P.I. On A Hot Tin Roof

by Julie Smith

  Stranger still, the dress was mauve; vaguely dressy, with a fluttery skirt. She had on earrings and makeup that didn’t hide a face full of wrinkles. Her shoes had tiny stacked heels. She was something from another era, and not at all what Talba expected. She’d thought Champage would be something of a redneck, but if this woman had raised him, he could at least be depended on to have decent manners.

  But despite her attempt at elegance, the woman didn’t achieve it. She spoke in a blustery, semi-country fashion that didn’t sound like New Orleans at all.

  “I’m Adele Reedy,” she said, not bothering to offer her hand. “You’d be Alberta’s niece.”

  Talba did offer to shake, and was not rebuffed. She got the impression Reedy was impressed with her politeness. “Sandra Corey. Aunt Alberta said she’s sorry she had to be away.”

  “Hope it’s not too serious. Come on in, let’s get acquainted. You’re going to be working with me, so I may as well tell you what’s what.”

  Yeah, Talba thought. Tell me everything.

  Reedy led her into a kitchen that was blessedly marble-free, and had a long table in it instead of the usual island. Kind of a beat-up table, the sort that had either been in the family for generations or scavenged from a European monastery. “Sit down. You want coffee?”

  “Please, ma’am,” Talba said, causing Reedy to raise a stiff gray eyebrow.

  “You’ve got good manners for a maid.”

  Alberta didn’t? Talba wondered. She said, “Guess my mama raised me right,” hoping she wasn’t laying it on too thick.

  “Guess she did.” Reedy handed her a cup, and took a seat opposite her new employee. “You got experience?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. Worked my way through Xavier cleaning houses. I worked for a service.”

  “Oh, those things.” Reedy wrinkled her nose. “We’ve had some very bad experiences with services. Xavier, did you say? You graduate?”

  “Yes ma’am. Degree in social work.” (The Xavier part was true, anyhow.) “This is just a favor for Aunt Alberta.”

  “What about your regular job?”

  “It ended about six months ago—agency funds got cut off. I was looking for another, but then this came up and I can use the money.”

  “I hope you’re good at laundry. You iron?” Score one for Miz Clara.

  “Happy to. You like your sheets starched?”

  To her surprise, Reedy laughed. “Alberta hates to iron sheets. We might have to keep you. Listen, laundry’s the main thing around here.”

  Talba groaned inwardly. The house was as big as three houses—how was she going to clean it, much less iron sheets?

  “There are five of us living here.” Reedy paused. “Well, six if you count Kristin, my son-in-law’s girlfriend. But you can’t because she has her own place—she’s just around so much it seems like she lives here. You don’t have to do her laundry.”

  “Your—uh—son-in-law?”

  “My daughter passed away a few years back, leaving him with two children. Royce is grown and married, of course, but Lucy’s fourteen. We’re just one big happy family, all thrown together by a legal dispute.” Talba had no idea what she meant by that, but she decided now wasn’t the time to ask. She heard clattering on the stairs.

  “Ah, there’s Lucy now. She goes to McGehee.”

  A teenage girl entered the room in a school uniform—a girl a little too plump, too awkward to be popular, or even socially acceptable in the fanciest girls’ school in town. She had pink skin and pale red hair, nicely cut in a bob—Reedy’s doing, Talba was willing to bet. Her sullen look said she’d prefer a Mohawk.

  “Lucy, say hello to Sandra.”

  The girl looked at her without interest and said only, “You making pancakes?”

  “Sandra’s just getting oriented. By the way,” she said to Talba, “can you cook ?”

  “I think I could manage breakfast. But maybe not pancakes the first day.” This was good, she thought. If they ate in the kitchen, she might get to hear them interact as she cooked. She stood. “Shall I scramble some eggs?”

  “Ewwww,” Lucy said.

  Reedy looked at her watch. “Everybody’s late today. We usually serve breakfast at seven-fifteen—Lucy’s school starts at seven-fifty-five, so it’s a race. But nobody usually turns up except Buddy and Lucy—sometimes Kristin. How about setting the table and getting out stuff for cereal? Missy, you get your own,” she said to Lucy. “You’re ’bout to be late for school.”

