The “few extra things” she’d tossed in consisted of a package of ultra-sheer black stockings, a pair of high-heeled black evening sandals, a tiny gold evening bag, and a jewelry box containing a pair of dangly antique jet earrings.
I held my breath as I slid the sequinned dress over my head and struggled with the zipper. BeBe had gotten ripped off big time with the dress. I’d have been willing to bet there wasn’t too much more than a yard of fabric in it.
I fastened the sandal straps and took a final turn in front of the mirror, nearly tripping from the awkwardness of the high heels.
I looked, I thought, like a hooker. A high-priced one, thanks to BeBe’s expensive taste, but a hooker nonetheless.
Somebody was knocking on the door downstairs.
“I’m coming,” I called. I picked up my house keys and lipstick and dropped them into the little evening bag, then tottered precariously down the steps to the front door.
“Good heavens,” Uncle James said, blushing.
“Just let me grab a jacket or something,” I said, rummaging through the contents of the hall closet. The choices were nil. Finally, I grabbed an old embroidered and fringed black silk shawl from the top shelf and draped it artfully around my shoulders.
“Better?” I asked.
“Depends on who you’re asking,” James said. “Personally, I think you look lovely either way.”
I gave him a quick grateful kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad BeBe talked me into going tonight after all. It’ll be fun having you as my date.”
“Maybe you’ll find somebody more appropriate at the party.”
“Never,” I said, linking my arm through his.
Emery Cooper’s silver Bentley gleamed like new money under the streetlight.
“Isn’t this fun?” BeBe cooed, leaning over from the front seat after James had helped me into the back. “Just like a double date.”
“Whee,” I said.
“You certainly look beautiful tonight, Weezie,” Emery said.
I’d met Emery once or twice before. He was in his early fifties, with thinning dark hair and a narrow face that gave him the look of a born mortician, except for the surprise of dark eyes that were fringed with luxuriously thick long black lashes.
“That’s an amazing dress you’ve got on there,” Emery said mischievously.
“Be good now,” BeBe said, giving him a playful punch on the shoulder. “You’re taken.”
“I was trying to be charming,” Emery protested.
“There’s a thin line between charming and lascivious,” BeBe said primly.
The four of us chattered away about nothing until Emery paused at the turnoff for Beaulieu.
“Oh my goodness.” BeBe barely breathed the words.
The old wrought-iron gates to the mansion had been rehung and newly painted. A white-haired black man in black tails, top hat, and white kid gloves waved us through the gate with a grand gesture.
“Wow,” I agreed. The long shell drive had been freshly raked. The construction equipment was banished, and each of the live oaks on both sides of the drive was covered in tiny white lights that twinkled in the gathering dusk.
“I haven’t been out here since I was a teenager, and my daddy brought me with him to make the burial arrangements for Miss Anna Ruby’s sister,” Emery said, slowing the Bentley to admire the view. “It really is magnificent, isn’t it?”
“Would you look!” BeBe said, leaning forward and pointing as the mansion came into view.
The outside of the house was crisscrossed with scaffolding, but the scaffolding had been adorned with more lights, and long white silk ribbons were tied in floppy white bows at every corner.
The house already looked perkier, its sagging corners propped up with new framing, the old tabby walls cleaned up and repointed. Gleaming new green-black shutters hung from all the windows, which had also been reglazed. All the overgrown trees around the house had been trimmed back, and there were new beds of blooming flowers peeking out from around the foundation.
“That Merijoy,” BeBe said. “Isn’t she something?”
A line of cars was already drawn up in the drive, and more liveried doormen were helping people from their cars.
“Isn’t it elegant?” BeBe asked, nudging me as we trooped up to the veranda of the house.
“I can’t believe what she’s already accomplished,” I agreed, looking around the foyer.
The heart-pine floors had been cleaned, sanded, and waxed, and they gleamed now in the light of hundreds of candles placed in heavy silver candelabras around the mostly empty rooms. Missing moldings had materialized, copies of the originals.
