Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery (10 page)

Damn! I didn't ask that boy to trust me! He'd done her a favor by not telling his cousins that she hadn't worked for them before, but that didn't make them friends. A friend would have told him the real reason he was being kept from his aunt, especially since he was blaming himself for Emmeline's illness. A friend would tell him his cousins might have plans to mess with his money. If they were friends, she would be able to tell him about her troubles and ask for his help in getting away. The idea was ridiculous. He was rich and white, and his handicap excluded him from much of what went on in his own world. It certainly minimized what little ability he might have had to understand
her life, especially her present situation. She was sure he looked on the sheriff, or any law enforcement officer, as a friend. He might even ask that kind-hearted waitress at the diner to call the sheriff because his friend Blanche was missing. She wondered if anybody was working on a vaccine against Darkies' Disease. She hurried into the station and stood in one of the ticket lines. Her legs had that “Run!” feeling again. She looked around the station to distract herself from the shouting in her head that said she should stop and think for a second. She was reminded of her last minutes in the courtroom, when she'd longed for someone to look at her, pay attention to what was being done to her. No one looked at anyone else here, either. But something happened that got everyone's attention.

She heard the siren just before the sheriff's car made a sharp, fast turn off the street, bounced over the curb into the bus station parking lot, and came to a screeching halt. Blanche quickly sidestepped out of line and out the side exit to her left. She hurried across the street against the light and walked back the way she had come.

“I like your suspenders,” she told Mumsfield when they were once again in the limousine.

He nodded his head slowly a few times, in a way that gave the subject of suspenders more weight than Blanche had ever suspected it had. “Suspenders are very important, Blanche.”

“Colors, too,” she added.

“Oh, yes! Yellow suspenders make driving the best. Safe.”

“Umm hmm.” It was Blanche's turn to nod in agreement. “And red for fixing cars, and orange for eating.”

“Yes, Blanche! You understand, Blanche!” He obviously thought she was quite clever to do so. Blanche chuckled to herself. This boy had more parts than a picture puzzle.

On the way to the country house, she asked Mumsfield if he'd mind some music and was lucky enough to find a radio station playing Diana Ross. She felt better with Diana in the car. Diana's
voice was like a ribbon tying Blanche to the part of the world she knew and needed. It wasn't simply her singing that soothed Blanche. Diana had once been poor, just like Blanche. If Diana could move from the welfare and the housing projects of Detroit to the top of the music charts and starring roles in movies, certainly Blanche could get herself out of this mess she was in, just as black women had been getting themselves and their people out of messes in this country since the day the first kidnapped African woman was dragged onto these shores. And wasn't she Night Girl, too? She saw herself holding Taifa and Malik's hands while the three of them looked up at the memorial to black Civil War soldiers that she'd once read was somewhere in downtown Boston. She leaned her head back against the seat and a smile curved her lips. In a little while, her eyelids drooped, her breathing slowed. It was the stopping of the car in the driveway of the country house that waked her. She emerged from a dream about taking the kids to an amusement park into the nightmare of the sheriff's car parked in front of the house.

FIVE

J
ust as when she'd been sentenced, Blanche's bowels reacted to the sight of the sheriff's car. But this time there was no ladies' room for her to hurry into and from which to escape. For a few moments she sat in the limousine, trying to get control of her sphincter muscles and staring out into the perfect summer day. Her eyes devoured grass and flowers, the height of the pines, the way the mockingbird on the lawn bobbed its tail. She took it all in as if to fortify herself with leaf green and sky blue before the man talking to Everett locked her away someplace gray and cruel.

The sheriff raised his hand, his palm toward Everett's chest, not touching him and not meaning to. Everett swayed back on his heels as though nearly pushed off balance by the force of the sheriff's gesture.

“Are you all right, Blanche?” Mumsfield leaned over and touched her arm. “You look funny, Blanche.”

Blanche shook her head and opened the car door. She forced her feet to move toward the house. How did he find me? she wondered. Her legs twitched with the longing to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. She clenched her teeth and cautioned herself not to cry or show fear.

The sheriff swung away from Everett and stepped in front of her. He reached out and tapped her on the arm. She managed not to flinch.

“Don't I know you, gal?” He moved closer to her, peering up into her face with squinty brown eyes. His little girl's voice somehow made the question seem more ominous.

Why was he toying with her? So he could reveal her as a liar as well as an escaped prisoner? She knew she must answer his question but wasn't sure she could stop herself from begging him to please have mercy on her, to at least let her see her children before she was dragged off to jail. She cleared her throat and wondered if he could smell the fear rising from her in acrid, sweaty waves. Would she be less scared now if this shrimpy, pot-bellied man were less well known for abusing black and poor people? Some folks thought it was being not much bigger and heavier than his tin badge that made him so mean. Blanche thought it was his genes.

“I said,” the sheriff repeated, “don't I know you, gal?” His stringy hair quivered as he spoke. His breath smelled of bile. For a second, her concern about being imprisoned was superseded by the possibility that the spittle glistening in the corners of his mouth might suddenly fly up into her face. She could already feel it, cold and acid against her cheek.

“Oh, yes, sir,” she finally managed to say. She wondered whose high, squeaky voice was coming out of her mouth. “Sometimes I help out in the kitchen at the Pettigrew place.” She literally held her breath. If he wasn't playing games with her, would he believe her? All the domestic help in town knew the sheriff regularly delivered the very drunk Miss Hazeline Pettigrew Conroy, heiress to the Pettigrew fortune, into the arms of one or another servant at the back door of the Pettigrew plantation. Just as everyone knew that old man Pettigrew had gotten the sheriff his job.

