A Table By the Window

by Lawana Blackwell

  The woman smiled and jabbed a key with an index finger. “It’s there as we speak, Miss Reed.” She opened a cash drawer. “Now, how would you like your change?”

  In no way did Carley envision spending five hundred dollars in the six days she had remaining in Tallulah; in fact, she still had most of the three hundred from an ATM in the San Francisco airport. But the officer had suggested that the shipping company might balk at an out-of-state check.

  The fact that Carley’s checkbook lay in a dresser drawer in her apartment made the advice even more practical. Still, she would probably have more than enough left to pay cash for the rental car instead of charging it as she had planned.

  Visa, your days are numbered, she thought.

  A man was entering the bank as she approached the exit. Caught up in her own enthusiasm, she barely glanced at him.

  “I thought you might be here.”

  That voice! Carley looked up at Blake Kemp’s grinning face. But before she could say that she did not appreciate his insinuation that she could not wait to get her hands on the money—even though that was essentially the case—he spoke again.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  “Um-hmm.” Carley moved over to the counter where deposit and withdrawal slips were kept.

  This time he gave her a nervous smile. “We’d like to buy the house.”

  “Oh. Sherry too?”

  “Of course.” He looked about, lowered his voice. “Will you take seventy-two thousand? And leave the major appliances for future tenants?”

  As little as Carley knew of real estate, she had absorbed enough from television and newspaper financial columns to know that she was supposed to make a counter offer in sort of a bidding ritual. But she still harbored a sense of guilt, having swept into town and inherited the bulk of her grandmother’s estate over people who had actually spent time with her. And they were family.

  “All right,” she said.

  He blinked, and his pleased expression faltered. “Ah…really?”

  She could read his thoughts—he wondered if she would have agreed just as quickly if he had offered even less. As little as she cared for Blake, she decided to spare him some torment.

  “But that has to be my bottom price.”

  He looked relieved. Taking a cell phone from his pocket, he said, “Sure, that’s fair. Since you’re not going to be in town much longer, do you mind if I see if Mr. Malone will draw up the purchase agreement today?”

  As it turned out, the attorney said he could see them right away. Carley followed Blake’s white Mitsubishi mini-truck over to the attorney’s office, and fifteen minutes later the paperwork only needed Sherry’s signature to take effect. “I’ll bring it over to the school and then go back to the bank,” Blake said, pumping Mr. Malone’s hand and then Carley’s.

  The Cavalier’s heater had no time to put a dent in thirty-degree weather. But the Tallulah library was warm and smelled of old books and wood and polish. The lone computer sat on a desk between the books-on-tape and magazine areas. Librarian Edward Juban said Carley would need to have a library card in order to access the Internet.

  “But bein’ as you have an address here, I can fix you up with a temporary one. My condolences on Miz Walker, by the way.” He was a soft-spoken, pear-shaped man, with dark brown hair, gray eyes, and a mustache that partially concealed a repaired cleft palate.

  “Thank you,” Carley said. “Did she come here often?”

  “Pretty often. She was a very gracious lady.”

  Every compliment directed toward her late grandmother sent a little stab to her heart. By the time you were old enough to contact her on your own, you had almost no free time, she tried to rationalize as Mr. Juban typed out her card.

  And so now memories of her grandparents would always be secondhand. After death was a terrible time to try to catch up.

  “What sort of books did she read?” Carley asked after signing her card. There were only a handful at the house. Besides a worn Betty Crocker and even more worn Bible, she had come across a crossword puzzle dictionary, an oversized picture book of quilting patterns, a collection of quotations, and a guide to Southern landscaping. One other title had made Carley smile.

  The Independent Woman’s Guide to Minor Automobile Repairs.

  But no fiction.

