Doing It at the Dixie Dew Page 11

  On a whim I turned toward Ethan Drummond’s office. The office door was closed, and I hesitated. Was I doing the right thing? I didn’t know who I could trust these days. All I knew was if I began to doubt good people like Malinda, and now Ethan, I was too fearful of the world, too timid to live in it with joy.

  “Ethan!” I called.

  From the back office he gruffed, “In here.”

  I heard the metal squeak of an ancient desk chair as it swiveled and he rose to meet me, offering a hug against his rough Harris tweed chest. “Bethie, honey,” he said. “You’re the last person I expected to come through that door. What can I do for you?”

  “Do you still have that old office safe?”

  He partially closed the door. “Anybody would have to blow up the building to get it out,” he said. “And it opens only for me. Why?”

  “I need to put something in it.” I thrust the bag toward him. “For a few days.” I read his puzzled eyes. “I didn’t steal it.”

  “I never thought such a thing. You’re not the thieving kind. Never in a million years. I’m just curious why my old safe? Why not a safe-deposit box at the bank? I’m assuming that’s the last of Margaret Alice’s silver.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not even mine. I’m just keeping it until the person who has a right to it can come claim it.”

  “Good enough.” Drummond took my package, placed it atop the safe and dialed the combination. “It’s here until you want it.”

  “Thanks.” I hugged him again, feeling the fragility of his bones and age through his coat. On impulse I kissed his cheek. “Thanks for everything.”

  As soon as I opened the building’s outer door, I heard the string band. Bluegrass, I thought, Country and Western, and half the town would be there patting their feet, sitting on the grass as they unwrapped free hot dogs, drank Coke from red and white paper cups and tied red balloons to all the babies’ wrists. The new Foodland was having their Grand Opening. Good-bye, Mr. Murphy’s M.&G. Growing up, we used to call it Mr. Murphy’s Mighty Good Food. Chain stores would put all the old-time small merchants out of business. Look out, Mr. Gaddy, I thought. There’s a CVS headed your way. They’ll be smart enough to make Malinda manager first thing and pay her three times what you count out each week. And it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Especially not for Malinda, who could handle a store and the pharmacy with one hand tied behind her back. Mr. Gaddy could take his arthritic knees and china doll of a wife to the Florida sun.

  I didn’t plan to be a part of the Foodland crowd, but somehow the music drew me. I stood on the edge and listened as bass fiddles vibrated even the newly planted grass. The burlapped, balled and still-reeling-from-shock infant trees around the parking lot looked naked, a little startled to be here. The band stood on a platform in the middle of the parking lot. Red banners on poles blew in the breeze behind them. I saw someone approach the stage, a woman in an orange cape. Crazy Reba.

  I caught my breath.

  The bandleader in a red-checked shirt, white jeans and cowboy hat leaned over to listen to something Crazy Reba said. He held the bow to his fiddle out like a baton and shook his head. She persisted. He kept shaking his head. Finally he nodded with a frown and she climbed the steps and stood beside him on the stage looking like a meek and mild orphan child.

  When the last note of “Rocky Top” floated toward the highest cloud, the leader held up his hand and his bow. “Folks, we got a request from this lady.” He motioned to Crazy Reba. “She wants to sing a song she hasn’t heard in a long time. Folks, there were tears in her eyes when she said it, and folks, I can stand of lot of things, but I can’t stand to see a lady cry.”

  With that Reba lifted up her face, all her jewelry shining in the sun, and sang in a clear, child’s voice, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

  The crowd buzzed for a minute, then quieted until Reba finished and stepped down. There was an awkward silence. No one knew whether to applaud or not. Finally Reba started applauding herself and everyone joined in.

  I walked home feeling something lifted from my life. Not a lead weight quite, but at least a little bundle of worries aside and out of my way. One piece of the puzzle clicked in place. Miss Lavinia’s jewelry had been found. Now to fit it to the others.

  Scott was about to apply the last coat of the varnish on top of the last pineapple stencil when I stopped by the sunporch. “Beautiful,” I said. “It looks perfect.” With the ruffled valances up, the tablecloths on and little bud vases with sprigs of whatever happened to be blooming in the yard … the place would look inviting, charming and cozy. Plus the food would do Mama Alice proud. I would see to that. Now that the painting was finished, I could design menus and plan an opening ad for the newspaper. I wanted a border print that included pineapples for the menus and my ad. I planned to always offer Mama Alice’s pineapple muffins on the menu. They would be the House Special.

  “A couple coats of polymer ought to hold it several years, I’d think,” Scott said. He rocked back on his heels and surveyed his work.

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “Assuming of course you don’t have a constant stream of heavy foot traffic, standing room only and things like that.”

  “I’d love to have things like that,” I said. “They would spell success. Sweet-smelling success. But I’m realistic. And this is Littleboro, not Pinehurst. I’ll take ten to twenty a day and be happy. Very happy.”

