Chapter Two

“This town loves a funeral,” I said. In the years I’d been away I’d forgotten exactly how much a funeral was an occasion in Littleboro. The funeral home, where the “viewing” took place, was a social gathering and the line of cars down Main Street was a status symbol. “Cars were parked clear down to the schoolhouse,” or, “Honey, I stood in line for over an hour. I’ve never seen such a crowd,” people said at the beauty shop and grocery store. Somehow I couldn’t quite see that sort of picture for Miss Lavinia Lovingood. It was hard to imagine who would be at her viewing or funeral.

My grandmother, Margaret Alice McKenzie, who raised me, used to say this town went all out for a funeral. Every weekend come pouring rain, blasting sunshine or icy-fingered sleet, there’s somebody out on the bypass selling artificial funeral wreaths. Wreaths with every color flower nature never made and ribbons that accuse or get to your guilt with sayings like “Remember Mama” or “Daddy, Gone but Not Forgotten” or “We Love You, Grandpa.” I try to look the other way as I drive by, though there’s not a ribbon that spells out my sins or advertises my guilt. Not one “Welcome Home, Prodigal Daughter” in the bunch.

Ida Plum laid a stack of sheets on the kitchen counter, cotton sheets, line dried, ironed. They smelled smooth and old-fashioned and as if somebody cared, a sweet-smelling bed. Had Miss Lavinia even noticed? Had it been a quick death? I felt a little chill remembering and wrapped my arms around myself.

“Would you look at all the cakes?” Scott stood at my kitchen table. “There’s six layer cakes and two pound cakes.” He counted like a child eyeing a picnic. Scott had become, by default, my contractor/go-to guy/general-knowledge person about restoring an ailing house. He had come to my rescue just as I was about to give up, give in and go. Go where? Anywhere but here.

When I first started on the Dixie Dew, I’d hired Jake Renfroe, somebody Verna Crowell from next door had said was “good.” Later I remembered Verna Crowell had said this with a giggle and her hand half over her mouth. Good at what? I should have asked her. Good at sending me faster toward rack and ruin?

Jake Renfroe would order materials that piled up on my porch and then not show up to do anything with them. Meanwhile, bills kept coming in for all he’d charged in my name. Finally I picked up the phone and fired him. He’d cried. It’s hard to hear an old man blubber over the phone, but I held firm.

Then Ida Plum said call Scott Smith. I did. He came and we’d been working together ever since.

Now Scott stood here in my kitchen eyeing the cakes under various wraps and foils as if they were trophies. Verna rang the back bell at six this morning, carrot cake in hand. “I’m so sorry to hear about Lavinia. Such a loss,” she said.

Verna lived in two rooms in a fifteen-room house that decayed more every day. Her house was a few years older than Mama Alice’s and until the last ten years had been kept freshly painted and in good repair. The Crowells had money, but Verna wasn’t about to spend it on heat in the winter or air-conditioning in the summer or paint and plaster and repairs. She was probably one of those “little old ladies” whom Father Roderick’s charm was wooing out of all they had.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d never met Miss Lavinia Lovingood before she decided to come to this house and die. Miss Lovingood had looked so awful when Ida Plum and I found her, all doubled over, her hair in a tangle and her face frozen in such agony. And so cold. I got goose bumps every time I thought about it.

“Lavinia Lovingood and I were girls together,” Verna said, then added before I could begin to count, “even if she was a good deal older. Of course we hadn’t kept in touch. Not for years. Not until she wrote me.”

“Wrote you?”

“About a month ago.” Verna reached down and pinched off a dead tulip bloom. “You keep a bulb groomed and they’ll last longer.”

“I don’t understand.” I felt like putting out my hand to stop any more tulip molesting.

“Wrote she’d be in Littleboro three days and come by to see me. Said we’d talk old times, catch up on our lives.” Verna turned, started across the porch. “Now look what it’s come to. But that’s what we all come down to in the end, isn’t it?”

I didn’t know any answers except to extend the cake back in Verna’s direction. “Please,” I said. “You keep it.”

