Doing It at the Dixie Dew Read online

  I didn’t go into the drugstore. Malinda was off on Wednesdays. She had probably taken her son, Elvis, to the park or fishing or to hang around a service station while her car was being greased and the oil changed. Malinda might be raising her child by herself, though she said her mother would get her feathers ruffled if anybody ever hinted at such a thing. Malinda did try to do a few macho things with her son. She quoted all kinds of statistics about black males to me: health and longevity and education and role models. Elvis wouldn’t lack anything Malinda could give him, I thought, but a live-in father. You can grow up without one, but not without a lot of scars and questions and anger. I knew about that and sometimes I tried to lay all that blame in my past with Ben. You can’t divorce someone you haven’t been married to, but ending the relationship feels the same, leaves scars, too. So does life. No one gets through it without some physical and emotional scratches and mending. Funny though, Miss Lavinia, as old as she was, had looked so serene, so at peace with herself, when she had checked in at the Dixie Dew. I had been taken with her countenance; she was old, but she was regal and there was a glow about her. A glow that had gone overnight into a death pallor. It was hard for me to believe. On my way home, I skirted the old courthouse, its redbrick the same mellowed brown the old library had been. At least that building had not changed, just been outgrown, and since it stood on its own little island in the middle of town it couldn’t be added on to. Hence the new Government Complex, built behind it and just a step away. The old courthouse was still in use, and in some little basement office a clerk filled out the death certificate on Lavinia Lovingood, age eighty-something, born Carelock County, died Carelock County. And somewhere in some small cubbyhole at The Mess I wondered if Fanny Upchurch was typing out Miss Lavinia’s obituary.

  Would they run it front page, not giving her age, of course, but a couple paragraphs about the Lovingoods’ being one of Littleboro’s most prominent families, and so on? And a photo of Miss Lavinia from her debutante days? Or her college yearbook? Somehow I knew she was beautiful. I just hoped the obituary didn’t include the information that she died in the Dixie Dew, recently renovated and now open as a B and B by local native Beth Henry.

  Bruce Beckner from the police department had said, “Don’t touch anything in this room.” He had taken Miss Lavinia’s handbag, looked through her wallet, credit cards, and flipped through her cash like the winner at a gaming table. “Ten thousand dollars.” He whistled. “That’s traveling.” He fanned through the bills with the tips of his fingers.

  They’d sealed off the room, just in case. “Until the lab reports are in,” Bruce had said. Right now, for all I cared, they could seal off that room forever.

  And they left Miss Lavinia’s little car parked out front: some sort of cute little foreign-looking sporty convertible. Scott said having it parked out there didn’t tear down the neighborhood a bit. It was locked and Ossie DelGardo would get around to moving it in a few days. Until then, it did grace the neighborhood with an elegant presence, though a glance at it did send a chill of something ominous down the back of my neck.

  Before Bruce came with his handy-dandy roll of crime scene tape, Ida Plum had gone into Miss Lavinia’s room and pulled the eel-skin suit and the lace blouse off the hangers. Then Ida had gone into Miss Lavinia’s drawers and gotten a slip, bra and panties, stockings and shoes. “I think she’d want to be buried well,” Ida Plum said, smoothing across her arm the most beautiful underwear I’d ever seen. “Handmade,” she sighed. “I’ll drop them by Eikenberry’s on my way home.” Trust Ida Plum to think of such things, the finishing touches.

  I felt like the whole thing with Miss Lavinia was so strange, so unreal. Walking helped me get my feet back on the ground.

  I turned the corner at the courthouse and remembered twenty years or so ago there had been talk about tearing the old courthouse down. Thank goodness some county commissioner or historic-minded group had opposed it. A sleek black marble glass box would stick out in this town like a pyramid. Besides, I snickered, they’d have to move the statue of the Confederate soldier. I could see him from my bedroom window. Always on guard, his rifle pointed to the sky, as I slept, protected. Had he been Miss Lavinia’s last look, that stone statue through the trees holding up the sky? A little halt in time? She’d been as close to home as she could get. I was glad about that. Littleboro had been able to give her something, and the sight of Mama Alice’s house being restored must have been a small comfort. Even when the rest of the town whispered loudly I’d never make it a successful bed-and-breakfast.

