Doing It at the Dixie Dew Page 8

  But what was Father Roderick’s housekeeper doing driving a moving van? Ida Plum had said she’d been someone he took in and gave a job to. She probably didn’t own more than the clothes on her back. Odd. But I could have sworn that was his housekeeper driving hell-bent for somewhere behind the wheel of that truck. It was her or someone who looked enough like her to be her twin sister. Two of those women in this world would be tough to take, I thought, and I didn’t know why I thought that. Just a feeling. I really didn’t know why the woman bothered me. But something about her bothered me a lot.

  Chapter Ten

  I hated lawyers’ offices, even Ethan Drummond’s old wood-paneled, pine-smelling, green rubber-tiled reception room. It looked like it had the first day he’d opened the practice with a green plastic sofa, two boxy brown plastic chairs, plastic plants and magazines no one but a lawyer would read, except a three-year-old issue of Country Music, which Scott started thumbing through.

  The door to the inner office was closed, but behind its milky pebbled-glass pane I saw shadows, heard voices. Heyman bellowed something about this “Hicksville of a town” and “chicken shed police department.” Scott lifted one eyebrow, grinned at me. “What are we doing here?”

  Someone peered from the hall into the reception room, then eased himself into a chair closest to the door. Mr. Mumble Mumble Polyester, I remembered, Miss Lavinia’s cousin. He perched on the edge of the chair as if he wanted a head start should an occasion call for him to jump and run. He acknowledged me and Scott with a quick bob of his head, looked behind him as though someone might be following, then waited, holding his tan pancake of a hat over one knee of those god-awful green plaid polyester pants.

  I listened as Ethan Drummond’s easy tones seemed to calm Kingswood Heyman down. Ethan was used to charming juries, judges, the city council, hostile witnesses, church elders … anybody who sat before him. He and his wife, Miss Grace, had been friends with Mama Alice for as long as I could remember. They’d treated me like a daughter, always remembered my birthdays, Christmases … every occasion. They thought me and Ethan Clay, their son, would marry. We would go up to the university together after high school. He’d finish law school, pass the bar, we’d get married, come back to Littleboro to live, and Clay would take over his father’s practice. But it hadn’t worked that way. Clay had gone to England on a Rhodes Scholarship and when he came back, he’d settled in New York. Verna Crowell told Mama Alice once that Miss Grace said, “That boy’s up there just making pots and pots of money and it scares his daddy to death. He thinks you can’t make all that much money unless you’re doing something dishonest. He thinks Clay won’t come back to Littleboro even for our funerals.”

  I had gotten a degree in art education and signed up to teach at a school in St. Tomsbury, Maine, where I met and moved in with Ben Johnson, a green-eyed bookshop clerk who read his wares, worried about energy conservation, world hunger, nuclear waste, and wanted to live in the jungles of Brazil because they were supposed to resemble the early days of the Earth. The bookshop lost more money every month and he kept denying it, emotionally and physically. If we talked, we fought, so Ben Johnson was reading something his every waking minute. I got tired of shouldering the whole load for someone who didn’t know that responsibility begins at your own kitchen table. When Verna Crowell called me to say that Mama Alice had fallen, was in the Raleigh hospital unconscious and would probably have to go to a nursing home, I came home to visit and stayed. I slept in my old bed, woke to the walls of my childhood and wanted them back. The week my grandmother died, I wrote for Ben Johnson to ship my things. They came two weeks later and I was surprised at how neatly fifteen years of my life fit into a dozen medium-sized boxes.

  Ethan Drummond hadn’t charged me a cent for settling Mama Alice’s estate. After the nursing home bills were paid, there was little left. After the fall, Mama Alice had required around-the-clock skilled nursing care, and it didn’t come cheap. I wanted her to have the best. She deserved it, and if it meant there was nothing left but the house and its contents then I would find a way to work things out.

  There had never been a question in my mind that Mama Alice fell. Until that second little note landed in my life. There was no question now, just a nagging “what if?” Sometimes the words seemed to stand just behind my shoulder and whisper loudly in my ear. I tried to brush them away.

  Ethan opened the door. “You-all can come on in now. I’m short a secretary this morning, so you’ll have to excuse things.”

