Hidden Riches

by Felicia Mason

  “You know, Delcine, you don’t have to be so condescending to people,” Clayton said. “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

  “Look,” she said, “I didn’t come back to this godforsaken town to win friends and influence people. I want to get the money Ana Mae left for us and then get the hell out of here. I have a life waiting for me.”

  “I think we were better off working in individual teams,” JoJo said.

  They pondered that for a bit, each one silently agreeing or disagreeing.

  When they got back in the car and Delcine fired up the air conditioning, she let go with something that had been bugging her. “What is with the y’all all around here? Don’t these people know that that’s a redundant, not to mention incomprehensible, phrase. You all all. God, that’s irritating.”

  JoJo tore open one of the oatmeal cream pies. “You know what he meant, so it’s not incomprehensible.”

  Clayton smiled. “Can I have one of those?”

  She passed the box back to him.

  “I cannot believe the two of you are going to actually eat those things.”

  “Do you know the way to the Fisher place?”

  “It shouldn’t be hard to find with those directions from Roscoe,” Delcine said shaking her head in disgust. “Make a left at the combine and a right when you see the house with the double rooster weathervane. Welcome to Hooterville.”

  “Once again,” JoJo said around bites of her treat, “you know exactly what he meant.”

  “Hey, guys. Let’s not fight,” Clayton said.

  “And what was with you stepping on my foot like that?”

  “We needed to keep him talking. We’re already at a disadvantage over the reverend, who knows all of these people. And he has Rosalee working with him. We need all the help we can get,” Clayton told Delcine. “And you were antagonizing the man.”

  An unladylike grunt assessed her opinion of his opinion.

  JoJo wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I forgot how friendly everybody could be here.”

  “Friendly?” The echoed question rang through the confined space of the car.

  “If you’d stuck out your boobs any farther he’d have been able to breast feed on them,” Delcine said.

  JoJo laughed and did a quick boost of her breasts, as if positioning them in one of her old showgirl costumes. “Don’t hate on me because the good Lord was generous with me and forgot to give you some.”

  “The good Lord made those silicone implants, did he now?”

  “All natural, hater. This is all natural.”

  From the back seat Clayton laughed out loud.

  “This reminds me of growing up,” he said. “You two were constantly going at it. And Ana Mae had to break up the fights.”

  Heading out of the Day-Ree Mart lot, Delcine started following the directions they’d gotten from Roscoe to get to the Fisher place. “Remember the time you took Mama’s silk scarf and I grabbed it?”

  JoJo turned in her seat, propping one leg up so she could see both Clayton and Delcine while they talked. “Yeah, I had it wrapped around my head and hanging down the back. I think I was being ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ or something. You went to pulling and tugging on that thing, and before long we were rolling on the floor, scratching like cats and dogs.”

  “Who won?” Clayton said.

  “Neither one of us,” Delcine said, chuckling. “Ana Mae came in, saw us. She stomped out of the room and came back with a big pair of pinking shears and the next thing you know that silk scarf was in two pieces not big enough to do anything with.”

  JoJo picked up the story. “She handed half to me and half to Delcine and said, ‘There’s some Solomon justice for you. Now both of you hush up.’ ”

  “No, she didn’t,” Clayton said. By now he too was laughing. “But what about Mama’s scarf?”

  “When she got home, we ran to tell her what Ana Mae had done. And you know what she did?”

  Delcine and JoJo looked at each other, and both fell out laughing.

  “What?” Clayton pressed.

  “She, she told us, ‘Well, Solomon was right.’ ”

  “And JoJo is crying now because she doesn’t have the scarf and Ana Mae isn’t getting in trouble for cutting it. So she goes to Mama, ‘Who’s Solomon?’ ”

  “Oh, Lord,” JoJo said, wiping her eyes. “What did I ever want to say that for?”

  “We both had to go not only to Sunday school and morning service for the next six weeks,” Delcine said. “Mama made us go to Wednesday night prayer meeting and Friday night praise and worship with Ana Mae. Said she couldn’t believe she was raising such heathen children, and since we didn’t know who King Solomon was, we could sit in church until we did.”

