How could this be? For the first time ever, I had a project with a virtually unlimited budget. And a killer deadine, it was true. But I’d had a killer deadline for the pump house and I’d had a field day decorating it on a virtual shoestring.
Gloria’s rules echoed in my head. Good rugs. Good art. One good antique. I’d blown the opportunity to buy a museum-quality chest the night before. But why did good have to equal expensive?
I certainly had some good—and cheap—rugs. I’d planned on buying an expensive Aubusson for the dining room, and something equally grand for the twin parlors. But the jewellike reds and blues of the rugs I’d bought last night could work in the ground-floor rooms at Mulberry Hill. And the blue and white porcelains—even the slightly chipped and damaged pieces—would bring that imperfect English country house look to rooms that wanted to be warm and lived-in.
As I walked, I watched the downtown Savannah skyline—shabby, yet intimate—come alive with daylight. If I tilted my head at just the right angle, I could see a row of church spires poking above moss-draped oak trees. Slowly, a new plan came together. I would make a home that would make Stephanie fall in love—if not with Will, with it. But I could only do this well if I pleased myself, by pleasing Will. I would not throw money at this project. Instead, I’d invest my own well-trained eye and imagination.
I turned to the right, toward the next square. The historic district was dotted with elegant antiques shops, most of which I’d shopped in before. I paused in front of an old favorite, Josephine’s, on Jones Street, which took up the basement and parlor floors of a red brick 1840s townhouse. In the basement window a woman was busily rearranging her merchandise. She’d stacked paintings, a grandfather clock, and a damask-upholstered Queen Anne wing chair to the side of the window and was pushing a new piece to the center of attraction. The woman had black horn-rimmed glasses. The new piece was the walnut chest-on-chest she’d purchased the night before. She turned and recognized me. A moment later the door to the shop opened and she popped her head out.
“You can still buy it,” she called to me. “It’s the best one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.”
“It’s wonderful,” I agreed. “But too rich for me. What are you asking for it, can I ask?”
She smiled broadly. “Thirty thousand. A steal, don’t you think?”
At York Street, on Wright Square, I stopped to look in the window of an antiques shop I’d never seen before. It was called @Home, and the vignette arranged there made me smile. A large pine demilune console table had heavily carved bowed legs and just traces of peeling palest blue paint. A black tole planter filled with lemons was placed askew on the table, with a casually thrown crocheted-lace cloth draping to the floor. I loved the artlessness of the vignette, but the table was clearly the star of the show. Its scale was cartoonish and its condition was imperfect, but it spoke to me. It would be the perfect centerpiece for the entry hall at Mulberry Hill. I put my face to the glass to peer in, hoping to catch sight of a price tag, but I couldn’t see one.
I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t even seven yet, and the stenciled sign on the shop’s door said it didn’t open until ten.
So I marched on. Around the squares, with a stop at the Amoco gas station on Drayton, for a surprisingly good banana nut muffin and a bottle of cold water and a copy of the local newspaper. Still only eight o’clock. I found a bench in another quiet square off Charlton Street, near the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. I’d never seen Troupe Square before, but liked it instantly for the cool swath of green grass and the antique iron armillary in the center, instead of the more usual statue.
I sipped my water and nibbled at my muffin, shooing away the scavenging pigeons who flew too close. I killed time by browsing through the newspaper, saving the best—the classified ads—for last. I’d hoped for an estate sale to occupy my time until the shop on York Street opened, but the few sales advertised for that morning were garage sales in the far suburbs of Savannah that I was unfamiliar with.
At nine I trudged through the scorching heat back to the Hilton. When I opened the door to the room, Austin was splayed out on the bed, facedown, still fully clothed. I let the door close loudly. He didn’t move.
I showered, changed, and packed my overnight bag. Finally I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my lips to Austin’s ears.
“Wake up, loverboy,” I whispered. “We’ve got work to do.”
He groaned and put another pillow over his head. “Leave me here. I’ll take the bus back to Madison.”
