Blessed Is the Busybody (17 page)

I went for the tissues, but of course, Sally had her own and had finished wiping her eyes by the time I returned.

“Leave this with me awhile,” I told her, patting her hand. “I’m going to check around a little. Ed has family in Boston.” I didn’t add that those last two statements had nothing to do with each other. In her own way my mother-in-law had done her share of checking in Beantown. Now I was going to do some on my own.

Sally straightened her shoulders. “I want to do something. I don’t want to feel helpless.”

“I think you should help Ed plan Gelsey’s memorial service. Why don’t you talk to a few of her closest friends and see if she ever told them what she wanted? Who knew her better?”

Of course that was the real question. Who
had
known Gelsey better? The real Gelsey, that is. I was scrambling to figure out the answer as I showed Sally to the door.

I spent the rest of the morning cleaning house and making a list of what I knew for sure about Gelsey Falowell. The former was particularly necessary, because today was the Meanie moms powwow in our living room. I still wasn’t sure Crystal O’Grady had gotten my messages, but everyone else would be here.

The Gelsey list was not as long as I wanted it to be. I knew Gelsey had lived here more than thirty years, that she was a force in the community. I knew she claimed to be from Boston’s Back Bay. I knew she claimed her maiden name was Railford, although Nan was dubious. I knew she’d had a daughter out of wedlock in Las Vegas, that Wanda Ray Gelsey was the name on the birth certificate, that she and the daughter were now dead. I knew a lawyer had facilitated the adoption and that I could sleep with one of his associates for more information.

That last part was no help at all, for obvious reasons.

I mopped and waxed the kitchen floor since no one had thought to install a new one since no-wax floors hit the market. I added: “Gelsey played tennis, loved expensive, tasteful jewelry, and took an instant dislike to me,” to my list. I cleaned the bathrooms and added: “Gelsey wanted to fire Ed and seemed to be searching for a reason to do so. She was a woman of strong opinions.” I dusted, and in between the coffee table and the fireplace mantel I added: “Gelsey kept false information in her address book, which is carrying deception to the ultimate limit.”

By the time the house was clean enough to suit me, I still had very little to go on.

Wanda Ray
was not a name I would associate with the Northeast. It’s a Southern name, an Appalachian or Ozark name, perhaps. Of course if she pulled these syllables out of thin air, this didn’t matter. But somehow, that didn’t ring true. After all, there’s an accent that goes with this name, just as there is with Gelsey Railford Falowell. Why would she choose a name that didn’t seem to fit?

Or perhaps it did fit at the time.

Perhaps she didn’t choose it. Perhaps it was chosen for her at birth.

Taking my life in my hands, I turned on Ed’s computer and thanks to lessons from yet another Dummies book I ran “Wanda Gelsey” through the Internet. When nothing turned up I searched for “Gelsey,” subtracting “Kirkland” after I realized I was getting numerous references to the dancer. When I still wasn’t getting anywhere I added “genealogy,” then “family tree.”

Since the computer was still working, despite freezing twice for old time’s sake, I went to Cyndi’s List, one of the most popular genealogy sites on the Web. I found my way to Social Security records and made a list of the states where “Gelseys” had died. Not surprisingly, Florida came up repeatedly. I envisioned an entire sun-drenched village of snowbirds with the same last name. The only other state that seemed to have a surplus of Gelsey graves was Kentucky, and those seemed to center in a town called Hollins Creek.

A few minutes later I was on the telephone to Frankfort to the Kentucky Office of Vital Statistics, but of course, they weren’t open on a Saturday. Since it had been a long shot they would help without birthplace and date, I hung up and considered other avenues.

The phone rang and Lucy screeched in my ear about Gelsey, Ed, and the rumors in town. I waited for the atonal overture to subside.

“I should have called you,” I agreed. “I’m playing amateur detective here.”

She agreed to put on her Sherlock Holmes deerstalker and deposit herself on my doorstep—breathing, of course—in a jiffy.

I had two hours before the Meanie moms arrived, so I made a large pan of gingerbread and checked to be sure we had enough apple cider.

My breathless pal was dressed in pumpkin-colored silk and black velveteen jeans when she arrived. I won’t say she looked excited about Gelsey’s death. She’s not unfeeling. But she did look ready for action.

