Savannah Blues

by Mary Kay Andrews

“Nothing. It’s just a little too foo-foo for my taste.”

  “Foo-foo?”

  “You know. Prissy, sissy. Fixed-up. Fancy.”

  “Not cruddy?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “I like my antiques to show their age. I don’t trust anything too gussied-up. I think it smacks of pretense.”

  “That’s why you like me,” he said, a little too smugly.

  “That and your chocolate seduction.”

  A display along the front of the store caught my eye. Unlike the shop’s other pastel and lace offerings, this was an almost masculine vignette of wicker fishing creels, wooden duck decoys, old leather boxing gloves, and three majolica oyster plates.

  The plates were wonderful, glazed in exuberant yellows and blues and greens, each of the oyster depressions glazed pink on the inside to look like a stylized oyster shell. Two of the plates matched. They had a raised seaweed border, with another border of tiny scallop shells along the very edge of the plate.

  “This stuff doesn’t look too foo-foo,” Daniel said, picking up the pair of boxing gloves. “My dad gave my brother and me a set of gloves just like these when we were kids. We used to beat the crap out of each other with them.”

  I picked up one of the pair of matching plates and turned it over. The marking was what I’d expected. Minton.

  “That’s the first time I ever heard you mention your father,” I said, looking at the other plate to make sure it was also Minton.

  “My dad is dead,” Daniel said, his voice flat. “He died when I was four. That’s why I don’t talk about him. There’s nothing to say.”

  I gave him a thoughtful look. My great-grandmother had been dead since I was four. I thought about her and talked about her all the time. Maybe it was different with men.

  I held up one of the plates for Daniel to see. “Aren’t these great-looking?”

  “You like oysters?” he asked, perking right up. “I’ve got a killer oyster stew I do in the fall, when they get sweet again.”

  “I love oysters,” I said.

  He took the plate from me and looked at it. “Cool.” But he winced when he saw the price sticker. “Wow. Three hundred fifty dollars for a plate to eat oysters off of?”

  “It’s three hundred fifty for the pair,” I said, picking up the matching plate. “This is English majolica. Minton, which is the manufacturer, is very desirable. I’m not an expert on majolica at all, but these look pretty early, probably 1860s. And I could swear they’re the same ones I saw at Beaulieu.”

  A pained expression crossed his face. “Again?”

  “At least these are apparently for sale,” I said.

  I took both plates up to the front counter, where a white-haired woman was sorting and pricing sterling silver flatware.

  She looked up at me and smiled when she saw the plates in my hands. “Aren’t those lovely? Do you collect majolica?”

  “They’re wonderful,” I said. “Are you Annie?”

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “Shall I wrap those up for you?”

  “Not just yet,” I said. “What can you tell me about them?”

  “They’re Minton, of course, and really, the color and modeling is exceptional on these plates. Anyplace else you’d buy these, you’d pay double the price I’m asking.”

  “Where did they come from?” I was smiling too, just a friendly, curious collector.

  “England.”

  “No. I meant, where did you buy them from?”

  Her sunny smile suddenly took on a layer of frost. “An estate. I buy things all over the Southeast. And I do a buying trip in New England every summer.”

  “Did these come out of a local estate? Maybe over in Savannah?”

  She picked up a silver soup spoon and pasted a price tag on the handle. “I really don’t remember.”

  “They look exactly like a set of Minton oyster plates I saw at an old plantation house outside of Savannah. Called Beaulieu. Did these plates come from Beaulieu?”

  Her blue eyes glittered dangerously. “I’ve never heard of Beaulieu. I’ll have to ask you to leave now, I’m afraid. We close early on Wednesdays.”

  I looked pointedly at the sign on the wall behind her, which said “Open Weds., Noon–9 P.M.”

  She saw where I was looking, and didn’t blink.

  “Summer hours.” She walked around the counter and held the shop door open. “Good-bye.”

  Chapter 45

  “Two strikes,” Daniel said. “I think there’s another antique store up the road a little bit. Want to try for a third strike there?”

