by E. Joan Sims
“It really is a shame that we don’t do this more often,” seconded my daughter. “Let’s do this at least once a week while we’re here. I’ll help Gran cook,” she added.
Lots of raised eyebrows there but Cassie missed it because she had hopped up to clear the plates and make way for the grand finale.
Mother had created little individual baked meringue boxes filled with raspberry sorbeija. Each one was topped off with a scattering of fresh raspberries and a rich chocolate sauce. Cassie and I had no choice but to stand and applaud in awe and admiration. Mother curtseyed gracefully in acknowledgment, then we all dug in like piggies.
When nothing was left of our magnificent dinner but a smudge of chocolate on my upper lip, we carried the dishes to the kitchen. I gratefully left them to Cassie who promised to take kitchen duty. Mother already had coffee brewing. When it was ready, we carried our cups into the living room with an extra pot for refills.
The time for getting down to work was at hand. I fetched a yellow legal pad from Dad’s desk. When I returned, Cassie had joined Mother and was helping her lift a large cardboard box onto the coffee table. We let Mother be the one to empty the box item by item. Cassie examined and I cataloged.
Everything was neatly arranged, either tied in heavy twine or wrapped in thick rubber bands. Somehow this surprised me.
“How did William have time to do all of this after Abigail’s funeral? I can’t imagine him having the presence of mind to go through and straighten out all of Abigail’s papers.”
A pained look crossed Mother’s face as she answered.
“Sue Dibber came over and offered to help. William let her go through Abigail’s things.” She looked at my astonished face and went on, “I know, Paisley. I felt the same way. They were such private people. I would have never thought William would allow that kind of personal invasion. I didn’t even suggest doing it, and I was Abigail’s closest relative. He must have been at a very low ebb.”
“Or maybe she was just an evil pushy witch!” snarled Cassie.
“That too, Cassie, dear,” agreed Mother sadly.
“Well, she has some nerve. She cut all the stamps off these old letters.”
Cassie held out Christmas and birthday cards from years past with neat little squares missing from the upper right hand corner of the envelopes.
Mother had that pained look again. “Yes, William was embarrassed about that. She told him her children collected stamps. He knew as well as I that stamps that old could have some real value and she was stealing them for herself.”
“That is so incredibly tacky!” I was angry now. “This broad must be some piece of work. I wish I could remember the remarkable Mrs. Dibber from the funeral.”
“I hate to sound unkind, but she’s really not very attractive.” Mother closed her eyes to describe her. “Tall, scrawny, dreadful taste in clothes—definitely catalogue couture. Bad complexion and lifeless dingy hair. As a matter of fact, she looks quite unhealthy which is surprising since she is a nurse and should know better.”
“A nurse? She’s a nurse?” I shuddered as I thought of those bony hands guiding a needle into my veins or touching my naked flesh.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, she was the nurse on William’s floor at the hospital when he died.”
Cassie mirrored my astonishment.
“Wow, Mom! The plot thickens.”
I looked at Mother in amusement. “Be sure and let me in on any other little gems you are keeping to yourself.”
“Nonsense, Paisley. I am not keeping anything to myself. I just don’t quite remember everything I know all at once. I did say that I had quite a few reasons to suspect Abigail’s demise was untimely.”
We spent the next two hours perusing musty old letters and photographs. Now that I knew these things had already been pre-examined by Madame Dibber I lost my enthusiasm. I was sure that we would not find anything to help our cause unless she was incredibly stupid and I was beginning to doubt that.
There were some very sweet photographs of Abigail as a child. On her first day of school she had posed in a stiffly starched sailor dress with a big ribbon in her pale blond hair. There were lots of pictures of picnics at the lake: Abigail’s parents, my grandparents, and the two little girls playing by the water’s edge. Abigail with her blond curls and Mother, the smaller brunette, looked like Snow White and Rose Red with sand buckets and tiny shovels. And there was a wonderfully pompous portrait of a man wearing a fedora and smoking a huge cigar. It was signed, “Love, Uncle Jackson.”
