Steps to the Altar

by Earlene Fowler

  “Sharp as a Mallomar,” I said, my sarcasm wasted on her. “But really, I’ve already worked it into my schedule.”

  “Not another word,” she said, clapping her hands together sharply to shut me up. “He’s your assistant and that’s that. Now, I’m off to see about your gramma’s shower. We’ve rented the upper room at Baxter’s Bungalow.”

  “You didn’t tell me that at the meeting,” I said. Baxter’s was a popular and often rowdy college bar downtown. Not at all the place I’d expected a senior citizen wedding shower to be held. Apprehension scratched at my insides. “Why are you having it there?”

  She looked at me as if I had suddenly grown antennas. “Because it’s got a karaoke machine, of course.”

  Before I could ask more, she had breezed through the door, calling to us to stay in touch and let her know if we found anything interesting in Maple Sullivan’s trunks.

  “So, boss, where do you want the trunks?” Detective Hudson asked.

  “Detective,” I said, making my voice as firm as I could. “As much as I enjoyed working together with you a few months ago . . .”

  He broke into my lie with a huge guffaw.

  I glared at him. “Okay, who are we kidding? You bug the crap out of me and I don’t want to work with you. I can’t even guess why you’d suggest it to Edna.”

  “Hey, what do I have to do to get you to call me Hud? And maybe I missed you.” His dark brown eyes twinkled.

  Before I could comment, he continued, “Look, you haven’t even seen the trunks. Take a look at them and then decide. There’s a lot of stuff there and two people could get it sorted and cataloged faster than one.” He closed the distance between us with two long strides and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, “And I don’t have to be telling you what a nag Miz McClun can be. If you really are that busy, you should be grateful for my help. There’s nothin’ says we have to work on it at the same time.”

  Thinking about the two weddings, two showers, the Mardi Gras ball, and that somehow I was going to have to deal with the fact that my husband’s ex-girlfriend was sniffing around did tempt me into accepting his help. He was right, we didn’t have to work on it at the same time. I could teach him the cataloging method, give him a key to the folk art museum—he was a sheriff’s deputy, after all, I could trust him not to steal the silver—and he could work on it when he could. Maybe this would work out and I could get Edna off my back that much sooner.

  “How many trunks are there?” I asked.

  His grin returned, as if he had heard my thoughts and knew he’d won out. “Four. I’ve got them in the back of my truck. Where do you want them?”

  I sighed. “Over in the corner there.” I pointed at the far end of the room, next to the oak credenza that still held Scout’s ball captive. “I’ll show you how we catalog things for the museum and we’ll divide up the trunks. After we’re through, we’ll go over each other’s lists to double-check that everything’s been properly cataloged. Also, we’ll wrap any linens, quilts, and clothes in acid-free paper to preserve them better. I’ll show you how.”

  He nodded, his face turning serious. “I’m fascinated by this Maple Sullivan’s life and I’m bettin’ you are too.”

  “I’m too busy to be fascinated,” I snapped. “So the woman killed her husband. So what? I’m sick of a society that finds murderers and criminals more fascinating than people who go through life not giving in to their baser instincts.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “People givin’ in to their baser instincts is what puts gas in my truck.”

  “Just go get the trunks,” I answered, not wanting to get into any kind of philosophical discussion with him.

  He came into my office about a half hour later, his sleeves rolled back and his face rosy with perspiration. “Thanks for the help,” he said, flopping down in one of my visitor’s chairs without asking.

  “You forget, I’m the brains, you’re the brawn. I’ve been working in here getting the forms ready.” I held up four file folders labeled MAPLE SULLIVAN, TRUNK NUMBER ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR. Each held some photocopied cataloging forms that listed the item, description, shape it was in, and its approximate value.

  “Wow, I bet you’re exhausted,” he said, grabbing my half-full can of Coke and drinking it in two gulps. “Fillin’ out labels is real thirsty work.”

  “Hey, that was mine!”

  “And it was the last one, I noticed,” he said. “Real hospitable of you, Mrs. Harper.”