  “I’m done,” I said ruefully. “Sorry I got us sidetracked. What was that you were saying about dinner?”

  He steered the truck onto the main road. “I’ve had a pork loin marinating all day. Then we’ve got some new potatoes with rosemary, chives, and sea salt to toss on the grill along with the pork. You like mango?”

  I nodded.

  “Mango and pineapple salsa, with cilantro and habanero peppers. I went all the way out to Polk’s at Sandfly and got some killer Kentucky Wonder pole beans. And for dessert…” He glanced over at me. “I think I’ll let that be a surprise.”

  “I think I could get used to this,” I said.

  “Hope so.”

  He made a right turn onto a narrow road and we bumped along past a dozen or so houses. Some of the houses were clearly nothing more than river shacks, while others had more uptown aspirations, with brick veneer and fancy decks and patios. All the houses were tucked higgledy-piggledy among thickets of cypress trees, oleander, swamp myrtle, and palmetto.

  I smelled the river before I saw it, the tang of mud and salt an unexpected balm to my jangled nerves. And then it was there, green patches visible between houses, with long fingers of dock stretched out to meet deep water.

  “Here we are,” Daniel said, turning onto a dirt drive. The house was unpainted cedar, worn silvery gray. It had a shed roof made of rusting tin, and a screened porch ran along the front of it. A board nailed to a live oak in the front yard proclaimed it to be the Love Shack.

  “Tater’s last name is Love,” he said. “He’s the buddy I told you about.”

  “You know somebody named Tater Love?”

  “His real name’s Wesley,” Daniel said. “But when he was a kid, the only vegetable he’d eat was potatoes.”

  “Guess it’s no weirder a name than Weezie,” I said.

  It had started back to raining again. We sat in the truck with the motor running for five minutes, waiting for it to let up. “Guess we won’t do any crabbing after all,” Daniel said. “Getting late, anyway.”

  The rain kept coming down. “Want to make a run for it? The front door’s unlocked. I’ll be right there.”

  I splashed through the weed-strewn yard and pushed the screened door open with my foot. Daniel came right behind me, lugging a forty-quart Coleman cooler, and I held the door open wide and let him pass by.

  Another screened door led into an abbreviated living room. He walked past and set the cooler down on a weather-beaten cedar picnic table.

  “Well?” He was like a kid, wanting to please me.

  “It’s adorable,” I said, and it was, in a rough-and-tumble fish camp kind of way. The first floor looked to be all one room. The living room flowed into the dining room, which flowed into a tiny galley kitchen. At the far end was a short hallway and a set of stairs that presumably led to the second floor. The interior was done in weathered cedar planks too, and there was a small rock fireplace at the living-room end of the great room. Big threadbare sofas and chairs faced the fireplace in a U shape, and the table and half a dozen rickety wooden kitchen chairs were set up so that you could look out at the river during mealtime.

  “Heaven,” I murmured, looking out at the rain-swollen marsh.

  Daniel put his arms around my waist and pulled me to him. “Yeah,” he said softly, “that’s what I was thinking.”

  He nuzzled my ear. “There’s some wine in the cooler. Can I pou
r you a glass?”

  “That would be nice,” I said, kissing him. “You mean, you shop for antiques, cook, and serve wine?”

  “I’m a full-service kind of guy,” Daniel said, demonstrating with his hands just what kind of service he was offering.

  I followed him into the kitchen and helped unload the cooler. He uncorked the wine and poured us each a glass. We sipped and cuddled, and eventually the rain let up enough for us to wander outside to look for the grill.

  “Tater said it was out on the dock last time he was over here,” Daniel said. “But it’s a family place, so stuff gets moved around.” He led me by the hand out to the dock, which was just as weather-beaten as the house.

  The tide was in, and the river lapped gently against the dock’s pilings.

  We found a rusty kettle grill at the end of the dock. A storage bench next to it had a flip-up lid that revealed a locker full of paddles, boat cushions, tackle boxes, and near the bottom, a bag of charcoal and a can of lighter fluid.