But Verna insisted. “Beth, honey, you don’t know when you’ll need it. At times like this you just don’t know what you’ll need.” She patted my hand with her soft, old, wrinkled, spotted one. “After all, what are neighbors for, if not at a time like this?” A dark, hairy mole on Verna’s cheek wiggled when she smiled. I’d seen that mole all my life, wondered why it never got any bigger. When I was little, I thought it looked for all the world like a bug and would crawl off any minute.

Lord,” I said after Verna left. “Word spreads fast. Around here all you have to do is whisper and it’s all over town.”

“Who could miss it?” Ida Plum stacked sheets in the linen closet. “It’s hard not to notice an ambulance backed up to a house, a body being hauled out in broad daylight.”

Miss Lavinia had looked so natural. Just old, eighty plus, maybe heading hard toward ninety. People die in their sleep, I told myself. She just happened to be a guest and sleeping in my house when it happened.

“That’s the way I want to go,” Florence Carelock said when she came to the back door with her Lemon Creme Delight Cake. “It’s such a peaceful thing. Of course we don’t get to choose, but if we could, that’s what I’d want.”

I tried to give back the cake.

“I have been your grandmother’s friend all these years,” she said, “and I want to do this much to help you out.”

If you want to help me out, I thought, you’d let me forget this ever happened in my house. You’d help me get clean linens on some beds, vacuuming done and guests welcomed and checked in. But I only smiled and thanked Florence.

Four cakes came in after that. Delmore Simpson brought a pound cake, and the preacher, John Pittman from the Presbyterian church, brought another. His wife always kept a cake in the freezer for such emergencies, he said, and her name was already taped to the bottom of the plate, though there was no hurry getting the plate back.

It’s not an emergency, I wanted to say. By this time, though, I’d learned to accept these food gifts and be grateful. Plus gracious. That was the least I could be. People meant well, I supposed. But in the back of my mind, I also wondered how much was simply curiosity and a cake was a ticket in the door.

“I wanted to go over some of the plans with you,” Pastor Pittman said.

“Me?” I said. “What plans?”

“The funeral services for Lavinia Lovingood are to be at First Church and I thought Thursday would be a better day to do it than Friday. We’re not supposed to have rain and I already have a golf date that morning and a wedding at four in the afternoon. Of course we don’t want to wait until Saturday or Sunday … that’s much too long, I think, don’t you?”

“For who?” I said, though of course I knew. Miss Lavinia. But who decided these things? Surely she had family somewhere. Cousins? Nieces, nephews? Somebody? A life she left for a few days that had now become a life she left forever.

“All her family is in Littleboro Cemetery. There was so little of it really. She’s the last, I suppose.” He penciled in his appointment book. “Two o’clock suit you? We could make it three?”

“I didn’t know her,” I said.

“But of course you want to be at her services,” Pastor Pittman said. “After all, she passed in this house … your house, your grandmother’s house.”

“That was an accident,” I said.

“Sad, but it can be expected,” Pastor Pittman said. “The Lovingoods were one of the founding families, foremost families, if I might call them that, of Littleboro. You ought to read our church history. Lavinia was the only child, the last of the Lovingoods, and she’d been away from this town over fifty years.” He looked sweetly at me, gave a strained, patient smile. “Why, her family gave four of the eight stained-glass windows in our church … surely you’ve noticed. The Herringfield Windows.”

Herringfields? Lovingoods? I thought. Where did they fit together?

“The wife’s family,” Pastor Pittman said. “They were the wealthy ones originally, and all the windows were given in old Mrs. Lovingood’s maiden name.”

Pittman was the pastor at First Presbyterian, but Miss Lavinia had been having tea with Father Roderick at St. Ann’s. Why? Had she converted when she lived in Italy? I could see that. Maybe she even saw the Vatican every time she looked out her window. Maybe she even had tea with the Pope on occasion. Who knows? I guess now we’d never know.

“Oh.” I remembered the stained-glass windows at church, two on each side of the pulpit. I’d spent a lot of Sunday mornings of my life until I went away to art school staring at Jesus in the Garden, his red flowing robe; Jesus in the Temple with the cat-o’-nine tails; Jesus suffering the little children (Mama Alice explained the scriptures on that one for years) and Jesus with the woman at the well.