  Discomfort crossed Mr. Juban’s face, as if he were a physician who had just been asked to breach patient confidentiality. “Well, romance novels, mainly. Miz Hudson brought back a half dozen that Miz Walker had checked out before…”

  “Really?” Carley was stunned and touched. Stunned, because the picture Helen had painted of her grandmother’s married life was bleak. And touched, because there must have been at least some mutual affection, for her not to have soured on romance over the years. Thanking the librarian, she sat at the computer and logged in with her new library card number. She entered her password in the Bank of California Web site. The transfer had indeed gone through. With a few clicks of the keys, she paid off the school loan and credit card balance, which included the cost of her round-trip airline tickets two days ago.

  Lovely, lovely zero, she thought. Such an underrated digit. Her next item on the list was to telephone Kay Chapman and the shipping company in Hattiesburg. She walked back to the counter as light-footed as if walking on the moon, and asked Mr. Juban the location of the pay telephone.

  He pointed to an arched opening past a couple of study tables. “I believe there’s still someone on it, but she usually doesn’t take long. Do you need the directory?”

  Carley reached into her purse for her notebook and the roll of quarters from the bank. “No thanks.”

  No sound came from the doorway as she drew closer. She came to a halt just before an alcove. A woman leaned against the wall, speaking with hushed voice into the receiver of a wall telephone between two doors stenciled with Ladies and Gentlemen. She was some years older than Carley but dressed younger, in tight jeans with bleach lines and a black leather motorcycle jacket. Straight, blunt-cut black hair fell in different lengths to her shoulder blades, her eyebrows were invisible behind bangs, and eyeliner was thick on both top and bottom.

  “…just going to have to be patient. You think this is—”

  She looked up at Carley and stopped.

  Sorry, Carley mouthed, taking a backward step.

  The woman shot her a sour look and turned toward the wall.

  Carley gaped at the Harley Davidson on the jacket’s back. How do you know I wasn’t going to the restroom?

  She moved over to wait by a display of books by Mississippi authors. So that Her Redneck Highness would not have the satisfaction of knowing her rudeness had affected her in any way, she picked up a book and began leafing through it.

  Soon her anger turned inward. You just paid off all your debts, and you’re going to let one person ruin your day?

  Intellectually, she was aware that her reaction was not just about being snubbed by a stranger—just as she was aware that she could not spend the rest of her life blaming her mother for everything. But a childhood of having to fend for herself had stamped into her earliest psyche the notion that she was an inferior person. Certainly not good enough to mingle with classmates with smiling moms who made cookies and ironed their clothes and fathers who pitched baseballs on manicured lawns. Homes where the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus came every year, not just hit or miss.

  Any slight, such as a clerk’s lifting her eyebrows, worked its way into fissures that were already there. That sense of unworthiness was probably the biggest reason she had so few close friends. If a person did not believe in herself, who else would?

  Or maybe you’re just obnoxious. Carley smiled at her own droll thought, for as low as she could feel about herself sometimes, she did not think that was the case. But then, being unaware of one’s own obnoxiousness was probably the first characteristic of an obnoxious person.

  “Someone returned that one just an hour ago,” Mr. Juban said, beside h
er. “It was on the New York Times list for three months. It won’t sit here long.”

  Carley closed the book to look at the cover. For all the attention she had given it, it could have been a manual on raising poultry. Camellia Street, by Bertram Norris. A contemporary murder mystery, said the blurb on back. “And he lives in Mississippi?”

  “Well, Nashville, actually, but he graduated from USM in Hattiesburg, so we claim him. He came to Books-A-Million back when his first book, Delta Dreams, came out, and he signed my copy. I have it stored in my closet—his first-edition books will be worth a fortune one day, just like Grisham’s A Time to Kill. It was an excellent read, but this one’s my favorite.”

  He was so willing for her to check it out that Carley hesitated before saying carefully, “I’ve just never cared for mysteries. When the suspense builds too high I end up peeking at the last chapter, and then my interest is gone.”

  Mr. Juban’s brown eyes widened, as if she had confessed to stealing lunch money from schoolchildren. “We don’t read simply for the endings, Miss Reed. A book is like a train trip. The journey is as important as the destination.”

