24 Addison

She'd slept most of Saturday nursing an epic hangover from whatever had been slipped in her drink. On Sunday, Dean refused to let Addison leave the house. He'd slept in the guesthouse but had conspicuously taken her car keys off the rack, leaving a Post-it that it would be best if she stayed at home until she felt better. "Felt better" being not-so-secret code for her acting like a crazy drunk in front of their so-called friends. All day long she'd done her best to check on the kids and take care of some laundry, not speaking to Dean but often being spoken to by Dean, who kept going back and forth from the guesthouse. She wouldn't answer him, just stared in his general direction until he was done talking. On Monday, the keys had miraculously returned to the rack and Dean was nowhere to be found, Superdad obviously finding better things to do than make pancakes on a busy Monday morning. Thank god Josefina was there to keep the family rolling along. You no look so good, Mrs. McKellar.

Addison had dressed in her supersuit, the black leggings, black cashmere hoodie, and Seaside ball cap, and worn her enormous sunglasses as she drove into the rising sun to drop off Preston first and then Sara Caroline. No small talk that morning. Both the kids sensed a seismic shift in the McKellar household that no one wanted to discuss. Sara Caroline only answered questions with a grunt and then moodily exited the passenger seat, opening the rear hatch for her lacrosse stick and slamming it shut behind her. Addison wondered what kind of stories were being passed around among her Hutch friends.

By 8:30, she was pulling into CK's Coffee Shop across from East High School. Porter Hayes's black Mercedes was parked in a handicapped space, its wheels with conspicuously heavy theftproof lug nuts on the rims. When she walked inside, she found him sitting in a booth facing Poplar and reading a copy of the morning's Commercial Appeal. The headline above the fold read: "Expected GOP Victory Could Help Obama in 2012" with a smaller headline below: "Elvis Costar Reported Missing. Daughter Seeks Answers."

"Okay," Addison said. "I'm ready, Mr. Hayes."

He looked over the edge of the paper and folded it twice, setting it by his coffee.

"So glad you came around, Mrs. McKellar."

"Addison," she said. "Just Addison. So what in the fuck is going on?"

Hayes leaned back into the booth and glanced over his shoulder. He looked every bit the part of the cool seventies investigator in his brown leather jacket over a cream-colored turtleneck.

"You sure you're ready?" he said. "Because once that cat's out of the bag, it's gonna run loose and free."

"Who is my husband?"

Porter Hayes reached down beside him and slid a manila envelope across the table.

"Mr. Dean McKellar," he said. "Once was lost but now he's found."

"Clever," she said, slitting open the top with her nail.

"Happens when you grow up in the church," he said. "My mom sang in the choir. Most beautiful voice I'd heard before I met my late wife. Say, you sure you want to open this here?"

"You want me to go back home to Dean with it?"

Hayes didn't say a word, only reached for his coffee.

The first page was an invoice from Hayes Investigations for an additional six hundred and twenty dollars and ninety-eight cents. The other pages were lengthy reports of where and when. Investigator spoke to... Investigator then consulted... "Want to give me the short version?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Been trying for a while."

"I wasn't ready then."

"But you are now?"

"My husband drugged me on Friday night and made me look like a drunken idiot in front of all our friends," she said. "And then he topped off the night by killing a man in our living room."

"Then what happened?"

"When my son and I came back inside, the body was gone," she said. "Dean left for a few hours and acted as if nothing happened."

Hayes raised his eyebrows. That was it. Just an eyebrow raise while he smoothed his mustache. Addison figured Porter Hayes wasn't exactly shocked by another murder in Memphis, or a man as deceitful as Dean McKellar. The letterhead on his invoice proudly reading Serving Memphis Since 1971.

"Your husband is not Dean McKellar," he said. "He took the name of a dead man from Cortland, New York. That's upstate, right below Syracuse."

Addison made a rolling motion with her hand for him to get on with it. He was rambling in his stories just like her father. He'd go on and on about what he had for breakfast and then running into an old friend at the Kroger pharmacy before telling you the goddamn house was on fire.

"Then who is he?"

"Well," Hayes said. "I don't exactly know."

"You don't know?" she said. "Then what the hell am I paying you for?"

