Trial

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Atlanta, GA

Charles

“WELL, PHILIPPE,” I said, stressing the French pronunciation (showing off?) as I settled back down, this time on the sofa, which placed me closer to and gave me a slightly different view of my prospective client, “we have so much to talk about that I hardly know where to begin. But first, let me apologize for Andrew and myself.”

“Please, I’m much more comfortable with the English version of my name,” he said, in that voice, which by now had begun to send chills down my spine. “Philip will do very nicely.” He quickly added, “Apologize? For what?”

“For discussing you and your case as though you weren’t sitting in the same room with us. It’s a bad habit in which we lawyers frequently indulge, and it is, and was, rude. I assure you that no offense was meant.”

“None was taken.”

Before I could say anything else, there was another discreet tap on the door; then it opened and two waiters wheeled in a small cart carrying, I supposed, our dinner, or at least a portion of it. Without a word, they went to the table in the corner and quickly arranged the first course. When that task had been completed, the one in charge walked over to where we were sitting, cleared his throat, and said, or rather intoned, with the same solemnity he might have used to address a gathering of twenty people, “Dinner is served.”

As we started on the soup, which appeared to be a broccoli and cheese combination—Andrew really was trying to make me susceptible; he knew that I loved anything containing broccoli—I asked Philip to tell me about himself, which, with starts and stops and occasional prompting by my questions, he did.

Philip was from a very old but somewhat impoverished Louisiana family who, during his youth, were still hanging onto a Louisiana plantation complete with a somewhat run-down antebellum mansion north of New Orleans. Lucinda, his late wife, was from a slightly less old but considerably more affluent Georgia family. As a child and young adult, she had frequently visited relatives in Louisiana who lived near the d’Autremont plantation, and they’d known each other since before adolescence. She was the only offspring of her family, and by the time she’d finished college was under intense pressure to marry and produce heirs. Neither of them, it developed, was particularly interested in marriage, oddly enough for the same reason. Philip had been interested only in boys from an early age, and while Lucinda occasionally, as they say, swung both ways, her predilection was for women.

Due to a chance meeting on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, in a setting that left little doubt—a gay bar, naturally—as to their respective s****l identities, they’d admitted the truth to each other. After that, they began to meet more often and had finally come up with a plan that would get her family off her back, so to speak. They pretended to, and actually did, date each other, dragging the process out for a couple of years before finally announcing that they were going to marry. Philip wasn’t at that point, out to his family, although he’d never attempted to hide his sexuality from them, so it was easy for him to maintain his part of the charade.

Needless to say, it was a marriage of convenience. They’d occupied, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the same residence on West Paces Ferry Road ever since their wedding several years earlier, and were in fact seen together in all of the right places and with all of the right people. Their private lives, however, were entirely separate. They had the means to and did maintain two small condos in different parts of town, which they used for the purpose of conducting those secret lives, and they had done so almost since the first year of their marriage. A very tidy arrangement, I found myself thinking.

There was much more than that, of course, and I filed all of it away for reference to be digested later. By this time, we’d worked our way through the soup, salad, sorbet, a wonderful veal dish that I recognized but couldn’t immediately name, and a bottle of Mondavi-Rothschild Opus One. I made a mental note to compliment Andrew on his choice of wines.

I needed to ask Philip some very pointed questions about the murder, but I decided to veer off on a tangent first, and over dessert and coffee got him to talking about his life. It turned out that he was a somewhat gifted writer and had published a number of novels, all of them under pseudonyms. His real talent lay, however, in the field of real estate, and he’d accumulated a great deal of income property, overseeing the management of which took considerable effort, which left him little time to indulge in much else. His social life, as he put it, was confined to the occasional weekend here and there. He’d managed to have several affairs over the years, none of them of any significant duration, and there was no one in his life currently, a revelation that started another chain of thought having to do with relationships.

Robert and I had maintained the fiction that we were merely friends and college roommates until after he’d received his degree in architecture. Because I still had two more years of law school at the time, he decided to do some postgraduate work so that we could stay in Cambridge together. When his parents came to Cambridge for his graduation, he told them of his plans for two more years of education, without, of course, telling them the whole story. They’d been adamant that he should come home and find a job. His summer savings and part-time jobs during the school year were insufficient for his needs without their support—they knew it and attempted to use that fact as leverage to persuade him to follow their wishes. Their tactics caused him to lose his temper, whereupon he told them precisely why and with whom he intended to stay in Cambridge for two more years. That, of course, had precipitated a breach in his relationship with his parents. They’d flown home in a rage, and had neither spoken to nor written him again.

Fortunately, I had a good income from a sizeable trust fund that had been created when my parents had died, as well as a smaller amount from a trust set up by my maternal grandparents. I wasn’t rich, but I had sufficient means to allow myself the luxury of not having to work during college or law school. It hadn’t been quite enough to support the two of us, but that income, augmented by our summer savings, some government loans and grants—because of my private income, I didn’t qualify for grants, but Robert did—and part-time jobs in Boston managed to see us both through the next two years. I finished law school and he received his master’s, after which we both found jobs in Atlanta and had begun our respective careers.

