Angel at Troublesome Creek

by Ballard, Mignon F.

  We stopped to see the Cummings at Summerwood on the way back, and since Rose offered dessert, Sam and I ended up staying longer than we’d meant. It’s just about impossible for me to turn down homemade peach cobbler.

  The answering machine blinked at me when I got home that night and I practically broke my neck in my rush to push the play button, hoping to hear someone had found my Hairy.

  Instead it was the next best thing. “I think I have the cookie jar you’re looking for,” a woman’s voice said. “It’s packed away in my back storage room with some other things, and it’s a little late to look for it tonight, but I’ll try to get to it tomorrow. I’ll give you a call when I find it.”

  Edith Shugart sounded sweeter than an angel. Well, almost.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bonita Moody still hadn’t regained consciousness, I learned the next morning, but a hospital spokesperson said she was stable. I thought about her haggard husband sitting up with her all this time and hoped he was stable too.

  “Mae Higgins said the Moody woman seemed a lot stronger this morning when she went off duty,” Doc Nichols reported. His neighbor was a nurse on Bonita’s floor, and he’d seen her having coffee in the Doughnut Barn. I wondered if Augusta had anything to do with the woman’s improvement.

  Word had gotten out about Walter Hildebrand’s aunt Alma’s car. It was being checked for fingerprints and other possible evidence, but so far I hadn’t heard of any suspects. Now that Todd was more or less out of the picture, I didn’t have any either. And that was even scarier.

  Being a Monday, we had wall-to-wall patients, but as soon as there was a lull I checked my answering machine and heard that Edith Shugart had found my aunt’s cookie jar. I could pick it up whenever it was convenient, she said.

  I looked at the clock. It was convenient for me right now, but unfortunately we still had a couple of cats and a pregnant poodle to see before lunch.

  When the phone rang at a little after one I was almost out the door. Doc Nichols had left a few minutes earlier and I started not to answer the call. It was probably Luanne Whitworth calling again from her mother’s in Knoxville to check on that rotten Claudette. Luanne boarded her Maltese with us whenever she went out of town, then drove everybody nuts calling to see if we were following her instructions.

  Still, it might be an emergency. Somebody’s pet might suffer or die just because I was in a hurry. I groaned and went back to see who it was. After all, the cookie jar wasn’t going anywhere.

  The woman on the other end of the line asked for me by name, which is kind of unusual because I don’t get many personal calls at the clinic. She was calling from the microchip company, she said. I recognized the system as the one Doc Nichols used to identify pets and hope flared like a tiny candle. Maybe … maybe …

  “I think I might have some good news,” she said. “We just got a call from an animal shelter in Gastonia, and it looks like they have your dog.”

  “Hairy! They’ve found Hairy Brown? When?” And to think I almost didn’t answer the phone.

  “Fellow brought him in yesterday. Said he was wandering around his neighborhood. They say he looks like somebody’s been feeding him. Seems to have lost his collar, but his ID number checks out on the scanner. It’s your dog all right.

  “You might want to give them a call,” she added. “Let them know the dog belongs to you. When do you think you’ll be able to pick him up?”

  “What about right now?” I said.

  I put in a quick call to Doc’s sister who agreed to fill in for me in case I was late getting back, and was on my way a few minutes later. If I didn’t hit any traffic snags I should be there in less than an hour—but how on earth did Hairy Brown end up in Gastonia?

  Hairy was dirtier, shaggier, and a little thinner, but he looked wonderful to me. He braced his big old feet against my chest and licked my face, and I hugged his smelly neck and cried. He rode home on the backseat with all the windows open, and as soon as we got back to the clinic, wolfed down a double portion of Canine Crunchies. After Doc checked Hairy over and pronounced him fit, I turned him over to the guy who does our grooming and told him to give him the works—which is more than I’ve ever been able to afford for myself.

  “How do you suppose he got way over there?” I asked the doc.

