The Lies of Saints, page 14
“I understand,” I said. “I will tell this woman how you feel.”
Life burst into the old woman’s face. She pointed at me, still clutching the shawl. “You, young man, have no idea how I feel!”
It was a well-deserved rebuke.
“No,” I said quietly. “I don’t.”
“Let me tell you about Anson,” she said. “He is not a piece in some puzzle you are trying to put together. He was flesh and blood. My flesh and blood.”
**
Just before his fifth birthday, it was discovered that Anson Hanoway Saffron had leukemia. Isabelle believed he was being punished for her sins—the excessiveness of lifestyle that she enjoyed as a wealthy woman—so she converted to Christianity and pledged Anson’s life to God if he would spare the boy.
The doctors called it a miracle cure, because within six months, they could not discover any sign of the disease.
Isabelle remained true to her pledge. She began attending church regularly. While her husband refused to go, she took Anson each Sunday, reminding him that his life was special and had been dedicated to God. Anson seemed to care little.
Until, years and years later, at age fifteen, his inward searching for meaning and truth led him to become a Christian. Shortly afterward, he read about leper colonies and decided that he wanted to serve God by serving those people. His father hoped this foolish, childish dream would pass, but Anson started to talk about dropping out of school as soon as he turned sixteen to fulfill his destiny.
Isabelle had been amazed at how Anson had stood up to his father. So she had stepped in and negotiated a deal. If Anson graduated from the Citadel, the family would finance the mission of his choice. His father agreed, believing that the Citadel would toughen up his son, making him lose his idealistic bent.
So it was that Anson Hanoway Saffron entered the Citadel in the fall of his sixteenth year.
**
“When Anson died in the manner that he did,” Isabelle finished, “my deal with God was over. I didn’t stop believing in God. I simply saw no reason to ever follow him again. He wasn’t my enemy nor was I his. I just wanted nothing to do with him ever again.” She smiled grimly. “It is a vow that I have kept. I am not far from death myself, and not even with that prospect can God bully me into turning toward him again. My loss is too great.”
I could think of nothing to say at first. A full minute passed. The breeze gusted into a wind, and sparrows fought on the ground near us among the scattering wisps of fallen palmetto leaves, long dried by sun and wind.
“I know something about loss too,” I said at last, quietly, meeting her eyes. “I did not know my father. My mother was taken from me when I was ten years old. My own son, stillborn, was buried in this cemetery before I knew he existed. And yet I returned to God.” I paused. “Maybe you will too.”
“I am old. I have no time for your platitudes.”
“Maybe not. But we have time to help another mother find the truth about her son.”
“You aren’t going to leave this alone, are you?” she said.
“I cannot.”
“Then do this for this old mother,” she said. “Find out why they did what they did to my Anson.”
She motioned for the large man in the overcoat. He ignored me as he came over and wheeled her away.
I stood alone in front of Anson’s headstone for several more minutes as the husks of broken palmetto leaves swirled over my shoes.
Chapter 18
“This is what I want to know,” Jubil said over the cell phone. “How did you get that stuff on Ashby?”
“Is it true?”
“I hate it when you answer a question with a question. If a perp tried it on me, I’d be on his throat like a Rottweiler. Let me repeat. How’d you get that stuff on Ashby?”
“Perp?” I said, walking down King Street toward the antique shop. Sunlight played off the ancient stone of the older buildings. “Is that cop talk?”
“There you go with the questions again. See, some of what you gave me on Ashby, I’m not sure I could get myself without a warrant.”
“Is it true?”
“You’re tiresome.”
“So it is true.” I stepped aside to make room for a mother holding hands with a determined toddler.
“Yes. Foster homes. Juvie records. Time in a state pen. Even the therapy sessions. Except all I could get on that was that he’d made appointments with a shrink while he was in the pen—nothing about what they talked about. Happy? Now where did you get it?”
“Internet,” I said. “Amazing the stuff you can find if you know where to look.”
“Nick . . .” His voice held dark warning, audible even through a cell phone connection.
“Jubil, if any laws were broken, I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Were broken? Nick—”
“Got to go. Buy you breakfast sometime.”
“Nick—”
I hung up. And walked into the antique shop owned by my friends.
**
“Nicholas Barrett, look at this!” Glennifer waved some papers at me. I’d barely stepped through the doorway to their office.
“Well,” I said, smiling, “good morning to you too.”
“It’s your Angel,” Elaine said. “You should see what she wants to make off us.”
“My Angel, huh. Not our Angel? What is it? An offer for any of your rotary-dial telephones from home?”
“Not amusing, Nicholas,” Glennifer said. “Not at all. Look at this, please.”
I accepted the sheets of paper. “May I sit?”
My prosthesis felt like it was cutting into my leg. It seemed like I had walked more than usual already.
“Certainly.” This from Elaine.
“And tea?” I asked.
“Certainly,” Glennifer said with some impatience. “Please read it and tell us what you think.”
I finished scanning the papers before the kettle began to whistle. Angel had put together a professional-looking proposal. Essentially, it was an offer to set up a Web site exhibiting their current inventory of antique furniture. She would maintain and update it as necessary, and handle the sales and shipping.
