by Peggy Webb
“But you were at his side for his inauguration.”
“As a friend and special guest. Nothing more.”
“What about that photo of the two of you having a late night rendezvous down by the pier?” Those photos had been the talk of south Alabama until the next trumped-up scandal came along.
I fought the urge to line this perky reporter up against the gas tanks and use him for target practice. With my spitfire temper, I should have been the redhead, not my sister.
“He was telling me the news about his engagement to a wonderful girl.” I suppose What’s Her Name is a wonderful girl, but that’s not what Dan was telling me. She was pregnant and he wanted my advice. Not that I’m wise or even pretend to be. It’s just that I’m a year older than Dan, and I bossed him around throughout our childhood. I guess he got used to it.
Frank Clifton spouted off a stream of questions, but I held up my hand as if I were warding off pesky mosquitoes. And believe me, we have a ton of them down here on the hot and humid Gulf Coast.
“I’m done here. I will give no more interviews until after my sister’s wedding.” I started to add, and neither will my dad, but I had every confidence that my fiery, impressively large dad would take care of the press in his own way.
I left the reporter still standing in the parking lot shouting questions and drove off in my rattling car. Soon, I was going to have to do something about my mode of transportation. Sure, most of the rattling came from the ammunition boxes rolling around on the floorboard every time I hit a pothole in the road, but a large portion was coming from under the hood and back there in the vicinity of the tailpipe.
Furthermore, I arrived at the Wild Ranch on Point Clear in a puff of smoke.
Lucy barreled out the door, laughing and crying, all at the same time.
“Maggie! Is that really you?”
“Who else would it be, silly goose?” My sister is only five-five, and I had to bend down to wrap her in a tight hug. She sniveled against my white tee shirt, and I thought of all the times she’d done that growing up, as if I were the older sister.
“Maybe the Wizard of Oz. It was hard to tell with all that smoke.”
“I know. Let’s get inside before we choke to death.” I led Lucy inside then held her at arm’s length to study her. With her red hair and pink cheeks she always reminded me of a one of the roses in Mom’s prized flower gardens. But today she was more flushed than glowing. “What’s up?’
“Mom’s about to go off her rocker.”
“How?”
“I think I let the wedding get too big for her.”
“I doubt that. Nothing’s too big for Mom to handle.”
“I know. That’s why I can’t figure it out. She’s jumpy and snappish.”
I was rarely home anymore, always off touring and endorsing products and cutting ribbons at various places across the U.S. Even giving speeches, which I despise. I’m not cut out for the celebrity circuit. Now that I was home, I longed to race into my old bedroom, swap my slacks for a pair of shorts then race out to the shooting range behind the house and shatter at least a hundred airborne clay targets or put bullet holes through the bullseye of a stationery target.
“Where’s Mom? In the kitchen?” I needed to see for myself that she was okay.
“No, she and Dad are down at the restaurant.”
“How long has she been this way?”
“Only since last week.”
“What happened last week?”
“The usual things. Last minute wedding errands, that sort of thing.”
“Maybe she’s just tired.”
“No. It’s more than that. She’s just a little…I don’t know…off.”
I couldn’t imagine Mom ever having an off day. She’s the steadiest, most reliable woman I’ve ever known, a rock in every crisis, a soft shoulder to cry on, a fount of wisdom. But she’s also the kind of woman who laughs easily and takes pleasure in the simple things of life.
Maybe Lucy was exaggerating. She’s always been prone to dramatics. Maybe she’s the one with ragged nerves. I don’t why she ever planned a wedding that would rival that of the so called Hollywood royalty. If I ever get married, which is about as likely as a pig taking flight, I’m going down to the beach, barefoot, and say a simple ‘I do’ as the sun sets over the water.
“Let’s have a cup of tea on the back porch, Lucy. Everything looks better after a cup of tea.”
