Hidden Riches

by Felicia Mason

While Delcine went back to the drawers, JoJo sat on the bed and walked through the years of Christmases she’d been apart from Ana Mae. Las Vegas was a long way from Drapersville, North Carolina. And like her other siblings, once she got out of Carolina, there was little to compel her to come back. Except Ana Mae.

  She studied the cards she’d made for her sister. There was the year she’d experimented with non-traditional Christmas colors, making cards that were neon orange and honeydew yellow, and the year she was obsessed with the iris folding technique of manipulating paper. Ana Mae had kept them all.

  Now that it was too late, she wished she’d spent more time with or just talking to her older sister. Two cards a year, at Christmas and for her birthday—if JoJo even remembered that one—and a brief call every now and then was no way to treat family. Her chance to do right by Ana Mae was gone, just like her chance for her own hopes and dreams.

  But her older sister loved her, and that was a gift she could always treasure.

  11

  Sibling Rivalry

  The offices of the Drapersville Times & Review were on the second floor of a bank building downtown. The Greek Revival architecture of the First National Bank of Drapersville stood out like the proverbial sore thumb it was. Milton Draper’s visions of grandeur for the town he’d founded couldn’t be contained in just the six-bedroom mansion he’d built for his bride. With money some said he’d stolen from a gold coach out west, Milton settled in North Carolina, opened a mill, a bank, and a mercantile. In other words, he owned the town.

  By the 1940s, hard times had come, and his grandchildren had little of their former wealth. Between the Great Depression and the war, the Drapers hadn’t fared very well. Milton would have been enraged over the way they’d squandered his legacy. But his bank building remained, and the grandchildren let out the two unused floors to maintain a steady income. That plan, like most hatched in the town, didn’t last. And it took until 1958, when a Draper great-grandson returned home from up North, that things began to look up for both the family and the town.

  He kick-started life into the newspaper and converted the third floor of the bank building into offices and two apartments. He kept one for himself rather than move into the mansion on the bluff with his bigoted and bitter cousins. He leased the other to what the townspeople called a never-ending stream of liberal hippies, artists, and musicians.

  By the Summer of Love in 1967, Drapersville, North Carolina, was the hidden gem and getaway of the Beat Generation. But by the late 1970s, all the hippies were gone, and the town once again settled into sleepy oblivion reminiscent of its undistinguished existence in the 1950s, and it remained that way through the turn of the new century.

  When Rosalee Jenkins got off the elevator on the second floor, the glory days of the Drapersville Times & Review greeted her.

  Yellowed and faded front pages of the newspaper hung in frames along the wall along with clippings from more recent editions of the now weekly publication that was “Your source for Hertford County News.” It didn’t seem to matter that its sister paper, the Ahoskie Times & Union Report, claimed the same thing.

  Rosalee made her way to the front counter, where Matilde Adams had manned the receptionist’s desk since Jimmy Carter was president. The blue and pink polyester pants suit she sported came from the same era and had probably been purchased on sale at Zayre’s back when that was the place to shop.

  Matilde’s pop-bottle lenses of her eyeglasses made her look blind, but she had a razor-sharp memory and knew more about the village of Drapersville and the city of Ahoskie than most people.

  “Rosalee Jenkins, I declare. I haven’t seen you since you and Ana Mae Futrell took out that ad looking for . . .” She abruptly stopped mid-sentence and reached out a hand to Rosalee. “Oh, Rosalee, I’m so sorry about Ana Mae. I know the two of you were close.”

  “Thank you, Matilde,” Rosalee said, placing her pocketbook on the counter. “But that’s actually why I’m here.”

  Matilde pushed her glasses up as she rose and straightened, a professional ready to provide the best customer service to a longtime subscriber. “What can I do to help?”

  Rosalee explained what she had in mind, and Matilde Adams led her back to the newspaper’s morgue, where all of the back issues of the paper were stored.