  What could she say? She was finished with Cranford and needed something to read. “I can put this on my temporary card?”

  He smiled. “That’s what it’s for, Miss Reed.”

  As he scanned the book at the desk, Carley caught movement in the corner of her eye. She looked to the left. The woman was standing just outside the alcove with arms folded, as if waiting for another call.

  And yet, the way she stared made it almost seem as if she were waiting for her. The last physical altercation Carley had gotten into was at fifteen, when a cheerleader called her “reform-school trash.” She had no intention of getting into one again, and especially not with a motorcycle-jacketed woman who could probably rip out her hair with one hand. When Mr. Juban handed her the book, she thanked him and walked over to the slanting magazine racks to wait for the woman to take her call or leave.

  She did neither, but approached.

  Oh no, Carley thought.

  “Sorry about that,” the woman said, unsmiling, but not looking threatening.

  Self-talk or no self-talk, Carley felt better. “No problem.”

  “That was my brother. Dad disowned him. My boy and I live with my folks; Dad checks the long-distance bills, so I have to call from here.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” The woman turned and walked away, sending Mr. Juban a wave on her way out. Carley let out a long breath and went to the telephone.

  Kay Chapman answered after the first ring, and was very understanding. “That’s how the business is,” she said, echoing Blake’s sentiment. She offered some advice. “I wouldn’t take a dime less than seventy-four thousand, if I were you. And do remember me if the Kemps’ loan doesn’t go through. I can always fax a contract to California.”

  Carley had not even thought of that. Relieved to have a backup plan, she thanked her. She telephoned Van Dyke Freight Company in Hattiesburg next, and arranged to have a truck out to the house on Tuesday morning between 8:00 and 10:00. Five days away. Surely she could be finished packing and sorting by then. She had to be, for the flight home was the following day. For a town so laid-back, time certainly raced.

  Chapter 9

  While a pot of minestrone simmered on one burner, the sauce for cacciatore on another, Carley started going through closets and dresser drawers. She decided to keep such things as Grandmother’s Bible and Betty Crocker cookbook—both with handwritten notes in some margins—and the book of quotations. A blue calico apron. A wonderful maple dough bowl. The quilts. Two sets of hand-embroidered pillowcases with crocheted edging.

  As Aunt Helen had suggested, she began packing her grandmother’s clothing into boxes labeled Salvation Army, saving out a mauve flannel shirt, soft and roomy. She buttoned it over her gray flannel slacks and imagined that her grandmother would have been pleased to know that she would wear it one day.

  She planned to speak with someone at Renaissance Consignment Furniture about the few pieces of like-new furniture. The two iron bedsteads and her grandmother’s dresser, chest, and chifforobe would be shipped back to California.

  She worked fast, stopping only long enough for a chicken salad sandwich—delicious on raisin bread after all—and to bring the finished cacciatore next door, politely declining a grateful Gayle Payne’s invitation for her to join her family tonight. The packing tape ran out at two-thirty. Carley decided to walk to the drugstore and explore the town more closely. After brushing hair and teeth and pulling her coat over her flannel shirt, she set out westward.

  At Main Street she looked south toward the row of shops where Auld Lang Syne was located. Should she drop in to say hello to Aunt Helen? A group of women were getting out of an SUV parked in front. Maybe on the way back. She went a block north, crossed to the other side at Corner Diner, and walked another block, occasionally weaving around shoppers and feeling more inclined to stroll and window-shop than hurry for packaging tape.

  Shop windows displayed vintage merchandise. Taped inside some corners were the same fading posters of Gweneth Stillman. It appeared that no one wanted to be the first to give up the hope that her killer would come to justice. Or perhaps, hope had died long ago, but no one wanted to be the first to take down the poster and give weight to that fact. Either way was touching—and contradicted what she had imagined about race relations in the South.

