by Anne George
Mary Alice and Ross Perry were having a halfhearted argument over who should pay the check as I walked up. Both were insisting on the honor.
“You invited me,” I reminded Mary Alice. No way I was going to get drawn into this argument.
“I’ll leave the tip,” Ross said.
Andre bowed and waved us into the street. As I went through the door, I looked around to see if I saw the Needham twins. If they were hiding behind the basil baskets, they were doing a good job.
“I’ve got to rush home to get dressed,” Mary Alice said.
Ross Perry nodded. “And I’ve got a couple of things need doing. I’ll meet you at Saint Paul’s about a quarter to three.” He shook my hand with a surprisingly firm grip. “Patricia Anne, it was a pleasure meeting you.” He smiled and walked off down the street, turning to give a small wave as he reached his car.
“What are you going to do?” Mary Alice asked me.
“Christmas shop. I think I’ll look around here for a while. There are some interesting places. Did you see that shop called the Witchery? I’ll bet I could find Freddie’s Celia something in there.”
“It’s the Stitch Witchery, a fancy sewing shop.”
“Oh. I thought maybe it was one of those New Age goddess places. Crystals and stuff.”
“In Birmingham? Are you crazy? Stick to T. J. Maxx, Mouse.”
“Well, it could have been,” I called to Sister as she disappeared around the corner, laughing.
It was a beautiful afternoon, no sign of the snow flurries of the night before. The sky was a clear blue, and abundant sunshine had pushed the thermometer on the bank building to a balmy 60 degrees. I threw my heavy coat onto the backseat of the car and headed for the mall to do some serious shopping. Fred and I usually shopped for the boys’ presents together and Fred bought mine (I’d point it out to him), but the rest was up to me.
I found a parking place fairly close to an entrance, dropped some money into the Salvation Army bucket, and bought a paper angel from the Humane Society. Three hours later, I emerged, dropped some more money into the Salvation Army bucket, and bought another angel from the Humane Society. Mary Alice says don’t be silly, send them one check a year. But if I did, I’d still have to stop and put in money and buy the angels. I know I would. When the Santa ringing the bell looks particularly bedraggled or they’ve brought puppies from the Humane Society, I’m a goner.
The sun was getting low in the sky, and I was tired, but Woofer hadn’t had his walk the day before or this morning. I rushed home, took a package of bean soup from the freezer, put on my sweats, and went to the dog yard. Woofer was delighted to see me. When I bragged on him for barking the night before, he rolled over on his back and wriggled with pleasure.
We set out at a brisk walk. We usually do, slowing down within a couple of blocks and, like the old couple we are, meandering home at leisure. More Christmas decorations had sprung up in the last two days. Some of my neighbors, I realized, could have been students of Ms. Felix. Her Jewish Santa bulletin board and the Holy Family in a sleigh on the next block had a certain tangential similarity.
While we walked, I thought of Lynn and Glynn Needham and their cryptic message. If it was a message. Claire wouldn’t have wanted me to worry. I stopped for Woofer to investigate a crack in the sidewalk. I should have pinned them down more, I thought. I glanced at my watch. The funeral would have been over a couple of hours ago. I wondered if the girls had gone to it. They certainly hadn’t seemed bothered by Mercy’s death.
The Bedsole granddaughters: Mercy, whom nobody seemed to like and who had been murdered; Claire, the lost one, the abused one whom someone hated enough to try to kill; Lynn and Glynn, each a beautiful half of a whole.
“Amos,” I said to the late afternoon, “you might should have kept your pants zipped.”
Woofer thought I was talking to him and stopped, wagging his tail.
“Not you, buddy. We had you fixed.”
Fred’s car came into the driveway as Woofer and I turned onto our block. He saw us and waved. He was waiting with the newspaper in his hand when we got there.
“I’ll put him up.” Fred reached down and scratched Woofer’s ears. “Come on, boy.”
I watched them cross the yard, two gentle old men.
