A Week From Sunday (20 page)

“Thank God, thank God!” she muttered.

Crawling out of the stairwell, Adrianna passed the door before falling face-first into the upstairs hallway. Blessed cooler air washed over her.

Slowly, Adrianna made her way down the stairs. When she passed Jesse’s closed door, his radio was blasting. No wonder he hadn’t heard her trying to batter the door down. In the bathroom she wet a cloth and ran it along the back of her head. Cool water trickled down her neck and ran beneath her blouse. The wetness chilled her skin but she hardly noticed it; after the blazing heat of the attic, she wondered if she would ever feel cool again.

Shutting off the faucet, she listened for any sounds coming from inside the house. Cowboy was still barking.
Why in the world isn’t Jesse yelling for Lola to let him in?

Adrianna took a long look at herself in the mirror. Strings of hair were plastered along her forehead and neck. Her eyes were bloodshot and distant. Her face was flushed such a crimson red that her cheeks resembled overripe tomatoes. However, the feature that she could not tear her eyes from was the furrows her tears had made down her dirty face.

When she’d finally managed to get to her feet, she had examined the door. Just as she’d suspected, it had been locked from the outside. She had been able to free herself because of the pressure provided by her makeshift lever. It had been no accident that she had become a prisoner in the attic. There was only one person who could have acted as her jailer.

“Lola!”

Tossing down the towel, Adrianna made for the kitchen, her anger rising with every step. As she neared, she could still feel the dizziness that floated around the back of her head but chose to ignore it. There was far too much to do for her to be ill. She passed Jesse’s still closed door without a pause and made a beeline for where she had last seen the spiteful cleaning woman. She was just about to set foot in the room when a man’s deep guttural laugh froze her in her tracks.

“. . . ain’t nothin’ that bitch can do about it!”

The voice had come from just outside the door that led out of the kitchen and onto a small porch at the rear of the house. Where anger had just filled Adrianna’s heart, it was now replaced with a chilling fear. The night before that same voice had threatened her.

Reuben!

Adrianna was frozen in place as if she were a rabbit trying to convince a fox that she wasn’t there. At any moment, that beast of a man could step in the door, find her standing there, and finish the job he had promised. Try as she might to move, she was rooted to the floor.

“If you had just done what I told you, I wouldn’t have to go to such trouble.”

Lola’s venomous voice came from the other side of the door. If there truly had been any doubt that the scheming woman had been behind the troubles at the Whipsaw, it was gone now. Somehow, the sound of her voice broke the spell holding Adrianna in place. Quickly, she scurried behind one of the pillars in the entryway, her head inclined to listen.

“I didn’t know your lover boy was gonna stick his nose in,” Reuben argued.

“Don’t you talk bad about Quinn!”

“Why in the hell you gotta slave after that good-fer-nothin’, anyhow?” the man snarled. Adrianna couldn’t imagine how Lola was able to stand up against a man so terrifying, particularly when he was so irate. “He ain’t never gonna marry you! The whole damn town knows it.”

“You shut your mouth! Just shut up!” Lola screeched. “Don’t you ever say one bad thing about Quinn Baxter! He’s more man than you’ll ever be, you shitty bastard! I swear, if you ever say anything bad about him again, I’ll never so much as give you the time of day!”

The ferocity of Lola’s words sent a chill racing down Adrianna’s spine. She was certain that Reuben would respond with a thunderous bellow of his own, but to her surprise, nothing came. When he did finally speak, his voice was shockingly timid and meek.

“Do you think she’ll get out of the attic?”

“Probably,” Lola answered matter-of-factly. “A damn child could get out of there. A good kick right on the doorknob would probably break that old thing in two. All I want is to scare her a bit,” the housekeeper continued. “If she ain’t smart enough to get out of there, she deserves to die. No . . . when the time comes, there ain’t no way she’s gonna escape.”

“What about the kid?”

“Jesse?” Lola laughed. “What about him?”

“All I’m sayin’ is it ain’t his eyes and ears that are busted,” Reuben explained. “If he catches wind of what yer plannin’, he could tell the brother, and then you’re shit outta luck.”

“Do you think I’m a goddamn fool?” Lola shot accusingly.

“Lola . . . I didn’t . . .”

“You think I just waltz around this place actin’ just like I do when I’m with you?” She laughed mockingly. “You think I give them any reason to worry? There ain’t nobody that knows what I’m really plannin’! Not even you! I’ve already tried it out and it works.”

What is she planning?
Adrianna’s mind raced over the possibilities but found that they were all too difficult to digest. Was Lola after more than Quinn’s hand in marriage? If she was acting while she was in the company of the Baxters, what was she really like? Adrianna was afraid she knew the answer to that last question; she was evil!

“But what about us?” Reuben asked.

“You and me?” Lola scoffed. “What with the way you bungled up last night and what you were saying about Quinn, I can’t imagine how you could expect me to give a damn about you.”

“I said I was—”

Lola cut him off. “If I was you,” she began, holding the moment so long that Adrianna felt as if a knife were being held to her throat. “I’d start thinking of ways to make it up to me.”

Chapter 17

T
HE CEILING FANS
in Comstock Grocery turned lazily in the mid-afternoon hour, their blades doing little more than pushing the heat around. A folksy song crackled from a small radio, its faraway music tinny in the high-vaulted space. The only other sound came from the flies that hovered above the shelves, their buzzing an incessant background.

Adrianna had left the Baxter home as much to get away from Lola, as to pick up a few things at the mercantile. Her head still felt a touch fuzzy from her time in the attic, but her strength was returning. What she’d really needed was some time alone; besides the store owner, the only other customer was a woman examining the spools in the thread cabinet.

“What a day,” Adrianna commented under her breath.