"Remember when I told you McKellar Construction did work for the Department of Defense?"

"Sure," she said. "You got that from our friend Alec Dawson."

Hayes held up his hand and nodded, wanting to hook up with the story. The waitress returned with a glass of water and a cup of coffee that no one had requested.

"Mrs. McKellar," he said. "Your husband doesn't build shit. Your husband sells weapons and men to the government. You understand? He's not a building contractor. He's a military contractor with millions and millions paid out from this stupid goddamn war. When the government doesn't want to take the blame, they hire men like your husband to farm out the talent. Instead of just taking more poor kids like they did in Vietnam. They don't want to win this thing or accept the blame. Just let things simmer over there in Afghanistan."

"My husband has never been to Afghanistan."

"Maybe Dean McKellar hasn't been," he said. "But Peter Collinson flies over on a regular basis doing work for Warlock Corp."

"Wait, wait, wait," Addison said, feeling all the curses upon mankind blowing up in her face. "Dean is really Peter?"

"Dean is Peter sometimes, but we're not exactly sure who Peter is," Hayes said. "His real company, Warlock, has a hell of a paper trail. Big, big money. I've counted up nearly sixty-five million just last year."

"We don't have that kind of money."

"Peter Collinson does," Hayes said. "Mrs. McKellar, your husband isn't just operating from Memphis. He's an international player. This war has been real good to him. I think he just comes back to Memphis to hang his hat, lie low in his old foxhole. You dig? Now I need to ask you a question. How exactly did you meet this man and what all do you really know about him?"

"He said he was from Upstate New York," she said. "He doesn't have siblings and both his parents died young. He was commissioned into the army right out of college and served in the first Gulf War. He was a captain but got tired of the bullshit. He was working in Manhattan when I met him, for an investment firm, with my friend Alec Dawson. Right? He was very ambitious. He was also charming and stable and we got married way too fast. He had lots of friends in New York. Friends of my friends. Hell, I wouldn't even have met him except for Alec. I guess he screwed us both."

This was a lot for a Monday. She rested her forearms on the Formica table and dropped her head into them. Hayes remained quiet for a long while until she got herself upright and wiped her face with a napkin. He reached over for another handful from the dispenser and passed them along. "You're very good at this," Addison said.

"Seen a lot of tears in my time."

"Lots of jilted wives?"

"And husbands," he said. "And lovers. And families. No matter the size of it, a lie is just a lie. He may be your husband here in Memphis, but he's someone altogether different when he gets on that plane. You do know he has his own private plane?"

"I only know he killed a man."

"Okay," Hayes said. "That's a good place to start. Who did he kill?"

"You believe me?"

"Of course, I believe you," Hayes said. "Your husband is one of the biggest damn liars I've ever come across. I'm here to help you sort out the truth, not to doubt what you have to say."

"He killed the one-armed man."

"The one who threatened you and made that big-ass turkey sandwich?"

She nodded.

"You know the man's name?"

She shook her head.

"You know why he's here?"

"Looking for Peter Collinson," she said.

"Well, goddamn," Hayes said. "Seems like trouble always comes home to roost, Mrs. McKellar. Guess we're not the only ones searching for the truth."

Addison shook her head and reached for the coffee. It looked weak and horrible but it was hot and warmed her hands. Her lips felt very dry and cracked as she spoke. "Please don't call me that anymore. Just call me Addison."

"Addison," Hayes said. "Okay, Addison. I think your family is in danger. Any chance you might get out of town until I can straighten all this out?"

Porter Hayes advised her to pick up her kids from school and head straight to the nearest hotel. "Use cash if you can," he said. "Dean, or whoever the hell he is, is sure to be tracking your every move."

Instead, Addison got in her Escalade and drove to the nearest Starbucks, sat in the parking lot, and cried for five minutes. Once she got her shit together, she called Alec Dawson at work. He wasn't in the office, and that's exactly where an intelligent and rational woman would've left it. But not Addison. She wanted answers and damn well knew that Alec had been holding out on Porter Hayes. He knew a fuckton more than he was letting on. If it hadn't been for Alec, she'd never have met Dean, she'd never have brought him back with her to Memphis, and she'd never have settled into Pleasantville, raising kids and attending fundraisers with a man she obviously didn't know.

