Angel at Troublesome Creek

by Ballard, Mignon F.

  “Better go,” she said. “Ran clean out of cat food—that’s why I’m here—and the kitties are waiting. Can’t let my babies go hungry.” She gave the car door a final thump before turning away. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Mary George.”

  It sounded like a warning.

  “What was that all about?” Kent asked as we drove away.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on, don’t pretend! That woman back there—your friend. Is my fly unzipped, or was it something I said?”

  I laughed and glanced over to check that out. “No to both questions. I think Delia’s getting a little uptight about moving. She’s lived in that house forever, and then she found out they don’t permit pets at that Pine Thicket place. Frankly, I think she has condo-itis!”

  My answer seemed to satisfy him, but it didn’t convince me. It wasn’t like my old neighbor to do something like that. She had acted skittish, almost rude. Not like Delia at all.

  “Did you leave your stereo on?” Kent asked when we got back to Miss Fronie’s. Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington—somebody—was swinging out with “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”

  I smiled in the darkness as we walked up the narrow flagstone path to my door. Augusta did like those train songs.

  “Where have you been?” I demanded when I was sure Kent was upstairs and out of hearing. Since it was getting kind of late and we both had to work the next day, Kent and I decided to socialize tomorrow night instead, and I’d promised him dinner as well.

  “Oh, good. That must mean you missed me.” Augusta grabbed my hands and whirled me about until I felt like one of those china ballerinas on top of a music box.

  “‘Miss you since you went away … miss you more than words can say … . ’.” Augusta sang, finally settling against the cushions of the couch with her dainty feet crossed. She wasn’t even breathing hard. “Goodness, haven’t thought of that song in years! We heard it just about every day when I was here last.”

  I panted, waiting for the room to stop whirling. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

  “Look, Mary George, I know I can be a bit of a dose at times. I thought you needed a break, that’s all.”

  I made a face. “And you didn’t? You really picked a great time to disappear. Somebody came in here while we were out yesterday and tore the place up looking for something, and I haven’t seen Hairy since.” I sank down beside her and put my face in my hands. “Kent and I have been out looking for him for hours, and I’ve checked everywhere. He could be lying out by the side of the road somewhere, you know what a klutz he is.” My head felt like it weighed a ton and I rested it against the back of the sofa.

  “I don’t think so,” Augusta said.

  “How do you know?” I heard her move, felt myself being covered with my aunt’s soft afghan, but I couldn’t open my eyes.

  “Trust me,” Augusta said, and the last thing I remember was the scent of those heavenly strawberries.

  I woke refreshed the next morning, still on the sofa, to the smell of coffee brewing and made it to work almost fifteen minutes early. Augusta had sprinkled her shoes with something that looked like—but surely couldn’t be—stardust, and while they dried, padded about with bare feet happily humming the song. I didn’t know if she’d be there when I got back.

  I was checking the classifieds about midmorning to see if they ran my lost-dog ad when Delia appeared like a wraith before me. The Chihuahua in the kennel behind me was yapping so constantly I hadn’t even heard her come in.

  A strand of her usually tidy white hair trailed across one cheek, and something that looked like snow drifted down the front of her dress. “Now I know where I’ve seen that man, Mary George! It just came to me all of a sudden-like when I was rolling out pie crust for the picnic tomorrow. You know how Caroline loved peach cobbler … it was one of her favorites, and that’s what made me think of it.”

  “Think of what? What man?” I tried to whisper because Royce Bolding was sitting right there under my nose with his accident-prone collie pup, and what Royce doesn’t know hasn’t happened yet.

  “That man you were with last night—the one who lives upstairs at Fronie’s. He’s the one I saw at your aunt’s last spring, the one I told you about.”

