by Cathy Holton
“There’s no guarantee any of this will work,” Eadie said cheerfully. “But we have to have faith it will.”
“Okay, the pictures are a definite yes,” Lavonne said. “Now how about the money—Eadie, have you figured out some way to get your hands on a large chunk of cash?”
“I’m not worried. Trevor’s never cut me off before.”
“Yes, well, Eadie, Trevor’s never planned on getting married again before. His fiancée might have something to say about you spending all his money. She might just convince him to put the brakes on your lifestyle.”
This was something Eadie hadn’t considered. “He wouldn’t dare,” she said, getting mad just thinking about it. “He wouldn’t dare cut me off. I’ve put up with him for twenty-one years and that ought to count for something.”
Lavonne told them her plan to sell the house out from under Leonard.
“My God, you’re a genius,” Eadie said.
“Do you really think it’ll work?” Nita said.
“That plan’s got more holes than a banker’s heart,” Loretta said.
“It’s a long shot,” Lavonne agreed, “but it’s the only chance I’ve got. Everything else will take years and I can’t wait years. I’ve got a business I’m hoping to invest in.”
“I’ve made arrangements with a gallery in Atlanta to take some of my best pieces,” Eadie said. “I’ve kept the girls around long enough; it’s time for them to go out into the world. The gallery will sell them on commission, so eventually I’ll make some money, but probably not right away. I’ve been kicking around the idea of renting out some warehouse space downtown and maybe opening up a gallery myself. You know, to sell to the tourist trade.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Lavonne said. “I may be able to help you out there. I know of some space that should be opening up pretty soon that would make a great art gallery.” Lavonne went to the counter and poured herself another cup of coffee. She sat back down. “But how are you going to come up with the money to finance the gallery?”
“Simple,” Eadie said, having just thought of it. “I’ll sell off the antiques.”
“Oh Eadie, you can’t sell off his family pieces,” Nita said. “Some of that stuff has been in his family for generations.”
“He doesn’t give a shit about those old things. He’s always talking about how he wants to sell everything and make a clean start.”
No one said anything. Loretta got up and went to check on a load of laundry. Eadie scowled and looked at her hands. “Oh all right, I won’t sell everything. I’ll just sell some of it.”
“You could have an estate sale,” Loretta said, coming back into the kitchen. “You could have an estate sale the weekend they’re gone.”
Nita pursed her lips and nodded. “Virginia and Myra Redmon will be out of town that weekend, too. That just might work.”
“The problem with an estate sale is you have to advertise,” Eadie said. “Someone will read the advertisement and figure out who’s having the sale, and then it’ll be all over town, and before you know it, we’re screwed. I’ve got the name of a woman who comes in and buys everything in a house, the whole kit and caboodle, for one price, and then hauls it all away. I think she’s our best bet.”
“Will she give us a fair price?” Lavonne asked, making notes.
“Shit, no. But we may clear a few thousand each, and I mean, hell, it’s a start. I’ll probably sell the family silver to the history museum because they’ve been after us for years to sell, and since Trevor and I won’t ever have kids, and there’s no one to inherit it anyway, I might as well go on and sell the whole collection intact.” No one mentioned the obvious, which was that Trevor and his new wife might have kids. After a minute Eadie looked at Lavonne and said, “I could probably make enough selling the silver and the Jefferson letter and the Nathan Bedford Forrest medical kit to live on for a while.” The Boone family had a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Trevor’s great-great-great-great-grandfather framed and hanging in Eadie’s dining room. She had a traveling medical kit used by Dr. Cincinnatus Boone, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s personal physician during the Mississippi Campaign, displayed in her living room. “I think you’ve got the best plan, Lavonne. You’re the one who stands to make the most.”
“I’m also the one who’s risking the most. It’ll be a miracle if Leonard doesn’t suspect something and refuse to go through with it.”
“What are you going to do with the money?”
