She closed her eyes as if seeing it all again. When she opened them, she gave me a tragic look.
“I dropped the statue back on the floor and turned and ran out of there like a scalded dog. I never even thought about the pot of chicken and dumplings again until just now.”
“You’re doing better than me. I never thought about them at all. I should have noticed that your car didn’t smell like boiled chicken and biscuit dough.”
We sat there in silence for a moment. There didn’t seem to be too much to say that’d make either of us feel any better, but now I understood Bitty’s insistence on wiping off the statue.
Finally I ventured, “Well, at least Philip isn’t dead. Think how bad it’d be if he was.”
Bitty pursed her lips. “The pot holders have our initials on them. Wedding gift. If he took that pot with him, he’s probably got the potholders, too, and is going to try to get me charged with assault or attempted murder. Then he gets out of paying alimony. I am so screwed.”
“Surely not. Sanders can verify that you were to bring him the food, and obviously he let Philip into the house. I still think they quarreled for some reason, and if Sanders didn’t bash him in the head, someone else did. Maybe Philip had someone with him. Maybe it was the mule.”
“Oh, don’t kid about it, Trinket,” Bitty wailed, flopping back in the wicker chair. “I’m doomed!”
I think I’ve mentioned that Bitty is prone to dramatics. I’ve always thought she’d have been a mega-star if she’d ever gone to Hollywood. Not that she’s done badly for herself staying in Mississippi. Bitty and I grew up in the era between June Cleaver and Janis Joplin. It was an exciting but confusing time. We never knew whether to wash our bras or burn them, but at least we had choices, while our mothers and grandmothers options were more limited.
“You’re not doomed,” I said. “Philip would have to have proof you assaulted him. All he has are pot holders and a pot of chicken and dumplings.”
She brightened immediately. “That’s true. And I could always charge him with theft.”
“Of a pot of chicken and dumplings? I can see the headlines now: ‘Senator Hollandale of Holly Springs, Mississippi has been charged with the theft of two embroidered pot holders and a pot of chicken and dumplings valued at eight dollars and thirty-four cents. While the senator protests his innocence, his former wife, the luscious Bitty Hollandale, asserts that although the senator ate the evidence, the empty pot is certain proof of his guilt. This is Trinket Truevine of Channel Eight in Holly Springs reporting to you Live from the Marshall County Jail.’”
Bitty’s mouth twitched, then she laughed. “It is ludicrous, isn’t it?”
“Drink your mimosa, Bitty. Sanders has probably eaten every bite of chicken and licked the last dumpling from the pot. When you take the necessary papers out to him, he’ll be so sated with boiled bird, broth, and biscuit, he’ll sign anywhere you tell him.”
Lifting her champagne flute, Bitty said, “To the power of chicken and dumplings!”
“And to happy endings,” I added.
I’ve always been a sucker for happy endings. There are far too few in life as it is, and even if the ones on television, in the movies, and best-selling novels are mostly fiction, just the hint of a Happily Ever After is enough to make me sigh with bliss.
That emotion is nearly always followed by the certainty that Prince Charming grew a beer belly and belches his comments at the dinner table, and the only one who listens to Cinderella’s dinner conversation anyway is one of the mice. Fairy Godmother has moved to Vegas, won big at craps, but forgot to turn the pumpkin back into a coach before she left so Cinderella can leave Charming and his shrewish mother behind.
If only there could be as many Happily Ever Afters in real life as there is in fiction, life’s trials and tribulations would be much easier to bear. It’s the promise of catching that brass ring on the merry-go-round, winning that blue ribbon, becoming champion of the spelling bee, getting that great job, that keeps most of us slogging on toward our own personal goals.
Sometimes, however, someone moves the goalpost. And it’s never closer.
