by Anne George
A notice on the door proclaimed that shirts and shoes must be worn and that no pets were allowed.
“Signs like that are so tacky,” Mary Alice said. “Makes us all look like a bunch of hicks. Like we’d go to a restaurant without shirts and shoes.” She sailed through the door carrying Bubba.
For once, Jake’s wasn’t too crowded. A couple were leaving a booth in the corner and Mary Alice made a dive for it, putting Bubba’s carrying case beside her on the seat.
“Maybe you better put him on the floor,” I suggested.
“He’s too upset.”
Bubba did, indeed, sound upset. His yowls blended in with the other loud noises, though. Acoustics have never been at the top of Jake’s priority list. Not only does a jukebox play nonstop country music—at the moment it was Hank Jr.—but the waitresses scream each order toward the back. When the order is filled, this is announced loudly as it is slapped on a high counter for the waitresses to pick up.
“Hey, ladies,” said a skinny woman in a short maroon uniform with “Mavis” on the pocket. She had a damp rag in her hand which she swiped across the table. “What you want?” If she saw Bubba, she chose to ignore it.
“Small order of ribs with red,” Mary Alice said. “Sweetened ice tea.”
“The same,” I said.
Mavis gave us a disgusted look over the order pad poised in her hand. The damp gray rag dangled from her fingers. “Why don’t y’all order a large and half it? Get the same amount, maybe a little more, and save yourselves a dollar and a half. Enough to get a fried pie. Peach today.”
“Can we get yellow sauce on half?” Mary Alice asked.
“No.” Mavis was not one to argue with. “Large, red!” she screamed toward the back. Bubba screamed, too, but his voice was drowned out.
When Mary Alice and I were growing up, our father told us never to eat at a restaurant with dirty windows. He said the condition of the windows told more about the restaurant than any health inspection score.
“Look at the window.” I pointed.
Mary Alice took a napkin, reached across Bubba, and wiped a small circle on the glass. “The sun’s come out.”
“I mean, look how dirty it is. Remember what Daddy always said.”
“It’s not dirt. It’s barbecue sauce.”
I looked around nervously. “Do you see their score posted anywhere?”
“For heaven’s sake, Mouse. The food doesn’t stay here long enough for any bacteria to grow in it.”
She had a point. Nevertheless, salmonella was not on my wish list for Christmas. I spotted the cleanliness scorecard posted above the cash register, slid from the booth, and worked my way through the crowd waiting to pick up orders and pay—“98” it proclaimed in black Magic Marker.
Mavis was putting our tea down when I got back to the booth. Big Mason jars served as glasses. “Y’all want lemon?”
We nodded that we did. She reached around to the booth next to us and handed us a saucer with small wedges of lemon on it.
“Well?” Mary Alice asked me, squeezing a piece of lemon into her jar.
“Ninety-eight,” I admitted. “Somebody’s on the take.”
“You are so picky, Patricia Anne. You ever hear of anybody getting sick at Jake’s?”
“I guess not.” I reached for some lemon. “I just don’t need food poisoning on top of everything that’s happened the last few days.”
“Well, you have been borrowing trouble, that’s for sure. Dragging those Needhams in off the street. Lord!” Mary Alice shook her head. I thumped a piece of squeezed lemon at her, hitting her on the arm.
“Is it safe to put this down?” Mavis asked, standing over us with a platter of ribs.
“Sorry.” I unpeeled my arms from the sticky table.
“That’s okay. I got a girlfriend I throw stuff at all the time.” Mavis put the ribs and a stack of white bread on the table.
“She’s my sister, not my friend,” I said, nodding toward Mary Alice.
“Got one of them, too. Y’all want anything else?”
We said that we didn’t, that it looked wonderful. And it did. For the next few minutes we concentrated on eating. Mary Alice slipped a few choice morsels through the holes in Bubba’s carrying case.
“I thought James Butler put him on a diet,” I said.
“Starting tomorrow,” Mary Alice said. “He needs to build his strength back up first.”
“You know,” I said, after the stack of bread and ribs had diminished considerably and I was feeling more kindly toward my sister, “Claire’s back, and I’m relieved she’s okay. Now I can wash my hands of the whole thing. Whoever killed Mercy or Ross or tried to kill Claire, that’s for the police to find out. Right?”
“Right.” Mary Alice put another crumpled napkin on top of the considerable pile on the table. “What’s that policewoman’s name who keeps wandering in?”
“Bo Mitchell?”
“That’s it.”
“Why?”
“I just wondered.”
Mary Alice never “just wondered” anything in her life. “Why?” I asked again.
Mary Alice shrugged and reached for the last rib. “You want some peach pie?”
“Might as well.” I stood up and waved for Mavis, who, miraculously, saw me and came to take our order. “Now, what about Bo Mitchell?” I asked when Mavis had left.
“If I called the police station, I’d want to know who to talk to.”
This was getting more and more curious. “Why would you want to call the police station?”
“I think I know where Ross Perry was going the day he was shot.”
“Where?”
