Treasure Me (26 page)

“No, no—I want it!” Bud shot from his chair. He bellowed across the newsroom. When Ralston neared, Bud said, “Get your stuff off Hugh’s desk. It’s the sacred territory of this paper’s finest investigative reporter. You’ve got a desk in Features—use it.”

Ralston flapped his gums like a fish out of water. After he sulked off, Bud swung back around. He was glowing like a goddamn holiday wreath and Hugh reveled in an involuntary spurt of self-congratulation.

It was snuffed out by a growing sense of doom.

Arguing with Theodora about where to spend the night wasn’t much of a plan.

Privately Birdie didn’t relish the thought of being alone, not after learning her mother had conned the sweet-looking Landon Williams. His ancestor, Henry Williams, was the abolitionist who’d helped Justice open the restaurant after she arrived in Ohio. So Landon came from good stock. Probably Meade was nice too, if she didn’t have reason to hate you because your mother had taken her father for all he was worth.

Her pulse rattling in her ears, Birdie stared out the passenger window of the Cadillac. What if she ran into Landon at the restaurant? She had no memory of him. She’d been young when her mother arrived in Liberty to shake him down. If he walked into The Second Chance, would he take one look and remember her as the child he must have known?

Or worse, what if Meade found out? A woman so powerful made for a lethal enemy.

Worried, she rubbed her arms. Yeah, she was glad for the invitation to bunk at Theodora’s place tonight.

There were other reasons to skip a night alone. With Hugh incommunicado—he still wasn’t answering his cell—she doubted he was back at the apartment. Besides, Finney was probably livid. Birdie hadn’t returned to work as promised after taking off with Theodora.

Waiting until morning to deal with the cook’s wrath
was
a good plan.

The Cadillac rumbled past Liberty Square. Birdie caught a glimpse of The Second Chance behind a speckling of falling snow. The place was aglow with light. Pretty Mrs. Daniels was framed in the picture window with a mountain of shopping bags at her feet and her adoring husband, Garrett, seated to her left. They were holding hands, grinning as their third-grader, Tilly, spun in a circle in a red velvet dress. The Liberty Elementary School holiday concert would be held next week and Tilly had captured a lead role. Birdie enjoyed the Daniels family, especially when Tilly clambered onto a chair, her ice cream sundae forgotten, and burst into song. The kid was a perfect-pitch soprano and the other diners always rewarded her efforts with hearty applause. At those moments, the restaurant seemed more like a private gathering, as if all the diners were family with Tilly a precocious delight, and Birdie, a distant relation, was able to warm herself in the room’s easy affection and good cheer.

She’d begun looking forward to her time spent at The Second Chance. Sure, she hated waiting tables even if the tips were getting larger with the holiday season in full swing. She didn’t plan to spend a lifetime taking orders and running miles. Even Delia talked of moving on once she figured out what she wanted to do with her life.

She huffed a breath on the frosty white of the passenger window. She didn’t enjoy the job so much as the people. Finney expected to see her at work. Delia looked forward to gossiping. Ethel Lynn, who was so scatterbrained she probably had marbles rolling around in her head, calmed down once Birdie tied on an apron.

In an unexpected way, she experienced a sense of welcome every time she arrived. For the first time in memory, her presence in a room mattered to someone. It mattered to the three women of The Second Chance.

And Theodora makes four
.

Straightening, Birdie peered through the windshield. “We’re in the woods.” The branch of a fir tree smacked the side of the Cadillac, and she jumped. There was nothing to see but pines so thick they kept the falling snow from reaching the ground. “Hire a lumberjack, Theodora. Your place is buried in trees.”

Looking pleased, Theodora made a sound with her nose.
Snickety, snickety.
“I like it this way. There’s lots of privacy and enough wildlife to feed a nation. It clears out a ways up.”

“You live back in the woods?”
In a hut, in a tree house?
“Don’t you get scared out here, all by yourself?”

“I require my solitude.”

“I’d be scared shitless.”

“Nonsense.” Theodora gave her satchel a pat. “I can take care of myself.”

Up ahead, the trees parted like the curtains in an old-time cinema. Snow brushed the gentle clearing. The log cabin, cut into the side of the hill, was surprisingly large. The sturdy dwelling featured a wraparound porch.