  Shouldered between Peggy’s Pastimes and Tallulah Drugstore was what apparently was once a café. Curious, Carley moved closer and cupped her hands to peer through the grimy window. A counter came into focus in the murky darkness. Beyond that, boxes were scattered upon the floor and tables and chairs were stacked haphazardly.

  At the sound of footsteps she automatically took a step back. The younger policeman from Corner Diner was strolling her way from the drugstore.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She returned his smile. “Hi.”

  He was only a couple of inches taller than Carley’s five-feet-five, solidly built with muscular shoulders obvious even through the leather jacket over his light-gray uniform shirt. “That was Emmit White’s hamburger place until mismanagement and Dixie Burger drove it out of business about eight years ago.”

  “What a shame.”

  “Well, he rakes in a fortune by owning the only auto repair business and gas station in town, so I can’t spare him too much pity.” Uncertainty entered his blue eyes. “Uh…Miss?”

  “Yes?”

  He pointed to the left corner of his mouth. “You have…”

  “What?” She touched the same corner of her own mouth.

  “No, other side.”

  She felt the crust of dried toothpaste, focused her eyes at her reflection in the dark window. Heat rose to her cheeks as she wiped the dime-sized spot away with a moistened finger. “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

  “No, I’m grateful. And now I understand some of the funny looks I’ve gotten.”

  His laugh carved deep dimples in his cheeks. Carley smiled and held out a hand. “I’m Carley Reed.”

  “Dale Parker.” They shook hands, and releasing hers, he said, “You’re Miz Walker’s granddaughter?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “I’d heard a granddaughter from California was down here to sell the house,” he explained in an easygoing drawl. “I just took a guess. Most of the antique hunters are older.”

  “Did you know my grandmother?” Carley asked.

  “Not really,” he said as uneasiness washed across his face. “I had to go in through a window after her neighbor Miz Templeton called.”

  Kindly, he spared her the rest. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hey, Chief!”

  Carley looked to her right. An athletic-looking man, about fifty and bald, was jogging toward them from across Main.

  “I have no
idea who that is,” Chief Parker murmured.

  “Bet you don’t remember me,” the man said upon reaching the sidewalk.

  Chief Parker grinned and offered his hand. “Well…”

  “Wayne Golden, from Picayune.”

  “Ah, yes I do remember,” Chief Parker said, and introduced Carley.

  “You’re the reason I spotted Chief Parker, little lady.” Mr. Golden nodded toward two women and a man standing outside Enchanted Attic Antiques. The women waved. “My wife, Nancy, noticed your pretty red hair all the way across the street.”

  “Thank you.” Carley smiled and returned the women’s waves.

  “But I don’t want to trespass upon your conversation. Just tell me a convenient time to drop by the station.”

  “Why don’t I just…” Carley began.

  “Wait, please,” Chief Parker said, touching her sleeve. He turned to Mr. Golden again. “May as well save yourself some time. I’m afraid I haven’t changed my mind about the property.”

  Carley’s forearm still felt sensation, even through layers of wool and flannel and even though his arms were now folded.

  “And yet my brother says you haven’t sold the timber either,” the older man said. “Wasn’t that why you took it off the market?”

  Chief Parker’s smile was beginning to look strained. “Well, timber doesn’t stop growing.”

  “True. But look, I’m still willing to buy the land. Just sell your timber now, so I’ll have time to replant before I retire.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then half. I’ll give you a good price.”

  “The land goes too deep for two tracts to get decent frontage. And you’d want the half with the pond, right?”

  “Well, yes. That was the plan, to build on it.”

  “That’s my plan too, one day.” The younger man shifted his weight, folding his arms. “Look Mr. Golden, I’m sorry I backed out. But there’s other land out here. You’ll find a nice place before you retire.”

  Mr. Golden sighed, shook his head. “All right. Sorry to disturb you.”

  “It’s not a problem. And I’ll tell your brother if I hear of any other deals.”