The Quiet Game

Tuscany was built in 1850 by a retired English general who imported the Italianate craze to Natchez from London. Three stories tall, the mansion is a splendor of northern Italian design, with an entrance tower, front and side galleries, marble corner quoins, huge roundheaded windows with marble hood moldings, and balustrade balconies on the second floor. Yet despite its grandeur, the overall effect of this transplanted villa is surprisingly tasteful.

The great door of the mansion closes just as Caitlin and I come within sight of it. From where we stand-beneath a dripping oak with a trunk as thick as ten men-Tuscany looks like an epic film set, floodlit, surrounded by trimmed hedges, azaleas, moss-hung Southern hardwoods, and luxurious magnolias. The broad, waxy leaves of the magnolias glisten with beads of rainwater.

"Do you know your way around the house?" Caitlin whispers.

"I used to."

"I'll bet. Come on."

She starts toward the house in a running crouch. Soon our faces are pressed to the panes of a ten-foot-tall window, with spiky hedges pricking our backs. The window glass is more than a century old, full of waves and imperfections, but Caitlin is videotaping through it anyway. Through the distorting medium I see Leo Marston standing before an enormous marble fireplace. Above the fireplace is a portrait of Livy as a teenager, or perhaps Maude. Leo bends, obscuring part of the fireplace, then straightens up and puts his hands on his hips. Beyond his knees, yellow flames billow up from a gas jet.

"He's building a fire," Caitlin says in a tone of disbelief. "It's seventy-five degrees and he's building an effing fire."

My last resistance crumbles. "Give me your cell phone."

I call directory assistance for Judge's Franklin's number, then let the computer connect me. The judge herself answers, and it sounds like cocktail hour at her house.

"Penn Cage, Judge Franklin. The lawyer Leo Marston is suing for slander."

"Oh. Why are you calling me at home?"

Leo lifts one of the file boxes and sets it squarely on the andirons. The flames lick their way up the sides of the cardboard, burning it black.

"Judge, at this moment I am watching Leo Marston destroy what I believe is the evidence I requested today in my requests for production."

A stunned pause. "Is he in the room with you?"

"No, ma'am. A few minutes ago I observed him removing file boxes from his office in a surreptitious manner. I followed him home, and I am now watching him burn those file boxes in his fireplace. Watching through a window."

"You mean you're trespassing on his property?"

"Is that really the point, Judge?"

I hear the clink of ice against glass, a hurried swallow.

"Judge, I have the publisher of the Natchez Examiner with me, and the events I described are all on videotape. She's taping right this minute."

"Christ on a crutch. What do you want me to do, counselor?"

"Call the police and have them come straight to Marston's house and confiscate those files. And I'd like you to come with them. You might just prevent bloodshed."

"I'll do it, Mr. Cage. But you get your tail off Leo Marston's property right this minute, before he puts a load of rock salt in your butt. Or worse."

"Yes, ma'am."

I click End and touch Caitlin's arm. "She's sending the police."

"They won't make it in time. The gate's closed, and they won't be able to get through."

"What do you want to do?"

"Make Marston want them to get here."

She pulls free of my grip and bulls her way through the hedge. Seconds later, the sound of shattering glass reverberates across the floodlit lawn.

Leo goes rigid before the fireplace, his ears pricked. Caitlin's rock smashed the window of another room, and he is unsure of what he heard.

Then another hundred-fifty-year-old pane smashes, this one less than ten feet from Marston. He stares at the broken window, looks back at the fireplace, then hurries out of the room.

Caitlin is standing in the drive like a pitcher on the mound, right arm cocked, a rock in her hand. She may not know what Leo is going after, but I do. And from the gallery Marston could pick her off firing from the waist.

I charge through the prickly hedge and run onto the lawn. "Get your ass under cover!"

Her cocked arm fires, and another pane shatters into irreparable shards. I sprint the last few yards and grab her arm, dragging her toward a thicket of azaleas. Just as we plow into the bushes, the front door of Tuscany crashes open and Leo bellows into the night:

"Where are you, you gutless sons of bitches? Come out and fight like goddamn men!"