by Mary Bowers
“Who is this?” I asked, still looking at the cat.
“Isn’t she beautiful? She’s our new shop cat. She waltzed in with me this morning. Just showed up at the door and waited for me to unlock it for her. Then she strolled in in front of me, like she owned the place.”
Florence was looking pleased, as if this cat and its imperious attitude were adorable somehow.
“What does Wicked think about that?” I asked.
Wicked is a tuxedoed domestic short-hair cat who thinks he owns the joint. Florence adopted him years ago, and she’s always brought him into the shop with her. He’s a good boy with humans, but will not tolerate other animals.
“Oh, Wicked doesn’t mind,” she said as if that wasn’t surprising. She puttered off to the room that we call “the attic,” which is really just a box room at the top of some enclosed stairs, and left me staring at the animal on the floor. Florence is an elderly lady and gets rattled easily, so I didn’t fire off a stream of questions at her, but I was extremely curious. Wicked doesn’t mind? Wicked owned Girlfriend’s. Anybody else on four legs was driven out of the place by a wild, black blur, sometimes on top of their owner’s head.
I found myself staring into the new cat’s eyes again. She hadn’t moved.
“What are you going to call her?” I asked Florence.
“Her name is Basket.”
I turned and stared at the wall enclosing the stairs. “Did you say Bastet?” I asked, emphasizing the second syllable, as Vesta had pronounced it.
“Basket,” she corrected, first syllable emphasized, as she came down and gazed affectionately at the strange animal. “Like a basket of trouble. Only I don’t think she’s going to be trouble. She’s very well-behaved. Noble, even.”
“Where did you get that name?”
Florence considered, looking at the ceiling. “It just came to me. Popped into my head right away, as soon as I saw her. I like it.”
Then she turned and walked back to the showroom, leaving me alone with a possible goddess.
I have to admit that as the day had worn on, that morning’s events had begun to seem more and more unbelievable. My interrupted dream of flying over the ocean seemed much more real than the grey hours that had followed. I had put the vision of Vesta away in a box at the back of my mind, and though I wasn’t sure what it meant, I decided to deal with it later. Or never. Probably never.
Now I was getting dragged back to that moment in the chill, misty dawn when I’d looked into the depot and seen these eyes staring back at me. Suddenly I was surrounded by the living memory of that moment; I could even smell the dankness of the place, and hear the distressed little voices of the kittens.
I had to take a moment to compose myself. Then I said, “Hello,” with a nonchalant dip of my head.
She immediately lost interest in me, gazing toward the show room, as if something better was going on in there.
Wicked strolled in and hopped up onto the shipping desk.
I relaxed and crossed my arms. Somehow I was hoping this new cat was headed for a take-down, thus proving that she was just, you know, a cat. Then I could put away the dreams of the morning and leave the whole thing alone. Take it out on Halloween, maybe, and scare the little kids with it. When it came to protecting his territory, Wicked was always on the job. If Wicked could take her out, she was no goddess.
I waited.
And . . . and . . . no.
“Basket” glanced once over her elegant shoulder, then ignored Wicked altogether. Elaborately.
I looked back at Wicked.
“Well? Is this your shop or is it not your shop?”
Wicked blinked his golden eyes at me, then started washing his forepaw.
A symbolic cleansing for the benefit of the goddess, no doubt. At that moment, when I was willing Wicked to show this gate-crasher how we take care of business downtown, he flopped back on his right hip, stretched out his left leg, and began grooming himself in a way that would be embarrassing in any lady’s presence, let alone a visitor from ancient Egypt.
“Classy,” I told him.
Then I froze at a touch on my arm. Looking down I saw the cat Basket touching me with one of her paws. I hadn’t seen her move, though she was a good six feet away from where I’d seen her last and had somehow materialized on top of some stacked boxes just beside me.
She gazed at me with an eye contact that was deeply intelligent, almost human. Her eyes didn’t bore into me. Instead, they held me, and I felt her in my mind, like a flood of green light, like glimpses of another time and place where there was strange music to be heard and grand movement all around me.
