Doing It at the Dixie Dew (15 page)

And I worried someone would see me in my robe, I thought. That worry was the voice of Mama Alice from childhood. The one that never wore pins in her underwear. “What if there'd be an accident and you'd have to go to the hospital? Why, somebody'd see your underwear.”

Verna hurried home with the rabbit in her arms, leash dragging behind them like a skinny red rat tail.

I thought of the housekeeper later when I walked to the post office. It was almost funny to think of her and her boyfriend backing a U-Rental up to a house and helping themselves, then heading for a flea market to unload it. Resourceful. Was their gripe with the church, Father Roderick or the world in general? What was their story? But most important, were they the ones to kill Father Roderick? And Miss Lavinia? After all, Father Roderick had been the one to return Miss Lavinia's handbag. The two connected somewhere, sometime, and now both were dead.

I flipped through my magazines, flyers and bills, almost bumped Rosalie Jones, Malinda's mother, who had the baby, Elvis, in a stroller. “You're the stuff.” I bent to talk to him and kissed the top of his head. He smelled like sweet potatoes. “And I hear your grandma's spoiling you rotten.”

Rosalie laughed. “I know who spread that rumor. The one I learned on.”

The baby had Malinda's bright eyes and wide smile. I squeaked his blue toy dog and he squealed in delight as if I had squeezed him a hug.

“Malinda's home sprawled out on the couch with some old high school stuff spread out around her. I hope she's going through it to clean out, throw away … my house is a rat's nest. I told her it was a crime and a disgrace to stay inside on a day like this.” Rosalie shook her head. “I don't think she even heard me. Give that girl a book and the world could blow up. She wouldn't know it.”

Rosalie wheeled off down the street. Elvis waved “bye-bye.”

Lester Moore, Miss Lavinia's cousin, stood on the courthouse steps, head bent, deep in conversation with Ethan Drummond. Sometimes I wondered how much business ever went on in offices. Moore cut his eyes at me. He touched his forehead in greeting and smiled halfway. A smile that said, I can eat you up and spit out your bones and no one will be the wiser.

I shook off his look that felt like arrows aimed at my back, tried to walk like I hadn't seen a thing and shuffle through my mail at the same time. There was the electric bill and a newsletter from an organization of art teachers announcing the annual meeting in San Francisco. They'll have to meet without me, I thought. An envelope said I was the million-dollar winner of the house of my dreams. I laughed at that one. The house of my dreams stood in front of me and it could gulp money down like a dragon ate pearls.

The fourth envelope made me stop in the middle of the walk. There was that handwriting again. The same bold slant and black ink handwriting that had written “Mama Alice was pushed” was here in my hand. I sat on the stack of bricks and held the letter addressed to some genealogical organization in New York City, a letter stamped with the pointing purple hand that read: “Undeliverable. Return to Sender.” And there in the top left-hand corner was the sender, the sender's address, and the person who had threatened my life. The person who knew how Mama Alice died and perhaps even caused it. It read: “Verna Crowell, 333 N. Main Street, Littleboro, NC.” Her mail had gotten in with mine.

Now I had no doubt, but what to do about it? Confront Verna? What if she denied it? And why had she written the note? What did she know? And what didn't she want me to know?

Or had the note been a tip to set me off on a quest to find out the truth of my grandmother's death?

*   *   *

Friday morning the Puttermans left full of orange cinnamon French toast topped with my special strawberry sauce.

“I'm tempted to stay one more night,” Leon said. “Just to get another bite of that barbecue. It was the finest kind. The finest kind.”

Ida Plum and I changed beds, cleaned the baths, vacuumed and dusted. As a team we were done in fifty minutes flat. “Back in business,” Ida Plum said as she wound the cord. “And none the worse for wear.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said. I put lavender soaps in the baths, on the closet shelves and in the drawers and left the doors slightly ajar.

Scott didn't come until after lunch, but we painted woodwork on the sunporch until almost five. “Pepto-Bismol pink,” he said.

I ignored him.

“The Pink Panther rides again,” he said.

I kept painting.

“When I close my eyes tonight, I will have only pink dreams,” he said, “but it could be worse.”

“Paint,” I said. “Just paint. We are not gearing up to get a spot in
Our State
magazine.” Truth was, his banter lifted my spirits and I hummed as I painted. The tearoom was becoming a tearoom. It was going to look glorious.

