Hissy Fit (36 page)

A cold front
moved in overnight. Saturday morning I woke up at seven o’clock. I tossed and turned and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. I got up and looked out the window. The street downstairs was slick with rain, and standing that close to the drafty window, I could feel that the temperature had dropped.

While the coffee was brewing, I got dressed. Blue jeans, flannel shirt, thick socks, and hiking boots. Okay, they weren’t actual hiking boots. I’d never on-purpose hiked in my life. But these boots were flat-soled and leather and as close as I came. I poured the coffee into a thermos and headed over to Daddy’s house.

It was early, but I wasn’t worried about waking him. My father has always been “up with the chickens” in the early morning hours, as he’d say. He’d be surprised to see me up this early, but I wanted to confess to him that I’d broken my promise and gone to see Sonya. I wanted to tell him about Mama’s burial place, and get him to go with me out to Vince Bascomb’s hunting camp. In short, I wanted to find Mama.

But when I pulled into Daddy’s driveway, I saw that Serena’s blue Hyundai was snuggled alongside his truck in the carport. I backed out and drove on.

This is a good thing
, I told myself.
She is a nice woman. He deserves some happiness. It’s time.
All the same, I was fighting back the tears. The early morning streets were empty. I felt so horribly alone. I almost turned back. I didn’t want to face that desolate cabin by myself. It was too cold, too dark, too wet.

I went anyway. I drove right past the turnoff for the Jernigans’ shack, and on down the road to the driveway to Bascomb’s. As I turned in, a covey of mourning doves that had been pecking away on
the broken asphalt rose up and scattered into the treetops. Fly away, doves, I thought. Fly away home.

The cold front had brought rain and high winds. The drive was littered with bits of broken tree limbs and blanketed with fallen leaves. More leaves were still sifting down from the treetops bent over the road. Here and there, bits of bright pink ribbon stood out from the tapestry of leaves. Survey flags. Had the property already been sold? And was Will the buyer? Maybe he would get his dove field after all.

I parked the Volvo in the same place I had on my last visit. I was glad of the boots and jeans this time around. It was copperhead mating season. I hesitated a moment, then rooted around in the Volvo’s trunk until I found what I needed—a wooden yardstick.

At first I deliberately skirted the cabin, walking toward the water’s edge, scuffing my feet and beating the weeds with my yardstick to chase away any lovesick snakes. Then I chided myself. If the well had been the only source for drinking water, the cabin would probably have been built as close as possible to the well.

I squared my shoulders and worked my way back up the gentle slope toward the cabin. I stared at it, trying to picture my mother out here. Had she sat on the glider on that now-crumbling back porch, with her lover’s arm tucked around her? Had she walked in these woods, maybe picking up a stray leaf to bring me for my nature collection? Had Darvis Kane taken her for a moonlight ride in that red rowboat? Was this where she came to escape the drudgery of being a wife and mother?

I tried to reconcile my mundane memories of her, dabbing Joy perfume behind her ears, ironing my daddy’s handkerchiefs, fixing my school lunches, with Sonya’s version; Jeanine, young and yearning for the forbidden, for adventure and intrigue.

I felt myself tense as I got closer to the cabin, and resolved not to stare at it. She was not in that house. Not anymore.

Wielding the yardstick like a sickle, I whacked viciously through
the kudzu vines and fallen leaves. Once the stick hit something solid, and I bent down to take a look. I’d found what looked like the remains of Bascomb’s trash pile. With no garbage pickup out this far in the country, most folks simply burned their trash. Old charred tree trunks ringed the fire circle, and with my stick, I poked bits of rusted tin cans, beer bottles, and broken glass.

I worked my way around the house, whacking at random, torn between wanting to find the well and wanting to run far away from this place of ruined lives. But something kept me there.

After an hour I was damp and tired and thirsty. I went back to the Volvo and poured myself a cup of coffee. I was drinking it, savoring the heat between my hands, leaning against the hood of the car, when I heard leaves crackling underfoot, twigs breaking, and voices. Voices coming from the Jernigans’ property line.

I had my car keys out, ready to flee, but then I recognized one of the voices.

It was Big Drew. “Been a long time,” his voice boomed out. “He let the place go to shit. Not that it matters now.”

As I watched, two figures emerged from the trees. Both men were dressed much the same as me, except that they wore vests of hunter safety orange, and baseball caps. It was Drew all right, and with him, his older son. A.J.

