by Ruth Moose
Or should I come back in daylight and try to be sure? Ossie had accused me in the past of going off “half-cocked” on something or someone I found suspicious.
I decided I’d better make sure, so Lady Bug and I putt, putted home, not to sleep, not even to dream, but to toss and turn and worry.
Chapter Thirty-five
“I, for one, don’t believe it for a minute,” Ida Plum said the next morning. “Nobody, not even Crazy Reba, burns a courthouse down with birthday candles.”
That’s when Scott chimed in. “Somebody down at the service station said that politician who’s on trial for embezzling campaign funds and having that affair with a lady photographer had it set to burn up the sex videotape evidence they were storing at our courthouse. It has been all over TV.”
“Ha. I bet he just wishes. A sex tape in the Carelock County Courthouse,” Ida Plum said. “That beats all.” She measured flour to make more biscuits.
“You mean our little Littleboro courthouse had that kind of national media coverage going on and I didn’t know about it?” I asked. Which meant I really did keep my nose to the Dixie Dew grindstone closer than Ida Plum was making me believe. TV? We didn’t allow them at the Dixie Dew. Maybe Ben Johnson’s austerity had left a little bit of residue on me. All that noise and verbal spewing would pollute my peace and harmony, which was considerable when I didn’t think about how much I owed fixing up the Dixie Dew and how much more had to be done and what it would cost.
Except for all that, I felt I had come back to claim my childhood and plant my feet in the rich soil of my ancestors. After all, some of them had fought and died for it: Great-Great-Great-Grampa Buie, who had fought in the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, had miniballs of gunshot working their way out of his body the rest of his life. But he had come home, miniballs and all. Then more wars, on down to my daddy, who died overseas in battle.
“That was what I heard at the service station.” Scott shrugged.
We waited but he didn’t add any detail, if he even knew any more details.
Instead he reached for the biscuits Ida Plum had put in the warmer basket. I could make muffins in my sleep, but only Ida Plum could make biscuits crisp on the outside, tender and butter-melting on the inside. A true art if there ever was one. “At this point, gossip and speculation are the only things we got,” I said. “Is that right?”
“I believe that,” said Ida Plum. She peeked in the dining room, then shut the door. “Where’s our Mr. Fortune this good morning?” She looked at me as if I had answers, which I did, but I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Scott. Surely he knew Sunnye Deye was to judge the Miss Green Bean contest, that his old love was to be back in Littleboro. Maybe he even knew now she wasn’t coming. If they did keep in touch, where did that leave me?
I watched Scott refill his coffee mug as though he didn’t have a care or concern in the world. Then when he went looking for fig preserves, I knew he was all right. I knew he was looking for fig because he went to my secret stash in the upper, upper cabinet by the pantry.
He found a jar I had half-hidden at the back, pulled it out and reached for another biscuit. For a moment I had a flash of an idea that I could offer a “stop by” breakfast for guys like him who wanted it fast and homemade.
Miles Fortune had not come down to breakfast before Scott left with an extra biscuit wrapped in a napkin Ida Plum handed him. “Bribery,” he said. “I know it when I see it.” He waved me a quick goodbye and left.
Ida Plum winked at me. “He’s going to start on the gazebo. Let’s do everything we can to keep him here, on the job, as long as we can. We can feed him lunch, too, if that is what it takes.”
Sherman and Robert Redford ate side by side at their separate bowls. He would miss that rabbit when Verna came back home. I let them both out the back door. I didn’t have to worry that Robert Redford would run off or roam the neighborhood. He and Sherman were almost always together. Buddies.
I knew keeping Scott on the piddly dink job of my gazebo wouldn’t be easy. It was such a small job and he had some big restorations lined up in Pinehurst and Southern Pines, places owned by people with big bucks and deep pockets. I only had big dreams and flat pockets. He had yet to give me an estimate. What if I couldn’t afford it right now? But I needed it right now. Juanita had already booked it for her wedding to Ossie. I would have to add it to my already too big bank loan that had this house as collateral.
