Shadow of an Angle

by Mignon F. Ballard

  The Carstairses had died in the 1930s, but over to the side we found a third and more recent gravestone from that family dated 1978. Dennis R. Carstairs seemed to have been the last of the clan. "I wonder if there are relatives still in Angel Heights who might know about the Dennis family, "I said, pulling up a pine seedling that had sprung up in the middle of the last Carstairs grave. "Maybe a wife or children." But I didn't have much hope, as the plot didn't look as if anyone tended to it on a regular basis other than the infrequent mowing.

  I made a mental note of the latest occupant's name and looked around for Augusta, thinking she might have returned to our family plot to pay her respects to Lucy and her parents, whom she claimed to have known, but I didn't find her there. Farther down the hill through a hedge of crape myrtle, now bare, I caught a glimpse of her seaweed gown, her upswept hair that rivaled the autumn leaves spiraling past. She stood looking up at a trim, willowy marble angel that towered above her. The angel's wings were folded, as were her hands, as if in prayer, and she seemed to be standing on tiptoe as she looked out over the graveyard with a stony, benevolent gaze and a Madonna-like smile. As I watched from behind the Potts family mausoleum (or the Potts Apartments, as Vesta calls it), Augusta rose up on her toes, brought her rounded arms into a reverent gesture, and sucked in her stomach, keeping an eye on the statue the whole time. I managed to stay quiet until she smiled, mimicking, I suppose the marble angel's expression. She looked like her lips were glued together. Then she threw out an arm for balance, tottered, and grabbed an overhanging dogwood limb to keep from falling over altogether.

  "Very well, let's see you do it, Arminda Grace Hobbs!" she said when she saw me laughing. "No one can stand on their toes like that. It isn't natural." She stood back to examine the stone angel. "And no one looks like that, either; her waist is too small, and her wings are crooked."

  Augusta laughed as I hopped on a pillar at the end of a wall and attempted to duplicate her stance.

  "This reminds me of a game children used to play," she said, pulling me out of a bed of ivy.

  "Follow the Leader? They still play it."

  "Then, shall we?" With that she skimmed over a low wall, hopped on one foot around a cedar tree, and spun around three times singing her favorite song, which I had learned was

  "Coming In on a Wing and a Prayer."

  Feeling ten years old, I followed, giggling. "That's not fair! I don't know the words," I told her.

  "Then sing one you do know!" Augusta swung into an oak tree, sat on a limb, and balanced an acorn on her nose.

  Bellowing out a rendition of "Jingle Bells"—(it was all I could think of)—I did the same. By the time we skipped, ran, and sang our way back to the cemetery gates I was dizzy and exhausted. I had also forgotten for a few happy minutes the somber reasons for our visit.

  The phone was ringing when we reached home. "Where in the world have you been? I've been trying to reach you," my grandmother demanded to know.

  "I was up on cemetery hill checking out that lot where the Dennises are buried. (I decided not to tell her about Sylvie Smith.) There's nobody else in the plot except for some people named Carstairs. Do you know if any of them still live here?"

  "There's Jewel Carstairs—no, wait a minute—she married the Knox boy and moved to Alabama, but I think her brother still lives here…. Why are you so out of breath? You been running?"

  "Just trying to keep in shape. Her brother—is he related to the Dennises?"

  "Gordon Carstairs? Remotely, I think. What's all this hullabaloo about the Dennises, Arminda? My goodness, they've been dead since before I was born."

  "She made nondescripts. I think their daughter might have been a member of the Mystic Six."

  Silence. "And what if she was? She's dead, too—unless she's found the fountain of youth. If you're thinking of tracing down that old quilt, you've got your work cut out for you. Give it up, Minda. That thing's long gone."

  "It's not the quilt. It's the women who made it. I need to know who they were, what happened to them."

  She didn't ask why. I was glad I didn't have to explain that my angel and I thought they had something to do with Cousin Otto's death.

  "I called to tell you they're reading Otto's will tomorrow, and I can't get in touch with Mildred."My grandmother sounded put out. I don't know what she expected me to do about it.

