by Robin Wells
My heart danced. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Sounds great.” His smile let me know he was definitely not having any regrets.
He turned to Gran, then angled his thumb toward the dining room. “Okay if I look at the dining room mural for a moment?”
“Of course,” Gran said. “Hope does beautiful work, doesn’t she?”
“Sure does,” Matt said from the other room.
He came back into the kitchen a moment later and sat down across from Gran. I placed a cup of coffee in front of him and sat down beside him.
“I have a question, Miss Addie.”
“Certainly. Ask away.”
“Well, you have a partially rotten stump in the backyard next to the shed. I think it’s the pecan tree that’s pictured in Hope’s mural in your dining room. When did you cut it down?”
“After Hurricane Katrina. More than half of the branches had broken off and it was leaning.”
“Was it planted after the suitcase was buried?”
Gran gazed thoughtfully out the window. “It might have been. One spring Charlie got a deal on a truckload of pecan trees. The store sold them. It was the first time they’d sold trees, and Charlie’s dad was miffed—said they were a lumberyard and hardware store, not a nursery. Anyway, Charlie planted three of them here, as well as three at both of our parents’ houses.” Gran looked at Matt, her eyes bright and excited. “If someone wanted to make sure something remained buried, the best way to do it would be to plant a tree right on top of it, wouldn’t it?”
Matt nodded. “Would it bother you if we dug up the tree trunk?”
Gran’s hand covered her chest.
“Are you okay?” I asked, immediately worried about her heart.
“Yes, honey. I’m just feeling . . . Oh, I’m so sure you’re right, Matt. And the fact Charlie planted trees on everyone’s property—well, that would have kept me from being suspicious.”
“If it’s okay with you, then, that’s where we’ll look.” He turned to me. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. I’m going to rent a stump grinder and a saw, and we’ll get to work.”
“Where are the girls?” I asked.
“At Sunday school. After church, Peggy, Griff, and Jillian are taking them to the zoo in New Orleans.” He briefly placed his hand on my back as he rose.
The simple touch warmed me to the core. I watched him pull his cell phone from his pocket as he walked out the back door, then turned to my grandmother. “Gran, are you sure you’re ready to deal with the consequences if we find that suitcase?”
“Yes, dear.”
“You know you’ll have to tell Eddie.”
“Oh, I know, honey.”
“We’ll have to call the police, as well. You could be in some kind of trouble for not reporting your suspicions.”
Gran’s chin tilted up. “I’d rather face the consequences here in this world than in the next.”
I swallowed.
“Ready for your bath, Miss Addie?” The aide stood in the doorway, a towel over her arm.
Gran turned and smiled. “Absolutely, Hannah. Wash me white as snow.”
• • •
We’d been at it for about two and half hours—alternately using the stump grinder, shovels, a pickax, and the metal detector, working on the trunk itself and digging a trench around it, then stopping to see if we got any metallic readings. The sun was hot, my shirt was sticking to my skin, and my stomach was growling. I was about to suggest I go make sandwiches, when Matt stopped the grinder for about the zillionth time.
“Did you hear that?”
It was hard to hear anything over the roar and whine of the engine.
“Not really.”
“I think we hit metal.”
He lifted the metal detector and turned it on. Sure enough, it pinged.
Excited, we both climbed into the trench and looked. All I could see was dirt, sawdust, and tree root. “I’ll take the pickax to it,” Matt said.
He swung it like a miner. Amazing, how hard pecan wood can be. I wondered how long it took for wood to petrify. After picking and chipping for what seemed like an eternity, the corner of a something distinctly non-treelike emerged. It looked like the metal corner of a trunk.
My pulse raced. “Wow.”
Matt nodded, his mouth tight. “Let’s work this sucker free.”
It took another hour and two broken handsaw blades, but he managed to cut away the stump to reveal a suitcase. It was metal, with tattered remnants of dirty cloth still stuck to it in spots.
I went in to tell Gran. She was seated at the kitchen table as the relentlessly cheerful aide made lunch. “I need to talk to my grandmother alone for a moment.”
“I’m in the middle of making tuna salad.”
“That’s okay. I’ll take over.”
“Well—okey dokey.”
We waited until she left the room. I suspected she was listening at the door. This aide had been full of questions about what we were doing in the backyard.
“You found it?” Gran asked eagerly.
I nodded.
“Oh my goodness.” Gran’s face was pale, her voice breathless. “I knew you would. Is it—is it still closed?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she personified the term Steel Magnolia. “I want to be the one to open it. Tell Hannah to go on home.”
I went into the other room and delivered the news.
“Oh no—I can’t leave! I’ll be fired by the agency.”
“Well, then, we need you to go to the store. Gran needs . . .” I searched my mind for something difficult to find. “. . . powder toothpaste. The whitening kind for sensitive teeth.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
“Well, try to find it. And get her some hand lotion, too. The kind that’s scented like cucumbers and lime.”
“Where on earth will I find that?”
“They sell it at the bath shop at the mall in Hammond.”
