by Cathy Holton
“Who would have thought that you and Will went to college together?” Darlene said blithely, her eyes scanning Ava. “Who would have thunk it, as we say down here.”
Fanny giggled. “That’s right,” she said. “We have our own language.”
Darlene gave Ava’s arm a little shake. “If someone down here says ‘bless her little heart,’ about someone—well, that means they’re mortal enemies.”
“Kind of like saying ‘we’re going to be good, good friends,’ ” Fraser said.
“And we don’t push a button,” Darlene said. “We mash it. We don’t take someone to the store, we carry them.” She giggled again and put one hand to the side of her mouth. “And if someone down here says your baby is sweet, well, then, you know it’s ugly.”
Ava shook her head. “Someone needs to write all this down for me. I’ll never remember it.”
“Isn’t she darling!” Darlene cried and Fraser said, “Another adversarial statement.”
“You know, you’re really starting to bug me,” Darlene said.
“Fraser, why don’t you refresh everyone’s drink?” Alice said pointedly.
“What, and leave Ava alone with the succubus?”
Josephine said, “Oh, Fraser, really.”
Darlene said, “What’s a succubus?”
“Now that you mention it,” Ava said, giving her glass to Fraser. “I think I will have another drink.”
Later, Ava asked Will, “Why do they call Fraser ‘Sparky?’ ”
“It’s just a nickname some of the town kids gave him. They liked to tease him because of his—uniqueness.”
“You mean his gayness?”
“Who called him Sparky?”
“Darlene Haney.”
“That figures. They always fight like cats.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Jealousy, I guess.”
Darlene Haney had invited Ava to lunch, so on Tuesday she walked the few blocks from the house to downtown Woodburn. It was a hot, sultry day. Cicadas hummed in the trees, and bits of yellow pollen floated on the air like duck down. The sidewalk was old and buckled where the tree roots had pushed through, upending the bricks. All along the street the few people she saw waved to her from their yards and shady porches. “Good morning,” they called, and she said, “Good morning.” Her manner was brisk. She was embarrassed by their attention, wishing she had paid more attention to the names of those she had met at the barbecue.
The Debs and Brides Shoppe faced the town square with its large fountain and ubiquitous statue of the Unknown Confederate Soldier. Large oak trees surrounded the square, with benches scattered beneath their shady branches. Everywhere there were masses of blooming shrubbery, and from the old-fashioned light posts lining the street hung baskets of ivy geraniums, petunias, and verbena. Most of the shops lining the square sported striped awnings and hand-painted signs, and the whole effect was quaint and charming and looked like something from a turn-of-the-century movie set.
The shop was crowded with debs arraying themselves for the Gardenia Ball. Darlene, looking flustered and overworked, raised her hand when Ava came in and shouted, “I’ll be right with you.”
They walked next door to the Kudzu Grille to order lunch. “Whewee,” Darlene said, lifting her hair off her neck with one hand and fanning herself with the other. “It’s hot enough to boil spit on a sidewalk.”
They sat at a small table near a window overlooking the square. “What’s good?” Ava said, looking down at the menu. “I’m really not sure what to order. I’m still getting used to Southern food. I’ll have to order the fried green tomatoes, of course, because I’ve never had them and hey, when in Rome.”
“There’s really only one thing to order and that’s the blue plate special,” Darlene said, closing her menu and reaching for Ava’s. “Collard greens, corn bread, black-eyed peas, and squash casserole for two,” she said to the waitress. “Oh, and a small plate of fried green tomatoes. And two sweet teas.” They watched her walk away.
“Well,” Ava said, looking around. The restaurant was beginning to fill up, and Ava was glad they’d found a table. She’d agreed to meet Darlene for lunch because it had occurred to her that Darlene might be willing to share information about the Woodburns. Specifically, Charlie Woodburn.
Darlene gave her a tight, fierce grin and slapped Ava’s arm. “I am so glad you came!”
Ava as always, disarmed by Darlene’s direct, friendly approach, said, “I’m glad I came, too.”