  "Are you sure you have the right number?" I said.

  "It's Lydia's voice on the answering machine, all right. I've left two messages."

  "Maybe they went on a leaf tour or something—you know, one of those all day trips. She'll probably call you back tonight. What time are they reading the will?"

  "That's just it. It's at ten in the morning, and if I don't get in touch with her soon, she won't get back in time."

  "Frankly, I'm surprised Otto left a will," I said. "I didn't think he was that organized."

  "I think Butler Pike shamed him into it," Vesta said. "Had his law office where the bookshop is before he built that place downtown. He was the one who sold us the building."

  I knew my grandmother and I were thinking the same thing, but she was the one who finally spoke it. "I do hope he remembered Mildred," she said. "I honestly dread for tomorrow to come."

  But it did come, and fortunately for us—and for her— Mildred never showed. Otto had left his share of Papa's Armchair to Gatlin.

  "It took only ten minutes," Vesta said when she and Gatlin stopped by the Nut House afterward. Otto's share of the shop was all he had to leave."

  Gatlin was still flabbergasted. She looked from Vesta to me and tried to speak, but nothing came out—a first for my cousin.

  "I—well, I guess—"Gatlin shrugged. "Don't you think Otto left it to me because he didn't think you or Mildred would outlive him?" she asked Vesta. She was wide-eyed and pale, and her voice actually trembled when she spoke.

  "That's exactly what I think," Vesta said, putting an arm around her, "and I can't think of anyone I'd rather it go to. I just don't know how to explain it to Mildred."

  "Do we have to?" My cousin regained a flush of color. "I mean I know we'll have to tell her he left me his share of the shop, but can't we say he made provisions for her to live there? She seems to want to stay, and I can't see any harm in it."

  "What about money?" I said. "She has to live on something."

  My grandmother spoke in her "don't question me" voice. "That's taken care of. You don't have to worry about that."

  Gatlin and I exchanged glances. I knew Mildred had a modest income along with her Social Security, but I never knew until now who supplied it.

  My cousin followed me to the kitchen to help make sandwiches for lunch. "All this time Mildred's thought Otto was putting money into her account! Do you think she ever suspected it was Vesta?"

  "I don't think she really wanted to know," I said, slathering bread with pimento cheese. "I just wish she'd call and let us know where she is. It's not like her, and I can tell Vesta's worried."

  "If we don't hear from her by tomorrow, let's drive over and see what's up," Gatlin said. "It's Sunday, so Dave can look after the kids." She lifted the cover from a bowl of fruit salad I'd put on the table and sniffed. "Where on earth did you get these heavenly strawberries?…And what's this? Fresh peaches in November?"

  Where on earth, indeed? I glanced at Augusta and smiled.

  Chapter Ten

  Hope you don't mind if Faye comes along," Gatlin whispered the next morning as we started for Columbia. "I usually end up dragging her everywhere with Lizzie, but we seldom have a chance to do things together." She grinned. "And I think she likes you even better than Tigger!"

  I smiled at the five-year-old cuddling a stuffed tiger in the backseat. "That's because I'm a pushover at the candy store." My young cousin and I had much in common besides our blond hair. We both loved chocolate, silly jokes, and story-books.

  Faye started with the jokes right away. "What did the hat say to the hat rack, Minda?"

  I pr
etended I didn't know.

  She giggled. "You stay here. I'm going on ahead!

  "When is a door not a door? When it's a jar!" she answered before I could reply.

  Thirty miles and fourteen knock-knock jokes later, I climbed in the back to read the latest selection of library books she'd brought along. Faye arranged them in order of preference and made room for me beside her, shifting her oversize stuffed Tigger to the corner of the seat. It wasn't until she progressed to her "busy" book and a new pack of crayons that I had a chance to tell Gatlin about Sylvia Smith.

  Content with her treasures, Faye seemed not to notice when, after a bathroom stop, I abandoned her for the front seat. "Remember Otto's special friend?" I said to Gatlin in what I hoped was an undertone.