  “You better believe I learned all of those Bible stories,” JoJo said, still chuckling.

  By the time they got to the house on Evers Street, they’d shared two more stories about their interactions with Ana Mae.

  “She sure loved us a lot,” JoJo said, as Delcine parked at the curb. “I wish we’d stayed in better touch through the years.”

  “Me too,” Clayton said, subdued and more than a bit contemplative about the sister they’d just buried.

  A few moments later, they stood at the curb in front of a white frame house. Freshly painted with green shutters and a well-manicured and lush green lawn, the house looked loved and lived in. The front porch held two white wicker rocking chairs with a small table between them.

  A garage, adjacent to the house, had clearly been turned into a workroom. The garage door was up, and the sounds of some kind of saw and hammering came from it, so they gravitated there.

  “Maybe we’ll get an answer here to how Ana Mae turned one hundred thousand and some change into almost four million.”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” JoJo said. “It sounds like she gave away a lot of the lottery money.”

  “I’ve been keeping a tally,” Delcine said. “So far we know she tipped the convenience store people. Knowing Ana Mae, she probably gave her church way more than a tithe.”

  “How much is a tithe?” Clayton asked.

  JoJo let out a hoot. “Now who needs to be going to remedial Bible study? A tithe is ten percent, Clay.”

  “Ten percent? You mean right off the top she gave ten grand to her church? Man, no wonder those TV evangelists rake in the millions.”

  “And remember, we’re talking about Ana Mae here, so it was probably more,” Delcine said. “A lot more.”

  “Well,” Clayton said taking each sister by the hand. “Let’s go see if we can find out what this Jeremy Fisher knows.”

  “Hellllooo!” Clayton called out as they approached.

  The man in a pair of jeans, hiking boots, and a plaid shirt clearly didn’t hear them. Safety goggles covered his eyes as he worked at a bench.

  When he paused to check an angle, Clayton called out again.

  The man looked up and smiled. He turned off the saw, pushed the goggles to his forehead, and swung his leg around.

  “Hey there, y’all. Just a sec.”

  He went across the room and turned off a machine from which the hammering noise emanated.

  Aerosmith suddenly blared from all directions.

  Delcine covered her ears.

  Jeremy snatched up a remote and pointed it toward a corner. The garage instantly fell silent. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he came over to greet them. “Sorry about that,” he said. “When I have all of the machinery going I forget about the music being up. It’s programmed to play louder than whatever I have on.”

  He reached out a hand to Clayton and shook it. “I was so sorry about Ana Mae. I sure loved that woman,” he said.

  Whatever the Futrells had been expecting, this wasn’t it.

  Jeremy Fisher was about twenty-five, twenty-six at the most, had sandy blond hair, and toffee-colored skin that pegged him as either biracial or somebody who spent a whole lot of time in the sun. That he knew who they w
ere without introduction also seemed to throw them for a loop.

  “You loved her?” JoJo said, staring at him like he might hold the secret to the Holy Grail.

  “I sure did. With all my heart,” Fisher said. “She believed in me when no one else did. Nobody else paid me any mind, but Miss Ana Mae, she was different.”

  He stuck out a hand to both Delcine and JoJo. “I’m Jeremy, by the way. I know we haven’t met or anything, but I’d know you all like my own family. Ana Mae talked about you all all the time. You’re Clayton,” he said, grabbing Clayton’s hand again and pumping it. “You’re the successful doctor out in California. And you’re Josephine from Las Vegas, star of the stage. And you’re Marguerite from PG County.” He pronounced the nickname of Prince George’s County, Maryland, as if it were Buckingham Palace and he was honored to meet the queen.

  “Delcine,” she corrected, forgetting that she preferred to be called Marguerite.

  “Are you Howard?” Clayton said, voicing the question they were all wondering about.

  Jeremy Fisher was about the right age to be Ana Mae’s son. And since he was biracial, that might explain why no one knew anything about Ana Mae having a child. Maybe she’d been seeing a white man in town. But who? Was that David Bell from the funeral his father and Ana Mae his mother?

