“I’ve already got one father,” Alex said, glaring at Matt.
Bailey stepped between the two of them. “Both of you are five years old. Where were you last night, Alex?”
“With Carol,” he said; then, when both Matt and Bailey looked at him in astonishment, he shrugged. “Older women like me. They confide in me. Give me an old lady, and she wants to bare her soul to me. And, occasionally, bare other things. Not that Carol . . . Poor lady.”
“How is she?” Bailey asked.
“Okay. But she was pretty angry at her husband. She regrets that they didn’t make up before he died.”
Matt took a seat at the table, and Bailey went to pour hot water into her teacup, but then, as she stood at the window looking out at the mulberry tree, what Alex had said hit her. He’d meant to be flippant, but . . .
She turned to look at Matt, and he was watching her, waiting for the same thought to hit her. For a moment she and Matt stared at each other, wide-eyed.
“Did I miss something?” Alex said.
“I think we may have a job for you,” Matt said softly.
“An acting job.”
“Doing what?” Alex asked suspiciously.
“We need someone to get a woman of—” Matt looked at Bailey. “How old is your sister?”
“Forty-one.”
“She’s that much older than you are?”
When Bailey nodded, Matt turned back to Alex. “We need someone to meet a forty-one-year-old woman and find out about a piece of paper, if it exists, and if it does, where it is.”
Alex looked from one to the other. “I’m going to need more information than that,” he said.
Matt looked at Bailey in a silent question: Was it all right to tell Alex about Jimmie? After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded, and Matt began telling Alex all that he needed to know. He had, of course, seen Bailey on TV on the arm of her flamboyant husband.
It was when they got to the part about Dolores, Bailey’s sister, that Matt turned to her. “If your sister is forty-one now, that means that when you were seventeen, she was already twenty-six.”
“Yes,” Bailey said, not seeing his point.
Matt and Alex exchanged one of those male looks that said that women had inferior minds.
“So?” Bailey said.
“And didn’t you tell me that she was beautiful?”
“Yes,” Bailey said. “She looked like a beauty queen. In fact, she won several pageants.”
Matt smiled. “So let me see if I have this straight. Dolores was twenty-six, beautiful, and unmarried.”
Alex looked at Bailey. “And you were seventeen, fat, and had a nose big enough to shelter a flock of geese from the rain.”
“Is there a point to this?” Bailey said, narrowing her eyes at both of them.
Matt and Alex smiled at each other, then Alex nodded toward Matt, as though to say, You take the honors.
“But in spite of the differences between the two of you, you bagged the man half of the women in America wanted. Right?” Matt said.
“I never looked at it that way,” Bailey said, “but I guess you’re right. I did.”
“And all your sister has done to you in retaliation is withhold knowledge that could gain you billions?” Matt said, wonder in his voice.
“I can’t believe she didn’t kill you,” Alex said cheerfully as he bit into his third cinnamon bun. “Slowly. Real, real slowly.”
“My goodness,” Bailey said, thinking about what they’d said. “I really did live out the Cinderella story, wicked sister and all.”
Matt and Alex laughed, then Matt turned to Alex. “Well? Think you can find out about that paper?”
“Sure,” Alex said. “It’s a done deal. But I’ll need a motorcycle and a full set of leathers. Chicks like motorcycles, and they like leathers. Can you afford that, old man?”
Bailey turned away to look out the kitchen window as Alex and Matt bickered in the background, and smiled. Home, she thought. She was home.
Twenty-four
Bailey couldn’t attend Phillip’s funeral for fear of being recognized, but Violet and Arleen went. Bailey and Matt cuddled up together on the couch and watched CNN at every possible moment. There was little coverage of the funeral, though, except to say that James Manville’s widow did not “come out of hiding and attend the funeral of a man who had been her friend for more than half her life,” as one reporter put it.
“Yet another strike against me,” Bailey said. “No matter what I do, it’s wrong.”