Abigail’s father had died when she was fifteen, leaving no insurance and no other money to see his widow and child through hard times or even the next month. His brother Jackson had helped out until Abigail graduated from high school, at which time my grandfather had gotten her a job at the telephone company. She worked there for the next thirty-eight years. Uncle Jackson had married a new lady and forgotten his little niece.
William and Abigail married late in life because their widowed mothers could not stand the sight of each other. But they apparently had a long and happy courtship as recorded on Kodak paper. There were lots of pictures of Abigail standing by the side of new cars. From the photographic evidence, William must have bought a new one every year. They were mostly all big cars, Buicks and Packards, with lots of chrome. William was a small man and I guessed that the big shiny machines must have given him a sense of dignity and importance.
When William had been elected to the Board of Directors at the bank, his picture was on the first page of the Lanierville Gazette. The faded newsprint revealed him as a dapper little man with a perky bow tie and big smile. The next year there were pictures of two different graves covered with funeral flowers, then at long last, a wedding photo. Abigail had kept a little journal of their wedding trip. They had waited fifty minutes for the results of their blood test. Armed with that little piece of paper, they had gone straight to the Methodist church. The minister read them their vows while his wife and two daughters witnessed the ceremony. Abigail had noted in big red letters, “We are really happy!”
Mother was wiping away a tear or two so I took over emptying the box. The last item was really a gem. It was a letter from Mother’s other deceased cousin, Dimple Howard. It described the Howard family tree as gilded and gleaming with the presence of several Dukes of Norfolk and countless Lords and Ladies beginning with the court of Henry VIII. Cassie and I had a good laugh over the magnificent fairy tale of a list. It had actually been duly accepted and sanctioned by the Daughters of the American Revolution. They had allowed Dimple and Abigail admittance to their esteemed throng by way of some poor little teenaged Howard. He had died carrying the flag in a battle against the very same British from whence he came.
Cassie wanted to know if we could create a coat-of-arms to match our newfound position in life. We discussed the possibilities with great hilarity until Mother’s thoroughly royal “Ahem” put us in our place.
Thus chastened, we trudged off to our little peasant beds to dream of blue haired old ladies with bony grasping hands.
I arose early the next morning and sneaked out of the house, leaving a note so no one would come searching. I knew that neither Cassie nor Mother would approve of my mission, and I did not want to waste time arguing. Besides it was my BMW to do with as I wished and I chose to be a little bit less conspicuous a consumer now that I was unemployed. And on top of that, the little farm communities in this area had more Camaros and trucks than foreign cars. I thought it best to blend in. The fact that I had always harbored a secret desire for a tough, mean four-wheel drive had nothing to do with it.
The nearest town of any size was Morgantown which sported a mall and two movie theaters. It also had several car dealerships, one of them owned by a college friend of mine named Bubba. Bubba had always wanted a Beemer. I hoped that I could persuade him to give me a decent trade.
“BUBBA’S BEST USED CARS” was a circus of flapping flags of every color, and balloons that bounced mad
ly around in the wind. It looked like a fun place to part with your money. All of the salesmen had big smiles and big meaty handshakes.
There was a tent in front of the lot. Underneath were lots of pretty young things in shorts handing out free coffee and doughnuts or cokes and hotdogs depending on your inner clock or digestion.
One of the smiling salesmen approached me when I parked in the sunniest spot on the lot. I posed the car to send out a bright ruby beacon of pristine fenders and shining chrome fittings. The man’s smile and the hope of a commission faded when I told him I was a friend of his boss. I feared for a moment he was going to snatch back my cup of really good hot coffee.
I leaned gently back against the Beamer and surreptitiously gave it a farewell pat. I had never really been too fond of the car. Cassie had talked me into buying it so I could take her to school in style. I always thought cars should do more than represent fashion or money. Automobiles were, after all, built to perform a service and I thought utility should be one of the services. After a year of sending suitcases ahead by UPS, I wanted a trunk big enough for more than an overnight bag.
