5 Death, Bones, and Stately Homes

by Valerie S. Malmont

  Cathy crossed over to the table and picked up a small cardboard box. "There's postcards from Emily and Rodney in here, donated by various people who received them over the years."

  I took the box and opened it. Inside were more than a dozen postcards, mailed from a number of overseas locations. They all seemed to bear a variation of the standard "having a lovely time" message. Cathy reached around me and selected one of the cards. "Here's the one Emily sent to her parents telling them she'd eloped to Texas." She handed me the card from Laredo, Texas, so I could read it. The delicate, feminine writing on the back said only, "Mumsy and Daddy. Rodney and I are married. We're living in Texas. I know you'll be angry, so I'm not sending my address. Emily."

  "What about Emily's wedding dress? Do you have that to put on display?"

  "I wish. Either she took it with her, or her father kept it when he sold the house after Emily's mother... Have you seen enough? I have to get back to work."

  "What were you going to say about Emily's mother?"

  "Only that she died a few weeks after Emily left. Part of the legend is, she died of a broken heart caused by her disappointment over the elopement, since she'd been delighted when Rodney skipped out. Apparently she'd hoped Emily could do a lot better socially."

  "I guess I'm done," I said, starting toward the foyer.

  "Wait a sec. Could you give me a hand with a few things? They're just too bulky for me to get them out to the curb."

  I grabbed one end of a mattress and we wrestled that to the street. Then we went back for a wooden chest with rope handles. "It's not heavy. Just awkward to get hold of and I don't want to scratch the floors. We just had them refinished. It's the original wide pine planking."

  "Cracks and all," I commented, deciding I'd better warn visitors to walk with caution.

  There was a ton of stuff to take out, and after about six trips back and forth to the street, I conveniently remembered another appointment. "Would it be all right if I took the scrapbook along? I'll take good care of it. Maybe I can find some human interest bits about the couple to spice up the booklet."

  She didn't look too pleased with the idea, but she fetched the scrapbook anyway. "Be sure I have it back by tour day. I want to display it."

  I hoisted myself into Garnet's truck and was surprised to see that it was nearly noon. I hadn't had any breakfast, and I was starved. There was a Waffle Shoppe on Main Street, downtown, which I'd been meaning to try, so I drove in that direction.

  I despaired of trying to find a legal parking place, and parked in a loading zone in front of the Scene of the Accident Theatre. It was only a block and a half away from the Waffle Shoppe, but it was a block full of boarded-up store fronts and pool halls. Ignoring the catcalls from some teenagers who should have been in school, I walked up the street. Standing before the restaurant, I tried to look through the window to see if it looked appetizing, but years of grease and smoke-filled air had taken their toll and I could see nothing.

  Inside, I found it to be a narrow room, with a row of booths along one side and a counter with stools along the other. The ceiling fan overhead didn't make a dent in the cigarette smoke. There was only one stool left at the counter, so I sat down and looked at the speckled menu. Pecan waffles leaped off the page at me. If there's one thing I love, it's pecan waffles. "And coffee," I told the waitress.

  I sipped my coffee while I waited for my order and tried to ignore the man on my right who kept staring at me. I could almost feel his breath on my arm. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and the New Yorker in me came to the fore. "Look, buddy," I began, turning toward him. "You're in my personal space."

  Face-to-face with him, I wasn't sure I really minded. He was extremely handsome, in a rugged, down-to-earth way. Even though he was dressed in the usual Lickin Creek male attire of jeans, plaid shirt, and boots, at least there wasn't a backward-facing ball cap on his head. Blue eyes twinkled in a tanned face. His light brown hair was short, almost a buzz cut.

  "Sorry, ma'am, I was trying to figure out where I've seen you before."

  Ma'am. He called me ma'am. He couldn't be much younger than me. Where did he get off with that ma'am stuff?

  "I know," he said with a huge grin that revealed straight, slightly yellow teeth. "Christmas Eve."

  I stared blankly at him.

  "You'd run off the road into a snowbank, and I pulled you out of your car. I remember you had something funny on your head."

  Now I remembered everything. "It was a tea cozy," I told him.

  It was his turn to look blank.

