by Anne George
“What?” she asked. “He’s the rich one, isn’t he?” The child had been around Mary Alice too long. I could just hear Sister saying, “Smart move, Tiffany.”
Which reminded me. “You’d better go tell Sister you’re going home with us.”
“Hey.” Tiffany reached out and grabbed Deputy Leroy’s arm as he walked by. “You know Mrs. Crane in the blue jumpsuit?”
He nodded.
“Tell her Tiffany’s gone home with her sister. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s go,” Tiffany said to Fred and me.
There is nothing as hot as a car that’s been parked in an Alabama cotton patch in August. We opened the doors and turned on the air-conditioning, but the leather seats were still a danger to any exposed skin. Finally, we were able to get in and back over the rows.
Tiffany pointed toward the Turkett Compound. “That’s a strange place back there.”
“How so?” Fred asked. He was trying to drive without holding the hot steering wheel. Quite a feat.
“Tiffany, there’s a towel back there on the floor. Hand it to Fred.”
“Here.” She passed it over the seat. “I don’t know. Just sort of spooky. Out in the woods like that and nobody living in the same trailer.”
“They moved out here because Pawpaw lost his hearing. All he wanted to do after that was fish, so Howard said.”
“How did he lose his hearing?” Fred asked.
“Well…” I related the story just as Howard had told it. Fred and Tiffany were an appreciative audience.
“A Port-o-John? Oh, God.” Fred was laughing so hard I thought I was going to have to make him pull over so I could drive.
Tiffany slapped the back of the seat. “I can just see him. I’ll bet he thought he’d died and gone to hell.”
I was giggling. “It’s not funny, y’all, and we ought to be ashamed. He can’t hear it thunder now.”
That set them off even more. “Oh, God, I’m going to pee my pants,” Tiffany squealed. “Stop at the next gas station, Mr. Hollowell.”
Fortunately, it wasn’t far to the interstate and a huge Exxon station. Fred and Tiffany, still laughing, both rushed to the rest rooms. I fished change out of the bottom of my purse and headed for the Coke machine. A large round thermometer hanging where a flower had probably once hung and died from heatstroke stated that the temperature was 105 degrees. Subtract five for the heat of the pavement, hell, subtract ten, you still had an egg-frying day. We would have been dropping like flies tromping through those woods.
Clunk. The Coke dropped down, wonderfully cold. I turned it up and chugalugged about half the can.
An old green car pulled up and Dwayne Parker got out. “I need one of those,” he said, pointing toward my Coke. “That sausage biscuit is still giving me trouble.” He fished around in his pocket for change. “You’re the aunt, aren’t you?”
“I’m the aunt. I’m Patricia Anne Hollowell.”
He put the money in the machine. “I’m Dwayne Parker. I’m the one who left the party the other night.”
“I know.” He was also the one who had nearly run us down the day before. I recognized the car.
“I guess I shouldn’t have left Mr. Lamont like that.” He took the Coke from the machine, opened it, and gulped it like I had mine.
“You were upset when you found out Sunshine was there. That’s understandable.”
“I guess so.” He studied the Coke can as if it held some great secret. “Well, I’ll see you, Mrs. Hollowell.”
“Okay. I’m glad we heard from Sunshine this morning.”
“Yes, ma’am. I am, too.” He turned toward his car. He had on an Atlanta Braves baseball cap which hid his crew cut, but his ears stuck out below it. Dwayne wasn’t going to have any trouble finding some girl who, like me, thought those ears were wonderful. Some girl who would be more than willing to pass them along in the gene pool. I hoped he realized that but knew he probably didn’t.
By the time we dropped Tiffany off and got home, it was almost eleven and had been a long time since the sausage biscuits. Fred took a shower while I fixed tuna-fish sandwiches. He took his with him, though, saying he needed to get to work. I took my sandwich into the den and turned on Jeopardy!. The answer to the final question was Madagascar which I knew. I always feel smart when I get the Final Jeopardy question. It’s even better when someone’s around who knows when I get it. Fred’s always pleased; Sister says it’s a rerun and I’ve already seen it.
