Many honors were attached to his name. Slowly as I listed them I began to imagine a powerful patriarch, some Burl Ivesian codger from a Tennessee Williams play. He had come out of his shell to run for the U.S. Senate in the early sixties, but had served only five years of his term, retiring because of illness. He died in 1966, aged sixty-one years.
I read it again and thought, What’s wrong with this picture?
The Archers had been like the Huxleys—money, position, power—but Hal Archer was the exact opposite of all that. Hadn’t Lee Huxley described him as dirt poor when they were kids? Maybe it was the Depression. A lot of people lost a lot of money in those days.
I looked deeper and found an earlier Robert Russell Archer, also a lawyer, who had dominated his state’s Republican party in the First War era, all through Prohibition until his own death in 1939. Grandpa, dead at fifty-three. The Archers had a nasty little gene in their makeup that did them in young. At fifty-four, Hal must be looking over his shoulder.
Born in rural Virginia, 1886, Gramps was a real log-cabin kinda guy. Put himself through the U of Virginia, then law school, and in 1907 married a woman named (I kid you not) Betsy Ross. Damn, I love that—I can almost hear “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Only one child, the already mentioned Robert Russell Archer. Apparently the family never used “Jr.” or “the third,” so at least their kids didn’t have to battle that all their lives. Like his son he missed the carnage of his day, 1914-18, but you knew he’d have gone in a heartbeat if he’d been a little younger. He was patriotic to the bone: tireless on Liberty Loan drives, a four-minute man always on the stump. Grandpa took a hand in everything that crossed his path. He never saw a civic need that he didn’t just yearn to filclass="underline" worked on an impossible number of worthy campaigns, and later, with his law career in full bloom, was involved in trusteeships, arbitration societies, and a debating club. He held retainers from half a dozen major companies in the twenties. And with all this real life going on, the old boy had still found time for a hobby. I took in a long, slow breath as I read it.
The first Robert Russell Archer—Grandpa—had been a noted book collector.
By then it was almost dusk. Koko would be waiting for me at the motel but at the moment I had an urge to see Archer’s natural habitat. I cruised over the newer spire of the Cooper River Bridge, on through Mount Pleasant, and then, pushed by an incredible sunset, headed east across a broad expanse of marsh. I crossed a drawbridge and came onto the long narrow island, yellow in the fading day. The road dead-ended at a continuous stretch of rolling sand dunes. I knew from my map that Fort Moultrie was a mile to the right, the beach lay just ahead, and Archer’s place was two miles north. I turned left and drove up the island.
The island wasn’t complicated—no more than half a dozen streets running north and south and a grid of short crossing streets, numbered from First to Thirty-second. Archer’s house was near the far end, not far from the inlet that separates Sullivan’s from a sister island called the Isle of Palms, and it took me less than ten minutes to find it. It was built on stilts, eight feet above the beach, with a grand wraparound porch, room under it to walk or park cars, and stairs on both the street side and the beachfront. As I drove past I saw a light somewhere inside and a car parked under the porch: couldn’t tell from there if it was Archer’s car, but all this made it look very much like someone was home. I parked my own car a block away, locked it, and walked along a path through the dunes.
In those few minutes the beach had gone from yellow to purple. The sea was rough, with whitecaps and large breaking waves closer in. I was pelted by heavy gusts of wind as I came abreast of the inlet. Far out at sea a light flashed from an incoming ship. The horizon was already dark, but the sky behind me was still showing a last spectacular sun splash through a thin layer of clouds. I went to the edge of the water and tried to look like some tourist out for a stroll.
I thought about what I had learned that afternoon and what it might mean. The editors at Who’s Who had a standard for brevity, with no word ever wasted on trivial information. When they said Grandpa had been a noted book collector, they weren’t talking about the Little Leather Library or The Rover Boys Whistle Dixie. Grandpa had been a substantial collector of expensive first editions, his collection worth mentioning to an international readership. Wouldn’t this put Josephine’s dream, if that’s what it was, in a new light? If her reference to Archer had meant Grandpa, not Hal, that could make her dream, recalled under recent hypnosis, more than fifty years old.
I walked up a long stretch of hard, wet sand. Archer’s house was just ahead. I could see only enough of the car to know it wasn’t his blue Pontiac, and in the room facing the sea was a light, in addition to the one I had seen out front. As I stood still on the beach, someone moved past the window. I came closer, skirting the house yet drawn toward it, wishing the dark were a little darker but unwilling to wait for that to happen. I stepped into Archer’s yard and went quickly into the dark place under his porch. From there I could hear the faint ringing of a telephone and someone moving around inside the house. The footsteps stopped: I heard a woman’s voice but she spoke too softly for anything more than that fact to be clear. I had a hunch that whatever was going on in that room was germane, important enough to take a chance, so I moved into the pale light at the bottom of the stairs and started up.
She was standing just above me and a bit to my left; the window was open and I could hear soft music playing in the background. It covered what she was saying and what her voice sounded like saying it, so I moved closer. I took the stairs slowly, making no noise, and at the top I eased across the porch and flattened myself against the house. Whatever was happening, the other party was now doing all the talking. I heard an uh-uh and an uh-huh and more silence. I stood against the wall just outside the window, close enough to be charged with groping. She said, “Okay,” and that single clear word turned my head around. I knew that voice and knew it well.
She said, “Yeah, right,” and if I’d had any doubt I kissed it good-bye.
“He should be here soon,” she said. “I’ll let you know when there’s something to report.”
Oh, Erin, I thought.
CHAPTER 23
I eased back toward the stairs, felt my way down, and stood under the house listening. I could hear her up there pacing. She was nervous. Whatever she was here for, the outcome was far from certain. And me, I had only two choices: announce myself or drop back into surveillance. Take the option while you’ve got one, I thought, and surveillance felt right on second guess. But cover your ass, Janeway. Get the car in case you need it.
By then it was quite dark: My cover was as good as it gets, so I walked away from the house, down the beach to the inlet, through the dunes, and up to the road where the car was parked.
A minute later I pulled into Archer’s street and parked in front of the house. It didn’t matter much where I parked: there were other cars along the road and my rental slipped in nicely among them. Archer would have no reason to know that I was within six hundred miles of here.