Savannah Blues

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “Hey.” He stood in the doorway and called after me. “That wasn’t a fight. That wasn’t even a good bicker. There you go, running away again. Come on back, damn it.”

  When I got to the carriage house, Tal’s car was in its parking slot. I could see something on my doorstep. A flower arrangement.

  “Shit,” I muttered, and I backed out and drove straight to BeBe’s house.

  She took one look at me and knew what had happened. “You did it, didn’t you?”

  I stalked past her into the kitchen and opened the door of her big stainless-steel double-door refrigerator. “You got any chocolate in this thing?”

  “There’s some Godiva fudge sauce in that jar on the door there,” she said. I took the sauce and opened the freezer. “Ice cream?”

  “Second shelf from the top.”

  I took the carton of Mayfield Moose Tracks and sat down at the kitchen counter. I took the top off the ice cream container and spooned chocolate sauce in. “Bourbon?”

  “You know where I keep it,” BeBe said, pointing to the liquor cabinet. I got a double old-fashioned glass and poured two inches of Wild Turkey bourbon over a layer of ice cubes, and I drank it neat, followed by a healthy chaser of ice cream and chocolate sauce.

  “Let me get this straight,” BeBe said, pouring herself a drink. “At some point last night, presumably after we talked on the phone, you and Daniel made mad passionate mattress music together. And at some point after that you two had your first official fight.”

  “We had our first official fight the first time you introduced us,” I said.

  “First official fight as a couple,” she said, correcting me.

  I took a couple bites of ice cream. “What makes you think we’re a couple?”

  “You’re not? This is just recreational fucking? I mean, Weezie, I am the first person to wholly endorse recreational fucking. It’s a concept that far too few contemporary American women embrace. It’s just that I didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”

  “Why is everybody so worried about what kind of girl I am?”

  “Never mind,” BeBe said. “I can see you’re in no mood to discuss philosophy. Is there anything else I can do for you tonight, besides provide chocolate and liquor?”

  “I couldn’t go back home,” I said apologetically. “Tal left another flower arrangement on my doorstep.”

  “At least he didn’t leave this one inside the house,” she said.

  “I had the fucking locks changed,” I said. “And James called him and told him to knock it off. But he still doesn’t seem to get the fucking message.”

  “You are in a mood,” she said, eyeing me warily.

  “It’s been that kind of a day,” I said. And I told her about my mother’s reaction to alcohol rehab, and about the fight Daniel and I had had, and about my sinking feeling that Lewis Hargreaves had already snagged the Moses Weed cupboard.

  “You want my opinion on any of this?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m being a bitch. Now that I’ve got a little chocolate and brown liquor in me, I’m ready for some counseling. God knows I could use it.”

  “First,” she said. “About your mother. Face the facts. She’s hooked on Xanax and bourbon. She’s an addict. You’ve done what you could for her. You and your dad let her know you think she has a problem. You told her you’ll help all you can. Now step back and let her own it.”

  “Easier said than done,” I said.

  “Second. Daniel. I hate to say it, Weeze, but I think he’s right. You have some kind of aversion to a romantic relationship.”

  “Are you saying I’m frigid?”

  “Christ, I hope not,” she said. “He’s a great guy. He wants to be with you. It’s only natural that he would be creeped out by Tal. Hell, everybody who knows Tal is creeped out by him.”

  “Are you saying I should move out of the carriage house?” I started to stand up.

  She pushed me back down. “Stay seated. Jeez. You are so touchy tonight. Getting laid certainly hasn’t improved these mood swings of yours.”

  “I do not have mood swings.”

  “Fine. Hormonal surges. Did you keep any of that Xanax you stole from your mother?”

  “I have the whole bottle in my pocketbook.”

  “You might consider taking one if these flare-ups of yours continue.”

  I opened my mouth to protest but then closed it again.

  “You said you wanted my opinion,” she said.

  “Go on.”

  “Give the guy a chance,” BeBe said. “That’s all I’m saying. He’s sweet, he’s funny, he’s damn fine-looking. He’s obviously nuts about you. And I bet he’s good in bed. Am I right?”

  I just looked at her.

  “Fine. Be discreet. He was great. I can tell just by the way you walked in here tonight.”

  “What?”

  “You had a definite hitch in your getalong, as my grandma Loudermilk would put it,” she said.

  “You are unbelievably crass,” I said.

  “And I’m right. Admit it.”

  I smiled despite myself. “You were right about the soup theory. And that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Okay. Daniel Stipanek is fine in every way. Why are you running away from him?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want to. It just happens. Something about him scares me, BeBe.”

  “Like what?”

  “For one thing, he has a real hang-up about his family.”

  “Like how?”

  “He won’t talk about them. He knows all about my whacked-out family, but he won’t say anything about his own background. All I know about him is that his father died when he was a little kid, and he has two brothers and they basically raised themselves because his mother was working at the sugar factory.”

  “That’s a lot,” BeBe said.

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “He’s angry about something. His mother, I think.”

  “Honey, we are all angry about our mothers.”

  “We know why I’m pissed at my mother, and why you’re pissed at yours,” I said, then stopped myself. “By the way, why are you pissed at your mother?”

