Her thoughts turned to Scott Simpson. He was like a sore spot she couldn’t help touching. In her mind she knew she wasn’t directly responsible for his suicide, but her heart wasn’t so sure. Maybe once this whole mess was straightened out—and it would be, she was determined about that—she could put this particular demon to rest. Once she understood everything that had happened, she could find some peace of mind.
She lay there a long time, her mind seething with facts and ideas, what-ifs and maybes. Restlessly she turned first one way, then another, hoping sleep would come. “Dang,” she said aloud a moment later, “I forgot to ask Elmer Lee if I could paint over that mess on the trailer.” Deciding that could wait until morning, she tried once again to go to sleep. Finally, around three, she drifted off.
Chapter 19
Wanda Nell stirred uneasily as the sound of voices penetrated her light sleep. Bleary-eyed, she rolled over in bed and peered at the clock. The time was six-forty-three. For a moment, she couldn’t remember what day it was, or whether it was morning or evening.
Then her mind began to clear, and she knew it was morning. She sat up on the side of the bed, yawning and stretching. She had slept poorly, her fitful dozing punctuated by disturbing dreams about her brother and the two dead men.
Wearily she got up from the bed and went to the bathroom. Her limbs were heavy and unresponsive, but she felt a bit more alert after splashing her face with cold water.
Her hair lay matted and sticky against her head. She would have to wash it when she showered. She tugged her brush through it and finally tamed it enough so that she no longer looked like a wild woman. She pulled on a bathrobe and tied it loosely around her.
In the kitchen, Juliet was rinsing her bowl in the sink, and Miranda was scrambling some eggs. Lavon, at the sight of his grandmother, picked up his sippy cup and started banging it on the tray of his highchair, claiming her attention.
Everything seemed so normal at the moment, and Wanda Nell was grateful for that.
She kissed both of Lavon’s cheeks and rubbed his head. He chattered away to her, but she listened with only half an ear. He often required no response, being happy simply to talk.
“Mama, are you feeling okay?” Juliet asked with concern. “Didn’t you go to work last night?”
“No, honey, I didn’t. I’m sorry, I just forgot to tell you I traded a couple of shifts with one of the other girls at work. I’m going to be off tonight, too.” Wanda Nell peered at the coffee pot, pleased to see that Miranda had made coffee already. She poured herself a cup and sat down at the table near Lavon. “Thanks for making coffee, Miranda.”
“You’re welcome. Would you like some eggs, Mama?” Miranda asked. “You can have some of these, and I’ll scramble me some more.” She separated the cooked eggs onto two plates, a small portion on one and a larger portion on the other. She left them both on the counter near the stove, letting the eggs cool before she gave Lavon his plate.
“No, thank you, sweetie,” Wanda Nell said. “I’ll have to be up for a while before I feel like eating anything. You go ahead and have your breakfast.”
“Okay,” Miranda said, “but I can fix you some later if you want.” She pulled two pieces of browned bread from the toaster and buttered them lavishly. She cut half of one of the slices into small pieces for Lavon, added them to his plate, then set the plate on his tray. He wasted no time sticking his fingers into the egg and stuffing bits of it into his mouth.
“Mama,” Juliet said, “before I forget it, Mayrene left you a note. She wasn’t sure when you’d be up.” She pushed a folded piece of paper across the table to her mother.
Curious, Wanda Nell picked up the paper and unfolded it. “W.N.,” she read, “I took care of that little paint job for you. Talk to you later, M.” Smiling, Wanda Nell stuck the note in the pocket of her bathrobe. Mayrene was a friend in a million, and she’d have to do something special to thank her, particularly because the girls seemed completely unaware of what had been painted on the trailer.
“I’ve got to go,” Juliet said, pushing away from the table. “The school bus will be here any minute.”
She gave her mother a quick hug, patted Lavon on the head, and waved bye to Miranda.
“Have a good day,” Wanda Nell called.
“What are you going to do today, Mama?” Miranda asked. She looked down at her plate. “If you’re not going to need the car, and if you wouldn’t mind looking after Lavon for a little while, I need to go into town for something.” She stuck a forkful of egg into her mouth before lifting her face to check her mother’s reaction.
