Shadow of an Angle

by Mignon F. Ballard

  "Home to where?" I said. "You certainly don't expect to go back to those rooms behind the store."

  "And why not? It's a lot safer there than at the UMW!" Mildred sat up to sip water, then lay down with a sigh. "I like where I live. It's close to everything, and the bookshop's right there with nothing but a door between us. I can just walk right in."

  "Obviously so can anyone else," Vesta reminded her. "You're coming home with me."

  "Or me," I offered. "After all, there's plenty of room, and I'm the only one there." Well…almost.

  "I've been thinking it might be a good time to go and see Lydia," Mildred said. "She's moved into her own place now, and she's been after me to visit since she left here."

  Lydia Bowen and Mildred had been like salt and pepper since Mildred first came to Angel Heights, and when Mildred wasn't taking care of Otto and the rest of us—and Lydia wasn't clerking at the Dresses Divine Boutique—you seldom saw one without the other. Vesta had once confided to me that she didn't know how the local Methodists knew to put one foot in front of the other until Mildred and Lydia showed them how. But soon after Lydia's husband died, a year or so ago, her older sister fell ill, and she moved back to Columbia to be near her.

  "That's a wonderful idea," Vesta said with obvious relief in her voice. I wasn't sure if it was because Mildred would be in less danger or that she wouldn't be staying with her. "I know how you've missed her, and Lydia must be lonely…. I'll phone her tonight, and one of us can drive you over in a few days when you're stronger."

  "That's kind of you, Vesta, but I can take care of it myself—only it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Right now I need to sleep." Mildred gathered the sheet to her chin and closed her eyes.

  I volunteered to stay the night. Since we weren't sure what Mildred had ingested, Dr. Hank, as well as the rest of us, was concerned about a possible delayed reaction. But our patient slept the whole time except for when she was awakened periodically by nurses. Gatlin dropped by for a couple of hours after she got her family settled for the night, and in a nearby waiting room we hunkered on green plastic chairs and whispered, trying to distance ourselves from other vigil keepers who slept restlessly or thumbed through magazines. November wind blew gusts of rain across the lamplit parking lot below, where rows of wet vehicles shone in a one-color world.

  "Looks like Mildred might not have been so paranoid after all," Gatlin admitted, moving a stack of dog-eared newspapers to make room for me beside her. "But where on earth did she get it?"

  "She said she had only coffee and cereal for breakfast yesterday," I said, "then nothing until Edna Smith brought her supper. If Edna meant to poison her, you'd think she'd be more discreet."

  "Minda, you don't suppose she did it to herself? Otto was Mildred's life. Maybe she didn't feel like going on without him."

  "I don't think so—at least I hope not. She's mad as hell, though. I can't see her even considering dying until she finds out who killed Otto and then yanks out his nose hairs one by one before throwing him to the alligators."

  A man lying on the one sofa made an issue of turning over and resettling his raincoat about his shoulders, so I lowered my voice. "Or her nose hairs. Mildred seems to think Sylvie might have become disenchanted with our Otto."

  "Do tell," my cousin said.

  I knew better than to meet her eyes. "Give me a break, Gatlin. Don't make me start to laugh…. They'll throw us out of here."

  "Sorry. It was just the idea of anyone being enchanted with Otto in the first place." She shifted in her chair and sighed. "So, was Sylvie at the UMW thing last night?"

  "Mildred didn't mention her, and anyway, why would Sylvie want to tear apart the bookshop? What could she be looking for?"

  "I can't imagine, unless Otto had a rare volume that's worth a lot of money and told Sylvie about it. She collects things like that, I hear."

  "The Smiths aren't hurting for money," I said. "Sylvia could probably afford to buy it for herself."

  "Depends." My cousin yawned. "Vesta says they're having what's left of the shortbread analyzed just to be sure. Poor Janice Palmer! She'll have to find some new recipes now."

  "They ate all the soup and corn bread, and Hank says he finished off the rest," I said.