I want world peace and fiduciary responsibility. I want the lions to lie down with the lambs. I want an end to hunger, poverty, disease, and our methodical extermination of species, human beings included. I want religious and racial tolerance, if not acceptance. I want honest politicians without their own agenda and with only the best interests of their constituents at heart. I want the huge hole in the ozone to close. I want clean air, pure rivers and streams, an unmolested rain forest and an end to clear-cutting old forests. I want oil corporations to invent environmentally safe energy, cars to run on vegetable oil, and TV reality shows to disappear.
For myself, I want to live quietly after I win the lottery.
Bitty just wants the Walter Place.
Neither of us is likely to achieve our goals, but neither of us is likely to give up hoping for miracles, either. My life outlook, however, is the pragmatic optimism I mentioned earlier. It’s a nice dream to have, but it just ain’t gonna happen.
Bitty’s outlook is more “Full speed ahead and Damn the torpedoes!”
I realize my goals are always likely to be unfulfilled. Bitty is certain that just one more swipe at the brass ring will be the one that succeeds.
Truth be told, I’d much rather be like Bitty. Her failures are just small obstacles on the way to success. My failures tend to be life-altering disasters. Maybe Bitty will rub off on me a little. That’d be nice.
Meanwhile, we needed to find out if Philip Hollandale was enjoying good health and a sound skull, and whether Ulysses Sherman Sanders had returned to home and hearth with his deaf and blind coon hound and gluttonous mule. My optimism hoped all was well. My pragmatism expected trouble.
Chapter Five
“You go up and knock.”
“No, you go up and knock.”
Bitty and I had been having this back-and-forth since we’d pulled up in front of Sherman Sanders’ house. The single wood door was still open and the other one closed. The screen door banged softly against the frame when the wind blew just right, which meant it wasn’t locked from the inside. There was no sign of Sanders, his hound, or the mule. There was, however, a rather skinny chicken pecking desultorily in the gravel around the side of the house.
The sunshine of the day before had been swallowed by rolling gray clouds that promised rain, but the temperature was still warm. I shivered anyway.
Then I took a deep breath. “We’ll go up together.”
“We probably look like we’re in a three-legged sack race,” Bitty said with a giggle when we clumsily climbed up the second step to the porch. That was because I clung to her arm as tightly as a baby possum to its mother’s tail.
I untangled my arm from hers and checked to see if I was still wearing my own shoes. It’d somehow seemed safer to present a bigger target, which made no sense at all.
“We’re adults,” I said aloud, more to convince myself than Bitty. “We’re just here to see if Mr. Sanders enjoyed his chicken and dumplings, and is ready to look over the paperwork for the historical register.”
“Right.” Bitty straightened her charcoal gray pinstripe jacket, smoothed her matching pinstripe slacks, and adjusted the neckline of her low-cut ecru silk blouse. Apparently she was leaving nothing to chance.
While I hesitated, Bitty took two purposeful strides forward, rapped sharply on the wood of the screen door, and waited expectantly. The only sign of indecision was the way her right foot tapped against the hickory plank floor.
“Yoo-hoo, Mr. Sanders,” she called through the wire mesh, “it’s Bitty Hollandale.” After a brief wait, she turned to look at me. “I don’t hear a single sound. It’s like it’s deserted.”
“Maybe he’s out back. Feeding chickens. Or the mule.”
We walked around back, me in my sturdy Nikes and Bitty in her pretty Manolo Blahniks. It was obvious I’d chosen more wisely when
she wobbled in a rut and nearly toppled into a lanky bush. Good thing I was there to grab her. While Bitty took the median between ruts that looked to be pick-up truck width, I crossed a small patch of dirt and grass to an L-shaped back porch that ran alongside what had to be the kitchen. In the past, kitchens were separate from the main residence for the purpose of fire safety. Not that it always helped.
This kitchen had been connected to the house by a breezeway. It was just as well-kept as the front of the house, even though the surrounding yard looked like a hog-wallow. Well behind the house were remnants of chicken coops and out-buildings that had seen much better days. An air of desertion hung over them.
