Miss Julia Weathers the Storm

by Ann B. Ross

  The back door suddenly swung open, scaring me half to death, as Sam, thoroughly drenched, came running in.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” I said, going to him. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been worried sick. Oh, Sam, you are soaked!”

  “I’m fine, honey. I’m fine,” he said, shrugging off the raincoat that had not repelled water. “Just picked a poor day to look at property. I tell you,” he went on, smiling, as I handed him a towel, “this was no time for man or beast to be out. But, beautiful land, Julia, as much of it as I could see. Lots of mist and fog, then we got caught in a downpour, but it has acres of hardwood, lots of rhododendron patches, and a fast-running stream. Well,” he ended with a laugh, “I guess any stream would be fast-running today.”

  “Go put on some dry clothes, Sam,” I said, “before you catch your death. Take a warm shower, too. Did you have lunch?”

  “No, but we had a big breakfast. We sat around the back table at the Bluebird until close to eleven, just talking. Then Len told me about this tract he wanted me to see, and off we went.” Then, ruefully, he added, “I’ll check the weather the next time we head for the hills.”

  —

  Preparing for bed later that evening, I went over in my mind the welfare of those I cared about. Although Marty had calmed down considerably in our area, there were still the occasional gusts of wind that rattled windows and made us all look up at each other. But Hazel Marie and her babies were safe and dry in her house, and every bed in my house was filled with Lloyd, Latisha, and Lillian. Well, and Sam and me, too, and all I could do was hope that the storm was doing no damage.

  Deciding that no news was good news except in the case of Etta Mae, I tried not to picture her inside that single-wide trailer bouncing around in high winds like a tin can. In which case, she wouldn’t be in any condition to let us know, anyway.

  So, hopefully, we all were reasonably safe and snug in dry beds and under strong roofs. I crawled into bed beside Sam and prepared to sleep the sleep of the just.

  Just as I was on the verge of slipping over the edge, Sam turned onto his back and said, “Julia?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You asleep?”

  My eyes opened. “Not now.”

  He laughed. “I heard at breakfast this morning who Leonard’s involved with.”

  That woke me up. “Who?”

  “Somebody who works in the County Inspections office in the basement of the courthouse, who’s worked there for years, apparently, and Leonard’s job—whatever it was—would’ve taken him there every day or so. At least, that’s what they say.”

  I sat straight up in bed. “Who is she?”

  “Well, nobody was sure of her last name. She’s just known as Totsie.”

  “Totsie!” I shrieked. “What kind of name is that?”

  “Lie down, honey,” Sam said. “It’s a nickname, I guess, but Hank Childers said that’s what’s on her nameplate. He knows her fairly well—he’s a contractor, you know.”

  “Oh, my word,” I said, collapsing back onto my pillow. “Leonard Conover and a woman named Totsie? What else did they say?” I said, sitting up again. “What does she look like? Some little flirty thing in short skirts and tight sweaters? Somebody who’d wear black underwear? That’s what a Totsie sounds like to me.”

  “Just the opposite, they said.”

  I absorbed that for a few seconds, then asked, “Are you going to buy that property you looked at today?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Good. You’ll have reason to go see about zoning and permits, and I want a full description when you do.”

  He laughed and drew me back down. After a few minutes of silence, I said, “That breakfast group of yours really knows what’s going on in town. Which means that I don’t ever want to hear another word about how women gossip.”

  We had a quiet laugh together, then I tried to sleep while visions of a woman named Totsie danced in my head.

  Chapter 32

  And those visions were still there when I got up the next morning. Sam was about to go downstairs as I continued to stand in front of the mirror, trying to do something with my hair.

  “Wait a minute, Sam,” I said, laying aside the hairbrush and turning to him. “Do you think I should tell LuAnne?”

  “Tell her what?” Which meant that Totsie wasn’t occupying his mind the way she was mine.

  “Why, you know—who the woman is.”

