by Anne George
“I got arrested today,” I said.
“Really?” He popped open the can, took a long swig, and headed down the hall.
I waited.
In a minute he was back, a startled look on his face. “You what?”
“We’d better sit down for this one,” I said.
Thirteen
Larry Ludmiller didn’t come home last night,” Yul Brynner announced as she came into my kitchen the next morning. “Virgil just called me. Tammy Sue is having a fit.”
I was sitting at the kitchen table and had just taken a bite of French toast. I chewed, swallowed, and looked at Sister as she sat down across from me.
“Did they have a fight or something?”
She shook her head. “Apparently not. Virgil said she had supper all ready for him, and he never showed up. And she’d told him she was going to cook a pot roast.”
“He called here yesterday looking for her. Right after y’all left for Tannehill. I gave him your car phone number.”
“We never heard from him.” Sister got up and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Tammy Sue called Virgil about two o’clock this morning and said Larry hadn’t shown up.”
“Maybe he was with one of the acts that he handles at some club. Is that a possibility?”
Sister sat back down and reached for the sugar. “That’s what I said, and Virgil said that it was highly unlikely and that he would have called anyway, that he never worries Tammy Sue like that. Besides, she was cooking a pot roast. I asked him if he wanted me to come up there, if there was anything I could do, and he said no, that he and Tammy Sue had called everywhere and they were going to go out looking.” She stirred her coffee. “He said Larry’s got a couple of apartments on Valley Avenue that his out-of-town acts stay in. They’re going to go over there.” She put her spoon down. “He didn’t say they were going to look in ditches on the way, but I’m sure they are.”
I pushed my French toast away. “This sure doesn’t sound good, does it?”
“Sounds scary as hell. I told Virgil I was on my way to my martial arts class and he said to go on, that there wasn’t anything I could do, but I just didn’t have the heart for it.”
“Well, maybe Larry’s all right. Maybe he left a message that got erased or something.” Little Miss Sunshine not believing a word of what she was saying.
“I hope so.” Sister looked over at me. “You feeling better this morning?”
“I was.”
“I know what you mean.”
We were quiet for a few minutes, both of us lost in thought.
“There could be a girlfriend,” I suggested.
“I don’t think so.”
“But it’s possible.”
“I doubt it.” She eyed my French toast. “Any more of that left?”
I shook my head. “But there’s some Sister Schubert’s orange rolls in the refrigerator. Nuke them for about fifteen seconds.”
“I like Tammy Sue,” she said, wrapping a couple of the orange rolls in paper towels and sticking them in the microwave. “Down to earth. Said she thought the long sunflower bridesmaids dresses would be great.” The microwave dinged. She took the sweet rolls out and came back to the table.
So Sister wasn’t the only one trying to get along here.
She blew on the sweet roll and then took a bite. “We walked down to the creek at Tannehill and there was a big old water moccasin slithering out of the water, and she grabbed a pistol out of her purse and shot at that snake before he could even blink.” Sister swallowed and took a sip of coffee. “Missed him but scared the hell out of him and us, too. Just as well that Debbie was in the car feeding Brother. He’d still be yelling.”
“She just snatched a gun out and shot it?”
Sister nodded. “She’s had training. She said she’d have hit the snake if she’d wanted to. And I think she would have. It just wasn’t that snake’s time to go.”
“A stepdaughter to appreciate.”
“That’s what I’m beginning to realize. She was going to take me to see a cabin up at Smith Lake this afternoon, but I guess since her husband’s missing, that’s off.”
“You’re buying some lake property?”
“Might as well.” Sister popped the rest of the sweet roll into her mouth and wiped her hands on a paper towel. “You know what I forgot, though? Deena just slipped out of my mind totally.”
“Who’s Deena?”
“Virgil’s other daughter. The one who lives in Texas. I just plain forgot he had three children, and he hasn’t said a thing about it when I’ve talked about the wedding. I guess I’ll have to ask her to be in it. And she’s got a couple of little girls, and if Fay and May are going to be in it, I guess her girls will have to be, too, except Tammy Sue says that Deena has a tendency to have panic attacks and might not be interested. I’ll have to ask her, though.”
