by Ann B. Ross
* * *
—
The relief of having a backup plan for Etta Mae’s future didn’t last very long. After discussing the pros and cons of starting a new business with Sam that evening, I was wound up so tight I could hardly sit still. He had pointed out the many pitfalls we would face if we started from scratch, most of which I had not only not considered but hadn’t even known of. It seemed to me that whatever happened, I was going to end up disappointing Etta Mae.
Maybe I should’ve never brought up the possibility to her, but if Ernest Sitton had stayed in the hospital only a few more days we would have had time to wrap things up. But he’d been discharged with obviously no lingering consequences from his hospital stay since he’d immediately jumped into the bidding. Even though I was fairly well convinced that he’d made a low offer, any offer at all would show Lurline that she had more than one fish on her line. And she would play us for all she was worth.
As bedtime approached, the house began to get colder and, as we undressed for bed, Sam remarked that we should consider replacing our old windows with new double-paned ones.
I had no response to that. My head was too full of other worries, but I said, “You’ll be warm enough tonight. I’m wearing a pair of socks.”
“Well, thank goodness for that,” he said, and I had to laugh since I was known for letting my cold feet creep closer and closer to his warm ones.
I didn’t think I could turn off all the possibilities and questions and problems running around in my mind, but I fell asleep fairly quickly. But then, sometime in the middle of the night I came wide awake, staring up into the dark of the room. Etta Mae, Lurline Corn, Bobby Lee Moser, Mildred, Penelope, and Ernest Sitton were streaming one after the other along the back roads of my mind and it was all I could do to lie still and not disturb Sam.
What if this happened? I thought. Or maybe that? Or what if my entire idea of letting Etta Mae borrow more money than she’d ever dreamed of had been foolish to begin with? What if she indebted herself, then the business fell apart from some unforeseen catastrophe? On the other hand, what if we dropped out in favor of Mr. Sitton and the business took off on an unsuspected trajectory so that a national home care service bought him out to the tune of several million dollars? Which could’ve been Etta Mae’s if I hadn’t been too squeamish to let her get so far in debt.
Finally, I slipped out of bed, unable to lie still any longer. I put on my thick quilted bathrobe and the lined hightop bedroom shoes, and tiptoed out into the hall. Looking in on Penelope, I made sure that she was warm and sleeping, then went downstairs in the dark. Streetlights lit up the familiar rooms, so I went straight to the kitchen without disturbing those who were able to sleep.
Closing the door behind me when I got to the kitchen, I felt for the light switch, then drew back my hand. Light from the street didn’t reach the kitchen, but Mildred’s accent landscape lighting did. Small path lights and foundation lights and lights around flower beds gave the kitchen a pleasant glow—not too glaring and not too dark. So, instead of turning on lights and plugging in the coffeepot, I made my way to the table and sat by the window, hoping that I’d soon be tired enough to go back to bed.
The clock on the stove showed two twenty in the a.m., still much too early to start a day, so I briefly considered going back upstairs for my book of devotions. It’s an unfortunate fact that serious reading soon brings on a haze of sleepiness.
But I just continued to sit, resting and clearing my mind, and lazily glancing out the window across the hedge and through the leafless Bradford pear trees that lined the boundary of my yard and Mildred’s.
Suddenly drawn by something on the side of Mildred’s house, I frowned and strained to see what it was. Then I stood up and pressed my face to the cold glass. What was that? Squinching up my eyes and wishing for a telescope, I peered long and hard at what looked like a huge white spider suspended on the vine-covered trellis on the side of Mildred’s house, an open window above it. Frowning, I thought, That’s not right, and recalled the time Horace had climbed the trellis outside that very same window, trying to sneak in, and also recalled the skeet-shooting shotgun that Mildred had fired, thinking that someone was breaking and entering.
Was somebody breaking in now?
Oh, my word, I gasped, electrified by the realization that no one was breaking in. It was Horace, breaking out! And breaking out in a state of undress that would get him arrested in a New York minute.