“Your house is big.” Taken aback, she leaned toward the windshield for a better look. “You live here alone?”

“Since my husband died, a long time ago.” Theodora parked in the garage and cut the engine. “Come inside. I’ll get supper on.”

While she bustled around the kitchen, Birdie wandered through rooms cluttered with hunting gear and memorabilia. The walls were chock-full of photographs—family shots with Theodora proudly seated in the middle, older pictures of her as an attractive young woman. There were five children, all now in middle age—two sons with long legs they hadn’t inherited from their mother and a daughter who was younger than the rest.

“That’s Belinda,” Theodora said, finding Birdie in the dining room holding a silver-framed portrait. “Ornery thing when she was small. Always into something. She still carries a compass in her purse, one of those gadgets they used to put in Cracker Jack boxes. Do they still make Cracker Jack? I wonder.”

“She doesn’t look much older than Meade.”

“Born the same year. Belinda just turned forty-one.”

Which meant Theodora had been well into middle age before bringing her last child into the world. Birdie’s respect for her grew.

Birdie’s own mother had never let her forget what a hassle it was to drag one kid around. And here Theodora had five children, all of whom had sprouted children themselves like so many wildflowers. There must be fifty people in her extended family, most black, some white, a petite Asian girl hanging on the arm of a young man who was probably a grandson.

Birdie turned toward the long dining room table. Seated on a gold pedestal in the middle of the gleaming walnut expanse sat a… thing. A squat, furry animal that had experienced the misfortune of meeting up with a taxidermist.

“What’s that?” she asked.

Mischief waltzed through the old woman’s gaze. “That’s Alice.”

“No, it’s a rodent.”

“She’s a groundhog.” Theodora gave the beast, which was as big as a terrier, a gentle stroke. “We started out as friends, but Alice upped the ante by digging around in my carrots. Soon enough, she was uprooting the tomatoes and taking bites out of the rhododendron. Oh, I warned her. But if a shot in the air won’t make a varmint listen, then a shot to the head will.” She patted the groundhog’s ear. “The taxidermist was pleased with my handiwork. I did this with a BB gun. Less mess that way.”

“Good God.”

What about Ethel Lynn? She was defenseless, and she got on Theodora’s nerves. The old thing wouldn’t hurt a fly. What if she upped the ante, purely by accident, and rooted around Theodora’s proverbial garden?

Ethel Lynn had been kind enough to invite Birdie over for tea. Sure, the old bat dropped china in the restaurant and squealed like a siren, but she had her good points. She never took the last slice of Finney’s homemade pecan pie. She replaced the toilet paper in the john. When a button came loose on Birdie’s coat, she produced a needle and thread from her enormous purse and sewed it back on.

“I need to know what the bad blood is between you and Ethel Lynn,” she said, following Theodora back into the kitchen.

The old woman lifted the lid from a pot and scooped some kind of stew into bowls. “Watch your tone.” She handed them off and they returned to the dining room. “My business with Ethel Lynn is none of your affair.”

“I really need to know.”

Seating herself at the head of the table, Theodora nodded for Birdie to sit on her right. When she had, Theodora said, “I’ll tell you this much. Her great aunt jilted my great granddaddy. Nasty business.” She lifted her spoon. “Now, wouldn’t you rather hear another story about Justice?”

“Sure.” Birdie lowered her nose to the bowl and sniffed. “What is this? It smells funny.”

“Squirrel stew.”

“Made with real squirrels? The kind that hide acorns?”

Theodora feathered a hand across her brow. “What other kind of squirrel is there?”

“Can I order a pizza?”

“When Justice came north, you can’t imagine what she ate to survive. Foraging through the woods, with ne’er a pot to cook a decent meal or a weapon to bring in game. Now, eat your stew.” Theodora waited with her dark gaze snapping until Birdie brought a spoonful to her lips. After she’d gulped it down, the old woman said, “Now, where was I? Justice came to Liberty with nothing but the clothes on her back. A kind woman on the Underground Railroad outside Columbus wrapped the slave’s bleeding feet with strips of cotton. Those were her shoes.”

