I made Faith another cup of tea before I left, and she finally calmed down, apparently convinced I was going to find out who had murdered Roxy Willoughby. When I got back to my car, I called Kit. Maybe she knew something I didn’t. Maybe Faith’s doctor had changed her medication and she was having problems adjusting.
Kit’s phone went to voice mail, so I left a “Hey, call me” message and didn’t say why. Then I drove to the General Store. What I really hoped Kit wouldn’t tell me was that her mother was starting to lose her grasp on what was real and what she imagined. That I couldn’t bear.
* * *
IN EVERY SMALL TOWN in America there is always a place that is the beating heart of the community, where everyone gathers to find out the news—who got their garden in early, how the morning hack went with the horses, whose five-alarm chili really should have won first place at the community center cook-off, who got engaged, divorced, married, fired, arrested, promoted, buried—the big and little life events that stitch us together, sometimes a little too intimately. In Atoka, that pulsing nexus was the General Store, which Thelma Johnson had owned since the days when God was a boy. Though she looked like a sweet, slightly befuddled grandmother, Thelma could extract your darkest, most private secrets with the surgical precision of the marines and the unabashed glee of a reality television show host. Usually within five minutes after you walked into the store. Attempting to resist her gentle but persistent questioning—though you’d sworn on your mother’s grave that you wouldn’t succumb—was like trying to avoid gravity. Then there was this: What happened in the General Store never stayed in the General Store, especially if the Romeos, a somewhat cantankerous group of senior citizens whose name stood for Retired Old Men Eating Out, had already been by for morning coffee and pastries, chewing over the latest gossip, which refueled them until they reached their next watering hole.
Thelma’s parking lot—which had space for precisely four cars—was empty when I pulled in fifteen minutes after I left Foxhall Manor. Hopefully, that didn’t mean Thelma was out of everything and that I’d missed the stampede to get what she liked to call “the white stuff you need when the other white stuff covers the ground”—milk, toilet paper, and bread. I parked next to the entrance to the white clapboard building with its peeling paint, hipped tin roof, and large picture window with the neon OPEN sign that had read OPE for years.
A television blared from the back room as I walked through the front door, which meant Thelma was watching one of her beloved soap operas. A moment later, a reedy voice called, “Coming! I’m coming,” and she emerged with the drama and verve of an aging movie star making an entrance at the Oscars, certain there will be a standing ovation.
Thelma dressed for maximum impact—always from head to toe in a color so strong, it seemed to vibrate. Today she wore royal purple: a knit minidress with matching open-toed stiletto heels, two propeller-shaped bows in her carrot red hair, and so much purple eye shadow, her eyes looked like two bruises behind her trifocals.
The minute she saw me, her face lit up. “Why, Lucille,” she said, “do come on in, child. My goodness, I haven’t seen you for an age and here I was just thinking about you.”
That gravitational pull kicked in and I walked over to her, taking a quick mental inventory of anything in my life that might have come under her microscope and drawing a blank. I pasted on a smile and said, “Were you really? How interesting.”
Thelma took off her glasses and wiped them on the sleeve of her dress. “Oh, my, yes. And, of course, I knew you’d come in after that.” She tapped the side of her head with her index finger and the multiple bracelets on her wrist jingled like sleigh bells. “It’s my God-given psychotic powers. I just know things. Don’t ask me how.”
“Well, it’s true nothing in Atoka seems to happen without your finding out about it.”
She beamed. “I do try to keep my oar in. And, of course, I feel such personal emphasis for folks.”
I wasn’t sure where she was going with that, but I nodded anyway.
She put her glasses back on and peered at me. “What can I do for you?”
“I need milk, if you’ve still got it. And bread. And batteries, size D.”
“I got chocolate milk is all,” she said. “And the Romeos were in this morning like a herd of grazing buffalo, wiping out all my cross-ants and bread. All I’ve got are doughnuts. But you’re in luck with batteries. Right around the corner next to ammunition and greeting cards.”
“I’ll take the chocolate milk and doughnuts. Hope will think she’s died and gone to heaven.”
Thelma had a little of everything as long as you didn’t mind the lack of variety. Though I could have driven into town to the Middleburg Safeway and found everything I needed there, her little store was a dying breed. If Safeway closed, it wouldn’t hurt their bottom line, I was sure. But the village of Atoka wouldn’t recover if we lost Thelma. I wondered how long she’d keep the store—and if there was anyone in line who would buy it from her when she decided she wanted to spend all her time watching her soaps and communing with the spirits on her Ouija board.