I steeped the tea while she got our two old Snoopy mugs from the cabinet, and we went outside to the screened-in porch. I sank into a chaise with deep cushions and let myself fall into the vista of rolling pastures and a blue lake backed by a forest dressed in all the colors of summer. Wild’s Champion raced into view, a beautiful black Thoroughbred who had placed fourth in the Kentucky Derby last year. If there was ever a more peaceful sight, I don’t know where you’d find it. Surely nothing could be amiss in a place such as this.
“Dad’s hasn’t been himself, either.”
“What?” Surely not Clint Wild, the steadiest, most courageous man I know. “What on earth are you talking about?’
“I don’t know. Not really.”
“Good grief, Lucy. You can’t just tell me that our parents are both falling apart and not even give me a little hint about what has been going on. Who’s been to visit Dad over the past week?”
“The only person I know of is Rex Langley. He showed up at the restaurant unannounced and Dad spent an hour holed up with him in the office.”
Rex Langley, Dan’s father and the owner of the adjoining ranch. It wasn’t unusual for him to visit Dad in his office.
“Rex was probably on the trail of another Thoroughbred.” Sometimes the two men purchased a racehorse together. Sometimes Rex, who has an eye for horses, would act as scout and report a horse that Dad would buy, solo. “Anybody else you can think of?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been up to my neck in last minute wedding details. How could I possibly be at the restaurant every day?” She cast a wistful eye toward Wild’s Champion as if she’d rather be in the pasture riding than trying to decipher a mystery. Lucy will go around the world to avoid controversy of any kind. “Maggie. You’ve got to figure this out. I can’t possibly go on a honeymoon with Mom and Dad all torn up.”
It was like asking a bird with a broken wing to fly. I didn’t know how I was supposed to figure out Mom and Dad’s problem when I couldn’t even figure out my own future.
Still, my sister needed reassurances, even if they were false.
“I’ll do my best, Lucy.”
Chapter 2
In which Lucy says ‘I do’
My best consisted of finally cornering Mom in the kitchen late that night when I heard her going down the stairs. She was brewing a cup of chamomile tea.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked. She nodded as I slid my arm around her and leaned my head against hers. She smelled like home, the faint scents of sugar and cinnamon she absorbed when she went to the restaurant, the honeysuckle shampoo she used on her hair and a hint of the rosewater toner she used on her face.
“What are you doing up at this hour?”
“I could ask you the same thing. What’s wrong, Mom?”
She stiffened and I leaned back so I could judge by her face whether she was thinking up a pretty lie just to make me feel better. Looking at her was almost like looking in the mirror. We’re both tall, slender, blued-eyed brunettes with unruly hair that defies comb and brush.
But that’s where the resemblance ends. Alice Jones Wild is quiet and unassuming, born to Virginia Delaney and Garvin Jones, both from ordinary families of shrimpers, sugar cane farmers and not very successful merchants. I’ve often wondered how my mother managed to adjust from living in the background to being the wife of a man always in the spotlight.
“I’m wound up, that’s all.” She shoved her dark curls off her face and attempted to fool me with a laugh. I wanted to grab her and say, Mom, I’m a grown woman. Stop kidding around. I g
uess she read my face because she stumbled over an explanation about all those wedding guests staying in the Grand Hotel and their expectations. “They’re driving me crazy, Maggie.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Darling, I’m not the one who needs help. You just take care of your sister.” There was a flash of something alarming in her eyes, but it was gone so quickly, I decided I’d just imagined it. Mom patted my face. “Lucy’s so excited, I’m afraid she’ll walk down the aisle in her pajamas. Promise you’ll take care of her.”
A dark premonition crawled up my spine. Mom’s expression was so serious, she didn’t look like somebody worried over pajamas. Still, I made the promise. But as I trotted back up the stairs, I had the awful feeling that my practical, straight-talking mother was keeping secrets.
