“What committee is that, Miss Reynolds?”
The committee, as she explained it, was a relatively small group of blacks and whites who believed justice had been circumvented, if not aborted, in the Jerry Tolliver case. It was started by a black woman married to a white doctor out on Fatback Key, and at first it consisted only of herself and a handful of whites like her husband, most of them residents of Fatback, but then it expanded to include two or three dozen people from all over Calusa and elsewhere in Florida, whites and blacks both, some of them well-to-do, some of them poor as dirt. The first meeting Kitty attended was out on Fatback — this was maybe a week after the committee was formed — and that was where she’d met Michelle and George Harper.
“Because what this doctor and his wife were trying to do,” Kitty said, “was get some other mixed couples like themselves on the committee. There aren’t too many of those in Calusa, I guess you know.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“Well, take it from me,” Kitty said. “All told, by the time the committee got off the ground — well, it never did get off the ground, actually, that cop’s still out there free as a bird. But what I’m saying, the only mixed couples she came up with — the doctor’s wife, I forget her name just now — were herself and her husband, and Michelle and George, and a couple from Venice, which isn’t Calusa at all. The rest of the people weren’t married — I mean, there were blacks married to blacks and whites married to whites but no other salt-and-pepper couples, do you know?”
I suddenly thought of the painting of the salt and pepper shakers hanging over Sally Owen’s water bed. I said nothing.
“The committee broke up three weeks after the first meeting. Meetings day and night, but you know this town, you never can get anything done in this town. Everybody went back home to cry in his beer. Fatback lady and her rich doctor husband — I remember her name now, it was Naomi Morris — went back to growing orchids, rest of us went back to doing our own things. Except...”
She hesitated.
“Yes?” I said.
“Well, some of us got to know each other pretty well during all those committee meetings. So we kept seeing each other socially.”
“Were Andrew and Sally Owen at any of those meetings?”
“Well, yes, they were on the committee.”
“Is that where you met Andrew? At one of the meetings?”
“Yes,” she said. Her voice was very low. She sipped at the cognac. In the fireplace, one of the logs suddenly crackled and spit. Out on the bay, I heard the distant sound of a speedboat.
“And, you know,” she said, “I was a divorced woman with a successful boutique on the Circle, but there wasn’t much else to my life just then, which is maybe why I joined the committee to begin with, to feel that I was doing something meaningful, you know, something important. Divorce is rough,” she said.
“Yes, I know.”
“You’ve been the route, huh?”
“I’ve been the route.”
“Well,” she said, and sighed again. “Andrew was attentive to me, Andrew was attractive, Andrew and I... well, you know.”
“When was this?”
“September last year? October? The fall sometime.”
“And Sally found out.”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well, yes, she found out.”
“And immediately sued for divorce.”
“Well, yes.”
“Well, she did, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Why were you so reluctant to tell me this the last time we talked?”
“Well, it was personal.”
“It’s still personal, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but Sally wasn’t dead then.”
“Michelle was.”
“I hadn’t been involved with Michelle’s husband.”
“Are you saying you think Sally’s death—”
“No, no.”
“...had something to do with your involvement with her husband?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how has her death changed anything? You didn’t want to discuss any of this a week ago, but now you seem...”
“It just started me thinking, that’s all. First Michelle, then Sally, almost as if all the women in the oar—”
She cut herself short. She had a habit of cutting herself short. She had interrupted herself earlier when she’d been about to say the name “Michelle,” and now she had just said the word oar and then closed her mouth on it as effectively as a shark on a fisherman’s paddle.
I looked at her.
She lowered her eyes and said, “It’s just that, well, in a social group like ours, after the committee broke up, I mean, it wasn’t considered... well, you weren’t supposed to fall in love the way Andrew and I did, to make waves the way we did.”
“But that would apply to any group in which there were married—”
“Well, sure, but Sally’s reaction... she sort of went off the deep end, do you know what I mean? She was a very vain person, you know, and... well, she just got furious. Made it clear to both of us that we’d be outcasts from then on, told us that none of the oar... none of our friends would have anything to do with us ever again. Which is why she asked for the divorce and named me in the action. To make sure we were out for good, do you understand? Out. Excommunicated.”
“This ‘oar’ you keep mentioning—”
“What?”
“You keep saying the word oar.”
“You must be mistaken.”
“I thought that’s what I was hearing.”
“Really? No,” she said. “Would you care for some more cognac?”
“No, thank you. So, as I understand it, you lost touch with most of the people you’d been socializing with...”
“Yes, because that’s the way Sally wanted it.”
“People here in Calusa?”
“Yes. Well, from all over, actually. The case attracted a lot of attention, you know. There was the couple from Venice, you know, and people from Tampa, Miami, Sarasota... well, wherever anyone was concerned about the injustice of what had happened.”
“Who from Miami?” I asked.
“Well, I really can’t remember. This was all so long ago.”
“Would it have been someone named Lloyd Davis?”
“I don’t remember all the names, really.”
“He was in the army with Harper, I just thought...”
“Mm, well...”
“If Harper and his wife were on the committee, as you say they were—”
“Yes, they were.”
“Then possibly he contacted Davis, tried to interest him in—”
“Well, I guess, now that you mention it, there might have been someone named Davis at one of the meetings.”
“Lloyd Davis?”
“I guess.”
“And his wife?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Leona, would it have been?”
“I really don’t remember.”
“Where was this?”
“At one of the meetings. Andrew’s house, I think. This was a year ago, more than a year ago. I think that’s where it was. People used to just, you know, come to the meetings. I don’t know if Sally and Andrew actually knew him, or whether someone else brought him. There were a lot of people, you see.”
“Two or three dozen, you said.”
“Sometimes more. In the beginning, anyway. Before the committee started breaking up.”
“Uh-huh.” I looked at my watch. “Well, Miss Reynolds,” I said, “I’m still not—”