Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover

by Ann B. Ross

  “It’s more’n just dreamin’,” Trixie assured me. “Rodney’s already lined up somebody to back him. All he has to do now is go out there and walk the property. You know, measure it and such to make sure it’s big enough for what he wants.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked, raising my eyebrows as I wondered who in the world could be Rodney’s silent partner. “All that and it’s not even for sale?”

  “He’ll get it. One way or the other, ’cause he says if you want something bad enough, you’ll get it.”

  “Well,” I said, my mouth tightening, “just wanting is not always enough. And you might remind Rodney that taking such liberties with someone else’s property could be misinterpreted.”

  She cut her eyes quickly at me, then just as quickly looked away. Then she suddenly stood up. “I got to go to bed.” And off she went without a good night or a kiss my foot.

  What was that all about? I wondered, unless it was to let me know that Rodney intended to present me with an offer to purchase. Yet neither she nor Rodney seemed to know who owned the property, and maybe, I suddenly realized, Rodney was looking at an entirely different plot of land—one that had nothing to do with me.

  But regardless of where the property was located or who owned it, the thought of the Binghams moving to Abbotsville was enough to make me ill. If they were a part of Rodney’s plans, I wouldn’t sell even if my property was on the market, which it wasn’t.

  Maybe, I thought, sitting up straight, I should find out exactly which property Rodney was interested in and, if it wasn’t mine, buy it out from under him just to keep the Binghams in Florida. Of course, he’d just look for another location, so I’d have to keep going behind him, which meant I’d be buying up property piecemeal all over the county.

  Maybe I’d eventually run him—and them—out of the state.

  The telephone rang then, loud enough in the quiet house to jangle my nerves. Hoping that it wasn’t Sam saying he’d be later than expected, I answered it.

  “Miss Julia? It’s Etta Mae,” Etta Mae Wiggins said, her voice stretched tight and thin.

  “Why, Etta Mae, how are you?”

  “Not so good. Miss Julia, I didn’t know you were going to sell the trailer park, and we’re all worried sick about where we’ll go.”

  “Sell the trailer park?” My hand tightened on the receiver as I held it. “No, Etta Mae, no, I’m not selling it. Where did you hear such a thing?”

  “Well, there was a man out here today with a tape measure. He drove up in a fancy black SUV and walked all over the place, looking at everything and measuring it, and he told us we ought to be looking for a new place for our trailers because he was buying it to put a cemetery on it. Or in it.”

  That confirmation just flew all over me, and it was all I could do to hold myself together. “I know exactly who that was, Etta Mae, and he has no right to even be on the property, much less to tell you you’ll have to move. That land is not for sale, and I have no plans to put it up for sale—not as long as you are there, anyway.”

  And I meant that. Etta Mae Wiggins had proved over and over to be a stalwart friend. We were nowhere near the same age, nor were we of the same background, yet we thought alike and we were both willing to risk life and limb for the other. She had demonstrated that over and over in our several escapades of the past—often, I admit, at my urging, but still, she was always willing. She and I had gotten off to a poor start, mainly because she had a reputation for a certain amount of looseness in her dealings with men, some of whom she’d married and some she hadn’t. I’d had little use for her at the time, especially because she seemed to have eyes for Sam, but that had been before I’d gotten to know her kind and needy heart. All she wanted from life was to be somebody, somebody respected for her innate decency and intrepid spirit—and she had found it in me. Why, what would I have done without her help in chasing jewel thieves or detaching the statue from the courthouse dome or rescuing Mr. Pickens from the clutches of a misinformed sheriff?

  I could count on Etta Mae Wiggins, and had, in fact, made her the manager of the trailer park, reducing her rent, and paying her a minimal wage to keep the place up, and she was doing an excellent job. She’d gotten rid of the riffraff, kept the area free of litter, and markedly cut down on the number of domestic complaint calls to the Abbot County Sheriff’s Department. As long as Etta Mae wanted to live at the Hillandale Trailer Park, it was going to be there for her.

