Ghost writer, p.32
Ghost Writer, page 32
“It’s not a holiday for another”—he looked at his watch—“two hours.” He set the pages down as Kathy nestled into the corner of the couch closest to the fire and Eleanor sat in a rocking chair farthest from it.
“I love this house, Eleanor,” Kathy said warmly as Jonathan offered to pour her a brandy. She declined. “How long have you lived here?”
Eleanor picked up a blanket she was knitting from the basket beside the rocker. “Oh dear, I guess it’s been . . . well, thirty or more years. I lose count, you know.”
Jonathan smiled and pinched off a piece of the brownie. “The world’s best, El. I swear it.”
She waved her hand at him like he was being foolish while her face glowed at the compliment. “A lot of good memories,” she said as she gathered her yarn. “Jon, your father used to love sitting in that very same chair. Drinking brandy and smoking those smelly cigars.”
Jonathan lowered his head and smiled, feeling Kathy’s eyes on him. He glanced up at both the women. “Dad liked brandy, did he?”
“Sure. Don’t you remember? I can’t believe you don’t!” She laughed and began to knit. “Earl and your father would sit up until two in the morning discussing absolutely nothing of importance. You wouldn’t know it listening to them,” she said, her eyes focused on her knitting project. She glanced up at Jonathan. “That’s why Earl leaves the bottle out for you, you know. It reminds him of those days with your father.”
Jonathan swallowed. “Earl and Dad were close? I didn’t realize.”
“Oh, as close as two older men can be, I suppose. They were good company, anyway.”
Jonathan then poured himself some brandy as Kathy looked on. They all listened to the fire for a little bit and watched Eleanor work yarn as if she were wrestling a rattlesnake. Jonathan doubted he’d ever seen anyone knit as intensely as Eleanor.
“I remember,” Eleanor started after a bit more silence, “the last Thanksgiving my sister was alive. It snowed that morning, and we had both gotten up to put the turkey in the oven. We sat and watched the snow fall as the sun rose. Glorious.”
Jonathan smiled. “Mom always liked coming here.”
“Sure she did. I was always a better housekeeper than she.” Eleanor laughed. “And she was so happy that you two had come with Meg and Leesol. Leesol had just been born, and we weren’t sure Kathy was going to take her out in the cold. I’m glad you did, Kathy. None of us could possibly have known that would be her last Thanksgiving.” She pointed a needle at Jonathan. “That’s why you need to come visit me more! You never know when I might go stiff.”
Jonathan and Kathy laughed quietly, trying not to wake the girls and Earl. “Eleanor, you always had a way of putting things.”
She shrugged. “I’m just glad we all had that Thanksgiving together. It seemed like the whole week was just a blessing from God.”
Kathy pulled her sweater around her and stared into the fire. Jonathan swirled his brandy around in his glass. But Eleanor wasn’t mindful of what either of them were doing. “Jonathan, your mother was so proud of you going into books. She always bragged about what an avid reader you were. Remember that week she brought all those books you had edited and asked you to sign them?”
Jonathan laughed. He’d forgotten that. It seemed so absurd at the time. Editors never signed books. But his mother had insisted, and Jonathan figured it wasn’t going to hurt anything. He didn’t realize how much it meant to her until after she died. When he went to her house, he discovered she owned exactly three copies of every single book he’d ever edited in his entire career.
Jonathan took a long sip of brandy. “I miss her eggnog.”
“Don’t we all! Lord knows I can’t make the stuff.” Eleanor changed knitting needles. “That was the first year Kathy helped out in the kitchen, too.”
Kathy looked up. “Well, I was so intimidated before. I’d have rather been in the kitchen with Martha Stewart!”
“Who, dear?” Eleanor asked, and Jonathan cracked up. “At any rate, I remember the three of us sitting up late, even after the men had gone to bed, and playing cards.”
“Yes, I remember. . . .” Kathy’s faint smile reflected a good memory.
