by Fannie Flagg
“Well, thank you again, and have a good night.”
Usually, if he had stopped someone with a skeleton wrapped up in the backseat, he would have been a lot more suspicious, but he figured the story was so crazy, it had to be true. And besides, he hated to give such a pretty lady a ticket if he didn’t have to.
As they drove away, Brenda looked at Maggie with brand-new admiration. “You’ve got more nerve than God. How did you think up that story?”
“I don’t know, but never mind that; what about the foot?” Maggie asked.
“Forget the foot; we can find the foot in the morning, but … I swear, you deserve an Academy Award for that performance. Honey, Meryl Streep has nothing on you!”
Although she enjoyed the compliment, Maggie figured she had probably offered the officer far more information than she should have. Still, she had seen too many episodes of Cops not to know that if you had something in your car you shouldn’t have, it was best to tell the police before they found it. Of course, she had lied to an officer of the law about it being plastic, but it had kept them out of jail. For the moment, at least.
They managed to get over to the storage bin without another mishap and stashed the skeleton behind a chest of drawers.
After Maggie dropped Brenda off, she couldn’t help but wonder about life. She was certainly not a philosopher by any means, but the fact that the very day she was planning to jump in the river was the exact same day she found out that the house she had loved all of her life was for sale was ironic, to say the least. Of course, finding that skeleton had certainly been a shock. She just hoped that she and Brenda were doing the right thing.
Now, the big question was, who was that dead man and what was he doing in the trunk? Who or what had killed him? And where in the world was his foot? What had they gotten themselves into? She hardly slept all night, worrying about the missing foot. And just when she had been sleeping so well, too.
Another Big Puzzle
Thursday, November 6, 2008
THE NEXT MORNING, MAGGIE WAS BACK UP AT CRESTVIEW BY SEVEN A.M., looking for the foot, and the first place she looked was the bottom of the trunk, where she found a shoe, but no foot. Brenda arrived by a quarter to eight, and together they retraced their steps from the attic to the car and back again. They then looked all over the yard, but no luck. Maggie was worried, but Brenda said, “Look, as long as the foot’s not in the house, we’re all right. Besides, we don’t know for sure if he ever had one. Maybe he was put in there without a foot. And even if it did fall off in the yard, a dog has probably gotten it by now and already buried it. So, we have nothing to worry about.”
Maggie didn’t like the idea of a dog trotting around the neighborhood with a foot, but what could she do? She was relieved when the building inspector’s report was finished. Other than a few minor things, the house was declared to be in great shape. No mold, minimal termite damage, no corrosion in the pipes, no moisture in the walls of the basement.
“They don’t build them like they used to,” the inspector said.
Later that afternoon, after he left, Maggie had to run back down to the river and pick up all the things she had hidden. There was no telling how long it would be until the house sold, and she couldn’t take a chance on anyone finding them. It took her two trips to drag all the things back to the car, and the mud ruined her brand-new Ferragamo shoes in the process. When she got back home, she remembered something else she had to do and called Dottie Figge and told her that the unit in her building she had thought would be for sale would not be available as soon as she had thought.
In keeping with Hazel’s method, Maggie wanted to put Crestview’s best face forward and get it sparkling clean and ready for next week’s showing; the last thing in the world she wanted was for it to linger on the market. Thanks to Mrs. Dalton, the gardens were in great shape; the ivy on the side of the house was green and healthy; the English box hedges that lined the driveway were strong and sturdy. All it really needed was a good cleaning. As she stood on the terrace, Maggie tried to imagine what it must have looked like when it was the only house on the mountain. She knew a Scotsman named Angus Crocker had built it in 1887 for his son, Edward, and that Edward had been lost at sea, but that was about all she knew.
LATER, MAGGIE WAS standing out on Crestview’s front porch, looking at the big door to see if it should be sanded and revarnished. She decided it was fine. All they needed to do was clean the small glass window in the middle and maybe have someone come over and power-wash the stonework in the front. That always freshened up an old house. As she was looking up, she noticed three small words carved in the stone archway over the door: THIRLED NO MORE.
Thirled? What did that mean? She had never heard that word before. Had it been misspelled? Was it supposed to be “Thrilled no more”? But that didn’t make sense. Was it a family name?
