Magnolias, Moonlight, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  I saw it was past midnight and groaned. I gathered up the dishes and went to coax Rex to bed in his kennel, still thinking about Jodi wanting to be like Hildy.

  The next morning, I pulled into the garage and breathed a sigh of relief after dropping Livvy off at Mother’s Day Out. We’d both been a little slow this morning, me because of my late night and Livvy because she spilled milk on her favorite shirt and didn’t want to change clothes. I’d relaxed my parenting standards quite a bit since Nathan’s arrival, but I had to draw the line at letting my daughter wear a wet, smelly shirt.

  I climbed out of the car, unstrapped Nathan from his seat, then went around to the passenger side of the car to get the diaper bag.

  “Not again.” Another thin scratch wavered down the other side of the car.

  An Everything In Its Place Tip for an Organized Party

  Before the Party Checklist

  Make guest list.

  Send invitations via e-mail or snail mail two weeks prior to event date.

  Plan menu—finger foods work best if you’re serving food from a buffet. If you’re planning a sit-down dinner, use favorite recipes that you know taste wonderful. One or two new dishes are enough to stress out most hostesses. Also, when planning your menu, think about what can be prepared ahead and refrigerated or frozen to cut down on the amount of work you’ll have on the day of the party.

  Party flow—decide on placement of food, drinks, and conversation area.

  Purchase nonperishable items.

  Purchase perishable items.

  Follow up with guests who haven’t responded to invitation.

  After the party

  Write thank-you notes for gifts received and to thank people who let you borrow items.

  Return rented and borrowed items.

  Chapter Twelve

  I put Nathan down for his brief morning nap and went back to the garage, where I walked from side to side, looking at the twin scratches. Why would someone key my car? Twice? Had I made someone mad? Cut someone off in traffic and this was how they were getting back at me?

  I ran my finger down one of the scratches and got an uneasy feeling. If it was intentional and not random, did that mean someone was following me around, watching me, and waiting for a moment when no one would notice them vandalizing my car?

  But why would someone do that? The people around here practiced friendliness like it was an extreme sport, and as far as I knew no one hated me. I paused. Unless someone didn’t like what I was doing to help the Find Jodi campaign? No, it couldn’t be that. That idea was too far-fetched. It was a sign that it was indeed time to upgrade my wheels. I shook off the anxious feeling. It was bad luck, nothing more. I went to the kitchen desk. I had to focus and get some work done before Nathan woke up.

  As I printed out the forms I’d need to take with me today to the meeting with Scott, I checked my e-mail. Nothing in the business account, but a new e-mail in my personal account from Abby.

  Abby had taken a break from teaching after the birth of her first baby, Charlie. They’d moved to Taylor last October, right after Charlie was born. Abby and I spent from January to September doing mom things—library story time, picnics at the playground, outings to the mall, and even a trip to the strawberry patch. But her “sabbatical,” as she called it, ended in September when she found a sitter for Charlie and returned to teaching.

  She wrote:

  Feels like it’s been forever since we’ve seen each other. What’s going on with you? For me, it’s the same old thing—multiplication and cursive.

  What’s going on? Where did I start? I replied:

  For a change I have more happening in my life than laundry. Well, I have that, too, but there’s other things—more interesting things—happening. Too much to tell you in an e-mail. Want to get together?

  I didn’t expect to hear back right away, but the computer dinged and I opened her new message.

  Yes! How about after school today?

  Can’t. I have an actual, real, live possible organizing client. Tomorrow?

  I hit REPLY and waited, but nothing came back. She was probably e-mailing during her planning period and had to go.

  I paused to listen. I could hear Nathan shifting around. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be completely awake and ready to play. It was strange that I could block just about anything out—the phone, the television, the dryer clunking away down the hall, the occasional jet from the base thundering overhead—but my senses were finely tuned to listen for those first rustling sounds coming from Nathan’s room.

  I jumped up and headed for the dishwasher. If I could get it unloaded before Nathan became fully awake, that was one less chore I had to do with him balancing on my legs.

  I paused in the hallway to get my bearings and catch my breath. I shifted my portfolio from one hand to another and checked to make sure I’d brought my marketing packet. All present and accounted for. STAND certainly wasn’t wasting money on classy digs. Glass doors lined a hallway of low-pile industrial-gray carpet. I headed for a door with a flag stencil.

  I entered a small waiting area that was as bare as the hallway, except for a receptionist’s desk and two hard plastic chairs. Not a picture or plant in sight. Okay, this might not be the big-bucks client I’d been hoping for, but right now I’d just take a client with some bucks. Maybe STAND had saved their decorating budget for better use elsewhere. Like for a professional organizer.

  A heavyset woman who looked like she was in her late forties sat at the desk stapling papers and chewing gum. Each time she banged the stapler her bracelets jangled and her huge hoop earrings rocked. She smacked her gum. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Scott Ezell. I have an appointment.”

  “Sure.” She tossed her head toward a door behind her and managed to chomp on the gum several times while also saying, “He’s in there. Go on back.”

