Hidden Riches

by Felicia Mason

  “Well, we sure ran into enough Howards that were dead ends,” Delcine grumbled. “That cop. Your son,” she said, nodding toward Rollings.

  “And there was Emily Daniels’s Howard,” Clayton said.

  “If you open the county phone book, you’ll see at least two columns of Howards,” Rollings added.

  Reverend Toussaint shook his head. “No,” he said. “I think she wanted her son named after his father, and she remembered that Howard was almost my name. My father wanted me named that. But my mother, who had roots in Haiti, wanted me named for one of her national heroes. So I became Toussaint. Howard may have been Ana Mae’s indirect way of naming her son . . . our son . . . after me. It was a name we almost had in common.”

  “The quilt,” Delcine said. “What was the purpose of the quilt? All we did was run around town talking to people who knew Ana Mae. There were no clues about the money.”

  “Talking to people who knew Ana Mae was the whole thing, just like Reverend Toussaint said,” Clayton said. “Don’t you see?”

  Delcine grabbed her big purse and plopped it into her lap. “Clearly not.”

  “The clues, the nine blocks in the quilt were the clues. Everything we’d need to know to find out more about Ana Mae was right there in the fabric, in the images she created. The quilt was about how she lived, what she loved, and what she spent her time on this earth doing.”

  Delcine didn’t look convinced and sought out Mr. Rollings. “It couldn’t be that simple,” she said.

  “It was that simple,” he assured her.

  “But . . .”

  “Shoot, I knew that the first time I looked at the thing,” Rosalee said. “It’s as clear as day and would be to anyone who knew Ana Mae.”

  “And that’s just it,” Clayton said softly, both awe and respect reflected in his voice. “We didn’t know Ana Mae.”

  Before Delcine could get out her next whiny complaint, Reverend Toussaint strode forward, pulling the quilt and its stand out again so all could see.

  “It was a diversion,” he said. “All a diversion.” He pointed to the block in the bottom row that had the trunk and lower leaves of the big tree appliquéd. “It’s about the tree,” he said. “See how its branches, leaves, and flowers encompass the entire quilt. That was a clue for me. As was this,” he said, pointing to the heart with HOWARD in the middle of it.

  “Seeing that is what made it all eventually click for me,” he said. “But not until you read that book to the children, Sister Josephine. I hadn’t thought about that tree in years, let alone its significance to me and to Ana Mae. We are, after all, talking thirty-some years ago. I’m a different man than I was at seventeen. This block and that message, HOWARD inside a heart, was just for me. None of you would ever have known its true significance. Not with your family name on your mama’s side being Howard. I’m the only one who could decipher what this meant.”

  He then told them about carving their initials in an old oak one night, an old oak just like the one Ana Mae had reproduced in fabric and stitches.

  “And these clues were for the rest of us to figure out,” Clayton said, approaching the quilt and the father he never knew.

  “The Scripture on the back, on the label,” Reverend Toussaint said, flipping it over for them to see. “ ‘Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.’ That’s what she wanted you, us, to remember.”

  “That’s what I don’t understand, Clay,” Delcine said, this time her voice almost the whine they remembered from their childhood in Drapersville.

  Clayton held out a hand to her. On a heavy sigh and with a much-put-out huff, Delcine put her big purse aside and got up to peer at the quilt with Clayton.

  “Some of them we figured out as a group,” he said. “The scratch-off lottery ticket that began it all, at least the financial part of the story.”

  For all of her book education and time in the Washington, D.C., area as a real housewife, not one portrayed on TV, Delcine remained slow on the uptake. “All we did was talk to the people at the store where she got the ticket.”

  Clayton nodded. “That’s it. If what I’m thinking is right—and Mr. Rollings, I’m sure, will tell us if we’re not—that’s what this whole quote/unquote treasure hunt was all about. It wasn’t, like Lester thought, digging for actual buried treasure. Like Mr. Rollings said, the money is all in bank or brokerage accounts. The treasure was finding out who our sister was.”

  He paused, frowned a bit, and then amended his last statement. “Well, for me, who my mother was.”