  I rattled the newspaper, hid behind it, trying not to smile. “Delia, you must be mistaken. What would Kent Coffey be doing at Aunt Caroline’s? Why, he didn’t even know her.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, clamped that mouth tight as an oyster, and leaned as far as she could over the counter. “And how do you know that, Mary George? Do you think he’s about to admit it?” My neighbor reared back and got a second wind. “And I’ll tell you something else: his car looked familiar too. Thought I’d seen it somewhere before, and I have. Parked right over there in Caroline’s driveway.”

  There was something about the way she said it that made me stop smiling. Delia Sims will indulge in gossip as much as the next person, but she’s not one to embellish, and I’ve never known her to tell an out-and-out lie. Still I asked, “Are you sure about this?”

  “If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t be standing here,” she said. “That man is up to no good.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “You are coming to the picnic Saturday?” Delia said.

  “Sounds almost like old times. A blue grass group’s supposed to play in the bandstand and there’ll be a costume parade in the park.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I said. I didn’t tell her I would be accompanied by her current suspect or that I was cooking his dinner tonight. That wouldn’t do at all.

  The picnic is the annual Fourth of July celebration sponsored by the ‘I’ll Try Society,’ a group of citizens who began as sort of a literary club in the early part of the century. Most of them “inherited” their memberships, I think. Aunt Caroline belonged and so does Delia—as did their parents before them, and so on. The official name for the festivities is the Star Spangled Freedom Festival, but everybody just calls it the picnic.

  “I hope you’re going to keep an eye out for that Kent person,” Delia said. “I don’t like him living so close. It’s just too, too convenient.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be glad to move if we ask him,” I said.

  “Joke if you will, Mary George, but I’m asking Fronie about him. Surely she must know something about the man’s background.”

  “Wait, don’t … I’ll do it. We don’t want to make him suspicious, and you know how obvious Fronie can be. Just give me a couple of days. Maybe I can find out what he was doing at Aunt Caroline’s. Could be something perfectly innocent.”

  She made that cat-sneeze sound again. “You just be careful, Mary George. A lot can happen in a couple of days.”

  I had just started to tell her about almost finding Sam, when a woman and two crying children rushed in with a kitten that had darted in front of their car and I had to give Doc a hand. I still had the slip of paper Sam’s old teacher had given me with his name and address; I kept it tucked inside my billfold with a sixpence Uncle Henry gave me, but I couldn’t work up the courage to call.

  Because of the emergency, I didn’t get home as early as I’d hoped. The kitten had used one of its nine lives, Doc Nichols said, but it should be good for the remaining eight. By the time he finished seeing the rest of his patients, it was after five o’clock, and Kent was due at my place at seven.

  I tried not to break any traffic laws as I drove home. If I hurried, I had at least thirty minutes to snoop around inside Kent Coffey’s apartment before he came home to change for dinner.

  The extra key hung on a small nail to one side of his door as I knew it did. He had told me about it the day before. I felt a small, nagging sense of guilt for betraying a trust, but that’s all it was—small—like an annoying housefly buzzing about my face. I brushed it away and let myself inside. Augusta wouldn’t approve, so I didn’t bother to let her know what I was doing. Of course that didn’t mean she didn’t, but so
far, so good.

  I noticed the smell at once. Fresh paint—the oil-based kind—and was careful not to touch the walls. Funny. Kent hadn’t mentioned having his apartment painted. Enough light came from the windows to see that the living room furniture wasn’t covered with drop cloths, and pictures still hung on the walls. Must be another room. Shutting the door behind me, I moved on, stopping to take off my shoes in case Miss Fronie might be listening.

  His kitchen was neater than mine. Clean dishes dried in a rack by the sink. Curtains made of red checkered dish towels hung above it. The refrigerator contained a carton of milk, eggs, half a cantaloupe, lettuce droopy enough to wrap presents in, and a week’s supply of beer. Boxes of frozen dinners filled the freezer. Nothing here.

