Too Late for Angels

by Mignon F. Ballard

  “Did you get her number?” Ellis asked. “Maybe later, if we ever get home, you can call and find out what went wrong.”

  “I wrote it down. It’s in the car.” Lucy started to run. “And so is my cell phone!”

  The smell of crushed pine and cedar was a refreshing change from the dank odor of sludge and decaying leaves that had surrounded the abandoned shack and Lucy was relieved to find that other than a few minor scratches and a broken headlight, the car was relatively undamaged. Pushing aside overhanging branches, she managed to open the door on the passenger’s side and get the cell phone out of the glove compartment. Ellis, tramping through behind her, wrenched open the opposite door and jammed on the emergency brake.

  “I thought you said you left this on,” she said.

  “I did!” Lucy shook her head. “I must be going crazy.”

  “Lucy Nan, the gear shift’s in drive!” Ellis drew in her breath. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “Wait, it could’ve slipped. Just let me call the garage. I’m afraid to try and back this thing out of here.”

  “Are you kidding? Somebody’s trying to kill us. Phone them from the road.” Ellis reached for the phone. “Here, let me have that. I’m calling Bennett.”

  Lucy shivered as they made their way up the hill. It was getting darker and a chill wind rattled the remaining dry leaves on the trees. She paused once to look behind them, dreading to see some dark, threatening shape emerge from the woods, but Ellis urged her on. Bennett was on his way and Lucy had given Ralph Sloan at Super Service directions and left the key under the floor mat.

  “What makes you think somebody let the brake off?” Lucy asked as they neared the top of the hill.

  “There are too many weird things going on around here lately, in case you haven’t noticed. Plus, I thought I heard a car scratch off somewhere close by as we started down the driveway, but I didn’t think much about it at the time,” Ellis said, scanning the deserted road ahead of them. “There’s another house just a little farther down the road and I thought it was probably coming from there.”

  “If I’d locked the car, this wouldn’t have happened. I was in such a hurry to see if this woman recognized Florence’s picture.”

  “You need to get in the habit. You forget to do it half the time—and everybody knows it.” Ellis grabbed Lucy’s arm and started across the road. “Let’s get away from here. I told Bennett we’d wait for him at the Cantrell place.”

  “Until recently I’ve always felt safe in my own hometown,” Lucy said. “I never used to lock my car in Stone’s Throw.”

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Ellis said. “Your car was rolling down that hill at a pretty fast clip. I think somebody gave it a shove.”

  “There should be tire tracks then.” Lucy looked over her shoulder. “Did you think to look?”

  Ellis nodded. “Didn’t see any. They must’ve parked on the grass.

  “But nobody knew we were coming here—”

  “Except Estelle,” Ellis said.

  No one appeared to be at home at the old Cantrell place, but there was a produce stand near the road that was in use during the summer months that would keep them out of the wind. Lucy found a couple of crates inside and made Ellis sit while she looked at her knee.

  “It’s a pretty bad gash and it has a lot of dirt in it. You must’ve hit a rock.” She’d been carrying wet wipes in her handbag since Teddy was born and used some to clean around the area. “You’ll probably need stitches in this, Ellis. We’ll need to go straight to the emergency room.”

  “Oh, goody! You just want an excuse to postpone calling Roger.”

  “Who said I was going to call Roger?” Lucy took the phone from her purse and punched in the number the woman had given her.

  Ellis frowned, searching the road for Bennett’s car. “Who are you calling, then?”

  “I’m going to find out right now about this mysterious Estelle,” Lucy said, then snapped the cell phone shut and dropped down on the crate beside Ellis.

  “What happened? Lucy Nan, if you didn’t have mud all over your face, you’d be as white as a ghost. Did anybody answer?”

  “Yeah. Evans and Sons Funeral Home.” Lucy felt cold through and through. She didn’t think she would ever get warm. “Why would somebody want to kill us, Ellis?”

  “Are you sure you dialed the right number? Here, let me try.” Ellis took the phone and tried again.

