A Clean Kill Read Free Page B

keeping me at bay. And that was fine. Handling and being handled are activities that take up most of a lawyer’s day. Besides, if I was going to do my client any good, I desperately needed to meet with Dr. Adderson before Russell & Wagler got at her.
    And it was on my way home.
    If you want someone to do something your way,make it easy for them. I was making it easy for the doctor by driving to her hometown for the meeting, and she was making it comfortable for me by inviting me to drop in at her warm and welcoming club halfway through a rainy-afternoon commute.
    We were jockeying for position, like two kids fighting over a football in a pile of dead leaves. And we both knew it.
    As I left Daphne behind, the drenched and shimmering blacktop wound through orchards and across horse farms with long stretches of white fence and occasional farmhouses too large and too perfect for farmers. Lightning flashed to the south, and, like a child, I counted the seconds until hollow barrels of thunder rolled across the sky.
    Seven miles outside the city, a paved road interrupted a line of white fencing. Next to the road stood a monument—no more than six feet high and three feet wide—constructed of old brick and sheltered by copper roofing. Bolted to the brick and safeguarded from the elements by a center-pitched roof was a bronze plaque that read T HE M ANDRAKE C LUB .
    I turned in and followed the road around a sharp curve, where the pavement split around a walled gazebo. I stopped and rolled down my window. A security guard stepped out. The club’s name was stitched on the front of his cap. Water cascaded from his visor, and a see-through gray raincoat covered his uniform.
    “Yes, suh?”
    I told him my name. “I’m here to see Dr. Laurel Adderson.”
    “Yes, suh. Just a moment, suh.” The guard stepped back inside the structural embodiment of his authorityand checked my name against a clipboard. Then he leaned out of the door and, using a slow karate-chop motion, signaled for me to proceed down the road.
    After rounding another hard curve, the clubhouse came into view and I realized two things. One, the road had been purposefully designed into an S-shape to hide both the guardhouse and the clubhouse from nosy peasants on the county highway. And two, Dr. Adderson belonged to one hell of a nice club.
    Nestled into a grid of hundred-year-old pecan trees, the Mandrake Club looked at once old and new. Like the sign monument out by the highway, the main building was constructed of ancient brick and the steep roof was sheathed in seasoned copper. Atop the second-story roof and centered over the main entrance, an octagonal turret with a pointed roof supported a weathervane cut in the shape of a prancing horse.
    Except for the pecan trees, nothing about the place was really old. But it had the too-perfect weathered ambiance that only big money can afford and only old money knows enough to want.
    The road circled in front of the clubhouse—no doubt designed for dropping off Southern belles—and then curved down and to the side, where a parking lot lay hidden by thick rows of longleaf pine.
    I stepped out into the waning rainstorm, locked the Jeep’s doors just for spite, and followed a brick walkway through the pines to a covered catwalk that ran along the building to the front entrance, where I got
yes-suh
’d again.
    The uniformed doorman pulled open the door as I approached and, not being a rube myself, I glanced at his nameplate before saying, “Why, thank you, Harvey.”
    I glanced back to see if Harvey was impressed, and he closed the door.
    Inside, the floors were hardwood, the walls were made of brick and dark paneling, and the rugs and furniture looked middling expensive. Someone’s budget had tightened by the time the furniture was put in, but it was still, as I said, one hell of a nice place.
    At 4:20 on a Monday afternoon, no one was in evidence in the entry hall. I started out on my own to find “The Gun Room,”