by Fran Rizer
“See!” Ms. Lucas spat out the words. “She’s psycho. She could have knocked me down the steps. I’ll file an eviction notice and she’ll be out tomorrow.”
“I beg your pardon.” I revved up a nasty tone. “But we saw Mrs. White earlier today, and she just said you were interested in the property. You can’t evict someone from a building you don’t even own yet, and when you do possess it, the legal proceedings take a lot more than a few days.”
“You must have seen Mrs. White this morning. Just an hour ago, we set the closing with her for tomorrow at four thirty.” Ms. Lucas turned to face Jane. “I want you out of here tomorrow night. I’ll come back after the closing to see that you’re gone.” She brushed against me as she stomped down the steps, then climbed into her Lincoln Town Car and drove away. The car was the same color as her hair and suit. I wondered if her monochromatic color scheme was intentional.
Jane seldom cries, but when she does, it just destroys me. Her eyes are useless, but her tear ducts work fine. Tears flowing from those sightless orbs have always upset me. “Did you call 911?” I asked.
“No,” Jane sniffled. “She called out my name right after I called you. When she did that, I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me before. I opened the door. After that, we just screamed at each other until you came.”
I put my arm around her shoulder and led her into the apartment.
This had been the perfect home for Jane, one giant square room with a kitchen area in one corner, a bed in another, television and love seat in the third, and door to the bathroom in the fourth. It’s important for all of Jane’s belongings to have designated places. The apartment was large enough for that, but not too big for Jane to keep tidy. Pearl had worked for the Commission for the Blind, and, knowing Jane through the commission, she’d let Jane have the place for a ridiculously low rental.
Once we were inside, Jane regained her self-control. She went to the kitchen area and washed her hands, then filled the coffeemaker and clicked it on. She tugged on a padded glove and pulled a baking sheet from the oven.
“Have a seat,” she said and motioned toward the love seat as she set the pan on a metal trivet to cool. Then she sat in the fake La-Z-Boy.
“I guess I’ll be moving soon.” Jane sighed.
“No problem,” I replied. “Don’t you remember? I promised to check with my landlady. I’d really love to have you living next door to me in the duplex.”
“Yes, that could be a cool setup.” She sat silently for a few minutes before pushing the remote control. The television clicked on and we watched Paula Deen for several minutes. Well, I watched; she listened.
When the commercial came on, Jane went back to the counter, poured two mugs of coffee, and added cream plus three sugars in one. To avoid overfilling cups and glasses, Jane folds her index finger over the rim. When the liquid reaches her fingertip, she knows the container is full. That’s understandable, but I don’t know how she senses when my cup is empty and reaches for it to give me a refill. As I accepted my coffee, she said, “You’re gonna get diabetes if you keep using all that sugar.”
I didn’t bother to answer her because it’s probably true. I didn’t tell her that I’d been cutting back to two sugars either. Instead, I inhaled the fragrance from my mug and said, “Cinnamon almond.”
Jane grinned. “You’re getting really good at that. The café du jour is Almond Cinnamon. You reversed the name, but you got the flavors right.” She sipped, then continued, “I’m sorry I called you, but that woman kept walking on the steps and when I called out, she didn’t answer until after I called you. I’ll bet she heard me talking to you through the door.”
“She does seem strange,” I said before changing the subject. “Do you mind if I call Otis? He was upset for you, wanted to come with me.”
“Sure,” she said and handed me her telephone. Her phone, not the one Roxanne uses.
“Middleton’s Mortuary,” Otis answered. “How may I help you?”
“Callie here. Jane’s okay. The woman who’s buying Pearl White’s property was here and wouldn’t answer, stayed quiet when Jane asked who was there.”
“That’s weird. Do you need to spend more time with Jane? The little girl’s family won’t be bringing her clothing in until tomorrow, so you can stay with Jane if you want. Just be on time in the morning.”
I thanked Otis and disconnected the phone. Turning to Jane, I said, “Otis has given me the afternoon off to spend with you. What do you want to do?”
