An Angel to Die For

by Mignon F. Ballard

  “About what?”

  “About coming to England.”

  “Rob, there are too many things to deal with right now, too many ifs. I can’t make a decision like that for a while.” I turned, still holding his hand, to start back down the trail, but Rob stood firm.

  “Then when, Prentice?” His blue eyes locked on to mine and held me there.

  “You can’t expect me to drop everything and go running off to England just because you’re lonely,” I said. “First we have to work things out about Joey. It’s not just me anymore, Rob, and England’s so far away. I couldn’t do that to Mom—put an ocean between her and Joey.” I smiled. “You should see her! She’s a different woman since—”

  “But I thought . . . I just assumed your mother would be raising Maggie’s child.” I could feel the tension like a current in Rob’s fingers.

  “His name is Joey,” I said. “His parents are dead and his granddaddy’s a lunatic. My mother and I are all he has, and she’ll be sixty in November. I’m sure she wants to be a part of Joey’s life, but she’s already raised two children. Joey and I are a package deal—take it or leave it!”

  I snatched my hand from his and ran down the path, stumbling over roots, shoving aside branches.

  “Prentice, wait! Slow down, will you? Look, I wasn’t thinking. Can’t we just sit a minute and talk?” I heard him close behind me. My chest hurt from running, my eyes burned, and I had a pain in my side. I knew I wasn’t being fair to Rob. I had thrust this upon him with very little prologue. What did I expect? I turned and waited for him, threw my arms around his neck and cried.

  We sat on a stone outcropping and talked until the shadows began to grow longer, and what had been a refreshing breeze turned into a chilling wind. I shivered and pulled my light jacket closer about me as we renewed our descent. “You’re cold. I’ll go and get a fire started.” Rob moved ahead of me on the path when we came within sight of the cabins. The small cottages were heated, but each was also supplied with a stack of wood for burning in the stone fireplace that dominated the main room. Our cabin, on entering, smelled of long-ago wood smoke and dark winter days, but the bathroom was clean, the sofa inviting, and soon bright flames fanned warmth and color into an otherwise dreary room.

  While Rob drove a few miles for takeout from a restaurant we’d passed earlier, I showered and changed and opened the wine we’d brought, then added more wood to the fire and sipped some as I watched the flames leap and curl. I felt drained, limp, as if I’d been sick for a long time. During our conversation on the rock, Rob and I had “danced” around the topic of marriage. And as for the issue of raising Joey, Rob admitted he was hesitant, even afraid.

  “It’s not that I don’t want children,” he’d said. “Felicia and I talked about it, but then that never came about. And you know what my job is like. It’s impossible to put down roots.”

  I didn’t argue that other people with the news bureau had families, and that Joey, as a baby, would come to know him as his own father. If Rob couldn’t see this for himself, he hardly needed it pointed out. We had, it seemed, come to a friendly wait-and-see impasse, and that, I thought, was the best we were going to do for a while.

  But I still waited for Rob McCullough to say, “Marry me, Prentice. I love you,” and with all our other problems, I should’ve let it go. After all, it wasn’t a major issue at the moment, and the man had come all the way from England to spend time with me. But like an annoying moth, the omission flitted across my mind biting and gnawing and leaving little holes in my confidence.

  Dinner, when it came, was fresh trout, flaky and delicious, and Rob and I ate it at a cozy table by the fire. Later, warm with wine, as we nuzzled on the sofa, I held his face in my hands and asked Rob McCullough just why he wanted me with him in England.

  “What kind of question is that?” He tried to squirm away.

  “Just answer it, Rob. Why me? You’ve never really said.”

  “I should think you’d know by now!” He was working into a huff.

  “Maybe so, but I’d like to hear it . . . so why?”

  “Well, damn it, Prentice, I like being with you and miss you when I’m not. I care for you! That’s why.”

  “Care? You care?”

  “Of course I do. What’s wrong with you?” His voice had developed an edge.