When Maggie got back to the office, she asked Ethel and Brenda, but neither knew what “thirled” meant. Then it occurred to her that since the man who had built the house had come from Scotland, maybe it was a Scottish word. Brenda went to her computer, sat down and Googled “Scotland, Thirled.” What popped up surprised both of them, especially Brenda.
Thirled: a term used to describe men who worked in the coal mines of Scotland. A thirled man was bonded for life to a company and wore a metal collar around his neck with the name of his owner stamped upon it. These workers stood deep in the pits and cut coal that their wives and children then carried to the surface in baskets. They were paid two shillings and sixpence (sixty cents) for twelve hours of work, and out of that, they paid for their own keep and were not supplied with food, shelter, or medical care. To survive, many families were forced to work all day and into the night in the freezing and dirty coal mines of Scotland. Thirled men were serfs, and if one removed his brass collar and ran away, he was captured by the sheriff and returned to his owner. His punishment was by the lash. He was punished for having stolen himself and his services from his master. This was the law in Scotland as late as 1799.
Brenda, who had majored in history, had never read anything about this before and said, “No wonder the poor man was happy to be thirled no more.”
A Crocker Family History
WHAT MOST PEOPLE HADN’T KNOWN WAS THAT THE CROCKER family had descended from a long line of thirled men, and even after the practice had ended in 1799, in the ensuing years, they had not fared much better.
Angus Crocker had been cold, dirty, and hungry much of his life, one of twelve children raised in a filthy hovel that sat outside the coal mine where his father worked, barely scratching out a living. Angus had been a good student, but just like his brothers, when he was ten, he had been sent down into the mines. A boy of his class, with no money, had no hope of ever rising higher than a miner, but when Angus was fifteen, fate stepped in and changed his life. In 1863, during the Civil War in America, there was a shortage of men to work the mines of Pennsylvania, and when a letter was posted that a mining company there was hiring and paying good wages, Angus jumped at the chance. He worked the night shift in the coal mines outside of Pittsburgh and sent himself through school during the day. Within eight years, he had worked himself up to mine boss, then to shop foreman, then to superintendant. Ambitious and smart, he caught the eye of a few men at the top. Impressed by Angus’s ability to strike a bargain and control his men, they promoted him to a management position, and he was soon traveling to and from Scotland to negotiate the company’s interests there. Kicked up in social status, he was on one of these trips to Edinburgh when he met and married Edwina Sperry, the only child of the industrialist James Edward Sperry. It was a good match. By law, upon her father’s death, Angus would have complete control of his wife’s inheritance and of all the Sperry mines in Scotland. As a dutiful son-in-law, he gave up his job in America and worked exclusively for his father-in-law. Thirteen years later, after the father died, he and his wife moved into the large family home in Edinburgh, and Angus Crocker took over th
e running of the mines. With the father’s money and Angus’s ability, the Crocker-Sperry mines soon became the biggest producers of coal in the country.
At age thirty-nine, Edwina Sperry-Crocker was pregnant for the first time, and Angus was deeply relieved. At last, there would be an heir with both Sperry and Crocker blood flowing in his veins. For Angus, it meant another large step away from the dirty coal mines of his youth. To be sure that everything went well, he hired a private nurse to attend to his wife’s every need in her last important weeks of pregnancy.
When the day finally arrived, the family doctor was called to the home, and Angus paced the floor downstairs, waiting for news. Edwina was frail, but after a long, hard labor, the young nurse, wanting to please her wealthy employer, rushed to the upstairs landing and announced to Angus that his wife had just given birth to twins. He had a son and a daughter! Twins had not been expected, but all Angus cared about was that he had a son, whose name would be Edward. He needed a son to carry on the Crocker-Sperry name and protect the business. Now no one, not even his grimy, greedy brothers and sisters, always looking for a handout, could ever dare steal what was rightfully his. He had an heir! Jubilant, Angus immediately retired to his study, poured a whiskey, and started planning the boy’s future. Tomorrow, he would send for his lawyer and change his will; everything he owned would now go to his son. In the unlikely event that he were to die before the boy came of age, arrangements would be made for a generous monthly allowance for his wife and the girl, but the day the boy turned eighteen, everything, the mines, the properties, would be his son’s to pass on to his own son after him.