  JoJo bent over to untie the straps on her high heels, which were, as usual, killing her feet. She gathered up and dropped the sexy and not really appropriate for daytime shoes on top of her bag, then padded barefoot over to the quilt. Without thinking or asking, she hopped up on the conference table, closer to her siblings, one leg dangling as if she were perched on top of a baby grand piano while a crooner wooed her.

  Reverend Toussaint and Archer glanced at each other, both shrugged, and they too moved closer to be able to see the detail.

  “Well, don’t y’all leave me,” Rosalee said. “I had something to do with this too.”

  With a welcoming arm out to her, Reverend Toussaint opened a hole.

  Watching them, Mr. Rollings smiled. The small group looked like a family at the moment. That’s the picture he wished his deceased client could have seen. He glanced up and the smile grew wry as he realized Ana Mae was probably seeing it unfold just as he was.

  “The clues we all figured out as a group or as a group talking to Ana Mae’s friends, neighbors, and townspeople were these,” Clayton said, pointing to the scratch-off lottery ticket and the Matthew 25 Scripture reference. “Ana Mae took the money, the talents, she’d been given via the lottery and made the money grow. She took her five talents and made them ten.”

  “Did y’all notice a sheriff’s deputy car outside the house since that day?” Rosalee asked.

  The lawyer replied, “Given the commotion caused by Mr. Coston and all of the neighborhood assembled out in the yard and on the street, Sheriff Daughtry and I decided to head off any treasure hunters bent on digging up the yard to find a chest full of gold coins.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rollings,” JoJo said. “I’m still sleeping in that house, and it would be mighty disconcerting to wake up in the middle of the night to hear somebody digging out there.”

  Rollings nodded, then stepped out of the conference room for a moment. When he returned, his efficient and quiet assistant, Maria, bore a tray with small bottles of water and cups for coffee.

  “It will be just a few minutes, sir. They’re on the way here now. And the other delivery will be here in about fifteen minutes. They’re just putting the finishing touches on.”

  “Excellent,” Rollings murmured. “And Mr. Coston, do you know where he went?”

  “I called the sheriff’s office when you buzzed and when Clyde came in here. He stopped over at Junior’s and has just been making a nuisance of himself. A deputy’s on him, though.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Another one we worked as a group was the bucket and the mop,” Clayton resumed, commenting about the quilt. “That’s that Fisher boy and his invention. Ana Mae invested in him and his company, and together they made a killing when he sold it to the Zorin Corporation.”

  “What about the animals?” JoJo asked.

  “That one was me,” Rosalee said, laying claim to one of the blocks. “Baby Sue and Diamond Jim came from The Haven. Ana Mae spent almost as much time there as she did at the church and at the Good Redeemer Academy.”

  “And Emily Daniels from the shelter stopped by the house with an award for Ana Mae,” Clayton added.

  “Ooh, ooh!” JoJo exclaimed. “I got that one.”

  “Which one?” Delcine asked.

  JoJo pointed to the seventh block of Jesus and the little children.

  “Ana Mae loved those kids,” JoJ
o said. “Jesus represents the church, or maybe the church and the school, and the little kids are all of her adopted grandchildren. They all published a book, Ana Mae and the Good Redeemer Academy kids.”

  She sent a flirtatious smile Reverend Toussaint’s way.

  He blushed and cleared his throat.

  Archer saved him by pointing out the teapot and teacup. “We found the tea shop where she gets her special blend. It’s lovely,” he said. “It’s a bit of a drive, but well worth it. And they simply adore Ana Mae there. We’re on their mailing list now, by the way,” he told Clayton in an aside. “They can overnight tea to us.”

  Rosalee tapped JoJo on the shoulder. “You found that square the day Hetty and Betty Johnson stopped by Ana Mae’s house.”

  “Reverend, you weren’t there that day. You’ve got to come see all of Ana Mae’s quilts. She has them all documented in binders with pictures.”

  Reverend Toussaint, who had been mostly silent while the Futrells and Rosalee worked through the blocks of the quilt, realized they’d skipped one.

