by Judy Alter
“Mom,” Em asked, “what’s the matter? You have that look on your face.”
“Nothing, darling,” I lied. “I’m just trying to figure out how to help Sheila.”
Maggie sighed. “I think that’s such a romantic story—finding her mother after all those years. I think I’ll write a paper about it.”
“Uh, Mag, I wouldn’t do that just yet. Wait till we see how it all turns out.”
She was crestfallen but agreed.
At the office, I told Keisha the plan for the day and asked if she minded watching the office alone.
“Nope. In fact, I’ll even bring you lunch from the Grill—what you want?”
“I’ll have to ask Sheila and Ms. Lorna—oh, why don’t you get us lunch from Bun Appetit? Hot dogs sound good. I’ll still ask and call you.”
“Okay,” she said, “but I have a feeling I’m missing out on all the fun.”
“I’ll let you know if you do.”
****
Keisha missed no fun. The day started out to be long and not very profitable for me. I set myself up at the kitchen table with laptop and cell phone. I really didn’t like doing business over a cell phone—the sound was never as clear and sharp, and there was a lot more, “Pardon me?” But today it would have to do. I could hear the low murmur of women’s voices coming from the living room, with an occasional chuckle and even a laugh. At least I wasn’t hearing tears.
My list of to-do things included some drive-by inspections and the delivery of a contract, and I couldn’t do any of that and watch Sheila, so I chafed a bit. The alarm man came about ten. Lorna answered the door and was about to turn him away, when I flew from the kitchen to the front door and said, “Ms. Lorna, he’s putting an alarm system in your house. All the doors and windows. You’ll be perfectly safe after that.”
“I’m already safe,” she harrumphed.
“Mother…” Sheila said in a placating tone.
I was pleased to hear that term from her, and apparently so was Ms. Lorna. “You think I need this?” she asked, ignoring me to turn to Sheila.
“Of course I do. That’s why I’m paying for it.”
“I can pay for it.” The haughty tone was back.
“Of course you can, but it’s something I want to do for my own peace of mind.”
“Will you come stay with me?”
“We’ll have to see…and consult Mike. But probably, someday soon.”
The alarm man looked confused. For some reason, he decided I had as much authority as anyone. “Shall I go ahead and get started? Big as this house is, it may take all day.”
I looked at Sheila. “Shall we just ask him to do the first floor, including the cellar door? I don’t think he needs to do the upstairs.”
She agreed, and Ms. Lorna protested, “I wish you two would stop talking as if I wasn’t here. It is my house you know, though someday it will be yours.” She patted Sheila’s hand.
Sheila just smiled at her, a bit sadly.
The alarm man began work, I asked the ladies about lunch, and I went back to the kitchen to call Keisha.
“Am I missing anything?”
“Just another of Ms. Lorna’s difficult moments,” I told her. “See you at lunch.”
The day dragged, broken only by Keisha’s appearance with hot dogs and iced tea. She was cheerful as usual, but I noticed Sheila was downcast. Wonder what that old woman said to her daughter to make her sad. I hope Sheila didn’t talk about Bruce Hollister.
Finally it was two forty-five, time for me to go get the girls. Of necessity, I was taking Sheila with me.
“You’re leaving me here alone with that man?” Ms. Lorna asked.
“You’ll be fine, Mother. He’ll finish up shortly and explain how to use the system. Just be sure you lock the door after he leaves.”
She did not look at all convinced, so Sheila looked at me and asked, “Could we come back after supper and check on her?”
I said of course, and we left a glowering Lorna McDavid behind us.
In the car I asked, “How did your day go?”
Sheila was still subdued. “Fine. We told each other some good stories about our lives, but something finally came up. She’s dying…or convinced she is. That’s why she was in such a hurry to find me. She’s rewriting her will. Wants me to ask you to call that young lawyer who got her out of jail. Now that’s a story you’ll have to tell me later.”
“Dying from what?” I asked curiously. Sheila’s statements explained certain obscure things Ms. Lorna had said.
