The Fixer Upper Part 16

"I don't feel so good," I told Lindsay, gripping my belly. "I think I might hurl."

"I can stop reading if you want," Lindsay volunteered. "You could call me back when you feel better."

I swallowed the wave of bile rising in my throat. "I'm never going to feel better. Let's just get this over with."

"All right," Lindsay said, sighing. "Let's see. Oh yeah.

"'Reached Friday at his residence in Georgetown, Hodder said that Ms. Killebrew acted on her own in hiring Ms. Foxx and Ms. Finesse.

"' "I was shocked when I saw the evidence that Dempsey Killebrew had made these completely unauthorized charges for prost.i.tutes," Hodder told the Post. "I certainly have never condoned or suggested such an action. Unfortunately, Miss Killebrew's ill-advised and illegal behavior has brought shame and embarra.s.sment to this firm. Naturally, we discharged her as soon as we learned about her involvement in this matter. I have turned over to the grand jury all Miss Killebrew's credit card records, as well as any other paperwork related to her employment here, and I look forward to cooperating fully with the government in an attempt to restore the good name of Alexander Hodder and Hodder and a.s.sociates." '"

"How could he?" I wailed. "He's making it look like hiring these women was all my idea. All I did was what he asked me to do. What he ordered me to do. Doesn't it say that I told this Shalani Byers that I was innocent?"

"Lemme see," Lindsay said. "Oh yeah. She says you said, 'No comment.' Here's some more stuff about you. Ooh. Ouch. Doesn't make you look too good, Demps."

"Read it anyway."

"'Ms. Killebrew, a 2007 graduate of Georgetown Law School, fled Was.h.i.+ngton soon after the Hoddergate scandal erupted, and has since gone into self-imposed seclusion in an obscure small town about an hour south of Atlanta, Georgia.'"

"Fled? She's making it sound like I was driven out of town by villagers with pickaxes and torches. I had to move out of Was.h.i.+ngton because Alex fired me and I couldn't get a job anyplace else. And I am so not in seclusion. Lindsay, do people in seclusion shop at the Piggly Wiggly? Do they go to Home Depot?"

"I know, baby," Lindsay soothed. "Do you still want to hear the rest?"

"You mean there's more? How much worse could it get?"

I soon found out just how much deeper Shalani Byers's wounds would go.

"'Neighbors in Guthrie, Georgia, a down-at-the-heels village with one stoplight and an abandoned bedspread factory, describe Miss Killebrew, twenty-seven, as a shadowy figure who dresses in a dead uncle's work boots and flannel s.h.i.+rts and currently lives in a dilapidated mansion that she shares with an elderly distant relative and an incontinent c.o.c.ker spaniel.'"

"Liar!" I gritted my teeth. "I never even touched Norbert's work boots. That's a complete fabrication. I borrowed his sneakers, and some overalls and s.h.i.+rts. I bought Carrharts, but it took a while to get them broken in. As for Shorty, Ella Kate walks him three or four times a day. He's irritating, but I don't think he's incontinent."

The other end of the line got very quiet.

"You're starting to scare me, Dempsey," Lindsay said. "We've got to get you out of there before you go completely native. When are you coming home?"

"After this thing in the Post? With everybody inside the beltway reading this c.r.a.p and a.s.suming the worst? Who's going to hire me? What the h.e.l.l am I going to do now, Lindsay?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "It's not a very flattering story, to say the least."

"Goooooddd," I said, flouncing myself down on my wheezy old mattress. "I'm screwed."

"You need to talk to Alex Hodder," Lindsay said. "The d.i.c.khead. This is all his fault."

"I just can't believe Alex is doing any of this," I said. "He knows the truth. He knows I would never have knowingly hired wh.o.r.es for Licata. I never even bought as much as a ham sandwich with that credit card without him okaying it. He would never willingly do this. Not without coercion. The only thing I can figure is, his lawyers are pressuring him to cut some kind of deal with the feds."

"Wake up and look at your back, Dempsey," Lindsay retorted.

I reflexively touched my right hand to my left shoulder blade. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't you see the tread marks?" she asked. "Alex Hodder is throwing you under the bus. And all you can talk about is what a sweet guy he is. Open your eyes, girl."

"He's just protecting himself. And the firm. You can't blame him for that."

"Oh no?" Her voice was mocking. "I was saving the worst for last. Listen to this. And then tell me what you think about good old Alex Hodder."

She cleared her throat and read on.

"'Although the federal prosecutor's office is keeping mum about Dempsey Killebrew's role in the Hoddergate scandal, at least one employee of Hodder and a.s.sociates made it clear this week that she believes investigators should take a closer look at Alex Hodder's closest aide.

