by Dixie Cash
The road going forward portended to be decidedly rougher. First-year, first-grade schoolteachers earned paltry salaries. Before Gran Bella’s passing, Sophia’s plan had always been to obtain her master’s. Just a few additional letters after her name could add thousands to her paycheck. Now, a plan to continue her education would have to wait until she got back on her feet financially. The time she would have dedicated to evening classes would now have to be spent moonlighting.
She had to start by ceasing to dwell on the negative and turn her attention to the positive, even though at this moment, she was pretty positive her bank balance was a negative. She had to find a source of additional income. Being employed at a second job would be no different from holding down a full-time job while she had worked toward her college degree, she told herself.
She rose from her chair and pawed through the newspaper for the classified section. She carried it back to the table and in less than fifteen minutes, had scattered half a dozen red circles over the page in front of her.
While a student, she had held a variety of jobs. She already knew waitressing in a high-end eatery paid more than clerking in a retail store.
She had experience in both family dining and fast food. From that, she had learned that the real money in waiting tables came from tips. Good tips came in restaurants that served food on plates, on tables with linen cloths. No tips came from places that served food in Styrofoam carry-out containers, ordered from a menu where a number beside a picture defined an entree.
Besides that, Sophia knew she had to be discreet. The school district didn’t forbid outside employment, but her employer might lose faith in her teaching ability if she spent part of her week wearing a paper hat resembling a chicken and asking,” Would you like to Super Cluck that order?”
Another thought lifted her mood. A second job would force her to get out of the house. She had virtually no social life and knew very few men. Among the patrons of an upscale restaurant she might meet men. Perhaps she would meet someone she would fall in love with and marry. She might even meet bachelors who were rich. She didn’t know how many women had met marriage-worthy men waiting tables, but surely there had been some. Wealth had never been at the top of her list of requirements in men, but after going through her stack of bills, money had jumped several notches.
She brought the phone to the dining table and pressed in the numbers from one of the ads. A male voice that made her think of silk answered the phone. After a brief conversation they agreed to meet at the restaurant at two o’clock for an interview. She had an hour to pull herself together.
Minutes later, she was at the bathroom sink brushing her teeth. Thanks to Gran Bella’s investment in good dental care at an early age, Sophia had perfect, sparkling white teeth.
She washed her face, then freed her thick hair from the elastic band that held it in a ponytail. She took pride in wearing her hair long and loose. A few strokes with a hairbrush and glossy ebony tresses fell around her shoulders. She had heard for her entire life that she was a natural beauty who needed little makeup, so with a swipe of coral blush to her high cheekbones and a touch of taupe lip gloss on full lips, she was finished.
She spent a moment studying her reflection. Her hazel eyes—her only feature that wasn’t Mexican—were framed by long black lashes. People said her eyes were captivating. Now, if only they would help her capture a job.
three
Debbie Sue walked the Styling Station’s last patron of the day to the door and locked it behind her. Edwina had moved to the payout desk and was already entering numbers into the calculator. “You don’t have to do that now, Ed. We need to head out to Justin’s place. It’s almost four.”
“Oh,” Edwina replied. The calculator’s whirr stopped as she looked up. “Don’t you think I should finish this? Get the deposit ready, then sweep up a little?”
Those chores were part of the end-of-day routine in the Styling Station, but an appointment with an Equalizers prospective client had always taken precedence. Edwina was stalling again.
Debbie Sue reached into her purse and dug out a tube of lipstick. She returned to her workstation, leaned closer to the mirror and swiped a fresh layer of Coral Ice onto her lips, all the while watching Edwina in the mirror’s reflection. The woman had moved from behind the desk to the front counter and was now intently occupied with putting pens in a coffee mug, ink tips up. Debbie Sue twisted the lipstick down and snapped the top back in place. “You gonna ride with me out to Justin’s or do you want to follow?”
