Doing It at the Dixie Dew Page 18

  And then there was Scott. Last night. I patted the empty bed beside me, pressed my face into his pillow. It still smelled slightly of a hint of his aftershave and something more. Something that made me stretch deliciously.

  I wanted to stay in bed all day. I wanted to roll in these sheets and swaddle myself in them. Telling myself if I did, Scott would come back and find me and we would begin again where we left off last night. We would repeat and repeat until we were marvelously spent, until we fell exhausted off each other and the bed and began again on the floor. God, he was good. God, I was good.

  The question was, Where was Scott now? The house was quiet. And what time was it?

  I slid into my slippers and shook myself, combed my hair with my fingers. Where was Scott? Had I dreamed the whole wonderful thing?

  I was tying my robe when someone tapped lightly on my door, then opened it.

  Ida Plum stepped in carrying a tray, coffee and muffins. “Are you ready for this?” She motioned me back in bed. “Once won’t spoil you, I don’t guess.”

  I didn’t protest but popped back in bed, plumped up my pillows and settled back, disappointed down to my toes that Ida Plum’s head had appeared behind that tray and not Scott’s. Where was he? This wasn’t the way I wanted my first morning after. I always thought, after making love, I’d be the one to wake early and lie there watching someone else sleep. Possessing rather than being possessed. Hanging on to that wonderful feeling as long as possible. But, my God, he’d disappeared.

  I couldn’t let Ida Plum, bless her thoughtfulness, see how disappointed I was.

  I sipped. God, he made good coffee.

  “Malinda made the coffee,” Ida Plum said.

  If she was reading my mind, then I was embarrassed.

  “I found it when I came in. With this note.”

  I read the note scribbled on a Dixie Dew B and B notepad: “If you need me I’m pushing pills. What a night. M.”

  “Her handwriting’s as bad as a doctor’s,” I said.

  “She almost was.” Ida Plum poured herself a cup. “Remember? She was going into medicine. All that hoopla with the Morehead scholarship and her being black and female. Double token, they had, but none of the papers spelled it out that way at least.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ve never heard all of it. Or maybe even most of it. Or maybe not the truth of it. Rosalie never has been one to talk her troubles. One day Malinda’s back, working at Gaddy’s, degree in pharmacy and a baby. I never asked questions. Figured if Rosalie or Malinda wanted me to know something, they’d tell me.”

  “I’ve never asked either,” I said.

  “I’m just glad she was with you last night,” Ida Plum said.

  “If she hadn’t been with me last night, I wouldn’t have been where I was. I’m no match for Miss Tempie, handyman or not.”

  “Speaking of Tempie. Ossie called. He’ll be by later to get a statement from you. He’s talked to Malinda. He thought you’d like to know they charged Rolfe with Lavinia’s murder.”

  “Father Roderick’s, too?”

  “Just killing Miss Lavinia. Rolfe also got charged with attempts on your life. And Tempie as accessory.”

  “Somehow I can’t see Miss Tempie in a cell.”

  “Neither could Ossie, apparently. That’s why he didn’t take her in. She must have pulled her poor, pitiful Tempie act. She is a master at it. Years of practice.”

  “He let her go?”

  “Until the trial. She confessed it was all her idea. She’s good at confessing and he’s got it on tape. He figured she wasn’t going anywhere and she wasn’t a threat to anybody.” Ida Plum picked up my towel from last night. I almost worried Scott’s blue plaid boxer shorts might drop out. Where were they? Where was he?

  “Did he get the whole story?” I wanted to hurry and finish my coffee and get dressed, find out what was going on in the real world.

  “Tempie had been embezzling from the church. They’ve had priests come and go. She’s always done the bookkeeping and it was always sloppy. Nobody thought to check and recheck until Father Roderick came along.”

  I stopped with an orange cranberry muffin halfway to my mouth. “Our Miss Tempie? The quintessential little old lady?”

  “Nobody but.” Ida Plum opened the curtains and raised the window.

  “And there she was giving me a lecture on manners and morals.”

  “Evidently she did it over the years. That’s manners for you. A nibble at a time.”

  “Why?”

