Between Black and White (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #2)(7)
“I’m fine, darlin’,” he said, smiling down on her.
Darla stood on her tiptoes and gave him a soft peck on the cheek. “Be careful,” she whispered. Their eyes held for just a moment, and Andy knew her admonition had nothing to do with drinking and driving. She licked her thumb and dabbed his cheek where her lipstick had left a mark. “Promise?”
“Promise,” Andy said, squeezing her hand and taking another sip of the Long Island tea.
“He doesn’t have far to go,” Saint Peter said after locking the door. He winked at Andy, and Andy nodded.
When Peter Burns had been a teenager, he had worked three summers on Andy’s farm, doing odd jobs and fixer-upper projects. Live and work in a place for five decades, and you touch a lot of folks. Some in a good way. Some bad. Andy figured his impact on Peter was positive, but who the hell knew? The boy had grown up to pour whiskey at a strip club on the edge of town. He probably wouldn’t be giving many speeches in his life thanking those that made it all possible. And what of Darla? She was a twenty-five-year-old stripper making a few extra bucks by sucking Andy’s seventy-three-year-old dick in the upstairs VIP room of the same place.
Just give me the Nobel Peace Prize, Andy thought, watching as the cars driven by the bartender and the stripper pulled out of the gravel parking lot. The only vehicle left was Andy’s rusty, gray Chevy Silverado truck, and he trudged toward it, feeling old and depressed.
He hadn’t planned on visiting Darla tonight, but the confrontation with Bo Haynes had put him on edge. He had told Maggie that he needed to “go out for a while,” and she had surprisingly not fussed over him, even though it was her birthday. He figured she probably knew where he went on nights like this—he had never made much effort to hide his nocturnal adventures—but since the death sentence had been handed down by his oncologist last fall, Maggie had finally and mercifully decided to look the other way.
The neon lights of the Sundowners Club flickered off, and Andy blinked to adjust to the darkness. The lot was now almost pitch dark, the only light coming from the half moon above. He fumbled for the keys in his pocket, finally finding them and clicking the unlock button on the keyless entry.
When he climbed into the front seat of the truck, he immediately noticed it. The smell . . . He turned quickly, but there was no one in the truck. But there had been, he knew. The smell was unmistakable. And vaguely familiar. Like a stale cigar . . .
His heartbeat now racing, he placed the key in the ignition but hesitated before turning it. Be careful, he thought, hearing Darla’s soft voice in his mind.
Andy Walton had made a lot of enemies in his seventy-three years. Funny thing, when you were once the Imperial Wizard of the Tennessee Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, people tended to hold a grudge. Didn’t matter what a man had done since. That he had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the local college, that the farm was now leased by a black man who utilized black laborers, or that his businesses employed over 10 percent of the people of Giles County.
None of that made one tinker’s damn. He had once worn the robe and hood. People had a long memory when it came to the Klan.
Andy tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking again about the run-in with Bo Haynes at Kathy’s Tavern. The hate he had seen in Bo’s eyes.
Forty-five years ago, Andy and nine other members of the Tennessee Knights had lynched a black field hand named Roosevelt Haynes on Walton Farm. Roosevelt was a meddler and had to be dealt with. Andy knew that he would have eventually been able to forgive himself for the killing.
If only the boy hadn’t seen. If only Bo . . .
Andy closed his eyes and turned the key. The truck didn’t explode, and truth be known, Andy hadn’t thought it would. But he had enemies, and he was about to make a few more.
Andy Walton was an old man. A man who had put down the robe and hood of the Ku Klux Klan in 1976 and made millions in the stock market. So much so that Newsweek did an article on him in 1987. “The Warren Buffett of the South” it had been entitled. The article hadn’t left out Andy’s Klan history but focused on how he had reinvented himself as a financial wizard. The theme was that money didn’t care what a man’s social beliefs had been. Money had no conscience.
Unfortunately, Andy Walton did have a conscience. And for forty-five years, it had eaten at him. Ever since he had looked through the holes of the hood and into the terrified eyes of the boy. And heard his screams.
He could still hear them at night. They came to him in his dreams.
Andy also had stage four pancreatic cancer. He was going to die in a month, and he wanted the screams to stop before he did. He wanted . . . what did the shrinks call it? Closure.
He knew he would probably still end up in hell—he had done too many bad things in his life. But maybe he wouldn’t have a front row seat.
Andy put the truck in reverse, feeling a deep resolve come over him. Now was the time, he knew. Right now. If he delayed much longer, it might be too late.
Gazing through the windshield, he saw that Highway 64 was deserted. The ride to the sheriff’s office would take no more than ten minutes. The story he would tell would take longer, but he doubted Ennis would mind. Andy eased his foot off the brake and started to back out.
He stopped when he saw the figure in the rearview mirror, blocking his path.
Andy slammed the gear back in park and reached under the seat for his pistol. He usually kept it . . .