I could leave right now. Get in the car and haul ass out of there. But A.J. would recognize the car. There would be questions. Recriminations. It was too late to go.

The men grew closer, and I could see that Drew was puzzled by my presence there.

“Keeley?” A.J. called, when they were a hundred yards away. “Is that you?”

“It’s me,” I said grimly. I put the cap back on the thermos and stowed it in the car, and then I waited.

“Hey there, Keeley,” Drew said as he approached.

“Hello,” I said coolly.

“Whatcha doing out here?” he asked. “It’s private property, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s Vince Bascomb’s property. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my coming out to take a look around.”

“What for?” A.J. asked with a laugh. “Ain’t nothin’ out here anymore. The house is fallen down. There’s snakes and poison ivy. And spiders. You know how you hate spiders. Not even you could save this old place.”

“I’m looking for something,” I said. “An old abandoned well.”

“Why?” A.J. wondered.

“Ask your father.”

Drew’s eyes narrowed.

A.J. looked from me to his father. “Dad?”

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Drew said.

“Okay,” I said. “How about I get to ask a question now? What are you two doing out here?” I glared at Drew. “It’s private property, you know.”

“It’s ours now,” A.J. volunteered. “Vince sold it to us. We own the whole cove now. We’ve got a buyer interested already.” He grinned. “Sweet, huh? It’ll be a gated community.” He gave me a meaningful look. “I’m saving this lot for myself. Once I get it cleared, tear the old place down, it’ll have the best lake view on the cove. Better than the shack’s even. But what’s this about a well?”

“Ask your father,” I repeated. “It’s a pretty interesting story. Kind of a mystery, I think you’d say.”

“Dad?” A.J. asked, his sunny face now puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

“She’s nuts,” Drew said. “Bad news. If that scene she made at your rehearsal dinner didn’t prove that to you, this should.” He put his hand on A.J.’s shoulder. “Let’s go, son. I told your mother we’d be back for breakfast.”

“Was that part of the deal you made with GiGi over the years?” I asked Drew, keeping my voice light, conversational even. “That you could stay out all night, do whatever you wanted, with whomever
you wanted, as long as you made it back in time for breakfast with her and the kids?”

“Keeley!” A.J. said sharply. “Cut it out.”

“Ask him about the well,” I said again. “He still hasn’t answered you, you know.”

“Dad?”

Drew turned his back on us and started tromping through the woods. “I’ll see you back at the Jeep.”

A.J. looked torn. “Why haven’t you returned my calls? What’s going on with you?”

“Tell him about the well,” I hollered, running to catch up with Drew. “Go ahead, Big Drew. Tell him about all the parties out here at Vince’s place.”

Drew stopped, turned around, and took a step toward me. I thought for a minute he might reach out and slap my face. I could tell he wanted to. “Shut up!” he hissed.

Now A.J. was right beside me. “What the hell is going on between you two?”

Drew shook his head, as though to warn me off. But it was too late.

“They used to call this the hunting camp,” I cried, gesturing toward the ruined cabin. “Hunting pussy is what they did. This is where Vince Bascomb brought his girlfriend. My mother’s cousin Sonya Wyrick. It was private, out of the way. A perfect little love nest for married men. And Vince was willing to share too. Your dad had a key. He used to bring Lorna Plummer out here.”

A.J. looked like he’d been slapped. “Paige’s mom?” he whispered, staring at his dad. “You and Mrs. Plummer?”

Drew didn’t bother to deny it.

“And my mother came out here with her boyfriend. Darvis Kane. The man she ran away with all those years ago, right, Drew? It was just one big old party for cheaters, wasn’t it?”

Drew Jernigan stood very still. I remembered Sonya’s description
of him the night my mother was killed. “Like a statue,” she’d said.

He was stone. He was granite. He was impenetrable. Nothing touched him.

“Vince Bascomb told me the whole story,” I said now.

Drew flinched, just slightly, but enough so that I knew he did have a pulse.

“They were out here that night,” I told A.J. “Your dad and Lorna. My mom and Darvis Kane. Kane had been drinking. He slapped my mother around, and then he left. When he came back, he had a gun. There was a struggle, and my mom was shot.”

A.J. looked horrified. “Dad?”

But Drew was still a statue.