  The lawyer Kingswood Heyman sat huffed up and hulking in a leather wing chair. He smiled slightly at Miss Lavinia’s cousin and gave a half wave with one hand, as if he’d really like to dismiss all of us.

  Scott stood. I took an old wooden chair that faced Ethan’s cluttered desk. I’d never seen it when it wasn’t at least a hundred papers deep in stacks and folders that slid and leaned, stuck out sideways in all sizes and colors.

  “Seems Mr. Heyman and his client are a little worried about some … er … missing property of Miss Lavinia Lovingood.” Ethan didn’t look at us; instead he fumbled with papers.

  At last, I thought, maybe we can find out what all the fuss has been about. That would be a relief. I’d been accused of murder in an offhanded way, searched in an unconventional way. And I didn’t know a darn thing about either or anything that was going on.

  “Exactly what?” Scott asked. “What are they looking for?”

  “Miss Lavinia”—Kingswood Heymen stood, loomed rather, in front of us—“traveled this time with some of her jewelry. I won’t be specific, except to say it can’t be found. Not with her luggage, nor her handbag, and it’s not in her car. Stands to reason it was stolen, and you wouldn’t be the first innkeeper to let a sleeping person be relieved of some of their valuables, and, in Miss Lavinia’s case … her life.”

  Scott sprang at Heyman then and grabbed his lapels to pull him face-to-face.

  “Stop,” I said. “Stop.”

  Ethan pulled Scott away. “Son, there’s no need for that. He’s got no proof.”

  “Except the missing pearls,” the cousin piped up.

  “Pearls?” I asked.

  “Among other things,” Heyman said. “Family pieces acquired over a lifetime. They won’t be hard to trace.” He eyed me with a hard, unmoving stare and brushed his lapels and his shoulders, brushed away any traces he’d ever been touched. Finally, he shook himself like an unfriendly horse that had been petted.

  “I’ve known this young lady all her life,” Ethan said, “and her family before her. They’re as fine as they come. You could trust her with your life. Most certainly a handful of jewelry. She’d never touch it.”

  Heyman pushed the cousin toward the door. The poor man looked as if he were being pulled by an invisible rope, eyes bulging, heels dragging. “We’ll get this straightened out if I have to jerk all the skeletons out of all the closets in this Podunk place.” Heyman banged the door so hard the glass rattled.

  “Sorry,” Ethan said. “That man can’t get what he wants and get away fast enough to suit me.”

  “Ethan,” I started, “you know—”

  Ethan waved his hand in the air like he wanted to erase all that had gone on in this room in the last half hour. “You don’t have to tell me. I know you didn’t have anything to do with the old lady’s death, much less some assorted pieces of junk. I got a feeling Heyman is the kind who tries to create a cyclone to try to cover up some of his own mess.”

  Scott shook Ethan’s hand and I hugged him, smelling tobacco and the same scent of aftershave I remembered from childhood, feeling the same rough wool of his jacket against my face. “Take care,” I said.

  Ethan’s voice followed us down the hall as he waved us out. “Bye,” he said and then repeated what he’d said earlier, “You two be careful.”

  “I think he’s right,” Scott said. “People in this town have been lucky. They’ve trusted too long.”

  “Mama Alice never locked the back doo
r in her life,” I said later.

  “What about Verna? Some of the other neighbors?”

  “They’ve always been in each other’s houses … just like their own. They’d be offended by a locked door. Think it was the snootiest, most unfriendly thing they’d ever seen.” I laughed. I thought of all the times Verna Crowell had poked her head in the back door and hollered, “Yoo-hoo, Alice,” and just come on in. If no one was home, Verna had been known to borrow eggs, sugar, a cake pan, a steam iron, whatever she needed, and then return it a few hours later, laughing she bet we hadn’t missed it. The whole neighborhood had had a “my house–your house” kind of arrangement. Not anymore.

  Scott dropped me off at the Dixie Dew, which seemed too quiet with Ida Plum gone for the day and no guests. It was almost dusk when I realized I hadn’t seen Sherman all day. I checked his favorite sleeping places, under the back steps, the sunny side of the garage, the swing glider on the front porch. Nowhere. The food I’d put in his bowl this morning hadn’t been touched. That definitely wasn’t like Sherman, who ate like some other cat growled behind him ready to snatch his dish away.