  “Nothing.” I kissed him on the cheek and swallowed what might’ve become a great self-pitying cry. “I’m just tired, I guess. Feel like I’ve been scrubbed on a washboard and hung flappin’ in the wind.”

  “I see,” he said. And I could see that he did. “I’m sorry, Prentice.”

  I was sorry too.

  “Damn it,” I said to Dottie when I phoned her the next day. “Why did he have to have such blue eyes?”

  “Aw . . . Prentice, I really hate this! Just give him a little time. Maybe things will work out.”

  I didn’t think so. The night in the cabin had been strained, and if it hadn’t been late and the two of us hadn’t been drinking wine, we’d have driven back right away. Rob made a noble gesture and slept on the couch so I could have the bed. The man had flown all the way from England for a grand reunion that turned into a disaster, and I was sorry for that. But not so sorry I didn’t sleep like a zombie, and when I woke the next morning he had the car packed and ready to go. The only good thing about the whole experience was, I was so miserable during the drive home, I forgot to worry about being followed.

  “Where is Rob now?” Dottie asked.

  “Had some business in Atlanta, and I think he plans to visit his mother in North Carolina before he flies back.”

  “Do you think you’ll see him again?”

  “I doubt it. At least not anytime soon.” And probably not ever, I thought.

  Rob had kissed me lightly on the lips before leaving me at Smokerise. “I guess the time’s not right for either of us,” he said. “But don’t give up on me, Prentice. Please. Promise you’ll stay in touch.”

  I would have promised anything just then because I knew if he hung around any longer I’d cry.

  “Hey, listen, I’m here if you need me,” Dottie said, her voice softer than usual. “I mean it. If you need a place to camp out for a while my rent’s paid through the end of the month—and I make a mean lasagna!”

  I felt a little better already.

  I put on the kettle for tea and hunted in the freezer until I found that little hunk of date nut bread Augusta had made earlier. I missed Augusta, missed her funny mixed metaphors, her practical advice, and most of all the gentleness of her presence. But Mom and Ola needed her more. I was looking up the number to call them at Ellynwood when a police car pulled up in our driveway and Donald Weber got out. He seemed to be in a hurry.

  I had the door open before he could knock.

  “Good, I’m glad you’re back,” the deputy said, following me into the kitchen. “Kinda thought you might be gone a day or so longer.”

  “So did I,” I said. I didn’t elaborate. “Want some tea? Water’s hot.”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, gotta get back. Came by here on the spur of the moment, hoping you might be here. See if you recognize this.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a small plastic bag with some kind of trinket inside.

  “Ralphine Totherow said Jasper gave this to their daughter to keep. Said she thought it was a charm for a bracelet.”

  He held the clear bag up to the light so I could see what was inside. “It doesn’t belong to me,” I told him. “I didn’t even come close to earning one of these—in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. It’s a Phi Beta Kappa key.”

  “Right. I know. The honorary scholastic society. Thought maybe it might’ve belonged to you or your mom.” Deputy Weber frowned. “Ralphine says she doesn’t have a clue where Jasper got it and I was hoping you might know whose it was.”

  I reached out to touch the bag, then snatched back my hand as if I’d been stung. “Oh, God!” I said. “I’m afraid I do.”
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br />   CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Has my aunt Zorah seen this?” I asked Donald Weber.

  “Why no, do you think it belongs to her?”

  The fish from last night’s supper flip-flopped in my stomach. I didn’t feel so good. “I think it belonged to her husband. My aunt said Faris Haskell was buried with it.”

  I waited a second for this to sink in. “Ye gods and little fishes!” The deputy tossed the key, bag and all, on the table. “There are initials on the back, but it never occurred to me they might be his. Do you suppose Jasper took this off his body?” He didn’t look too well either.

  “Looks like somebody did. Aren’t you going to see what the initials are?”

  Reluctantly he picked up the bag and held it to the light. “Kinda hard to make out, but it looks like F.W.H. Must be his, all right.” He put the horrid thing back in his pocket.