  Kent’s floor plan was the reverse of mine, so his bedroom should be above my living area. The smell of paint was stronger here, and the door was open so I ventured in. Aside from a couple of tables against the wall and an old kitchen chair with a broken back, the room was empty of furniture. Built-in shelves held tubes of paint, brushes, thinner, stacks of canvases. Others leaned against the walls. Two large easels stood near the window. One contained an unfinished painting of an old woman sitting in a porch rocker looking with longing at a rusting mailbox. You could tell by the expression on her face she didn’t expect any mail. A photograph of the same woman was fastened to the canvas.

  The other painting was covered by a paint-smeared cloth.

  I looked at my watch. Kent was usually home by six-fifteen. It was almost ten after six. Carefully I lifted the rag from the painting.

  Aunt Caroline’s face looked back at me.

  She was wearing her “good” rose print dress with the white lace collar, the one we had buried her in. The artist had painted her seated by the piano at home with one hand on the keyboard and the other in her lap, and she looked so real I wanted to throw my arms around her.

  “I was going to ask you to take a look at it after I’d added the final touches, but now that you’d found your way in, maybe you’d like to volunteer an opinion.” Kent Coffey stood in the doorway behind me. I had no idea how long he had been there.

  “And an explanation as well,” I said, wondering if he could hear my heart ticking away like my aunt’s metronome gone wild. Even my words sounded choppy. I was breathing much too fast. “Look, Kent, I’m sorry. I have no business here, I know, but …”

  He was looking at my bare feet and I followed his gaze. My shoes dangled from my hand. What on earth could I say? Make up some excuse like, I came to borrow an onion?

  “I came to borrow an onion,” I said. “For the spaghetti sauce … forgot to go by the store on my way home, and remembered about your key … hope you don’t mind.”

  His expression told me he did mind, but it was the best excuse I could think of. I’m not a very good liar. “The painting is beautiful,” I said. “Aunt Caroline would approve. Why didn’t you tell me you were painting her portrait?”

  “She wanted it to be a surprise.” He folded his arms and looked at me. I wanted to run, bolt out the door, but I would have to squeeze past him in the doorway.

  Now he made some sort of effort to smile and stepped back, as if he could read my thoughts. “The church music committee commissioned it,” he said. “Your aunt was against it from the start—had a devil of a time getting her to pose for me.” Kent followed me into the living room, which I supposed doubled as a sleeping room. “It’s to hang in the choir room, they tell me. I believe they plan a formal dedication in September.”

  I looked down at the shoes in my hand and held them behind me. “Stepped in mud,” I said, remembering the puddle in the driveway. He didn’t look as though he believed me.

  “You didn’t tell me you painted, Kent. I’m no critic, but I’m impressed. And I like the old woman and the mailbox. Anybody I know?”

  “Lives in South Carolina, somewhere between Columbia and Newberry. Said she didn’t mind if I took her photograph.” Kent pulled off his tie, threw his jacket across the back of a chair. “Sometimes I take the back roads making sales calls. Interstates get so tiresome.”

  “But the painting of my aunt … do you do this often? How did the committee know about you?”

  He grinned. “Unfortunately, not enough to make a living. Good thing I have another job. This was Fronie’s idea. She recommended me.” Kent’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Except for the committee, nobody’s supposed to know about this. Your aunt was going to tell you.”

  So that was why Delia hadn’t known about the project. She wasn’t on the church music committee; Fronie Temple was. I felt about twenty pounds lighter.

  “Well,” I said. “Guess I’d better start dinner!”

  He waited until I reached the door. “Don’t you want your onion?” Kent said.

  I accepted one from the mesh bag that hung inside his broom closet, then took it home and stirred it around with some ground beef and some of that spaghetti sauce that comes in a jar. After a couple of glasses of wine, it tasted pretty good. The whole time Kent was in my apartment I worried about him wandering into my kitchen and finding the bag of onions I kept in a bin under my counter.

  And I worried about Augusta Goodnight too. She was there somewhere, I was sure of it, and I couldn’t relax. After all, here I was entertaining a good-looking man for dinner, complete with wine, salad, and a really good cheesecake from the frozen food section. Kent apparently had forgiven me for invading his secret studio, and it should have been a special evening, even if I did cheat on the spaghetti sauce.