“Tell me,” she panted, sliding into her usual seat at the table.

I did, scratching up every detail except, of course, the truth about Jennifer’s parentage and all that went with it.

I had considered whether to tell her about the false addresses in Gelsey’s book, but in the end I swore her to secrecy and related what Sally had told me that morning. Lucy can keep secrets. She won’t tell me the selling price of a house until the records become public. And even if I torture her, I don’t think she’ll give details about the night her broker celebrated the sale of a prime corner property by swimming naked with two unnamed females in Emerald Springs. What little I know came from the
Flow
and the reporter who found him a towel and a pair of pants.

“So Gelsey was living a lie?” Lucy gnawed at her lip. I was sorry the gingerbread was still baking.

I debated some more and companionably chewed my own. “Looks that way.”

Lucy knows me well. “What?” she demanded.

“Well, I think she has another name. And I can’t tell you everything I know or why. Can you handle that?”

“You bet.” Lucy had made an attempt to tame her hair with a tortoiseshell barrette. It hadn’t worked. Curls whipped both cheeks as she nodded. “What is it?”

“Wanda Ray Gelsey.” I explained what I’d found on the Internet.

“Did you look up the Hollins Creek white pages? You know white pages are on the Net, don’t you?”

At my sheepish expression, she shook her head. “Let’s go.”

Ten minutes later Lucy was on the telephone with Amy Howard, one of the two realtors listed for Hollins Creek, a virtual hotbed of Gelseys. We had learned Hollins Creek was in Kentucky’s mountainous eastern coal field, nothing more than a dot on the map, mines and two blocks of small businesses.

Lucy introduced herself. She claimed she had a client who was interested in purchasing a second home in Kentucky, Hollins Creek to be specific. She needed more information. Lucy listened awhile, then she made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and winked at me.

“Yes,” she said. “It is rather a ways to go, isn’t it? But her family’s from that area. She’s sentimental.”

She listened. “Gelseys, I think,” Lucy answered a question I could only imagine. “Oh, I’m not sure of first names. I think she mentioned a Wanda Ray?”

She hung up eventually and rubbed her ear. “Wanda and Ray Gelsey had a daughter, Wanda Ray. She left town a long time ago when she was still a teenager and never returned. Amy says Wanda Ray always thought she was worth more than anybody in Hollins Creek, or at least that’s what she’s heard.”

“Gelsey was seventyish? Is this woman you spoke to a hundred?”

“Even better. She’s
related.
If Wanda Ray and our Gelsey are one and the same, Amy Howard is a distant cousin. Ray Gelsey was Amy’s mother’s uncle.”

“What, is this Amy a walking Hollins Creek genealogy?”

“Just because your mother macramed her way across America and you never put down roots, don’t assume everyone else chopped down the family tree.”

“Junie’s macrame was brilliant. She wanted to macrame my wedding dress but my nipples kept poking out between square knots.” I tapped my lip. “It might be the same Gelsey. Or it’s possible Gelsey made up the name
Wanda Ray
for some other reason.”

“Amy said Wanda and Ray were devastated when their daughter abandoned them, and it’s probably prudent for my client not to tell anybody if she’s related to Wanda Ray. They’ll hold it against her. Oh, and there are a lot of houses for sale in Hollins Creek.” Lucy glanced at her Cartier knockoff and frowned. “I’m showing a condo in ten minutes. Gotta go.”

I took the gingerbread out of the oven and set it on a rack to cool. So there really had been a Wanda Ray Gelsey, and it wasn’t such a common name that I’d expect to find a hundred more. But what did this tell me?

The Las Vegas connection had been gnawing at me. It was possible Gelsey had simply gone there to give birth. It was an anonymous sort of place, large enough where she could sink into the shadows, the kind of town where nobody would notice a pregnant woman or care about her situation. Flights and hotels were cheap, surely medical care was excellent.

But wasn’t Las Vegas also a lure? The kind of place a young woman might yearn to live after a childhood in a Kentucky coal patch? Bright lights, city life. I’ve never seen photographs of a younger Gelsey, but I imagine she was lovely.

