Doing It at the Dixie Dew (20 page)

Frankly, I thought, the Merritt house didn't look much better than half the empty buildings downtown. Windows on the third floor were missing shutters or were broken and boarded up. I admired the beautiful blue balls in the lightning rods on the roof, but even some of the rods were broken, bent and twisted.

A wooden balcony jutted from a second-floor window. It hung loose with one side askew. Sad, I thought, a house this elegant falling apart.

To the rear of the house, I saw a structure that had once been a greenhouse. Now only a few panes of glass glinted and weeds tall as trees shot up through the rest.

Inside this mess, I thought, lives Miss Tempie Merritt, who never lets you forget she was a Juilliard scholar and once played a concert tour. She loved to lavish all that information around. The old frump. And she dressed in clothes so old they were almost back in style again. Thin cottons with square lace collars, tucks, dropped waistlines; Miss Tempie even let her slip show before teens wore slips as dresses. She loved to point out her hand-tatted lace edging.

The old bird, I thought as I rubbed one of the gate's iron finials that was old and heavy in my hand. Miss Tempie could hold one hell of a yard sale. Probably every piece of furniture ever bought for the house was still there. She'd hang on to everything until her last breath, then try to take it with her if she could. Tempie had probably left it all to her poodle, but Harold had done some lawyer a big favor and died first. Now Miss Tempie was probably stewing up a new will and driving Ethan Drummond crazy.

I sighed. A little breeze ran through new maple leaves in the thick forest on each side of the gate. I pictured Miss Tempie sitting up nights clipping newspaper coupons for cat food.

A Jeep wagon slowed. Malinda honked and waved. “I'm parking here,” she said. “That driveway looks tough on tires.” She hopped out, slammed the door.

“Where's your hat?” I asked.

“You kidding? I may do a lot of things, but wearing hats isn't one of them.”

“Gloves either?” I inspected Malinda's hands. “I thought you said this was a hat and glove occasion.”

“Mental gloves.” Malinda held both hands out, wiggled her fingers. “I'm careful what I touch and even more careful what I eat.” She opened the gate. Huge hinges gave rusty, deep-throated groans.

I connected the sound with being trapped in the mausoleum, and it wasn't a fond memory.

“If it smells fishy…” Malinda pushed the gate open and left it. “In case we have to leave on the run … If it smells fishy … I'm passing it up.”

“Just because I've been behind her in line at the grocery checkout and know she doesn't own a cat isn't proof positive.”

“It's proof enough for me.” Malinda locked her car and dropped the keys in her pocket. “That driveway looks rough on panty hose, too. Lucky I'm not wearing any.”

Grasshoppers leaped and whirred in the weeds and gravel, then sat and buzzed like rattlesnakes.

“This place is snaky,” I said, eyeing the waist-high weeds.

“All snakes don't live in the grass,” Malinda said. “Some dig pits and fill them with goo for little girls to fall into.”

“No pits here,” I said, picking my way. “Just pitchforks we may be walking into.” I'd worn a blue shirtwaist dress but wished now I'd worn jeans. The dress made me feel vulnerable and less able to move swiftly if I had to.

Malinda wore a denim shirt that kept getting hooked by briars.

A flock of crows chased a blue jay that screamed overhead. The crows' cawing sounded like laughter, cruel and teasing.

My heels sank in the gravel between briars. Several times briars whipped and scratched my legs.

“Long drives may be impressive,” Malinda said. “But who cares? I'm so hungry I'll eat the icing off the pan.”

“What?” I said. “You mean bowl.”

“No,” Malinda said, “I mean I'll eat icing off the pan. It's an old family story. Remind me to tell you sometime when we aren't picking our way through briars.”

The driveway widened and the weeds and briars thinned. My legs still burned from the scratches that felt raw and bleeding.

“A couple of coats of paint wouldn't hurt this place,” Malinda said. “My mama would have painted or moved out a long time ago.”

Behind huge white columns stood a wide concrete porch piled with dead leaves and fallen branches. Shrubbery grew almost as high as the second-story windows.

“Bet that roof leaks,” I said. “I bet it's leaked for years.”

We stood before huge double doors that had tall leaded fanlights in an arch above them. I twisted the doorbell that felt corroded. The bell gave an ugly rasp that echoed inside as if the house might be empty.