Darlene patted Ava’s hand. “I just know we’re going to be good, good friends. I knew it from the moment I first set eyes on you. I knew it right here,” Darlene said, thumping her chest like she was trying to dislodge something trapped in her trachea.
Ava smiled nervously. She looked around the restaurant. “Do you eat here every day?”
“Sure,” Darlene said. She crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward, examining Ava closely. “I wish my eyelashes were as long and thick as yours! Why, if I went without mascara like you do, my eyes would just disappear in my face.”
“Is it open for dinner, too?” Ava asked, smiling at the waitress who brought their iced teas.
“I could never get away with wearing my hair short. It looks good on you but if I went around not fixing my hair or my face nobody would give me the time of day!”
Ava coughed politely. The tea was good, very cold and very sweet, served in a frosty mason jar. Ava tried to think of something pleasant to say. “So do you like your job?”
“Oh, hell no,” Darlene said. “But it pays the bills and puts food on the table, two things my ex seems incapable of doing, bless his little heart.” And she launched into a long tirade about her deadbeat ex-husband and Ava listened, thankful to have Darlene’s attention off her for a while. A short time later the waitress brought their food. Darlene was still going on and on about Eddie Haney. “Listen to me,” she said finally, giving another bright fierce smile. “Going on and on about my loser ex-husband when you’re attached to just about the most perfect man in the whole wide world!”
Ava looked at her blankly. “Who?”
“Why, Will Fraser, silly.”
“Oh, right. Will’s a nice guy.”
Darlene leaned forward and lowered her voice. “So is it true you two are actually—dating?”
“Who told you that?”
Darlene chewed slowly, her eyes fixed steadily on Ava’s face. “It’s common knowledge,” she said.
“It’s true that Will and I are good friends. We went to school together.” Ava’s voice trailed off. She glanced around the restaurant, took a long drink of iced tea. “We’re just good friends.”
“Oh, really?” Darlene said, and it was clear that she wasn’t convinced.
Ava turned her attention to her plate. “The food is good,” she said and it was true, everything except the fried green tomatoes, which looked pretty and smelled good but tasted kind of bland.
“This is country-style cooking,” Darlene said, pointing at her plate with her fork. “You probably don’t get a lot of this at the Woodburn table.”
“Oh, no, they eat a lot of vegetables. And Maitland makes corn bread from time to time, although he puts jalapeño peppers in his.”
“Really?” Darlene said. “Jalapeño peppers? Huh.”
“Listen, there’s something I wanted to ask you,” Ava said.
Darlene put her fork down and leaned forward. “Go ahead. Shoot. Ask me anything.”
“Charlie Woodburn.” Ava stopped. Saying his name sent an odd tremor down her spine. A week ago she had never even heard of him and now she couldn’t stop thinking about who he was and how he had died.
Darlene stared at her curiously, a slight smile pulling down the corners of her mouth. “What about him?”
“What do you know about him? I know he was married to Fanny before Maitland. A long time before Maitland. I know he and Fanny eloped and then he died.”
Darlene
pushed her plate away and crossed her arms on the table. “Well, of course that was long before my time,” she said, letting her eyes slide over the diners at the tables closest to them before shifting back to Ava. “But you know how these little towns are. Everybody’s known everybody else’s secrets for generations. And everyone loves to gossip about the high and mighty Woodburns.”
There was something secretive about Darlene, something damp and cloying that spilled out of her like an overfilled glass. Ava could sense it now. She remembered Fraser’s tale of Darlene’s glory days up at UT, how she’d dreamed of marrying a rich man and instead found herself saddled with three children, working long hours in a dress shop frequented by snotty adolescent girls. Ava supposed this was why Darlene seemed so eager to gossip about the Woodburns; it took the focus off her own dreary life.
“High and mighty?” she said.
