Half Past Mourning

by Fleeta Cunningham

  “You aren’t going to turn me over to your uncle and leave, are you?” Alarm and a hint of uncertainty echoed in his query.

  Nina had to suppress the chuckle that bubbled up. “I am, and you’ll be fine,” she told him. “I have some practicing to do myself.” She couldn’t hold back her excitement over her own afternoon plans. “I have to start getting used to driving the Princess.” The look on Peter’s face changed to one of pure envy, though he grinned in appreciation at her elation.

  “Your uncle is letting you drive the Isotta?”

  “Yes, in the antique car rally for the Fourth of July. I can’t wait. I’ve wanted to drive that car practically my whole life.” Nina looked toward the barn doors where Ron Reeves and two of the shop boys were rolling the behemoth out of its lair. “Isn’t she gorgeous? Of course, I’m going to have to get used to that right-hand drive. That’s the first thing. And she has a tricky three-gear transmission, with no power steering, as well.” She waved a dismissive hand toward Peter’s astonished face. “You go on with your practice sessions, and I’ll catch up with you later. I have a date with a Princess, and you just don’t keep royalty waiting.”

  The afternoon was a good one, free for the moment of all the questions, revelations, and fears that had darkened the last few weeks for Nina. The Princess was all she’d hoped for, and though the car proved to be a challenge to drive, it wasn’t an unmanageable one. Nina steered the gleaming machine back through the shop doors and let it roll to a stop under Ron Reeves’ watchful eye.

  “No trouble?” he asked, wiping away a spray of dust from the chrome.

  “Not a bit,” Nina assured him. “You did an incredible job on the finish, too, Ron. The Princess didn’t look one bit better the first time her tires touched the road in 1924 than she does right now.” She knew Ron, an artist at heart, took pride in the work he and the boys in the paint shop did for her uncle.

  “She’s a pretty piece of work, isn’t she?” He put the chamois away and opened the side door for Nina. The whine of an engine caught Ron’s attention, and they both turned. Nina saw the sheen of yellow breezing past the open doors. Ron froze for a second, and she looked back at him. Surprise pulled his normally cheerful face into alarmed lines. She remembered he’d been away for a while, visiting his parents, and wouldn’t have heard the T-Bird had been located.

  “Am I seeing things, or is that Danny’s yellow T‑Bird out there in the lot?”

  Nina put one hand on his arm. “No, that really is Danny’s car.” She gave him a quick update on the events. Ron’s brows wrinkled and his hazel eyes narrowed as if the news distressed him. Nina realized Ron must have known of Danny’s other, darker side. She hurried to assure him she’d learned of it, as well. “It looks like Danny did run out on me, Ron. And maybe sold the car before he left. Or traded it for something less obvious.” She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “It’s all right, Ron. I’ve learned a lot about Danny that’s pretty hard to swallow. I guess you knew more about him than I did, just from working around him. Maybe you were too kind to tell me, but I know now. I’m going to be okay. I’d rather know than go on the way I have been. Sheriff Hayes is really looking, and he’s certain he can find out where Danny is. Whatever he learns will be better than not knowing, even if it’s things I don’t want to hear.”

  Shaking his head as if he still couldn’t trust his eyes, Ron Reeves walked with her back to the parking lot. “Danny and me, we got along, but I can’t say I ever really got close to him. He was a rich kid playing at working, and me, well, if I don’t get a paycheck, I don’t eat. It kinda put a wall between us. I knew Danny had a wild side, and he talked a lot about what he’d do when he cut the apron strings at home. Wanted to get out and see the world, kick up his heels. Never thought he meant to dump you, as well. Maybe he decided to make a clean break with everything, even the car.” Ron shrugged. “Of course, he could buy whatever he wanted. He never had to worry about affording anything; he could always write a check. So if he wanted another car, any car, I guess he’d just order it.”

  Nina heard a tinge of bitterness in Ron’s words. He must have resented Danny, and I never realized it. Ron had been one of the youngsters Eldon Lassiter took under his wing. A couple of years older than Danny, Ron had had a brush or two with the law before he found his niche in the paint shop, restoring classic cars and creating custom paint jobs for individual clients. He was a skilled craftsman, painting anything from classy advertising for a delivery van to fiery flames for a show car. He’d been working since he was just a lanky teenager. Nina could understand how Ron, poor but talented, working for bare necessities, would resent Danny—indulged, wealthy, and taking for granted luxuries others only dreamed of having.

