A/N: We move ahead.

Big Swamp

Chapter Five: Clubbable

I peel off my damp tux and hang it to dry on my closet door.

I step back and squint at it hanging there.

It did look good. I looked good in it. But it isn't me. Hanging there, it seems like a skin I sloughed off. Nobel Hall's not my sort of place, beautiful though it is, house Sarah Walker though it does.

I slip on an old, holey Oberlin t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts. I grab my trusted old Parker fountain pen and the yellow legal pad I am currently using, and I go downstairs. I put the pen and paper on the large dining room table and I walk into the kitchen. Like the rest of the house, it doesn't contain much decoration, although the utility items double as decor, I suppose. Large old mixing bowls, nesting largest to smallest, sit heavy on one counter. Ellie's prized and intimidating Griswold cast-iron pan stands guard on the antique gas stove, seasoned to perfection, glistening like black glass.

I open a cupboard and take out one of the Mason jars we use as glasses, a big one, and I open the refrigerator with a silent prayer. My prayer receives an answer: a large pitcher of Ellie's sweet tea fronts the central shelf. Answered prayers: maybe a perk of having that hulking priest — Hannah's memorable phrase — as a friend?

I put ice in the Mason jar and pour the slow-moving tea over it. The pitcher I return to the refrigerator.

Sipping the tea — it's too sweet to gulp, closer to a solid than a liquid, closer to a topping for pancakes than a drink — I walk back to the table and sit down. I pull the legal pad to me and uncap the pen, and I begin to consider the scene I am writing in my latest detective novel, Do I Not Bleed? — Quite a title, huh? Learned (almost) reference.

But that's part of what I like about the best of the writers in the genre, especially my heroes, Chandler and MacDonald. Educated men — reference and allusion crowd their novels thick as corpses. My detective, Burnishaw Lennox ('Burney' is what his friends call him), violates norms of the genre, I guess. My comment to Sarah about being a soft-boiled detective was actually a moment of self-quotation: Burney calls himself that in this novel. Burney's short, a bit overweight, but he's also patient, quick, charming, and insightful. I like writing him. I'm just starting to re-imagine the scene when I hear the door open and hear whispers, laughs.

A moment later Ellie floats into the dining room light from the front room dark. Her lips are red and swollen and parted: she's panting a little. Her color is high and her eyes, like her thoughts, elsewhere. It takes her a moment dimly to see me, see the room. She blinks at me and then smiles her warm, generous smile. That smile kept me living when Mom and Dad died.

"Someone had a good time," I say, teasing her.

She looks down at herself, smooths her dress, bites her lip. She hadn't quite intended for me to see her slightly disheveled. "Um, yeah, Chuck. I had a great time. Sorry we didn't get to talk more, that I didn't get to know Sarah. But Shaw showed his ass — not that he has anything else to show — and then we seemed on opposite sides of the room for the rest of the evening. Did you have a good time? Sarah Walker's dead-in-your-tracks pretty, brother of mine."

She's spiraling, or as close as Ellie gets. Spirals are my thing. I find it adorable. I haven't seen her this excited, particularly about a man, since...ever.

"Dr. Woodcomb isn't just a big brain," I say in response.

She sighs and answers unselfconsciously. "He sure isn't." She catches herself then and gives me a quick embarrassed look. "Not that I...I mean that we...He kissed me in his car. Then again on the steps. Then on the porch. Then at the door. But nothing...that is, nothing else, happened. He was a gentleman."

Her awareness of her surroundings, of me, increases. She looks at the pad, the pen in my hand. "You don't seem as happy as I expected you to be after playing beau to the belle of the ball…"

I can't tell Ellie the truth — confidentiality — so I shrug. "The Shaw thing threw me off, I guess. And Hannah. I don't think Sarah likes me as well as...as well as I'd hoped."

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

Emily Dickenson wrote that, more or less. Tonight, I feel like it's a thing with horse feathers. I shoo it from its perch in my soul, vulturous old bird.

"Sorry, again, Chuck." Ellie smooths the back of her skirt and sits down opposite me at the table. Her face is puzzled. "For what it's worth, every time I saw her Sarah was looking at you — gazing at you. She sure seems to like you. — Why do you think she doesn't?"

I shrug again. If Father Casey can have a language of grunts, I can have one of shrugs. "She made it pretty clear. I was her date because...she doesn't know anyone else yet."

Ellie presses her lips into a line as she often does when she thinks hard, but she doesn't share her thoughts with me. After a moment, she shifts in her chair and launches in a new direction. "I saw you talking with Hannah."

"Yeah, we talked a little. She was complaining about Shaw."

Ellie nods. "Undoubtedly. How's she, otherwise?"

