“I—I’m terribly sorry—”
“It really was my fault,” I said. “My hand brushed against the cup.”
“I saw exactly what happened,” Mr. Ridley said. “Miss Brown, clean up this mess. The cashier will settle with you.”
“You’re discharging me?”
“You are through here,” Mr. Ridley said. “And don’t ask me for a recommendation.”
Emma went away to the kitchen. When she came back with a cloth to wipe up the spilled chocolate, her face was very white.
“Don’t you worry, Emma,” Florence whispered. “You’ll find a better job. Mr. Ridley is an old slave driver anyway!”
Emma didn’t reply. She kept her head bent low as she mopped at the floor.
“Emma,” I asked, “how long will it take you to change your uniform?”
“About five minutes.”
“Then meet us outside as soon as you’re ready to leave.”
Emma nodded and returned once more to the kitchen. A minute later, Mr. Ridley brought me a fresh cup of chocolate.
“I am sorry you have been annoyed. Is everything quite satisfactory now?”
“No, it is not, Mr. Ridley,” I said. “I don’t care for the flavor of your chocolate. In fact, I don’t care for the flavor of anything about this place!”
I slammed a quarter down on the table, stood up, and walked out of the café.
Florence followed me, but once we were outside, she protested.
“We might at least have eaten the food since we paid for it,” she said.
“I’d starve before I’d touch anything at that place, Flo. I’ll never set foot in there again—not after the way he acted.”
We waited in Bouncing Betsy. Emma came out wearing her hat and carrying a paper bundle under her arm. Florence made room for her in the front seat.
“It was kind of you to wait.”
“We’ll take you home,” I said, starting the car.
Emma said that she lived at a rooming house on Bancroft Street, and I turned the car in that direction.
We rode along in silence until Flo said, “Have you any idea what you’ll do, Emma?”
“I’ll try for another job. If I don’t get one, then I may starve.”
“Oh, surely it’s not that serious,” I said.
“Well, not quite. I have about ten dollars saved. And if the worst came, I could go to Chicago and live with a cousin—if she’d take me. But Ann has four children and can’t afford to help me much.”
“Maybe Dad could use you at the newspaper office,” I said. “Can you run a typewriter?”
Emma shook her head.
“It’s very kind of you, Jane, but I am not trained for newspaper work.”
“Perhaps you could find a position as companion to someone,” suggested Florence. “Didn’t you study French and music.”
“I’d like such a job,” said Emma. “Unfortunately, I can’t locate any. I do know of a place where I might find housework.”
She opened her purse and withdrew a clipping torn from the morning edition of the Greenville Examiner.
“Wanted—girl for general housework,” Emma read aloud. “Board, room, $2.50 a week. Apply at Old Mansion, White Falls.”
“The pay isn’t very high,” I said.
“No, but with my room and board, I’d not have many expenses. Unfortunately, I can’t apply for the place because the bus doesn’t run down that way.”
“My bus does,” I said. “I’ll take you to White Falls if you want to go there.”
“I’d be grateful.”
“How soon can you be ready?”
“Not more than twenty minutes. It won’t take me long to pack my suitcase.”
I dropped Emma off at her rooming house on Bancroft, promising to return for her in a very few minutes.
If we were heading off as far as White Falls, we really ought to let somebody know where we were going. I’ve learned from hard experience that even though I may be a grown woman of twenty-four when I don’t turn up for meals on time, Dad—not to mention Mrs. Timms, our housekeeper—tends to fear the worst. I stopped off at home intending to inform Mrs. Timms, but she was out, so I telephoned my father at the Examiner office.
“What time do you expect to get back from White Falls?”
“Probably not until after dark,” I said. “Please let Mrs. Timms know I’ll not be home for dinner, Dad.”
“You’ll be missing out on her black pepper chicken, you know,” Dad said, “and who knows what other assaults on the stomach lining. Mrs. Timms got another package from her sister in Calcutta today, and I’ve no doubt it was packed to the brim with spices.”
