“Time would make them soon forget. And every day I remember that the only things in the world that matter to me now are you, Sam, and Belle.”
“Oh, Papa.” I hunched my back toward John to hide my sudden tears. I reached up to my cheeks to brush them off and my fingers came away slick and wet. I’d promised I would stop all this crying. But surely this didn’t count, when I was crying for Papa instead of myself.
“Since you are putting down roots there, I want to come look at some places, too.”
“That would be—” My voice broke, and I cleared my throat. “That would be fantastic. When do you want to come?”
“How about Sunday?”
“Sounds great.” A sign in a window flashed in my memory: SEEKING PART-TIME VET. “All right, Papa. See you then.”
“Love you, Itzpa.”
“Love you.”
I ended the call and put the phone back in my purse. My face was still wet. I leaned down toward my shoulder and used the short sleeve of my T-shirt to blot my cheeks. First on one side and then the other. When I’d done all I could, I walked to the long, high countertop. Gertrude bounced happily along with me. “Sorry about that.”
John was washing coffee cups by hand. “What can I get you?”
I stared up at the hand-lettered menu board on the wall in front of me with unseeing eyes. “Can you do an iced coffee?”
“I can do it iced or I can put it in the blender for you like one of those frap-type of drinks.”
“That sounds good. The blender version.”
“What flavor do you want?”
“Regular coffee. Honey. And almond milk?”
“Got it.”
He scribbled something on an order pad and stuck it on a spike. He tucked the pencil behind his ear. I handed him my credit card. He swiped it and typed on an iPad then swiveled it to face me. I touched twenty percent for the tip and signed with my finger.
“No receipt.” I swiveled it back to him.
He handed me my credit card. “Give me just a second.”
I went back to the table and took a seat. Apparently there was no such thing as a midday rush in Round Top on a Thursday afternoon. While he prepared my coffee, I scrolled my messages on my phone.
I had a text from Annabelle. “Jay dumped me. What am I gonna do?”
My hand flew to my chest. Jay had been the moon and the stars to Annabelle for the last year. He was her first love.
Before I could answer her, John shouted over the sound of the blender, “You’re writing a book about Gidget Becker, aren’t you? And living in her place?”
I kept my phone in my hand but returned to the counter where he could hear my answer. “I am.”
He turned the blender off and poured the creamy tan concoction into a clear plastic cup. “My father knew her when they were young. They went to church together. If you ever want to know anything about Gidget when she was young, I know my dad would have plenty to say.”
“I met another of Gidget’s friends from her childhood. Another girl that would’ve gone to church with them.”
John held up a canister of Reddi-wip. “You want me to top it off?”
I couldn’t believe it when I heard myself say, “Sure.”
He squirted a tower of white foamy topping on my drink. “I’ll bet it was Lucy.”
“Yes,” I said.
“She’s my aunt.” He handed me my drink.
“Oh, is your dad Bubba?”
“Sure is. Oh, wait.” He grabbed a straw in a paper wrapper. He tore the top off the straw wrapper and handed it to me, holding the paper-wrapped end of it.
“Thank you.” I took the straw and stuck it in the top of the drink.
“Aunt Lucy’s an old busybody. Dad doesn’t go to the church anymore. She never married, and I suppose she’s just bitter. She and my dad don’t get along.”
I took a deep pull of my coffee drink. Brain freeze. I put a hand to my forehead and he laughed.
“Well, I know it’s cold, but otherwise, how is it?”
“It’s great.” I winced anyway, brain still frozen. “Thank you. It will keep me cool and awake on my walk to the library.” I shouldered my bags and raised my drink to him as Gertrude and I headed for the door. “Thanks again, and I may be in touch about your dad.”
He smiled after me. “Good luck.”
