Authors: Rosina Lippi

Tied to the Tracks (38 page)

BOOK: Tied to the Tracks

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“Then you had best get a move on,” Rob said.

At the door John hesitated. “I’m going to need all the help I can get these next two days.”

Rob said, “You know where to find me.”

It took every bit of persuasion she could muster, but Angie managed to get the whole crew into the editing suite by seven on Thursday morning.

The novelty of working in such a well-equipped and comfortable space put them all in a good mood. They could spread out logbooks, files, computers, and their personal gear, along with an array of cups and carryout bags. Best of all, they had enough computing power and no restrictions on how much of it they used, or how long they spent here. That was such a luxury that it took Angie a full hour before she relaxed enough to stop constantly looking at her watch.

Big companies with large staffs allocated the logging to assistants, but Angie liked everything about this part of the process. Most of all, she loved the working together and the talk about the story while the digital counter at the bottom of the screen ticked along steadily. The entire time she scribbled, writing down minimal information about the scene and its location while Tony did the same on a laptop.

Markus wanted to know if Rivera was going to take notes, too, at which she flexed her fingers in the air like a surgeon wiggling into sterile gloves.

“Hell no,” she said, settling down in front of the controls. “Somebody’s got to drive.”

They had been working together like this for so long that it was like dancing with a very well known and trusted partner. Rivera often froze the flow of the video in the split second before Angie or Tony could ask her to, either to catch up with note taking or to talk about a particular shot. Sometimes it was no more than an expression on a face perfectly lit by the late-afternoon sun, but there were dozens of segments that made Angie catch her breath and remember, with complete clarity, what she loved about her work, and why she was here.

Which had nothing to do with John Grant, not in the first line.

“Angie?” Rivera was saying.

“Sorry. What?”

“Could you put my mark next to this bit of John and Miss Zula talking?

“Sure.” Angie picked up her red pen to draw a star next to the entry that read
02:02:38:13, 02:04:04:13, JG talking 2 ZB re fall schedule. Z 2 Louie asleep & pan around office
and got a blob of ink instead. She turned her head.

“Where’s Markus?”

“He left a half hour ago to run errands for his mother,” Tony said. “Jeez, Ang. You drag us in here at the crack of dawn and then you fall asleep yourself.”

“I’m not sleeping,” Angie said steadily. “I was concentrating. Hold up, I’ve got to go get another pen.”

John came into the reception area just as Angie was closing the door to the supply closet. She stopped where she was and tried to smile, but didn’t quite manage. Breathing was almost as hard.

He was dressed in a dark gray summer-weight suit with a deep red tie over a snowy white shirt, and Angie had a sudden memory of the dry cleaners he used in Manhattan. The woman behind the counter—small and round with a heavy Slavic accent—had talked to John as an indulgent but hard-to-please grandmother might have. Angie had come to the conclusion that he liked it, or he would have taken his business to one of the hundreds of other dry cleaners in the city.

She said, “What was that woman’s name, the one who called you
booby
?”

John smiled so suddenly and so beautifully that Angie’s breath hitched and caught and she thought,
Where the hell have you been?
But she bit her lip to keep from saying it.

“Mrs. Pulaski. I think about her, too, every time I put on a suit. The dry cleaner here is Miss Nellie, and she calls me John-John. I miss Mrs. Pulaski.”

“You haven’t been back here all that long,” Angie said. “Cheer up, I’m sure you’ll find some shop clerk willing to abuse you to your face.”

“Probably not in Ogilvie,” John said. “Mostly people wait until you’re out of hearing to bad-mouth you.”

That made Angie think of Win Walker. She realized that she had successfully put the condom episode out of her head—so successfully that she had yet to tell John about what had happened after he shimmied out the bathroom window. But then she had run into Patty-Cake at least four times since the afternoon of the fourth, and there was no indication that her nephew had been whispering in her ear. Angie had to assume that he kept quiet out of professionalism, which made her feel guilty all over again, this time for underestimating him. She was thinking about that when she realized John was saying something quite important.

“—and then Rob called me an idiot.”

Which he was, most certainly. An infuriating, frustrating, gorgeous idiot she had missed beyond all reason for almost forty-eight hours, and what did that make her?

She said, “We agreed it was best to keep contact to a minimum.”

“I should have called, at least.”

True
. Another thing not to be said aloud, not at this moment. Instead Angie said, “You look like you’re on your way someplace.”

“Reunions on campus, I have to go to a luncheon.”

“That explains all the people wandering around.”

“I have to give a talk this evening, too, and then there’s a supper—”

“Isn’t Miss Zula giving a talk, too? Because we’re supposed to shoot it.”

“Ah.” John looked disconcerted at this news. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you there.”

“I suppose you will.”

He cleared his throat again. He said, “There’s a letter from Caroline.” He said it lightly, but there was a tension in him that she could see in his shoulders and the tilt of his head.

Angie leaned against the closet door and crossed her arms on her chest. “She’s told her family?”

“No. Not yet. It’s complicated,” John said. “I need to talk to you, but I have—”

“This alumni thing, you said.”

“Are you around later this afternoon?”