  "It's a...a thing to keep a teapot warm.... I was trying to stop my forehead from bleeding.... Oh, forget it. You were driving an eighteen-wheeler, and you took me into town. You were trying to get to West Virginia for Christmas, weren't you?"

  "Yup "

  Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart? Cooper, I decided, he was my favorite of the two old-time Western stars.

  The waitress brought my waffles, a scoop of butter big enough to fit in an ice-cream cone, and a bottle of warm maple syrup. "No wonder this place is so popular," I sighed, after taking a bite.

  "I eat here every morning I'm in town," said my new friend. "By the way, my name is Haley."

  "I'm Tori Miracle. Is Haley your first or last name?"

  "Both."

  I couldn't think of anything appropriate to say, so I speared another piece of waffle with my fork. The man on my left chose that moment to light a cigarette, and smoke drifted under my nose. I slammed my fork down and snarled at him. "Kindly put that cigarette out or take it outside."

  He inhaled deeply and smoke curled slowly from his nose. He was dark, with a short beard, and narrow lips. "You got a problem, lady?"

  "Yes, I do. You're polluting the air and ruining my appetite."

  Without any warning, he reached forward and ground his cigarette out right on top of my pecan waffle.

  "You happy now?"

  I'm not often at a loss for words, but all I could do was stare at my ruined waffle and gasp in disbelief.

  That's when Haley twirled his stool around and stood up. Even from where I sat, I could tell he was well over six feet tall. "I don't suffer fools gladly," he rumbled ominously, and with one quick movement, he grabbed the man by the back of his shirt and pulled him from his stool. He didn't stop pulling until they were out the door. The other diners, who up till then had watched in silence, began to cheer, and many of them rushed out the door behind Haley and my tormentor.

  After only a minute, the crowd outside roared, the door flew open, and Haley paused in the doorway and said, "`How are the mighty fallen.' Second Samuel." He was followed by a dozen men who were all trying to slap him on the back.

  "That's enough," Gary Cooper said shyly. "Just remember that pride goeth before a fall."

  He straddled the stool next to me. "Sorry you had to see the dark side of me, ma'am."

  "It wasn't a dark side, at all. You were protecting me. I'm not used to that, and I liked it. Thank you."

  He blushed but refrained from saying, "Aw shucks."

  "Miss Miracle, this might seem kind of bold of me, but I wonder if you'd like to socialize with me some evening?"

  "Why... thank you. That would be very nice." I'd never heard the word socialize in this context before, but I assumed it was a synonym for date.

  "Great." He swung around and stood. "I'll be out of the state for the next few days. How about Friday? I'll pick you up at six, sixthirty. We can get a bite to eat. You still living with that college professor?"

  I nodded and was distracted by the waitress bringing me a fresh waffle. It didn't occur to me until later to wonder how Haley knew where I lived. But by the time I thought of asking, he was gone.

  Four

  Outside the restaurant, I took a deep breath to cleanse my lungs and started to gag. Instead of fresh air, everything smelled like grape juice. It coated my nostrils, and I even imagined I could taste the grapey flavor on my tongue. From somewhere came the sound of tinny,
rhythmic drumming. Now what? I wondered. I thought I was familiar with most of Lickin Creek's idiosyncracies, but this was something new.

  I returned to the truck in time to stop Luscious Miller from writing a ticket for illegal parking. Luscious, who was the acting police chief in Garnet's absence, was trying very hard to do a good job and to be nice to me because he still thought of me as the chief's girlfriend. "Please don't park like this anymore," he pleaded. "Next time, it might be one of the part-timers writing tickets, and more'n likely they won't tear it up."

  "I promise I'll never do it again," I swore with my fingers crossed behind my back.

  "Thanks, Tori. How's things going for you?"

  Guilt washed over me. Just fine, I could have said, I found a skeleton yesterday, and I'll probably give you the details in about three weeks. Instead, I said, "Can't complain. How about you?"

  "I've got nearly four months of sobriety," he said, his sallow cheeks flushing a little.

  "Congratulations. That's quite an accomplishment."

  He pushed the three strands of hair back over his bald spot and smiled shyly. "I owe it to you."

