“Here you are,” Hazel Marie said, as she pushed through the kitchen door the next morning, a cheery smile on her face. “I just dropped Lloyd off at the tennis courts, where he’ll probably be all day. Any coffee left?”
“Yessum,” Lillian said, pushing herself up from her chair. “I get you some.”
“You stay right there,” Hazel Marie told her. “I’ll get it. Listen, y’all, this town is buzzing with talk. I mean, even at school yesterday morning all the teachers were talking about Richard Stroud. I hadn’t seen the paper, so I didn’t know a thing about it until I heard what they said.” She pulled out a chair at the table and joined us. “And what about the mayor? From what they were saying, people’re ready to impeach him or recall him or something. Nobody wants to tear down the old courthouse.” She grinned. “But nobody wants to put up money to fix it, either.”
“We’ve been talking about the same things,” I said. “I don’t know what this town is coming to. It just beats anything I’ve ever seen, what with New Jersey developers coming in with bulldozers and the mayor having no sense of history. To say nothing of what’s going on with the Strouds and the Conovers.”
Hazel Marie’s head jerked up. “What’s going on with the Conovers?”
Lillian said, “Uh-oh.”
“Oh, me.” I leaned my head against my hand. “Looks like I can’t keep anything to myself. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Hazel Marie, you can’t tell a soul, but Leonard has moved out and LuAnne is just beside herself.”
“Moved out?” Hazel Marie whispered, her eyes wide with shock. “Where to?”
“I don’t know. I forgot to ask.”
Hazel Marie frowned. “I wouldn’t think he had it in him.”
“Well, me, either,” I said. “And I’m sure it won’t last long. I mean, what will he do all by himself? Of course, LuAnne’s convinced he has another woman somewhere.” I smiled wryly at the thought. “I can just imagine who.”
“Who?” Hazel Marie asked.
“Who what?”
“Who does she think the other woman is?”
“Oh,” I said, waving my hand dismissively, “her first thought was Helen Stroud…”
“Helen!” Hazel Marie levitated from her chair.
“No, no, wait. I said it was her first thought, but of course it’s not Helen. She wouldn’t have him on a silver platter.” Concern for Helen swept over me again. “Hazel Marie, I am just worried sick over that woman. I’ve called her and gone over there and I can’t get in touch with her. Everybody’s trying to find her to see what she knows, including a newspaper reporter who was hiding in that privet hedge I wish she’d get rid of. I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh, it’s just awful about Richard,” Hazel Marie said. “I hope…”
“Knock, knock, anybody home?” James, who’d worked for Sam for years, opened the back door and stuck his head inside. “Oh, ’scuse me, Miss Julia, I didn’t know you in here. How you do? Hey, Miss Hazel Marie, Miss Lillian.”
Lillian’s eyes rolled up in her head at the sound of his voice. A grim look settled on her face, as she lowered her head and heaved an exasperated sigh. She rarely had the time of day for James, but he popped in at our house often enough to make me wonder about his intentions, as well as her reception of them.
“Come in, James,” I said. “It’s nice to see you. If you came to visit Lillian, we can leave you two alone.”
As I picked up my cup and motioned to Hazel Marie, Lillian gave me an imploring look just as James said, “No’m, I don’t mean to in’errupt yo’ coffee-drinkin’, I jus’ hear something that make my blood run cold an’ Mr. Sam not home, so I stopped off here to tell somebody about it.”
“Isn’t Sam at his house?” I asked. “That’s where he said he’d be, though why he’s working on a Saturday, I don’t know.”
“Well, yessum, he come this mornin’, but he say he have to go downtown an’ he went. An’ I went to the sto’ to get him some snacks he like…”
“Snacks!” I said. “He’s not supposed to be snacking, he’s supposed to be working. James, he’ll ruin his dinner if you feed him all day.”
“No’m, I don’t all day, jus’ ever’ now and then to keep his stren’th up.”
But Hazel Marie wasn’t interested in Sam’s eating habits. “What made your blood run cold, James?”
“It all over the grocery sto’,” he said, his eyes getting wide with the thought of what he’d heard. “Folks all talkin’ in the aisles an’ at the meat counter, an’ somebody say it’ll be in the paper in the morning. So I’m not tellin’ anything don’t nobody else know.” He paused, perhaps to be sure he had our full attention. “They talkin’ about one of them sheriff’s deputies findin’ a car what’d run off Blake Mountain Road up where it twist an’ turn ’fore it run into the interstate, an’ that car ended up ’way down the side of the mountain in a gully, like. Nobody know how long it been there, it bein’ all smashed up and wrecked and stuck down in a creek with bushes all around it. But wasn’t nobody in it or nowhere around it, and nobody seen what happen or when it happen.”
“That’s a treacherous stretch,” I said. “I expect the driver just lost control. Probably somebody from out of state who didn’t know how steep the grade is.”