Jane squealed with joy. She worked her phone line at night, and I was busy at the mortuary most days, so we didn’t have as much time together as we’d like. “Let’s pick up some po’boy sandwiches and picnic on the beach,” she suggested.
I’d never shared the secret with anyone. Jane and I used to skip school and go picnic on the beach. It was still one of our favorite things to do. Sitting on the sand, watching waves, was peaceful and brought memories of when we were young and our only problems related to which boys we each liked that week.
Jane locked her apartment door, mumbling that she hoped Pearl hadn’t given “that blankety-blank” keys to everything yet. I’ve tried to convert Jane’s profanity to my kind of kindergarten cursing, but she’s not always a believer. We put the ragtop down on the Mustang and headed to Rizzie’s Gastric Gullah near Hunting Island.
The restaurant had been open only a little over a month, but from the cars in the parking lot, it looked like Rizzie was doing well. Rizzie is a Gullah girl, well, woman, from Surcie Island. She’s beautiful—tall and dark as Godiva chocolate. She wore a red and turquoise-patterned piece of cloth that covered her breasts, wrapped around one shoulder, then circled her hips, forming a dress that exposed her toned arms. When she moved, one leg showed, but only up to her knee. She’d shown me how to wrap the long cloth to make a dress, but I never got the hang of it. Rizzie also wore a head cloth in turquoise with gold threads through it. Traditional to her West African roots.
“Huddy, ev’rybuddy,” she called loudly. “Come jine we on we bittle.”
“What did she say?” Jane questioned. She hadn’t come to St. Mary until we were in ninth grade, and she doesn’t understand the Gullah language as well as I do.
“She said,” I answered, “hurry, everybody, come join us and our food.”
“You got it!” Rizzie said as she motioned Jane and me to one of the small tables. Rizzie speaks Gullah for tourists, and though I understand the language better than I speak it, sometimes she enjoys laying it on for me, too.
“No table,” I said. “We want you to pack us a picnic. We’re on our way to Hunting Island Beach.”
“Where’s your picnic basket?” Rizzie asked and pushed a stray curl of jet black hair back up under her head cloth.
“We didn’t bring a basket,” Jane answered. “Just put it in a bag.”
“What do you want in your picnic?” Rizzie said.
I laughed. “From the smells in here, I want one of everything you’re cooking today, but we’ll settle for some sandwiches and drinks.”
“What kind of sandwiches?”
“How about shrimp po’boys?” I suggested. “That’s not very Gullah, but it’s what I want.”
“All seafood is Gullah,” Rizzie said. “My people lived on the islands for a long time and we cooked mostly what came from the ocean. I can make you the best shrimp you ever tasted. I’ll put some hush puppies in for you, too.”
Having eaten here several times in the few weeks Rizzie’s restaurant had been open, I knew she made the best hush puppies, even better than my brother’s. While Rizzie cooked, I described the restaurant to Jane.
“She has shelves all around with sweetgrass baskets on them. Since Rizzie makes baskets, I suppose they’re her own work, but she’s got framed Gullah art and other crafts on the walls with price tags on them. Probably made by her friends.”
“What kind of framed pictures?”
By the time I’d described the Low Country scenes in
some of the paintings, Rizzie was back with a large plastic Piggly Wiggly grocery bag. “Sorry,” she said, handing me the sack. “I don’t have ‘to go’ bags yet. I’m just using what I get free.”
“That’s fine,” Jane said as if she could see. “Pay her fast, Callie. I can’t wait to eat these po’boys. They smell delicious.”
As I handed Rizzie the money, I asked, “How’s your grandmother?”
“Oh, Maum’s about the same. Sometimes I worry that brother Tyrone and I spend so much time working here that Maum’s left alone in the house too much.”
“I’ll stop by and see her sometime. Take some red polish and give her a manicure.”
Rizzie laughed. “That would be great, but now she’s been watching television, and she wants to try some other color, maybe metallic blue.”
