“Good God.”
What about Ethel Lynn? She was defenseless, and she got on Theodora’s nerves. The old thing wouldn’t hurt a fly. What if she upped the ante, purely by accident, and rooted around Theodora’s proverbial garden?
Ethel Lynn had been kind enough to invite Birdie over for tea. Sure, the old bat dropped china in the restaurant and squealed like a siren, but she had her good points. She never took the last slice of Finney’s homemade pecan pie. She replaced the toilet paper in the john. When a button came loose on Birdie’s coat, she produced a needle and thread from her enormous purse and sewed it back on.
“I need to know what the bad blood is between you and Ethel Lynn,” she said, following Theodora back into the kitchen.
The old woman lifted the lid from a pot and scooped some kind of stew into bowls. “Watch your tone.” She handed them off and they returned to the dining room. “My business with Ethel Lynn is none of your affair.”
“I really need to know.”
Seating herself at the head of the table, Theodora nodded for Birdie to sit on her right. When she had, Theodora said, “I’ll tell you this much. Her great aunt jilted my great granddaddy. Nasty business.” She lifted her spoon. “Now, wouldn’t you rather hear another story about Justice?”
“Sure.” Birdie lowered her nose to the bowl and sniffed. “What is this? It smells funny.”
“Squirrel stew.”
“Made with real squirrels? The kind that hide acorns?”
Theodora feathered a hand across her brow. “What other kind of squirrel is there?”
“Can I order a pizza?”
“When Justice came north, you can’t imagine what she ate to survive. Foraging through the woods, with ne’er a pot to cook a decent meal or a weapon to bring in game. Now, eat your stew.” Theodora waited with her dark gaze snapping until Birdie brought a spoonful to her lips. After she’d gulped it down, the old woman said, “Now, where was I? Justice came to Liberty with nothing but the clothes on her back. A kind woman on the Underground Railroad outside Columbus wrapped the slave’s bleeding feet with strips of cotton. Those were her shoes.”
Birdie spooned around the chunks of squirrel meat and captured a wedge of potato. “I couldn’t survive without my shoes.” A good thief didn’t trust much but her instincts and a fast pair of Nikes. With her feet bleeding, Justice would’ve been in a lot of pain. “She walked all the way from Columbus?”
“A man picked her up in Marion and hid her in the back of his wagon. Like the woman on the Railroad, he was the right type of white folk. He took her all the way to Liberty.” Pausing, Theodora looked off into the past. “Imagine, child. You’re a young woman and you arrive in a town without a soul to welcome you. Lonesome, tired—imagine how you’d feel.”
Birdie’s heart shifted. Had it been any different on her first day in town? There’d been the overwhelming déjà vu, the feeling she’d stood in Liberty Square at some time in the past. The sensation had made her irrepressibly sad. She’d been lonely and tired, a stranger in a small town. Like Justice.
“The man Justice loved was still down south,” Theodora said. “She was heartbroken, wondering if she’d ever see him again.”
What if I never see Hugh again? Birdie lowered her spoon. “How did she go on?”
“The way our kind always does. She found other women to cling to, women who befriended her. They put food in her belly and hope in her heart. They made her laugh when she was down and they found her work—honest work that didn’t pay much, but it was enough to help Justice take root in a new life. A better life than the one she’d known.”
Birdie lifted her spoon. I’m eating rat. The kind of rat that lives in a tree.
It wasn’t bad. The meat was spicy and wild, with a tart aftertaste. She swallowed it down.
“And if you think Justice was some kind of saint, think again,” Theodora said. “Before she met the preacher’s son and settled into a respectable life—even before she learned to trust the women who became her friends she was… Lordy.”
The old woman hung her head, revealing thinning wisps of hair on her scalp. She lowered her palms to the linen tablecloth and heaved a sigh replete with shame. Birdie grabbed Theodora’s wrist as her fingers curled with agony. The tablecloth bunched in rippling waves.
“What? What did she do? Was she a prostitute? No. Not Justice.”
“Worse,” Theodora croaked, the top of her head bobbing with the word.
