He pulled out his small green notebook and flipped open the first page. He jotted down the name and address Caleb had given him: Karen Devereaux, 255 West Paces Ferry Road. Beside Laura Angelica, Karen sounded as blunt and snub-nosed as Frank’s own name, and he almost immediately imagined her as the ugly duckling with the beautiful sister, the one for whom the family had never had much hope.
He pressed down on the accelerator as the traffic cleared slightly near Buckhead. Karen Devereaux. He repeated the name but could find nothing to go with it. He knew only that whoever she was, her life was about to take a dreadful turn. She would soon be told of her younger sister’s death, then be driven back downtown to identify the body. He had seen men and women snap like small twigs at such moments. Years before, he had brought a middle-aged woman downtown. She had been small, slight, so weak that she’d appeared almost breathless at the top of the stairs. Her son had been killed by a drunken driver and his body lay in one of the refrigerated vaults the police used as makeshift morgues. She’d stared at her son’s face for a long time, utterly silent as she gazed rigidly at the half-crushed skull. Then suddenly, she’d whirled around with terrific speed and slapped Frank’s face with all her womanly might. He had actually staggered backward, the heat of her hand still on his skin, his eyes watching, startled, as she’d pressed her back against the wall, slid slowly down and crumpled to the floor.
He was still vaguely thinking of her as he arrived at the Devereaux house. The driveway was circular, and it curved gently in a wide are around a broad field of neatly pruned shrubs. A line of azaleas bordered it, their bright red flowers shining brightly.
The house looked as if it had been built with something religious in mind, and as he stepped out of the car and stared up toward its tall white columns, Frank thought of the tiny wooden church in which his father had struggled to save the souls of those tormented, guilt-ridden farmers who came to him. The Devereaux house gave off the sense of people who had already been saved from most of the ordinary trials of life. Here no one had ever worried about an early frost or too dry a summer. It rose over the surrounding green as if it held dominion over everything around it. The tall columns stretched up to a wide portico, and the white facade which rested in its shade seemed almost smug in its serenity. It looked like the kind of grand, spacious place which invading armies chose to house their commanding officers, and Frank could easily imagine the conquering Yankee generals who might once have tethered their horses to its tall pillars.
An enormous oak door opened at the second ring of the bell. Frank had expected to see a butler in a black coat, but instead he found a young woman in a paint-dappled artist’s smock and tattered blue jeans. She wore unpolished brown loafers, and her long black hair was gathered casually in the back, where it hung in a wild confusion of unruly curls.
She looked at him questioningly, as if he’d ended up at the wrong entrance.
“Yes?” she said.
“Is this the Devereaux house?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m looking for Karen Devereaux.”
“And you are?”
Frank took out his badge. “Frank Clemons.”
The woman nodded slowly. Her dark eyes narrowed somewhat as if she were putting it all together, the dusty, bartered car, the dusty, battered man in his rumpled brown suit, his swollen, bluish eyes, the bent and tarnished badge.
“I’m Karen Devereaux,” she said finally. “What’s wrong?”
“Would you mind if I came in?” Frank asked hesitantly.
“All right,” Karen said. She stepped back and allowed Frank to walk into the foyer. It was painted white and decked with the portraits of what he guessed to be the more distinguished figures of the Devereaux family, senators, judges, planters, members in good standing of what Caleb always called “the moonlight and magnolia crowd.”
Frank reflexively took off his hat and twirled it awkwardly in his hands.
“I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you,” he said.
She drew in a slow, calming breath. “I’ve been through this before,” she said.
“Through what?”
“Bad news,” Karen said. “My parents were killed in an air crash in Europe. I was just a young girl at the time. A man like you came to the house. He took off his hat like you did, and he kept it in his hands. He kept glancing down at it while he told us.” She lifted her face slightly, as if trying to brace herself. “What is it this time?”
“Your sister.”
“Dead,” Karen said. It was not a question. It was a statement of fact.
“Yes.”
Her reaction was a silence so absolute that it seemed to draw everything else into it. Her eyes stared placidly into Frank’s, and her lips tightened, as if in a determined effort to hold back the scream that might have broken through them.
“We found her body early this morning,” Frank said.
Karen stepped back and grasped the edge of a small table. Her eyes darted from one portrait to another, as if she were communicating this latest family tragedy to the lost, ancestral dead.
“We’re not sure what happened to her,” Frank added after a moment.
She looked at him. “Not sure?”
“No.”
“It was some sort of accident?”
He decided to go easy. “We don’t know,” Frank told her. “We just found her body early this morning.” He waited for her to speak. She didn’t. “Off Glenwood Avenue,” he added.
“I see.”
“Did you notice that she didn’t come home last night?”
“No.”
“Does she live here, Miss Devereaux?”
“Yes, she does,” Karen said. “A room upstairs.” She drew her hand from the table, and Frank could see the marks her nails had left on its polished surface.
“You’ll have to come downtown and identify the body,” he said.
“Officially, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“So there’s no doubt that it’s my sister?”
“No doubt. We have a tentative identification from the yearbook at Northfield. She did go to Northfield, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“I could take you downtown now, Miss Devereaux,” Frank said. “Or, if you’d rather wait …”
“No,” Karen said immediately, “I’d rather go now. I don’t want to wait.”
“All right.”
“Just let me change,” Karen said.
“Of course.”
“I’ll be right down.”
“There’s no rush,” Frank told her. He smiled sadly. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you all this.”
Karen turned quickly and darted up the stairs.
Alone in the foyer, Frank allowed his eyes to settle on the room. He noticed the immaculately polished table, and the large porcelain vase that rested on top of it. There was a large enameled box beside the vase, black, but with a scene of what looked like European peasants painted on it. Absently, before he could stop himself, Frank opened it. It had a dark red velvet lining, and he ran his finger over it quickly, then closed the lid. He turned his head slowly to the right, and looked at a large portrait of a tall, gray-haired man in a dark blue wing-backed chair. The man sat in a large, book-lined room, and there was a look of enormous pride in his eyes. Perhaps the pride came from his money, or his power, or even from the books which surrounded him, all the vast learning they represented. It was a hard face to read, but in that, it was simply like every other human face. They came in all sizes and configurations, and they divulged nothing. The proud gray man in the book-lined room might be anything, anything at all.