Miss Julia Takes the Wheel

by Ann B. Ross

  He walked me to my car in spite of the rain, where I waited until he got inside the house before pulling away from the curb. I’d urged Lloyd to tell no one but his father, but that didn’t apply to me. I couldn’t wait to get home so I could unload the events of the day on my patient Sam. And maybe on Lillian, too.

  Not, I assure you, just to be the bearer of astonishing news, but to have help in knowing what to do about that news. If it had been about anybody but someone whom I already knew had problems, I would’ve perhaps shared it with Sam, who would’ve just shaken his head, then forgotten it. But Lauren Crawford was a different kettle of fish. Somehow, and I don’t know how or why, Sam and I seemed to feel some responsibility for the young woman who was so obviously in deep trouble.

  Chapter 46

  *

  “I was just before calling out the rescue squad,” Sam said as soon as I walked into the kitchen at home. He was sitting at the table while Lillian dipped up supper at the stove.

  “We was about to eat without you,” she said, whacking a spoon against a pot. “You been worryin’ us to death.”

  “Didn’t Mildred call to tell you I’d be late?” I asked, quickly taking my place at the table. “I’m sorry, but Lloyd was anxious to do what his father told him to do, so we went to the Rosewood house. And on top of that, we’d already had a day of it. Here, Sam,” I said, passing a basket to him, “have a biscuit.”

  “Long day, then?” Sam asked.

  “I’d call it an interesting and surprising day, even a shocking one. A little scary, too.” In fact, the day had been all that and more, and as I sat there staring at a full plate before me, I didn’t think I could eat a bite.

  “Tell me,” Sam said, putting his hand over mine.

  So I did, prefacing my recitation with “Don’t either of you breathe a word of this.” Even though I’d already told Sam some of it, I started with the lunch I’d had with LuAnne, where she’d let slip what Lauren had been doing at the Good Shepherd Funeral Home. Then I launched into Mildred’s announcement that she’d be more than twice as long at The Safe Harbor than usual, which left Lloyd and me nothing to do but drive around.

  “And that’s all I intended to do,” I said, “but one thing led to another.” I told them about being not only delayed, but blocked, by the overturned chicken truck, complete with a description of chicken feathers flying everywhere with some still stuck in various crevices of the Bonneville. I told them about our discovery of an abandoned house in the woods that offered the relief of one problem, but may have presented a more pressing one, which I planned to pass along to Coleman. Then I told them about Lloyd’s admission that he wanted company while he uncrated kitchen cabinets at the Rosewood house, and while there, he’d revealed the reason that he hadn’t wanted to be at the house alone in the first place.

  “Something scare him over there?” Lillian asked with a worried frown. “That house been empty a long time, an’ no tellin’ who else been in it.”

  “Not that kind of scared, Lillian,” I said, leaning my face on my hand. “Bless his heart, I hate to tell this, but he’d seen Mrs. Crawford and Mr. Wheeler when they thought no one else was around.”

  “Uh-oh,” Sam said.

  Lillian stopped and stared at me with her mouth open.

  “That’s why,” I explained, “he didn’t want to be there without a car parked out front—so they’d know someone was around. I declare, Sam, I didn’t know what to say to him. I think I relieved his concern a little by encouraging him to tell his father, but not Hazel Marie since she’ll be around Lauren and would feel uncomfortable with her. I hope that was the right thing to do.

  “But,” I went on before he could respond, “if Lauren’s involved with Mr. Wheeler, that would certainly explain some of her strange behavior, like turning down invitations and driving like a wild woman and walking past without speaking and so on. But it doesn’t explain planning a funeral.”

  “Unless,” Sam said soberly, “it’s all become too much for her and she sees only one way out.”

  “But those children, Sam,” I said, near tears at the thought. “How could a mother . . . ?”

  Sam took my hand. “She’s fragile, honey. We don’t know how long she’s been under such a strain.”

  “Not all that long,” Lillian said firmly. “They not been here more’n a few weeks. That’s pretty quick to find somebody to fool around with.”

  Sam nodded. “That’s true, but we don’t know how much baggage she brought with her. Stress piled on top of stress can take you to the breaking point. But I guess I’m more surprised at Nate Wheeler. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d interfere in a marriage.”

  “Huh,” Lillian said, half under her breath. “That be any kind of man at all, you ast me. If he have half a chance.”

  “Well,” I said, sitting back as I drew a deep breath, “we may be overlooking something. For all we know, what Lloyd saw was a onetime thing. Both of them may now be wallowing in shame because of that one lapse, and I wish I’d thought to tell Lloyd that. These things do happen, I guess, and it’s up to the moral character of each one as to whether it progresses any further on the downward slope toward total chaos. And we don’t know either of them well enough to be able to predict what, if anything, will be forthcoming, especially in the way of some climactic and very public denouement.”

  “Miss Julia,” Lillian said, her hands on her hips, “I don’t understand a word you say.”

  “Oh, well. All I meant is that we don’t know how much has already happened or how much will happen. It could be all over or it could be just beginning. And I don’t know that we can do a thing about it, whichever it is.”