She got the chocolate milk and put the doughnuts in a white bakery bag while I found the batteries. When I joined her at the cash register, she gave me a sly look. “So, do tell. Who was that good-looking man who paid you a visit this morning? He looked familiar, but I know I’ve never seen him in these parts before.” She placed a hand over her heart. “My, but wasn’t he the handsome devil. Looked like a real Hollywood type, a movie director or something.”
I said with a straight face, “I’m not sure who you’re talking about.”
She gave me a stern look. “Course you are, Lucille. He stopped in here about ten-fifteen this morning because he was having trouble with his PMS.”
“His—pardon?”
“You know, that map thing in folks’ cars that talks to them. He said his PMS couldn’t figure out the small roads around here. He was looking for Sycamore Lane, and I knew that was you.” She folded her arms across her chest. “So … aren’t you going to tell me who he was?”
I’d been there all of about five minutes. How did she always know?
“His name is Gino Tomassi. He owns a vineyard in California. A rather large vineyard. He knows Quinn from way back.”
“Tomassi? Are you talking about the Tomassi Family Vineyard?” I nodded and her eyes grew wide. “Why, my goodness, I used to drink their Chianti red wine pretty regular years ago. It came in those nice bottles that looked like a jug and they put ’em in a sweet little straw basket. I used ’em for candleholders afterward. Looked real pretty with lots of different colors of wax dripping down the sides.”
“I’ve heard about those raffia-wrapped bottles,” I said. “Unfortunately, they don’t make them anymore.”
“Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen them for an age.” She pressed the fold in the bakery bag until it was as flat as if it had been ironed and gave me an innocent smile. “Isn’t that nice, Quinn inviting an old friend to come for a visit all the way out here from California?”
“Uh … yes. It is, isn’t it?” Eli always says I’m the world’s worst liar, but there was no way I was going to tell her the truth about Gino. “I guess I’m done here. Thanks, Thelma. Take care of yourself and have a nice day.”
“Not so fast, missy. You’re looking a mite tired, Lucille. How about a nice cup of coffee? On the house. Pep you right up. Besides, I thought you’d be interested in hearing who dropped by this morning. And I don’t mean Gino Tomassi, either. It’s someone else. I’m sure you’ll never guess.”
You’d never want to play three-card monte with Thelma. She’d strip you down to your underwear in minutes.
I took the bait. “Who?”
“Uma Lawrence, that’s who.” She saw the expression on my face and smirked. “Knew I’d surprise you.”
She had. Uma Lawrence was Roxy Willoughby’s long-lost granddaughter.
“She’s in town?”
“Yes indeedy. How Roxy managed to keep that child a secret all these years is beyond me.” Thelma put her hands on her hips in a way that said she meant to get to the bottom of that mystery. “She arrived today and, don’t you know, she stopped in here just like Gino did, because she was lost. Except she was asking for directions to Mac MacDonald’s house instead of yours.”
Roxy hadn’t confided in anyone that she had a granddaughter, but I wondered if Uma Lawrence had known about her grandmother. If anybody could worm that information out of her, it would be Thelma. Like everyone else in town, I was curious, too.
“I suppose I have time for a quick cup,” I said. “What’s today’s Fancy?”
Thelma always kept three pots of fresh-brewed coffee, labeled Plain, Fancy, and Decaf, on a table near the glass vitrine where her bakery goods were displayed.
She arched a heavily penciled-in eyebrow and it disappeared under her lacquered helmet of red bangs. “It’s a peppy one. Brewed Awakening. Perks you right up like a double-double espresso.”
I’d just had tea with Faith Eastman, but I said, “I’ll try it.”
She poured two coffees and gave one to me. “You know where the milk and sugar are.”
I fixed my coffee and followed her to a corner of the store where a pair of Lincoln rocking chairs faced each other next to a woodstove. After we sat down, I said, “So, what’s Uma Lawrence like?”
Thelma sipped her coffee. “Nothing like Roxy, I can tell you that.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s not very friendly. And I don’t think she likes it here.”
“She only just arrived.”
“I know,” Thelma said. “Though she’s quite a beauty. A redhead, like Roxy used to be, probably around your age, Lucille, pushing thirty. One of those English rose complexions, and when she talks, I swear she sounds so British.”
“She is British,” I said. “She lives in London.”
Thelma gave me an irritated look. “I know that. It’s just such a surprise to think that Roxy had another family in England all this time and none of us had a clue. Mac told me he was pretty sure Roxy’s husband never knew, either. Otherwise, he probably never would have married her, the two of them being such devout Catholics and her breaking that commandment about not committing adulthood.”
I nodded. “Right.”
