“Goddamn it,” I whisper. “Royal is the key.”
The only real mystery in all this is my father’s stubborn silence. He hasn’t spoken one word about Viola’s death, and he’s flatly denied an intimate relationship with her. To my amazement, he seems as opaque as Brody Royal to me now. All my life, my father has seemed a model of virtue and humility, yet today a childhood memory returned to whisper that he’s also a liar. Caitlin spent most of last night and half of today researching Royal, yet she discovered nothing incriminating on the multimillionaire (who Henry insists is a homicidal monster). How can I resolve these contradictions? If Royal is the sadistic sociopath Henry Sexton believes he is, how could he have concealed it for so long? And if my father isn’t the medical version of Atticus Finch that we all believe him to be … then what is he?
To answer these questions, I need the kind of source that Caitlin couldn’t access with all the power of her father’s media empire, that the police couldn’t match with all their informants and all the information petrifying in dusty file rooms across Mississippi and Louisiana. I need information that lives not on hard disks in remote servers, but in the soft tissue of aging human brains.
And one brain in particular.
Putting the Audi in gear, I back out of my parking space and pull into Commerce Street, driving almost in a trance. A few hours ago, Caitlin said something that’s resonated ever since: “There’s a secret history here …” That phrase always makes me think of Donna Tartt, the Mississippi-born writer, though that title originated with Procopius and his exposé of the crimes of the emperor Justinian. Every small town has its historia arcana, and in Natchez, our secret historian is a woman whom few people have seen in the past ten years. A fabled recluse, she lives with her three servants in one of the finest antebellum mansions in the city. Her name is Pythia Nolan—“Pithy” to her friends—and she’s probably one of the few Natchezians who could read Procopius in the original Attic Greek.
Born into one of Natchez’s oldest families, Pithy was widowed in 1943, when her husband was shot down over the Pacific. She never remarried, but she lived a full and varied life, and as a result knows everything about anyone who matters in Mississippi over the age of forty, and most things about their offspring. I’ve used Pithy as a secret source for three of my novels, and her disguised anecdotes invariably delight or shock my readers, even those on the other side of the world. As per our agreement, her name has never appeared on my acknowledgments pages, a distinction that some locals point to with pride. Pithy operated by some personal code that I suspect made her an instrument of karma. Through what she revealed through me, she dispensed a sort of stealth justice, even if the only people who recognized themselves were those who had committed the sins for which she believed they should pay.
About a year ago, to my dismay, Pithy stopped taking my phone calls. She claimed that I hadn’t sufficiently disguised information she’d given me for my last book. No amount of apology or obeisance has proved sufficient to reopen the gates of her famed mansion to me, but today I must risk rejection once more. For no one is more likely to know what secrets lie behind the public faces of Brody Royal and Tom Cage.
Pithy is probably older than Royal, and while her wealth may not be as liquid, the widowed belle probably owns more land than the Louisiana magnate. She was my father’s first patient when he moved to Natchez (as she never tires of reminding him), and Dad continues to make regular house calls at her mansion, though he’s almost as sick as she is. I say “almost” because Pithy is dying of emphysema. She coped well with the disease for some years, but over the past six months she’s deteriorated rapidly, or so Dad tells me.
Dialing her number from the contacts list on my phone, I wait two rings; then a rich African-American voice, says, “Mrs. Nolan’s residence.”
That voice belongs to Flora Adams, Pithy’s maid since 1956, and the daughter of her mother’s maid.
“Flora, this is Penn Cage. I need to talk to Pithy, in person if you think she’ll see me. It’s very important.”
“Mayor, if you’d called yesterday, you wouldn’t have stood a chance. But if talking to you can speed up Dr. Cage coming back out here, you’ve got a magic key to her sickroom.”
“That’s exactly what I’m coming to see her about. Dad’s in trouble, and I think Pithy may be able to help get him out of it.”
“Come on, then. Doc Cage was s’posed to see Miss Pithy today, but he didn’t show up. She’s about to die for one of his cortisone shots.”
“I’ll be out front in five minutes.”
“I’ll have Darius open the gate.”
Flipping the S4 into Tiptronic mode, I roar down Homochitto Street and blow through the yellow light onto Lower Woodville Road, which blurs into background as I drive. How small and helpless Henry Sexton must have felt all these years, pursuing Brody Royal—a multimillionaire who counts senators, governors, judges, and business magnates among his close friends. A man who could with impunity order the murders of two federal witnesses and go on as though nothing had happened. If any man in this area is untouchable, it’s Brody Royal. Yet the despair I felt in the doorway outside Shad’s office has faded. If Shad told me the truth up in his office—if Dad’s bail won’t likely be revoked until Judge Elder returns next Monday—then I have six days to prove that someone else killed Viola, or at least to raise reasonable doubt. And if anyone can illuminate the hidden chapters of my town’s history, it’s the old woman dying in regal splendor in her cloistered mansion, the keeper of our collective secrets …
Pithy Nolan.
CHAPTER 41