Hidden Riches (16 page)

“I always like to stock up,” she said. “You never know when the urge might hit you.”

“Oh, for God's sake,” Delcine muttered.

A second later, she let out a small yelp and hopped on one foot.

“Clayton!”

Clayton ignored her, hoping he hadn't really done much damage to her foot when he stepped on it to shut her up. His focus was on getting as much information as possible out of Roscoe.

JoJo gave a little shimmy, as if she needed to get a little more comfortable in her tight jeans and the pullover sleeveless shirt that showed off her bosom the same way a tight sweater might.

“And you wanted a Day-Ree Dog special too—right, sugar?”

“Yes, indeed,” JoJo said, licking her lips in anticipation.

“Who else did Ana Mae give money to?” Clayton asked.

Roscoe talked as he stepped to the hot dog grill to make JoJo's order. “Her church, the school. You want the works on your dogs—right, sugar?”

“Give me everything you've got,” JoJo said.

Delcine rolled her eyes, but stayed quiet.

“And that Fisher boy,” Roscoe said. “I heard tell she gave him some of the lottery money. But I don't know how much. He's one of them inventors or something. Always making stuff from things other people throw away. He sure helped Loretta, though. She's the manager here at the Day-Ree Mart now. But she off today. That Fisher boy, he made some kinda contraption for her that made her so happy she told him he could get a Day-Ree Dog for free for life, anytime he come in. He don't eat meat, though, that Fisher boy. He got a good head on him, but he's a little different, if you know what I mean.”

“He's gay?” JoJo asked.

Clayton gave her a look.

“Naw,” Roscoe said, taking a sidelong glance at Clayton, “leastways not that I know of. He don't eat meat. He be one of them, whatchacallit, vegetablians.”

“Vegetarian?” Clayton supplied.

“Yeah, that's it. Don't eat meat or eggs or anything normal like. He just always tinkering and building and, well, he just ain't too sociable. But he and Ana Mae, they got along like cornbread and grits.”

“What's his first name?” Clayton asked.

“Gerald or Jeremy or Jerome. Something like that. Maybe George. Most people just call him the Fisher boy.”

Roscoe placed JoJo's hot dogs next to her oatmeal cream pies, then turned toward the two conference-size tables set up with lottery slips, pencils, and displays where a couple of people were sitting, filling out their numbers.

“Hey, Paulie. What's that Fisher boy's first name?”

“Jeremy,” the answer came back.

“Yeah, that's it,” Roscoe said. “Jeremy Fisher.”

Clayton was able to get a little more out of Roscoe, including the fact that to the clerk's knowledge, Ana Mae hadn't won any more money from the North Carolina Lottery, nor ever even played again.

Armed with JoJo's purchases and the directions to Jeremy Fisher's house, the three headed across the gravel parking lot to the car.

“You know, Delcine, you don't have to be so condescending to people,” Clayton said. “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

“Look,” she said, “I didn't come back to this godforsaken town to win friends and influence people. I want to get the money Ana Mae left for us and then get the hell out of here. I have a life waiting for me.”

“I think we were better off working in individual teams,” JoJo said.

They pondered that for a bit, each one silently agreeing or disagreeing.

When they got back in the car and Delcine fired up the air conditioning, she let go with something that had been bugging her. “What is with the y'all all around here? Don't these people know that that's a redundant, not to mention incomprehensible, phrase. You all all. God, that's irritating.”

JoJo tore open one of the oatmeal cream pies. “You know what he meant, so it's not incomprehensible.”

Clayton smiled. “Can I have one of those?”

She passed the box back to him.

“I cannot believe the two of you are going to actually eat those things.”

“Do you know the way to the Fisher place?”

“It shouldn't be hard to find with those directions from Roscoe,” Delcine said shaking her head in disgust. “Make a left at the combine and a right when you see the house with the double rooster weathervane. Welcome to Hooterville.”

“Once again,” JoJo said around bites of her treat, “you know exactly what he meant.”

“Hey, guys. Let's not fight,” Clayton said.

“And what was with you stepping on my foot like that?”

“We needed to keep him talking. We're already at a disadvantage over the reverend, who knows all of these people. And he has Rosalee working with him. We need all the help we can get,” Clayton told Delcine. “And you were antagonizing the man.”

An unladylike grunt assessed her opinion of his opinion.

JoJo wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I forgot how friendly everybody could be here.”

“Friendly?” The echoed question rang through the confined space of the car.

“If you'd stuck out your boobs any farther he'd have been able to breast feed on them,” Delcine said.

JoJo laughed and did a quick boost of her breasts, as if positioning them in one of her old showgirl costumes. “Don't hate on me because the good Lord was generous with me and forgot to give you some.”

“The good Lord made those silicone implants, did he now?”

“All natural, hater. This is all natural.”

From the back seat Clayton laughed out loud.

“This reminds me of growing up,” he said. “You two were constantly going at it. And Ana Mae had to break up the fights.”

Heading out of the Day-Ree Mart lot, Delcine started following the directions they'd gotten from Roscoe to get to the Fisher place. “Remember the time you took Mama's silk scarf and I grabbed it?”

JoJo turned in her seat, propping one leg up so she could see both Clayton and Delcine while they talked. “Yeah, I had it wrapped around my head and hanging down the back. I think I was being ‘I Dream of Jeannie' or something. You went to pulling and tugging on that thing, and before long we were rolling on the floor, scratching like cats and dogs.”

“Who won?” Clayton said.