What would be . . ? “No way.” Birdie yanked her hand back. “If you think I’ll believe she murdered someone, I won’t!”
The sound was terrible, from the bowels of hell. “Worse.”
“Oh, man.” Birdie wracked her brain for possibilities. Floundering, she glanced at Theodora. If the old woman bent her neck any lower, she’d put her nose right into her stew. Was she crying? “I give. What did Justice do?”
The gnarled hands flew off the table, scuttling Birdie’s pulse.
Theodora lifted her head with a snap. “She betrayed the people who loved her the most. She was a thief.”
Chapter 21
“Birdie, are you here?”
Placing his laptop on the coffee table, Hugh scanned the silent apartment. The Second Chance was already closed for the night. Where was she?
He’d driven straight in from the Register, where he’d spent most of the day tooling around the paper’s archives for background on Justice Postell. He’d found some material but it didn’t lift his mood. If his rationalizations had made him sick earlier today, he was now emotionally at death’s door. He was a reporter selling out the woman he cared deeply about.
He tried to assure himself it was the right thing to do. If Ralston wrote about Birdie’s true occupation as a thief, she’d suffer the indignity of being exposed before the people of Liberty. She’d made friends here, maybe the only friends she’d ever had.
Opening his laptop, he wrote, Hidden treasure in a small town. He completed a few paragraphs before abandoning the work. Deleting the file, he started over.
While he worked he wrestled an image of her, how her eyes grew soft during those rare instances when motive met opportunity and he’d kissed her. Struggling to keep his attention on the task at hand, he plodded on. A rap on the door broke his concentration.
Delia stood in the hallway. On the lapel of her leather coat, a pathetically joyous Frosty the Snowman pin—some electronic gizmo—blinked on and off.
“It’s December,” she said when he stared. “I get into the spirit early. Has Birdie come back?”
“She’s not here.”
“She took off with Theodora yesterday. She never came back to work.” Absently, Delia fiddled with the paper bag in her hands. “What’s going on? You look bad. Like a guy on his way to the gallows.”
“Don’t hold back, Delia. I have a soft spot for women who tell me I look like shit.”
Giggling, she lifted her shoulders in a flirty shrug. “I’m just saying you need rest. Maybe you’re working too hard.”
“Maybe.” On impulse, he took a stab at bolstering his rationalizations about betraying Birdie’s trust. “Have you noticed any cash missing from your wallet?” He nodded toward Delia’s purse, one of those blue jean things covered in spangles. “A few bills, or a twenty missing? Anything like that?”
The waitress brought a stick of gum from her pocket and slowly unwrapped it. “Not lately.” She chewed, considering. “But a few weeks ago, I was missing ten bucks. Really pissed me off. Of course, I’d been to Bongo’s. You know how it goes when you’re drinking.”
Hugh flinched. “I have an idea.” An extended drinking spree, the type to leave him unconscious for hours, was tempting about now.
“Maybe I spent the money there. But I don’t think so. See, I preorder my Jell-O shots to make sure I don’t overspend. Only way I know how to stick to a budget.”
“Sensible.”
“How’d you know I was missing cash?”
“I didn’t.
” Birdie. “I’m just asking.” She’s a common criminal, which is why I’m justified in breaking my word. Hugh dug into his magic and smiled in a way that made women melt. “What about Ethel Lynn and Finney? Have they been coming up short?”
“No… but one of the customers complained right before Thanksgiving. She swore someone took twenty bucks from her wallet while she was in the ladies’ room.”
“Do you remember her name?” He should be writing this down.
“She was someone’s niece—Mrs. Park’s? I can’t remember. She was in town visiting relatives.”
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t think so.” The waitress rose from the spell he’d cast. “What’s with the questions? A robber wouldn’t come to Liberty, at least not to The Second Chance. Finney would pound him with her skillet.”
Her quaint assessment was amusing. “Then let’s hope there isn’t a robber in town.”
Maybe he was doing Birdie a favor by sparing her the danger of Finney’s skillet. But with the hunt for the rubies off, would she stay? Bad odds, that. He stifled his anguish, but not before it knotted his heart.
