“
F
ronie says you had a hot date last night,” Delia remarked the next day when I dropped by her place after work.
And that wasn’t all Fronie said, I thought. I wanted to ask our old neighbor about her relationship with my aunt, but I couldn’t think of a way to do it without being rude and intrusive.
I shrugged. “Miss Fronie talks too much. I did go out with the guy who lives upstairs, Kent Coffey. Went to that fish camp down by the river, but the only thing hot was the cocktail sauce.”
Delia cuddled a huge orange tabby. “And?” she said, looking up at me.
“And nothing. He’s very good-looking, seems nice. The shrimp was delicious, but the hush puppies had sugar in them. We got home before ten.”
“Oh,” she said. The tabby thumped to the floor and gave me a hateful cat glare.
“Actually, I had a very good time,” I said, feeling a little guilty for being abrupt. I had been eager to go somewhere, anywhere away from my apartment, away from Todd Burkholder. But I didn’t tell Delia that. “Kent’s a manufacturer’s rep,” I explained. “Works for that new systems company just outside of town.”
“Think you’ll go out with him again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He’s good company, but I’m not ready for anything serious. Besides, I don’t know much about him.” I didn’t want to repeat the mistake I’d made with Todd, but it gave my sagging ego a boost to know somebody desired my company. And of course it didn’t hurt that he looked like a flesh-and-blood fantasy—mine, to be exact. But I had learned the hard way to watch my step.
Delia bent to stroke a purring calico. “You’re right to take it slow. I certainly wouldn’t rush into anything, but surely Fronie knows his background.”
She seemed to have something on her mind. Did she know something I didn’t?
“I don’t think she knows any more than I do. He’s quiet and minds his business, she says, and has been with her since January.
“Look, Kent’s not the least bit sinister or anything. He’s just a guy who wanted company for dinner. That’s all.” Delia was as bad as Aunt Caroline! Did she expect a resume, complete with family history? I did wonder, though, why someone as handsome as my upstairs neighbor would choose to ask me out, especially when I’d been out-and-out rude when we met. Surely there were a lot of single women eager to date him.
We sat in sagging wicker chairs on my neighbor’s back porch with the whish-whish of the ceiling fan and the cloying smell of gardenias by the steps. Outside the cicadas tuned up for their summer evening serenade. “Well, I have good news and bad news,” Delia said, refilling the iced tea in our glasses. “I think I know who bought your cookie jar.”
“Great! When can I pick it up?”
“That’s the bad news. There’s a problem. I ran into Lottie Greeson in the post office this morning—knew I’d seen her at the yard sale with Edith Shugart. They go everywhere together—cousins, you know. Anyway, turns out Edith was the one who bought the china dog, only the Shugarts are on vacation. Aren’t due back for several weeks.”
“Isn’t there any way to reach her? A phone number or something?”
“Not unless you want to try to chase her around Europe. They’re on one of those tours. You know, dinner in Paris, lunch in Venice—that sort of thing.”
“But when will they be back? Isn’t there some way her cousin could get it for me?”
“Not without checking with Edith first. I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait, Mary George,” Delia said.
Still I wrote down the woman’s name. Delia didn’t think the Shugarts were due back anytime soon, but it wouldn’t hurt to call.
Delia reached over and patted my arm. “We’ll find it, honey. Don’t worry. It isn’t going anywhere.”
She was right. It wouldn’t help Aunt Caroline’s cause to get all worked up over something I couldn’t change. I took a long swallow of tea, sweet and cold, and closed my eyes, relishing the peace of the moment. At least that idiot Todd hadn’t come calling the night before, or if he had he hadn’t found me at home. And he hadn’t phoned today either. Yet.
One of Delia’s four cats—the gray striped one with a white-tipped tail—rubbed against my ankles, making me welcome in spite of my dog scent. I would miss this old house. “When do I get a tour of the condo?” I asked. “I thought you were going to put your house on the market.”
Clink! Clink! Delia rattled ice in her glass, stared into the amber liquid like a fortune-teller searching for the future. “They won’t take pets,” she said, more to the cat at my feet than to me.
“Who won’t?”
“Those people developing the condos. Pine Thicket Paradise, they call it. How can it be paradise if they won’t let me bring my kitties? Mary George, what am I going do?”
“I can’t imagine Delia Sims without a cat draped around her,” I said to Augusta that night. “Why, she’d be miserable without her pets. I know how lonely I’d be without Hairy, even in the short time I’ve had him. I look forward every day to his being here when I come home.” And I reached down to stroke the dog’s head. He made one of his agreeable doggie grunts and pawed my knee.
Augusta sat in my aunt’s rocking chair with a sewing basket on her lap. She was making a skirt for herself, a beautiful filmy skirt of gold and green and blue all melting into each other. It didn’t even look like the same cloth I’d bought for her at Dorothy’s Fabric Shop. “That’s all very well and good,” she said with a slight flutter. “But you’re much too young to rely on a dog for company, Mary George.”
“You can depend on dogs,” I said. “Unlike some people I know.”
She raised her eyes toward the ceiling. “For heaven’s sake, child, you’ve had
one
unfortunate romance …”
“Guess again,” I said.
“Oh. Well, then, there’s that young man upstairs. He certainly seems interested.”
“Huh!” I said. “I doubt it. Desperate’s more like it.”