“Not on your life,” I said, shaking him now. “Come on. I found a great piece at a shop here, and I want to go buy it before somebody else beats me to the punch.”
Austin moaned and groaned, but with a combination of threats and pleading, he finally got moving. While he showered, I went downstairs, paid the bill, and got him a cup of coffee.
We pulled the truck up to the shop on York just as a young woman was unlocking the shop.
I jumped out and met her at the door. “The table in the window,” I said, momentarily throwing caution to the wind. Never appear anxious was the antiques buyer’s rule. To hell with that. I wanted that table.
She jumped, startled, I guess, by my intensity so early in the morning. She had short dark hair, wore a tank top that bared an impressive tattoo on her left forearm, cutoff green fatigues, and black high-top Converse sneakers.
“It’s an awesome piece, don’t you think?” the girl asked, opening the door. A small gray kitten streaked past me as I stepped inside.
“Biedermeier,” the girl cooed, scooping the kitten up in her arms. “Were you out all night, you bad tomcat?”
I looked out the window at the van, with Austin slumped down in the passenger seat. “There’s a lot of that in Savannah, it seems.”
She let the cat down and nodded sagely. “It’s the humidity. People forget themelves.”
“About the table,” I began.
The girl moved around the shop, snapping on the lights. “It’s six hundred,” she said firmly. “We just picked it up this past week, so I really can’t cut the price so soon.”
I reached for my checkbook. “Perfect.”
48
Austin helped me wrap the console table in a mover’s quilt and stow it in the back of the van, along with the rugs and the boxes of dishes. “Good night last night?” he asked, stepping back from the van to fan himself with his baseball cap.
“Sort of,” I said. “Great prices on the rug and porcelains, but on the one piece I really liked, the bidding got too steep and I dropped out. But I did have an epiphany.”
He walked over to the driver’s side of the van. “My turn to drive,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you awake enough for that?”
“No, but with two more cups of coffee I will be.”
I was happy to turn the driving over to him. Headed out of town, he kept his eyes on the road. “What kind of an epiphany?”
“Hmm? Oh. Well, I just felt really guilty spending so much money on Mulberry Hill, when Loving Cup is teetering on the brink of closing down.”
“Isn’t that Will’s problem?”
“It is. But it feels so decadent, blowing, like, ten thousand dollars on a single chest of drawers.”
“You spent that?” Even he looked alarmed.
“No, but I easily could have, last night. But I didn’t. And I decided I’m really better—more creative—when I’m scrimping and scrounging. Does that make any sense to you?”
He nodded. “Sure. It’s like, when I have masses of gorgeous flowers, how hard is that to pull off a look? Anybody could do it. But give me an unusual container, some gravepines, pokeberries, dried hydrangeas, stuff you could pick out of anybody’s yard, that’s when it’s fun. That’s when I know that I’m fabulous at what I do.”
“So I’m not crazy?”
“Only in the sense that you could make a lot more money by spending a lot more of Will’s money. And it’s not lik
e he doesn’t want you to do that.”
“I know. But I just can’t. That table I bought, back there in Savannah? That’s the most fun I’ve had this whole trip. And now I can’t wait to get back to the drawing table, to sketch out how I want the entry hall mural painted around it, and to find just the right mirror—nothing too frou-frou, and wall sconces…”
“I get you,” Austin said. “I take it that means we’re bargain hunting from now on?”
“You got it,” I said. “We might even skip New Orleans. I was thinking about a Mallard or Belter tester bed for the master bedroom. It’s what Stephanie would expect. And I could probably find one at one of those antiques shops on Magazine Street. They have divine stuff, but the prices are just so unreal.”
“Skip New Orleans?” Austin looked crushed. “But you promised.”
“All right, but only one night. I don’t think you can survive that much more clubbing.”
He breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “I promise I’ll be good until then,” he said. “I’m saving myself for New Orleans.”
