The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [92]
I looked back at them. Miss Dinah had a hand to her mouth now, Mom leaned into her. Unc said, “Tell me, Huger.”
I turned back to it. I was quiet, then said, “The head of a black man. On a six-foot pedestal, kind of. And he’s got green glass eyes.”
“My God,” he whispered. “It’s true.”
“Of course it’s true, Leland,” Simons said. “Everything Constance told you Wednesday night on the telephone was and is terrifically true, beginning with her confessing to you her role in fencing our finds through her contacts with curators across the country.” He paused. “A delightful technological toy, the tapping of a phone. Even if it’s your own.”
Unc quick turned to him, said, “She did it only because you, you bastard, drove her to it.”
Simons laughed, his head back with it. He pointed the gun at Unc. “Surreptitiously sock away enough hard-earned dollars to the right charitable foundation without your wife knowing, then blame your apparently decreasing income on the health-care industry and looming senate-committee hearings, and your wife will believe the life to which she has been accustomed is soon to disappear. Next dangle a small temptation—perhaps a mythical plot of ground never before excavated—and the revenues one might gain were one to sell off a piece here, a piece there. Promise her, of course, only a piece here and a piece there will be sold, and promise her as well that all else will be presented to her beloved museum, and there you have it: a sort of archaeological bait-and-switch. She participates in the sale of one item to the black market, I then threaten to divulge this tidbit to the proper authorities, and her life as a South-of-Broad Dupree-Middleton-Simons is over. She must keep her mouth shut while we salvage what we can, or her life is over.” He paused, shook his head, still smiling. “As well you know, Leland, as regards your inability to inform Lord Huger of your sordid soirée with his delightful mother here some sixteen years ago, pride is a frightening thing, powerful unto paralysis. And unto death.”
Mom cried again, let go the shovel. She moved to me, held me. But I did nothing. I kept my hands at my side, let her cry, hold me.
I said, “Guess everybody on earth knows.”
“You imagine true,” Simons said.
And still Unc said nothing.
Tabitha gave out a sharp cry, just one, and Miss Dinah turned, looked at her. Tabitha moved her hands, looked at her momma, nodded now and again at the statue.
Miss Dinah slowly nodded back. That was all, and turned back to it. “Where the rest of them?” she asked. “The other three?”
“I’m afraid the other three have already been crated and shipped out of Charleston Terminal, though of course we don’t cart from here the entire structure, only the bust itself. Deputy Thigpen has the most delightful diamond-bit cable saw that slices through tabby like a scalpel through skin, and uses only the muscles in one’s arms so as not to arouse undue suspicion; no whine of a power saw emanating from a nighttime island. This is the last one, this night’s harvest our last on the island. This particular one,” Simons said, and looked back at the bust, “according to the information Constance, bless her heart, amassed for this project, and as states the lore no doubt handed down to you by your ancestors, Miss Dinah, is the Son, set facing due west. And set exactly forty-two feet due east was the Mother,