Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery (2 page)

She had a naturally long stride and generally walked so fast that her friend Ardell refused to walk anywhere with her. Now she whipped around corners and down unfamiliar streets until her heart pounded on the wall of her chest like a prisoner demanding release. The pavement rushed up to slap the bottoms of her feet—hard, jarring slaps made more lethal by her size. Though she didn't consider herself fat, she did admit to having big bones and hips. And breasts and forearms to match, when it came right down to it. Only her legs were on the smallish side. However, they didn't have any trouble carrying her as fast and as far as she wanted to go.

For the first time in her life, she wished for the kind of gray and rainy day when people seemed to pull inside themselves, unwilling to look out and see the world, see other people. See her. She walked on at top speed until she was so out of breath she
was forced to stop. She leaned against a nearby tree. She needed to think, make a plan.

Around her lay the clipped and tamed lawns of one of the sidewalkless worlds where she went to scrub floors and make beds for women whose major life goals included attempting to supervise her doing their housework, and bragging to their friends about how well they'd trained her. This particular neighborhood was at the high end of the ones in which she currently worked. No buildings could be seen from the road, but the presence of solid old houses with more than one kind of domestic help could be felt in the air. She wished she had a little white child to push in a carriage or a poodle on a leash so she'd look as though she belonged there.

She walked along the narrowing road until she reached a street sign—Grace Road and Cranberry Way. Where had she seen Cranberry Way before? She took a few more steps before her memory caught up with her. She stopped to root around in her sturdy, all-purpose black handbag. She pulled out a small, dog-eared notebook, wet the tip of her finger, and quickly flipped through it until she found the page with the note she'd made. She'd scribbled the name of the family so that now she couldn't make it out, except that it began with a C and ended with an S. The address was clear—One Cranberry Way, 8:30. The week-long job she'd canceled out of this morning was around here somewhere.

It was a Ty-Dee Girls job. She didn't like working for domestic agencies, particularly this one. The wages were even lower than what she got on her own, and the people who ran it were nasty as castor oil. But they were a steady source of extra income while she was building up her private clientele. She'd known for weeks that she wasn't going to take the Ty-Dee job. She'd lined up more lucrative work for the week. She'd meant to call the agency days ago, but it had slipped her mind, until this morning. They'd been pissed as hell that she'd canceled at the last minute. They
weren't so likely to find a replacement for her with no notice. If she got lucky, this could be the perfect place to hide until she could get safely out of town. If Ty-Dee had already sent someone to the job, Blanche would claim her showing up was some sort of mix-up and just tiptoe away. Now to find the place.

She hurried down Cranberry Way, hoping she was going in the right direction. A sharp curve in the road turned out to be its end. She was smack up against a high wrought-iron fence with arrowhead spikes along the top.

Blanche turned and stared down the road she'd just traveled. The enormity of what she'd done settled over her like one of those gray clouds she'd been wishing for earlier. Instead of looking for a hiding place, she wished she could just get out of town. Find the nearest highway and get as far away from Farleigh as she could get, that's what she wanted to do. But she had more than her wants to consider; there was also Mama and the kids.

Lord! She could see and hear the whole thing—the sheriff banging on Mama's door, Mama huffing and fussing while the sheriff was questioning her about Blanche's whereabouts, opening her closet doors, leaving footprints on her linoleum. Mama would definitely throw a conniption! Would she be able to keep the kids from knowing what was going on? Blanche shook her head to dislodge the picture of a beefy deputy dragging Taifa and Malik away from Mama's outstretched arms. She told herself that her being a fugitive wasn't reason enough for the county to take over the care of a couple of black kids with a grandmother more than willing to keep them. She knew she was just frightening herself, as if her situation weren't scary enough. Still, the picture of her sobbing children wouldn't go away.

She'd been reluctant to take on the role of parent to her dead sister's two children, even though she'd promised her sister she would do so. It had taken a year as an adult runaway in California before she could finally face the task. When she'd returned from
California—from what her friend Ardell called “Blanche's first chance"—she'd taken responsibility for the children even though her mother, who'd had them while Blanche was away, was not at all happy about giving them up.

“First you run off hollerin' about how you don't want these children takin' over your life. Now you come back here and break my heart by draggin' my grandbabies off to New York! Don't no child need to be in New York!” her mother had told Blanche when she came for the children. It was her next words on the subject that now bothered Blanche: “Better not be no next time. I might not let 'em go.” Her mother's voice was so clear in Blanche's head they might have been standing face to face. The “next time” her mother had warned her against was equally present. Blanche rubbed her upper arms and shivered. Somewhere nearby a mourning dove seconded her growing despair.

TWO

“T
here you are!”

Blanche whirled around. The left half of a woman's face with one large, gray-blue eye was peering out at her from an opening in the fence.

“At least you could have phoned to say you'd be late! I've been trying to get your agency on the phone for hours. But I knew that if you came at all, you'd come to this gate! I just knew it!” Triumph struggled with peevishness for control of the woman's voice.

“That agency always sends you people to this gate, even though I've told them repeatedly not to do so.” She raised her arms above her head and tugged at the high gate. The bottom of her apple-green blouse crept out of the waistband of her skirt. A bit of beige silk slip hung from beneath the hem.

“Well, don't just stand there! We want to leave immediately after lunch.” The woman stood back from the gate and motioned Blanche inside.