“Nothing here but a couple of chickens,” Bitty said with obvious disappointment, and I turned to see her peer into a weathered shed with the door hanging by one hinge. “Oh, fresh eggs! There are several—do you have something we can put them in, Trinket?”
“Forget the eggs, Bitty. I’m beginning to think something happened to Mr. Sanders. An accident, maybe. Didn’t he have a vehicle of some kind? A truck or car?”
“I should know? Still, he had to have something. How else would he get into town to buy supplies?”
There was no sign of a truck or car, not even a rusted one. I began to get the inescapable feeling that Sanders had been hijacked. No dog. No mule. No Sanders. As much as he took care of the house, he wouldn’t go off and leave it unlocked. While the area isn’t known for vandals or crime, most people at least shut their doors in chilly weather.
“What’s that smell?” Bitty stuck her face up into the air and wrinkled her nose.
“Chicken poop?”
“No. Worse than that. Like . . . a cow lot. Or roadkill.”
We just looked at each other for a moment. I could tell she was thinking the same thing I was thinking, but neither of us wanted to be the first to say it out loud.
Finally I said, “Where do you think it’s coming from?”
Bitty looked at the badly leaning shed next to the one housing chickens and fresh eggs. I drummed up my courage, forced my feet to move through the weed stalks and dirt, and went as close to the shed as I dared. I’ve always had a rather weak stomach. Someone can just talk about bodily fluids or what the contestants on Survival or Fear Factor had to eat to stay in the game—I really think most of television’s reality shows are created by sixth grade boys—and I begin to get queasy. My stomach rolls, my face feels hot, and it takes all my effort not to hack up a giant size hairball. Motherhood was a shock to my system. Only perseverance and love got me through it without barfing on my beloved child. But it’s been a long time since I had to deal with that sort of thing, and my once-acclimated stomach has reverted to its former intolerance.
So I held my breath, stuck my head quickly into the shed, and hoped I’d find rotting fruit or cow patties, and let my eyes adjust to the dim light seeping through cracks in the weathered gray wall-boards. A dark, familiar shape lay on the floor of the shed, half-covered by a ratty old blanket, placed there on cushioning straw as if laid by loving hands. I stared a moment.
Eyes watering, I pulled my head out of the shed and walked back to Bitty. She had a look on her face of hopeful expectation, and I slowly shook my head.
Bitty put a hand to her chest and sucked in a deep breath, then coughed before asking, “Is it Sanders or . . . or Philip?”
“No. It’s Tuck.”
Bitty blinked. “Tuck?”
“The hound. Sanders’ coon hound. Remember? Loud? Blind?”
“Of course, I remember, Trinket. I just can’t figure out why you’re crying about it.”
“I’m not crying. The smell made my eyes water. Though come to think of it, I’d cry over Tuck before I would Philip.”
“Wouldn’t we all.” Bitty looked toward the house. “So what do you think this means? Maybe Sanders got so upset when his dog died that he went off someplace?”
“I don’t think the dog just died.”
“Well, I’d say not. From the smell it has to have been a few days.”
“No,” I said, “I mean that the dog looks like . . . like he’s been hurt. There’s blood.” I didn’t go into details. Just thinking about it was enough to make my stomach roll a little bit.
“Then maybe Sanders went off to confront whoever killed his dog. I can’t see him killing it,” Bitty said, and I agreed with the last.
“No, I don’t think he would have done that. But I do think we need to find out how Tuck died. Then maybe we can figure out why Sanders went off, or if he’s gone at all. We still don’t know that he’s left. I’d hate to call the police if there’s no need.”
We both looked at the house.
“It’s open,” Bitty said, and I nodded.
“Yep.”
It took a few minutes to dredge up our courage, for after all, we might be dealing with a crazed dog-killer at best, a murderer at worst, but we finally went back to the house. Bitty’s heels clacked on the heart pine floors. My sports shoes made squeaky sounds. An air of abandonment hung in the rooms as we went from one to the other, checking under beds, in armoires, the water closet with its old-fashioned clawfoot tub and antiquated plumbing, and the closed-in space under the stairs. No locks kept us out of any of the rooms, even the attic that was a historical buff’s wildest dream come true. Bitty kept making little sounds like a hamster as we looked through metal racks of old clothes covered with plastic. A hoop made of horsehair and folded on itself would billow out any of the skirts on the old dresses. Bitty flapped her hands in distress.
