Steps to the Altar

by Earlene Fowler

  “I think you know.”

  I studied the tips of my boots, deliberately taking my time answering. I reached down and flicked off a leaf stuck to the toe of my left foot, making her wait to hear my reaction.

  “Delilah,” I finally said, straightening up. “What in the world is there for us to talk about? You want my husband and you’re doing your level best to get him. He’ll go with you or he won’t, it’s that simple. You and I have nothing to discuss.”

  “I will get him back,” she said, her voice rising slightly, an edge of hysteria causing her nostrils to flare. “He loved me first. Long before he even knew you. I took him before from Lydia and I can take him from you.”

  I shrugged, pretending indifference, even though I felt like throwing up. She had broken up Gabe and Lydia. No matter how inevitable Lydia had said their marriage’s demise had been, the truth was that Del had dealt the final blow. Could she do that with me and Gabe too? I honestly didn’t know.

  A sudden calm came over me, and for once, I didn’t feel like an awkward kid, a tongue-tied adolescent who couldn’t find the right words to say, who felt like everyone knew the rules of the game but me. For once, I felt in control. I looked straight into her eyes.

  “I was the first woman he ever loved,” she said, more than a hint of desperation in her husky voice. “He told me he never loved Lydia. They only got married because she was pregnant. He loved me first. He told me that.”

  “Maybe he did,” I said softly. “But isn’t the real question who he’ll love last?”

  I didn’t wait for her answer. I turned, got into my truck, and drove out of the parking lot without even once looking back in my rearview mirror.

  22

  BENNI

  THAT NIGHT, ANXIETY about my marriage problems and excitement about finally discovering what had happened with Maple Sullivan caused me to toss and turn in my sleeping bag, watching the moon through the bedroom’s window move like cold molasses across the sky. Finally, at 3 A.M. I gave up trying to sleep, packed an overnight bag, put Scout’s traveling water and food dishes in the truck, and set out for Idyllwild.

  As I had expected, four hours later, I hit bumper-welding traffic in Los Angeles, but once I inched through that, it was an easy drive. I followed the freeways until I came to Highway 74, which wound through the palm tree–lined retirement community of Hemet and started up the mountain toward the town of Idyllwild. Though I’d taken four breaks for both me and Scout, by this time, my eyes were crusty from fatigue and concentrating on unfamiliar roads and my hands were stiff from gripping my truck’s steering wheel.

  We passed over the San Jacinto River and began steeply climbing with each turn, a shallow creek bed to our right, the sheer face of the mountain to our left. The two-lane road twisted unpredictably, giving no relief to my aching shoulders. Scout hung his head out of the window, his nose quivering at the scent of wild rabbits, coyotes, and squirrels. Around one corner we caught our first glimpse of pine trees covered with snow. I hadn’t expected snow and I mentally kicked myself for not calling and checking on the roads. But Idyllwild was, at the most, five thousand feet and there hadn’t been any rain all day so I hoped the roads were clear. A fork in the road gave me a choice of Idyllwild or Palm Desert. I veered left and soon came to a small sign: IDYLLWILD, POPULATION 2200, ELEVATION 5303. WELCOME TO AMERICA’S CLEANEST FOREST. I passed the Idyllwild Arts Camp on my left and in minutes found myself in the middle of the compact mountain town.

  There was just enough snow to make it look like a Christmas card. Snow frosted the roofs of many of the shops, most of which sported a cabin motif. A huge fortlike structure housing more shops engulfed the center of town, and after a quick driving inspection, I decided to ask about a room at the Idyllwild Inn, a motel and cabin complex in the middle of town sitting next to one of the town’s crowning glories, a chainsaw-carved totem pole topped by an American eagle.

  Again, I kicked myself for not putting this trip off until after Elvia and Emory’s wedding and doing a little research into places to stay. I didn’t even know if they’d allow dogs. I checked my watch—a little before noon. Even if I had only an hour-long conversation with Thelma Jones, and drove straight back home, I’d still get there at the earliest 9 P.M. That was if I didn’t fall asleep on the road and kill myself or someone else. No, considering the amount of sleep I didn’t get last night, it would be better if I spent the night. And I didn’t have a lot of time to look for someplace to stay. I’d have to take my chances with the Idyllwild Inn.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Scout, who whined to get out, his nose still vibrating at the new smells. A blue jay jumped from limb to limb in the tree next to our car, scolding us with loud squawks. Scout barked in frustration and pawed at the window.

