Doing It at the Dixie Dew Page 12

  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.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bricks from the low wall pricked the backs of my legs like fear. I had taken the first available seat and now just sat holding my mail and Verna’s returned letter. A flock of robins swooped to the lawn where the condominiums were under construction. The birds rustled leaves in the magnolia trees. A car went by. I saw and heard, but it all blurred and one black thought kept beating in my head: Verna was mixed up in a murder. Make that two murders. Almost three. What could I do?

  Take the nasty threatening little notes I’d received, and the letter, over to Ossie DelGardo, slap them on his desk and say, “I’ve found your killer.” The notes didn’t say Verna was a killer, but they might point the way to one. Ossie DelGardo would laugh me and the letter out of his pale green, pine-scented office. He would tell me to go tend my muffin making at the Dixie Dew. Isn’t tha
t what B and Bs were all about? Renting out spare rooms and calling it a business? And murdering guests as they slept, robbing them of their last possessions? That was how Ossie DelGardo saw me. I was on page 1 in his book of suspects. In fact, the only one, until Father Roderick’s housekeeper cleaned out the rectory. That ought to put her somewhere in the running with me. Tied for first place at least.

  I let myself in the front door and heard ripping and splitting sounds from the rear of the house. It sounded like somebody was tearing all hell out of something. “Scott!” I called.

  “Yo!” he called from the kitchen where he stood on a stool, held a crowbar and pulled cabinets loose from the wall. “Ida Plum stacked the stuff from this cabinet in the pantry so I could start here. I couldn’t stand to see you making do in this monstrosity of a kitchen anymore. I’m taking it wall by wall.”

  “I thought you were gone,” I said. “Your truck—”

  “Around back. So I don’t have to haul these babies so far.”

  I could have hugged his bare back. Put my arm around his shoulders, pulled him close and just cried. Because he cared. Because I was scared. Because I just plain didn’t know what to do, where to go from here … all of it.

  “One wall at a time,” he said. “That’s how we’ll take it. You’ve got these drawn off … drawers and shelves and all those good things where you want them. I’ll do the rest.”

  “But the money…” I started.

  “What’s a charge account for, if not to charge?” He worked nails from a piece of molding. “Solid pine. You don’t find wood this good these days. I’ll reuse all I can.”

  I stared at the stack of splintered boards at his feet.

  “Okay, so some of it goes to the fireplace, but think how toasty your toes are going to be next winter. I’ve started a stack in the garage for you alone.”

  “Can you take a break?” I asked, and held up his empty coffee cup. “I can make a fresh pot. I need to talk.”

  “Let me get this last cabinet down and I’ll give you my undivided attention.”

  Carefully I laid the letters on the table, started coffee and pulled carrot pecan muffins from the freezer. I had no new reservations for overnight guests at the Dixie Dew. One did not pay off renovations without income with which to do so. Unless windfalls landed in one’s lap, and Miss Lavinia’s jewelry didn’t count. That’s not gains, ill-gotten or otherwise. The jewelry was part of her estate that Mr. Green Polyester Pants Cousin, Lester Moore, would probably get his pinkies on with glee. At least Crazy Reba was out of danger, roaming around town with plastic rings and things from her fingers to her toes, buzzing like a June bug.

  Scott stirred sugar and milk in his coffee and took a long, satisfying drink. “That’s what I needed. Real coffee.”

  “And I need real help,” I said.

  “Shoot.” Scott reached over and covered my hand with his rough and tender one.

  “I’m into something and I don’t know the way out,” I said.

  “Road maps free of charge … name your destination.”

  “I know who’s been leaving those notes.”

  He waited.

  I shoved Verna’s returned letter toward him, then unfolded the notes I’d received over the last few days.

  Scott studied them, then let out a little whistle. “Not old Verna. Not Miss Priss and Proper. Goody Blue Hair?”

  “It can’t be anybody else.”

  “So, do you invite her for tea and serve these?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it, but that’s an idea. She’s got to be confronted. She’s got to know that I know she’s mixed up in these murders.”

  “What then?” Scott put his empty cup in the dishwasher.

  “I don’t know. I’ll take it one step at a time. Like your cabinets, one section at a time.”

  “Meanwhile, it’s Can you come to tea, Verna C.?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll bake Littleboro’s Cream Cheese Pound Cake. She can’t refuse.”

  “Feed your enemies,” Scott said, “and they’ll follow you everywhere.”

  “Verna isn’t an enemy. I may be into something bigger than I can handle. I can’t … I won’t believe she had anything to do with murder.”

  “Just don’t go for tea at her house, my sweet.” He laid a hand lightly on my shoulder. “Promise me.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This is my party. And it’s going to stay that way.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  At three o’clock I took the pound cake, all golden brown and crusted on top, from the oven. It filled the kitchen with vanilla and sugar and a hundred days of my childhood. I could have cried if I let myself.

