Doing It at the Dixie Dew Page 14

  At breakfast I casually asked the Harltons how they slept.

  “Why, honey,” Louise Harlton said, “I slept like a log. I tell you I put those earplugs in and I go nighty-night.”

  “Earplugs?” I asked.

  Harry Harlton blushed.

  “He snores like a steam engine,” said his wife. “I tried separate bedrooms for a while. And even that didn’t work. He shakes the house. I have truly thought seriously about divorce.”

  “No, you didn’t,” her husband said. “Not seriously.”

  “Yes, seriously,” she said. “But a three-dollar pair of earplugs saved our marriage.” She patted his hand. “Now he just snores to kingdom come and I just sleep right through it.”

  They had slept through all the commotion. I was relieved. It saved me a lot of explanation, a lot of which I didn’t have answers for myself.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I waited in the newspaper office with my ad for the Pink Pineapple Tea and Thee. I used the same pineapple motif I’d stenciled on the sunroom floor and my menu covers, only smaller.

  While I waited I glanced over the front page of The Mess: “Littleboro Women’s Club Wins Tray,” “4-H Helping Hands Win State Award,” “Hoe and Hope Garden Club Announces Yard of the Month Winner.” A whole town of real winners, I thought. I flipped pages. On the sports page I saw Homer Flooey had pulled in a twelve-pound bass. I wondered if that left any in the lake. I wondered if the water level went down when he pulled that big one out.

  In the middle of the paper, near the fold and below an article and photograph of Barry Spender, who had made the Million Dollar Round Table in insurance, I read “Trial Set for Accused Killer.” The housekeeper was listed; her name was Debbie Dellinger. Hmm, thought I, somehow the woman never looked to me like a Debbie. Debbie was sweet. Like Little Debbie Cookies or Debbie Reynolds with the smile and good cheer. Not someone in tight clothes and clear plastic heels who hotfooted it out of town with a whole truckload of furniture. The article said the trial would be held in Clinton and no date had been set. District Court got the big cases. I wondered if Ossie DelGardo would be pictured with the Accused in full glory. Ossie DelGardo with his jack-o’-lantern smile. His Bring ’Em Back Alive look like the man holding up his twelve-pound bass. Ossie had caught his killer and, better than that, he had hauled in a woman. That gave him extra points.

  On page 2 was the photo of the new priest at St. Ann’s. Black, I noticed. He was black. Good, I said to myself. He’s what this town needs. He will shake up some set little social values and we will see who puts their religion over their racial prejudices. I wished him better luck than his predecessor. I felt a little cold wind at the back of my neck when I remembered finding Father Roderick. It seemed so long ago. Instead of only three weeks. So much had happened.

  Out the window I saw a flash of pink and lavender across the square. Crazy Reba flying her panties? I almost laughed out loud. When Reba bathed she also washed out her underwear in the bathwater. Or that’s what Verna said. Then Reba took them back to her tree and hung them on the limbs to dry. Reba flies her flags, I thought. She’s color in this place, this town where even this newspaper office is as dull and dusty and worn as Ethan Drummond’s place. They had probably been furnished the same year, and since green plastic never died the chairs had never needed replacing.

  Finally the secretary got off the phone and took my copy. She wrote up an order to run it every Wednesday for the next four issues. “Can you bill me?” I asked.

  “Not if you don’t have an account with us.”

  I wrote her a check and didn’t look at the balance.

  In the drugstore Malinda poked a pencil in her topknot as she came from behind the prescription counter. “Shopping for more bangles and spangles and beads?”

  “Never again,” I said.

  “Did it work?”

  “Haven’t you seen Reba around town? You can almost feel the glow before she’s in sight.” I lifted both arms in the air. “At Christmas the town can stand Reba on the courthouse lawn. She’ll be a real living Christmas tree in all her sparkle and shine.”

  “Funny,” Malinda said. “She never comes in here.”