  “Well?” Lucy asked and her friend gave her back the cell phone without a word.

  “Somebody thinks we’re getting too close to the truth,” Ellis said, hugging herself for warmth. She made a face. “And where’s Augusta when we need her? Some guardian angel she turned out to be!”

  Lucy had been thinking the same thing, yet she had been the one who suggested Augusta take some time off. “I think you must’ve been filling in for her today,” she said. “Besides, we’re here, aren’t we?” She jumped up as she saw Bennett’s car slowing. “And here’s your hubby!” She had never been so glad to see anybody in her life.

  “You’re staying with us tonight, Mom, and that’s that.” Roger stood in the doorway of the den as if blocking her way. Lucy started to sit, and then thought better of it. If she sat, then Roger would sit, too. It had been like that since he arrived an hour before: When she went into the kitchen, he followed; when she opened the pantry door for a can of soup for supper, he was right behind her, no more than a foot away. A shadow. She worried that he might even try to follow her into the bathroom while she showered and changed. Instead he had stationed himself outside the door.

  “What in the world were you and Aunt Ellis doing out there in the middle of nowhere?” Now her son rubbed his forehead and gazed at her with a deeply aggrieved expression, and he did it quite well, Lucy thought. She remembered all the times she had done the same to him. It hadn’t worked then and it wasn’t working now.

  “I’ve explained the best I can, Roger. And I’ll be fine here, really.” She glanced at Augusta, who stood by the window looking almost as injured as Roger. The angel had been waiting when Bennett brought her home and had looked on with a bewildered expression while Ellis’s husband checked the house before leaving. Although Lucy had tried to downplay the danger while filling her in on what happened, she could tell Augusta was distressed. She had never seen her as subdued.

  “Let the police do the investigating,” Roger said for about the fifth time. “This is not your business, Mother.” He stirred restlessly. “Now, where’s your overnight bag? Let’s get some things together and go.”

  So it’s Mother now, Lucy thought, and it certainly was her business, but her son’s patience was wearing thin. And so was hers, but it wasn’t worth the hassle. “All right!” she said. “Just for tonight.” Across the room Augusta nodded with a slight smile and Lucy knew Clementine would be in good hands while she was gone.

  “What happened to that woman who’s supposed to be living here?” Roger asked as Lucy threw a few essentials into a bag. “Why is it I never see her?”

  “She’s rather shy, and of course she travels quite a bit.”

  Roger muttered something that Lucy couldn’t understand, but the very tone of it sent angry darts of frustration smack into the bubble of pent-up emotion that had been building up for so long, and Lucy Nan Pilgrim sat on her bed and cried. She cried until she was good and ready to stop. And then she did.

  “Mom, I’m sorry. You know I worry because I love you.” Roger knelt beside her, his arms around her, and now and then he patted her shoulder with a clumsy masculine hand. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  Lucy kissed his cheek and reached for the tissues. “It’s all right. I’m okay now.” Then she noticed that Roger had tears in his eyes, too, and it almost made her weepy all over again.

  Earlier she had asked Bennett not to phone Roger. “I’ll tell him tomorrow—I promise,” she said, but Bennett would hear none of it. Fortunately, Lucy got a brief reprieve as no one had b
een at home when he first called. He had also telephoned the police from the emergency room where Ellis was having her knee treated, and Elmer Harris, the chief himself, had met them there to get a report of what happened on Hatley’s Mill Road.

  “You’ve been through a lot,” Roger was now saying, “and I’ve been so busy at the college, I’m afraid I haven’t been around much lately.” He grinned. “Hey, you know that soup you ate isn’t going to hold you long. Why don’t we stop on the way to our place for a couple of burgers and shakes?”

  Lucy said that sounded good to her, knowing full well her son would grab any opportunity to eat junk food when Jessica wasn’t around.

  “Maybe Julie could come for a few days,” Roger mused later as they waited for their order. “We haven’t seen much of her lately and I think it would do you both good.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t tell Julie about this just yet,” Lucy said.