  Scott had cleared the kitchen of excess boards. Verna was due at four, and when the doorbell rang I thought at first it was Verna coming early. I almost panicked. Scott had hung a green-striped sheet over the entrance to the pantry. We’d shoved everything from the cupboard into it. When the kitchen was completed the pantry was going to be an office for me, a place to keep Mama Alice’s collection of cookbooks and the B-and-B records, to plan menus, to shut the door on the world.

  “I’m hanging around for this,” Scott said. “No matter what you say.”

  “Did I say anything?” I asked on my way to the hall.

  I was relieved to see through the glass the outlines of two people. Just don’t let them be Ossie DelGardo or Lester Moore, I thought. Those two I can do without any day of the week. I opened the door.

  “Are you open?” a woman in purple slacks asked. “We were driving through and saw your sign, so I said, ‘Harry, let’s check. It won’t hurt to check.’”

  “Here we are,” Harry said with an apologetic little slice of a smile.

  “Of course,” I said. I’d forgotten I also ran a bed-and-breakfast. “Come in.” I opened the door, took them to my registration desk. “If you’d like to see the rooms first…” I said, indicating the stairs, “you’ve got first choice.”

  The woman went upstairs while Harry registered them. Mr. and Mrs. A. Harry Harlton of Elmsville, NY. “On our way to Florida,” he said. “Her sister lives there and we go this way twice a year. Usually stay in a motel, but we came to this first and Louise likes to try new things. I’m not much for that myself. All I want is a hard bed and a hot shower.”

  I laughed. “Then you want the Periwinkle Room. That has the firmest mattress.”

  “Back trouble.” Harry rubbed his lower back. “Had it all my life, and Father before me. ‘The Harlton back,’ we say, when it acts up.”

  “There’s parking in the rear,” I said as Harry Harlton went out for their luggage.

  Now I wasn’t alone in the house to deal with Verna, but how could you discuss something this serious with some stranger poking his head in to ask where one would find an extra lightbulb, to say the lamp wasn’t working … or some such situation?

  Louise Harlton called from the top of the stairs, “Put us down for the blue room. I think that bed’s better for Harry!”

  “Breakfast is anytime before ten,” I told her. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Will do.” Harry Harlton took an overnight bag and cosmetic case upstairs. “Any place we can get a decent steak around here?”

  “Floyd’s,” I said. “On Main Street. If you don’t mind hush puppies on your plate along with the baked potatoes. Tell him I sent you.”

  That took care of the Harltons for dinner … and getting them out of the house for a while. Maybe Verna would be late. Very late.

  I lifted the paper doily from atop the cake where I’d sprinkled powdered sugar. Ha. What if I’d sprinkled it with roach poison instead? Would Verna know the difference? I had read somewhere that aging caused people’s taste buds to dull, lose sensation. Is that what happened to Miss Lavinia and whatever poisonous thing she’d eaten that killed her? Whatever it was, wasn’t in this house, I thought. Verna better have some answers.

  “I’m Sheetrocking this wall,” Scott said in the kitch
en, “and when I’m not hammering I can hear everything being said.”

  “Thanks,” I said as the phone rang. “And this is only powdered sugar … even if the thought is otherwise.” I was ashamed of myself. Verna was an old lady. She didn’t want to hurt anyone … ever. Not unless she had to.

  “Honey,” Verna said when I picked up the phone, “can we make that dessert? I got into cleaning a closet and I never saw so much stuff in my life. That’s what this weather does to me. It’ll kill me yet … before I’m through … if this cleaning spell don’t let up.”

  “Seven?” I asked, and Verna hung up.

  It was seven thirty when Verna came in. “That darn rabbit. When he knows I’m in a hurry, he’s slow as constipation.”

  Any other time I would have laughed. Tonight I almost dropped the cups and saucers. In fact, the cups rattling in the saucers sounded exactly how I felt inside … shaky, my thoughts clattering together.

  “Decaf?” Verna asked. “I hope that’s decaf.” She pulled out a kitchen chair, waved a finger to Scott and leaned over the pound cake. “You did Miss Alice proud, honey. I bet you couldn’t count how many pound cakes that woman made in her lifetime, and never a one that wasn’t smooth and creamy enough to melt in your mouth.”

  “Let’s take our coffee out to the sunporch,” said I. “I want you to see my stenciling.”

  Verna poured her cup half full of cream, then let me fill the rest with coffee. “I like a little coffee in my cream.” Verna laughed. “That’s what Calbert always said.”

  I put cake on plates, carried them on a tray and the coffee out to the sunporch.

  “Why, it’s just sweet as can be,” Verna said when she stepped onto the sunporch. “Who in the world but you would have ever thought about painting this old floor? You can hardly tell it’s paint … it shines so.”

  We talked of the bed-and-breakfast, the tearoom. I held up swags of fabric I’d bought for the windows and tablecloths.