  “Good gracious, Julia, I wouldn’t tell her for the world. No telling what it could lead to. No, honey, let’s keep it to ourselves. She’ll learn who it is soon enough, but she’ll never forgive you for knowing it before she does.”

  That didn’t exactly make sense, because why would she hold Leonard’s gallivanting against me? But after thinking about it, I knew that Sam was right. I shouldn’t be the one to reveal all the squalid details to LuAnne, even though, I admit, I was dying to tell her.

  —

  By the time I got to the kitchen, Sam had already left to meet Len Burnside for another look at that mountain property—this time, more adequately dressed and shod for inclement weather. I found Lloyd and Latisha at the table eating breakfast, while Lillian leaned on the counter, talking to them as she eased the weight on her cast-bound foot.

  Looking sharply at her, I said, “Is that foot bothering you this morning?”

  “No more’n usual.” She straightened up and began spooning scrambled eggs onto my plate.

  “You did too much yesterday. Let me have that plate, and you sit down. Elevate that foot, too. I want you to stay out of this kitchen today and take care of yourself.”

  “Yes’m, I will. I might even set out in the yard and let the sun shine on it.”

  I went to the window to look out at the drenched yard—mud puddles and raindrops on grass and leaves sparkling in the bright sunlight. Thready clouds against a bright blue sky scudded in the high-altitude wind, but the promise of a fine August day was in the offing.

  “Lloyd,” I said, sitting at the table as he took his plate to the sink, “I know you want to play tennis today, but the courts will take awhile to dry. Why don’t you and Latisha pick up some of the debris in the yard this morning?”

  I had to smile at my use of the typically Southern way of giving a command by way of a question. But how much more pleasant and courteous it was to ask for cooperation rather than issuing abrupt orders. Besides, it was easier to get things done if everyone was agreeable.

  “Sure, we can do that,” Lloyd said. “The courts might be dry by lunchtime. Come on, Latisha, let’s get to work.”

  “Oh-h, me,” she said, dragging herself upright. “All I do is work, work, work from sunup to sundown.”

  Lillian and I laughed at the absurdity of Latisha’s heavy workday. “Don’t try to move any large limbs,” I cautioned. “You could get hurt. Leave them where they are, and Sam will get them later. Just pick up what you can and pile it all by the curb on the street. The city’ll send a truck by in a day or so.”

  —

  After insisting that Lillian sit in the living room with her feet resting on a footstool, I took myself in hand and called LuAnne. Not that I particularly wanted to, mind you, but because she would expect me to check on her well-being, especially after the first night of her return home.

  “LuAnne?” I said when she answered. “How—”

  “I’m fine, Julia, but I’ll tell you right now that I don’t have time to listen to any more television commercials.”

  “Why, LuAnne, I just wanted to see how you and Leonard are getting along. Television commercials have nothing to do with it.” Although if she had launched into another diatribe about her pitiful circumstances, I had intended to point out how frequently constipation was openly discussed on the air—no initials or euphemisms ever disguised that uncomfortable condition. Frankly, disc
ussing it publicly struck me not only as shameful, but as an indication of how poorly some people had been raised.

  “Believe me, I know it, and I hope you’re off that subject for good. But, Julia, I’m glad you called. You wouldn’t believe how happy Leonard is to have me home. I made blueberry pancakes for him this morning, and he just beamed. Maybe the secret is to cater to his needs more than I’ve been doing.”

  “Umm, maybe. Although it seems to me that that’s what you’ve always done.”

  “I don’t need any negative thoughts, Julia,” she admonished me, while those pressing negative thoughts of Totsie, Totsie, Totsie ran through my head. I mentally clamped my mouth shut.

  “Well,” I said, “I just wanted to check on you and remind you that what it really comes down to is this: What is best for you? What do you want?”

  “Oh, Julia,” LuAnne said, her voice choking, “I know what I want. I want a happy—or, at least, a halfway happy—marriage, and I’m not sure I’ll ever have it. I can’t make blueberry pancakes every morning for the rest of my life. And he just keeps saying that nothing’s wrong, that he’s happy with the way things are—still are.”

