Angel at Troublesome Creek

by Ballard, Mignon F.

  The child turned and waved to me as the old gray Chevrolet disappeared around the corner, but the woman in it never looked back.

  “She must have heard me calling. Why did she ignore me like that?” I asked Delia.

  “Peculiar—like I told you,” my neighbor said. “Belongs to one of those far-out religious sects. Thinks it’s a sin to go to the bathroom.”

  “Wow! That must get pretty uncomfortable.”

  She laughed. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  That night we counted the proceeds. We had taken in a little over a thousand dollars, which, with the sale of the house and furniture, would enable me to pay off the rest of my aunt’s funeral expenses and most of her other debts as well. Aunt Caroline had been forced to borrow a large chunk of money after Uncle Henry died, and had been repaying it by the month.

  I was glad not only for Delia’s bookkeeping skills but for her easygoing, practical nature, and I spent that night in her home. The next morning I moved into the box-crammed three-room apartment in the rear of Fronie Temple’s faded brick house that sat back from the road in a tangle of dogwood and rhododendron. “I never did like to cut grass,” my landlady said. “And I’m not about to start now!”

  My belongings had been delivered the afternoon before, but other than the day I’d rented the apartment when the rooms were bare and fresh with paint, I hadn’t had a chance to inspect what was to be my home.

  Home. Aunt Caroline’s favorite rocker, Uncle Henry’s old leather chair, the china lamp with a hand-painted shade. Stacks of books. Dishes. Boxes of linens. Silence. And me.

  The rooms were fairly large with high ceilings and a row of windows at one end of the living area. The walls had been painted a pale yellow by someone who wasn’t too neat, and tiny drops and spatters dotted hardwood floors that probably hadn’t been refinished since the house was built. It was much like the house I grew up in, and I should feel right at home. But I didn’t. I was alone, tired, and surrounded by the biggest mess I’d ever seen. I sat on a packing crate and thought of all the things I had to do. My salary at the animal clinic wasn’t as much as I’d been making in Charlotte, but the rent was less, and I might just get by if I didn’t eat too much.

  Still, I wasn’t one step closer to finding out who murdered Aunt Caroline. I had a strong feeling it had something to do with the missing Bible, and I was determined to find it. How, I didn’t know. I did know that if anything had happened to me, my aunt would have made it her business to learn who was responsible, and that I was letting her down. Suddenly I felt like the last person in the world, and grief, like a heavy, gray blanket settled about my shoulders. Tears swelled hot in my throat, and I cried until a kind numbness came over me. I felt empty. A rag doll with no stuffing.

  “Feeling better now? A good cry usually helps, I think. But duty calls, Mary George. All these things aren’t going to get put away by themselves.” The words, spoken softly, were nevertheless emphatic, and I looked up and saw her there. Augusta Goodnight had traded her froufrou hat for a bright blue bandana and she stood in the kitchen doorway with a box of utensils—which she made a point of rattling. “Well, come on, let’s get on with it! The kitchen first, don’t you think?

  “And what do you call this oven the size of a bread box? Does it really cook as fast as they claim?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was almost a week before I realized the cookie jar was missing. To tell the truth, it took about that long to sort through the clutter and put everything away, especially with Augusta’s help.

  “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” she told me, putting my curling iron in the silverware drawer. Thought it was a cooking utensil, I suppose. A few days later I discovered my pizza cutter in Uncle Henry’s household toolbox. Looked like a lawn edger to her, Augusta said.

  But, to give credit where it’s due, it was Augusta who made me aware that the cookie jar was gone.

  “You need something bright up here,” she said as we lined the kitchen shelves with yellow scalloped paper. “Don’t you have a flower pot or something? Maybe a big jar?”

  I knew immediately what had happened. It was that awful, hopeless feeling you get when you know you’ve done something stupid and it’s too late to do anything about it, like the second after you lock your keys in the car.

  But we looked anyway. There were still a couple of boxes I hadn’t unpacked, and I shifted the contents to the floor.

