Shadow of an Angle

by Mignon F. Ballard

  Gatlin had just left to pick up Faye from kindergarten when the dispatcher at the Get Up and Go Transportation Service phoned to tell us that a driver had called for an elderly passenger a week ago today and delivered her to the bus station there.

  My grandmother rarely cried, but now she made no attempt to hide her tears. "She's been gone seven days, Minda—eight if you count today. Where on earth can she be?" She pulled a rumpled tissue from her pocketbook. "I've felt uneasy about this from the very beginning."

  "Why don't we take a look at her apartment? See if she took anything with her. Might give us something to go on."

  Vesta sighed, but followed me into the small rooms in back of the shop. "Might as well. Can't hurt to look."

  "Find anything missing?" I asked when she'd had a chance to look around.

  "Her small suitcase is gone, and her coat, but she took that with her to the hospital." Vesta peered again into the tiny closet. "That silly hat's missing, too, and I don't see her lavender suit—the one she got on sale last year. I don't think all of her dresses are here, either."

  "Looks like she planned to be gone for a while." I sat on the bed, relieved that at least Mildred had taken enough clothing, and watched my grandmother pulling out dresser drawers. "What are you looking for now?" I asked.

  "That zebra. Scruffy old thing. Mildred gave it to Otto for Christmas when he was just a little tyke, and he dragged it around everywhere. She hangs on to it like it's some kind of icon. Now that Otto's dead, I wouldn't be surprised if she's taken to burning incense."

  "Oh, I saw that zebra at the hospital," I told her. "It was in that little table beside the bed."

  Vesta smiled. "Doesn't surprise me a bit. She hides things in it, you know."

  "Hides things? In the stuffed animal?"

  "Lord, yes! Of course she doesn't know I know. And it's so big I could get my foot in there. No telling what else she's got in that zebra. Mildred's sewn it up so many times, the poor animal must be molting."

  "Vesta, maybe we should tell the police. At least they could help us look for her."

  "I don't know, Minda. There's nothing wrong with Mildred's mind, and she'd never forgive me if we humiliated her by dragging her back, but I'm worried about those pills."

  "The ones Irene gave her?"

  "What if she takes more of them?" Vesta sat on the bed beside me and almost—but not quite—let herself sag. "Frankly, I don't know what to do."

  "We can't very well drag her back if we don't know where she is," I said. "Why don't we ask at the bus station, see if anyone there remembers her? Somebody might be able to tell us where she went."

  Gatlin insisted that our grandmother wait for David to accompany her on her bus station quest that afternoon, and their oldest, Lizzie, and I went along, too. Faye decided to stay and "help" her mother at the bookstore. Tigger liked it there, she said, because he could sit in the window and see what was going on. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that the drugstore across the street sold hot dogs and ice cream.

  Lizzie was working on her Toymaker badge for Girl Scouts, and during the ride to Rock Hill I tried my best to help her make a cornshuck doll, but the dried shucks became so shredded, we ended up with something that looked like confetti.

  "What about a sock puppet?" I suggested. "Or maybe some kind of game?"

  Lizzie turned up her freckled nose at the sock puppet, but the game, she thought, might be kind of fun. "We could make it sort of like Clue, " she whispered, "except it would be Minerva Academy instead of that big old house, and the body would be Otto's!" My young cousin frowned. "Lessee… Sylvie Smith did it in the bathroom with a plastic bag…."

  "Elizabeth Norwood! You're downright ghoulish!" I glanced at my grandmother in the front seat, but she appeared not to have heard. "You'd better not let Vesta hear you talking like that. And what makes you think Sylvia had anything to do with it?" (I really must've been the last one to hear about Otto's rumored romance.)

  She shrugged. "He dumped her, didn't he? Everybody at school knows that."

  I remembered how much I thought I knew in the fifth grade and tempered my advice with a smile. "Still, it isn't in very good taste, is it? Especially with Otto being family and all. And we don't know for certain what happened between them. Why don't we think of some other game?"

