Angel at Troublesome Creek

by Ballard, Mignon F.

  I wish I could be sure of the same. We sat in the living room, which was about as comfortable as the small window air conditioner could make it, and I told him about Aunt Caroline’s death, what I suspected.

  “You sound pretty certain about this,” he said. “From what I’ve heard about her, your aunt doesn’t sound like the type to make enemies. Could it be because of something she saw, or knew?”

  “I think it was something she had, something that belonged to me.” I told him about the Bible. “And a few days ago somebody came in here looking for something while I was gone—ripped my needlepoint footstool apart and rummaged through drawers. I think they were after the family Bible. Of course they didn’t find it because it wasn’t here.”

  He stretched long legs in front of him. “Any idea where it could be?”

  “If I knew that, I might have some clue as to why Aunt Caroline died.”

  “I wonder what could be in there that somebody wants bad enough to kill for. Is there anybody you could ask? A relative or somebody?”

  I shook my head. “There’s nobody left but me, at least that’s what my aunt always said. My parents didn’t have any siblings, and when they died there was no one to take me, except the home at Summerwood, until Aunt Caroline and Uncle Henry came along. And they weren’t really kin, but they treated me like they were.” I curled, shoeless, at one end of the sofa while Sam lounged at the other with a comfortable distance between us. I had the strangest feeling that we’d never been apart.

  Now he leaned forward with one arm stretched along the back of the sofa. “Look, Mary G., I don’t want to scare you, but should you be living back here by yourself like this? I know you have a landlady and that guy upstairs, but what good did they do when somebody came in here and searched the place? What if you’d been here alone? You can hardly see this place from the street.”

  I’d thought of that, of course. More than once. “I did have a dog,” I said. I told him about Hairy Brown. “I’ve been running an ad in the paper, but so far I haven’t had any luck.” I drew up my knees and sighed. “He’s such a good old dog, Sam. A big, brown wad of fur with a tongue sticking out. I can’t believe how much I miss him.”

  He reached across and took my hand, gently stroked the back of it. He didn’t even have to speak. I wanted to ask him about his marital status, his love life—or the lack of it—but I was afraid to mention it. “Have you been happy?” I asked instead.

  He looked thoughtful, then smiled. “Yes, I have. Teaching can be rewarding, at least some of the time—although not financially, of course. And I really would like to see something good come of Summerwood, Mary G. These kids need it, and the land is there if we can just get funding. The church dropped their sponsorship after the home closed, and I just don’t have the time it takes to do it justice.”

  “Sounds like you need a fund-raiser,” I said. “A good PR person.”

  “Or a guardian angel,” he said.

  “Goodness, I’m thirsty! Want something to drink?” I jumped up and went in the kitchen for a glass of water, then stood at the sink until my smile went away. If Sam saw my face, he wouldn’t leave me alone until I told him about Augusta Goodnight, and I didn’t want to scare him off after being apart so long. After all, even Sam Maguire has limits as to what he might believe.

  “Why don’t you drive out to Summerwood with me tomorrow?” he was saying. “And bring a paintbrush. I promised them a hand sprucing up the dining hall, and Delia said she might even come and give us some decorating tips. God knows, we can use the help!”

  “I wonder if Delia’s made up her mind about moving to that condo?” I said, finally composed again. “I don’t know what she’d do with all her things over there. And then there’s that rule about pets.”

  “Oh, I see she hasn’t told you,” Sam said.

  “Told me what?”

  “She’s changed her mind. Told me tonight she isn’t going to move.”

  “But she was going to put her house on the market, and I know it’s depressing for her looking across the street at Aunt Caroline’s place. They’re making it into offices, you know. Did she say what she was going to do?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Said she’d make a decision when the time came … whatever that means.”

  It seemed to me Augusta needed to send for backup. We didn’t have enough guardian angels to go around.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked Delia the next day as she measured the windows in the big old barn of a dining hall at Summerwood. I had been painting for hours and everything on me was sunshine yellow, including most of my hair.