  “How are your folks doing?” she asked to redirect the conversation. Ron had been estranged from his parents when he was running with a wild crowd. She was glad the breach had been healed once he settled down. Health problems had sent his parents to a drier climate, and Ron visited them often to make sure they were comfortable.

  “They’re just great, Nina. Dad’s thinking about taking up golf again, and Mama’s signed up for a ceramics class. They’ll live to be a hundred the way they’re going.”

  “That must be a relief for you.” Nina watched Peter guide the T-Bird around one last course of complex curves and head for the parking area.

  “Want to take a look at the T-Bird?” she asked. “I know you always liked it.”

  Ron turned away. “Thanks, but I need to wipe down the Princess and put her away for the boss.” He gave Nina a strained smile. “Wouldn’t want her to get the sniffles or anything.”

  Nina waved at Peter as he pulled the sports car to a stop at the side of the long shop wall. He looked pleased, a satisfied smile lighting his face, his hair a mass of coppery tufts from the wind. Something about that smile, the tumbled hair, the easy way he sauntered toward her, pulled at her heart. He’d become such a reliable friend since she first saw him in the college parking lot, the first real friend she’d had since Danny.

  She met him at the edge of the building. “Uncle Eldon give you good marks?”

  He draped a casual arm over her shoulders in a companionable hug that left a surprising warmth when he moved a step away. “He said you’d taught me all I was going to learn till I tried out the competition. Experience is all that’s going to make me better now.”

  “That’s what I thought he’d say,” Nina assured him. “You’re going to have a lot of fun getting the fine points down.”

  Peter tapped one long finger on her shoulder. “Looked like you were having a pretty good time with the Isotta. Are you sure you want to risk that gorgeous piece of machinery in a road rally? What if it gets a ding or a scratch? That car has to be worth a fortune.”

  Nina glared at him. “A ding or a scratch? With me behind the wheel? You don’t seem to have much confidence in my abilities, my friend. The car was made to run, not sit up on a pedestal to be admired. Worth a fortune or just a couple of dollars, cars need to be on the road.” Struck by a sudden impulse, Nina stopped short. “Can you read a stopwatch and a compass?”

  Peter folded his arms across his chest. “Well, I was a Boy Scout. Of course I can read a compass, and I was playing with stopwatches before you were in grade school. Why?”

  She chuckled. “It just happens that the road rally requires teams of two, a driver and a navigator. I thought, since you’re so worried about the Princess, maybe you’d like to go along as my navigator, just to be sure the old girl doesn’t pick up a—What was it?—a scratch or a ding?”

  “Me? You want me to make the run in the Princess with you?” Peter’s face lit up and his grin grew wider. “I’d be honored to escort two Princesses to that particular ball, madame. Are you sure your uncle won’t have someone else in mind?”

  Nina waved the question away. “Driver has the final say on who navigates,” she assured him and then added as an afterthought, “Oh, yes, the teams have to be in period cost
ume suitable for the vintage of the car. That’s 1924, in our case. Can you manage something?”

  “Costumes? The roaring ’20s?” Peter gnawed his lower lip. “I haven’t done a costume party since grade school, Nina. You sure we have to?”

  “We have to,” she insisted. “It’s in the rules.” She’d seen the longing look he’d given the elegant red car and the excitement in his eyes when she invited him to the rally. He’d find something to wear.

  “All right,” he agreed at last. “I don’t know what it will be, but I’ll do it. I don’t suppose you could help me out here?”

  “Nope, you’re on your own. I have my own flapper finery to find.” She glanced down at her blue pedal pushers and striped top. “I’m afraid we’ll both be pretty hot and tired by the time we get to the end. The Fourth of July, an open car, and extra layers of clothing equal a lot of heat. But it’s going to be fun.”

  “For a chance to spend the day with two fabulous ladies, I’ll make the sacrifice.” Peter glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s getting late, Nina, and I have final exams to grade. I need to head back.”