“Leota Wood’s.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, when I had to go to the bathroom, I just happened to open the door and look in her back bedroom to see if there were any more quilts there, and, Mouse, it was stacked full with stuff from all the Outsider artists. I couldn’t look but a minute, but I swear I saw some of Abe’s paintings. And Lonnie Holcombe’s and Ruby what’s-her-name. There was a lot more stuff than at Mercy’s gallery. Just piled in there.”
I skipped over Mary Alice’s just “happening” to open the bedroom door at Leota Wood’s house and went right to “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was thinking about it.”
“And what did you decide?”
“That Ross and Leota are art thieves. They were stealing the Outsider art and selling it on the black market and Leota told Ross—remember that phone call he made at the restaurant?—that their connection, probably some big art Mafia man, had just called and told her that he was going to make a deal with them that afternoon and Ross rushed out there, only it was a ruse and they were hiding in the woods and shot him.”
I looked at my sister, who nibbled the last bit of barbecue from the last rib. She added the bone to the pile on the platter, dipped a napkin into her water glass, and wiped her mouth and hands with the damp paper. She didn’t look like a woman who had suddenly taken leave of her senses.
“Well?” she said.
“You were figuring this out while you were driving down Highway 280 in Christmas traffic?”
“It makes sense.”
“You think this makes sense? A Mafia art connection shooting Ross Perry in the middle of Shelby County makes sense?”
Mavis slapped down two fried pies and two forks. “Coffee?”
We shook our heads no.
“Don’t burn yourself,” she warned automatically as she walked away. Unnecessarily, also. Smoke poured from the pies.
“Ross was on his way to Leota’s. I feel it in my bones,” Mary Alice said, picking up her fork. “They were up to something.”
“Well, Bo Mitchell wouldn’t have anything to do with it. This is Shelby County. You’re going to have to call the sheriff and explain the feeling in your bones. He needs to be alerted about that art Mafia, anyway. God knows we don’t need that element running around down here in
the Shelby County woods.”
Mary Alice plunged her fork into her pie. “Okay, you explain it, then.”
“I can’t. I’m not even going to try. My sister warned me a few minutes ago to quit borrowing trouble. I’ll dump a little more meat in the stew, though. I called the Butlers’ the other night and got Abe. He thought I was Leota and told me, and I quote, ‘The pictures ain’t ready. Git off my ass.’”
Mary Alice blew on a piece of hot peach pie, touched her tongue to it, and blew on it some more. “It means something, Mouse,” she said between puffs.
Bubba screamed for more barbecue.
“Everything does,” I said.
We had a terrible time getting my tree off Sister’s car. At least getting Sister’s back on. The man at the Christmas tree farm had tied them together. So when we loosened the rope in my driveway, both trees fell. We were struggling to get Sister’s back on top when a florist delivery truck pulled up and a young man got out with the largest poinsettia I had ever seen. At least two dozen brilliant red flowers, splashed with white as if someone had dripped a paintbrush over them, glowed in the winter sun. The plant was in a brass container, so large it was awkward for the young man to carry.
“Hollowell?” he said.
“That’s me.”
He shifted the plant’s weight slightly. “You better let me put this inside for you.”
I rushed to open the front door and held it open while the man climbed the steps carefully and came into the hall.
“I’ll put it where you want,” he offered. “It’s not heavy as it looks. Just bunglesome.”
I had him put it in the bay window in the kitchen. It was so beautiful, I caught my breath.
“Who’s it from?” Mary Alice asked. She had followed us into the kitchen.
I opened the card and read aloud: “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Hollowell, and thanks for kidnapping us. Glynn and Lynn.” I teared up a little.
“Oh, come on, Mouse. No tuning up.” Mary Alice turned to the deliveryman. “You know, I’ll bet this nice young man would help us put my tree on the car.”
And he did. And left smiling happily because of the “little Christmas something” Mary Alice gave him for helping.
After she and the still-unhappy Bubba left, I dragged my tree around the back and went looking for the stand. It had been so long since we had had a live tree, I wasn’t sure where we had put it last. But I lucked out. It was on a shelf in the basement right by several strings of big colored lights. I eyed them for a moment, then decided that would be pushing Fred with his fear of fire too far. I was going to have to make a trip to the Big B for some tiny lights.
“What have you done, Mama?”
I jumped. I had been concentrating so, I hadn’t heard Haley come to the basement door.
She answered her own question. “You’ve bought a live tree and Papa’s going to have a fit.”
I came up the steps with the stand. “Most probably,” I agreed. “How come you’re not at work?”
“Not much elective surgery this close to Christmas.”
“People elect to have heart surgery?”
“They can put it off. Sometimes.”
I looked at tiny Haley. The thought of her routinely rummaging around in people’s chests still boggles my mind. I have never wanted to know what’s under my skin. Let sleeping guts lie, is my philosophy. A bad one, according to Haley, who drags me in for mammograms, Pap smears, and other various and sundry indignities. She needles her father into going, too, fortunately. Several years ago, he had an early-stage melanoma removed from his back that neither of us had paid any attention to.
“See?” Haley told her father when the lab report came back. “See? I told you so.”
“What do you do,” Fred asked me, “when your children start telling you ‘I told you so’?”