  Now it was my turn to blush. "You don't owe me anything, Luscious. All I did was give you a talking-to. You did the hard part. By the way, do you happen to notice a grape juice smell in the air?"

  He looked surprised, turned his face upward, and sniffed. "Sure do. It's for the crows."

  "I've heard of feeding the birds, but giving them grape juice seems a little extreme."

  "Sounds silly, I know, but Marvin Bumbaugh read somewheres that crows don't like grapes, so he sprayed all the trees in the square with grape juice to try to scare them off before they nest. And he's got kids from the middle school beating on pots and pans and shooting off firecrackers down there by the fountain. One way or the other, he's going to keep the streets clean this spring. Not to mention protecting all of us from the West Nile Virus."

  "What on earth is West Nile Virus?"

  Luscious shrugged. "Don't exactly know, but it's bad news for people and horses. And we've got plenty of both in Lickin Creek."

  He saluted and marched down the street, shoulders squared, looking inches taller.

  The clock on the Old Lickin Creek National Bank chimed once. I decided to drive out to Alice-Ann's house and get the keys to another house.

  "You made a date with who? I mean whom," Alice-Ann, the English major, screamed. "A truck driver you only met this morning? Tori, you're crazy"

  "Actually I've known him for several months," I told Alice-Ann, not mentioning that our earlier encounter had been a brief ride through a blizzard on Christmas Eve.

  "That's better," she said. "I thought he was a perfect stranger. Did you say he was in the trucking business?"

  "No, Alice-Ann. I did not. I said he was a trucker."

  Her shoulders stiffened, but she was savvy enough not to say anything snobbish.

  "I know what you're thinking," I couldn't resist saying.

  "Tori, I'm sure he's a nice man, whatever he is."

  I waited in her kitchen while she slammed things on a tray: glasses of iced coffee with lots of fresh cream, a plate of chocolate mint Girl Scout cookies from the freezer, sugar in a red ceramic bowl, and long-handled spoons. "Grab some paper napkins, will you please? I can't fit anything else on here."

  I followed her through the center hallway into the living room. This was a large room, nearly fourteen feet high, with tall, uncurtained windows across the back that looked out upon trees still bearing the soft pastel-green leaves of spring.

  Alice-Ann's decorating taste was "country," and by that I mean rickety-looking chairs, a three-legged carpenter's bench used as a coffee table, and cracked pottery pieces full of dried weeds sitting in every corner. Old bean pots and canning jars served as lamps. Duck decoys and dried herb bundles dangled from the ceiling, while blue-and-white enamel cookware, full of holes, hung on the walls. Rag rugs were scattered over the polished pine floors. Even though it was May, a small fire burned in the great stone fireplace.

  Alice-Ann nudged aside a copper bowl full of dried yellow flowers and placed the tray on a wooden bench sitting in front of the fireplace. I moved a half dozen hand-quilted pillows off the redand-white checked loveseat to make room for us to sit down.

  We faced the fire and sipped our iced coffees. "This is so cozy, Alice-Ann. Makes me almost want to nest."

  "Maybe someday you and Garnet will have a place of your own," she said. Apparently she had decided my trucker date was inconsequential.

  I hadn't told her Garnet and I were through. It was too painful a subject. "Maybe," I said.

  Alice-Ann looked over the notes I'd made while touring the Bride's House earlier that morning and had a few suggestions to make. "You don't need to mention anything about the exterior. Hopefully, with the trees in full leaf, nobody will see how bad it looks. And do be sure to mention the stained glass windows. They're supposed to have been made by the Tiffany Studios." I hadn't even noticed them, but duly made an addendum to my notes.

  Alice-Ann read to the end and began to chuckle.

  "What's so funny?"

  "What you say here about Mrs. Rakestraw dying of a broken heart."

  "That's what I was told."

  "I guess if you want to get technical, every heart that stops is broken."

  "What are you trying to say?" I asked.

  "She committed suicide. But her husband didn't want anyone to know. Apparently she had some sort of mental disorder the family wanted to keep quiet. I suppose that part of the legend has been conveniently forgotten. It wouldn't do for potential B-and-B guests to know she hanged herself in the closet of one of those charming bedrooms the Ridgelys are hoping to rent out at exorbitant rates."

