I spotted the Larousse group as it was coming out of the dining room. Earl Larousse, instantly identifiable from the newspaper photos I’d seen, wore his trademark white suit and a black silk tie, like a mourner at a Chinese funeral. He was about five-eight, bald and heavily built. Beside him stood a younger, slimmer version of himself, although there was a slight effeminacy to the son that was absent from the father. Earl Jr.’s slim frame was concealed beneath a billowing white shirt and a pair of black trousers that were too tight around the ass and thighs, making him look like a flamenco dancer on his day off. He had very fair hair, which rendered his eyebrows almost invisible, and I reckoned he had to shave about once a month. Five other people-three men, two women-were talking with them as they left the room. The party was quickly joined by an eighth person, the man with the slicked-back hair, who walked up to Earl Jr. and whispered discreetly in his ear before moving on. Immediately, Earl Jr. looked over at me. He said something to his father, then detached himself from the group and came over to me. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it certainly wasn’t to see his hand outstretched and a regretful smile on his face as he reached me.
“Mr. Parker?” he said. “Let me introduce myself: Earl Larousse Jr.”
I took his hand and shook it. “You usually have people followed from the airport?”
The smile wavered then resumed its post, this time the regret more pronounced.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We were curious to see what you looked like.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We know why you’re here, Mr. Parker. We don’t necessarily approve, but we understand. We don’t want there to be problems between us. We understand you have a job to do. Our concern is that whoever is responsible for my sister’s death is punished with the full force of the law. For the moment, we believe that person to be Atys Jones. If that proves not to be the case, then we’ll accept it. We’ve made our statements to the police, and told them all we know. All we ask of you is that you respect our privacy and leave us in peace. We have nothing to add to what has already been said.”
It had the air of a rehearsed speech about it. More than that, I sensed a detachment about Earl Jr. Although he sounded sincere, if mechanical, his eyes were both mocking and slightly fearful. He wore a mask, although I didn’t yet know what lay behind it. Farther back, his father watched us, and in his face I saw hostility. For some unknown reason, it seemed to be directed at his son as much as at me. Earl Jr. turned and walked back to the group, and a shroud fell across his father’s anger as they made their way out of the lobby and into their waiting cars.
With nothing else to do I returned to my room, showered, ate a club sandwich, and waited for the car rental guy to arrive. When the call came from the desk I went down, signed the paperwork, and entered the parking garage. I put on my sunglasses and headed out, the sunlight gleaming off the windshield, but there was no sign of the Chevy and nobody seemed interested in me or the car. On the way out of town I stopped at a mall and bought two new cell phones.
Elliot Norton lived about two miles outside Grace Falls in a modest white faux Colonial with two pillars at its front door and a big porch running the full length of the first floor. It looked like the kind of place where the mint juleps would still have the julep mix dissolving in the glass. The large sheet of industrial plastic covering the hole in the roof did nothing to add an air of authenticity. I found Elliot around back, talking to a pair of men in coveralls who leaned against a van, smoking. The legend on the side of the van indicated that the two men were roofers from Dave’s Construction and Roofing out of Martinez, Georgia (“Want To Save? Call Dave!”). To their left was a pile of scaffolding, ready to be put in place so that work could commence the following morning. One of the men was idly tossing a piece of burnt, blackened slate from hand to hand. As I approached, he stopped and jutted his chin in my direction. Elliot turned a little too quickly, then left the two workmen and stretched out his hand to me.
“Man, am I glad to see you!” he smiled. Some of his hair had been scorched away on the left side of his head. What remained had been cut back in an effort to disguise the damage. There was gauze over his left ear and burn marks glistened along his cheek, chin, and neck. His left hand, where it was visible beneath a white tube bandage, was blistered.
“Don’t take this wrong, Elliot,” I said, “but you don’t look so good.”
“I know. Fire took out most of my wardrobe. Come on.” He reached behind my back and guided me toward the house. “I’ll buy you an iced tea.”
Inside, the house smelled badly of smoke and damp. Water had penetrated the floors above and damaged the plasterwork in the downstairs rooms, brown clouds now sweeping across the white skies of the ceilings. Some of the wallpaper had already begun to peel and I reckoned there was a good chance that Elliot would be forced to replace most of the timbers in the hallway. In the front room was an unmade sofa bed and clothes hung from the curtain rail or splayed themselves across the backs of chairs.
“You’re still living here?” I asked.
“Yup,” he replied, as he washed some ash from a pair of glass tumblers.
“You might be safer in a hotel.”
“I might be, but then the folks who did this to my house would probably come back and finish the job.”
“They could come back anyway.”
He shook his head. “Nah, they’re done, for now. Murder isn’t their style. If they’d wanted to kill me, they’d have done a better job first time round.”
He took a jug of iced tea from the refrigerator and filled the tumblers. I stood by the window and stared out at Elliot’s yard and the land beyond. The skies were empty of birds and the woods surrounding Elliot’s property were almost silent. Along the coast, the migrants were already in flight, the wood ducks joining the terns, the hawks and warblers and sparrows soon to follow. Here, farther inland, there was less evidence of their departure, and even the permanent residents were not as obvious as they formerly were, their spring mating songs ended and their bright summer plumage slowly fading to the mourning cloaks of winter. As if to make up for the absence of the birds and their colors, the wildflowers had begun to bloom now that the worst of the summer heat had departed. There were asters and sunflowers and goldenrods, and butterflies flocked to them, attracted by the predominance of yellows and purples. Beneath the leaves, the field spiders would be waiting for them.
“So when do I get to meet Atys Jones?” I asked.
“Be easiest if you talk to him after we get him out of county. We pick him up from the Richland County Detention Center late tomorrow, then switch him to a second car out back of Campbell ’s Country Corner to lose anyone with an interest in where we might be taking him. From there, I’ll drive him to the safe house in Charleston.”
“Who’s the second driver?”
“Son of the old guy whose gonna be taking care of him. He’s okay, knows what he’s doing.”
“Why not stash him closer to Columbia?”
“We got a better chance of keeping him safe down in Charleston, believe me. He’ll be over on the east side, in the heart of a black neighborhood. Anybody comes asking questions and we’ll hear about it in plenty of time to move him again if we have to. Anyhow, it’s a purely temporary arrangement. Could be that we’ll have to stash him somewhere more secure, maybe hire private security. We’ll see.”
“So what’s his story?” I asked.
Elliot shook his head and rubbed his eyes with dirty fingers. “His story is that he and Marianne Larousse had a thing going.”