Hidden Riches

by Felicia Mason

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What if she’s able to find the quilt?” Lester clarified.

  Delcine, on her feet and now standing behind Clayton, glared down at her sister. “Do you think you know where it is?”

  The question, which could have come across as a gentle query from Clayton, barreled out of Delcine like the demand it was.

  Lester, still focused on Rollings, made an appeal. “If she finds it, let us back in the game for the big money.”

  “Mr. Coston . . .”

  “It’s only fair,” Lester said. “She finds it and we give back the envelope.” He was already reaching for the manila envelope. Not finding it in his chair, he leaned over and grabbed it from the edge of JoJo’s chair cushion.

  Lester thrust the envelope at the lawyer.

  “There was no contingency. . . ,” Rollings started saying.

  But Clayton piped up. “That’s fine with me,” he said giving JoJo’s hand a gentle squeeze. “If she, if we, find the quilt, JoJo is allowed back in the clue hunt.”

  He turned around to glance up at their remaining sibling. “Delcine?”

  Holding her head as if she had a migraine and looking generally disgusted, Delcine scowled and then just said, “Whatever.”

  Clayton took that as acquiescence and rose, turning to Archer. “That’s legal, right?”

  Archer looked at Rollings. “As long as all of the invested parties agree, I don’t see a problem. Do you?”

  “Well, there was no contingency for this scenario,” Rollings said. He mulled it over for a moment, then, apparently, like Archer, coming up with no legal objection, nodded.

  “Reverend le Baptiste, do you agree?”

  “Absolutely,” the preacher said.

  “Mrs. Foster?”

  Delcine sent daggers in the direction of JoJo and Clayton, then gave Lester a lethal dose of her glare. “Yes, that’s fine,” she finally said. “If we find it.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Lester said rubbing his hands together and grabbing his wife’s hand. “Come on.”

  “I’m really, really sorry, everybody,” JoJo said.

  Rollings stood. “I suggest that you all go back to the house and reconstruct the events that led to the, uh, disposal of the quilt. If it’s found . . .”

  “When it’s found,” Lester interjected.

  “When it’s found,” Rollings conceded, “please immediately bring it here. That is not negotiable. Does everyone understand? The quilt is to be retrieved and returned to this office immediately.”

  He got everyone to verbally agree. For a moment he turned toward his desk, looking as if he might draw up a contract to that effect for each of them to sign. But in the mere seconds it took him to think the thought, the heirs were dashing for the door.

  For the first time since arriving in North Carolina, Marguerite felt that her world might not be imploding around her. While the others went outside, she’d hung back for a moment in order to ask Rollings a question.

  His assurance—that the money would immediately be available to the winning heir or heirs—eased her trepidations. While little could be done about the indictment Winslow faced, with the promise of three point eight million dollars, she could stave off the creditors and the foreclosure.

  With shrewd eyes she assessed her brother and sister. JoJo was trying to hide it, but she and Lester probably needed money as well, judging by the way Lester pounced on the offer of ten thousand. Then there were the other signs. The too-done makeup could be attributed to JoJo’s former profession. But cheap clothes couldn’t be masked with costume jewelry and Payless shoes.

  Her glance then slid to her brother Clayton, the only Futrell who’d actually made it.

  The irony didn’t escape Marguerite. Neither did the resentment that their mother, and even Ana Mae, always seemed to favor the boy in the family. It was something of sweet justice that he didn’t turn out to be the man their mama thought he’d be. Marguerite couldn’t begrudge him his success, though. A doctor “married” to a lawyer. Wasn’t that every girl’s dream, to marry well?

  She thought she’d chosen wisely with Winslow. But time proved just how wrong she’d been. And how stuck she was now.

  It was pretty likely he’d go to prison. Where would that leave her? The scandal ruined friendships that had been built on professional achievement rather than true caring or sentiment. And it was highly possible that the lies on which she’d built her own history and reputation would come to light when reporters started digging around into Win’s crimes.