Wanda Nell hated to disappoint her, but there was just no way around it. There was no telling what she might have to do today, or where she might have to go, and she couldn’t be without a car.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Wanda Nell said gently, reaching out a hand to her daughter. “I just can’t today. I may need it all day long, I just don’t know. Is it something you could do tomorrow maybe?”
“I guess so,” Miranda said, her face turning sulky. “I don’t know why I even bothered to ask.” She laid her fork on the table beside her plate and picked up the piece of toast. Tearing it into strips, she dropped them onto the plate. “I hate this. Why don’t you just put a chain on me and leave me here.”
Wanda Nell was irritated by the anger in Miranda’s voice. “I know you get tired of having to stay here and look after Lavon,” she said, trying not to speak in the same tone Miranda had used. “But you’re his mama, and you have to take care of him. When you get a job, we can look into day care for him, because then you’ll be able to afford it. And having a job to go to will get you out of the house and give you something to look forward to.”
“Yeah, like work is something I’m really gonna look forward to,” Miranda muttered.
That did it. Wanda Nell’s temper flared. “When are you going to understand that you just can’t sit there on your rear end all day long and expect everyone else to take care of you? I was barely a year older than you are now when I had T.J., and I didn’t go running around and having fun all the time, expecting my mama or anybody else to take care of him. I know it’s hard, but you’ve just got to do it.” She almost added, You made the bed, and now you’ve got to lie in it, but she held back.
Miranda’s defiance wilted in the face of her mother’s little sermon. Her lip trembled, but she didn’t say anything for a moment. Instead, she picked up her fork and ate a bit more of her scrambled eggs.
Wanda Nell sipped her coffee and kept an eye on Lavon, in case he started throwing eggs on the floor. He liked doing that, but for the moment he seemed to be happy enough with eating them. He wasn’t paying any attention to the grown-ups, Wanda Nell was glad to see.
“I kinda wanted the car today so I could go look for a job,” Miranda said in a tone dripping with self-righteousness. “But I guess it’ll have to wait.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Wanda Nell said, still exasperated with the girl. She had clearly been doing her best to manipulate her mother. “I didn’t mean to come down so hard on you. You should have said that’s why you wanted the car today.” She wasn’t completely sure she believed Miranda, but there was no point in arguing about it now. “As soon as this mess is straightened out, I’ll make sure you have the car so you can look for a job. Okay?”
Miranda nodded. She got up from the table and took her plate to the sink. For once, instead of leaving it there for someone else to deal with, she rinsed it and stuck it in the dishwasher.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Miranda said. “I’m going to the bathroom.” She walked out of the kitchen.
Wanda Nell got up and poured herself more coffee. She was getting restless. Maybe it was the combination of the caffeine and a bad night, and arguing with Miranda sure didn’t help. She needed to be doing something, but what?
It was too early to start calling people and asking them about Lily Golliday. Besides, she might as well wait until she heard from Tuck. If either of the Golliday men he
knew had some knowledge of Lily, there was no use in her jumping the gun.
Same thing with T.J. and the property search. She wasn’t sure what time the courthouse opened, but she doubted it was before eight o’clock. Then there was no telling how long it might be before T.J. could find anything.
So what could she do?
She thought about her plan to confront the sheriff and question him about all this. Would that do any good?
What if it did harm? What if the sheriff knew all about this and was helping his son cover it all up? If she went barging into his office making accusations, she might make things a lot worse for Rusty and for the rest of her family.
She had always thought of the sheriff as a pretty decent man, and her daddy had once thought that himself. But then they had had a falling out, and shortly afterward her daddy died. Wanda Nell had a gut feeling that whatever had soured the friendship between her daddy and the sheriff lay at the bottom of this current mess.
If only her parents were still alive, she could have asked them. She was sure her mother had known what happened, but her mama had never confided in her about it.
