Hissy Fit (37 page)

“All of this?”
Will asked, peering into the open cargo doors of the van.

“Yep,” I said. “All for you. I believe you’ve already seen the invoices.”

He glowered at me. “Where does it go?”

“Anywhere you like,” I said. “It’s your house.”

“I mean, where do you want it all to go?”

“I don’t work for you anymore, so it doesn’t make any difference to me. Maybe you should ask Stephanie.”

“Not funny,” Will said. He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a minute, and then looked over at Adam and Jorge, who were waiting expectantly with the furniture dolly at the edge of the loading ramp.

“Keeley,” he said, finally. “Could you step into the library, please?”

I glanced down at my watch. “Okay. But just for a minute. This van is due back at Ryder in half an hour.”

“I’ll pay for an extra day,” Will said. He looked at Adam and Jorge. “Why don’t you guys go out to the kitchen and get yourselves a sandwich or something?”

I followed him into the library and he carefully closed the door behind him. He gestured toward the only seat in the room, the leather wing chair behind the desk. “Would you like to sit?”

“Sure,” I said. I sat down and folded my hands on the desktop and waited.

Will paced around the room. He reached down into one of the boxes stacked against the bookshelves and brought out a leather-bound volume.

“Keeley,” he said, his voice low, his eyes on the pages he was thumbing through, “I’ve been an ass.”

“That,” I agreed, “is an understatement.”

“I’ve been an ass in a lot of ways. About Stephanie, this house, blaming you for that disaster out in the dove field, all of it. I, uh, got caught up in some crazy fantasy, and then I was concentrating on getting Loving Cup back on track, and I guess I just lost touch with reality.”

He looked up and smiled crookedly. “The only thing I did right since I moved here was to hire you in the first place.”

“Probably.”

He stared down at the book. “As it turns out, you were right about her all along. She, uh, didn’t have any real interest in living in Madison full-time.”

“Imagine that,” I said. “How’d you figure it out?”

“A broker called me yesterday, wanting to set up an appointment to come out and list the house.”

“This house?” Now I was shocked.

He nodded. “He was with some Atlanta real estate agency that handles what they call exclusive properties. He’d been showing Stephanie houses in Buckhead, and I guess she let it slip that I owned a plantation house over here, and that we’d eventually be selling it. I think he actually jumped the gun. I called her as soon as I got off the phone with the guy, and of course she tried to deny it, but I even had the guy’s name and the name of the agency, so she couldn’t really lie her way out of it.”

“Ouch,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to find out about her that way.”

He sighed. “Better now than later. Anyway, I uh, want to apologize to you. And I’d really like it if you’d come back to work for me. I want you to finish up Mulberry Hill.”

Now he was standing directly in front of the desk, looking down at me. “Without any interference. Or outside influences.”

I gave it some thought. “What about that Thanksgiving deadline?”

He reached in the pocket of his slacks and brought out a small black velvet box. He looked at it sadly, then put it back in his pocket. “No more deadline. Take all the time you need.”

On Wednesday
Gloria came back from the post office with a package, which she laid on my drawing table. It was wrapped in brown paper recycled from a Bi-Lo grocery sack and addressed to me in wavery black ink. “Open it,” she instructed.

I slit the box with the edge of my scissors, and out slid a thick rectangle wrapped in a cardboard sleeve. I cut the tape on the sleeve, unfolded the flaps of cardboard, and found myself looking down at a formal black and white portrait of Jeanine Murry Murdock. She wore the same kind of black off-the-shoulder drape I’d worn in my own high school senior picture. Her dark hair was teased and flipped up at the ends, and her lips were parted, just slightly, into a smile that promised everything.

Gloria stood by my shoulder, looking down at the photo. “You like?”

I nodded. “Where’d you get it?”

“Sonya Wyrick,” she said. “She called me, not long after you went to see her that second time. Said she wanted to do something to make amends. We talked. I told her how you felt. She hadn’t heard about Vince Bascomb. I told her what Drew said—you know, about the fact that we’ll never be able to recover your mama’s body. She said then that if she could find it, she had something she wanted you to have. I think this is it.”

“And I’m just supposed to forgive and forget, is that it?”

