by Angie Fox
“Interesting,” I said as Fiera led me down a bright yellow-painted hallway with vintage plaster accents. Art glass sconces lined the walls.
The residents had decorated their doors with photo collages and flowered wreaths. I saw one veteran had hung a pair of small flags crossed over his door—Marine Corps and the Stars and Stripes.
“Two more down,” Fiera said, nudging me along. She stopped and knocked at a door covered in zebra wrapping paper. “I called her on the way over, but she didn’t pick up.”
“Do you think we missed her?” I asked, disappointed. We should have set up a time to see her.
“Oh, she’s always home in the morning,” Fiera insisted. An elaborate pink-framed dry-erase board hung below the peephole. Fiera grabbed the pen. “She either forgot to turn her ringer back on after she woke up, or she’s sleeping in,” she said, penning a quick note to MayBelle. “Don’t worry. We’ll track her down. She’s a diva anyway, but she’s worse if you wake her.”
“I suppose we can grab a coffee around the corner. Or…” I turned to the door across the hall.
A white poster board hung on the door. Residents had written welcome messages to Jorie over the entirety of it.
This was her place.
It warmed my heart to see Sugarland hospitality in action.
Wonderful to have you here. If you play bridge, join us in Room 314 on Tuesdays at 1:00 p.m.
Welcome! Welcome! I baked cookies for you. It’s worth the elevator trip. And, no, I can’t leave them at your door because Bart will eat half of them. –Gloria in 201
Bart promises to eat only three. Love, Bart
I don’t know what I’m going to harass you about now that you’ve moved here at last—and across from chez MayBelle! Heaven help you. I’ll think of something. –MayBelle
I tried the door and found it unlocked.
Of course it was. This was Sugarland.
“Instead of coffee, do you think we can stop in to Jorie’s apartment for a few minutes? I’d like to see if she had any other old wedding pictures like the one she brought me.” Especially if the police had been unable to locate the photo she’d tried to give me at the church.
I hated to go in uninvited, but with Fiera along, it should be all right. They’d been neighbors and friends.
“That’s a good idea,” Fiera said, grabbing MayBelle’s pen again and adding a note that we’d be across the hall. “MayBelle can join us when she can. She’ll either get my phone message or see this when she’s going out.”
“I just hope the photos aren’t still at Jorie’s old house,” I said as I opened the door.
“All of Jorie’s things are out of the house,” Fiera said, following me in. “It sold a month ago. She found your picture while unpacking boxes at her new apartment.”
We walked down a short hallway to a cozy living room. A pair of tufted chairs flanked a table in front of a wide picture window framed by yellow-flowered curtains.
A comfortable-looking couch topped with a cozy green and yellow afghan graced the wall to the right. Across from the couch, a television took up a tasteful portion of the wall over a green-painted apothecary cabinet. I placed my bag on the coffee table by the couch and admired the framed photos of Jorie’s family in San Diego. They looked so tan and happy by the beach. It pained me to think how much they must be hurting from her death.
“Jorie kept her photographs in here,” Fiera said, opening up the doors to the apothecary chest. What had at first appeared to be dozens of little green drawers was in reality two large doors that opened to reveal a pair of long storage shelves.
Decorative boxes in a yellow and gray chevron pattern lined the shelves like a page out of a catalog. It was all rather cute. “Jorie’s only been here a few weeks, but her place is better decorated than mine,” I mused.
“All of this came from her house,” Fiera said, making me feel slightly better. I’d lost everything and had to start over. Jorie had developed her taste over time. “But yes, she did have a knack for making things look nice.” Fiera settled onto the floor in front of the cabinet. “The photos are in here,” she said, sliding a box out.
It was empty.
“Well, in this one, then,” she said, sliding out another as I settled on the plush carpet next to her. But the second box lay empty as well.
A small furrow appeared between Fiera’s brows. “This is weird.”
Together, we started pulling boxes.