Lavonne hesitated a minute and then said, “I’m going into business with Mona Shapiro. We’re changing her bakery to a deli that serves breakfast and lunch, and opening up a catering service.”
Eadie looked surprised and excited at the same time. “That’s brilliant,” she said. “In that location, you’ll make a fortune.”
“I wish I could figure out something to do to make some money,” Nita said wistfully. “I wish I could figure out something to sell.”
“Do you have anything that might be valuable?” Eadie said. “Something like the Jefferson letter or the Nathan Bedford Forrest medical kit?”
Nita shook her head. “My mother-in-law has most of the family antiques. All I’ve got is a bunch of furniture and a big-screen TV and stuff like that.”
“There has to be something else,” Lavonne said, making scribbles on her notepad. “Something that maybe has your name on it. I don’t suppose the house is in your name?”
“Oh I don’t think so,” Nita said.
“The cars?”
Nita shook her head. “Charles always buys the cars,” she said. “He just brings a new car home whenever he feels like it. I never know what he’ll buy.” She played idly with her hair. Outside in the yard, her father’s old Jack Russell terrier, Winston, chased a squirrel up a pecan tree. He got halfway up the tree trunk before age and gravity forced his descent. “I think my name’s still on the title for that old car, though,” Nita said absently.
“What old car?”
“The old car that belonged to Charles’s daddy that Charles keeps in the storage shed out at the back of our lot.”
“There’s a car in that building?” Lavonne said. “I thought it was a garden shed.”
“Yeah, everybody thinks that. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
Lavonne looked at Eadie. “What kind of car?”
“Just some old car,” Nita said. She knew the name but in the excitement of the moment she had forgotten. “Charles calls it the Deuce.”
“How do you know your name’s on the title?”
“Because I found it the other day in a stack of files on Charles’s desk. He had written, ‘Nita—Change Title Over,’ on the outside of the file and when I looked inside there was this piece of paper that had my name on it. I think it was a car title, I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t even know what a car title looks like, I guess.”
Lavonne looked at Eadie and shrugged. “It bears further investigation, don’t you think?”
“Hell, yes. Even if it’s only worth a thousand bucks, every little bit helps.”
Loretta got up and went to the sink to stir a pot of soup she had left simmering. She had calmed down considerably once she heard the women’s plan for revenge. She looked less like a pit bull now, and more like a kindly grandmother. She grinned and stirred the pot. “You girls are nutty as a Claxton fruitcake,” she said. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
“Where’s Charles right now?” Lavonne said to Nita.
“He’s playing golf with Dolph Meriweather and Ed Trotter and then they’re having supper at the club.”
“Can you get into the shed where he keeps the car?”
“He keeps the key in his desk.” All this made Nita nervous. She was beginning to worry this revenge might not work out after all. She was beginning to realize what she had at stake. Charles was a bad man to underestimate. He had enough of his mother in him to be dangerous when crossed. “Ya’ll don’t think we’re making a mistake, do
you?” she said, fingering the hem of her shirt nervously. “You don’t think we’re going to make them so mad they come after us with everything they’ve got.”
“Don’t worry,” Eadie said, putting her arm around Nita. “Everything will turn out all right. You’ll see.”
Lavonne closed her notebook and reached for her purse.
“Are we going somewhere?” Eadie said.
“Let’s take a little ride over to Nita’s house,” Lavonne said, gathering her purse and notebook in her arms. “Let’s go over and see what kind of car Charles has been keeping locked up in his little faux garden shed.”
IN THE END, they had to talk Loretta out of coming with them. She was determined to be part of their revenge planning, and it was only by reminding her that Eustis would ask a lot of questions if she wasn’t around, when he and the kids got back from fishing, that they managed to convince her to stay home.
Nita retrieved the key and they went down the garden path to the back fence. A sign reading Wet Paint hung on the gate, but Nita pulled the latch and they went through. Lavonne had never been back here. She could see the faint tracks of a sandy road running across the heavily wooded lot toward the county road that stretched some miles behind the subdivision. “How many acres do you have, Nita?”