  “Yes’m, an’ that’s the Lord’s truth.”

  * * *

  —

  We left it at that because we had to. There was nothing we could do, and, as a result, my sympathy swung back and forth between a stressed and burdened young wife and her busy, but oblivious husband. And I’ll be fully truthful about this—my sympathy tended toward the husband, because I had once been the busy, oblivious, and totally blind party in another triangle.

  I tried not to let that influence the way I felt, but it’s hard not to draw parallels when you’ve been in a similar situation. But then there was Mr. Nate Wheeler to deal with. None of us knew him well—just that he was a widower, fairly new to Abbotsville, unafraid of manual labor in spite of being well-off financially, handsome in the way that some men age well, for I would guess him in his early forties. Hm-m, Lauren’s husband was some years her senior as well. Maybe she was attracted to older men.

  But here was another thing—what if Dr. Don found out about his wife’s new interest? What kind of explosion would ensue? How would he handle having been cuckolded—to use a Shakespearean word? Would he storm out of house, home, and medical practice? I couldn’t answer that, either, but one thing was certain—Bob Hargrove’s patients could be left holding the bag. Or up a tree, or in hot water, or something else equally perilous.

  * * *

  —

  For the next day or so, my mind was so filled with what Lloyd had witnessed that almost everything else was pushed aside. I worried about him first of all, wondering if I had come across as too understanding of infidelity—offering excuses for inexcusable behavior. Maybe I should have expressed my disapproval of it in no uncertain terms. Teenagers, after all, tend to see things in black and white: This is right; that is wrong. Yet as we age, hair is not the only thing that begins to fade into gray areas, and we find reasons and excuses for activities that we would have once condemned. “Thou shalt not” turns into “Under certain circumstances, maybe thou canst.”

  I found myself feeling comforted for having urged Lloyd to confide in his father, and that was as much of a surprise to me as anything else that had happened. Maybe Mr. Pickens was growing on me, but here’s the thing—if anyone knew a
bout adultery—whether as perpetrator or perpetratee—he was the one. Any man who was on his third—or was it his fourth?—wife had to be well schooled on the subject. Although let me quickly add that I had no reason, not even a tiny suspicion, that he was anything but totally committed to Hazel Marie. Maybe he’d aged out of fooling around, or maybe he’d finally grown up.

  Be that as it may, my mind was easy for having sent Lloyd to him. It never hurts to hear from someone who knows whereof he speaks.

  Besides, there were other things that I had allowed to lapse while worrying about things I could do nothing about. And the main one was that little amber vial that I rediscovered in the bottom of my pocketbook a couple of days later. How in the world had I overlooked doing something about that and the cabin in which it was found?

  I took it out, held it up, and turned it around in the bright lights of the bathroom and tried to read the patient’s name, the physician’s name, or, barring both since they were unreadable, the name of the pharmacy where the prescription had once been filled. The label was scratched, torn, and smeared, and I would’ve thrown it away without another thought if Lloyd had not said that it was only one of several cast aside in the old house. And, of course, if he had not identified that house as a place of drug transactions.

  So, with a worried glance at another mass of threatening clouds overhead, I took myself to the sheriff’s office downtown on the other side of Main Street to put the vial in the hands of Sergeant Coleman Bates. That, at least, would be one thing I could do and have off my mind.

  It didn’t quite work out that way for when I asked for Sergeant Bates at the front desk, I was told that he was in Washington, D.C., taking an advanced course in antiterrorism tactics with the F.B.I.

  “Well,” I said, impressed but somewhat nonplused, “what about Lieutenant Peavey? May I speak with him?”

  The officer at the desk pushed aside a stack of papers and said, “He retired a few years ago. Can I help you?”

  “Well,” I said again, not knowing quite what to do, “I hope you can.” I held up the vial, then launched into telling him how and where it was found and, leaving Lloyd out of it entirely, how I was sure that I had stumbled upon a so-called drug house. “So,” I concluded after describing its location, “I’m sure you’ll want to watch the place and raid it just as soon as possible.”

  The officer, substantial in height and girth, stood up, took the vial from me, and turned it round and round as I had done, frowning thoughtfully as he did so.

  “It’s unreadable,” I said. “I’ve already tried. Except I think the pharmacy is in South Carolina, so what it’s doing up here, I don’t know.”

  “Um-m,” he said, squinching up his mouth. “We’ll take your report under advisement. Thank you for coming in, Mrs. . . . ?”

  “Murdoch,” I said. “Mrs. Sam Murdoch, and you’re quite welcome. I believe in supporting law and order.”

  “And we thank you for it,” he said, an indulgent smile playing across his face. “You can leave this with me and not worry about it one minute longer.”

  “And you’ll take care of it?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he said. “Forthwith.”

  I turned away and left, feeling at first quite virtuous for doing my duty as a citizen. The memory of that smile, however, coupled with his “there, there” tone of voice stayed with me and, while waiting at a red light as a sprinkle of rain dotted the windshield, it suddenly hit me that I had been very kindly, but very thoroughly, patted on the head and sent on my way.