"Okay."

"She spent a lot of the evening looking at you and Sarah. Seeing you two together was harder on her heart than Shaw was on her feet."

It's my turn to nod. "I'm going to make things right with her, Ellie. I will. No more dithering."

"You like Sarah, don't you? Really like her."

"Geez, Ellie, I'm not eight."

"Well, then you are interested in her."

I grope for a way to change the subject. "Why'd you let Shaw yank you onto the dance floor?"

"Oh, that. He surprised me, first of all. And second of all, I didn't want to have to be bitchy in front of Devon; Shaw would have forced me to be bitchy. I knew you'd step in — but I didn't expect things to go the way they did. Devon was impressed."

"I guess," I offer, "but it added to Hannah's humiliations."

"I know. She was a trooper, though, helping Shaw up and leading him out, head high."

I picture the scene. "Yeah, she was."

Ellie gestures at the pen and paper. "Communing with Burney?"

"Trying to."

"Do you think you've ever written a woman more fit to be the leading lady in a detective novel than Sarah Walker?"

"No," I admit, "my imagination's not that strong."

Saturday rises hot and then heats up.

I spend the heat of the afternoon with Morgan. Bolonia's house is old and sprawling but it has a pool behind it, Bolonia's only splurge. She made us ham sandwiches before she left to play bridge with some friends. I'm eating one in a deck chair I've pulled into the shade. Morgan floats, his eyes closed, on an innertube in the center of the shallow end of the pool. He paddles with his hands every so often, his eyes remaining closed, keeping the innertube in the shallow end.

Morg's afraid of the deep end.

"Chuck," he says in a contemplative tone, paddling gently, "tell me again. She had on a blue dress, Rita Heyworth, and long, long blue gloves?"

"Yeah, Morg," I say around a bite of ham sandwich. Bolonia's occult gifts extend to processed meats. "Long, long blue gloves."

"And you held her hand — while she was wearing the gloves?" I see one eye open a bit as he gauges my reaction.

"Right, I held her gloved hand."

"Jesus," Morgan says, extending the name to sentence's length. "Tell me again."

"Morg, this is getting disturbing. I can't tell if it's Sarah or the glove."

"I wouldn't want to," he sighs, closing the eye. Then I notice him consult the front of his shorts and I look away. I don't need to know the full extent of his reaction to the thought of Sarah's gloved hand.

"Hey, Chuck," he says again in his continued, dreamy voice, "would it be alright with you if I looked into...a matter...for Big Jim Sutton. He asked me…"

One of the curiosities of the known universe is that Big Jim Sutton likes Morgan as much as he dislikes me. Other than me and Bolonia, that makes the total number of people who like Morgan countable on one finger.

"A...matter?"

"Uh-huh. Mhm. Evidently," whenever Morgan tries to play PI he starts sentences with 'evidently', "some small items and some cash have disappeared from the Briggs and Stratton employee locker room. He asked me if I would just check around, talk to the folks, you know, see if I notice anything."

"Morg, you know that to actually be a PI in Alabama, you have to meet certain requirements, among them is a test you have to pass."

He waves his hand lazily. "I could pass that test, no problem. I've seen every black and white detective movie ever made. I proofread your novels. I work by your side."

I reverse the order of his list. "You sit in my waiting room and play video games. You read my novels and add your misspellings. You watch detective movies but you never get the details right and always get the perp wrong. You suck at all known forms of testing."

He continues to wave his hand. "Short hurdles."

"Short hurdles are tall when you're even shorter."

"Way to buoy my confidence, best friend." He splashes water at me but the droplets far fall short of the target.

I laugh. "I'm just giving you a hard time, Morg. If you got serious, you could pass the test, no doubt. But remember," I take on a stentorian tone, "to get a license you must also have committed no crime of moral turpitude, and the Licensing Board decides the final definition of 'moral turpitude."

Morg looks at me, puzzled. "Moral what?"

"Turpitude. Inherent baseness or vileness, shameful wickedness, depravity."

He still looks puzzled. My list seems not to have helped. I sigh. "The sort of thing you were imagining with Sarah Walker's glove…"

"Oh. Oh. That is a high hurdle."

I laugh again. "I figure just your browser history would convict you."

"Leave my browser out of this."

"Seriously, Morg," I say, losing both the stentorian and the joking tone. "If you want to help Big Jim, that's fine. But you can't do it for pay, and you can't link what you are doing to me or the office. You're just a private guy helping out a buddy."

"A private dick helping out a buddy," he says.

"From your mouth to God's ear, Morg."

He looks meekly up into the hot blue sky and then scoffingly back at me, and paddles away from the deep end.