  I stepped past a stack of cement bags. Behind it lay lumber, scaffolding. The Redfern house had been torn down, a façade of Southern homes built in its place. Condominiums. Ida Plum had said the Catholic diocese was building those. Seven units followed the façade like cars on a train. Who would buy those? How many people had moved to Littleboro last year? Three? Probably those three were not looking for two-hundred-eighty-thousand-dollar condominiums, but somebody might think big, bigger than I, and they’d have either more money or better credit or know something I didn’t know.

  As I opened my own gate, I saw the swing of something orange-red on the lower limbs of the huge water oak in front of the town’s water tower. Crazy Reba was back in town. Oh Lord, she’d probably be at the funeral tomorrow. Not knowing where she was, dressed in parts of five different outfits and singing nursery rhymes. That was sad, too. Crazy Reba had been plain Reba Satterfield in high school. A little loud and strange, but she’d graduated with the rest of them. Married somebody, had five kids in four years, and her mind kicked out. She was one of the revolving-door cases for the courts and hospitals for the mentally ill. Not considered a danger to herself or others, she lived on the streets and under the tree, hanging her clothes across the limbs, sleeping on and under them at night. Mama Alice had fed her, given her blankets, only to find in the morning that Reba had used the blankets to drape Mama Alice’s boxwoods. Reba never slept inside. She said she didn’t like walls. Sad, I thought again, and the sadness seemed like a gray cloud following me home.

  On my own walk, I meandered, checked Mama Alice’s boxwoods for spider mites, noted the grass needed mowing. There was an apron of a yard on each side of the walk, usually mowed with the push mower Mama Alice had used until last year. Mama Alice must have known Miss Lavinia, I thought. Maybe she would have known why Lavinia Lovingood had come back, but Mama Alice was dead. For a moment I ached for those arms I’d always gone to for answers and comfort.

  Ida Plum met me in the kitchen. She waved the wand to the vacuum cleaner like a dark warning flag. “Don’t go upstairs,” she said. “They’ve dusted for prints. Miss Lavinia was murdered.”

  Well hell, I thought, that’s just what Ossie DelGardo wants. To turn Littleboro into some big-city crime scene. Oh, he is in his glory, but I didn’t believe it for a minute. There had to be a glitch somewhere. At least I hoped there was.

  Chapter Four

  Thursday morning I watched a silver curtain of rain slide off the roof. Yesterday seemed like a blur. Three guests for the Dixie Dew. In, out. I hardly saw them. In fact, the whole week had been very blurred, very fuzzy and not the way I liked my life to be. I wanted a crisp, clean, organized, smoothly clicking along kind of life. Not one that kept falling apart and I had to pick up the pieces, salvage what I could and start all over again. My life lately had been like this house, badly in need of care and attention.

  Oh, this house needs gutters, I thought, beautiful long, new gleaming gutters and downspouts that cost like the dickens, and right now I couldn’t take out another loan for them. Not until I’d hacked my way heavily at the present one. That was my first thought. My second thought was Miss Lavinia. It was pouring rain on the day of her funeral, and it looked and sounded like one of those rains that would go on steadily throughout the day and continue into the night. Poor Miss Lavinia.

  I unplugged my warming tray in the dining room that kept muffins, Danish and bacon ready to
serve and started upstairs, where Ida Plum had taken off the dirty linens. I started to vacuum the Periwinkle Room. I walked quickly by the tightly shut and sealed door to the Azalea Room, tried not to think, just started laying out fresh towels, smoothing on clean linens, working steadily, mindlessly, in the Lobelia Room.

  I found burgundy leather slippers had been left under the bed. Mr. Holtzman. I’d have to write him, see if he wanted them sent. And Mrs. Frick, in the Green Room, had left a package of tights in the bathroom … I assumed they were hers and didn’t belong to either Mr. Holtzman or Mr. Frick. There was a gold earring under the dresser. I bagged and labeled them for the basket under the lobby desk. I’d have to write Mrs. F. also.

