Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery (19 page)

She removed the fruit plates from the table, then served the eggs, bacon, hash browns, and grits.

Grace waved away the food without shifting her gaze from Everett. Her face was pale, her eyes were red and wide. She's like a TV set that can only get one channel, Blanche thought. She wondered what would happen to Grace if that station went silent or, like now, simply refused to broadcast on her frequency.

Everett continued to act as though nothing and no one existed beyond his newspaper, just as he'd done the morning after the sheriff was murdered. Blanche was on full alert as she moved closer to him, but she wasn't prepared for the sudden
wave of revulsion that made her skin turn cold when their hands accidentally touched. Everett took a teaspoonful of eggs and a slice of bacon, which he promptly ignored. Mumsfield had his usual sizable helping of each dish.

When she leaned over Everett to fill his coffee cup, a slight tremor ruffled the newspaper. Everett quickly laid it down and glanced up at her as if to see if she'd noticed. He's like a hostage, or a drowning man, she thought, in the moment that their eyes met. He smoothed back his already unruffled hair in a gesture that Blanche understood to be his brand of hand-wringing. She smiled at his discomfort. It eased the pain of serving him. Still, her face flushed with shame. She told herself she had no other choice than to act as she was. She accepted the truth of this, but somehow it wasn't enough to stop her from feeling as though she'd betrayed herself and Nate in some way. I'll bring him down, she told Nate, on her way back to the kitchen. Somehow or another, I'll make him pay. I promise.

She expected Mumsfield to come back to the kitchen when he finished his breakfast, but it was Grace who slipped by the swinging door. She stood by the table slowly wringing her hands.

“My husband and I will be out for lunch.” She spoke quickly, as if she expected to be interrupted or told to shut up. “My aunt has had a restless night, and she's in a fierce mood. So if you'll prepare a thermos of soup and perhaps some sandwiches for her lunch, I'll take them up when I take up her breakfast tray. That way you needn't disturb her while we're out.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Blanche waited for Grace to leave. Grace blinked at her a few times.

“You've heard about it on the radio, haven't you?” Grace asked.

“Ma'am?”

“About Nate, about the fire....I wanted to come tell you before breakfast, as soon as I heard, but my husband said...”

Blanche didn't understand why she wanted to lie to Grace but decided to follow her first mind.

“What about Nate, ma'am?”

“He's dead.”

“Oh, Lord!” Blanche lifted her apron to her face as she'd seen Butterfly McQueen do in
Gone With the Wind
. If the subject had been anything other than Nate's death, she'd have had a hard time keeping a straight face. It was the kind of put-on that gave her particular pleasure. But now she only wanted to appear convincingly simple. She rubbed her eyes to moisten and redden them, and raised her head to regard her enemy's helpmate.

“What happened, ma'am?” she asked. Her face felt hard and sharp, as though she'd used her apron to wipe away all of her softness.

“There was a fire. Last night. At his place. He must have been asleep.” Grace's hands continued to wrestle with each other.

Blanche folded her arms across her chest. “It sure is a shame.” She shook her head from side. “He seemed like a nice old man.... Was his wife...”

“Oh, no,” Grace told her quickly. “He didn't have a wife, or other family. He was alone when he...when the house burned down.”

Yes, of course, Blanche thought, the house burned down. Nobody burned it down. Nobody knocked Nate out or threw a lighted cigarette on his old newspapers and roasted him alive. The house burned down.

Grace continued talking. “Perhaps he was a very sound sleeper. Perhaps the roof collapsed before he could get to the door.”

Blanche ducked her head and tugged at her apron until the tightness had drained out of her face and she'd blinked the scalding tears from her eyes.

“Too bad,” Grace went on. “But, of course, you didn't really know him, did you?”

Blanche didn't bother to tell Grace that she had known Nate better and more truly in twenty-four hours than any rich white bitch could have known him in a lifetime. “Did he work for ya'll a long time?” she asked instead.

Grace's eyes widened. “Why, he's been here since I was a child.” There was a wistful note in her voice.

