Chapter Fourteen

The next morning I stood before the drugstore jewelry counter with twenty dollars in my hand. I missed “dime stores,” the Roses stores, McLellans and Woolworths I’d grown up with. Littleboro had one of each and I’d spent Saturday mornings with fifty cents to spend among the marshmallow peanuts, Blue Waltz perfume sets and rhinestone hairnets. Usually I bought books of paper dolls or wonderful, waxy-smelling boxes of crayons or magic brush paint books.

“Ah,” said Malinda. “A big-time spender. Got me a live one, Mr. Gaddy!” she called to the back. Then to me she said, “I’d rather sell rings and things than peddle pills.” She slid on a dozen jangle bracelets, held both arms up like a snake charmer. “This is usually Delores’s counter, but she’s off this week. Went to see her son in Alabama. She’ll never recognize the place when she gets back. What can I sell you?”

“The cheapest, tackiest, wildest junk jewelry you got,” I said.

Malinda laughed and reached behind her to a box heaped high with every color of plastic made to jangle or wear on ears or string like Christmas lights around your neck. “This box has been waiting for a sucker like you. I’d say it’s waited as long as it can without scenting up the whole place.” She pulled out a huge pink plastic chain and held it up. “Think this will fit? You planning on the country club dance or something?”

“Reba,” I said. “They’re for Reba … not me.”

“For a moment there I thought you’d left your taste back in third grade.” Malinda plowed with both arms through the jewelry. “Give me twenty dollars and this entire box of priceless jewelry is yours, and yours alone.”

Malinda dumped the contents of the box into a brown bag for me. “Tell her not to wear it all at one time or she’ll be arrested for tacky.” She folded down the top and handed it to me. “Is it Reba’s birthday?”

I hesitated. “I wish it were that simple.” Should I tell Malinda? For some reason I felt if anybody in town could be trusted with the truth, it was Malinda. So I told her about the jewelry, and Malinda leaned her head back and laughed. “For a quiet gal you sure do get in some messes.” Then she asked seriously in a low tone, “And what do you do with the real things after you get them from Reba? Turn yourself into a target?”

“I think I know who the real things fit,” I said. “And if I can’t get them back to their owner, I can at least get them to the next in legal line and get some DelGardo hassle out of my face.”

“Good luck,” said Malinda. “And let me know what happens?” She waved me out the store, glanced behind her and whispered, “Take care, you hear.”

Now to find Reba. Should I try Reba’s tree or first try to guess where Reba might be? The Dinette. Sometimes Blue’s Dinette behind the courthouse fed Reba. The meal was pay to keep her away during their busy hours.

I put my face against the plate glass and shielded my reflection with one hand on my forehead. The lunch crowd was lawyers sleek in their dark suits and paisley ties, visiting judges, defendants, telephone linemen, construction workers and anybody in town who liked their food Southern fried and floating in gray grease. They ate there. A plate of greens, the dried beans of the day, sweet potatoes, fried okra, corn, corn bread, all went for something like $5.50. Tom Blue and his son John Robert cooked six days a week in a blackened back room, passed the plates over a swinging half door and kept half the county fed. Including Reba if she ate in a back corner and kept quiet.

Sure enough, I saw Reba, Kool-Aid blanket-shawl and all, in a back corner swigging the last of her iced tea. I waited. I sat on one end of a stone bench under a budding dogwood tree in front of the courthouse and waited. Reba would be by, two or three toothpicks in her mouth and smiling like an otter. I pulled out the largest, loudest bracelet and necklace and laid them on the bench. Bait the trap, I thought. Spread honey for the strange orange bear.

Reba did look bearish and bulky in her blanket as she swaggered, full bellied, down the walk. She spotted the bracelet like a hawk drawing bead on prey. “Mine?” she said, and swooped.

“Yours,” I said. “You can have it.”

Reba slid the bracelet on her arm, twirled it around a little and danced, then reached for the necklace. “Mine now.”

“If you want them,” I said.

“Pretty Reba.” Reba patted the necklace to her chest.

“Want me to fasten it?” I asked. “Turn around.”