  I made us both iced coffee, sat on a stool at the counter and pored over Mama Alice’s old cookbooks. Some of the pages were spattered, tan and torn. I turned each loose leaf of the notebook carefully and smiled over some of the names and notes. “Miss Wanema Kratt’s Blue Cheese Dressing. Add a tablespoon more milk. Wanema always did make things a tad too dry.” Or “The Salad Mildred Mottsinger Made for Her Daughter’s Wedding Brunch” and “Herbert Clark’s Basting for Birds.” The cookbook was like the story of Mama Alice’s life.

  In the back were recipes on index cards, recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines. I flipped through them and made mental notes to go through them more carefully later and decide which ones to file or discard. Several slips of paper slid to my lap and some fell to the floor. I picked them up, started to go through them, then stopped. Here was a recipe in the same handwriting as the threatening note I had gotten. The note that said Mama Alice was pushed. I turned over the speckled page to the back. It was blank. There was no name on the recipe, but the same bold, upright letters had written of death and threats … and Scalloped Tomatoes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I stood on my front walk holding The Mess. It carried no national news. Those few in Littleboro who wanted to know what went on in the “real” world had to go to the drugstore for the Raleigh News & Observer or subscribe. Most people read The Pilot religiously, had read it all their lives. It was the gospel.

  Still in my robe and slippers, hair uncombed, I didn’t think anyone would be out so early. But there was Verna. Verna who seemed to know everything that happened in Littleboro any hour of the day or night. Plus the details.

  Verna had Robert Redford on his red leather leash. “He goes crazy over oxalis this time of year,” she whispered. Her breath smelled like the inside of a rusty leather trunk. Robert Redford flicked an ear as if he’d heard her. “I swear,” Verna said, “he knows when I’m talking about him. That rabbit.”

  I unrolled my paper, glanced at headlines announcing “Big Crowds Expected at May Fair” and “Big Crowds Attend Foodland Opening.” Big crowds in Littleboro were fifty or more.

  The Mess had reprinted an article from the News & Observer about the remodeling of an older home. This one had the country motif coming out its walls. It was too cute for words. Why did people think they had to “country” up an older house? Every house has its own personality, I thought. I resolved that the Dixie Dew would not display one single lace-trimmed wooden heart that said “Welcome” or “Back Door Friends Are Best” or “Home Is Where You H
ang Your Heart.” The one thing I did know about an older home was that everything costs twice what you estimate and takes twice as long as you think.

  Verna said, “You know that Debbie Dellinger, Father Roderick’s housekeeper? Seems she and her sidekick boyfriend were arrested at Rider’s Ridge in South Carolina. I’ve heard tell that flea market is so big, you can walk all day and still not see it all.”

  Robert Redford lifted a hind foot, scratched himself.

  “Smart,” said Verna. “I never would have given that woman credit for having that much sense. Who at a flea market is going to ask where anything came from? Who cares? All they want is something for nothing. And that’s what she got.” Verna laughed at her own joke. “Something for nothing but some nerve and a little bit of effort. It’s the biggest flea market in the South, must be a real hellhole.”

  “For her at least.” I almost laughed. Verna surprised me using that language. It was definitely not little-old-lady language.

  “Did they recover all of it?” I asked. I remembered there had been some lovely furniture in the parish house, a number of antiques. The housekeeper had cleaned out everything but dust balls under the beds.

  “The church will get the money she made from it,” Verna said, “I’m sure. All she’s got on her, but what good will that do? Probably most of the stuff was practically given away. She got a fraction of what it was worth.” Verna picked up Robert Redford, scratched behind his ears.

  “Wonder how The Mess will play it?” Verna continued. “Big photo on page one of Ossie DelGardo with the handcuffed housekeeper and some caption that reads like the most wanted, most dangerous, worst criminal in fifty states has just been apprehended here in Littleboro, or an inch paragraph under the obituaries back of page one? Depends on how who’s who in the church wants it played … loud and dramatic, wringing scandal for all it’s worth, and sympathy, or as quickly skipped over and quietly forgotten as possible? It will be interesting to see.”

  I flipped through The Mess. There was no mention of Mrs. Housekeeper and her midnight raid. That would either make headlines next issue, as Verna said, or get an inch mention buried on an inside page.

  “And that cousin,” Verna said, “Lester Moore. He’s been hanging around this town like he’s ready to pounce on something that belongs to him. I don’t know what could. Who’d ever heard of him before Lavinia died? He could be fake for all I know. How do we know he’s who he says he is?” She looked up the street toward the courthouse. “Ossie DelGardo’d haul in his own mother if he had half a notion.” Verna had an inch-long safety pin where a button had been at the top of her brown cotton dress. Her slip hung out, a very dirty slip, almost the color of her dress.

  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 hur
t 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.