“Panic attacks?”
“Well, Tammy Sue says she’s been known to faint dead away and twitch. Sounds awful, bless her heart. But she’s on medication now and a lot better.”
“Reckon she carries a gun, too?”
Sister narrowed her eyes and looked at me. “I don’t know, Patricia Anne, but there’s something to be said for a woman who can sell a piece of property, shoot a snake, and cook a pot roast in a Crock-Pot all at the same time. Neither of us could do it. Or our daughters, either.”
She had me there. “You’re marrying into rugged stock,” I said.
“If you discount impersonating Elvis and panic attacks.”
“Well, no family’s perfect.”
“True.”
We grinned at each other.
“Speaking of which,” Sister said, “Marilyn hasn’t been in touch with you any more has she?”
“No, and there’s nothing wrong with Marilyn.”
“Of course there is. If she’d had any common sense, she’d have snatched Charlie Boudreau up years ago and had a bunch of kids by now.”
“She said she couldn’t live with him.”
“That’s just an excuse.”
No way I could figure that one out. I got up and put my dishes in the dishwasher.
“You over being arrested yet?” Sister asked, handing me her coffee cup.
“Fred made me feel better. He said he was going to go down to the police station and beat them all up. And then he fixed me hot chocolate with marshmallows and we watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” I closed the dishwasher. “I’m going to go over to Bernice Armstrong’s house this morning. She’s got a rocking chair that she says would be perfect for Haley.”
“You want me to take you? You couldn’t get it in your car if you decided you wanted it.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to go to your karate class?”
“I’m not in the mood. Go get dressed while I call and see if Larry’s shown up.” She reached for the phone. “I declare I hope he’s in one piece somewhere.”
I shared that wish fervently.
The Armstrongs live in a beautiful old part of Birmingham called Forest Park. Most of the homes here were built in the early 1900s, large homes on level lots and lush lawns with huge old trees. Many of the detached garages were probably built for carriages originally. There are sidewalks and small parks, and a ride through this neighborhood is a trip to a more gracious time. One can imagine the ladies sitting in wicker chairs on the large, cool porches visiting and drinking tea while the cooks cooked supper, the yardmen cut the grass, the cleaning ladies cleaned, and the nannies took the children to the park. Now the Magic Maids come in once a week, a yard service does the yard, and the kids are at Mother’s Day Out or day care. Still no bad deal. And a few lucky ones still have a nanny. As for the cooking, the ladies go to the Piggly Wiggly or the Winn-Dixie like the rest of us. The houses are still treasured, though. And it shows.
The Armstrongs’ house is a three-storied dark brick set well back from the sidewalk. When Mary Alice and I pulled into the driveway, Sandy’s Lawn Service was hard at w
ork. One young man was circling on a riding lawn mower, one was weed-eating around the trees, and one was planting red and white begonias in a triangular flower bed between the drive and the walkway.
“Those things are going to freeze,” Mary Alice informed him as we walked by on our way to the front door. “North of Montgomery you don’t plant flowers until the first Sunday after the first full moon after March twenty-first.”
He looked up and smiled. “Sometimes you gotta take a chance, lady. And begonias are right hardy.”
“They do look pretty,” I assured him. And to Sister, “That first full moon thing is the date for Easter.”
“Which is the right time to plant flowers. You miss blackberry winter.”
She was confused but she had a point. Blackberry winter is the last cold snap we get in the deep South. It invariably falls at Easter and kills the blackberry blooms as well as a lot of other flowers.
We walked through the spring smell of newly cut grass and rang the doorbell. Sister looked around at the well-kept house and lawn. “The insurance business must be doing all right by Jerry Armstrong,” she said. “But didn’t I hear he was sick or something?”
“He had open-heart surgery. He’s doing fine now. Haley was the scrub nurse and that’s why Bernice wants her to have the rocker. She said Haley was wonderful.”
