Angel at Troublesome Creek (14 page)

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Authors: Mignon F. Ballard

BOOK: Angel at Troublesome Creek
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I jumped in with both feet. “Sam was telling us about his work at Summerwood,” I said, giving Kent a silent signal to slip away. “Why don’t you tell her about it, Sam?”
Naturally he latched on to that like a dog to the mailman’s leg, and we left them there talking together. Sam waved to me as we walked away. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said. It was almost impossible to hide my pleasure.
It didn’t occur to me until we were almost home that I hadn’t thought to ask Sam about his marital status. And I still couldn’t figure out how he’d known where to look for me. “Are you sure you didn’t leave a note on the door when we left?” I asked Kent again.
“Absolutely.” He shook his head and glanced at me with a puzzled look. The two of us walked slowly, not saying much, the empty basket bumped our legs with each step. Finally Kent pointed to something as we came within sight of my door, and his voice sounded rocking-chair weary. “There’s your note, Mary George. You must’ve put it there at the last minute. Guess you just forgot.”
The message was written primly on a small piece of white paper: Gone to Picnic in Park. And it was signed with my name, only I didn’t write it.
And there at the top—so faint I could barely see it—was a slight smudge of chocolate.
 
I
invited Kent in for a cool drink, which he politely declined. I was glad. “I’m sorry,” I said, and kissed his cheek. I was saying good-bye and he knew it. I walked inside feeling more than a little puzzled with myself, and put my empty basket in the kitchen. It had been a most peculiar day. A handsome, likable man had demonstrated an obvious interest in me, and I had just opened the door and showed him the way out without even a second thought. And all because of Sam. I hadn’t seen Sam since he had corrected my table manners and then told me he was leaving me all practically in the same breath. That was almost twenty years ago. A lot can happen to change a person in twenty years. For all I knew Sam could have a wife and six kids. He might even be an ax murderer. But he didn’t look like an ax murderer.
The apartment seemed quieter than usual. Augusta had left her brief note on my door and taken flight, and Hairy’s favorite rug lay empty and undisturbed beside my bed. His water dish waited in the kitchen. I checked my answering machine, but no one had called.
In the bedroom the good-luck rock frog Sam had given me crouched on my dresser and leered at me with its funny gold-painted eyes. I smiled, wondering if Sam would remember.
The temperature had
dropped
to a sweltering eighty-five degrees and my air conditioner groaned under the stress. I stripped off my sticky clothes and spent at least ten minutes in the shower washing hamburger smoke from my hair. The phone was ringing when I stepped out and I hurried to answer it, hoping it would be Sam. It was. “I couldn’t wait till tomorrow,” Sam said.
“Where are you? How did you get home so fast?” I looked at the clock. It was a little before nine.
“I’m at Delia’s,” he said. “Are you alone?”
“Well … yes. How did you know?”
“I didn’t know, I just hoped,” Sam admitted. “Delia’s kindly offered to put me up for the night. We’re sitting out here on her porch having a beer—or at least I’m having a beer. Delia’s drinking something with ice in it, and she says she’ll make one for you if you’ll come over.”
My hair was dripping down my neck, I was tired, and had nothing exciting to wear. “Be there in a minute,” I said.
This was met by such a long silence, I thought he’d changed his mind. “Better still,” Sam said at last, “why don’t I come over there? We have a lot of catching up to do, and Delia says she’ll leave the door unlocked for me.”
I immediately scrambled for the hair dryer. “You know where to find me,” I told him.
 