“I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?” Glennifer said. “Did you see the hourly rate she wants?”
“About half of what you’d be charged by anyone else,” I said. “And she’s as good as you could find, twelve or not.”
“She wants 15 percent of sales,” Elaine said. “Did you read that part?”
“Knowing Angel, I expect she’s very willing to settle for 10. After all, more than once she’s been in this very office listening to you two shrewdly negotiate with a hapless client.” I set the papers on the desk. “Seems to me that you don’t have much to lose. She’s put a cap on what it will cost you to set up the site. I’m guessing she figures to get her reward on the back end if the idea works.”
“Either way,” Glennifer said, “that’s a lot of money for a twelve-year-old. When I was her age . . .”
“You had a family,” I said.
I let them ponder that before I continued. “Sounds like when you read the proposal, you felt she was trying to make money off you. I see a girl who is determined to take care of her little sister. I’ve noticed Angel saves every penny she gets.”
“They have a guardian,” Elaine said. “You. And it doesn’t look like you’ll go broke soon.”
“Angel lost her mother and her grandmother. Think she ever wonders if I’ll be taken away too?” I’d lost my own mother when I was young. I didn’t have to search my soul too deeply to understand Angel’s fears.
“Oh.” Glennifer put an arm around Elaine. “That makes me so sad. Perhaps we should hire her for the Web site then.”
“Not for that reason,” I said. “She’d be humiliated if she ever thought you agreed to her proposal out of pity.”
“He’s right,” Elaine said. “We’ll consider it on the merits alone.”
I waited as Glennifer readied our tea. This daily ritual with these two dear and quirky ladies had become important in my life. I was grateful for it.
“Two questions,” I announced. “First one is this. Any more telemarketing calls?”
The broad grin on Elaine’s face made the question worthwhile. “Nicholas! Listen to this.”
She fiddled with the cassette until a taped conversation began. It was marked by the typical few seconds of silence while the telemarketing computer registers that a phone line has been answered. Then came a male telemarketer’s voice, with Elaine’s following.
Hi. My name is Michael. I’m with—
Gord! Don’t try to tease me like that. I’d never forget your voice.
Ma’am? Actually, I am Michael. I’m with—
Still the same silly sense of humor, Gord. I miss that. Do you really think after five years of marriage, I’d forget?
There’s this program I’d like to explain. It can save—
Gord, the kids are teenagers now. But they really miss you. Every day I tell them that Daddy loves them. You do love them, don’t you?
Once again, I must tell you. My name is—
My father’s dead now, Gord. So you don’t have to worry about him hauling out that shotgun again. And I’ve forgiven you. Shouldn’t you come home now?
I’m not—
Then why did you call? This is breaking my heart, Gord. Don’t tell me you’re still with that floozy? What that horse-faced old nag has that I don’t is beyond me.
Ma’am—
Tell me! Is it her? My father might have passed on, but I didn’t bury his shotgun with him. Where are you living? I’m going to reverse trace this call and come find you.
I’m not Gord!
I’m so sorry for yelling at you, sweetheart. Just give us one more chance, all right? I’ll even start to shave my legs if you come back—
Click.
Gord? Gord?
Glennifer and Elaine giggled as the tape ended.
I applauded from my chair. “Couple more like that, and you can compile a best-seller.”
“It’s certainly more lighthearted than the subject you’re going to bring up with your next question.” Glennifer leaned forward to refill my china cup. “Because I can predict what it will be. That tawdry suicide affair. I do wish you’d give this up, you know.”
Glennifer’s tone of voice had become more serious, and I looked up sharply from the spoon of sugar that held my attention.
“Yes, Nicholas, there’s an eerie coincidence here, except I doubt it’s coincidence.”
“Oh?”
“Yesterday you asked if I could find out anything about the suicide of Anson’s grandfather.”
I nodded. I had asked just before leaving the shop.
She continued. “I made a couple of phone calls to old friends. It didn’t take me long to learn far more than I wanted.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t want thanks. Truly. This entire matter disturbs me. After all, Whitman Metiere’s body was discovered under the lodge, was it not?”
It was. So far, the only body publicly acknowledged by the Charleston Police Department.
“And didn’t you tell us under the strictest confidence about that young man Matthew Pederson? That he was involved with the hazing that led to Anson Saffron’s suicide?”
Again, I nodded.
“Here’s what I don’t like, Nicholas.” Glennifer spoke softly. “It was Whitman Metiere who forced Anson’s grandfather to the point of desperation. Jesse Hanoway owned a business that owed Whitman Metiere a great deal of money. Metiere forced the banks to begin foreclosure proceedings on the Hanoway family.”
“But earlier,” I said, “you told me that Metiere loaned Hanoway enough money to help him retain his business.”
“I did tell you that. Because he did. What I didn’t know was the behind-the-scenes happenings, how Metiere pushed Hanoway to the edge. Nobody knows exactly what he did. Or why. But Hanoway hanged himself in Metiere’s garage, you know. He had a note in his pocket that said Metiere was responsible for all his family’s ruin.”