  Of course then he wanted to know why and she struggled to explain. “Your sister hasn’t been too keen on me since I criticized her choice of boyfriends,” she said.

  “Oh, that guy? What’s his name? Buddy…something? He’s a jerk! I can’t imagine what she sees in him, but she’ll outgrow him, Mom. Just give her time.”

  “I wish she’d hurry,” Lucy said.

  Now Roger turned to her. “But that’s no excuse for keeping her in the dark about what’s been going on around here. She’s your daughter and a grown woman now. You shelter her too much.”

  Lucy started to argue with him until she realized he was telling the truth. “It’s just that I’d rather have her come home because she wants to rather than because she has to,” she said. “And she did say she’d try to be here for Thanksgiving if she can get off. The three of you will be coming, won’t you?”

  He winked at her. “Are you kidding? I love my wife, but I draw the line at tofu turkey. Of course we’ll be there, Mom!”

  “What’s this I hear about you and Ellis competing in the fifty-yard dash out on Hatley’s Mill Road?” Ben Maxwell stood at her door the next morning with a basket of apples and a potted plant. “Christmas cactus,” he said, thrusting it into her hands. “They didn’t have a wide selection at the grocery store.”

  “Thanks. I’ll look forward to seeing it bloom.” Lucy stepped back to let him inside. “And why is it that everybody in town seems to know what happened to us in less than twenty-four hours?”

  He set the basket on the kitchen table and looked forlorn. “I’m not everybody in town,” he said. “Am I?”

  She kissed his cheek which, she noticed, smelled of some sort of spicy soap. “Of course you aren’t. I was going to call you this morning anyway.”

  His eyes brightened. “Is that right?”

  “Right. I wanted to invite you to supper tonight.”

  “Here, you mean?”

  “Exactly. A very informal affair. I’m making a big pot of soup, cornbread and a sweet potato pie. What do you say?”

  He laughed. “I say just try and keep me away! What can I bring?”

  “Just bring yourself. You wouldn’t let me help with the picnic at King’s Mountain Sunday, remember? Now it’s my time.”

  “Oh, and there’s something else I wanted to mention,” he said as she walked with him to the door. “You know Patsy Sellers, the young lady who handles the public relations at Bellawood, is expecting a baby in a few weeks?”

  Lucy smiled. “Yes, I hope she’s doing all right.”

  “Fine as far as I know, but she asked me to give you a message. Seems they’ve been having trouble finding someone to fill her position and she thought you might be interested in helping out a few days a week until they can hire someone full-time.”

  “Really? I did have some experience in that line when Charlie and I were first married, but it’s been a long time. I doubt if I’d be of much help.”

  Her hand seemed lost in his large callused one, but his grip was gentle as he said good-bye. “You might be surprised,” he said. “And you did say you’d been kind of at loose ends lately. Just think about it.”

  She didn’t have time to think long because Chief Harris called just then to tell her they had traced the call she’d received from “Estelle” to a public phone booth in the next town.

  “I don’t suppose you found any tire tracks, either?” Lucy asked.

  “If somebody was out there, they parked on the grass verge,” he said. “Our men couldn’t find any signs of another car.”

  If? If somebody was out there? Lucy’s hand trembled as she hung up the phone. Did the fool man think she and Ellis made the whole thing up? And what about the fake phone call? She could hardly call herself from another town!

  Lucy stood by the telephone trying to calm herself before she spoke with Ellis. Her head felt as if it was about to explode. She wondered if the police had told Ellis the same thing.

  “Think blue,” Augusta said, suddenly standing beside her, and the touch of her hand made Lucy think of summer, a field of daisies ruffling in a light breeze. “What?” she said.

  “Close your eyes, take deep breaths and think blue,” Augusta said. “It will calm you, add years to your life.”

  “The police chief doesn’t believe us,” Lucy said, but she did as the angel directed.

  “Then the police chief must be a donkey,” Augusta said in that same quiet tone.

  “You mean an ass?” Lucy smiled.

  “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “Not quite,” Lucy said.