 
Sam Maguire stood in my small living room and looked about. It had taken him just under six minutes to get here—barely time enough for me to find a decent pair of clean shorts, put on a touch of lipstick, and comb through my damp hair.
“Smells good in here,” he said.
“We’ve—I’ve been baking brownies,” I said. “Sorry there aren’t any left.”
“Nope, not brownies.” Sam frowned, sniffed. “Strawberries. Is that some kind of air freshnener? Smells like the real thing.”
“Yes, doesn’t it?”
He looked at me through narrowed eyes. “You’re teasing me, Mary G.”
How could he know? How could he still know after all these years when I wasn’t quite telling the truth?
“Delia tells me you’ve been having a tough time of it, but you look terrific. There’s something … can’t quite put my finger on it … almost tranquil about you, about this place.” Sam put an arm around me, hugged me to him. “I just have a feeling, Mary G. Everything’s going to work out all right.”
I wish I could be sure of the same. We sat in the living room, which was about as comfortable as the small window air conditioner could make it, and I told him about Aunt Caroline’s death, what I suspected.
“You sound pretty certain about this,” he said. “From what I’ve heard about her, your aunt doesn’t sound like the type to make enemies. Could it be because of something she saw, or knew?”
“I think it was something she had, something that belonged to me.” I told him about the Bible. “And a few days ago somebody came in here looking for something while I was gone—ripped my needlepoint footstool apart and rummaged through drawers. I think they were after the family Bible. Of course they didn’t find it because it wasn’t here.”
He stretched long legs in front of him. “Any idea where it could be?”
“If I knew that, I might have some clue as to why Aunt Caroline died.”
“I wonder what could be in there that somebody wants bad enough to kill for. Is there anybody you could ask? A relative or somebody?”
I shook my head. “There’s nobody left but me, at least that’s what my aunt always said. My parents didn’t have any siblings, and when they died there was no one to take me, except the home at Summerwood, until Aunt Caroline and Uncle Henry came along. And they weren’t really kin, but they treated me like they were.” I curled, shoeless, at one end of the sofa while Sam lounged at the other with a comfortable distance between us. I had the strangest feeling that we’d never been apart.
Now he leaned forward with one arm stretched along the back of the sofa. “Look, Mary G., I don’t want to scare you, but should you be living back here by yourself like this? I know you have a landlady and that guy upstairs, but what good did they do when somebody came in here and searched the place? What if you’d been here alone? You can hardly see this place from the street.”
I’d thought of that, of course. More than once. “I did have a dog,” I said. I told him about Hairy Brown. “I’ve been running an ad in the paper, but so far I haven’t had any luck.” I drew up my knees and sighed. “He’s such a good old dog, Sam. A big, brown wad of fur with a tongue sticking out. I can’t believe how much I miss him.”
He reached across and took my hand, gently stroked the back of it. He didn’t even have to speak. I wanted to ask him about his marital status, his love life—or the lack of it—but I was afraid to mention it. “Have you been happy?” I asked instead.
He looked thoughtful, then smiled. “Yes, I have. Teaching can be rewarding, at least some of the time—although not financially, of course. And I really would like to see something good come of Summerwood, Mary G. These kids need it, and the land is there if we can just get funding. The church dropped their sponsorship after the home closed, and I just don’t have the time it takes to do it justice.”
“Sounds like you need a fund-raiser,” I said. “A good PR person.”
“Or a guardian angel,” he said.
“Goodness, I’m thirsty! Want something to drink?” I jumped up and went in the kitchen for a glass of water, then stood at the sink until my smile went away. If Sam saw my face, he wouldn’t leave me alone until I told him about Augusta Goodnight, and I didn’t want to scare him off after being apart so long. After all, even Sam Maguire has limits as to what he might believe.
“Why don’t you drive out to Summerwood with me tomorrow?” he was saying. “And bring a paintbrush. I promised them a hand sprucing up the dining hall, and Delia said she might even come and give us some decorating tips. God knows, we can use the help!”
“I wonder if Delia’s made up her mind about moving to that condo?” I said, finally composed again. “I don’t know what she’d do with all her things over there. And then there’s that rule about pets.”
“Oh, I see she hasn’t told you,” Sam said.
“Told me what?”
“She’s changed her mind. Told me tonight she isn’t going to move.”
“But she was going to put her house on the market, and I know it’s depressing for her looking across the street at Aunt Caroline’s place. They’re making it into offices, you know. Did she say what she was going to do?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Said she’d make a decision when the time came … whatever that means.”
It seemed to me Augusta needed to send for backup. We didn’t have enough guardian angels to go around.
 