Then she turned away and I was released. The strange music, just beyond reach, faded away before I could take hold of it. I felt exhausted and confused, and tried to take control of my own thoughts again.
Could it be?
If she was a goddess, she wasn’t a very demanding one. After apparently searching my mind, she lost interest, jumped lightly down from the boxes and walked away with her tail in the air, pushing through the curtains that separated the back room from the showroom. Wicked followed her, after throwing me a grin that looked suspiciously derisive, and there I was alone, feeling left behind. Then I realized that I could hear Carlene and Sheena, my two volunteers, talking in the shop. They’d been waiting for me. Shaking my head, annoyed with myself, I went in and got the expedition to Cadbury House organized.
After all, I was in charge here.
Chapter 5
“You never met Vesta?” I said, swinging my Ford Escape onto State Route A1A.
Carlene was riding shotgun with me; Sheena and the boyfriend – his name turned out to be Kevin – were following us. I’d given Sheena directions to Cadbury House so they’d get there if my Chicago-style driving left him in the dust somewhere. The road skimmed along beside the beach, and there were postcard glimpses of the Atlantic beyond the dune, and very little traffic.
Checking my rear-view mirror from time to time, I saw that Kevin could keep up just fine. Trust a Southern boy.
“I saw Miss Vesta around town, like everybody else, but we were never introduced,” Carlene said. “She dinged somebody’s car a few weeks ago, right in front of Perks, then merrily drove away.”
“She was driving? Did the other car’s owner see?”
“Yeah. It was a vintage bonger, and it was hard to tell which ding was Miss Vesta’s, so the guy just shrugged it off. The Huntington family is pretty well liked around here. If it’d been anybody else . . . anyway, somebody should’ve taken the car keys away from her years ago.”
“It hasn’t been that long since I’ve talked to her. She seemed okay to me, but I’m surprised she was driving.”
“Oh, she was all right, I guess. Just, you know, old. Tended to take long, rambling trips down memory lane. While she was in Perks she was going on about some ancient pharaoh while Ronnie was trying to serve her. I mean the place was slammed, line out the door, Ronnie short-handed because some kid she hired went surfing instead of showing up for work, and there Vesta was doing everything but the walk-like-an-Egyptian thing right there at the counter. I think Ronnie had told her she had a nice necklace on. The Bird of Death or something.”
“Nekhbet?”
She looked away from the coastal scenery to stare at me. “Whatever. You got the lecture too?”
I sighed. “Yes, I, too, have complimented Vesta on her jewelry.”
“Freakin’ bore. And I really needed my Café Americano. I’m so addicted to caffeine I get a headache . . . .”
She chattered on about the horrors of long lines in coffee shops and the demon drug, caffeine. I looked in the rearview mirror again, and there were Kevin and Sheena, right on my bumper, making the turn onto the dirt road that wound through the overgrown jungle of the Cadbury estate. It was over three miles from the turnoff on the main road to the point where you could see the house itself, and because of the narrow dirt road, you had to go about fifteen miles per hour. T
he drive threaded through old-growth live oaks and thick patches of coastal scrub, all tangled and interwoven with a lattice of vines. Shafts of sunlight struck down to the ground between the branches and occasionally hit me in the eye, but mostly the drive was shaded. Finally the road straightened out and led directly to the front of the long, low house. Behind it was the wide expanse of the river with a little dot of an island just offshore where an egret was landing.
Kevin’s truck squealed to a stop behind me, and in a flurry of slamming car doors, we had arrived. I gave him a good looking-over for the first time, and tried to like him for Sheena’s sake. He was too old for her, I thought right away, maybe 40 to her 28, and he had a slightly underweight, wasted look. Still, he was here to help, and I brushed off my first impression as quickly as it formed. Books have many covers.