  Delia jotted down a number and wound the tape measure around her hand. “I’ll worry about that when I have to,” she said. “Can you imagine me without my babies?’ She drew herself up indignantly.”Well, there are other places to live!”

  I didn’t know of any right offhand, but I didn’t think this was the best time to remind her of that.

  “Need more paint?” Sam stood behind me with a bucket and poured some into my tray. “Do you realize we’re standing just about where we always used to sit, Mary G.? Pinto beans and rice. Seems we had ’em every other day!”

  “Remember Cindy?” I said. “Always made us cupcakes and sticky buns.” I remembered long tables of wiggling children, the clatter of knives and forks.

  “And called me Sam-I-am. Always had a joke. I thought she was beautiful.”

  “Cookie hated her.” I dipped my roller in paint.

  “Naturally,” Sam said, looking thoughtful. “Remember our verse? How we made everybody sick—or tried to?”

  I nodded. “Grisly, grimy, glumpy bats, brewed and stewed in lizard fat …”

  “With a clump of this and a lump of that,” Sam added.

  “Served with a hunk of sewer rat!” Laughing, we ended the “poem” together.

  “I’m afraid we made a lot of the other kids sick,” I said.

  Sam shrugged. “Too bad they didn’t want their dessert.”

  Since there weren’t any campers at Summerwood that day, we lunched under the trees on carry-out pizza with Rose and Lyman Cummings, the couple running the camp for the summer. Lyman, chubby and bearded, looked a little like a middle-aged Santa Claus, and, according to Sam, forever had his nose in a book. His wife, in her midforties, looked to be about a size six and had the kind of complexion a teenager might envy. She seemed to have boundless energy, fueled probably by the four pieces of pizza she’d just eaten. It was hard not to hate her.

  “There’s nothing to stop us from having some kind of benefit right here,” Rose suggested, swigging the last of her iced tea. “Something that would bring us a little ready money for repairs. At least it would be a start.”

  I looked at the long, sprawling building behind us. “Why not a dance? You have the space, and you know how people go in for those line dances. How about a country-western theme? Might be kind of fun. Maybe we can get that blue grass group who played in the park to donate their time.”

  “Why, that’s a wonderful idea,” Delia said. “What made you think of that, Mary George?”

  “I don’t know. It just came to me,” I told her. I don’t know why she seemed so surprised.

  “Why not next month before school starts back?” Sam suggested. “If you and Rose will work out the details, Mary G., I’ll take care of the promotion end, but I’ve got to spend some time with my family. I promised Ed we’d go fishing sometime this summer.”

  A rock dropped in my stomach. Ed? Who was this Ed? What family?

  “Ed’s my brother—well, half brother really.” Sam stretched out in the grass and pulled his cap over his eyes. Good grief, could he read my mind? “Be in the tenth grade this fall,” he said. “Dad married again when I was twelve, and they’re living in Atlanta now. I try to get together with them whenever I can.”

  “Of course,” I said, and smiled, filled with goodwill now that the rock in my middle had dissolved into mush.

  “Ha
d a bad turn there for a minute, didn’t you?” Delia reminded me on the way home that night. The two of us drove back in her car since Sam lived in the other direction.

  It’s impossible to ignore somebody when there are only two of you in a closed car. “You don’t miss much,” I said. “You really like him, don’t you?”

  “Who?” She glanced at me and laughed. “Oh, you mean Sam … . Well, of course I do, Mary George, only not in the same way you do.”

  I didn’t even bother to deny it.

  It was dark when we reached home and neither Kent’s white Honda nor Miss Fronie’s old blue Buick were parked in their usual places. Delia pulled as close to my doorstep as possible to let me out, then waited while I unlocked my door. I flicked on the outside light and stood in the doorway to see that she didn’t back over my landlady’s petunias on her way out. I waved at her little farewell toot of the horn and turned to go inside when I heard the unmistakable sound of a footstep in the dark yard beside the house.

