Angel at Troublesome Creek

by Ballard, Mignon F.

  I think I gasped. Somebody did. I knew someone had called for an ambulance because they reported my aunt hadn’t come to the door and they couldn’t get a response. It must have been Bonita Moody.

  “But why was she afraid?” I asked.

  “Because she thought she heard somebody in there that day. Somebody who didn’t want to be seen. The front door was unlocked, so she just come in like she usually did and yelled to let your aunt know she was there. She was already dead when Bonita found her.”

  “Are you sure that’s all?”

  Ray Moody paused at the door of his wife’s room. “That’s all she’ll admit to, but Bonita’s been acting mighty funny. I think she might’ve seen something too. And she forgets sometimes and talks about it—about finding her. I’m just afraid she might’ve mentioned it to the wrong person.”

  “Aren’t you going to say something to the police? This might have had something to do with what happened in the parking lot. She shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “Why do you think I’m still here? I’m just waiting for our minister to spell me so I can get a short nap. The police know all about it, but they think this was done by a teenager who’d had too much to drink.” Ray Moody shook his head and I felt so sorry for him, I tasted tears trickling into my throat. “They don’t pay much attention to the likes of me,” he said. “We’re just hoping they can find that car. The front of it oughta at least have a dent or two.”

  On my way home from the hospital I stopped at the Troublesome Creek police station to file my complaint against Todd Burkholder. The local police department is housed in a scruffy red brick building behind the bus station that usually isn’t included on the town garden tour. I wasn’t looking forward to going there, but at least things seemed to be on the quiet side.

  Until I got inside. I recognized the voice first. It belonged to Mr. Hildebrand, my high school algebra teacher, and he was not pleased.

  “Aunt Alma’s going to be furious!” he thundered, marching back and forth in the front cubicle of an office. “And with good reason. Whoever’s responsible for this should be made to pay! She’s had that car three years and never put a scratch on it … . Now this.” He reached the end of this three-step pace and turned abruptly. “Of course she’s going to blame me. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on it while she was gone.” And Walter Hildebrand, usually straitlaced and always proper, said “Shit!” Said it loud. And on a Sunday afternoon.

  I dodged just in time to keep from being seen and clamped a hand over my mouth. Imagine! The man was human after all.

  “May I help you?” A female officer greeted me from behind a counter at the far end of the room. She frowned at me, then stared until I wondered if I’d done something wrong. “Mary George, is that you?” she asked, looking closer.

  That voice. I knew that voice. “Pat?” I looked at her again. “You look great! I didn’t know you worked here.”

  “Been a long time since high school,” she said. “Had to lose weight to pass the physical. I’m about thirty pounds lighter than when you last saw me.”

  Pat Callaghan and I had played clarinet together in the high school band, and she’d been one of those people we’d predicted “would be really pretty if she’d just lose weight.” Well, she had lost weight, and Pat was a knockout.

  “Do you know who that is in there?” I asked, pointing to the other room. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten for the moment why I’d come.

  She laughed. “Old Starched Shorts himself! How could I forget? He’s been going at it for ten minutes.”

  “What’s going on?”

  She crooked her finger, motioning me closer. “You know about that hit-and-run in a church parking lot last night? Well, looks like the car involved belonged to Starched Shorts’s Aunt Alma. Mercury Cougar. Been in her garage for about a month now while the aunt was visiting her grandchildren up in Maine, and he was supposed to keep it running, take it out now and then.”

  I nodded. “Only he didn’t.”

  “Right!” Pat grinned. “Seems Walter didn’t do his homework. Auntie’s due home tomorrow, and when he went over there to check on the car after church today, he found the front dented and the Cougar covered in dust like it had been out in the country somewhere.”

  Like to Hughes? “Didn’t he have the key? How could anybody else drive it?” I asked.

  “He thinks his aunt Alma kept an extra hidden under the floor mat.” Pat shrugged. “Looks like somebody else must’ve known about it too.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The ugly truth rode home like a vulture perching on my shoulder, its claws in my flesh. It hadn’t been Todd Burkholder who followed me to Summerwood that day, which meant he probably wasn’t the one who searched my apartment and let Hairy Brown vamoose.