“Even though Metiere had loaned them money to save the business from foreclosure proceedings that Metiere himself initiated?”
Both Glennifer and Elaine nodded.
“Strange, isn’t it, Nick?” Glennifer said.
“It seems to me,” Elaine said, “that Metiere was a cruel man.”
“Let me be sure I follow,” I said. “Isabelle Hanoway is Jesse Hanoway’s daughter. She married into the Saffron family. It was her son Anson who was found dead at the Citadel. He, like his grandfather, was found dead at the end of a rope.”
I didn’t add that it had been murder. Or that Anson was further linked to his grandfather by the fact that Matthew Pederson’s body was found in the same place that his grandfather’s business associate had been found.
“Essentially that is it,” Elaine said. “There are some, then, who might say that by the way he died, Whitman Metiere reaped what he had sown during a long, hateful lifetime.”
Chapter 19
For the second time that day, I accepted an invitation to St. Michael’s Church. But not the cemetery—instead, the sanctuary.
I began my wait as I’d been directed in the voice mail. The sanctuary’s lighting was subdued, the silence loud. Although my conscious mind assured me that I was safe, primal fear prickled at the nape of my neck. I sat sideways in a pew, determined that the person who’d sent the message would not catch me unawares.
The cross at the front of the church held my attention. What a symbol of peace and hope, that God would reach down to man and die on it as the ultimate sacrifice for the sins that would otherwise make the chasm between us and God infinitely deep and wide. Yet how often had it been abused and misused over the centuries, so that those who were truly broken and in desperate need of that peace and hope viewed the same cross with suspicion and fear.
Each time the church doors at the back swung open, throwing a wide beam of light down the aisle, I squinted to try to make sense of the outline of the person entering. Three times tourists walked in and spoke in hushed awe at the back of the church.
The fourth visitor, however, slowly walked up the aisle. She was large and old, wearing sunglasses. Her hair was long and unkempt, a dirty blonde. She wore an overcoat, with the hem of a dark dress down to her ankles, and my sense was that she shopped for clothing at a thrift store. As she moved closer on wide-heeled shoes, I was able to see her face in the light from the windows. I saw that the plainness extended to square jaws and square cheekbones beneath the sunglasses. In a parody of womanhood, her face was garishly painted with far too much makeup, put on far too sloppily.
She stopped at my pew and slid in beside me. I edged away, wary of an attack, then felt ridiculous because of it. Cheap perfume overwhelmed me.
“Promise first that we’ll leave separately.” Her voice was a low, manly rumble. Strangely familiar.
I nodded. This woman would not be my first choice of companions anyway.
“Lean forward, as if we are a couple, praying.”
Then it clicked. The strangely familiar male voice from this ugly woman. “John Sebastian,” I said.
“Lean forward. Please.”
I did.
“Secret life?” I asked.
“This is nothing I would do if I didn’t have to.” He spoke tersely. “I can’t be seen with you. And you may be watched. Anytime. All the time. I don’t know.”
His fear was palpable. And slightly contagious. I fought the urge to look around.
“When you came to visit,” he said, “I knew who you were. I was afraid to let you know, in case it made you come back. But I thought about it after. You know nothing about that detestable symbol you showed me. You’re looking for them, aren’t you?”
“Them?” Although I knew who he meant.
“Don’t play games with me. This is not a game. I’m terrified of them. So was Victoria. She couldn’t live with the fear. Neither could I, but I wasn’t prepared to give up everything I had here in Charleston. She was.”
“Are you saying . . . ?”
“I’m saying I’d done some things wrong in our marriage. No, I won’t lie. I’d done some horrible things. I’d made that marriage a torment for her. Then came the night I paid the price. When I tell you, you’ll understand why I’m so afraid now.”
Sebastian turned his face toward me. It was the first time our eyes had met since he’d walked into the church. I saw desperation.
“I want you to know what it was like. If you repeat this to anyone, I’ll deny it. If you repeat this to anyone, it will probably happen to you. They are real.”
**
The ceremony happened on the night of the All Saints’ Ball; Metiere’s descendants had been only too happy to carry on the tradition despite his disappearance at the event decades earlier.
It took place in a carriage house in Charleston that had once been used as slave quarters. For decades after the last of the slaves had been declared free, the small building beside the Metiere mansion’s beautiful garden had housed the aristocracy’s other beasts of burden. As a result, the interior still smelled faintly of the horse sweat and hay dust that had replaced the earlier odors of human fear and humiliation and suppressed rage.
Where straw had once been used for the slaves’ beds and later for the horses’ stalls, there was now merely dirt. The interior was a shell, not yet converted to a cottage in the manner of other similar carriage houses behind other mansions. Black sheets covered tiny windows, and on this evening they blocked the glow from the orange full moon that hung just above the nearby mansion.
Those same black sheets hid from the outside the light of candles burning on an elaborate wrought-iron stand. This was the light that cast a circle, with the shadows beyond complete darkness.
Thirteen cloaked and hooded figures gathered at the edges of the flickering light, surrounding an open coffin on the dirt floor.