  “This isn’t a tea party. So, when can you get started?”

  He crushed the empty can, tossed it toward my trash can, and missed. Then he didn’t bother to get up and throw it away. What a jerk.

  “Not today. I promised Maisie I’d take her to the Atascadero Zoo. She never gets tired of that place.”

  I scooted my chair over and picked up the can, giving him an irritated look as I tossed it in the trash. “How is your daughter?”

  His face relaxed and lost that edgy, out-to-get-you look cops seem to develop after years on the job. “She’s real fine. Growin’ like a California weed, but pretty as a Texas bluebonnet.” He stood up abruptly. “Well, gotta go. Show me real quick what you want me to do.”

  I pulled out a form and went over it with him, emphasizing the importance of describing each piece as thoroughly as possible. We would eventually take pictures of everything, but the written account was just as important.

  He listened attentively, without interrupting, obviously interested in the process. My judgment of his facile personality altered just slightly.

  “How did you become interested in the historical society?” I asked, giving him a key to the co-op building and showing him where in my desk I would keep the trunk keys.

  He shrugged. “One of the guys in Robbery told me about how they were having trouble finding workers to fix up the Sullivan place. I went down with him one afternoon and had a great time paintin’ and sawin’. Learned that stuff from my mama’s daddy, my pawpaw Gautreaux down in Beaumont, Texas. He built the house he and Mawmaw Gautreaux lived in from the day they were wed to the day she died of cancer last year. My mama was born in a bed he carved. Kinda made me feel closer to him.” He raised his eyebrows. “Besides, felt like I had to do something with my useless history major.”

  “You majored in history? So did I!”

  “And did it help you grow better cows?” he asked solemnly.

  “No, the agriculture minor did that. Does it help you catch criminals quicker?”

  He rolled down his sleeves and buttoned the cuffs. “Maybe. It taught me how to be patient when I’m looking for something. Also taught me that folks do the same ole crazy-ass things they’ve always done. Ain’t nothing all that new and creative about a criminal mind.”

  “So I’ve heard Gabe say.” I looked over at my black-and-white schoolhouse wall clock. “You’d better get going or Maisie will have your hide.”

  His eyes crinkled in pleasure, thinking about his daughter. “Amen to that. She’s a real little whip-cracker.” He stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. “I’ll leave my finished forms on your desk. That okay?”

  I nodded. “I’ll leave the file folder on the credenza.”

  “Oh and one more thing.”

  I waited expectantly, feeling a bit friendlier toward him now. Maybe he wasn’t as big a jerk as I thought.

  “I was standin’ there watchin’ you for two long, glorious minutes and I’d have givin’ a hundred bucks straight out of my pocket for two more.”

  “Get out, you freak,” I said.

  9

  BENNI

  AFTER DETECTIVE HUDSON left, I decided to take a quick look at the contents of each trunk and try to assess how much time this job might take. I was annoyed that he’d finagled his way into this project and even more annoyed at the way he could still jerk my chain.

  Three of the trunks, of obviously good quality, were made by the same manufacturer. They were a shiny black with pale
wood trimming and slightly tarnished brass hardware. The fourth was much older and more cheaply made—dark green metal with rusty hinges and a silver-colored padlock that had, I would guess, been added later. Using the keys Edna had given me yesterday, I opened the one closest to me, one of the more expensive-looking black ones. A sweet, musty scent wafted up, like the smell of dried rose petals. The top tray contained a tangle of costume jewelry, fake jewels that winked and glittered under the harsh, overhead lights. Under the tray were neatly folded clothes, tissue paper stained gold with age carefully placed between the wool suits and linen dresses.

  I lifted out a stiff, narrow-collared navy gabardine jacket. Underneath it was a matching skirt. It looked like something Katherine Hepburn would wear playing a wisecracking lawyer in the movies. A business suit? Edna said Maple Sullivan had worked as a writer for the Tribune so that made sense. I made a note to stop by the library and look up some of her work on microfilm. Would there be any indication in her writing of the horrible crime she would eventually commit? I’d check the stories on the murder too. How difficult it must have been for her colleagues to have to report on a crime committed by one of their fellow writers. I folded the suit and carefully placed it back in the trunk.