“Sorry, Amos,” I said guiltily to the late afternoon. “Maybe some of us are just luckier.”
Fred got a beer from the refrigerator and disappeared into the bathroom while I heated the iron skillet for corn bread. Bean soup and corn bread on a chilly winter night are hard to beat. After I put the bread in the oven, I called Mary Alice to see how the funeral went. The main thing I wanted to know was if the Needham girls had been there. I got her answering machine. Maybe she had gone to relieve Tiffany, the Magic Maid, at the mall.
I put the soup in a saucepan to thaw and turned the burner on low. I could have done this in the microwave, but the smell of bean soup is too good to miss. It would take the bread a while, anyway.
Fred came in freshly showered and in his terry cloth robe. “We going out tonight?” he asked, nuzzling my neck.
“Did you see the bed?”
“Couldn’t. There were too many packages.”
“Then let’s spend the evening admiring all I bought and getting the decorations down.”
“Suits me.” He turned me and cupped me against him. “Umm,” he said, kissing me lightly.
“Umm,” I echoed.
“I swear this is a den of iniquity,” Mary Alice said behind us. “Don’t y’all ever quit?”
Neither Fred nor I moved. “Mary Alice,” he said quietly, “go outside and knock on the door.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the polite thing to do.”
“I could see through the window, anyway.”
“Mary Alice.” Fred still had not raised his voice.
“Shit.” I could hear the door open and close.
Fred shoved me aside and slammed the dead bolt lock on the door. He whirled around the kitchen and den, closing the blinds so quickly, they rattled in their casements.
“Now,” he said, coming back and putting his arms back around me. “Where were we?”
“Not breathing quite as hard,” I giggled.
“Mouse?” I could hear Mary Alice calling. “Mouse, that’s not very nice.”
“Don’t answer her,” Fred said.
“Mouse, I came to tell you something terrible.”
“Ignore her.”
“I don’t want to hear anything terrible!” I yelled back.
“Mouse, Ross Perry is dead. Somebody shot him.”
“Oh, shit,” Fred said, releasing me. He went to unlock the door.
“May I come in?” Mary Alice asked politely. Fred shrugged and she stepped back inside the kitchen. “That really wasn’t necessary, you know. I know when I’m not welcome.”
“What do you mean, Ross is dead?” I asked.
“Dead. Shot. Somebody shot him.”
“Who’s Ross Perry?” Fred asked.
“Where?” I wanted to know.
“In the head.”
“Where was he? Not where did the bullet go in.”
“Down in Shelby County. He didn’t come to the funeral and all of us were pretty pissed because our going together was his idea. But he must not have been there because he was dead.”
“Good excuse,” Fred said. “Who’s Ross Perry?”
“A friend of Sister’s,” I explained. I turned the burner off under the soup and sat down at the kitchen table. “I don’t understand.” I turned to Fred. “We had lunch with him today at the Green and White.”
“I’m sorry.” He patted my shoulder. “Let me put on some clothes. I’ll be right back.”
Mary Alice pulled out a chair and sat down beside me. She still had on her elegant new black suit.
“That suit was a good buy,” I said.
“Comfortable, too. I hate skirts you can’t sit down in or cross your legs in. This on
e’s just right.”
“A Baby Bear skirt.”
“What?”
“I’m just babbling. Tell me about Ross.”
“All I know is he’s dead. James Butler and his wife were on their way to the funeral and saw this car weaving down the road toward them. Then while they were watching it, it went off the road and down the embankment into Kelly Creek, about a thirty-foot drop. The car was upside-down in the creek when the Butlers got there. James’s wife called 911 and James grabbed his vet’s first aid stuff and climbed down the bank. He even managed to get Ross out of the car, God knows how, upside-down like it was and under water, and dragged him over to the bank. By that time, his wife—what’s her name?”
I shrugged that I had no idea.