That was one wedding I’d knock myself out making as close to perfect as possible. Not because I liked Ossie, but because this was Juanita’s third and maybe there’d be a fourth in her future, more business for the Dixie Dew. Who knew? I couldn’t imagine living with a man like Ossie more than a week. All wound up, going to wipe the world clean of crime and those who even think of committing one. Too focused for me. And I somehow had a feeling Ossie DelGardo was in Littleboro because of something he had done wherever he came from. His eyes were too dark and too close together. And he walked with a swagger, like he owned the town. Mama Alice wouldn’t have trusted him farther than she could throw him. She could spot a phony from one meeting and a good look square in the face.
Crazy Reba’s wedding was off. Dead and done. It was her dream and we’d all played along. A harmless dream that had made Reba so happy we couldn’t bear to burst her balloons. Poor Reba. Where was she now?
It was ten a.m. before Miles Fortune came in from his run, showered and apologized that he’d totally missed breakfast and hoped he hadn’t inconvenienced me in any way. He’d gotten pancakes at the Breakfast Nook. “Great pancakes,” he said. “I haven’t had pancakes in years.”
I felt a bit envious and wondered if I should put pancakes on my menu once in a while, even if they were not one of the things I liked to make. Crepes, yes. Pancakes, no. Crepes had possibilities. Pancakes were pancakes unless they were the Dutch Babies Mama Alice used to pamper me with when I was growing up. She poured batter into an iron skillet on top of the stove, let it set, then put thin apple slices on it, let it puff up and put it on a plate. So sweet you didn’t even need syrup or honey.
“Not a problem,” I said, but did offer him a cup of coffee.
Ida Plum had made his bed, tidied things, brought the towels down. “A laundry chute would be a dream in this house,” she said as she walked by on her way to the basement. Washer there, ironer here in the kitchen. I liked it that way. Loved the smell of sun-dried sheets being ironed. We stored them in the linen closet with dried lavender. Did my guests notice? Did they write comments on the national B and B site?
“Just cream, no sugar.” Miles Fortune waved away my offer. Scott would have said “Sugar. Give me some sugar,” and leaned toward me hoping for a kiss. But Miles was cooler and besides he didn’t know here in the South when someone said “give me some sugar” they meant hugs and kisses.
This Miles was a different man from the one half-dressed in my living room last night. He smiled his gleaming killer of a smile. He wore beige linen pants and a crisp blue pinstripe shirt with white cuffs, this time elegantly rolled to his elbows. I loved to see a man who could roll cuffs and still look perfectly dressed. And he smelled like a fresh shower, all soap, a hint of lotion. Confidence. He radiated zest, enthusiasm.
He stirred cream in his coffee. “Guess what I heard down at the Breakfast Nook?”
I shook my head. He could have heard anything and 90 percent of it wouldn’t be true. But I waited.
“The fellow your Ossie cop picked up from the picnic table beside the road, the one who died—”
“Died?” I waited some more, listened harder. Now I was interested. Very interested.
Chapter Thirty-six
“Somebody who works down at the sheriff’s department said the guy regained consciousness long enough to say something about a body. Helped bury a body? Something.”
“Did he say whose body?” I kept my back to Miles, pretended to crumb the table. This had to be Butch Rigsbee. His body. Had Reba killed him? Oh m
y God, now she really may have killed him. As well as the fellow I “rescued” from the picnic table. “The stranger died?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Miles said, “but get this. The guy said he wanted to get to the hereafter with a clean slate.”
Knowing the condition of the body on which I’d done CPR, his conscience would be the only thing clean about him. “So who was killed? Who was the body?” I could guess, but needed to hear somebody say it.
“Get this. The stranger, his name was Swaringen something, hooked up with a woman who thought the dude was going to marry her. Some crazy lady. It’s the funniest stuff I ever heard. Everybody at the Breakfast Nook was laughing.”
They all knew about Crazy Reba and her wedding. Miles didn’t. “Swaringen?”
“Somebody identified him.” Miles was enjoying all this. This local color. This wild tale.