  She glanced at me and mouthed the woman's name.

  "Right. She was at the cemetery Friday putting flowers on his grave."

  "Better late than never," Gatlin said. "She never made it to the funeral. Didn't even sign the register."

  I looked back at Faye, who was carefully connecting the dots. "Asked him for forgiveness. Said she was sorry," I murmured.

  "Sorry for what?" Gatlin turned off the expressway onto Columbia's Two Notch Road.

  "Beats me," I said, and told her how I'd come to overhear Sylvie Smith's one-sided conversation.

  "She's an odd one, all right. Are you sure she didn't see you?"

  I wasn't, but I didn't want to think about it. "I found where the nondescript lady's buried."

  "'Scuse me?… Faye, don't be peeling the paper from those new crayons!"

  (How did she know?)

  "Guess I forgot to tell you there's a recipe for nondescripts in one of our great-great-grandmother's old cookbooks, and it was contributed by a Mrs. Carlton Dennis. The recipes were compiled by a group of ladies at about the time Lucy was still a child."

  Gatlin slowed for a traffic light. "Can you read that street sign? It's not Sandhill Avenue, is it?" I told her it wasn't.

  "So," she continued, "you think this woman might have been Number… Which one served the refreshments?"

  "Five, I think. It's the only lead we have. The Dennises are buried in that lot below ours. The one with the big lily stone."

  "Ugh!" Gatlin made a face. "What about the daughter?" "The only others were some people named Carstairs. Her name was Susan, and I guess she could've been a daughter. There was a Dennis Carstairs buried there, too."

  "Carstairs. The man who used to sub some when I was in high school was named Carstairs. Worked at the newspaper for a while, I think."

  "Gordon Carstairs?" I said.

  "That's the one. Don't you remember him? Filled in some for Mrs. Whitmire."

  I shook my head. "I wasn't that lucky. Gerty never missed a day. Is he still around?"

  "As far as I know. Lives out on Old Mill Road in that little log cabin with the big oak tree out front. Kind of a quaint-looking place."

  I remembered the house and always thought it looked like an illustration from a fairy tale. I was about to ask my cousin if she'd go with me to see him when we pulled up in front of Lydia Bowen's. It looked deserted.

  "See if there's a light inside," Gatlin said. "Doesn't look like anybody's home."

  "Maybe they're in the back. I'll check." I left the others in the car and rang the bell of the small brick bungalow. The house was like many of its neighbors, built probably in the 1930s, on a wide, tree-shaded street. Except for a few brown oak leaves that had drifted onto her porch, Lydia's place seemed neat and cared for. Pansies bloomed in a hanging basket, and the nandina bushes by the front steps were filled with clusters of bright red berries. I looked through the living room window to see a cozy arrangement of slipcovered chairs grouped about a table piled with books. One book lay open facedown, as if the reader meant to return shortly. But nobody came to the door, and I couldn't see a light inside.

  I turned to Gatlin and shrugged. "Where could they be?"

  "If you're looking for Mrs. Bowen, she's gone somewhere with a group from her church." I turned to see a man who looked to be in his thirties approaching from the yard next door with a huge gray cat on a leash. The cat growled at me and didn't look at all happy.

  "Do you know if anyone was with her?" I asked, explaining our errand. "We haven't heard from Mildred since she left home, and we're a little concerned. She hasn't been well."

  The man, who said his name was Albert Reinhardt, didn't know about Mildred, but was collecting Lydia Bowen's mail and newspapers until she returned. "Left a couple of days ago and said she'd be back by the middle of next week," he said, scooping up the cat, who was hell-bent on digging up Lydia's chrysanthemums. "Some kind of church retreat, I think….

  Stop that right now, Herman!" He deposited the squirming, hissing feline on the ground, and I thanked him and jumped into the car before Herman decided to go for me.

  "What now?" Gatlin wanted to know.

  "I guess we wait. Lydia's gone on some sort of Methodist retreat, and it looks like Mildred went with her."