  “How would you like to be named BeBe?”

  “Oh yeah. But what’s Daniel got to be so pissed about? Here’s another thing, BeBe. I knew him in high school. And I never heard him mention a word about his family. It was like he was raised by wolves or something. What do you know about him?”

  “I know he’s the best chef in Savannah,” BeBe said. “That’s all I need to know.”

  “But what about his background? I mean, God forbid I should sound like Mama, but BeBe, who are his people?”

  Chapter 51

  “We could check Daniel’s personnel file. From the restaurant,” BeBe said.

  “What would that prove?”

  “A lot. His last place of employment, his last address. Next of kin.”

  “He’d probably list one of his brothers. I know he’s got one named Derek, who’s a plumber, and one named Richard, who drives a big rig.”

  BeBe finished the last of her drink. “Do you want to do this or not?”

  “Yeah,” I said, throwing the ice-cream carton in the trash. “Let’s do it.”

  BeBe’s office at Guale was in a tiny room just off the kitchen. She flicked on the overhead light and pointed to a file cabinet. “Personnel records.”

  BeBe opened the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and thumbed through the contents until she came up with the file she was looking for.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Stipanek, Daniel F.”

  “Quick,” I said, “what’s the F for?”

  “Francis,” she said, leafing through the papers inside. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Give me that,” I said, taking the file and sitting behind her desk.

  “Hey,” she said. “This is my office and that’s my chair.”

  She sat in a chair in the corner and sulked
.

  “Last place of employment was the Huguenot House in Charleston,” I said.

  “No good calling them,” she said. “They went out of business.”

  “His references don’t sound too interesting,” I said, reading on. “Here it is; next of kin: Paula Gambrell. And there’s an address in Columbia, South Carolina.”

  “Does he have any sisters?” BeBe asked.

  “No,” I said. “Just two brothers.”

  “Maybe it’s his mom,” she said.

  “Or a cousin.”

  “I know that name,” BeBe said. “Gambrell. But I can’t think why.”

  She picked up the phone.

  “Who are you calling?” I asked.

  “Emery Cooper,” she said, winking at me.

  “Your funeral director boyfriend?”

  “Emery literally knows where all the bodies are buried in this town,” she said, winking again. “He’s very well connected. And well endowed.”

  She fluffed up her hair and put on some lipstick while she was waiting for her call to be connected.

  “Emery?” she cooed. “Darlin’, how in the world are you?”

  Her tinkly laugh echoed in the office.

  “You are the naughtiest man I have ever known,” she said. “And I would do something about that condition of yours if I didn’t have other pressing business to attend to right now.”

  She gave me another broad wink. I considered leaving the room.

  “Darlin’, what does the name Paula Gambrell mean to you?”

  “Yeah. Gambrell, with two ‘l’s.”

  “I’m checking on a prospective employee’s references,” she said. “So the name does mean something to you?”

  “Oh,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth. “That’s right. Hoyt Gambrell. Good heavens, I’d forgotten all about that man. Whatever happened to him?”

  “You don’t say. And you think he’s still in prison?”

  I sat up a little straighter at the mention of prison.

  She listened a little longer. “Well, that’s a sad, tragic story,” she said finally. “All right, lover. Yes. Just as soon as I get through with business.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “What did Emery say?”

  “Do you remember that thing with Hoyt Gambrell? He was some kind of assistant vice president over at the sugar plant, years ago, back in the eighties, I believe.”

  “I was in parochial school in the eighties,” I reminded her.

  “At the time it happened, I was just old enough to know it was the juiciest thing to hit Savannah in years,” BeBe recalled. “Mama hid the newspaper so I wouldn’t read all the trashy stuff that was going on, but the other kids at school filled me in, because, of course, Gambrell’s kids went to school at Country Day with me.”

  “What was so juicy about Hoyt Gambrell?” I asked.

  “He was married to the daughter of one of the company founders, but he had a roving eye. There was a young woman, Paula Stipanek, who worked on the plant floor, in the bag room. She was attractive and raising a passel of little kids by herself. She caught Hoyt Gambrell’s eye, and he had her transferred to his office. One thing led to another, and pretty soon they were ‘dating.’ ”

  “But you don’t get sent to jail for adultery,” I said.

  “No,” BeBe said, “but you do get sent to jail for extorting kickbacks from vendors—if you get caught. Which Gambrell did. The whole thing might have blown over, since he was married to the boss’s daughter, except that after he got caught, he was quietly invited to leave the company. But Gambrell went berserk when they fired him, called up his former father-in-law and threatened to burn the plant to the ground. That’s when the law got involved.”

  “And when he got sent to jail,” I said.

  “Yep. He had actually rigged some kind of bomb to go off in the executive dining room, but the thing was a dud. Right before the shit hit the fan over the extortion thing, Gambrell figured out that the company’s lawyers might try to get Paula Stipanek to testify against him, since she was his secretary and presumably knew a lot about the kickback scheme. Damn if he didn’t get a quickie divorce from Miss Sugar Princess and marry Paula.”

  “That way she couldn’t testify against him.”