Bubba hurried across the lot towards me all smiles and flexing muscle. There was nothing stereotypical about him. He was tall and slim with a Henry Fonda gait and a tan as real as fishing and mountain climbing. His hair was still thick and flaxen and just unruly enough to keep him from being pretty. He grabbed me with one big arm and swung me around like a sack of feathers.
“Paisley, darlin’! Boy, are you lookin’ good! I’m gonna dump Donna this time for sure and run away to Tahiti with ya!”
He gave me a big old chaste smack on the cheek. He truly did adore Donna and their four little white-blond toddlers.
“How’s your Momma?”
“She’s great, Bubba”
“And that beautiful daughter of yours?” he asked.
“Cassie is fine, too. She’s a student at Emory.”
“Man, I can hardly believe that.”
His country accent slowly faded as we walked and talked. He held my hand in his as easily as he had twenty years ago when we walked across that same college campus.
There had been a brief moment when we had imagined we were lovers instead of friends, but as friends we had more fun. We stayed that way through thick and thin. It had been mostly thin for him for a long while.
After I met and married Rafe, Bubba married an apparently sweet young debutante from Atlanta. Marie Lynne turned out to be a complete shrew. She made Bubba’s life miserable for ten long years until she finally partied and drank herself to death.
Bubba came to see me after she died. He cried on my shoulder for a whole month until I found a shrink who made him see that it was truly not his fault. He went back to Atlanta, sold his law practice, and returned to his hometown. He bought some fantastic farmland and found pretty little Donna who had the strength of mind and character to match his. Four beautiful blond babies later they were happy and successful. I hoped he wanted to give Donna a Beemer for Christmas.
In less than two hours I drove off the lot in my almost brand new bile green four-wheel drive Jeep Cherokee with Bubba’s check for the difference in my back pocket.
I passed a western boot outlet going out of town and decided impetuously that I had to have a new outfit for my new wheels. I hung a rather large and ungainly U-turn. The Jeep had a much bigger turning radius than the BMW, and I almost took off the toe of the neon boot in the parking entrance. I emerged from the store thirty minutes later sporting red hand-tooled boots with green and yellow leather roses. I also topped them off with a soft fawn colored hat with a leather and turquoise band. Yippee!
The two-inch heels on my boots made climbing into my wheels easier. And I got my first wolf whistle in a long time from the guy at the Exxon station next door.
I rolled down the windows and tuned the radio to a country music station. Reba, Wynonna, Dolly, and I sang at the top of our lungs all the way home.
I had not expected whole-hearted approval of my choice, but I also never imagined I would be verbally tarred and feathered. Mother peered cautiously out the library doors.
“Paisley! Why, that is you. Oh dear, you haven’t had a wreck have you?”
“No, Mother, I’m terrific. Meet my new Jeep!”
She raised her elegant eyebrows just a millimeter. “Couldn’t you find something a little less tasteless? Really, dear, that is the ugliest thing on four wheels I have ever seen. And lose those silly boots, dear. You look like a clown.”
She turned and went back inside. I had been dismissed.
I was mad now, and determined that someone come and play with me and my new toy. I honked the horn madly and was a bit dismayed to hear something that sounded more like a wounded goose than the macho basso profondo I had expected.
Cassie came bouncing out of the back door with a big grin thinking she would see some friend or other, since I had just sounded the teenage siren. The bounces died down and the grin faded as she approached and realized that somehow the Jeep and I were together.
“My God, Mom! What are you doing with that monstrosity? What a horrible color! You look positively bilious just standing next to it. Where is our real car?”
That was it! I started laughing. Rafe, with all his Latin dignity, hated it when I laughed at him, and Cassie liked it even less. She looked at me with fire in her eyes and actually stomped her foot. I laughed even harder. She picked up a big handful of wet mud from the edge of the driveway and flung it at the front door of my truck. I lay across the hood and laughed hysterically.