  Still, he most definitely had harassed me, so I went ahead with the complaint. At least there was one thing I could do something about. I wondered if Todd would whine to the police about how I bit his finger.

  But if not Todd, who?

  I found Kent washing his car when I got home that afternoon and he gave me a friendly wave. I felt awkward at seeing him, but, living in the same house there was no way we could avoid each other, so it was sort of a relief to get it over with. I wondered if he’d noticed Sam’s arrival after he left me at the door the night of the picnic. And since he lived above me, I was almost sure he had.

  I went over and spoke to him, although it was the last thing I wanted to do, and asked him if he’d let me see my aunt’s portrait when he finished it.

  “Why, sure, I’d be glad to,” Kent said, then turned his back on me and squatted to scrub at a wire wheel, leaving me to stand there in silence. And he whistled. Just like the seven dwarfs, he whistled while he worked, but I was no Snow White and it stomped on my pride with a size-twelve boot. And to think I was feeling sorry for dumping him the way I did! You’d think the man could seem a little unhappy.

  “By the way, I think you left your stereo on again,” he called as I walked away.

  Augusta hunched her shoulders, kicked up her feet, hips swaying in measured rhythm. She looked anything but angelic—until she glanced up and smiled. “‘Box Car Blues,’” she explained, stretching out a hand. “Here, kick off your shoes, there’s plenty of room.”

  I hung back, or tried to. “Augusta, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  It didn’t do any good. I was placed firmly behind her. Now and again, she reached out to touch me, turn me in the right direction, until gradually something happened: I began to feel one with the music, and filled with the beat, my body moved in time. I closed my eyes and smiled. I could dance without even looking!

  “You see,” Augusta said. “It’s fun.”

  “I wish you could help with the barn dance,” I said, and told her about the proposed fund-raiser for Summerwood. “We need somebody who can get people out on the floor, somebody who knows the dances.”

  “You have somebody,” Augusta said, finally lighting on the sofa. “There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t do it yourself.”

  “But I don’t know all those dances! I can’t get up in front of all those people.”

  “Yes, you can. And you will if you want something badly enough.” She locked in on me with her long, green gaze and I couldn’t turn away.

  “We’ll see,” I said. Maybe. Well, why not?

  “Has anybody called?” I glanced at my telephone answering machine, which stared back with its red unblinking eye.

  “Not since you left,” Augusta said. “Whom were you expecting?”

  “Somebody might have found Hairy,” I told her. “And I thought I might hear from Sam.”

  Augusta thoughtfully swung one gold sandal on the end of her elegant toe and raised an eyebrow. “Sam probably went to church.”

  “My day wasn’t exactly wasted,” I said, showing off my Red Cross badge of courage. I searched the refrigerator for sandwich makings. “It looks like Bonita Moody was run down d
eliberately and they’ve found the car that did it.”

  She leaned over my shoulder, scooped vegetables from the crisper. “Really? Just the car? Who was driving?”

  “That’s what I was going to tell you. They’re not sure. The owner’s been in Maine for several weeks and somebody’s been using it while she was gone. And Augusta … I think it’s the same car that followed us that day we drove to Hughes.”

  “I thought you said that was Todd?”

  “It did look like his car, but now I’m not so sure. This was a Cougar. Same color, and they look something alike.”

  I watched her concoct a salad that would do justice to the cover of Gourmet. Nosegays of radishes, frivolous spirals of carrot, a sprinkling of sprouts, three kinds of lettuce … and was that hearts of palm? Where did all this come from?

  With Aunt Caroline’s old wire whip, Augusta blended a tangy dressing with an onion-orange smell, then took two large bowls from the cabinet. “You can set the table,” she said, lifting a warm, crusty loaf from the oven.

  I put my mayonnaise and sliced turkey back in the refrigerator and did as I was told. “From now on, you’re welcome to do the cooking,” I said.