  “She was accustomed to a certain lifestyle. You saw her house. It takes something to keep a house like that standing … even if it’s not standing very well. Taxes go up every year, even on unoccupied property. And to keep her in cat food. It may be cheaper than tuna, but it still takes a couple of cans a week for casseroles and salad.”

  I loaded my knife with strawberry jelly. “I thought she taught music.”

  “She hadn’t taught in years,” said Ida Plum. “She had gotten to the place where she screamed at the kids relentlessly. Or that’s what I heard. And more. It doesn’t take corporal punishment to get a kid to practice music. Or it shouldn’t.”

  “Probably did more than just whack their fingers with a ruler. She had a vicious temper.” I shuddered, remembering how I had cowered under the fear of Miss Tempie’s upraised hand holding that ruler like a guillotine ready to come down on my helpless fingers. “Where does Miss Lavinia fit into the picture?”

  “According to Ossie, who, contrary to what you heard, has not been spending all his time with Juanita but digging through a lot of information and checking out sources, Lavinia was leaving everything to St. Ann’s. That’s where Father Roderick came on the scene. Doesn’t surprise me a whit.” Ida Plum sniffed. “He never struck me as the priest type. I thought he was too good looking.”

  “That’s why she came back,” I said.

  “She was eighty plus. She knew she couldn’t have a lot of years left.” Ida Plum fluffed the curtains and wiped a finger of dust from my bureau. “I told you that from the first day you got her reservation. She wanted to be buried here. She just didn’t plan on being buried here quite so soon. She planned to spend her last days in one of those new condominiums the church is building. She’d be taken care of until her last breath; then the church would take over from there with what was left of her money. And there was supposed to be quite a bit left. Or that’s what I heard.”

  “And with all the inheritance, Miss Tempie’s minor indiscretions over the years would be forgiven. Especially since she was the one who recruited and reunited Miss Lavinia with St. Ann’s.”

  “Tempie just hurried up the process. At her age you get impatient.” Ida Plum had her hand on the doorknob.

  “And Father Roderick’s housekeeper?”

  “She killed Father Roderick. That all came out when Ossie talked to Tempie. Tempie knew it from the start. She just didn’t tell. She always was one to keep things to herself. Thought she was too good to even talk to most people.”

  “Sounds like a domino effect.”

  “And both Tempie and Father Roderick knew the housekeeper stole Miss Lavinia’s jewelry.”

  “Which Crazy Reba then stole from her when she went in the rectory to take a bath.” Oh, it was all falling into place, domino after domino.

  “When Father Roderick was going to report his housekeeper to Ossie DelGardo, he made the mistake of praying first. That’s when the housekeeper strangled him.” Ida Plum snorted. “His religion did him in. Maybe he was a real one. I just thought he did more playing at it than actual work.”

  “So it must have been Miss Lavinia’s silk teddy. The housekeeper must have taken it when she stole the jewelry. The poor woman. She couldn’t have fitted half her ass into it.” I laughed. “It’s all so curious.”

  “That’s Littleboro for you.” Ida Plum started out.

  “But where do I come in all this?” I asked. “All I did was find Miss Lavinia and Father
Roderick. And maybe get myself and Malinda half-killed. I didn’t know anything or anyone who might have been in the murdering business.”

  There was no answer. Ida Plum had shut the door. By the time I got dressed and into the kitchen, Ida Plum was gone. She’d left a note. It was a day for notes, I thought, reading it. Ida Plum had written on a grocery shopping pad, below “Carrots” and “Bathroom cleanser:” “Your Mr. Murchison is still in bed. I did not take him a tray. One was enough and I’m not starting that. Hope he is not a repeat of Miss Lavinia. One was enough of that, too. I.P.D.” Scott would laugh at those initials. The Ida Pineapple Department.

  I forced myself up the stairs. There was only silence at the top. I waited outside Mr. Murchison’s door. It was so quiet. I tapped on the door. Then tapped again. Please, not again. Surely, it couldn’t happen twice. I’d be out of business fast.

  I tapped again, leaned against the door and listened. Nothing moved. No one coughed or turned over in bed, or made a human sound.