  “I bet I know why,” I said, and wrinkled my nose. “That old-fashioned medicine smell. I love it, but it reminds me of ear infections and chicken pox and sore throats and all the prescriptions I had from here as a child. I bet Reba remembers.”

  “I like the smell, too,” Malinda said. “Every morning when I open up, it’s still there and I take a deep breath. But then I never had sore throats or ear infections as a child.”

  “Nothing?” asked I.

  “Remember I got the perfect attendance pin every year?”

  “Among other things,” I said. “And speaking of high school, do you remember Mr. Booth?”

  “Mouse Ears Booth?” Malinda played with one of her gold hooped earrings. “How could I forget? I was the one who put the green snake down Freddie Folder’s backpack at Lemon Lake. That garter snake is probably telling the tale to generations of garter snakes.” She slapped her hip.

  “Do you remember seeing something he called wild parsley?”

  “I remember poison ivy,” Malinda said. “And pitcher plants … those long-necked bug-eating things.”

  “Somewhere near Lemon Lake grows wild parsley, and I’d like to find it.”

  “Won’t the tame kind do? Any supermarket’s got it.”

  “The tame kind isn’t deadly poison.”

  “Got anybody in mind?” Malinda grinned.

  “No, but somebody had Miss Lavinia marked for it.”

  “You don’t trust the fine law-enforcement staff in this fine town?” Malinda asked. “You got to be the Little Red Hen and do it yourself?”

  The truth was, I didn’t trust anybody anymore except Malinda and Scott and Ida Plum … maybe. When Verna Crowell was mixed up in something, the rest of the town must be, too. Verna was your pillar of the community. She was your Sunday-school-teacher type. Your first-grade teacher. Your mama when your mama wasn’t around. When the Verna Crowells of the community went bad, the rest of the world was heading downhill and racing like a bobsled.

  “Make us a picnic supper.” Malinda went to answer the phone. “And pick me up at home at six. I’ll supply the wine and we’ll go a’parsleying.”

  Before five, I had packed a pasta salad with peppers and almonds, cheeses and a loaf of pumpernickel still warm from the oven. Scott had taken the twin loaf after hinting in and out of the kitchen all afternoon about bread baking being his favorite perfume and how he thought flour on anyone’s nose was a real turn-on. I ignored him.

  “I don’t know what your mama cooks,” Ida Plum said, “but whatever it is, it doesn’t fill you up.” She was at the ironer again and I thought, Those two make a real team. Things get done.

  “Who says I have a mother?” Scott asked, hammer poised over a nail. “I may have sprung fully formed from the loins of Apollo.”

  “Ha,” Ida Plum said. “Double ha.” I had told her about my wild night. The first thing she said was, “And you still haven’t reported this? At least called Ossie.”

  I explained. She shook her head, hugged me. “I guess you know what you’re doing.” She stepped back to look at me. “Though sometimes I do wonder.”

  “Sure you don’t want to take some muscle along?” Scott asked. “I know Malinda’s going, and she can handle her own with a lot of things.”

  “I’m pretty good at taking care of myself in certain situations, too,” I said.

  “You aren’t going to at least call Ossie DelGardo?”

  “No, I don’t intend to. Not yet.”

  “Don’t wait until it’s too dangerous,” Scott said at the door.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m getting more okay every day. Trust me.”

  “I do trust you,” Scott said. “I just don’t trust the rest of the world out there.” He pointed out the door.

  “That’s you!” Ida
Plum called after him. “You are out there. Out of here!” She turned back to her work and I packed the rest of my picnic.

  The house where Malinda had grown up was on a tree-lined, neat street next to Queentown. Rosalie kept the house so freshly painted it sparkled. It was a soft yellow, with white shutters. She had hanging baskets of ferns on the porch and planters tumbling tight with purple petunias. There was a vegetable garden out back, and in a month or so corn would be taller than the fence. And okra, squash, tomatoes, beets and green beans. I bet there were rows of zinnias and marigolds and hollyhocks beside the back wall.