  “What about the first block?” he asked. “The chicken.”

  “Ana Mae made the best fried chicken in the county. Even that old shrew Lizbeth Hornsby had to admit it,” Rosalee practically cackled. “You shoulda seen her old prune face when Ana Mae got awarded the blue ribbon at the county fair last year. That was a sight to behold. You remember, Reverend. I see you over there smiling.”

  Reverend Toussaint couldn’t hide the grin at that memory. But Rosalee told them the rest of what happened that day.

  “You’d a thought Lizbeth got a lemon stuck in her mouth her face was so scrunched up.” She was still chuckling when Archer spoke up.

  “That doesn’t seem to fit the pattern,” he said.

  “What pattern?”

  “Well, look,” he said, pointing to the corresponding quilt blocks as he made his case. “In each one of these, there’s a story that was either relayed to one of you or that you found out. No one talked to this Lizbeth chicken lady, right?”

  The Futrells and Rosalee shook their heads in the negative.

  “So that means there must be something else about the chicken. A clue or person we haven’t talked to or found yet.”

  “That would be me,” a new voice said from the conference room door.

  All of the heads turned as Rollings got up to greet the newcomer.

  “Mr. Bell, I presume?” he asked holding out a hand.

  The man who’d boo-hooed all over the church at Ana Mae’s funeral bounded into the room.

  Trailing behind him was a young man, about twenty-five or so years old, with short spiky brown hair and multiple piercings and tattoos. His jeans, strategically ripped, had the expensive look of a designer’s interpretation of grunge rather than the honest to goodness wear and tear of a favorite pair of Levis.

  David Bell—David Z. Bell, Chairman and CEO of the Zorin Corporation in Ohio—pumped Rollings’s hand. “I don’t know how you did it, Mr. Rollings, or how Ana Mae did it, but thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much for giving me back my son.”

  Rollings dipped his head as if offering a regal blessing. “I’d like to take the credit,” Rollings said. “But it’s Miss Futrell who found him.”

  “Is that Granna Mae?” The young man asked. “Is that who this Ms. Futrell is?”

  Reverend Toussaint and JoJo exchanged a look.

  “Another adopted grandchild?” JoJo asked him.

  Reverend Toussaint shrugged.

  “One thing is for sure about Ana Mae,” Clayton said in an aside to Archer, “she believed in picking up strays along the way, whether people or animals or projects.”

  “The virtuous woman,” Reverend Toussaint intoned.

  “May I have your attention, everyone?” Rollings said. “I believe most of you met David Bell during Miss Futrell’s homegoing service. This is his son, Theodore Edgerton.”

  “Teddy,” the young man said. “Theodore Edgerton Bell sounds like some stuffy-ass lawyer.” He glanced at Rollings in his three-piece suit, then added, “No offense, dude.”

  “None taken, Mr. Bell. I’ve taken the liberty of having dinner ordered and delivered from Junior’s Bar and Grille. Despite the name, they make an excellent barbeque.”

  “Any fried chicken?” David Bell asked.

  “None like Ana Mae’s,” Rosalee said.

  “There sure wasn’t,” Bell said.

  “Ana Mae always brought you chicken,” JoJo said. “You mentioned that when we all talked on the phone. They weren’t paying attention,” she added with a nod toward Clayton and Delcine, “but I heard you.”

  Bell nodded, beaming, as he rubbed his substantial belly. “Yes, she did. And on more than one occasion we went to the butcher shop for fresh chicken that she fried up right in my kitchen.”

  JoJo went to the quilt and pointed to the block with the plate of fried chicken. “This quilt block is about you,” she told Bell. “Every one of these blocks represents something Ana Mae loved.”

  While JoJo pointed out all the elements of the quilt for Bell, Maria transformed the conference room table into a dining table. She’d either found one somewhere in the office or run out and purchased a tablecloth to protect the conference room table. Then with the help of Junior himself, who wasn’t going to trust this special delivery to any of his regular drivers—they would, undoubtedly, fail to glean any important information on the goings on that had everybody wondering who was gonna win the pool—laid out a spread of Carolina-style ribs and pulled pork, his special sauce, coleslaw, baked beans, potato salad, homemade rolls, and several gallons of sweet tea.

