Too Late for Angels

by Mignon F. Ballard

  The mystery woman was still sleeping soundly when Lucy risked a glance in the purple room before creeping back downstairs. The lumpy brown handbag sat under the kitchen table where Shirley had left it. Feeling like a thief in the night, Lucy lifted it to the table and opened it, halfway expecting Shirley to sneak up on her from behind.

  The bag was a well-known brand of good-quality leather, but was beginning to show signs of wear. She didn’t know what she expected to find in there, but it surely wasn’t this. The woman’s large purse was filled to the brim with cellophane-wrapped snacks. Packages of crackers, cookies, peanuts, and a couple of smashed chocolate bars tumbled onto the table along with a crumpled pink-flowered handkerchief, a powder puff wrapped in tissue, a broken comb and three hairpins. In a small zippered compartment she found sixty-eight dollars in bills folded around forty-three cents in change. A cylindrical object that had slipped through a tear in the lining turned out to be a tube of pale pink lipstick that had been used almost to the nub.

  After giving the bag a thorough check-over and a couple of shakes for good measure, Lucy put everything back as carefully as she could. If Shirley had any identifying papers, she—or somebody—didn’t want them found.

  Lucy took butter out to soften and put sharp cheddar in the food processor. Might as well start on the cheese straws while waiting for that woman to waken. She wished Nettie would hurry and come. But would her neighbor be able to recognize her old playmate after this length of time?

  What had it been like living in this house over sixty years ago? she wondered. The basic floor plan hadn’t changed much except for the bedroom they’d made by enclosing one end of the big back porch. But of course everything else was different—the colors, the furniture, and she and Charlie had remodeled the kitchen when they bought the place over twenty years ago. If Shirley/Florence thought she had stepped into the 1940s-era home she’d known as a child, it wasn’t surprising she was confused. Not only had the decor changed, but the people she had known and loved were gone.

  Lucy remembered Papa Zeke, Ellis’s grandfather, who had built this house in 1917 and lived here until he died, sharing it with Florence’s parents. He’d outlived both of them. And she remembered little Florence’s dollhouse, kept like a shrine in the room that would someday become Julie’s. She and Ellis were not allowed to play with it.

  After Papa Zeke died, the house came to Ellis’s father, who sold it to the Methodist Church for a parsonage. Later, when the congregation opted to build a more modern home on the outskirts of town, Lucy and her husband finally got a chance to own the rambling cream-colored brick with too many fireplaces and not enough closets that Lucy had always admired.

  “I don’t know why you’d want to live there,” Ellis had said. “The ceilings are too high, it has way too many rooms, and it’s right there on Heritage Avenue. Why, Papa Zeke used to say that on Sundays the church traffic alone would make a preacher lose his religion. Called it Hallelujah Hill.”

  But Lucy loved the drafty old house from its musty dirt-floored basement to the cobwebbed attic, where now and then she still discovered delightful long-stored treasures like the high school yearbook from 1926 and a child’s battered scooter with a fold-down seat. She loved the worn brick walkway that meandered between the magnolia that covered most of the front yard and the big ballerina-like spruce she and Ellis had always called the tutu tree. But Lucy claimed as her own the gazebo Charlie had built for her in a shady corner of the backyard. Her New Dawn rose climbed there in May, filling the air with its delicate pink scent, and now, in October, golden leaves from the crooked old black walnut tree carpeted the gray wooden floor. Lately, though, she sometimes wondered if the house had become too big for her. There had been times since Charlie died, and especially after Julie left, when Lucy Nan Pilgrim felt her days were as empty as her life had become. Her part-time job at Bud’s Blooms, a local flower shop, had ceased to exist when Bud Fincher, the owner, retired the year before and sold the small brick building near the center of town to a dry cleaning establishment. And although Lucy was proud of Weigelia Jones, the student she had tutored for two years in the adult literacy program, she missed their Wednesday afternoons together since Weigelia had graduated last spring.