The sheriff didn't bother to respond. He simply turned from her to Everett, dismissing her with his lack of interest. Blanche let her breath out in a rush and hurried inside to the bathroom.

Relief made her light-headed. She fought the urge to laugh hard and long. Twice now she'd managed to use her wits to save herself. The old folks said things happened in threes. Did that mean she was going to have to rescue herself once again before she could get away clean?

She soaped and washed her hands and the place on her arm where Sheriff Stillwell had touched her. She fought the urge to actively wish him ill. Those kinds of wishes often seemed to boomerang. And it wasn't necessary to wish the sheriff ill. All she had to hope for was that life provided him with exactly what he deserved. She looked into the medicine cabinet mirror, almost expecting to see an unfamiliar face, as though her ability to fool the sheriff had been aided by a newfound ability to alter her looks and turn herself into someone else. No one, not even the sheriff, was likely to look for her here in this house. Unreleased laughter coursed through her, freshening her blood, restoring the sheen to her skin that her scare with the sheriff had erased. Now, if her income-tax check would only come.

She hummed a bit off-key while she loaded the dishwasher with lunch dishes, then wheeled the vacuum cleaner into the front of the house. Everett was nowhere in sight and neither was Grace. Out the front window, she could see Mumsfield shining the hood of the limousine. The sheriff’s car was gone.

She quickly ran the vacuum cleaner over the living room floor. But why was the sheriff here if he wasn't looking for her? Blanche's movements slowed as her vision turned inward. She could see the sheriff holding up his hand, like a traffic cop, as though Everett's words were a line of cars to be halted. When the sheriff had turned away from Everett to hassle her, he hadn't even bothered to excuse himself to Everett. She thought the sheriff had stopped her only to show Everett he was the man in charge, even of the people in Everett's employ. Everett had been so stiff he was almost trembling. Why? At the time, she'd thought Everett was outraged by Stillwell's uppityness. Now she wasn't so sure. Could it have been fear that had nearly knocked Everett off his feet? She'd been so frightened herself it hadn't occurred to her that there was any fear left for anyone else. She recalled a kind of trapped animal look on Everett's face. But what did the sheriff have to say that would frighten Everett? She shook her head and
stepped up the pace of her vacuuming. If I need to know, I'll find out, she told herself with a certainty born of her victory over the sheriff.

She lugged the vacuum and a bucket holding a feather duster, furniture polish, chamois, sponge, spray cleaner, and a long-handled brush up the back stairs. She had no intention of using all of these items, but it looked good to have them. She dropped the lot at the top of the stairs and looked at the seven doors ranging on either side of the hall. She knew the far door on the right belonged to Emmeline. She didn't feel like dealing with a drunk at the moment, so she knocked on the door closest to her and on the opposite side of the hall from Emmeline's room. No answer. She opened the door to find a built-in linen closet full of sets of sheets, hand towels, and blankets in zippered plastic bags. Beyond the closet, the rest of the room was full of boxes with labels like Living Room Dust Covers, Shutters, and Croquet Set. The room next to the storage room was a bathroom with no towels and the fusty air of disuse.

The smell of machine oil and chocolate greeted her when she eased open the first door on the right-hand side of the corridor. Mumsfield's room: silver foil candy wrappers on the floor by the bed, a model car on the night table, pictures of cars and clocks on the walls. An oily machine part lay on newspaper on a table by the door that led to the bathroom. The machine part reminded her of men gathered in garages, oiling cars, talking about women, and sipping beer, not an image she associated with Mumsfield. Why had she expected a train set and marbles? She guessed Mumsfield to be about twenty-five. Maybe it had as much to do with what she heard and saw as what she felt, like the way Everett talked to him and Grace talked about him. Even though he was allowed to drive the car and could probably take it apart and put it together again, he wasn't to be taken seriously as a person. Something they shared.

She went back into the hall to fetch her cleaning supplies and met Grace, who gave her a tight little smile but said nothing. She
passed Blanche, knocked on the door of Emmeline's room, spoke her own name as if in response to Emmeline's question, although Blanche didn't hear the question, then entered the room. Blanche returned to Mumsfield's room and gave it a quick dust and shine.

The room next to Mumsfield's belonged to Everett. Blanche realized it was possible and logical for the room to belong to both Grace and Everett, but she didn't think so. It smelled like a man's room, no hint of that light, flowery scent Grace wore, only something sharp and heavy that she could identify only as a man-smell. And there was nothing of Grace to be seen, no slippers, no nightgown at the foot of the bed. There was plenty of Everett around. His bureau was littered with change, keys, a sock. A pair of shorts were thrown over the arm of the chair by the window. The sheets and light blanket were tangled into a knot that sat in the middle of the bed like a cherry on a sundae. His bathroom was a heap of damp towels.

She might have taken such sloppiness to signify someone who was too busy, too miserable, too hurried or distracted to give time or thought to neatness. None of those conditions applied to Everett as far as she could see. He didn't appear to be working at any job other than preening himself and humoring Grace. Blanche had seen him both angry and agitated, but he seemed neither unhappy or harried. She pulled on a pair of the rubber gloves she'd bought in town before gathering up Everett's stray clothes. If she were planning to take these folks on as regular customers, she'd tell him about leaving his dirty underwear lying about. She didn't consider picking up people's funky drawers from the floor a normal part of her work. She expected her employers to put their soiled underwear in the hamper and their soiled tissues in the wastebasket. She considered this behavior as a sign of what her mother called “couth,” and a good indicator of whether or not she could expect any respect from a customer—and whether she'd be with that customer for very long.