As I painted I thought of the broken half of Reba's earring that Sherman had found and I had mistaken for a lizard. It had lain all night on the desk blotter. “I bet that earring is real,” I said. “Knowing Reba, she wore it on her underwear.”

“Reba never does anything halfway,” Scott said.

“I think it is the real stuff and Reba, Miss Lavinia and Father Roderick are all connected. She's in and out of every nook and cranny in this town. I don't think she'd hurt anyone, nor actually steal anything, but if that jewelry is real and she was wearing it around, she could be in danger.”

“I know,” Scott said. “This town is not your all-American red, white and blue, Fourth of July, Norman Rockwell painting of a place these days.”

“Okay,” I told him when we stopped to have a glass of iced tea. “The answer to the question lies with the wizard.”

“On Main Street.” Scott raised his glass.

“Raynard Bennett.”

“He never struck me as a wizard at anything but passing the collection plate on Sunday mornings,” Scott said.

“That's right,” I said. “He does always look and act like the perfect usher. But he knows his jewelry. He probably teethed on it.”

I changed from jeans into a wraparound denim skirt. As surely as I went out in jeans and scarf, my hair in disarray, I would run into half the town. Not that it mattered, but Mama and Mama Alice always said, “Keep yourself clean. You never know who you'll meet.”

I slid the half earring into the breast pocket on my blouse. “See you.” I gave Scott a cheery little parade queen wave of my hand.

The air smelled like lilacs. It almost seemed a pale purple. I thought how many thousand times I had walked this sidewalk. I knew every dip, crack and irregular corner. I knew the wisteria on the Britts' fence. Another house going to slow ruin. Wisteria hid a lot of latticework that had not been painted in years. It was probably only a step away from toothpicks for termites.

The old movie theater was now the meeting place of The Fellowship for Power, Peace and Plenty. On Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, fifteen or twenty cars parked along the street in front. I knew the four established steeples of First Presbyterian, First Baptist, First Methodist and St. Ann's looked down on such an assembly … not that any of that congregation would ever grace their doors.

In the window of Faye's Fashionette I glanced at a patterned skirt spread out like an umbrella beneath a wicker table. The matching blouse hung flat as a skeleton on a white wicker screen behind.

When I passed the drugstore, Malinda rounded the corner. She almost bumped into me. “This kind of day, I'd rather be anywhere than behind that counter,” she said. “I got spring fever all over.”

“I know,” I said. “Even the air makes me feel light-headed. Your mama said you were sprawled out on the couch looking at old high school stuff.”

“That was then; this is now,” Malinda said. “I was looking for something. Come in for a Coke.” She held the drugstore door open.

“Will do on my way home!” I called, and turned the corner to Bennett's Jewelry.

As a child, I thought all the wealth in the world was in the windows of Bennett's Jewelry. Black velvet drapes and swags and folds held rings and pins and bracelets, watches and crystal vases, the thinnest china and cut-glass goblets. I used to stand there and mentally buy things to take home to Mama Alice. My graduation watch had come from Bennett's and the birthstone ring for my tenth birthday. The ring I lost in Lemon Lake on a picnic two weeks later. I never trusted myself with “real” jewelry since. Not that I had funds to invest in any. Jewelry was too easy to lose or have stolen.

Raynard Bennett put his jeweler's lens in after he took the half earring from me. He turned it over several times, studied it, polished it with a cloth, then studied it more. “Your mama's or Miss Alice's?”

“Neither,” I said.

“Old enough to be,” Raynard said. “And worth a pretty penny. If you got the rest of it. Or even if you haven't.”

He put a clear liquid on a cloth and rubbed, his long fingers steady and knowing. “Diamonds have always been a girl's best friend.”

“Diamonds?” I said. “But I thought—”

“It's gold with little winks of emeralds in between.”

“Oh,” I said, “but—”

Raynard put the earring in a case and snapped it shut. “A pair of those would run over five thousand.”

“Dollars?”

“Maybe a little more.” Raynard put the case in his palm and held it toward me. “We can remount for you. Or sell.”

