Chapter Nine

“Who would do something like that?” I asked. I grated carrots to make carrot nut muffins.

Scott leaned against the counter, reading his mail. Lately he stopped by his post office box, then brought his mail here to read. He studied sale catalogs from Sears, Lowe’s and Home Depot. His idea of Heaven seemed to be a hardware store or a lumberyard and paint outlet. “Sounds like a crank note,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about it … just the reason behind it.”

“But what if she was.” I said. “I mean Mama Alice—”

“Don’t think about it,” Scott said. “A note like that isn’t a serious threat. Just something from a sick mind.”

“But how sick?”

“Well, folded in between fabric sounds more like a prank.” Scott said, “I’ve got to wash these chimney brushes and get them back to the rental shop in Raleigh before two.”

“Wash away,” I said, shuffling through my mail, which included a letter from Ben Johnson, my ex something; a friendly sounding chatty note any longtime friend might have written. There wasn’t a word of affection or any reference that there had ever been any. His handwriting was almost calligraphy. Slow, intense. Ben is the Luddite of Luddites, those who believe and cling to the “old ways” as the best way. No computers, no e-mail for him. He even said he thought all these electronics were polluting the airwaves. “Get the paint off your hands long enough to pick up a pen,” he wrote. “You can’t work all the time. You know what that does to one’s mind. Not that it’s ever had much of a chance with mine.”

“Yeah,” I wanted to answer. “Turns it to mush.” And that’s how I felt. I really should write Ben. We hadn’t been in touch except for his Christmas Eve phone call. But all this was too much to write about. Too much to believe. This quiet, sleepy little town where a dog could leisurely and regularly cross Main Street at midday and not have a car honk at him. Well, maybe a toot or two … if traffic happened to be heavy.

I kept grating carrots. I’d make several batches of muffins and freeze them. Who would write a note like that and put it in my fabric? And did it have anything to do with those two words Miss Lavinia had written before she died? “That is…” Strange last words, I thought. But not threatening. This note had an implied threat to it.

I had bought the curtain fabric over a month ago. The Calico Cottage was a dusty little shop with racks of patterns, rows of pins and bolts of materials that stood like huge books on the shelves. And presiding over it all was a wrenlike woman, Birdie Snowden. Could she have tucked in the note with the sales slip like she used to tuck in the cards of buttons and spools of thread when you bought cloth to make a dress, blouse or skirt? Mama Alice, who had sewed so much for me, used to say, “Sometimes I think we’d both go naked as Eve if I couldn’t run us up a little something once in a while.”

I ran my mind back over all the guests who had been in and out since I’d opened the Dixie Dew. There had been a dozen or so, including Miss Lavinia and that Mr. Lucas. Maybe he wasn’t with a B-and-B directory after all but was some private investigator hired by someone to check me out. Stop it, I told myself. You know that’s ridiculous. And thinking of ridiculous, Ossie DelGardo. But he hadn’t been in my bedroom this morning, only looked in the door. What about the two who had been with him, lawyer Heyman and Lester Moore, cousin Polyester Pants? They hadn’t left the living room, I was sure. I’d stayed in the downstairs hall when Ossie went upstairs to poke around. And besides, it just seemed more a woman’s thing to do, fold a note inside a piece of fabric. Somehow, I thought a man would be more likely to mail a note to you, pin it with a knife to the front seat of your car or seal it in an envelope and slide it under the door.

Could any of the cake ladies of last week have quietly slipped into my bedroom and left the note? They would have to go past me and probably Ida Plum, in the kitchen, and I was sure they didn’t. I tried to think who brought cakes. Verna Crowell had been the first one. Verna had been Mama Alice’s best friend, closest neighbor for sixty years or longer. There wasn’t anything Verna wouldn’t do for Mama Alice, or anyone else for that matter. Verna was a kind soul, not a sick mind, even if she did insist on her daily ration of sherry.