“That’s up to you,” Gloria said.

I turned around. “What would you do?”

“Me?” she asked. “I think I would want to lighten my load. Right now, Keeley, you’re carrying around an awful lot of black muck. You hate Drew Jernigan. Hate Lorna Plummer. Hate Sonya. Hate Darvis Kane. And you know what? It’s not doing you a damn bit of good.
Sonya feels bad, but she’s apparently the only one of ’em who has a conscience.”

“I want them to hurt,” I said. “I want Darvis Kane found. I want him in jail for killing my mother.”

She sat down at the conference table and started flipping through the rest of the mail she’d brought back from the post office. “Look,” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell you this at all, but I hate to see you spending all this energy making yourself miserable, so here goes. I talked to Howard Banks about Darvis Kane, and he’s been doing some digging.”

“Sheriff Banks,” I said eagerly. “Does he know where Kane is?”

“No,” Gloria said. “Howard ran one of those national crime computer checks. Darvis Kane did some time in the late eighties and the early nineties for mail fraud, auto theft, and bank fraud. He was released from a county jail in Bakersfield, California in 1997. And after that, there’s nothing.”

“He might still be alive,” I said. “Daddy’s detective could still track him down.”

“No,” Gloria said, sounding very definite. “No more detectives. No more digging. Howard says Kane is probably dead. Darvis Kane was a con artist and a thief. He ran with criminals most of his life, and the chances are one of them killed him. So that’s it. End of story.”

“Did you tell Sheriff Banks about Drew Jernigan’s part in Mama’s murder?” I asked. “Does he think something can still be done?”

“He already knew,” Gloria said. “Vince Bascomb called him up and asked him to come out to see him at his house, just a couple of days after you saw him. I guess he didn’t want to take his secret to the grave.”

“Then why isn’t Drew in jail?” I demanded.

“Because Drew Jernigan denied everything,” Gloria said. “And without a body, there’s no proof of any of it. Now, Keeley,” Gloria said sternly. “I want you to stop obsessing about this. Your father wants it too. Jeanine has been dead for twenty-five years. It’s over.”

I propped Mama’s picture up against the drafting lamp on my table. I would need a frame. Sterling silver always looks nice with black and white.

“So that’s it,” I said softly. “No justice. Sounds like a made-for-television movie. No justice for Jeanine.”

“Well,” Gloria said thoughtfully, “maybe just a little. Poetic justice, I guess you’d call it.” Slowly that megawatt smile blinked on. “I passed Madison Mutual coming back from the post office, and I thought I’d check to see if the new console tables we ordered for the boardroom had been delivered. Guess who’s sitting in the president’s office starting today?”

“Drew,” I said. “He’s been sitting there every day for as long as I can remember.”

“Not anymore,” Gloria said gleefully. “It’s Kyle’s office now. According to the new head teller, there was a shake-up at the quarterly board meeting, and Drew was quietly dethroned by unanimous vote.”

“How?” I asked. “It’s a family-owned bank. The Jernigans
are
the board.”

Gloria shook her head. “Correction. GiGi, A.J., and Kyle are the board. Together the three of them hold controlling interest in the bank. I guess having the sheriff pay them a visit to inquire about Vince Bascomb’s story got GiGi’s attention. Plus I hear she thought Drew was spending too much time with JoBeth, the old head teller. And the boys had apparently had it with their father screwing around on all of them. So now JoBeth is on the street, and from what I hear, Drew is too. Although it’s a very nice street. GiGi has decided to keep The Oaks and the house at Cuscawilla. She’s decided Drew can have the house at Highlands.”

“So Kyle’s president of Madison Mutual?” I asked. “A.J.’s in Chicago, learning how to be a mortgage broker. And Drew’s out? For real?”

“For real,” Gloria said. She reached for her Rolodex. “I think I’ll give Kyle a call. That new office of his is going to need some work.”

We held
Mama’s memorial service on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

True to his word, Will had quietly bought up all the lots on the cove from the Jernigans, including, at his absolute insistence, Vince Bascomb’s property. His first acts as new owner had been to burn down what was left of the old cabin, and replace all the planks on the dock.