  “Who knows? Probably ran out when somebody opened your door. Looks like he’s been wandering around a good bit, but he could’ve gotten a ride. I expect somebody befriended him for a while.”

  For whoever did, I was grateful. On the way home I stopped at Anderson’s Market for Hairy’s favorite dog food, then stood in the kitchen watching him gulp it down. Augusta had left me a loaf of her wonderful bread, and I had several slices with a couple of bowls of soup. I realized now why I was so hungry. I had completely forgotten about lunch. I had also forgotten to collect the cookie jar from Edith Shugart.

  I waited a little while to call her so I wouldn’t interrupt her dinner. The two cousins had been so decent about letting me buy back the jar, I hated making a nuisance of myself, but Edith didn’t seem to mind. “Why, of course, come right over,” she said. “We were just sitting here watching one of those old game shows on TV.”

  The Shugarts lived a couple of miles out of town on Campbell Road and it took a few minutes to get there. Hairy sat behind me, his cold nose nudging my neck as I drove. I was glad to have him with me, not only for his company but because I was having that feeling again, that sensation of being followed. Lightning bugs winked in the gray dusk, and cars were beginning to turn on their lights, but you could still see to drive without them.

  We passed a cornfield, dark green and shoulder high, a country church, gray in the fading light and circled by a low stone wall, then a pine thicket and the turnoff to the narrow side road where the Shugarts lived. I turned, then slowed and glanced behind me. A car passed, then another, bright headlights shoving back the night. The third car was dark and I was too far away to make out anything but a vague shape. The driver seemed to hesitate at the entrance to the road, but obviously thought better of it and drove on. Probably somebody looking for a street, I decided, feeling slightly relieved. But not entirely. There were only three houses on Campbell Road. If someone had followed me, they wouldn’t have to be Christopher Columbus to discover where I went.

  A light burned on the porch of the Shugarts’ neat white farmhouse, and Edith greeted me at the door. She looked to be in her midfifties and wore shorts, sandals, and a pink-smeared T-shirt. The whole house smelled sweetly of peaches.

  “Come in, sit down a minute. Would you like some tea?” Edith ushered me past the dim living room where a television blared to the brightly lit kitchen. “Excuse the way I look. Been putting up peaches all afternoon, and I’m just too blamed tired to change.”

  I declined the drink, explaining that my dog was in the car, but sat at the kitchen table while she went to the back porch and returned with a box. It was the same box Aunt Caroline’s coffeemaker had come in, the one that had held the cookie jar.

  “I reckon this is all right,” Edith said, pulling open the top to look inside. “To tell the truth, I haven’t really looked at it since I brought it home. My sister collects cookie jars and this one looked so cute I thought she’d get a kick out of it, but another one will come along.”

  She started to remove the tissue, lift the ceramic dog from the box, but I reached out to stop her. “That’s all right, you don’t need to do that. I can see it’s the one—see the chip on the ear? I did that when I was a little girl.” I patted the smooth earthenware head. It would be good to have him back again—clue, or no clue.

  Edith had paid three dollars for the cookie jar, and only asked for the same. I forced a five-dollar bill into her hand and practically ran to the car, refusing change. Still, she chased after me, protesting, across the yard. I think she would’ve hounded me all the way back to town if she’d had on good running shoes and hadn’t been so tired.

  I could hardly dr
ive for curiosity about what might be in the jar, but I was afraid to stop and look inside. I didn’t notice a car waiting when I left the Shugarts’ street, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t being followed. At least I knew it wasn’t Aunt Alma’s gray Cougar. The police had impounded that.

  By the time I got back to town I just couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to cross Snapfinger Road to reach my place at Miss Fronie’s, and on impulse I turned and drove the couple of blocks to Delia’s, trying not to look at the still-empty house across the street. We hadn’t had our formal closing so they hadn’t begun renovations, and the old place looked forlorn and sad.