  Talba heard more stair-clattering, heavier this time, and in a moment a man walked into the room who looked for all the world like a youngish Burl Ives—round belly, round balding head, bland, slightly red face. “You Alberta’s niece?” he said. “Welcome to the asylum. We think the world of Alberta, but that don’t mean we ain’ gon’ fire her ass if she don’t get back to work soon. Can’t cook worth a damn. Burns the bacon every time. Maybe you’ll work out better, honey, and we’ll just keep ya. You cook?”

  “Not this morning, Buddy.” Reedy’s voice was strained. “We’ve got to get her oriented.”

  “Sure, sure. I’ll find some roots and berries or somethin’. You show her around.”

  “Guess it’s that time,” Reedy said. “You dropping Lucy off?”

  “Goddammit, have I got to do everything around here?”

  “This is Sandra,” Reedy said. “My son, Buddy Champagne.”

  “Judge Buddy Champagne to you, Adele. You just call me ‘your honor,’ honey.” He winked at Talba.

  And I’m “Your Grace” to you, fatso.

  Lucy made a face Medusa would have envied. “Daddy, you are so queer!”

  “Queer? Who ya callin’ queer? Save that for ya brother, princess. Ya daddy’s anything but.”

  “Royce is not queer!”

  Oh, boy, Talba thought.

  “Let’s go, Sandra. Let me show you where everything is.”

  “Yes, Miss—uh—do you prefer Mrs. Reedy or Miss Adele?”

  “Lord, honey, we don’t stand on ceremony around here. Call me anything—”

  “Except late for supper,” Lucy finished with a sneer in her voice.

  “Young lady, you are way too big for your britches. Now eat your breakfast and get on out of here.”

  Talba saw that both Lucy and her father had managed to find cereal and serve themselves. Good—they weren’t completely helpless.

  Reedy showed her the kitchen products, told her what to use on what (she’d never seen stainless steel cleaner before), and had just ushered her into a stately but somewhat dusty hall when a gorgeous young woman came running down the stairs in a black suit she’d probably bought in New York. Her golden hair glistened and her skin looked as if it had been scrubbed with stainless steel cleaner. She was the only one other than Reedy who deigned to shake hands with a mere maid.

  Once she stopped moving, Talba could see that she was really quite petite—but she had a presence, no question. “Hi. I’m Kristin LaGarde.”

  “Sandra Corey.”

  “Good to meet you. Gotta grab coffee and run.” She clacked into the kitchen and Talba heard her say, “Morning, Princess. Sleep well?”

  For the first time, Lucy showed signs of life. “Hey, great suit.”

  “We can’t exactly start at the top,” Reedy said to Talba, “because that’s where Royce and Suzanne live.” She pronounced it Suzonne. “They’re never up before nine or ten. So let’s start on the second floor.”

  As they climbed the stairs, she added, “Royce keeps irregular hours—he’s learning the seafood business, working for a friend of the family. And Suzanne’s a consultant.” She seemed a bit uncomfortable, as if feeling a need to explain their sloth.

  “Oh,” Talba said noncommittally, a word she used a lot when she wanted more information.

  She got it. “You ever heard of feng shui?”

  “No, ma’am, don’t believe I have,” though Talba was more than familiar with the concept.

  “Some Chinese thing—
it’s about arranging furniture, far as I can see; big on mirrors. Suppose to make the chi flow right so you’ll have good luck and get rich.”

  “Ma’am? Not sure I understand.”

  “Listen to me, I’m talking like she does. Chi is energy. Anyway, that’s what Suzanne does. Goes into people’s houses and pushes things around; I call her a fluffer.”

  Talba said nothing.

  “Fluffs things up.”

  Talba made her eyes go big. “Really? She get a lot of work?”

  “Mmmph. Not so you’d notice.”

  Talba thought this was a classic case of the shoemaker’s children. If ever a house could use some good chi, this one could. It looked as if it hadn’t been rehabbed in thirty years or more, and a good thing, Talba thought—maybe the bathrooms wouldn’t be paved with marble. It was well lived in, but not, if its condition was any indication, particularly well loved. It had the slightly dingy, musty look and feel of neglect. Alberta was probably so overworked she couldn’t get around to everything, but that wasn’t the whole story. The furniture needed reupholstering, the walls needed painting, the curtains needed replacing. It was a bit like a time warp—as if its mistress had suddenly died, and no one had loved it since. Talba suspected that was more or less the case, and wondered if Kristin was going to be moving in soon. If so, the Champagnes had better get their marble order in.