Mrs. Timms, who hasn’t traveled outside a fifty-mile radius of the city of Greenville more than a handful of times in her fifty-three years of life—and then only to go as far away as Chicago—has a sister Henrietta who married a diplomat. Henrietta has made it her mission in life to make Mrs. Timms’ vicarious experience of her own world travels as vivid as possible. This is how our household came to—as Dad puts it—consume more spices per annum than the entire subcontinent of India. I’ve grown to love Mrs. Timms’ curries, but my father has never adjusted. The odd thing is, I’ve been expressly forbidden to breath a word of the discomfort my father endures on account of his over-spiced diet. I suspect my father harbors feelings for the widowed Mrs. Timms which are far deeper than ordinary friendship.
But then Mrs. Timms is no ordinary housekeeper. My mother died when I was ten, so she’s practically raised me since. They have a lot in common: Mrs. Timms and Dad. My father is disappointed in me because I refuse to become a member of staff on his newspaper, and Mrs. Timms is disappointed in me because she never managed to turn me into a proper lady who doesn’t go out with tears in her stockings and remembers to apply a conservative coating of lipstick.
Dad and Mrs. Timms did somehow succeed in marrying me off—despite my apparently slovenly ways—to a lovely newspaperman by the name of Timothy Carter. That’s how I came to be Mrs. Carter, relict of the late Timothy Carter. We only lasted a year before Timothy committed the unpardonable sin of going down a dark alley in hot pursuit of a scoop and subsequently coming between a mafia hitman’s bullet and his intended victim. Now I’m a widow and absolutely determined that if I do end up center-aisling it a second time it won’t be with another newspaperman.
“I’ll tell Mrs. Timms that you won’t be home for supper,” my father promised. “Drive carefully, Jane.”
After that, we stopped off at Flo’s. Her mother was still out, ostensibly maintaining order and decorum amongst the ranks of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Reverend Sidney Radcliff was in his study, knee deep in wadded up writing paper and cigar butts.
“When are you going to break down and get a typewriter to compose your sermons?” I asked by way of greeting.
Revered Radcliff just laughed. I think that now, even if he saw the light and wanted a typewriter, he’d refuse to modernize just to spite me.
“Where are you going again?” he asked absently, even though Flo had already told him twice.
“White Falls.”
“Oh, yes,” said Reverend Radcliff. “Used to have an aunt who lived there. Nice little hamlet, at least the bit of it that hasn’t yet washed into the river.”
When we returned to Bancroft Street, we found Emma waiting on the front porch with her suitcase. The luggage stowed the back seat, we drove out the south road which led through fifteen miles of rolling country to the town of White Falls, located on the bank of the Grassy River.
During the ride, Emma was by turns talkative and morose. I supposed Flo and I were sympathetic listeners because Emma told us all about her difficulties since graduating from school. Her parents had left her with more debts than money, and after the estate had been settled, nothing had been left. She had worked in a drug store, in a restaurant, and as a nanny, but none of those positions had proven satisfactory.
“I haven’t been very lu
cky,” she said. “It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if this housekeeping job is gone before we get to White Falls.”
“We’ll hope not,” I said.
I worried we might be delayed by a rainstorm. Clouds scudded like sailboats across the sky. I called Florence’s attention to them, but she said, “Oh, the sun is shining. It won’t rain for hours.”
However, before we had covered two-thirds of the distance to White Falls, the gathering clouds blotted out the last patch of blue. Florence rolled up the car windows to protect us from the chill wind. It grew darker, and flashes of lightning crackled across the sky.
“Will we reach White Falls before it breaks?” Emma asked.
“Not a chance,” I said. “The rain is coming now.”
A great white sheet of rain approached from the direction of the Grassy River. A few drops of rain splattered the windshield, and then a deluge descended. The pavement became a lake, and I could not see more than ten feet beyond the headlights.
“This is a regular cloudburst!” I said, slowing Bouncing Betsy to a crawl.
“Maybe we should pull up under a tree,” Flo suggested. “You’re apt to run off the road.”