  The other three trunks were just as full and emanated that same sweet, potpourri smell. The second one held mostly household linens. Stitched by her or by friends and family? A set of dishtowels caught my eye and I pulled them out. In her cedar trunk, Dove had a set of these towels made during the war years when, because of gas rationing, inexpensive, stay-at-home hobbies like needlework were popular. Maple’s towels were made of that same lintless, flour sack cotton which was more decorative than useful when it came to drying dishes. Dove’s, like many others I’d seen in antique stores, had the days of the week embroidered in bright cotton thread—MONDAY—WASH DAY, TUESDAY—IRON DAY, WEDNESDAY—MEND DAY, all the way to Sunday, which usually showed the housewife sitting in a rocking chair reading her Bible.

  Maple’s dishtowels revealed a side of her I couldn’t help liking. Like so many other women during that time, she had embroidered a set of tea towels. But hers showed the woman sitting in the rocking chair reading every day, with the titles of the books she was reading embroidered across the bottom of each towel: MONDAY—WINDSWEPT, TUESDAY—FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, then the rest of the week, MILDRED PIERCE, THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM, VALLEY OF DECISION, CROSS CREEK, and the one that made me smile at its sheer audacity, that forbidden yet widely read book, SUNDAY—FOREVER AMBER. The towels looked brand new and I wondered if she’d ever shown them to anyone or kept them to herself as a secret amusement.

  “Maple Bennett Sullivan,” I said out loud. “You were a caution.”

  The third was full of small knickknacks and mismatched pieces of china. It appeared she collected teacups. There were also some hats, trimmed with netting and miniature artificial flowers. Small, tight hats that would cling closely to her head, held on by the sharp combs inside, neat and as trouble-free as a hat could be. Though I didn’t know what she looked like yet, I could picture her in the navy suit, one of the hats attractively cupped to her head, strolling purposefully down Lopez Street, enjoying the admiring glances of the flocks of servicemen who crowded the streets of San Celina, off duty from Camp Riley, north of the grade, up near San Miguel. She would acknowledge their respectful wolf whistles with an indulgent smile, her stride never faltering. She’d be on the way back to the Tribune’s offices. During the war they’d been located in a building across from the courthouse. It was a red brick building with carved stone curlicues above the oak doors that was now a bar and restaurant called The Twisted Tort Cafe popular with deputy DAs and defense attorneys who needed a quick bite before or after court.

  I smiled to myself, amused at my own imagination. I was already giving this woman a life and a personality when all I really knew about her was she was married to the only son of a once-prominent San Celina ranching family, worked for a time as a journalist, and had killed her husband. And remembering the tea towels, she definitely had a mind of her own.

  Allegedly killed her husband, the small voice inside me insisted.

  Projecting undocumented feelings and possible scenarios into the lives of the people I was studying was one of the biggest problems, Russell Hill, my old history professor and mentor at Cal Poly, could find in my research papers. He once suggested that perhaps I should be minoring in creative writing and not agriculture and make my living writing historical fiction. This was all said in a gentle and amused manner as I was unabashedly one of his favorite students. I’d have to pay Professor Hill a long overdue visit in the next few weeks and see what he knew about Maple Sullivan. He had been born and raised in San Celina County and its history was his passion.

  The fourth trunk, the older, cheaper one, was one that I would not trust to Detective Hudson’s inexperience. It held books, files of papers that appeared to be the original drafts of her stories, scrapbooks, including one that contained brittle yellowed clippings from the Tribune showing Maple Bennett Sullivan’s bylines. She had saved me from a lot of tedious research at the library. All I’d have to do was read this scrapbook. I pulled out one clipping and read her human-interest story about a man in a ranch outside of Cambria, back before rich people discovered the town, who had braided a rawhide riata for a war bonds drive. She described how he scraped the hair off the rawhide, cutting the strings from the full hide, beveling the strings so they would lay straight, and finally braiding the rawhide.