  "How convenient," Gatlin said.

  "Oh, get real! We've known them forever. Dr. Hank sewed up my knee when I fell off my bike and set my arm that time the rope swing broke."

  "And nursed me through a nasty flu and about a million throat infections. I know. I don't even like to think it, but somebody wanted Mildred out of the way last night, and they didn't care how they went about it."

  "If what Mildred says is true, they didn't find what they were looking for. But she claims it's somewhere safe."

  Gatlin frowned. "And what and where would that be?"

  I shrugged. "Beats me. She's not telling."

  We looked in on Mildred to see if she was breathing, and I tucked the covers around her; then Gatlin walked with me to the snack machine, where I bought my supper—a pack of crackers and a cup of disgusting coffee. "By the way, Irene Bradshaw says her mother was one of the Mystic Six," I told her. "She says she remembers the quilt they made but doesn't know where it is."

  "Aunt Pauline. I think I remember her. Does Irene know who the other four were?" Gatlin bought a candy bar and pressed it into my hand. "Dessert," she said.

  I thanked her and stuck it in my purse. "The other three," I said. "Annie Rose was a member, too." But I didn't tell her how I knew, or that my guardian angel had pointed it out to me. The psychiatric ward was right around the corner.

  Mildred seemed much better the next morning, so after I helped her with breakfast and brought the morning paper, I left her in the charge of the nurse with the soap-and-water brigade. The doctor who had admitted her was due to make his rounds before noon, at which time we expected him to discharge her, and Vesta planned to shanghai Mildred to her place for a couple of days, until she felt like traveling.

  Augusta seemed not to have noticed I'd been gone, as she didn't look up when I let myself in by the kitchen door that morning. She sat at the table with a mug of steaming coffee and a stack of cookbooks in front of her, and now and again she'd murmur and smile, then make a note in her ever-present scribble pad.

  "Coffee's still hot," she said without turning around. "And I expect you could use some breakfast, too. That hospital food hasn't improved a lot since Florence Nightingale walked the corridors with a lamp. You haven't eaten, have you?"

  "No, but right now I'd rather sleep," I said, and did. I didn't even bother to ask how she knew where I'd been.

  I woke to the aroma of something that hollered Eat me!, and I could guess by the smell that whatever it was had more calories than I wanted to know about. Augusta was at it again.

  Surely there's no dieting in Heaven, I thought. If there were, it wouldn't be Heaven.

  A fan of thin, fragile pastries under a snow of confectioner's sugar on Vesta's rose crystal platter beckoned from the center of the old library table. I broke off a crisp, golden finger of one and let it dissolve in nutty sweetness on my tongue.

  "Are we having a party?" I asked, reaching for another.

  Augusta stood by the window making a great to do with a whispering of leaves and the graceful dance like arcing of her arms. When she stepped aside I saw that she had turned my great-grandmother's big wooden bread bowl into an autumn work of art. Ears of dried corn, winter squash, cotton bolls, and nuts rested in a jaunty nest of red and gold from sweet gum, hickory, and maple. Now she studied it for a minute, shifted it about half an inch on the window seat, and turned her attention to me. "Sleep well? I hope you're rested."

  I nodded, licking sugar from my fingers. "Mmm…what is this?"

  "Some recipe I found in one of your old family cookbooks. Like it? It really was quite a nuisance to make." Augusta smiled at me like a child with a secret and swept into the next room to settle by the fireside, her skirt spread in a celestial circle around he
r. Today she wore a simple gown that seemed to have been woven into a swirl of cosmic colors in plum, rose, and the green of an ancient forest.

  "Okay, what is it?" I asked, going along with her game.

  "Nondescripts." She looked up at me from her seat on the ottoman, and a tawny gold strand of hair fell across her face. For some reason, it made me smile.

  "Whose was it? Where did you find it?"

  "In one of those recipe books. It was from some kind of woman's club, I think. Daisy Delights, it was called. I believe Daisy was the name of the club."