  “Well,” I said again, at a loss as to how to respond. “I’ll support you in whatever you decide to do. But, LuAnne, I don’t think you’ll ever regret making this one last—possibly last—effort to improve your marriage. You know, though, that there are some couples who’re just plain mismatched, and no matter how much one of them tries, the basic personality of the other can never be changed. That may sound like some of Sam’s psychobabble, but it’s the truth.”

  “I know it,” she mumbled, then blew her nose. “He’s in there now watching a game show, and refuses—absolutely refuses—to talk about her.”

  “Well . . . well,” I said, wracking my brain for something to console her. “I guess a lot of people stay in unhappy marriages for fear of the alternative, and I understand that.” And I did, for I was wondering, as I had often wondered before, what I would’ve done if I’d discovered Wesley Lloyd Springer’s perfidy while he was still engaged in it. Jumping out of a safe, though miserable, marriage without a parachute would make most women pause.

  “Miss Julia!” Lloyd called as the back door slammed shut.

  “Oh,” I said, my heart lurching at the urgency in Lloyd’s voice, “I have to go, LuAnne. One of the children may be hurt. Talk to you later.”

  Hanging up the phone, I hurried to the hall. “In here, Lloyd. What’s happened? Is Latisha hurt?”

  “Uh, no’m,” he said calmly enough, as he shook his soaked sleeve loose from his arm. “We’re okay. Why?”

  “Well, for goodness’ sakes, I thought . . . well, it doesn’t matter. Why were you calling me?”

  “I’m pretty sure I saw that car again.”

  “Here? On this street?”

  “Yes, ma’am. See, we were picking up the front yard, and I stood up with an armload, and there was that black Suburban just sitting . . . well, just slowing down in the street. It was like it was passing our house until somebody saw me, and it stopped. I stared at it, and I know they were staring at me. They had to be—nobody else but Latisha was around, but then it sped up and went on by.”

  “My word, Lloyd,” I said as a chill ran down my spine. “Are you sure it was the same car?”

  “Well, gosh, it felt like the same one—blacked-out windows and all. I ran to the sidewalk to try to read the license plate, but it was too far away. I’m pretty sure it was a Florida tag, though. I couldn’t see the numbers—didn’t have my glasses on, dang it.”

  “Well, Lloyd, I don’t know what to think.” But that wasn’t true. I knew what I was thinking, and I was thinking that those shady people we’d met on the beach were taking an inordinate interest in the boy standing right in front of me. First at his mother’s house—the one whose address they could’ve found in a glove compartment—and now at my house, perhaps by chance as they tooled around? It was as if they were mapping his locations, and my skin began to crawl at the thought.

  Chapter 33

  “Where’s Latisha?” I asked.

  “Sitting on the back steps cleaning her shoe.” Lloyd grinned. “She stepped in something.”

  “Well, tell her to leave them outside, and both of you come on in the house.” I wasn’t sure what we should do, indeed if anything, seeing that both Mr. Pickens and Coleman were out of reach, and Sam was out in the woods somewhere. I could, however, keep Lloyd—seemingly the object of interest—out of sight until Sam got home.

  “We’re not finished picking up the yard. I mean I’m not, because Latisha spent the time laying her shells out in rows on the front steps and counting them. Looks like she has about a hundred.”

  “Don’t worry about the yard,” I said. “Lloyd, listen, I don’t want to scare you, but we should be cautious until we find out who’s in that car. And, of course, until we’re sure it’s the same car you’ve been seeing. So I’ll tell Lillian to keep Latisha occupied in the kitchen—no need to upset her—and you and I can sit by the window in the living room and see if it comes back around.”

  “Well, I was gonna meet some friends at the tennis courts this afternoon. . . .”

  “Oh, I think keeping watch for about an hour will do it,” I assured him. “If the people in that car are interested in us, they’ll be back around soon enough.”