“Neither one of us,” Delcine said, chuckling. “Ana Mae came in, saw us. She stomped out of the room and came back with a big pair of pinking shears and the next thing you know that silk scarf was in two pieces not big enough to do anything with.”

JoJo picked up the story. “She handed half to me and half to Delcine and said, ‘There's some Solomon justice for you. Now both of you hush up.' ”

“No, she didn't,” Clayton said. By now he too was laughing. “But what about Mama's scarf?”

“When she got home, we ran to tell her what Ana Mae had done. And you know what she did?”

Delcine and JoJo looked at each other, and both fell out laughing.

“What?” Clayton pressed.

“She, she told us, ‘Well, Solomon was right.' ”

“And JoJo is crying now because she doesn't have the scarf and Ana Mae isn't getting in trouble for cutting it. So she goes to Mama, ‘Who's Solomon?' ”

“Oh, Lord,” JoJo said, wiping her eyes. “What did I ever want to say that for?”

“We both had to go not only to Sunday school and morning service for the next six weeks,” Delcine said. “Mama made us go to Wednesday night prayer meeting and Friday night praise and worship with Ana Mae. Said she couldn't believe she was raising such heathen children, and since we didn't know who King Solomon was, we could sit in church until we did.”

“You better believe I learned all of those Bible stories,” JoJo said, still chuckling.

By the time they got to the house on Evers Street, they'd shared two more stories about their interactions with Ana Mae.

“She sure loved us a lot,” JoJo said, as Delcine parked at the curb. “I wish we'd stayed in better touch through the years.”

“Me too,” Clayton said, subdued and more than a bit contemplative about the sister they'd just buried.

A few moments later, they stood at the curb in front of a white frame house. Freshly painted with green shutters and a well-manicured and lush green lawn, the house looked loved and lived in. The front porch held two white wicker rocking chairs with a small table between them.

A garage, adjacent to the house, had clearly been turned into a workroom. The garage door was up, and the sounds of some kind of saw and hammering came from it, so they gravitated there.

“Maybe we'll get an answer here to how Ana Mae turned one hundred thousand and some change into almost four million.”

“I was wondering the same thing,” JoJo said. “It sounds like she gave away a lot of the lottery money.”

“I've been keeping a tally,” Delcine said. “So far we know she tipped the convenience store people. Knowing Ana Mae, she probably gave her church way more than a tithe.”

“How much is a tithe?” Clayton asked.

JoJo let out a hoot. “Now who needs to be going to remedial Bible study? A tithe is ten percent, Clay.”

“Ten percent? You mean right off the top she gave ten grand to her church? Man, no wonder those TV evangelists rake in the millions.”

“And remember, we're talking about Ana Mae here, so it was probably more,” Delcine said. “A lot more.”

“Well,” Clayton said taking each sister by the hand. “Let's go see if we can find out what this Jeremy Fisher knows.”

“Hellllooo!” Clayton called out as they approached.

The man in a pair of jeans, hiking boots, and a plaid shirt clearly didn't hear them. Safety goggles covered his eyes as he worked at a bench.

When he paused to check an angle, Clayton called out again.

The man looked up and smiled. He turned off the saw, pushed the goggles to his forehead, and swung his leg around.

“Hey there, y'all. Just a sec.”

He went across the room and turned off a machine from which the hammering noise emanated.

Aerosmith suddenly blared from all directions.

Delcine covered her ears.

Jeremy snatched up a remote and pointed it toward a corner. The garage instantly fell silent. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he came over to greet them. “Sorry about that,” he said. “When I have all of the machinery going I forget about the music being up. It's programmed to play louder than whatever I have on.”

He reached out a hand to Clayton and shook it. “I was so sorry about Ana Mae. I sure loved that woman,” he said.

Whatever the Futrells had been expecting, this wasn't it.

Jeremy Fisher was about twenty-five, twenty-six at the most, had sandy blond hair, and toffee-colored skin that pegged him as either biracial or somebody who spent a whole lot of time in the sun. That he knew who they were without introduction also seemed to throw them for a loop.

“You loved her?” JoJo said, staring at him like he might hold the secret to the Holy Grail.

“I sure did. With all my heart,” Fisher said. “She believed in me when no one else did. Nobody else paid me any mind, but Miss Ana Mae, she was different.”

He stuck out a hand to both Delcine and JoJo. “I'm Jeremy, by the way. I know we haven't met or anything, but I'd know you all like my own family. Ana Mae talked about you all all the time. You're Clayton,” he said, grabbing Clayton's hand again and pumping it. “You're the successful doctor out in California. And you're Josephine from Las Vegas, star of the stage. And you're Marguerite from PG County.” He pronounced the nickname of Prince George's County, Maryland, as if it were Buckingham Palace and he was honored to meet the queen.

“Delcine,” she corrected, forgetting that she preferred to be called Marguerite.

“Are you Howard?” Clayton said, voicing the question they were all wondering about.

Jeremy Fisher was about the right age to be Ana Mae's son. And since he was biracial, that might explain why no one knew anything about Ana Mae having a child. Maybe she'd been seeing a white man in town. But who? Was that David Bell from the funeral his father and Ana Mae his mother?

“Howard?” Jeremy asked. “No, I'm Jeremy. Jeremy Fisher. I'm an inventor, and Miss Ana Mae invested in my company.”

“Your company?”

“Fisher Innovative Solutions. But these days I run FDE, Inc., Fisher Design and Electronics,” he said, sweeping a hand to encompass the garage. “It doesn't look like much, but with high-speed Internet and FedEx, it's all I really need. And thanks to Miss Ana Mae, I can devote all of my time and energy to my passion.”