Fran Rizer - Callie Parrish 06 - A Corpse Under the Christmas Tree (21 page)

Deep into the book, I was startled when James Brown shouted from the counter. I didn’t plan to answer—just let whoever was calling talk to the machine. The phone made that sound it makes to let me know a message was left just as I heard loud beating on the front door.

I reached out the dry hand holding the book, and laid
Fatal Descent
on the pile of clothing on the floor. I clutched my phone and retrieved the message.

“Callie, I’m on your porch. Your car is here and your lights are on. Why don’t you answer your telephone? I can only see you for a few minutes, and if you have company, I’ll certainly go away, but I’m worried about you. Please come to the door or call my cell if you’re all right.”

That message was something my daddy or my brothers or the sheriff might leave right before they broke down my door to be sure I wasn’t sick or injured, but the caller was none of the above. It was Dean Robinson.

I climbed out of the tub and wrapped a towel around me. The pounding increased in intensity and volume. At the door, I peeped through the little hole and saw Dean with a very worried, very frantic look on his face.

“I’m all right. I was in the tub,” I shouted through the door.

“Can I come in and see you for a few minutes?” he asked.

“I thought you had to work tonight,” I answered, and the sheriff’s cautioning words to me about not telling
anyone
I wasn’t dressed when they showed up at my door crossed my mind. What did I really know about Dean Robinson? He was a homicide detective, but I’ve read a true crime story about a trooper raping and killing a woman on I-95. It had happened in Florida, and Dean said he’d come to South Carolina from Florida. I remembered that creep who’d told me about tying his wife to a tree and shooting over her head. I remembered the women at Safe Sister and their tales of how men who’d seemed nice turning violent. Those thoughts flew through my mind like migrating geese.

“I am working, but even on duty, we get a break occasionally. I want to see you. Will you open the door?”

He’d been the perfect gentleman on our date, and I was sure Wayne had checked Dean out before hiring him.

“You’ll have to wait until I’m dressed. Can you do that?” I did exactly what Wayne had cautioned me not to do.

“Yes, I’ll wait.”

I don’t know what I was thinking then—I must not have been thinking at all—because I ran to the bathroom and pulled on the clothes I’d dropped on the floor before my bath. Dirty clothes on a clean body? That’s too weird. It just shows I wasn’t thinking.

Car horns blew and firecrackers shot off like bombs just as I opened the door. All the noise startled me.

Dean Robinson stood there holding a piece of mistletoe over his head. He dropped the mistletoe, took me in his arms, and gave me the kiss I’d wanted the night we went out to eat. The man was a wonderful kisser, and when we parted, I saw that he was as impressed with that smooch as I was.

“Wow! Happy New Year!” he said. “May I come in for a few minutes?”

I hadn’t caught my breath yet, so I nodded. He stepped inside and pulled the door closed. That night he was wearing a uniform, and the khaki clothing set off his light hair and blue eyes.

“I get a meal break when I’m on duty. I decided I’d rather be here with you at midnight, so I skipped dinner, but I can’t stay long. Some of the partygoers will be on the roads soon now. The joke is that New Year’s Eve releases all the amateur drunks, but any drunk on the roads is murder waiting to happen.”

“It’s midnight?” The question must have made me sound senseless after all the noise we’d heard. Honestly, I
felt
senseless after that kiss.

“Midnight’s over. Now tonight’s work really begins for law enforcement.”

“Did you say you skipped your dinner?”

“That kiss was worth missing a meal.”

“Sit there at the table. I’ll have dinner for you in no time.”

I spooned food from the Styrofoam tray I’d saved in the fridge onto a plate and microwaved it.

Dean seemed to enjoy the chicken as much as he had all the sampling we’d done at the Brazilian steak house. When he finished, he wiped his mouth on his napkin and stood. “That was fantastic. Did you cook it?”

I laughed. “Didn’t you see me dip it out of a to-go tray? I brought it home from Gee Three.” Embarrassment swept across his face as he asked, “Did I just eat your dinner?”

“No, I’ve already eaten.”

Looking back, it seems strange that I would tell him all about my frustrated day and buying an extra meal so my friend wouldn’t know I would be alone on New Year’s Eve, but Dean was easy to talk to, and when he left, we shared another of those magnificent kisses.

Lying in bed, I thought about how lucky I am to have a good job, real friends, and a loving family. I considered making a New Year’s resolution, but the next thing I knew, my alarm clock was ringing.

“Whew! The house smells awful. That’s the stinkingest food in the world!” Mike’s words as he stepped out the door and walked over to my Mustang in Daddy’s front yard didn’t surprise me. He’s the only one of Daddy’s six kids who doesn’t love collards. Sprinkle them with hot pepper vinegar and give me a big spoon full of chowchow, and I can eat a mess of collard greens.

The odor wafted across the porch and into the yard even with the doors closed. I won’t deny the aroma of collards cooking isn’t as appetizing as the taste of them. Rizzie told Daddy a long time ago that if the cook puts a whole, raw, unshelled pecan in the pot, the collards wouldn’t smell. Daddy’s answer was, “I
like
how collards smell.”

“Will you help me get a couple of folding tables and some chairs out of the shed?” Mike continued. “Pa sent Frankie and Jane to the store for something. I don’t know what. Pa’s invited company for dinner today, and I swear he’s acting like a chicken with its head cut off.”

“Company? Who’d he invite?”

“Wayne, Pork Chop Higgins, Miss Lettie, and Miss Ellen plus him, you, me, Frankie, and Jane. That’s nine, and we may have Bill and Molly. Don’t know about them yet. Bill said he’d call back when their plans are made. They seem to be having the holiday problem married folks suffer.”