I lifted Reba’s hair that was heavy with dirt and oil. Underneath Reba’s ragged sweatshirt I felt several necklaces. “You want these old ones off?” I asked. “Aren’t you tired of them? You got new ones now.”

“Off,” Reba said, and pulled at them.

I took off a dozen necklaces of various stones and metals. There were jeweled pins inside Reba’s blanket that glittered like a swarm of insects.

“Take them all off.” Reba helped me unpin the various broaches. She laid them on the bench, giggling. “I got new junk.”

I laughed. Reba saw it all as junk. She hung on earrings, three more necklaces on top of the pink plastic chain, and filled her arms with bracelets from elbows to wrists. Then she stripped rings, handed them to me and put the ones I gave her on every finger, wiggling them in front of her face like a child, giggling all the while. She danced away singing, “I got new rings and things and things and rings.”

Lord, I thought, she’s a flower child without a garden. She’s too late. Twenty years ago some commune would have taken her in. I gathered up Reba’s discarded jewelry and stuffed it in the brown bag. I rolled the top down and tucked it under my arm like a loaf of bread or a ham. The stuff was heavy. No wonder Reba was glad to get it off.

Now if I could only get rid of it before somebody knew I had it. I headed home at a determined pace, but not without first looking back. What if someone in a courthouse window had watched the exchange between me and Reba? Somebody could quickly figure out what I was doing and why. Somebody who did not have my best interest at heart. Somebody who had in mind another trip to the cemetery for me. This time in a hearse.

I thought rightfully my “find” should go to Ossie. But he was sure to jump to conclusions and down my throat, about me making his job harder, concealing stolen property, lying to him when I had it all along, and he, big, tough lawman, would have to arrest me. Just for hindering his investigation. I didn’t know what to do. Home seemed the surest place to go, but halfway there I changed my mind. What would I do with this stuff after I got there? Put it in the cookie jar? That would be worse than having Crazy Reba roaming around town dangling it across everybody’s doorstep and backyard shrubbery. I opened the bag and felt around in the jewelry I’d gotten from Reba, found the matching earring to the one Sherman had been playing with. Found a string of pearls long as a rope and so beautiful they took my breath away. Good stuff. Real stuff. Somehow I thought I knew though Mama Alice, my mother, or I had never owned anything the likes of this.

On a whim I turned toward Ethan Drummond’s office. The office door was closed, and I hesitated. Was I doing the right thing? I didn’t know who I could trust these days. All I knew was if I began to doubt good people like Malinda, and now Ethan, I was too fearful of the world, too timid to live in it with joy.

“Ethan!” I called.

From the back office he gruffed, “In here.”

I heard the metal squeak of an ancient desk chair as it swiveled and he rose to meet me, offering a hug against his rough Harris tweed chest. “Bethie, honey,” he said. “You’re the last person I expected to come through that door. What can I do for you?”

“Do you still have that old office safe?”

He partially closed the door. “Anybody would have to blow up the building to get it out,” he said. “And it opens only for me. Why?”

“I need to put something in it.” I thrust the bag toward him. “For a few days.” I read his puzzled eyes. “I didn’t steal it.”

“I never thought such a thing. You’re not the thieving kind. Never in a million years. I’m just curious why my old safe? Why not a safe-deposit box at the bank? I’m assuming that’s the last of Margaret Alice’s silver.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not even mine. I’m just keeping it until the person who has a right to it can come claim it.”

“Good enough.” Drummond took my package, placed it atop the safe and dialed the combination. “It’s here until you want it.”

“Thanks.” I hugged him again, feeling the fragility of his bones and age through his coat. On impulse I kissed his cheek. “Thanks for everything.”

As soon as I opened the building’s outer door, I heard the string band. Bluegrass, I thought, Country and Western, and half the town would be there patting their feet, sitting on the grass as they unwrapped free hot dogs, drank Coke from red and white paper cups and tied red balloons to all the babies’ wrists. The new Foodland was having their Grand Opening. Good-bye, Mr. Murphy’s M.&G. Growing up, we used to call it Mr. Murphy’s Mighty Good Food. Chain stores would put all the old-time small merchants out of business. Look out, Mr. Gaddy, I thought. There’s a CVS headed your way. They’ll be smart enough to make Malinda manager first thing and pay her three times what you count out each week. And it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Especially not for Malinda, who could handle a store and the pharmacy with one hand tied behind her back. Mr. Gaddy could take his arthritic knees and china doll of a wife to the Florida sun.

