Chapters (42)
- Cover Page
- EARLY BIRD BOOKS
- Praise for the Writing of Richard North Patterson
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- About the Author
There was memory in her words. She paused as if to puzzle on it, then went on. “It was around the time that Martin Luther King was here. Claude Acton got drunk out on the patio and started carrying on about how he should be shot. Daddy and Henry and Lydia were there and then she just disappeared.
“A little later I went inside to look at my dress again in the mirror. When I started upstairs I heard someone crying in the first-floor bathroom. It sounded awful. I stopped there on the stairs, and then the door opened.
“It was Lydia. Her face was all tight and drawn so she didn’t look herself. I just stared for a minute. Then I ran upstairs. I don’t know if she saw me but I couldn’t go back outside. The rest of the party I hid in my room—crying too, I’m not sure why. Maybe I was confused about adults.” She shook her head. “I was confused about a lot of things, then. I remember being angry at King because people always fought over him and it had spoiled the party and my new dress.
“Later Daddy asked where I’d been and I told him about Lydia. He didn’t say much, just that he thought Claude’s talking like that upset her because of Grangeville and her father. I found out later that was about when the book came out saying those black men were innocent and that Lydia’s father had fixed the trial so he could run for governor. I think maybe it just stayed with her all her life, like it was something she’d done or couldn’t run from.” She looked sadly ahead. “Maybe she never even decided who it was that had spoiled her party—she was young when it happened, and he was her father. But I never really knew.”
Lydia’s murder lent the story a horrible poignancy. I wondered at the doubleness that caused her to cry over Grangeville, yet hang her father’s portrait on the mantel. Finally I asked, “Did she ever talk about it?”
“Not that I know of. She probably didn’t want to. She must have known how some people felt about her father.”
“Was there anyone she did talk to?”
“Besides Henry? I don’t know, unless it was Etta, her maid.”
“That seems odd.”
“Not really. Etta would have been with her more than most. Why is that important?”
“I’m not sure. There’s something wrong here—something more than Lydia being murdered. I can smell it even if I can’t see it.”
“What you smell is Jason Cantwell.”
I turned to her. “Sperm and all?”