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Authors: Delia Rosen

BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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Chapter 17
The antebellum South.
The period before the Civil War, a time of gentility and breeding, of gentlemen and ladies, of plantations and—
Slavery. That’s the big ugly shadow. Like thinking of famous Austrians or Germans and sticking to just Mozart, Goethe, and Gutenberg. The shadow of human bondage hangs over the South the way Hitler hangs over parts of Europe.
It’s indelible.
But locals have learned to live with the stain. They balance it with a pride in the lives they otherwise lived, with all those qualities that glow brighter in their absence. As much as my grandfather loved wrestling and watched old videotapes until they broke, my dad loved John Wayne. And his favorite John Wayne movie was
Stagecoach
. There’s a scene in that film when Hatfield, the gambler-gentleman played by John Carradine, is about to put a bullet in the head of Lucy Mallory, played by Louise Platt, because they’re going to be overtaken by savage Indians. I remember being horrified by that as a child.
“Daddy, is he going to
shoot
her?” I remember crying.
“Be quiet,” he said.
After the movie, he explained that Hatfield wanted to spare her being captured by the savages, that murdering her was actually a kindness.
I didn’t see that. I saw murdering her as killing her. Years later, I still felt that way, though I saw how it could be interpreted as an act of charity and perverse goodness.
The South is like that. There’s no getting around the awfulness at the center of that prewar society. But the crepe that was hung from it was thick and gay and, if not transformative, at least an effective camouflage. When pressed, Tennesseans will point out, with pride that sounds more like an apology, that their state
was
the last to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.
All of that aside, they did build beautiful homes. Short of a Caribbean beach house or a Central Park triplex, you might agree to marry a so-so guy just to live in one of those plantations. Helen Russell’s estate was no exception.
I had stopped at home to put on sweats, then scooted down the highway and parked around the corner on Elliot. I hoisted the bike out with an appropriately aggrieved “Oy.” It was a compact mountain bike, mud-splattered where my manly friend had no doubt tested that manhood against hill and stream. He had thoughtfully provided me with a helmet and full water bottle. As I adjusted the flimsy-feeling headwear, I hoped that the old saw was true, that riding a two-wheeler was something you didn’t forget. I thanked God that at least the roads were flat here.
Helen was supposed to emerge in about ten minutes so I’d have to circle or fuss with the chain or do something until she appeared. I pedaled to the corner—without falling, though I wobbled a little at the start—and was delighted to find that stalling would not be necessary; a woman in spandex was just emerging from the driveway. I was less delighted with the prospect of having to catch up with her; she was a good tenth of a mile ahead of me, I guessed, calculating her distance by the only measure I knew: New York block lengths. Twenty of them made a mile and this was about two blocks.
I chugged after her, trying to think of what I’d say when I caught up.
“Fancy meeting you here”
wasn’t going to cut it.
I was out of breath before I’d gone one block. I don’t work out; it’s not that I’m lazy, but walking in New York and being on my feet at the deli have always been all the exercise I needed to retain my svelte figure. Calf muscles I’ve got; “wind” is not my strong suit. I was
shvitzing
like a marathoner by the time I caught up to Helen. At which point I had to stop to take a drink. I wasn’t sure she’d seen me until she swung the bicycle in a tight, skillful circle and came back. She continued to pedal around me as we spoke.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I nodded while I drank, then managed to gasp out, “Fine, thanks.” I looked at her. “Hey, fancy meeting you here!”
“Who is it?” she asked, still circling like an eagle—but without the same kind of menace Rhonda had displayed.
“Gwen Katz, of Murray’s Deli.”
“I see now, yes,” she said. “You’re a little far from home.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, hoping she meant the deli and not New York. Jews are paranoid that way. “This is how I’m trying to learn about Nashville,” I said, “by biking through its communities.”
“If you’d care to join me, I’d be happy to show you around,” she said—not breathing hard, the little hummingbird.
I accepted eagerly and got my legs working again. She kindly let me dictate the pace.
I caught glimpses of her as she talked about the neighborhood and its history and the homes. I listened as well as I could with blood slamming in my ears, the helmet partly covering them, and the wind scooping up the rest. When we were all finished with our multiple circumnavigations of the block—and when I was about all-in—she invited me to the house for a lemonade.
Success was never harder won.
A groundskeeper took the bicycles, a butler opened what used to be the servants’ entrance, and we made our way to a sunroom the size of my house.
“It’s got lovely light, don’t you think?” she asked.
“I think you could fit the sun
in
here,” I said.
She laughed coquettishly, she did. A practiced Southern laugh, charming and designed to put a guest at ease. We sat in cobra-backed wicker chairs just a few feet apart. Only hers was facing the afternoon sun.
“That’s why I take my ride in the afternoon,” she said as a servant brought our drinks. “So the rays of the sun can help me recuperate.”
We had just been
out
in the sun, which wrung us dry as toast. She seemed to read my mind.
“It’s a question of sweating out the bad humors and then replenishing them with healthful vitamins.”
She pronounced the word with a short “i” like the British. I was still on the fence as to whether the woman was genuinely cultured or totally affected. She certainly looked like I had always imagined a Southern Belle to look—except for the form-fitting cycling outfit, which revealed zero body fat. She was petite and fluttery, the delicate bones of her fingers always in motion, her eyes lively and alert, her mouth always upturned and painted very red.
