by Annie Jones
“Your money has always been good enough for me, boss. I’ve been mighty proud to work for you and your father before he passed on all these years.”
“You sound like you’re making a farewell speech, Red, ol’ buddy.” Riley chuckled.
“Well, ain’t I?” Red took his hat off again, this time turning it so as to give the impression he’d become absorbed in adjusting the band inside as he spoke from the heart. “You sold the mill already, boss. That deal is signed, all legal-like. Done and done. The new company has moved me up to take things over and come Monday we’ll have a new logo and letterhead on all our transactions. I don’t think there’s a thing you can do about that, can you?”
“I still have an obligation to Wendy. I said I’d cut back my hours and move her to a better home and I will. I’ve just got to find another investment that’s as good as the one I just lost.”
“I wish you all the best, boss.” Red’s handshake spoke so eloquently of gratitude and respect that it humbled Riley a little
to be on the receiving end of it.
“Thanks.” Riley released Red’s hand and started up the truck. “We’d better head back. Wendy’s got some kind of ballet recital practice tonight, and I said I’d pick her up at 8:30 because my mother hates to drive after dark. If I’m late, Momma’s bound to volunteer me to work at the real recital, so I can’t make the same mistake on the big night.”
“Maybe you ought to call her now to let her know you’re on your way then. I know I always get extra points for doing that kind of thing around my place.”
“Good thinking, Red.” Riley began punching in the number, more to show his confidence in the new mill manager’s advice than because he felt the need to check in at home.
Momma had everything under control. She always did. That was one thing Riley never had to worry about. He pressed the call button then lowered the mouthpiece to talk to Red. “One thing I’ll miss at whatever new venture I take, having you around to help keep me in line.”
“Don’t care about keeping you in line as much as I want to keep you out of one of them frilly tutu thingies,” Red grumbled.
“Huh?” The phone began to ring on the other end.
“You said if she got mad your Momma was going to make you be in the show...” Red let his voice trail off. He looked so tickled with himself that you’d have thought he swallowed a feather.
Riley rolled his eyes. The phone kept ringing. “She’d volunteer me to work the concession stand or take tickets or something, not dance around in a tutu.”
“Bet they’d make more money having you prance around on stage than having you dish up cheese nachos and pour warm, flat beer.”
“Red, it’s a little girls’ dance recital, they don’t serve—” Riley stopped mid-sentence to click off the power on the phone. He didn’t understand why he hadn’t gotten an answer, and suddenly that took precedence over this silly conversation. He stared out at the darkness and the desolate road ahead. “That’s weird. Momma didn’t pick up the phone. That’s not like her at all, she just can’t stand to let a phone ring.”
“Maybe she went out—”
“She doesn’t drive after dark.”
“Maybe some friend came and got her and took her out.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Riley reached for the phone again. “Maybe I’d better try calling once more. Maybe I made a mistake in dialing or—”
With his hand just inches above the phone, it let out its shrill mechanical ring.
Riley snatched it up. “Walker here.”
“Mr. Walker, good,” the voice on the other end said in a solemn monotone. “You don’t know me. I’m with the county ambulance service and we’re in your home. We heard the phone ringing just as we got here and so I called back, hoping I’d get you or at least a trustworthy friend we could notify.”
“Notify?” Riley tried to make sense of it all but the man might as well have been speaking another language. “Notify of what? You say you’re in my home? Is my mother there? What’s going on? Has something happened to my daughter? To my mother? What?”
“Mr. Walker, please. I can’t stop and go over it all with you now but your mother has had a bad fall. She’s conscious, but dazed and in pain. I’d wager she’s broken a bone, maybe even banged her head a little. We’re on our way to County General Medical Center, now. Can you meet us there?”
Riley checked his watch. His mother needed him, but Wendy would be waiting for him soon. He’d never been in a position like this before. In every other emergency situation he’d encountered since he’d taken Wendy in to raise as a baby almost seven years ago, his mother had been the person he relied on, his safety net. He had to make a choice now and he did not like it, not one bit. Still, he knew what he had to do. “I have to pick my daughter up first.”
“Well, get there when you can. County General. Do you know where it is?”
“Yes. I’m on my way.” Riley pulled his truck onto the quiet road and drove—drove and prayed with all his heart that everything would be all right.
It had to be all right. It just had to be.
Chapter Three
“I am so mad at Daddy for dying and leaving me in this awful mess that I could just...strangle him!”
Dixie pushed aside a bulging green and brown ledger held together with a succession of faded red rubber bands, each more stretched to its limit than the next, and every one threatening to snap at the slightest provocation. The movement sent a shower of pink and yellow receipts and bills of lading cascading off her father’s huge antique desk.
“This is just so unlike my father to have things in such disorder. I know he was trying to put some deal together to help get things in order because he mentioned it when we last spoke but I don’t know how I’d ever find his work on that in all this.”