“Anyway, James’s wife had crawled down the bank and they started trying to revive him. Ross wasn’t breathing, but he’d been under the water for several minutes. James even had this oxygen pump he carries in his car and he tried that, but nothing. Mrs. James, whatever her name is, said they were working so hard on Ross, they didn’t notice the blood pooling under his head. Looks like a doctor would have noticed that, doesn’t it? It’s an important symptom.”
I agreed that a doctor might wish to investigate a pool of blood under someone’s head. “But they were just assuming he had inhaled water. Makes sense.”
“True,” Mary Alice agreed. “It wouldn’t have made any difference, anyway. He was dead as a doornail by the time they started trying to revive him.”
“Do they know who shot him?”
“James says there are deer hunters all over those woods, even where they are posted. He thinks that’s what happened. The hunters don’t realize how close they are to the road and they shoot. He says this time of the year he and his wife are scared to let their children go out to play.”
“My Lord!” I thought about Ross turning and giving a wave as he got into his car, about the shadow on his bald head that looked like Gorbachev’s birthmark. This man had sat across from me at lunch and now he was gone.
“Mary Alice,” I said, “the Crazies are catching up to us.”
“God’s truth.”
We sat quietly for a few minutes, each immersed in our own thoughts. When Fred came in and wanted to know what had happened, I listened to the story again. This time I had some questions.
“How did you hear about it?” I asked when Sister got through telling Fred.
“James was supposed to be a pallbearer. When he didn’t show up, Thurman called and got him on his car phone.”
“That was good news to get at a funeral,” Fred said. He hit the palms of his hands against the table. “I hope they catch the son of a bitch that shot him and lock him up for good. Remember that little girl that got killed on I-65 last year? The same thing. Riding in the car with her mother. Damn! Peeping Toms right on our own porch in the middle of the night and folks getting shot just riding down the road.” He stood up, stomped to the back door, walked out, and slammed it.
“My goodness!” Mary Alice exclaimed.
“He’s just going to talk to Woofer,” I said. “Things that happen by chance make him nervous. He’s a cause-and-effect man.”
“Is that like bread and potatoes?”
I chose to ignore this. “Why do you suppose Ross was in Shelby County? He said he had a couple of errands to run, but he was pushing it to get down there and back in time for the funeral.”
“I have no idea.” Mary Alice went to the refrigerator and got a beer. “You want something?”
“A Coke. There’s one already opened. That’ll be fine.”
Mary Alice came back to the table and handed me the bottle of Coke. It had lost some of its fizz but still tasted good.
“Were the Needham twins at the funeral?” I asked.
“I don’t know them.”
“You couldn’t miss them. They look just like Claire, only taller.”
“I don’t think so. At least I didn’t see them. There was a good crowd there, though. Betty Bedsole made it through okay. I don’t think I could, Patricia Anne.”
“I don’t think I could, either.” We were quiet for a few minutes, each thinking her own thoughts. Mine were about Tom’s funeral. The only thing that had gotten me through it was trying to help Haley. “What about Liliane?” I asked.
“She got through the funeral okay. I’m sure Ross’s death is going to be another blow, though. They were pretty good friends, I understand.”
“I still wonder what Ross was doing down in Shelby County. You think he could have been going to see James? Was he on the road to their house?”
“It’s the road, apparently. But why would he have been going to see James? He knew he would see him at the funeral.” Mary Alice put her beer down and stood up. “Who knows?” She shrugged.
“You want some bean soup?” I asked.
“Nope. I’ve lost my appetite.”
I looked at Mary Alice in alarm. I had never heard her say this before. “You feel okay?”
“I’m okay.” She started toward the door and turned. “You know, Mouse, I just don’t think I can get away with wearing this suit to another funeral in the same week. Plus the cocktail party. Do you?”
“Go home,” I said.
Mary Alice reached into the cookie jar, got a handful of fruit drop cookies, and left.
Fred came back in as I was turning out the corn bread. “Looks good,” he said. “Smells good.”
“Is good.” I carried the two bowls of soup to the table and Fred followed with the plate of corn bread.