“But that’s thirty miles away!”
“Take Gran’s car.”
I handed her the keys, walked to the front the door, and held it open.
She lifted her head and sniffed. “I know you’re just tryin’ to get rid of me.”
“I’m just asking you to do your job.”
She shot me a dirty look but gathered up her purse and left. I stood on the porch and watched until she pulled out of the driveway. “All clear,” I said, striding back into the kitchen.
As I helped Gran into a chair on the patio, Matt spread newspapers on the outdoor table. He carried over the rusted suitcase and set it down.
We all stared at it, as if it were a genie’s bottle. Gran slowly reached out her hand.
“It’s locked,” Matt gently said.
Her hand froze in midair, then fell into her lap. “Can you force it open?”
Matt pulled a screwdriver from his toolbox, wedged the flat edge against the lock with his left hand, then picked up a hammer. With a single loud bang, the lock gave way.
I watched Gran’s lips firm. “I want to be the one to lift the lid.”
“I’ll go get you some gloves,” I volunteered. I ran to the shed and grabbed a pair of cotton flowered gardening gloves. Gran’s hands shook as she pulled them on.
“It’s rusted,” Matt said. “I’ll need to pry it loose.” He worked with a crowbar until the suitcase lid creaked and started to give.
“All right, Miss Addie,” he said. “Put your hands beside mine, and we’ll open it together.”
Her face was pale, her skin so thin and translucent I could see the blue veins underneath. Her eyes held a combination of fear and determination that I can only call courage. Her lips disappeared as she pressed them tightly together.
Matt’s leather gloves pushed upward on the suitcase lid, Gran’s frail, flower-gloved hands pushing beside them. With a squawk that sounded like something from a horror movie, the lid abruptly swung upward.
Gran peered inside.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
43
adelaide
I stared inside the suitcase, then pressed the back of my cotton glove against my mouth.
“What?” Hope asked, her voice quavering. “What is it?”
I couldn’t speak.
“Something covered by a blanket.” Matt moved aside so Hope could step up beside me. I continued to stare at the partially rotted pink-and-blue blanket, stained and dirty. A baby blanket—one I’d never seen before. My stomach and heart felt as if they’d swapped places.
“Do you want me to lift it?” Matt asked.
No. Truth was, I didn’t want to see what was underneath. I wanted to slam the lid and pretend we’d never found the damned thing. But I couldn’t do that. I’d done that for all too long.
“I’ll do it.” My hand shook. Covered in that flowered cotton glove, it didn’t even look like it was attached to my arm as I peeled back that blanket.
Inside, something was wrapped in what looked like it had once been newspaper, but now resembled papier-mâché.
I tugged on it. It came off in big chunks. And underneath . . .
Bones.
I recoiled. “Oh dear Lord.” Hope’s arm circled my shoulders. Oh, Charlie—how could you? A sob escaped my mouth.
“Wait.” Matt leaned in. “This isn’t human.”
“What?”
He moved the newspaper. “The head shape is all wrong, and so are the teeth.”
Teeth? Babies don’t have teeth!
“It looks like the remains of a dog,” Matt said.
“A dog?” Hope and I breathed the words at the same time.
“Yeah.” Matt held back the paper and Hope peered in. “See the jaw? And there’s some fur.”
“It’s definitely not a baby,” Hope said.
Not a baby. Not a baby! My own bones went limp.
“There’s something else in here.” Matt unwrapped something from the paper. As I watched, he pulled out an Old Crow whiskey bottle.
“Oh my. That’s what Charlie drank.” I felt my legs go weak. Hope grabbed my arms and helped me to a chair.
“Did you have a dog?” Hope asked me.
“No,” Gran said. “Charlie always said they were too much trouble.” Actually, his mother had said that, and Charlie had just accepted it, like he accepted most pronouncements from his parents.
“Did you know anyone who did?”
“Well, sure. But not in Mississippi. We didn’t really know our neighbors. We stayed to ourselves because of the false pregnancy.”
“This is the suitcase that was in the trunk of the car?”
“Oh, yes. I’m sure of it. I’d never seen a suitcase like that before.”
Matt continued to paw through the paper. “Look—here’s a dog collar and a tag!”
He lifted a cracked leather collar and read the tin tag. “Sonny. Fourteen Belmont Street, Cratchatee, Mississippi.”
“Where’s Cratchatee?” Hope asked.
“It’s a small town east of Jackson.” I sank back in the chair and pulled off my gloves. Tears filled my eyes.
“Are you okay, Gran?”
I nodded, but my mind was reeling. “I don’t understand. Why would Charlie bury a dog? What happened to the baby?” Tears flowed down my cheeks. I tossed the gloves aside and wiped my face on my sleeve, my gut churning. “I was supposed to straighten out this whole mess. How am I going to do that now?”
“I thought the important thing was to find the suitcase and alleviate your fears,” Hope said.
“But this doesn’t alleviate them!” I clasped and unclasped my hands in my lap, rocking back and forth in a chair that wasn’t a rocker. “I still don’t know what happened to the baby!”