The heat of the July afternoon was smothering. I’d picked up iced coffees before we set out, and the plastic cup in my hand immediately started to sweat, giving me cold condensation to run across the back of my neck. I stood still and listened to the quiet of the place.
Apparently, none of my helpers had gotten this close to Cadbury House before, and I could see that they were all curious. They stood in the driveway and gazed.
“Big,” said Kevin, looking from one end of the house to the other.
“Oh my,” said Sheena.
“Question,” Carlene said, raising an index finger. “If the folks living here are named Huntington, why is it called Cadbury House?”
“The house belonged to Vesta’s family,” I explained. “The archeologist ancestor is the one who actually built it. His name was Kingsley Danvers Cadbury. When Vesta inherited the house she was already a widow, and her son Graeme was a grown man. She moved in, but as you can see, it’s kind of isolated out here. When she started getting older, Graeme couldn’t persuade her to move, so he brought his wife and moved in with her so he could take care of her. Now, I suppose, the house is theirs.”
“But it was built by this archeologist? King whatever --?”
“Kingsley Danvers Cadbury.”
“Any chance there are real Egyptian relics in the house?”
I gave her a sideways glance. “Only in our dreams, Carlene.”
“So did everybody call him King Cadbury?” she asked with a smirk.
“Actually, I think they called him Waffles,” I said vaguely, not knowing the reason he had a Wodehousian nickname. All the upper-crusties from that era seemed to have a real name fit for royalty and a nickname fit for a gerbil.
As always, I was entranced by the space, solitude, and softly worn elegance of Cadbury House. It was rugged and elegant at the same time. The dark brown Adirondack-style building had a massive roof coming down from a high peak to cover a deep veranda that ran all the way around the house. It was a setting fit for a Regency heroine, pining away for her lost love and writing tragic poetry.
It was a creation of the landscape around it, seeming to rise organically out of the ancient groves of live oaks. There was more glass than wall to the house itself, with tall French doors lined up all the way round, giving a dim view of shapes inside and blindingly backlit by the sun on the other side of the house. The veranda was large enough to accommodate rows of wooden chairs and still leave room for the musicians who played at Vesta’s parties.
“Bet we’re going to get some good loot in there,” Carlene said, wiggling her eyebrows at me.
“Bet we are,” I said. “You guys wait here. I’ll go knock.”
But as I turned I saw Diana Huntington floating down the steps of the veranda toward us, a vision of grace and beauty in diaphanous batik tied around a wet, black bathing suit.
“Get that truck out of my driveway,” she yelled.
Startled, we stood like fools and gaped at the Venus with the voice of a pro wrestler.
“Um, Diana?” I ventured. I’m usually pretty poised, but, wow.
“You heard me,” she yelled, still loud though she was standing right in front of us now. “Move it!”
“I don’t know if you remember me,” I said as if she weren’t screaming in my face. “I’m Taylor Verone, from Orphans of the Storm. The shelter?”
“I know who you are. We met at that fundraiser thing Vesta threw.” She was still screaming. “Who told you to troop up to front of the house and block the driveway like this? The stuff is over there. In the old servants’ quarters. I had it moved out of the house this morning. Pull your trucks over behind that building and get them out of my sight. Where are the others?”
I actually looked around. “Others?”
She rolled her eyes and retied the wrap, surveying us grimly. “Three women and him?” Kevin straightened up and tried to look manly. “You’re going to need more help,” she said, turning to reenter the house. “I’ll meet you over there.”
We were dismissed, apparently. We gazed at one another in silent wonder.
“That,” Kevin remarked, “is not a nice lady.”
Chapter 6
Kevin had said a mouthful. He probably should have dropped the “nice” part.
