Doing It at the Dixie Dew (19 page)

I snipped off several specimens and carefully slid them into my plastic sandwich bag.

The sky had become a thick gray and was darkening fast. “Do we go back the way we came or is it closer to walk out to the road, walk back to the car that way?” I asked.

“If they haven't moved the road, it's closer,” Malinda said, and started down the hill ahead of me.

Suddenly there was a yelp and Malinda slid down a muddy slope and disappeared.

“Malinda?” I called. There was a muffled, watery kind of answer that sounded desperate. “Malinda?”

“Here!” Malinda called. “Here! Help me!”

Malinda had landed in a black bog and foundered, slipping, splashing back as she tried to reach for an overhanging limb, a low-growing bush … anything she could grab to keep from sliding under again.

I searched for a limb on the ground that I could hold out to Malinda. Nothing. There was nothing. I thought of taking off my shirt, but that wouldn't reach. But I had something that would. Quickly I stripped off my jeans and, holding the end of one leg, knotted the other and threw it to Malinda, who slid, reached for it and missed.

I threw the jeans again. This time they landed closer, floated in the thick foam, bobbed. Malinda grabbed the knot. She held on, coughing, as I braced my foot against a boulder and pulled. I pulled until my arms felt stretched from my body, stretched until they were no longer a part of me.

Malinda crawled onto the bank. She sprawled on the ground, coughing and gagging. I helped her to a dry place in the pines, Malinda dripping, covered with slimy tags that hung from her like bright green fringe. She reeked of decay and stagnated water.

“I owe,” Malinda coughed, choking, coughed again.

“You owe me nothing.” I hugged her. “It's my fault we're here in the first place.”

“Yeah.” Malinda stood and shook herself, squeezed water from her hair. “If I'd gone down again, you'd never live with the guilt. I know you. See what a bundle of bad vibes I saved you?”

“I owe you,” I said. “We're even. Leave it that way.”

“Let's go home,” Malinda said. “That was no natural wonder that tried to suck me under.”

“What do you mean?”

“That sucker was man-made.” Malinda took off her blouse and twisted water from it. “I mean dug. Somebody dug a pit … a cotton-picking moat. The sides of that thing were smooth and you dropped into it too suddenly. Nature's too kind for that. She warns you.”

“So, whose property is this? People don't go around digging eight-foot ditches in public parks.”

“I think we passed the park when we climbed that wire fence,” Malinda said. She rested again on the pine needles and tried to dry her hair, which hung in her eyes and was pasted to her neck and shoulders.

“If that way is the cemetery,” I said, and pointed east in the darkening sky, “then this way goes toward Miss Tempie's.”

“It's her land, then,” Malinda said.

“And her trap, and her parsley…”

“… that killed Miss Lavinia.”

There was a sound of twigs being broken. The crisp, quick snap, then silence.

Malinda and I looked at each other.

Malinda whispered, “I've got a feeling somebody heard every word we said.”

Chapter Twenty

There was an envelope in my door the next morning. When I removed the note, a dried, dead old bug fell out and I read in spidery handwriting: “Come to tea honoring me. Five this afternoon. Tempie Merritt.” I laughed. I wouldn't go for the world. The nerve of that woman. Not even an “I would like you to” or a “Please,” but “Come to tea.” Not on your life. I crumpled the yellowed paper, threw it in the trash, then scooped the bug back into the envelope and dumped it in as well.

Whoever left the note prowled the streets early in the morning or late at night or both. Crazy Reba wasn't the only nocturnal creeper around.

There had been no guests at the Dixie Dew last night. For one thing, I hadn't been home to receive them if any came. I told Ida Plum, when we cleaned up after the Harltons left, that as slow as things were … after their bang-up start, I'd call her when I and the Dixie Dew needed her.

“Humph,” Ida Plum said. “That may be too late the way you been living your life lately.” But Ida Plum had made sure all the beds were freshly made, the linen closet stacked and looking like an ad in
Organize Your Home
magazine, before she took her sweater off the hanger in the pantry, draped it around her shoulders and started out. “You be careful,” she said. Ida Plum stood in the doorway and I half expected her to point her finger and lecture, but she didn't. Her tone of voice had done that. “You don't know the ways of Littleboro anymore. Things change underneath more than they change where you can see them and it's not always for the better.” She wheeled on her heel and was halfway down the walk before I could ask, “What things? What do you know?”

