by Ruth Moose
“My wife sent over her Lemon Crème Cake,” Pittman said, as if he’d read my thoughts. “It’s to die for.”
I hoped not, but no sooner had he said it than Miss Isabella screamed, “There’s a turtle in my soup!”
She fell back in her chair, which landed on the floor with a loud kathump. She lay flat on her back, both legs kicking in the air, arms waving frantically.
“There’s a turtle in my soup!” Miss Isabella screamed. “It’s alive. Alive! It looked at me.”
“What?” the man from The Mess asked. He cocked his ear toward Miss Isabella. “What’s in your soup? A fly?”
I didn’t hear her say “fly.” She said “turtle.” Or I thought she said “turtle.” I wasn’t sure and it surely did sound odd. Everyone at the table looked at each other. Had she said “turtle”? I saw puzzled frowns around the table. No one knew what to do. We froze like people in a painting.
“Oh,” said our honorable mayor, springing up from her chair, “my goodness. That must be our precious Nadine.” She came around the table, plucked the box turtle from Miss Isabella’s soup bowl, held it at eye level and said, “Why you smart little thing, you. Of course. You knew it’s mock turtle soup. You knew, didn’t you?” She laughed, picked up one of the thick monogrammed linen napkins from the table and wiped Nadine’s feet, her little toes as dainty as a doll’s fingers. “Smart, smart girl.”
The turtle blinked as if to say, Where did all these people come from? A perky turtle. She looked intelligent, even.
“Those clever Betts Brothers must have put Nadine in the centerpiece. They know how she loves flowers.” Mayor Moss held the turtle close to her chest, said to it, “Don’t be scared.” The turtle nodded her little head. “She is not fond of loud noises and that scream may have scared her a bit,” Mayor Moss told the group. “But she does love the television in her room. Especially PBS and golf. Tennis matches make her nervous.”
Mayor Moss walked to the French doors and opened them to a flagstone patio. “She’s had her bath for today,” she called back to the frantic Miss Isabella, still flailing on the floor. “And sometimes she gets a touch of baby oil on her shell to keep the shine. She’s a perfectly lovely turtle.”
With that she took the turtle out to the patio, patted her shell a couple of times, then released her at the base of an ivy-covered fountain. “Play sweet,” Mayor Moss said.
I didn’t know whom she expected the turtle to play with. A vole or two? A dragonfly? A lizard? And a turtle with her own room and TV? Who knew?
The rest of us stood looking down at Miss Isabella thrashing like a two-year-old having a tantrum. Who would reach down to help her up? Then as suddenly as she had screamed and fallen back in her chair, Miss Isabella went limp. Arms limp, outspread on the floor, legs limp, eyes rolled back in her head.
“Is she breathing?” someone asked. I think it was Dr. Rouse Wilson, the dentist. I’d been in his chair often enough growing up I should have recognized him across the table, but in a sport coat and Carolina-blue tie, he looked different. And, of course, he’d gotten bald. He bent over Miss Isabella, lifted her wrist and felt for a pulse. “Faint,” he said. “I think we better call somebody.”
“Who?” asked Her Honor, standing at his elbow. “What?”
A couple of people pulled out cell phones, fingers at the ready to punch in 911, and asked, “What’s the house number here?”
“Stand back, everybody,” said Dr. Wilson. “Give her some air.” He went over to a large plant in the corner, broke off a leaf, and started waving it back and forth, fanning Miss Isabella.
Miss Isabella wasn’t making a sound. Not a gurgle. Not a cough. The room was so quiet we could hear the paddle fans going tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Wait,” Dr. Wilson said. “I think she’s coming around.” He reached down and helped her up. Miss Isabella stood on her feet, wavered, rocked a bit, held the back of her chair for support. “I think it snapped at me.” She pointed in the direction of the centerpiece. “That turtle. It hissed. It was awful. I definitely heard a hiss.” Miss Isabella wrapped her arms around herself as though she had to protect herself against a turtle, or the memory of the one who had since left the room.
Calista Moss drew herself up tight as a folded umbrella. “Nadine does not hiss. She has never hissed in her life. And snapping is not in her nature. She is not a snapping turtle.”