I put my plate in the dishwasher and admired the cabinets I’d painted. A new floor would be nice, a white one. Maybe I should go look at samples. I tapped on the window for Woofer, but he stayed in his igloo. Just as well. On the corner of the TV screen the temperature was posted: 100 degrees.
Sunshine was okay, hopefully, and my Haley was marrying a man she loved. I should be happy. I should be ashamed not to be happy. But Haley wouldn’t be home for her birthday, or for Christmas, or maybe not even when Debbie’s baby was born. She wouldn’t be popping in to see what we were having for supper. I undressed and got in the shower and bawled. My life was changing big-time here, and I don’t cope with change well.
By the time the water began to cool, though, I was beginning to pull myself together. Six months. It was only for six months. And we would go visit her. Warsaw must be a wonderful place to visit. We could do all kinds of sightseeing. The only other time I had been to Europe had been with Mary Alice, a trip to Scandinavia which happened to coincide with the explosion of Chernobyl. We saw one fjord before we were forced to stay inside the hotel while the radioactive cloud passed overhead. Everyone was furious because we had all had a good dose of radiation before the Russians admitted what was happening. Mary Alice kept telling the Swedes she thought it was downright tacky that they hadn’t been informed immediately. I think they translated “downright tacky” without any problems.
I got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around me, stepped into the bedroom, and screamed.
Mary Alice, sitting on my bed in a semi-yoga position, dropped the tuna-fish sandwich she was eating. “Shit! What’s wrong with you?”
“You just scared the hell out of me.” I sat on the end of the bed and burst into tears again.
“Well, my Lord!” Mary Alice handed me a paper napkin. “I thought you’d cried yourself out in there in the shower.”
I snatched the napkin from her and wiped my eyes. “How long have you been here?”
“About fifteen minutes.” She picked up the pieces of her sandwich and started putting them back together. “Is this bedspread washable?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”
“I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“You just scared me to death instead.”
“Listen. A normal person would not be scared to death and yelling if they walked into their bedroom and saw their sister sitting there eating a tuna-fish sandwich.”
“What do you mean ‘a normal person’? I’m normal.” I thought for a moment. “Besides, it’s one person; you should have used ‘she.’ If ‘she’ walked into ‘her’ bedroom.”
“Hmmm.” Sister examined her sandwich and took a bite.
“What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were going to stay out at the Turketts’ for a while, talk to the sheriff.”
“They all got in a fight.” She drank some tea and put the glass back on the nightstand.
“Put something under that. It’ll circle. Get a coaster out of the drawer.”
“Anything else interesting in there?”
“I’m sure you know. You’ve been here fifteen minutes.”
“Testy, testy.” But she got the coaster.
“Who got in a fight?” I asked.
“Howard and Eddie mainly. Howard told Eddie he had peanut cojones and Eddie took it personally. Men are so fixated on their balls. You know?”
“How come he told him that?”
“Best I could tell—I wasn’t paying much atten
tion until Eddie hit him—Howard thinks Eddie ought to expand his business and Eddie doesn’t want to chance it.”
“He hit him?”
“Knock-down, drag-out, much as you can have in a trailer. Meemaw came in yelling like a banshee and broke them up. I swear, Patricia Anne, I half expected that woman to turn them over her knee and spank them.”
“Where were the sheriff and Kerrigan? Still in her trailer?”
“I don’t know where she was. He was talking on the phone in his car and I told him Henry and I were leaving.” Sister took another bite of her sandwich. “That is one more dysfunctional family out there, Mouse.”
“Did you see Pawpaw any more?”
“We saw him hightailing it across the cotton patch as we were leaving. Probably heading toward the river fishing.”
I got up and got underwear, khaki shorts, and a white tee shirt from the chest of drawers. The mirror above it showed a face that had been crying for a long time.
“You need to put some ice on your eyes,” Sister said. “Did I tell you I checked on flights to Warsaw?”