If Ida Plum knew so much and continually warned me to be careful, why couldn't she tell me what she knew about what was going on? Sometimes I wondered if Ida Plum might only be working here to keep an eye on me for Miss Tempie. Or Verna. Or whoever else had my immediate demise in mind. Ida Plum certainly wasn't working for the pay. Not with what I'd been paying her. Maybe somebody else was paying her. But why?

After last night, I wouldn't be surprised at anything anybody would do. Man-made slime pits. I shuddered to think what would have happened if either me or Malinda had gone that way alone.

Last night after I dropped Malinda off … Malinda who rode home wrapped in our picnic tablecloth saying she'd have to take ten showers to get the stench out and she was headed there straight as her squeaky sneakers would take her … I took a long bath myself. I soaked and read and thought. I'd nearly drowned Malinda in my wild parsley chase and had endangered both our lives. All for what? To find the root of what was going on in this town. Nobody else seemed interested. Ossie DelGardo might consider murder too much to be a part of his job, but when it happened in my house and almost happened again … to me, then somebody had to do something.

Tea with Miss Tempie? Of course I wasn't going. I had better things to do. I'd rather scrape ghastly gray paint off the double doors that opened to the dining room. I'd rather paint moldings. I'd rather do anything.

At ten Scott arrived towing two electricians he introduced as Bob and Bill, the Mitchell brothers. “Bob plays bass and Bill plays fiddle.”

Scott must have read my look, because he quickly added, “When they're not stringing hot and cold wire.”

The brothers—one had a red beard; the other was bald—wore matching dull blue uniforms with
ACE
embroidered on the backs.

“They're bona fide,” Scott added. “In fact”—he laid an arm across Bill's shoulder—“they're the best.”

The three went to the attic. Later I heard them in the basement, yelling things back and forth.

Just before lunch, Malinda telephoned. “You going to go play tea party?”

“Not this girl,” I said, wondering why Malinda got an invitation, too.

“I'm game if you are. Always wanted to put on my hat and gloves, go to the front door of that house. Hell, I always wanted to be invited to that house.”

“Miss Tempie's?”

“Honey,” Malinda said, “that house was the awe of my childhood. My grandmother cooked for them. Once in a while I got to hang around the kitchen and peek through a crack in the door at the goings-on, but that was as far as I got.”

“What went on?” I scraped paint as I listened.

“Not that one,” Malinda said in the background. “There.” I could almost see her pointing out an aisle to someone in the drugstore, then turning her attention back to me. “Nothing. That's just it. That house was so filled with anger and silence, it sulked. Her daddy tippled in a big way, and the mother was just this side of the crazy farm.”

“I didn't know,” I said.

“You ever thought how sudden this tea party is? I mean, what brought this on?”

“You don't believe in bolts from the blue?”

“I believe I know who heard us splashing around in the ooze last night.”

“And here we go back for more?”

“Why not? I'm going for my mama, my grandmama and me. It's time.” Malinda's voice said she had made up her mind.

“See you at the front gate at five,” I said, wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

Back at the Dixie Dew Scott took my scraper and worked on the door. “Don't eat anything fishy,” he said.

“You know?” I asked Scott. “About this lovely invitation to what promises to be a lovely tea with Miss Tempie?”

He must have overheard me on the phone to Ida Plum who said, “You and Malinda are asking for trouble. This whole idea sounds suspicious to me. I think you ought to mind your own business, such as it is, and stay home.” She slammed down the phone. I knew in my heart of hearts she was right, but this “invite” seemed a way to get to the bottom of all this nasty stuff.

“I heard, and I can guess. Stay way away from the Nine Lives Paté,” he said, paint flakes falling in a shower around him.

I leaned around the dining room door and poked my tongue at him. “I'll put it in my napkin and bring it home to you.”

Sherman rubbed her ankle. “No, not you.” I laughed.

Guests checked in at two. A retired teacher who had lavender hair. Ms. Joyce Linski. She looked like a stick wearing big glasses. The man with her was round and red and slightly damp all over. He wore an embroidered shirt. Had puffy little hands. “Norman Small.” He took my hand in both of his and patted it warmly.