  “Howard?” Jeremy asked. “No, I’m Jeremy. Jeremy Fisher. I’m an inventor, and Miss Ana Mae invested in my company.”

  “Your company?”

  “Fisher Innovative Solutions. But these days I run FDE, Inc., Fisher Design and Electronics,” he said, sweeping a hand to encompass the garage. “It doesn’t look like much, but with high-speed Internet and FedEx, it’s all I really need. And thanks to Miss Ana Mae, I can devote all of my time and energy to my passion.”

  “Your passion?” The question came from Delcine.

  “Come on in the house. Mama will be pleased to have company, and I can tell you all about it.”

  “Mama?” Delcine asked.

  Jeremy nodded and then turned to secure something on his workbench.

  “Is he Howard?” JoJo mouthed to her siblings.

  Both Clayton and Delcine shrugged.

  “Mama, we’ve got company,” Jeremy called as he escorted the Futrells into the house.

  “Back here, honey.”

  Jeremy led them down a wide foyer and into a spacious great room.

  “Holy cow!” JoJo said.

  A back wall of windows opened to an unexpected oasis, a large in ground infinity pool surrounded by lush greenery and a waterfall.

  “Wow,” breathed Delcine, who was not easily impressed. “You can’t tell from the front of the house that all of this is here.”

  Jeremy grinned. “Cool, isn’t it? I figured out how to use rainwater for the waterfall. It looks like it’s flowing into the pool, but it isn’t. The water is actually irrigating the fields.”

  “The fields?” Delcine asked, walking, uninvited, deeper into the room, which was decorated in an eclectic mix of French country and traditional furnishings.

  “Well, not really fields like a farm, but we do grow our own vegetables. Tomatoes, cucumbers, three varieties of lettuce, beans, and corn. Plus sunflowers. Those are just for fun.”

  “Jeremy, I doubt our guests want to hear about your crop experiments.”

  The woman who entered the room came in soundlessly, which was surprising since she was in a motorized wheelchair.

  Seeing at least JoJo’s expression, she laughed.

  “No sound, I know. Freaks out some folks. But I love sneaking up on people,” she said. “Hi, there, I’m Nell Fisher.”

  Clayton and JoJo shook her hand. Delcine waved from the window.

  The familial resemblance between Jeremy and his mother couldn’t be mistaken. While her wispy blond hair and pale blue eyes made her seem fragile at first glance, there was a strength in Nell that Jeremy also exhibited. In her mid-fifties to maybe early sixties, she had a twinkle in her eyes that put them all at ease with her disability.

  “Welcome to our home,” Nell said. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Ana Mae spent many hours here talking about you all.”

  She turned the chair to her son. “Jeremy, where are your manners? Invite our guests to sit down.”

  Nell shook her head. “Kids. It doesn’t matter how old they are.” She steered toward a seating area with two large sofas, a chaise lounge, and big comfy chairs.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fisher,” Clayton said. He waited until she slid into a spot clearly designed to let her engage with guests in the space.

  “Oh, it’s just Miss. I never married. But call me Nell.”

  “I like that,” JoJo said.

  “That my name is Nell?”

  Seeing the laughter in her hostess’s eyes, JoJo grinned as she settled on a cushion. “That you’re an independent woman.”

  “Mano will be bringing us some tea in a moment.”

  “He’s one of my best creations,” Jeremy said.

  And sure enough, a few moments later, a robot about the size of a third-grader pushed a cart into the room. A pitcher of iced tea and a plate of cookies were displayed on the cart’s tray. Underneath in an open storage area were glasses and napkins.

  After Jeremy and Mano served everyone, the humans munched for a few minutes, talking about the weather and other banal pleasantries.

  “Well, I know you all probably have some business to discuss,” Nell said, “and I have some tomatoes that need harvesting. It’s been lovely meeting all of you. I’m just sorry it took this sad occasion for us to get together.”

  With Mano the robot following behind her, Nell left her son and the Futrells in the great room.

  “That little man is so cool,” JoJo said.