Miss Isabella shook her mass of white curls fluffy as a bag of cotton balls, put a hand to her forehead. “I don’t feel well at all.”
Dr. Wilson, who had been holding her elbow, said, “I think I’ll take her to the emergency room, get her checked out.”
Everyone around the table murmured that seemed like a good idea.
We took our seats. Now there were three empty chairs at the table.
“I’m sure Miss Isabella will be perfectly fine.” Mayor Moss picked up her napkin and spread it again in her lap. “Nadine, I’m not so sure about. She’s very sensitive. Gets frightened easily.” She frowned slightly, quickly regained her smile, and set about finishing her soup.
Her Honorable’s chef, with two sous chefs trailing behind, brought in three large silver casseroles and put them on the sideboard. Everyone was to serve themselves some sort of chicken that was creamy and crispy, mixed with water chestnuts and rice. If there had been green beans around I didn’t see any, only asparagus. The third contained a squash casserole that I saw Debbie Booth analyzing in small bites and recording in her mind. I knew Debbie could write a food column and make plain old squash sound like King Midas’s gold on a plate.
After everyone had filled their plates, the waitstaff cleared the sideboard of the main meal and brought in dessert trays piled with thumb-sized squares and rounds and triangles of chocolate cake plus little bitty parfaits. But no Lemon Crème Cake. Where was it? Had somebody absconded with it? Pastor Pittman looked at the dessert tray, then at me, and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, Beats me. I even smelled it baking this morning.
Somehow I could see Mrs. Butch W. Rigsbee back in the kitchen, shoving that whole cake in some takeaway box and beating it out the back door, holing up somewhere to eat it, getting supercharged with sugar and planning her next threat to me. I, like Nadine, did tend to scare easily.
Mr. Moss didn’t even appear for dessert. Was there really a Mr. Moss at all?
Outside a window I saw a shadow, someone or something move. Mr. Moss?
When the person came closer, I saw Miles Fortune holding a small camera to his eye. What was he doing here? He came to the window, put his face next to the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes, stepped back, took another camera shot, then came to the window again. He stared in at the luncheon party, stood staring a long time. I tried to get his attention by making a face at him, tried to mouth the words, “Go away. You’re being rude.”
He ignored me. Everyone else seemed intent on scraping the last smear of chocolate from their dessert plates. Debbie Booth licked her spoon. A minute later, Miles Fortune was gone from the window.
As we were leaving I saw a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud heading down the driveway. “Oh, dear.” Mayor Moss put her hand to her cheek. “That must be Mr. Moss taking Nadine to her psychotherapist. That woman’s scream could make her jittery for days.”
No one commented. What did one say: I hope she recovers? I tried to imagine Nadine on the couch in a psychotherapist’s office. The one-way conversation.
The first thing I did when I got back to the Dixie Dew was go straight to my pantry/office and on my computer I Googled Mr. Miles Fortune. Put in his name and there was his photo, killer smile and all. He looked L.A. laid-back. Posed casually, one leg laid lightly across the arm of a director’s chair in his studio “near downtown Los Angeles.” His biography listed a stint at Oxford, some studies at UCLA earlier, then most recently photography shows in London and Paris. I was so impressed I sat back in my chair. And here he was in little ole Littleboro.<
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While I was at it, I Googled Ossie DelGardo. Nothing. Not one line. I tried every site, every spelling of the name DelGardo. According to Google he didn’t exist. Was he here under some assumed name? The idea sent shivers up my backbone. And this Ossie DelGardo was marrying Juanita, one of our own. That meant he’d be here to stay. Not good news.
I called Ida Plum to come look at the computer screen. As she bent over my shoulder and saw the nothing on Ossie, she said, “Sometimes those things don’t know it all. And sometimes it’s better not to know so much.”
“Are you saying ignorance is bliss?”
“Not in your case. If I know you, and I have for too long, not knowing just sets your teeth on edge and you won’t rest until you get the down and dirty.”
“Well, I wish I didn’t know so much about Miles Fortune. All that intimidates me to no end.” I got up. “And the less I know and see Ossie DelGardo, the better off I am.”