  Toussaint le Baptiste didn’t quite know what to make of everything that had transpired over the last couple of days. Ana Mae Futrell’s death and funeral had knocked him for something of a loop. And the meetings with Attorney Rollings and the family sent him down for the count.

  He and Ana Mae had a history, a very personal one. But it reminded him of the poem by Robert Frost that he’d learned in school. He and Ana Mae had traveled different roads. Looking back now, he wondered what might have become of them had they walked the same path. He’d chosen college and seminary and the single life of an ascetic devoted to ministry and service. Ana Mae Futrell had her pick of boys back in the day. But after she found the Lord, she sent them all packing. She eventually followed in her mother’s footsteps. She worked hard and lived a Christian life.

  He knew Ana Mae won some money playing the lottery. She’d come to him to confess the sin.

  “Reverend, I swear, on my Mama’s grave and in Jesus’ name, that I’ve never gambled before. I never even went to the bingo games at the Catholic church even though I cleaned up after them. I just saw all the people in the Day-Ree Mart talking about a new scratch ticket, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to spend a dollar on one.”

  Toussaint smiled at the memory. Her one-dollar ticket ended up being a big winner. Embarrassed, she gave the church her tithe and more just as soon as she cashed the check from the lottery office.

  Had she gotten hooked on playing the lottery and won another big payday?

  Where else would she have gotten close to four million dollars to give away?

  He closed the Bible on his desk and flipped forward a couple of pages on the yellow legal pad. Reverend Leonard yielded the pulpit to the associate pastor one Sunday a month, and it was Toussaint’s Sunday to preach. So he was supposed to be writing his Sunday sermon, but his mind kept straying to Ana Mae and the Futrells. Instead of jotting notes on the Scripture text he planned to preach from, Toussaint did some ciphering.

  If memory served correctly, Ana Mae won a hundred twenty five thousand in the lottery. She paid her tithe, handed out a couple of scholarships to church kids headed to the local community college, and bought some books for the library and the recreation center. Even if she’d invested wisely, he still couldn’t figure out how she had so much.

  Every year she took a little trip, but nowhere exotic. He knew that because she took the bus and was always back in time for the next Sunday service.

  “You were a mystery to me in life, Ana Mae, and you’re keeping it up in death. God rest your soul, sister. God rest your sweet, sweet soul.”

  Lester sluiced water over his head, then shook himself like a dog.

  “Hey,” JoJo squealed. “Watch it.”

  They were both squeezed into Ana Mae’s small bathroom trying to get dressed for the day. The space, though tight, was actually a little bigger than the bathroom in their trailer back in Las Vegas.

  JoJo looked at her husband, who finger-combed his hair in the mirror. “What are you supposed to be today, a Mafia boss?”

  Lester snorted as he smoothed an errant tuft behind his ear.

  JoJo grinned in the mirror.

  “What?” he asked.

  She paused in the process of putting on her fake eyelashes. “You’re trying to copy Archer’s hairstyle.”

  “I am not,” Lester declared, indignant.

  But the red crawling up his neck called him a liar.

  Lester, who was actually biracial, looked more like his Irish father than his Jamaican mother.

  “He did look good at the funeral,” JoJo said, again picking up her eyelash implements.

  “Hmph.”

  Lester wiped his hand
s on one of Ana Mae’s pale blue bath towels, then patted his wife’s plump butt.

  “Stop,” she said. But she was smiling when she said it.

  “Is there a Walmart around here?”

  “What do you need a Walmart for?”

  He shrugged. “I just need to pick up some things. Maybe they’ll help with the search.”

  Suspicious now, JoJo turned to look him in the eye. “Things like what?”

  “A map, to start with,” he said. “I’ve never been here, and it’s been what, more than ten years, almost twenty or so, since you were here. If we have to stay around, I wanna know how to get around.”

  “Lester, we don’t have to stay. I do. You can head home anytime. Don’t you have a couple of shows booked?”