Matt didn’t say anything. He agreed with her, but he knew that showing his anger wouldn’t help the situation.
Atlanta and Ray did attend the funeral, and there was a shot of Atlanta weeping into a handkerchief. “I can’t believe this happened,” she told reporters. “He was our friend as well as our attorney.”
The coverage was played against a background video of scenes from James Manville’s life.
“It’s hard for me to believe that Manville and those two were related,” Matt said. “The three of them don’t look anything alike. And not any of them look like Frank McCallum. Are you sure that all of them are blood relatives?”
“That’s what Phillip asked me, too,” Bailey said, her eyes on the TV. After a moment she felt Matt looking at her. When she turned toward him, he was staring at her, and he looked as though he was angry. “What?!” she asked.
“Phillip said that he didn’t think Manville and those two were related? He said this when? During his last call to you? The one that I asked you to repeat word for word? That call?”
Bailey gave a weak smile. “Uh, yeah. Did I forget to mention that he said he wondered if Atlanta and Ray were Jimmie’s siblings?”
“Yes, you did,” Matt said softly. “What else did you ‘forget’ to tell me?”
Bailey took a deep breath. “Did I mention that I found a photo of Jimmie with the man who hanged himself in the barn?”
“One, two, three, four . . . ” Matt began, narrowing his eyes at Bailey. “That photo better be in my hands by the time I reach ten.”
“Or what?” she said defiantly.
“Or no more oral sex,” he answered.
Bailey was off the couch and back with the photo before he reached eight. But she didn’t hand the picture to Matt. “Look, before you see this, I have to tell you something. By the time I met Jimmie—actually, by the time the world met Jimmie—he’d had some surgical work done on his face. I think maybe he’d had quite a bit of work done.”
“What kind of—” Matt began, but then he stopped and held out his hand for the photo.
Slowly, Bailey handed it to him.
“I see,” Matt said, after looking at the photo for a long while. “And you’re sure this kid is the man you were married to?”
“Oh, yes. When you live with a man that long and know him that intimately—” She broke off because Matt was looking at her in a way that let her know that he didn’t want to hear about her “intimacy” with another man.
“Where did you get this picture?” he asked.
“I was looking for my chinois, you know, that conical strainer that you put on the top shelf in the pantry? You’d put it up so high that I had to climb on the shelves to get it, and I saw the corner of this photo sticking out between the boards.”
“The only room in this house that hasn’t been taken apart and put back together is that pantry,” he said thoughtfully. “Wait here while I get my crowbar.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Bailey said. “That room is also the only one in this house that was nice from the beginning, and you’re not going to destroy it.”
“Did it occur to you that Phillip Waterman’s death probably wasn’t accidental? That he found out something that cost him his life? And since he was warning you days before he died that those two goons were trying to find out where you are, maybe you’re next on the list to have an ‘accident.’ ”
“No,” Bailey said, swallowing. “I can’t say that I
did think of that. You’ll put my pantry back together?”
“That’ll be easier than trying to put your body back together,” he said as he walked toward the door.
“I’ll take everything out of it,” she called over her shoulder as she started running for the pantry.
“Nothing,” Matt said, looking at the bare walls. He had removed every shelf and every board nailed onto the studs, but there was nothing inside except years of dirt, dead insects, and dehydrated rodents.
Bailey tried not to weep as she looked at the naked, ugly walls of her once-beautiful pantry. The boards were stacked on the ground outside the kitchen door.
Matt leaned against the doorjamb. “Let’s look at this logically. First of all, there could be nothing else here. That one photo being stuck in between the boards could have been a fluke. On the other hand, if a person felt the need to hide one thing, then he probably needed to hide more, so there’s probably a motherlode somewhere. And if there is such a treasure trove, it’s either here in the floor or in the barn. So where do we look next?”