I looked again at the black ink, the letters printed in long slash-like strokes. Strange. And stranger still, it looked like handwriting I’d seen before. Not the same handwriting as Miss Lavinia’s note. Her two haunting words, “That is…,” which didn’t make sense. This note, in a totally different handwriting, did make sense in a way. At least it was a complete sentence, “Margaret Alice was pushed.” But who made their letters like that? Skinny, almost as if they had been painted with a brush.

Ida Plum stopped by to say she was going to visit her sister in Weaverville for a day or two.

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” I said. “You’ve never mentioned her.”

“You just weren’t listening. Of course I’ve mentioned my sister, Ida Clair. Many times, many times.” Ida Plum wore deep blue slacks and a lavender pullover. She had a purple bow in her hair. As she left the porch, I caught sight of her purple sling-back pumps.

Since when did one wear bows to visit a sister? If such a sister really existed. And sling-back pumps? Must be a classy sister, I thought. Those sure looked like three-hundred-dollar shoes to me.

As I took the third batch of muffins from the oven, there was a tap on the back-door glass. I opened it to Malinda, who said, “I trust my nose and follow it.” She helped herself to one of the warm muffins, breaking it open as she winked at me. “What’s new in the trade?”

“Nobody. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero. But I ain’t complaining and see, I’m still swimming in hope. Fix up the old home place and guests will come.”

“If you say so,” Malinda said. She wrapped another muffin in a paper napkin and put it in the pocket of her smock. “This baby is my three o’clock snack and Lord-help-me-make-it-to-five.” She slipped out the back door. “See you around.”

A dozen times it had been on the tip of my tongue to tell her about the note. And something stopped me. I didn’t know what. Maybe I thought it sounded so juvenile. So Nancy Drew. And yet every time I thought of it, I got goose bumps. Nobody in this world had a grudge against my grandmother. Nobody.

It was after four when Scott got back. He’d rented a wallpaper steamer to use on the hall walls. I worried we’d have to peel and scrape for days.

I had no guests, nor inquiries from any, but then it was only Monday. Things would probably pick up toward the weekend.

When he asked about Ida Plum and I told him she was visiting her sister, Ida Clair, he stopped unwinding the steamer cord and laughed so hard he bent double.

“What?” I asked. “What’s so funny?”

“Don’t you remember that old Knock Knock joke about who’s there and the answer is ‘Ida Clair’? ‘Ida Clair who?’ ‘Ida Clair I’m from the South; who are you?”

“Okay,” I said, “but that still doesn’t tell me anything. And she was dressed up. A bow in her hair and heels!”

He laughed some more, slapped his side. “She really did it. She’s taking the tour.”

“Tour?”

“Yadkin Valley vineyard tour. It’s a day thing. I gave her the flyer. Just didn’t think she’d take me up on it. The wine tasting and all. Good for her. Maybe she’ll meet somebody. One can get lonely, you know.”

Before I could answer he started the steamer. Somehow I never thought of Ida Plum as lonely. Scott, either. Maybe I had gone around too long thinking I owned the rights to the condition.

Scott and I worked with the steamer until after midnight. There were six layers of wallpaper that ranged from bamboo to roses, the bamboo being the oldest and hardest to remove. “Remind me never to plant any of this stuff,” Scott said. “I’ve seen enough to last a lifetime.”

“Think how the kudzu would give it a run for the space,” I said. “You know the old story about if you plant kudzu in the rear of your yard it will beat you back to the house.”

Scott laughed as he left.

A few minutes later I let Sherman in the front door. I started to lock the door when I saw a huge van careen around the corner and down the street. A do-it-yourself rental type of moving van, going much too fast, and where on earth did moving vans go at this time of night? I watched as it passed and gunned down the street. I thought the determined driver looked a little like Father Roderick’s housekeeper.

But what was Father Roderick’s housekeeper doing driving a moving van? Ida Plum had said she’d been someone he took in and gave a job to. She probably didn’t own more than the clothes on her back. Odd. But I could have sworn that was his housekeeper driving hell-bent for somewhere behind the wheel of that truck. It was her or someone who looked enough like her to be her twin sister. Two of those women in this world would be tough to take, I thought, and I didn’t know why I thought that. Just a feeling. I really didn’t know why the woman bothered me. But something about her bothered me a lot.