“She didn’t say. Just said she didn’t expect to be here long. I suspect she thinks she has some incurable form of cancer. Probably what is delicately called ‘female troubles.’”
“She hasn’t been to a doctor. I’d know because Keisha would have taken her. In fact, I don’t know if she’s ever been to a doctor since you were born.”
That startled Sheila, and she said, “Well, that’s my first order of business. I’ve got to get her to a physician immediately.”
That makes it our first order of business! There goes at least another day, getting her into a doctor and straightening out what I saw as inevitable insurance problems. Maybe I could ask Sheila if she has a gun with her…an innocent question. If she did, with the alarm system in place, she could stay at Ms. Lorna’s without a babysitter. We’d still have to drive her, but….
Sheila seemed to read my mind. “Once the alarm is in, you don’t have to stay with me, you know. Mike will probably tell you that I have a gun…and I know how to use it.”
“Do you have it with you now?”
“I never go anywhere without it.” She was quite calm about it, though carrying a gun made me nervous, always a little on edge. And it hadn’t helped her the day she was run down. She switched subjects. “What doctor would you recommend?”
“A woman. I use a woman I like. Maybe we’ll start there.”
We had reached Em’s school by now and sat in the long line of cars waiting their turn to round the corner and pick up children. Finally, our turn came, and Em jumped into the back seat. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Sheila. How was your day? Mine was awful. I have soooo much homework.”
“Well, as soon as we get Maggie, we’ll get you started on it.”
Poor Maggie had to sit outside the school for the time it took me to get from Em’s elementary school to the dedicated sixth-grade school. She was not in a good mood, and by the time I got my squabbling girls home and settled—at different tables—with homework, it was too late to start exploring physician and insurance problems. I promised Sheila I’d get on it first thing in the morning.
By morning I’d thought it over and decided Sheila should do some more gentle inquiry before we called a doctor. I didn’t think it would be helpful to say I wanted to make an appointment for an elderly woman who thought she was dying, but, no, I didn’t know why. Mike had agreed Sheila could spend the day if she and Lorna set the alarm and Sheila carried her handgun. So I dropped Sheila off, told her either Keisha or I would be back with meatloaf for lunch, and sailed off, free to deliver contracts, do curbside appraisals and scout the neighborhood, all activities I’d postponed the day before. I reveled in driving the streets of my neighborhood alone, noting an improvement here, a new flowerbed there, a recently repainted fence and even a couple of For Rent signs that prompted me to write down the contact information so I could see if the owners would consider selling. One was a plain-jane modern modest brick house set down, unfortunately, in the midst of lovely, refurbished Craftsman houses—I wasn’t too interested in that one. But the other rental was a Craftsman bungalow someone had lovingly restored, and I suspected a sad story behind the rental—why had they had to give it up? Illness? Divorce? An unexpected move out of town. Too often, vacant houses, especially ones that had been well cared for, told sad stories.
The morning flew by, and Keisha and I both decided to take lunch to Sheila and Ms. Lorna. Peter’s staff at the Grill packed up four lunches of meatloaf, mashed
potatoes and gravy. We took a tray of iced tea in cups and headed out.
At Ms. Lorna’s we knocked (I told Keisha not to use her key) and after Sheila peeked through the door at us, I heard her turn off the alarm system before she let us in. After greeting Ms. Lorna, I unpacked our lunches under the elderly lady’s disapproving stare.
“I don’t eat out of plastic,” she announced.
I’d seen her eat out of cardboard hot dog containers at Bun Appetit, but I refrained from commenting. “Let me just go dish this up onto plates.” I headed for the kitchen, closely followed by Keisha and Sheila. The latter kept apologizing, but I told her it was no problem. Keisha promised to wash up.
We gently moved the dishes on the dining room table, put down our lunches, and iced tea in real glasses. I made do with Peter’s paper napkins but used real flatware, and Ms. Lorna seemed pleased. She sat at the head of the table like a proper hostess and said cheerfully, as though the lunch had been all her idea, “I’m so glad to have you gathered around my table.”