I heard her slam the back door. I tried to control myself, but it was another five minutes before I could wipe my eyes, blow my nose, and hiccough my way into the house.
Mother was standing by the kitchen sink looking out at my vehicle.
“Really, Paisley, whatever possessed you?”
“Look, Mother, I never liked that little red death trap. You used to call it that, remember? This is much safer, and besides,” I finished lamely, “we can carry things.”
She looked at me suspiciously. “What sort of things?”
“Well, I don’t know, farm things.”
I searched my mind desperately for something.
“Antiques! You always see things you want to buy when we go to those flea markets but you don’t have a way to get them home. Now you do!”
“Paisley, that’s just the excuse I give rather than hurt someone’s feelings by saying, ‘I wouldn’t have that if you gave it to me.’”
“Oh.”
She looked out the window speculatively.
“Now, if you bought that thing because we need to blend into the scenery when we go about foiling the schemes of evildoers, I think with a little more mud on the fenders you may be onto something.”
She turned and grinned at me. “Paisley, is the game afoot?”
I gave her a quick and grateful hug. “Yes, Mother! The game is definitely afoot! Let’s go get muddy. You want to drive or shall I?”
“I’ll give it a go.” She winked and looked down at my feet.
“Do they have those boots in my size and maybe a more discreet color?”
Chapter Seven
As Mother got ready for our first adventure in the Jeep, I went to seek out Cassie. I banged on her bedroom door like I was the teenager. She would not answer me at first but when I mentioned the possibility of new footwear my beloved little brat finally condescended to open up.
“Do they have to be cowboy boots?”
“No, they have all kinds of boots.”
“And leather jackets?”
This could end up costing me more than I planned.
“I can’t afford leather jackets right now, but when we get the book published you can have twenty.”
“I don’t want twenty. I just want one, black, with pants to match.”
“Okay.”
“And a vest.”
Thus, as any mother worth her salt, I allowed myself to be neatly blackmai
led for daring to want something for myself.
“Now, put on something dirty. We are going to go ride in the mud somewhere to complete our disguise.”
“Disguise?”
“Yeh, mud. It was your idea, Cassie.”
And so we spent a lovely afternoon driving in the fields by the pond, then by the bigger artificial lake by the cliffs. Everything was still wet and muddy from the rains last week and our camouflage was complete in no time at all.
Cassie and Mother fell in love with my mean green machine once they saw where it would go and what it could do. We unanimously decided to name it Watson and christened it with a cherry slushy at the Dairy Queen.
I brought a map and we sat at one of the tables in front of the DQ and planned our assault on the unsuspecting Mr. Dibber.
William and Abigail had lived in Lanierville, a coal-mining town full of strip malls and fast food emporiums. It was a sad and dreary little place to live and a worse place to die. And now that we knew they could have lived anywhere in the world, it seemed especially tragic that Lanierville was their final resting place. It was, however, the place we decided to start our quest.
Mother was the one who knew the route and planned our trip. She also had a list of Abigail’s friends and wanted us to call as many as we could. As she said, “You never know what someone may or may not know.”
Criminology was hard work, so we rewarded ourselves with hot fudge sundaes and promised each other our next meal would have fewer fat grams.
Cassie begged to drive home. I agreed even though I feared driving with her under the influence of chocolate. We piled into the front seat of Watson, hips touching a little more than before, and headed back to the farm to prepare for the morrow.
Mother was up at the crack of dawn preparing low-fat pimento cheese sandwiches, which I insisted was an oxymoron, and a big jug of sweet iced tea for our road trip.
Cassie came bopping into the kitchen already dressed and ready to go before I had finished my first cup of coffee. They were both as giddy and excited as little girls going to their first circus. I took my second cup and my grumpy old self off to a nice hot shower so they could have their fun uninterrupted by my morning meanies.