“We haven’t used that at the mortuary yet, so I don’t have any in my manicure kit, but I’ll pick some up and try it on your grandmother’s nails.”
I guided Jane back to the car. Rizzie followed us out. “Here,” she said and put another small bag on the floor behind the driver’s seat. “Can’t have a picnic without watermelon.” She laughed and said, “Ef oonah yent hab hawss fuh ride—ride pawnee.” I laughed, too. Rizzie had been around enough to know my brothers call my Mustang a pony. She’d said, “If you don’t have a horse to ride, ride a pony.”
Chapter Seven
It’s impossible to carry on a conversation riding down the highway in a convertible with the top down. We headed down Highway 21 and cut over to the entrance to Hunting Island after a few minutes.
From the parking lot, we headed to the beach area, though from the smell of our food, I don’t think it would have taken much to talk both of us into eating in the car.
I carried the bag full of hot hush puppies, packets of Tabasco sauce, and succulent-smelling shrimp po’boys as well as the smaller bag with the melon. Jane brought our beach towel, and we each held a giant soda, Coke for me and Dr Pepper for Jane. The damp sand oozed through our toes as we walked barefoot to the edge of the waves.
Even sitting on the towel, water from the sand quickly wet our derrieres. Jane’s through the shorts she wore with a halter top. Mine all the way through my black work dress skirt tucked around my knees as well as my padded panties. The sky and water merged a rich medium blue, blurring the horizon. An occasional wispy white cloud floated above us, and the waves broke out in the ocean like white foam. I’ve seen pictures of beaches with beige, even dark brown sand. The sand here was the palest possible cream—almost pure white.
Both Jane and I have decent manners, but when it’s just the two of us, we don’t always use them. “Callie,” Jane said as she chewed a mouthful of shrimp, “you understand everything Rizzie says in Gullah. Why don’t you ever answer her in Gullah?”
I took a big swallow of Coke, then said, “I understand it better than I can speak it. Rizzie wouldn’t care if I mispronounced something, and the tourists wouldn’t know the difference, but some of the Gullah customers might think I was making fun of them.”
I chewed a delicious, oniony hush puppy—crispy on the outside, fluffy and tender on the inside.
“What about Dr. Melvin? Has the funeral been set yet? If you have to work at the service, do you think one of your brothers might take me?” Jane piled her questions one on top of the other, not giving me time to respond to one before she asked the next.
“I’ll be sure you get to his memorial, but I don’t know when it will be. Depends on when the autopsy is completed.”
“What do you think killed him?”
“Probably had a stroke or heart attack in the Jacuzzi.”
“The way you attract murder, I’m surprised you still don’t think that young wife of his killed him for his insurance money.” Jane grinned.
I confess that I probably blushed. Jane couldn’t see it, but she sensed my embarrassment. “Oh, I’m sorry, Callie,” she said. “I don’t mean you attract murder. I just meant you’ve gotten involved in several of them lately.”
“Let me tell you this,” I said. “If I ever have anything to do with another homicide, I’ll be a basket case, for sure.”
Jane laughed. “A basket case or a casket case?”
“Probably a casket case. Otis and Odell will be laying me out in one of our finest models.” Even in the June heat, I shivered when I said that. I had once been locked in a casket, and it wasn’t a pretty memory.
Apparently, Jane had the same thought and the same reaction. “Don’t even joke about that, Callie. You’re giving me the heebie jeebies.”
“Tell me about it. I don’t want to work on any more murder victims, nor get involved with their killers.”
Several minutes passed. We didn’t talk, just enjoyed the food. I hoped Rizzie’s restaurant became a smashing success because I could eat her cooking forever. Seagulls flew above us. I love to watch them. They seem to flap their wings more slowly than most birds when they fly.
“Want some watermelon?” I asked as I pulled the green sphere from the plastic bag.
“Not yet.”
“Jane,” I said. I folded my trash and stuffed it back into the plastic Piggly Wiggly bag. “Let’s talk about you. I know we usually spend time together at your place, but you’ve been to my apartment. The one next door is the exact floor plan in reverse, a mirror image. It hasn’t been rented in a good while because it needs repairs, but I don’t think there are any major problems. Could you look at it tomorrow if I can set it up with my landlady?”