I opened the door and the wall of heat and humidity hit me in the face. I waved a hand in front of me to cut through the thick air. Not that it did any good. The library was about two blocks away. Small-town blocks, not city blocks. There were no sidewalks. I walked on the asphalt on the left-hand side of the street. Gertrude went nuts pulling me every which way. As I walked along, sipping and trying to control the dog, I remembered Annabelle’s bad news. I had put my phone back in my handbag when I was gearing up to leave the coffee shop. I used my free hand to retrieve it now. The bright sunlight made it hard to read the screen. I used voice activation to send Annabelle a text back.
“What happened? Are you okay? Dumb question. I’m so sorry!” I hit send.
In five minutes, I’d reached the library grounds. My arm was sore from Gertrude’s pulling. Who knew there were so many squirrels in Round Top? I shook it and changed hands with the leash, looking around me. The Round Top Family Library was housed in an immaculately reconstructed historic church. White clapboard, a metal roof, wonderful Gothic windows, and a tall belfry. It stood beside the tiny Rummel Haus, which was restored in place as an activity center for the library. An old guy was sitting in front of the Rummel Haus at a picnic table shaded by a giant live oak, working on his laptop. I smiled. Too hot for me out here, but more power to him.
I walked under the metal entry arch and up to the double front doors. My mother would have loved this library. In fact, my mother loved all libraries. Unfortunately, it was only as I put my hand on the door that I considered the dog at the end of my leash.
I thought back to the old guy in front of Rummel Haus. At least it was shaded there. I tugged on Gertrude, who gave me a dirty look, and we went back around the corner toward the picnic table. The man was packing up his laptop, and by the time we reached him, he had a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and was standing up.
“Good afternoon,” I said to him.
He grunted. “Too damn hot.”
“You won’t get an argument from me.”
I set my bags on the table and pulled Gertrude in as she attempted to sneak off with him. She turned back toward me, her front half, at least; her back half still pointed in the direction she’d been headed.
I shook my head. “You’re a mess, Gertrude.”
She smiled, her tongue hanging out and her dreadlocks bouncing as she trotted the few steps back. I hooked the loop at the end of the leash under one of the picnic table’s feet.
“Behave.”
She plopped down for a rest. I connected to the free Wi-Fi. It worked and I wasn’t paying by the gig.
“Hallelujah,” I said to Gertrude.
She cocked her head toward me.
“Never mind.”
A flood of messages poured into my inbox, half of them from Brian. I knew I should feel guilty—and I did a little bit, but I knew he would understand. I typed a quick message apologizing for not writing earlier and explaining the day—days, really—full of police and legal woes. I promised him an update and an avalanche of finished work soon. Next I pulled up white pages for Houston and poked around until I found Darlene Hogg. I filled her in: My name really was Michele, I lived out at Gidget’s old place in Giddings, and I was writing a book about Gidget, not just an article. Gidget had wanted her daughter’s father to know about her, and to get his blessing to find and tell the daughter about him. It was imperative I reach him. I left out how I figured out her identity. Sometimes it’s better not to give away all your secrets.
I had so many things I wanted to do, like dig for information on the lying Lester Tillman, Gidget herself, Darlene Hogg in her many marital inca
rnations, the attorney Nancy Little, the Beckers’ registration for their antique car, Lonestar Pipeline, who thought they were routing through Gidget’s place, the Houston Arts Trust, and every artist who’d personalized work for Gidget. I needed to post on the adoption boards now that I had a birth year for Gidget’s daughter, and read through them, too, to see if she’d left a message for Gidget or her father. I wanted to hunt down any deliveries to Gidget’s place in the last few weeks. I should write a post for the blog. I should figure out if Ralph had a tie to Lonestar or to this deal they thought they had to route the pipeline through Gidget’s place. Just thinking about how much I had to do to fulfill Gidget’s last wishes took my breath away. I would do all of them. I had to.
But I had to triage for now. I needed the property records for Gidget’s land. I figured I could get the plat from the county, but first I pulled up Google Earth and put in the address to see if I could get enough information that way, without the red tape. While Google Earth did its thing, I glanced at my phone again. Nothing from Annabelle.
A Cayenne caught my eye as it pulled into the library parking lot and joined the handful of other cars. The vanity plates gave the owner away. Greyhound. He parked, but didn’t get out.