Nita shrugged, trying to fit the key in the lock. “Two or three, I think. It’s a double lot.”
They went in through the small side door, and Nita switched on the light. She opened the window blinds so they could see better. Eadie grabbed one side of the tarp, and Lavonne grabbed the other, and they pulled it back over the roof of the car like they were pulling a blanket over a sleeping child.
“Oh, my God,” Lavonne said. The Deuce, all chrome bumpers and flaring fenders, gleamed like a scepter in the dim interior of the garage. Dust motes swirled on the beams of sunlight slanting through the windows. The air was thick with the scent of paste wax and leather.
Eadie whistled. “That’s some old car,” she said.
“It’s not just a car,” Lavonne said, walking around to the front grille. “It’s a Duesenberg.” She was so excited her voice cracked. The hand lightly stroking the front grille trembled. “And it’s worth a hell of a lot more than one thousand dollars.”
“How much more?” Eadie said.
“I’m not sure.” Lavonne walked slowly around the car. “Leonard was watching an antique car auction on TV the other day, and they had a car like this one featured. I wish I had paid more attention now to what it sold for, but I’m pretty sure it was close to seventy-five thousand dollars.”
Nita looked from one to the other. Eadie grinned and put her arm around Nita’s shoulders. “Do you know what this means? If your name is on the title and it’s worth seventy-five thousand dollars and we’re able to sell it—well, all right then. There’s your little nest egg.”
“I can’t sell this car,” Nita said. “Charles loves this car more than anything in the world.”
“When was the last time he drove it?” Eadie asked, arching one eyebrow. “When was the last time he took it out for a spin?”
“Never,” Nita said. Whether or not he enjoyed owning the car was not the issue. The issue was that Charles would be furious that Nita had sold something that belonged to him without asking his permission. Still, Nita thought, selling the Deuce was a symbolic gesture that needed to be made. It put Charles on notice that their marriage, although continuing, was changing to something he might not like. In renegotiating the terms of her marriage, Nita felt she should speak softly and carry a big stick. And a seventy-five-thousand-dollar bank account in her name might be just the stick she needed.
Eadie let go of Nita and turned to Lavonne. “The question is who do we sell it to? And how quickly can we do it?”
“First we’ve got to find the title and make sure it’s in Nita’s name. Then we have to figure out how to have it appraised without Charles knowing about it, and then we have to figure out how to sell it quickly.” She stepped back and knocked over an oilcan.
“Is this an example of goddamn synchronicity or what?” Eadie said, grinning. “I mean can you believe how this is all coming together?”
“Don’t get too cocky,” Lavonne said. “We haven’t pulled it off yet.”
Nita put her hand over her mouth and giggled like a schoolgirl. “Charles will be so mad if I sell this car,” she said. “Ya’ll, he might leave me.”
Eadie and Lavonne looked at each other. “Look, Nita, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Lavonne said. “We don’t have to sell the car.”
Nita thought about it for a moment. She couldn’t imagine Charles leaving her no matter what she did to him. Who else could he find to dominate and bully, who else would cater to his every whim like a docile slave girl?
She looked at Lavonne and grinned. “Let’s do it,” she said.
THE FILE WAS where Nita remembered seeing it last, sitting in a stack on the corner of the library desk. Lavonne sat down in Charles’s chair and opened the file and Nita said nervously, “Just make sure you put everything back the way he had it or he’ll know we’ve been in here.” Eadie went down the hall to use the bathroom, and Nita went into the kitchen to check messages on the answering machine. A few minutes later she heard a metallic coughing sound, followed immediately by a high-pitched yodeling scream, the closest Lavonne Zibolsky would ever come to a rebel yell. Eadie and Nita sprinted down the hallway to the library.
