Hidden Riches (15 page)

“You clearly don't give a damn about any of this or any of us,” Delcine told her husband.

Winslow didn't bother with a reply. Instead, he reached for the remote control for the television.

Delcine snatched it from his hand and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and the batteries popped out. A dent in the wall and tear in the wallpaper testified to the force she'd used.

The argument between them had been raging for the better part of an hour. The hotel's front desk had already phoned once asking them to keep it down because complaints were coming in.

In response, Delcine cranked the volume on the perky morning TV host, and when the commercials came on it was a battle to determine which was louder. Winslow, fed up with the argument and the TV noise, just looked at her, then manually turned down the volume.

“What do you want me to do, Marguerite? What do you want me to say? We're screwed. Okay. Does that make you happy that I said it?”

She put her hand on her forehead, clearly trying to gather her patience with her husband. Taking a deep breath—and then another one—she went to the area near the room's full-length mirror and bent to pick up the batteries and the back cover of the remote.

“Dammit,” she said seeing the crack in the cover.

Then, standing, she brandished the broken piece of plastic. “See this? Do you see this?”

“Yes,” Winslow said. “It's something else we'll have to pay for.”

That did it.

“We?” she said advancing on him. “Don't you even go there, you trifling excuse for a man. This is what our lives have become, a cracked and broken mess, and all because of your greed and stupidity.”

“That's enough, Marguerite.”

She stopped and stood ramrod straight, cocking her head just a bit. “Or what? What are you going to do? Hit me?”

Winslow looked at her in disgust, then stomped around her and to the closet. A moment later, he was back with his garment bag and two suits in hand.

“Where are you going?”

“Home. The funeral is over. There's really no need for me to stay down here.”

“Oh, no, you don't,” she said, reaching for the hanger. “You're not running out on me now.”

Winslow actually laughed at that.

“Run out on you? Hardly, Marguerite. I'm not stupid, despite what you may think. You're about to inherit three point eight million dollars. I'm not going anywhere.”

“Your ass is going to jail. For a long time.”

“There's been no indictment,” Winslow said.

“Yet,” she taunted right back. “And when it comes, you are going down. At least you'll have a bed in prison to sleep on. The kids and I won't even have that, thanks to you.”

“I'm not going to prison.”

As if he hadn't uttered a word, Delcine kept talking. “And don't go claiming Ana Mae's money. We haven't even started figuring out what that heap of rags is supposed to mean. That preacher and those damn cats are likely to get all of the money.”

Winslow moved around her again, this time to get his underwear and socks from the drawer he'd placed them in. A moment later he went into the bathroom and came out with his shaving and toiletries kit.

Hands on hips, Delcine watched him. “This is how you handle every problem that comes your way in life, isn't it? You just walk away.”

“Yes,” he said, calm as a poker player bluffing a low pair.

Fully packed, he picked up his Ray-Bans from the dresser top, slung his garment bag over a shoulder, and headed toward the door. “Later.”

Delcine threw the batteries at him as he walked through their hotel room door.

Archer and Clayton finished off the last of the eggs Benedict in the dining room of the bed-and-breakfast. The booklet of quilt photos from Everett Rollings was open on the table.

“Where should we start?” Clayton asked.

“Are you sure you mean that
we?
”

Clayton's gaze met his partner's. “After last night you have to ask me that?”

“Just checking,” Archer said. He turned to the beginning of the booklet to find the image of the overall quilt. “My guess is that your sisters will start with the first block and work from there. We can begin with a different one, maybe one of the ones on the bottom row.”

But Clayton wasn't really paying attention. His thoughts were on Ana Mae. “She was almost like a mother to me, you know.”

“Who?”

“Ana Mae.” Clayton dabbed his napkin at his mouth and placed it on the left side of his plate. “Mama was always working, and Daddy was gone by then. I remember when I was about nine or ten, I'd gotten into a fight with a couple of boys at school.”

“A faggot fight?” Archer said, a knowing sympathy in his voice.

Clayton nodded. “I was constantly beat up. But that one was especially brutal. Mama was cleaning somebody's house, but Ana Mae was home, doing some of the extra ironing that Mama took in.”

Archer reached for and took Clayton's hand in his. “What did she do?”

Closing his eyes, Clayton gave a little half-laugh. “She sat at that same rickety kitchen table that's there now and cried with me. Then she got a rag and cleaned my face, made me a cup of tea with honey and a little bit of something else that she knew Mama wouldn't like . . .”

“A touch of medicinal hooch?”

He smiled. “Something like that. And then she said the most remarkable thing.”