I didn’t plan to be a part of the Foodland crowd, but somehow the music drew me. I stood on the edge and listened as bass fiddles vibrated even the newly planted grass. The burlapped, balled and still-reeling-from-shock infant trees around the parking lot looked naked, a little startled to be here. The band stood on a platform in the middle of the parking lot. Red banners on poles blew in the breeze behind them. I saw someone approach the stage, a woman in an orange cape. Crazy Reba.

I caught my breath.

The bandleader in a red-checked shirt, white jeans and cowboy hat leaned over to listen to something Crazy Reba said. He held the bow to his fiddle out like a baton and shook his head. She persisted. He kept shaking his head. Finally he nodded with a frown and she climbed the steps and stood beside him on the stage looking like a meek and mild orphan child.

When the last note of “Rocky Top” floated toward the highest cloud, the leader held up his hand and his bow. “Folks, we got a request from this lady.” He motioned to Crazy Reba. “She wants to sing a song she hasn’t heard in a long time. Folks, there were tears in her eyes when she said it, and folks, I can stand of lot of things, but I can’t stand to see a lady cry.”

With that Reba lifted up her face, all her jewelry shining in the sun, and sang in a clear, child’s voice, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

The crowd buzzed for a minute, then quieted until Reba finished and stepped down. There was an awkward silence. No one knew whether to applaud or not. Finally Reba started applauding herself and everyone joined in.

I walked home feeling something lifted from my life. Not a lead weight quite, but at least a little bundle of worries aside and out of my way. One piece of the puzzle clicked in place. Miss Lavinia’s jewelry had been found. Now to fit it to the others.

Scott was about to apply the last coat of the varnish on top of the last pineapple stencil when I stopped by the sunporch. “Beautiful,” I said. “It looks perfect.” With the ruffled valances up, the tablecloths on and little bud vases with sprigs of whatever happened to be blooming in the yard … the place would look inviting, charming and cozy. Plus the food would do Mama Alice proud. I would see to that. Now that the painting was finished, I could design menus and plan an opening ad for the newspaper. I wanted a border print that included pineapples for the menus and my ad. I planned to always offer Mama Alice’s pineapple muffins on the menu. They would be the House Special.

“A couple coats of polymer ought to hold it several years, I’d think,” Scott said. He rocked back on his heels and surveyed his work.

“Wonderful,” I said.

“Assuming of course you don’t have a constant stream of heavy foot traffic, standing room only and things like that.”

“I’d love to have things like that,” I said. “They would spell success. Sweet-smelling success. But I’m realistic. And this is Littleboro, not Pinehurst. I’ll take ten to twenty a day and be happy. Very happy.”

I made us both iced coffee, sat on a stool at the counter and pored over Mama Alice’s old cookbooks. Some of the pages were spattered, tan and torn. I turned each loose leaf of the notebook carefully and smiled over some of the names and notes. “Miss Wanema Kratt’s Blue Cheese Dressing. Add a tablespoon more milk. Wanema always did make things a tad too dry.” Or “The Salad Mildred Mottsinger Made for Her Daughter’s Wedding Brunch” and “Herbert Clark’s Basting for Birds.” The cookbook was like the story of Mama Alice’s life.

In the back were recipes on index cards, recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines. I flipped through them and made mental notes to go through them more carefully later and decide which ones to file or discard. Several slips of paper slid to my lap and some fell to the floor. I picked them up, started to go through them, then stopped. Here was a recipe in the same handwriting as the threatening note I had gotten. The note that said Mama Alice was pushed. I turned over the speckled page to the back. It was blank. There was no name on the recipe, but the same bold, upright letters had written of death and threats … and Scalloped Tomatoes.