“Oh, sure,” Darlene said, rolling her eyes mockingly. “The Woodburns have been gentry for generations, ever since old Randal Woodburn crossed the Cumberland Bluff back in 1799. On his way to Nashville, they say, to study law with his old friend Andrew Jackson. The Woodburns were an old Virginia family, gentry even back that far, before the Revolutionary War, and Randal was the younger son who had to seek his fortune on the frontier. They say he stopped at Piney Creek and saw the rich bottomland churned up each year by the floods and figured if he could find a way to divert the creek he’d have the makings of a fine plantation. Of course, there was nothing there in the way of civilization at the time, just the occasional fur trader making his way up from Natchez, and a Chickasaw town decimated by smallpox.
“Anyway, he drove off the few Chickasaws who still had the gumption to fight, enslaved the rest, and set about clearing the land and diverting the creek. His father sent a gaggle of black slaves to help, and when they were done he had a well-built stockade to keep the slaves and animals in, a cabin to sleep in, and two thousand acres of rich bottomland to grow cotton. He called the plantation Longford after their homeplace in Ireland or Scotland or wherever it is the Woodburns came from.”
“But how does Charlie Woodburn fit into all this?”
“Hang on, I’m getting to that. It seems Old Randal got lonely back there in the wilderness and took up with a Chickasaw woman who bore him a number of little brown-skinned, black-eyed children. That’s where the Black Woodburns come from.”
“The Black Woodburns?”
“That’s right. They all descend from Randal and this Indian woman, and they’re called that because of their dark eyes and black hair. To distinguish them from the True Woodburns, whose eyes are always blue-gray, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“And Charlie was a Black Woodburn?”
“Black as the devil. Now don’t look at me like that, I know it sounds crazy, but you can always tell a Woodburn just by looking at them. They all look like they were stamped out of a cookie cutter, kind of like the royal family of England, only half of them are dark-eyed and dark-haired and the other half are light-eyed and fair. And the ones who are dark are poor as a sawmill rat.”
“Will’s hair is dark.”
“Yes, but he’s a Fraser, too. His grandmother, Celia, was a Woodburn, but the male line of True Woodburns died out with Will’s great-grandfather, Miss Celia and Miss Josephine and Miss Fanny’s father. Maybe that’s why the Colonel took such an interest in Charlie Woodburn, offering to pay his way through Vanderbilt. Charlie looked just like Old Randal—you’ve seen that oil painting of him in the dining room of the house—only with the dark eyes and hair of the Black Woodburns.”
“So Miss Fanny’s father took Charlie in and raised him? He approved of Fanny marrying him even though they were distant cousins and Charlie had no money?”
“Oh, hell no,” Darlene said, shaking her head and looking at Ava like she couldn’t believe how naive she was. “Charlie was a Woodburn but he wasn’t highborn. He wasn’t a True Woodburn. He was born here but raised in New Orleans. The rumor is, his father was a gambler and Charlie took after him. Came riding into town in a big car and fancy clothes, making all the girls’ hearts flutter like that actor from the silent movies, the one who always dressed up in veils and turbans.”
“Rudolph Valentino?”
“Yeah, him. Fanny’s father was happy to send him to Vanderbilt, but he never intended for Charlie to marry one of his daughters.”
“So what happened?”
“The old man dropped dead and suddenly Celia and Josephine and Fanny were orphans. Rich orphans. Celia was still a child, but Josephine and Fanny were up at Vanderbilt with Charlie, and that’s where he got his hooks into her. He eloped with Fanny right under the Woodburn cousins’ noses, not to mention Maitland Sinclair’s, who was Miss Fanny’s childhood sweetheart. They say Charlie did it for the money.”
“So Charlie Woodburn eloped with Fanny, and the rest of the family got angry because they felt he was taking advantage of an orphaned girl?”
“That’s right, and that’s why they killed him.”
Ava stared blankly at Darlene.
Darlene’s eyes grew round. She clamped a small, plump hand to her face. “Oh, dear,” she said through her fingers. “I’ve said too much.”
“Don’t even think about stopping there,” Ava said, leaning to peel Darlene’s fingers off her mouth. “Continue.”
Darlene looked around the restaurant and dipped her head, dropping her voice. “That’s just a story,” she said. “No one knows if it’s really true. There are probably a half dozen stories about how Charlie Woodburn died. And who killed him.”