  “You’ll never catch him,” I said, giving him a rough scrub on the head. “Now, behave. I want to secure us a place to lay our heads tonight and you need to appear to be well trained.” He licked my hand and barked at the jay again.

  The snow made a satisfying crunching sound under my boots as I walked toward a huge carved gray squirrel holding a sign saying IDYLLWILD INN. Trying not to slip since my leather-soled boots were not the best shoes for snowy weather, I picked my way up the steps to the office part of the old house, praying they’d take dogs. Luck was on my side today. Though they didn’t allow dogs in their theme rooms, a double row of rooms I’d seen from the parking lot, they did allow them in their cabins back behind the office. I rented a studio cabin with fireplace and drove to it along the snow-crusted paths at the back of the pine-covered complex. I quickly checked it out—bed, table, chair, stone fireplace, tiny bathroom. Everything I needed. I dumped my overnight bag on the bed and turned on the heat to take the chill off the small room. Then I took Scout for a quick walk, studying the town map I’d picked up in the Inn’s office.

  Thelma Jones’s street was only about a half mile away. When I got back to my cabin, I called her on the phone and was told to come right over, she was fixing a pot of tea right that moment.

  She lived in a tiny, woodframe house set back on a spacious tree-filled lot. Wooden lawn ornaments of chipmunks and bears lined her stone walkway. Though it was still February, a three-leaf-clover flag celebrating the coming St. Patrick’s Day fluttered in the breeze and there were no less than five wooden windmills situated throughout the yard. Obviously her husband or somebody owned a fancy jigsaw and knew how to use it. The lot was thick with trees though you could easily see her neighbors on both sides, one a post and beam cabin that appeared unoccupied, and the other filled with children having a snowball fight in their front yard.

  I watched them for a few seconds, tempted to join. Before I made it halfway up the walk to her blue-shuttered house, the front door opened. Thelma Jones, wearing a red chenille sweater and black pants, waved at me. Her thin gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a red bow.

  “Let your puppy loose in the backyard,” she said, pointing to a side gate. “It’s fenced. Then come on in the side door. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  I thanked her, then went back to my truck to fetch a grateful Scout. He bounded across the wide, unsullied expanse of snow in her backyard, both his ears straight up in pleasure. I laughed out loud at his excitement. This was obviously a dog who had never seen snow before. He immediately spotted a chattering squirrel, chased it up a pine tree, and then stood at the base of the tree barking with joyous abandon at the unimpressed rodent.

  “Have fun, boy,” I said, opening the windowed door to the side of the house that I assumed was the kitchen.

  Inside Thelma’s kitchen, decorated with a cherries and chicken theme, I introduced myself and sat down across from her in the red-and-yellow-painted breakfast nook. She poured me a cup of tea and offered me a chocolate chip cookie still warm from the oven.

  “Thanks,” I said, suddenly ravenous. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and it was a little after 1 P.M. All the coffee I’d consumed since 3 A.M. was starting to jangle my
nerves. Food was exactly what I needed.

  “So, you’re looking into Marybell Knott’s life,” she said, settling down across from me. She pushed the plate of cookies closer to me.

  “Yes,” I said. “What do you remember about her?”

  While I drank three cups of tea and ate four cookies, Thelma told me what she knew about Marybell Knott. How she’d come to the small town of Idyllwild back in the forties, how beloved she’d been by the longtime residents of “The Hill” as they called Idyllwild, how Thelma and her sister, Lily, had both nursed Marybell through her last days.

  “She never spoke of where she was from, whether she had family or not,” Thelma said, her watery green eyes focusing on the wall behind my shoulder. She absentmindedly tapped her small teaspoon against the thin china cup. “She had a slight Southern accent, you know. So me and Lily always guessed she was from somewhere in the South, though she’d never speak of her past. She went to church faithfully every Sunday. As strong an Episcopalian as you could ever want. A dear, dear lady.” She looked at the brass-framed picture of Marybell and her sister, Lily, a photograph she’d fetched from the living room bookshelf.