  “Delia, wait!” I screamed. But it was too late, I could hear her turning into the street, well out of earshot. Rushing inside, I tried to slam the door behind me, lock it before he could follow, but my hands seemed to have lost all communication with my brain. Suddenly the door was wrenched from me, and a large hand circled my wrist. I turned and bit what felt like a finger as hard as I could while landing a kick at my attacker’s ankle.

  “Ow! Goddamn it, Mary George, I just want to talk!” Todd Burkholder snatched away his injured digit. I had managed to shove him outside, but he blocked my way back in. To say that my heart raced would be an understatement. I didn’t know hearts could beat that fast—I don’t know why I didn’t pass out.

  Maybe because I was mad. “You’ve picked a hell of a way to go about it,” I said. “What in the world is the matter with you? Can’t you understand? We have nothing to talk about.”

  For the first time I noticed his car in the deep shadows at the far end of the yard, partially screened from view by the overgrown crape myrtles beside the driveway. Todd had parked it at the top of a slight slope facing the street—for a quick getaway, I supposed.

  I forced myself to space my breathing, to speak evenly. I had to get rid of him. “Look, Todd,” I said. “Why don’t you come by the clinic one day next week? We can talk there if you want, but this is not the time or the place. It’s late—and frankly, you frightened me.”

  “I did?” I think he smiled. Again his hand tightened on my arm. I had a sickening feeling I had said the wrong thing.

  That did it. “Damn it, go away! I never want to see you again. Get lost, asshole!” I shoved against him with all my strength, but I might as well have been pushing on a stone wall.

  And then I heard it: the deliberate grinding of gravel, the sound of a car beginning to roll. Todd’s car. Slowly it began to inch down the driveway, sideswiping a shrub along the way. Pine cones crunched beneath the tires.

  Unfortunately he didn’t seem to notice. “Excuse me,” I said in as loud a voice as I could muster, “but isn’t that your car?”

  “Oh, my God!” Todd Burkholder vaulted from the stoop and took off running while I squeezed inside and double locked the door.

  “Mary George Murphy, there’s just no excuse for such filthy language!” Augusta Goodnight said beside me.

  And then I could have sworn she laughed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The next day I found out that somebody had run down Bonita Moody that night in her church parking lot, and she was lying in a coma over at Culpeper General with extensive internal injuries.

  I should have guessed something had happened because it took the police over an hour to check out my complaint about Todd the night before, and even then the man they sent was filling in for somebody else.

  By then, of course, Todd the clod was long gone, and the investigating officer (and I use that term loosely), seemed to think I was seeking revenge after a lover’s spat. I could swear out an injunction, he said, although it didn’t look like I’d suffered any bodily harm. Yawning, he told me there was a law now against stalking that might keep my “boyfriend” at a distance, and if I’d come down to the station he was sure they’d be glad to take care of it for me.

  By then it was so late I could barely keep my eyes open, so I told him I’d be there tomorrow. After all, Todd had scurried off like a roach in the kitchen light, and I had my very own guardian angel for the remainder of the evening.

  But then I didn’t know yet about Bonita.

  I heard it first from Fronie Temple who learned about it at church. I had slept late that morning—in spite of Augusta’s little tuneful reminders. I’d heard her humming as she puttered about the living room, but it took me a while to identify the song as “The Little Brown Church in the Wildwood.” Augusta’s not always on key.

  Anyway, I must’ve dozed through several stanzas before the smell of coffee brewing finally lured me out of bed, and I was outside getting the Sunday paper when Fronie pulled into her garage. I heard her car door slam and turned to find her trailing after me down the drive, face all flushed, oversized crocheted handbag dangling from one arm.

  “Worst thing!” she said breathlessly. “Some woman was just about killed last night right there in the parking lot at Rising Star Church of the Lamb—you know, out on the old Charlotte Highway. They said she’d gone there to practice the piano. Now, I ask you, where can a person be safe if not in her own church?”