  The door was open and when I stepped inside I saw that the inner office was almost as bare as the front office, except for a table with four small televisions, all tuned to news channels and muted. Scott sat at a pressboard desk behind a laptop and a stack of papers. He was wearing a long-sleeved oxford shirt and dress pants, and his tie was patterned with a design of jet fighters. He stood up, extended one hand, and pushed his glasses up with the other. “Ellie. Good to see you again. Come in. Would you like some coffee or a Coke?”

  It was never a “drink” or “a soda,” only Coke existed, especially in Georgia. I declined and he said, “Well, let me get the worst part over with first.” He walked to another door in the office and opened it.

  So that’s where they’d put everything. And I do mean everything. It was the “shove it all out of sight” ploy, a longtime favorite technique perfected by many kids as they “cleaned” their room. Shoving everything under the bed made the room look so much better, but it only delayed cleaning up the mess. Same principle here, just a door to hide the mess instead of a dust ruffle.

  There were at least three filing cabinets that I could see. There might have been more, but I couldn’t tell for sure because boxes were stacked to the ceiling and piles of paper tilted precariously on top of them. A coffeemaker sat on a TV tray crammed into a corner. Rolled banners leaned against a pile of Christmas decorations and five-gallon bottles of water. “You can see why we need someone like you. I don’t have time to dig through here and Candy, you met her on the way in, she’s not what you’d call the organizational type.”

  I pulled out my packet and said, “Why don’t you glance through this and I’ll take a look at what you have? Then I’ll need to ask you a few more questions before I can give you an estimate.”

  “Sure. Have at it.” Scott waved me into the storage area and went back to the desk.

  I stepped across the threshold into the tiny square of open space and began scribbling notes as I looked through the file cabinets and peeked in the boxes.

  Candy stuck her head around the door frame, and one hoop swung wildly aga
inst her cheek as she informed Scott, “I’m takin’ my break.” She jiggled some change in her hand. “Anyone else want a Coke?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. Scott declined as well.

  After a few minutes I sat back down across from Scott in another of the molded plastic chairs and worked through a few questions that helped me sort out exactly what clients expected the final result to be. “So, basically, you want an accessible filing system for the paperwork you deal with on a daily and monthly basis. You also need long-term storage for older items,” I summarized. “As well as a place to store the Christmas decorations.”

  Scott smiled. “Got it in one.” His phone clipped at his waist buzzed and he checked the display. “Excuse me. I have to take this one.” He flipped his phone open and swiveled his chair slightly away from me.

  I finished up my notes, then gazed around the room, waiting for him. He said, “Right. Press releases go out Monday and I’ll follow up…”

  Candy returned and walked into Scott’s office. She slapped a bottle of Peach Snapple down on his desk and whispered to me, “If he doesn’t have his afternoon tea he gets a headache and then he’s a real bear to work with.” She winked at me and headed back to her desk.

  Scott swiveled back toward me, saw the drink, and shook his head. He twisted off the lid as he continued his conversation.

  I switched my gaze away from him and focused on the television screens. Even though they were muted, it was hard not to watch them and try to keep up with the text that popped up.

  The word Nash marched across the screen of the television that was tuned to a local station’s early evening edition of the news. I recognized the stately black woman they were interviewing. I’d seen her at the Find Jodi meeting where she’d embraced Nita and comforted her. Now she was the one fighting not to cry. The closed captioning at the bottom of the screen read Sherry Wayne, cousin of William James Nash, was visibly upset today after she learned the remains found earlier this week were those of her long-missing relative. Sherry dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, shaking her head, but continued to talk. I went back to reading the crawl. Wayne says the family is relieved to finally be able to bury Nash, but questions remain about his final hours.

  Now I understood Colleen’s comment about Sherry being the only one who truly understood what Nita was going through.

  Scott finished his call and turned up the volume on the TV. Sherry’s robust voice quavered only slightly as she said, “We just want to know what happened to William. We’ll keep pressure on county officials until we know the truth.”

  The shot switched to a view of the sheriff at a press conference. The reporter’s voiceover intoned, “However, answers about this cold case with racial overtones appear to be a long way off.” The report ended with the sheriff again asking for patience and reiterating that investigators were pursuing all possible leads.

  Scott hit the mute button.

  “Racial overtones?” I asked, puzzled.

  Scott sighed and tossed the remote and his cell phone on the desk. “Sadly, the lynching of William Nash is one of the few claims to fame we have here in North Dawkins besides the large military base and our railroad depot.”

  “Lynching?” I’d never seen anything about that when I read up on North Dawkins before our move. I always like to know as much as I can about the town we’re moving to. It helps make the move smoother and—usually—helps Mitch and me make a good decision about where to live.

  “Yes, as awful as it is, it’s about the only thing that happened here between the arrival of the railroad and the arrival of the Air Force base,” Scott said.

  “What happened with Nash?”