  There was but one way to put a positive spin on her current situation, just one way to resolve all of her problems: She had to be the one to get all of Ana Mae’s money.

  In a stall in the ladies restroom, JoJo was thinking similar thoughts, a fact that would have set Marguerite’s teeth on edge had she known.

  She’d had to hock her wedding rings to get the fare to North Carolina. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been the first time she’d made her way to Vegas Thrifty Pawn. The owner there, who’d been sweet on her way back when, always gave her a good rate and didn’t mind if she was a bit late getting her stuff back.

  This time, though, JoJo probably wouldn’t claim her jewelry. What was the point? Her marriage was all but over. The only reason Lester even showed up in Drapersville at all was because he had a sixth sense for sniffing out money. And, boy, had his nose been working overtime this go-round—almost enough to make JoJo wonder, if just fleetingly, if he actually could claim some level of psychic talent or ability.

  She quickly dismissed that, though. Lester’s primary skill was conning people out of their hard-earned money, whether by sleight of hand or one of his “psychic” readings.

  There was a lot JoJo could do with the kind of money Ana Mae left them, even if it had to be split up three ways.

  Clayton didn’t need it. He was a doctor with a successful practice back in San Francisco. And his sexy sweetie, Archer, made a ton of money suing people or doing whatever it was he did.

  No, the only Futrell who hadn’t lived up to her—or anybody’s —potential was Mary Josephine. It was time her luck changed, though.

  Time indeed.

  Out on the sidewalk on Clifton Street, the heirs sort of stood around looking stunned.

  “Three point eight million dollars,” Lester muttered. “That’s like four million bucks. And it’s all cash?”

  Marguerite narrowed her eyes at her brother-in-law. “For some of us. Her direct heirs.”

  Lester slipped his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “And my baby here is gonna get her cut.”

  “Girl, what possessed you to throw out that quilt?” Rosalee asked.

  JoJo shrugged out of her husband’s embrace. “It was ugly. The squares made no sense. It looked like something from the country.”

  “The last time I checked, this was the country,” Winslow said on a dry note, uttering the most words he’d spoken around any of them since arriving in North Carolina. “There’s not a decent coffeehouse within thirty miles.”

  Marguerite rolled her eyes. “Winslow, please.”

  “We need to find that quilt,” Rosalee said.

  “We?” Marguerite inquired.

  Rosalee nodded, smug. “That’s right. I’m reckoning if JoJo tossed it out as a rag, none of you will be able to figure out any clues. That leaves me.”

  “Over my dead . . .”

  “Excuse me,” Archer interjected before either Rosalee or Marguerite landed the first slap, push, or pull of hair. “We, as the people who were witness to the reading, need to stop arguing and set about finding this quilt.”

  Clayton leaned over, whispered something in Archer’s ear.

  Seeing the two, JoJo’s husband smirked. A pack of cigarettes materialized in his hands. He tamped down the Newports, then slipped one from the package. Before Lester could reach for a book of matches, JoJo plucked the cigarette from his lips and snapped it in two.

  “Hey!”
r />   “You’re supposed to be quitting.”

  “You’re the one who quit. Don’t take your cravings out on me.”

  Clayton nodded to Archer and then announced, “We’re leaving. I guess this is something like a treasure or scavenger hunt.”

  “Yes, rather so,” Winslow added with one of his sage nods.

  “And may the best team win,” Lester said.

  Even though Clayton had put the suggestion in everyone’s head that they were on a scavenger hunt, it took the Futrells about a minute for them all to realize they had to find the quilt before they could divide and conquer anything.

  Eventually realizing that Ana Mae’s house was the best place to begin, they headed there.

  Marguerite put on a pot of coffee as the heirs, Rosalee, and Reverend Toussaint crowded into the kitchen.

  “Would she really leave all that money to a couple of cats?” JoJo asked.

  Rosalee nodded. “Ana Mae loved all animals and spent a lot of time over to The Haven, the no-kill animal shelter. But she loved Diamond Jim and Baby Sue the best. She loved ’em like they was her own kids.”