The Lee County Country Club is not exactly terra incognita. I've been there. Honestly.

Of course, I'm not a member and almost certainly never will be. But I went once with Hannah to a dance during the summer after our senior year, and I've had to go occasionally on professional business. It turns out that the Club has its fair share of intrigue and that I have sometimes been involved in it.

The Club's set on one edge of a massive, breath-taking golf course, and it is surrounded on the other side by tennis courts, an Olympic-size pool, and a small building that stands alongside the pool and that gets called 'the Cabana' although it's too ornate and pastel to seem particularly Cabana-ish to me.

I meet Wylie at the front door. He's just gotten out of his Mercedes and handed the keys to the valet. The valet parked my Camry, dust and all, a few moments earlier, and I've been standing, chatting with her. She's a tall, attractive red-headed Auburn student named Carina Miller, who's finishing a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management.

I'm surprised when she recognizes me and asks about Morgan. He met her a few weeks ago in the Avondale, a nice, quiet upstairs bar in downtown Auburn, just up the street from Toomer's Corner. She recognizes me from Morgan's description, and she asks how Morgan's doing. I tell her fine.

She seems under the decided impression that he is my partner, in fact, my senior partner, but I don't disabuse her of that mistake. She seems perfectly able to handle herself, and why spare Morgan the bruising he deserves?

"Chuck," Wylie says as he glances at Carina rounding the front of his car, "good of you to come. I'm still trying to get to know folks in the area and you seem like someone worth knowing. My niece certainly seems to think so."

My immediate thought is that that's a lot of seeming, but I don't speak it. I just nod and shake Wylie's hand. "Glad to be invited. It always seems cooler out here, even though I know it's not."

He nods. "It does. I hope you're hungry. I am."

We walk into the Club and through it, to the restaurant inside. As we walk, we chit-chat about the party, the Alabama weather. Several well-preserved, tanned middle-aged women pass us, or we pass them, and they all have eyes for Wylie. He gives each his Bob Barker smile and nods.

A young man seats us in the restaurant and gives each of us a menu. We're seated by a large window that looks out onto the pool.

"Price is no object, Charlie-boy," Wylie announces, in a somewhat unexpected we're-best-chums voice. It's the second time he's told me that, and if he keeps saying it, I'm going to stop believing it. I believe the reverse of Carroll's line from The Hunting of the Snark. "What I tell you three times is false."

"Thanks, Wylie." I pretend to consult the menu but I am instead watching as Wylie settles into the scene. His eyes are quick, intelligent. He sizes up everyone in the room in a few seconds. I get the unsettling feeling that he is no fool, despite his over-the-top charm. I'm going to have to be more careful than I was at the party. There, I had Sarah and the other party-goers to provide distraction. Here, I'm his focus.

"Say," I begin casually, "what do you do? Sarah never actually told me."

He smiles. "It's not easy to say, that's probably why. I guess you might say I'm a professional dabbler. I inherited a lot of money from my father, who'd already diversified the family holdings, and I've diversified them even more. Mostly, I've worked in corporate finance, but of late I've not been in an office much. I'm at the point where I just don't need to work. My money makes money for me."

"So, it grows, like the desert?"

He stares at me. "You're a complicated man, Charlie-boy."

"Most people call me 'Chuck'," I say with a hint of flatness.

He nods. "No doubt, Charlie-boy, no doubt," he says either not hearing or not caring.

I notice his eyes narrow a bit and I follow his glance out the window and to the pool. Sarah Walker is climbing out of the pool wearing a red bikini. I was right, what I said to Ellie: my imagination's not that strong. My gulp, luckily, is inaudible.

My immediate, irrevocable judgment is that Sarah Walker owns all the colors she wears. Black, blue, red, whatever.

Her hair hangs down, dark and wet, and she uses her fingers to comb it back from her face and then her hands to squeeze water from it. She turns and speaks to a man who is climbing out of the pool behind her.

He's an ad for an abs machine. He's not tall but he's pretty, maybe prettier than Devon Woodcomb. He's certainly...daintier...despite his dark tan. He smiles at Sarah beneath his Ray-Bans. I cannot see her reaction. She's facing him and I am not going to stare at her back, her backside. Her reaction does not reinforce the man's smile. Wylie turns to look at me.

"I guess my niece is here too. I didn't know she was coming, but then again, she didn't know I was. We haven't talked much since the party. Bryce Larkin," he says, nodding in the direction of the ab ad, "showed up unannounced yesterday morning, and she's been...tied up...with him since. He's staying at the Hall."

We're both looking at him, Larkin. A definite note of disapproval sounds in Wylie's voice.

Wylie sips his water and the waitress arrives and takes our orders. Larkin's dampened the two of us as well as the pool deck.