“If I stop and shut off the motor, the engine wires may get so wet from this driving rain that we won’t be able to get it started again until the storm is over,” I said. “I believe it’s better to keep going.”
Before Bouncing Betsy had traveled very much farther, it became apparent to me that my decision had been unwise. The rain was coming down harder. A coughing gasp from the engine warned that the motor might die anytime. We were going to be stranded in the middle of the road.
“We’ll have to pull up somewhere,” I said.
“I see a building just ahead.” Florence peered through the rain-splattered glass. “It looks like a shed.”
“And the door is open, or rather there isn’t any door!” I said. “A welcome port in a storm!”
I turned the car into the dirt track leading off the roadway and drove into the shed.
CHAPTER 2
As the car rolled into the building, I was startled by a squawking flock of frightened chickens. Too late, I saw that we had driven not into an empty shed, but into one which was very much occupied.
A small pig had been penned in one portion of the room and tethered to a post was a once-white goat. Three small children in soiled overalls cowered against the wall, one crying in terror at this startling intrusion of Bouncing Betsy.
A woman in a long, faded calico dress, holding a spoon in hand, stared open-mouthed at us, while her husband, unshaven, straw hat set back on his head at a rakish angle, slowly came toward the car.
“Mercy!” Florence said under her breath. “Imagine an entire family living in a place like this!”
Retreat was out of the question. Bouncing Betsy’s engine was dead. There was no use trying to start her again until the spark plugs had thoroughly dried.
“I am sorry to have driven right into your home,” I apologized as the man came over to the running board. “We never dreamed anyone was living here.”
“This ain’t really our home. We’ve just been squattin’ here since we lost our boat.”
“Well, at least you have a roof over your head,” I said. “And that’s not to be sneezed at in a rain like this.”
It was still raining pitchforks and hammer handles, and wind whipped around the building, making it creak in every one of its ancient joints.
“It’s a right smart downpour,” the man acknowledged. “Won’t you ladies git down and make yourselves to home? Though I reckon them cushions feel softer than anywheres we got to set.”
Flo and I climbed out and were confronted by the entire Gains family.
There was Ma Gains, from behind whose wide skirts the heads of two little Gains peered: Jed, who might have been ten or twelve; and old Joe Gains, the father, variously known as “Rusty Gains,” and “Mud Cat Joe.”
“We’re river people,” Mud Cat Joe informed us. “And we’re plumb off our beat a-livin’ in a cow barn. We ain’t naturally that kind of folks.”
“But what happened?” I asked. “Where did you used to live?”
“On the old Grassy,” Mud Cat Joe replied, jerking a scrawny finger toward the rear of the shed. “The river runs right along back of this building.”
“Did you work on the Grassy?”
“Work?” Joe repeated. “No ma’am, we lived on the river.”
“In a houseboat, but we think some bad men stole it,” said Jed, the oldest boy.
“Yep, Jed is right,” his father said. “We had the slickest little shanty boat that ever stuck on a sandbar. We tied her to the bank over thar to do some tradin’. When we got back, all we had left was the raft. Someone had cut the rope and gone off down river with our boat. So, we moved in here—us and the pigs and chickens.”
“Pigs on a houseboat!” Florence said. “I never heard of that before.”
“Oh, us river folks all have pigs. That is all except them that’s too shiftless and ornery to put up with ’em. But we packed ’em around on the raft, not right in where we lived.”
“But how do you live in a place like this?” Flo asked. “There isn’t even a place to cook.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Mud Cat Joe said. “Jennie, show ’em your cookin’ truck.”
Mrs. Gains led the way to the back of the shed, pointing to a rusty old iron cook stove whose pipe protruded from a large hole in the low roof.
“She draws like a house afire. Ain’t it so, Jennie?”
“It ain’t bad!” Jennie said.
“Jennie is the best corn pone baker on the river,” Joe said. “And her catfish! She bakes ’em so they’d melt in a man’s mouth.”