“Boy, you two were the night owls! Talk, talk, talk!” Eleanor raised her yarn up into the light of the fire. “My sister always liked you, Kathy. She was glad Jonathan snagged you.” She winked at Jonathan. “Anyway, I went on to bed, but I could hear the two of you jabbering on like a couple of schoolgirls!”
Kathy scooted to the edge of the couch. “Anyone want another brownie? I think I’ll have one.”
“No, thank you, dear. I always wondered what it was you two talked about. You must’ve stayed up two more hours after I’d gone to bed!”
“It’s been a long time. It would be hard to say,” Kathy said from in the kitchen. “Sure you don’t want a brownie?”
The question was left unanswered, and the room grew quiet while Kathy was away. Eleanor stretched her arms up and set her knitting aside as Kathy re-entered.
“Boy, you two are quite the conversationalists without me, aren’t you?”
Jonathan noticed she came back empty-handed. “Aren’t you going to have a brownie?”
Kathy smiled and rubbed his shoulders from behind him. “Well, I didn’t want to eat alone. Besides, I’m tired. I should get to bed.” She kissed him on the cheek. “It’s my turn to rise early with the turkey.”
“This turkey ain’t gettin’ outta bed till noon!”
She playfully hit him. “You know what I mean.”
Jonathan squeezed her hand, and then she walked up the stairs to the bedroom off the loft. The door squeaked as she closed it. Jonathan looked at Eleanor, whose old, wrinkled face grew younger next to the warm light of the fire. She pulled a single pin from on top of her head, and long, shiny gray hair fell down across her shoulders. “You’ve got a jewel in that woman and don’t you forget it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jonathan said with a wink.
Eleanor walked to the fire and warmed her hands against it. “Family is so important. It’s all you have when you have nothing.”
“True.” Jonathan’s heart expanded with relief for the decision he’d made to stay with Kathy, and for the assurance that the frightening story he had been receiving had ended. He celebrated that thought by finishing off his brandy.
Eleanor had turned so her back was facing the fire. “You’re far away, dear.”
Jonathan smiled up at her. “Just thinking. Just thinking how . . . happy I am.”
Eleanor nodded with approval. “You should be. You have a good life.” Her eyes darted to his briefcase. “You’re not overworking, are you? Couldn’t you leave that at home just for the few days you were here?”
“I have an important meeting next week. I’m presenting two proposals.”
Eleanor twisted her hair in her hand. “Proposals. Who cares? It’s not as if these were your first two! This is what you do! This is what you’re good at! When are you going to take the pressure off yourself?”
“Right now!” Jonathan reclined in the chair as the leg rest popped out. “Things are different now, El. My premier writer retired and died. I can’t depend on him forever. Besides, if I’m ever going to be executive editor, I’m going to have to be better than the others.”
“Well, being an executive anything isn’t all there is in life.” Jonathan smiled as she lectured him. “Your wife and kids need to see you.”
“I know, I know,” he said with a laugh, his hands held up in front of him in defense. “Believe me. I’ve changed a few things in my life, and I am going to spend more time at home.”
Eleanor approached him and patted him on the shoulder. “Good, good. Sophie will be an old woman before you know it. I never imagined my life would go by so quickly. And so many things I can only look back on with regret. I suppose if one could see the end of his life at the beginning of his life, one might measure his time differently.”
“I’ve learned what’s important. This family is everything to me.” He looked up at her. “But thank you for caring.”
Her sunken gray eyes peered down at him. “Are you taking your family to church, Jon?”
Jonathan’s eyes darted to the fire. “Well . . . not . . . I’m going . . . no.”
Eleanor moved around him so she could see him better. “My dear, have you forgotten that? Have you forgotten our Lord?”
Jonathan shook his head and muscled the leg rest back down into the chair. He stood and walked to the fire. “No, no. Of course not. It’s just been . . . hectic. I’m tired when Sunday comes.”