The file was opened on her lap. Lavonne held a piece of paper between two fingers like she was holding a winning lottery ticket. “Do you know what this is?” she said, her hard metallic voice vibrating. They both shook their heads. “It’s an appraisal Charles had done six months ago. That car’s a 1931 Duesenberg Model J Sedan, and it’s worth—are you ready for this, are you fucking ready for this—it’s worth seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” She set the file on the desk and looked at them in wonder and amazement. Eadie took Nita in her arms and began to dance her around the room. “And what’s more,” Lavonne said, putting her reading glasses back on and shuffling through the file, “not only is Nita’s name, solely, on the title, but there’s correspondence in the file to indicate that Charles was supposed to sell the car when his father died to a doctor in Atlanta, a doctor by the name of”—Lavonne checked the file—“Marshall Osborne, and when he didn’t, the doctor threatened to sue, which explains why Charles transferred title over to Nita. There’s also correspondence in the file, dated three years ago, indicating the doctor is still interested in purchasing the car, should Charles ever decide to sell it. He must have realized he’d never get it by suing, so he decided to try the honey approach.”
Eadie stopped twirling Nita around the room. “So, all we have to do is contact the doctor and make arrangements to sell the car to him, and Nita is pretty much set for life.”
“By the year 2010, one out of every two businesses will be owned by women!” Lavonne shouted.
Nita’s eyes were bright as a little bird’s. “But I couldn’t keep all of the money,” Nita said hesitantly to Eadie. “Could I?”
Lavonne and Eadie looked at each other and then back at Nita. “Honey, with seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, you could do whatever you damn well please,” Eadie said.
CHAPTER
* * *
ELEVEN
JIMMY LEE’S HOUSE was just the way Nita had pictured it. He lived in the older section of town, not too far from the antebellum mansions of the rich, in an area of small, shotgun-style raised cottages. The house had a wide porch that extended across the front and around one side, overlooking a small, well-kept yard. Azalea bushes rimmed the lawn. An old live oak stood in the middle of the side yard, spreading its huge branches protectively over the house. A peeling concrete bench rested against its trunk.
Nita parked at the end of the drive closest to the garage, hoping no one she knew would drive by and see her car. If anyone saw her and asked questions, she would tell the truth. She was
there to learn woodworking. She was there to learn a hobby.
An old yellow lab ambled across the yard to greet her, his tail swinging back and forth with each step. Nita’s heart fluttered in her chest like a wren throwing itself against a plate-glass window. She combed her hair with her fingers, took a deep breath, and climbed the steps to the front porch. The front door was open. She stood at the screen door and called timidly, “Hello?”
There was a smell of bacon in the air, and fresh-brewed coffee. She could hear noises from deep inside the house, the clatter of silverware, the clanging of pots, the distant whine of a radio. A wide hallway ran the length of the house. On one side, through an opened doorway, she glimpsed a bedroom, and on the other side, a formal room filled with tall bookshelves and a leather armchair and floor lamp. She opened the screened door and stepped inside. “Hello,” she said loudly.
“Hey, come on in,” he shouted. He stuck his head around a corner at the end of the hall, wiping his hands on a towel. “Are you hungry? Do you want some breakfast?” He came out to greet her.
“Just coffee,” she said, following him down the long hallway. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and his feet were bare.
There was another bedroom on the left and to the right a room filled with two sofas and a TV in a tall armoire. The back of the house was an enclosed porch with a bathroom on one end, and the kitchen on the other. She followed him up a step into the kitchen. Tall windows overlooked the yard. A small table and four chairs nestled in a corner between two windows. The ceilings in the house were high, at least fourteen feet, and covered in beadboard. She sat down at the table and he poured her a cup of coffee, then sat down across from her.
“I like your house,” she said, reaching for the creamer.
“Thanks.” He put one foot up on his chair and rested his arm across his knee. His hair was still wet from his shower and curled slightly at the ends. “Did you park out front?”