  “From what I remember hearing, she wouldn’t have done that anyway,” BeBe said. “Hoyt went off to a federal prison in Florida, and Paula followed him down there.”

  “She left her kids?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” BeBe said.

  “My God,” I said. “Daniel wasn’t kidding when he said he and his brothers raised themselves. How awful.”

  I handed Daniel’s personnel file back to BeBe. Now I wished I’d never seen it. Families suck, he’d told me, and I’d been sure he hadn’t meant it. But now I knew he did mean it, and I knew why, and I wished I didn’t.

  “Let’s go,” I told BeBe. “I feel like I need a bath.”

  Chapter 52

  On the way home from Guale, I drove by the warehouse on Martin Luther King Boulevard, where they were going to have the Beaulieu estate sale in the morning.

  I parked out front and stared at the place. For the first time I realized the old white brick building had once housed Cranman’s, my daddy’s favorite sporting goods store. My very first fishing pole had come from Cranman’s, as had the sleeping bag I took on my first Girl Scout camping trip.

  The windows that had once showcased pup tents and racks of shotguns had long since been boarded up, and now the store entrance stood behind a sturdy chain-link fence.

  Neon orange posters were attached every six feet along the length of the fence. “Important Estate Sale. Saturday—8 A.M.,” the signs said.

  Important was an understatement, as far as I was concerned. Urgent was more like it. With the money I’d raised, I should have more than enough cash to buy the Moses Weed cupboard. If it was still there, and if the price hadn’t been hiked up.

  When I got home to the carriage house, Tal’s flower arrangement was still on my doorstep. I picked it up and dropped it in his garbage can.

  Jethro was thrilled to see me. I went in the kitchen and gave him a bowl of fresh water and a doggy treat, and I swear, he had a doggy orgasm right there on the kitchen floor. He followed me upstairs and lay down at the foot of my bed.

  The Beaulieu sale was to start at eight. I packed my estate-sale kit: flashlight, measuring tape, magnifying glass, checkbook, and billfold. No thermos of coffee though. I was damned if my bladder would get me in trouble this time.

  I set my alarm for 4 A.M. and dropped off to sleep, dreaming about dancing cupboards and singing chifforobes.

  A cop, wearing a neon orange reflective safety vest, directed traffic around the old Cranman’s store. The curb in front of the building was lined with cars. I cursed but followed the cop’s directions and parked in a gas station parking lot a block from the store. I hoofed it back and joined a motley crew of about thirty people lounging or sitting against the chain-link fence in front of Cranman’s.

  My buddy Nappy was in line four people ahead of me.

  “Hey, Weezie,” he called, “you going in legally this time?”

  I gave him a wan smile. The other people in line around me started whispering and looking at me funny. I sat down with my back against the fence and dozed off. Three hours later I woke up when people started jostling and talking. It was nearly seven-thirty. The line had grown—it stretched down Martin Luther King and around the corner beyond my sight. I stood up, stretched, and yawned.

  Nappy caught my eye. “How long has it been like this?” I asked.

  “Since about six. You missed the excitement. A dealer from Miami tried to pay somebody up in the front two hundred dollars for his place in line. The guys in back of him nearly lynched the guy.”

  “I don’t need any more excitement,” I told Nappy.

  “You got something in particular you’re looking for in there?” he asked. “I know you got a good look around the las
t time out.”

  I bit my lip and motioned him closer. “Hold my place for a minute, will you?” he asked the woman behind of him.

  He walked over to me. I put my lips to his ears. “There’s a pre–Civil War cupboard. Made at Beaulieu. I saw it last time, and it was marked fifteen thousand. If I could get it, I could set up my own antique shop.”

  Nappy nodded knowingly. “You want me to tag it if I see it?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, and I gave him a roll of my masking tape marked “Sold–Foley.” “If you grab it before I do, there’s a finder’s fee,” I told him.

  “Good deal,” he said, winking.

  As the line inched forward, a fight broke out in front of us. Normally Savannahians are too well mannered to brawl over an estate sale. But this was not a normal estate sale, and anyway there were people here from all over the East Coast. And for them, business was business.

  A burly black man in a white T-shirt that said “SECURITY” threatened to relocate the instigators, and they quieted down. The security man proceeded on down the line handing out cardboard fans with numbers. Mine was number thirty-six.

  I clutched it to my chest and said a little prayer and planned my strategy for finding the cupboard. Cranman’s had been closed for at least fifteen years, and I could no longer remember what it looked like or how it was laid out inside. All I could do was plan to move very fast through the store, looking for the cupboard’s tall profile.

  At eight o’clock people started jostling forward. At eight-thirty I was at the door. At eight-forty-five I was inside. The place was jammed with stuff, all of it arranged in rows, on tables, and in glass cabinets.

  I raced up and down the rows. I saw the Charm-Glow stove, the rows of McCoy flower pots, the Aubusson rugs, and the oriental rugs, which had been cleaned and unrolled for display. I ran up and down the vast old store, past stuff I would have drooled over any other day.

  At 10 A.M. I called it quits. I fought my way to the checkout line, where a bank of women with calculators and credit card machines were ringing up people’s purchases.