  "Sounds like just her kind of thing, but you'd think she'd at least let us know." Gatlin frowned as she eased back onto the street. "After all, she's eighty-three and just out of the hospital. What if she gets sick?"

  "I'm sure Lydia would get in touch with us. Don't know what else we can do. But maybe—"

  "I'm hungry!" Faye announced from the backseat. "Tigger wants some ice cream."

  "Tell Tigger he can have some ice cream after he eats his lunch," her mother told her, grinning at me. "What do you think His Highness would like?"

  Faye made a big issue of whispering to the stuffed animal and cocked her head as if listening to his reply. "Hot dogs," she said. "And fries."

  "Doesn't Tigger ever get tired of hot dogs?" Gatlin asked, searching for a fast-food place.

  Her daughter considered this. "Well, sometimes he likes pizza."

  I don't know what it is about riding in a car that makes me hungry, but just then I would've been glad to settle for either.

  Content after having eaten her fill of junk food, Faye fell asleep in the backseat clutching the bedraggled Tigger, giving Gatlin and me a chance to discuss more openly what might have happened to Great-grandmother Lucy's round-robin quilt.

  "You seem to be more interested in that quilt than Vesta ever was," Gatlin said. "Mind telling me why you think it's so important?"

  "Because it was made by the Mystic Six," I said. "I think they made it for a reason, and if we can locate the quilt, we might be able to find out what that reason was and learn who the other three members were."

  "Most quilts were made for a reason, silly—to keep people warm. What's so different about this one?"

  "For one thing, they passed it around, and from what Vesta says, it sounds like it told some kind of story." AndI have a heavenly hunch it might tell us something about Otto's murder, I wanted to add. "Don't tell me you aren't curious."

  "Yeah, I'm curious. I'm curious to know what's going on with you, Arminda Grace Hobbs."

  "Whatdaya mean?" I looked out the window as we drove through the little town of Chester, South Carolina, where streets were Sunday silent except for a squall of little boys skateboarding along the sidewalks, followed by a big brown dog. "Don't you love that old house?" I said, admiring a large Victorian set back from the street. "Must cost a fortune to paint, though."

  "You're different," my cousin persisted, ignoring my tactic. "Can't put my finger on it, but it's like you know something I don't."

  "There's a first time for everything," I said, making a face. "Do you think it'll be too late to pay a visit to Gordon Carstairs when we get home?"

  Gatlin had promised to help Lizzie with a homework project, so she dropped me off at home and I gave Gordon Carstairs a call.

  "By all means, do come by," he said. "I've been working all day and would welcome the respite."

  I almost expected to be greeted by Goldilocks when I knocked on the door of the rustic cabin, but I was met by one of the
bears instead—or that was the appearance he gave. Gordon Carstairs was a stocky, heavyset man with a head full of iron-gray curls and a beard to match. Bifocals slid halfway down his large nose, and an unlit cigar protruded from a corner of his mouth. It jiggled as he spoke. "Trying to quit— rotten habit," he said, removing the gnawed brown stub. "You must be Vesta's granddaughter—you have the Maxwell look, all right. Come on in and excuse all this hodgepodge. If I ever get through with this project, maybe I'll be able to clear a path through here…."He winked. "But I doubt it."

  Mr. Carstairs had told me when I called earlier that he was working on a history of the county, and from the look of things, he must have started with Adam and Eve. "Here, have a seat," he said, removing a sheaf of papers from an orange plaid sofa, and for the first time I noticed the sleeping dog at my feet. "Scoot over now, Colonel," he said, scratching the animal between the ears. "Make a little room for our guest.

  "Looks just like an officer I served under back in my army days," he explained with an affectionate glance at his pet. "We've been together a long time, haven't we, old friend?"

  The dog, who looked to be a mixture of hound and German shepherd, replied with a yawn and a thump of his tail before resuming his nap. I didn't blame him. The room was close and much too warm, with a wood fire blazing in the big stone fireplace, but the heat didn't appear to bother my two companions.