Empty, empty. My stomach sank with each featherlight empty box.
“These had pictures in them,” Fiera vowed. “I saw them quite recently.”
“Here’s a full one,” I announced, welcoming the heft as I pulled out a box full of photographs.
Thank goodness.
“She could have sent a bunch to her family,” I reasoned.
“She’d talked about doing that, but said she hadn’t had the time yet,” Fiera said, taking the first photos from the top of the box. “In fact, she asked me to help. Only we hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”
Fiera handed me a stack of photos. These were of Jorie’s children growing up. I recognized her daughter Suzanne. She was a few years behind my mom in school.
“She always meant to put these in albums,” Fiera said as we gently sifted through old school pictures, family picnics, birthday parties, and camping trips. Some of the prints had faded with time, the back of each neatly printed with the date in Jorie’s scrolling hand.
“I’ll put these aside for Suzanne,” Fiera said when we’d finished.
“I almost feel bad for snooping.” These were intimate family moments.
“Jorie wouldn’t mind,” Fiera said, sighing as she pulled out another empty box.
“Let’s hope not,” I said, disappointed when the rest of the boxes yielded only one more collection—this one filled with more recent photos of Jorie and her friends on various outings. I recognized Fiera and MayBelle, but my grandma wasn’t with them. These must have all been taken after she’d died.
“I can’t believe there are no wedding photos,” I said, returning the boxes. “Does she have a wedding album somewhere?”
“She has to,” Fiera said, not sounding optimistic at all.
We looked everywhere—in the bedroom dresser and under the bed, in every closet.
Jorie did have a framed photo of her and Ray standing in front of the Three Angels altar, with their daughter and a very young-looking Pastor Bob, but it had been taken well after their wedding day and didn’t bear any resemblance to the photo she’d tried to give me.
I even tried the kitchen, which would be the last place I’d expect to find a keepsake wedding album.
“Jorie’s daughter is coming in from San Diego the day after tomorrow to make arrangements,” Fiera said as I stood empty-handed in the Spanish tiled kitchen. “She may know what happened to all of those pictures.”
“I just can’t believe this is it,” I said. It didn’t make sense. If Jorie had an envelope for me, if she had kept pressed flowers and a letter from my grandmother and a wedding picture, there had to be more. At least more wedding photos. “Are you sure there’s nothing left in her old house?”
“She closed on it last week,” Fiera said. “It’s now occupied by Betty from the high school and her three kids.”
“All I know is there have to be more pictures.” The one she tried to give me was so random—bridesmaids outside the church. “She had to have saved others.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Fiera said as we heard a knock at the door.
“Are you in here?” a woman’s throaty voice called.
“MayBelle!” Fiera acknowledged, and we were soon greeted by a woman wearing a maxi dress and a long beaded necklace. A pair of cat-eye glasses perched on the top of her sleek black-haired bob. “Verity!” she announced as if I were on a game show.
MayBelle wrapped me into a hard hug that smelled like bergamot, saffron, and cigarettes. Just as quickly, she let me go. “Enough of th
at. How are you, dear?”
She raised a dark, heavily lined brow and regarded me like she expected an honest answer, which she probably did. From what I remembered of MayBelle Clemens, she wasn’t the type to sugarcoat life.
She was a preacher’s daughter. Born into a preaching family was more like it, one of the nine children of the original head of the Three Angels Church, the venerated Pastor Clemens. He’d had eight boys and MayBelle. Her brother Bob was the current retired Pastor Clemens. His son, Pastor Mike, ran things now.
You’d think with all the holy men in the family, MayBelle would be a proper lady. But she’d gone the opposite way. Rumor had it she’d even pierced her belly button. I personally think she enjoyed shocking people.
It didn’t make her a favorite around our small Southern town, but at least with MayBelle a person knew where they stood.
“I’m upset about what happened to Jorie,” I told her, putting it plain.
