An Angel to Die For

by Mignon F. Ballard

  What I saw was a teddy bear as big as a five-year-old staring at me from the corner of the sofa.

  The rest of the room was neat, but drably furnished, and other than the bear, I didn’t see any signs of a baby.

  “I think she’s packed up all the baby’s things and plans to stay away awhile,” I told Augusta. Except for the teddy, the room looked as if no one ever lived there.

  But the canvas swing with Miss Mary Priscilla in it remained on the back porch. I wanted that doll. I considered prying open the screen door and snatching it from that cheerless place, but I couldn’t take a chance on setting off an alarm and summoning the police—or worse, Grace Pittman. I remembered how I used to tease Maggie about Miss Mary Priscilla. Once I even threatened to throw the doll from the barn loft because Maggie had eaten my chocolate Easter rabbit. My little sister went crying to Mom, and for punishment, I had to stay home from the church Easter egg hunt. Oh, Maggie, I would give you a million chocolate rabbits if I could!

  “We have to think of a way to get in touch with Ola Cress,” I said, keeping one eye on the house across the street. “The post office won’t give out information on a forwarding address, but what if I wrote her, gave her my phone number? Do you think she’d call?”

  “It does seem as if she has us between a stone and a very firm object. But didn’t you say someone had been asking about Joey at the restaurant? Who do you think that might be?”

  “Probably Sonny’s father. The people at the funeral home said he blamed Maggie for Sonny’s death.”

  “I wonder why.” Augusta thought about that for a minute. “Still, I wouldn’t risk giving her your phone number, Prentice. The mail Ola received several days ago is still in her box. Anyone could read it. I’d be a little more careful I think.”

  “Then what? I would call and leave a message, but she doesn’t have an answering machine.”

  “We need an intermediary,” Augusta said, turning the heater up a notch as I backed out of the driveway. “Why not write and explain who you are. Have her call someone you both trust.”

  “It would have to be somebody local, and I certainly don’t trust that woman at The Toy Box. I’m sure she knows more than she’s telling.”

  “What about the gentleman at that lovely place you stayed last night? The—what do you call it—bed and breakfast?”

  “Tisdale Humphreys. Of course. He offered to help if he could.” Well, he could, and I told him that when I called from the convenience store on our way out of town.

  “Well, of course, I’ll be most happy to relay your message,” my new friend said. “I haven’t had such a clandestine adventure since poor old Ernest Wither-spoon hid out here when his third wife Opal Mae was on the warpath.”

  And so it was arranged that I would write Ola and explain who I was, asking her to call Mr. Humphreys if she wanted to get in touch. All I could do now was wait.

  “Surely Maggie must have mentioned her family to Ola Cress,” I mused as we started back to Georgia. “My sister kept in touch with Mom from time to time and even had our parents’ picture in her billfold. I can’t believe she didn’t make provisions for her baby if anything happened to her.”

  “People your sister’s age seldom believe anything life-threatening will happen,” Augusta said. “But I agree. This woman shouldn’t be surprised at your inquiries. Something’s not quite right.”

  “You don’t think she’d hurt Joey?” I almost rear-ended a truck.

  “No, no. Nothing like that. But I believe she’s afraid. Terribly afraid, and I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe it’s Sonny’s father. From what Mr. Clark, Junior, said, I’m scared to death of him myself.”

  Augusta didn’t answer.

  The closer we got to the Georgia state line, the more I worried about what was happening back home. Or in my case, not happening. I had been doing some freelance writing to bring in a little money until I could find another job, but a little money is exactly what it brought in. I was going to have to start sending out résumés in a big way if I wanted to cover the job market, and I hadn’t even had time to update mine. “By the way,” I said, turning to my resident angel, “I don’t suppose you’re familiar with computers?”

  “You mean that thing that looks like a little oven with a keyboard? One thing at a time.” Augusta turned in her seat to look behind us. “Right now I think we’re going to have to deal with that car that’s been on our bumper for the last twenty miles.”

  “That’s what you said last night, remember? Are you sure you’re not imagining things?”