Augusta frowned. “Now, why would you say that? I don’t like to encourage vanity, Mary George. Pretty is as pretty does, I’ve always said, but there’s not a thing wrong with your looks. In fact, you remind me a bit of Shirley Sue Hawthorne.”
“Shirley Sue Hawthorne? Who’s that?” I tried to keep a straight face. I was still having a problem with the vanity bit.
“One of my temp assignments back in the thirties—just after talkies came out. An actress. Did very well in silent films, but talked like she had marbles up her nose.”
“I thought all those early movie stars were tiny and blond.” Augusta was only trying to boost my confidence. I couldn’t imagine looking like a film star, silent or otherwise.
“Not Shirley Sue.” Augusta shook out her skirt and examined it. It looked iridescent in the lamplight. “In fact, she might have been a little taller than you, and her eyes were brown as buckeyes. You have hair like hers too, except yours might have a bit more red in it.” Augusta sat down and began to hem her skirt. The needle flashed in and out faster than any sewing machine. “There’s not a thing wrong with your
looks
, Mary George Murphy!”
I smiled. Couldn’t help it. Maybe she was making this up, but I didn’t care. “What happened to her?” I asked. “Shirley Sue. Did she have to give up acting?”
“Naturally I had to guide her into another profession,” Augusta said. “Fortunately Shirley Sue was tall and willowy, fantastic dancer, and that was just before they started making all those grand musicals. She didn’t want for work. And later, I believe, she opened her own studio.”
Augusta swirled the skirt over her head and fastened it at the waist. “Fact is, she was the one who taught me to dance,” she said, twirling into the bedroom and out—with just a light pause in front of the mirror.
“Good thing you didn’t have to wait to learn from me,” I said, and found myself being pulled to my feet and whisked to the middle of the floor while Augusta punched a tape into the VCR. She detested daytime television—it embarrassed her, she said—all those intimate commercials, and people doing and saying things to make even a statue blush, although sometimes I’d hear her late at night laughing at
I Love Lucy
reruns. But she loved the VCR, and I kept her supplied with rented tapes of the good old forties stuff. In fact, I was becoming addicted myself.
Now, with Augusta at my side and “Achy Breaky Heart” coming at me from the TV screen, I was being forced to do confusing, bouncy things with my feet in time to the music.
“Don’t look down!” Augusta commanded, jabbing me in the ribs with a sling of her wrist. “Watch the screen, watch me. You’ll get the hang of it.”
We went through the steps six times, and just when I thought I’d get to rest, she fast-forwarded into a fiendish stomper called “The Boot-Scootin’ Boogie.”
I slept like a zombie that night. And when Kent called the next day and invited me out for Saturday night, I secretly hoped we’d go dancing.
We went to a movie instead—Dutch, because Kent was a little short on cash, but that was okay—and stopped afterward for ice cream at the Hound Dog Cafe.
Kent kissed me good night at the door, but I didn’t ask him in, although I think he expected me to. Frankly, I wasn’t in the mood for anything more. Not with Kent, not with anybody. Not yet.
What was the matter with me? Was it because of what happened with Todd? Although any positive feelings I’d had for the man were zilch, and I felt I owed a thank-you note to his little aerobics bimbo. After a couple of days of comparative peace, he’d called me twice at home and once at the clinic, until finally I’d threatened him with the police. My taste of sweet revenge had turned to vinegar, and I just wanted this creep to leave me alone.
Now I lay in bed listening to night noises outside my window. Hairy Brown snoozed on the floor beside me, and Augusta had taken off to wherever she goes when she’s not around. A squirrel scuttled over the roof, and branches brushed the side of the old house. At least I hoped it was branches.
Could Todd Burkholder have had anything to do with what happened to Aunt Caroline? But that didn’t add up. On the day my aunt died, Todd was still making out hot and heavy with that woman next door. Wasn’t he? Yet Delia had mentioned seeing a strange man across the street, someone my aunt hadn’t wanted to discuss.
I had an awful thought that Aunt Caroline might have bribed Todd to break off with me, but bribed him with what? And what was Bonita Moody trying to hide? She had denied being at Aunt Caroline’s the day my aunt died, even though Delia swears she saw her there. Unless Delia herself wasn’t telling the truth … but I didn’t want to think about that.
The only thing I was certain of was that whoever was responsible for my aunt’s death was looking for my family Bible, and for all I knew, they had already found it. Unless Aunt Caroline hid it where none of us would ever think to look.
Suddenly the room seemed close and dark. And quiet. I seemed to exist in a black void. Alone. I had felt this way when I was five and my parents died in that horrible wreck, until Sam made the ultimate gesture and let me keep his turtle overnight. From then on, he made every day an adventure: stringing a vine bridge over the creek (we both fell in), following the tracks of the wild and terrible “clopadopalous” that turned out to be a neighbor’s mule. I smiled, remembering how we’d collected lightning bugs and turned them loose in Cookie’s room while she slept. Cindy, the young apprentice cook, was generous and noted for her sticky buns, but hateful Cookie was not only stingy with her portions but a tattletale as well.
I remembered Sam’s face at ten, sunburned and smiling, his eyes sparkling with exciting news he just couldn’t wait to tell. What would he be like now? And why would I even care? But I did. Lately he had been more and more on my mind.
“Night is just day painted over,” I thought just before sleep. I wanted my old friend back. Maybe I’d never find him; or worse, I might be sorry if I did. But I knew I had to try. I had to find my Sam.