Archer squeezed his hand, and Clayton reveled in the support and the love from his partner. “She told me that God made me just the way he wanted me. That I was special and perfect just the way I was. Ana Mae taught me how to be gay and proud in a time and place when being either was virtually impossible.”

“She was a special lady,” Archer said.

Swallowing, Clayton nodded. “It's funny how I've tended to forget that. Being here has brought it back.”

Archer reached for the napkin and pressed it into Clayton's hand. Dabbing his eyes, Clayton said, “I took her for granted and then ignored her because she was poor and uneducated and represented everything that I wanted no part of.”

“Shh,” Archer said. “She loved you and knew you loved her.”

“But I never told her,” Clayton said, the tears now openly falling.

“Yes, you did.”

Clayton shook his head, denying the words.

Archer took Clayton's chin in his hand to make him look into his eyes. “Yes, you did, Clay. You became a success. You're a doctor. Do you know how proud she was that her baby brother was such a big shot? And he married a lawyer.”

That got a chuckle out of Clayton.

“Hey, no more shoulda, coulda, woulda. Not only isn't it productive, it's pointless. If she didn't love all three of you, she wouldn't have left you all anything in her will.”

“The cats will probably end up claiming all the money,” Clayton said.

Archer's mouth quirked up at that. “You're probably right.”

“We don't need the money,” Clayton said. “Not the way I think JoJo does.”

“Her husband is a revolting man.”

“Has been from day one,” Clayton said. “I don't know what she sees in him.”

“And I'll bet there are a lot of folks in this town saying the same thing about us.”

Both men laughed out loud at that. Then, since no one was around to see, they shared a tender kiss.

From around the silk screen that separated the dining room from a small prep area at the bed-and-breakfast, Nan March peeked out when the talking stopped. A fresh pot of coffee in her hand, she stifled a gasp when she saw the two men kissing. Never having witnessed anything like that before, she was caught between fascination and revulsion. Because of what was in Ana Mae Futrell's obituary, she'd known they were that way. But knowing something and seeing it with your own two eyes was altogether different.

But the kiss wasn't what shocked Nan the most.

There had been a lot of speculation around town about what was going on with the Futrells. Now she knew for certain.

As she'd refilled their breakfast plates, she'd gotten several glimpses of the booklet they referred to throughout the meal.

Eddie Spencer had been right. One of Ana Mae's quilts had something to do with a whole lot of money she'd left for her family. But apparently there was a catch, and each of the Futrells was trying to beat the others to claim it.

Nan slipped back into the kitchen. She put the coffee carafe on the counter and picked up her cell phone, hoping it wasn't too late to place a bet at the barbershop.

T
he siblings agreed to work through the puzzle as a team—the rationale being they could get it done faster that way. The plan was to meet up at Ana Mae's after breakfast and then start a diligent search. They worked at a disadvantage, having been away from Drapersville for so long. And the Lord only knew what Rosalee and Reverend Toussaint were up to. So a united front seemed the best bet.

But Archer and Clayton, figuring that the girls would want to start with the first quilt block, opted to do their own analysis from the opposite end. So far neither of them had been able to decipher Ana Mae's message on the block featuring a mop and a bucket.

“I wish Rollings had given us some more guidance on how we're supposed to figure out all of this,” Clayton said.

The booklet with the images from the quilt was propped open on the car's dashboard in front of him.

Behind the wheel, Archer stopped for a light. “Ana Mae worked as a domestic. So that's a start.”

Clayton frowned. “That seems too easy.”

“In the legal profession, sometimes we find that the easiest explanation to a problem usually works,” Archer said. “Go to the front with the picture of the whole quilt.”

As Archer made the left turn onto the street to Ana Mae's house, Clayton flipped back to the beginning of the book.

“The quilt really is pretty,” he said. “I remember Ana Mae always liked color and lots of it.” Clayton smiled as he traced the images on the paper with a finger.

“Fried chicken,” he said looking at one of the blocks. “Ana Mae made the best you've ever eaten.”

“Maybe you can look for her recipes when you get to the house.”

Clayton caught the singular in Archer's voice. “Where are you going to be?”

“I'm going to drive around a bit. Explore the area. Then hopefully get some work done back at the B and B.” He glanced over at Clayton, “This is a journey for you and your sisters, Clay. Something that the three of you need to do together.”

“But . . .”

Archer stilled the objection with a hand on Clayton's thigh. “I'm still going to be here with you and for you,” he said. “But this is a time for you, Marguerite, and Josephine to reestablish your connections. You're scattered all over the country, and none of you likes North Carolina, so in addition to saying good-bye to Ana Mae, this might be the last time you see your remaining sisters, too.”