  “Miss Ana Mae liked it too,” Jeremy said. “We’ve been testing out a new model, one that would help her . . .” His voice trailed off, and he blanched. “I’m sorry. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that she’s really gone. She was like my big sister and other mother and best friend and confidante all rolled into one.”

  Jeremy laughed then. “We made quite a pair. The gospel-singing black cleaning lady and the long-haired geeky vegan white boy. ‘Here they come,’ ” he said in a spot-on imitation of Eddie Spencer. “ ‘Ana Mae and that Fisher boy.’ ”

  Shaking his head, Jeremy added, “You know, I don’t think many people in this town except Ana Mae and my mama even know my first name. They all call me That Fisher Boy.”

  “That’s how we found you,” JoJo said.

  “The Day-Ree Mart?” Jeremy guessed.

  “Yep.”

  “We understand Ana Mae invested in your company,” Delcine said in an effort to end the chitchat and get to the point of their visit.

  Jeremy grinned. “Absolutely. I have, well, had five investors, including Mama. But Miss Ana Mae was far and away the biggest shareholder in the company. We had quite a run together, the two of us.”

  “What, exactly, is it that you do?” Delcine asked.

  That question apparently was all the encouragement Jeremy Fisher needed. He launched into a detailed description of his company that had them wishing for an executive summary.

  “I started tinkering with things when I was a little kid. I was always trying to come up with something that would make Mama’s life easier.

  “She has MS,” he explained. “When I was young, well, younger,” he amended, looking at the three of them, “I was always coming up with things that would make it easier for her to get around the house and do things in the kitchen. I just never stopped tinkering,” he added with a self-effacing shrug.

  “How did you meet Ana Mae?” JoJo asked.

  “When I went away to college,” Jeremy said. “I did two years here at Roanoke-Chowan Community College so I could stay at home to help Mama. But when I transferred to Chapel Hill to finish up the undergrad degree, Miss Ana Mae came over a couple of days a week to check on Mama and do any heavy cleaning that needed to be done. The
re usually wasn’t any since Mama insisted on being independent. You sure got that right, Miss JoJo,” he said, shaking his head in mild disgust.

  “One time I came home on break and Miss Ana Mae asked me about some of the things around the house that I’d done for Mama. She asked me if I could come up with a better approach to a mop and bucket. It took me a while, but after graduation from Chapel Hill, I did.”

  “So you’re a preacher too?” JoJo asked.

  The question earned her a blank look from Jeremy and an inelegant “Huh?” from Delcine.

  “At chapel school. That’s where you learned how to be a minister, right?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Delcine muttered.

  “I don’t understand,” Jeremy said at the same time.

  Clayton, who did understand, took the diplomatic approach. “He means the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” he told JoJo. “Chapel Hill is the name of the town. It’s about, what two or three hours from here?”

  Jeremy nodded. “Almost three.”

  “You were telling us about Ana Mae,” Delcine prompted.

  Jeremy nodded. “She tested it out and loved it. The next thing you know, she’s telling her friends and they all want one. I was working on the first generation of Mano then, so the cleaning solutions stuff was a sort of side thing. But before you know it, that was taking all of my time. The mop and buckets were selling well. I needed capital to expand Fisher Innovative Solutions. By that time, Miss Ana Mae had tested out some of my other inventions, and when she won the lottery money, she invested in the company. Well,” he added with a shrug, “she really invested in me. She believed in me when everyone else called me that crazy Fisher boy.”

  For a moment, Jeremy looked as if he might cry. Then, his voice unsteady, he told them, “Even after all this time, it seems a little odd to call it the company, like it was some big thing. There were really just three of us—me, Mama, and Miss Ana Mae.”

  Delcine’s eyes scrunched up as if she were trying to figure out a missing element. “And the assorted projects and products you created? You took them to market?”

  Jeremy nodded and gave them a big smile. “Yep. And the rest, as they say, is history. When the Day-Ree Mart and the hardware store downtown started carrying the cleaning caddy and some of my other stuff, the Times & Review did a big story.”