“What are these?” Lorna asked, moving her black-eyed peas around with her fork.
I explained they were a popular dish in the South and in Texas, astounded she’d never eaten them. “Put a little salt on them,” I suggested.
Ms. Lorna harrumphed, but after Sheila told her they were really good, her mother ate every last pea, all her meatloaf, and all her potatoes. If she was terminally ill, it hadn’t affected her appetite.
We cleaned up, and Keisha and I left for the office where I hoped to get some desk work done before I had to come back to get Sheila at quarter to three.
When I did go back to get her, I asked how much information she’d been able to worm out of her mother.
“Not much. She told me her illness was a private affair. She did say she went to a doctor twenty years ago, but she’s forgotten his name. She didn’t much like him. Instead of a doctor she wants to see that lawyer who helped her before…when she was in jail.” Sheila smiled. “You’ll really have to tell me that story, because she won’t talk about it. But she wants to rewrite her will. Says she’s leaving the house to me.” She spread her hands helpless. “My future is so uncertain, I’m not sure what I’d do with it.”
This was not the time to tell her how much I wanted that house.
Once the girls were home and settled, and Sheila had gone out to rest, I got on the phone. First I called Sherry Goodwin’s office and talked to the appointment nurse. I explained the situation, and she said apologetically, “Kelly, if it’s been that long since she’s been to a doc, the first appointment will take a while. Best I can do is next Monday at nine in the morning.”
“I’ll take it,” I said. “And I don’t know about insurance, but I’ll try to find out by then.” Sheila and I had a lot of work to do persuading Ms. Lorna, finding out if she had Medicare, and so on. Terrell Johnson would be important, and I called him next.
“Lorna McDavid? The old lady who was growing pot? I really liked her. Thanks, Kelly. I’ll be glad to visit with her. Just give me the number, and I’ll set up an appointment.”
“There’s a slight problem there, Terrell. She doesn’t answer her phone. If you call in the morning, her daughter will probably be there, and I’ll have her forewarned to answer.”
“Daughter? I thought that old lady had no family.”
So I told him the long story. He said, “Wow!” at least three times, and then said he was looking forward to getting in the middle of another of my “situations.”
My thanks were a bit dry, I feared.
****
The next morning Mike again agreed Sheila would be safe at Ms. Lorna’s, and I dropped her off with a word of encouragement to look out the front and back windows every so often to check for stalkers, anything out of place.
Sheila promised. “I really want to start cleaning that house, going through the pantry and closets. I don’t think she’s done a thing in ages. But I don’t know how much I can do with one-hand.”
“Be good for Ms. Lorna if you put her to work,” I suggested.
Sheila sighed. “If I can. She just might object to everything I want to discard.”
I laughed. “Go slowly.”
Keisha went by there for the grocery list and found Sheila had added enough things to it that she could fix Ms. Lorna a one-armed good lunch—soups, eggs to scramble, fresh vegetables. Keisha even went to Central Market and got a ready-made meat loaf and a ready-to-cook marinated chicken breast. No more lunchmeat for our grand lady.
Tuesday and Wednesday passed uneventfully, as we sort of fell into a new routine. If I worried about Bruce Hollister and his henchmen, it was sort of in the back of my mind. Nothing came out and jumped at me, although I knew it was foolish to put fear completely behind me.
Wednesday evening Megan Jackson called. “Kelly?” Her voice sounded a little tentative, and I clutched the phone more tightly.
“Could I swing by for a minute? I’ve got something to show you.”
I said of course and invited her to share supper with us.
“No, but thanks. Mom will have fixed supper, and Brandon and I are going to spend the evening studying together.”
I said okay but couldn’t help asking, “If everything okay?”
“I hope so,” she said.
I busied myself making sloppy joes while waiting for her. Em asked if I knew who Ma Ferguson was because she had to write a paper on her, and I told her she was the first woman elected governor in the country, and she served right here in Texas. My knowledge ended there, but Maggie said, “Come on, squirt. I’ll help you look her up on Google.”
“Don’t call me squirt!”
