by Gayle Leeson
A few people were still clustered closer to the barn with their picnic baskets or were gathering their belongings as the line of cars threaded their way through the field to park. Volunteers with orange vests and flashlight wands were in charge of properly spacing out the vehicles.
I was glad I was wearing my sneakers when we had to trek through the grass to the barn. I hoped the grass wouldn’t stain my shoes. But I put that thought aside as I took Ryan’s hand and headed toward the lights, bluegrass music, and shouted conversations.
There were strings of white lights wound around the high rafters. Additional lighting was provided by lanterns on the round tables surrounding the dance floor. At one of those tables sat Mom and Aunt Bess.
“Well, don’t y’all look pretty?” Aunt Bess smiled up at us.
“And don’t you look beautiful?” I asked. Aunt Bess had gussied herself up in a red, white, and blue striped dress, wore a U.S. flag pin, and had her hair tightly curled. She even had on a touch of red lipstick.
Aunt Bess patted her hair and tried to look as if the compliment was completely unexpected.
“Mom, you look great too.” And she did. She wore a green short-sleeved summer sweater and white linen slacks.
I introduced the two of them to Ryan.
“I’m meeting a beau myself this evening,” Aunt Bess said.
My eyes widened and I nearly got whiplash turning back to look at Mom for confirmation. She merely rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Are you serious?” I squeaked.
“Yes, Amy, I am. You’re not the only one who can still manage to corral a fellow.” Aunt Bess smiled at Ryan. “I met this gentleman on the Internet—a site about fishing for a mate or hooking someone or something. It had a fishing theme. They’re having a free weekend, and I made good use of my time this morning.”
“Oh, heavens.” I placed my hand on my chest. Aunt Bess was trolling dating sites now.
“He should’ve been here by now. Of course, if he doesn’t show, he’ll never know what a prize he missed out on. Am I right?”
“Y-yes, ma’am,” I said. “Where’s Renee?”
“She isn’t here yet either,” Mom said.
“Would you like to dance?” Ryan asked softly.
“More than you could possibly know.” With relief, I allowed Ryan to lead me to the dance floor.
They had just started playing a slow song—“Tennessee Waltz”—and I placed my arms around Ryan’s neck. He encircled my waist, and we began to dance.
“You didn’t exaggerate about Aunt Bess,” he murmured.
“Did you think I had?”
He laughed softly. “I admit to thinking maybe you’d embellished those stories about her.”
“And now you see what I’m dealing with. Or rather, what Mom deals with.” I shook my head.
I spotted Jackie and Roger coming through the door. They didn’t exactly look happy, but at least they were here. That was something. Maybe they had called a truce for the time being.
After the song ended, I was about to suggest that Ryan and I go over and say hello to Roger and Jackie when Sarah and her boyfriend, John, approached us. Ryan and John had gone to high school together.
Sarah gave me a hug and told me I looked cute. I returned the compliment. She wore a white maxi dress, gold thong sandals, and gold earrings. I imagined her to be the modern-day equivalent of Cleopatra.
Sarah and I had been friends all our lives. She was a legal secretary, and John was on holiday break from the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia. They’d been dating since their junior year of high school.
“Let’s get some food,” John suggested.
The four of us went over to the buffet. There were pork ribs, fried chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, a variety of salads—Cobb, potato, pasta, fruit—and every kind of dessert you could imagine. We loaded our plates and then found an empty table.
As we ate and talked, I noticed an attractive man talking to Mom. As they talked, Aunt Bess appeared to get angry and leave. Mom burst out laughing. I simply had to know what was going on. “Would you guys excuse me for just one second?”
I hurried over to Mom. “Is everything okay? I just saw Aunt Bess storm out.”
“Yeah, she’s waiting for me in the car.” She turned to the tall man, who was much closer to Mom’s age than Aunt Bess’s. “This is Mark. He was here to meet Bess.”
“Yes, unfortunately, the Bess I met online looked exactly like Jenna,” he said.
I frowned. “Talk about your false advertising.”
“I’d better go and take her home,” Mom said.
“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Mark said. “Could I . . . could I call . . .”
“I’m sure we’ll see each other around town,” Mom said. She kissed my cheek and whispered that she’d talk with me tomorrow.
I knew how Mom felt about online dating, but Mark was a nice-looking guy and he seemed intelligent and kind. Of course, one never knew. Anyone could be charming for a few minutes. And the man had fallen for Aunt Bess’s “catfishing.”
As Mom turned to leave, Renee burst through the door. She was sloppily dressed in shorts, a ripped T-shirt, and flip-flops. And she was clearly drunk.
“What’s the deal? Why-dja start the party without me?” She staggered over to Mom. “Whass new, cuz? And why’s Mom in the car pouting ’bout some guy?”
“Um . . . she’s upset,” Mom said. “Why don’t you and I take her home?”
“Who upset my mom?” She pointed to the man still standing at Mom’s right. “Was it you? Huh? Was it?”
Jackie came up and tried to take her mother by the arm. Renee shook her off.
“No! I wanna know! Was it you who upset my mom?” she cried.