Google Earth finished pulling up Gidget’s place. I admired the leafy green top view surrounding the livestock pastures where crops used to grow. From above you could see cuts through the trees that appeared to be fence lines separating her property from mine on one side, Lumpy’s on another, and someone’s who I hadn’t yet met in the back. I remembered Lumpy told me that the Beckers used to own all the land, and I pictured it fenceless, years ago. There was a small pond among the trees, and near the back of the property there appeared to be something shiny and red under the canopy of tree branches.
My phone dinged and I looked down at it. Annabelle: “He’s jealous about a guy. It’s not my fault.”
Another car pulled into the parking lot and backed in beside Greyhound. I voice-recorded a text for Annabelle, staring at my computer screen, the pastures, forest, and farmhouse. “I’m so sorry.”
I glanced back at the parking lot. Greyhound was still in the Cayenne with it running. The other driver had left his car running as well, and both drivers had rolled down their windows. They were leaning toward each other. Talking. With a sick feeling, I squinted for a better look. It was Greyhound, all right. And the driver of the other vehicle was Lester Tillman.
Rashidi pulled his car to a stop, blocking my view.
Chapter Twenty-four
When we got back to Gidget’s, Rashidi’s work with the grinder was downright violent. The mild-mannered savior of spiders had returned from his safe-cracking meeting feeling borderline homicidal. He’d driven up to the mobile home where the guy lived and found Dixie flags hanging as blackout curtains in the windows. The guy had a shaved head, and—after he called Rashidi “boy” one too many times and only after Rashidi had enough information to DIY—Rashidi had driven away before he was tempted to “knock he ass out,” as he so colorfully put it. I was relieved, because dumbass racist bastards—sorry, Mom—usually traveled in packs, and I was scared to think what they might have done to a black Rastafarian with an island accent who’d decked one of their own.
I was mad, too. At Greyhound. But the reason for my upset wasn’t as emotional as Rashidi’s, and I decided to just tell him about it later.
I flinched as the grinder we’d stopped at the Mercantile to get on the way back whined, went quiet, then hit the floor.
“Dammit,” Rashidi shouted.
The deafening noise resumed. The grinder kicked up a thick metal dust cloud that I was sure was ripping the insides of my lungs like shrapnel. I left Rashidi to it and took myself and a large glass of water to check on Maggie’s progress in the barn. Gertrude and her buddies were lounging in the shade next to the piles Maggie was creating.
She emerged through the barn door, her face smudged with dirt and her arms full of old wood and rusted metal. She was probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, even covered in grime. The most poised one, too. I wondered if I would ever feel as confident as Maggie looked.
She crowed, “Have I got shit to show you.”
Not the most eloquent, though. “I’ll trade you a water for the guided tour.” I held a glass up at her.
“Deal.”
She dumped her armload on the ground in front of her three large piles. She took the glass from me and gulped until she’d drained it, then set it down in the grass.
She picked up a spiral notebook and flipped to the first page. “I’m separating my finds into those I want to make an offer on and those I recommend you keep—which I’d offer on in a heartbeat, too, but I don’t want to be greedy. The other pile is just for things I’d pitch out.”
The pile of the stuff that she wanted to make an offer on was enormous and the pile of trash was fairly sizeable. The things she thought I should keep was pretty small.
“Awesome,” I said, then filled her in on my eventful trip and Rashidi’s terrible one before we started her reveal.
Maggie shook her head. “Well, I don’t know if I can top a weird Senator Herrington encounter, Greyhound’s odd behavior, or a stone-cold racist, but I do have some eighteen-hundreds wagon wheels and an old cast-iron stove, plus an entire kitchen’s worth of pre-electricity gadgets and hoo-has.”
“All of that in there? I’m shocked.”
“Slow down, little Jaguar,” Maggie sang. She continued, something about a sky blue Jaguar and a Thunderbird Ford.