I shook my head no.
“We could fly the Concorde to Paris and be in Warsaw in five hours. Just about as long as it takes to get to Pensacola. Think about that. You wouldn’t bat an eye if she was going to Pensacola for six months, now would you?”
“I can’t afford the Concorde,” I said.
“I can. Besides, it’s the idea of the thing. Just knowing the possibility. True?”
“True.” And I did feel better. I turned and gave Sister a grateful smile.
“The seats are kind of little on the Concorde but Fred’s not big, and you’re not big as a flea. The three of us will do fine.”
Fred, Sister, and me, halfway across the Atlantic, the point of no return, squashed together in three little seats. My smile faded.
“Anyway, I came by to tell you that Gabriel says Sunshine’s in a dark place but okay.”
“You talked to Meemaw’s channeler?” I began to dress.
“Of course not. Meemaw talked to him.” Sister leaned back against the headboard. “How much do you weigh?”
“Enough. What did Gabriel say?”
“He told Meemaw that Sunshine’s in a dark place. I just said that, Mouse.”
I zipped up my shorts. “Did he give any details?”
“I have no idea. I told Meemaw that Henry and I were leaving and to call if she needed us, and she said she had just been communing with Gabriel and Sunshine was okay in a dark place.” Sister took the last bite of her sandwich. “I hope it’s not a cave. Remember those snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark?”
“Lord, yes.” I sat on the bed and looked at Mary Alice. We’ve been sisters for sixty-one years. She had no more stopped by to tell me Gabriel said Sunshine was in a dark place than she could fly. “Want to tell me why you’re really here?”
“I knew you were upset at Haley leaving so suddenly.”
“And?”
“And I found something in my pocket I don’t know what to do with.” She handed me a lined index card, the kind you write recipes on, that had been folded in half. On the top was a cartoon turkey saying From the kitchen of Mary Louise Turkett. Below that, someone had printed in pencil, Chief Joseph sends his regards to your son.
I studied the card, turned it over to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.
“It’s a threat, isn’t it?” Sister reached over and took the card back. “They’re saying Ray’s in danger, aren’t they? That the same thing could happen to him.” She shivered. “It’s cold in here.”
“No, it’s not. And I don’t know what it means.” Of course it was a threat, but I didn’t want to upset Sister more. “It just showed up in your pocket?”
“When Henry and I got in the car, I felt the corner of it sticking me, but I just thought it was the tag on my new underpants.”
Made sense to me.
“But when I let Henry out at his house, I went in to see about Debbie and reached in my pocket and found it.” Sister studied the card. “Reckon I ought to call the sheriff?”
“Probably. But let’s think about it a minute. The first thing he’s going to ask you is if you have any idea how it got in your pocket.”
Sister looked at me as if I didn’t have walking-around sense. “Somebody put it there, Mouse.”
“But who?” I took the card back. The printing, though done in pencil, was very neat and precise.
“Well, it’s Meemaw’s recipe card.”
“Did she have a chance to put it in your pocket?”
“I don’t think so. We sort of kept our distance from each other.”
“Pawpaw?”
“He had the opportunity. But so did Eddie and Howard. They each hugged me when I went in Howard’s trailer.” Mary Alice thought for a moment. “But you know, Mouse, it could have happened any time we were crowded around listening to the sheriff. It could have been anybody there.”
I suddenly remembered the smell of grape-jelly breath, of someone’s whispering that Sunshine had crawled out from under a rock. “What time is Ray’s plane?” I asked.
“Around seven. Why?”
“Because he’s walking into a mess.” I reached into the nightstand, got a notepad and a pencil. “Okay. Let’s start with Sunshine. What do we know about her?”
“She looks like a Barbie doll.”
I wrote down Barbie. No one looks like a Barbie doll naturally. Or cheaply.
“She’s a nursing student at Jefferson State, lives with her grandmother because her mother’s a porn actress.”