Mama Alice had been a lapsed Catholic and First Presbyterian had the best youth group, so I went to both churches. Early Mass at St. Ann’s, then regular service at First Church so I could go to Youth Group that night and on Wednesdays. It was the only social life for teens in Littleboro. My friend Malinda had done the same except she and her mom, Rosalie, had been pillars of St. Ann’s.

“One always wants to come home, doesn’t one?” Pittman said. A slight smile played at a corner of his mouth. He drummed his appointment book. “No matter how far one goes, home is still the place you want to come back to.”

He left through the front door and admired the leaded fanlight as he went. “You’re doing wonders with this old house,” he said. “Paint really perks things up.” Paint and the sweat putting it on, I wanted to say, plus what it cost. “I think it would have been cheaper to just cover it with money … paste on bills like wallpaper,” Ida Plum said once.

I closed the door. Mama Alice always kept the glass door panels curtained, but I liked them bare, more light in the gloomy hall, on that dark curving staircase. Sunday evening Lavinia Lovingood had gone up those stairs alive, Monday afternoon she had been carried down dead. I turned quickly toward the kitchen where Scott and Ida Plum sat eating cake. “This Lemon Creme is heaven on a plate,” he said. “There ought to be a law against doing something this good with food.” He sliced another piece, slid extra icing off the knife with his finger, then licked his finger, closed his eyes and smiled.

“So what do I do with the rest of them?” I asked.

“How are you fixed for freezer space?” Ida Plum asked. “You could be in the tearoom business tomorrow.” Ida Plum was on my side. Bless her. By converting the glassed-in side porch into a usable space, I would not only provide breakfast-eating space for the overnight guests but also be able to serve light lunches and snacks. The tearoom would provide extra income … after it got started and business built up. Mama Alice had been known as the best cook in Littleboro. She catered weddings, bridesmaids’ luncheons and monthly meals for various civic clubs in town. In addition to the house, she’d left me a treasured hoard of tried and truly great recipes.

“This funeral business,” Scott said. “I’m surprised Ed Eikenberry didn’t put a wreath of white flowers on the door and some signs out front. He loves to advertise. In fact, I’ve never seen anybody enjoy the way they make their living quite as much as Ed Eikenberry.”

“Oh, he wanted to,” Ida Plum said. “I stopped him.”

“Thank God,” I said. “That’s all I need to greet arriving guests. Word would spread fast in the B-and-B business. ‘Come to the Dixie Dew and Die,’ or ‘At the Dixie Dew They Do You In.’ Can’t you just see it? ‘At the Dixie Dew We Specialize in Resting in Peace.’”

“You could add an ‘R.I.P.’ on your logo,” Scott said. “Or ‘For Your Final Rest, Dixie Dew Is the Best.’” He drew a banner in the air with his hands.

Ida Plum hooted from the hall, then went upstairs.

I laughed and laughed until my cheeks burned and my eyes watered. “Stop, stop. It’s not funny. It’s awful.”

“You’re right,” Scott said. He put his plate in the dishwasher. “But don’t let the ghosts get to you. The Guilt Ghosts. None of it’s your fault. It could happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime. The Dixie Dew and you weren’t singled out as a spot on the map for Miss Lavinia’s demise.” He wrapped cakes for the freezer, put his name on the label of the chocolate pound cake and drew a skull and crossbones underneath.

“Scott!” I said.

“Don’t get rattled. That’s just to ensure this baby is mine. In case anybody robs freezers.”

“Nobody robs freezers. Or if they do, they take roasts and steaks. Not chocolate cakes.”

“Insurance,” he said, and started to the basement to Mama Alice’s freezers. The freezers were two oversized commercial units that stood side by side like giant white coffins. Mama Alice bought them when a restaurant in Raleigh went out of business. She got them for a song, she always said, and in the catering business she said they saved her life. She baked weeks ahead for a party or wedding reception.