The whole thing was embarrassing as hell, like a dream she used to have repeatedly as a teen, her dream self at school completely naked and walking the halls, people pointing and snickering, and her with no place to hide, absolutely exposed to everyone.

No offense to Porter Hayes, but she needed a lot more than what would fit on a neatly typed report. Hayes was apparently an honest man, but he'd also left her with a new invoice for six hundred and twenty dollars and ninety-eight cents after the extra thousand she'd already paid him. She wasn't sure where the ninety-eight cents came from, but she was sure he had his reasons.

Addison started her Escalade again and drove toward Collierville and the house Alec shared with his daughter, Ellie. She didn't have Alec's phone number anymore, Dean long ago telling her to erase any and all messages to Alec Dawson or his ex-wife, Susan, and block their numbers. There was to be no more contact with that family. At the time, Addison thought it was a legal thing, something to do with the lawsuit, but did as she was told without a single question. Funny how that worked. Never thinking to question Dean.

She drove straight through Germantown, past the turn to her father's condo and another turn to the home where she grew up. Most everything in the quaint faux village of strip malls and little businesses looking absolutely the same. The Germantown Kroger, the Baskin-Robbins, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where she was confirmed and they had the funeral service for her mother.

Along the highway, you could still catch glimpses of what Germantown used to be like long ago, before she was born. Old families still clinging to their rolling acreage and farmland set between the never-ending puzzle-piece subdivisions. Churchill Downs, Miller Farms, Magnolia Ridge...

She had a Hutch directory in her car and pulled off to find Ellie Dawson's name. She plugged the address into her Cadillac's GPS and continued her journey east, wondering how long it took Alec and Ellie to get to school every day, fighting traffic up and down Poplar. Must be an absolute mess. Addison had been to their house years ago, back when Alec and Susan had moved in. She recalled it as one of those Country French McMansions at the end of an otherwise empty cul-de-sac, surrounded by open lots and signs promising a pool and tennis club to be built soon. Alec had been the developer or one of the investors. Dean had approached her back then about selling the old house in Central Gardens for a brand-new house with more square footage and fewer headaches. But she loved that old house and never even considered the move. Besides, it was so far out of Memphis, you might as well live in another state. All the things that made Memphis, Memphis were comforting and close. Collierville was new money. Addison wasn't interested.

As she got off the highway and took some turns on a few back roads, it started to rain. She listened to the calm, soothing voice of her female navigator until she turned into a neighborhood called Rowan Oak, feeling herself smile for the first time in a while. The idea of naming a McMansion subdivision after Faulkner's antebellum house was absolutely ridiculous.

It was coming back to her now. With the current recession, the empty lots were still empty. The signs promising the pool and racquet club looked sun-faded and shabby. Earth-moving equipment stood motionless in the weedy lots as she drove into Alec's cul-de-sac, surprised that his was still the only home in the circle. His house was huge, bigger than theirs, Country French with river stone walls, a steep slanted roof, tall windows, and twin chimneys. Alec's old Jeep Wagoneer was parked out front and she pulled in behind it. Most of the landscaping was brown or leafless.

Damn, it was pouring now. She waited a few minutes to see if it would stop. When it didn't, she took a breath and ran for the front door, Nikes sloshing along the pebbled sidewalk and on up to the porch, where she furiously knocked and rang the bell. A few seconds later, Alec opened the door.

He wasn't dressed for work. He was shoeless in khaki pants and an untucked blue button-down. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked like he hadn't shaved for a few days.

"I want you to be straight with me," she said. "How did you meet Dean? And who the fuck is he?"

"What do you mean?"

"Dean McKellar, the real Dean McKellar, died in a car accident in nineteen ninety-two."

Alec held the door wide as she stepped into the foyer, dripping wet.

"How about a towel first?" Alec asked, disappearing back into the kitchen, coming back with a big white towel and pitching it to her. She ran it over her face and hair and across her damp hoodie.

"Well?" she said.

"Just how much do you know about me after I left Ole Miss?"