He gave my knee a proprietary pat. “Why don’t you catch a nap? I’ll wake you up when we hit Birmingham.”
“No nap,” I said, yawning. “I want to read…”
When I woke up again, we were at a rundown Shell oil station in what looked like the middle of nowhere. Austin was standing beside the van, pumping gas and looking down at a road map.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“After three.”
I got out of the van, went inside the gas station to use the bathroom, and when I got back, he was just folding the top to his cell phone.
“Where exactly are we?” I asked, yawning again. “Birmingham?”
“Not quite,” he said.
“Define not quite.”
“We’re in Alabama, but not Birmingham. Not yet. We’re taking a little detour. This is Wedowee.”
I blinked. “Why does that name ring a bell?”
“Because Wedowee, Alabama, is the hometown of Darvis Kane.”
There was a Coke machine outside the cashier’s office. I walked over and got myself a Diet Coke and got back inside the van.
Austin got behind the wheel and started the engine. He was waiting for me to say something. I was waiting for him to say something. Finally he gave in.
“Darvis Kane has a sister who still lives in Wedowee. Her name is Delores Akers. She’s a good bit older than he is. I thought she might have some idea of where we can find her brother. That was her daughter I was just talking to on the phone. She said her mother is still napping, but if we come by in fifteen minutes, maybe she’ll see us.”
“And tell us what?”
“I don’t know,” Austin said calmly. “I’ve only spoken to the daughter. Her name is Bella. And she’s not exactly a Chatty Cathy. Claims she’s never met her uncle. But Wedowee is not that far out of the way. I thought it was worth a little detour.”
“All right. We’ve come this far, we might as well see what happens.”
Austin looked disappointed. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I tracked her down? It took two weeks, you know.”
“No,” I said, looking out the window.
We drove around greater Wedowee for the next fifteen minutes. Not a lot to see.
Eventually, following a set of directions he’d scribbled on a paper napkin, we drove through a run-down section of town until we came to a cluster of concrete-block duplexes painted a drab yellow. A half-dozen dilapidated cars and trucks were scattered around the pockmarked concrete strip that ran in front of the units, and at the end unit, the front door was open, and an old lady in a pair of bright green shorts and a Braves T-shirt was vigorously sweeping dirt right out onto the front porch.
As we approached, she kept on sweeping. Clouds of dust rose up around us. We stopped at the edge of the little concrete porch. “Mrs. Akers?” Austin called. The old lady appeared not to have heard us. The sweeping got more furious. I had to stand back and cover my mouth to keep from inhaling it.
Another woman came out onto the porch. She looked only a shade younger, and wore a Braves baseball cap and blue jeans and a Bill Elliott NASCAR T-shirt. She grabbed the old lady’s arm and cupped one hand to her ear. “Mama! Cut it out now. We got company.”
The old woman looked up at us. Her face was pale as milk, and her short white hair stuck straight up in the air, like so many strands of white coat hanger wire.
“Who’re you?”
“Austin LeFleur,” Austin said, stepping right up and reaching out to shake the old lady’s hand. “And this is my friend Keeley Murdock.”
“I don’t know nobody named Austin,” the old lady said plaintively, hanging on to her broom with both hands. “Nor Keeley neither.”
“They’re strangers,” her daughter informed her. “Come over here from Madison, Georgia. Want to ask you about your brother Darvis.”
The old lady squinted at us speculatively. “What about Darvis? What you want with him?”
“Well,” Austin hesitated. Clearly, Nancy Drew had never had to interrogate anybody as uncooperative as Delores Akers. He coughed and began again. “Could we maybe go inside and talk?”
“What for?” Delores asked.
“Mama!” her daughter scolded. “Be nice. They come a long way today.”
“I don’t know them and they don’t know me,” the old lady muttered. But she allowed her daughter to lead her back inside the dimly lit house. Bella Akers instructed us to be seated on a green metal glider. She helped her mother into a wooden rocking chair and sat in the only other piece of furniture in the otherwise bare room, a ladderback chair. An air-conditioning unit poking through the front window of the house churned mightily to little effect.