“Say thank you.” And I meant it. Now he and I check each other over like monkeys.
“It’s a nice tree. Bigger than mine.” Haley was holding the tree up when I came up the basement steps. “You got any decorations for it?”
“I can probably find a few. Help me get it in the stand.”
This is never an easy job, trying to get those screws in the trunk of the tree. I was grateful for Haley’s help.
“I need to borrow your black evening bag,” she said as we hauled the tree that had looked so small in the field up the back steps. “And Grandmama’s cameo. And that gold hair thing of yours. You know, the butterflies. I’ve decided to wear my hair up for the Policeman’s Ball, Mama, because I’m wearing a dress that looks, I swear, like a slip or a nightgown. In fact, I bought it in Rich’s lingerie department, but the tag said it could be used as a dress so I’m taking them up on it.”
“Sheriff Reuse is a lucky man,” I said. It was wonderful hearing Haley babbling happily like this.
“Whoa,” she said as we went through the kitchen. “Where did those gorgeous flowers come from?”
“The Needham twins, Lynn and Glynn. Claire Moon’s sisters.”
“Because you took Claire to the hospital? That was certainly thoughtful.”
“No. Because I dragged them home last night.”
We put the tree in the corner of the den while I explained to Haley that I had been afraid for the twins to drive and had brought them home from the very spot where they were staying. “And I was right,” I finished. “They had Claire there with them. They were the ones who took her from the hospital.”
“Have you seen her? Is she okay? And why did they take her?” Haley was down on her hands and knees trying to straighten the tree up. “How’s that?”
I backed up and looked. “A fraction to the right. And no, I haven’t seen her. James Butler said Thurman Beatty had gone to get her. We were out at his horse hospital getting Bubba.”
“Aunt Sister’s Bubba was in a horse hospital?”
“And held his own, I’m sure.”
Haley backed away from the tree and stood up. “Is it still leaning?”
“Looks straight to me. Do you think I ought to move Abe’s painting? The tree’s not touching it, is it?”
“It’s fine,” Haley said.
The mention of the painting reminded me of the Mafia art connection lurking out at Leota Wood’s house. I told Haley about Mary Alice’s conclusions when she had seen the bedroom full of Outsider work. To my surprise, Haley didn’t laugh.
“Mama, two people are dead and another had a close call, and the only connection among them is the gallery, the Outsider’s work. Think about it. Aunt Sister may be on to something.”
“The Mafia hanging out at Leota Wood’s? Get serious, Haley.”
“I am serious. Not the Mafia, but what do you know about Leota Wood?”
“That she’s a nice old lady in her seventies who lives in a log cabin in the woods and who makes the most beautiful quilts I’ve ever seen in my life.” I started to the kitchen. “Come on, I’ll fix us some coffee, or would you rather have Coke?”
“Coke. I’ll get it.” Haley got two glasses down and pointed one toward me. “Suit you?”
“Sure. I need something to cool Jake’s barbecue down.”
“Red or yellow sauce?” Haley stuck the glasses under the ice dispenser.
“Red.”
“Mama.” Haley poured the Coke. “You ought to live dangerously sometimes.”
“Eating at Jake’s is dangerous.” I sat down at the table. “And do you know they had a ninety-eight health department score?”
“Jake knows the right people.” Haley joined me at the table.
“Maybe some of that art connection Mafia.”
But Haley refused to take this lightly. “Tell me again about Leota Wood.”
I did, including the coydog, Rover, and my phone call to Abe Butler when he thought I was Leota and told me to get off his ass. I also told her that it was possible Ross Perry had been on his way to Leota’s since he was killed only a mile or so from her house, but that he could have been going to see
anybody who lived along that road, including James Butler. “She’s just a nice, talented old lady, Haley,” I concluded. “There’s a logical explanation for all that artwork being in her bedroom. You can bet on that. Probably wasn’t as much as your aunt Sister said, anyway.”
“She’s a fence,” Haley said, gazing into her glass as if it were a crystal ball. “All that stuff is stolen and when Ross called she told him she had one particular thing that he collected, knowing he would pay her a fortune for it.”
“Then who stole all the stuff and fenced it with Leota and why did she shoot Ross Perry?”
Haley stirred the ice with her finger. “Claire Moon stole it.”
“What?” My head was beginning to throb. “Why not her sisters?” I got up and took two aspirin from a bottle that was almost empty. “Or her aunt Liliane.”
“The twins weren’t here for Mercy’s party, were they?”
I swallowed the aspirin. “I have no idea. Why?”
“To kill Mercy.”
I had started a grocery list on a notepad that had “Keep on truckin” printed across the top. Some company Fred did business with. I tore a couple of sheets from the back and handed them to Haley. “Here. Write me a short synopsis. I’m still confused about some points.”
“So am I.” Haley grinned good-naturedly. She stuck the paper in her pocket. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“Well, in the meantime, let’s get the stuff you came for and see what we can find to go on this tree. And we need to talk about the boys. It’s okay for Freddie and Celia to stay with you, isn’t it? Like they did last Christmas?”