  “Are you sure you didn’t put it away someplace?” I asked Augusta. Like in the refrigerator? The shower? But it would be hard to hide anything as big as that china dog in three small rooms.

  “Forget it,” I said finally. “I’m afraid it’s no use, it’s gone. It must’ve been sold at the attic sale.”

  Augusta folded her arms. “Think,” she said. Her tone, I thought, had a most unangelic inflection. “When was the last time you saw it?”

  I had labeled the box and set it aside back in Uncle Henry’s study, but with all the confusion and people poking about, it could have been picked up by mistake. I sat on the floor and tried to remember who might have bought it. The frail little man who happily carted off that old clock that hadn’t worked in years? The large woman in the T-shirt that said If Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy? “Maybe Delia remembers,” I said, tossing an assortment of unsold kitchen knickknacks back into the box to go to the next white-elephant sale.

  Augusta, searching again under the sink for the missing jar, disappeared as usual when somebody knocked at the door.

  “Mary George?” My landlady sang out. “I thought you might like a few slices of my rum cake for dessert tonight.”

  I still had half a bowl of potato salad she’d brought over a couple of days before. It tasted okay after I added a little onion and some mustard and pickles.

  She stood on my doorstep with a covered plate in her hand, and the first sight of her jolted me as it always did. Her screaming purple lipstick went way over the edge of where her lips ought to be, and the color seemed to jump out at me. And then of course there’s that Easter-chicken hair.

  Her large bosom preceded her as I stepped back to let her inside. “Hope I’m not interrupting …” She looked about. “Thought I heard somebody talking in here.”

  “You did. Me.” I smiled as I accepted the plate. “I’ve misplaced a favorite cookie jar and I’m afraid it was sold by mistake.” I shrugged. “Must’ve been fussing to myself. You didn’t see it, did you? A china dog with a broken ear?”

  “Lord, honey, at my age I’m getting so forgetful, I wouldn’t remember it if I had!” She shook her head. “Why, sometimes I go into a room and clean forget what I came for. Too much on my mind, I reckon, but I can’t stand it if I’m not busy.” With a long sigh, Fronie sank into Uncle Henry’s brown leather chair and fanned herself with yesterday’s paper.

  I came close to asking about her policy on pets, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. What if she said no? Hairy Brown was looking a lot better. His foot was healing well, and Doc Nichols said if his appetite got any better, I’d have to invest in a pet food company. I looked forward to bringing him home. Augusta was fickle about keeping me company, and it would be comforting having a dog around, especially at night.

  “You don’t mind if I sit a minute, do you? These old legs are about to give out on me. You’ve got it looking real nice in here, Mary George, but it sure seems strange seeing Caroline’s things in a different place.”

  I brought her a cup of tea, and between swallows of Earl Grey, my landlady listed on one hand the things she had to do that day.

  “ … and sometimes I get migraines so bad I just have to lie down. I know I take on too many things, but then, somebody’s got to do it … .”

  When she started counting on the other hand, I groped for another subject.

  “Miss Fronie, do you know a woman named Bonita Moody?”

  “Bonita Moody. Works over there at the Triple Value, doesn’t she?”

&nb
sp; “That’s the one. Delia says she’s seen her at Aunt Caroline’s a lot. And she was at the attic sale last week.”

  She drained her cup and nodded. “Piano student.”

  “What?”

  “Bonita Moody. She was taking piano lessons from Caroline. Been studying for several months now, I think.”

  Then why did the woman act so strange and run away when I tried to approach her?

  That night I dreamed I found the cookie jar. I was a child again back at the house on Snapfinger Road playing hide-and-seek with Sam. But that didn’t make any sense because Sam left the children’s home before I came to live in that house. But then dreams are usually mixed up anyway; in this one, I saw Sam running up the back stairs, heard his muffled laughter behind the closed attic door. But when I opened it, Sam was gone. The attic was bare except for the cookie jar, still in the box where I’d seen it the day Augusta came. Yet I knew there was nothing up there. Delia and I had checked twice.