“We are going to watch Wheel of Fortune with our supper.” I took the small TV from the counter and placed it in the middle of the table. “We’ll talk after a while.”
“Fine,” Fred said, bless his heart. We ate quietly while Vanna turned letters. “Richmond, Virginia! Richmond, Virginia!” Fred prompted a contestant who landed on $5,000 and called out an n. “That’s a hard one,” he sympathized with the woman who was unable to come up with another consonant and who eventually saw $10,000 disappear from the screen in front of her. “They shouldn’t have them that hard.” The woman agreed; you could tell by her pinched smile as she clapped for the winning contestant. I felt myself beginning to relax.
By the time we watched Jeopardy and I had answered the Final Jeopardy question correctly (Wells Fargo), I was ready to talk about Ross Perry and seeing the Needham twins.
“After we get the Christmas decorations down,” Fred said.
“We can talk while we’re doing that.”
Fred held up his hand. “No, we can’t, Patricia Anne. You’ll be telling me something important and I’ll say where’s the nativity scene and you’ll get mad and say I’m not paying attention. We’ll get the decorations down first.” He was right and I knew it. One of the advantages of a forty-year marriage.
He pulled the attic steps down and I followed him up. The last time I had been up there had been a few months before. I had been with Haley, who was looking at her old formals stored up there. It had been a painful, purging afternoon when Haley accepted the loss of Tom. Until then, she had been fiercely, angrily, holding on to him. We had never put the dresses up, I realized. They bloomed on the old rocker, the sewing machine, the trunk.
“What are these dresses doing out?” Fred asked.
“I think Haley’s going to give them to the Goodwill.” I began to pick them up and hang them back in the closet.
“Let’s see. The tree first.” Fred dragged a long box over to the steps.
“The lights and the new ornaments.” He handed me a smaller box.
“And the old ornaments.” This was the most precious box of all. He placed it gently beside the steps. “Now, where’s the nativity scene?” We both laughed.
Within an hour the bottlebrush tree was assorted and assembled in the living room. When it was new, the metal prongs that went into the plastic trunk were color coded. Now we had to hold the limbs out and guess which went where, not too hard a job sin
ce the result should be a perfect triangle.
“Fine,” Fred said. “Now the lights.”
“I’m going to talk about Ross Perry now,” I said. “You just do the lights.”
Fred nodded and plugged the first string in. It worked, which I found encouraging. I started by telling him about meeting Ross at the gallery, that he was an art critic for the paper and a friend of Mercy’s and Liliane’s. I talked about the lunch we had had today with Mary Alice and how Ross had waved as he got into his car and how I hadn’t particularly liked him or the Green and White and had acted common as pig tracks, so Mary Alice said, though I really didn’t think it had been that bad. And in the ladies’ room Claire’s twin sisters had shown up and might have had a message for me that Claire was all right, though I wasn’t sure, but they were as beautiful as she was.
A second and a third set of lights came on while I talked. Fred would stop me occasionally with a question.
“Do the twins live here?”
“Liliane Bedsole said they live in New York and model. They’re pretty enough.”
“So they were here for Mercy Armistead’s funeral?” Fred plugged in a fourth set of lights, which didn’t burn. “Damn.”
“I guess so. These are strange people, Fred.” I handed him a string of lights that worked.
“How so?”
It was hard to describe the twins, not their appearance, but the way they communicated with each other. “They’re sort of wispy,” I finally said.
“Wispy?” Fred disappeared behind the tree, pulling lights behind him.
“Like they’re only real for each other.” I knew I was not doing a good job of explaining the twins. “I’ll bet they’re the ones got Claire from the hospital, though. I don’t know why they did it, but I’ll bet they’re the ones. Somebody had to have done it. Claire was too medicated to have slipped out by herself.”
“But why?” Fred stood back and admired the tree before he began to twist another string of lights around it. “Tell me if I’ve got a blank spot.”