“I’ve told you and I’ve told you, Miss Fulton-Leigh, you do not have to tackle this all at once.” Howard, the junior Greenhow of Greenhow, Greenhow, Byson, and Pryor, Attorneys at Law, bent to collect the papers she’d spilled onto the deep blue and green, hand-loomed rug. “Settling your father’s estate, getting up to speed on his records, learning about his business, plus tax information, and payroll and personal accounting practices—it’s a huge undertaking, Miss Fulton-Leigh.”
He snatched up a pink receipt then placed it quite precisely on the desk.
Dixie watched as three more papers slid off to take that bill’s place.
“Tremendous, one might say.” He gathered together a handful of pages in both pastel pink and yellow then added them to the lurching pile with a firm pat as if to warn them to stay put.
Dixie stared at the haphazard reminder of her own struggle to sort out her father’s usually well-organized records. Greenhow was some kind of fool if he thought he could hold back the inevitable. Just as Dixie would be some kind of fool to think her drive and determination alone could bring order to the turmoil her father had left behind. In her frustration she kicked the desk leg, realizing too late what she had done.
Greenhow sucked in his breath, thrusting his hand out, stiff-armed.
Before he could actually do anything, the whole, deranged heap surged off the side of the desk, swishing and hissing and flapping as the papers poured downward like rain gushing down a gully.
It did not surprise Dixie how much it soothed her to sit and watch the chaos empty itself onto the floor of Daddy’s meticulously appointed office. How she longed to just let go like that, to let everything come swooshing out until there was no more care or worry or grief left. Just imagining herself doing that very thing eased her pinched and knotted muscles a little.
Greenhow started to bend again to begin retrieving the papers.
Dixie coughed.
The three pages remaining sloughed off the edge of the desk to cover his oxblood, wingtip shoes. He pulled up short, snorted, and let the papers be. “As I was saying, this is really too much to take on, especially for...”
He drew the last word out, maki
ng a gesture with his hand like someone playing a game of charades. But instead of seeming to coax her to finish the statement, he gave more the impression of someone trying to avoid saying something vulgar in mixed company.
She gave him a blank look.
It did not encourage him to elaborate. He just churned his hand in the air with more embellishment and said, “Especially for...”
“For...” She mimicked the man’s inflection flawlessly, letting her voice trail off just as he had, though she did forego his weak, wincing expression. It was a business trick she’d learned from her daddy, throwing someone’s words back at the, then nailing them with an icy glare. It often nudged a conscience toward the truth or, lacking that, embarrassed a person into blurting out what they really meant just to fill the awkward silence.
Her father never did cotton to innuendo or coy implications. Anyone who did business with or on behalf of John Frederick Fulton-Leigh spoke their mind right out. Either that or they kept their mouths shut. If she ever hoped to fill her father’s shoes—she glanced down at her size 7 sling-back heels and corrected herself—if she ever hoped to step into her father’s position in work and in the community, she could accept no less from her associates than he would.
She propped her elbows up and laced her fingers together. At thirty-two, with a good fifteen pounds extra padding on her and the kind of air-brushed complexion only a stacked genetic deck could provide, she knew she wasn’t as scary as Daddy had been. But she had caught a glimpse of herself in the powder room mirror just before this meeting began. With pale, blue-purple bags under her eyes and her hair pulled back in a low, tightly coiled bun that could hardly be distinguished from the collar of her black silk dress, she looked frightful enough. She set her jaw and pierced Mr. Greenhow with a hard look, goading him to finish what he had started.
The lawyer coughed. Of course, it was a fake cough. He didn’t even hold Dixie in high enough regard to pretend it was anything else by covering his mouth when he did it. Other than that, he made not one sound to attempt to excuse or explain himself.
Daddy would have thrown the man out the door for less—if the lawyer were lucky. She glanced heavenward, not seeking divine guidance but to steal a quick peek at the familiar bullet hole her father had left unpatched in the office ceiling. Daddy had his ways of dealing with people, mostly relying on his reputation, power, and persona. When they didn’t work he found more creative approaches to get what he wanted.
Dixie, however, did not have her father’s large frame, cold eyes, booming voice, or personality—one so big it projected out from his physical form like an aura of electricity that could be either benevolent or dangerous. No, she did not have her father’s presence to call upon. Or his skill with firearms. What she did have was his absolute refusal to put up with snobbery, arrogance, or nonsense.
She dropped her palms to the desk and leaned forward. “It’s too much to take on for what, Mr. Greenhow? A woman?”
She refrained from saying “a little woman” or “a pretty, fickle, frivolously rich woman,” even though those were the words she suspected had run through the middle-aged lawyer’s balding head. Dixie eyed him over the mound of file folders still scattered before her.
This man, with all his paper rattling, negativity, and now foggy innuendo had just gotten on her very last nerve. Not an easy thing to do, by most people’s account. She knew all too well that talk around town painted her as some kind of saint capable of putting up with things far beyond the reach of most human endurance—most notably, her family
That bump in her train of thought made her tilt her head to one side and hone her gaze even more keenly on the man standing possessively in the dead center of Daddy’s office. “Or perhaps you were alluding to some failing in the Fulton, Cunningham, and/or Fulton-Leigh gene pool?”