  I studied the face of this elderly woman standing in front of a decorated Christmas tree, trying vainly to see anything about her that would suggest she was Maple Sullivan. The eyes, maybe? Her mouth? Were those her cheekbones behind the sagging, slightly chubby skin of a woman in her seventies? I couldn’t be sure. The only picture I had of Maple was when she was in her twenties.

  “Do you have any younger pictures of Marybell?” I asked.

  She shook her head no. “This is one of the few we had. She hated having her picture taken. Said she wasn’t at all photogenic. She’d always be the one volunteering to take the pictures.”

  “So,” I said, sipping yet another cup of tea, trying not to rush her yet wanting desperately to take the box of Marybell’s possessions and go through them piece by piece in my little cabin. “You said you helped your sister nurse Marybell. Did she . . . at the end . . . was she . . .” I swallowed nervously, then just blurted out, “Did she have any last words?”

  Thelma sighed. “I wasn’t with her when she passed on, Lily was. I was down the hill on a senior citizens’ trip to a matinee of Oklahoma. Lily was beside herself, as you can imagine. If Hugh hadn’t been there, why, I think Lily would have just collapsed.”

  “Hugh?” I asked.

  “Hugh Laramie. A dear man. Reminded me a lot of Marybell, actually. Reserved, a bit of a loner, quite religious himself. Like Marybell, he never missed a service at the Episcopal church. For years he owned a little leather shop downtown before his hands got too full of arthritis to work. Made belts and wallets and key chains to sell to the tourists. His shop was even featured on one of those travel shows—that Huell Howser fellow. We always wondered about him and Marybell, if there wasn’t something going on. But if there was, they hid it well. Of course, at the end, when she asked for him, we just wondered all the more. But by that time, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was we’d lost her.”

  Thelma’s eyes teared up and she reached into the sleeve of her sweater for an embroidered handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes with the wrinkled cotton. “Then we lost Lily, which about did me in. Me and Hugh shared a lot of tears during that time. We surely did.”

  “This Hugh Laramie,” I said. “Is he still living here?”

  She nodded. “Yes, over on the other side of the Fort. You know, that big log building in town. He’s got a house over by the arts camp.”

  “You said he was the last person to talk to Marybell before she died.”

  She nodded again. “Lily said he was in there for a good long time. Over an hour. When he left, she went back to sit with Marybell, who was kinda slipping in and out because of the pain medicine, and then Marybell just squeezed Lily’s hand. Lily went out to the living room, and when she came back to check on her an hour or so later, she’d passed on.” Thelma gave a small sniff and dabbed at her nose. “Guess Marybell just had to say goodbye to Hugh. Whatever they had together, she wanted to talk to him last. That tells you something right there.”

  I set my half-eaten cookie down and asked, “Do you think Hugh might talk to me?”

  “I don’t see why not,” she said. “Let me call him. But first, let me show you her box.”

  She took me out to the single-car garage and pointed to a pasteboard box on a low shelf. “Go ahead and put it in your car,” she said. “I’ll go give Hugh a call and see if he’ll talk to you.”

  I lugged the box to my truck and slipped it in the bed. Resisting the urge to go through it, I hurried back inside to find out if this Hugh Laramie would see me.

  She was on the phone in the kitchen. “She’s right here,” she said into the receiver. Then she handed it to me. “He wants to speak to you.”

  “Hello? Mr. Laramie,” I said. “I’m Benni Harper.”

  “Thelma told me you wanted to speak to me about Marybell Knott.”

  “Yes, if you’re not too busy.”

  “Come by at six o’clock,” he said, his voice so soft I had to press my ear to the receiver to hear him. “I’ll talk to you then. Thelma will give you directions.”

  “He said he’d talk to me,” I said, hanging up the phone. “And that you’d give me directions to his house.”

  After writing the easy instructions on a piece of notebook paper, I thanked Thelma profusely and went to get Scout.

  Thelma stood on her back step and asked, “Will her things be part of your museum up in . . . where was it you said you were from?”