Flapping my hands and jittering around the kitchen, not knowing what to do first, I started toward the stairs to wake Sam. Then stopped. Horace would be down and gone before Sam could get up and get over there. Call Mildred? How long would it take to rouse her from a medicated sleep? Too long. Ida Lee? She was on the other side of the house. 9-1-1? They were fast, but Horace, with his head start, was faster.
I grabbed my cell phone from the charger and flew out the back door, scrambled through the hedge, and bounded up the incline of Mildred’s lawn to the foot of the trellis. The closer I got, the higher up he seemed. High ceilings make for elegant rooms but a long way down from a second-floor window.
Chapter 42
Looking up at the soles of Horace’s bare feet, some ten feet above me where he clung like Spider-Man to the vine-covered trellis, I yelled, “Horace, what are you doing? Come down from . . . I mean go back up! Go up to the window! You’re going to freeze to death.”
“Help,” he moaned, and stayed where he was.
“I can’t reach you. You have to crawl back up. Do it, Horace, it’s just a couple of feet. Just climb straight up to the window.”
“I can’t,” Horace mumbled. “I’m stuck.” Then louder, he said, “I can’t hold on!”
“Don’t fall!” I yelled. “Hold on!” Thinking that if I climbed a couple of feet toward him he’d feel safer, I reached up to grasp the trellis and drew back a badly scratched hand. I’d forgotten that Mildred had replaced the wisteria vine that had once flourished on the trellis with a beautifully espaliered but treacherous pyracantha with glossy leaves and orange berries and long, sharp thorns.
So when Horace said he was stuck, he meant it. With trembling hands, I searched for Mildred’s number on the bright face on my phone, finally found it, misdialed it the first time, but finally heard her phone ring. And ring and ring.
“Hold on, Horace,” I called. “I’m getting some help. Just hold on. Don’t turn loose.”
“Help,” he said.
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” I mumbled, urging Mildred to wake up and answer.
Finally, she did, saying, “What?” in a sleep-befuddled voice.
“Mildred! It’s Julia. Wake up! Are you awake? Horace is out here hanging on your pyracantha vine, and—”
“What?”
So I repeated it all over again. “Hurry, Mildred, I don’t know how long he can hold on, and I can’t reach him.”
“Julia? Where are you?”
“In your yard! Your side yard under Horace’s window. Let me in and I’ll help you get him in.”
A second of silence ensued, then Mildred took hold, and when Mildred takes hold, things begin to happen. “Hang up,” she commanded. “Go around to the front. I’ll call Ida Lee to let you in while I get Horace inside.”
She would have a hard time doing that, but I followed orders and waited a few minutes by the front door until I heard Ida Lee running through the house from the back. Following orders also, she unlocked the door and let me in.
She was in the same stages of undress as I was, but neither of us cared as we hied up the stairs in a flurry of bathrobes and headed for Horace’s room.
Inside the room with its four-poster bed and flocked wallpaper, the first thing I saw was Mildred’s wide, silk-covered back end filling the open window as she leaned over to reach Horace. The room was freezing, making me wonder how long the window had been open, which also meant
wondering how long Horace had been impaled on the trellis.
Ida Lee ran to Mildred’s side and wedged herself into the open window beside her. There was no room for me, thank goodness, for I had about reached my limit and needed to catch my breath. I leaned against a wall, listening as they encouraged Horace to reach up and clasp their hands.
“Pull, Ida Lee!” Mildred cried. “Get his other hand and pull!”
Horace yelled, crying and cursing, but Mildred urged him and Ida Lee on. Finally in a voice of command, she said, “Just hush, Horace. Just hush and lift your foot to the next slot in the trellis.”
“It hurts!” he cried.
“Oh, suck it up, and do what I say.” Mildred had no pity when she wanted something done.
With a mighty heave and a piercing scream from Horace, Mildred and Ida Lee pulled him over the edge of the window and onto the floor of the room.
Ida Lee snatched up a coverlet from the bed and wrapped it around Horace’s scratched and bleeding body. She helped him to a chair, then went to the adjoining bath for what was needed to patch him up.
