Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [27]
When Brixton left home to join the Washington MPD, he put worshipping behind him—until he met and married Marylee Greene and had two kids with her. The Greene family was devoutly Catholic, and Brixton went along, although he knew that he was only going through the motions. Their daughters were dutifully baptized in the Catholic faith and he attended Mass with them whenever his shift allowed. If his faith had been weak before becoming a D.C. cop, nights spent on the city’s mean streets did nothing to strengthen it. And the breakup of the marriage brought a sense of finality to any belief in a higher power. He hadn’t set foot in a church since.
He and the Jewish Flo Combes were a perfect match in that regard. At thirteen her parents had celebrated her coming of age with an elaborate bat mitzvah at a local catering hall. She’d dated plenty of young men, many of them not Jewish, which was all right with her parents. Neither her mother nor her father was especially observant, and their attendance at the local synagogue was restricted to the high holy days.
When Flo graduated from the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan and launched what she hoped would be a successful career as a clothing designer, she fell hard for a handsome young Jewish fellow who was in his third year of residency at a New York City hospital. Their marriage had lasted even fewer years than Brixton’s had—two years, two months, six days, to be precise. Her husband turned out to have an increasingly serious prescription-drug problem that set his emotions on a roller coaster, placid one moment, volatile to the point of physical abuse at the next. Fortunately, no children were involved and they parted amicably, as amicably as possible in such circumstances.
Flo soon tired of the Manhattan rat race and looked to relocate to a more serene environment. A high school friend had moved to Savannah and encouraged Flo to join her there. She packed up, found an apartment in this quintessential southern city, got bank backing for her dress shop, and happily settled in to her new life. There were beaus there, too, of course, but along came Robert Brixton, fresh from twenty years as a homicide detective with Metro, and their distinctly secular, off-and-on relationship took off. Although they disagreed about many issues, they were in concert on one important one: neither wanted to be married again.
Eunice Watkins greeted Brixton and, unlike her son, gasped when she saw his face.
“It’s a long story,” he said. “I’m fine. Not to worry.”
She invited him in for sweet tea. He declined, explaining that he had appointments to keep. She’d put the photograph in a plastic bag and taped it closed.
“You take good care of that now,” she said.
“You have my word,” he said. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask whether you’ve received any more strange phone calls.”
“No, thank the Lord.”
“That’s good,” he said. “You let me know if you do. I’ll try and have the picture back to you later today, but it may be tomorrow.”
“That will be fine,” she said.
“I spent time with your son this morning.”
“Lucas called and said you’d paid him a visit.”
“I’m sure you’re very proud of him.”
“I thank God every day for him,” she said. “Every day. I’ll be prayin’ for you, Mr. Brixton,” she added, indicating his face.
“I appreciate that,” he said.
His next stop was the Christian Vision Academy. He’d been on those grounds before as a cop, two calls, as he recalled, having to do with suspicious-looking people hanging around. The private girls’ high school was the butt of occasional jokes, mostly about its reputation as being snobbish and priggish, the students’ families coming almost exclusively from Georgia’s A-list stratum. But it had a sterling reputation for turning out fine young southern women who, for the most part, went on to marry fine young southern men after leaving CVA and majoring in finding suitable husbands at college. A few had strayed over the years