  “San Celina. If I have a say, they will.” And, I thought, if they are truly Maple Bennett Sullivan’s possessions. “Are you sure you want to give them to me?”

  She waved a hand at me. “I’m an old woman with more than enough of my own junk. When I pass away, they’d just be given to the Goodwill or sold to a junk dealer. Just as well you have them as strangers.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Take care.”

  It was only 3:30 P.M. so I had a while to wait before my meeting with Hugh Laramie. I went to a small grocery store a couple of blocks from my cabin and bought some dog food, a roll of paper towels, a loaf of bread, a package of bologna, a small jar of mayonnaise, and a couple of Cokes. I was hungry even after the four cookies, but I didn’t want to take the time to go to a restaurant. I wanted to see what was in that box.

  After drying off Scout’s feet and legs as best I could with the paper towels, I poured him some dog food, made myself a sandwich, and opened the pasteboard box marked MARYBELL on the side.

  There wasn’t much to see. A lot of letters and cards, which I scanned to see if any were connected to San Celina. They were all from people here in Idyllwild. There was a redwood box of junk jewelry, some crocheted doilies, a couple of teacups, a pale pink scarf knitted from angora yarn, a worn King James Bible, once white leather but now butter-colored with age. The Bible held no confessional letters or indications that she’d once been Maple Sullivan. After I’d spread everything out on the double bed, I patiently went through it again, believing in my heart that she hadn’t completely abandoned who she’d been. Something was here, somewhere in this meager box of possessions she’d left behind.

  I went through each piece of jewelry, felt inside the three handbags that were in the box. Nothing. I sat at the small brown table and finished my sandwich, chewing it in frustration. She was a smart woman, if Marybell had indeed been Maple, and had completely covered her tracks. What now? All I had left was Hugh Laramie.

  After putting everything back into the box, I set my travel alarm clock for five forty-five and lay down on the bed. Fatigue made every blink of my eyes feel like sandpaper against skin. It seemed only seconds before the alarm jarred me awake. For a moment, I was disoriented, not remembering where I was, why I was there. I splashed some cold water on my face, took Scout out for a quick walk, and then left him inside the cabin with strict instructions to be good.

 
Hugh Laramie lived in a small stucco house on a lot surprisingly barren of trees. Unlike Thelma’s house, his place was extremely plain, almost spartan. A single pine, at least thirty feet tall, grew in front. I walked down the recently cleared sidewalk to his pale blue front door. He answered after two knocks. He appeared to be in his late seventies with a full head of white hair and the shiny reddish complexion you often see on people with Celtic blood running through their veins. Even though he was slightly stooped with age, he towered over me at least a foot.

  “Mr. Laramie?” I held out my hand. “I’m Benni Harper.”

  He took my hand in both of his, patting the top of my hand gently. They were warm and soft, and for some reason, I instantly felt soothed.

  “Yes, yes, come in, young lady. I have some peppermint tea brewing. Do you drink tea? I made it with bottled water. I know how you young people hate tap water.”

  “Thank you,” I said, stepping into his overly warm living room. “Peppermint tea would be wonderful.”

  “Make yourself at home,” he said, pointing over at a threadbare brown sofa. “I’ll go on now and get the tea.”

  I took off my jacket and laid it down on the sofa. The room was as undecorated as the outside of his house. The sofa, a maple rocking chair, a small television, a couple of end tables, and a coffee table. The walls were bare except for the far wall, where an impressive collection of crosses and crucifixes, about thirty or so, hung. I was studying them when he came back into the living room with a tray filled with tea items.

  “My only indulgence,” he said, nodding at the wall of crosses. “Been collecting them since I was twenty years old. My favorite is that Navajo one.” He pointed to a silver-and-turquoise cross to my left. “The man who made it for me died of liver cancer. Last thing he ever made. Lloyd Yazzi. Good man. God-fearing man.” His blue eyes clouded with memories of his friend.

  He gave his head a small shake and gestured at me to take a seat on the sofa. After fussing with the tea and offering me a plate of pale sugar cookies, he leaned back in his rocking chair. “So, you’re wanting to know about Marybell Knott.”