Eleanor laughed suddenly, so hard that Jonathan turned around to make sure she was okay. “What’s so funny?”
Eleanor gathered herself and joined him at the fire. “Oh . . . I was just thinking back a few hundred years—”
“El . . .”
“Earl and I had gotten ourselves started in this fishing club. We were gone a lot on the weekends, making it to all the lakes nearby for fishing competitions and what not.” She laughed again. “Anyway, we were traveling by camper on a Sunday, and I mean to tell you it was one disaster after another. First two tires blew. Then we ran out of gas. Then we left our fishing license back in a whole other county. And finally Earl broke three of his toes after he stumbled on a rock.”
Jonathan glanced over at her. “I don’t even like fishing.”
“My point, dear, is that God made His point quite clear that He wanted Earl and me back at church. We’d been going once every two or three months. Boy, when God has a point to make, He sure knows how to make it! Earl doesn’t even eat fish anymore.” A log fell off the fire with a thud, sparks and tinder flying up into the smoke and then falling as lightly as feathers. “Well, I’d better head to bed.” Eleanor moved past him and to the edge of the room.
“El?”
“Yes, dear?” She was only a ghostly silhouette against the light of the room behind her.
“Have . . . have you ever seen God?”
“Seen Him? No, dear. I’ve never seen God.”
Jonathan cleared his throat, still warm from the brandy he’d consumed. “Do you think God . . . um, that He comes down here? Ever? To prove a point?”
Eleanor stepped back into the room enough so that the fire barely illuminated her thin face. “Sure. God has come down here once or twice.” She smiled definitively.
“Recently . . . ?”
“Jon? What are you asking?”
Jonathan stared back into the fire. “Nothing.”
“No. There’s something on your mind. What is it?”
Jonathan’s pause was filled with the crackle of the fire. “Maybe I’ve seen the writing on the wall. That’s all. Except it wasn’t on a wall.” He looked up at Eleanor and then shrugged slightly.
The heat from the fire made him tired, and his mind was having trouble keeping up with his emotions. All he knew was that he would’ve rather believed God was writing that story than Clyde. God had the right. Clyde didn’t.
Eleanor stood silently in the doorway, her hands clasped in front of her nightgown. “Well, dear,” she finally said, “the last person who saw God’s handwriting ended up dead.” Jonathan’s eyes shot up. “So let’s hope you didn’t.” She smiled peacefully.
Jonathan rubbed his face in his hands and thought about pouring himself another brandy. Who was he kidding? Of course it was Clyde. How could he even imagine that God might be so personal as to send him pages for his salvation? He laughed to himself and took a deep breath that flared his nostrils. And the salvation part of it was questionable. It had been a nightmare above all else. A nightmare that he was glad was over.
“Good night, Jonathan,” Eleanor said and flipped off the light in her bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind her.
“Good night,” he said softly. No, he certainly hadn’t seen God’s handwriting. If God came down and wrote, it wasn’t going to be legible to him. At one time in his life, God hadn’t been quite as mysterious, but that was long ago when things were simpler and his brother was by his side.
“The last person who saw God’s handwriting ended up dead.”
His ghostwriter was most definitely Clyde Baxter.
chapter 22
Honey, please, you don’t have to drive,” Jonathan argued as Kathy backed out of the driveway, all of them waving at Earl and Eleanor, who were standing on the front porch wrapped in their coats.
She turned on the wipers as the snow fell on the windshield. “You have work to do. I know that. This is a perfect time for you to read Clyde’s manuscript.”
“Yes, but—”
“And Clyde’s funeral is tomorrow, so . . .” She lowered her voice and glanced back at the girls in the rearview mirror. “You probably won’t feel like working.”
Jonathan’s hands ran over his two-day stubble. “I don’t feel like working now.”
Kathy patted him on the leg. “Honey, you’ve got to finish the manuscript.”
Jonathan looked at her. “Why is it so important to you for me to finish it? You’ve never encouraged me to work before. You still don’t believe it was Clyde sending me those pages, do you?”