  I turned the knob and again waited. Nothing.

  And nothing met me inside the room. Nothing and nobody. It was cleared out. There was a note on the dresser. “Left at 5 a.m. Thanks for a good night. Rupert Murchison.” The handwriting was small, little mouse tracks across the page and as tidy as an accountant.

  The bed was unmade, but the spread had been pulled up to neaten it and there were damp towels over the rod in the shower. Mr. Murchison had been here and gone. Gone on his way and not to his reward. I was relieved. Oh, was I relieved. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I sighed and started removing the sheets.

  Sherman came in, hopped on the dresser and looked out into the maple whose leaves were unfolding at a fast rate. He looked as if he were thinking, Bird for lunch, bird for lunch. He flexed a paw against the screen, got it caught and began to pull.

  “Trying to tear the house down, Sherm?” Scott poked his head around the corner. “The House of McKenzie stands on strong turf, old buddy.” Scott pried the cat’s claws loose, then picked him up and held him next to his chest.

  “I just had a scare.” I smoothed on fresh sheets. “When Mr. Murchison hadn’t come down, I came up and it was the Monday morning of Miss Lavinia all over again. No answer when I knocked. Not a sound of someone in here … someone alive, that is. Then I opened the door and it was empty as a tomb.”

  “Unless it’s a tomb that belongs to a Merritt.” Scott put the cat down and helped me tuck in the sheets. I liked a guy who could make a bed. Or who didn’t feel it beneath him to help make a bed.

  I didn’t like remembering the Merritt tomb. Sometimes, if I let myself, I could still smell that dry air, dust and darkness. Total darkness had a smell. I’d never forget that smell.

  “Did you know when he left?” I wanted to ask a lot of questions, but that seemed the only safe question to start.

  “I heard him,” Scott said, “when he left, and earlier. He’s a sleepwalker. That noise I heard last night just before … when I got up so suddenly … was Mr. M. standing at the top of the stairs in his skivvies, dead asleep.”

  I laughed. “He should have told us. Or locked himself in. What if he’d gone out the door? Walked down the street?”

  “I got him all tucked in. Then he woke up and told me about leaving early, at five. I guess so I wouldn’t come up and try to tuck him in again.”

  So that’s where Scott went so abruptly last night. He never said and I hadn’t asked. There had been too much to do. Too many new discoveries being made. “No more blackberry wine,” I mumbled.

  “What?” He picked up Mr. Murchison’s sheets.

  “Ida Plum told me about Ossie’s call and Miss Tempie confessing. I still don’t understand what it had to do with me.”

  “You were a threat to Tempie. And she was running scared. You came back to restore your grandmother’s old house, turn it into a business.”

  “I can’t understand how that was a threat to Miss Tempie. What it had to do with anything.”

  “Miss Tempie talked about that, too.”

  “She must have talked a lot,” I said.

  “She had a lot to talk about.” Scott smoothed the bedsheets. “And Ossie listened well. You underestimate him.”

  “So who killed Mama Alice?”

  “Nobody. She fell. That’s what I’m saying. She simply fell down the stairs and never regained consciousness. It was a stroke that caused her to fall.”

  “But those notes Verna wrote?”

  “Miss Tempie put her up to them. You knew that.”

  “Why?”

  “To scare you off. To get you to give up the Dixie Dew and leave. Sell. In one word, that’s what they wanted.” Scott plumped a pillow, tossed it back on the bed.

  “Sell to whom?” I asked.

  “St. Ann … the diocese.” Scott stood back to admire his plumping.

  “The condominium project.” I grabbed the bundle of soiled sheets and damp towels to take downstairs. Maybe a laundry chute could be built up here to send this stuff downstairs in a fast slide. New project for Scott? “The Dixie Dew stands in the way, I guess. And you saw the architect’s drawings, the blueprints?”

  “A long time ago.” Scott stood in the doorway, hands tucked in his pockets.

  “That’s why I had so much trouble getting workmen? Oh,” I said, “it all makes sense now. And you were willing to help me.”

  “To save the Dixie Dew.” He grinned.

  “Is that the only reason?”

  “One of them, and as good a one as any.” He turned, went into the hall.

