Butterfly Sunday (31 page)

What the hell had happened to Buicks? Darthula
wondered as the car lurched forward. She’d had her ass kicked less setting in back of Lonnie John Spakes’s pickup truck.

“Say what?”

“Dark blue, dark …”

“Dark mean the area is still clean of Mephistopheles, but a tall indication he’s coming and he ain’t far.”

Father Timon hadn’t been “called” to the priesthood. The truth was more that his mother, who was now gone to her reward, had driven him into his robes. He was deeply ashamed to admit it, but he equated faith with ignorance. Darthula’s comforted him for some reason. It was real. He drove past Whitsunday Pentecost Church and circled with the road as it turned around in a clearing. Then he stopped the car and Darthula got out.

“Darthula, can you work for us tomorrow?”

“You and no other, Father.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”

She nodded. Then she disappeared into the thick bramble. As she did, a handful of white butterflies rose behind her.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1999

10:30 A.M.

Soames waited by the back of the truck while Leona maneuvered the soft bank of the creek. “Overdoing it a little, aren’t we?” Soames said when Leona had crammed the last two sword ferns into the truck bed.

Leona shrugged. “Better to have too much.” She had a long day ahead of her in that church. She was determined to give Rhea Anne her money’s worth. She knew exactly where she’d use every garland and loop of flowers and leaves. Soames was getting on her nerves. Why had she volunteered to help Leona if she was going to be so critical and oddly resentful?

“Don’t delude yourself into thinking the Brisbanes are going to appreciate your efforts,” Soames moaned as she dumped her purse on the seat beside Leona and put the truck in reverse. Leona didn’t say anything. She
had already deposited the Brisbanes’ appreciation in the Bank of Orpheus.

Soames chattered like a starling with a toothache as they headed down the hill under the sparkling trees. Leona half listened, counting dogwoods, drawing pictures of raw countryside still wet from last night’s rain. The wind in the trees always reminded her of some outerspace cathedral choir. They roiled around the big curve out of the woods, and farmland dropped down a mile on her right, then rose into a long wooded hill. She could see the familiar courthouse clock tower just above the trees.

It always made her glad to see that clock poking its rounded slate roof and white face just above the high horizon. She always felt grateful for the sight. To her it meant she had survived the darkness of the wooded hills behind her and that another world, one better lit and familiar and sensible, hadn’t disappeared with all the things she had lost. It was still there and waiting for her. This wedding was her biggest step toward it to date.

“That odious bitch!” Soames had stopped at the light at the southwest corner of Court Square. It was just after eleven. There weren’t any other cars in either lane. She didn’t see anyone on the sidewalk.

“Who are you talking about, Soames?”

She hissed with irritation as if Leona were the dumbest person alive for not knowing. Soames could be like that. If it was on her mind, it was the most important thing in the world.

“Excuse me for breathing your air, ma’am.”

“Whoever taught you it was good sense to play dumb all the time?”

“I’m not playing dumb, Soames. I am dumb!”

They went on in silence, bristling, the pair of them. Soames pulled into the alley behind the church and got out to help Leona unload the truck bed.

“Don’t bother,” Leona hissed.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Leona,” Soames moaned, picking up a fern. “You can’t haul all this by yourself.”

“Please put that down!”

“Fine,” she minced, letting the giant green plant drop to the asphalt. She got back into her truck. After Leona had finished unloading the bed, Soames scratched off up the alley.

Weird, the very idea of a wedding upset some women.

Two hours later Soames walked into the sanctuary wearing a good as new smile and carrying a boxed lunch. She had one of her housekeepers with her. That was her way of rolling up her sleeves and digging in.

“I’m sorry for this morning.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Sweetie …” Soames began in a mournful tone. Then she stood and motioned for Leona to follow her through a door beside the altar that eventually led them up a set of stairs and into the church parlor.

“I thought you knew, Leona.”

Soames was having a little drama. Leona never knew where the facts began and the fantasy would lead. She was baiting Leona to ask a lot of questions. Leona had hours of work ahead of her.

“Soames, I have work to do.”

“Of course you don’t know.”

“What?” Leona stood up and laid a hand on the doorknob. Soames could drag one of her scenes out for a week. She didn’t have the time. Time seemed to be all Soames had.

“Averill is having an affair with Helen Brisbane.”

Funny how the reality of a situation hit you first. When Soames told Leona that Averill was sleeping with the bride’s mother, Leona’s first thought was that now she was really dying to meet her. Clearly Soames was hoping that Leona would at least explode as if a torpedo had just hit her.

“I’m sorry,” Soames whispered. “I thought you had a right to know.” Soames knew the lay of the land between Leona and Averill. She knew Leona was getting her enterprise off the ground. Leona couldn’t have cared less if Averill was sleeping with the bride or her mother. Why did Soames? Soames followed Leona back downstairs into the sanctuary. She kept cramming the thing into Leona’s ears. She thought it was the height of deception. That guttersnipe Rhea Anne had known about it all along. This was all designed to humiliate Leona. Soames stayed to help her decorate the church, taking every opportunity to object on Leona’s behalf.