  “It’s hard on the hands,” Abbott Fitzhugh, the cowboy artisan, said. “Even with hands as tough as these old paws. You get blisters and the muscles get real tired. You have to be careful to pull each string evenly so you don’t have a lumpy riata or it doesn’t pull itself into a circle.”

  It was auctioned off for two hundred dollars to a Standard Oil executive. Fitzhugh, whose picture showed a man of lean handsomeness with thin, taciturn lips, had worked full-time as a wrangler up at the Hearst ranch, where he’d ridden for the rich newspaper man five days a week, then come home on the weekends and worked his own ranch. He was proud, he said, to help his country and had willingly and joyfully braided this rawhide riata in his spare time.

  “And when, pray tell, would that be?” Maple Bennett Sullivan added in an authorial aside at the end of the piece.

  Just that line alone made me like her. It told me she understood how hard this man worked and how precious his time was.

  I picked up a packet of letters tied with a red ribbon. The top one was addressed to Garvey Sullivan, 112 Firefly Lane, San Celina, California. The return address was Maple Bennett, Mercy Ridge, Kentucky. Courting letters between Maple and Garvey? So, she was obviously a Southern girl, another thing that endeared her to me, seeing as I was technically born in Arkansas even if I had lived most of my life in California. I took the letters and the scrapbook of newspaper clippings to read when I found the time.

  Underneath the packet of letters, in a tarnished silver frame, was a black-and-white photograph of a man and a woman. The engraving on the frame said MAPLE AND GARVEY—MAY 1, 1942. She had a sturdy thinness that suggested her tough, rural upbringing and a simple face with even, pleasing features. Her dark hair was shoulder-length cut in a modified Veronica Lake pageboy. Her eyes were also dark. In the black-and-white photograph, her red lipstick appeared the same color as her eyes. She wore a simple dark suit with a light-colored blouse pinned with a corsage of roses. He wore a dark suit with a small handkerchief tucked in the chest pocket. His hair was combed straight back from a high forehead. She smiled shyly at the camera while his face held a steady, solemn gaze.

  Back in my office, I left a note on the front of the file containing the log sheets for the trunks.

  “Leave the fourth trunk (the older one with the books and stuff) for me. And put everything back in the trunks just like you found them.” I underlined the last five words twice. Someone a long time ago had taken the time to pack her things neatly in her trun
ks and I didn’t want to dishonor that act. Of course, storing some of her things in the trunks might not be the best way, but I’d have to consult with Edna to see if she wanted to store them any other way . . . or even perhaps display them. There was a forties section of the historical museum where Maple’s things would fit in. On the other hand, some of the members of the society were probably put off by the fact that she was a criminal and didn’t want to celebrate that piece of San Celina history.

  Alleged criminal, the voice corrected me again.

  I sighed and left the file and note for Detective Hudson on the corner of my credenza where he couldn’t miss them. I was definitely going to have to find out more about this Maple Bennett Sullivan if for no other reason than to convince the skeptical little voice that there was no mystery here. A dead man, a rumored affair and pregnancy, a wife who disappeared leaving everything behind. Sounded just like what it was, a sordid mess of human emotion and pain, the breakdown of love between two people who couldn’t imagine that ever happening—a domestic disturbance that got out of hand—the stuff that patrol cops see every day of their lives. Today, the whole story would be dissected on a daytime talk show and the couple would be given their fifteen minutes of tacky fame before becoming another statistic.

  Hunger pangs were telling me it was lunchtime, so I headed for my truck. It was past one o’clock, and on the way out, I met a couple of potters. Behind them trailed a group of quilters carrying an array of colorful bags containing supplies they didn’t store here. The co-op studios were always busier in the afternoons and evenings because many of the artists worked as housecleaners or other service-type jobs that were best done in the morning. That’s why I tried to go to the museum and get my work done before noon. When the co-op was full of artists, if I was in my office, it became the social and complaint center of the building, which I mostly enjoyed, but it also kept me from getting any real work done.