  “About last night…” I started, but didn’t get to finish. Scott had disappeared down the hall. I heard the vacuum roar, rattle and whine, thought there’s something totally endearing about a man behind a vacuum cleaner.

  The next edition of the Littleboro Messenger had the headline “Local Crime Solved,” with a picture of Rolfe beneath, who was being held. “They made Rolfe look like the country’s number-one threat to society.” Malinda had brought in the newspaper and stood beside me at the kitchen counter reading over my shoulder. Farther down the page was “Local Native Found Dead” and a picture of Miss Tempie from when she graduated from Juilliard. Her body had been found in a wooded area on her vast estate, the article read. There was no evidence of foul play, and none was suspected. Miss Tempie was shown in profile. She was twenty-two, an all-American girl with a blond pageboy, beatific and wearing a single strand of pearls. She looked absolutely beautiful, ready to have the world worshiping at her feet.

  “Suicide?” I asked.

  “The slime pit.” Malinda shivered. “Maybe her mother didn’t tell her a lady never takes her own life. The coroner said she was dressed in white from head to foot. They even found a large white hat floating beside her.”

  “My hat,” I said. Somehow it must have fallen off when I jumped up from that tea table. I hadn’t missed it. “Lord, she must have looked like a water lily,” I said, “against the black water. Monet would never have been inspired. Or some Pre-Raphaelite gone bad.”

  The third item on the front page read: “Evidence in Murder Case Still Missing.” Miss Lavinia’s jewels, reported to be worth a small fortune, still had not been recovered.

  “I think you better turn yourself in … jewel thief,” Malinda said.

  “I forgot!” I said. “How could I have forgotten?”

  “Think our local law enforcement will buy your story? Crazy Reba won’t be a reliable source … even if she confesses to the original theft.” Malinda flapped the sports section of the paper back and forth.

  “I think as soon as the Mr. Green Polyester Pants Cousin gets his loot he’ll be gone within the hour. No questions asked.” I fixed Malinda a glass of iced tea. “Want a sprig of mint in it?” I asked. “Or parsley?”

  “I never want to see another sprig of parsley in my life,” said Malinda. “In fact, I almost break out in a rash when I hear the word.”

  I guess Miss Lavinia had been try
ing to write in her farewell note something about how it wasn’t parsley. Or “That is hemlock” or “That is the last time I have tea with Tempie Merritt.” I would never know.

  Malinda and I spread the newspaper on the counter between us and read bits aloud.

  “I really don’t think our Ossie, as you call him, will question anything as long as he gets the rocks back.”

  Malinda turned the page to “Society News,” which I always thought was an oxymoron if there ever was one. “Look,” she said.

  “Engagement Announced.” There was Ossie in full uniform, badge shining like a prize medal, his arm around Juanita with her two-level teased hair. He wore a fat-cat grin and Juanita’s blinding white smile was as tight as her last face-lift and new set of dental implants would allow.

  “Well, what do you know!” I said.

  “Her third.” Ida Plum came through with a set of sheets fresh from the ironer. “And who knows which it is for him.”

  “Going to the wedding?” Malinda asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I already know what I’m buying for a wedding gift.”

  Malinda shook her head, hand on the back door, heading out. “Aren’t you suddenly the benevolent one!”

  “A set of knives,” I said. “And depending on my mood from now until then, I may or may not decide to enclose a coin to cut the bad luck.”

  Malinda left laughing.

  I could truly wish both Ossie and Juanita happiness. And a long life. Longer than Miss Lavinia, Father Roderick and Miss Tempie, too, wherever her little soul had flitted to.

  On the back page of The Mess was a reprint of an article that had appeared in the Baltimore Sun travel section: “Yankees Going South, Go to the Dixie Dew.” The byline was of a Dillon Lucas, who must have been my mystery guest/travel writer who had spied on me and taken the photo of the Dixie Dew printed with the aritcle. In the picture on the walk in front of the Dixie Dew was a woman strolling a big white rabbit on a leash. The rabbit seemed to be smiling as if he’d just eaten something green and delicious. The woman looked like she owned the street, the sidewalk, the world.