  She was laughing when the telephone rang again.

  “I’m calling from Asheville,” a woman’s voice said. “I saw that woman’s picture in the bus station here and I think I sat across from her on the bus not long ago.”

  “Who is this?” Lucy demanded. She wasn’t about to get roped into that little game again.

  “This is Juanita Grimble. I work in the Pancake Palace up here and I’m on my break right now. I wonder if you could call me back ’cause this is costing me money.”

  “Just let me get a pencil” Lucy said. And this time she would get in touch with her roommate as well to see if Juanita Grimble and the Pancake Palace really existed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Well, you can leave me out!” Ellis said. “I can’t believe you’re going on another wild-goose chase, and all the way to Asheville at that. This time somebody might try to run you down with an eighteen-wheeler on one of those mountain roads up there. And what if this Juanita Grimble turns out to be another Estelle?”

  “But she isn’t. I called my old roommate. You remember Stella? She was in our wedding. Anyway, she was the one who posted the fliers up there, and the Pancake Palace isn’t too far from where she works, so she went there for lunch today and actually met this person. She’s real, all right. And Augusta’s going with me, so I think I’ll be okay.” Lucy laughed. “After what happened yesterday, she’s sticking closer to me than white on rice.”

  “I don’t know, Lucy Nan. I think you’re taking a chance. I wish you wouldn’t go.”

  “With all the weird things going on around here, I’ll probably be safer up there, and I can’t wait to hear what this woman has to say,” Lucy said.

  Ellis sighed. “Why can’t you talk to her over the phone?”

  “You know good and well it wouldn’t be the same. Maybe this waitress overheard something, and I want to see if I can find out who Florence sat with, and where she got off the bus. A seventy-year-old woman looking for her mother isn’t your run-of-the-mill passenger, Ellis. She must’ve called attention to herself.”

  “I guess I should be going with you, except it’s been suggested I’m not to leave the county,” Ellis said. “You will be careful, won’t you?”

  “I’ll call you when I get back. Ralph said he’d have my car ready early tomorrow, so we’ll probably leave soon after breakfast. I wish you could go with us, too, but I don’t want the police on my tail,” Lucy said. “I think they believe we made up that story about so
mebody letting the brake off the car.” She told Ellis what the chief had said.

  “Asshole!” Ellis muttered.

  “Augusta says he must be a donkey. By the way, how’s your knee?”

  “Hurts like the devil but at least I have an excuse not to cook for a while,” Ellis said. “And, oh—I almost forgot to tell you I discovered a call on my answering machine this morning from Velda Craig, the lady at the assisted living residence in Illinois. She said Leonard Fenwick has given her a list of his wife’s jewelry. There’s nothing on there that fits the description of the pin you found.”

  “I’m not surprised. As much as I dislike dealing with our doofus police chief, I guess I’ll have to turn it over to the police, but they’ll have to wait until I get back from Asheville. This afternoon I’m cooking supper for Ben.”

  “Aha! How cozy! First dinner and a concert, then a picnic, and now this! And does Ben know what you plan for tomorrow?”

  “No, and I’m not telling him. The fewer people who know about this, the better, so keep it under your hat, okay?”

  “My lips are sealed,” Ellis said. “Just promise you won’t park on a hill!”

  That, Lucy discovered would be difficult to do, as there weren’t too many level places in Asheville, North Carolina.

  It was almost nine-thirty when Ralph brought her car around that morning, so it was close to one o’clock when they stopped at a barbecue place outside of Hendersonville for lunch. Earlier, Lucy had told Roger she would be spending the afternoon with Stella, which was partially true since she planned to drop in on her former roommate while she was in Asheville, and her son had promised to bring Teddy by that afternoon to take Clementine for a run.

  “You didn’t forget the Brunswick stew, did you?” Augusta asked as Lucy returned to the car after picking up their take-out order.

  “Barbecued pork with slaw, Brunswick stew and sweet tea,” Lucy said, putting the paper bag containing their meal on the seat beside her.