  After we ate, Augusta sat serenely across the table for a few minutes without speaking, only to tell the truth, her eyes didn’t look so serene. “Mary George, this isn’t good,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re getting close to the truth.”

  “Isn’t that what we want?”

  “Yes, but not at the risk of someone’s life. It certainly sounds as if somebody tried to kill Bonita Moody because of what they think she saw, and all because of the missing Bible. Your aunt realized its importance and put it away somewhere. I’m almost certain that was why she died.” Augusta swished the dishes in the sink and waved them sparkling dry. “We have to find that Bible before anyone else gets hurt. Before you get hurt.”

  “I don’t know where else to look,” I said. “It wasn’t anywhere in her house, and I certainly don’t have it here.”

  “Then she must have hidden it somewhere else, in which case she probably left a clue.”

  “I don’t think she had time. After all, Aunt Caroline didn’t expect to die when she did.”

  “Nevertheless, there’s that chance.” Augusta leaned against the sink and folded her arms. “Now think, Mary George. Think.”

  “The cookie jar,” I said. I kept coming back to the cookie jar. “It was sitting in the middle of the attic floor.”

  She nodded impatiently. “Did you get a chance to look inside?” “No, but there wouldn’t be room for a Bible in there. And then that lady bought it by mistake.” I shoved back my chair and started looking through the phone book. “Now, what was that woman’s name again? Surely she’s back from Europe by now.”

  There were two of them—cousins—and I had jotted the woman’s name and number on the back of something, something that had been handy when I called before. And I had telephoned from my bedroom. In the second drawer of the bedside table I found one of those scented advertisements for perfume with a phone number and the name Lottie Greeson scribbled across the front. Hadn’t she told Delia her cousin was due back this week?

  She picked up on the fourth ring, sounding sort of breathless. “Sorry … we were eating watermelon out in the backyard.” Lottie Greeson stopped to catch her breath and laughed. “My goodness, you’d think I’d run three times round the block!”

  I told her who I was and reminded her about the cookie jar. “I believe you said your cousin bought it at the yard sale. Has she returned from her trip yet?”

  “Edith? Oh, Lord, yes, honey! Got back early yesterday. Bless your heart, I plumb forgot to tell her about that, and they’ve gone over to Aunt Ella’s in Mooresville for the afternoon. She turned ninety last week, you know.”

  I said I didn’t know and sent belated good wishes. “When do you think I might get in touch with Edith?” I asked.

  “If I have sense enough to remember, I’ll phone her tonight,” Lottie said. “But if you haven’t heard by tomorrow, you might better give her a call. It’s Lloyd Shugart on Campbell Road. You’ll find it in the phone book.”

  “She sounds like a reasonable person,” I said to Augusta as I came back into the living room. “Let’s hope Cousin Edith’s as laid-back as Lottie.”

  But Augusta didn’t seem to hear me. She stood in front of the sofa staring at the television with an expression of disbelief. “Tell me I’m not hearing this!” Augusta covered her ears. “Imagine talking about such things right in the family parlor. Where’s that gadget that turns this thing off?”

  I found the remote control and flicked off the commercial for a feminine hygiene product. Augusta sounded so much like Aunt Caroline I wanted to hug her. I guess I must have been smiling.

  “What is it? What’s so funny?” Augusta’s face was flushed, her eyes flashed. “I don’t know how things can change so much in fifty years, honestly I don’t! Why, poor old Lucille Pettigrew would’ve had palpitations for sure if she’d seen something like that.” And she patted her ample chest and sighed.

  The next thing I knew, Augusta stood in front of the mirror adjusting a pert hat atop her pouf of hair. It was a natural straw with bright green and turquoise streamers and a slightly turned-up brim, and Augusta looked like she’d just stepped out of a painting. She tweaked the hat this way and that, tilted it on her head, and posed, no doubt liking what she saw.

  “Looks nice,” I said. “Where’d you find it?”

  “Can you believe somebody was throwing this out?” she said. “All it needed was a little fixing up. Now, where is my handbag?”

