"Positioned?"
"Yep, so when Vernon goes to Washington, Tim will be added to the Board."
"Why is that important?" I knew Edwina and Roscoe's reasoning, but wasn't sure Ruby subscribed to it.
"The company has always been divided. Gladys and Vernon on one side, the rest of us on the other." She sighed like she hated talking about the business. "Since Vernon 's boys have moved up in the company, their side always gets the votes on major decisions. Tim will help even the odds."
"You don't think Tim will have a loyalty to our mother?"
She smiled. "That's the first time, in a long time, that I heard you call Gladys 'mother.' That's nice to hear."
A little shaken by my slip-up, I corrected myself, "I meant Gladys."
A chuckle tumbled from Ruby's smiling lips. "Tim never got a lot of support from your mother-"
"Big surprise there," I interrupted.
"Lord," she looked up at the ceiling, "let me get this out so we can stop talking about it."
"Sorry, go on. Tim wasn't supported by Gladys…" I led her.
"Our side knew we needed a young executive, and Tim was the most logical choice in the company."
"The only choice?" I asked, sounding bitchier than I meant.
"Unless you want to start working there?" She grinned and turned to go back to the kitchen, but stopped. "You and Mark have a good time last night?"
"The best," I replied. I began to slip into the memory when the phone rang.
Ruby padded down the hall to answer it. "Derek, it's for you."
I joined her in the den, and she handed me the phone.
"Yes?" I said into the receiver and sat down in the wingback chair.
"Derek. It's Daniel." He added quickly, "Don't hang up."
Ruby took her clippers and returned to the backyard.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I want to explain."
"You've got one minute." That was all I thought I could stomach.
"When I first met you and found out you were part of the Harris family, I wanted to get Information-"
"I know." I interrupted, not wanting to hear this.
"But," Daniel continued, "as I got to know you-as you, not as part of this political family-my motives became personal. Complications sprang up as I struggled between getting a story and being attracted to you. I met with my editor, and told her I couldn't write another article on you or Vernon. I was too personally involved."
"What did she say?" I couldn't believe he gave up following the Senate campaign for me.
"I'm assigned to the county commission and city council meetings." He sighed, then added, "It's not as boring as it sounds, really."
I had to laugh. "Sorry you got reassigned."
"It's for the best. Besides, I want to help you."
"Help me? How?" I grabbed my cigarettes, tapped one out, and lit it.
"The attack here in the morgue, at first I thought that was about my article and you getting in the way of Vernon 's campaign, but you must be onto something serious considering the harassing phone calls and the attack on your aunt Ruby."
"Yeah, maybe." I still didn't trust him, even if he wasn't writing articles on Vernon 's campaign.
"I've been researching the archives for information on your family from the late thirties through the fifties, you know, the time you had looked up that night in the morgue." He waited for my reaction.
I kept silent.
"I found some information on Caleb Sampson."
"What?" I almost jumped out of my seat. "What did it say?"
"So you were looking for that?" he asked.
"Yes. Walterene wrote about it in her diary. What did you find?"
"Caleb Sampson worked as a gardener for Ernest Harris. He was found hanged in a tree and the Klan was blamed. No official investigation took place, which I thought was odd for the employee of a prominent citizen."
I was disappointed; I knew that much. "Anything else?"
"That's not the kicker," Daniel explained. "I researched backward and forward. That was the only instance of Klan activity within Charlotte for thirty years, before or after. Sure, there were reports in surrounding counties, but nothing within the city."
"Are you saying you think it was staged to look like the Klan?"
"That's more likely than what was reported in the paper."
Ernest and Vernon did it, and made it look like a Klan killing. I knew this wasn't something I should say to Daniel. "That's the mystery," I said, "who did it?"
"That's why someone is trying to scare you away. I think you have an idea."
"Not really, Daniel. I just know he died. I wasn't sure if it was suicide or murder. Now I know. Thanks."
"But, Derek-"
I hung up the phone.
THAT AFTERNOON, I dropped in on Mark. His assistant, Becky, told me he was in a meeting and would be back soon, so I wandered the streets of downtown Charlotte, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the endless parade of people scurrying from building to building. Mr. Sams' death kept coming to mind; I tried to imagine that the Klan had done it, and that it wasn't significant that no other activity preceded or followed it. There hadn't been any investigation back then, and the police had known much more then than I knew now.
I found a sidewalk cafe to sip a cappuccino and smoke a couple of cigarettes. From my table, I could see the Observer building to the south and the Harris Tower to the north; I sat between the two, thinking about the men in each, wondering what they were thinking at that very moment.
Thoughts of Daniel choked my mind with guilt. A reporter can never be off the clock; he's always thinking about a story and how to dig deeper; of course, that's a drawback. Was his phone call meant to work another angle with me? Trust, respect, and openness was what I wanted, not deception. My family seemed to thrive on deception: plots to take control of the board, schemes to get elected to the Senate, lies to cover up a lynching… Cheating on your wife with your cousin.
A secret held for more than eight years. How could Mark do it? Physical urges had to overcome him. No one knows, so maybe he never acted on those impulses. That's impossible! The thought shook me. Out-of-town business trips would have allowed Mark the cover of anonymity to meet other men who didn't recognize his name or associate it with the family. What a prison to be locked in, no one to talk to, no community, no support, no love, no life. But, what if that wasn't true? I knew other closeted men whose secret lives forced them into an underground society where one betrayal could end a life built on lies-"discreet" was the personal-ad synonym for closeted. I imagined covert meetings in a dark sports bar where the code words "My wife is out of town" signaled the promise of a new brother into the fraternity of silence.
I ground out my cigarette and headed back toward the Harris Tower, wondering how to unlock the prisoner trapped in the plush cell at the top. As I ambled up the street, a chill sensation of someone watching me crept up the back of my neck. Few retail shops lined the streets, so I stopped at a bank window as if I was absorbed in the posted interest rates. I watched the reflections of people passing behind me and especially of anyone who had stopped too. A dark-haired man in his thirties checked a map on a bus shelter about fifteen paces behind me; I waited to see if he moved on. He didn't.
The corner-crossing signal had just changed; I watched for the red flash to warn pedestrians not to leave the curb, then bolted across the intersection just before the traffic light turned green, and the man was cut off from following me. Looking back, I saw him cross to the other side of the street. Paranoia left me in a cold sweat; I pushed through the revolving doors of the Harris Tower lobby and checked for the man; he was across the street, staring at the doors I had just entered.