Monument to Murder Read Free Page B

think, Wayne?”
    “Mind if we order first?”
    “Not at all.”
    Red beans and rice with andouille sausage for him; Brixton opted for a New York strip steak.
    “So here’s how I see it. I believe the mother. Louise Watkins was paid off to go to prison. Ten thousand bucks is pretty tempting for someone in her situation. She sees it as a way of paying back her family for all the heartache she’s caused them. I also think that maybe this person who handed her ten big ones figured she’d get fifteen, maybe twenty years, but the judge takes pity on Louise, figures she’s been punished enough in her young life, and slaps down four. She walks out a free woman and this other person makes sure that she never tells the real story. Boom-boom. Not to worry.”
    Their meals were served, which got Wayne off the hook from having to comment immediately to Brixton’s what-if. They dug in, saying little except for small talk with Wayne doing most of it. When they’d finished, St. Pierre dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “Excellent,” he said. “Truly excellent. Now, my old friend and colleague, here’s what I think of your thesis. I think you’re creating a scenario to justify going forward with this client of yours. I think Savannah’s ghosts have taken possession of you. It happens, you know.”
    Brixton laughed. Maybe St. Pierre was right, he thought. Maybe that special aura that surrounds Savannah, Georgia, had invaded his soul and caused him not to think clearly. He dropped the subject—for that evening—and they lingered over hot, black coffee.
    “Know what surprises me?” St. Pierre asked.
    “What?”
    “That you elected to stay in Savannah when you retired from the force. I figured you’d be packed and gone, back to Washington or New York.”
    Brixton shook his head. “When I first got here I figured that’s exactly what I’d do. Put in my time. Earn the pension check. But this place grows on you, like the Spanish moss on those oak trees. Maybe it’s the funny way you people talk, funny but charming. My ex-wife is a southern girl, from Virginia.”
    “So you’ve said.”
    “Go back to Washington? Why do you think I left there? They built the city on a swamp, and swamp creatures keep showing up. They’re known as bureaucrats and elected officials.”
    Brixton had ended up in Washington, D.C., because the New York PD had put on a hiring freeze. But four years had been enough. He’d had it with politics playing a role in every aspect of his life, including policing. Savannah was expanding its force and he figured it was worth a try. His marriage had broken up; he was footloose and fancy-free. So he took the Savannah job and now here he was, years later, with a pension check and his own private investigative agency that sometimes generated enough income to pay its bills. Why hadn’t he taken the money and run? Who knew? Inertia probably.
    Brixton covered the check. As they left, they paused to look at a TV set over the bar. Video of the president of the United States and the first lady showed them hosting an event on the White House lawn for some of D.C.’s disadvantaged children.
    “Warms your heart, doesn’t it, to see one of our own in the White House,” St. Pierre said.
    “Maybe it warms your heart, Wayne,” Brixton said. “I’m not from here. Remember?”
    “That’s right. You are a Yankee interloper who came to our fair city to find fame and fortune.”
    Brixton grinned.
    “And did you? Find fame and fortune?”
    “What I found is humidity and the stink from those paper plants that settles over everything in summer. She’s good-looking.”
    “Mrs. Fletcher Jamison, first lady of the land? Yes, she is a fair thing, youngest first lady since Jackie O. Mrs. Kennedy was thirty-one on inauguration day. Jeanine was thirty-eight. Jack and Fletcher robbed the cradle.”
    They went to the street.
    “Washington’s almost as hot and humid in the summer as this place is,” Brixton