  “I’m not imagining the driver is the same man I saw yesterday, and the car’s the same too. Dark blue. I’m not familiar with manufacturers, so don’t ask me the make.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. The Buick was about two car lengths behind and from what I could tell, the driver seemed to have a beard. “Must’ve been back there all along. We’ll have to ditch him somehow—don’t want him following us home.”

  “Isn’t that a restaurant up ahead?” Augusta asked. “And it’s crowded too. Good! Turn in here.”

  “I can’t believe you’re thinking of food with the bearded avenger on our tail.”

  “This might be our chance to give him the slip. But you’ll have to hurry. No, don’t park out front! Find a place in back.”

  I followed Augusta’s directions and watched the blue Buick turn in behind us. “He stuck right with us,” I said. “What now?”

  “That’s exactly what we wanted!” Augusta’s face was flushed. I think she was actually enjoying this. She lowered her voice as if the man in the blue car might hear her. “Now here’s what I want you to do . . .”

  I hoped it would work.

  With the strange man watching, I walked calmly around to the front of the building and went inside, giving him plenty of time to follow. I was led to a small table in a corner of the busy restaurant where I pretended to study the menu while my stomach turned to stone. The man at the table across from me was putting away french fries as if he were in some kind of contest, and the smell of them made me green. The man with the beard was seated three tables away. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel him looking at me. If he approached me, I would scream—right after I threw up from fright.

  When the waitress came I ordered a glass of tea and a salad, slid a bill under my napkin to pay for it, and took my compact from my purse, frowning at what I saw. The ladies’ room was in the rear and I avoided eye contact as I walked past the man who had been following me, aware that he watched my every step.

  A couple of minutes crawled by before I worked up enough courage to peek around the door. The bearded man, his back to me, was tucking into a bowl of something, probably chili, and I slipped quickly and quietly out the back door, into the car, and out of the parking lot. While my heart thudded out of my chest, Augusta leaned back and laughed. “Fooled him that time, didn’t we? Wonder what he’ll do when he realizes you’ve gone?”

  “I just hope I can put enough miles between us so I won’t find out,” I said. “I wish I knew what he wanted. If he had something to say, all he had to do was open his mouth.”

  “I think he wants to find out where you live,” Augusta said.

  I drove a little faster.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was dark as I turned into the long drive approaching Smokerise, and I could see a glimmer of light from inside the house. I had meant to leave a light burning to discourage unwanted visitors, but we left in such a hurry I couldn’t remember doing it.

  But I did remember leaving Noodles inside, so why was she curled up on the back porch?

  “That silly cat’s out,” I said to Augusta. “Be-trice must’ve let her out when she came to feed her.” I tried the door and found it firmly locked. Except for Be-trice, Mom, and Aunt Zorah, no one else had a key.

  Inside I turned on a light in the kitchen and sniffed. Bacon. Augusta had whipped up a cheese omelet the morning before we left for Tennessee, bu
t we hadn’t cooked any bacon, and bacon hung heavy on the air. A plate and flatware sat in the sink, and one of the placemats appeared to be streaked with jam. My cousin, for all her faults, was a neat freak. She would never leave a kitchen like this.

  “Somebody’s been here,” I said, “and I don’t think it’s Goldilocks.”

  “Somebody’s still here,” Augusta said. “Get out.”

  That was when I heard a creak from the sitting room, as if somebody was trying to be quiet. The phone was in the sitting room.

  If I could just get to the telephone upstairs, I would barricade myself in the bedroom and lock the door! Augusta gave me a shove in the right direction, and I could sense more than hear her close behind me as we ran through the dark dining room and up the stairs. We had almost reached the landing when I heard the back door shut softly.

  “Whoever it was is gone now,” Augusta whispered in what I supposed was an effort to assure me. I was not assured. I slammed the bedroom door behind us, and sat on the floor leaning against it. Augusta knelt at the window looking out. “I can’t see who it is, but I hear somebody running.”

  “Jasper Totherow,” I said, and reached for the phone.