“What if the whole thing is a hoax,” Malinda asked, “and there's nobody here? I can't believe anyone lives like this.” She glanced at the debris on the porch, the cracked windows and bare wood showing where paint had cracked off completely.

To the rear of the house both of us noticed a freshly mowed area of grass, not weeds, and a planter perky with pansies. There was some new order in all this chaos. Some attempt.

We started to go around back, toward the mowed area, when one of the front doors opened.

Verna Crowell stood holding Robert Redford. She wore a faded green cotton housecoat and pearls.

Malinda poked me in the ribs.

“They're in the solarium,” Verna said. She had her eyes made up, and a round red spot of rouge like cartoon characters wore sat high on each cheek. They? I wondered who, besides Miss Tempie, was in the solarium.

“Kinky,” Malinda whispered behind me. “This is kinky.”

Verna stiffened, drew herself up and held the rabbit closer. “He's a rabbit, not a cat.” She glared at Melinda. “His name is Robert Redford.” She turned and we followed her from the foyer with its glass chandelier so dust hung and cobweb woven it would take six men scrubbing and two tubs of water to ever get it to shine, through smeared glass doors into a huge, dark hall that loomed with furniture and heavy oil portraits and was packed high with boxes.

“Lord,” Malinda muttered under her breath, “is this where dirt goes to die?”

“Oops.” I bumped a box tall enough to contain a coffin stored on end. Whatever was in the box didn't shift half an inch, and my thigh ached as if I'd hit a boulder.

The hall smelled of mildew, rotten fabric, old furniture and filth. We passed several sets of double doors locked with bolts as big as arms.

Verna put Robert Redford down and the rabbit hopped like he knew where to go. Verna hummed a little tune I tried to recognize until I gave up. Either the tune wasn't to a song I knew or Verna was making it up as she went along. The rabbit stopped once and scratched under his red halter. Verna waited for him. I saw glass doors ahead and light.

When Verna opened the doors, sunlight stung my eyes.

“It is an abrupt change, isn't it?” Verna asked.

The solarium was so thick with plants, my first thought was, A jungle. We'll need machetes to hack our way through. But Verna went smoothly around a tree and led us down a path. There had once been an indoor pool in the solarium, but over the years someone had filled it with soil, compost, whatever, and Miss Tempie had a regular vegetable garden growing there with cornstalks five feet high, tomato plants, okra and peas. Cucumber and squash plants tumbled from wooden tubs along the walls.

At a patio table spread with an irregular cloth, Miss Tempie sat wearing a straw hat. She'd tied a scarf over it that she knotted under her chin. On her arms she wore blue lace mitts, probably left from some prom or wedding fifty years ago. They covered liver spots and saggy old arms. There's no pride like old Southern pride, I thought.

“Girls,” Miss Tempie said. “Girls, do come sit down.”

There were five chairs at the table. I saw Malinda count, too. There's four of us including Miss Tempie, I added in my head, and no one else was in the room. Was this a séance? And the empty chair for a ghost? Would Miss Lavinia reappear in her nightgown? Or her beautiful eel-skin suit, the one she was buried in?

The cornstalks parted and there stood a man holding a shovel. His right hand wore a thick bandage. “Oh,” I remembered, and my head began to ache. I couldn't see his face, but I knew his size and shape. Rolfe, the man who had been with Miss Tempie in the cemetery. Her handyman, chauffeur, gardener … whatever dirty thing she needed doing.

Malinda saw the man and the hand at the same time. She nodded at me. “This isn't to be an all-female party after all,” she murmured.

Robert Redford suddenly bumped Miss Tempie's chair and bounded under the table, rocking it. Dishes clattered and Miss Tempie continued to pour a hot steady stream of tea that missed the cup completely and ran in a little brown stream on the tablecloth.

The rabbit shot out the other side of the table and Verna darted after him.

The soft scraping sound of a shovel being sent into the soil and lifted out again made my spine tingle. The man was shoveling a hole.

“Don't mind Rolfe.” Miss Tempie paused in her pouring. She held the pot aloft and gestured with her other arm. “I simply feel one must return to the soil what one can, when one can.”