“What’s that?”

“Husband wants to go to his family’s house and wife wants to go to her mom’s home for holiday meals. My wife’s mama and daddy were divorced. One year, we ate Thanksgiving dinner three times—her mama’s, her daddy’s, and Pa’s. Thought I’d bust wide open that night. Don’t guess you had that problem since your in-laws were in Columbia and we were down here.”

“Not exactly, but there were a few times we had holiday brunch at Donnie’s and drove down here for dinner.”

“If I ever marry again, I’m gonna make my wife cook all the holiday meals and invite every one of the family members from all sides. If they come, okay. If they don’t, okay, but I’m going to eat my Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s meals in my own home.” I noticed he said he’d
make
his wife cook and
my
meals in
my
home. I hoped that wasn’t indicative of his real feelings. If so, no wonder his first marriage failed.

“How many tables do we need?” I asked as Mike unlocked the shed door.

“He said bring in two—one for overflow for eating and one for him to spread out the food.”

When we had the tables and chairs set up, I went back to my car and brought in a black outfit to change into before I headed to work. I hung it in Daddy’s closet and went into the kitchen to ask if I could help.

Daddy had a big old Cheshire grin plastered across his face. “How’s Big Boy?”

“I went by and saw him last night. They’re still treating the infection, but he’s improving. I called this morning, and the vet said he may be able to come home tomorrow.”

“Good,” Daddy said, then added, “I want your dog to be well, Calamine, but don’t leave him any longer than is medically necessary since I left an open charge card there for his care.”

“Yes, sir, and I promise to pay you back no matter how much the bill is.”

“So far as helping, you know I don’t like people getting in my way when I’m cooking.”

Mike began singing, “Paw don’t allow no helping in here, Paw don’t allow no helping in here. I don’t care what Paw don’t allow, I’m gonna help him anyhow …”

Daddy snorted, “That boy’s a singing fool.”

“No kidding, Daddy, what do you want me to do?” What I wanted to do was change the subject before Mike got smart alecky with Daddy. Instead of mouthing back, Mike left the room. In a minute, I heard the shower running.

“I don’t have tablecloths, so get some sheets out of the closet and put them on the tables. Then, set the main table with the china out of the breakfront and use those fancy napkins over there. You can use our regular dishes on the overflow table.”

Daddy is not one to bother with tablecloths, and I can’t remember ever using the china out of the big, mahogany dish cabinet he calls the breakfront. It was Mama’s china—wedding gifts when she married him—and Daddy was too afraid one of us would break a piece to ever use it until now.

Just then, Frankie and Jane came in the back door. He carried several green tissue cones of mixed hothouse flowers—red carnations, yellow mums, and lacy green fern—which he handed to me and said, “Find a vase to put these in. I don’t know nothing about flower arrangements.”

A vase? Daddy’s idea of a vase is a fruit jar, or, if we’re being fancy, a glass or pitcher. Frankie took Jane by the hand and led her into the living room. Soon I could hear him playing guitar and singing to her. Jane likes old music. She’s a big Patsy Cline fan, and she
loves
Elvis songs, undoubtedly because her mother sang them before she died about the time Jane and I graduated from high school. Frankie was singing “Love Me Tender,” and if a visually handicapped person can gaze at someone lovingly, Jane was doing it. I guess in reality, it was her body language, not really her eyes that shouted her feelings for my brother.
Oh, Lord, here we go again,
I thought.

Frankie had bought so many flowers that I separated them into two containers—Daddy’s biggest, best drinking glasses. “Will these do?” I asked, holding up an arrangement in each hand.

He turned and looked at the arrangements. “Yeah, put that one on the main table,” he said, pointing to one of them. “It’s the prettiest. Put the other one on the spare table. We won’t need that table if Bill and Molly don’t come. We can add a chair and sit nine without it, but eleven would be too crowded.” He hooted a happy laugh. “I invited Pork Chop Higgins to eat with us, so we might need both tables with or without Bill and Molly.”

“What made you invite Pork Chop?” I asked.

“Now, Calamine, I can add a few people any time I cook, but with Pork Chop’s wife and nine kids, that’s eleven people, so I’ve never invited all of them for an inside sit-down meal. When I heard his wife took the children to see her mama, I called and invited him. He said he’d love to come, asked what he could bring, and told me he’d talked to you at Rizzie’s grill yesterday.”

“We did talk. He’s a nice man.”

“That he is. I don’t like to think of any man being alone on a holiday. I don’t know what I would have done after your mama died if I hadn’t had six kids to keep me so busy I couldn’t spend much time alone.”

“What are we having today?” I asked him.

“Calamine, what do we always have on New Year’s Day? Collards, Hoppin’ John, sweet potatoes, coleslaw, deviled eggs, mixed winter vegetables, corn bread, biscuits, whole smoked pork ham, coconut pie, pound cake, and all kinds of cookies. If I have time, I may fry a chicken or two, also.”

“I can’t wait. What time did you invite the others to come?”

“Told ’em to come any time they want, but we’ll eat between one and two. I promised we’d do some pickin’ and have a sing-along after dinner.”

“Sounds good, but I have to go to work this afternoon. Otis and Odell are prepping Patsy Corley this morning and expect to be ready for me later today.”

“I didn’t think about the Middletons. They could have come here to eat.”

“They’re planning to eat at Bubba’s Bodacious BBQ Barn. They’ll have all the New Year’s Day fixings on the buffet.”

Daddy grinned and stirred the Hoppin’ John as he bragged, “None of it will be as good as my cooking. I wish you’d be here for Miss Lettie and Ellen to hear you sing.”