And so, on that sunny autumn Saturday, at three in the afternoon, the five of us—me, Gloria, Daddy, Serena, and Austin—stood on the end of the dock and finally said our goodbyes to Jeanine Murry Murdock.

Austin had made a beautiful wreath of daisies, Mama’s favorite flower, with a single fat pillar candle set in the middle of it, like a float, and after Dr. Wittish finished with the brief service, we lowered it into the lake and set it adrift.

After a while Dr. Wittish went off to work on his sermon for the next day, but the five of us stayed on. We drank some champagne, cried a little, and stayed out on the dock well past dusk, watching the gently bobbing wreath until finally a soft breeze came up and the candle’s flame flickered and died.

Exactly one month later, on Christmas Eve, the five of us stood around another grouping of flowers and candles with Dr. Wittish.

Austin had outdone himself decorating Mulberry Hill. Two huge Della Robbia wreaths festooned with gleaming apples, pears, lemons, limes, and a single pineapple hung from red velvet ribbons on the wrought-iron gates to greet the wedding guests. He’d lined the driveway to the house with hundreds of glass hurricane lamps, inside each of which burned large red bayberry candles. All the tree trunks on the
oak alley had been wrapped with tiny twinkling white lights, and on the porch of the house itself, miles of spruce roping were interspersed with the waxy magnolia leaves, holly berries, and dried hydrangea blossoms. More white lights covered the six-foot fir on the hanging balcony over the front door, and the door itself was flanked by a pair of eight-foot-tall hand-hammered brass figures of the angel Gabriel, whose trumpets crossed in the exact middle of the door.

And parked near the doorway, festooned with ribbons, stood Daddy’s favorite touch, a gleaming white 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.

With Stephanie off my back, I’d easily completed Mulberry’s restoration by the first week in December. Will had been so pleased—thrilled, really—that he’d given me a very special Christmas gift.

All modesty aside, the house looked spectacular that night, lit almost completely by candlelight. A fire crackled in the fireplace in the front parlor, where we’d placed the big Frazer fir Will and I had driven to North Carolina to cut ourselves, and the mantel was lined with boughs of holly, spruce, fir, and magnolia, wrapped with wide cream silk ribbons.

I’d hired a string quartet to play in the back parlor, and they’d arranged themselves artfully around the room, where they were the perfect accessories to the magnificent furniture and paintings.

Miss Nancy had offered to hire the caterer for the event, and I, with a hundred other details to take care of, had gratefully accepted her offer. She’d dimmed the lights of the glittering Waterford chandelier, but the heavy mahogany table was covered with the Georgian silver candlesticks I’d bought in New Orleans, plus silver trays of the tiniest, most delicate canapés I’d ever seen.

It was an hour before the ceremony, and I’d been so busy all day, I hadn’t had a single bite to eat. I was famished. When I thought nobody was looking, I snuck downstairs, barefoot, with only a thin satin robe covering my slip, and swooped down on the table and snatched up what turned out to be a morsel of crab cake. Miss
Nancy, dressed in a floor-length green velvet dress with a red ribbon wrapped around her walking cane, came into the room just in time to catch me at my thievery.

She slapped my hand smartly. “Get your mitts off the goddamn crab cakes,” she exclaimed. “That’s for company. And get your ass upstairs before the guests start arriving and catch you in nothing but your drawers.”

“Ta-da!” Both of us whirled around to see Austin, standing in the dining room doorway flushed with excitement. He was still dressed in jeans and a white chef’s smock.

Two men in white shirts and tuxedo pants stood beside him, staggering under the weight of the biggest wedding cake I had ever seen.

“Good Lord!” Miss Nancy said.

“Put it over there, on the sideboard,” Austin directed. “And don’t break any of those Steuben wineglasses.

“Do you like?” he asked, when the men had disappeared into the kitchen.

Nancy and I stood in front of it, turning this way and that to take in every detail. The cake was a three-foot-tall scale model of Mulberry Hill, accurate right down to the balcony with a tiny tree fashioned from a sprig of rosemary trimmed with silver dragees.

“It’s amazing,” I breathed. “How did you do it? Or did you?”