At first I was confused why she was singing. Then I didn’t care. My jaw dropped. Her voice was probably the most amazing thing my ears had ever heard. Katie had a beautiful voice, but Maggie was on a different plane.
“Well?” she prompted me.
“Oh my God.”
“What do you mean, oh my God? Did you get my hint?”
“Hint? I was listening to you sing.”
She waved her hand like she was swatting away a fly. “No, it was a hint. I had a huge find.”
“What is it?”
She lifted a beat-up, corroded chrome fin with an SS on it from the ground by the “Michele should keep these” stack.
I wasn’t really sure what she was holding. “And?”
“It’s a hood ornament. From a really old car. I Googled it. Swallow Sidecars shortened their name to SS when they switched from making motorcycle sidecars to automobiles. Their earliest cars were just called SS models. Then SS Jaguars. Then just Jaguars. So this”—she held it out to me—“was the hood ornament to a pre-Jaguar.”
Papa had told me as much when he saw the picture of the car. I reached out for the piece of metal, sucking in a breath. It was small. I ran a finger over the flared top edge. “This proves, at least, that there was one.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Now, we just have to find the rest of it. But from a pure junk perspective, this is gold. Anything from this car. Pure gold.”
“Pure gold that belongs to Gidget’s daughter, if we can find her.”
“True.”
I took out my phone and snapped a picture of the hood ornament up close. I emailed it to my blog, titling it “Things That Are True.”
My phone rang. Expecting a frantic Annabelle, I answered. “Hello? Belle?”
“Nope. It’s Blake. Hi, Michele!”
Whoops. Not only had I not answered his text, but he’d left me a voice mail the day before, too. “Blake Cooper. Wow. Hello.”
Maggie chortled. “Blake Cooper from La Grange?”
I nodded.
In my phone ear, Blake was saying, “I’d love to meet you for lunch in Round Top one day when I’m working in La Grange.”
In my non-phone ear, Maggie was screeching, “Oh my God, I lost my virginity to him in high school!”
My eyes widened at her. I covered the mouthpiece. “For real?”
Maggie licked her finger and touched it to an imaginary stove and made the sound of it sizzling.
“He was so hot. Is he still?”
Blake said, “Am I interrupting something?”
“My friend Maggie Killian is saying she knows you.”
“Maggie Killian? Tell her I said hello!”
I exchanged greetings between them. “Well, we’re in the middle of a meeting, Blake. Thank you for calling. I’ll have to get back to you.”
“Except you won’t.”
I laughed stiffly. Damn him for being right. “Sure I will.”
After I hung up, Maggie gave me the more detailed version. More detailed than I wanted to hear. I explained my connection to him. Finally I was able to get her back on track. The project. Gidget’s barn. Maggie showed me the highlights from the rest of her junking. There was a ton of cool stuff, but nothing else led us closer to Gidget’s daughter or the car.
“You’re doing great. And I’ve got to get back to work or my boss is going to fire me.”
“I’ll come with you. I need water and a cool-down.”
We entered the house, and she set the SS fin on the kitchen counter. The high-pitched shriek of Rashidi’s grinder assaulted our ears.
She refilled her water glass, then spoke in a shout. “I’ve probably only got another hour in me before I melt.”
“Sounds good,” I shouted back.
The whirring of Rashidi’s grinding operation stopped as soon as she left. I heard some guttural sounds from Rashidi that might have been expletives, but not the continental United States variety.
“Are you okay?” I called to him.
He muttered something else then his voice brightened. “Irie.”
He came into the kitchen with a painted birdhouse in each hand. He set them on the table. His dreadlocks and face were gray where his protective mask had ended. My face twitched.
“I need more wheels for the grinder.”
I shook my head. “You need the fountain of youth. You’ve aged four decades in an hour.”
He ducked into the bathroom and yelped. I heard water running and the sounds of splashing. “No towels.”
“In here.”
He stumbled back with water on his face and his eyes half closed. I grabbed some paper towels from the kitchen counter and handed them to him.
Fighting for Anna Page 26