Turning Angel

He sets his jaw and shakes his head with confidence. “You didn’t know Kate. Nobody knows about us.”

The naïveté of human beings is truly breathtaking. “Whatever you say.”

Drew puts his big hands on the wheel and squeezes it like a man doing isometric exercises. In the small space of the car, his size is intimidating. I’m six-foot-one, two hundred pounds; Drew has two inches and twenty pounds of muscle on me, and he hasn’t let himself slip much from the days he played tight end for Vanderbilt. It’s not hard to imagine Kate Townsend being attracted to him.

“It comes down to this,” Drew says in a steady voice. “The police are going to start probing Kate’s life. And if they probe deeply enough, they might find something that connects me to her.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A diary? Pictures?”

“You took pictures?” Why am I asking? Of course they did. Everyone does now. “Did you videotape yourselves too?”

“Kate did. But she destroyed the tape.”

I’m not sure I believe this, but right now that’s not the point. “What about Ellen?” I ask, meaning his wife.

His eyes don’t waver. “Our marriage has been dead for ten years.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“I did. You and the rest of the town. Ellen and I mount a major theatrical production every day, all for the sake of Tim.”

Tim is Drew’s nine-year-old son, already something of a golden boy himself in the elementary school. Annie has a serious crush on him, though she would never admit it. “What about Tim, then? Were you going to leave him behind?”

“Of course not. But I had to make the break from Ellen first. I’ll die if I stay in that marriage.”

They always sound like this before the divorce. Any rationalization to get out of the marriage.

“I don’t want to say anything negative about Ellen,” Drew says softly. “But the situation has been difficult for a long time. Ellen’s addicted to hydrocodone. She has been for six years.”

Ellen Elliott is a lawyer who turned to real estate in her midthirties, a dynamo who focuses on the upscale antebellum mansions in town. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, she seems to have pulled off the rare trick of breaking into the inner cliques of Natchez society, something outsiders almost never accomplish. I’ve never known Ellen well, but the idea of her as a drug addict is hard to swallow. My mental snapshot is a sleek and well-tended blonde who runs marathons for fun.

“That’s kind of hard for me to believe, Drew.”

“You can’t imagine Ellen popping Lorcet Plus like M&Ms? That’s the reality, man. I’ve tried for years to help her. Taken her to addiction specialists, paid for rehab four times in the last three years. Nothing has worked.”

“Is she clinically depressed?”

“I don’t think so. You’ve seen her. She’s wide open all the time. But there’s something dark underneath that energy. Everything she does is in pursuit of money or social status. Two years ago she slept with a guy from Jackson during a tennis tournament. I literally can’t believe she’s the woman I married.”

“Was she different when you married her? About the money and status, I mean?”

“I guess the seeds of that were there, but back then it just looked like healthy ambition. I should have seen it in her mother, though.”

I can’t help wanting to defend Ellen. “We all start turning into our parents, Drew. I’m sure you have been, too.”

He nods. “Guilty as charged. But I try to stay self-aware, you know? I try to be the best person I can be.”

And that led you to a seventeen-year-old girl? I have more questions, but the truth is, I don’t want to know the gory details of Drew’s personal life. I’ve heard too many drunk friends pour out the stories of how their lives fell short of their dreams, and it’s always a maudlin monologue. The odd thing is that by almost anyone’s estimation, Drew Elliott has led a dream life. But as my mother always said: You never know what’s cooking in someone else’s pot. And one thing is sure: whatever happens as a result of Kate Townsend’s death, Drew Elliot’s touchdown run through life has come to an end.

“I need to get home to Annie, Drew. Mia needs to leave.”

He nods with understanding. “So, what about it? Will you help me?”

“I’ll do what I can, but I’m not sure that’s much. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

He nods and looks into his lap, clearly disappointed. “I guess that’s the best I can hope for.”

I’m about to get out of the car when Drew’s cell phone rings. He looks at the LED screen and winces. “Jenny Townsend.”

My chest tightens.

“She’s going to want me to come by the house.”

“Will you go?”

“Of course. I have to.”

I shake my head in amazement. “How can you do it? How can you look Jenny in the eye tonight?”

Drew watches the phone until it stops ringing, then meets my eyes with the sincerity of a monk. “I’ve got a clear conscience, Penn. I loved Kate more than anyone on earth, except maybe her mother. And anyone who loved Kate is welcome in that house tonight.”

Drew is both right and wrong. He will be welcome in the Townsend home tonight; in fact, of all the visitors, he will probably be the greatest comfort to Jenny. But what if Jenny Townsend knew that her personal physician had been having sex with her teenage daughter? That he was about to abandon his family and blow Kate’s perfectly planned future to smithereens?

“I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” I say softly.

Drew catches hold of my forearm as I climb out, once more forcing me to look into his eyes. “I’m not out of my mind. It wasn’t a midlife crisis that led me to Kate. I’d been starving for love for a long time. I’ve turned down more women in this town than you can imagine, both married and single. When I hurt my knee in that car accident last summer, I was home for six weeks. Kate was there every day, watching Tim. We started talking. I couldn’t believe the things she talked about, the things she read. We e-mailed and IM-ed a lot at night, and it was like talking to a thirty-five-year-old woman. When I could walk again, I organized a medical mission trip to Honduras. Kate volunteered to come along. It was actually Ellen who suggested it. Anyway, that’s where it happened. Before we returned to the States, I knew I wanted a life with her.”

“She was seventeen, man. What kind of life could you have had with her?”

“An authentic life. She was only two weeks shy of eighteen, Penn, and she was going to Harvard in the fall. I’ve already taken the Massachusetts state medical boards. I scored in the top five percent. I’ve already put a deposit on a house in Cambridge.”

I’m speechless.

“And now none of that will ever happen,” Drew says, his face tight with anger and confusion. “Now someone has murdered her.”

“You don’t know it was murder.”

His eyes narrow. “Yes, I do. It had to be.”

I gently disengage my arm. “I’m sorry for your pain, man. I really am. But if it gets out that you were involved with Kate, you’re going to be crucified. You’d better start—”

“I don’t care about myself! It’s Tim I’m worried about. What’s the best thing I can do for him?”

I shake my head and open the door to the rain. “Pray for a miracle.”

Mia Burke is sitting on the porch of my town house on Washington Street, a bulging green backpack beside her. I park by the curb, looking for Annie’s smaller form, but then I see that the front door is open slightly, which tells me Annie is still sleeping and Mia is listening for her. Mia stands as I lock the car, and in the light of the streetlamp I see that, like Drew, she’s been crying.