  Lizzie tossed her head and grinned. "Okay. How about Missing Mildred?"

  I was glad when David pulled into the bus station a few minutes later. I stayed in the car with Lizzie while my grandmother and David went inside with a recent photograph of Mildred.

  "They think Mildred's dead, don't they?" Lizzie said, watching them disappear into the building. "Maybe whoever killed Otto kidnapped her and is holding her for ransom in a cave somewhere."

  "Why would they do that, Lizzie?" I asked.

  "I don't know. Why would anybody want to kill Otto?" She linked her arm in mine, and we waited silently for her dad and Vesta to come back with a clue that might help us find Mildred.

  But I could tell from their grim faces our trip to Rock Hill had been a waste of time. "The woman who sells tickets said she might've seen Mildred, but she couldn't be sure," Vesta told us. "And the man who works with her couldn't remember seeing her at all." My grandmother sank into the front seat with a moan, and that bothered me almost as much as Mildred's disappearance. Vesta Maxwell is not your everyday, run-of-the-mill moaner. In fact, she's not the moaning type at all.

  "There's the police—," I began.

  "I know, I know. I suppose we could take legal measures to find out if Mildred charged a bus ticket on a credit card or wrote a check for her fare," Vesta said.

  "Of course, if she paid cash, we'd have no way of knowing," David said.

  I wished he hadn't. It was a long, quiet drive back to Angel Heights.

  We found Gatlin waiting with exciting news when we returned. Dr. Hank had finally agreed to sell the building next door. "Of course it's gonna take him a few days to get those old records out," she said. "I've talked with a couple of contractors about getting an estimate on the work that needs to be done."

  "Let's hope the walls remain standing," Dave said, shaking his head. "Hank's old records might be the only thing holding them up."

  "You'd think he'd be excited for me," Gatlin said later that night as we drove to see Pluma Griffin's niece in the assisted living center on Chatham's Pond Road. "I know it's a gamble taking a chance on this tearoom-bookshop idea, but there comes a time when you just have to hold your breath and jump in."

  "David's just wary," I said. And with good reason, I thought, but for once I had sense enough to keep it to myself. "He'll come around when you get an opinion from the contractors."

  My cousin didn't respond, but sat in the passenger seat with her arms folded and stared stonily ahead. "I left him to get Faye to bed and see to Lizzie's homework," she said a few miles down the road. "Still, I think he was glad to see me go."

  "Probably," I said. "You're scary when you're mad."

  "Boo!" Gatlin laughed. Finally relaxing, she noticed the loaf of date-nut bread I'd brought along that Augusta had wrapped in star-spattered cellophane. "You've been baking again? Looks good—what is it?"

  "Date-nut bread." I shrugged. "All those pecans…I do live in a nut house."

  "You belong in one," my cousin said. "And I don't believe for one minute you've become this domestic overnight. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were hiding a gourmet cook in the pantry." She closed her eyes and sniffed the rich, dark loaf. "She doesn't take orders, does she?"

  "What makes you think it's a she?" I asked, and laughed. Gatlin laughed, too, but I could tell by her look she was kind of shocked that I'd even joke about having another man in my life. Frankly, I surprised myself.

  I had found the loaf cooling on the kitchen table when I'd reached home earlier, but Augusta was nowhere around. Walking into a house without Augusta in it jolted me more than I was prepared to admit, and I sensed an urgency in her absence that g
ave me sort of an angelic kick in the pants.

  Dusk had fallen early as it always does in mid-November, and although it was not yet five-thirty, backyard shadows enfolded the house and its surroundings in an indigo cape. I stepped out onto the back porch and called her name, and in the distance I heard her humming a song that would probably be familiar if Augusta could stay on key. She approached almost noiselessly in a swirl of autumn leaves, her purple, moon-splashed scarf billowing about her, long necklace glinting green and azure as she twirled. Arms out, head back, her small gold-sandaled feet moved quickly, gracefully, in what surely must be some kind of heavenly dance. The song, I finally decided, was "Turkey in the Straw."