In the passion of the moment, Diana had gestured wildly to the left of the house where nothing much was visible, but not wanting to bring her flaming out of the house again, we got back into our vehicles and drove slowly in the direction she’d indicated. Sure enough, set back at that side of the house and sharing the veranda was a building with a row of doors reminiscent of the old cracker-box motels of yesteryear. There was a breezeway about eight feet wide between the main house and this boxy building, and peeking in the windows, we saw that the near portion of it was the old kitchen. There were doors directly facing one another on the kitchen and the house, and I realized that this was how food was brought to the Cadbury table from the hot kitchen in the old days. Beyond the kitchen there was a back-to-back double row of servants’ quarters, one side facing north and the other south.
As we got out of our cars again, Diana popped out of one of the cabin doors and said, “In here.”
The volunteers kept behind me as we climbed the steps of the veranda. The breezeway was just that – a tunnel for what little wind there was, and the breeze was heavenly, but we weren’t going to be working there. The old cabin-quarters of the servants were bound to be sweatboxes, and we left the breezeway with regret. When we were in front of her, Diana continued, “And in there and in there,” gesturing at the next two doors down the line. “I’ll leave you to it, but don’t leave without checking with me, and don’t make a mess.”
She exited, stage right.
We made our way to the dusty old cabins and stood in the doorways, immobilized. Inside was a jumble of steamer trunks, furniture large and small, old clothing, old boxes, everything heaped and stacked together. I found myself staring at a candelabrum that had been set on top of a lady’s vanity when I was distracted by an electronic beep. Looking to the next cabin door down the line, I saw Kevin putting a cell phone to his ear.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Calling my buddy,” he said. “Lady, we’re gonna need another man here, and I think we’re gonna need another truck.” Then he turned away and said, “Hey, Dusty, ya doin’ anything right now?” into the phone.
“Bless the boy,” Carlene said.
“Amen,” Sheena added on the beat.
“Courage, troops,” I told them, and entered the first cabin.
I made an inventory as we went along. It was hot, sweaty work. The old servants’ rooms had never been air conditioned. On a Florida afternoon in July, they were sweltering, and the air inside them tasted like dust. Each room had a door and a window, but they were on the same wall, next to one another, giving no cross-ventilation. My volunteers worked like heroes, sorting, packing, lifting, toting, sneezing and joking, making the heat and the back-breaking work almost bearable.
After an hour or so, Kevin and Dusty had taken a load of furniture pieces to Girlfriend’s, then come back for more. We needed to get things like chairs, c
offee tables and a sideboard out of our way just so we could see what else we had.
Apparently, every item that would remind Diana of Vesta had been ejected from the house within hours of the old lady’s death. I got the impression that Diana had been stewing for years, walking around the house and thinking, “And this is going to go, and this and this . . . .”
All Vesta’s little treasures were evicted. Heaps of jewelry, a china table service I remembered from Vesta’s parties, a silver tea service, hat boxes, possibly containing hats, old-fashioned crocheted runners and antimacassars, lamps, armchairs – I had no idea how we were going to make sense of it all, but I wasn’t going to have a discussion with Diana. We’d scoop it all up and sort it out back at the shop.
I rubbed the silver of the tea service, idly thinking of magic genies, and wondering if it were really valuable. I also wondered how Vesta’s housekeeper, Myrtle, had felt about the clean sweep Diana was making. Myrtle was the sister of my faithful Florence, and though she lived with the Huntingtons and not in town with Florence, I’d met her once or twice. She wasn’t the most cheerful person in the world, but like Florence, she was faithful. It must be breaking her heart to see all of Vesta’s things being swept out the house to be sold to strangers.
I walked to the middle one of the three cabins and saw Sheena kneeling on the floor, smoothing her fingers along an elbow-length white glove.
“Where must she have worn this?” she said softly. “Dances, parties, when she ‘came out,’ like they used to say. Whose hands did these gloves hold while she danced?”
I smiled. Pretty little Sheena, with her long yellow hair and her mild blue eyes and her sweet imagination. Sheena, who hadn’t known Vesta, but still thought of her as a person, someone with an interesting life, in a way that Diana apparently never had. I wondered suddenly whether Diana had kept a souvenir of her mother-in-law and knew immediately that she hadn’t.