  I checked the shrubbery around the front hedges, calling, “Kitty, kitty!” as I went. Sherman was named after the Civil War general and Southern scourge, William Tecumseh Sherman. I could scold, “William Tecumseh, stop that,” and it usually worked. Right now, I just wanted to find the cat. I wondered if I yelled, “William Tecumseh, come here right now,” the cat would appear at my feet.

  When I’d checked out the grounds around the Dixie Dew I started down the street toward Littleboro Cemetery. Sherman and Robert Redford had been known to romp over and around tombstones, hide under cedars and pounce at each other. Sometimes I thought Robert Redford saw himself as another cat, one with longer ears and a short tail. That rabbit was a riot. Verna Crowell sounded so funny when she talked about him. “I was sitting there watching TV, me and Robert Redford, when the news come on about that young Kennedy boy. I thought Robert Redford was going to jump right off my lap. It scared him so.”

  I walked inside the wrought-iron gates and up the gravel drive, calling Sherman. That cat, I fussed. If he’d decided to take a nap somewhere he’d wait for me to find him and, when I did, he’d simply yawn, stretch himself out and allow me to pick him up and carry him home.

  “Sherman!” I called. God, I hoped I wouldn’t run into Miss Tempie. Surely she didn’t come this time of day to put flowers on her dog’s grave. Creepy, I decided. Verna might love Robert Redford, she might make a fuss over him, but she’d have enough sense not to put flowers on his grave when he died. And not to expect to bury him in a “people” cemetery.

  The Merritt mausoleum stood dark in the shadows of cedars and dogwoods. I thought I saw something move behind it. I called again. I stood between the Merritts’ mausoleum and the Lovingoods’, wondering if it was too early for copperheads to be out. Leaves had piled up and decayed next to the side of the building. God, the things were spooky. I heard a noise, went around the corner and saw the brass door of the Merritt mausoleum was open. “Sherman!” I called. “Robert Redford!” I wrapped my arms around myself and felt utterly stupid. Here I stood in a cemetery in the almost dark trying to find a cat and a rabbit. No way was I going inside that thing to look. Besides, if it was dark out here, it would be pitch-dark in there. The cat, if he was in there, could just stay. He would come out when he got good and ready.

  I turned to go back the way I had come, between the cedars and mausoleums, when I heard a scratching in the leaves. “Sher—” I started. Then I felt something hard and heavy on my head. Something that hurt like hell.

  Who? Why? That was what I thought when I woke to the darkest dark, a zinger of a headache and a smell that nauseated me. A smell that was dank and cold. Basement? Was I in the basement? I felt the wall beside me. Cement. And under me, cement. I tried to stand and bumped my head hard … the ceiling was cement. This was no basement. I felt the wall on my left side. My God. It had to be the mausoleum. What was I doing in the dark inside a mausoleum? I remembered the door was open and I had called Sherman and heard a noise.

  Door. Mausoleums had doors. I eased my way along the wall, feeling it with my fingers, not daring to feel or touch anything else. The door had slammed shut by mistake, surely, and I’d fallen. That’s why my head hurt. I felt all around the door. Every crack and seam. I felt it top and bottom and in between. My heart hung tight in my chest, fluttering as frantic as a trapped bird. There had to be a catch somewhere I could trip with my hand. All I had to do was touch it and the door would open.

  Calm down, I told myself. Think. Think logically. Pretend you are blind and you’re feeling for the doorknob. Start at the top, go straight across, then move down. Measure with your fingers so you’ll know you’re covering the surface. Go slowly, slowly. You know it has a knob. It is a door. It will open. All you have to do is find the knob.

  My fist found where the knob was on the outside. Inside there was a smooth plate. No one opened a mausoleum from the inside, I realized with dread. No one ever came out of these things. They were one-way. In forever. Forever.

  A little ribbon of light lay in the corner and … eyes. The eyes moved closer. That was when I screamed.