“It’s criminal,” she agreed, her strong features clouding. “I never would have left the fundraiser if I’d known she was in trouble.” She said it as if she could have single-handedly defeated the killer.
Then again, maybe she could have.
“Why did you have to go?” I asked, curious.
“Poker game,” MayBelle said.
“For real?” I asked.
“You said your joints were bothering you,” Fiera countered.
MayBelle shrugged a bony shoulder. “Everything aches at this age. And if it gets me out of small talking with Virginia Wydell and her crowd, I’ll take it.”
Fiera rolled her eyes. “Figures you’d skip out.”
MayBelle grinned. “I did my duty at the Three Angels. I gave my check. I said hi to Mike and a few of my friends. And I still made it to Lucky Joe’s by one o’clock.”
“Who’s Lucky Joe?” I wondered.
“My bookie,” she said.
Sure. Now I understood better why my grandmother had liked MayBelle in small doses. “While you were at the church, Jorie showed you the photograph and the letter she’d planned to give me—” I began.
“That’s why I wanted to find you,” MayBelle interrupted. “Jorie gave me a photograph as well.” She grinned at my surprise. “Want to see it?”
“Yes,” I said as she beckoned me to follow.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Fiera.
“She didn’t tell me,” Fiera said, hurrying behind me.
“I was trying to get out of there,” MayBelle stated as if that explained everything. “Now Fiera says your picture is missing. I wonder why.”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” The answer could lead me to Jorie’s killer. “Do you remember who else saw the photo Jorie had for me?”
“I have no idea,” she said, leading me across the hall. “But face it—it could have been anybody.”
She was right.
And she didn’t lock her door, either. She opened it right up and hustled us into an apartment I could only describe as classic Marilyn Monroe meets Southern charm. Colorful pots of glossy hibiscus accented a motley assortment of antique furniture. Her couch was rattan with white cushions. A gold chandelier hung above it all, dripping with party beads.
I stopped cold to stare. It all came together in an unexpected sort of way. It wasn’t gaudy. It was simply a lot to take in.
Kind of like MayBelle.
“I’m eighty-three. I can live how I want,” she said dryly.
“Yes,” I said. Yes, she could. I almost tripped over the woven Indian rug laid over the already plush carpet.
“Here it is,” she said, taking a gold-framed photo from an assortment on the coffee table.
MayBelle’s photo bore a certain resemblance to the one Jorie had planned to give me. Only this one showed the full trio—my grandmother, Jorie, and MayBelle—on Jorie’s wedding day, standing on the church steps, holding flowers, smiling as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
“This is lovely.” I sighed.
And I had no idea how it could mean anything to anyone other than us.
“Your grandma was a great lady. Kind, with a heart of gold and a streak of fire,” MayBelle said, looking at the photo with me. She touched her throat where my grandma’s necklace had hung all those years ago, and where it now graced my neck. “I see a lot of your grandma in you.”
I looked up into her eyes, crinkled from smiling. “Thank you.” It meant a lot for her to say that.
“I hear the good you’ve been doing,” she added. “The Sugarland grapevine isn’t all bad.”
“Even if it is all-knowing,” I said, returning my attention to the photo. “We hit a dead end at Jorie’s place. We came looking for wedding pictures, but most of Jorie’s picture boxes were empty.”
“Well, Fiera took three boxes last night,” MayBelle said, glancing past me to where her friend stood looking at her phone.
“Oh.” Fiera’s cheeks reddened and she almost dropped her phone. “That was for the library,” she said quickly. “There was nothing overly personal in there.”
I would have thought she’d be too broken up to visit Jorie’s apartment just hours after she died.
“Why didn’t you mention it?” I asked. Just a few minutes earlier she’d stood there and wondered with me exactly where all the pictures could have gone.
“It’s not as if Jorie gave them to you,” MayBelle pointed out as if oblivious to the way Fiera had begun to fidget. “At least you returned those gray chevron boxes.”