  “If you’re going to see my aunt, give me a chance to speak with her first,” I said, and he promised he would. After the way she’d been acting, I was afraid Aunt Zorah would need every doctor on her list when she saw Uncle Faris’s long-buried “treasure.”

  For some reason that nobody remembers, the library in Liberty Bend closes at noon on Wednesdays, so I waited until my aunt had a chance to get home before I dropped by. I found her in the backyard on her hands and knees pulling weeds from her tulip bed. Aunt Zorah will do just about anything to avoid yard work and usually pays the boy down the street to do it, so this kind of took me by surprise. Besides that, she obviously still wore the clothes she’d gone to work in and had mud all down the front of her skirt.

  “Let’s go to lunch,” I said.

  “Good heavens, Prentice, you nearly scared me to death! I’m not hungry.” She went on wrenching innocent plants from the ground.

  “You’re pulling up half your tulips, and you’re supposed to leave that daffodil foliage,” I pointed out, feeling faintly pleased that I knew something she didn’t.

  “Don’t care. Just leave me alone.”

  I sat on her back steps. “Hey, things haven’t been going so great in my life either. What’s going on with yours?” I waited. “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me.”

  My aunt stood and wiped her hands on her skirt. “It’s too god-awful to talk about. You wouldn’t believe the mess.”

  “I might.” I followed her inside, found something harmless in a can for our lunch, and told her about the Phi Beta Kappa key.

  “Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” she said, staring into her bowl of vegetable soup.

  I covered her hand with mine. “I know Uncle Faris disappointed you, but that was a long time ago. Don’t you think it’s time to forgive him?”

  I don’t believe she even heard me. “If there’s a bigger fool than Faris Haskell, it’s me.” And that was all she’d say.

  The phone was ringing when I got home.

  “How was your visit with Rob?” my mother wanted to know.

  “We put things on hold,” I said.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Depends on the way you look at it, I guess. Mom, I’m worried about Aunt Zorah.” I told her about Uncle Faris’s key and my aunt’s strange behavior.

  “Poor Zorah! Dear God, all this must be tearing her apart! Your dad said they tried every way in the world to keep her from marrying Faris Haskell but she wouldn’t listen. Now just look at the trouble he’s caused.”

  Just like Sonny Gaines, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “How’s everything at Ellynwood? I’m trying my best to get down there as soon as I can.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. The weather here’s been beautiful and I’d like to get Joey out more but we didn’t have room for his stroller. Would you bring it when you come? And I’m running a little short on clothes—brought mostly winter things, and I think I left my good walking shoes under my bed; I could use a couple of pairs of shorts too.”

  “What about Ola?” I asked.

  “I don’t think she wears shorts.” I thought I heard a little laugh here.

  “I mean how is she? Holding up okay? You don’t have any turrets there for her to jump off of, do you?”

  “Prentice, what a thing to say! She’s napping now, but she does seem sad, and she’s on some kind of medication. I don’t think she’s well.”

  “You haven’t seen any bearded strangers around, had any weird phone calls, have you?”

  “No, thank heavens! So far, so good. What about you?” my mother asked.

  “Lately I haven’t had time to notice,” I said. And that was the truth.

  I also hadn’t had time to check my phone messages. A part of me hoped there would be one from Rob saying he wanted to forget what had happened—or didn’t happen—on our mountain trip and start all over again. The other part of me was relieved when there wasn’t.

  Dottie had phoned to say she’d had an encouraging response to some inquiries on our exciting new project and to keep my fingers crossed. The dentist’s office called to remind my mother it was time to have her teeth cleaned, and some man I’d never heard of left a message to see if we’d be interested in leasing our property for a nursery and garden center.

  I played the last message again. The man’s name was Peter Whisonant. He and his partners owned a business in Cartersville, a town about thirty miles away, and were interested in expanding to our area, he said. He sounded gruff, businesslike, and to the point, and left a number for an exchange in Cartersville. I wrote down his name and number and filed it with a bunch of other stuff in the kitchen drawer that barely shut. This would be something I might refer to Mom’s lawyer friend when he returned from his European travels.