  Her family had moved into this house when Julie was three and Roger ten, and they spent eighteen happy years there until Charlie died three years ago from injuries suffered in a traffic accident. Julie, who was just beginning her senior year at the university, had left in her closet at home a pair of shoes she planned to wear to a dance, and her father was making a detour from his business trip to deliver them when an eighteen-wheeler went out of control on the interstate. She had never been able to forgive herself.

  How Lucy missed Charlie! Missed the feel of his arms around her, the way he would look through the house for her and call her name as soon as he came home, the touch and the smell of him. She even missed having to pick up his towels off the bathroom floor.

  Now Lucy sifted flour and salt, then blended in butter and cheese. Julie had never been quite the same since her father’s death, she thought. But just now she didn’t want to think about her daughter, who hadn’t been home since that last disastrous visit in August when she’d announced she was moving in with that doofus Buddy Boy Bubba, or whatever his name was. Here it was almost time for Halloween, and Thanksgiving with all its rich smells and colors would soon descend upon her household. Julie had never missed a Thanksgiving at home before. Her daughter’s leaving had left another void. The world seemed hollow without the sound of Julie’s voice, her offbeat sense of humor. Lately she hadn’t even returned her mother’s phone calls, and e-mails were ignored. The big house felt empty now without someone there to talk to. How comforting it would be, Lucy thought, to have someone compatible to share it.

  Lucy Nan Pilgrim set the pastry blender aside, plunged in with both fists and squeezed the sticky dough, kneading it with her fingers.

  The cheese straws were golden brown and cooling when she heard her neighbor’s familiar rap at the door.

  “Oo-wee! It’s getting cold out there!” Nettie McGinnis, having found her teeth—much to Lucy’s relief—clutched her coat together and refused to relinquish the wrap. “Something sure smells good.”

  “Cheese straws for Ellis’s ‘do’ tomorrow. Come on back to the kitchen and we’ll have some. I just put water on to boil.”

  “What’s this you have to tell me?” Nettie asked, teasing the steaming water with her tea bag. “Good, juicy gossip, I hope.”

  “Better than that,” Lucy said, and told her about the woman sleeping upstairs.

  “Do-law! Oh, now…wait just a minute! How could that be?” Nettie held on to her cup with both hands and carefully set it back in the saucer. “Why, she’s been gone over sixty years! Sixty-five years, to be exact, because I was eight years old when Florence disappeared and I turned seventy-three my last birthday.”

  “But you remember her? I mean, you must’ve played together.”

  “Well, I was three years older, but of course I remember her. I’ll never forget the day it happened. I wanted to help them look for her but my parents wouldn’t let me out of the house—or even out of their sight for the longest time after that.” Nettie draped her coat over the back of her chair. “Wouldn’t that be something if it really is Florence? What’s she look like, Lucy?”

  Lucy pushed back her chair. “Come on and see for yourself.”

  “Where is she? I thought you said she was sleeping?” Nettie picked up a cheese straw and broke it in two, letting the pieces fall onto the plate.

  “Upstairs in Julie’s room, and if her chest wasn’t moving up and down, I’d swear the woman was dead. She hasn’t stirred once.” Lucy glanced at the clock. “And it’s been almost two hours.”

  Her slumbering guest hadn’t moved from her last position when the two women quietly opened the bedroom door and crept in to gaze down upon her. She slept on her side with her mouth partly open, the coverlet pull
ed to her chin. Her cheeks were lightly rouged, Lucy noticed, and a dusting of silvery eye shadow lingered on her eyelids. A small reddish mark near her hairline resembled a scar.

  Nettie leaned over for a better look, her glasses sliding down her nose, then stood back and shook her head, frowning. “No way,” she whispered, following Lucy out into the hallway.

  “How can you be sure? After all, you said yourself it’s been sixty-five years.”

  “Lips are too full. Florence had a thinner mouth, and her hair’s too light. You can see she was a blonde. I remember Florence as being a brunette—a lot darker than this Shirley. Whoever she is, that shade of lipstick doesn’t suit her. She does remind me of somebody, though. Can’t think who.”

  Lucy shrugged. “People change. How could you know for sure after all this time?” She realized now how much she wanted this woman to be Florence. Maybe it wouldn’t be the perfect ending to a heartbreaking saga, but at least they would finally know what happened to poor little Florence.