“It was nothing,” Fiera insisted, stuffing her phone into her pocket. “Maybe a few letters now that I think about it. But nothing her family would have wanted.” She’d turned pink at the ears. “Nothing that has anything to do with you, Verity,” she was eager to add.
“Still, you were surprised to find less at Jorie’s apartment than you expected,” I said. “Were the other boxes full last night?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look,” she said, genuinely distressed. “It really was no big deal.”
“All right,” I said noncommittally. She’d better not be lying to me. My sister worked at the library, and I’d be double-checking her story.
MayBelle crossed her arms over her chest. “I think I know where the other things might have gone.” The preacher’s daughter had gone from friendly to lethal on a dime. I started to see why MayBelle liked poker. She had the temperament for it. “After Fiera left with her boxes last night, my dear nephew dropped by Jorie’s apartment.”
“Pastor Mike?” Fiera gasped.
“I watched him go in and I watched him go out,” MayBelle said, fishing around in her pocket. “Jorie kept a bunch of pictures in an Amazon box under her bed. He snagged that and loaded up a box of his own. Took two trips.”
Fiera appeared ready to faint. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“Why didn’t I stop you?” she countered, fishing around in her other pocket and drawing out a small cigarette case. “He’d just try again, and I have to sleep sometime.” She flipped the case open and selected a smoke. “Frankly, I wanted to see what he’d take.”
“Do you have to do that now?” Fiera asked as if she couldn’t endure one more thing.
“It’s why I have a balcony,” MayBelle said, drawing a silver lighter out of the pocket on the other side. “Now what else are you not telling your partner in crime, here?” she asked, drawing aside a pair of gauzy white curtains to reveal a set of French doors.
“There is no crime. I’m just trying to help Verity recover what she lost,” Fiera said. I didn’t miss the tension in her voice.
“Um-hum,” MayBelle said, stepping outside.
I was no fan of cigarettes. In fact, I was glad Frankie’s smoke was ghostly. But the balcony could have been burning down at that point, and I’d have still wanted to go out there.
“Got room for one more?” I asked, parting the billowing curtains.
MayBelle was brutal on the cross-examination and seemed to be holding all the card
s. She could be bluffing, but I didn’t think so. I wanted to learn her angle and why she’d thrown her friend and her nephew under the bus.
She eyed me as she took a drag, and I’m not sure if it surprised her when I closed the door behind me.
I liked Fiera, but she’d just proven she wasn’t always going to tell me the truth. And I wondered what Fiera had taken that was worth lying about.
The small balcony stood high enough to catch quite a breeze, but luckily the wind blew away from me as MayBelle took another long drag.
I leaned against the rail. “Tell me more about the photographs in those Amazon boxes.”
She cocked her head slightly as if she liked the question. Smoke curled out of her nose. “They were some of Jorie’s oldest, most cherished pictures. My nephew had no business taking them.” She glanced at the French doors. “And I was just trying to get Fiera’s goat in there. I did ask Mike what in Hades he was doing.” She took another drag. “He said Jorie had left them to my brother Bob.”
The second Pastor Clemens.
I nodded, trying not to cough on the smoke. I’d be paying a visit to both Pastor Mike and Pastor Bob. “Do you know where Pastor Bob is living these days?”
She flicked the ash of her cigarette over the balcony and sent it tumbling down. “My brother lives three doors down from me.” She cocked her cigarette and seemed greatly amused at my surprise. “This is a great building.”
“I love the painted glass ceiling downstairs,” I confessed. “And this balcony.” You could see the entire town square.
“I thought I’d see more of my brother when he moved in. But Bob likes to read all day. Not my style.”
“There are a lot of great restaurants around here,” I suggested.
She twisted her lips ruefully. “Mike visits Bob every night.” She took another drag. “They either go out to dinner, or Mike brings it up. Or so I hear. They never invite me.”
“Well, maybe it’s boy bonding time,” I tried to reason.