"'Hodder and a.s.sociates executive administrator Ruby Beaubien said the company, at her urging, has hired a forensic accountant to examine "any and all doc.u.ments and expense records generated by the disgraced junior lobbyist." '"

"Disgraced!" I yelped. "Oh my G.o.d, she's calling me a thief and a liar, as well as a pimp. This is unbelievable. I thought Ruby was my friend."

"Wait," Lindsay ordered.

"' "It was clear to many of us at the firm that Dempsey Killebrew had an unhealthy and inappropriate attraction to Alexander Hodder," Ms. Beaubien said. "Although Mr. Hodder made it quite clear that her attentions were not welcome, and that he did not reciprocate her affection, Miss Killebrew continued, in a grossly inappropriate manner, to pursue a personal relations.h.i.+p with Mr. Hodder, who is a happily married man. Finally, after hounding Mr. Hodder with dozens and dozens of calls to his cell phone, and a drunken midnight visit to his residence, I insisted to Mr. Hodder, that despite his concern for the young woman's welfare, she be terminated." '"

"Oh. No," I whispered. "No way." I put the phone down and dashed blindly down the hall to the bathroom, where I unceremoniously barfed my brains out.

I have no idea how long I stayed in the bathroom, hanging on to the cold white porcelain commode like a drowning swimmer. I do know that I heard my cell phone ringing several more times. I heard the doorbell ringing, and then Shorty's crazed barking. After a while, Ella Kate started banging on the bathroom door.

"Hey!" she called. "Are you still in there?"

"Go away," I croaked.

"You go away," she countered. "And take that durned phone of yours with you. It's Sunday, the Lord's day, and that phone of yours keeps a-ringin' and a-ringin'. You got men coming and going and wanting to know where you are and what you're a-doin'. It don't look right for a Christian maiden lady like myself to have men hanging around here this way."

"Send them away," I said. "I don't want to see anybody."

"Send them away yourself," Ella Kate said. "I'm going to church. And when I get back here after Sunday school, there better not be any men hanging around. Or I'll set Shorty on them-and you."

I heard her sensible lace-up oxfords clomping down the hallway, and then down the steps and out the front door.

Finally, when my legs were starting to cramp, I stood up shakily and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror.

There were dark circles under my bloodshot eyes, and my face was red and blotchy from crying and retching.

"You look like a deranged person," I told my reflection. "Like a stalker."

I dressed hurriedly-and this time in my own clothes. Even though it was close to seventy outside, I put on the wool pants and sweater I'd worn the day I arrived in Guthrie. I put on makeup-foundation, powder, blush, eye shadow, liner, mascara, the works. I grabbed my pocketbook and the car keys, and hurried out the back door, locking it behind me.

The Catfish coughed twice and the engine cut off once, but when I got it warmed up, I backed down the driveway and onto Poplar Street. I sped down the street and through Guthrie's minuscule business district.

It was Sunday-morning quiet. The shops on Main Street were closed, the streets abandoned. I drove past Guthrie First United Methodist, where I knew Ella Kate was sitting in the front row. I pa.s.sed Grace Presbyterian Church, with its stately gray granite bell tower, and the sprawling redbrick complex that comprised Guthrie First Baptist. Across the street from the Baptist church, I saw All Saints Episcopal Church, and I spotted Carter Berryhill's sedate Mercedes sedan with the Nature Conservancy b.u.mper sticker parked at the curb out front.

I was careful to stay under the speed limit until I got out to the state highway. Then I floored the accelerator. The Catfish responded sluggishly at first. Norbert and Ella Kate had probably never driven more than thirty-five miles an hour. Now it was time to blow the kinks out of the Crown Vic's powerful engine.

I was doing fifty-five when I hit the I-75 on-ramp, and moments later, was pleased to see how easily the Catfish adapted to seventy and then eighty miles an hour. I didn't slow down until I started hitting Atlanta traffic. I stayed on I-75 until it merged with I-85, and when I saw the exit signs for Lenox Road, I took the off-ramp and followed the road until I started seeing the high-rise towers of Buckhead, and the congestion around Lenox Square Mall.

It wasn't until I pulled into the parking lot of Houlihan's and parked that I had any clear idea of where I was going and what I was going to do. I only knew I had to get away from Birdsong, had to get out of that "down-at-the-heels village with one stoplight" Shalani Byers had described in the Was.h.i.+ngton Post.

I couldn't be the shadowy figure in the scary dead uncle's clothes today. I pulled a mirror from my pocketbook and applied a coat of lipstick. I patted my hair into place, and stepped out of the car.

The Sunday brunch crowd was just starting to stagger into Houlihan's. I told the hostess I didn't need a table, so she gestured toward the bar.