Edwina flopped her wrist in an exaggerated show of nonchalance. “Oh, I’ll just go in my car. No need you coming all the way back to town just to bring me to my car. His place is the old Gill place. I know right where it is. After we look things over, I’ll just hop on the butane route and be home before you know it.” She didn’t abandon arranging pens in the mug.
Debbie Sue heaved a sigh. “Okay, what’s up? Why are you digging your heels in?”
“I’m not,” Edwina said innocently.
“Ed, I’ve broken feral horses easier than I’m getting you to move. I thought we discussed the possibility of a ghost and we decided that it wasn’t possible. There’s an explanation.”
“We didn’t discuss it. Not really. We talked about psychics.”
“Psychics, ghosts, monsters in the closet, it’s all the same.” Debbie Sue flipped the OPEN sign to the CLOSED side, then moved toward the back door, keys in hand. “Now, c’mon. We’re gonna be late.” She waited for Edwina to join her.
Edwina lifted herself from her chair as if she weighed three hundred pounds. Debbie Sue had never seen her so reluctant. Usually, she would jump in front of a tornado to prove her point. Yet from the second Justin told his story, a new side of Edwina had started to emerge.
The woman in El Paso—what had Edwina called her? Isabella something? She hadn’t made just an impression on Edwina, she had scared the living shit out of her. Debbie Sue wanted to tell her longtime friend that her former mother-in-law had most likely been told about the money being hidden by Jimmy Wayne and dropping that bomb on the unsuspecting Edwina drummed up business for the crystal-ball reader. But intuition told Debbie Sue to let it go. Edwina could take a joke as well as anyone, but teasing her at this point would be a bad idea.
Outside in the parking lot behind the salon sat Edwina’s royal blue 1968 Mustang. As she began to paw inside her purse for keys, it occurred to Debbie Sue that she could end up at Justin Sadler’s house alone while her partner went on her merry way home. “Why don’t you ride with me, Ed? With the price of gas, we’ll save a buck or two by taking one rig.”
“Well…I guess I could…but I should call Vic and tell him where I’m going.”
“Why?”
“In case he needs me for something. He’s due home in a couple of hours.”
Debbie Sue knew that Vic, who now owned his own big rig and worked as a long-haul trucker in his retirement, had been on the road for a week. “So call him on your cell.”
“Well…I guess I could…” But Edwina made no move to make the call.
“Ed, call him. We need to get going.”
“Oh, hell, Debbie Sue.” Edwina dug her cell phone from her purse and speed-dialed a number. Debbie Sue listened as Edwina explained to Vic where she was headed and added she should be home in approximately an hour and a half. Debbie Sue had to admit letting someone know where they were going could be a good idea, and she didn’t know where Buddy was at the moment. “Look, Ed, there’s no such thing as dead wives coming back from the grave.”
“I know that.” Edwina hoisted her chin and dropped her cell phone into her purse. She strode to Debbie Sue’s red pickup truck and climbed into the passenger seat.
Twenty minutes later, they rumbled across the cattle-guard entrance to Justin’s place. As they approached the house they saw that it was a sixties-vintage rambling ranch-style house. An air conditioner unit underpinned by cinder blocks jutted from a window. Trees so large the
y had to have been planted twenty or thirty years ago shaded the home. A yard with big trees other than mesquites was a rarity in Cabell County.
The horse corrals and two sorrel mares caught Debbie Sue’s attention. To an untrained eye, they would be nothing special, but to Debbie Sue, who had spent most of her life on horseback, they were spectacular. This pair had cost someone a lot of money. Justin hadn’t impressed her as being a cowboy, so had these obviously highbred horses belonged to his deceased wife?
Braking to a complete stop, Debbie Sue sat and studied them. She could see they were restless and tense. Too bad they were being treated as if they were house pets. They needed exercise and grooming. From the looks of them, Justin wasn’t the only one missing Rachel. Debbie Sue had even more questions than before for this young man.
Justin walked out on the porch. His chocolate lab, Turnup, got to his feet and met him. “Get back, boy. We’ve got company.”