“Outside in his underclothes!” Mildred said with a snort as she slammed the window closed. “And him with a drawer full of silk pajamas.” Then, with a glance around the room, she addressed whoever was listening. “There is just one thing I want to know—where is Grady Peeples?”
“That’s exactly what I was wondering,” I said, looking behind me down the dark, silent hall that stretched the width of the house and ended at the door to Mildred’s room.
“I am simply furious!” Mildred said, stomping her foot. “I mean, where is he? We’ve all been running in the hall and calling Horace and leaning out a window, and him crying and yelling, and Grady is sleeping through it? Now, I ask you, Julia, does that make sense to you, especially since he’s being paid to prevent just this sort of thing from happening?”
“Well, no, it doesn’t,” I said with another fearful glance behind me. “But, Mildred, something else might be going on.” I edged away from the hall door as a shiver ran down my back.
We stared at each other with growing horror. Was Grady lying half-dead in his bed? Had there been a home invasion and Grady was tied up somewhere while criminals roamed the house? Had somebody else opened the window and pushed Horace out?
Mildred grabbed my arm. “We can’t just stand here and wait for whatever it is. Come on.”
We hurried to Grady’s room right next to Horace’s from which he should’ve heard the commotion we’d made. Mildred flung open the door and flipped on the light switch without one thought of his privacy, and he wasn’t there! The bed had been slept in but Grady wasn’t in it.
Mildred gasped and my heart sank. What in the world could’ve happened to him? And there we were—three helpless women and a wounded man at the mercy of who knew what.
“Inez!” Mildred cried, a note of panic in her voice. “We have to see about her.”
The two of us ran down the hall and into the alcove that led to Penelope’s room, now occupied by the live-in nurse. Mildred didn’t hesitate, nor did I. She pushed open the door, flipped on the light switch, and stopped short. Blocked by Mildred’s wide body, I both heard and felt the sound she made as if she’d been hit. She groaned as her breath came and went so fast and deeply that I wondered if she was nearing another panic attack.
“What?” I said, trying to see past her. “Is she all right? What is it?”
Mildred stepped back, pushing me as she came, and slammed the door. “They’re there! Both of them!” she said, her eyes wild with fury. “In bed! Together!”
“Oh, no!” I said, shocked at what I hadn’t seen but could vividly picture.
Mildred stood stock-still, her hand closed on the doorknob. “Oh, yes! You should’ve seen them, Julia, I scared them to death.” Mildred managed a small laugh, but it had an edge of hysteria to it. “Grady must’ve levitated two feet. I don’t mean to be crude, but that was an instance of coitus interruptus if I ever saw it.”
“Oh, my word,” I said, patting my chest as the image sharpened in my mind, to say nothing of my surprise at Mildred’s knowledge of Latin. “You mean, they were actually . . .”
“I do mean it—full-blown and no doubt about it. Not a stitch on either one of them, and all the while poor Horace was hanging on the side of the house in twenty-degree weather, stuck full of thorns.” Mildred took a deep, shuddering breath. “Unacceptable! This is absolutely unacceptable!”
She twisted the knob, opened the door, and stuck her head inside, eyes closed. “Pack your things, both of you, and get out! Tonight! Right now! I’ll mail your pay through dinnertime last night, but no further. I’m not paying a cent for what you’ve been doing since then!”
And she slammed the door closed. “Come on, Julia,” she said as she swept past me. “I don’t want to lay eyes on either of them again. All I’d see is what I just saw, and my heart can’t stand the strain.”
“I can’t believe the audacity,” I said, following her into the hall. “You can’t have that going on, but, Mildred, how will you manage without them?”
“I’ll manage,” she said with a heaving sigh. “I always do.” Then, glancing down the hall toward Horace’s room, she said, “Here comes Ida Lee, bless her heart.”
Ida Lee walked to us and uncharacteristically put her arm around Mildred’s shoulder. Mildred leaned against her, asking about Horace.