  Surprised at the regret she felt at ending the afternoon, the last of her coaching sessions with Peter, Nina agreed. School would be out for her fourth graders at the end of the week, and she had end-of-school duties to complete. “We’ll be having an all-day play day at school on Friday, with a softball game in the morning and hot dogs for lunch. I’m pitching and I’m also in charge of the equipment for the kids. It’s time for me to get the bats ready and see if we still have a few balls around. I’d better get home, as well.”

  “You’re pitching? I’d like to see that.”

  “Pitched for my team in college, I’ll have you know.” Nina flexed her arm. “I was pretty good back then.”

  “A full-blown tomboy, huh?”

  “To my mother’s endless dismay.”

  He held the door for her, and Nina settled into the yellow-and-black seat. For a moment she had a sense of loss, a feeling that a special time had passed. She’d miss the afternoons she’d spent with Peter. He was good company, and he’d helped her deal with the shock of finding Danny’s hidden sides. His good humor and common sense had steadied her as the revelations took their toll. He’d been a good friend, an entertaining companion. Peter slipped into the driver’s seat and headed the convertible down the narrow drive. At the stop sign, he reached over and took her hand.

  “I want to thank you for taking the time to coach me these past few weeks, Nina. I never would have enjoyed this car as much if you and your uncle hadn’t shown me how to make the most of it.”

  “I enjoyed it, too, Peter. It’s been fun to watch you discover how good you are.”

  “What about the search for Danny, Nina? The sheriff came to see me, but I didn’t learn anything. Has he said anything more to you? Any idea where Danny went or how he got away from here?”

  Nina twisted slightly in the seat, tucking one long leg up under her. “No, but for the first time I feel like the sheriff is really looking. If we could just come up with the reason Danny left his car behind, I think we’d be a lot further along.”

  Peter’s russet eyebrows pulled together, puckering his brow. “I think that’s a good place to start. And I heard from Betty Andrews on Monday. The wedding is over, the bride and groom gone, and she’s getting her life back in order. She said if I wanted to come over next Saturday, she’d be glad to poke through her husband’s papers and see if there’s anything to say who sold him the car. She was sorta curious about why I was asking, so I told her about you and about Danny and why it’s important to know how her husband came to buy the Thunderbird.”

  Nina stared down at her blue seersucker pants. She supposed the woman’s curiosity was natural, but Nina hated to be the subject of the inevitable speculation. “She said she’d talk to you?”

  Peter squeezed her hand again. “She said she’d talk to us. Danny’s disappearance and all you’ve been through the past two years worried her. Especially the speculation that Danny was involved with other women. Mrs. Andrews said she’d like for you to come with me. You’d see things I wouldn’t, and maybe you’d ask different questions. Anyway, do you want to come? She lives clear over in Barlow, but I thought we could leave early, have lunch along the way, and get to her place mid-afternoon. Will you come, Nina?”

  Reluctant to relive the pain such a visit would bring, Nina closed her eyes in thought. Painful or not, she had to have answers. “Yes, I think I will, Peter. I think it may be important for me to talk to this woman.” She turned so she was staring out into the receding countryside beyond the windshield. “I probably won’t be able to think of anything you haven’t, but I do want to hear what she says.”

  “It’s going to be hard for you, isn’t it? Still, you may be the only one who can ask the right question or know if the answers have any significance.”

  “I just hope we find some answers and that somewhere down the road we’ll know what happened to Danny.”

  “Have you really considered what we might find, Nina? Really thought about it, I mean? Those answers might be more painful than not knowing.” Peter’s words were burdened with uneasiness.

  Nina drew a sharp breath. “What do you mean? What could be worse than not knowing? You’re seeing something in all this, aren’t you?”

  Peter pulled up in front of her house and shut off the motor. “Nina, you’re such an open and honest person you don’t think of other people doing something deceitful. But you’ve heard from that boy Tinker and from your uncle that Danny did play around with other girls. And men are apt to chase after women they shouldn’t. One way Danny could have left town and not taken his own car is to have gone with someone else, some woman.” He took both her hands in his and she felt the gentle pressure of his concern in his touch. “I don’t want to make this worse for you, sweetheart, but it’s the only thing I can think of that fits all the things we’ve discovered. Forgive me for adding to your pain, but you should think about the possibility. That’s why you must decide if your need to know the truth is powerful enough to stand up to what you might find. Can you stand it if we learn Danny left on your wedding day with another woman?”