  "I didn't know where you were," I said, my relief in seeing her obvious in my voice. "The bread smells great. Is that for supper?"

  Her hair had come loose as she danced, and now Augusta caught the coppery mass in one fleeting motion and fastened it behind her head. "It's for Pluma's niece. You said you were going to see her."

  It had been a tiring day. "Tomorrow," I said. "It'll keep until tomorrow."

  Augusta paused at the foot of the steps and looked up at me. She didn't answer. She didn't have to.

  "Are you telling me to hurry?" I said.

  Augusta nodded. "Time and Mrs. Hopkins wait for no one."

  "Huh?"

  The angel smiled. "Mrs. Hopkins was a cow. So called because the family who owned her said she reminded them of a neighbor by that name. Mrs. Hopkins woke them, bellowing to be milked at five every morning, and that was an expression they used." Augusta moved past me into the house, and a crisp, earthy scent trailed after her. It smelled of apples and pumpkins and sun-dried grass. "That was in another time, of course. I wasn't with them long."

  I followed her inside. "Don't leave me yet, Augusta. Please. I can't do this without you," I said.

  "Don't worry," she said. "It's not time yet. I'll let you know when it is."

  "Augusta, do you know what's happened to Mildred? Because if you do, I wish you'd tell me. Vesta's really worried, and so am I."

  She shook her head. "I think Mildred's searching as we are. I can only hope, as you do, that no harm comes to her."

  "But you think she's still alive?"

  "Arminda, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see." My guardian angel opened the refrigerator and quickly closed it. "I'm afraid I didn't prepare anything for supper. Why don't we order pizza?"

  Now, on the way to see Martha Kate Hawkins, pepperoni sat heavily in my stomach and Pluma Griffin's message to my great-grandmother weighed on my mind: I won't forget!

  Augusta claimed never to have met her, but said the name sounded vaguely familiar. I guess if I'd been responsible for as many people as Augusta over the centuries, I'd forget a few names, too.

  October House, the assisted living center where Martha Kate lived, was festive with pumpkins and fall foliage. A foursome quarreled at cards by the gas fire in the parlor, and somebody was playing "I Could Have Danced All Night" on the piano at the far end of the room. I had called ahead, so Mrs. Hawkins was waiting for us, and even managed a gracious thank you when we saddled her with Lucy's copy of The Heart Sings a Blessing.

  "Well, my goodness," she said. "This does go back a long way, doesn't it?" She stuck it under her arm. "Do you think people really read stuff like this?"

  I knew then if Pluma Griffin's kin knew anything to help us, she would give it to us straight.

  She led us to a small sitting area where comfortable chairs were arranged around a marble-topped coffee table. "It's still not too late to get coffee—but not the real thing, I'm afraid. Would you like some?" Pluma Griffin's niece hesitated before joining us in the flame-stitched coral chairs. She wasn't very tall—probably not much over five two—but she was trim and straight. I remembered her as being pleasant but efficient when I visited Dr. Hank's office during my growing up years.

  I thanked her but declined—and got straight to the point. "We've become intrigued by a group of women our great-grandmother used to belong to," I began, ignoring the eye-rolling from Gatlin at my use of the pronoun we. "From what we've learned, there were six of them, and after finding this book, Vesta thinks your aunt Pluma may have been one of them."

  Martha Kate Griffin took time to remove a dead leaf from the African violet on the table in front of us before she answered. "Why, yes, that would be the Mystic Six," she said, leaning back in her chair. "Did you know they passed a quilt among them? I always thought it had some kind of story behind it, but Aunt Pluma never said. She willed her pretty little pin to me. Look, I had it made into a ring." And our hostess held out a fragile finger bearing the encircled flower and star.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Do you know what happened to the quilt?" Gatlin asked after admiring the woman's ring. "I remember seeing it once or twice when I was little, but I've forgotten what it looked like. Vesta said it had something to do with the academy."