  I bumped into Ida Plum with the cleaning cart, took supplies and started on the bathroom. Then I buffed the hardwood floors Scott and I had sanded, rubbed to a gleam with wax and stain. They were the charm of the second floor. Guests loved them. And the cute area rugs in front of the fireplaces and beside the beds. Scott and I had bought the rugs at an auction, cleaned, aired and sunned them. The effect was cozy, but cozy wouldn’t warm anyone this winter. The cold truth was really cold. Unless I put in a new furnace, the upstairs was going to be rented by only the most hardy. Scott had the idea of offering guests an electric blanket, a space heater for the bathroom, and in the morning presenting them with an endurance certificate. I didn’t think we’d get many takers, except possibly some sturdy stalwarts. Though I’d grown up that way and it hadn’t hurt me a bit. In fact, being used to cold rooms had been a boon for me those Maine winters.

  I dusted and decided these rooms wouldn’t get fresh flowers from the back garden unless the rain stopped. And Miss Lavinia wouldn’t get many mourners. How could she have when she’d been gone from Littleboro so long? No children, no siblings. No cousins? Maybe somewhere there was a first cousin or a first cousin once removed.

  “Except Elsie Shimpock,” I said aloud.

  “What?” Ida Plum asked as she wound the cord on the vacuum.

  “Elsie Shimpock, the town mourner. Is she still alive? She may be the only one at Miss Lavinia’s funeral. That’s all she used to do, go to funerals, whether she knew the person or not. She went, and she wept. Beautifully.”

  “You think she’ll show up for Miss Lavinia?” Ida Plum said. She took her dustcloth, polished the stair rail. “Does the sun rise? Is water wet?”

  “She’ll show up like a prop. She’ll be there in black. Hat, umbrella, all.” I almost laughed. “Mama Alice said if Elsie Shimpock showed up at her funeral, I was to shoot her.”

  “Did she?” Scott asked as he came up the stairs. “And most importantly, did you?” Scott wore a blue-checked shirt and jeans. God, he looked good in jeans, I thought, then looked away.

  “Shoot her? Of course not, but I honestly don’t remember seeing her there. She’s creepy.”

  “And you, Ida Banana? You going?” Scott asked. He took Ida Plum’s dustcloth and wiped the stair rails.

  “I know too much now,” Ida Plum said as she headed downstairs. “Just minding my own business.”

  “Have it your way,” he said. “But you might miss a show.” He dusted so hard I was afraid he’d strip paint.

  “It’s only dust,” I said. “Leave a little of the varnish.”

  “Sorry.” He eased up. “My mind wasn’t in this gear, or any gear for that matter. Nowhere near here.” He seemed distracted. Was it something Ida Plum had said or done? Her story of Elsie Shimpock or something else? He dropped the cloth onto the cleaning cart and went downstairs. Later I thought I heard him on the phone. He was fine at lunch, calling Ida his apple pie, making sandwiches, but he didn’t mention the funeral again.

  That afternoon at the church the first person I saw was Elsie Shimpock, black hat and all, sitting in the last pew. I was the only other mourner and neither of us had a real reason for being here. I sat in the center section. Pastor Pittman and Father Roderick made four, and just before the service started Verna Crowell slipped in, walked by the closed casket and took a seat beside me. She wore a voile dress with a torn lace collar and gave off a strong whiff of mothballs and cedar. And Sherry. Sherry? She reeked of sweet sherry. Had she been tippling when she baked? How much did she tipple alone in her house every night of her life anyway? And maybe it wasn’t such a bad way to pass an evening. I thought I might even decide to take it up … if I ever found time.

  “I wish I could have seen Lavinia,” she whispered. “It’s been so many years and I wonder if she had as many wrinkles as the rest of us. I guess the undertaker took care of that, though. Now I’ll never know.” She took out a handkerchief with a rust stain shaped like rabbit on it and blew her nose, then folded and tucked the handkerchief in the chest of her dress.

  There was only the casket spray of flowers, pink and white. I remembered Mama Alice’s funeral. Though we’d requested memorials be sent to the church education fund, there had been more arrangements than I had ever seen. There was something lonely about a single spray, and the organ music didn’t lift the mood. Funeral music always sounded funereal, like the organ’s most sorrowful notes were pulled out and held for an even more mournful effect.