Later, when he left Scotland and built his new home in America, Angus stood and watched with great pride as the stonemason carved THIRLED NO MORE above the entrance.
A Lost Object
Saturday, November 8, 2008
MAGGIE WAS ANXIOUS TO GET CRESTVIEW ON THE MARKET AS soon as possible, and she had hired Griggs Roofing, the company they always used, to inspect the slate roof. On Saturday morning, when Maggie drove up to the house, she saw that Mr. Griggs was already up on the roof working, and his ten-year-old son, Warren, was out on the front porch. He was a sweet little boy, and Maggie was happy to see him. As she headed up the stairs, she could see that he was busy playing with something. She assumed it was a toy or a ball, until she got a closer look, and then she almost fainted. The object he was scooting all around the stone floor was the missing foot!
Oh, Lord. She had to be very careful how she handled this, so as not to alarm him. She casually walked over and said, “Hi there, Warren.”
He held the foot up and shook it at her. “Hey, look what I just found! It’s a foot; it’s got toes and everything!” He rattled it at her again.
“Oh, yes, I can see that. Where did you find it, honey?” she asked, trying to remain as calm as possible.
“Down there in the bushes,” he said, pointing at the boxwood hedge. “I’m gonna take it to school on Monday. I think it’s a real dead person’s foot.”
Maggie smiled at him. “I know it looks real, but it’s not.”
Warren shook the foot again. “It looks like a real foot to me.”
“No, darling, it’s much too small to belong to a real person.”
He held it up and looked at it. “Are you sure?”
“Oh yes. You’ve heard of a lucky rabbit’s foot, haven’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, what you found is a lucky monkey’s foot.”
“A monkey foot?”
“That’s right. The lady who used to live here lost it when she was moving out, and she’ll be so happy you found it. I know she’ll want me to give you twenty-five dollars as a reward. Isn’t that wonderful? Give it to me, and I’ll take it to her right now and bring you back your reward, okay?”
Warren still seemed a little reluctant to hand over the foot, so Maggie added, “Why, she might even give you thirty dollars!” She had been prepared to go as high as fifty, but luckily, Warren settled for thirty.
As she drove back across town with the foot in her purse, Maggie was horrified. What was her life becoming? Just three days ago, she had stolen a dead body and lied to the police, and she had just shamelessly bribed an innocent child. Once you took that first criminal step, it was all downhill from there.
Brenda was waiting for her in front of the storage unit, and when she pulled up, Brenda opened the car door and got in.
“Where is it?” Brenda asked, looking around to see if anyone was watching.
Maggie opened her purse. “It’s in here,” she said, looking around as well. “Oh Lord, I feel just like we’re doing some kind of dope deal.”
Brenda took the foot out and put it in a small paper sack from Baskin-Robbins. “Got it.” As she climbed out of the car, Brenda added, “I just hope it’s the right foot.” And she walked away.
Maggie called after her, “What do you mean, ‘the right foot’?”
But Brenda didn’t hear her. Oh great, Maggie thought, now she was going to have to worry about that. Did she mean the right foot as opposed to the left foot? Or did she mean the right foot for that particular skeleton? Oh God, she was being punished for stealing that listing from another agent; she just knew it. Finally, Brenda came back out and walked over with a strange look on her face.
“Well?” asked Maggie. “Was it the right one?”
“The right foot?”
“Yes …”
“No, it was the left foot.”
“What? It can’t have two left feet.”
“No … it was the right foot, but it was the left foot. Anyhow, I hate to tell you this, but a toe is missing.”
“What? What toe?”
“The little toe. Didn’t you count the toes before you put it in your purse?”
“Nooo, I didn’t count the toes! Oh, Lord.”
“Well, just calm down, and look in your purse; maybe it got caught on something …”
“Dear God in heaven.” Here she was in broad daylight, searching for a dead stranger’s little toe in the bottom of her purse. But after a minute, she found it and handed it to Brenda. She would never be able to use that purse again, and it was brand-new. But at least they had all the parts in one place.