  The second floor twisted and turned, so that two distinct sections—maybe wings—were set far enough apart that Lucy and Adele (as Talba was beginning to think of her), who occupied one, probably couldn’t hear Kristin’s cries of passion from the other, where the judge had his chambers, so to speak. She was relieved to see that Adele and Lucy shared a bathroom on the hall, though the judge had his own. There was probably one more upstairs and a powder room on the first floor—only four if she was lucky.

  Lucy’s room was painted lavender, a color Talba wouldn’t have picked for someone with her coloring. It was the usual jumble of heartthrob posters, stuffed animals, wadded-up clothes, and machines—TV, CD player, and computer. No telephone, though—she probably had her own cell phone.

  Adele’s room, by far the neatest in the house, was surprisingly un-frumpy. Its floral curtains and duvet cover seemed new. A few good antiques—dressing table, bed, writing table—had been chosen with care—and the walls were a light yellow. Talba liked it; she couldn’t see how this woman could stand to share a bathroom with a teenager.

  The judge’s bed was a department store sleigh style—clearly a reproduction—and he had some old but shabby pieces that Talba found comfortable and masculine. The walls were dark green and the bedding was a green, brown, and burgundy paisley—probably Adele’s choice. Very suitable; utterly lacking in imagination.

  What deeply interested her was this: Buddy’s home office opened off his bedroom, so that in the second room she could probably hear anyone who entered the first room in time to get her nose out of whatever it was in.

  Starting at the front door, the first floor consisted of a wide hall, powder room, living room, dining room, sun room, library, kitchen, and a small sitting room the family evidently used for watching television, which Adele called the den.

  “We hardly ever use the living room,” Adele said. “It probably won’t need much.”

  Except a paint job and new furniture, Talba thought. It was painted a kind of dirty mauve, as depressing as it was downright unsightly, and it was hung with dusty photos, mostly, and a few dark-hued oil paintings, mostly still lifes and nature scenes. The furniture was old—not antique, just old—and upholstered in patterns that looked as if they’d been designed about fifty years ago.

  The dining room was deep forest green, with windows on the garden. To Talba’s mind it was the best room in the house, except for the library, which she loved. It was painted a deep wine color, and in here, old furniture looked good. It was worn tan leather, and there was even a library table, piled with books, and a fireplace. On the mantel stood matching statues of black figures in turbans, the sort known as “blackamoors.” Adele had the grace to flush slightly when she saw Talba looking at them. “Sorry about those,” she said. “This is Buddy’s favorite hangout—the original smoke-filled room, where he brings his cronies to drink and puff on vile cigars. Someone gave him those old things and nobody’s ever been able to talk him out of them.”

  “Too bad—I know somebody who’d like them, and he’s a black man. Collects what he calls ‘insult art.’ Aunt Jemima clocks, those little jockey statues, mammy salt shakers, the whole thing. Let me know if the judge ever wants to sell them.”

  Adele looked as if she didn’t know whether to wince or smile. Instead, she just stared. “Uh—I prefer the sun room myself,” she said finally. But even that seemed hopelessly out of date, its wicker furniture covered in a floral print on a black background that had gone out of style sometime before the Kennedy era. But it did afford a view of Adele’s pride and joy. “Gorgeous garden,” Talba said.

  “Thank the good Lord for it,” Adele said. “It’s the only thing between me and a padded cell.”

  That sounded so promising Talba held out a bit of bait. “Things get pretty crazy around here?”

  Adele rolled her eyes, though rather unsuccessfully—it took a teenage girl to pull that one off. “Families,” was all she said.

  Aside from the library, the den was the most user-friendly of all the rooms, having been recently painted a soft cream. The furniture looked relatively new, and a great deal less expensive than the maw-maw stuff on the rest of the first floor. It even had a built-in television console.

  “We built this out of the old pantry,” Adele explained. “Had to have some place to relax.”