  Linda Eller sat alone in the choir loft. She worked at Belk’s cosmetic counter, sang for every funeral. I remembered her from high school, short, curly haired, dated Ron Eller, married the week after graduation, had a baby nine months later. Everybody counted on their fingers. It gave the town gossips exercise, kept their math working. That and bridge and Juanita’s Beauty Shop. I wondered what the talk had been this week at Juanita’s about Miss Lavinia’s death at the Dixie Dew. Folly? Beth McKenzie’s Waterloo? Who’s ever going to go to a place, sleep in the same bed where somebody died? Somebody was sure to say, “That’s one business that’s dead before it even got started good.”

  Pastor Pittman took the pulpit with Father Roderick beside him and both conducted the service. They read the prescribed scriptures about everything in its time and I wondered somehow if this really had been Miss Lavinia’s time. If so, would she have left such a strange note? Two words. “That is…” Those two words had haunted me ever since. What should I do about that note? Did it mean anything? I had been tempted to show it to Bruce Bechner, then changed my mind. He didn’t seem all that quick on anything. Struck me as the good ole easygoing kind to just do what they’re told, get their paychecks every Friday and keep their mouths shut.

  Pastor Pittman? I could have shown the note to him, but somehow if it didn’t have some president’s picture on it I didn’t think he’d be interested.

  Now in his church he presided with Father Roderick as backup. Both men alternated with a few short prayers, and Linda sang all the verses of “Ave Maria,” which really was lovely, if a little long; then they followed the casket out. As I started to leave the church I saw Father Roderick in the vestibule talking to an intense woman in a red tee-top (no bra) and tight jeans. The woman reached up, brushed lint off Father Roderick’s shoulder in a possessive, familiar gesture and continued talking, her long silver earrings swinging back and forth in a fast, angry rhythm. She pulled back her long, grayish hair with a brisk toss. I noticed her clear plastic spike-heeled shoes. She was not your ordinary, run-of-the-day citizen of Littleboro. Not in those shoes.

  All kinds, I thought as I walked to the door, priests and ministers work with all kinds and at all times.

  “Lovely, just lovely,” Verna said. She held her flat black book of a purse over her head. “It’s too hot to walk to that cemetery, and if I know Lavinia, and it was my funeral, she wouldn’t walk there either.” She turned toward home.

  I don’t know why, but I decided to go on to the cemetery. To see the thing through, I guess. The rain had stopped and when I left the church I reached for my sunglasses. Everything had a bright, bright shimmer: trees, streets, the sidewalk. I laid my umbrella on the porch swing at the Dixie Dew, heard strains of the music from Aida blasting from the sunporch and continued walking toward the cemetery. Aida m
eant Scott was painting the rest of the windows, which meant the Pink Pineapple Tea and Thee would soon be a reality.

  In the Littleboro Cemetery, the hearse was already backed up to the mausoleum. Pastor Pittman stood beside it, Bible in hand. Off in the corner of the cemetery under a dripping dogwood tree, Elsie Shimpock watched. Like a buzzard, I thought. Lord, she’s got to have some sort of empty life if going to funerals is her hobby, her kick. That woman dresses in black and creeps to funerals like a buzzard. Harmless, no one had ever known her to be otherwise, she just had a fetish for funerals. Still, she made me uncomfortable.

  As Pastor Pittman finished his few verses, two men walked up: one tall and bald with the build of a football guard, sweating in a tight tan sport coat, the other wearing green polyester pants and a plaid coat in a matching green and black. He had a beaky parrot nose and small, dark eyes. They shook hands with the preacher and I heard something about “lawyer…” cousin … got lost, “too late for the funeral, and where in this godforsaken place could you go to get a drink?”

  I felt myself tickle out a half smile. At least they’d asked the right minister. Ask the one at the First Methodist or First Baptist and they would have gotten a frosty stare. Pittman and his parish knew their liquors and wines, where to find them. He’d probably invite these two odd fellows home, saying, “A little toddy after a rain will help get the dampness out of one’s system.” He’d intone, hurmph, hurmph, and lean the decanter their way, pouring a generous share.

  There was a note on the refrigerator when I got home. Ida Plum had gone to Juanita’s Beauty Shop. That’s where you got the news, found out what was going on in town. The Littleboro Messenger came out every Wednesday, had only the old news … things everybody already knew, just had it confirmed. Everybody felt better to see it spelled out there in black and white. That made it official. Speeding tickets, DUIs, pocketbook thefts, bad checks, grass fires, deaths and weddings.