  So, if Rodney Pace expected to buy that land just because he wanted it, he was going to have to lower his expectations. And deal with me while doing so.

  “Etta Mae,” I said, picking up our conversation, “you don’t have anything to worry about, and you can tell all the other residents out there that I said so. Just go on about your business, and let me handle this. I’ll put a stop to it in short order, but if you see that man out there again, let me know. I’ll have him arrested for trespassing.”

  “Whew,” she said, “I’m sure glad to hear that. I didn’t know how I could afford to hire somebody to move my single-wide—it takes a mint to do that. Plus find another place as nice as this and lose my manager’s job, too. Thanks, Miss Julia, I’ll sleep better tonight knowing you’ll take care of it.”

  Assuring her that indeed I would, I hung up the phone and studied the best way of going about taking care of it. My first impulse was to call Rodney and straighten him out in no uncertain terms. But then I reconsidered, realizing that any interference on my part could put a big kink in his relationship with Trixie, and do it just as Sam and I had determined to welcome Trixie’s friends into our home. So my next thought was to bide my time and let him commit himself one way or another to my face. Then I would politely but firmly tell him the property wasn’t for sale, and that would be that.

  Maybe in the meantime, he would have learned, if he didn’t already know, who owned the property. Learning who owned it could put a damper on his whole enterprise, unless . . . unless that had been the driving force behind his interest in Trixie all along. That very thought made me ill for her sake, but I had to consider the possibility.

  During all of this deep and troubling thinking, I had held myself together well enough, but I made one great determination right then and there: if Rodney thought he was going to put a mortuary, scattering garden, crematorium, cemetery, or anything else on my property, he was sadly and eternally mistaken. Mr. Rodney Pace had just about gotten too big for his britches.

  Chapter 28

  By the time Sam came in from his meeting, I was already upstairs grimly preparing for bed. “Thank goodness you’re home,” I said, tightening my robe as he entered the bedroom. Then I launched into a litany of outrage.

  “You won’t believe this, Sam, but I just had a call from Etta Mae telling me that Rodney’s been out there measuring my property and”—I stopped and took a deep breath—“and he had the nerve to tell her to get ready to move, and not only her but all the other residents. And, even worse than that, Trixie told me that Rodney’s going to hire Elsie and Troy to work at his mortuary, and that means they’ll be moving here, and the very thought of it makes my head hurt. And LuAnne told me that Thurlow is donating some kind of park to the city and I think he’s planning to name it for Jimmy Ray in honor of his service to the district, and, futhermore, it would be just like Thurlow to announce it right before the election.” I stopped and tried to think if anything else had happened. “And, well, I guess that’s all. How was your meeting?”

  “Fine,” he said, loosening his tie, “very good, in fact. We’ll have a television ad on the air in a week or so. And some radio ads, too. But it sounds as if you’ve had a busy evening.”

  “I have,” I agreed. “I doubt I’ll ever get to sleep. There’s so much going on that I don’t know which one to worry about the most.”

  “Well, hop in bed and let me brush my teeth. Then we’ll talk about it.” Sam headed for the bathro
om as I hung up his jacket.

  When we were both in bed, propped up on pillows side by side—our favorite place to talk over any problems—I thought again of how special such times were, even when the problems we dealt with were dire and unsettling. A brief memory of my first marriage flashed through my mind—Wesley Lloyd Springer believed that you went to bed to sleep, not to talk or to read or to do anything else except on infrequent occasions, and even then he hadn’t had much to say.

  “Okay,” Sam said, taking my hand, “tell me all about it.”

  “I hardly know where to start, but let me ask you. Have you noticed how Trixie has gone from one thing to another? First she wanted to be a fitness trainee, then she wanted to switch to some hot box yoga business, now she wants to be a beautician to the dead. What in the world is she thinking? She’s not trained for anything, and she doesn’t light on anything long enough to get trained. I think that any time Rodney mentions something, she just latches on to it.”