It was no wonder, Wanda Nell thought, looking back. At the time, toward the end of her junior year in high school, she had been so wild for Bobby Ray she wasn’t paying attention to anything or anybody else. It got so bad that, as soon as school was out for the summer, her parents had packed her up and sent her off to stay with her mama’s cousins in Little Rock, Arkansas. They were hoping if they kept her away from Bobby Ray long enough, she would get over it and get back to normal.
She had barely been in Little Rock for two months, though, when the news came that her daddy was in the hospital. She got back to Tullahoma one afternoon in late July, and her daddy had died that night in the hospital.
After that, everything went to hell in a handbasket, as her grandmother used to say.
They were all distraught over her daddy’s death. She had sought comfort with Bobby Ray, oblivious to her family’s needs. It wasn’t long before she discovered she was pregnant. Rusty had grown more and more distant, but Wanda Nell was too preoccupied to notice or even care that much. She had claimed most of their mother’s attention until well after the wedding and the birth of T.J.
Miranda comes by it honestly, she told herself. But I had to learn responsibility, and so does she.
When Miranda came back into the kitchen a few moments later, she no longer had a petulant look on her face. She didn’t say anything to her mother, and Wanda Nell decided not to prolong their previous conversation. Instead, she said, “Honey, I’m going to jump in the shower. I need to wash my hair this morning, and then I may have to go into town. Will you listen for the phone? I may get a call, and it could be important.”
Miranda heaved a sigh. “Sure, Mama.”
“Thanks, honey,” Wanda Nell said. When she got up from the table, she made a point of going over to where Miranda stood by the sink and gave her a big hug. Miranda stiffened slightly, but then she hugged her mother back.
As she luxuriated in the hot water of the shower, Wanda Nell tried to clear her mind and relax a bit. The water comforted her, enveloping her in its warmth. If only she could stay in here for a month or two. She laughed at the notion, but she definitely felt much better as she toweled herself dry about ten minutes later.
Combing out her hair, then blow-drying it, she let her mind roam back to the problems at hand. She wished Tuck would hurry up and call. How nice it would be to find a shortcut to Lily Golliday, but if she had to sit down with the phone book and start calling every Golliday in it, she would do it.
Twenty minutes later, she had finished getting dressed. She was putting the final touches to her makeup when the phone rang. She went into the bedroom to answer it, but Miranda had already picked up in the kitchen.
“Oh, hi, Tuck,” she heard Miranda say. “You want to talk to Mama?”
“I’m here, Miranda,” Wanda Nell said. She heard a click as Miranda put down the receiver in the kitchen. “Tuck, you there?”
“I’m here, Wanda Nell,” he said. “How are you this morning?”
“Tired and anxious,” Wanda Nell said flatly. “But what else is new?”
“It’s not like you to sound sorry for yourself,” Tuck said in a light tone.
Wanda Nell sighed. “I know. I don’t even know why I said that. Sometimes it just slips out.”
“In a way, I take it as a kind of compliment,” Tuck said, and Wanda Nell could hear the smile in his voice, “the fact that you feel comfortable enough with me to say something like that.”
“Well, you are part of my family,” Wanda Nell said. “I guess you could say you’re my son-in-law. I’m not really sure what else to call you.” The conversation had taken an odd turn, at least for her, and she was a little uncomfortable.
“That’ll do just fine,” Tuck said. “But I promise I won’t start calling you mama, like T.J. does.”
Wanda Nell had to bite back a retort. Tuck was only about ten years younger than she was, and that made him about eight years older than T.J. who had recently turned twenty-three.
“The reason I called,” Tuck continued, after a brief pause, “is that I spoke to both of those men I was telling you about last night.”
“Any luck?”
“In a way,” Tuck said. “Neither one of them actually knew the young woman, but they both gave me the name of an elderly woman in the community who might be able to help you.”
“At least that’s something,” Wanda Nell said. “If it keeps me from calling everybody in the phone book, I’d be happy.”
“Have you got something handy to write with?”
“Hang on a second,” she said. She pulled out the drawer of her bedside table and scrambled inside for a scrap of paper. She found an old eyebrow pencil, and then she was ready to write. “Got it. Go ahead.”