Bailey didn’t even look down at the wonderful old floor, its wide boards worn with years of use. “Barn,” she said. “I feel in my heart, right down to my toes, that if there is anything hidden, it’s in the barn. After all, the man did . . . well, hang himself there, so I’m sure that whatever he wanted to hide, he would have hidden it in the barn.”
“Right,” Matt said, “pantry floor it is.”
“I hate men,” Bailey muttered as Matt put his crowbar under the first board.
“What did you say?” Matt asked as he pulled the first board up.
“I said that I— What is that?” she asked as she peered over his shoulder. In the hole that the board had revealed was the corner of a metal box.
“You aren’t curious, are you? Actually, I think maybe we should wait on this,” Matt said, moving back from the hole. “In fact, I think I’d like something to eat.”
“Get it yourself,” Bailey snapped, then grabbed the crowbar from him and pried up the second board. When she’d removed four boards and the box was exposed fully, she looked up to see Matt lounging against the doorjamb, a smirk on his face.
With her nose in the air, Bailey pulled the box out of the hole and carried it past him to take outside. “If you ever again want to eat anything I’ve cooked or share my bed, you’ll wipe that look off your face.”
Matt’s face changed to serious so suddenly that Bailey laughed. “Here, you take the dirty thing outside while I get us something to drink. And if you open that box before I get there . . . ”
She let him imagine his punishment.
A few minutes later, she joined him outside. Matt had wiped the dirt off the outside of the box and was sitting on a chair, looking up at the mulberry tree and patiently waiting for her to show up.
“You do the honors,” Matt said as he took the glass of lemonade from her.
It was an old metal box, with the outside printed, “Earnest’s Crackers. Good for the digestion.”
Bailey took a deep breath before she pulled the lid off the box. What would she find inside?
What she saw was heart-stoppingly familiar. There were four blue ribbons on top, all of them for preserving. Lifting the ribbons, Bailey looked at them, then sat down on a chair and held them, running her fingertips over the slick surfaces. She’d never seen these particular ribbons before, but they opened memories.
“What is it?” Matt asked, watching her.
“I just never put two and two together before now, that’s all. I was told that the man who hanged himself had put up jams and pickles and that he’d sold them in town. By the time I saw his photo with Jimmie, though, so much had happened that I’d forgotten about his canning. But in the photo, I saw that he and Jimmie were friends.”
Matt was frowning in concentration, trying to understand her point.
Bailey looked up at him. “The first time I saw Jimmie, I had just won a blue ribbon for my raspberry jam.” She looked down at the ribbons she held. “A ribbon almost identical to this one.”
“You think there was a connection?”
“I think maybe what I did, putting the fruit in the jars, entering a contest and winning, was something that strongly reminded Jimmie of someone else he knew . . . and probably loved.”
Matt leaned toward the table, looked into the box, and withdrew a stack of edge-worn index cards fastened with a rotting rubber band. The band fell away the moment he touched it. “Hmmm,” he said loudly, then began to read the headings on the cards. “Ginger Jelly. Wild Blueberry Marmalade. Caramel Apple Butter.”
“Give me those,” Bailey snapped, then snatched them out of his hands. “Don’t you know that a canner’s recipes are secret?” she said as she looked down. “Oh, my goodness. Two teaspoonsful of lemon juice. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“If they’re secret, then maybe we should respect the dead and burn them?”
Bailey opened her mouth to say something; then she smiled. “Sure. Who needs more Brandy Peach Conserve in the world?” She held out the cards toward him. “ You burn them.”
“I hate women,” he said, smiling, as he removed the envelope from the bottom of the box.
Matt and Bailey looked at each other, and a feeling—this is it—passed between them. Matt held out the envelope toward Bailey, but she shook her head, so he moved the two chairs close together, and with their shoulders touching, they opened the envelope.
In it were two photographs. The first one was a copy of the same photo that Matt had found. Atlanta and Ray were teenagers, standing in front of the mulberry tree where Matt and Bailey were now sitting, and looking into the camera with sullen hostility. On the back of the photo was penciled, “Eva and Ralph Turnbull, 1966.”