“Give this to Birdie.” Delia said, drawing his attention back to her. She handed over the bag. “Everything she asked for is in there.”
Opening the bag, he was accosted by the photo of a simpering blond on a purple and gold carton. “What is this?”
“Hair coloring, dufus. Birdie promised to fix me up.” The waitress twirled a lock of her lime-blond hair. “I keep trying for something golden but I screw it up. She’s going to get rid of the green.”
“You think she can color hair? Don’t count on it, sweetheart.”
Grinning, Delia smacked his forearm. “She says she can. I believe her.” Angling her hip, the waitress added, “By the way, have you called her? She’s left a zillion messages on your cell. She’s really worried about you.”
“It’s on my ‘to do’ list.”
Returning her calls meant hearing her voice. It would be enough to make him question his motives, something he couldn’t afford. Not that putting off the inevitable made much sense either. Eventually there’d be a confrontation. They were roomies.
“Put it at the top of your list,” Delia said. “She needs to hear from you.”
* * *
Birdie tightened her seatbelt as the Cadillac swerved into the snow-packed Square. “Everything you said about Justice last night… it was a lie,” she said, and the stringy muscles along Theodora’s jaw twitched. “You made it all up, didn’t you?”
The Cadillac coasted to a stop before the darkened restaurant. Rosy threads of daylight spread across the hood of the car. A giant plow swept past, hurling sheets of white like so much ice spun from a snow cone machine.
“Are you referring to the story of her thievery?” Theodora opened her satchel and withdrew her corncob pipe. “You skedaddled from the table so fast, I thought you weren’t enthralled with my story.”
“I was sleepy.”
In truth she’d been dumbstruck when Theodora made the announcement about Justice. A thief wasn’t worse than a murderer, no matter what the old woman thought. Yet a sticky sort of guilt had clung to her all night while she tossed in bed and wrestled the question: If a thief betrayed the people who trusted her, was that worse than cold-blooded murder?
Not possible. Still, the old woman’s assessment bothered her.
Now she’d ditched the hurt and was just plain suspicious. The story dovetailed too closely with her life of petty crime. It must be a sailor’s yarn.
Theodora struck a match, and Birdie waved her hands like a traffic cop. “Don’t smoke in here. I can’t open the window. It’s freezing outside.”
“I always smoke in the morning.”
“It’s not a good plan. It’ll kill you one day.”
Theodora leered, the rising sun catching the hills and valleys of her face. “Bring it on.”
Annoyed, Birdie rolled down her window. “About Justice. You were telling me a fable.” She dared a glance through the plume of smoke. “It was some kind of a Sunday school lesson. You made up the story to fit what you thought I needed to learn.”
“Justice was a thief.” Theodora turned up the heat in the Cadillac then settled back. “The man who picked her up outside Marion and gave her a ride to Liberty? He was a notions seller. She hid in the back of his covered wagon.”
“What’s a notions seller?”
“A man who sells everything from bolts of fabric to hammers and nails. Small towns didn’t have hardware stores back then. He traveled through Ohio selling his wares. He sold clothing too. While they were bumping along those country roads, Justice noticed shoes in one of the crates. Nice, sturdy leather shoes.”
Who’d blame a runaway slave for snagging a pair of shoes? “She walked hundreds of miles in her bare feet. Lifting a pair of shoes doesn’t qualify as theft. She was desperate.”
“Stealing is stealing, child. Mind you, Justice was burnin’ with guilt over what she’d done. Once she was earning a living in Liberty, she sent money back to the man to pay for the shoes.”
Uneasy Birdie crossed her arms, as if the action might shield her from the remorse dogging her whenever she lifted money from a wallet. Especially after she’d snitched cash from the baker, Natasha Jones. She was still trying to figure out how to return it.
If that wasn’t bad enough, she’d learned at Meade’s office that Wish had oozed her way through Liberty. Her mother had done a number on Landon Williams, and good. Birdie tugged her coat tighter, but she couldn’t banish the icy realization—she was a thief like her mother and just as loathsome.