“He’s asleep,” Ida Lee said softly, “and I think he’s all right. I pushed a chest against that window and locked the door. He won’t get out again. Now, let me put you to bed. You need to rest.”
Mildred raised her head and said, “No, not yet. I think I need to wind down a little.”
“Then come downstairs,” Ida Lee said soothingly. “And you, too, Mrs. Murdoch. I’ll fix some hot cocoa. Doesn’t that sound good?”
“We’ll go to the kitchen,” Mildred said, asserting her authority to occupy a room she rarely even visited. “Grady and Inez are moving out tonight, and I don’t want to see either of them ever again. They’re to go out the front door without stopping, Ida Lee, and good riddance.”
Ida Lee raised her eyebrows as she looked at me, but she raised no questions. I nodded, so she turned Mildred toward the stairs. We settled at a table in the large kitchen, as far from the assigned exit of the shameless pair as it was possible to get.
Chapter 43
“Well, I’ll tell you this,” Mildred said, her hands cupped around a hot mug. “I’ll never again hire someone on the recommendation of a current employee. You know that’s how Inez came to work for me—Grady recommended her and now I know why. So here they’ve been, both under the same roof, and who knows how many times in the same bed. And right under my nose! It just beats all I’ve ever heard.”
“It really does surprise me, though,” I said, recalling the one brief time I’d been in the company of Mildred’s rawboned private nurse. “Inez seemed so cold and angular. She didn’t look the type who’d do something like that.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Mildred, the woman of the world, said. “That type is the most ravenous of all. It’s the little, plump, smiling ones who tease but rarely act out, and it’s the ones you least expect who can’t get enough.”
“I didn’t know that,” I murmured, learning something every day. “But what’re you going to do without them?”
“Well, the first thing I’ll do is buy new mattresses and get rid of the used ones.” She shuddered at the thought of how they’d been used. “And I still have Ida Lee and Doreen. And Penelope. We’ll make do until I find a suitable place for Horace, because I’ve come to the conclusion that he has to go. I just cannot risk having someone move into the house again.”
“No, I wouldn’t, either,” I said, but thinking Penelope? “What about your plans to go to Duke?”
“Oh,” she said, with a wave of her hand, �
��I can do without that. If I can survive a night like this one, I can survive anything. It’s time to get out of bed and take control, which I intend to do. And the first thing I have to do is face the fact that Horace needs constant supervision and there’re not many places that provide that—suitable places, I mean.”
“Memory Care units, I think they’re called,” I said, having recently read an informative article. “I’m sorry, Mildred, but it does seem that he needs to be in a locked facility with well-trained personnel—to keep him from hurting himself if nothing else.”
“Yes, and I hate doing it, but he is just determined to get out and go somewhere. So when I think of how he could’ve broken his neck falling from that trellis, a locked facility is sounding better and better. Anyway, I have to start investigating what’s available but, in the meantime, I’m going to see that he has a safe, pleasurable last few days in his own home. That’s where Penelope comes in. He likes her and never gets agitated or afflicted with wanderlust when she’s around. I’ll send Ida Lee for her later this morning, but thank you so much for keeping her. I hope she hasn’t disrupted things too much.”
“Not at all,” I said as a feeling of loss almost overcame me. “But, Mildred, I hope you don’t mean to put too much responsibility on her—she’s only a child, you know.”
“I do know, but it’ll only be for a few days while I find a place for Horace. Of course, it’s almost Christmas so that might delay things a bit, what with personnel being on holiday breaks. But Penelope is such a calming influence on him, and I have to use who and what I have available.”
My heart sank even further at the thought of Penelope being available for use. It wasn’t as if Mildred didn’t have the means to avail herself of suitable help. It was all I could do not to ask, What about Tonya? What about hiring a responsible adult? What about you?
Mindful of my intention to stay out of the affairs of others, I restrained myself from saying what I was thinking, but it was hard. All I could do was remind myself that Mildred had been, and might still be, ill, and that she was not normally so self-involved. Besides, if I had a husband in the shape of her husband, there’s no telling what ill-advised means I would use to help him.