“You used to come here as a little girl?” Blanche asked the question as though there were something deeply fascinating about this particular piece of Grace's history. It was really her need to change the subject that prompted the question. She didn't know how much of this woman's nonchalance about Nate's death she could take. Better to get her off on everybody's favorite subject.

Grace slipped into a chair and folded her arms on the table in front of her. “I was just five that first summer. I remember I wore a...” Grace's eyes filled with recollections. A bittersweet smile curled her thin lips as she talked of polka-dot sundresses and homemade ice cream. There was no mention of Nate in Grace's description of how the house and its inhabitants had looked to her little girl eyes. He was also forgotten in her tale of childhood summers spent romping through the wondrous woods around the house. The KKK story Nate had told was obviously not a landmark in the life of his savior.

While Grace rambled through her childhood, Blanche worked at getting her temper under control. She thought it unlikely that Grace knew the particulars of Nate and the sheriff's deaths, mostly because she couldn't imagine Everett telling Grace about them.

“...It was the third summer that I met Everett. He...”

Blanche responded to Everett's name. “It's like ya'll was meant to be married from birth, ain't it, ma'am?” Blanche used her tone of voice and her facial expression to say how romantic she found this idea.

“Oh, yes!” Grace leaped at the idea like a hungry cat at liver, just as Blanche knew she would. Blanche understood what a relief
it was to find a soft, warm memory to distract the mind from the unpaid rent, the lost love, the sick child, the murdering husband. When Grace eventually stopped to take a breath, Blanche fine-tuned the course of the conversation. “It must be wonderful to be with the same man since childhood.”

“Oh, yes!...I mean...We haven't been together all that time, exactly...He...”

Blanche chuckled. “Oh, I know how it is with a man! He sees someone different, someone younger or prettier, or...” Blanche left room for Grace to add “richer,” in her mind, and then went on. “And off he goes, just like a puppy after a rabbit. Then here he comes back, tail between his legs, looking to be fed.”

Grace didn't answer for so long, Blanche thought she'd made a mistake to use such a broad and obvious prompt.

“If only he trusted me more, talked to me!” She gave Blanche an anguished look. There was more warmth and feeling in her voice than Blanche had heard before. Spots of red dotted her cheeks and neck. “Whatever it is, I know I could help him. I know I could!” She raised her hands and opened her arms and fingers as though grasping an invisible Everett and pulling him to her chest. “I could arrange things so that...This family has connections!” she added, with a little toss of her head. Then she caught her breath and stared into middle space, a look of loss and pain on her face, as though confronted with some awful vision. She was quite still for few moments, after which she seemed to collapse in on herself. Her shoulders rounded, her hands fell heavily to her sides. Tears pooled in her eyes and began a slow course down to her chin.

“What's the use?” she mumbled. She shook her head slowly from side to side. “What's the use?” She rose, turned, stumbled to the swinging door, and pushed her way into the dining room.

Blanche was pleased. Grace might not know anything, but she clearly suspected something. Blanche opened a can of chicken rice soup and marveled at the sort of woman who thought she could
make everything right for her man, even if she didn't know what “everything” was, just as she could change him from being a louse into a sweetheart. Despite her shortsightedness and romantic nonsense, Grace was not to be dismissed. She might turn out to be useful.

While the soup heated, Blanche cut the crusts from four slices of bread. Grace would never turn Everett over to the police. But she must know something that could be used to convince other people of Everett's guilt. Whatever it was, Blanche was prepared to pump Grace hard to get it. She sliced the meat from the leftover Cornish hens and softened some cream cheese. She would have to find a way to start another conversation with Grace. She turned off the fire under the simmering soup, found a thermos in the pantry, and filled it.

Blanche had a feeling the whole business with the soup and the sandwiches was for her benefit. She sliced a few olives and put them in the sandwiches, then covered the dish with a silver plate cover. She diced some ham for Emmeline's omelet, broke two eggs into a bowl, and seasoned them, while a pan heated. She thought it was terrible to waste so much food, but she had to play her part. She eased the omelet onto a warm plate.

“Is it ready yet?” Blanche jumped an inch off the floor at the sound of Everett's voice. A faint creak on the other side of the door to the dining room had told her somebody was headed for the kitchen, but she'd expected Grace. Everett was standing just inside the door. “I've come for the tray. Is it ready?”