“Her name is Mrs. Hattie Conley,” Tuck said, and then he read out the phone number.
Wanda Nell read it all back to him.
“That’s it,” he said. “From what Jasper Golliday told me—he’s the one who apparently knows her the best—she’ll be happy to talk to you. She’s quite elderly, but she’s sharp as a tack, and she knows everybody. Plus she knows who everybody’s related to, and everything else besides.”
“Sounds like Miz Culpepper,” Wanda Nell commented a bit acidly.
Tuck laughed into the phone. “In a way, but from what Jasper said, Mrs. Conley is a lot sweeter.”
“Wouldn’t be difficult,” Wanda Nell muttered.
“What was that?” Tuck asked, though from his tone, Wanda Nell was convinced he had heard her.
“Never you mind,” Wanda Nell said. “Thanks for this information. I’m going to call her right now.” She glanced at the bedside clock. It was a little after seven-thirty. Surely Mrs. Conley would be up and about by now.
“Good luck,” Tuck said. “And call me if you need anything else. T.J. will be heading over to the courthouse in about an hour to start that property search. As soon as we find anything—if we find anything—one of us will call you.”
“Thanks,” Wanda Nell said. She put the phone back on the hook.
She waited a moment, then picked up the phone and punched in the number Tuck had given her.
After about six rings, someone answered. “Hello.”
“Good morning,” Wanda Nell said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I hope I’m not calling too early in the morning. Is this Miz Hattie Conley?”
“Chile, you ain’t calling too early for me,” the woman said, chuckling. “I don’t sleep much anymore, and it be all I can do to keep myself in the bed past five o’clock most mornings. Who did you say this was?”
“I’m sorry,” Wanda Nell replied. “I didn’t say yet. Miz Conley, my name is Wanda Nell Culpepper. I got your name and phone number from Mr. Jasper Golliday, because he thought you might be able to help me out.”
“Why, honey, I’m too old to work anymore,” th
e old voice said with a hint of laughter. “I don’t know what Jasper be giving my name out for. He done know I be too old.”
Wanda Nell had a sneaking suspicion that Mrs. Conley was teasing her. “Actually, it wasn’t work I needed, ma’am. I actually need some help in finding a girl I think might be in trouble. Mr. Golliday said you would probably know who she is and how to find her.”
For a moment Mrs. Conley was so quiet Wanda Nell was afraid she had fallen asleep or put the phone down. “Did you say you was a Culpepper?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wanda Nell said. Should she explain her relationship to the Culpepper family?
Before she could say anything else, Mrs. Conley spoke again. “Then I reckon you must be the girl that was married to the old judge’s son. The one that got hisself kilt a few months ago. That be right?”
“Yes, ma’am, that was my ex-husband.”
“That sure was a sorry business,” Mrs. Conley said. “I been knowing the judge and his wife for a long time. My cousin Charlesetta used to work for Miz Culpepper.”
“How is Charlesetta doing?” Wanda Nell remembered Mrs. Culepper’s elderly maid with great affection. Charlesetta had always treated her nicely, unlike her employer.
“She be doing just fine, particularly now she don’t have to be going up and down them stairs seventeen times a day.” Mrs. Conley laughed. “Charlesetta done told me that Miz Culpepper tried to keep her hopping all the time.”
“I’m glad Charlesetta is doing fine,” Wanda Nell said. “I don’t know how she put up with Miz Culpepper for so long, either. I’m sure Charlesetta would vouch for me, Miz Conley, if you want to ask her before talking to me.”
“Land sakes, chile, I don’t need to ask Charlesetta about you,” Miz Conley said, her voice warm and friendly. “I know you come from good people. But I tell you what, it sure would ease my mind if I could talk to you in person. I just hate talking over this here telephone. Would you mind coming to see me?”
Wanda Nell had to smile at the question. Mrs-. Conley sounded almost like a child asking for a present. “I’d love to come see you, Miz Conley. You tell me where you live, and I’ll drive on over.”
Best Served Cold (A Trailer Park Mystery Book 3) Page 18