Did she not see that Helen and Averill would soon be making a move? She had no doubt Averill would make his move sooner rather than later. However, Leona was preoccupied with her own moves at the moment. So she tried to ignore Soames until, mercifully, she left to have her hair done for the wedding around four o’clock. Soames had succeeded. Leona was riled. Leona was angry. Though not with Averill—with Soames for trying to push her buttons.

Rhea Anne and Helen showed up around five-thirty. Like most legendary seductresses, Helen was a little disappointing in the flesh. She was a small, quiet woman with dyed black hair. She wore a little too much rouge. She was charming, though. She seemed genuinely moved by the decorations. She was very complimentary. In fact,
both she and Rhea Anne hugged Leona with tears in their eyes.

Not that Leona was inclined to let anything tarnish the little glow of goodwill she felt toward the Brisbanes when she stopped to consider the fact that their check had immediately cleared upon deposit.

The last person Leona saw in the church was Ransom Brisbane. He crept into the sanctuary and stood at the back while she was gathering her things. Despite his considerable height and broad shoulders, there was a balloonlike quality to Ransom. He seemed always to be straining his neck or poking his heavy frame glasses back up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. That and a host of rumors about him and the Episcopal rector was all Leona could claim she knew about him.

“Mother fuck,” he moaned, dropping his jaw with exaggeration, “Mother of God …” He moved slowly toward her, taking in the canopy of ferns and wildflowers over the aisle. He had a fancy crystal and gold glass in his right hand, part of a large set she had seen on Father Timon’s dining room buffet.

“Exquisite,” he spat. Leona smelled vodka. “Helen and I will always be in your debt.” He spoke with casual intimacy, as if this were the continuation of a previous conversation. People did that a lot in Orpheus. She supposed it was because they knew so much about each other, it didn’t seem relevant whether or not they had actually ever met. In Ransom’s case the familiarity seemed closer than that, almost a violation. He was drunk.

Leona was tired. She wanted to take some pictures for her customer book and get out of the church before the guests began to arrive. Ransom was talking ninety to nothing about weddings and fashion designers and swirling his arms like snakes as he conjured up all kinds
of images that he found a great deal more exciting than Leona did at the moment.

Did the self-important shit not see she was busy and exhausted and not the least bit interested? Did he think she had some obligation to put up with him? Was she supposed to believe he didn’t know about her husband and his wife? Or did it make the moron feel high-class to stand here talking on with her and making a show of not knowing a thing?

“Where did you study design, Leona?”

“I’m afraid I never did,” she replied, turning to pick up a metal basket filled with leaves and flower petals.

“Idiot savant?” he asked with a goofy grin that identified the true idiot to Leona’s satisfaction. Then he lunged with one arm toward the metal basket in her hands, grabbing it in what was meant as a chivalrous gesture, but which landed him facedown on the floor while the glass in his hand flew across the sanctuary, smashing into a thousand pieces against the baptismal font. There were twigs and leaves and pine needles everywhere.

“Mary Mother of God!” he shouted as he got back to his feet. “Timon’s goddamned Medici cocktail glass! Look here!” He pointed to a rise in the edge of the oriental runner at least five feet away from where he’d stumbled. “Haven’t you ever heard of tacking down a carpet runner?”

Leona dared not open her mouth. The smallest amount of oxygen would ignite the coals of rage and God alone knew where things would end. She just stood there shaking with gritted teeth while Ransom fled down the aisle.

Because of Ransom’s drunken melee, it was five minutes before seven o’clock when Leona walked out of
the sanctuary. She was exhausted. She took the route along the side of the church that was away from the parish house lawn. She was avoiding the first wave of wedding folks. She had called one of the Spakes for a ride home. The boy was waiting in his shabby pickup truck in the alley where she and Soames had unloaded the plants that morning. Across the alley were parking places behind the stores along the east end of the square. Most were abandoned at this hour on a Saturday. Just before they reached the street, she spotted Soames’s Lincoln in a narrow bay behind a shoe store. Soames had parked there to avoid the wedding traffic along the street.

It was eight-fifteen when Soames pulled into her driveway and got out of her car. She had just come from the church. She was shaking and crying. Rhea Anne had finished dressing for the ceremony upstairs in the church parlor. The church was packed to overflowing. A madrigal was playing. At seven twenty-five the wedding party lined up on the church steps. Ransom Brisbane stumbled upstairs to collect his daughter and lead her down the aisle. He found her asleep on the parlor sofa. He called to her, but she didn’t hear him.

Moving closer, he saw the pistol on the floor and the tiny trickle of blood from the hole at the middle of her forehead.

MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2000

10:45 P.M.

Leona had been so deep into her account that it took her a minute to reacclimate to her surroundings. She had been a long way off. Now Blue looked over his desk at Leona as if he had just seen the Rapture. Then he opened his desk drawer and took out a small ivory pistol. It was identical to the one Leona had seen in Soames’s purse yesterday afternoon.

“Where did that come from?”

“It’s Rhea Anne Brisbane’s suicide weapon.”

It was a pair of antique dueling pistols. Soames had tried to give her one of them at least a dozen times—for self-protection! She had even put it in Leona’s purse. Did Leona remember the last time? Now she did. It was on the afternoon before that doomed wedding. She had gone into her bag for her scissors and there it sat. She
hadn’t even bothered to protest. Instead she had just slipped it quietly back into Soames’s purse.