“All by myself. All it took was five years’ worth of back issues of
Martha Stewart Living,”
Austin said, preening just a little. “It’s a lemon pound cake, with lemon curd filling and white chocolate ganache icing, and all the windows and doors are marzipan.”

He turned from the cake to give me a disapproving stare. “And just what are you doing down here in your shimmy, little miss, when we have a wedding here within an hour?”

The three of us poured ourselves a glass of champagne, and then finally I ran upstairs to get dressed. I was upstairs in the master bedroom, brushing on some mascara at what should have been Stephanie’s dressing table, when Austin knocked and then darted inside.

“Oh Austin!” I had to catch my breath. He’d changed into a black Armani tux, starched and pleated white shirt with black pearl studs and a red plaid cummerbund and matching bow tie—with black velvet monogrammed evening slippers.

“You like?” he asked, whirling around so that I could get the full effect.

“You’re divine,” I said, deliberately using his favorite adjective. “It’s all divine. And you are the best best friend any girl ever had.” I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him directly on the lips.

He wriggled out of my grasp and stood in front of the full-length mirror, turning this way and that, smoothing his hands over his waist. “Is the plaid too much? Too precious maybe? It’s the LeFleur tartan, you know.”

“Do the LeFleurs have a tartan?” I asked.

“They do now,” he said, twinkling. “I designed it myself. Do you think it’ll work for New Year’s Eve, too?”

“In Madison?” I said dubiously. “I think it’s a little formal for here.”

“No, silly,” he said impishly. “New Orleans. I’m spending New Year’s Eve in New Orleans this year.”

“With Robert?” I was jumping up and down with delight.

“Who else?” he said coquettishly. “Now please, Keeley, get dressed.”

“Is everybody here?” I asked.

“Everybody who is anybody,” he replied. “The house is full to busting.”

“What about Daddy? Have you checked on him? How’s he holding up?”

“He was kind of nervous. Until I gave him his gift. I think that cheered him right up.”

“And what kind of gift did you give him?”

“A tee-tiny little sterling silver flask,” Austin said. “Full of single malt Scotch. He took a swig of that and mellowed right out.”

“Oh God,” I said. “Go back in there and take it away from him. We can’t have him passing out in front of Dr. Wittish.”

“He’ll be fine,” Austin said airily. “You just worry about yourself. How are
you
holding up?”

“Me? I’m fine. No problem. Cool as a cucumber.”

“Really? Then why are you
still
sitting here in your shimmy, when the cream of Madison society is sitting downstairs waiting for that string quartet to start playing Mendelssohn?”

“I’ve got time,” I assured him. “I just want to sit here for another minute or two, and then I’ll get dressed. I’ll be down in five minutes. I promise.”

“You’re thinking about your mama, aren’t you?’ he asked.

I nodded, and a lump rose up in my throat so that I couldn’t speak.

“See you downstairs,” he said, and he kissed my forehead and left.

I sat down at the dressing table and took the tiny cut-crystal flask out of my evening bag. I shook the bottle vigorously, removed the stopper, and touched the last drops of Joy perfume to my wrists and earlobes. Then I slid my dress over my head, zipped it up, and stepped into the highest pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes they were selling that season. I gave my hair, twisted into Mozella’s most elaborate upsweep, a quick spritz of hair spray, and then it was time to make my entrance.

I had to hold the dress’s train bunched up to my knees as I took each stair slowly and deliberately. At the bottom of the stairs, crowded into the hall and parlor, I could see the crowd of glittering guests, and the mingled scent of the flowers and perfume and candles rose up and nearly made me swoon, and I hurried down to join them, gently working my way through the crowd into the parlor, where Dr. Wittish waited patiently in front of the fireplace.

Now the quartet was playing the first sweet strains of Mendelssohn, and there was a low collective “aaah” as Serena, radiant in a long-skirted ivory satin evening suit with a sweetheart neckline, made her way down the stairs, clinging to my father’s arm.

The guests parted to let them pass, flashbulbs popped and motor drives whirred. Gloria stood on the other side of the fireplace, like me, dressed in black velvet, although my gown was sleeveless, with a deep plunging V-neck, while hers was a more modest long-sleeved number. We both held the bouquets of white stephanotis Austin had made for us, and Daddy, as he approached the makeshift altar, had a single white rose pinned to his lapel. He was beaming, and I thought he must be the most handsome man in the room.