  “There is one way you can be sure—other than DNA, of course.” Nettie hesitated on the stairs. “Florence had a bad scar on her leg from that time she jumped off the roof of the toolshed.”

  “Why’d she do that?”

  Nettie looked kind of sheepish. “Playing Peter Pan. Well…I was Peter Pan and she was supposed to be Wendy. I never thought the child would actually believe she could fly! Somebody had left a shovel on the ground and Florence got an awful gash from it. Had to have a bunch of stitches and a tetanus shot. Doc Loudermilk sewed her up, and you remember how fond he was of the bottle.”

  “That’s awful!” Lucy said.

  “It took a long time to heal and never did look right.”

  Downstairs in the kitchen Nettie struggled into her heavy coat. “I wasn’t allowed to go to see The Wizard of Oz because Mama said I shouldn’t have let Florence climb up there, and I’d looked forward to it all week!”

  Lucy helped her neighbor into her coat. “I wish I could think of a way to get a look at that scar. Where is it?”

  “Upper leg. Left one, I think, but I can’t be sure. It kind of zigzagged. Maybe if you offered a change of clothes. Doesn’t look like she brought any. She can’t wear what she has on forever.”

  Lucy nodded. “True. I’ll offer to launder the dress she’s wearing—that is if she ever wakes up!”

  “What if the scar’s not there? What then? What are you going to do about her?”

  “I don’t know. Scars heal—even bad ones sometimes. Anyway, I’ll let Ellis worry about it when she gets here. She’s her cousin.”

  “Huh!” Nettie said. She helped herself to some more cheese straws before buttoning her coat. “Weather’s getting nasty,” she observed, wrapping her head in a green plaid muffler. “Cold as a well digger’s butt out there! I reckon Ronald and Virginia are baking themselves on one of those pretty white Hawaiian beaches about now. Law, don’t some people have all the luck?”

  Lucy agreed that they did, but said that if anybody deserved a break it was a couple of underpaid teachers. Ronald and Virginia Brent, longtime members of Stone’s Throw Presbyterian, where Lucy and Nettie belonged, had recently won a lottery prize of several million dollars and had immediately put their house on the market and taken off for destinations unknown to anybody but the immediate family, and possibly their travel agent.

  “They probably want to escape all the gimme people,” Lucy said. “It was in all the papers—even made the TV news.”

  “Do-law, I couldn’t believe it!” Nettie said. “Turned on the television one night and there they were—Ronald and Virginia—standing in front of that statue of the Confederate soldier right here in our own Rutledge Park. Oh, well, they’ll come home sooner or later,” she added, making her way to the door. “All that sunshine and palm trees could get old after a while.”

  Lucy was going to say she wasn’t so sure about that when she heard a loud clanging out front that made both of them jump.

  “Now, what in the dickens was that?” Nettie asked as the two of them hurried to see what had caused the ruckus. “Sounded like two skeletons making love on a tin roof!”

  “It came from somewhere out front. I hope there hasn’t been an accident!” Lucy ran to the door to discover her garbage cans crushed against the sycamore by the curb and trash scattered all over the street. “Oh, hell! Some idiot has just run into my garbage cans—and just look at that mess! I’ll swear, Nettie, it looks like they did it on purpose. They’d have to go out of their way to hit them.”

  “Did you see anybody?” Nettie stepped onto the porch, scanning the empty street.

  “They were gone before we got out here—and a good thing, too! That plastic bin was practically new, and it looks like they’ve flattened the metal can. I hope it didn’t hurt the tree.”

  It was almost dark by the time Lucy, with Nettie’s help, finished shoveling the scattered debris into large plastic bags. The sycamore, she saw to her relief, had escaped with only minor scrapes.

  “Oh, Lord! I almost forgot about Shirley/Florence up there,” Lucy said after they had swept up the last of the broken glass. “She’s probably awake by now and wondering what happened to Martha.”

  “Well, if that noise didn’t wake her, she must be in a coma,” Nettie told her. She frowned. “I thought you said you were expecting Ellis. I hate to leave you here alone.”