  "That seemed to be the theme of it, yes." Martha Kate Griffin turned the dainty ring on her finger. "It fascinated me when I was a girl because it incorporated a burning building. Aunt Pluma said it represented the old classroom wing that was destroyed in a fire. Professor Holley died in it, they say."

  "Seems a strange reason to make a quilt," I said, thinking Lucy and her friends must have been a morbid lot.

  "People sometimes make quilts that tell a story," our hostess reminded us. "And in those days Minerva Academy was the focal point of just about everything that went on in Angel Heights. And not only did the fire deprive them of their center of culture, it also killed the very person who provided it." She paused to smile and flutter her fingers at two women walking past. "Fitzhugh Holley was sort of a celebrity in his own right, as well, from what I've heard. Wrote a little animal series for children. Something about a cat, I think. They were published, I believe, after he died."

  "Callie Cat and Doggie Dan," Gatlin said. "I've seen copies at Holley Hall—under glass, of course."

  Martha Kate nodded. "I believe they were on the quilt, too, and several figures—female figures, naturally, since the school was only for young women."

  "Your aunt—did she have the quilt when she died?" I asked. "I'd really like to see it."

  "I didn't find it among her things. It's a shame really, as it should be on display at the academy. In fact, I asked Gertrude Whitmire about it once, thinking perhaps the quilt had been donated to the museum there, but she didn't seem to be aware it existed."

  I must have groaned, because Martha Kate turned to me in concern. "Is anything wrong, Arminda?"

  "It's just that we were hoping you might be the one who had it. I'm afraid we've come to the end of the trail, and no one seems to know where the quilt ended up," I told her.

  "Oh, I do hope it hasn't been destroyed! Young people now don't seem to value the old family heirlooms as they should…." Martha Kate smiled at Gatlin and me. "Present company excepted, of course.

  "Aunt Pluma must have been number six on your list—or were you unable to find descendants of the others?"

  "We've tracked down all but one," I said and then noticed Gatlin's grin. "Sorry, didn't mean to make them sound like criminals or something, but it's taken a lot of detective work to get this far."

  Pluma's niece leaned forward as if she meant to share a secret. "So, who have you spoken with so far?"

  I counted on my fingers beginning with Lucy's daughter— my grandmother, Vesta. "And Irene Bradshaw—her mother was Pauline Watts, and then Flora Dennis's granddaughter, Peggy O'Connor. We—I—drove all the way to Cornelia, Georgia, to find her. Your aunt Pluma would make number four. My great-grandmother's sister, Annie Rose, belonged, too, but she drowned in the Saluda when she was only sixteen."

  "There was something on the quilt about that, too, I believe." Martha Kate frowned. "A little strip of blue fabric representing a river, and a rose embroidered beside it. I remember Aunt Pluma telling me about your great-aunt. My goodness, she'd be your great-great-aunt, would
n't she? Her death must have affected the others deeply."

  Now she turned to Gatlin, who seemed to be at least making an effort to keep up with the conversation. "I'm sure you've asked your grandmother about all this?"

  "Vesta couldn't tell us much," Gatlin said. "She said the women passed the quilt among them, but she couldn't remember what happened to it." My cousin looked at me and shrugged. "And from what Minda tells me, the others weren't much help, either."

  "Then perhaps Mamie can tell you something," the older woman said. "The last I heard, her mind was sharper than my own."

  "Mamie? Was she a friend of your aunt's?" Gatlin shifted her coat from one arm to the other and tried to cover a yawn. It had been a long day, and my cousin was ready to leave. So was I. Almost.

  "Mamie Estes was the one you missed. She's number six." Martha Kate looked at both of us and smiled.

  "Do you know if she left any descendants we might ask?" I said.

  "Unless something's happened in the last couple of months, you can ask Mamie herself," Martha Kate said. "She lives in Charlotte with a daughter-in-law, and the last I heard was still reading a couple of books a week."

  "But she has to be at least a hundred and ten!" Gatlin said, letting her wrap slip to the floor.