  They ended up in the kitchen, where Reedy had a desk for paying bills, which seemed to be about it for her personal space outside the bedroom. Talba found the tour alone had nearly exhausted her.

  “Monday’s the day we change the sheets,” Adele said. “So that’s done. Alberta usually does the rest of the laundry on Tuesday, and irons the sheets she did the day before. That way she can do the rest of the ironing throughout the week, when she has some spare time.”

  Good Lord, Talba thought, wondering when she was going to find any.

  “I think she does the bathrooms on Tuesday, too, so they’re probably pretty dirty. And of course she makes the beds and straightens things every day. Then she’s available to make lunch for whoever wants it, and I don’t know what the rest of her system is.”

  “Kitchen every day, of course,” Talba ventured.

  “Certainly. Do you do windows?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Long as the Pope’s still Catholic.”

  “Good. Because Alberta doesn’t. You could make that a project while you’re here.”

  “Happy to. Place’ll be glowing time I get through.”

  “You’re on your own, then.”

  “I’d better get my laundry going.” Adele had by now shown her where the laundry room and the various hampers were, except, of course, those belonging to the still sleeping beauties.

  She had gotten the first load of laundry in, and was just putting the finishing touches on Adele and Lucy’s blessedly marble-less but completely trashed bathroom when a male voice roared, “Hey! Can I get some breakfast around here?”

  She returned to the hall, still wiping her hands, almost colliding with a man probably in his early thirties—around Kristin’s age—wearing ripped khaki shorts and nothing else. His hair was greasy and hadn’t been combed. She could smell alcohol from three paces, that stale day-old reek that comes from a hard night of heavy drinking.

  “Well, hello!” he said, giving her what he obviously believed was a charming smile. He was tall and skinny—way too skinny for her taste—and his dirty hair was brown, with natural blond highlights. His face was somewhat obscured by a fashionable goatee, but mostly, it was handsome—straight nose, unremarkable brown eyes, okay lips, high brow, and decent chin—not exactly strong, but decent. He had
premature wrinkles around his eyes, probably from too much partying, and one of those bracelet-of-thorns tattoos on his right bicep. Talba never could get the hang of those things. If you were going to get a tattoo, why not get a jaguar, say, or a parrot? What was up with thorns?

  She stepped backward, to make a statement. “Mr. Royce, I presume.”

  “You presume, do you? You a Harvard Ph.D. or somethin’?”

  “Something,” she said. “That’s for sure. Something named Sandra Corey.” Once again she offered to shake, not sure whether this was wise with a nearly naked white guy still drunk from the night before, and sure enough, it wasn’t: The jerk kissed her hand.

  “What would you like for breakfast, sir?”

  “Oh, drop the ‘sir’ bit. And that ‘Mr.’ crap too. Call me Royce. We’re equal-opportunity assholes around here.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Royce.” She gave him a sideways glance to see how he was taking it, then added, just in case, “Sorry—just kidding.”

  “Oh, man, we got a comedian here.” He shouted up the stairs, “Hey, Suzanne. Come on down. Ya gotta meet Edwina Murphy here. Hey, that’s good—maybe I’ll call you Eddie.”

  Okay, a license to smart off. “You do that, Mr. Royce, suh. And put in a word with Comedy Tonight, okay? I don’t cook so good; I’m scared I’ll get fired when you taste my eggs. I got a poor ol’ mama and a crippled little brother.”

  He did an approving double-take and called again, “Suzanne! You’re missin’ the show.”

  A woman appeared on the third floor landing, which was as big as a sitting room, and furnished like one, with a sofa flanked by tables and lamps, a console table on the wall across from it. She was also tall and skinny, also brown-haired, with one of those Hollywood-looking mussed coiffures that wasn’t a whole lot longer than her husband’s, which was way too long for a judge’s son, in Talba’s limited experience. The woman’s beak was long, narrow, and a bit turned under—very French—and it gave her face the kind of character she didn’t see in Royce’s. Her lips were full and her cheeks rosy from sleep. She looked elegant even in the sweatpants she was currently tying. She wore them with a tiny white T-shirt that showed a hint of midriff. “What’s going on down there?”