  "I can see where that might be bad for business," I acknowledged. "I have time to look at another house today. Which one do you recommend?"

  "The Zaleski House on Magnolia Street. It's small and won't take long." She glanced at her watch and frowned. "I'd go with you but Mark gets home from school around three. I'll call the owner and see if she's home."

  She lifted the straw beehive on the end table and revealed a very modern-looking telephone. Her glare silenced my giggle, and she dialed. "Hello, Mrs. Bonebrake? Alice-Ann MacKinstrie here." The next few minutes were spent in ritual conversation about health, weather, and family. I emptied my glass and waited patiently. She finally got around to asking if I could come right over. "Wonderful, Mrs. Bonebrake. Her name is Tori Miracle." She paused and listened. "Yes, that one. Please don't hold that against her. It was an accident." Another pause. "So was that."

  She hung up and recovered the phone with the beehive. "All set." She grinned.

  "What did she ask about me?"

  "Oh, the usual... Aren't you the one who planned the Civil War reenactment at the women's college last fall? And didn't you have something to do with the courthouse and the historical society burning down?"

  "Is that all? Did she forget I'm supposed to have killed Senator Macmillan?"

  "She didn't even mention him. You're going to have to stop being so paranoid, Tori."

  She gave me directions to the house, the kind I'd fondly come to think of as Lickin Creek directions. "Go downtown, turn right at Second Street, hang a left where the railroad station used to be, go a few blocks and turn right just before you come to the oak tree in the middle of the road, go about a mile past where the Roadcaps used to live. The house will be on your left. You can't see the Lickin Creek from the street, but it runs past the back garden."

  "What's the house number?" I asked. I should have known better. Nobody in Lickin Creek knew anybody's house number. Houses were identified by the name of the first family to have lived there. Thus was Mrs. Bonebrake's home still known as the Zaleski House. For a newcomer like me that made finding any place doubly confusing. Not only did I not have a house number to go by, but the name on the mailbox was unlikely to be of any assistance.

  "You can't miss it. It's
the only Queen Anne on the block."

  "It would help if I knew what Queen Anne looked like."

  Queen Anne, I discovered an hour later, meant a house with a gingerbread porch, a front door set to one side, and a tower on the other side covered with fish-scale shingles. At least that's what it meant in Lickin Creek. The part that wasn't covered with fish scales was red brick. A moss green picket fence, the same shade as the fish scales, surrounded the front yard.

  I entered through the gate and found myself in a happy little garden full of tulips, hyacinths, and other spring flowers whose names I didn't know. The door burst open, and Mrs. Bonebrake filled the porch. She was an imposing woman, nearly six feet tall, with longshoreman's shoulders and a moustache.

  "Come in," she said curtly. "I'll show you around, but you'uns got to be quick about it. I've got an orthodontist appointment at four." Perhaps her need for orthodontia was why she didn't smile at me.

  I entered a tiny foyer, brightened by a window veiled with lace curtains on my right. Ahead of me was a staircase, to my left the front parlor. "Let's start here," I said, pointing to the parlor.

  Mrs. Bonebrake went ahead of me. The room was sparsely but elegantly furnished with Victorian antiques. The walls were painted a delicate pink, which perfectly matched the faded Oriental carpet covering most of the dark wood floor. And there were more lace curtains filtering the afternoon light.

  "The fireplace works," she said, nodding toward what appeared to be a black marble mantel. Closer examination proved it was wood painted to resemble marble. I made a note of that and followed her into the dining room. Over the rectangular walnut table hung an antique oil lamp. "It's original," Mrs. Bonebrake told me. "I like the way it looks at night, so we never replaced it."

  The kitchen was engaging. It had modern appliances while still retaining most of the old-fashioned feeling of yesteryear. Here, the knotty pine I'd seen in so many Lickin Creek homes seemed to fit.

  "Back stairs," she said, opening a narrow door. "Come on."

  I was glad I didn't have to turn sideways to get up the staircase. Mrs. Bonebrake did, and I wondered how often she used these stairs.