When the waitress leaves, I look back out. Sarah's reclining in a deck chair and Larkin sits in one beside her.

Carina Miller walks by, and I watch as Larkin visually inspects her backside through his sunglasses. Sarah sees it too and frowns, although she turns her face from Larkin so he cannot see her reaction.

Wylie clears his throat. "So, your family's not from the South?"

I'm unsure how he knows that but I let it go. "Not originally. My parents moved down here a few years after meeting each other in Boston. My mom's family is from Boston. Her father, my grandfather, is still there."

"Oh, are you close to him?"

I pick up my water and sip it again. "Yes, now. He and Mom didn't get along — about Dad. She loved Dad, Grandpa...didn't…" I shrug.

I see Wylie's eyes stray out to Sarah and Larkin. He nods in understanding. "Right, too bad. But things are better now?"

It's a long story, and complicated; I don't want to tell it now, especially while watching Larkin-o-Vision, all-abs-all-day TV. So, I shorten and simplify it. "Yes, it took some time after Dad and Mom were killed but, yes. Things are better now."

"Good," he says, as he moves his glass so the waitress can put his salad down, "family matters."

"It does," I agree. "Is...Larkin...family?"

"No, no. He and Sarah were...an item once, but he's part of what she needs to get away from. California."

Somehow I understand him. Larkin's California personified. Bolonia would hate him. I certainly do. I adjust my chair so I cannot see so easily out the window.

"So, Wylie, you've not got any business keeping you busy here?"

He smiles. "You're a good judge of character, Charlie-boy. I can't be completely idle, don't have it in me. I've got a thing or two going here, angles, but nothing...far enough along, developed enough, for comment."

I take a few minutes and try to get him to comment, but he never does. He splits his attention between me and Larkin-o-Vision and keeps his conversation vague.

We finish, stand, and are about to walk out when Sarah and Larkin come into the restaurant through the double doors that lead out to the pool. Sarah sees us immediately, and she is surprised. She doesn't like surprises. But she overcomes her frown and reverses it as she approaches. I am thankful she has a wrap over the bikini

Unfortunately, Larkin, although he has a shirt in his hand, has not put it on. The abs are more depressing up close.

"Chuck, Uncle Wylie! I didn't know you'd be here. It's nice to see you, Chuck." She sounds like she means it but she glances at Larkin as she speaks. "Um, Chuck, this is Bryce Larkin. An old friend of mine...a friend of mine."

Larkin reaches out for me, the Rolex Submariner on his wrist flashing in the restaurant. His sunglasses are pushed back on his head and I see that he has bright blue eyes. I hate him more every moment.

"Chuck, is it?"

"Yes, good to meet you." I'm spitting the words like sawdust but I sound like I mean it. I don't.

"Sarah mentioned you to me, that you were her date at the party the other night."

"Yes, she suffered through dancing with me," I report with a wavering smile.

She gives me a split-second look of annoyance and it tinctures her tone. "No suffering involved. Our dancing was...memorable."

Larkin gives me a more respectful glance, straightens himself. "Our Sarah loves to dance."

I have no clue how to respond to the 'our'. She's not mine. She once was his, or so he seems to think, maybe still thinks. I can't tell what's true now.

I've had enough of the Club. Enough. I imagine beating Larkin into submission with his Submariner.

"Thanks kindly for lunch, Wylie. Sarah, Bryce, nice to see you again and to meet you, respectively." As I leave the restaurant, I hear sandals slapping behind me, then a hand lightly grabs my arm.

I turn and Sarah's standing there; it's her hand. Her cheeks are faintly red again, like when she picked me up for the party. Probably the sandalled sprint to catch me. I have long legs; I eat up ground with each stride even if I'm not hurrying, although I was just then.

"Chuck," she says softly, looking around and behind her, then facing me, "I'm sorry about the other night, the drive home. I stopped being good company. But you didn't. I know this is confusing, you working for me and all, but could we meet later this week?"

I honestly can't tell if she is asking me for a date or asking me for a PI-client discussion. At the moment, I don't care.

"Sure, how about tomorrow?"

She smiles at me and dissolves me in my shoes. "Great," she says. "I'll call you."

I nod, look past her, and glimpse Wylie talking to Larkin. They aren't talking as buddies. Seeing that makes me dislike Wylie's 'Charlie-boy' less.

I part with Sarah and go outside. Carina, back at the valet stand near the door, takes my keys and goes to fetch my Camry.

A/N: If you're reading this and have been reading Jeux, I hope it's obvious that this one proceeds at a drawling, leisurely pace by comparison. It will continue that way mostly. — Pour a sweet tea, sit back.