Ida Plum had gone upstairs to vacuum. The door to Miss Lavinia’s room was sealed and would be left that way for a while; even the bed was not to be changed. Police Chief Oswald DelGardo had sent his best and brightest, Bruce Bechner, over with the crime scene tape Monday night. Bruce bustled about like he was sealing off a presidential suite. That still left plenty to do, and who knew what tonight would bring? I didn’t want to think about it. One dead guest in my bed-and-breakfast had been one too many.

“Honest,” I said. “It wouldn’t help business if word got out in the trade. Three days in business, I’m trying to get listed in the guidebooks and registers, approved by the B-and-B national board, and zonk, I have a death on my hands.”

“Forget it,” Scott said as he put the pineapple cake in the refrigerator. He surprised me being so easy to work with in a kitchen, but then he lived alone (I assumed) and was used to the ways of a kitchen. He seemed at ease here, almost from the first day. Instead of bringing a thermos of coffee from home, he brought coffees, freshly ground cinnamon and mocha coffees, hazelnut, amaretto, rum and almond, and made them here.

“Since when did any grocery store in Littleboro go gourmet?” I asked.

“Who says I only shop in Littleboro?” He poured me a cup of some exotic mixture that had perfumed the whole house as it perked. Coffee always smelled better than it tasted, I thought, but wouldn’t say such a thing aloud for anything.

My hand touched his as I took the cup and I thought how warm his fingers were, how strong. Fingers that had taken this house and started pulling it into shape. Helping make it into a business. Warm hands and a sturdy, dependable presence that had too quickly become an everyday part of my life, which scared me a little. I took the coffee and turned away. You learned a lot of things through pain, and one of the things was not to get too close to whatever caused it. But Scott wasn’t Ben Johnson and Scott was here when I needed him, at least for now.

Scott always said he came when I called him. That much was true. When I first came back to the Dixie Dew, he pulled his truck into my driveway, got out and strode, both hands in the pockets of his jeans, straight toward a stack of materials Jake Renfroe had ordered and not used. Scott walked around the tarp-covered stuff, inspected it as if it were a used car and he could hardly restrain himself from kicking the tires … if there had been any. He stepped onto the porch, introduced himself and shook my hand, then went back to his truck for a clipboard and tape measure.

I offered to show him around, but he said, “I’d rather poke around on my own for a while. Then I’ll have better questions and save you time. I charge by the hour, but I’m not on your clock yet.” He bent to check a loose board on the front porch, lifted it looking for termites, then poked the decay to test for dry rot. He didn’t comment. I knew the house was solid. It just needed a million gallons of paint and a new roof and a heating and cooling system and a new kitchen and enough wallpaper to roll out a road to China and … the list was endless.

“Uh-huh,” Ida Plum had said when I came in the kitchen. “You got a live one now.”

“Who is he?” I asked. I thought Scott looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure.

“You know him,” Ida Plum said. “You’ve known him all your life.”

“Me?” I asked. “Not really.” The name rang a faint bell, but I think I’d remember that face, those eyes so blue they took your breath away, those dark curls. “He would be better looking if he didn’t have that smart-aleck smile pasted on his face,” I said.

“He married Cedora,” Ida Plum said as she rinsed a dish.

“Ohmygosh,” I said. “Not the Hollywood Princess. Not Miss Broadway Bound. Not Miss Talent Running out Her Rear End.”

“That one. Nobody ever understood it. Both sets of parents tried to have it annulled.”

“So what then?”

“She went to Broadway and took him along.”

“She went to Hollywood and he came home. I think I get the picture now,” I said. Cedora Harris, who called herself Sunny Deye, could now be heard singing commercial jingles: dishwashing liquids, body soaps, floor mop stuff. You had to know her voice, that clear, distinctive, lovely voice, to know it was Cedora. I had been two years behind Cedora in school. Her presence was so strong it probably still had an aura in the halls of Littleboro High. She was like something God dropped in the wrong place. That red-gold hair, green eyes and a figure the boys fell over. Poor Scott.