  "But whose recipe?" Angel or not, I was ready to shake her.

  "The recipe was contributed by a Mrs. Carlton Dennis. Does that strike a gong?"

  I giggled. Couldn't help it. "Strike a gong? Do you mean 'ring a bell'? Nope, I don't even hear the faintest ding. When was that thing published?"

  Although she tried to hide it, I could tell Augusta was annoyed at my reaction—or vexed, as my grandmother would say. A dainty little flush spread across her perfect cheeks. "I don't know, but I'll look," she said, and disappeared into the kitchen, returning seconds later with a small blue paperbound book that was little more than a pamphlet. It was speckled with age and possibly with food. Augusta glanced at the fly leaf. "1912," she said.

  "This Mrs. Dennis could have been the mother of one of the Mystic Six," I said. "I don't know anybody with that name here, but I'll bet Vesta would."

  Augusta spoke softly. "Then why don't we give her a call?"

  I'd had almost nothing to eat since the day before, so I put my grandmother on hold while I inhaled two bowls of Augusta's pumpkin-peanut soup with several pieces of her honey wheat bread. The nondescripts, I found, made an elegant dessert.

  "It's not a thing in the world but egg yolks and flour with a little vanilla," Augusta said, "but you have to roll them thin enough to see through. It was hard to lift them from the frying pan without breaking them."

  "Maybe you can teach me to make them," I said, but Augusta didn't answer—which usually meant she didn't want to.

  I waited until mid afternoon to phone Vesta—I wanted to get a report on Mildred, too. "Do you remember a family here named Dennis?" I asked when she finally answered the phone. She sounded breathless, as if she'd run up a flight of steps. "What's the matter? Your elevator not working?"

  "I was in the shower, Arminda. Now, who's this you want to know about?"

  "Oh. Want me to call you back?" I pictured her towel wrapped and scowling, dripping water on her lush burgundy carpet.

  "No, it's all right. I grabbed a robe. Dennis who?"

  "A family named Dennis. We—I found that recipe for nondescripts in an old cookbook, and it was submitted by a Mrs. Carlton Dennis."

  "The name sounds familiar. I know I've heard it somewhere. When was this?"

  "1912. It was published by a club your grandmother belonged to. Sort of like a garden club I guess—called themselves the Daisies. I thought maybe her daughter might be one of the Mystic Six."

  My grandmother laughed. "The Daisies. Met faithfully once a month. I don't think they ever gardened…but I don't remember a Mrs. Dennis belonging."

  "Maybe they moved away…. I was hoping you might know if they had a daughter." It was hard to keep the disappointment from my voice.

  "I'm sorry, Minda. Is there some special reason you want to know?"

  "Well…no. Just curious," I lied.

  "Wish I could help you, honey, but I do well to remember my social security number."

  It wasn't until I'd hung up the phone that I realized I hadn't thought to ask about Mildred, but I decided it might be wise to give Vesta time to get dressed before I called again.

  She saved me the trouble. "Minda, I've thought of where I saw that name," my grandmother said when she phoned me a few minutes later. "It was in the cemetery. The Dennises have the plot down from ours. I've walked past it for most of my life, going to the hydrant for water."

  "The Carlton Dennises? Are other family members buried there?"

  "I don't know. Don't think so. I just remember the name on the stone. You've seen it, Arminda. It's a big old thing with lilies carved on it. Mama used to say she thought it was ostentatious."

  "Good," I said.

  "What?"

  "I mean, thanks for the information. How's Mildred?"

  Vesta groaned. "Well, I'd really like to tell you how she is, but Mildred's flown the coop."

  I tried to picture that. "What do you mean? Where is she?"

  "Called from the hospital this morning to tell me her friend Lydia was driving down to get her and she'd see us in a couple of weeks."

  "I can't blame her for wanting to put Angel Heights behind her for a while," I said. "Maybe this visit will be good for her."

  "It's just as well, I suppose," my grandmother said. "They phoned a few minutes ago to tell me they're ready to settle Otto's estate, and I don't have a good feeling about it."