THE WAITERS HAD long since cleared the table and departed, but not before reminding us that we wouldn’t be disturbed and if we needed anything we should pick up the telephone on the desk to call. By that time, we were sitting side by side on the sofa, jackets off, enjoying a fine glass of Port—W & J Graham Tawny 40 Year Old.

Just as I was about to ask my pointed questions, he surprised me by asking me about myself. I gave him the short, condensed version, starting with school—including Robert—and leading up to the present.

We’d lived together until Robert had died of a brain tumor shortly after the tenth anniversary of our first meeting. Even after three years, thinking about the final months of Robert’s life brought me almost to the point of melancholy. At one point, I’d very nearly sold the town house that we’d bought, furnished, and decorated together, because everything in it was a reminder, one way or another, of Robert. In the end, however, I decided that I couldn’t part with something that we’d both worked so hard to create, and I tried to concentrate upon remembering the happy years that had preceded those final months.

I hadn’t gone out with anyone since then, despite Richard’s constant attempts at matchmaking. Richard, my best friend since seventh grade, had moved into the largest of the three spare bedrooms during Robert’s illness in order to help with his care, and had stayed on afterward taking care of me. Richard’s presence and upbeat attitude were a couple of of the things that had kept me sane during the first months after Robert died—that, and the love and affection of Lance.

Philip was attentive during my recital and made appropriately polite and seemingly sincere responses. In fact, he gazed at me so intently and with such evident interest that I distinctly felt the foundation under my defenses begin to shift and crumble. To switch the conversation to safer ground, I decided to cut to the chase, saying, “Enough about me already. We need to talk about the murder.”

“WHAT DO YOU WANT to know?”

“First, do you have any idea who might have done it?”

“None whatsoever.” He paused and looked thoughtful.

“What?”

“I just thought of something that Lucinda said recently.”

“What was that?”

“I need to backtrack just a moment. Did I mention that she was about six weeks pregnant?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Her family was still very much on her case to produce an heir, and she got this notion that if we produced an heir it would shut them up. She had herself artificially inseminated, using me as the donor. We could have gotten her pregnant in the normal way, but neither of us derived any particular pleasure from s*x with each other. Anyway, the pregnancy was confirmed, and she did mention that she was thinking about breaking off her current affair for the duration of the pregnancy, at least.”

“How did the other woman feel about that?”

“I’m not sure, but I got the impression that her lover was getting somewhat possessive and that Lucinda was tired of it. You have to understand that we simply didn’t talk about such things very often.”

“You’re suggesting that she told this person, and that got her killed?”

“I suppose it’s possible.”

“Did she have any other lovers?”

“Never more than one at a time, as far as I know. We jointly agreed in the beginning that we wouldn’t rub each other’s noses in that aspect of our lives, and kept it totally separate.”

“So you never met any of them?”

“Only once, and I didn’t actually meet her, merely saw her from a distance. Three or four years ago, we turned up at the same party quite unexpectedly, each of us with dates. Lucinda and I spotted each other from opposite sides of the room. I nodded to her and pointed to the door, indicating that my date and I would leave, which we did. I didn’t really get a good look at the woman she was with.”

“Any chance that person was the one she was still seeing?”

“I doubt it. To the best of my knowledge her affairs never lasted longer than six months or so.”

“Could one of her former lovers have killed her for some reason?”

“I’m not sure. If that’s what happened, it’s very strange that it happened at the house on West Paces Ferry Road, because we had what I thought was a firm understanding that we would never bring any of our s****l partners there. I never did, and as far as I knew, neither did she. On the other hand, she might well have brought a former lover to the house in order to keep her current lover from knowing about it. When I was being questioned by the detectives, they kept pounding away at the fact that there was no evidence of forced entry. I suppose that could be taken as an indication that she knew the killer and had let them in.”

“What exactly have you told the police?”

“Well, they wanted to know where I’d been that weekend and could I prove it. I told them I’d spent the weekend out of town and refused to tell them where, but I don’t think they believed me. They also asked me who I thought might have done it, and I told them that I had no idea.”

“Did they say anything else to you?”

“I’m not sure. I was very upset and in shock when they first questioned me. I’d just gotten home, and it’s all a blur now. As you can imagine, Lucinda and I were not in love with each other, but we’d known each other for more than twenty years and were in some ways very close, almost like brother and sister.”

“What makes you think they might arrest you?”

“Just a feeling, I guess. They keep coming back and asking the same questions over and over again, and I don’t think they’re satisfied with the answers. I also get the impression that they aren’t looking very hard in any other direction, either.”

“Is there anything else you think I need to know at this point?”

“Only that I think they might have somehow discovered that I’m gay.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Nothing they said overtly, just some sly innuendo in some of their questions and remarks.”

“I’ll be honest with you, that’s not good. Our dearly beloved district attorney is a notorious homophobe, and he’s so publicity-hungry that he’s liable to go after you for no other reason than that of milking the situation for all the free publicity it’s worth.”

“I know, I’ve heard stories about him, and that’s one of the reasons for my concern.”