“No,” I said. My hand trembled as I took the half earring. “Not now.” I slid it in the pocket of my skirt next to a piece of paper. Probably some old shopping list left from Lord knows when. I thanked Raynard and hurried out. Real diamonds. I had a half an earring worth a lot of money. How much was the rest of the stuff I'd stashed in Ethan Drummond's office worth? No wonder that cousin of Miss Lavinia's had been in such a tizzy to get his hands on the stuff. Oh, Reba, I thought, do you know what you've gotten yourself into? Of course she didn't. She couldn't.

I was almost past the drugstore when I remembered Malinda. I'd just pop in and tell her we would make it another time. I felt too muddled for conversation.

“Inventory,” Malinda said. “I'm ready for a break.” She put her pencil behind her ear, popped her clipboard down and came around front. I felt the jewelry case bulge conspicuously.

Malinda waved me to a seat. “This is my treat.” She scooped ice, ran Cokes and stirred. She winked at Mrs. Gaddy, who was scraping the grill. “One of my many perks.”

“Perk away,” Mrs. Gaddy said. “You and me both.”

“I'm glad you asked me. I needed a break,” I said.

“Give this peace another twenty minutes.” Malinda leaned back in her chair. “Then all hell breaks loose.”

“That hasn't changed,” I said. Schoolkids still poured in hungry, loud and thirsty. But most of all, loud.

“I don't miss it.” Malinda laughed. “Being that age. Do you?”

“I don't think about it,” I said. “Unless I've scraped paint for a couple of hours, peeled wallpaper or hand sanded floors … then I feel something I never felt at seventeen. Tired.”

“How's the house coming?”

“Slowly, slowly,” I said. “I'd say it's about half where I want it to be.”

“I admire your spunk,” Malinda said.

“Spunk is the offspring of necessity,” I said.

“All this admiration isn't why I invited you in. Not that I didn't want to see you anyway … but I'm worried about something. Ossie DelGardo's asking questions about you around town.”

“Me?” I said. “That man's despicable. More than that. He's like something slinking around town. Some animal that crawled out of the pond some moonlit night.”

“I know. I know,” Malinda said. “He has all the personality of a weasel. But that's not the point here. He's found out the poison that killed Miss Lavinia Lovingood was a type of hemlock.”

“Hemlock. That what Socrates drank. Wasn't it? Hemlock?”

“And others,” Malinda said. “But Miss Lavinia is the only one we know. The question is … where did it come from and more than that … who gave it to her?”

“My God,” I said. “He doesn't think I had anything to do with poisoning her … does he? What would I get out of it?”

“Just thought I'd tell you,” Malinda said. She finished her Coke with a swirl of her straw in the ice and one last attempt to get any in the bottom of the glass. “As bad as I hate to, the tea party's over and I've got to get back to work.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Take care.” Malinda headed toward the back of the store. “Don't do anything I wouldn't!” she called.

“Trust me,” I said. “I won't.”

I somehow managed to get out the door and halfway home before my temper got really boiling. If I were a kettle, I'd be whistling like hell. I felt that steamed. More than steamed, damn mad. Who does Ossie DelGardo think he is? The FBI? CBS? CIA? UDC? The more initials I named the funnier it got, and I started laughing in spite of myself. The whole thing was ridiculous. Stupid and senseless and … well, a lot of things I didn't know but was going to find out. If Ossie DelGardo wanted to watch my every move, he owed me some answers to some questions. At least that. Damn him.

Scott had gone home when I got back to the Dixie Dew. Or somewhere. His truck was not in the driveway. I wanted him to be there. I needed a sounding board. I needed an ear and somehow I didn't think Ida Plum was someone who would take much of my screeching.

I got the mail from the box and flipped through it; envelopes marked “Occupant” or magazines that wanted me to try them free for the first month. There was nothing that looked like a reservation.

When I pulled the jewelry box from my pocket the piece of paper I'd felt earlier came with it. How long had it been since I'd worn this skirt? I unfolded the paper and read: “The grave is a fine and very cozy place, didn't you think?” The note was written in the same black ink and with the same slanted thin strokes of handwriting as the first note. The note that said Mama Alice was pushed. I dropped the note on the walk. I felt like screaming as if something had bitten me. Evil. It reeked of evil. This town reeked of evil as if it sat under a poison cloud and the creeks and streams ran with it.