Wedding Bell Blues (14 page)

When the waitress walked past me, I saw her face. That bleached-out hair, those snarling lips—none other than Mrs. Butch Rigsbee. Oh my God. In the flesh. In person. Here in this house! I wanted to duck down, get under the table. I had seen her photograph in his wallet and I knew it was her. But she had not seen me up close.

“Oops.” The server dropped a corn stick in Debbie Booth's lap. “Hope it wasn't hot.” She laughed, a high horsey laugh, stepped back and clapped her hands. Didn't even apologize.

Had it been meant for me? A small, innocuous gesture to remind me I was under threat? Or was I getting paranoid? I still suspected some weird woman was on the loose in Littleboro and had her eyes on me. Would anyone actually drop a hot corn stick on purpose? Maybe she was just clumsy or simply an inexperienced waitperson.

Debbie quickly picked up the corn stick, tossed it back and forth between her hands, then blew on it to cool. “Not too hot now,” she said and buttered it. “Just right.” Perfect manners. Our Debbie rose above the situation. That's what Mama Alice would have called it.

Mayor Moss frowned, waved her hand to dismiss the waitress from the room. “New,” she said to the rest of us. “Her first event. She's a friend of my chef. Just showed up unexpectedly and he insisted I put her to work.”

The waitress, aka Mrs. Butch Rigsbee, leaned around the passage to the butler's pantry, stuck her tongue out and mouthed, “I've got my eyes on you.” Did she mean me? Or did she think Debbie was me?

Her Honor didn't see the rude gesture or maybe she chose to ignore it. Her Honor was gracious. My grandmother would have applauded her, too, that she knew how to manage gracefully a sticky situation.

There was a silence in the room loud enough to reach the ceiling. We all held our breath waiting for what might happen next. That's when I thought I saw something move in the centerpiece. Something was in the lilies. The lilies moved. Something alive was in and among the centerpiece.

Two bright little dots of black eyes looked up at me.

Had an anole gotten in with the greenery? But these eyes were bigger, farther apart. Not an anole. At the Dixie Dew, Sherman brought the little green lizards inside regularly and alive. He was a hunter, but not too much of a killer. If I couldn't catch the anoles and put them back outside, Sherman managed to eat them one body part at a time, sometimes leaving the tails. Picky eater.

The mayor kept eating her soup and so did the rest of us. Cool and tasty. Good soup.

The little black dotted eyes in the flower centerpiece moved, disappeared, appeared again.

Did no one but me see them? I didn't want to say anything and cause any sort of commotion, like everyone screaming, jumping up and running from the room. All because of a lizard? Or it could be a snake. All I had seen were eyes and a wiggle in the flowers.

We ate amid companionable chitchat: the weather first and foremost, the festival, the trashion show, who had been where, doing what with whom. The corn sticks had gone back to the kitchen and our little butter flowers got softer and wider on the plates.

I smelled some sort of chicken dish coming after the soup and thought to myself, Please don't let the vegetable be green beans. Spinach, I can love. The ubiquitous broccoli lightly steamed. Anything but green beans. Knowing the mayor, and in keeping with the theme, she'd probably planned them first. I hoped dessert was going to be something gooey and chocolate. Please let it be chocolate.

“My wife sent over her Lemon Crème Cake,” Pittman said, as if he'd read my thoughts. “It's to die for.”

I hoped not, but no sooner had he said it than Miss Isabella screamed, “There's a turtle in my soup!”

She fell back in her chair, which landed on the floor with a loud
kathump
. She lay flat on her back, both legs kicking in the air, arms waving frantically.

“There's a turtle in my soup!” Miss Isabella screamed. “It's alive. Alive! It looked at me.”

“What?” the man from
The Mess
asked. He cocked his ear toward Miss Isabella. “What's in your soup? A fly?”

I didn't hear her say “fly.” She said “turtle.” Or I thought she said “turtle.” I wasn't sure and it surely did sound odd. Everyone at the table looked at each other. Had she said “turtle”? I saw puzzled frowns around the table. No one knew what to do. We froze like people in a painting.