*
There was so much pink at my sister’s wedding, I felt as if I were downing in Pepto Bismol. That’s awful of me, I know. This was Lucy’s day, and as long as she was happy I was determined to pretend that taffeta rosettes and stilettos and syrupy music are my favorite things in this world. She simply glowed as she walked down the aisle on Dad’s arm. They made a striking pair, Lucy’s riot of red curls worn loose under her veil and Dad’s silver hair and ruggedly handsome face set off by his tuxedo.
I studied him for any signs of the same turmoil I sensed in Mom, but all I saw was pride. Sill, Clint Wild is the master at keeping his private life exactly that.
As he handed Lucy over to Steve Sullivan, she flashed her dimples at me and mouthed, at last. It was hard for me to reconcile the tame-looking bride promising to love and to cherish ‘til death do us part with the rambunctious sister who could ride horses like a Triple Crown winning jockey and handle race cars as if she’s top dog on the Talladega Speedway.
Actually, both of us can. Growing up, we had access to fine horses on our ranch and the race cars owned by some of the wealthy clientele who frequented Wild’s restaurant. When the handsome, easy-going, adventure-loving Steve Sullivan came to our ranch to train Dad’s horses, it was inevitable that he and Lucy would fall for each other.
It was also inevitable that I would I feel a strange sense of displacement, of Lucy’s newly shifted loyalties, as we raced from vows to reception to the moment when my sister would throw her wedding bouquet.
I deliberately stood behind a large group of women who were eager to be next to the altar. In spite of my best efforts to avoid even the hint of matrimony, Lucy lobbed her bouquet straight at me. If I hadn’t caught it, it would have hit me in the face, and how would I explain a black eye to the press?
They were headed my way now. As I searched for a place to duck, Dad cut them off and gave them just enough Clint Wild quotes to keep them from pestering me.
Finally Steve and Lucy left for their Hawaiian Island honeymoon in a shower of rice, and I headed toward the door. At last I could take off this ridiculous dress and these infernal high heels.
“Maggie.” My mother’s voice had an edge I couldn’t identify.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
“Nothing. I need you to stay here until all the guests leave. Your dad and I have to change and take a few people out in the boat.”
“Who is so rude to insist that you treat them to a boat ride while you’re up to your neck in Lucy’s wedding reception?”
“Everybody will be gone in thirty minutes, and your dad and I will be back in time for supper. Play nice, Maggie.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.” Mom gave me a fierce hug and whispered, “I love you.”
Then she was gone. I looked around for Dad, but he was no longer in the reception hall. If this boat ride were anything except an annoyance, he’d have come to talk to me about it.
That’s what I kept telling myself as I pretended to be a smiling hostess overseeing the departure of wedding guests, many of whom I didn’t even know.
I was telling myself the same thing when suppertime rolled around and my parents had not returned. Sill, as I rattled around in the big family home alone, I looked anxiously out the window at a night sky as dark as black velvet. I’d feel much better if the sky were filled with stars to lead Mom and Dad home.
“Don’t panic.” I said this aloud to reassure myself, and then proceeded to go onto the front porch and shade my eyes as if that would help me see Alice Ann and Clint Wild strolling home, arm in arm.
Obviously they got delayed. Both Dad and Mom are excellent sailors. Though a cloud cover turned the night to ink, there was no sign of an approaching storm, no reason to believe anything except that they had docked somewhere along the bay to treat their guests to a good meal.
I went inside to retrieve my cell phone and call Dad. His deep voice instructed to leave a message. A call to Mom yielded the same results.
I made a sandwich and tried to eat, but as I watched the hands of the clock move through the hours, I kept re-playing every disaster-at-sea movie I’ve seen. I roamed through the house and even out toward the paddocks, restless. Finally I decided to call my parents again.
This time there was no reassuring sound of either Mom or Dad saying to leave a message. There was only a remote electronic voice telling me the phone was out of service…and the chilling certainty that my parents had vanished.
