three

Miss Dora and I walked out of the courthouse into the muggy night air. We climbed into her Bentley, and she dumped her purse between us—a large Hermès bag, which she affectionately called The Black Hole, thanks to its tendency to suck objects into a vortex. Tonight the purse bulged with fabric swatches, marble chips, and a fan deck from Sherwin-Williams.

From the depths of the bag, her cell phone rang. She reached inside, pulled out a gilt drapery finial, and located the phone. She answered with a breathless hello. A tinny, hysterical voice rose up, but Miss Dora cut it off.

“I’m so sorry you’re troubled,” she said. “But it’ll have to wait till the morning. I’ve got a family crisis. Toodle-loo.”

She rang off and turned onto Azalea Street. “A client is having a hissy fit,” she said. “Apparently the wrong furniture was delivered—a hideous brown leather sofa instead of a silk settee. The poor woman is hysterical. Mark my words, she’ll call back.”

Halfway to I-26, the phone trilled again. This time, Miss Dora didn’t bother to say hello. “Look, darlin’, there’s two ways of doing things,” she told the client. “Your way and my way. Let’s do it my way from now on.”

“Humphrey Bogart said that in The Caine Mutiny,” I whispered.

She winked at me and resumed her conversation. “You’re talking way too fast,” she told the client. “Start at the beginning.”

I settled against the window and remembered the engagement party Miss Dora had thrown for me and Bing. It had been a warm April night, and her guests had spilled out of the Queen Street house into the courtyard.

During the party, Miss Dora had pulled me aside and pointed out prominent Low Country citizens, adding salient points about their personalities, marriages, and household decor. She waved to a sharp-nosed woman in a blue dress. “Look at those diamonds, Teeny.” Miss Dora whispered the woman’s name. “She’s one of the richest women in South Carolina. But she’s miserable. Just like Vita in Mildred Pierce.”

“You mean she eats her young like an alligator?” I said.

Miss Dora smiled. “You’re familiar with that movie?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Teeny, you’re a keeper. You put me in mind of my baby sister. Gloria and I were rabid film buffs. She was an ash-blonde, just like you. Same big old brown eyes. Same cute little gap between her front teeth. Big boobs and curvy hips. She was made for childbearing. And she had a turquoise convertible, just like you—a Chevy, not an Olds.”

“Had?” I asked.

Miss Dora’s eyes teared up as she told me how Gloria’s convertible rear-ended a truck filled with giant pumpkins. “It’s like Gloria has come back to me,” she’d said, squeezing my hand. “I know you aren’t her, but it just makes me feel good to be around you.”

Remembering the party made me sad. That same night, Bing and I had spent a little time in Miss Dora’s azalea pink guest room.

Now, from the other side of the Bentley, I heard a loud shriek, and images of Miss Dora’s guest room evaporated.

“What the poop!” she cried. “I think she’s been drinking. Every other word is gibberish.”

She dumped the phone into her purse. “You know what, Teeny? Bing’s an asshole for letting a jewel like you get away.”

She steered the Bentley into traffic. In the distance, I saw lights from the Ravenel Bridge.

“Now tell me about the peach fight,” Miss Dora said. “And don’t leave out a thing.”

“You heard what I told the judge,” I said. “Have you really seen him undressed?”

“Bunches of times. The judge and I had a little fling when I first moved to Charleston. But he had the littlest penis I ever saw in my life—in fact, I called him Pencil Pecker. I quit him and married Rodney Jackson.”

As she headed toward the historic district, I wondered if the memory of the judge’s private parts had distracted her.

“Aren’t you taking me to my car?” I asked.

“I like a man who’s well endowed in every way,” she added, ignoring my question. “Which is something the Jackson men aren’t. But they’re gargantuan compared to Pencil. And yes, I know you want your car. I’m sure you’re worried sick about that bulldog of yours. But do you really think it’s wise to go near Bing Laden after he took out that restraining order?”

She drove through the intersection of Queen and Meeting. I’d thought for sure we were going to her house on Johnson’s Row. I looked back at the Mills House Hotel, then I glanced at Miss Dora. She was just being Dora-esque—scatterbrained, late for appointments, a notorious no-show.

The traffic thinned after we drove past St. Michael’s Episcopal. Miss Dora pointed out houses she’d decorated, adding assessments of her clients. “Stingy,” she said, gesturing at a redbrick. “Social climbers,” she said about a white clapboard. When she spotted a blue stucco she hadn’t decorated, she flipped her hand and said, “Fugly.”

She swung onto Tradd Street, nosing the Bentley around parked cars, then she drove past Church and Bedon’s Alley. When she hung a left onto East Bay, I expected more of the deco-tour but she made a U-turn and angled the Bentley in front of a three-story pink house with gray shutters. A sign next to the door read SPENCER-JACKSON HOUSE, CIRCA 1785.

I’d never been inside this house, but I knew its history. It had been in the Jackson family forever; it was high maintenance and needed a full-time custodian. Bing’s uncle Elmer had lived here rent-free, but he’d died three weeks ago. After the funeral, Bing and I had driven by the house and I’d asked if he was going to sell it. “Never,” he’d said. “The Spencer-Jackson House proves my family is Old Charleston.”

“Miss Dora, why’re we stopping here?” I blinked at the iron gate, into a breezeway that was lit up with gas lanterns. At the end of the corridor, faint lights twinkled in a private garden.

She ignored me and dug through her purse, muttering to herself. Two men in sweats jogged by the Spencer-Jackson and moved toward a blue house with black shutters. On this side of East Bay, the houses were fitted together like marzipan confections—cotton candy pink, blueberry, lime, saffron, watermelon ice. Across the street, the homes were cream, white, or beige, as if their more colorful neighbors had sucked the life right out of them.

The joggers cut across the street, past a white Winnebago plastered with cat-related bumper stickers, and headed toward the Battery. Behind them, I saw a wedge of Charleston Harbor. It spread up and out, all streaked with lights.

I fidgeted with my Ventolin inhaler—all I’d brought with me from Bing’s house. The matron at the detention center had let me keep it after I’d explained about my asthma. My chest tightened when Miss Dora pulled a hot pink tasseled key chain from her purse. I fit the inhaler between my lips and took a short puff.

“Here are the keys,” she said.

“To what?” I asked.

“To the Spencer-Jackson House,” she said. “Your new home sweet home.”