“I certainly did the former today,” I said, forcing myself not to chuck the unsweetened lemonade.
“Then you have not been taking these tours for very long?”
“I just started,” I said. “Went around Confederate Hill yesterday, Belle Meade the day before, two other communities before that.”
I was watching those big eyes carefully. At the mention of Belle Meade they twitched just a little, like a gnat had buzzed them.
“We’ve been behaving like criminals,” she said unexpectedly. There was a trance-like quality to her voice. She seemed to be looking at something distant, or past.
“Who has?” I asked innocently.
“All of us who were there,” she said. “The guests. We’ve been keeping away from one another, afraid that our eyes would betray us.”
“Betray what?”
“Our secret,” she said in a rough whisper.
I set the drink on the glass-topped rattan table that stood between us. I edged the chair around it, closer to her.
“What’s going on, Ms. Russell?”
“We planned this murder,” she said.
“We?”
“The Cozy Foxes,” she said. “We—”
And then she erupted in laughter. I nearly fell back. The laugh was big and real, not like her previous titters.
“You haven’t ridden a bicycle in years!” she said. “And I haven’t acted in years—oh, at least twenty of them. But I was very good, don’t you think?”
I was flabbergasted. If I looked half as stupid as I felt, that was too much. What was worse, I couldn’t tell if she were truly amused or if she was Disney villainess amused, laughing at me before she turned me into some kind of creature or locked me in the castle dungeon.
“Don’t try to put one over on a mystery aficionado,” she said, still sputtering out chuckles. “Never mind the mud, when it hasn’t rained here in weeks. Your sweat clothes smell of nothing, not even fabric softener from a recent washing, and your
waitress
shoes have white soles that show nothing of the black rubber from the pedals. Also, poor dear, poor silly dear, I told you nothing but lies about the community and you didn’t challenge a single one. Did you really think that Margaret Mitchell lived on this street?”
I dimly recalled her saying something about
Gone With the Wind,
but I honestly couldn’t remember what.
“Child, she was from Atlanta!”
“I couldn’t hear very well,” I said lamely.
“No, I’m sure not,” she said. “You were too busy trying to figure out how to work that mountain bike—which you borrowed from whom?”
“A friend,” I said timidly.
She took a long draught of lemonade. I waited for the ax to fall. I was too ashamed to move.
“What is your interest in Hoppy Hopewell?” she asked. “Were you a lover? Did he promise you money?”
“No, nothing like that—”
“Then you
are
interested in him!” she charged.
Ow. I fell for that old gambit.
“Yes. I
am
interested in him,” I said.
“Then I repeat: why?”
I wrestled with that one a moment before replying. “Because I’m trying to impress the man I’m dating.”
That took her by surprise. “And that is?”
“Detective Grant Daniels.”
“Indeed! Son of the Civil War historian who named one son each after the competing generals.”
I didn’t pretend to know that. For all I knew, she was lying again. “That’s the man,” I answered.
“Did he tell you about me?”
“No.”
“Let me rephrase that.
What
did he tell you about me?”
Christ, she was good. “That you declined to talk to the police again.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
She finished the glass and poured more from the pitcher—refilling mine as well, which gave me some hope.
“I used to live in this estate with my brother, the eminent philanthropist John Warden Russell,” she said. “Have you heard of him?”
I said I had not.
“He endowed hospitals throughout the state, including our own beloved institutions here in Nashville. When Mr. Hopewell came to town, he befriended my brother—who had a fondness for chocolate and young ladies, both of which were to be found at that shop—and persuaded him to put said Mr. Hopewell on the board of his philanthropy. That was five years ago. He then proceeded to use his position there to try and insinuate himself in the good graces of every highborn family in this town.
“Mind you, John had nothing against a man trying to get ahead—but it became personally embarrassing, as you can, I hope, understand. After several months, John asked him to resign. It created a local scandal, since Mr. Hopewell did not go quietly into that good night. It was insidious—he spread rumors about John and his liaisons. Before very long, my brother became the brunt of jokes at the club, at parties. The matter was not just tawdry, Ms. Katz. It was vicious. There is, as you may know, a rivalry between many of the families in this great state. It was easy and convenient for them to use this to tear him down.
“John took his life within a year,” she said, the life gone from her eyes, the mouth curving down, the voice dropping. She suddenly seemed much older than her fifty-odd years. “I have always blamed Mr. Hopewell for that.” She regarded me with a hint of fire. “I was not sorry to see him gone.”
It took me a moment to collect my thoughts. I did not for a moment think that this one had been a performance.
“Do you think Mr. Hopewell intended for things to go that far?” I asked.
“What he hoped is of no interest to me,” she said
“Of course. May I ask, Ms. Russell—if you hated him so much, why did you go to the party?”
“To change my activities to suit his comings and goings would have given him power over me,” she said. “That I would never allow. No, it was better to remind him of his low place merely by being where he was. True to form, he was a coward until the end. I did not acknowledge him, but I did not ignore him. He hid from me, first in the kitchen and then upstairs.”
I perked. “Did you see him go upstairs?”
“I last saw him slinking in the direction of the staircase,” she said. “Until he crashed loudly and deservedly through the ceiling, I had no idea nor interest where he had gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I said after a long silence. I had sat in silence, watching her; I’d wanted to make sure she had nothing left to say.
“For which part?” she asked.

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