  Upstairs I found my mother’s shoes under her bed as she’d suspected, selected some of her shorts and lighter clothing for the sweltering south Georgia climate, and set them aside with Joey’s stroller. Bearded man or no bearded man, I was going to leave for Ellynwood in the morning unless something earthshaking occurred.

  And what happened the next day might not have been earthshaking, but it created a heck of a quake in Liberty Bend.

  I was finishing a hasty breakfast when Sheriff Bonner called. “We need you to come down here for a few minutes if you can,” he said without the usual polite preliminaries. And of course my first thought was of Aunt Zorah.

  “What’s wrong? Is it my aunt? Has she—?” I couldn’t bring myself to finish.

  “No, no. It’s not that. We’re holding someone for questioning in Jasper Totherow’s death and possibly the death of the woman we found on your property. We’d like you to have a look at him, see if he looks familiar.”

  Was it the bearded man? But why would anyone in Sonny Gaines’s family want to kill Jasper Totherow? As far as I knew, they didn’t even know him.

  I would just have to find out when I got there. I knew the police had questioned Ralphine but had found no reason to hold her. If they seriously suspected anyone else, I hadn’t heard about it. I stuck my cereal bowl in the sink, grabbed my coffee mug, and hurried to the car, hoping that when I got to town we would know something at last. Was Jasper’s murder connected with what had happened to Uncle Faris? Was that why Aunt Zorah was behaving so strangely?

  By the time I reached the sheriff’s office, I was gripping the steering wheel so tightly my fingers felt welded to it.

  The suspect was being held in an adjoining building that housed the county jail, and remained in a small room for questioning. A policeman led me down a long corridor so that I could look through a window and see him.

  He wasn’t anything like what I expected. The man fidgeted in his seat, examined his hands, paced to the window, then back again where he sank heavily into the chair and drummed his fingers on the table. Except for the table and two chairs, the room was bare. The man was alone. I didn’t know him.

  “Anybody you recognize?” Sheriff Bonner wanted to know when I was led into his inner sanctum a few minutes later.

  I shook my head. “I’ve never seen him.”

&n
bsp; “Are you sure? He has a beard.”

  “But he’s not the man I saw. Not the one who came to our house. This man’s older—much older, and fatter, and his beard’s fuller, fuzzier. Also he wears glasses. The other man didn’t.”

  The sheriff leaned back in his chair. “So you’re never seen him?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “Because Suzie Wright said he looks like the guy she saw running into the woods on your property, the one wearing that purple cap.”

  I shrugged. “Could be, but I never saw him. Who is he?”

  “Gives his name as Fabius Hawthorne.” The sheriff smiled. “You probably know him better as Faris Haskell.”

  If I had been the fainting kind, I think I would’ve passed out cold right then, but the floor looked none too clean, and I was distracted by a most annoying noise that sounded like an old dog baying.

  Turned out to be an old funeral director. “I’ll swear to you I had nothing to do with that man’s death!” Maynard Griggs hollered. “This is harassment—that’s exactly what it is!”

  I recognized the policeman as one of the detectives who had been at Smokerise recently. He looked a little like Peter Sellers, the actor who played Inspector Clouseau, and I halfway expected him to fall over a chair or something. Instead he led the elder Mr. Griggs into the sheriff’s office and seated him gently. I didn’t know whether to stay or go, so I stayed.

  “We’re not accusing you of killing anybody, Mr. Griggs.” The sheriff spoke calmly. “We just need some information is all, and I understand you might be able to help us.”

  The old man’s lip quivered. “I don’t know anything about it. I’ve a right to a lawyer. And my son Harold—where is he, anyway?”

  “Harold’s on his way,” the sheriff told him, “and here’s the phone . . . or would you like us to call a lawyer for you?”

  “I’ll wait till Harold gets here.” The old fellow looked up at me. “Oh, dear,” he said. “This really is a quagmire.”