I could see he was already thinking what a great story this would make at some swanky party back in L.A., about all the loony local yokels in Littleboro. He’d have them all in stitches. He’d be the life of the party.
“Somebody from Motel 3. That motel that is no motel,” Miles said. “Thank God I didn’t have to stay there. Bedbugs and fleas would have been the least of my worries. The handyman might have been ready to do me in.” He looked at the ceiling, still smiling. I’d admired that blinding white smile at first but now I hated it. So fake. Miles was such a phony. Why had I not seen it before?
Now I was distracted, a bit lost in Miles’s story. Swaringen, the man on the picnic table, had been working at Motel 3, and knew something about a body. Could this be Butch Rigsbee? And how in the world did Reba fit in all this?
“What about this woman who was going to marry him?”
“That’s even funnier. She came to the motel room with her wedding dress looking for the dead guy. Swaringen told her he was the dead guy’s best man and somehow she got the idea she’d marry him instead since the dead guy wasn’t there. He must have given her some song and dance.”
So Swaringen had convinced Reba he was Butch’s best man, “better man,” and Reba was ready to marry anybody just so she could be a June bride. But had she really killed him? Or Butch? She had called me to come save Swaringen. She wouldn’t have done that if she’d been trying to kill him. Plus there was not a mark on his body, and I had sat on a lot of that body. Did she know he might have killed Butch Rigsbee before she got there with her KFC picnic? Was Butch her original God fiancé? She must have bought into this Swaringen’s story about being God’s best man hook, line and swallow. She had said in all her hysteria that she’d killed a “better man.” To her, anyone who drove the GOD truck was “God.” This whole thing was getting too strange, even for Littleboro. And Miles was enjoying all this way too much.
“Where were our professional police in all this?” I asked. I tried to say “professional” without my usual sneer. At the moment my dislike for Miles was surpassing my dislike for Ossie. I didn’t want Miles thinking I disrespected one of Littleboro’s own.
Miles laughed. “Oh the talk was that Ossie and Bruce had been on the case from the beginning.” He referred to them by their first names as if they were old buddies of his. I was getting angrier, but I wanted to hear the rest of his story. “In fact,” Miles continued, “they’d seen that van parked at the motel earlier, went back and saw the clothes hanging in the closet. Knew they didn’t fit Swaringen. They figured out something fishy was going on. Duh.” Miles slapped his knees with both hands as though this was as funny as some comedy show. Oh, these locals. Oh, these backwoodsy types.
“It’s not funny. People are dead,” I said. I didn’t want to think about how the morgue in Chapel Hill was filling up with bodies hauled in from Littleboro. Debbie Booth and now the Swaringen guy.
Miles stood to go, still chuckling. “I filmed the remains of the fire,” he said. “Got my old-South-in-ruins image. It’s perfect.”
He was changing the subject but I’d heard enough about bodies for the moment and needed time to sort it all out. The mention of the fire shifted my attention back to yesterday, and the smell of smoke that still lingered outside my B and B.
“It’s horrible,” I said. “It’s ugly. That courthouse was the symbol of our town. It was our icon. We’re known for that silhouette of the courthouse with the clock tower on top.” I was almost crying. Here he was celebrating, his life back in order, and my town was bereft. Black ruins, shambles, only the brick walls still standing.
Yes, he got the photos he wanted to tell the story he wanted to tell and it would be better without our Miss Sunnye Deye. But what he got wasn’t true. Littleboro might not be booming but it certainly wasn’t dead.
“And you are going to take this film back to Los Angeles and show the rest of the world this is the American South. See? This is what it looks like. They hang on to their past, revere it, worship it, even.”
Miles Fortune pushed back in his chair, put both hands out toward me. “Whoa,” he said. “I’m not making a statement. Just showing what I saw.”
“You are making a statement and it’s not true. You’re not showing any of the beauty. Only the ruins, the ugly, the neglected.” I thought how dismal the Dixie Dew looked when I’d first come home and how it looked now. Not perfect, but with white paint that glowed, a sturdy new roof, and gleaming copper gutters. Black shutters. My pretty tearoom that got an occasional lunch group of book club ladies. My bank loan in big figures that I chipped and chiseled away bit by bit each month. I was hanging on by the fringe of my living-room rug, which was so worn in places you could see the bare boards underneath. Threadbare. I knew what the expression meant. I wanted to ask if he was leaving. I wanted him to leave.