“Y’all want a Pepsi?” Bella asked.
“I’ll take one,” Delores said, but Austin and I politely refused.
While Bella went into another room, Delores studied us closely as she rocked.
“My little brother Darvis lived over there in Georgie one time,” she stated. “Had a good house with wall-to-wall carpet.”
“He worked for my father,” I said. “At my father’s car lot. In Madison. But that was twenty-five years ago.”
“I ’spect,” Delores said, rocking away. Bella walked back into the room and handed her mother a can of Pepsi with a straw poking out of it. The old lady sucked greedily and rocked some more.
Austin gave me a subtle nod.
“The reason I’m interested in finding out about your brother—” I started. But then I stopped. Why was I looking for Darvis Kane?
Another nod from Austin. But I just sat there, hopelessly tongue-tied.
“Your brother Darvis was apparently having an, um, relationship with Keeley’s mother, back there when he lived in Madison,” Austin said, stepping in. I shot him a grateful look.
“Keeley’s mother’s name was Jeanine Murry Murdock. She disappeared in 1979. And we think maybe she left town with Darvis Kane.”
“Disappeared?” Bella asked, looking from me to Austin. “You mean, like, vanished? Like kidnapped or something?”
“Well, no, we don’t think Jeanine left against her will,” Austin said. “We think they just ran off somewhere. Together.”
“Sounds like Darvis to me,” Delores said, looking up from her Pepsi. “He always did like the ladies. Especially ones that was married to somebody else.”
“Did you ever meet my mother?” I asked, leaning forward eagerly. “Did they come here?”
“Here? Why’d they come here?” Delores asked.
“We think they went to Alabama, after they left Madison,” Austin explained. “They were driving Jeanine’s car. A red Malibu. And we know the car was sold in Birmingham, not long afterward. But that’s all we know.”
Delores went back to sucking on her Pepsi and rocking.
“Mama?” Bella said, leaning forward and putting her foot out to stop the rocking. “Tell them what you know about Darvis. Did he ever bri
ng a lady around here? Back in 1979?”
Delores’s pale lips formed a pout. “He brung a lady he said was his wife. Had a couple young’uns with ’em too. But that was a long time ago.”
“Lisa?” I cut in. “Darvis was married to a woman named Lisa. And they had children.”
“I got cousins?” Bella asked, startled. She kicked at her mother’s shin. “You never told me I had no cousins.”
“Ow, dammit,” Delores hollered.
“Darvis was married to a woman named Lisa Franklin. She divorced him after he abandoned her and their children,” Austin said. “Lisa lives down in Palatka, Florida. And your cousins, Courtney and Whitney, live in that area too,” he said, looking at Bella.
“Courtney and Whitney,” Bella said, rolling the names around on her tongue. “They sound nice.” She gave her mother another kick. “That’s for not tellin’ me.”
The old lady howled and started rocking rapidly back and forth.
“When exactly was the last time you heard from Darvis?” Austin asked.
Bella poised her foot just above her mother’s shin again. “Tell ’em right now, Mama. Or I’ll kick you clear to the next county.”
Delores scooted her chair backward, away from her daughter. But she stopped rocking. After a minute she said, in a low voice, “I knew he was doin’ wrong. Darvis was always doin’ wrong. But he was my mama’s baby, and he never had a hand laid on him. Spoilt rotten, that was Darvis.”
“What was he doing wrong the last time you saw him?” I asked gently.
“Driving that fancy car you talked about,” she said defiantly. “Big old shiny red Malibu. He come driving up here out of the blue one day. Wanted me to follow him over to Birmingham in my car, so he could sell that one. Said he’d give me five dollars gas money if I’d do it. So I did.”
“What about my mother?” I whispered. “Was my mother with him?”
She shook her head vehemently. “He didn’t have no lady with him that time. It was just him. And he was in a big hurry too.”
“Did he say why?” Austin asked.
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