“Where's your bag?” The woman's pale eyes made contact with Blanche's dark ones for half a second. The woman's face was older than her light, breathy voice. Not-so-small wrinkles branched out from her eyes and down her cheeks. Wavy lines creased her forehead, and the skin around her mouth was beginning to pucker. Her sharp-featured face with its wide-set eyes and high, sloping forehead reminded Blanche of the pet ferret her Uncle Willie used to keep for hunting rabbits. Cropped blond hair accentuated the point of her chin and her rather long neck.
She was a few inches shorter than Blanche's five foot seven and looked anywhere from thirty-five to fifty. Whatever her age, she was in better shape than Blanche, flat-bellied and wiry. She held herself very straight but relaxed, in the way of women who have been schooled in posture.

“Never mind,” she added, saving Blanche from having to think up an excuse for not having a suitcase. “You can take care of that tomorrow. You're about Bernice's size. She always leaves a spare uniform at the country house. You'll just have to wear your street clothes until we get there.” She gave Blanche a somewhat pained look before continuing along the cobblestone path.

Blanche was reminded of old lady Ivy, out on Long Island. She couldn't stand to see the help in regular clothes, either. Might mistake them for human beings. Blanche chopped down her usually wide stride to match the pace of the woman in front of her. A stone could walk faster, Blanche tsked to herself.

“Cook left a cold lunch.” The woman turned her head toward Blanche. “You need only set up a buffet in the dining room. We'll serve ourselves. We'll lunch early. I want to leave for the country as soon as possible.” She took a deep breath. “Of course, there's the washing up to be done.

“Darn it!” The woman lurched forward as though she'd tripped over some unseen obstacle. She recovered herself and continued walking and talking as though nothing had happened.

Blanche thought of her Aunt Sarah. Blanche had actually seen Aunt Sarah continue to expound on the best way to smoke a turkey while sitting in a sea of oranges she'd knocked from a bin at the supermarket after stumbling over nothing anyone could see. Aunt Sarah had continued her turkey-smoking instructions even while Blanche and one of the bag boys were hoisting her to her feet.

“There is no other help in the house, just now.” The woman raised her pink-nailed hand as if to ward off some protest or question from Blanche.

“Of course, you'll be getting the meals and seeing to the house in the country,” the woman told her.

Blanche wondered if rich girls took classes in how to impose on the help by making an impossible workload sound like a breeze.

“It is aired and ready for us, however. And we're very informal there. No large dinner parties, few guests. Although we always maintain a high standard.”

A wry smile lifted the corners of Blanche's mouth. Life did seem to be poking fun at her, sometimes. Even on the run she had to clean up after people.

“We always give our regular staff vacation when we go to the country. That's why you're here.” The woman turned her head and gave Blanche a smile with more width than warmth in it. And because you're trying to make it on the cheap with just one staff person, Blanche added to herself. What was it about money that made people who had it not want to spend it? Blanche gave the woman her own shark's tooth smile, along with a demure “Yes, ma'am.” She was relieved to hear the regular help was away. She wondered if the woman was as direct and fast-talking with other people who were not the help.

The woman stopped and turned so suddenly that Blanche almost bumped into her. She examined Blanche's face. “You
have
worked for us before, haven't you?” A vertical frown creased the middle of her forehead. “I specifically asked the agency to send someone who knew our...routine. My aunt's...I don't seem to remember your face...” Her eyes narrowed slightly.

Blanche forced her mouth into a toothy grin and blinked rapidly at the woman. “Oh, yes, ma'am!” Blanche's voice was two octaves higher than usual. “You remember me! I worked for ya'll about six months ago. I think one of ya'll's regular help was out sick? Or maybe had a death in the family?” She gave the woman an expectant look.

The woman's face remained blank for a moment. “Oh, yes, of course.” She quickly turned and continued walking along the path. “My memory is just terrible of late,” she told Blanche over her shoulder. “So much to think about, to remember...so much on my...”

Blanche smiled and nodded. She ain't got no more idea what's going on in her house than a jackrabbit. Blanche had guessed as much. The woman hadn't even bothered to ask her name. That was just fine. The last thing Blanche needed right now was a truly interested employer. But she was sorry for the permanent help. This was the kind of employer who responded to your need for a surgeon with a bag of dated, cast-off clothes.

The house they approached was large, many-winged, graceful, and of that peculiar pink brick which Blanche remembered seeing only in this part of the country. Blanche believed in the power of houses. She'd worked inside too many of them to act—as most people did—as though a house were just a building. She could often tell what a house was going to be like by the way it either fit into the landscape or imposed itself upon it.

This house rose from a bed of flowers and shrubs that spoke of a builder and a once-a-week gardener, both with an eye for blending nature and architecture. But this house had nothing to say to her, personally. Much like the woman who lived in it, the house recognized her only as a function. Fortunately, she wasn't going to be there long enough for it to matter.

She followed the woman up three steps to a flagstone patio and through French doors into a room that smelled of leather and was lined with so many books it could have been a nook in the New York Public Library. The woman opened a door on the far side of the room. Blanche followed her down a long hall, around a corner, past four or five other doors, and down a dark, uncarpeted, and narrower corridor into a large, bright kitchen.

It was at least as attractive, well designed, and well appointed as any of the kitchens she'd known in New York. And it was larger
than most—a microwave, plus two built-in, eye-level ovens, a rotisserie, a double-door refrigerator and freezer built into the wall, an eight-burner range, copper-bottomed pots hanging from the ceiling, a wealth of kitchen cabinets, and, in the middle of the floor, a butcher-block work station complete with sink and garbage-disposal unit. It was a kitchen so different from the rickety range and dripping tap in the house Blanche lived in that she didn't think they ought to be called by the same name.