She rattled off all the variations of her family’s surnames, though folks in town still tended to refer to them all succinctly as The Fultons. There had been no actual Fultons in town since her great-grandfather died in 1960. It had been a smart business move on her father’s part to hyphenate his family name, Leigh, with the old family name—just a gentle reminder of who his family was and how they were connected to the town’s founder and the town’s only factory.
“Were you going to say this job is too much to take on for someone from my family, Mr. Greenhow?”
“No, now, I did not say any such a thing.” He raised his hand.
She noted that he sported a bona fide manicure. He had to have gone a far piece away from tiny Fulton’s Dominion, Mississippi, to have gotten that without causing tongues to wag.
“What extravagance,” folks would say, shaking their heads.
“Who does that Howard Greenhow think he is? Some movie star? Some TV lawyer? Certainly throws his money away like one.”
“Mr. Greenhow, it appears to me that my family’s business has provided a very nice lifestyle for the members of your law firm.” It wasn’t as blatant as accusing him of squandering cash like a TV lawyer but it got the point across.
“We worked for every penny we’ve earned, I assure you.”
She nodded, managing an amicable smile. “And you stand to earn even more should you convince me I am unequal to taking on my father’s obligations, because you will then do it for me. With due compensation, of course.”
“Are you making some kind of accusation, Miss Fulton- Leigh?”
“No, but I have the feeling you are, Mr. Greenhow.” Her pulse fluttered like a scared rabbit’s but she dared not back down now. Fear and uncertainty would not win out today. She would be strong and sure. She would be her father’s daughter and starting now she would not let anyone ever doubt that. “Why don’t you just come out and say what you mean? I can tell you want to leave me with the impression that I should not even try to deal with my daddy’s business and I want to hear why you think that.”
A thin veil of sweat beaded up on the man’s now-flushed forehead. “Well, there have been some questions...some speculations... some...”
“Down and dirty, mealy-mouthed, too-good-to-be-true and too-juicy-to-be-kept-to-yourself gossip?” She was just trying to help the man get to the meat of things.
“Some conjectural discourse.” He ignored her help, mopped his brow with a white handkerchief he’d produced from his pocket, and went on without missing a beat. “Myself, I have nothing but respect for the way your father has conducted himself professionally.”
“But?”
“But...” He bobbed his head as he spoke, his gestures close to his body. “You can see for yourself that your father had begun to let things slip these last few months.”
She couldn’t deny that. “So, does all this..” she slung her arm out to indicate the confusion of paper everywhere, “…mean the company is in some kind of serious trouble?”
“No, No!” He paced a few steps, tentatively, as if he were stalking something elusive.
She sighed in relief. “I thought not.”
He pivoted on his heel and went in for the kill. “I’d have never allowed that to happen!”
“My father would never have allowed that to happen.” She would not allow this little man to trod on Daddy’s memory to put himself and his firm in a better position to move in and take things over. “And let me assure you, Mr. Greenhow, neither will I.”
“Of course.” He tugged at his tie. “Of course. It’s just that there are a few problems that need immediate attention before they get out of hand.”
“Such as?”
He narrowed one eye at her and frowned. Or maybe the growing irritation with her that affected his stance and the tightness in his voice now had him squinting and grimacing involuntarily. “Frankly, Miss Fulton-Leigh, your payroll is too big and your benefits package too generous.”
“And it’s your advice that this company should cut back on those?” She’d heard Daddy rail against Greenhow’s ideas before. They had been the family attorneys since the senior Greenhow, a childhood
friend of her father’s, had drawn up the incorporation papers over thirty years ago. He’d kept them on because they were hometown folks, an old friend, he’d said. But Dixie thought her daddy probably actually liked locking horns with stubby old Howard now and then, especially since Daddy never had any doubt over who would win out in those contests of will and opinion.
Dixie, on the other hand, found it all distasteful and a waste of precious time. So she played Greenhow’s part for him to hurry things along.
“While we’re at it, maybe we should think about using a lower grade of materials in our furniture? The customers won’t know they’re sitting on inferior padding, fabric, frames. Who’s going to tell them? The workers we haven’t laid off will be too afraid for their jobs to speak up.” She stood and walked around the now empty desk, kicking aside receipts and files as she did. “Meanwhile, the company will be able to lay back and rest easy on the nice, fat cushion of a larger bottom line.”
“You say it like I’m suggesting you should steal milk money from grade-schoolers and rob little old ladies of their life savings tucked away in the sugar jar.” His face puckered.
Dixie turned on her heels, the paper beneath her feet rustling and crackling as she made her way back to the old office chair behind the desk. “Well, aren’t you?”
He clenched his jaw so tightly his lips turned practically white.
She supposed that was the only answer she would get from him on that so she dropped into the seat again. The old wheels shuddered and creaked.
“Actually, those are just some ideas of mine, some areas that need to be addressed.” He smiled. It was the kind of smile that made her feel like brushing off unseen cobwebs and other creepy things. “There are other issues here, at the plant. The trucking department must be seen to right away. You know your grandfather won’t—”