  He grinned, then leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. “I don’t want to leave you in your time of need. I’m gonna take Ana Mae’s car. I’ll be back in a flash. Since you all decided to start the hunt together—something I disagree with, by the way—I wanna make sure we have everything we need.”

  “Everything like what?”

  “Just stuff,” he said evasively.

  JoJo didn’t like the idea that he was already claiming Ana Mae’s belongings as “theirs.” And she sure as hell knew he was up to something besides picking up a map at Walmart. Lester’s steady gig doing a psychic show at an off-Strip local casino brought in a little cash. It was his Vegas street work that brought in the most money. He and a partner, a sleight-of-hand magician, scammed tourists on a regular basis. She had no doubt that he was up to something. Drapersville and Ahoskie were too small for him to pull a big con, and without Mickey Davenport, his partner in crime, or as he put it, his business partner, Lester was limited and at a disadvantage. Which, as far as JoJo was concerned, was itself a blessing.

  She did, however, know that the lure of Ana Mae’s millions would keep him on the straight and narrow for a while at least.

  What JoJo had not yet figured out was how to claim all the money before Delcine, Clayton, or that preacher did—and permanently get rid of her husband. Back home she knew how to find people who, for the right price, incentive, or chip to cash in later, could make problems disappear. Here in North Carolina, though, she had to play a different set of cards.

  She heard the screen door slam as Lester left the house. A moment later she heard Ana Mae’s old Bonneville reluctantly kick over. And then she remembered the offer from Eddie Spencer.

  Imagining Eddie in the role of an old-time Vegas gangster, she grinned. The offer he’d made to her for “anything you need” was just the sort of thing one of those guys from Las Vegas’s organized crime days would say. Back when she looked like she did in her dancing days, it was easy to picture the way it would all go down. She’d put on something clingy, making sure to show off the girls to their best advantage. Then, knowing full well she’d have to pay up one day, she’d ask one of the boys for a favor—to arrange an accident for her husband.

  Once Lester’s car blew up or he was escorted out to the desert for a one-way trip, she’d be free to live her life the way she wanted to.

  A Lester-free life. The very notion lifted her spirits.

  But reality set in a moment later as she stared in the mirror. She could no more kill Lester than she could fly. A girl could dream, though.

  At one point in her life, JoJo thought she needed a man, someone to take care of her, to make her complete. Time, marriage to Lester, and being here in North Carolina had changed her perspective.

  She would give Eddie Spencer a call, though. Maybe he could give her some suggestions on the job outlook in the county.

  Once it arrived in JoJo’s head, the notion of staying here appealed to her . . . a lot.

  “You clearly don’t give a damn about any of this or any of us,” Delcine told her husband.

  Winslow didn’t bother with a reply. Instead, he reached for the remote control for the television.

  Delcine snatched it from his hand and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and the batteries popped out. A dent in the wall and tear in the wallpaper testified to the force she’d used.

  The argument between them had been raging for the better part of an hour. The hotel’s front desk had already phoned once asking them to keep it down because complaints were coming in.

  In response, Delcine cranked the volume on the perky morning TV host, and when the commercials came on it was a battle to determine which was louder. Winslow, fed up with the argument and the TV noise, just looked at her, then manually turned down the volume.

  “What do you want me to do, Marguerite? What do you want me to say? We’re screwed. Okay. Does that make you happy that I said it?”

  She put her hand on her forehead, clearly trying to gather her patience with her husband. Taking a deep breath—and then another one—she went to the area near the room’s full-length mirror and bent to pick up the batteries and the back cover of the remote.

  “Dammit,” she said seeing the crack in the cover.

  Then, standing, she brandished the broken piece of plastic. “See this? Do you see this?”

  “Yes,” Winslow said. “It’s something else we’ll have to pay for.”

  That did it.

  “We?” she said advancing on him. “Don’t you even go there, you trifling excuse for a man. This is what our lives have become, a cracked and broken mess, and all because of your greed and stupidity.”