“Oh,” said our honorable mayor, springing up from her chair, “my goodness. That must be
our
precious Nadine.” She came around the table, plucked the box turtle from Miss Isabella's soup bowl, held it at eye level and said, “Why you smart little thing, you. Of course. You knew it's mock turtle soup. You knew, didn't you?” She laughed, picked up one of the thick monogrammed linen napkins from the table and wiped Nadine's feet, her little toes as dainty as a doll's fingers. “Smart, smart girl.”

The turtle blinked as if to say, Where did all these people come from? A perky turtle. She looked intelligent, even.

“Those clever Betts Brothers must have put Nadine in the centerpiece. They know how she loves flowers.” Mayor Moss held the turtle close to her chest, said to it, “Don't be scared.” The turtle nodded her little head. “She is not fond of loud noises and that scream may have scared her a bit,” Mayor Moss told the group. “But she does love the television in her room. Especially PBS and golf. Tennis matches make her nervous.”

Mayor Moss walked to the French doors and opened them to a flagstone patio. “She's had her bath for today,” she called back to the frantic Miss Isabella, still flailing on the floor. “And sometimes she gets a touch of baby oil on her shell to keep the shine. She's a perfectly lovely turtle.”

With that she took the turtle out to the patio, patted her shell a couple of times, then released her at the base of an ivy-covered fountain. “Play sweet,” Mayor Moss said.

I didn't know whom she expected the turtle to play with. A vole or two? A dragonfly? A lizard? And a turtle with her own room and TV? Who knew?

The rest of us stood looking down at Miss Isabella thrashing like a two-year-old having a tantrum. Who would reach down to help her up? Then as suddenly as she had screamed and fallen back in her chair, Miss Isabella went limp. Arms limp, outspread on the floor, legs limp, eyes rolled back in her head.

“Is she breathing?” someone asked. I think it was Dr. Rouse Wilson, the dentist. I'd been in his chair often enough growing up I should have recognized him across the table, but in a sport coat and Carolina-blue tie, he looked different. And, of course, he'd gotten bald. He bent over Miss Isabella, lifted her wrist and felt for a pulse. “Faint,” he said. “I think we better call somebody.”

“Who?” asked Her Honor, standing at his elbow. “What?”

A couple of people pulled out cell phones, fingers at the ready to punch in 911, and asked, “What's the house number here?”

“Stand back, everybody,” said Dr. Wilson. “Give her some air.” He went over to a large plant in the corner, broke off a leaf, and started waving it back and forth, fanning Miss Isabella.

Miss Isabella wasn't making a sound. Not a gurgle. Not a cough. The room was so quiet we could hear the paddle fans going
tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick
.

 

Chapter Twenty-one

“Wait,” Dr. Wilson said. “I think she's coming around.” He reached down and helped her up. Miss Isabella stood on her feet, wavered, rocked a bit, held the back of her chair for support. “I think it snapped at me.” She pointed in the direction of the centerpiece. “That turtle. It hissed. It was awful. I definitely heard a hiss.” Miss Isabella wrapped her arms around herself as though she had to protect herself against a turtle, or the memory of the one who had since left the room.

Calista Moss drew herself up tight as a folded umbrella. “Nadine does not hiss. She has never hissed in her life. And snapping is not in her nature. She is not a snapping turtle.”

Miss Isabella shook her mass of white curls fluffy as a bag of cotton balls, put a hand to her forehead. “I don't feel well at all.”

Dr. Wilson, who had been holding her elbow, said, “I think I'll take her to the emergency room, get her checked out.”

Everyone around the table murmured that seemed like a good idea.

We took our seats. Now there were three empty chairs at the table.

“I'm sure Miss Isabella will be perfectly fine.” Mayor Moss picked up her napkin and spread it again in her lap. “Nadine, I'm not so sure about. She's very sensitive. Gets frightened easily.” She frowned slightly, quickly regained her smile, and set about finishing her soup.

Her Honorable's chef, with two sous chefs trailing behind, brought in three large silver casseroles and put them on the sideboard. Everyone was to serve themselves some sort of chicken that was creamy and crispy, mixed with water chestnuts and rice. If there had been green beans around I didn't see any, only asparagus. The third contained a squash casserole that I saw Debbie Booth analyzing in small bites and recording in her mind. I knew Debbie could write a food column and make plain old squash sound like King Midas's gold on a plate.