Alec had a fire going in the grand living room, an honest-to-God real woodburning fire, not a propane insert like what had been installed in Addison's house. The fire was warm and cozy, but the house was oddly spare and almost empty. She sat on the end of a tacky L-shaped sofa, probably a Costco special, along with two mismatched leather chairs around what appeared to be a nice antique coffee table. There was no art on the walls and only one antique rug on the hardwood floor. The only thing the house seemed to have in abundance were televisions. He had two in the main room, both above the fireplace, and another by the kitchen.

Alec noticed her staring.

"Haven't had much time to decorate after Susan left," he said. "She pretty much took everything."

"Oh, no," Addison said. "I think it looks nice."

"No, you don't," he said, smiling. "It looks like a bachelor pad, which I swear it isn't. Ellie absolutely hates it. I promised her I'd let her buy whatever she wants when she comes back home."

"I thought she was living with you."

"Susan moved back with her boyfriend and filed for joint custody," Alec said. "Tennessee law doesn't exactly favor the father in these situations."

"Even though she left you?"

"She said I was stifling."

"No offense, Alec," she said. "But Susan was a truly awful person."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Alec said, rubbing the scruff on his chin.

Addison set the towel on the arm of the sofa. "And why didn't you tell me about Dean?"

He nodded. "Fair enough."

"I want to know it all," she said. "Everything. Okay? No bullshit. You owe it to me, Alec. We were friends long before you met Dean and introduced him to me. And if there were any red flags, I damn well deserve to know. Christ, you were in our fucking wedding."

"I know."

"But he's a phony," she said. "A cheat. A liar. He's not even Dean McKellar. I don't know who the hell he is."

"Where's that coming from?" he asked. "Porter Hayes?"

She nodded.

Alec stood up and went over to poke at the fire, sparks catching and heading up the flue. God, she wanted a drink. It was so early and after the weekend she'd had and what people thought, it was probably the last thing she needed.

"Would you like a drink?" he said.

"Yes," she said. "Very much."

Alec Dawson lived so far out of Memphis, there wasn't a chance he'd even heard about the other night. The Zoo Boo fiasco, a night that would live in infamy all around the Club.

"Dean drugged me the other night," she said. "I've been drugged before. I know what it feels like. He wanted me to look like a loser in front of all our friends at a fundraiser."

"Ha," Alec said. "Friends. Those people are hyenas. They're not your friends, Addy."

"And you?" she said.

But she said it to his back as Alec turned and headed to the kitchen where—like only a man would—he had an extensive bar set up on the countertop where normal people would've served breakfast to their kids. She noticed his broad back and muscular shoulders as he poured the whiskey into two crystal glasses, the khakis fitting him nicely.

He brought back two whiskeys neat.

"Did Dean ever tell you about a man named Whitman Chambers?"

"Who the fuck is Whitman Chambers?"

"If I told you his complete résumé, you'd think I was lying," Alec said. "He was sort of like the guy on the Dos Equis ads. The most interesting man in the world. He'd been one of the very first Delta Force guys. He was part of that crazy plan to get the hostages out of Iran in 1979 that failed miserably. He fished in Nicaragua and hunted in Africa. He spoke nearly every single language and had contacts in every corner of the world. Dean and I both worked for him and we idolized him."

"You two worked for an investment firm," Addison said. "In New York."

"It was an investment firm in some ways," Alec said. "My father had a friend who had a friend. He was into all this bullshit with the Bohemian Club in California. You know about that? These rich fucking nuts who get naked every year among the sequoias and discuss world events. Anyway, I'd been out of Ole Miss about a year, working for my dad's company, and then I get an offer to help Chambers. It was still doing construction. But much different from what I was used to. I wanted to clear land and prep development; Whitman was in the business of nation-building."

"Jesus, Alec," Addison said, taking a sip of the whiskey. It felt warm and nice and spread throughout her whole aching body. "Please don't bullshit me. This sounds like complete bullshit. I promise you, I will never speak to you again if you're covering for Dean."

"I can't stand that guy," Alec said. "Okay? I wish I'd never met him. And I wish you'd never met him. As bad as you think he is, I promise you, he's worse."

"But who is he?" Addison said. "What does all this shit have to do with Dean? I'm being told his company is some type of fucking mercenaries."