“Hmm. You know, Mouse, we’ve got to decide no later than today what we’re going to do to welcome she and Nephew home. It’s just a couple of weeks away.”
“Her. You don’t welcome ‘she.’”
Sister scowled. For a second I thought she was going to reach over and pinch my arm, something she learned how to do sixty years ago without leaving a bruise. It has something to do with the way she rolls her fingers. It hurts like hell, and you have no proof that Miss Innocent has done a thing.
Fortunately the front door opened.
“Hey, y’all,” Bernice said. “Come in. Day and Dusk and I are just having coffee in the sunroom. Y’all come on back.”
We stepped into the foyer and both of us shrieked. A monster stood there, arms raised to attack. Sister and I grabbed each other. (Later on we would both swear we were trying to protect the other.)
“Oh, I’m sorry, y’all,” Bernice said calmly. “I forgot to warn you about Maurice. I know it’s tacky having him here right at the front door, but we haven’t decided where to put him, and this is as far as we got. You wouldn’t believe how bunglesome he is, and how heavy.”
I peeked around Mary Alice’s arm and saw that Maurice was a grizzly bear, larger than any bear I had ever seen in a zoo. Standing on his hind legs, he was in an attack mode. Only the glass eyes gave away the fact that those six-inch-long claws weren’t going to rip us open at any given moment.
“It’s a stuffed bear,” I said, peeling Sister off of me.
“My God,” she said when she opened her eyes and looked. “What the hell?”
“I apologize.” Bernice reached way up and patted Maurice’s chest. A chunk of fur slid down and over his belly. “Bless his heart. He’s molting and falling apart. But Jerry treasures him. His uncle left it to him when he died last month. He supposedly shot it in Alaska when he was a boy, the uncle that is, but knowing Uncle Hardy, I have an idea that the poor bear died a natural death, and Uncle Hardy just stumbled upon him. At least, I hope so.”
Mary Alice and I looked at Maurice and he looked back, glassily. My heart was slowing down, and I hoped Sister’s was, too.
“I know he’s tacky here in the foyer,” Bernice repeated. “I mean, how many people in Birmingham have a whole, stuffed grizzly bear in their house, and them an endangered species to boot. It’s embarrassing. But what are you going to do when your husband thinks something is wonderful and it was a gift from his own dead uncle?”
Mary Alice reached over and touched Maurice. Fur drifted to the floor. “Dustbust him?”
Bernice shook her head. “Jerry would have another heart attack. I just don’t understand men. Do y’all?”
“Fortunately it’s not necessary.” Sister paused to give Maurice another pat as we walked by on our way down the hall.
Day and Dusk were standing by the window in a deep conversation as we came into the sunroom, though Day seemed to be doing most of the talking. It was eerie the way they matched their names. Blond Day was dressed in a jade green suit; dark-haired Dusk had on a black leotard and tights. They both looked up.
“Heard you greeting Maurice,” Dusk said, grinning. “Mama really needs to warn people.”
“I’m going to send him back to New York with you,” Bernice said. “He’d be better than all those chains and bolts you weight your door down with.”
“That’s for sure. Her door has so much metal on it you can hardly open it.” Day motioned to a wicker love seat. “Y’all sit down, and I’ll get you some coffee.”
“I’ll do it,” Dusk offered. “You need to get back to work.”
Day glanced at her watch. “I guess I’d better, but I hate to. Y’all come see me at the bank, ladies. We’ve got great CD rates.”
Bernice gave her a hug. “Go peddle your wares somewhere else.”
“Bye, ladies. I’ll call you later, Mama.” We heard her tell Maurice to behave himself as she went out the front door.
Tiny Dusk poured each of us a cup of coffee and offered us sugar and cream.
“Are you feeling okay now?” I asked, taking the napkin she offered.
“Much better, thanks.”
“It was the shock of seeing that Griffin Mooncloth dead,” Bernice said. “Y’all want some cookies or something?”
We both shook our heads.
“It shocked us, too,” Sister said. “We were sitting in the front row and he nearly landed in our laps.” She took a sip of her coffee and then put the cup on the table. “Which reminds me. You know Larry Ludmiller, Dusk?”