Then I Googled Butch Rigsbee and got nothing. I tried every variation of the name, every spelling. Nothing. What was this business of people who had no birth, no history? These nonpeople? They weren’t even a name.
Chapter Twenty-two
I shut down the computer and started upstairs to change clothes. Ida Plum called after me that Malinda had phoned, said she was making posters for the return of Robert Redford and I could come pick them up.
I found Malinda standing next to the copier in the back of Gaddy’s. This copier was so old it could have come over on the Ark. In Littleboro if something still worked, we used it until it didn’t or you couldn’t get parts for it. This ancient box on a stand shook and rumbled as it ran a page. “Look.” She handed me one of the posters from the still warm stack.
She had found a picture of the real Robert Redford online and put it in the center with the word LOST and then “large white rabbit with red halter and leash answers to the name Robert Redford,” followed by my name and phone number.
“This will get attention,” she said as she held up the limp poster and waved it to dry.
“Do we want to offer a reward?” I asked.
“Not unless we have to,” she said. “I think people who return lost or stray animals don’t really expect a reward. They do it because they love animals.”
Mr. Gaddy pushed his glasses tighter on his nose, came from behind the pharmacy window. “I’ll give a twenty-five-dollar gift certificate.”
“Thank you,” I said. I’d always liked Mr. Gaddy. He’d flavored all my cough syrups and yucky medicines with coconut because he knew that was one of my favorite tastes, right up there with lemon.
In the bright light of day and a ceiling full of fluorescents, as opposed to the spooky night when Malinda and I had come for more prescription bottle tops, the drugstore looked like any small-town drugstore was supposed to: rows of over-the-counter health remedies, a magazine rack, the cosmetics aisle and of course the soda fountain/lunch counter. But I felt as if Ossie DelGardo’s shadow, or the memory of him, lurked just outside the door, around the corner and into the alley.
When Mr. Gaddy was out of earshot I told Malinda, “I found the wallet. I showed Ossie the photos and told him how this woman was threatening me.”
“And?” Malinda said as she straightened and stacked the posters. “What?”
“He didn’t laugh. At least he didn’t do that, but I could swear he must have been thinking what fun he was going to have telling Juanita what a little scaredy-cat I am.”
“What did you want him to do?”
“Take me seriously,” I said. “Believe me. Treat me like I have some sense.”
“I think you have to earn all that.” Malinda put the cover back over the copier.
Since when had she gotten so philosophical? And just when I needed her to be on my side. I wanted total sympathy. But she did have a point. I hugged her, thanked her for all her work on my behalf and Robert Redford’s.
I took a handful of posters and headed home.
Chapter Twenty-three
When I got there Scott was at the kitchen table eating a bacon, fig and Brie sandwich Ida Plum had made him. Pig and Fig. One of my favorites. “His mother doesn’t cook,” she said, and poured him a glass of tea. “I don’t know how she raised him.”
I thought how humiliating it must be to be an adult and move back in with your parents. I guess that’s what Scott did when he came back. After Cedora, after another life. What had he done in California to occupy himself between music gigs and practicing, while his wife (?) Cedora was making herself famous? Build sets for some movie studio? Construction work? Is that how he learned to do all the carpentry and other stuff?
I wondered if Scott still slept in his childhood bedroom at his mother’s house, if it had bunk beds and wallpaper patterned with spaceships or boats or some cartoon character. Snoopy sheets and towels? I had lost a lot of years with Scott, as he had with me, and so far the only filling in the blanks we’d done had been in bed, not catching up on where we’d been and who we’d been with. He had been ahead of me in high school. I hadn’t known him as much as I had heard about him. Then when I came back to Littleboro, he was the one to pitch in and help me patch up my house and try to turn it into a business. And occasionally try out one of my beds, with me in it. Just not often enough, and not enough to let me know where I stood. I didn’t know where I fitted in his life, if at all. We were both trying to patch together our lives these days and we managed to get a little busy between the sheets on a few occasions, too few and too far between lately. Mostly, as most people did in Littleboro, I let things ride.