“Aha!” I wrote down Frances Zata. My best friend and recently retired counselor from Robert Alexander High had just taken a part-time counseling job at Jeff State. Said she wasn’t cut out for retirement. Frances doesn’t mind sharing a little information occasionally.
“Lives in a trailer with her grandmother,” I muttered. “What about clothes?”
“What are you talking about?” Mary Alice asked.
“Where does Sunshine keep her clothes? I didn’t see much closet space in that trailer.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have many.”
“At twenty and looking like she does? Get real, Sister. Besides, I’ve got an idea that Kerrigan makes a lot of money. A whole lot.” I wrote clothes and money. Then I added car. “Her car doesn’t fit either.”
Mary Alice yawned. “The main thing is she’s missing and left a bloody nightgown by a body.”
I looked up from my notes. “The nightgown was by the body? I don’t remember seeing a nightgown, do you?”
“No. But I wasn’t paying much attention, to tell you the truth, to anything but the Indian guy. Anyway, that’s what Eddie Turkett said, and he could have been wrong.”
Nevertheless, I wrote down nightgown.
Mary Alice yawned again. “Look, I don’t think I got a wink of sleep last night. All I want you to do is tell me if you think I ought to call the sheriff about this note.”
“I said probably.”
“Then maybe I will.”
“Okay.”
“It could be a joke.”
“Could be. Not likely.”
“I’ll see.” Mary Alice stood up. “You know what, Mouse?”
“What?”
“We know Meemaw’s name now.” She ambled out of the door. I hoped she made it home before she went to sleep.
Frances Zata is the most elegant-looking woman I have ever known. Hair a beautiful color of blonde pulled back into a chignon, face unlined, eyes round and blue, she’s a sixty-year-old paean to chemistry, cosmetics, and surgery. She’s also a dingbat at times. She’s currently madly in love with a pink Victorian house on Choctawhatchee Bay in Destin, Florida, and its owner. In that order, I suspect. He’s grieving over the death of his fiancee and Frances is keeping close tabs on which step he’s on in his grief. I’m predicting a spring wedding as he seems to be bearing up very well. In the meantime, Frances has taken the job at Jeff State. I picked up the pho
ne and called her.
“Hey, Patricia Anne,” she said. “Good thing you called today. I’m off Fridays and Mondays so I can go to the coast.”
“How’s Jason?”
“He’s way past denial and anger. Getting into acceptance.”
“That’s good.”
“Coming right along. What’s up with you?”
“You got an hour or so?”
“I think I’m the only one on the whole campus today. Tell me.”
So I told her about Haley and Philip. Frances commiserated with me; her only son lives in London. Then I got into the Ray-Sunshine story, described the dinner party, the snooping trip Mary Alice and I took, and Chief Joseph.
“You were there?” Frances interrupted. “My Lord. I read about that in the paper. A hog-butchering knife?”
“Stuck to the linoleum.” I heard Frances gasp as I segued to Sunshine’s disappearance, the bloody nightgown, the search through the woods.
Frances is a good listener which makes her a good counselor, but I didn’t want to push my luck. I left out a few details like Gabriel and the Port-o-John and the porn movies. Interesting details that she would enjoy someday soon when we had an afternoon to visit.
“Anyway,” I finished, “I wonder if you could look Sunshine’s record up for me. See what kind of student she is, if she’s in any kind of extracurricular activities, if she cuts class much.”
“I’ve already pulled her record up, Patricia Anne. These used to be confidential, you know. Now anybody with a computer can get to them. We’ll probably have to go back to the old-fashioned manila folders in file cabinets someday. Give me a minute. Let me see what we’ve got.”
I could hear clicks from her computer.
“Pretty good grades,” Frances announced. “Came for tutoring in chemistry.”
“Did she cut class much?”
“My Lord, Patricia Anne. They don’t have that old three-cuts-and-you’re-out rule like they did when you and I were in school back in the Ice Age.”
“They don’t keep attendance?”
“Nope. Not like we had to, girlfriend.”
“Extracurricular activities?” I waited for the search.