  JoJo shuddered. “I don’t see why. Cats are scary creatures.”

  “That’s just ’cause they make you sneeze,” Lester said.

  “I’ve been doped up on Benadryl from the first day I walked into this house,” JoJo added.

  Archer gave Clayton a told-you-so glance.

  “You should have stayed at a hotel,” Clayton offered.

  JoJo flushed, then glanced guiltily at her husband. “Well, yes, but, uh, someone needed to be here.”

  As if picking up steam for her explanation, JoJo pointed to the countertops still overflowing with food from neighbors and friends. “Somebody needed to be here for when people dropped by.”

  She smiled broadly, as if suddenly satisfied with that explanation.

  “JoJo, start from the beginning,” Marguerite said. “Tell us what you did with the items to be donated or destroyed.”

  The field marshal’s command put them all back on track.

  JoJo bit her lip and looked around as if just seeing the kitchen for the first time. “Well, first I gathered up all the stuff that was over there.” She pointed toward a corner where an ironing board was set up in a little alcove.

  “That’s where Ana Mae did her work,” Rosalee pointed out.

  “Work?” Marguerite said, trying—and failing—to keep the sneer or the haughtiness from her tone.

  Rosalee sucked in her breath and stood straight and tall. All five foot two inches of her challenging the taller, sophisticated woman. “Ana Mae and me did honest work. Every single day. Ain’t nothing wrong with washing and ironing clothes and cleaning houses.”

  Marguerite closed her eyes for a moment, trying to gather her composure.

  “Unless you punch out in a toilet,” Lester said with a nudge at Archer.

  “Out!”

  “I was just funning,” Lester said.

  “Actually,” Clayton said, sending a brief glance in Archer’s direction, “would you all give us a moment, please? Just the siblings. JoJo. Marguerite.”

  The sisters exchanged a look, wondering at the authoritarian tone in their otherwise docile brother’s voice. After a moment, Marguerite nodded.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “We, the three of us, need some time alone.”

  Muttering under his breath and pulling out his cigarettes, Lester stomped off.

  With a long and lingering look at Clayton, Archer took his leave, giving Clayton plenty to wonder about the message his partner was trying to send telepathically.

  Pulling out a pipe, Winslow excused himself and headed out the back door.

  When just four of them remained, as one the Futrells turned toward Rosalee.

  “I got to leave too?”

  “Please,” Marguerite said.

  “You don’t have to be snappish about it,” Rosalee said. “I know where I’m not wanted. I just wonder if any of you all know that. You’re acting all brotherly and sisterly now that Ana Mae is in the ground. But not a one of you cared a whit about her while she was alive.”

  “Be that as it may,” Marguerite began.

  Clayton’s hand on her arm stayed the rest of her comments. Marguerite cleared her throat.

  JoJo just watched the byplay, feeling, as usual, much like a third wheel with a broken spoke.

  When Rosalee left, slamming the side screen door on her way out, the three looked at each other.

  “Three point eight mil,” JoJo said. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “It’s not ours yet,” Clayton reminded them. “First we have to find that quilt you tossed out.”

  Even under the heavy makeup, JoJo’s face turned red. “I’m sorry, all right. How many times do I have to say that?”

  “Well, just be glad we cut you back in,” Marguerite reminded her.

  JoJo bit back a comment. Marguerite had always been the uppity one, the one they all figured would make it out of Drapersville and on to something grand. She’d even married well. To that fancy Winslow with the big government job. For a while, it seemed like every time JoJo went to her mailbox there was a postcard with Marguerite’s schoolteacher-perfect handwriting coming from some exotic locale or a country that only people on the TV news seemed to know how to find or pronounce.

  If JoJo hadn’t gotten knocked up, and later been stupid enough to marry Lester, maybe she would be the one with the fancy house, the fancy car, and the fancy, but kind of dull, clothes.

  She should have been the one to marry a good man who provided well for his family. Instead she’d picked Lester.