“Are you sure there was one?” Matt asked softly.
“Yes. Positively. And now . . . well, now I guess I’ll go to my grave not knowing.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
I actually hadn’t been sure before, but I was now. “Yes.”
Matt closed the lid on the trunk. “Well, then, I can track down this address and find out who was living there at the time.”
My chest fluttered with hope. “Oh, could you?”
Matt looked at Hope, and she nodded. He grinned at me, and he was so handsome, so confident, that for a moment it was like looking at Joe. “Sure thing, Miss Addie,” he said. “Sure thing.”
44
matt
Before we found the suitcase, I’d thought that all of Miss Addie’s tales about dead babies and B-24 flights might be nothing more than the imaginings of a partially senile woman with head trauma. But as she filled me in on some of the details of what had happened sixty-something years earlier, I couldn’t help but think what a reliable witness she’d make in the courtroom. She was coherent and exact. She told the story consistently from her own perspective, as an observer and participant. These were memories, not wild permutations of an injured mind.
Preliminary research online to find the address was nonproductive. The town map didn’t even list a Belmont Street. A call to the tax assessor’s office in Cratchatee County on Monday revealed that no property records prior to 1995 were available digitally, but were open to the public in files at the courthouse.
I called Hope. “Are you up for a road trip? I can take Friday off.”
So that’s how we ended up headed to Cratchatee, Mississippi, the following week. We left at seven in the morning because it was a three-hour drive, but the time just flew. Hope and I talked about all kinds of things—movies and music, religion and politics, current events, and even our marriages. When I told her about Christine’s sudden passing, her eyes filled with tears. She reached out her hand, and I took it, and I drove like that the rest of the way, holding her hand.
I told her about growing up in Texas, and she told me about her childhood. I learned that her parents had married late in life, that her dad had been eighteen years older than her mother, and that her mom had been forty-two when Hope was born. Losing her mom had been a huge blow to her, and had left her so sad and lonely it had been easy for her opportunistic ex to take advantage of her.
Hearing how this jag-off had moved in on her when she was at her lowest point made me furious. I’m not a violent person, but I wanted to smack him in the face.
Our conversation flowed easily, covering both deep and shallow terrain, with a strong undercurrent of sexual tension. I was not only attracted to Hope; I also genuinely liked and respected her. She was smart, fair-minded, funny, and empathetic. Hanging out with Hope felt like hanging out with a friend I’d known for years.
My father had told me many years ago that the true test of a relationship was a road trip. All I can say is, Hope and I passed with flying colors.
The tax assessor’s office was at the courthouse, which was located in the center of town. A helpful clerk told me that Belmont Street probably had been located outside of the actual town limits. Many dirt roads had existed in the forties and fifties that were no longer there or had been renamed.
A search of old records on microfiche showed that the street had been located about eight miles west of town and that 14 Belmont had been owned by an Edsel Wortner. Apparently the house had been torn down to make way for a new housing development in the sixties. No current listings for Wortners were listed in the Cratchatee records or any online search sites.
“You need to find some old-timers,” the assessor’s clerk told us.
“Where should we look?” Hope asked.
“Well, there’s the nursing home on Elm Street.�
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“Most of the folks in there have dementia,” said a woman wearing a Realtor’s name tag who was doing a title search. She’d been listening unapologetically to our conversation. “If I were you, I’d start with the downtown diner.”
So that’s what we did.
A cowbell jangled over the door as we walked in. Sure enough, a couple of elderly men—one with an oxygen tube in his nose, chewing on an unlit cigar, and the other dipping snuff—sat in the back booth, sipping coffee.
A waitress with long blond hair had her back to us as she cleared the plates from a table. “Sit anywhere you like,” she called. When she turned around, I was shocked to see that her face was creased and wizened, her upper lip long and pleated like corrugated tin. Her monkey-ish face was about fifty years older than the lush mane of hair. The disconnect threw me. I stared for a moment before it hit me: she was a senior citizen wearing a Blake Lively wig.
Hope spoke up while I was still gathering my wits. “We’re looking for some information. We found a dog tag with an address among my grandmother’s things, and we were wondering if anyone here could tell us where the property is.”
“What’s the address?”
I told her. She pulled her mouth to one side as she raked food off the plates into a trash can. “Never heard of that one.” She turned and hollered to the men in the back. “Buster, Willard—y’all ever hear of Belmont Street?”
“Hotchkiss Road used to be called that,” the one with the oxygen said. “My uncle used to live there.”
We headed to the back of the diner and introduced ourselves. The men returned the favor. The one with the oxygen was Buster.
“Can we sit down and buy you a cup of coffee?” I asked.
“We’d be delighted.” Willard scooted over in his booth and smiled at Hope. His large size left about six inches of clearance for Hope. “Our coffee is always on the house, but I wouldn’t mind a piece of that pecan pie.”
“Gertie’ll skin you alive if you eat that,” Buster said.
“What she don’t know won’t hurt her,” Willard replied.