“My friend,” Ms. Linski said. “He will take the rear bedroom and a nap.”

They started up the stairs as one of the electrician brothers came down. Bill or Bob took their bags and said, “Don't mind us, ma'am; we're mostly overhead.”

“Low sodium!” Ms. Linski called back. “Only fruit for him for breakfast. But I'll take eggs and a muffin … if it's homemade. And diet butter!”

She sounded so immediate, I started to remind her breakfast was usually in the morning, and a good eighteen hours away, but Ms. Linski said, “We've brought our own dinner, and we have work to do.”

“Work?” I asked.

“Conferences don't just happen. They have to be planned and somebody has to do it.”

“I see,” I said. Murders don't just happen, I thought. They have to be planned, and somebody has to do it. But me? Who planned and murdered Miss Lavinia Lovingood and Father Roderick? Tried to murder me? May have murdered Mama Alice? One busy little person or several working together?

“Yoo-hoo.” Verna Crowell came from the kitchen. “I came over to see if you wanted some lovely little zucchini squash. They were at the Farmer's Market and I couldn't resist them.”

I knew Verna didn't buy the zucchini because she couldn't resist them. They were meant to be a peace offering, and I could sniff, say I never touched the things, or be gracious, rise above the situation and act out Mama Alice's proverb “pretty is as pretty does.”

“Thank you, Verna,” I said, and took the green-striped things. “That was thoughtful.”

“You probably do the little boat things with them, but I don't go to all the trouble. They're sweet fried in with broccoli and peppers. Try that.”

“I'll make zucchini bread,” I said. “This is still a bed-and-breakfast … not a tearoom yet.”

Verna giggled. She actually put her bony fingers over her face and giggled. “Tempie's the one having tea.”

I stopped putting the zucchini in the refrigerator and turned to Verna. “You're going, too?”

“Wouldn't miss it,” Verna said. “When Tempie calls, you come running or you are through in this town. That's what Father Roderick found out.”

“What?” I asked. “What about Father Roderick?”

Verna started out the door and I wanted to grab her shoulders and stop her, but Verna turned. “Let Tempie tell you. She knows it all,” she said in a snappish voice, then set her lips in a hard line.

I knew I'd get nothing else. What Verna knew she wouldn't tell. And maybe Miss Tempie did want to talk. After all, she was honoring herself. Tacky, Mama Alice would have hooted. “Tacky” was giving yourself a bridal shower. “Tacky” was sending printed thank-you notes for gifts instead of handwritten monogrammed ones. So Miss Tempie was being about as tacky as tacky could get. But if she had some answers for me, she could be as tacky as she wanted.

Chapter Twenty-one

I stood in front of wrought-iron gates with a huge
M
in the middle. The Merritts never did anything small, and the iron in that gate looked thick enough to keep out anybody, friend or enemy.

The hot afternoon sun felt like a heavy hand on the top of my head, even through my white lace “picture” hat. I found the hat nestled in tissue paper in a gold and black hatbox in the attic. Mama Alice always said if you keep something and wait twenty-five years it will come back in style. I didn't know which style was in at the moment and I didn't care much past blue jeans, but something told me I needed to show up at Miss Tempie's in a hat that said I could give as well as I got.

I didn't even have to dust the hat; I just shook it a little, put it on and walked out the door.

I didn't see Verna on the way over and I didn't care. Verna was so nutty, she'd take a light after-lunch nap and sleep through the afternoon, wake just in time for the sherry hours. If I was lucky, that's what Verna had done today. If I wasn't, Verna would be there, chattering away about something that didn't matter. Verna would say anything to keep from saying what you really wanted to know, what you needed and wanted to hear.

I stared at the tall white house that loomed like a castle at the end of the magnolia-lined driveway. The Merritts had picked the highest hill in town to build on, a town they'd owned most of at one time. Probably they still owned some of the empty buildings downtown that couldn't be rented, should anybody have a burning desire to start a booming business in a dying, decayed little town. Most of the buildings had leaky roofs, broken windows and weak floors. And low property tax bills. Probably pocket change for people like the Merritts.