“Almost.” Blanche poured water over the tea leaves and thought about flinging the water in his face.

Everett smoothed his hair and frowned slightly as he looked out the window. Blanche set the tray on the table. She didn't trust herself to hand it to him.

“She's not well, you know,” he said, without moving to take up the tray. “Not...not physically ill. Just...sometimes she imagines... She's under a good deal of strain. I hope she hasn't...Do you know what I mean?” he asked when Blanche made no reply.

“She's old,” Blanche told him.

“No. I mean my wife.”

For the first time since he'd entered the room, Blanche looked directly at him.

“I simply thought you should know,” Everett said after a long pause. “In case she should say something...”

In case she should say something about you being a psycho, Blanche thought. And dragging out that tired crazy-woman number! She wished she had a nickel for every time some man had told her she was nuts, just at the moment in their relationship when she was letting him know that she saw him for what he was.

The silence between them began to crackle. “I'll take that now.” Everett snatched the tray from the table and quickly backed through the swinging door to the dining room.

Once he'd gone, she realized she hadn't been frightened of him. Wary, yes, and ready to scream and run, but not afraid. Probably because there was no sense in both of us being scared, she thought. She was sure it was fear she'd felt wafting off him like mist from a frozen lake. Not of her, but of something, someone. Maybe he really thought Grace was about to crack. That pleased her. If he was afraid, he was that much closer to doing something stupid, perhaps something even money and influence couldn't cover up—although she was hard pressed to imagine what this could be. Still, if he'd been his usual arrogant self, he'd never have made that little speech about Grace. Blanche hummed as she cleared away the breakfast dishes.

When Mumsfield did come to the kitchen, it wasn't Nate he had on his mind, at least not the first time. “Blanche! The car is dented. On the fender!” He pointed toward the driveway. He said “dented” as though it meant the same as “totaled.”

“When did it happen, Blanche? When?” He started pacing around the kitchen.

“Hold it!” Blanche blocked his path. “None of that ripping and running in here! Sit down and tell me about it.”

“A dent!” he told her again when he was seated, and in the same incredulous tone of voice.

“I take it you didn't hit anything.”

“Never, Blanche! Never!”

“How long do you think it's been there, Mumsfield, honey?”

“Since today! This morning! There was no dent yesterday, Blanche.” His eyebrows drew a straight line over his eyes.

“So who else could have done it?” she asked him with her voice in neutral.

Mumsfield's mouth formed a perfect circle. Blanche mentally supplied the “Oh” that went with it and wondered what had caused it. Surely Mumsfield wasn't thinking that Everett had used the car to go kill Nate, as she was. His next words made it clear what was on his mind.

“Cousin Everett crashed his own car,” Mumsfield told her. His face was in a deep frown. Blanche thought she heard a shade of Nate's intonation when Mumsfield referred to Everett.

“You don't like him.”

Mumsfield blushed, lowered his eyes, and began fiddling with his fingers.

“You don't have to like him, you know.” She was tempted to tell him that she herself hated the man.

“But he's my cousin, Blanche. Aunt Em says...”

“Just like you don't have to like all of your relatives, you also don't have to agree with everything a person says because you love her.”

“He laughs at me, too, Blanche.”

It was Blanche's turn to form a wordless “Oh” and avert her eyes from the bittersweet amusement in his. There are no fools out here, she thought, only a whole lot of ways of getting to the same place.

Blanche was stuffing towels into the washing machine when Grace returned Emmeline's breakfast tray. Most of the food was gone. Down the toilet, Blanche thought. Grace said that she
and Everett were leaving, that Mumsfield was somewhere about the place, and reminded Blanche not to disturb “poor Aunt Emmeline.”

Blanche went through the house to a front window, where she watched the limousine slide down the drive. She could feel Mumsfield in the kitchen waiting for her. He was pacing, almost skipping, around the room. His eyes were bright.

“Mumsfield is going to get us something special, Blanche. Something we need!” he told her.

“And what might that be?”

Mumsfield grinned at her. “You'll see, Blanche, you'll see!”