  Still, the next day I forced myself to go back inside that empty shell of a house. I had only moved out the week before, yet it had an air of being long abandoned. This house had been my home, my place of refuge, yet I felt uneasy here.

  With Delia standing guard at the foot of the steps and Augusta hovering nearby, I went up those dark, musty stairs once more. But just as I thought, the cookie jar wasn’t there.

  “Didn’t you say you first saw it in the middle of the attic floor, apart from everything else?” Augusta reminded me. “I believe your aunt may have been trying to tell you something.”

  “It seems to me if you really were an angel, you’d know what she meant, or at least where I could find it.” I was hot and tired, and disgusted with myself for letting the cookie jar go, and the empty house made me sad. “What good is it being an angel,” I said, “if you don’t know any more than that?”

  “Sorry,” Augusta Goodnight said. “That’s not in my job description.”

  But I realized she was right about the cookie jar. For whatever reason, the chipped ceramic dog was important, and somehow I had to find it.

  “Do you suppose Bonita Moody might have bought it?” Delia asked later. “Remember? We saw her shopping around that day.”

  But surely I would have noticed it if she had been carrying something as bulky as that.

  At any rate, it gave me an excuse to pay a visit to Bonita Moody. Face to face, maybe she would tell me about the last time she saw my aunt alive.

  The Moodys, Delia told me, lived in Mimosa Village on the east side of town. I remembered the area as a checkerboard of small mill-owned houses built about sixty years ago. The cotton mill closed before I came to live here, and the houses are now privately owned. The Moodys’ neat home was gray with white trim, and pink geraniums bloomed by the walk. A little girl about nine sat in the porch swing, but ran inside when she saw me. Was there something about me, or did skittishness run in the family?

  Through the screen I looked into a narrow hall where a spray of magnolias sprang from a white pitcher on a table by the door. Their sweet perfume reminded me of the big tree by the dining room window back at Summerwood, and of Sam who always ate his dessert first, and mine too if he could get it. In a singsong voice, the two of us would quote our disgusting verse about bats and lizards and worse to discourage others from wanting their cookies or cupcakes, or whatever Cookie reluctantly doled out. And for the first time in years I thought of Cindy, who had worked in the kitchen at Summerwood and who sometimes slipped us extra goodies. Smiling, I rang the bell.

  She knew immediately who I was, and I knew immediately I wasn’t welcome. I would have to talk fast before the door closed in my face.

  “Those magnolias smell wonderful, and they look pretty in that vase.” I smiled again, making no attempt to enter. Good. At least she was still there.

  “I’m looking for a cookie jar,” I said. “China dog with a chipped ear.” I introduced myself. “I saw you at our attic sale last week and hoped you might’ve noticed who bought it.”

  Her tension eased slightly, but she still wasn’t ready to invite me for Sunday dinner.

  “It was special to me,” I added. “Belonged to my aunt, and I’d really like to have it back.”

  With one hand, Bonita smoothed the collar of her blouse. “I didn’t see it,” she told me, shaking her head. “Ray—that’s my husband—he was in a hurry to leave. Didn’t have much of a chance to look around.” She paused. “I’m real sorry about your aunt.” The words were almost whispered.

  “Thank you. I understand you took piano from her, and I wondered if you might have seen my aunt that day, right before she died.”

  If I had told her we were being invaded by machete-wielding Martians I don’t think she could have freaked out more. She wheeled around as if she expected Norman Bates himself to be lurking in the background. I felt a little jumpy myself.

  “No, that’s not true. I don’t know where you heard that. I hardly knew your aunt.”

  Whoa, now! Back up, lady, before you sink in any deeper, I thought. Something was definitely wrong here. Her belligerent denial made me want to strike back. It was as if she had erased Aunt Caroline from her life, like my aunt didn’t matter. Why was this woman lying to me?

  “I’m sorry I bothered you,” I muttered, then turned and walked away. I was halfway down the walk when she called to me.

  “Mary George, wait! Look, I’m sorry. What I said back there wasn’t true.” With a hand on my arm, Bonita Moody walked with me to the curb where I’d parked my car. Her voice was so low I walked bending over to hear her.