When he found me later, I was on the sunporch scraping paint off one of a million windows. “Tearoom,” I said. “The rest of the house will be a bed-and-breakfast and this will pick up some of the lunch trade, the garden clubs, bridge groups, that sort of thing.”

“You an idealist?” he asked. “The world eats idealists for breakfast. I’ve been chewed up and spit back out a few times.”

I felt like taking my paintbrush to his face, that smug, know-it-all, sardonic look. “Does that mean you’re out? You won’t take on this job?”

“It means I will, but on my own terms.”

I waited, didn’t look at him, just scraped paint as hard and fast as I could. I turned my back to him and scraped as if he had left, as if there were no one in the room but me and my life depended on getting off this old paint. Dry shards flew in my face, made me cough. I didn’t have to hire him and it didn’t cost me anything to listen.

“I’ve got a couple of good people I call on from time to time, but mostly I’ll do a lot of the work myself,” he said. “I’m versatile and I’ve restored a half dozen or so of these big boxes in a couple of the counties around here. I’ll work it flextime. Which means I may come in early and leave late or come in late and leave early. I may work nights or Saturdays or Sundays or holidays or whenever I’ve got materials on hand and time. My time is by the hour and I’ll show you a weekly running tab on where we are. Can you work with that?”

Could I refuse? It wasn’t like a dozen stood in line bidding for the job. I’d hired Jake Renfroe and for two months all he’d done was order materials, smoke his pipe, go around knocking it against the walls and say, “Miss Bethie, your grandma was some fine lady.” Sometimes I felt like going to Verna and just asking why the heck she had ever recommended Jake Renfroe to do the work. Was she trying to set me up for failure? If so, why? She and Mama Alice had been close as sisters. Or I thought they were.

There was nobody else in town to take on something like this. Littleboro was a do-it-yourself or do-without town. “You’re on,” I said.

He reached for my hand, which was covered with dust and paint flecks. I extended my hand and he took it. “You just hired the best,” he said.

And certainly the most modest in the business, I wanted to add but didn’t.

Scott had made the renovating a project, a challenge, a puzzle to solve. Like Miss Lavinia’s death.

Surely Miss Lavinia had not been in any pain. Surely she would have cried out, called to me for help, tried to come downstairs. I hoped Miss Lavinia Lovingood died a simple, good and natural death. Even Ed Eikenberry said it looked that way, but he wouldn’t know for sure until the autopsy came back from Chapel Hill. Probably Thursday or Friday. Meanwhile plans for her services were in progress, full swing.

Like Mama Alice always said, this town turned out for a funeral. And they surely did for my grandmother’s six months ago. Police Chief Ossie DelGardo, the hearse, family cars, funeral procession, even if it was only five blocks from any church in town to Littleboro Cemetery. Bruce Beckner, his assistant (who was also the rest of the Littleboro Police Department), stood at the courthouse square, hat held over his chest, and stopped traffic for the funeral. Anyone from out of town would think it showed respect. How wonderful this remaining bit of Americana, this little town keeping a quaint custom long after big cities raced past and forgot it. Truth was, Ossie DelGardo and Bruce Beckner didn’t have one earthly thing else to do but drive around in their respective cars and confer at Will’s Bar-B-Que west of town, where the hickory logs were split and stacked tall as a fence behind it and the little pink pig’s four neon feet never stopped running. Nor did the scented smoke stop permeating the town, sunup to sundown, six days a week.

Miss Lavinia had paid for three days. I would have to refund two days to her estate, wherever that was. Miss Lavinia, I wanted to say, wherever you are, couldn’t you have waited until your three days were up, then gone somewhere else to do it?

Do it, I thought. That sounded like sex. In high school and college you were asked, “Did you do it?” And everyone knew which girls “did it,” which couples were “doing it.”

Miss Lavinia didn’t do it. She died. And she didn’t have any choice in the matter. Or did she? The real question was, why had she come back to Littleboro at all? And what the heck did those two little cryptic words on her note mean?

It was so strange. All of this. Strange and unsettling. Maybe coming back to Littleboro wasn’t the right thing to do at this point in my life. Maybe all this was taking my life in some direction I didn’t want to go.