  “Apparently not in the parking lot,” I said, hoping no one could see me standing there in my short summer pajamas. And then a little warning bell tolled in my head. She had gone there to practice the piano. “Do you remember who it was?” I asked.

  Fronie shifted her purse and frowned. “Why, yes, I believe it was that same woman you asked me about, Mary George. Used to take piano lessons from Caroline. Happened after dark. Whoever hit her just drove off, they said—probably some dope dealers from out of town. Doubt if they’ll ever catch them now.” And my landlady shook her head until a yellow curl slipped over one eye.

  I knew it wouldn’t be long until Delia reported in, and sure enough, the phone rang about fifteen minutes later. Bonita had been in surgery for over three hours, she told me, and had been given several units of blood. The ministers in the community had issued an appeal on Bonita’s behalf, Delia said, to replace the blood she’d used, and I couldn’t think of any reason—except an intense dislike of needles—why I shouldn’t donate some of my own.

  Also, it might give me an opportunity to find out just how Bonita’s domineering husband had reacted to her “accident.” It seemed a little too much of a coincidence to me that this awful thing should happen just after I heard him reading her the riot act at the picnic a couple of days before. Bonita Moody was afraid of something, and I was pretty sure I knew what—or who—it was.

  Ray Moody was either on the verge of a nervous breakdown or he was a darn good actor. I found him pacing the corridor outside his wife’s hospital room while nurses changed her linen. I wore an adhesive bandage on my arm and a bright sticker that said Be Nice to Me—I Gave Blood Today! I’d had a doughnut and a carton of milk and felt just fine.

  But Ray Moody didn’t, or at least he didn’t look fine. He looked awful. His eyes were puffy and red rimmed in a white, drawn face, and when I stopped to introduce myself I could see my words didn’t register. At first.

  “What was your name again?” he asked, stopping to lean against the pale green corridor wall. The man looked as if he hadn’t slept in a year. I had come here prepared to blame him for what happened to Bonita. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  “Mary George Murphy,” I repeated. “Your wife Bonita took—”

  He nodded impatiently. “Piano lessons from your aunt.”

  “How did you know? I thought—”

  “What do you mean, ‘How did I know?’ Bonita told me.” Ray Moody glanced at the room behind him and came almost close to smiling. “Or, I should say she finally got around to telli
ng me after that happened to your aunt. She’s a funny one, Bonita is … Lord, if I’d known she wanted to learn that bad, we could’ve worked it out somehow. I should’ve just gone on and gotten her a keyboard or something so she wouldn’t have to practice at the church.” Bonita Moody’s husband took out a wrinkled handkerchief and blew his nose. “That’s what she was doing over there, you know. Told me she wasn’t going to stay that late.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “How is she?”

  Head down, he rubbed his eyes, then looked away. “It don’t look good, but they say she has a chance. If the preacher hadn’t come by about then to get the notes for his sermon, she probably wouldn’t even be alive. I think they meant to kill her.”

  “Did he get a look at the car?”

  “Yeah, but it went screeching past him in the dark, and he didn’t even see Bonita lying there until the car that hit her was gone. Says he thinks it was a Ford—gray, or maybe pale blue or white. Like I said, it was dark.”

  Gray. The same color as Todd’s Mustang. And he’d left in a huff—actually more than a huff—just before Bonita was struck. But why would Todd want to hurt Bonita Moody?

  The nurse came out and nodded to him, and Ray started to go back into the room. “Wait,” I said, and touched his arm. “I think your wife was afraid of something.”

  There, I’d said it. I began to feel a little weak. Maybe from loss of blood; maybe from being chicken hearted. Or a little of both.

  He frowned. “You’ve got that right. I told her she should’ve told somebody, but Bonita—well, she was scared to talk about it.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  Ray Moody led me aside, glanced behind him and whispered, “Look, Bonita didn’t quite tell you all the truth that day you come by. She had to change her lesson day because our Margo had a dentist’s appointment that Monday before your aunt died … . It was Bonita who found her body.”