"I'm a builder now and that's what I did then," Alec said. "Sometimes I did it in South America or Africa, but I was doing the same thing I do here. Bringing in the heavy equipment and doing a job. Dean is the mercenary. Have Gun Will Travel. You know that show?"

"My dad's second favorite."

"Dean was Whitman's right-hand man," Alec said, holding the whiskey but not drinking any. The rain pelted the hell out of the empty windows, echoing deep into the Spartan living room and open kitchen. "Chambers was a visionary. He believed that small, emerging nations would be willing to pay big money for not only infrastructure but private armies. If Chambers had lived long enough to see the Towers fall, he'd be one of the richest men on the planet. Instead, he crossed the wrong guy in Africa, and someone put a bomb on his plane."

"Jesus," Addison said. "You kept all this from me?"

"I figured once you and Dean got married, he'd told you everything," Alec said. "You guys just hit it off so damn quick, there wasn't time to warn you."

"Bullshit, Alec," she said. "Bullshit. You know me better than that. What's his real name?"

"Dean McKellar," he said. "He's always been Dean McKellar to me."

"And what did he do for this Whitman Chambers?"

"Chambers provided security and soldiers to those willing to pay," he said. "Dean ran that branch. Whatever you may think about Dean, I promise you, in this arena, he's the real deal. He'd been Special Forces, some time at the Agency. We'd come across people in fucking Bolivia, and he'd have met them. He speaks almost as many languages as Chambers himself. Listen, I've seen him in action, Addy. You don't want to fuck with that guy."

"Terrific," she said. "He told me he'd been a captain in the first Gulf War. He got a purple heart for falling off a tank rolling into Kuwait."

"I think he might've been having some fun with you," Alec said. "Dean would never fall off a tank. And no, I know what we told you, but we were never finance bros in New York. Chambers had offices in New York and London. We made a lot of trips across the Atlantic and as young ambitious guys all over the world. Drinking at the Dorchester. The Ritz. A big time for a kid from Memphis."

Addison turned up the whiskey as fast and precise as she used to do at the bar at The Gin back in Oxford. She didn't need to explain to Alec that she could drink most any guy under the table and would never—God forbid—get drunk off one and a half glasses of goddamn wine.

"Dean killed a man the other night," Addison said. "We'd just come home from the Zoo Boo."

"How was the Zoo Boo?"

"Goddamn, Alec."

"How do you know Dean killed someone?"

"Because I fucking saw it," she said. "I was walking the path behind the house to the kitchen, and there was Dean standing inside the house with a man with one arm. I saw them clear as day through the window. He and the man were arguing, and blam, blam, blam, Dean shot him."

"What did you do?"

"I had been drugged and I was in shock," she said. "By the time Preston and I got into the house, he'd moved the body."

"Are you sure you saw it?" he said. "A one-armed man?"

"Alec."

"Okay, okay," he said. "I believe you. I always will believe you. And I'm sorry. Really sorry. I blame myself for all this. We were the ones who crashed your Christmas party. Where was that?"

"P.J. Clarke's," she said. "We were celebrating my stupid author hitting the list for the hundredth time."

"Right," he said. "I was late and Dean got there early."

"Yep."

"Story of my life." Alec put a hand to his temple and pressed. He looked like he was either trying to forget something or had an excruciating headache.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine."

"Why aren't you at work?"

"Late flight from Miami," he said. "Work stalled out with a development we have in Coconut Grove. Hey, do you want a refill?"

Addison nodded, and Alec disappeared again. Maybe she and the kids could stay here, taking only a couple of the endless rooms. Dean wouldn't suspect it and Alec would never tell him. He must have a hundred bedrooms in this place. Maybe Sara Caroline could finally reconnect with Ellie, be friends like they'd been as little kids, sharing a place at the little ice cream tables at Sugar Babies. Gumdrops and sprinkles. God, that was so long ago but seemed like yesterday. Alec handed her another whiskey.

"I really shouldn't be doing this," she said. "I have to pick up the kids."

Alec looked at his Rolex. "It's not even ten," he said. "You have time. Come on. Let me help you. Okay? It's going to be fine. I promise."