  “I don’t know. Come and look at this.” Augusta, who had wandered into the bathroom, beckoned to me from the doorway.

  There was a ring around the bathtub the color of red Georgia clay, and a puddle on the floor beside it. A damp towel oozing water hung over the side. Thank heavens for 911, because I was too rattled to look up the sheriff’s number and my hands too shaky to dial it.

  It took the sheriff ten days to get there. Well, actually it was about ten minutes, but it seemed like ten days, and this time the big guy himself showed up, along with a young sergeant who stuck to him like chewing gum, and couldn’t be more than nineteen.

  “It sure does look like somebody made themselves at home here,” Sheriff Bonner said after a preliminary look around. “Have you found anything missing?”

  I hadn’t had time to look, but with the sheriff and his shadow following me around, I checked the family silver, which is about all we had that was worth anything, except for a few family heirlooms, and they all seemed to be here. The worn velvet jewelry box that had belonged to my great-grandmother was still inside an empty box that once held sanitary napkins. Mom always called it “the family jewels” and kept it on the top shelf of her closet. She must have forgotten the box in her hurry to put Smokerise behind her. If whoever had been “boarding” here meant to steal something, the misleading box had put them off, or they hadn’t had time to find it.

  “I couldn’t find any evidence of a break-in,” the sheriff said. “At least not at this point in time. Are you absolutely sure that door was locked?”

  “Unless she’s a lot smarter than I think, that cat can’t open a door,” I told him. “My cousin came by to feed her yesterday, but she swears she locked the door. I just spoke with her on the phone. The cat was inside when she left.”

  Sheriff Bonner was a big man. The sofa groaned when he sat on one end of it, and I almost expected the other to seesaw up. “Besides you and your cousin, who else has a key?” he asked.

  “Just my mother, but she’s in Savannah. And Aunt Zorah.”

  “Better call her and see if she still has it,” he said. “My deputy tells me he was out here yesterday to look around and didn’t notice anything out of the way.”

  That must’ve been a shock, I thought. “Have you been able to identify the dead woman yet? And what about Uncle Faris? Has he—”

  Sheriff Bonner rubbed his eyes, as if he hoped it would make him see clearly. And I could clearly see he didn’t have anything new to tell me. “Not much success there, I’m afraid. The woman’s not from around here. We’ve sent out inquiries of course, but so far no one of that description has turned up missing.”

  “What about Jasper Totherow? Have you been able to locate him?”

  When the sheriff shook his head, his ruddy jowls swayed with the motion. “Not at this point in time. He’s a sly one, Jasper is, but he’ll turn up sooner or later. I don’t believe this is Jasper’s doing, though.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  The sheriff smiled at the skinny sidekick who accompanied him. “Took a bath, didn’t he?”

  Aunt Zorah found our door key in the bottom of her ironing basket where she always kept it. Nobody was likely to bother with her ironing basket, she said. (And neither was Aunt Zorah.)

  “I wish you’d just come and stay awhile,” she said. “You know I’d love to have you, and I don’t for one minute like what’s going on out there.”

  I told her I didn’t like it either.

  “I’m just about to sit down for supper. Stuffed peppers. Got plenty, so you come on.”

  “Oh? Stuffed with what?”

  “Whatever was in the refrigerator. Pour enough ketchup on it and who cares? I’ll save you a plate.”

  I made my excuses. A virus. A bad virus. And very contagious too. I promised to bolt all the doors, and the sheriff was sending a car to check periodically during the night.

  “First thing tomorrow, I want you to get your locks changed,” Sheriff Bonner said as he left. “I don’t know what’s going on out here, but I mean to find out. Meanwhile, I’d feel a lot better if you were to stay with your aunt.”

  “The sheriff’s right,” Augusta said after he left. “I do what I can, but a little common sense is in order here, Prentice Dobson.”

  I had bolted all the doors from the inside and stacked trash cans full of canned goods in front of them. “There are some things worse than intruders in your bathtub,” I said. “Obviously you’ve never eaten Aunt Zorah’s stuffed peppers.”