No matter how hard she tried, she could not get the conversation between Lola and Reuben out of her mind. The single fact that Lola had intentionally locked her in the attic was bad enough without knowing it was only one of the vile woman’s plans. With an ogre of a man like Reuben willing to help her, was there anything too low for her to do?
“There ain’t nobody that knows what I’m really plannin.’
” Lola’s words chilled her.

“Is there anything I can help you with, miss?” a voice behind her spoke, startling her.

Adrianna spun quickly to find that the store’s clerk had come out from behind the counter. A portly man on whose bald head only small tufts of white hair remained near his ears, the clerk had a smile nearly as wide as his entire face. A pair of pince-nez glasses balanced precariously on his bulbous nose. There was something about him that reminded Adrianna of a preacher; she supposed that there was certainly a touch of salesmanship in both professions. As he wiped his hands across his apron, he seemed to sense that he had startled her.

“I’m terribly sorry if I gave you a fright. It’s very easy to get lost in thought in a store like this. Lord only knows how many days I’ve spent staring off into nothing,” he explained. Extending one hand toward her, he said, “I’m Roger Comstock, the owner. If there is anything I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“My name is Adrianna Moore,” she said, giving him as warm a greeting as he had given her. “I’m afraid that I’ve never been in your nice store before, and I was wondering where I might find the bath soap.”

“Right this way.”

Mr. Comstock led Adrianna to another aisle where he directed her to what she was looking for, before excusing himself and returning to the counter. Thanking him for his help, she looked halfheartedly amongst the various kinds of soap, her mind still racing over all that had befallen her.

It was enough that she had found herself in Lee’s Point at all, let alone that she was faced with the possibility that an irate woman she hardly knew wanted to do her harm. The decision to run away from Richard Pope’s advances had seemed like a wise idea at the time; but had she known all of the calamities that would befall her on her journey, she might have been a bit more cautious. Still, she’d run, and the situation she had found herself in was of her own making. Her life with her father in Shreveport seemed many years and thousands of miles away.

The question that gnawed at her the most was whether or not she should tell Quinn about what had happened with Lola. At first, she’d been angry enough to have spoken out. It would have been a simple matter to have shown Quinn that the door had been locked behind her. He would have had no choice but to fire Lola and get her out of the household.

But is it really that simple?

As more time had passed, doubt had begun to eat away at the strength of her resolve. What if there was even a single grain of truth to what Lola had said about her and Quinn’s relationship? Would he just laugh away all accusations? After last night, when he had tenderly planted a kiss on her lips, she had great difficulty believing that he could be involved with someone like Lola.

But still . . .

Right then and there, in the middle of Comstock Grocery, she decided to hold her tongue, not out of a fear of Lola’s reaction or even of a rejection by Quinn. Instead, it was because of a business lesson she had heard her father say he had learned:
Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer
. Lola was dangerous, of that there was no doubt. But she would be undeniably
more
dangerous if she were out of sight. Adrianna decided that until she was certain, she would keep her tale to herself but keep both her eyes on Lola.

“Are you waiting for that bath soap to jump off the shelf?”

As she turned to the sound of the voice, Adrianna expected to find the clerk, Mr. Comstock, returning to make a small joke. Instead, a dapper-looking younger man in a well-tailored suit stood eyeing her mischievously. His blond hair was slicked back in a style she hadn’t seen since she’d left Shreveport. The ceiling fans blew the scent of cologne to her nose as the man absently rubbed one thin hand along his jaw line.

“Excuse me?”

“The way that you were staring at all of these bars of soap,” the man said, taking a step toward her while gesturing to all of the soap on the shelf, “made me think that you wanted them to make up your mind for you.”

There was something about the sarcastic way in which the man spoke that made Adrianna uncomfortable. She’d had enough awkward meetings with strangers in the last several days to last her a lifetime! Turning on her heel, she meant to simply walk away and ignore the man, but when he spoke again, he stopped her in her tracks.

“You play piano at the Whipsaw, don’t you, Miss Moore?”

“How do you know my name?” she challenged him.

“Well,” the man said with a smirk, moving once again to narrow the distance between them, “it might have been that I simply overheard you introducing yourself to the clerk a few moments ago, but I’m afraid that would be a lie. The fact is, word of the mysterious new piano player at the Whipsaw has traveled across this little town as if it were the wind itself. You can hardly wonder how news could travel so fast, though. With so little to entertain themselves, the citizens of Lee’s Point have become well-practiced gossips.”

“Hopefully, they had good things to say.”

“I have heard that your playing is excellent,” he said evenly.

“You weren’t there?” Adrianna asked, her tone a touch challenging. Images of the free-for-all that had occurred sprang back to mind.

“I wouldn’t set foot in that rattrap dive unless it was a matter of utmost importance. From outward appearances,” the man said, looking her up and down, “I would think that a cultured woman like yourself would feel the same.”

The hairs on the back of Adrianna’s neck suddenly stood up. This man had her at a distinct disadvantage; there were things he obviously knew about her although she wouldn’t have known him from a bale of hay. That needed to change. “I’m afraid I did not catch your name.”

“That would be because I have failed to mention it,” the man said coolly, a smile faintly crossing his lips before fading. Stepping ever closer, he extended his hand. “My name is Fuller. Dewey Fuller.”

Adrianna refused to take his greeting. “I’m afraid that I don’t understand just why you have interrupted my shopping, Mr. Fuller. Surely you’re not seeking piano lessons.”

The man’s laugh rose quickly, overpowering the other sounds in the store. The woman examining the thread looked up for a moment before returning to the spools in the cabinet. “That is quite a wit you have, Miss Moore.” Dewey chuckled. “As much as I would like to take lessons from someone as pretty as you, I’m afraid I lack musical talent.”