Birdie spooned around the chunks of squirrel meat and captured a wedge of potato. “I couldn’t survive without my shoes.” A good thief didn’t trust much but her instincts and a fast pair of Nikes. With her feet bleeding, Justice would’ve been in a lot of pain. “She walked all the way from Columbus?”

“A man picked her up in Marion and hid her in the back of his wagon. Like the woman on the Railroad, he was the right type of white folk. He took her all the way to Liberty.” Pausing, Theodora looked off into the past. “Imagine, child. You’re a young woman and you arrive in a town without a soul to welcome you. Lonesome, tired—imagine how you’d feel.”

Birdie’s heart shifted. Had it been any different on her first day in town? There’d been the overwhelming déjà vu, the feeling she’d stood in Liberty Square at some time in the past. The sensation had made her irrepressibly sad. She’d been lonely and tired, a stranger in a small town.
Like Justice.

“The man Justice loved was still down south,” Theodora said. “She was heartbroken, wondering if she’d ever see him again.”

What if I never see Hugh again?
Birdie lowered her spoon. “How did she go on?”

“The way our kind always does. She found other women to cling to, women who befriended her. They put food in her belly and hope in her heart. They made her laugh when she was down and they found her work—honest work that didn’t pay much, but it was enough to help Justice take root in a new life. A better life than the one she’d known.”

Birdie lifted her spoon.
I’m eating rat. The kind of rat that lives in a tree.

It wasn’t bad. The meat was spicy and wild, with a tart aftertaste. She swallowed it down.

“And if you think Justice was some kind of saint, think again,” Theodora said. “Before she met the preacher’s son and settled into a respectable life—even before she learned to trust the women who became her friends she was… Lordy.”

The old woman hung her head, revealing thinning wisps of hair on her scalp. She lowered her palms to the linen tablecloth and heaved a sigh replete with shame. Birdie grabbed Theodora’s wrist as her fingers curled with agony. The tablecloth bunched in rippling waves.

“What? What did she do? Was she a prostitute? No. Not Justice.”

“Worse,” Theodora croaked, the top of her head bobbing with the word.

What would be . . ?
“No way.” Birdie yanked her hand back. “If you think I’ll believe she murdered someone, I won’t!”

The sound was terrible, from the bowels of hell.
“Worse.”

“Oh, man.” Birdie wracked her brain for possibilities. Floundering, she glanced at Theodora. If the old woman bent her neck any lower, she’d put her nose right into her stew. Was she crying? “I give. What did Justice do?”

The gnarled hands flew off the table, scuttling Birdie’s pulse.

Theodora lifted her head with a snap. “She betrayed the people who loved her the most. She was a
thief.”

“Birdie, are you here?”

Placing his laptop on the coffee table, Hugh scanned the silent apartment. The Second Chance was already closed for the night. Where was she?

He’d driven straight in from the
Register
, where he’d spent most of the day tooling around the paper’s archives for background on Justice Postell. He’d found some material but it didn’t lift his mood. If his rationalizations had made him sick earlier today, he was now emotionally at death’s door. He was a reporter selling out the woman he cared deeply about.

He tried to assure himself it was the right thing to do. If Ralston wrote about Birdie’s true occupation as a thief, she’d suffer the indignity of being exposed before the people of Liberty. She’d made friends here, maybe the only friends she’d ever had.

Opening his laptop, he wrote, Hidden treasure in a small town. He completed a few paragraphs before abandoning the work. Deleting the file, he started over.

While he worked he wrestled an image of her, how her eyes grew soft during those rare instances when motive met opportunity and he’d kissed her. Struggling to keep his attention on the task at hand, he plodded on. A rap on the door broke his concentration.

Delia stood in the hallway. On the lapel of her leather coat, a pathetically joyous Frosty the Snowman pin—some electronic gizmo—blinked on and off.

“It’s December,” she said when he stared. “I get into the spirit early. Has Birdie come back?”

“She’s not here.”

“She took off with Theodora yesterday. She never came back to work.” Absently, Delia fiddled with the paper bag in her hands. “What’s going on? You look bad. Like a guy on his way to the gallows.”

“Don’t hold back, Delia. I have a soft spot for women who tell me I look like shit.”

Giggling, she lifted her shoulders in a flirty shrug. “I’m just saying you need rest. Maybe you’re working too hard.”