Dusk had curled up in a wicker chair in a position that only a dancer could accomplish. Her legs seemed to have disappeared.
“The one who books acts?” she wanted to know. “I’ve met him is all. Why?”
“He seems to have disappeared. He didn’t come home last night.”
Bernice looked up, alarmed. “They don’t think it’s connected to the Moonflower case, do they?”
“Mooncloth, Mama.” Dusk said. Bernice shrugged
“I don’t know what they think,” Sister said. “I just know they’re trying to find him and that they say this is totally unlike him. They’re worried.”
“Maybe he had a wreck,” Dusk suggested. “His car could be down an embankment or something. Remember that lady who ran off the road in Shelby County and kudzu covered her car for weeks?”
“Oh, surely not.” Bernice pushed her coffee away. “Do y’all know him?”
“He’s Virgil Stuckey’s son-in-law. Virgil and I are getting married in May.” Sister turned to me. “Do you remember the exact date?”
I shrugged that I didn’t.
“Virgil’s the sheriff of St. Clair County until the end of this month,” Sister explained, “and then he’s retiring.”
“Well, I declare, Mary Alice.” Bernice beamed. “That’s wonderful. When did all this happen?”
“Recently.” It was the first thing I had said since we sat down. The other three looked at me in surprise as if they had forgotten I was there.
“You wouldn’t believe, Bernice. He looks a lot like Cary Grant,” Sister said. “And the wedding is going to be in the little church at Tannehill Park.”
It’s hard to believe that even as strong an emotion as love could turn a combination of Willard Scott and Norman Schwarzkopf into Cary Grant. Proof that it really is blind, I suppose.
“Well, tell me all about it,” Bernice said.
So Sister did, including the wedding dress and the sunflower and magenta bridesmaids’ dresses. Bernice seemed enthralled and even Dusk seemed excited. Too excited, I realized, when she clapped her hands as Fay and May tossed rose petals. Her face seemed flu
shed, too, I noticed. Was she still sick? Or was she on something? Some people were allergic to stomach medications. Maybe that was it.
Mary Alice and Bernice were engrossed in the talk about the wedding, and I watched Dusk. Surreptitiously, of course. To a casual observer, she would look relaxed, curled up in a chair. But I realized that she was in constant motion, pushing her hair back, patting the leg that was curled under her.
So I wasn’t as surprised as the other two were when she suddenly jumped up, excused herself, and left the room.
“You okay?” Bernice called after her.
“Fine,” echoed down the stairs.
“No, she’s not,” Bernice said sadly. “She’s still in a dither about the murder. I wish she’d talk about it, but she won’t. Not even to Day.”
I put my coffee cup on the table. “I’m sure it shook her up terribly.”
Bernice sighed. “I wish she wouldn’t go back to New York just yet. But she says there’s a new show that she wants to try out for. And when Dusk makes up her mind, she’s adamant.”
“How well did she know the Mooncloth guy?” Sister asked.
“Not all that well. She knew him in class, of course, but it was actually Day who knew him better than Dusk. Day met him when she was visiting Dusk in New York and went out with him some. She thought a lot of him. Said he was the last person in the world who she could imagine anyone murdering.” Bernice shook her head. “So sad. They’re going to have a memorial service for him in New York, so she’s going back with Dusk. I’m glad she’ll be with her for a few days.” Bernice looked toward the steps. “I’m still worried about Dusk. To tell you the truth, I think she may have an eating disorder. Have you noticed how terribly thin she is? I can’t get her to go to a doctor, though.”
“Patricia Anne’s always had one,” Sister commiserated.
“I have not.” I rubbed my forehead. I could use some aspirin.
Sister looked at me sadly. “She plays the denial game.”
“I’m afraid Dusk does, too,” Bernice said. “Well, enough of that. You want to go see the chair?”
“I eat,” I said as we went up the steps. “I eat a lot.” But sometimes you’re just plain talking into a vacuum.