After the war, Roxy had worked as a commercial pilot for a charter company that flew wealthy individuals—mostly rich businessmen and their wives and girlfriends—all over the world. She’d married Bruce Willoughby, one of her clients, who was forty years her senior and had made his fortune in international real estate. He passed away shortly after they were married and Roxy ended up a young and very rich widow.
“I still can’t get over the fact that Mac didn’t know,” I said. “He’s Roxy’s nephew. They were always so close.”
“He had no clue, Lucille. And he’s right touchy about it, too,” she said. “Once he found out about the new will, he asked a friend who owns an antiques store in London to help track down Uma. Uma was the one told him both her parents were dead, her mother from alcoholism when she was a little girl and her father of a heart attack a few years ago.”
Thelma seemed to have acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of Roxy’s family in a matter of days. “You certainly have all the information, Thelma.”
“Oh, you know me. I’m a regular Orifice of Delphi. People come to me all the time for advice or whatever,” she said. “And they want to share their stories, too, so I listen. I have a mind for remembering like a steel trapdoor, you know.”
“I do know that,” I said. “Did Roxy ever meet Uma or see her daughter again after the war?”
Thelma shook her head. “Uma didn’t remember meeting Roxy and she says her mother never mentioned her grandmother, either. But who knows?”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore, since everyone involved is dead.”
Thelma set her coffee cup down on a stack of soap opera magazines that were piled on table next to the rocking chair.
“It’s just so peculiar the way she changed her will right before she died,” she said, shaking her head as if she was still trying to work it out. “Let me tell you, Mac is madder ’n a wet hornet at Sam Constantine for keeping quiet about that.”
“You know very well Sam couldn’t talk about Roxy’s will to Mac,” I said. “It’s lawyer-client confidentiality.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Even so, it’s been pretty tense between him and Mac lately when they both show up here at the same time for their morning coffee. Mac feels like Sam double-crossed him, because a few weeks ago he sold Sam two oil paintings he picked up at an estate sale in Georgetown. They were real valuable, too. Not like the Mona Lisa by that da Vinci Code painter, but still worth a lot of money. Mac said he gave Sam ‘the family discount’ on account of them being such old friends and now he thinks the least Sam could have done was give him a hint about what was happening.”
“It was Roxy’s place to tell Mac, not Sam’s. Maybe she meant to and she died before she got around to it,” I said. “I don’t suppose you have any idea why she changed her will?”
A few years ago, Thelma had confided to me that she had lost a baby when she was much younger and, like Roxy, she and the father had never married. It had broken her heart. “Maybe,” she said, and her voice was soft with memory, “Roxy woke up one day and realized she’d completely missed out on her daughter’s life but that she still had a chance with her granddaughter.”
She took off her glasses and wiped the corner of an eye.
“Oh, Thelma, I’m so sorry—”
“It’s okay, Lucille. Really. But if it was me, I think that would be reason enough.”
“Sam Constantine always says that a will is the last time in someone’s life that you get to make amends, to put things right,” I said. “Maybe you’re right and that’s what happened to Roxy.”
“I just wish the Lawrence girl was a little nicer, that’s all.” Thelma put her glasses back on and blinked at me. “When she sashayed in here, she acted like she was the queen of England, all high-and-mighty. I don’t think she was much impressed with the store, or with Atoka, for that matter. I heard her talking on the phone when she was standing in one of the aisles. Either she didn’t think I could hear what she said or she didn’t care.”
“What was she saying?”
Thelma waved a hand. “That she wanted to get back to England to take care of her dog.”
“Her dog? Are you sure?”
“Course I’m sure. She was yakking on the phone, carrying on about some woman making her dog’s dinner and that she didn’t want her to make a hash this time.” Thelma made a clicking sound with her tongue. “A dog that gets fed hash. I never. But it was the other thing she said, Lucille, that got me all riled up. As clear as a bell, I heard her. ‘I’m not sticking around for long. As soon as it’s sorted, I’m clearing off.’ Her very words. Just wants to get what’s coming to her and skedaddle.”
“That’s rather harsh,” I said. “Although she never met her grandmother and technically there’s nothing to keep her here. Mac’s got the house. I guess you can’t blame her.”
“Oh, I don’t blame her. I blame Mercury. It’s in retrograde all week long,” Thelma said in an ominous voice. “You know what that means, don’t you? Trouble. Never do anything important when Mercury is in retrograde, Lucille. You’ll just have to fix the mess later.” She ticked items off on her fingers. “Relationships go to hell in a bandwagon because people just can’t communicate proper, say what they really mean. And you should never, ever make travel plans or sign important papers, both of which Uma Lawrence is planning to do. She’ll regret it, just you wait and see. Mark my words, when Mercury starts spinning backward, there’s always trouble.” She gave me a dark look. “And this time won’t be any different.”