There were arrangements of camellias and roses and magnolia leaves placed strategically around, but Merijoy had wisely decided to let Beaulieu’s stately old rooms speak for themselves.
“Look.” BeBe elbowed me again and pointed to a wall opposite the fireplace in the front parlor.
There, cordoned off with velvet roping, stood the Moses Weed cupboard. The elm boards glowed warmly and the cupboard’s shelves were now filled with blue-and-white Canton china, much the same as the Canton ware that the Mullinax family had once displayed with such pride. With the exception of a long cloth-covered table being used as a bar, the cupboard was the only piece of furniture in the room.
“It’s wonderful, Weezie.” I turned. Merijoy was standing beside me. She took my hand and squeezed it. “Can you believe it? Can you believe how wonderful the house looks? It’s like a fairy tale, don’t you think?”
“It’s magnificent,” I said, giving her a hug. At the same time, it occurred to me that Merijoy Rucker’s life was like a fairy tale. But her enthusiasm really was infectious.
After we chatted with James and BeBe and Emery for a while, Merijoy dragged me into the hall to see a painting she’d bought. “It’s not from Beaulieu, of course,” she admitted. “But it’s by a low-country artist, and from the eighteen eighties, so I thought it would be perfect for the house.”
We were standing in front of the painting, which was a river scene, sipping champagne, when I spotted Daniel Stipanek. He was dressed in a tuxedo, deep in conversation with a woman I didn’t recognize. I almost spit out my wine.
“What’s he doing here?” I whispered.
Merijoy gazed across the room.
“Who? Daniel? He’s catering the food tonight. And he’s only charging us his cost. Honestly, Weezie, he is so scrumptious in that tux of his. I could just eat him up. Couldn’t you just eat him up?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Especially since the woman he’d been talking to had turned around now. She was blond, with amazing cleavage. It had to be Michelene.
“Weezie?” Merijoy tugged at my arm. “Is something wrong? You two make the cutest couple I’ve ever seen.”
She saw the stricken look on my face.
“Don’t tell me you’ve broken up.”
I nodded mutely.
“Oh no,” she moaned. “What happened?”
“We had a fight.” It sounded stupid, even to me.
“Well, you’ve just got to get back together,” Merijoy said. “He’s too cute. You can’t just let him wriggle off the hook, honey.”
“He’s already wriggled,” I said. “And from the looks of things, somebody else has him hooked now.” I looked around the room to find James, but the place had gotten so crowded that all I could see was a sea of black tuxes and cocktail dresses.
Merijoy and I exchanged air kisses and I wandered away to find my “date.” Suddenly, the fun had gone out of the evening.
“Weezie.” BeBe had materialized at my side. “Did you see who’s here?”
“Daniel,” I said. “He’s catering the party.”
“Well, I knew that,” BeBe said. “He’s using the equipment at the restaurant.”
“I saw him in the living room, nuzzling up to that Michelene person. He’s wearing a tux. And he looks gorgeous, of course.”
BeBe swept me up an
d down with her fake eyelashes.
“Weezie, honey,” she drawled, “I hate to break it to you, but you look twice as gorgeous as he does. Every man in the room, except Emery, of course, has his eyes on you tonight.”
I looked down at my cleavage and tried to yank up the bodice of the dress. “But I don’t want every man in the room. I want Daniel.”
“Then stop all this whining and sniveling and do something about it,” BeBe snapped. She gave me a little shove. “Go talk to him. Flirt with him. When he sees you in that dress, I guarantee he’ll forget all about that idiotic fight of yours.”
“Not Daniel,” I said. “He forgets nothing. He even remembers the bathing suit I wore when I was seventeen.”
She sighed dramatically. “All right. Have it your way. Go into hiding. Be miserable. You’re an adult. Do what you want.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
I walked away before she could offer any more unsolicited advice. After all, I reasoned, why should I take relationship advice from a woman with three failed marriages?