After everyone had filled their plates, the waitstaff cleared the sideboard of the main meal and brought in dessert trays piled with thumb-sized squares and rounds and triangles of chocolate cake plus little bitty parfaits. But no Lemon Crème Cake. Where was it? Had somebody absconded with it? Pastor Pittman looked at the dessert tray, then at me, and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, Beats me. I even smelled it baking this morning.

Somehow I could see Mrs. Butch W. Rigsbee back in the kitchen, shoving that whole cake in some takeaway box and beating it out the back door, holing up somewhere to eat it, getting supercharged with sugar and planning her next threat to me. I, like Nadine, did tend to scare easily.

Mr. Moss didn't even appear for dessert. Was there really a Mr. Moss at all?

Outside a window I saw a shadow, someone or something move. Mr. Moss?

When the person came closer, I saw Miles Fortune holding a small camera to his eye. What was he doing here? He came to the window, put his face next to the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes, stepped back, took another camera shot, then came to the window again. He stared in at the luncheon party, stood staring a long time. I tried to get his attention by making a face at him, tried to mouth the words, “Go away. You're being rude.”

He ignored me. Everyone else seemed intent on scraping the last smear of chocolate from their dessert plates. Debbie Booth licked her spoon. A minute later, Miles Fortune was gone from the window.

As we were leaving I saw a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud heading down the driveway. “Oh, dear.” Mayor Moss put her hand to her cheek. “That must be Mr. Moss taking Nadine to her psychotherapist. That woman's scream could make her jittery for days.”

No one commented. What did one say: I hope she recovers? I tried to imagine Nadine on the couch in a psychotherapist's office. The one-way conversation.

The first thing I did when I got back to the Dixie Dew was go straight to my pantry/office and on my computer I Googled Mr. Miles Fortune. Put in his name and there was his photo, killer smile and all. He looked L.A. laid-back. Posed casually, one leg laid lightly across the arm of a director's chair in his studio “near downtown Los Angeles.” His biography listed a stint at Oxford, some studies at UCLA earlier, then most recently photography shows in London and Paris. I was so impressed I sat back in my chair. And here he was in little ole Littleboro.

While I was at it, I Googled Ossie DelGardo. Nothing. Not one line. I tried every site, every spelling of the name DelGardo. According to Google he didn't exist. Was he here under some assumed name? The idea sent shivers up my backbone. And this Ossie DelGardo was marrying Juanita, one of our own. That meant he'd be here to stay. Not good news.

I called Ida Plum to come look at the computer screen. As she bent over my shoulder and saw the nothing on Ossie, she said, “Sometimes those things don't know it all. And sometimes it's better not to know so much.”

“Are you saying ignorance is bliss?”

“Not in your case. If I know you, and I have for too long, not knowing just sets your teeth on edge and you won't rest until you get the down and dirty.”

“Well, I wish I didn't know so much about Miles Fortune. All that intimidates me to no end.” I got up. “And the less I know and see Ossie DelGardo, the better off I am.”

Then I Googled Butch Rigsbee and got nothing. I tried every variation of the name, every spelling. Nothing. What was this business of people who had no birth, no history? These nonpeople? They weren't even a name.

 

Chapter Twenty-two

I shut down the computer and started upstairs to change clothes. Ida Plum called after me that Malinda had phoned, said she was making posters for the return of Robert Redford and I could come pick them up.

I found Malinda standing next to the copier in the back of Gaddy's. This copier was so old it could have come over on the Ark. In Littleboro if something still worked, we used it until it didn't or you couldn't get parts for it. This ancient box on a stand shook and rumbled as it ran a page. “Look.” She handed me one of the posters from the still warm stack.

She had found a picture of the
real
Robert Redford online and put it in the center with the word
LOST
and then “large white rabbit with red halter and leash answers to the name Robert Redford,” followed by my name and phone number.

“This will get attention,” she said as she held up the limp poster and waved it to dry.

“Do we want to offer a reward?” I asked.

“Not unless we have to,” she said. “I think people who return lost or stray animals don't really expect a reward. They do it because they love animals.”