  Daniel made the fire and I watched, sipping my wine, enjoying his efficiency of movement. I pulled a couple of the boat cushions out of the dock box and arranged them on top of a plank bench looking out across the river.

  The sky was beginning to streak crimson and gold, and the rain had cooled things off considerably.

  When he’d arranged the coals to his satisfaction, he sat down beside me on the bench, stretching his arm around my shoulders.

  “Nice sky,” I said.

  “It’ll do,” he said. “Now what were we talking about before?”

  “Something to do with lighting my fire,” I said.

  “Oh yes,” he said, pulling me onto his lap. “You can light my fire.”

  Sometime after that, the coals burned down to white ash. The sun got set, and most of the bottle of wine got drunk. Daniel and I took our time getting to know each other.

  “We should go inside,” I said lazily, watching him undo the buttons on my blouse. “Somebody will see us.”

  “Who?”

  “Fishermen. People in the other houses. People out on the docks.”

  “It’s dark,” Daniel said. “And nobody pays any attention to anybody else over here. This is Bluffton.”

  “You have a real thing about lovemaking alfresco, don’t you?” I asked.

  He was busy kissing me, and I didn’t get an answer for some time.

  “Oh,” I said, and he kissed my shoulder blade and went a little lower.

  “Oh,” I said again, but this time it had an entirely different context. As in, oh yes.

  When the sun was entirely gone, a bright yellow light blinked on atop a light pole beside the grill.

  Suddenly self-conscious, I tried to pull my blouse together.

  “Hey,” Daniel said, “you’re ruining all my hard work.”

  “I know,” I said, struggling to stand up. “But I really don’t feel like putting on a show here. Besides, don’t you want to start dinner?”

  He tugged my hand until I landed back in his lap. “The hell with dinner. I’m doing just fine with the starter.”

  He pushed my blouse off my shoulder. “Hey,” he said, slipping a finger under the shoulder strap of my black-on-blond bra, “this is nice. Is it a breakaway number like that black dress of yours?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s brand new. It’s the most expensive lingerie I’ve ever bought.”

  “For me?” He reached both hands around my back. “Here. Let’s take it off so it doesn’t get all swampy.”

  He popped the snap with the same wonderful efficiency he’d used in lighting the fire.

  “Can’t you make that light go away?” I asked.

  He reached the lamppost in a single stride. A minute later it was dark, and I heard what I was sure was a lightbulb hit the top of the water.

  After that, the only sounds were the gentle lapping of the river against the dock pilings and the even gentler rustling of clothing being removed.

  At some point in the proceedings, a long-forgotten concern occurred to me.

  “Birth control,” I murmured, rolling away from him on the dock.

  He trailed a fingertip lightly down my belly. “You’re on the pill—right?”

  “Wrong,” I said, catching his hand with mine.

  He groaned, and it wasn’t a good groan. “Did you happen to see a drugstore back there in town?”

  I had to laugh. “You transport me across the state line for immoral purposes, you pack a cooler with a four-course dinner, including wine, and you forget a thing like that?”

  He kissed my shoulder and sat up and started looking for his clothes.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll be right back. Tater probably has something up in the house.”

  “You’re nuts,” I said, “if you think I’m waiting out here, naked, alone, on the end of a dock in the middle of nowhere. I’ve seen all the ‘B’ movies, and this is the perfect slasher setup. Besides,” I said, reaching for my own clothes, “I’m getting splinters in my butt.”

  Back in the house I sat on the edge of the sofa and giggled while Daniel ransacked the house, opening cupboards and drawers and closets and slamming them all with loud, explosive expletives.

  “Goddamn it, Tater,” I heard him mutter. “Where do you hide your damned rubbers?”

  By now I really was starting to get hungry. I found the loaf of french bread he’d brought, and cut off a slice, which I slathered with what looked like homemade pâté.

  Daniel came stomping down the stairs, cursing and muttering.

  I held out a piece of bread to him, but he shook his head in refusal.

  “Just how old is this Tater person?” I asked, looking around the Love Shack. Now that I thought about it, the place didn’t look much like a swinging bachelor’s pad. No black leather sofas, no lava light, no CD player, no condoms.