  “There’s some red velvet cake and a sweet potato pie for dessert,” Junior said.

  He hovered, hoping for an invitation to stay. But Rollings thanked him, and efficient Maria hustled him out of the conference room, closing the door behind them.

  “A heart attack on a plate,” Delcine muttered when Junior left, noting the lack of a single fresh green dish.

  But she, like all the others, ended up sucking the bones on the melt-in-your-mouth ribs.

  Conversation at the table was pretty much nonexistent until both David Bell and Reverend Toussaint almost simultaneously sat back with a “Whew!” and rubbed their stomachs.

  “Now that’s what you call good Southern eatin’,” the CEO said.

  Teddy, looking around for more ribs, eyed the quarter rack still on Delcine’s plate.

  “Here,” she said, passing the plate across to him. “You pack it away just like my son.”

  “Thank you. Granna Mae said the food in Carolina was good, but she never said it was this good.” He sent a sly glance in his father’s direction. “I see why the two of you had a ‘special’ relationship.”

  “Now, Teddy, you’re giving these folks the wrong impression,” David Bell said. He looked at the people gathered around the table. “I . . . I meant what I said at Ana Mae’s funeral and then later on the phone with you all. That woman meant the world to me.

  “She knew Teddy and I were—well, I suppose estranged is the polite way to put it. What I didn’t know is that she’d launched a search for him.”

  “I wasn’t lost, Dad.”

  “You were lost to me. I didn’t know where you were or what had become of you.”

  Teddy spread his hands out in a look-at-me gesture. “I’m fine, clearly.”

  Twin snorts came from opposite ends of the table as both Rosalee and Delcine let their opinions about tattoos and piercings be known without saying a single word.

  “Granna Mae accepted me for who I am,” he said.

  “And what, exactly, are you?” Delcine asked.

  “An artist,” the young man replied.

  “And a quite accomplished one, if I may say so myself,” the proud father declared.

  “Granna Mae was my patron.”

  “The virtuous woman,” Reverend Toussaint intoned at the same time Archer muttered, but with a smile, “Here we go again
.”

  By the end of dessert, David Bell explained to them all his fried chicken connection to Ana Mae Futrell.

  “She never would let us fly her in for our annual board meetings,” he said. “She’d just get on that Greyhound bus and ride all those hours up to Columbus. And she always brought with her, just for me, a basket of her fried chicken. Best meals I ever ate were with Ana Mae sitting in our corporate dining room and in the kitchen at my house.

  “She also showed me, last year, the big blue ribbon she won for beating out some little scrawny woman named Lizbeth Hornsby, who thought she could fry up some chicken better than my Ana Mae.”

  That elicited laughs around the table.

  Rosalee got up and came around the table to tap Everett Rollings on the shoulder. “Can I talk to you for a minute,” she said. “In private.”

  “Of course,” he said. “We can talk in my office.”

  Rosalee grabbed her handbag and followed Mr. Rollings through a door that he held open for her. When they were alone, he folded his arms across his chest.

  “You and the reverend were giving me quite a few stares earlier,” Rollings told her. “I assume that you want to explain what was on your mind.”

  “You assume right, Mr. Rollings.”

  Rosalee opened the clasp on her purse and pulled out a sheet of paper that was folded in quarters.

  “I went to the newspaper office to look up some old birth announcements. I got a little distracted ’cause there’s a lot of interesting stuff in those old files. Things I’d either forgotten about or never even knew. But that’s neither here nor there. You know how the hospital used to send out the names of all the babies born and the newspaper put them in under the birth announcements?”

  Rollings nodded. “You thought you could find Ana Mae’s son in those old records?”

  “Exactly,” Rosalee said. “There was no way to keep that information out of the paper back in those days. So I figured I’d go and look through all of the old issues to see if I could find when Ana Mae had a baby.”

  Rollings smiled. “That was good sleuthing on your part. But as you now know, Ana Mae’s son was born in Virginia, not here in North Carolina.”