“Not plastic! Oh, clothes will ruin if they’re kept in plastic . . . . ”
“If they haven’t ruined in fifty or so years, there’s time to suggest other methods of storing them.”
I tried to keep her focused, but she kept getting sidetracked by cracking leather saddles and saddlebags, a doctor’s black bag with instruments dulled by time, and a horsehide and brass chest containing an assortment of letters tied in ribbon, old invoices, and some documents that could be almost anything. At one point, I thought Bitty might just pass on out with emotion. I’d rarely seen her that overwhelmed, not even at her first wedding. This rivaled the birth of her twin sons, now professional students and party-goers at Ole Miss. Twins run in our family. That’s why I stopped at one child. I didn’t want to risk twin boys with my husband’s genes and my tendency toward ignoring the obvious. If I’d been more alert, I’d have seen that Perry’s multiple jobs were not a sign of a career on an upward trend, but the lack of long-term employability. All I’d seen at the time were washboard abs and a tight butt. Not excellent marriage qualifications.
Our thorough, if often distracted, investigation turned up neatly made beds, evidence of a morning shave—men never notice all those tiny bristles they leave in the sink—and a used bath towel that seemed out of place in the otherwise tidy bathroom. Plain cotton, it lay atop the bath mat by the tub as if hastily dropped and never retrieved.
Outside, the wind began rattling the windowpanes and threatening rain. I hurried Bitty ahead of me, and we passed through the breezeway to the kitchen out back. There, on a stove that would have been at home in the pages of Little Women, sat Bitty’s pot of chicken and dumplings. Two pot holders lay near it, embroidered with fancy initials. Bitty stuffed them into her purse.
Fruit flies hovered in a thick swarm, and we didn’t need to check to know Sanders had never had a chance to eat his chicken and dumplings.
“Well,” Bitty said after a long minute of silence, “someone had to bring the pot inside.”
I looked at her and opened my mouth, but she beat me to the punch.
“No,” Bitty said forcefully. “Calling the police will only complicate things.”
“Bitty. This isn’t a complication. This is a missing man and possibly murder. We have no other choice.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course we have other choices. Sanders may be having an affair with a truck stop waitress. Think how mad he’ll be if the police track
him down at a Motel Six and his name is in all the papers. He can’t be dead. He owns The Cedars, and it’s not yet signed up to the historical registry. If he doesn’t have any heirs, it’ll go up for sale at some sky-high price the Holly Springs Historical Society can never afford, and they’ll tear down the house and put up a Mini-Mart.”
“Out here on a strip of asphalt road frequented only by stray dogs, tractors, and slightly hysterical women? Come on, Bitty. The only thing they’d put up here is a Beware of Mule sign.”
Bitty stuck out her chin, looking very much like the mule I’d just mentioned. “This land backs up to Highway 7. They could build a Wal-Mart on it.”
I rolled my eyes. “They just opened a new Wal-Mart right off 78 Highway. I hardly think they’d build another one a mile or two down the road. We have to involve the police. If you don’t want to, I completely understand. I’ll leave your name out of it, but I think we should at the very least report Sanders missing.”
“Fine.” She looked at me crossly, and then sighed. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“Don’t worry,” I comforted her as we left the kitchen and went back to her car, “I’m not right very often.”
“I know,” Bitty said.
* * * *
Sergeant Maxwell looked at us with an expression that gave nothing away except an air of resignation. A hefty man, with skin the color of polished mahogany, he has black eyes and a broad, strong nose, high cheekbones, and full lips that he kept pressed together a little bit too long before he shook his head and said, “Repeat that, please.”
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