  I parked in the back and let Hairy out on his leash for a minute before letting Delia know I was there. Naturally, Hairy wanted to come inside too, but Delia’s cats didn’t care for that idea at all, so we compromised. I left Hairy on the back screen porch where he settled for a snooze, tail thumping in contentment on the cool wooden floor.

  “Oh, Lord!” Delia sighed when she saw what was in the box. “How many times have I seen Caroline fill that jar with cookies?”

  “And how many times have you seen me empty it?” I said.

  We opened the box on Delia’s mahogany Chippendale dining table, now cluttered with half-filled packing boxes. “I won’t be going to that stiff-necked condo,” she explained, “but I sure don’t plan to stay here and flutter around like some dusty old moth!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. I had come up with what I thought was a brilliant idea for Delia’s future and had mentioned it to Sam, but we weren’t yet sure if we could work things out, so I kept my mouth shut for now.

  I lifted the jar from the box and set the lid aside. There was something in the bottom of the jar. At first I thought it was merely a wad of tissue, but on touching it, I realized it was cloth.

  Delia pushed up her glasses. “What is it, a rag?”

  “Some doodad trimmed in lace. Looks like one of Aunt Caroline’s hankies, and there’s something inside.” Carefully I unwrapped the small object and held it for Delia to see. “It’s some kind of key, but I’ve never seen it. What do you suppose it opens?”

  Delia picked up the key and examined it, adjusting her bifocals. “See that number on the back? Two-eight-four? That’s either a locker at the airport or the bus station or the number of a post office box.”

  Since Troublesome Creek doesn’t have an airport, and my aunt Caroline wouldn’t go inside the local bus station unless a cleaning crew and an exterminating company went before her, the key had to be for a post office box.

  I stuck the key deep inside the pocket of my shorts, gathered up the cookie jar, box and all, and woke my sleeping mongrel. Delia followed me outside. “Well?” she said as I urged Hairy into the backseat.

  “Well, what?”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to the post office. Why wait?”

  Delia moved down a step. “Mary George, do you realize what time it is?”

  I didn’t, but she was going to tell me.

  And she did. “It’s after ten—probably closer to eleven, and you’ll be going in there alone for anybody to see.”

  “Delia, it’s right in the middle of town. There are lights.”

  “My point exactly. Somebody wants whatever’s in there in a bad way. What’s to keep them from following you there, watching you open that box? Do you think they would hesitate to take it from you any way they could? The post office is usually deserted this late. There wouldn’t be a soul to stop them.”

  “You’re scaring me,” I said. “Stop it.”

  “Good. Now, promise you’ll go straight home. Whatever’s in that post office box will be there tomorrow. It’s not going anywhere.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, and waved as I drove away. Surely Delia couldn’t be serious. Now that I was this close, I meant to find out what was in that box and why it was so important. And I meant to do it tonight. After all, according to Sam, night is just day painted over. Isn’t it?

  But that was before I saw somebody watching from across the street.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  This time a chicken rode home on my shoulder, and I bypassed the post office without hesitation. I was raised on Snapfinger Road. I know what should and shouldn’t be there, and that dark, person-size shape standing just beyond reach of the streetlight shouldn’t have been there at all. I spotted it by the stone wall on the corner just before turning out of Delia’s drive, and paused to see if it was somebody walking a dog, stopping to cross the street, but The Blob didn’t move. It was waiting me out.

  And Delia was right. The post office was brightly lit, but I didn’t see a car in the parking lot. My neighbor had a point. Whatever was in that post office box would wait until tomorrow.

  But the next day … well, if I were superstitious I’d say it was cursed.

  In the first place, I was late leaving for work. When I had reached home the night before, Fronie was rehearsing for the international yodeling competition, or so it sounded. Whatever it was went on and on, and was much worse than awful. I made a decision right then and there to stay away from church that Sunday.