He watched as a red Silverado crew-cab truck came to a stop in his circular drive. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he called out to the two women inside, “Y’all have any trouble finding the place?”
Debbie Sue climbed out of the truck. “Nah. Richard Gill and his brood used to live here.”
“His mama was an invalid, bless her heart,” the woman named Edwina said. “Years ago I used to come out here every week or so and fix her hair.”
“You make house calls to fix people’s hair?”
“Not as a rule. But Mary Gill was bedridden. She always took pride in her looks. It picked her spirits up to have her hair done. Don’t guess anyone ever saw it, but it made her feel better.”
Justin took an immediate liking to Edwina. He could tell she had a kind heart. He had always felt the world could use more kind hearts, especially women’s. He smiled, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun.
Turnup pranced over to Debbie Sue, his tail whipping as he begged for attention. She reached down and stroked his head. “Turnup, get down,” Justin ordered.
“He’s all right,” Debbie Sue said, crouching to a squat. She cradled the dog’s snout in her hand. “He’s just happy to see someone. Why do you call him Turnip?”
“Rachel named him that because he just turned up on our doorstep one day. ‘Turn up.’ Get it?”
Debbie Sue laughed for the first time since he had met her, a warm laugh that lit up her face. She was tall, not as tall as her partner, but taller than Rachel had been. And she had green eyes like Rachel’s.
Setting the dog away, Debbie Sue rose, straightened her clothing and became serious again. She strode toward him, all business. “Justin, our normal procedure before we agree to do surveillance work is to take a look around. Sort of do an assessment. Then Ed and I discuss it. We get back to you in a day or two and tell you if we can help you and what we’ll charge.”
“Wow, you’re ready to just jump right in, aren’t you?”
Edwina lowered her huge sunglasses to the tip of her nose and looked over the top edge. “She takes our work very seriously.”
“Yes, well I guess that’s what I want. Somebody to do a serious job. Uh, sure thing, ma’am. Take a look around. Am I supposed to go somewhere or do you want me to stay here?”
“These incidents that have been bothering you, we’ll need you to show us where they’ve taken place,” Debbie Sue answered. “I’ll get my camera and be right with you.” She walked back to her truck.
“I always thought this was a nice place,” Edwina said. “You keep it real clean and neat, just like the Gills always did.”
“Thanks. Rachel and I bought it right after we got married. It’s more house than we needed, but at the time we figured on having some kids someday. And she wanted a place for her horses. This house came with the six hundred and forty acres and some good outbuildings. Rachel always had a way of making me give in to whatever she wanted.”
Debbie Sue returned, camera in hand, “I couldn’t help but notice those mares you’ve got penned up. Did I hear you say the horses were your wife’s?”
“Yes, ma’am, you did. I think she loved those horses as much as she loved me.”
“They’re beautiful animals, but they need some exercise.”
“I know they need to be ridden, but I’ve seldom been on a horse. Don’t even know much about them. I grew up in the city.”
“You don’t have to ride them, though it would be good for them. Just turn them loose in the pasture so they can run around a little. They look like they’ve been penned up for weeks. It’s not right to treat horses like that. They need exercise.”
Justin heaved a breath, and looked down, contrite. “You’re right. Truth is, it’s been hard to be around them.”
“You aren’t the only one that misses her,” Debbie Sue said sternly. “They lost someone they loved too. It’s cruel what you’re doing to them.” She walked past him into the house, leaving him and Edwina to stand and stare.
“There are some areas of Debbie Sue’s life you don’t mess with,” Edwina said, removing her sunglasses and shoving them onto the top of her head. “The treatment of animals, horses in particular, is one of them. She’s funny that way.”
Justin was more than a little wary of Debbie Sue after the warning she had delivered back at the beauty shop. “Yes, ma’am. I can see she is.”
He trailed the two women into the house, stopping in the foyer. “Uh, see those yellow roses? They weren’t here when I went to town earlier. But they were here when I came back. That’s just one of the things.”