  Peter walked her to the porch of the pretty orchid house at the end of Jasmine Street and left. Again an almost tangible curtain of isolation fell around Nina as the T-Bird pulled away. Without conscious thought, she unlocked the door and entered the silent cottage. Late afternoon clouds made the room dim, and the familiar chairs and tables huddled in half shadows. Nina slipped off her driving shoes and padded in sock feet to the armchair by the window. Sinbad, looking up from the chair opposite, stretched, rippled in a tabby flow to the coffee table, and curled into her lap. With one finger she rubbed his tattered ear, her mind drifting in a fog of melancholy contemplation.

  Danny planned it, he worked it all out, and he left. How could he say the things he did that last night, the night before our wedding, and still go away without me? Is Peter right? Was there another woman? Was she there all the time, in the shadows, and I was too blind to see it? She could have been waiting for him, met him when he left the wedding, and then they went away together. They wouldn’t need two cars, and the T-Bird was so noticeable. Did he sell his and drive away in her car? Is that it? I never thought of that possibility, but Peter’s got a point. It fits all the pieces of the puzzle together. But why go through with the wedding to me if he loved somebody else? Why not just leave?

  Nina rubbed the cat’s ears, smoothing the fur without feeling its ragged texture. That night, the night before the wedding, Danny had said so many things, promised her such a wonderful life. The trip to Dallas would only be the first of many roads they’d travel. They’d see the big races, the Indy, maybe even the Grand Prix in a year or two. He’d take her to Paris, to Vienna, around the world. They would look for gems of the automobile world for the Lassiter Museum. Together they’d make it a showcase for the history of cars and their artistry. They’d build a home
, a jewel of a house, just for the two of them. They’d play and love and have their own world within its walls.

  Nina felt a slow tear slide down her cheek. Danny, a dreamer, a playmate, could make her see castles in the clouds. She’d believed him, damn it; she’d believed every word. And all the time there’d been other women, other plans, and other dreams with no place for her in them.

  Sinbad looked up with a baleful glare and kneaded her knee with piercing claws when she stopped stroking his fur. She shifted him in her lap so his head rested on her arm. “It has to be another woman, doesn’t it, tough guy? I might as well face it. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. He sold the car, left with her, and probably stuck the license and pocket knife in the trunk just to break off all ties here. If they went to Florida, or anywhere else, a copy of his birth certificate and a few dollars, possibly a driving test, would get him a new license and a new life. His lawyers would make things work for him, I guess. They get a lot of money for doing what he wants done and not telling anything about it.”

  In the end, he didn’t love me. It was someone else, someone who touched him in ways I didn’t. Some woman with more sex appeal, prettier maybe. Not the small-town schoolteacher who played softball with the kids and liked to see how high she could climb or how hard she could kick the ball or how fast she could make the car get around the track. Maybe that other woman knew things about men that I don’t. Or was exciting in bed. Or was just more of what he wanted than I knew how to be. He loved her, loved her a lot more than he loved me. She must have been someone Marigold would have disapproved of, even more than she did me, or he would have told his mother. Who, who would he have wanted that much? Some sexy siren who knew how to play the game? An older woman who had been around? Some dungaree doll who flattered his ego? Who and why and when did it all start?

  Nina wrapped her arms around the cat and buried her face in his fur. “I loved him, Sinbad. I didn’t know anything else, but I knew I loved him. I wanted to make his life good, to see him break out of that velvet-box world Marigold kept him in.” A tide of pain swept through her, and hot tears poured into the cat’s fur. “If he found that with somebody else, I shouldn’t be so hurt and angry, should I? When you love somebody, you want what makes them happy. If it wasn’t me, then I should be glad Danny did find someone else. I should be glad about that, shouldn’t I, Sinbad? Maybe I will be one day. Maybe, in time, I won’t feel as if something had been ripped out of my soul. I’ll try, Sinbad, I’ll try. It would be so much easier if we hadn’t had that last night, the night before the wedding. Oh, Sinbad, if he just hadn’t lied to me that night, that night of all nights.” The hard sobs came then, wrenching and tearing at the center of her being, till she thought she’d break into pieces from the pain. “That night, our special night. Why did it have to be a lie? Oh, Danny, didn’t it mean anything to you, after all? Didn’t I?”