  “That’s enough, Marguerite.”

  She stopped and stood ramrod straight, cocking her head just a bit. “Or what? What are you going to do? Hit me?”

  Winslow looked at her in disgust, then stomped around her and to the closet. A moment later, he was back with his garment bag and two suits in hand.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home. The funeral is over. There’s really no need for me to stay down here.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, reaching for the hanger. “You’re not running out on me now.”

  Winslow actually laughed at that.

  “Run out on you? Hardly, Marguerite. I’m not stupid, despite what you may think. You’re about to inherit three point eight million dollars. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Your ass is going to jail. For a long time.”

  “There’s been no indictment,” Winslow said.

  “Yet,” she taunted right back. “And when it comes, you are going down. At least you’ll have a bed in prison to sleep on. The kids and I won’t even have that, thanks to you.”

  “I’m not going to prison.”

  As if he hadn’t uttered a word, Delcine kept talking. “And don’t go claiming Ana Mae’s money. We haven’t even started figuring out what that heap of rags is supposed to mean. That preacher and those damn cats are likely to get all of the money.”

  Winslow moved around her again, this time to get his underwear and socks from the drawer he’d placed them in. A moment later he went into the bathroom and came out with his shaving and toiletries kit.

  Hands on hips, Delcine watched him. “This is how you handle every problem that comes your way in life, isn’t it? You just walk away.”

  “Yes,” he said, calm as a poker player bluffing a low pair.

  Fully packed, he picked up his Ray-Bans from the dresser top, slung his garment bag over a shoulder, and headed toward the door. “Later.”

  Delcine threw the batteries at him as he walked through their hotel room door.

  Archer and Clayton finished off the last of the eggs Benedict in the dining room of the bed-and-breakfast. The booklet of quilt photos from Everett Rollings was open on the table.

  “Where should we start?” Clayton asked.

  “Are you sure you mean that we?”

  Clayton’s gaze met his partner’s. “After last night you have to ask me that?”

  “Just checking,” Archer said. He turned to the beginning of the booklet to find the image of the overall quilt. “My guess is that your sisters will start with the first block a
nd work from there. We can begin with a different one, maybe one of the ones on the bottom row.”

  But Clayton wasn’t really paying attention. His thoughts were on Ana Mae. “She was almost like a mother to me, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Ana Mae.” Clayton dabbed his napkin at his mouth and placed it on the left side of his plate. “Mama was always working, and Daddy was gone by then. I remember when I was about nine or ten, I’d gotten into a fight with a couple of boys at school.”

  “A faggot fight?” Archer said, a knowing sympathy in his voice.

  Clayton nodded. “I was constantly beat up. But that one was especially brutal. Mama was cleaning somebody’s house, but Ana Mae was home, doing some of the extra ironing that Mama took in.”

  Archer reached for and took Clayton’s hand in his. “What did she do?”

  Closing his eyes, Clayton gave a little half-laugh. “She sat at that same rickety kitchen table that’s there now and cried with me. Then she got a rag and cleaned my face, made me a cup of tea with honey and a little bit of something else that she knew Mama wouldn’t like . . .”

  “A touch of medicinal hooch?”

  He smiled. “Something like that. And then she said the most remarkable thing.”

  Archer squeezed his hand, and Clayton reveled in the support and the love from his partner. “She told me that God made me just the way he wanted me. That I was special and perfect just the way I was. Ana Mae taught me how to be gay and proud in a time and place when being either was virtually impossible.”

  “She was a special lady,” Archer said.

  Swallowing, Clayton nodded. “It’s funny how I’ve tended to forget that. Being here has brought it back.”

  Archer reached for the napkin and pressed it into Clayton’s hand. Dabbing his eyes, Clayton said, “I took her for granted and then ignored her because she was poor and uneducated and represented everything that I wanted no part of.”

  “Shh,” Archer said. “She loved you and knew you loved her.”