I sat down and ordered a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, and when the salt-crusted tumbler was still half full, I ordered another, along with a cheeseburger, cooked rare, with a side of onion rings. When I looked up and caught sight of myself in the bar-back mirror, I was taken aback. That shadowy figure described by the paper was gone, but so was the Dempsey Killebrew I'd left behind in Was.h.i.+ngton less than three weeks ago.

24.

I picked at my food and sipped my drink, but barely touched the second b.l.o.o.d.y Mary I'd ordered. To my surprise, I found I'd lost my taste for liquor-or maybe just my desire for a good strong buzz.

As it grew close to noon, the restaurant began to fill up and the noise level rose. Families dressed in their Sunday best arrived and took the larger tables, and couples and singles drifted in too, dressed in their designer blue jeans and T-s.h.i.+rts with ironic slogans. Finally, I had to move my pocketbook from the vacant bar stool next to mine to make way for another solitary drinker.

After I'd dawdled for nearly two hours, the harried bartender arrived with my check and lingered in front of me, willing me to drink up and get out.

And go where? I wondered, rifling through my pocketbook for cash to pay my check.

I was just pulling out of the parking lot when my cell phone rang. I took it out and answered, "Hi, Dad."

"What the h.e.l.l have you gotten yourself involved in, Dempsey?" Mitch demanded.

My heart sank. I'd been hoping to call both my parents to warn them about the latest development in the scandal, to give them my side of the story, before things got blown all out of proportion. Obviously, I was too late.

"You saw the Was.h.i.+ngton Post?"

"No, I haven't yet had the pleasure of seeing my daughter's name being written about in connection with hookers and crooked congressmen," Mitch said.

"Then, how...?"

"A reporter called the house at seven a.m., wanting to know if you were my daughter," Mitch broke in. "Pilar is furious. Sunday is our only day to sleep in. The call woke the boys, and now they're bouncing off the walls."

"I'm sorry. I don't even know what to say."

"You could start by telling me that you didn't hire hookers for that man."

"Of course I didn't!" I cried. "Do you even have to ask?"

"But the charges were made to your credit card," he said. "That doesn't look good."

"Alex asked me to book wakeboard lessons, and then a therapeutic ma.s.sage for Representative Licata. I never knew anything about prost.i.tutes. I never saw the amount charged to the credit card."

"You see!" he cried. "That is total and absolute fiscal irresponsibility. Which is why you're saddled with all this d.a.m.ned loan debt. You're twenty-eight years old-and you don't even own a car. When I was your age, I'd bought my first home and had already established a college fund for you."

I felt my blood start to boil. How many times had I had to listen to my father's rant about fiscal responsibility? It was true that he'd been successful in business at an early age-but it was also true that as the only child of two only children he'd been a trust-fund baby who'd come into his inheritance at the age of eighteen.

"Dad, if you'd just let me explain."

"And this...pathetic crush you had on your boss. A married man! It's so...disgusting. Good G.o.d, Dempsey, what were you thinking? He's what-fifty? Jesus. He's twenty-two years older than you!"

Maybe it was the b.l.o.o.d.y Mary. Or maybe it was just that I didn't give a d.a.m.n anymore. "Oh, right, Dad. I'm twenty-eight. You're sixty. And how old will Pilar be on her next birthday?"

"That's different and you know it," he said.

"Yes. It's different because you say so. Because you're the dad."

"Don't take that tone with me, Dempsey. Remember, it's my name you're dragging through the mud. Mine and Pilar's and the boys."

"Fine," I said, clutching the phone so hard with my right hand that my fingertips were cramping. I felt a stabbing pain between my eyes.

"Look, Dad. This isn't getting us anywhere, so I'm going to hang up now. I don't expect you to understand any of this. But I do think it would be nice if you'd at least give me the benefit of the doubt."

"Wait. Don't you dare-"

I flipped the phone closed and tossed it onto the seat.

25.

My cell phone rang again, just as I was. .h.i.tting the Guthrie city limits, but I didn't want to answer it. The confrontation with my father had left me feeling battered and shaken. But when a minute pa.s.sed and it started ringing again, I picked it up to see who was calling.

BERRYHILL AND BERRYHILL flashed across the readout screen.

I pressed the connect b.u.t.ton. "Tee?"

"Sorry," came the b.u.t.tery Southern drawl. "You got the old man this time."

"You're not so old," I told Carter Berryhill. "Anyway, after the morning I've had, the sound of your voice is a welcome relief."

"You might not think so when I tell you why I'm calling."

"Uh-oh."

"Where are you, by the way? I know you're not at Birdsong."