I steered the conversation back to generalities for a time so part of me could talk while the other part assimilated all that I’d just heard. He had good reason to be concerned. If District Attorney Craig Wetherbee could work a gay angle into this case, he would run with it, even if it was built on thin air. A staunch Southern Baptist of the worst hellfire and brimstone sort, Wetherbee was notorious for his homophobia. It was rumored that he had aspirations to higher office, perhaps even the governor’s mansion.

I snapped back to reality, realizing that I was being asked a direct question. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I was woolgathering for a minute there. What were you saying?”

“Will you help me? That is, take the case?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

He must have sensed some hesitancy in my voice, perhaps even an unspoken “but,” because he articulated it for me and said, “But…?”

“Well, the firm will want a retainer of at least $50,000 against $500 per hour for my time, $200 per hour for any associates’ time, and any out-of-pocket expenses for investigators, etcetera.”

“No problem….” Then a sly look came over his face as he said, “And what will you want?” with a slightly mocking tone in that golden voice.

I don’t know what came over me at that point, but the shifting foundations of my fortress caused the crack to yawn widely open. From a spot on the ceiling I seemed to be looking down at us on the sofa, where I saw and heard myself saying, “You.”

“In what way?”

“Naked. In my arms. On that rug. Right now.”

“And what else?” His blue eyes were still virtually inscrutable, but there was a definite hint of something in them.

In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought. Again, from afar, I heard myself saying, “You. In my bed. Every night.”

“Not naked?”

“Well, I took that as a given and didn’t want to seem redundant.”

“For how long?” Still no discernible reaction.

“Until your legal problems are resolved or until we get tired of each other, whichever takes longer.”

To my surprise and wonder, he stood up, said simply, “Sounds good to me,” and started removing his tie. Of course, I stopped him immediately—I prefer to unwrap my own packages.

The next thirty minutes or so will be etched in my brain forever. We began to undress each other, starting with shirts and ties. His chest was as smooth as silk, and from the definition his muscles showed, I deduced that he worked out regularly. I stroked his smooth, tanned chest, moved my hand down to his extremely flat stomach, and said, “I’m glad that you’re not hirsute.”

“What would you have done if I were?”

“Well, earlier in the evening I noticed that the bathroom is not only fully equipped but well stocked, including shaving cream and disposable razors. I guess I’d have had to try them out.”

“Too bad I’m not. That sounds like fun.”

I unbuckled his belt and unzipped his trousers, which immediately fell to the floor. He was wearing sexy low-rise square-cut boxer briefs, not unlike my own. I slid them down over his thighs, kneeling as I did so.

He said, “You have me at a slight disadvantage, you’ve still got your pants on.” He proceeded to remove my disadvantage, and we embraced and kissed deeply. We sank down on the rug in front of the fireplace, and without any further conversation, it was all over with hands and mouths almost before it had begun. In point of fact, it had been so long since I’d experienced real s*x—s*x with oneself doesn’t count—that I came as quickly as a sixteen-year-old virgin.

“Sorry to be so quick,” I said, “but it’s been three years.”

“Not to worry, next time will be better.”

“I don’t see how it could be any better.”

“Well, then, we’ll just have to make it last longer.”

And we started again. This time it did take somewhat longer, and it was, unbelievable as it may seem, better. Afterward, we lay side by side for a long while without speaking.

Finally, he said simply, “Penny.”

“Well, I was just thinking of what Charles Ryder said the first time he saw Sebastian Flyte’s ancestral home.”

“I’ve both seen and read Brideshead Revisited, but I don’t remember the line.”

“Golly.”

“You’re surprised that I don’t remember something from a series I saw several years ago?” he said.

“No. When Charles Ryder first saw Brideshead Manor House from a distance, he simply said, ‘Golly’.”

“Oh yes, now I do remember. Most appropriate. Then as now.”

There followed a great deal of inconsequential small talk, until finally I said, “Now that we’ve had some practice, let’s go somewhere and try this in a real bed.” Despite the fact that hours, even days, seemed to have elapsed, it was only eleven.

“My place or yours?” he said with a smile that lit up the room. With that smile I was hooked, knew it, and didn’t give a damn.

“I think, given your uncertain legal status, that it had better be my place. This club has a covered entrance around back for use in weather that’s too inclement for the portico out front. We can have my car brought around there, and if you were followed here, you won’t be seen leaving with me—you can arrange to have your car picked up tomorrow.”

He agreed, and when we were dressed and presentable, I used the phone to call down and request that my car be brought around to the rear entrance. Then he took the phone and told the appropriate person that he felt the need of a designated driver, was catching a ride with me, and would have his car picked up in the morning.

By eleven thirty we were back at my town house. I gave him the fifty-cent tour, and within minutes we were upstairs. We went through the ritual of undressing each other for the second time and were in bed almost in less time than it takes to tell about it. Strangely enough, I had no second thoughts about bringing this man to share the bed that Robert and I had shared for so many years.

I was hooked, all right. Head over heels, and I quite honestly didn’t know what to do about it… except, of course, enjoy it while it lasted.