Ida Plum had told me she had heard that Scott married Cedora Harris, his high school sweetheart, the one the whole town said had “Talent with a capital T.” But I didn’t know if Ida Plum knew that for sure or it was just one of those things you hear but don’t have confirmed. If it hadn’t been reported in The Mess, then it didn’t happen. I needed to check files at The Mess office. Maybe later when I wasn’t chasing down a runaway rabbit. Or was the only one who seemed concerned about a missing, maybe murdered man Reba had called God.
I knew those files were not online, probably never would be, and to check would mean a whole day, or days, of my life looking through microfilm. There would be a lot of press on Cedora I was sure. I’d heard about her most of my life. Her voice. She sang like a red-haired angel and stood out in the church choir any Sunday she decided to put in an appearance. She won some sort of state talent contest, then was a finalist in the Miss America competition, but not the winner. I remembered watching it with Mama Alice. The whole town couldn’t understand why our Cedora only came in as a finalist. It was probably the last Miss America pageant I ever watched. Art school, then the Maine years with Ben Johnson occupied my time. He didn’t even own a TV. He really believed electronics were polluting the airwaves.
“Do you have a hammer?” I asked Scott. “I need a hammer and some tacks.”
“Can’t use one of mine,” he said between bites of his sandwich. “My hammers are personally weighted to my hands and body rhythms. These are healing, knowing hands.” He wiggled ten fingers, reached across and patted my hip.
I plundered in Mama Alice’s junk drawer until at the back I found a small hammer, then got some pushpins from my check-in desk in the hall. I waved the hammer at Scott as I walked past.
“Not so fast.” He grabbed one of my belt loops. “We need to catch up. Ossie knows Reba’s out and he’s okay with it. He wanted to let her stay in the jail cell until he could get more information on her situation. At the moment, the fellow Reba thought she killed is in Moore County Medical, critical condition.”
I knew that already. Front page of The Pilot, but I didn’t say that I knew.
“That’s the latest,” Scott said. “Word is the fellow could go either way. Whatever Reba thought she did, Ossie said there was not a mark on him. Could be pills or some combination of stuff he swallowed, or smoked. If he doesn’t make it, his body will go to Chapel Hill for an autopsy
.”
“And Reba? What will happen to her then?”
“That’s Ossie’s call. Police business.”
“And that’s the way Mr. Ossie wants to have it,” Ida Plum said, “with your nose out of it, Beth McKenzie.”
“I have to find Verna’s rabbit before it’s too late.” I pulled loose from Scott’s hold on my belt loops. Since when and where had Scott gotten buddy-buddy with Ossie DelGardo? At the Breakfast Nook? Blue’s Dinette? Service station? Probably at one of the guy hangouts in this town.
“Any chance Robert Redford is with Reba, wherever she is? Her tree?” Scott used his napkin, left it beside his plate. I saw Ida Plum had given him some of Mama Alice’s secret-recipe sweet-and-sour pickles. The open jar was too near his plate so I removed temptation. I picked up that jar and screwed on the lid. People loved those pickles so much they couldn’t stop with just one. The jar was half-full and I didn’t know how many Scott had eaten or how many jars we had left. These were reserved for special occasions and special people. Ida Plum must have felt Scott Smith was one of those. I was still thinking on that one. Our relationship at the moment was just that, a relationship. More than friends, but not really committed to anything heading toward permanent. I didn’t know whether either of us wanted that. We were in the middle.
“You don’t worry about Miss Reba,” Ida Plum told Scott, then she looked at me and winked. “We got her covered.”
Scott reached over and did a tap dance with his fingers on my arm, lifted his face for a kiss.
“No hammer,” I said and whirled around, “no kiss.”
“Stingy with your affection, aren’t you?” Scott grinned. “Why do I always have to earn your love?”
“Not earn,” I said. “I’ve got scars and scabs you haven’t seen from this battle of just taking things one day at a time.”
“And I’ve got to build one more booth, reinforce the bandstand, then hang some banners and sheeting,” Scott said. “If this festival thing happened more than once a year, it would kill us all. Work us to death.”