  Augusta carries this bottomless tapestry bag that can produce anything from a toothbrush to a pair of hedge clippers. “Why?” I asked. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Somebody needs to keep an eye on Bonita Moody,” she said. “Since she can’t look after herself.” She found her lumpy bag and opened it, and after poking about inside, seemed satisfied.

  “When will you be back?” I asked.

  “When it’s time.” She gave the hat a final poke, the bag a settling shake and headed for the door. “Don’t worry, you won’t be alone for long.”

  “How do you know?”

  Augusta cocked her head and looked at me before she stepped outside. “Trust me,” she said, and was gone. I ran to the door to look for her, but of course she wasn’t there.

  It wasn’t fifteen minutes before somebody knocked at my door, and I opened it to find Sam Maguire standing on my step with a white paper bag in his hand. “Started to call you, and then I thought how disappointed I’d be if you weren’t home, so I just took the chance and came anyway.” He held up the bag and shook it. “Hope you like submarine sandwiches. Thought we might go on a picnic. I know a secret place.”

  I smiled. “You don’t suppose we’ll see clopadopalous tracks?” “Wouldn’t be surprised,” Sam said, and shook his head. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

  “I can remember it. I just can’t spell it,” I said.

  The brown stream still wound through the meadow, now dotted with cedars and pines, but Sam knew his way around, stopping only to pick a bouquet of daisies and Queen Anne’s lace, which we stuck in an empty can on our picnic table. The table was our own big rock in a shady spot beside the water, only the rock didn’t seem as big anymore.

  Sam and I ate our sandwiches slowly and sipped slightly warm root beer we’d bought at a country store. He told me about growing up in Texas and working his way through a small college there. “I wrote to you when I left here,” he told me. “Wrote you several times. Made me mad as all get-out when you didn’t write back.”

  “I never got them,” I said.

  “I know. Dad admitted later he’d never mailed them. Didn’t want me to have any connection with Summerwood. He hated having to leave me here. Guess he thought he could just erase it from my mind.” Sam swirled the brown liquid in his soft drink bottle. “It didn’t work that way.”
<
br />   “I’m glad.” The rock was smooth and warm. I ran a finger along a crevice, trailed it in the cool water. “Somehow I thought you’d be married by now, raising a bunch of kids.”

  He laughed. “I am raising a bunch. That’s what teaching amounts to, like it or not. I happen to like it. I was engaged for a few months right out of college, but both of us had second thoughts. Guess we just weren’t ready. She went on to law school, and I got a job teaching eighth grade science and went back to school for my masters.”

  And what have you done with your life, Mary George? I waited for him to ask, but he didn’t. I hated to admit I’d dropped out after two years of college. If he ever did ask, I would just have to say I planned on going back in the fall. And now maybe I would.

  Lying back on the rock, I listened to the sweet rush of water and watched late afternoon sunlight flicker through the leaves. I felt safe here in this good place with this good man, but all wasn’t safe and good. I told Sam what happened to Bonita Moody and why.

  “What makes you think that won’t happen to you?” he said. “Mary G., why don’t you go and stay with Delia, at least for a little while?”

  “And what could Delia do? Anyway, I’m hoping to know more tomorrow.” I told him about Edith Shugart and Aunt Caroline’s cookie jar. “At least it’s some kind of lead.”

  “How many people knew where this guy’s aunt Alma kept her car? That she’d be away for a month?” Sam wanted to know.

  “Let’s see now … how many people are living in Troublesome Creek? Three or four thousand at least. Ours is a little town, Sam. Everybody knows everything.”

  “But they wouldn’t know about the extra car key.”

  “No, I guess not,” I admitted.

  “Look, this is the worst possible time for me to have to leave, but I promised Ed this fishing trip a year ago, and this week’s about the only time we can get together.” He smiled. “At least it’s only for a few days—or until my little brother gets enough of roughing it. You will be careful, won’t you, Mary G.? I don’t want anything happening to you.” Sam stood and took my hands, drew me up and kissed me, and the part of me that had been missing for so long was back where it belonged. And if we had been standing in water, we might’ve been electocuted right there on the spot.