  I didn’t have to go to the door. Malinda was waiting. She had changed to jeans and a Tar Heel T-shirt of Carolina blue. Malinda waved to the baby standing in the door. “God, he hates to see me go. Especially if I’ve just gotten home.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Malinda tucked wine in the basket. “No big deal. He’s used to my undivided attention from the time I get home until he goes to bed. I read to him until he falls asleep. Want to hear me recite Goodnight Moon? All of Dr. Seuss? Where the Wild Things Are? In the Night Kitchen?”

  “Spare me,” I said. “But I’d like your thinking on where to go first. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking behind the dam … that area.”

  “First we eat,” Malinda said. “I’ll think while I chew.”

  At the park we ate sitting on the end of the pier. The lake was empty. The paddleboats were still docked and shelved from winter. The concession stand wouldn’t open until after Memorial Day. That was the official start of summer and Labor Day the end. Someone grilled hot dogs on the hill near the shelter. From the tennis courts we heard a steady whump, whump, thack.

  Malinda layered cheese, ham and lettuce on pumpernickel spread with hot herb mustard. “Wonderful,” she said. “I’m thinking already.”

  I told her about last night.

  “I would have aimed lower,” Malinda said. “That’s where it really gets them.” Then she laughed. “Of course, he wouldn’t be as easily spotted around town then, would he? Just walking sideways … if he was walking at all.”

  “All I remember of Booth’s field trips seems to be swampy places or places between bogs and marshes.

  “That sounds like behind the dam.”

  We locked the picnic things in the car. I tied my blouse in a knot at my waist, pulled on a cotton hat, then picked up my plastic bag, botany book and scissors.

  We walked around the end of the dam. Someone had dumped a rotten rowboat in the willows along with several old tires, rusted buckets and junk in general. “The Hoe and Hope folks ought to come inspect this scenic little corner of Littleboro,” I said. “Watch for snakes.”

  “Snakes watch for me,” Malinda said. “I make enough noise to tell them I’m coming.” She brushed back shrubs and low limbs as we climbed the hill.

  The sun was orange neon, a copper ball coloring everything in a strange, strong light.

  “This is the backside of nowhere,” I said.

  “Those were Booth’s favorite places.”

  We crossed a swamp below the hill, then through more woods. “I used to listen to my mama and stay away from woods like this,” Malinda said. “Too bad she never warned me about the wide-open places as well.”

  I didn’t press. I suspected both of us could hang regrets like rags from every bush we passed.

  Malinda walked a fallen log across a ravine. “Ha, I’m not in such bad shape after all.”

  I followed through brambles and briars.

  “Oops,” Malinda said, stopping. “Here’s where we detour. There’s enough poison ivy to itch all of Littleboro the rest of the summer and half into winter.”

  We crawled over a wire fence topped with twisted barbs, holding down the cutting edge for each other.

  “Anything familiar to you yet?” I asked.

  “My first trilliums this year.” Malinda sighed. “Look. But we’re not looking for beauty … we’re hunting evil. Wonder if anyone ever died from eating a trillium?”

  “Just wild parsley,” I said. “And I think I see something in that low place that looks green and frilly. Something a garden club lady would like.” I had told Malinda Booth’s story about the garden club ladies luncheon and the parsley look alike.… and Malinda whooped. She didn’t remember it. “That’s probably when I was catching that poor garter snake that probably hasn’t recovered yet.”

  I examined the plant. “Remember how to key?” I asked. “Your flora formula?”

  “‘Conium maculatum, botanical name. Common name: poison hemlock, lesser hemlock, deadly hemlock, poison parsley, muskrat weed. Deadly parts: all; the poisonous leaves can be made into a fatal salad,’” Malinda read. “I think you found what did in Miss Lavinia. But who put the parsley on her plate? It didn’t get there by itself.”

  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, qui
ck 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?