Ava was quiet for a moment, remembering Will’s hesitation in the cemetery. “Tell me,” she said finally.
“Well, some think it was Maitland Sinclair. He had the most to gain because he and Fanny had been sweethearts since childhood and they married after Charlie died.”
“But not right away.”
“Oh, hell no. Not until after Miss Fanny’s boy, Sumner, was grown. And then some. Sumner was born the same year Charlie died, and he must have been about forty when they finally married.”
“Fanny and Maitland waited forty years to marry?”
Darlene shrugged. “Yeah, but still, they married.”
Ava sat back with her hands in her lap, thinking about all this. She thought of the framed photographs of a youthful Fanny and Maitland hanging on the walls at Woodburn Hall. They may not have married right away but they had certainly traveled the world together, they had certainly acted like husband and wife. Or had they? Perhaps they had only been friends, not lovers. Fanny must have been crazy in love with Charlie Woodburn to mourn him for nearly forty years.
She thought of big jolly Maitland with his homemade mayonnaise and apron that read Kitchen Bitch. Poor man.
“Maitland is a sweetheart,” she said. “I can’t imagine him murdering anyone.”
Darlene gave her a dismal look. “You never know what people will do,” she said darkly, “if they’re pushed to it.” They were quiet for a moment, each lost in her own thoughts, and then Darlene roused herself and added, “Personally, I always thought it was the McGann woman.”
“Clara? What about her?”
“Who killed him. From what I’ve heard anyway.”
“Wait a minute,” Ava said, holding up one hand. “Start at the beginning. How exactly does Clara fit into the Woodburns?”
Darlene frowned and tapped one finger against the edge of her iced-tea jar. “I don’t know. Her people were slaves at one time, I guess, but no one around here ever talks about stuff like that.”
“Will says Clara’s people were freed before the Civil War.”
“Oh, well, he should know, then.” Darlene yawned, then hesitated as if something else had occurred to her. “One story I always heard is that Clara is related to the Woodburns somehow.”
“How?”
Darlene shrugged. She gave Ava a sly smile. “Maybe you should ask your good friend Will.”
Ava imagined that a question like t
hat would go over about as well as her questions about the fiancée and Charlie Woodburn. “Why do you think Clara had something to do with Charlie Woodburn’s death?”
“Her mother was a healer. People used to come from far and wide to have their fortunes told, and she knew how to use herbs and wildflowers. I’m sure she taught her daughter. I’m sure Miss McGann knows how to use plants, which ones are poisonous and stuff like that. She could’ve poisoned him and no one would have known the difference.”
“But why would Clara McGann have poisoned Charlie Woodburn?”
Darlene shrugged and stifled another yawn. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe she didn’t like him.”
Coming out of the Kudzu Grille, Ava’s attention was drawn by a man loading lumber into the back of a pickup truck. He was standing across the narrow brick street with his back to her, and for a moment Ava thought it was Will. But then he turned and she stood staring at him in amazement. He bore a striking resemblance to Will, tall and dark-haired, although he was sturdier, more heavily built. He stood staring intently at her, the sunlight glinting on his hair. Beside her, Darlene stiffened.
“Good morning,” he called and his voice was not like Will’s. “Who’ve you got there?” he said, talking to Darlene but still staring at Ava.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Darlene said. She took Ava’s arm. “Come on,” she said. “We’re risking our reputations just talking to him.”
He laughed as they walked off. Ava turned and glanced at him over her shoulder. He was leaning against the truck watching her, and she suddenly remembered that night outside the movie theater when she and Will had been silently observed by a dark-haired man. He was that man. She was sure of it.
“My God,” Ava said, letting Darlene pull her along the sidewalk.
“No. Jake Woodburn,” Darlene said.
“One of the Black Woodburns?”
“Black sheep more likely,” Darlene said. “He makes Charlie Woodburn look like a saint.”
“He and Will could be twins! Well, maybe not twins, but certainly brothers.” Ava could feel the heat beating down on the top of her head, seeping through her, settling in her bones.