  Chapter Eleven

  The eyes jumped back at my scream. Whatever it was, my scream had frightened it. An animal of some sort? Oh, that it was Sherman. If I had to die in this box, I’d at least have my arms around something familiar. That was the smallest of comforts … if there could be any in this situation. But if it was Sherman, he wouldn’t have jumped back at my scream.

  The animal crouched in the corner. I stayed very quiet, very still. Then I heard soft thuds on the floor. Thuds that had the rhythm of hopping. Rabbit hops. Robert Redford. That darn rabbit! I called and he came to me. I gathered him into my arms. He felt warm, as glad to be found as I was to find him. “You crazy rabbit,” I said, hugging him. “What are you doing here?” If only Robert Redford were a dog. He could bark. Someone might hear, come and let us out. But who? Few people ever came into this cemetery during the day and certainly no one at night. The wrought-iron gates had an automatic lock and timer on them. It might be days before anyone came. By then it would be too late. I tried to think if I’d even read in the paper of any funerals scheduled here this week. I couldn’t think of any. Not many people used Littleboro anymore. Except for the older families in town, and there were fewer of them every year. Most funerals were held in the new memorial park on the other side of town. It looked like a golf course except for the statue of Jesus on a pedestal that stood in the middle.

  I eased my fingers along the crack of light that was the door’s edge. It was a faint light now and fading fast. Soon all would be dark. I held the rabbit close. He nuzzled my cheek, nipped at my hair.

  The door was solid metal. And this one would probably be sealed even tighter except it was old and the ground around it had probably settled over the years. How much air did I have? How long could I last? And how long would it be before someone found me? What if they never did? There were no more Merritts left to bury. The mausoleum might not be opened for a hundred years and only then to move it, build a superhighway or shopping mall. Not a lot of chance of Littleboro growing to that anytime soon. Who’d even care whose bones were here in the mausoleum? If only I’d called to Scott I was going to look for Sherman, that I was going to the cemetery. Scott would never think to come here. He’d report me missing, as in kidnapped. I was an adult, or at least I thought I was most of the time. I wouldn’t even get my picture on the post office bulletin board, or on a milk carton. My features and my bones would fade to dust in this cement box.

  I felt moisture on the walls. If I had to lick the walls to stay alive, I’d do it. I’d do anything to stay alive until somebody found me … if I couldn’t get out.

  I put the rabbit down. He hopped back to his corner, probably settled down to sleep. He didn’t know where he was. I wished I didn’t.

  I felt un
der the door. Dirt. Could I dig my way out? Maybe if I dug under the base it would be enough to unsettle the rest of the concrete. Maybe the walls were so old they’d crumble. Why couldn’t they have been brick instead of cement? Why couldn’t the Merritts have built a cheap mausoleum? Why couldn’t they have used cheap materials that would age and crumble with time? No, this stuff was probably better built than a bomb shelter. “Sealed tight as a tomb” was no cliché. It was true.

  I dug until my wrists ached, all my nails felt broken and my fingers felt raw. I couldn’t tell if I had made any progress. That was when I began to bang the door. In desperation I screamed, cried, then fell exhausted in the dirt. Dirt that smelled rank and moldy, old as death.

  Then I thought I heard something. I didn’t know what … something. Or someone?

  A small, tinny sound. Closer.

  A faint voice.

  “Help!” I screamed. “Help me! I’m locked in here.”

  The voice stopped. Oh God, I thought, I’ve scared them away. They’ll think it’s a ghost. I yelled the wrong thing. “It’s Beth,” I yelled again as I pounded the door. “Can you help me?”

  Finally a small voice said, “Who? Little Beth McKenzie?”

  Verna Crowell.

  “Yes!” I called. “It’s me and I’m locked in the Merritt mausoleum. I’m locked in. Go get help!”

  “I don’t know how,” Verna said.

  “Call the emergency number in the phone book,” I said. “Call the police; call Scott; call anybody who can get me out.”

  “Be calm, be calm,” Verna mumbled. “I want to find Robert Redford.”

  “He’s with me,” I said. “Get help. We’re both locked in here.”

  “Don’t cry,” Verna said.

  I didn’t know if she meant me or Robert Redford.

  “Stay right there,” Verna said. “It’s too late to be out. People shouldn’t be running around in the dark.”