Rolfe was burying something, I realized. But what? Rows of corn nearly hid him. All I could see was a torn black T-shirt that read “Jesus Saves” in large silver letters across the back.

“We owe a duty to the earth,” Miss Tempie said. “A debt that must be paid.” She looked with milky old eyes toward the ceiling.

Paid with murder? I wanted to ask, but didn't. Instead, I picked up my napkin … it was pink and faded where it had been folded. There was a rust spot the color of dried blood in one corner.

I noticed Malinda unfolded her napkin also. Aren't we the prim and proper ones? I thought. Present at what could be our last meal if we weren't careful, and we came of our own accord. Curiosity killed the cat. It could kill us.

Miss Tempie emptied the rest of the tea and said, “I can't believe we've run out already.” She got up and tottered toward the kitchen.

“Dishwater's stronger than that stuff,” Malinda said. “It's so thin I could read a newspaper through it.”

I choked a nervous giggle, then coughed. There was a dry spot in my throat that tickled. I kept coughing, the man kept digging and Malinda glanced around, pointed to the missing glass overhead, the smudged and dirty windows that were either cracked or half-broken.

Birds flew in, came and went through the missing windows. They winged and squeaked as they dipped down into the garden.

“Why are we doing this?” Malinda shivered. “I've been in slums I felt safer in.”

“Because somebody killed Miss Lavinia Lovingood and Father Roderick … but not necessarily both. We've got to find out.”

Verna came back, balancing a huge silver tray so heavy she rocked and swayed carrying it. She thunked it on the table. “Girls, when you get my age, don't go around thinking you can do anything you used to.”

On the tray were rows of vanilla wafers and thin lemon cookies arranged on a stained and crumpled paper doily.

“Can you get salmonella from cookies?” I mumbled to Malinda.

“Only if they're filled with warm chicken salad,” she said.

Miss Tempie tottered in, sandwich tray in one hand, teapot in the other.

“And speaking of chicken salad…” Malinda whispered.

“I make my own,” Miss Tempie said. “I always have.” She held the tray toward me and I hesitated. The sandwiches were nestled in parsley and decorated on top with parsley. They probably had parsley in the filling. Or what most people thought was parsley until it was too late. What Miss Lavinia mistook for parsley?

“I'm allergic,” I said.

“Now, I've never heard that,” Miss Tempie said. “Allergic to what? Certainly not chicken. Not my chicken salad with homemade mayonnaise and a little kiss of curry…” She puckered her mouth. “Oh, it is the best stuff.” She put a sandwich on my plate, then two on Malinda's, her old bony fingers blue and swift. “You must take at least a bite. That's only good manners.”

I ate a cookie that was dry, crumbly, and tasted like mothballs.

Verna took a sandwich, broke it in half and nibbled like a rabbit.

“Don't.” I reached out my hand to stop Verna mid-sandwich.

“Honey,” she said, holding her sandwich out of my reach. “I helped Tempie make these and this is my lunch. I walked over here.” She finished the sandwich and took another.

Miss Tempie ate sandwiches, too, her tongue clicking slightly as she chewed. “I think there's nothing better. And better for you. People today don't eat right. That's what's wrong with half the world.”

Malinda dipped a cookie in her tea, shrugged and gave me a half smile that said she could dunk and sip with the best of them. She even held out her little finger as she dunked.

The shoveling stopped and there were muffled sounds, then the shovel again. Another hole being dug? There were two of us and two graves waiting where no one would ever think to look. Certainly not members of our fine local law enforcement. If they ever thought to come looking here, Miss Tempie would give them cookies and tea and they'd bow and scrape to old Southern customs, the mystique of sweet Southern little old ladies.

Finally, Rolfe packed the earth around the holes, stamping with what sounded like huge feet. I remembered the sound of those feet. How they thumped and bumped down the hall to my bedroom. What did he plan to bury? I'm not sure I wanted to know.

“Too bad Father Roderick couldn't be here,” Miss Tempie said. “He liked my chicken salad so much. He even asked me especially to make it for Lavinia that day we had tea.”

“What day?” I asked.

“The day she came back. Came back to Littleboro to live.”

“Ha,” Verna said. “Ha on you. She didn't come back to Littleboro to live. She came back to die.”