“No’m,” James said, shaking his head from side to side. “They got all them ’mergency workers an’ rescue people an’ sheriff’s deputies an’ police dogs out there, an’ they all lookin’ ever’where for a body.” James stopped and looked around, again making sure he had our attention. “They sayin’ likely it been th’owed out, maybe a long ways away. An’ what scare me so bad is them sayin’ that mashed up car b’long to Mr. Horace Allen, an’ the body he left behind ain’t nowhere to be found.”
“Oh, no,” I said, grasping the edge of the table. “That has to be wrong. I spoke to Mildred just yesterday, and she didn’t say a word about Horace being missing and nothing about a car wreck. Hazel Marie, we ought to go over there. She may not know a thing about it.”
“Yessum,” James said solemnly, “she do now. Ida Lee, she be in the sto’ an’ she hear it, too. She take off for home soon as I tell her ’bout poor Mr. Horace. That girl won’t have much to do with me, but she purely grateful to me this mornin’.”
“Uh-huh,” Lillian mumbled, as her face twisted with derision.
Hazel Marie picked up my cup and saucer along with her own and took them to the sink. “We better go right on over, Miss Julia. Mildred’ll be out of her mind with worry. We should be there when somebody comes to notify her, which they’ll do when they’re sure it’s his car.”
“They sure,” James said, nodding his head up and down. “Least ever’body at the Winn-Dixie say it his.”
Lillian was up and bustling around, turning on the oven to preheat and getting out the mixing bowls. “That po’ Miz Allen, she be hurtin’ now, but I’m gonna fix her my carrot cake ’cause I know she like it.” She opened the refrigerator door and took out the egg carton. “You can go on home now, James. You already done all the damage you can do, an’ I don’t have no more time for you.”
Leaving them to it, I followed Hazel Marie out of the kitchen, reminding her to put on a sweater while I hurried to the bedroom for mine. I knew that as soon as the word got out, women all over town would be doing exactly what Lillian was doing—baking, cooking, mixing casseroles and covering one dish after another. That’s what we did whenever there was grief in the family of someone we knew. There would be many who didn’t know the Allens well, but just a slight acquaintance would send them to the kitchen and then to Mildred’s with dish in hand. Every inch of her long dining-room table and kitchen counters would be filled with platters and cake plates and Pyrex bowls full of first one thing and another. Some women I knew had a favorite recipe for condolence calls and kept all the ingredients on hand just for those unexpected moments. Emma Sue Ledbetter, for one, always took the same thing, and I heartily wished she’d come up with a different recipe.
I met Hazel Marie as she came back downstairs and both of us, our faces creased with concern for Mildred—and for Horace, too—hurried out to the car.
“You drive, Hazel Marie,” I said, veering toward her car. “I’m too jittery. I’ll tell you, when death comes calling practically next door, it is too close for comfort.”
Hazel Marie turned on the ignition and backed the car down the drive. Then she had to wait for several cars to pass. She glanced at me. “You know, we could’ve walked. We’d probably be there by now.”
“I didn’t even think of it, that’s how upset I am. Oh, well, Mildred might need something and it’ll be more convenient if we have a car with us.”
The last car went by, and Hazel Marie got us out on the street. Just as Mildred’s large, Federal-style house came into view, a sheriff’s car pulled out of her driveway, passed us and headed on toward town.
“Why, that looks like Lieutenant Peavey,” I said, craning my neck to look at the patrol car.
“Oh, my,” Hazel Marie said. “I guess that means it’s official. Wonder where they found the body.”
“This is just terrible, Hazel Marie. Who would’ve imagined Horace Allen dead on a mountainside? He was the least likely person I know to be an outdoorsman.”
Hazel Marie shook her head, murmuring, “It all sounds so crazy.” Then she pulled over to the curb hardly half a block from our house. “I’ll park here,” she said. “I don’t want to get blocked in when everybody else comes calling.”
I nodded, as we continued to sit there in front of Mildred’s stately home, neither of us all that eager to go inside. Mildred was a woman of intense feelings, and she was never reluctant to make them known. I felt for her and wanted to be of help, but at the same time I dreaded the lamentations I knew were coming.
“Wonder what he was doing up on that mountain road,” Hazel Marie said, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel.
“I wonder, myself. It had to’ve happened last night or early this morning, don’t you think? I mean, if Horace had been gone any length of time, we would’ve heard about it before now. Mildred wouldn’t stand for it, for one thing, and Horace knows to toe the line. Knew, I mean he knew to toe the line.”
At the sound of a car turning into the drive behind us, I turned to see who it was. “Oh, my goodness, Hazel Marie, there’s LuAnne already and she hasn’t had time to cook anything and probably wouldn’t feel like it if she did. We better go on in, but listen now, don’t say a word about Leonard. Nobody’s supposed to know that he’s gone, too. Though not in the same way as Horace, as far as I know. But don’t even ask her how he is or anything. It’ll just set her off, and Mildred doesn’t need any more stress. We’re going to have our hands full as it is.”