  “Tater?” Daniel got a blank look. “I don’t know. He’s in his late fifties or early sixties, I guess.”

  “And is he married?”

  “Not any more. Why?”

  “Give up the search, genius,” I said. “If Tater did have any Trojans, the expiration date probably passed twenty years ago. They’d probably fall to pieces as soon as you unwrapped one.”

  His face fell. “God damned Tater.” He picked the car keys off the table by the cooler. “There was a convenience store right before we came into Bluffton. I’ll bet they’ll have something.”

  “Good thought,” I said. “In the meantime, don’t you want me to start dinner? It’s past nine, you know.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “There’s a grill basket for the potatoes. Pour some olive oil on ’em before you put them in the basket. And put the tenderloin at the side of the grill. I don’t want it to get too charred. And the green beans can be heated up; I cooked them earlier in the day…”

  “Go on,” I said, waving him away. “I do know how to cook, you know.”

  “Not as good as me,” he said.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  I found a canvas tote bag hanging on a hook by the back door, and loaded it up with the pork, the potatoes, and everything else I’d need. Then I took my fixings out to the dock and arranged everything on the coals.

  I sat and sipped my wine and listened to the sizzle of the meat and potatoes on the grill. After fifteen minutes, I took the pork off the coals. And after another ten, I added the potatoes and the pork to the platter I’d brought, covered it all with foil, and strolled back to the Love Shack.

  Daniel had been gone over half an hour. I set the table for two, fixed myself another slice of bread and pâté, and put the green beans in a saucepan on the stove and turned the heat on low.

  I roamed around the house, wineglass in hand, exploring. As I’d expected, there was a small bathroom downstairs. Upstairs, there were only two more rooms. A rustic bathroom with a rust-stained porcelain sink and a claw-foot bathtub, and a single bedroom.

  It was not the Ritz. The room was fitted up und
er the eaves of the house, meaning the bed sat under a sloping ceiling with no more than four feet of headroom above it. The bed itself was an old four-poster whose headposts had been sawed off to allow the bed to fit into the space. A pile of neatly folded sheets sat atop a threadbare cotton quilt covering the bed.

  I thought about making the bed, but in some weird way, I couldn’t. It seemed to planned. Too hussyish.

  I went back downstairs and looked at the clock. Daniel had been gone forty-five minutes. By now he could have gone all the way to Savannah and back.

  Looking around the living room reminded me of the bid I’d left earlier in the day for the rattan furniture. I wondered if the dealer had called.

  There was a phone on the wall in the kitchen. I picked it up and dialed in my phone card number, and then my house number. I punched in the code to retrieve messages from my answering machine. There were three messages.

  The first one was from Uncle James.

  “Weezie? Your mother is fine. Don’t worry about her. You both took a big step today. I’ll talk to you later.”

  The second message was from the dealer.

  “Eloise Foley? This is Gary Wolcott. Your bid for seven hundred fifty dollars for the Heywood-Wakefield has been accepted. Pick it up tomorrow, by five, or it’s no deal.”

  The third caller really didn’t need to identify himself.

  “Weezie?” His voice was soft, little more than a whisper. “Baby, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything. I swear to God,” he said, and now his speech was slurring. “I never meant to hurt you. Just believe that I loved you. Only you. Caroline was a mistake. You were the only woman I ever really loved. I always did, and, uh, baby, about the house…” His voice trailed off for a moment. “Yeah. The house. I want you to have it. Afterward. So, OK. And I love you. I told you that.” His voice trailed off. The tape kept going, but Tal’s voice stopped.

  I hung up the phone, feeling chilled. What did he mean, afterward? He was drunk again, I told myself. He was trying to make me feel sorry for him. Trying to scare me.

  I called Tal’s number. My scalp prickled when I heard the voice on the answering machine, a voice from beyond the grave. A clipped, nasal accent. “Hi. You’ve reached Caroline and Tal. We’re busy. So leave a number. OK?”