“All right if I stay on a few more days?” he asked as he started out. “It’s not like my room’s in great demand.” He sounded a bit miffed. And who wouldn’t be? I’d preached him my sermon, waved my birthright flag in his face.
I nodded. If I said a whole lot more, my anger would singe him. “Stay as long as you like.” If he noted the sharp tone in my voice, it didn’t show on his face or in the set of his shoulders as he left the room.
What I didn’t say was, I hope you scare up a copperhead snake poking around in our “ruins.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
I hoped I wouldn’t do the same thing when I went back to Motel 3 to see if I could get some answers and try to get Reba out of some of this mess. Was Ossie out looking to re-arrest her?
I cranked up Lady Bug and away we went, even though I didn’t know what I expected to find at Motel 3. It was the only place I knew to go, the place where it started with Reba and her wedding supper and Allison playing keep-away with the wallets.
What I saw and heard was Allison on that bulldozer, running it back and forth across the rubble. When she saw me, she aimed that yellow dinosaur in my direction and roared straight toward me as fast as it would go.
Was she trying to run me down? Not if I could help it. I dodged out of her way. She braked the bulldozer to a squeaky stop where it kept on puffing and snorting out black goop until it finally chugged to a silence. Then it seemed to me like that yellow monster sat there and sulked, pouted that it hadn’t got the chance to run me over.
Allison climbed down and came over, stomping dirt off her boots, slapping more off torn black leather jeans two sizes too small. Her sweatshirt read TOM CAT’S KITTEN but she didn’t look like anybody’s kitten to me. “They could have cleaned me out,” she said.
“Who? What?”
She took off her hard hat, shook out her hair that now had reddish-pink and blazing-blue streaks in it. More and more it had a look of flames, burning bright down to her coal black roots.
“Ossie and Bruce.” She waved her hand toward the rubble.
“You mean when they checked the scene, bagged evidence, that sort of thing? Like they do on TV?” I wanted to start our conversation on a quiet note. Mama Alice always said you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
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sp; “They only took the rinky-dink stuff out of the room, the prescription stuff. What was left”—she waved an arm toward the rubble—“was the rest of his mess. Butch’s clothes, his god-awful tacky suit and shoes and stuff. I told them to take it all. Take the whole pile. Of course they didn’t. Wouldn’t. Would have saved me a lot of paying by the hour to rent this hunk of junk.” She slapped the bulldozer’s hood. “Yeah, that bastard. Been using me as a stop-off place between here and Florida.”
For what? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. Instead I asked, “Using Reba, too?”
“Yeah.” Allison clapped her hard hat, smothering the flames of her hair. “All for his dirty business.”
“What kind of dirty?” I asked, but she had already walked away, hopped back on the bulldozer and cranked up with a roar that shook the ground under me.
Could Reba be in over her head? Caught up in Swaringen’s death and Butch Rigsbee’s, too? At least Ossie had the body of Swaringen, but where was Butch’s body? I looked harder to try to see that flash of something white I saw last night that I thought might be Butch’s suit. Only rubble. No sequins, no white suit.
Allison was into something illegal with Butch the crook along with the murder of Swaringen? Who was the real killer or killers in this business?
I didn’t know. So I started home to think on it all, back to my own business. Minding my own business for a change. I wasn’t doing much good at anything else.
I got almost to Lady Bug when I saw a flashing of lights, turned to look and noticed the lights going on and off in the office of Motel 3.
I walked over. The door was open, so I went in. That whale of a monster TV was going like crazy, the sound was off, with some black-and-white Western playing. Who was watching it? Allison was on the bulldozer, and there were no cars except mine in the parking lot.
The bedroom door was cracked, so I eased it open all the way and saw somebody in Allison’s bed. I walked closer, found myself tiptoeing even on the carpet.