Kathy kept her eyes steady on the road and switched on her lights. “I know you’ve got an important meeting Monday. You said Nellie’s expecting something big from you.”
Jonathan sighed and clicked open his briefcase. “I don’t even know if it’s finished. I mean, this is a nightmare. In more ways than one.”
Kathy slowly passed a stalled vehicle. “I think you owe it to him to at least read what he did finish. This book was important to him.” Kathy met his curious stare. “You said so yourself.”
Jonathan pulled the papers out of his briefcase. “Girls, you have enough heat back there?”
“Yes!” they all sang in unison. Kathy and Jonathan smiled together.
“Get to reading,” Kathy ordered and then smiled. “Nellie has nothing on me, baby,” she winked.
Jonathan settled into his seat and tilted the seat back to a less upright position. She was right. Nellie was expecting something big, and regardless of how he was feeling about Clyde, his book had to be his ticket to getting Nellie’s confidence in him back. He found his place.
The comment she had given the press sounded like a weather report on a dull weather day. “The two men were convicted of their crimes by a jury of their peers. We have found no significant evidence to release either one of them. We cannot and will not make a rash decision because we are coming under pressure from the media and from political agenda groups. The fact of the matter is that we have found nothing that would cause us to probe further into investigating either of these cases. Thank you.”
I had listened to the broadcast on my car radio, followed by a bombardment of political opinions afterward.
“Obviously DA Caladaras has let her previous mistake of releasing a prisoner cloud her judgment in this. She doesn’t want to make another mistake. And an innocent man will die for it.”
“She’s just covering her own behind. She won’t admit she prosecuted an innocent man.”
“Maybe Donomar is lying. But at least investigate it further than this!”
“Someone will answer if another innocent man is executed! Do we want to make it four in one year? Esther Caladaras will answer, and Governor Wallace, too!”
On and on the comments went, each more heated than the previous one. I felt helpless and angry with her, but I wasn’t about to give up hope. Not yet.
I waited impatiently in a break room of the federal prison. I had at least persuaded Esther to let the FBI continue their investigation into Donomar’s cell. Maybe, just maybe, they would turn up something that would link him to the death of one of those women.
Agent Lauttinghouse knocked on the door just as I was about to buy another Twinkie from the vending machine. “Keaton, there’s nothing.”
I sighed hard. “Are you sure, Gordon?” He nodded. I shook my head. “No. It’s in there. That’s part of the game. Don’t you see that? He’s laughing right now, knowing we can’t find it. This is a game to him. The game has rules. He will follow those rules. He can’t win if we’re not all following the same rules.”
“Keaton, my men have been at this for five hours. These men know what they’re doing. Whatever it is we’re looking for, it’s not in there.”
I was surprised Esther’s secretary and guard let me through. I figured I’d been banned from seeing her, now that she had made up her mind. Four days had passed. Two days until Joseph James would be executed. He still would not return my calls or acknowledge in any way that I wanted to see him.
The national news’s lead story every single night was the looming execution of these two men. Political agenda groups had made this story so big that even China and Europe were following it. The fact that three innocent men had been executed earlier in the year was fuel for their fire, and I hoped their fire would grow bigger.
The governor had been on every single national show that existed, hoping to help his campaign for the upcoming election but ending up answering question after question about the case. Even Lincoln Smith had found fame in his last days. He must’ve told his story a hundred different times, and it never changed one bit. I watched him carefully. The more I listened to him, the more I believed him. And so did the rest of the world. He had suddenly become the poster child for mistaken guilt.
Esther’s door was cracked slightly. I didn’t bother knocking. I figured someone had told her I was on my way in. When I entered, she was eating Chinese and almost seemed relieved as she waved me in.
“Keaton,” she said after a large gulp, “you’re the last person I expected to see. You fired yet?”
I smiled and took a seat. “The jury’s still out on that one.”