Serena’s dark hair was pinned off her neck that evening, to show off the diamond necklace Daddy had given her as a wedding gift. Daddy towered a good six inches over her, and looked down at her with such undisguised adoration that I was blinking back tears even before they’d begun to repeat their vows. I glanced over at Gloria. She was crying. I heard a sniffing off to my left, and sure enough, Austin was bawling like a baby.

Half an hour later we were all drinking a champagne toast in the dining room. Serena hadn’t wanted much in the way of formality. No receiving lines. Just champagne, and good food, and wonderful friends.

She cut the cake and fed it to my father, who by the look of the glow on his face, had long ago drained the rest of the Scotch from his tee-tiny flask. I felt a warm hand on my bare shoulder and looked up into Will’s dark eyes. He looked gorgeous in his black tux, and his red hair, which still needed cutting, gleamed like copper in the glow from the candlelight.

“Nice night, huh?” he asked.

“Perfect,” I told him. I stood on my tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek. But he turned his face just slightly and my lips brushed his, for just an instant.

“Thank you for tonight,” I told him.

“For what?” he asked. “You and Austin did all the hard work. I just stayed out of the way.”

“You’ve done a lot, and you know it,” I said. “Daddy and I can’t thank you enough.”

“How does it feel?” he asked. “Watching your father get married?”

“It feels right,” I said simply. “He and Serena are so sweet together. They’re like a couple of teenagers. She makes him happy. And I couldn’t ask for any more than that.”

“No regrets?” he asked.

“About what?”

“A.J.?”

I made a face. “What about you? Any regrets about Stephanie?”

“Christ!” he said. “When I think how close I came. If it hadn’t been for that grotesque fountain, and the absolute fit she threw over it, if I hadn’t walked up and seen it with my own eyes…”

“She turned out to be a real ball-buster, didn’t she?”

“Literally,” Will said. His hand was still on my back, and he pulled me just the slightest bit closer. “Mmm,” he murmured. “You smell really nice tonight. I never noticed that about you before. Do you always smell this nice?”

“It’s a special occasion,” I pointed out.

“The first time I met you was a special occasion too,” he said, grinning wickedly. “As I recall.”

“When was that?” And then I remembered. The night of my rehearsal dinner. “Oh my God,” I said. “When I think of how I must have looked that night I could still just die of embarrassment. There I was, covered with strawberry margarita mix, barefoot, and having just thrown the biggest hissy fit in my entire life. I can’t believe you watched me vandalize A.J.’s car, without even saying a word. And then you pop up out of that ridiculous yellow Cadillac of yours, and point out that I can’t even spell. That was a great first impression, wasn’t it?”

“You were adorable,” Will assured me. “How could I not hire you?”

My cousin Janey came running up just then. “Hey you guys, come on! They’re about to leave. Serena’s about to throw the bouquet.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me after her, shoving me to the front of the crowd, where I stood with Gloria and a couple dozen other single women of various sizes and ages.

The white Cadillac was pulled up out front, with the motor running, and a big white silk bow tied respectfully to the hood ornament.

A cry went up just then, and Daddy and Serena emerged from the house in a hailstorm of birdseed.

“Bye, shug,” Daddy said, spotting me on the porch and pausing to give me a big hug. “You be sweet, y’hear?”

Serena turned her back to the crowd and tossed her bouquet high over her head. The women all squealed, and reached overhead, but it was Janey who dashed forward at the last second and caught it on the fly.

I wandered back into the house and fixed myself another glass of champagne. The string quartet was still playing, and guests were lingering, seated on the sofas, or standing around, admiring Austin’s decorations.

I went upstairs, to the master bedroom that the wedding party had commandeered to get ready in, and I was sitting at the dressing table, making repairs to my makeup, when Will walked in.

“Oh,” he said, startled to find me there. “I’m sorry. I thought you were downstairs.”

“It’s all right,” I said, dabbing at the corner of my eye with a tissue. “It is your house. And your bedroom. I’m just finishing up here.”