  She laughed. “Well, no and I don’t intend to. At least not at this point in time!”

  I slept that night on the sofa in the sitting room with Augusta blessedly nearby. I didn’t remember till morning that my sister had rumbled out of our lives with a key to our house, and I didn’t recall seeing it in her purse.

  I found Maggie’s scuffed brown purse wrapped in tissue upstairs in her chest of drawers where I had left it, but there were no keys in it, not even a key to the other side of the house she shared with Ola Cress. The ’83 Dodge involved in the accident at the railroad crossing had belonged to my sister, and I imagine she used it only for errands; it was too old for much of anything else. Any keys she might have had would have been in the ignition at the time of the impact, and I didn’t want to think what might have happened to them. If the key to Smokerise had been with them, there was no way to know it now.

  Remembering the jewelry box, I decided to check it again to see if everything was there. My great-grandfather Scott had given a strand of pearls to his bride on their wedding day, and I knew how much the necklace meant to Mom. It was the only piece of jewelry she had that might be considered valuable, and she only wore it on special occasions. Sitting on my parents’ bed, I held the box on my lap and opened it to find other treasures inside: Granddaddy Scott’s gold watch fob, a Masonic ring from Grandpa Dobson, Grandmother’s sapphire pin, and the small diamond earrings that had been Mom’s twenty-fifth anniversary gift from Dad. But no pearls. If someone had stolen the necklace, why didn’t they take the other things too? My mother must have taken it with her, I thought, and prayed I was right. The idea of that shiftless Jasper Totherow with the family pearls in his pocket made me sick with rage.

  The first thing after breakfast I called for a locksmith to change all our locks and he promised to take care of it right away. While I waited, I wrote to Ola Cress and tried to explain the urgency of my situation without spooking her completely. As far as I knew, the woman had no reason to distrust Tisdale Humphreys. I just hoped the post office in Ruby was forwarding her mail.

  Maybe Ola would be able to tell me why Sonny Gaines was driving my sister’s car. And what were they doing in Athens, Tennessee? She had her purse with her and had left Joey either at day care or with Ola Cress, so she must h
ave been going somewhere. But for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what she was doing with Sonny after she’d made it clear to our mother she didn’t want any men in her life. Unless Maggie had been coerced.

  While in town to mail the letter, I was conscience-driven to stop by the library to let Aunt Zorah know I was still among the living.

  On my way inside I was almost knocked sideways by Maynard Griggs, the elder of the funeral home Griggses, who came scurrying out with an armload of books.

  “Oh, my goodness, I beg your pardon,” he huffed as a thick volume slid to the sidewalk.

  “That’s all right.” I tried to regain my breath and my composure as I stooped to pick up a copy of A Collection of Works by Charles Dickens.

  “My granddaughter’s writing a term paper,” he said, hurrying away. I smiled. I didn’t know the man was capable of moving that fast.

  Aunt Zorah gave me the evil eye from her desk on high. “Well, I see you’re still with us. Can’t say I’m not surprised with all the goings-on out there. What do you suppose these people are after? You don’t have hidden treasure you haven’t told me about, do you?”

  “If we do, it’s hidden from me,” I said. “And I’d probably be safer at home than here. Mr. Griggs just about bowled me over out there with all that literature he’s lugging around.”

  Aunt Zorah made a face. “Spoils that Cynthia rotten! And that snobby Ernestine’s just as bad, if not worse. Spent all that money to send that girl to prep school, and what does she do? Flunks out before the term’s half over! What is she now? Sixteen? Seventeen? Old enough to go to the library on her own.” She snorted. “It doesn’t help a child to do too much for them. She’ll pay for it in the long run.”

  I thought of the papier-mâché hand puppet Mom sculpted for Maggie’s book report in the fourth grade, the excuses she made for her poor grades. Maybe Aunt Zorah had a point.

  “I don’t guess you’ve heard any more about what happened to Uncle Faris,” I said, hesitating to bring up the subject.