  “Word around North Dawkins is that William wanted to organize some sort of march or event in support of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. People say he was hanged on an oak tree out by the Taylor place, the one that’s a B and B now, and then his body was tossed in the swamp over at the far side of the county.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said. It was hard for me to imagine what North Dawkins would have been like before the Civil Rights movement. All signs of segregation were gone now, at least on the surface. Black people and white people worked in the same offices, went to the same schools, and lived in the same neighborhoods. The only place I noticed a split along racial lines was on Sunday mornings when people tended to worship at either mostly white or mostly black congregations, which I thought was sad. Shouldn’t churches be the first place for reconciliation? I supposed the difference in worship styles explained some of the division. I did see people with Confederate flag bumper stickers from time to time. The most popular one said IT’S OUR HERITAGE. BE PROUD OF IT. How can you be proud of something that included slavery? Obviously, race relations weren’t perfect. “I wonder why I hadn’t heard about Nash?”

  Scott said, “People don’t like to talk about it.” His gaze was fixed on the monitors as he spoke quietly, almost to himself. Suddenly, he swung back to me and raised his eyebrows. “So, as for your fees…”

  “Oh, of course.” I handed him a sheet of paper. “This is a time and materials breakdown. The cost depends on whether you’d like to do some of this yourself or have me do all of it.”

  “I won’t get it done and Candy—”

  A shout from the outer office cut him off. “I ain’t cleaning up that pile of crap. I didn’t make that mess and I’ve got enough to do out here.” This statement was followed with a resounding slap on the stapler.

  Scott said, “Candy isn’t one for tidying things up. And we have a big donor dinner coming up. She’s got plenty to do with that, so we’d need you to do the work.”

  “Fine,” I said as I wrote some figures down. I liked Scott’s straightforward approach. So few people were honest with themselves when it came to cleaning out clutter or organizing things. Good intentions lasted only so long before they had to be backed up with solid hard work and realistic appraisals to see results.

  I handed over my estimate and sat back in the chair. I’d gotten better at this part, stating my fees. I still felt a little nervous, but at least now I didn’t apologize for charging for my services. It had taken a while to get over my feelings of awkwardness. I didn’t charge an outrageous amount of money, but I’d had a few people in the past balk at my prices. They were polite to me, simply turning me down or telling me they were too busy at the moment, but I knew they were thinking, “Why would I pay this gal for something I can do myself?” The problem is that most people either don’t actually get around to doing it themselves—we’re all incredibly busy with our fast-paced lives today—or people get started, but don’t finish. And there’s nothing more depressing than a half-organized room.

  Scott put the paper down and said, “This looks fine.” Apparently, they had enough money in the budget to cover organizing, even if they didn’t have enough to decorate, which was fine by me. We discussed payment and he wrote me a check, a deposit which I’d use to purchase supplies. I slipped the check into my portfolio and we worked out a schedule for me to return and work on the storage area during the next week.

  I put my purse strap on my shoulder and prepared to stand up, but Scott was lounging back in his chair sipping his Snapple, which already had condensation on it. “Thank you for coming in today. I know Colleen probably tried to warn you off me.”

  “Well…” I wasn’t sure how to answer that one.

  He waved the bottle in the air. “Don’t worry about it. I know she thinks I had something to do with Jodi’s disappearance. I don’t understand why she’s so fixated on me, but maybe she’ll let up since the remains weren’t Jodi.”

  Somehow I didn’t think that was going to happen. Colleen seemed pretty adamant in her dislike of Scott and her suspicions.

  “No, I shouldn’t kid myself.” He put the bottle on the desktop and we both stood. “Thanks for coming in,” he said as he walked me to the door. “We’re looking forward to getting organized.”

  Candy snorted and said, “You’re look
ing forward to it? You hardly ever set foot in there. I’m the one who’s always looking for something or trying to find a place for more files. Whole place looks like Crooner’s junk market.”

  “It won’t look like that for long,” I said before I headed out the door. I checked my watch. That hadn’t taken as long as I thought it would. I felt rejuvenated, like I did each time I had a project spread out in front of me. Organizing wore some people down, but it had the opposite impact on me. I loved it. It energized me. I had time to pick up some file boxes and at least two sets of shelves. Better to get the errands done while I was without the kids. It was so much faster. I could be in and out of the store in under fifteen minutes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It took a bit longer than fifteen minutes to grab the supplies because of a snafu at the checkout. Of course, I picked the set of shelves without a bar code, but it was sorted out and I was sitting in the Jeep, supplies loaded in the back, peeling the foil off a Hershey’s Kiss because I was starving. The peanut butter sandwich I’d had with Livvy and Nathan hadn’t been enough to last me all day.

  I steered the car to my favorite sandwich shop. I still had an hour before I was supposed to be back at home. Anna was warming up a frozen cheese pizza for the kids, a special treat that Livvy loved. I wasn’t sure if she was more excited about having a babysitter to play with or the cheese pizza. I was just glad that she was over the stage of clinging to me and screaming for me not to leave. Unlike Livvy, cheese pizza wasn’t my favorite. I’d much rather have a panini sandwich.

  I was cruising through the parking lot, looking for a slot at the restaurant, when a car zipped out of a slot and across my path. I slammed on the brakes and my purse tumbled off the passenger seat onto the floorboard. The car whipped away down the aisle and after I loosened my grip on the steering wheel, I parked in the empty slot.