“Maggie, don’t rely on Wikipedia.”
“I know,” she said in a bored tone.
I busied myself in the kitchen, growing more curious about what Megan Jackson wanted. She was so busy with school and Brandon, we never saw her except at potluck suppers or holidays, so this was especially curious. And her comment about hoping everything was all right was ominous.
After Megan gave me a hug and greeted the girls, she followed me to the kitchen and wordlessly put a newspaper on the table. It was the TCU daily student newspaper, open to a middle page and an article headlined, “Touching Mother/Daughter Reunion.” A somewhat fuzzy picture showed Sheila and Lorna sitting on our couch, their hands clasped, looking intently at each other. I knew without looking that the byline said, “Elisabeth Smedley.”
I looked at Megan, who shrugged and said, “I didn’t know she’d do this. She brought it home this afternoon and was real proud to show it to me.”
I sank into one of the kitchen chairs and began to skim. Megan sat across the table, staring intently at me.
According to Smedley’s version, Sheila had been snatched from her mother’s arms as an infant. She and the mother had spent forty years, searching for each other, and their reunion was only due to the intervention of an intrepid local sleuth—that would be me, and I was boldly named. And, in this telling of the story, Ms. Lorna had been a famous movie star—the writer was not at liberty to reveal the actress’ stage name—and had chucked it all to search for her child. The daughter was now married to a prominent televangelist in Texas but planned to devote the rest of her life to caring for her mother. The only part she missed was Ms. Lorna’s hint that she hadn’t long on this earth.
“How bad is it?” Megan asked, her voice a bit shaky.
“Well, aside from invasion of privacy…and maybe libel if Bruce Hollister ever saw it…I guess it’s not too bad. It’s fiction, loosely based on truth, and it would embarrass Sheila and Ms. Lorna but we just won’t show it to them. And it’s unlikely Bruce Hollister will ever see it. It is, after all, a student newspaper, and it will disappear when tomorrow’s edition comes out.”
“I thought of all that,” Megan said, “and I told Elisabeth she’d violated the rules of hospitality when you invited her to supper.”
“What’d she say?”
�
�Writers have to do whatever to get their story. Not a good excuse to me, but I’m majoring in business. What do I know?”
“I know it’s not a good excuse,” I said.
Maggie and Em came back in to the kitchen, and Maggie glanced casually at the newspaper and then her attention riveted on it. “That’s Sheila and Ms. Lorna!” and she began to read, occasionally saying, “That’s not true!” or “She made that up!” When she finished, she looked at Megan and said, “Sorry, but your roommate is a creep.”
Megan looked unhappy. “Yeah, you’re probably right, Maggie.”
“Girls, we’ll show this to Mike and no one else. By tomorrow it will be forgotten.”
All three looked doubtful. With another hug, Megan left us but not before I thanked her for sharing the article. “Nothing will come of it,” I said. Somewhere in the back of my mind the thought lingered that it did indeed spell trouble.
Chapter Eleven
Monday morning Bruce Hollister himself stormed into my office, waving a copy of the student newspaper. “How dare you?” he roared.
I considered crawling under my desk for protection, but I stood up and held out a hand in greeting. Unlike his cordiality with Mike, he brushed my hand aside.
“You…you…you…” He was red-faced, his eyes bulging with anger, and I was afraid he’d have a stroke right in front of me. He sank into my visitors’ chair so heavily it’s a wonder that chair held firm. Bruce Hollister was no small man, a fact I was uncomfortably aware of now that he was so close to me.
“It’s bad enough you give my wife shelter and don’t allow me to see her, but now you’ve introduced her to that slattern mother of hers and allowed a reporter to write about the whole thing.”
Keisha jumped, and I was sure it was the word slattern that nearly sent her sailing across the office to confront him. With a glance, I reassured her. I was still in charge…I thought.
“Mr. Hollister, let me explain….”
“Nothing can explain this,” he yelled, waving the newspaper.
“Mr. Hollister, that is a student newspaper, only distributed on campus. No one else will see it. How did you get it anyway?”
