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overnight, she had gone from a slender, almost ethereal woman of a
certain age to a stolid, solid middleaged woman. She still loved
exquisite period dresses with lace and hand stitching, and she had a
beautiful wedding gown, circa 1880, on a mannequin in her bedroom in
Papa and Boppo's house, a white ghost figure standing in a dark
corner.
The antique dress was about a size 8, and Pat wore a 22. She reveled
in her costumes, but she could no longer squeeze into them. If she
dreamed of romance and perfect love, she no longer spoke of it.
Way back in the days when Pat and her children, Susan, Debbie, and
Ronnie were living with Boppo and Papa, Pat had often accused her
parents of resenting the money they spent on her and her children. "If
we're too much for you to support," she would cry, "I'll just go work
in a Waffle House!" It was only an idle threat. Then. For Pat, a job
at the Waffle House was the most desperate strait in which an
upperclass woman could find herself. Twenty years later in 1987, she
was forced to take a job as an assistant manager at a Pizza Hut up I-7S
in Stockbridge. She told her children that she would earn close to
twenty thousand dollars a year, if you included benefits.
How she hated it. If anything, it was far worse than a Waffle House.
The steel bowls of pizza dough were heavy and hurt her back. The smell
of tomato sauce and oregano clung to her auburn hair and seeped into
her very skin. She couldn't get along with the younger managers and
the other workers.
Life didn't seem fair to Pat. Susan had a fine house and a good
husband, Debbie was tanned and wild and sexy as Pat had once been, and
Boppo had a man who loved her beyond reason. But Pat?
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Pat had nothing. She had no love, no future, no money, and she had
lost the only home she ever wanted. She had become fascinated with
antique dolls and wanted to collect them. And then she wanted to own
real antique carousel horses. She wanted to be a true southern lady.
There were so many things she wanted. Somehow, there had to be a way
to get them.
"Pat didn't want to go to work for the Crists, you know," Margureitte
Radcliffe recalled. "I believe it was their son who called her-because
she had such wonderful references from her looking after other elderly
people-and he just pleaded with her, begged her, to take care of his
parents. A very fine old family. Very, very wealthy."
Pat resigned from the Pizza Hut, glad to be rid of the smell of tomato
sauce and oregano (despite what her mother later said), and went to
work for Elizabeth and James Crist.
The Crists had lived for decades in a mansion on a huge, rambling
spread of manicured grounds on Nancy Creek Road near Atlanta's
Peachtree Country Club.
Once, a long time ago, Pat Taylor had designed the kind of estate she
wanted, but all her efforts to make it come to life had fallen short.
Her dream plantation was very like the Crists' estate. Their home was
built of pale green wood siding, three stories high, with wings,
dormers, bay windows, a "Florida room.
" The main house had maids' quarters and an attached garage with room
for four cars, and the grounds featured a pond, a pool, a barbecue
area, and every other possible nicety for gracious living. The mansion
was set at least five hundred feet back from Nancy Creek I Road. A
circular driveway led through the pine trees, oak trees, holly bushes,
and huge rhododendrons that sheltered the vast green stretch of lawn.
The view from the rear of the house was into private woods. The Crists
were, indeed, "very, very wealthy."
In the spring of 1987 the Crists found they needed assistance. James
Crist suffered from Parkinson's disease. Betty Crist called a friend
of hers who worked at the Peachtree Plaza and asked if she had any
suggestions. "Yes," the woman answered. "There's a woman named
Patricia Taylor who's supposed to be awfully good." Armed with Pat
Taylor's phone number at the Radcliffes', Betty Crist called her and
arranged an interview. The buxom applicant seemed competent and
intelligent. She had a certain air of quiet good breeding about her,
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