I jerked my head in the direction of the cabin. “She died. Right over there. They never went for help. They never called the police. They were too worried about covering their own butts. Your dad and Lorna dragged my mother’s body out of there and they stuffed her down a well. They covered her with rocks!”

A.J. winced.

“And then they went back to town like nothing happened,” I continued. “I bet you made it back in time for breakfast with GiGi that morning too, didn’t you, Drew?”

I fell on him then, pounding his chest with my fists. “Didn’t you? You and GiGi and your boys had breakfast together every morning. And I never saw my mother again, you son-of-a-bitch.” He didn’t move, didn’t even try to protect himself from my blows. “You son-of-a-bitch,” I cried, clawing at his face. “All these years she’s been out here, and we never knew.”

A.J. grabbed me by the wrists and pulled me gently away from his father. He wrapped his arms around me, but I tore myself away. I wouldn’t, couldn’t take comfort from him. Not from anybody. Not today. I wiped my runny nose on the sleeve of my shirt. “Show me the well,” I said, my voice shaking. “We want to bring her home.
My father wants to bury his wife. You can at least have that much decency.”

“Dad?” A.J. asked.

Drew just shook his head.

“Tell her where the fucking well is!” A.J. shouted. “For God’s sake, Dad, show her. You owe them that much.”

Drew sighed. He pointed toward the lake. “Out there. When Georgia Power built the dam to create the lake, all that land was flooded within less than a month afterward. She’s somewhere out there, under maybe twenty, thirty feet of water.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “You’re just lying to save your own skin. I’ll ask Mr. Bascomb. He’ll tell me the truth. He doesn’t have anything to lose anymore.”

“He’s dead,” A.J. blurted. “He died Tuesday. The funeral was Thursday.”

“Poor bastard,” Drew said. He gave me a coolly appraising look. “Don’t be so quick to judge others, Keeley. Your mother was a cheap little tramp. We did you and your daddy a favor keeping that quiet all these years.” His smile was sardonic. “But don’t worry. Your secret’s safe.” He turned and looked at A.J. “Coming?”

A.J. shook his head no. I watched Drew tromp off through the underbrush, back toward home and a forgiving wife, and I went to pieces again.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” I screamed at him, sinking to the cold, wet ground. “You didn’t have to leave her out there, you son-of-a-bitch.”

“Keeley,” A.J. said, kneeling down beside me. He put his hand gently on my shoulder. “Let me take you home.”

I shook him off. “Don’t touch me.”

Saturday night
I threw a pity party for myself. The refreshments were simplicity itself: chili-flavored Fritos squeezed with lime and a tub of frozen margaritas.

For entertainment, I turned on A&E and watched an old Shirley MacLaine movie called
Gambit,
where, through the magic of movie makeup, Shirley and Michael Caine managed to convince the world that Shirley was actually a reincarnated Asian goddess.

The phone rang half a dozen times, but the caller ID informed me that it was A.J., and since I was fresh out of understanding, I finally turned the ringer off so that Shirley and I could enjoy our evening without interruption.

I woke up around noon Sunday, with a mouth that tasted of dead cactus. A shower helped matters, as did some cheesy scrambled eggs and bacon. I was puttering around the apartment when the phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID to make sure it wasn’t A.J.

Instead it was a woman named Tiara, who said she was with Ryder rental. “You have our van,” Tiara said accusingly. “It was supposed to have been turned in yesterday. Miss Murdock, we have a reservation for that van, and it’s supposed to be picked up at four this afternoon.”

“The van,” I said, slapping my forehead. “I’d completely forgotten. I’ll have it there by four.”

“Three,” she corrected me. “It takes us an hour to clean and service it for the next customer.”

I hung up and went to the window and looked out. The van was right out front where I’d parked it Friday. And it was still full of furniture. Furniture that belonged to Will Mahoney. Who was no longer my client.

“Crap,” I said, dialing Austin. There was no way I could unload all
that stuff by myself. I let it ring six times, then hung up. “Crap,” I said again, dialing Daddy’s number out of desperation. With a sister and a daughter in the interior design business, my father absolutely hated moving furniture. He’d declared himself out of the moving business several years ago, but he’d just have to break with policy for this one last emergency.

Daddy’s phone rang four times before his answering machine picked up. I slammed the receiver down and scowled. It was probably his turn to spend the night at Serena’s. This was plain pathetic. My fifty-something father was getting more action than me. Way more.