  Chapter Nine

  I'd had enough of cemeteries. After Jarvis died I visited his grave site several times a week, but the experience did nothing to comfort me. If anything, the sight of the shiny new marker against raw, red earth made me hurt even more. Before leaving for Angel Heights, I had left a pot of bright yellow chrysanthemums and said goodbye. Jarvis was in the laughter we'd shared, the love we had for each other. He wasn't there.

  My mother lay in this cemetery, and for that reason I hadn't been back here in years, but I knew where she was buried as if I'd made it a daily ritual. Now it was time to go there for real. A magnolia shaded her headstone—a simple slab of granite engraved with her name and the dates of her birth and death. There was a place for my father beside her, but I didn't think he'd be using it, since there wasn't room there for his second wife. Mom had died of a brain tumor, sudden and final. We hardly had time to say the things we wanted to say, do the things we needed to do to ease her going. I was only fourteen, and she was my lifeline. Her death left frayed ends.

  But today Augusta walked with me, and I brought the last of the lingering roses from the bushes under the dining room window. Pink and yellow, they weren't nearly so vibrant as my mother had been, but they would have to do. After a couple of days of rain, the weather had turned warmer and I shed my sweater as we walked the mile or so through residential streets and up the curving road to the town cemetery on the hill. The sky was so blue it almost hurt my eyes, and here and there leaves still clung to trees like colorful confetti. The angel-like rock formation on the hill above us seemed to smile her blessing. It was the kind of day that made me glad to be alive, and I felt a slight pang of guilt as I walked past those who weren't here to enjoy it.

  Augusta left me alone to spend some time by my mother's grave, and I cleared it of fallen magnolia leaves, arranged the roses in a jar, and said some things to her that were in my heart. I was getting ready to leave when I heard a car approaching on the gravel road nearby and saw Sylvie Smith get out with a large white potted mum. She seemed to be heading for Otto's grave in the adjoining lot, and not wanting to intrude on a private moment, I stepped behind the magnolia. I heard the rustle and crunch as she waded through the mound of now-dead flowers on his grave to make room for her chrysanthemums. And then I heard something else.

  "I'm sorry, Otto. I hope you can forgive me. I didn't know what else to do."

  I stood for frozen minutes with my face pressed against the tree, my hands digging into its sooty black bark, until I heard the car start up and she was gone.

  Augusta, of course, was nowhere in sight. I found her on the far side of the hill, arranging a spray of autumn leaves on a lonely looking grave set apart from the rest. The person buried there had died in the early part of the twentieth century. "Family must have moved away and left her, "she explained. "She's not here to care, I know, but it doesn't hurt to brighten the spot a bit."

  I told her about Sylvie Smith. "What do you think she meant? She asked Otto for his forgiveness, Augusta. Do you suppose she killed him?"


  "Was she grieving? Remorseful? How did she act?"

  "She didn't stay long, and I couldn't see her without giving myself away, but she sounded sad. Kind of quiet. I wonder what she's sorry for."

  Augusta didn't answer, but I could tell by her tiny hint of a frown she thought it worth considering.

  The Dennis family plot was right where Vesta had said it would be, and easy to recognize because of the huge lily-festooned stone. Augusta gingerly stepped over the low rock wall to read the inscription. "Louise Ryan Dennis and Carlton Clark Dennis … Why, they died only a few days apart: February eleventh and February fifteenth, 1918."She paused with her hand on the stone as if giving it a blessing. "The flu epidemic, of course! So many soldiers died—others, too. It was merciless, spreading through towns, cities, sometimes taking whole families."

  "Are there other markers?" I looked about for a daughter or daughters who might have met the same fate.

  "None named Dennis, but there seems to be another family in the same plot. Relatives, perhaps."Augusta knelt by a small stone in the corner almost hidden by a holly tree. Carstairs… Susan D. Carstairs. Husband's buried here, too. Name's Robert."