  “Maybe I can read and watch at the same time. I’ve still got some summer reading to finish before school starts.”

  I smiled—neither book nor street would get much attention if he tried to do both. “After we’ve watched a while, I’ll drive you to the courts. I don’t think you should be walking alone until we find out more. For now, though, I’ll sit and watch with you.”

  And that’s what we did, sitting across from each other in my matching Victorian chairs in front of the double window that faced the street. I paged absently through a magazine, looking up and out every second or so, while Lloyd was soon absorbed in his book.

  Then an article on how to clear out clutter caught my attention, and I let a few extra seconds pass without looking up.

  “There it is!” Lloyd jumped up, his book falling to the floor as he ran to the door. “They’re back! I’m going after ’em!”

  I sprang from my chair and followed as fast as I could. “Wait, Lloyd! Don’t go out!”

  I caught his shoulder just as he opened the door. “We can’t catch them, honey. All we’ll do is let them know we’re on to them.”

  He looked through the sidelight by the door, then slumped back. “It’s gone. I wish I’d had a rock or something.”

  “Listen now, we still don’t know if it’s the same car. You’ve only seen it from the front and from the side, with just that quick glance at a Florida tag.” Even as I was trying to deter him, I was feeling the same urge to do something—almost anything would be better than sitting around watching while somebody else was watching us.

  “Go get your racket,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the car, and we’ll drive around and see if the car’s in the vicinity. Then I’ll take you to the courts.”

  —

  “Well,” I said as I pulled into a parking space beside the tennis house at the country club, “it seems to have disappeared. No sign of it anywhere.”

  “Maybe we should’ve made a wider circuit,” Lloyd said. “But I doubt they’d linger around after making two passes. They probably figured that somebody would notice them.”

  “I don’t know, Lloyd. I keep thinking that we could be making one car out of half a dozen similar ones. On the other hand, we did have a break-in at the beach, and they have their windows blacked out, which is a little unusual. The only reason for doing that is so no one will know who’s in a car. That alone is worrisome enough.”

  “And don’t forget,” Lloyd added, “how that woman rolled up her window so quick on the interst
ate. I mean, Miss Julia, she looked right at me, and I was walking by not three feet from her, and that window zipped up like nobody’s business.”

  “Still, it’s all supposition at this point,” I said, yet fretting inside that it might not be. “Now, listen, Lloyd, I want you to stay right here on the courts—there’re plenty of people around, and those people in the car aren’t going to come walking in.” There was a certain privilege—namely, exclusiveness—that went along with country club membership, and I paid enough in dues and fees to be assured that no unknown persons would threaten Lloyd’s safety.

  “If I’m not back,” I went on, “call me when you’re ready to come home. I do not want you walking home by yourself, okay?”

  “Yes’m, I’ll call you.” He got out of the car, waved at me, and hurried into the tennis house. Several people were on the courts already, and I waited until I saw Lloyd walk out and join three boys who had been batting balls around while they waited for him.

  —

  Before going home, I drove up and down the street in front of Hazel Marie’s house, checking things out. There wasn’t one black car parked on either side of the street, so I pulled into her driveway and walked up to the door.

  Knowing that I considered drop-in company rude and disruptive to one’s daily routine, Hazel Marie’s eyes widened in surprise when she saw who was ringing her doorbell.

  “Miss Julia!” she exclaimed. “How are you? Come in, come in. I just put the babies down for a nap.” Which, I assumed, meant that she’d been thinking of taking one, too.

  “I can’t stay long, Hazel Marie,” I said, stepping into the wide hall of the house that had once belonged to Sam. “I know you have a dozen things to do, but I need to talk to you for a minute.”

  After being shown to a seat in the living room and turning down offers of coffee, tea, lemonade, orange juice, or water, I said, “Hazel Marie, I don’t want to worry you, but . . .” And I went on to tell her about the lurking vehicle which appeared to be tracking Lloyd’s movements and keeping tabs on his whereabouts.