I went out to the van and climbed in. I would rather have taken a beating than ask Will for help, but that was just what I was going to have to do. Anyway, it was his furniture. Why should I kill myself unloading it?

When I got out to Mulberry Hill, the gates were open. As I approached the meadow, I caught my first break of the day. Two pickup trucks were parked at the edge of the pond.

I recognized the big silver Ford F-150 as belonging to Adam, as in Adam, the big strong construction foreman. I didn’t know who the other truck belonged to, but it didn’t matter. Chances were very good that it was a guy—a guy who could probably be sweet-talked into helping me unload the van, if I played my cards right.

I pulled up alongside Adam’s truck and hopped out. I heard the chug-chugging of a motor then, and smelled the unmistakable scent of gasoline. As I got closer, I saw the source of the racket. A huge gas-powered pump sat on the ground, and a thick hose ran from the pond to the pump, with water gushing out of the discharge hose on the other side of the bank.

The men had had a busy morning. The rose bushes had been yanked out of the ground and tossed in the bed of the other truck, alongside the fancy wrought-iron furniture. There was a large wooden crate in the back of the F-150, and from the amount of hissing
and quacking coming from it, I guessed the designer swans had been evicted.

Adam and another man were standing in the middle of the pond, wearing rubber hip boots and circling the fountain as though they couldn’t decide whether to climb it or wrestle it.

“Hey, Adam!” I called, standing at the edge of the pond.

“Hey, Keeley,” he said, turning and waving at me.

“What are y’all doing?” I asked.

“Ripping out this fountain and draining the pond,” Adam said, grinning. “The boss’s orders.”

“The man has no appreciation for fine art,” I said, giving him a wink.

“Guess not,” Adam said. He cocked his head. “Hey, uh, I thought you were fired.”

“No. I quit,” I said. “But I’ve got one last delivery to make.” I gestured toward the van. “That thing is full of furniture for Mulberry Hill, and I need to get it unloaded before three, when I have to return it to the rental place. Do you think you two could help me out?” I batted my eyelashes exaggeratedly. “Pretty please?”

“Sure,” Adam said. “Soon as me and Jorge get this statue thing out of here. It’ll take a while for the pond to drain. Then we got some truckloads of dirt coming to fill it in. We could get the furniture, right, Jorge?”

“No problem,” Jorge said. “Soon as we take care of this horse.”

“They’re unicorns,” I informed him. “And they’re magical, you know.”

“That’s good,” Jorge laughed. “Because we’re fixing to make ’em disappear. You watch.”

He clambered up on top of a thick concrete post that supported the statue, put his arms around it, and tugged. His face contorted with the effort of it, but the unicorns did not budge. “It won’t move,” he told Adam. “They must have cemented it on here.”

“Well, we gotta make it move,” Adam said. “The boss said it had
better be out of here by the time he comes back. If you saw the look on his face like I did, you’d know he means business.” With that, Adam waded out and climbed up the muddy embankment to his truck, where he fetched two lethal-looking sledgehammers.

“Now you’re talking,” Jorge said, grabbing one of the sledgehammers. He circled the unicorns looking for a likely place to start, and with no further ceremony, hauled off and gave it a mighty whack.

“Uuuuh,” he grunted. A small chunk of concrete broke off the unicorn’s flank.

Adam took up position on the second of the unicorns and proceeded to give it a whack. The two of them were hammering away, and the pond was slowly lowering. I sat on the tailgate of Adam’s truck to watch the show.

Suddenly a white Porsche Boxster came speeding down the driveway. It screeched to a stop beside Adam’s truck, and a woman in a set of white silk tennis warm-ups jumped out of the driver’s seat.

I saw Adam look at Jorge. “Uh-oh,” Jorge said softly.

“What’s going on here?” Stephanie cried, surveying the scene before her. “What have you morons done to my beautiful pond?”

As if on key, Erwin hopped up on the Porsche’s dashboard and started to bark. “Aaar-aar-aar-aar-aar.” He sounded like a VW with a bad starter.

“Get away from my statue,” Stephanie demanded, striding over to the edge of the pond. “Don’t you dare touch those unicorns.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Adam called. “It’s the boss’s orders. He wants his dove field back.”