Chapter 3
In which Magnolia tries not to panic
I didn’t wait “til morning to call the cops. And they showed up on my doorstep ten minutes after getting the call. After all, this was a football legend who had disappeared.
They dispersed search boats that night, while I stood at the edge of Mobile Bay with my arms wrapped around myself, wishing for Lucy, wishing for Steve, even wishing for my eccentric Delaney great aunts, Pearl and Grace. They’ve always been favorites of mine, feisty and outspoken and colorful.
I know the rumors--that they’re outcasts, but I can’t understand why any family would get so up in arms over Pearl’s long-ago strip-tease act. Nor can I fathom how Mom’s family would get their noses so out of joint over Aunt Grace just because she thinks she can talk to a cat—Houdini. Family lore has it that when one cat grows old, he vanishes and another tom kitten magically appears. A continuous parade of Houdini cats. I think it’s delightful.
Of course, there might be other skeletons buried in the closets of my maternal grandmother’s sisters. Still, I much prefer their company to that of Virginia Delaney Jones. My grandmother has been prim and straight-laced all my life. When I was a kid, she used to scare me half to death creeping around on her crepe-soled shoes and aiming sharp, disapproving looks my way. She never even said anything when I won Olympic Gold except, “I don’t know why any granddaughter of mine would want to shoot a gun,” as if her sternness somehow got siphoned off from her and directly into Lucy’s and my bloodstream. Thank goodness, it did not.
Suddenly I saw boat lights heading my way. Good news, I thought. It has to be.
I moved so close to the water I could feel waves lapping over the tops of my tennis shoes.
Sheriff Leonard Jenkins jumped from the boat and joined me. “I don’t want you to get discouraged, Maggie,” he said, and I did exactly that. “We couldn’t find the boat, not a sign. But don’t you worry. Soon as it’s daylight, we’ll send search helicopters.”
Though the sheriff looks like everybody’s idea of Santa Claus, right down to the big belly, white beard and jovial laugh, I took no comfort in his hand patting mine and the easy way he suggested we go back to the house for a cup of coffee.
It wasn’t coffee, the sheriff wanted, but answers. Dad always admired him. “Don’t let Leo fool you,” he’d say. “The grandfatherly act of his hides a razor sharp mind and an iron will.”
“Let’s go over what your mother told you again…before she left.”
I gave the sheriff an almost verbatim account of our brief conversation, and he tipped back in his chair to study me. “Are you sure she didn’t say who all was going out in that boat.”
“All she said was �
��some people.’ I didn’t ask their names and she didn’t volunteer.” I was furious with myself. How many times throughout this long and dreadful night I’d wished I had asked! I took everything for granted. That nothing bad would happen to Mom and Dad. That they’d come home, as usual. That life would go as it always had, everybody going about their business but always connected, always knowing the core of the family—Alice Ann and Clint Wild—would always be here, running the ranch, running the restaurant,
“Don’t worry about it, Maggie. We’re going to start questioning wedding guests, starting with those at the Grand Hotel. Maybe somebody saw something, or knows something that might tie into this business.” He rammed his hat on his head. “Do you have anybody to stay here with you?”
“No. But I’m fine. I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”
“I know you are. I don’t have a single deputy who can shoot as well as you. Still, if you were a daughter of mine, I’d want somebody here.”
My sense went on full alert. What does he know that he’s not telling me?
“Do you think I should call my sister and brother-in-law to come home?”
“It’s too soon. Let’s wait and see what happens. My guess is that Clint and Alice Ann will show up today chuckling about some crazy thing that sent them off on a wild goose chase.”
But they didn’t show up that day laughing about a wild goose chase, nor the day after that, the terrifying and endless day where none of the guests questioned had seen a thing nor had they heard anybody talk of going on an outing in Dad’s boat.
On the third day, I called Lucy. Her delight in hearing from me and her laughing mood broke my heart a thousand different ways. I’d rather have eaten raw oysters, which I cannot abide, than tell my sister that our parents were missing and she had to come home.