Mark took a deep breath. “Yes, I suppose it was. I thought she was someone else.”
“Well, who’d you think she was?” Renee demanded.
“That doesn’t matter,” Mom said. “We need to get her home.”
“Are you s’posed to be her date for the evening?” Renee put her hands on her hips and glared up at Mark.
“I . . . I . . .” He looked at Mom helplessly. “Jenna, I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “Renee, I think everybody will feel better once we get you and Aunt Bess home.”
“I have ev-every right to be here, and so does she! I’m going out there and drag her back inna this barn if I have to.” She pointed at Mark. “And you’re going to dance with her!”
“You’re not doing anything,” Jackie told Renee with icy determination. “I’m taking you back to Aunt Bess’s house right now, and you’re going to stay there until you sober up.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” She swayed and had to latch on to Jackie’s arm to regain her balance.
“You’ll do exactly as I say, or I’ll have you arrested.”
Something in Jackie’s eyes caused her mother to back down. “Fine. I’ll leave.”
“No. I’m taking you home. I won’t have you endangering everybody else on the road.” Jackie glanced over her shoulder at Roger. “See why I don’t want her to know anything about my personal life?”
Gripping her mother’s arm, she headed for the door.
“Jackie, wait!” Roger called.
I placed my hand lightly on his shoulder. “Just let her go. She’s embarrassed, and she wants to handle this by herself.”
He nodded.
“Give her some time and then call her or drop by her apartment and check on her,” I said. “And take ice cream. Rocky road.”
I turned, unaware that Ryan, Sarah, and John had come up behind me.
“Why don’t you come on over to our table?” Sarah asked Roger.
He shook his head. “Nah. I think I should go. Y’all have a good night.”
/> “Do you still want to stay?” Ryan asked me. “If you want to go and see if Jackie and the rest of your family is all right, I understand.”
“No. They’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s like I told Roger, they need some time to work all this out themselves. I’ll see them tomorrow.”
Chapter 7
On Sunday afternoon, Jackie and I were in the kitchen making lunch for Mom and Aunt Bess . . . and Renee, I supposed, if she made an appearance. I knew from Jackie that she’d brought her mom here last night and had left her in the guest room. But Mom quietly told me that although she’d opened the door to check on Renee once or twice, the woman was out of it.
I was shredding cabbage for coleslaw while Jackie breaded catfish and put it in the skillet to fry. If the smell of frying catfish didn’t wake Renee up, I suspected nothing would. Jackie was being awfully quiet, so I tried to draw her out.
“How are you today?”
“Better than I was yesterday,” she said.
I wanted to tell her that I knew last night had been terrible for her. How humiliating to have her mother come into the dance behaving that way! And I wished I could reassure her that Renee’s actions were certainly no reflection on Jackie. But I didn’t know how to do any of that tactfully, so I simply waited until she was ready to open up.
“Roger came by my apartment last night,” she said. “He told me he’d wanted to come after me right away but that you encouraged him to wait and give me some time to myself first. Thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome. Did he bring the rocky road?”
She smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact, he did. And he said he completely understood now why I’d tried to keep our relationship from my mom. I guess he never realized how bad she could get.”
“No, none of our friends did. You did a pretty brilliant job of hiding that from everyone except me, Aunt Bess, and Mom while you were growing up.”
“Poor Granny. She made excuses for Renee all the way home last night.”
“She always will,” I said softly. “She doesn’t know how else to cope. If she confronts Renee about her behavior, Aunt Bess is afraid she’ll drive her daughter away again . . . maybe for good.”
“I wish she would go away for good.” Jackie’s lips tightened.
You don’t mean that. You wish she’d get her act together and be the mother you deserve . . . the daughter Aunt Bess needs her to be.
I kept my sentiments to myself.
• • •
I was relieved to get back home. Things had been tense at the big house today. Aunt Bess was withdrawn, Mom was wary, and Jackie was hurt but trying to hide the pain with anger. Renee finally put in an appearance as we were finishing up lunch. She wandered through the dining room, mumbled a hello, and then went into the kitchen. She didn’t come back out, and when Mom and I took the dishes to the kitchen to be washed, we realized she was gone. We had no idea if she’d gone out the door or had simply returned to the guest room. Either way, we didn’t talk about it. We just cleaned up the lunch dishes, and I took off after inviting Mom to join me at my house later.
“Let me get Aunt Bess settled in for the afternoon, and I might,” she’d said.
That had been two hours ago, so I guessed Aunt Bess still wasn’t settled.
There was a knock on the front door. Since I was thinking about Mom, my initial guess was that it was her—that she’d finally gotten Aunt Bess settled in watching a movie or something. But then, Mom wouldn’t knock. And she wouldn’t come to the front door.
I opened the door to find Ryan standing on the porch looking exhausted and disheveled. My eyes widened. “Are you all right?”
“Just tired. I should’ve called instead of just dropping in, but I really needed to see a beautiful friendly face.”
I smiled. “Come on in. Would you like some iced tea and key lime pie?” We’d had the pie left over from lunch.
“I’d love it. While you’re slicing the pie, I’ll step into your bathroom and wash my hands and arms, if you don’t mind. And my face.”
