“It’s such a pleasure to meet you!” Daisy Fayette said, blushing faintly beneath her powder. “Please, have some lemonade.”
Wellstone allowed the matron to pour him a glass. “Thank you.”
“Thank you. I was so surprised to get your letter. Bless your heart, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Imagine: Francis Wellstone, wanting to interview me!”
He drank this in with a smile. “Reliable sources have mentioned you’re the person to talk to when it comes to Savannah’s history.”
“And aren’t you kind to say so? I have to tell you, Mr. Wellstone — Frank — that Malice Aforethought was one of the most fascinating and shocking books I’ve ever read.”
Wellstone kept his smile in place with some effort. Why was it that when people wanted to compliment him, they invariably brought up his first, and best-known, work? What exactly did they think he’d been doing in the twenty years since it was published? It was like gushing to Papa Haydn over his first damned symphony.
In college, Wellstone had planned on becoming a historiographer. However, fate intervened when, in graduate school, it became clear he didn’t have the temperament necessary to pore over dusty tomes in search of insight. So he dropped out of Columbia and took an internship at New York magazine, doing whatever gofer work needed to be done and helping the staff writers while figuring out what to do with his life.
And it was at New York that Wellstone found his calling. He might not have had the disposition for analyzing ancient texts, but he had an impressive gift for research: contemporary research. While doing background and fact-checking for the magazine articles, he discovered a knack for teasing out secrets that the staff writers would never have found otherwise. This gift was particularly useful for smear articles on celebrities and gotcha pieces on public figures. Instinctively, Wellstone knew how to talk to doormen, nannies, and cast-off lovers; his academic background gave him insight into where to dig for information that was meant to stay buried. The articles, often reeking of snark and schadenfreude, were devoured by the magazine’s readership. In short order, Wellstone stopped toiling behind the scenes and got his name among the other top-tier journalists on New York’s masthead.
Then lightning struck: While doing background for a piece in the magazine, he unexpectedly came across a source with a trove of gossip about the high-profile attorney Laurence Furman. Furman was beloved by all for his good works, among them saving a West Virginia town from a rapacious company eager to situate a toxic waste dump there. Furman was known everywhere for his philanthropy and willingness to fight for the benefit of the workingman.
Except this turned out to be only part of the story. Deeply buried was another Laurence Furman: a lawyer who used blackmail and political connections to crush his opponents and a man who harassed and abused his female staff and threatened them into silence. Perhaps most damningly, Wellstone discovered that Furman had worked with his opponents on the other side of several lawsuits to line his own pockets at the expense of his clients.
There was too much scandal here for an article, and the subject was too juicy a bone for Wellstone to simply toss to his employer. Instead, he wrote Malice Aforethought, a salacious tell-all couched in literate prose, a magnificent character assassination of Furman. Wellstone’s research was so thorough, his sources so irrefutable, that — instead of challenging the scandalous allegations — Furman committed suicide two weeks after the book was published. What a triumph that had been, rocketing the book to number one on the bestseller list.
“Thank you, Daisy,” he said. “This lemonade is delicious, by the way.”
Malice Aforethought had been followed by several awards and a Hollywood movie. Wellstone thought he had it made. But the follow-up books hadn’t sold nearly as well and, because of sloppy research, had attracted several troublesome and expensive lawsuits. Ultimately Wellstone settled into a career that more resembled Geraldo Rivera’s than Upton Sinclair’s, churning out dubious books of scandal based on anonymous sources as quickly as possible. Now, with twelve titles to his name, he found himself still scoring an occasional bestseller even as the reviewers trashed his work.
He glanced at his hostess, widowed a decade and living off the diminishing fortune of her late husband. She had written several pamphlets on Savannah folklore and legend and was considered a local expert, even if she taught at a dump like Savannah-Exeter. But that wasn’t why he was there. He had learned something else about Mrs. Fayette — something that he sensed might be very useful.
“So, Daisy—” he said, putting down his glass and leaning forward. “Even though I didn’t want to mention it in my letter, you can probably guess why I’m here.”
She leaned forward. “You’re going to write another book!”
He nodded.
“And it’s going to be about Savannah!”
“Among other things, yes.” He waved a hand, palm upward. “Given you’re the expert on the city’s history — especially its, ah, supernatural history — may I rely on you as one of my primary sources?”
“Why, of course!” She raised her glass to her lips, fingers trembling slightly. He couldn’t help but feel flattered at her reaction to the idea of seeing her name between the covers of a Francis Wellstone book. He smiled inwardly, pleased to know he still had the touch.
“Along the same lines, I hope you’ll understand that — just for the next month or two — you’ll have to keep the nature of my project to yourself.”
She nodded vigorously, pleased to be in on the secret.
These points established, he leaned back. “Thank you, Daisy. I don’t mind telling you how glad I am for your help. It will make my work so much easier — and the final product so much better.”
“A Francis Wellstone book about Savannah,” Daisy said, almost to herself.
Wellstone could have told her Savannah was only going to play a minor role in his book, but his instincts were, of course, far too keen for that. The fact was, the work was almost complete. In his past two books Wellstone had focused on debunking cultural mountebanks. Those had been exposés — the first about megachurch evangelical preachers, the second about diet-hawking celebrities — and both enjoyed upticks in sales. He was taking aim in his new project at the pseudoscience of the paranormaclass="underline" skewering the psychics, spiritualists, clairvoyants, mediums, and crystal-gazing charlatans who exploited the supernatural to leech money from a gullible public.
The research was basically done. However, Wellstone had found himself stumped as to the best way to lead the reader into his book. He’d considered using the first chapter to expose a “spirit communicator” employing phony equipment to contact the dead, and of course Gerhard Moller came to mind. And then he’d heard that Barclay Betts, his old nemesis, was planning to shoot a docu-series on Savannah’s haunted houses, featuring Moller. At that, Wellstone knew he not only had an intro — he had found the perfect bookend for his work, at the same time settling an old and bitter score with Betts.