Clayton stared straight ahead and then closed his eyes for a moment.

“I never really thought about it that way,” he said. “But you're right. The only one of us who loved this place was Ana Mae.”

Archer weighed his next words carefully. Then, nodding toward the quilt booklet on the dash of the rental, he said, “And maybe Ana Mae wanted you to know that.”

When Delcine finally arrived at Ana Mae's house, JoJo was sitting at the kitchen table flipping through a small yellow box. The coffeemaker burped and dribbled its last drops of java as a kettle on the stove began its windup to a full whistle of boiling water.

“Where's Lester? I see the car is gone.”

JoJo looked up. “Hey. He went to Walmart. What took you so long?”

“Winslow and I got into it,” she said. “He's headed back to D.C. . . . to, uh, check on the kids.”

JoJo's eyebrows rose, but she didn't say anything.

Delcine had never even so much as hinted that she and Winslow had anything but the picture-perfect marriage, coordinated by Martha Stewart and as solid as a Norman Rockwell painting. They were living and breathing the American dream in a huge house in one of Maryland's wealthiest counties. Their neighborhood was so exclusive and expensive it was called an
enclave
on the site JoJo googled for information.

JoJo and Lester lived in an enclave too: the Brighton Beach Mobile Home Community. That was a laugh. The whole dump was in the middle of the desert and far from bright.

“Clay will be here in a bit. He called when they left the bed-and-breakfast.”

Delcine rolled her eyes at that. “As if this backwoods metropolis would know what a suitable B and B was.”

JoJo shrugged. “I drove by. It looks real nice.”

They were spared what JoJo knew would be Delcine's caustic comment on their differing definitions of the word nice by Clayton's knock on the screen before he came in.

“Good morning,” he said, and headed straight to the counter. “Thanks for putting the water on,” he said over his shoulder to JoJo.

“I pulled some tea down.”

He looked at a box of Lipton tea bags on the counter, near the chipped mug she'd set out for him.

“Archer found and used some tea leaves the other day. I'm going to brew a cup of that.”

“Tea leaves?” Delcine said. “Is that what that stuff is? I thought Ana Mae had a stash of marijuana. I almost threw it out, but the container was pretty.”

She pointed to where Clay would find the tea tin amid the clutter of the kitchen counter.

“Sister Ana Mae Futrell of the Holy Ghost Church of the Good Redeemer would not be having any of that mari-jay-whanna in her house,” Clay said, hands on hips mimicking an indignant church lady.

He measured out tea leaves, added them to an infuser, and then found a proper teacup and saucer in the cupboard.

JoJo laughed at his antics.

“Well, that is true,” Delcine conceded. However, unwilling to lose ground, she added, “but we didn't think she played the lottery either.”

Chuckling, Clayton went about preparing his tea. “You have a point there.”

He added a touch of honey and then sat at the table. “So, what's the plan?”

By mutual agreement, the Futrell siblings decided to start their search together, and they would begin at the place where it all started—with the lottery ticket.

Since Lester had Ana Mae's car, Delcine drove. Clayton claimed the backseat before JoJo could start whining. It didn't take long for them to get to the Day-Ree Mart, where Ana Mae bought her winning ticket. It had been in the same place for the last four decades and hadn't changed much in the intervening time.

“I always wondered if it was spelled like that because they didn't know how to spell dairy or if they were being cute,” Clayton said from the backseat.

“I'd go with the former,” Delcine said dryly.

“You're both wrong,” JoJo said. “It's named after the first owner's parents.”

Delcine glanced over to look at her but quickly got her eyes back on the road.

“And you know this because . . . ?”

“'Cause I used to, um, see Billy Ray Jarrett.”

“Billy Ray Jarrett? Who was that?” Delcine asked.

“R.J.,” Clayton said from the back. “He had the most gorgeous eyes.”

“That wasn't all that was gorgeous about that man,” JoJo said on a knowing purr.

“Well, who was the Day and who was the Ree?”

“His daddy was Dayton and his mama was Maureen, but apparently everybody called her Ree.”

“Does anybody in this godforsaken place just have a normal name?” Delcine said.

“Welcome home to Carolina, sis,” Clayton said.

The Day-Ree Mart had actually been updated over the years. These days, the North Carolina lottery was a big part of its business. Much like Junior Cantrell's place and the barbershop, the Day-Ree Mart served as convenience store, gas station, meeting place, and all-around spot for anyone who wanted to know what was going on.

The lottery ticket Ana Mae purchased had come from here.