“The point is,” Theodora was saying, “folks make mistakes all the time. They can put things straight.”
“You were trying to teach me a lesson.” Shame tweaked her false indignation. “Not that I’m a thief.”
Theodora sucked languidly on her pipe. “Of course not.”
She huffed out a breath. “So Justice took something. So what? Someone who steals isn’t so bad,” she blurted, the words gushing out in a nervous ramble. “I’m not talking about holdup men. They don’t care who they hurt. But your everyday pickpocket? Maybe he’s tried going straight, but he’s not sure how to pull it off. Try sticking to a nine-to-five life after you’ve grown up in a world without alarm clocks. It’s a bitch.”
Theodora cocked her pipe in the corner of her mouth. “See this?” She rubbed her index finger and thumb together. “I’m playing the world’s smallest violin.”
Offended, Birdie shifted in her seat, the sticky feeling returning. “So you aren’t big on sympathy. All things considered, it’s no surprise.”
“No surprise at all.”
“Just admit a guy who steals to get by is light years better than someone who’d kill. I mean, if you kill someone, they’re dead.”
“Obviously.”
“You killed Alice. Did the beast deserve it?” She was firmly on the groundhog’s side. “She ate some carrots and nipped your bushes. Is it enough reason to spill blood?”
“Alice had it coming to her.” A smoke ring popped from Theodora’s lips. “She’d been warned.”
“Great! Clear the woods of wildlife! Just don’t aim your BB gun in my direction. My glass house is just fine, thank you very much.”
“So you say.”
“I’m not a thief!”
Not for much longer, anyway. She’d find the rubies and cash them in. Afterward she’d ditch life on the run. Won’t I? Greasy doubt settled in her stomach, banishing her self-confidence.
Frustrated, she yanked open the passenger door. “Thanks for the ride, and dinner last night. You’ve destroyed my image of squirrels as cute little creatures. Now I’ve got them stuck in my head as a chunky kind of stew.”
With that, she marched toward the door of the restaurant and banged on the glass. The crunching of snow beneath tires, and the Cadillac hydroplaned away into the white.
Finney should’ve answered by now
. Her teeth chattering, Birdie snapped up her wrist. Shit—it wasn’t even seven A.M.
She marched around back with her darkening mood making her strides uneven. Sliding through a thick layer of slush, she stumbled into the hallway. By the time she trudged upstairs, she’d worked herself into a fine fury.
To her surprise, Hugh was camped out in bed with his attention glued to his laptop. He looked like he’d been working there for days. Notepads and balled up sheets of paper were tossed out across the comforter.
He gave no reaction when she stood fuming at the base of the bed. If she’d been an ax murderer, he would’ve blissfully gone to his death typing away on his friggin’ laptop.
Hurling her coat on a chair, she searched for patience and came up empty. “Where the hell have you been?” Not the best greeting, but there was a bottle of Scotch on the nightstand beside a coffee mug and Hugh looked woozy. “I thought you were in a car wreck. I was thinking about calling every hospital in the area. Would it really have put you out to let me know where you were?”
He topped off his mug then sipped. “It’s nice to see you too, Celery,” he replied, flourishing the mug in the air.
“You’re a shit, Hugh.”
“I try. Thanks for noticing.”
“I notice you’re starting your day with eighty-proof.”
“Lay off.” His flannel pants were endearingly rumpled and his tee-shirt showed off his pecs to good effect. Not that it mattered. “If you’re curious, I got back last night.”
“Why didn’t you return my calls?”
“Because you’re not my mother.” He smiled devilishly, then resumed typing.
Fine. So he was playing the mystery card. No skin off her back.
Shivering, she stared at the bed with longing. She’d spent weeks bunking on the apartment’s couch with Old Man Winter rattling the windows. The night at Theodora’s, nestled in a bed she’d swear was stuffed with feathers, made her appreciate the finer things in life. Like a mattress large enough to sprawl out on and a comforter big enough to burrow down in.
Treasure Me Page 21