Edwina cocked her head and gave him a strange look. “Oh, yeah? You mean you didn’t put ’em there?”
“No. I don’t know how they got there.” Justin saw Edwina’s eyes flare, but she said nothing.
Debbie Sue rubbed one of the rose petals between her thumb and fingers, leaned in and smelled them. “They’re real,” she said.
“Yeah, we’ve got some yellow roses growing in the backyard,” Justin said.
“Did you check to see if someone had cut any today?”
“I didn’t have to. I think they came from one of our, uh, my bushes.”
“Well, let’s be sure. Ed, you want to check the rosebushes? See if there are fresh cuts.”
“I think you should check the rosebushes,” Edwina said. “I don’t know a damned thing about flowers.”
Debbie Sue sighed. “Okay.” Justin showed them the patio door leading outside from the dining area and followed them to Rachel’s rose garden, where several varieties of roses grew. Sure enough, fresh cuts showed on the stems of the bushes that produced the yellow blooms. “Damn,” Justin said when he saw them. He was starting to get that crawly feeling up his spine again.
“Hmm,” Debbie Sue said.
“Shit,” Edwina mumbled.
Debbie Sue raised her camera and snapped a picture.
“And you have no idea who might have cut roses from these bushes? Or when?”
“No,” Justin answered, slowly shaking his head. “Honest to God.”
“Shit,” Edwina mumbled again.
“What other unusual things have happened?” Debbie Sue walked around the rose garden, snapping pictures, while Edwina stayed a few feet away.
“Out here, not much,” Justin said. “Most of what I’ve noticed has been inside the house.”
Debbie Sue started back toward the house. Inside, she circled the coffee table and snapped more pictures of the roses in the vase from every angle. Edwina looked under lamps and behind furniture.
“That blue afghan on the sofa was Rachel’s,” Justin said.
“She liked to curl up under it and read. Several times a week I fold it up and put it on the end of the sofa. But sometimes, when I come home from work, it’s moved and heaped in a pile, like someone has used it.”
“The hell,” Edwina said. She walked over to the sofa, lifted the cushions and peered under them.
“Hmm.” Debbie Sue fingered the afghan and snapped more pictures.
Justin wasn’t sure what th
ey expected to find, but since they were the professionals, he decided to just let them work.
Edwina moved from the living room to the dining room and disappeared into the kitchen. “Well would you look at this?” she called out. “I haven’t seen these in a hundred years.”
Debbie Sue followed the voice and Justin trailed behind. “What is it?” she asked.
Justin was curious, too. He and Rachel had no hundred-year-old antiques that he was aware of.
Passing through the kitchen doorway just behind Debbie Sue, he saw Edwina studying the refrigerator door where Rachel had placed magnetized alphabet letters. “My kids used to have these when they were little,” she said. She set her purse on the counter and plucked a letter from its place. “My oldest would sit on the kitchen floor and practice her ABC’s while I cooked.”
“It must have been a hundred years back,” Debbie Sue quipped. “Because I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you cook.”
Justin smiled. “Rachel told me she’d done the same thing as a little girl. She saw these at a garage sale and bought them. She was hoping our little one would do the same one day. But a few letters are missing.”
A profound sense of loss threatened to overpower Justin, as it sometimes did when the future without his wife and the hopes and dreams they had shared became even more starkly clear. An uncomfortable, almost unbearable, silence fell. He returned to the living room and sank to the sofa, staring at the vase of yellow roses, regretting all that would never be.
Debbie Sue and Edwina came back from the kitchen. “Hey, you okay?” Edwina asked.
“I’m fine,” Justin said a little too brightly. “Sometimes things just—” He shook his head and blinked away moisture, certain these two women didn’t want to see a grown man break into tears. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Debbie Sue and Edwina took seats in the wingback chairs opposite him. Debbie Sue was studying her notes when Turnup began to pace and bark insistently.
“Excuse me,” Justin said, rising from the sofa. “I wasn’t expecting anyone. I’ll just go see who’s outside.”