Inside, they passed a crammed display of Doritos, Cheese Doodles, fried onions, bags of pork skins, and potato chips in no less than six different flavors. And right next to the salty items were all of the sweet ones: boxes of Little Debbie snacks and a lot of oatmeal cream pies and the southern favorite Moon Pies. Not a piece of fruit could be spied in the place.

Hot dogs, sausages, and other high-fat processed meat items rolled on a grill that was constantly kept supplied. The Day-Ree Mart still made the best hot dogs in all of Drapersville.

“Umm,” JoJo said, inhaling the scent of hot dogs. “Remind me to get one of those before we leave. I love me some Day-Ree Dogs. And Lester likes oatmeal cream pies.”

Delcine did her eye roll as Clayton approached the clerk behind the counter. His name badge read “Roscoe.”

With a single question, the convenience store clerk pegged them as outsiders. “Y'all all need to get the way up to Virginia Beach?”

He reached under the counter and came up with a piece of paper about the size of an index card. “Here you go,” Roscoe said, handing it to Clayton. “Just make a right up at the light and follow them there directions till you get there. We get a lot of folks like y'all all who take a wrong turn and wind up here. We got a special going if you wanna get some snacks for the road. Buy two Day-Ree Dogs, get a snack cake free. Any one of them over there,” he said, pointing to yet another overflowing display of high-calorie items.

“No, thank you,” Delcine said.

At the same moment, JoJo said, “I'll take one of the specials, and I need a couple of boxes of those oatmeal cream pies to take home.”

“God, JoJo,” Delcine mumbled.

Several customers came in then, half of them making a beeline to the expansive lottery ticket display and the others queuing up at the hot dog grill.

Roscoe greeted them all by name before turning back to the out-of-towners.

“We're not here for directions,” Clayton said. “My name is Clayton Futrell, and we'd like to speak with the store manager.”

“Futrell? Y'all all related to Ana Mae?”

“Yes, she is, was, our sister,” Clayton said.

Roscoe put his hand across his heart. “My sympathies to all y'all. Ana Mae was some good people. God took an angel on home when he tapped on Ana Mae's shoulder.”

Clayton and Delcine shared a glance.

JoJo busied herself inspecting the rest of the junk-food items in the mini market.

“That's what we're here about,” Clayton said. “We wanted to talk with someone who knows about the lottery ticket Ana Mae purchased here.”

“Shoot, man, everybody knows about that.” Roscoe's grin said he ranked among the everybody. “Ana Mae sure was generous when she hit big too. 'Course it was a scratcher and not the regular numbers, you know. But ain't nobody I ever heard of won even that much on the regular numbers—a hunnerd and twenty five Gs. That's a lot of money.”

Delcine pushed forward, bracing her hands on the front counter. “What do you mean she was generous?”

“Well,” Roscoe said, scratching his chest for a moment, “Loretta sold her the ticket, and Ana Mae give her five hunnerd just as soon as she got the check from the lottery people. Me and Butter was working that shift too. I was stocking and Butter was out . . .”

Distracted, Delcine asked, “Butter?”

Roscoe's grin grew wider. “That's just what we calls him around here. His name is Robert. But like I was saying, Butter was out fixing the propane for a customer. But since we was all working that shift, Ana Mae gave us a reward too,” he said pulling a long vowel on the word so it sounded like reee-ward.

“She gave each of you five hundred dollars?”

“Shoot no,” Roscoe said. “That was just for Loretta, who sold her the ticket. Ana Mae gave me and Butter a hunnerd bucks a piece. I thought that was real nice since she didn't have to give any of us nothing at all.”

The Futrell siblings looked at each other. There was clearly a disconnect somewhere. Delcine expressed it.

“Are you sure Ana Mae won just one hundred twenty-five thousand?”

Roscoe narrowed his eyes at the thin woman. “Just? I don't know where y'all all from, but a hunnerd and twenty five thousand dollars is a lotta money round these here parts.”

Seeing that Delcine neglected—yet again—to don kid gloves when dealing with people, Clayton asserted himself as the man of the family.

“That's not what she meant,” he explained. “What my sister was trying to ask,” Clayton said, giving Delcine a sidelong look that said please, shut up, “was do you know if Ana Mae shared any of her winnings with other people?”

Roscoe shifted his bulk a bit so his attention focused solely on Clayton, giving a none-too-subtle cold shoulder to Delcine.

“Sure,” he said.

JoJo stacked three boxes of oatmeal cream pies on the counter and flashed Roscoe a broad smile. In an instant, his grin was back, and he zeroed in on first her ample chest and then her face. “You gonna need some help eating those, sugar?”