The urge to hear what he had to say, good or bad, to get it over with once and for all, that urge was at war with the far less pleasant compulsion Angie was feeling. If suffering and regret were going to be on the itinerary, she would take him along for the ride. She said, “We’re in the middle of a big logging session, and we’ll be at it all day.”

His face fell. “Okay, well. Maybe after this alumni supper thing? You could come over to the house, that might be safer.”

Hours and hours and hours from now. Angie nodded.

“Good.” He turned toward the door and then suddenly changed direction and came across the room in four long strides. He put one hand on the door over her head and leaned down and kissed her, short but sweet and thorough, a kiss that said the things she needed to know. She heard herself let out a shuddering sigh of relief.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “It’s nothing about you. Nothing bad about us. I don’t want you to worry. I’m trying, Angie, I’m really trying. I don’t want to screw this up.”

Angie nodded. “Good.” This time she managed a smile. “Good.”

As president of the university, Karl Bray lived in the small mansion on campus that Captain Joshua Ogilvie had built in 1820 when he first settled the town and gave it his name. Karl was an excellent administrator and a nice enough man, but he was also a native of Vermont, an art historian, and an unapologetic atheist, so it was no surprise to John that after fifteen years in town, Karl had never really become part of the community.

And still Karl should have known enough about how Ogilvie worked and the old quarrels not to seat Zula Bragg next to Button Preston Ogilvie. They both had to be included, that much was clear—Button’s husband, Harmond, was the chair of the board of regents, and she herself was an alumna.

John sat across the table from the two elderly women who so studiously ignored each other. Miss Zula was as reticent as ever, answering politely whenever one of the guests addressed her but never allowing a conversation to go very long. The fact that the people around this table would each be contributing tens of thousands of dollars to the university impressed her not at all. Button, on the other hand, never stopped talking. She had gotten onto the subject of the town’s history and genealogy, the worst possible place to go when she was sitting next to Zula Bragg.

“Your husband and son are the last direct descendants of the original Joshua Ogilvie, the man who built this house, is that right?” This from a middle-aged alumna who was president of a small bank in Atlanta.

“That’s right,” Button said. “Most of the Ogilvies in town are descended from
John
Ogilvie, Joshua’s younger brother? Dr. Grant’s mother is an Ogilvie of that line.” She shot him a patronizing smile, which John pretended not to see.

Button went on for a while about the Ogilvie lineage, fabricating where it suited her and skipping over the less savory bits, such as the fact that Zula Bragg was herself directly descended from both Joshua and John Ogilvie, who had been visionary men when it came to everything but slavery and the persons of their female slaves. It was exactly this kind of talk that had gotten Button Ogilvie written into
Sweet-Bitter,
the novel that had won Miss Zula the National Book Award.

Karl Bray said, “To be completely fair, Button, you have to remember that Captain Ogilvie had children outside his marriage. Those descendants are here in town, too.” His gaze flickered toward Miss Zula and away again.

Button smiled stiffly. “That’s a theory,” she said. “One without any sound
proof
.”

The man to Karl’s right cleared his throat. He was twice Karl’s size, with a great slope of belly and jowls like the flaps on a rooster, and he had a deep, resonating voice that almost echoed off the high ceilings. “These days we can prove or refute such claims on the basis of DNA testing.”

“But, Dr. Beasley,” said Button, “why? Why go stirring up all that dusty old history? We need to look forward, and forget this obsession we have with hashing over the past.”

“Such as genealogy,” said John, but while her expression stiffened, she didn’t rise to the bait.

“But his other descendants—” a younger man began, and then stopped when Button turned a glittering glance in his direction. Before she could launch into what John suspected was a set piece, her husband spoke up.

“This is a matter of some delicacy,” he said in his high, breathy voice. “But really, if you don’t allow emotion to cloud the issue, it is quite simple. Outsiders who don’t understand the social nuances sometimes get the idea that we descendants of Joshua Ogilvie are racists, but the truth is, we’re just snobs. Not that the two failings are
necessarily
mutually exclusive, but they are in this case.”

There was a ripple of vaguely uneasy laughter around the table, and John reminded himself that he had come back here knowing full well that he would be dealing with people like this, who dealt out such casual arrogance like loose change. There were fewer of them around these days, it seemed to him, and of course there was also Zula Bragg, who had never flinched at defending herself.

Miss Zula said, “Mrs. Langley, have you been to the family cemetery on the grounds behind the mansion?”

“Why, no,” said the bank president. “Now that you mention it, I never have.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Zula. “It’s not generally open to the public. But I’m sure Dr. Bray could arrange for you to see it.

“My sister and I visit the cemetery a few times every year,” Miss Zula went on. “We’ve got four great-grandparents and four great-great-grandparents buried there—all but two of them in the section reserved for slaves.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but there was a light in her eye that John knew better than to challenge. Apparently Button did, too, because she kept quiet.

“Is that so?” The doctor looked interested. “I’ll bet your documentary people have been all over that piece of history.”

Button made a tight little circle of her mouth and then said, “I’m afraid you’re probably right.”

BOOK: Tied to the Tracks

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