“Sure.” Jane giggled. “I’ll be happy to go tomorrow, and you can tell the landlady that renovations for appearance aren’t important to me. I just want a safe place with all the appliances working.” She broke into a belly laugh, and added, “Especially the stove. I’m going to learn to cook as well as Rizzie.”
Now, Jane is no slack in the kitchen. She’s a far better cook than I will ever be and gives Rizzie a run for her money. They just cook different styles. Jane leans toward Italian and occasionally Mexican.
“I assure you, Jane, if you move in next door to me, you’ll have two ranges to cook on, because I don’t ever use mine!”
I stuffed our trash bag under the towel, then put the watermelon and shoes on the corners to keep the towel from blowing away. We took a walk along the edge of the water, letting the waves wash up over our toes. I felt like I could stay forever.
“I need to get home and see how my benne wafers turned out since they cooled,” Jane said. “Besides, I have to take a short nap before I start work.”
On the way back to our belongings, loud seagull squawking drew my attention again. Just as I looked up at the sky, I heard a sound I knew too well. The crack of a rifle shot. Both Jane and I jerked toward our left as a bleeding seagull landed about twenty feet away from us. I’d followed the falling bird visually. Jane must have been able to hear the thud when the bird hit the sand.
“Isn’t it against the law to hunt here?” she said.
“Not only is it against the law to hunt at this park, it’s illegal to shoot seagulls even during bird season.” I know these things because Daddy and my brothers all hunt, and I used to go with them.
Jane and I hurried toward the towel. We had both sat down to put on our shoes when the sound cut through the air again, with a simultaneous splash! Our watermelon exploded into pieces, splattering both of us with wet, red mush and scratching us with broken pieces of hard rind. I grabbed my shoes and snatched Jane’s wrist with my other hand. She already had her sandals on.
“Is someone shooting at us?” she squealed as we ran to the parking lot and jumped into the car.
“I don’t know. We’re just getting out of here!” I yelled as I cranked the car, threw it in gear, and took off.
We weren’t even out of the state park before it happened.
Chapter Eight
It stopped. Dead still. The Mustang died smack in the middle of the road. The car had never given me a minute’s trouble except for regular
maintenance like oil changes and occasional new tires. Now it just sat there.
The pony wouldn’t budge at all. Jane and I still had the jitters from the watermelon exploding all over us. The dead seagull upset me, but when the sniper hit the melon, the thought slid across my mind that the shot might have been directed at us, not necessarily to kill us, but to scare us. I wanted out of there right then.
I slammed my fists against the steering wheel and said, “Shhhh . . . oooot!” Shame on me for what I almost said.
“Call a tow truck,” Jane suggested.
Buh-leeve me, I couldn’t afford a wrecker. I rang Daddy’s house on my cell phone. Since three of my five older brothers move in and out of the home place frequently, I guessed right—one of them answered.
“Hello.”
“Hey, this is Callie.”
“I know who you are. After all, you are my sister.
What’sa matter? You sound upset. Did you find another homicide victim?”
Among my problems was the fact that he’d recognized me, since I’m the only sister, but I wasn’t sure if the voice belonged to Bill or Frank. I took a guess.
“Bill, my car won’t start! It stopped right in the middle of the road!”
“Do you want me to tell Bill when I hear from him?”
“Okay, Frank. I’m sorry. You two sound alike. Where’s Bill?”
“Said he was meeting Molly. I think they’ve gone to register for wedding gifts.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Probably Wally World.” He laughed, then roared like his smarty-pants answer was hysterical because he was more sophisticated, less redneck than Bill. If Frank ever remarries, he’ll register someplace classy—like Target. At his first wedding reception, he insisted on potato chips with French onion dip.
“Can you come get us?” I asked.
“Where are you and who’s with you?”
“Jane’s with me, and we’re at Hunting Island State Park.”