  “She had some errands, but she should be here any minute. You run on home now before you freeze out here. I’ll be fine…and, Nettie, thanks again.”

  Except for a light in the kitchen, the house was dark when Lucy went inside, and she felt a bit uneasy as she stepped into the shadowy hallway, pausing to listen for footsteps upstairs. Everything was quiet except for the pinging of the furnace and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.

  The tall clock cast a deep shadow and Lucy thought for a minute that someone was standing beside it, then realized she was looking at the half-open doorway that led into the back hall.

  I refuse to be frightened in my own home! Lucy switched on a lamp, took a deep breath and started upstairs. If the woman was still asleep, she would just have to wake her. This had gone on long enough.

  Still, she was glad to hear the sound of a car in the driveway, then Ellis’s familiar voice calling to her from the back of the house.

  “Lucy Nan! It’s me! Sorry I’m so late. Umm, those cheese straws smell yummy!” Never one to use the front door, Ellis had come through the back porch and into the kitchen. Now she threw her wrap across a kitchen chair and met Lucy in the hallway. “Is she still here? Where is she?”

  “Upstairs, I hope.” Lucy told her what had happened in front of her house. “Nettie and I just now finished cleaning up the disgusting litter. She must be still asleep. I haven’t heard a sound.”

  “You think somebody deliberately ran into your trash cans?”

  “Either that or they had an early start on their evening libations. Took us over an hour to scoop up the mess.”

  “Speaking of…this must be the day for strange happenings. Have you heard about Calpernia Hemphill?”

  “What about her?” The two of them stood in the downstairs hallway speaking in whispers.

  “Dead. They found her body out at their place in the country—Bertram’s Folly. You know—where Calpernia was going to have that theater workshop. Looks like she fell from the top of that crazy tower.”

  Back in the early nineteen hundreds, a fellow named Bertram with too much money and too little sense had decided to build a castle on a property several miles outside of town. Unfortunately, he ran out of money and then out of town before his creditors could pin him down. Calpernia Hemphill and her husband, Poag, had purchased the acreage for a weekend retreat when they first came to Stone’s Throw and had built a small cottage there.

  Lucy drew in her breath. The very thought of anyone falling from such a place made her legs go weak. “But Calpernia’s afraid of heights,” she said, “and everybody knows
that old tower’s not safe. What was she doing up there?”

  “She was supposed to meet the director of the workshop at the Folly this morning. He was the one who found her. Heard her little dogs barking in the cottage and nobody ever came to the door, so he started looking around. He almost didn’t see her because she fell right smack in the middle of a bunch of pokeberry bushes as high as your head,” Ellis said. “I heard some of the stones had crumbled away at the top.”

  “Poor Poag!” Lucy leaned against the banister. “Didn’t he just leave for a European tour with his choral group from the college? What a blow!”

  Ellis nodded solemnly. “They had a farewell performance at Sarah Bedford last night. Calpernia saw them off afterward.” She shook her head. “If only she’d gone with them.”

  “When do they think it happened?” Lucy asked.

  “Sometime this morning. Had to. They say there were breakfast dishes in the sink at the cottage. Besides, it was almost eleven when the chorus left here for the airport last night,” Ellis said. “Poag must be halfway around the world by now.”

  Lucy made the appropriate noises. Poag Hemphill, the college’s talented choral director, was a tireless worker for many charities, a wonderful dancer and a pretty good bridge player, and she had always enjoyed his company, but she had never cared much for Calpernia. Too flashy, and the world wasn’t big enough for that woman’s ego—yet she wouldn’t have wished her that end. “Stone’s Throw won’t be the same without her,” she said. And Lord, wasn’t that the truth?

  “So, what did Nettie say—about this woman here?” Ellis asked as they started upstairs. “Does she think she might be Florence?”

  “Says her lips are too full,” Lucy said. “But Florence had a scar—a bad one on her thigh—that might help us decide if she’s who we think she might be. She had to have stitches and Nettie said Doc Loudermilk botched it up.”

  “Huh! I’m not surprised,” Ellis said. “Mama said he left a sponge in our milkman.” She giggled. “Poor man was always thirsty.”