The Man on the Wall
Monday, November 10, 2008
ON MONDAY MORNING, THE CLEANING CREW MAGGIE HAD HIRED was crawling all over the house, so when Brenda came in after lunch with all the comparables in the area for them to go over, they went into the library to get away from the noise. Brenda sat down at the desk and opened her briefcase. “Did you know that eight out of ten of the houses that sold last year were Babs’s listings?”
“I’m not surprised,” said Maggie.
“How does she do it? She’s like a shark: eat and swim, eat and swim.”
As Brenda was busy getting all the papers in order, Maggie happened to glance over her shoulder at the oil portrait hanging above the fireplace. She had seen it several times before, but this was the first time she realized that the man in the portrait was dressed in the same formal Scottish kilt as the skeleton.
“Oh, my God! Brenda, look.”
Brenda looked up. “What?”
“Just turn around; look. Is that what I think it is?”
Brenda looked.
Brenda said nothing, but she stood up and went over and peered more closely. “It’s the same outfit, all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. Right down to the buckle on the sash.” Brenda turned to Maggie with wide eyes. “Honey, we’ve got Mr. Edward Crocker himself over in storage.”
“But it can’t be him. Mrs. Dalton said he had been lost at sea; they never found him.”
“Well, I can’t help that; the gold plaque right here says ‘Edward Crocker,’ and I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to get out of here. Bones is one thing, but looking at that man when he was alive is another!”
Maggie followed Brenda out of the room, sti
ll wondering how a man said to be lost at sea could wind up in a trunk. What next?
Later that afternoon, after Brenda left, Maggie went back into the library and looked at the portrait again. The man in the portrait, who appeared to be at least in his forties, had clear blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and sandy-colored hair and was standing by a tree, with a golf club, in a stiff formal pose. Although he was gazing off into the distance, as she looked closer at the face, she saw something about his expression that intrigued her, a slight softness around the eyes. All she knew about Edward Crocker was what Mrs. Dalton had told her and the things she had read about him in school: that he had been a rich and powerful iron, coal, and steel man and had done a lot for the city. Of course, she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure the skeleton in the trunk was Edward Crocker, but still, there was something in his eyes that made her want to know more about him. “Who was he?” she wondered.
Edward Crocker Begins
1884
FROM THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH, NURSE LETTIE ROSS NEVER LEFT young Edward Crocker’s side. Although she was still very young and pretty, she had no time for suitors. She was on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and slept in his room at night. Angus Crocker was terrified of kidnappers. There were ruffians down in the valley that would do anything for money.
As a consequence of his father’s mistrust of strangers, Edward played no games with other boys and mostly stayed indoors. Edward took after his mother’s side and was delicate and prone to colds and fevers, but even so, Angus refused to let Nurse Lettie call in a doctor. He no longer trusted doctors. He had come through many childhood illnesses; so would Edward.
But Lettie, being a trained nurse, did believe in doctors. Her own brother back home in Scotland was studying to become a physician. What Angus didn’t know was that Lettie Ross, passing the child off as her daughter, had dressed little Edward as a girl, and they had visited many a doctor in Birmingham over the years. She would take no chances while typhoid and yellow fever ran so rampant. She had made a secret vow to God that nothing would ever harm this child in her care, and if the child needed medicine, Angus Crocker be damned, the child would have medicine. But other than those occasional visits to doctors and carefully supervised outings to visit the Crocker-Sperry mines and steel mills, Lettie and Edward seldom left the grounds of Crestview. It wasn’t too uncommon. In the rarefied world of the wealthy, in the days of private tutors and private nannies, everything was brought up the mountain to Edward. Private barbers cut his hair; clothes were brought to the home and picked out for him by Nurse Ross. His schooling was conducted at home. He had everything a boy could want, except friends his own age and a loving father. The only real interest Angus seemed to have in Edward was to teach him the business so he would be prepared to take over one day. With no friends and a father who was absent most of the time, Edward’s entire world revolved around Lettie Ross. And for Lettie, who was still young enough to miss her brothers and sisters, Edward was her only companion. They played together, made up games, and had fun together. But then one day, when Edward came of a certain age, they suddenly grew even closer. Edward and Lettie Ross had a sexual secret, a secret that must never be told.