  Then, just as I was about to drop off to sleep, Sam called from Atlanta and we talked for twenty minutes or more. He and his brother planned to leave early the next morning for a lakeside camp—far from telephones and civilization, he told me, and it would be several days before he called again. I told Sam about finding the key in the cookie jar, but not about being followed. After all, I wasn’t sure I was being followed, and I didn’t want him to know how nervous—oh, well, let’s face it, neurotic—I’d become.

  Of course it’s difficult to hide something as obvious as that. “Mary G.,” he said, “I really think you should wait on this. Why not let Doc Nichols keep that key, at least until I get back? You can trust him, can’t you? It might not mean a thing, but if it does, just having it could put you in danger.”

  “Are you crazy? You want me to wait until you’ve caught your quota of fish? No offense, Sam, and I do appreciate your concern, but there’s no way I’m going to put off opening that box!”

  “There’s no use arguing with you, Mary G.,” he grumbled. “But please be careful, will you? You know you’re ruining my fishing trip. I won’t be able to relax a minute for worrying about you.”

  I think I promised something ridiculous—that I would open the box at high noon in the company of an armed guard, or something crazy like that—but it got him off my back.

  I was almost fifteen minutes late when I pulled into my usual space in the clinic’s parking lot the next morning. I grabbed my purse with one hand and smoothed my hair with the other, hoping I’d get a chance to put on a little makeup later if we didn’t have a heavy patient load that day.

  He stepped in front of me so fast I almost ran smack into him, and for a minute I was so startled I couldn’t speak.

  Todd Burkholder took me by the shoulders and held them in a tight, uncomfortable grip. “Hey, just a minute! Don’t be in such a hurry,” he said.

  “Get out of my way, Todd! You know you aren’t supposed to be here, and I won’t think twice about calling the police.”

  “Oh, don’t I just know it.” He gave me a slight shake, but his fingers relaxed on my arm. “This is a public parking lot, you little bitch. I have as much right to be here as anybody.”

  We shared the lot with a couple of dentists and the town’s one florist, and as if in explanation, Todd waved a sickly-looking lily in my face.

  “Get your hands off me right now,” I said in somebody else’s voice. I sounded meaner than a vegetarian at a barbecue. Good.

  And it must have worked, because he did. Todd shook that pathetic flower in my face until the stem broke. “I’ve had it with you, Mary George Murphy! Because of you I’m probably going to lose my job—and for what? I didn’t do a damn thing to you! Didn’t follow you out to God knows where, and I sure as hell never broke in and searched your apartment.”

  Todd’
s face was an interesting shade of watermelon red. It reminded me of one of those new crayon colors. And he spit so when he talked I held up my purse like a shield. “Lady, you don’t have a thing I want!” he said. (Well, that’s not quite all he said, but I’ll leave out the adjectives. Thank goodness Augusta wasn’t listening!) After an apopletic pause, Todd hurled the lily in my direction, only it broke in two and flopped to the pavement.

  Now he backed away from me, still sputtering. “All I wanted was a chance to explain. Now everybody thinks I’m some kind of pervert.”

  I never thought I would feel sorry for this jerk, and I still didn’t, but I didn’t plan to destroy his shabby little life. What this man lacked in manners and diplomacy, he made up for in sheer boorishness. What in the world made me think I was in love with this creep? No wonder Aunt Caroline flinched at his name!

  “I guess I did accuse you unfairly,” I said. “But you scared me half to death. If you want to discuss something, Todd, you don’t lurk in the shadows and pounce. It tends to put one on the defensive.

  “Look, if it will help, I’ll call your boss and explain,” I said.

  If he’d had a cross, I think he would have held it in front of him. “Just stay away!” Todd screamed. “For God’s sake, stay away from me, woman!”

  “Well, sure,” I said, watching him leap into his car and scratch off. I jumped to get out of the way. One wheel backed over the lily. I didn’t think I’d be seeing Todd again.

  “I thought he was going to run over my toe,” I told Doc Nichols later that morning as we shared some of his wife’s oatmeal raisin muffins with our coffee. I could laugh about it now, although still somewhat shakily.