“When we kin get ’em,” Jennie added.
“We ain’t had much vittles since The Empress was stole,” Mud Cat Joe said. “You can’t ketch many fish from the shore, and the hens don’t lay good when they ain’t on the river.”
“And the kids is nigh naked,” Jennie said.
“Yep, their clothes was all on the boat. Times is bad, but I allows I’ll build up another boat right soon if the skunks that took The Empress don’t bring ’er back. There’s right smart timber in this here shed.”
Joe ran an appraising eye over the dilapidated shelter above his head. Today it was only a shed. Tomorrow it might be a brand-new shanty boat, housing in comparative comfort, Jennie and Joe and their little brood.
Mud Cat Joe offered me the one good chair in the room, which he explained had “come floatin’ down the river” only that morning. He chatted at great length about The Empress, telling how he had searched everywhere along the shore for the missing houseboat but had been unable to find a trace of it.
“What does your boat look like?” I asked.
“Oh, there ain’t another like her. She looks like a purty little box a settin’ on a raft. She has a smoke pipe a comin’ out of her middle that’s painted green, and her sides is covered with tar paper. Inside she has two rooms—the settin’ and sleepin’ room, and the eatin’ room. The settin’ room is papered real purty with sheets we took out of a mail order book.”
“There was petunias growin’ in a box on the porch,” added Jennie.
“That boat sure was a daisy.” Mud Cat Joe sighed. “Best on the river, but she’s done vanished.”
The sun peeped out between two skudding thunderheads; the rain fell in fitful splashes and finally stopped altogether. We could continue their journey.
I stepped on the starter and gave a sigh of relief when Bouncing Betsy decided to run. The Gains family gathered around to bid us goodbye.
“Thank you for giving us shelter,” I said.
“You’re right welcome, Ma’am. Where you all goin’ now?”
“Down to White Falls, if the car is willing. Is it far from here?”
“Two miles by the river. Reckon it’s quite a spell farther the way you’re goin’.”
I shifted
into reverse, but Mud Cat thought of something more he wished to say. He crowded close, shouting above the roar of the engine:
“Say, if you see anything that looks like The Empress down that way, I’ll be obliged if you’ll let me know. We need that boat mighty bad.”
“We’ll keep an eye out for it,” I promised.
With the Gains family waving goodbye, I backed from the shed to the road. The pavement was wet and slippery, but already the sun had struggled through the clouds.
“Well, that was an experience!” exclaimed Florence, when we out on the road again. “You do have a way of getting into the strangest places, Jane. Such as Silva’s séance parlor for example!”
“Silva’s séance parlor?” repeated Emma.
“Oh, just one of Jane’s many adventures,” Flo said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t read about it in the newspapers?”
“I’m afraid I did not.”
“Well, everyone else in Greenville and surrounding territory saw the account.”
“I must have missed it,” Emma confessed. “I’m not much for reading the papers.”
“It’s too long a story to tell in full detail,” Florence said. “To sum it up: Jane had a little spare time, so she went out and solved a mystery about a weird looking witch doll. I shiver yet when I think of it! Incidentally, she saved the life of the Great Silva, and aided in the capture of an escaped convict.”
“Don’t forget the reward,” I added. “I suppose you had no part in all the excitement, Flo?”
“Not worth mentioning. Why don’t you devote your talents to Mud Cat Joe’s cause? He would appreciate it.”
“You mean the vanished houseboat?” I slowed the Bouncing Betsy to avoid a hard bump. “Well, that’s an idea! I can’t understand how anyone would be so low as to steal from such poverty-stricken people.”
“Oh, the boat may have just floated off down the river,” Florence said.
“Mud Cat said the rope had been cut.”
“That’s so. Well, Jane, perhaps you can solve the mystery of what became of the vanished houseboat!”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t interest me deeply. I do mean to take the Gains family food and clothing. And they should have a better place to live. That old shed must be freezing cold at night.”
Jane Carter Historical Cozies: Omnibus Edition (Six Mystery Novels) Page 16