I gave him directions to the bathroom.
“You won’t believe what a day I’ve had,” he continued.
“I’m looking forward to hearing all about it . . . I think.”
Once we were settled in the kitchen with pie and tea—Ryan wouldn’t sit on the sofa because he said his pants were too dirty—he started telling me about his day.
“George Lincoln’s widow called the sheriff’s office this morning. She said she’d got a phone call from someone—she thought it was a man but the voice was distorted so she wasn’t a hundred percent sure—telling her to put her husband’s files in a box in the vacant lot next to their house.”
“Wait,” I said. “Files?”
“Yeah.”
“Joyce, Mr. Lincoln’s secretary, mentioned that he had files on everyone in town. She gave me the impression that he used the information to buy himself leverage. For instance, she said she was glad he didn’t have anything to keep me from opening the Down South Café.”
“Those files might be the reason he’s dead,” said Ryan.
“So the sheriff is sure now that Mr. Lincoln’s death was a homicide?”
He hesitated and then took a drink of his tea. “I shouldn’t be confiding all this to you, but since you already knew about the files, I imagine you know as much as I do at this point. Mrs. Lincoln said the files the caller wanted were the personal files George kept on the residents of Winter Garden as well as a few other people throughout the region. I guess our Chamber of Commerce president thought he might need a county official in his pocket at some time or other.”
“Wow. That’s hard to believe that our little Chamber of Commerce was so corrupt.”
“I wouldn’t say the entire organization. Just Lincoln. But then he and Ms. Kaye pretty much are the whole chamber, aren’t they?” He shook his head. “So, back to the adventure. Mrs. Lincoln calls the station before eight o’clock this morning and says that this person called and demanded that the files be left in a box in the vacant lot beside her house by one o’clock this afternoon.”
“Did she do it? Leave the files, I mean?”
“No . . . well, kinda.” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “The sheriff wasn’t about to let those files get gone. If somebody’s wanting to get his hands on them, odds are he—or she—is the one who killed George Lincoln.”
“Yeah, but if the caller is watching the house, he’d know Mrs. Lincoln called the police and that his not-very-well-thought-out plan to get the files was in the toilet.”
“Exactly. Since the caller had instructed Mrs. Lincoln not to call the police, we needed to approach the problem from another angle. I had to dress as a pizza delivery man, borrow a car and a delivery bag from the pizza parlor, and be at Mrs. Lincoln’s house by eleven thirty—any earlier, and it would’ve been suspicious.”
“Because the pizza parlor doesn’t open until eleven.” I spread my hands. “Wait. You took her lunch?”
“No. I used the delivery bag to take the files back to the sheriff’s office. I left some cardboard pilfered from the pizza parlor’s Dumpster for Mrs. Lincoln to put into the box and take to the vacant lot. Then the sheriff and I went back to keep watch.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. We drove the pizza delivery car back and parked it two streets over from the Lincoln house, walked back, and crouched in the bushes. We saw Mrs. Lincoln take the box of cardboard over to the vacant lot, put it under the willow tree as instructed, and go back inside.” He shrugged. “We waited until three o’clock, and then we gave up.”
“Is Mrs. Lincoln supposed to call you if anything happens?” I asked.
Ryan shook his head. “Sheriff Billings went back, got the box, and put it inside the house. Right now, he’s on his way to Blountville to the airport.”
I frowned. “Where’s he going?”
“Nowhere. He’s putting Mrs. Lincoln on a plane to her sister’s house in New Jersey. He said he was going to advise her to stay there until he was sure she’d be safe here.”
“But what about Mr. Lincoln’s funeral? Won’t the coroner be releasing his body soon?”
“He’ll keep it on ice”—he winced—“sorry, accurate but bad choice of words—until Sheriff Billings asks him to release it. But from what Sheriff Billings said, that was a concern of Mrs. Lincoln’s too.”
“I’m sure it was. She’s already been making the arrangements.”
“It’ll be fine.” Ryan covered my hand with his. “The main thing now is to make sure she’s safe . . . and that she’s not playing us.”
“Playing you?”
“No one ever showed up, and we only have her word that she received a call about the files.”
“But why would she lie about that?” I asked. “Didn’t she seem frightened about the whole encounter?”
“Yes, she did. But if she killed her husband, she just handed us over a whole stack of other suspects.”
I topped off his tea. “She could’ve given Sheriff Billings the files without manufacturing a death threat.”
“She could have, but if someone did indeed threaten her, it makes her look more innocent to play the frightened victim. Don’t you think?”
“Well, yeah. Gee, were you this cynical about me when you were investigating Lou Lou Holman’s death?”
“Of course not.” He winked. “I knew all along you were innocent.”
• • •
Mom finally walked down to my house at about eight o’clock that evening. We sat out on the porch on the white rocking chairs, her with Princess Eloise on her lap. Jealous little Rory hopped on to mine.
“Have you had a good day, Mom?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a good day. I enjoyed lunch. I love our Sundays.” She stroked the cat’s long white hair. “I just don’t know what to do about Renee.”
“Had she left the house after lunch, or had she gone back to her room?”