The next photo was a studio portrait of the man who had hanged himself and an older woman, who didn’t look very happy. She wasn’t pretty, and the turn-down of her mouth added to her overall picture of misery. But the man looked sublimely happy. His light colored eyes—the photo was black and white—had a faraway look to them anyway, but in this picture, they looked rapturous.
Both the man and the woman had on suits, both of them with flowers in their lapels.
“Wedding,” Bailey said. “This is a wedding photo, and she did not want to be married to him.”
Matt turned the picture over. On the back, written in what looked to be a child’s block lettering, was, “Hilda Turnbull and Gus Venters. Married May 12, 1966.”
“It looks like the two kids weren’t his,” Bailey said.
“Or three kids. How does Manville fit into this?”
“You don’t think that this woman was once married to Frank McCallum, do you? Didn’t I read that Frank left Calburn right after graduation, but returned a few years later with a young son?”
“Yeah,” Matt said.
“What if Frank went away, married this woman Hilda Turnbull, had three kids right away, then divorced her? But what if she said she didn’t want the youngest child, the one with the cleft lip?”
“So Frank returned here to Calburn with his youngest son; then, years later, this Hilda showed up with the other two kids?” Matt looked at her with admiration. “Not bad sleuthing. For a girl,” he added.
When Bailey threw a pillow at him, he caught it, then pulled her into his arms and began kissing her.
“Who would know?” Bailey said, her mouth on Matt’s ear.
“Know what?” His lips were running down her neck.
“Who would know more about these people? We can’t very well go back to Rodney. He went crazy when I mentioned Gus’s name.”
“Mmmm,” Matt said, his lips moving farther down her throat. “We could ask Violet when she gets back from the funeral,” he said.
“Right. Her, uh, connections to all the men in this town.”
“No,” Matt said. “We can ask her what Burgess told her.” He had unbuttoned four buttons on her blouse.
Bailey pulled
away to look at him. “Burgess? The football hero? Were he and Violet lovers?”
“I assume so, since she was married to him.”
Bailey stiffened in his arms. “Violet was married to one of the Golden Six? And no one told me about this?”
At her tone, Matt moved away with a sigh. He knew that there was going to be no more lovemaking until this was hashed out. He ran his hand over his eyes. “That’s why she came to Calburn. Burgess went to California on business back in the sixties, and he returned home with a wife. I was just a kid then, but I still remember hearing how she shocked people.”
“While she was married?!” Bailey asked, wide-eyed.
“No,” he said in disgust. “Not that way. It was the clothes she wore and the way she acted.”
“Oh, I see. Miniskirts and go-go boots.”
Matt smiled. “My mother once told me that Violet had shocked everyone because she didn’t wear a hat or gloves.”
“That is shocking,” Bailey said, smiling. “Was your mother also shocked by her?”
“I think my mother rather liked Violet, although she never said one way or the other, but when I was a kid I saw the movie Bonnie and Clyde on TV, and when my mother saw I was watching it, she said, ‘That’s what Violet was wearing the first time I saw her.’ ”
“Right,” Bailey said. “One of those movies that sweeps the country with its fashions. So Violet came from California, wore the latest of the latest, and was married to one of the Golden Six.”
“Right. Burgess had bought the house that Violet lives in now years before, and they lived there until the lumberyard went bankrupt and Burgess was killed in a plane crash.” Matt grimaced. “A lot of people said he went down on purpose. I heard that he was never the same man after Frank’s death.”
“That’s what people said about Jimmie,” Bailey said under her breath, then her head came up. “ ‘Murders called suicide,’ ” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“Arleen—”
“You mean the woman you foisted on Janice? The woman who whenever I’ve asked you where you met her, you’ve run into another room rather than answer me? That Arleen?”
The Mulberry Tree Page 29