  “It’s Ray, you see. He didn’t want me taking those lessons. Says we can’t afford them.” She looked back at the house and sighed. “Now, if he went in for expensive sports equipment, things like that, it wouldn’t be a problem, but Ray never spends a cent on himself. Have to save for the kids’ college, he says. We never went ourselves.” She almost smiled. “Shoot! I have to make him buy himself decent clothes for church.

  “Your Aunt Caroline was one of the kindest people I ever met, and I know I’m going to miss her. She didn’t charge me all that much, and I practiced over at the church. Still, all those lessons, and the music and all—well, they add up.”

  I nodded. I know what it’s like on a budget. “That last day,” I said. “Did she say or do anything different? I believe you might have been the last person to see her alive.”

  Her small face turned as white as the magnolias in her hallway. “Oh, no. That couldn’t be. My regular day’s Monday, you know, and that week our daughter, Margo, had a dentist’s appointment, so I had to cancel my lesson. I didn’t see your aunt at all.”

  “Then why did Delia tell me she saw her there on Tuesday?” I said later to Augusta.

  She didn’t answer for a minute because she was learning a line dance—“The electric slide,” she said—from a video she’d ordered using a “convenient toll-free number”—on my credit card of course, but Augusta always paid up. She had given up on aerobics—too exhausting, she said. And when I got home, I thought for a minute I’d wandered into the wrong apartment. Augusta flitted about my living room in an old dress of Aunt Caroline’s, her hair tied back with a bright green ribbon. She fluttered her filmy skirt about her and sat on the wobbly footstool.

  “Then one of them’s not telling the truth,” she said.

  I nodded. “Bonita. Full of chickenshit if you ask me! Acts like she’s afraid of something.”

  “Or somebody. And do you have to use that word?” Augusta shucked her gold sandals and wiggled bare pink toes. “Then I suppose we’ll have to find out who or what it is.”

  I was about to ask her just how I was supposed to go about that when the telephone rang.

  “Hi, hon,” a familiar voice said. “Look, I guess I’m in the doghouse with you, but tell me it’s not too late to make up. Please?”

  Todd Burkholder! Aaack! I hung up the receiver and brushed my teeth three times. Just hearing his deceitful voice made me
want to scour the room with industrial-strength antiseptic. How did he know how to find me?

  After the second time he called I turned off the phone. The next day I brought my puppy home. I doubted if he’d bite, and he scared himself when he barked, but he could dam sure lick somebody to death!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The wailing knifed through walls, crashed off the ceiling, and scraped at my eardrums like fingernails on a chalkboard. Even the African violets in the window seemed to droop, curling furry leaves around their fragile faces.

  “‘A-a-ma-a-zing gra-a-a-ce, how swe-e-e-t the sound, that saved a-ah wretch like me-e-e … .’”

  Miss Fronie was at it again, and it was amazing to me there was a window left unshattered in the house. After agonizing minutes of catlike screeching—warming up, she called it—my landlady plunged with gusto into her vocal repertoire, her volume tuned to torture.

  Augusta huddled in Uncle Henry’s old brown chair with a knitted cap pulled over her beautiful hair, a wad of socks stuffed underneath to cover each ear. “How much longer?” she asked. Her seagreen eyes betrayed any pretense at tranquillity. Fronie Temple had broken the angel barrier.

  “It’s good for your constitution,” I said. As awful as the singing was, I couldn’t deny a touch of satisfaction in this small, earthly dent in Augusta’s heavenly glowcoat.

  Hairy Brown sat at the angel’s feet, ears perked, his large head following the sound. If dogs could smile, this one would be close to laughing. “I think he likes it,” I said.

  While the two of us cringed, Hairy kept time with his tail. And when, after a blessed pause, Fronie squawked forth with her version of “The Holy City,” my tone-deaf puppy leaned forward on his haunches, lifted his shaggy head skyward, and joined in—not unlike people I’ve seen, who, filled with beer and camaraderie, gather around the piano to harmonize.