 
“What
are
you going to do?” I asked Delia the next day as she measured the windows in the big old barn of a dining hall at Summerwood. I had been painting for hours and everything on me was sunshine yellow, including most of my hair.
Delia jotted down a number and wound the tape measure around her hand. “I’ll worry about that when I have to,” she said. “Can you imagine me without my babies?’ She drew herself up indignantly.”Well, there are other places to live!”
I didn’t know of any right offhand, but I didn’t think this was the best time to remind her of that.
“Need more paint?” Sam stood behind me with a bucket and poured some into my tray. “Do you realize we’re standing just about where we always used to sit, Mary G.? Pinto beans and rice. Seems we had ’em every other day!”
“Remember Cindy?” I said. “Always made us cupcakes and sticky buns.” I remembered long tables of wiggling children, the clatter of knives and forks.
“And called me Sam-I-am. Always had a joke. I thought she was beautiful.”
“Cookie hated her.” I dipped my roller in paint.
“Naturally,” Sam said, looking thoughtful. “Remember our verse? How we made everybody sick—or tried to?”
I nodded. “Grisly, grimy, glumpy bats, brewed and stewed in lizard fat …”
“With a clump of this and a lump of that,” Sam added.
“Served with a hunk of sewer rat!” Laughing, we ended the “poem” together.
“I’m afraid we made a lot of the other kids sick,” I said.
Sam shrugged. “Too bad they didn’t want their dessert.”
 
 
Since there weren’t any campers at Summerwood that day, we lunched under the trees on carry-out pizza with Rose and Lyman Cummings, the couple running the camp for the summer. Lyman, chubby and bearded, looked a little like a middle-aged Santa Claus, and, according to Sam, forever had his nose in a book. His wife, in her midforties, looked to be about a size six and had the kind of complexion a teenager might envy. She seemed to have boundless energy, fueled probably by the four pieces of pizza she’d just eaten. It was hard not to hate her.
“There’s nothing to stop us from having some kind of benefit right here,” Rose suggested, swigging the last of her iced tea. “Something that would bring us a little ready money for repairs. At least it would be a start.”
I looked at the long, sprawling building behind us. “Why not a dance? You have the space, and you know how people go in for those line dances. How about a country-western theme? Might be kind of fun. Maybe we can get that blue grass group who played in the park to donate their time.”
“Why, that’s a wonderful idea,” Delia said. “What made you think of that, Mary George?”
“I don’t know. It just came to me,” I told her. I don’t know why she seemed so surprised.
“Why not next month before school starts back?” Sam suggested. “If you and Rose will work out the details, Mary G., I’ll take care of the promotion end, but I’ve got to spend some time with my family. I promised Ed we’d go fishing sometime this summer.”
A rock dropped in my stomach. Ed? Who was this Ed? What family?
“Ed’s my brother—well, half brother really.” Sam stretched out in the grass and pulled his cap over his eyes. Good grief, could he read my mind? “Be in the tenth grade this fall,” he said. “Dad married again when I was twelve, and they’re living in Atlanta now. I try to get together with them whenever I can.”
“Of course,” I said, and smiled, filled with goodwill now that the rock in my middle had dissolved into mush.
 
 
“Had a bad turn there for a minute, didn’t you?” Delia reminded me on the way home that night. The two of us drove back in her car since Sam lived in the other direction.
It’s impossible to ignore somebody when there are only two of you in a closed car. “You don’t miss much,” I said. “You really like him, don’t you?”
“Who?” She glanced at me and laughed. “Oh, you mean Sam … . Well, of course I do, Mary George, only not in the same way you do.”
I didn’t even bother to deny it.
It was dark when we reached home and neither Kent’s white Honda nor Miss Fronie’s old blue Buick were parked in their usual places. Delia pulled as close to my doorstep as possible to let me out, then waited while I unlocked my door. I flicked on the outside light and stood in the doorway to see that she didn’t back over my landlady’s petunias on her way out. I waved at her little farewell toot of the horn and turned to go inside when I heard the unmistakable sound of a footstep in the dark yard beside the house.
“Delia, wait!” I screamed. But it was too late, I could hear her turning into the street, well out of earshot. Rushing inside, I tried to slam the door behind me, lock it before he could follow, but my hands seemed to have lost all communication with my brain. Suddenly the door was wrenched from me, and a large hand circled my wrist. I turned and bit what felt like a finger as hard as I could while landing a kick at my attacker’s ankle.

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