Merijoy and her host committee had set up a buffet in the dining room. I suddenly remembered I’d had nothing to eat since a banana and a mug of coffee fourteen hours earlier.
The food, I had to admit, looked incredible. A tall white-clad chef carving a steamship round of roast beef stood at one end of the table. At another end, a Japanese chef was hand-rolling sushi to order.
I picked up a small glass plate and started grazing. Barbecued shrimp on a skewer, tiny goat cheese and sun-dried tomato tartlets, and miniature fried grits cakes topped with carmelized onions crowded my plate. I added a sliver of smoked salmon atop some black bread, topped with capers.
I was just popping a grape into my mouth when James walked up. “Listen, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to leave.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m ready anytime you are.”
He shook his head. “No. I’ve got to leave right now. Janet just beeped me. Denise Cahoon is in serious trouble. Janet is picking me up out front, and we’re going straight over to the police department.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Denise found out Inky’s girlfriend is driving a new Jeep Cherokee, and she had a meltdown. She went down to the newspaper, snuck upstairs to the composing room, and shot the place up pretty bad.”
“My God,” I said. “Was anybody hurt?”
He grinned. “Fortunately, she hit Inky in the ass. He’s a pretty bulky guy. The girlfriend took a bullet in the hand, but another bullet went astray and hit the composing-room foreman in the leg. He lost a lot of blood, and he’s still in surgery at Memorial.”
“You go on ahead,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. BeBe and Emery will take care of me.” He touched my shoulder and then was gone.
I watched as he moved briskly through the crowd toward the front door, then I turned around and started the hunt for BeBe and Emery.
But the rooms were swarming with people. The house was awash in tuxes, sequins, jewelry, and big hair.
I finally caught sight of Merijoy on the veranda, deep in conversation with a portly man with a bad toupee. He looked vaguely familiar.
She waved me toward them. “Eloise!” she called, flashing a huge smile. “I want you to meet Baxter Howell.”
So that’s how I knew him. From the Baxter Howell Cadillac ads on television. On the commercials, he wore a crown on top of his toupee and swept through the dealership proclaiming himself the “Caddy King of the Coastal Kingdom.”
“The Caddy King!” I said, laughing. “I just love your commercials.”
He took my hand and kissed it. “And I just love your dress.”
I laughed uneasily and shifted my shawl up around my chin.
“Baxter,” Merijoy said, “Eloise is one of my old classmates from St. Vincent’s Academy. She’s the one who found us that magnificent cupboard in the front room.”
“How nice,” Baxter said, taking a sip of his highball. “You’re a young lady of exquisite taste, I can tell.”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” I said. “Merijoy, have you seen BeBe?”
Merijoy looked stricken. “Oh, Weezie. I guess she couldn’t find you to tell you she was leaving. Emery had a family emergency. They left about fifteen minutes ago.”
“A family emergency? One of his kids?”
“No,” Merijoy said. “It was his little sister. Melanie. She was working downtown at the newspaper, and some deranged woman broke into the place and shot her in the hand. Can you believe it?”
“Emery’s sister is Inky Cahoon’s girlfriend?” The world really was too small.
“Who?” Merijoy was the confused one now.
“Never mind,” I said, patting her hand. “The thing is, Uncle James had to leave in a hurry too. So it looks like I’m stranded.”
“Nonsense,” Merijoy said. “You can ride back to town with us. Of course, we’re not leaving for hours yet. We’re having a midnight breakfast buffet, you know.”
It was only ten o’clock. My toes, cramped into BeBe’s spike-heeled sandals, screamed in protest.
“That sounds nice,” I said lamely.
Baxter Howell had turned away to talk to someone else.