  Chapter 47

  *

  Rain came down in buckets the rest of the day and all the next day and into the one that followed. Every evening during the local news, we learned the number of inches that had fallen, setting records all over the western end of the state. We heard reports of fallen trees, power outages, and, scariest of all, mud slides down mountainsides that blocked roads, even interstates, and flattened houses, cars, and trucks.

  In between the downpours, the sun peeked out for a few minutes now and then, giving us a promise of better weather someday. It took awhile, though, as the ground became soggier and soggier, and we began to think in terms of monsoon conditions. Lillian worried about the little stream that ran behind her house and through a couple of culverts before emptying into one of the tributaries of Little Mud Creek.

  “That thing already up over the bank now,” she told me. “No tellin’ when it come sloshing over everything.”

  “Stay over here anytime, Lillian,” I said. “You shouldn’t ever drive through water that’s covering a street.”

  One good thing about the weather finally occurred to me—it was so miserable that surely a number of trysts would be put on hold. I mean, who wants to meet one’s inamorato with dank, stringy hair?

  Each morning I placed a call to Coleman, hoping that he had returned to duty. My intention was to hold that desk officer’s feet to the fire, but Coleman remained in Washington. To get the whole matter off my mind, I even called Binkie to ask her to tell Coleman when she spoke to him, but she was in court, seemingly from sunup till sundown, so I was stymied every way I turned. And the image of that little amber vial—evidence in my mind of local drug activity—kept nudging me to do something.

  Sam tried soothing me with a reminder that the wheels of justice were notoriously slow, but that didn’t help. Plus, he had something to look forward to and I didn’t. He and Mr. Pickens were planning a day trip to Charlotte to visit a large wholesale warehouse, where they intended to buy at cut-rate prices all the appliances and fixtures needed for the Rosewood house. And to save on outrageous shipping charges to load them into a rented truck and bring them home.

  But I, kept in by the rain, resorted to fiddling with the jigsaw puzzle again just to occupy myself with something. That pastime didn’t last long. So, after turning on every overhead light and every lamp downstairs, trying to lighten both the house and my mood, I found myself wishing that Mildred would need a driver again. She didn’t, for Horace was now home and she was busy hovering. A new Lincoln Town Car waited in their four-car garage, but Horace refused to walk the few steps to go see it. Mildred couldn’t understand his obstinacy.

  “Because,” she complained to me, “I haven’t even sold the Boxster yet. It’s still sitting right out there where it’s always been, but I guess to him that Town Car is like the handwriting on the wall. He says if I sell his precious car, he just won’t drive at all. Which, to look at it from the bright side, is one way to get him to follow doctor’s orders.”

  “Oh, Mildred,” I said, soothingly, “I hope it doesn’t come to that. He’s been through a lot these past few weeks. Maybe he needs to have something to look forward to, don’t you think?”

  “Not if it means he drives that tin can with rockets on it. He could kill himself, Julia, and somebody else, too. Because I’ll tell you this, Horace’s memory is just about shot. He asks me a dozen times a day where his Boxster is, and can’t even remember after I’ve taken a picture of it sitting right out there in the garage.”

  “Well, I’ve heard of memory problems after having certain health issues. I expect it’ll improve after a while.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Mildred said. “I’m getting tired of telling him a dozen times a day that Ida Lee is not his sister.”

  Knowing Ida Lee as well as I did, I couldn’t help but think that Horace should’ve been so lucky. But I also couldn’t help but sympathize with him and with Mildred. He for having to put up with her, and her for vice versa.

  After hearing the daily report on Horace’s health and the general state of their marriage, I was even more thankful for Sam than I normally was.

  But of course listening to Mildred’s litany of complaints brought to mind a problem much closer to home. Not that I had a problem, but I feared that Sam did. Just the previous evening as we’d finished supper, Sam turned in his chair to get
to his feet, and I saw a grimace of pain flash across his face.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, immediately concerned.

  “Just a twinge,” he said. “I’m fine now.” And, indeed, he seemed so, for he moved easily away from the table, thanked Lillian for the meal, then went on to the library with no other indication that his back was preparing to act up again.

  Turning to follow him, I passed the telephone just as it rang, so I answered it.

  “J. D. Pickens here,” the caller announced. “I’m calling to thank you for steering Lloyd in the right direction.”

  As usual, his abrupt manner unnerved me, so it took a minute for me to respond. “He’s spoken to you, then?”

  “He has. Good move on your part. Tell Sam I’ll pick him up about eight in the morning.”

  That was apparently all he had to say as he ended the call, leaving me to thank the Lord that I’d done something right. To please Mr. Pickens is a remarkable feat for anyone, especially me, and I went on into the library with a lighter step.

  “That was your driver,” I told Sam. “He’ll be by around eight in the morning.” Mr. Pickens’s plan was to rent a box truck, drive the two or so hours to Charlotte, load the truck with everything from the commode to the kitchen sink, then drive back—all in one day and at fire-sale savings.

  “I wanted Lloyd to go with us,” Mr. Pickens had told Sam, “to teach him the value of price shopping. But he’s got school and the weekend’s out for me. And we’ve got to get that house done. It’s costing money.”