  Sam nodded. “Probably. And we don’t know if he’s just talking in general or if he’s actively encouraging her. One thing’s for sure, though, she is entirely too dependent on what he says. And did he really promise to hire her grandparents?”

  “That’s what she told me. Oh, Sam, I couldn’t stand having them around. You better win this election or I’ll have to move to Raleigh without you.”

  He laughed. “Without me? Not a chance. Now, listen, put the Binghams on the back burner. That’s a long way off, if it ever happens. I have a feeling that Rodney just talks a lot about his plans and all the possibilities he can dream up, and Trixie hears what she wants to hear. She’s headed for a great disappointment, I’m afraid.”

  “So is he, because if all his plans hinge on getting the Springer Road property, he might as well pack it in. Sam, how much land is out there, anyway?”

  “I’ll have to look at the plat, but probably close to thirty acres or so. Maybe a little more.”

  I looked at him in surprise, as well as some dismay, because I’d hoped it wouldn’t meet Rodney’s criteria. “That much? Surely the trailer park isn’t that big.”

  “No, most of it’s woods. Actually, I did a little research on the state requirements for a cemetery, and Rodney’s going to need a lot more than thirty acres—that’s the minimum for a cemetery itself. It wouldn’t include room for a mortuary, crematorium, scattering garden, parking area, and all the other big dreams he has. Unless, of course, he plans to locate that part of the business elsewhere, which is what a lot of mortuary owners do. Your property would probably be workable if he wants it just for grave sites, but not for anything else.”

  I pictured the location on Springer Road—the clearing where the mobile homes were located was densely surrounded by pine trees, cedars, and hemlocks with a scattering of dogwoods that bloomed in the spring—a lovely pastoral setting marred only by single- and double-wide trailers and their hook-ups. I’d had the woods underbrushed several years before and now hoped that the blackberry bushes and briars had grown back thick enough to discourage Rodney.

  “I think,” Sam went on, “there’s an old homestead back in there somewhere, maybe just a chimney still standing. And there may be some hardwood, too, in case you ever wanted to clear it for timber.”

  “I don’t.”

  Sam grinned at me. “Well, I’ll tell you, it would take an awful lot of effort and money to turn that place into a grassy cemetery. Think of all the stumps that would have to come up.”

  That thought cheered me considerably, and I finally got to sleep, picturing Rodney, hot and sweaty, swinging a pickax.

  —

  Knowing that Mildred was not an early riser, I called her late on the following morning to see when would be a convenient time for me to visit.

  “Come right now,” she said brightly. “I’ve just finished breakfast, and if we wait too long it’ll run into your lunchtime.” She laughed. “We seem to operate on different schedules, Julia.”

  I knew that, which was one reason I never visited Mildred without calling. Another reason was that I never visited anyone without a call first. Drop-in guests, and I’m including LuAnne, are never quite as welcome as ones who are expected.

  —

  “Good morning, Ida Lee,” I said when Mildred’s housekeeper opened the door. “How are you?”

  “Quite well, thank you,” the lovely and efficient Ida Lee greeted me. “Mrs. Allen is looking forward to seeing you—she’s in the morning room.”

  I followed Ida Lee across the spacious foyer to the small room beyond the curving staircase. Mildred was sitting in a cushioned wicker chair, a tea service on a table beside her. A row of windows behind her revealed the well-kept grounds surrounded by a boxwood hedge with flowering shrubs and ornamental trees strategically placed.

  Mildred smiled as I entered, saying, “I would get up if it wasn’t so much trouble and you weren’t such a close friend.”

  “Stay right where you are,” I said, taking a chair beside her. “No need to get up for me.” Mildred was a heavyset woman who hated to move once she was settled, so she stayed settled most of the day.