His smile lit up the room. The rain hit the roof and windows harder, pounding the McMansion like a fucking drum. This time Alec didn't take a seat across from her but instead moved in right beside her, stretching his arm over the couch. He didn't touch her, but he was making his presence known, in a comforting way.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I fucked up."

"I wish I'd known."

"You guys were inseparable those first few months," Alec said. "You told me you'd never been in love like that, and then all of a sudden you guys were getting married. I felt like you were happy and safe and I was happy as hell for you."

Addison sipped the whiskey, slowly this time, and allowed herself to lean back, her shoulder touching Alec's arm. "Why the hell did you both want to come back here?"

"Whitman died," he said. "We tried to keep things going for a while, but without him, the company fell apart. It was a fucking mess. Dean and I wanted out. My dad was getting older and he wanted to hand over Dawson-Gray to me. When I left, Dad had started to have some bank problems and was about to lose everything. What can I say? You and Dean had just gotten married. He told me he was done with that life. Dean stepped in with some quick and needed cash and we became partners. He was smart and charismatic, and I needed someone to step out front."

"No, you didn't."

"But I needed his money."

"And here I thought it all was fate."

"It worked for a while," Alec said. "Until 9/11 and Dean smelled all the money we could be making. We watched the Twin Towers fall on a TV in our office and everything changed from that moment. He started farming out little jobs, getting some DOD money. But then he wanted to go full out with his mercenaries, like he did with Whitman. He bought some land down in the Delta—"

"Shit," Addison said. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

"Yep," Alec said, his hand resting on her shoulder and pulling her closer. "Dean always wanted to be the lead dog. I always seemed to be a day late and a dollar short."

"Don't say that."

"I ruined your life."

"Dean ruined my life."

"A lie of omission is no less a lie," he said, leaning in to tuck her head underneath his, almost as if they were watching a movie on the couch. And she was back in the early nineties at his crummy duplex in Oxford, Alec working out "Stairway to Heaven" on his guitar. Addison in a haze of pot and cheap whiskey and laughing so hard she couldn't breathe. They had only ever kissed, and only that one night. They slept in the same bed, woke up and went to Smitty's for breakfast, and kept right on dating other people and never spoke of it again.

"I'm so damn sorry."

Addison turned to him. "It's definitely a lot."

"Can you go to the police?"

"And tell them what?" Addison said. "He has dozens of witnesses to say I'm a drunken, strung-out mess. He's seeding this whole bullshit story that I'm crazy."

"Dean wouldn't hurt you," he said. "But he'll do anything to protect himself. And whatever he's into these days."

"And what's that?"

"Nothing big," Alec said. "Just selling arms and private security across the globe to the highest bidder."

"Wonderful."

Alec lifted his head and took in a deep breath. They didn't talk for a long while, just hanging there together in that big, empty room, watching the fire. She could feel him breathing against her, and the smell of his cologne was nice and piney, and not so aggressive like Dean's aftershave.

"I'm so sorry I was late."

"For what?"

Alec turned and kissed her hard on the mouth and Addison put her arms around his neck, pulling him in as they fell into that long goddamn awful Costco sofa. There was so much kissing and not even time for Addison to take off her damn hoodie, the yoga pants pulled down to her knees, Alec ripping off his neat blue shirt, nearly tripping as he kicked out of his khakis, falling down onto the one rug in the room by the heat of the fireplace and doing stuff that she shouldn't be doing but wished she'd done so long ago. She felt all the shame of being naked and exposed, the embarrassment of living a stupid lie, just lift right off her and into their hands and mouths. She pushed Alec onto his back, feeling like she'd climbed a great hill, and straddled him, hands pressing down on his chest, and all of it so rough and intense that it happened for her over and over. Realizing that once, a long time ago, Dean had made her feel this way, too. Dean. Oh, Jesus. Her husband was a trained fucking killer.

After, she'd gotten up and gathered her pants up around her, pulling down her hoodie and running off in the general direction of where surely there was a bathroom. She ran the water and sat down on the toilet, goddamn crying again.

A soft knock on the door. "Are you okay?"

"No."

"You have to leave him, Addy," Alec said. "It's not safe."