“Listen, Weezie,” Merijoy said, lowering her voice, “Baxter Howell was absolutely starry-eyed while you were talking to him. He’s going to become a sustaining sponsor for Beaulieu, at ten thousand dollars a year for three years.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
I headed for the powder room, which was off the front hallway. It was really a tiny, closetlike bathroom that had been hurriedly papered and painted in time for the party. I slammed the door shut and locked it. It smelled like candle wax and wet paint.
I fixed my hair and put on some more lipstick and started to unstrap my shoes. If I was going to make it another two hours, I had to get out of those torture traps.
I closed the commode lid and sat down. I was drowsy from the heat and the wine. Before I knew it, somebody was knocking discreetly at the door.
I lurched to my feet and struggled back into the damned heels.
Outside the door, an elderly woman was hopping up and down, waiting to get in.
“Sorry,” I said. I sped away down the hall to get away from her.
And ran smack into a black-clad figure toting a huge silver tray of dishes and glasses. My heel caught in the runner. I lurched forward and took the tray carrier down with me.
The tray went left. And the delicate champagne glasses and plates of leftover food went—everywhere, but mostly all over me.
“Damn it,” I muttered, feeling the chill of champagne soaking through the dress.
“Goddamn it,” the waiter growled. I knew that growl. I quit brushing canapes off my dress and looked up. It was Daniel. Now the chill wasn’t just from the champagne. I shivered.
“I’m sorry,” I said, scrambling to stand up so I could give him a hand.
He waved my hand away and picked up the tray and stood there staring down at the mess.
“I’ll get a broom. I’ll clean it up,” I said. “I’m really sorry, Daniel.”
He flicked a bit of endive from his tuxedo lapel and frowned. “Sorry. Seems like I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
Chapter 70
I stopped blotting my dress with the edge of the shawl and looked at him with as much dignity as I could muster. Which wasn’t much, considering I had bits of Brie dangling from my earrings.
“You don’t have to be so snotty,” I said quietly. “It was an accident, you know. I certainly didn’t mean to…”
“Hurt me,” Daniel said. He reached out and straightened the strap of my dress, which had slipped off my shoulder.
“You’re soaked,” he said, with the ghost of a smile that made me shiver even more. “I think your dress is shrinking.”
I looked down and made a valiant effort at hiking up the top. A piece of shrimp toast was plastered to my left breast. I brushed it away. “The dress is ruin
ed,” I said. “And it isn’t even mine. Six hundred dollars. Down the drain.”
He looked shocked. “Really?”
“It’s BeBe’s. She loaned it to me. It was brand new.” I shrugged. “Oh well. Is there a dustpan and broom in the kitchen?”
“Probably,” he said. “I need to get this cleaned up before somebody else slips and gets hurt. Why don’t you stay here and wave people away while I get the stuff?”
“All right,” I said.
A minute later he was back with a mop and a broom and a garbage pail.
“I can’t sweep in this dress,” I said apologetically as he got busy cleaning up the glass.
“I’m surprised you can even walk in it,” he said, glancing up at me.
“I knew I should have stayed home tonight,” I said, rubbing my arms for warmth.
“I heard you bought the townhouse,” Daniel said, dumping the glass and broken china into the trash can. “Have you moved in yet?”
“Sort of. Most of my stuff is over there. But I’m still sleeping at the carriage house.”
He raised one thick eyebrow in a question.
It was a question I didn’t feel like answering just then. Or ever.
“OK,” I said briskly. “Look. Send me the bill to have the tuxedo cleaned. It was all my fault. Guess I’ll go catch a ride home. See ya.”
I gave him a cheery little finger wave.
“I saw your uncle leave over an hour ago,” Daniel called after me.
I turned around slowly. “He had an emergency. But Merijoy can get somebody else to give me a ride back to town.” I started walking again. I could feel a run zipping its way up the back of my left leg. My toes squished in the wet sandals.
“I’m going back to town,” Daniel said. “If you want to ride with me.”
“I thought you were serving a midnight buffet. It’s not even eleven yet.”
Savannah Blues Page 44