  “Mildred, your yard is lovely,” I went on. “If I were you I’d sit here all day and admire it.”

  “I just about do,” she said, laughing as she reached for the teapot. “I thought tea would be nice for a change. Around this time every summer, I’ve about had my fill of lemonade.”

  “So,” I said as we sipped from Mildred’s porcelain cups, my hands shaking just a tiny bit. The worst thing, to my mind, was being in a position of having to ask for money. “I expect you know I’ve come for a special reason. And I hope I’m not imposing, but, Mildred, I’m afraid Sam’s running behind in the senate race, and I’m worried about it.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “Oh,” I said, taken aback, “am I that obvious?”

  “Elections take money, Julia. No one knows that better than I do. I’ve already contributed to his campaign, but I don’t think I’ve reached the limit. If I have, then I’ll send more from Horace and Tonya.”

  “Oh, Mildred,” I said, a wave of gratitude washing over me. “You don’t know how much I hate asking for financial help, or how much I appreciate your generosity. I want to assure you that Sam does not know I’m doing this, but I’m sure he’ll know who his contributors are and he’ll be ever so grateful.”

  Mildred gave a languid wave of her hand. “Just tell him I expect to be invited to the Inaugural Ball, regardless of who wins the governorship. And there might be a few more favors along the way. I’ll let him know as I think of them.”

  I was really getting a lesson in the art of politics, because even though Mildred was smiling, I knew she meant what she said. She would expect to have a state senator at her beck and call, and I wondered if she’d covered all the bases by contributing equally to the Mooney campaign.

  —

  I thought about that on my way home—which was just down Mildred’s drive to the sidewalk, then a few yards to my house—but it was long enough to give me an idea of how to approach Thurlow Jones. With that idea in mind, as well as with the elation of having gotten a sizable contribution just by asking, I walked past my house, turned the corner, then another, and went straight to Thurlow’s house before I lost my nerve.

  For the first time ever, I found him puttering around in his large yard with pruning shears in his hand. It was about time that somebody did something about the overgrown place. I had to untangle an out-of-control wisteria vine from my hair when I opened the front gate.

  Thurlow looked up as the gate squealed in protest as I entered. “Well, well, the Lady Murdoch draws nigh,” he announced with his usual mockery. “To what do I owe this unusual visit? I don’t normally receive unexpected visitors, but I’ll make an exception for you.”

  He dropped the pruning shears where he stood, then came over to
the brick walk, studded with weeds, where I waited. I was a little discomposed, since I had only recently prided myself on my courteous habit of calling before a visit. But, I assured myself, Thurlow wouldn’t know a courtesy if it bit him.

  “Thurlow,” I started strongly, “I’m well aware that you are a Mooney supporter, but I think you should give some thought to supporting Sam’s campaign, too. That’s what big corporations do: give to both sides so they’ll have access regardless of the winner. Besides, you know Sam, and you know he’d make a better senator than Jimmy Ray any day of the week.”

  “Oh, so that’s what you’re here for. I shoulda known you wouldn’t give me the time of day ’less you wanted something. Well, dear lady, I always put my money on the winning horse, and that ain’t Sam Murdoch.”

  That dear lady put my back straight up, and his effrontery in presuming that Sam would lose just flew all over me.

  “You don’t know that, and, furthermore, it would be a fair race if you’d stay out of it. I heard about that park you’re planning, and I know that Jimmy Ray wouldn’t stand a chance without your backing, and I think it’s a crying shame that you have more say-so in an election than all the voters in the district. And, and, well, that’s what I think.”

  He threw back his head and cackled, loud and long, and if those pruning shears had been at hand I might’ve been tempted to use them. Instead, I turned and walked off, my head held high, even though humiliated as usual after any run-in with him.

  “I’ll think about it,” he yelled behind me, but I knew better than to count on any help from him.

  Chapter 29

  “I’m glad you fin’lly home,” Lillian said, looking up from the sink as I walked into the kitchen.