  It wasn’t. I found it almost impossible to get into serious necking with an angel looking over my shoulder. And I’ll admit I had one ear tuned to the telephone in case someone answered my ad. One lady called after dinner about a white poodle she’d found that, according to her, was “dirty enough to be brown,” and later a man phoned to tell me he’d seen a dog like Hairy—only it was a month ago. Naturally, every time the phone rang, my hopes soared, then fell with a splat!

  Still, the two of us were cuddled on the sofa watching a movie on TV when Delia phoned. The movie was that old Hitchcock thriller, the one where Cary Grant hides in a cornfield from a sniper in a crop-dusting plane, and I could watch it over and over. But tonight I just couldn’t get comfortable with this relationship. I knew it, and Kent Coffey knew it too.

  His arm was around me, my head rested on his shoulder, his lips were about two inches away, and he smelled wonderful. I closed my eyes and saw Sam, the Sam of my childhood. What would he look like now? And what if he was married?

  But what if he wasn’t?

  I was relieved when the telephone rang.

  “Mary George,” Delia Sims said. “Are you alone? Can we talk?”

  “No and no,” I told her. “I’ll call you back, okay?”

  “Look,” Kent said as I hung up the phone. “I can see you have something on your mind, and to tell you the truth, I’ve had a tough week. Why don’t we take up where we left off another night?” He kissed me lightly on the lips, thanked me for his dinner, and disappeared almost as magically as Saint Nicholas on Christmas Eve. Only Kent Coffey wasn’t Santa, and it wasn’t even December. I guess he had had just about enough of me, and I can’t say I blamed him. We seemed to be making a habit of postponing evenings together.

  “Don’t forget the picnic tomorrow,” I called after him as he left, but I don’t think he heard me. At least, that’s what I chose to think.

  “Did I interrupt something?” Delia asked when I phoned her back. “If it was that Kent Coffey, I’m not sorry!”

  “Well, you should be! Not that you interrupted anything with any kind of future to it. But you’ve got this poor guy all wrong, Delia. Kent Coffey had a perfect excuse for visiting Aunt Caroline.” I told her about the painting.

  “A little too perfect if you ask me,” Delia said. “So what if he did paint her portrait? Does that rule him out from being a suspect in her death? Maybe he got greedy, wanted more for the portrait tha
n Caroline could afford. He can’t be making much of a living or he wouldn’t be living at Fronie’s.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said. “Delia, you know Aunt Caroline didn’t have money for things like that, and wouldn’t spend it on herself if she did. The church music committee commissioned that painting, and we’re not supposed to know a thing about it, so please don’t let on to Fronie Temple that I told you.”

  I could tell I’d said the right thing. Delia practically purred. It did her heart good to be one up on Fronie.

  “Well, I hope she’s happy! That woman’s been wanting to head up some committee or other ever since she came here. But never mind about Fronie. What’s this you were fixing to tell me this morning about that old friend of yours? Sam, wasn’t it? Have you seen him? Did he remember you?”

  “I haven’t exactly seen him yet,” I admitted. “But at least now I know where I can find him.” I told her about my conversation with Geraldine Thompson.

  Delia hesitated before she spoke again. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Mary George Murphy,” she said. “And I wouldn’t let my guard down just yet around that Coffey fellow either. He may know more than he lets on. Just you remember that.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “By the way, did you have a chance to call Lottie Greeson about when the Shugarts will be home?”

  “They’re staying a few extra days in London. Should be home by the end of the week.” Delia paused. “Mary George, I may be an old butt-in, but I don’t feel right about that man you’re seeing—portrait or no portrait. Now, promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “Promise,” I said, laughing. “See you at the picnic tomorrow.”

  But after I hung up, I double locked the doors. Silence hung heavy outside my windows, and the shadows seemed deeper than usual in this old, high-ceilinged place. Hairy Brown wasn’t much of a watch dog, but I missed him more than ever tonight.