Ed has a colleague in Las Vegas, and it was time to ask for help. I had an hour and a half before the moms descended, and I left a message.

George returned my call an hour later. George Bentsen went to seminary with Ed. He visits us whenever he’s in our neighborhood, so we probably won’t see much of him while we’re in Emerald Springs.

George is something of a high roller. He figured out quickly that life in a normal parish held little appeal, and he turned his sights to other things. About five years ago he wandered west and founded the Las Vegas Chapel of Bliss, three acres with a view of the mountains, a gazebo that holds fifty guests, and a full-time wedding coordinator who insists on at minimum a fifteen-minute consultation. His niche is tasteful weddings without Elvis impersonators,
Star Trek
captains, vampires, costumed cupids, or the bright lights of the Strip. His wife does the floral arrangements. They make out okay.

I was lucky it was a slow day and George could call me back between weddings. I told him quickly what I needed and why. He was outraged that anyone would suspect Ed of murder, and promised to see what he could find out. Not surprisingly, George knows a fleet of private investigators. Checking credentials is a booming business in Vegas.

By the time I hung up, the moms were knocking.

May Frankel arrived and immediately set to work cutting gingerbread and putting it on plates. Tara’s mom, Rachel, came into the kitchen and ladled the cider I had heated into mugs and mismatched china cups. Both of them knew the reason for the meeting. We had held a mini-conference about it in the middle school parking lot.

I am surrounded by women who dress in hand-decorated seasonal sweatshirts. Today Rachel’s was forest green with appliqued apples, a harbinger of fall. Shannon’s mother, Grace, was still clinging to summer, and hers was sea green with a peach collar and cuffs and embroidered sand dollars. With local fashion in mind I wore one of Junie’s creations, a short-sleeved sweater knit from ribbon yarn and something that may well be hemp. I hope not to get arrested if I stray too close to a bonfire.

The others streamed in until there were ten of us. I wasn’t sure how interested they were in the topic, or if they had turned out to get away from their families. Just as I was about to give up on Crystal and abandon the kitchen she arrived with her customary flurry, white blond hair billowing around her shoulders.

“I hope you didn’t start without me?” She said it playfully and wagged a finger.

I held out the last plate of gingerbread. “We saved you one.”

“Oh Aggie, you are the perfect mother, aren’t you? The closest I get to baking is the tanning bed at my salon.” She followed with a peal of laughter and set the plate on the counter. “I won’t have any cider, I don’t think. But thanks.”

“Everyone’s in the living room.”

“Goodness, is there room for us?”

“There’s a spot on the rug just for you, Crystal.”

She looked down at white linen pants, and I left her to wrestle with what was probably the most serious problem she had encountered that day.

She joined us, but she stood and leaned against the wall, the mistress of compromise.

Everyone was chatting about the beginning of the school year, what their brilliant and talented daughters had already accomplished, and whether the fifth graders should be allowed to try out for junior varsity cheerleading. I took Crystal’s spot on the rug, a worn oriental heirloom from one of Ed’s cousins, and leaned against the sofa between May and Rachel, who were discussing the relative merits of two English teachers. I heard Gelsey’s name mentioned across the room and tried not to react.

The moment there was a lull, I cleared my throat. “I’m so glad everybody could come.”

Unfailingly polite on the surface, they all made the appropriate noises.

“The girls are such good friends,” I continued. “And it occurred to me that their friendships give us a little clout. They’re going to be making a lot of changes in the next years, and maybe if we make some decisions as we go along and stick together, we can make sure they don’t grow up too fast.”

May jumped in. “I’m already concerned. Seems to me there’s just too much pressure out there for them to turn into adults. Television, the music they listen to. Maddie has a good head on her shoulders now, but I worry.”

Grace leaned forward. I don’t know Grace Forester well, but I remembered that Deena had said her daughter Shannon was sitting with a table of boys at lunch this year. I was expecting no help from this quarter.

“Let me tell you,” she said. “These girls are just one step from having sex between classes! Mark my words.”

No one said a word. I cleared my throat. “Umm . . .” It was the best I could do.

“Well, I’m not quite
that
worried,” May said smoothly. “But I do think we need to protect them a little. From themselves as much as from the world. We need to help them send the right messages, don’t you think?”