  But not for long.

  Lester didn’t know how much she wanted to leave Las Vegas and move somewhere . . . maybe even back home. And if there was nothing else, she knew how much Lester thrived in a place like Vegas and would wither in a small place like Ahoskie or Drapersville, which was all the more reason to move to North Carolina. On a whine, he’d already asked, “What do people do here?”

  A broad smile transformed JoJo’s face. The image of Lester black and withered up like a dead vine on an otherwise thriving houseplant filled her with . . . joy.

  “What are you over there grinning about?” Clayton asked.

  “Just imagining a different life.”

  The three fell silent. And just for a moment, it was like it was when they were kids—young at heart, but old of spirit, and all dreaming about the day when they could escape the confines of small-town life, small-time attitudes, and small-minded thinking.

  Life had a funny way of turning itself around and biting you on the ass, though, JoJo thought, because all three of the Futrells, though they had successfully escaped once, now found themselves right back where they’d started from—in Drapersville, North Carolina, with the future looking dismally like last call would be hollered in this place, and when the lights came up, they’d find themselves alone in a dingy bar wondering what had happened to the evening’s luster.

  “Let me think a minute,” JoJo said, as if she hadn’t been wracking her brain from the moment they left Rollings’s office. “There were four boxes of giveaway stuff. Some clothes, shoes, household goods.”

  “And?” Delcine prompted.

  Nervous and getting even more anxious about her transgression, JoJo bit her lower lip and closed her eyes, concentrating hard.

  Then, suddenly, she smiled.

  “What?”

  “I remember what box it was in,” she said.

  Seeing the Futrell sibling’s men outside, a neighbor strolled over to get a better look at them all. She couldn’t get off work and had missed Ana Mae’s funeral, but she’d heard plenty about it. It was time to get a good look-see at the folks who were the topic of such juicy speculations over at Junior Cantrell’s place. Junior’s side-by-side businesses specialized not just in haircuts and the best barbecue in town, but in the latest gossip; served hot and juicy, like his ribs.

  “Aftern
oon everybody,” she said, with a wave toward the three men. “Thought I’d come over and give my respects.”

  “Good afternoon,” Winslow said.

  She lifted a brow, wondering if this one was supposed to be the homosexual. He sure was proper. “I’m Thelma Whitherspoon. I live right over there across the street. Saw y’all out here and thought I’d come on over. Couldn’t make Ana Mae’s funeral, and I hadn’t stopped over yet. I sent a card, though,” she added, defending her negligent neighborliness.

  Archer offered a hand to the woman. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Whitherspoon. Thank you for your regards.”

  She smiled up at this one. With those luscious blue eyes and that I want to lick-you-all-over stare, he was one fine man.

  “Marguerite, JoJo, and Clayton are inside.”

  Lost in Archer’s gaze, it took Thelma a moment to register what he’d said. “Marguerite? Who is Marguerite?”

  “That’d be the one you people call Delcine,” Lester added.

  At the “you people,” Thelma’s gaze left the sexy one and slid over to the big man with the cigarette. This had to be JoJo’s husband, Lester. The talk about him wasn’t all that good. Now she saw why.

  He was one of them light-skinned Negroes who thought they could pass for white but wasn’t fooling anybody, not even white folks, who sometimes couldn’t tell. She sniffed, dismissing him, as she turned her back to him.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye out on the house while y’all was away,” she said. “Some folks just leave stuff on the porch if nobody’s home. But only the junk man went around back like he always do.”

  As one, Archer and Winslow said, “The junk man?”

  Lester tossed his cigarette into the grass and watched it burn, then, frowning, went to stub it out.

  “Yeah,” Thelma said. “He always stops over here the day before trash day. Ana Mae would leave him stuff he could take to sell. You know, stuff she’d been given from some of her people but couldn’t find a use for or somebody to give it to.”

  “And he took things from the back porch?”

  Thelma looked Winslow up and down. “That’s what I just said.”