“Well, he can’t have it back,” she announced. “The fountain stays. Now, get out of there and turn this pump thing off.”

Jorge put his sledgehammer down and leaned on it, waiting to see what his foreman would do.

Adam just shook his head. “Ma’am? I’m sorry as can be, but Will wants this fountain out of here. And the pond too. And he’s the one who signs my paycheck.”

Adam swung his sledgehammer and landed a blow on the unicorn’s side, and Jorge followed suit.

Bravo, I wanted to cheer. Well done, Adam.

For the first time Stephanie looked around and saw me sitting ringside.

“Keeley,” she said pleadingly, “Those idiots are destroying my statue. Make them stop.”

“I can’t,” I said. “Haven’t you heard? I don’t work here anymore. I got fired. I’m not in charge of anything around here.”

Her eyes flared. “Well, I haven’t been fired.” She clapped her hands. “You men. Stop that this instant. That is a very expensive sculpture. I had it shipped all the way from Italy. It’s a signed, limited edition Vesuvio.”

I thought it looked more like something from the Franklin Mint myself, but Erwin seemed to agree with his mistress, because he hopped out of the car and ran around now in little circles, barking and hopping with anger and energy.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Adam said. “Boss’s orders.” He reared back with the sledgehammer and knocked out a good-sized chunk of the unicorn’s nostril, which landed on the bank with a thud.

Stephanie screamed as though it were her own flesh being assaulted. “Stop it!”

Unwilling to let Adam outdo him, Jorge chimed in with his own sledgehammer, which Adam soon joined, until the two of them were playing their own version of the “Anvil Chorus.” When a piece of the unicorn’s plumed tail whizzed by my ear I ducked down behind the hood of the truck.

But Stephanie was fearless. “I said STOP IT!” she screamed. “STOPIT, STOPIT, STOPIT!” She was hopping up and down, and Erwin was barking in matching staccato, “Arfarfarfarfarf!”

When Adam’s sledgehammer dislodged his unicorn’s magical horn, this action seemed to have triggered Stephanie’s panic button. Suddenly she was splashing her way into the pond. She launched
herself forward, grabbing for Adam’s sledgehammer, but he spun effortlessly out of the way, and she did an awkward belly-flop.

Total immersion did little to dampen Stephanie’s fury. When she emerged, water streaming from every orifice, sputtering and spitting, Adam guffawed, a serious tactical error on his part. Without warning, she hauled off and socked him square in the crotch.

Adam howled, dropped the sledgehammer, and doubled over in pain, clutching his privates as though to ward off any further assault. Jorge, wide-eyed, backpedaled as fast as possible away from her.

Erwin seemed to be cheering from the sidelines, “Aar, aar, aar, aar, aar, aar,” which, when you think of it, must be the dachshund equivalent of “Rah-rah-rah!”

Now Stephanie was diving for the sledgehammer, bringing it up and thrusting it menacingly at Adam, who, with no place else to hide, had positioned himself on the far side of the unicorn.

“Get away from my statue, motherfucker,” Stephanie said, lunging at him with the sledgehammer. “I mean it! You get away from my Vesuvio, or you’ll be singing soprano in the church choir in this god-forsaken hellhole. I’ll chop your nuts off and feed them to these goldfish.”

“Stephanie!”

The shocked voice cut through the cool morning air like a hot knife. All four of us turned to see Will standing behind us, hands on hips, a look of shock and disgust on his face.

As if on cue, Stephanie dropped the sledgehammer and burst into tears.

“Oh Will,” she cried, wading toward him. “Look what they’ve done! They’ve chopped up my Vesuvio! I tried to stop them and then Adam turned on me. He actually threatened me with that axe thing. I’ve never been so terrified in my life.”

She’d reached the bank now, and she was trying to climb out, but couldn’t seem to get a proper toehold with her tiny designer Nikes. “Will,” she whimpered, after sliding belly-first in the thick red mud.
The white silk warm-ups were caked with mud, her blond hair lay flat against her skull, and her melted mascara ran down both cheeks. She staggered back to her feet and held out her arms, imploringly. “Will?”

“Christ,” he muttered. Then he turned around and stalked back in the direction of the house.

“Will,” Stephanie cried. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got up and reached down and hauled her up onto the bank. She flopped on her back like a beached carp. Erwin trotted over, yipped, and tenderly licked her face.