When Will the Dead Lady Sing? (3 page)

“Wait, Mackie! Don’t hit him. It’s okay. Sarge will get him.”

A man in gray slacks and a yellow polo shirt stepped from behind the big Emily Brunner holly tree up by the street. Another man, short and stubby, hurried around him with a chain in his hand.

The short man wore jeans and a green T-shirt and walked with a limp. “Hey, boy. Hey, boy.” He sidled toward the buffalo holding out something on one palm. That brute nuzzled his palm as nice as anything and let the man snap the chain through a loop hanging from its neck. “I’ll get him back in the truck,” he called to the taller man. He and the buffalo strolled amiably across the lawn and down the street.

I wished I could go with them. I’d rather walk a buffalo than remain where I was.

Every woman worth her salt has at least one guilty secret in her past. Mine was staring me in the face.

2

“Hey, Mackie, surprised to see me?” Burlin Bullock squinted against the morning sun. I wished a sinkhole would open in our lawn and swallow one of us. I wasn’t particular about which one.

Mama always said that women who don’t fix their faces before they come out of their rooms in the morning are asking Fate to fix their wagons. I stood in the early-morning sunlight wearing no makeup whatsoever, my hair at its day-before-beauty-parlor worst, dressed in fuzzy slippers and one of those snap-front coffee coats that are so easy to throw on. Why hadn’t I developed a taste for flaming-orange satin pajamas with matching high-heel mules?

Burlin was handsomer at sixty-four than he’d been at twenty. His smile had always been wide and attractive, but over the years it had chiseled deep lines into his face that passed for character. His once-blond hair was now silver, but still thick and straight, parted on the left. His gray slacks had a crease you could use to slit boxes, his yellow polo shirt was soft as butter, and his black loafers were polished so the shine hurt my eyes. Or maybe that was the sun’s reflection off his gold Rolex watch. He smelled like he’d just come out of the shower, and although he’d put on weight since I’d seen him last, it suited him. Mama would have said he’d finally grown into his potential.

Burlin always had considerable potential. When we were both at the University of Georgia, he’d been president of the drama club and a steadily rising star in student government. He’d gone on to Yale Law School, with an eye to following his daddy’s footsteps in Georgia politics, but he’d done his daddy one better: He had served a couple of terms in Congress.

Now his gray eyes twinkled down at me from his tanned face. “Cat got your tongue?”

Burlin was always tanned. These days, he docked a sail-boat at Lake Lanier, owned a condo at St. Simons Island, and went out several times each winter to ski in Colorado. How did I know? Because he was a regular guest on one of Joe Riddley’s favorite talk shows, was often asked to sit in on newscasts to comment on national situations, and was a familiar face in the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. We seldom went a month in Georgia without seeing Burlin in the paper for something. He was the kind of politician men admire and women adore.

For one moment of treachery to all the life experiences that have made me who I am, I wished I could strip off my face and look twenty again, and I gathered my wits to say something intelligent. “What the dickens are you doing here?”

He shifted so the sun wasn’t right in his eyes. “My boy is running for governor, you know.” Of course I knew. The election wasn’t for another year, but the campaign had been in the paper for months. Lance Bullock was one of two strong candidates in our party, and with none in the other, whoever won next year’s primary was likely to get elected.

However, having Lance run for governor was one thing. Having Burlin in my front yard was another—particularly when he said, “We’re running his campaign out of Hopemore for the next week or so and staying down at the Annie Dale Inn. I guess you know it?”

I guess I did. Annie Dale Wilson was a year younger than me, and we’d bicycled all over town together, growing up. We’d drifted apart during junior and senior high— Annie Dale got a little wild back then—and lost touch after I went to college and she stayed home to work, but we still enjoyed an occasional chat or a wave when she passed me on her bike. Annie Dale was still a serious biker and spent two weeks each year bicycling in a different country.

“We’re proud of Annie Dale,” I told Burlin. “Some people scoffed when she turned the old house her granddaddy built after he retired from the railroad into an inn. They said she’d never make a go of it because it’s too close to the tracks. But trains don’t come through town anymore, and she’s had folks from thirty-nine states, so far, and a lot of weekend wedding parties. Having a gubernatorial candidate will really float her boat.”

“It’s handy for us. She’s turned the whole second floor over to us, including a sitting room we can use for an office.”

“Still, Hopemore is a funny place for a campaign center,” I pointed out.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s the county seat of Hope County, has several thousand voters, is centrally located between I-20 and I-16, and you’re here.” He smiled down into my eyes. When I didn’t rise to that lure, he added, “Besides, it’s smack in the middle of everything, including the gnat line.” He ruefully scratched one arm.

I’d already noticed the pesky creatures nibbling my ankles in the tall grass. We’d had a lot of rain that week, and our grandson Tad hadn’t mowed yet. I surreptitiously rubbed one ankle with the top of my other foot and wondered why Burlin’s son’s campaign couldn’t be run out of some other deserving town to save me from my current predicament.

Burlin reached out one hand toward me, but I stepped away. His voice was low and husky. “You’ve still got those big brown eyes, and your hair is just like I remember it. The very same shade of honey brown.”

I didn’t bother to tell him about the part my hairdresser, Phyllis, plays in the color of my hair. Instead, I took another step back and demanded, “Did you put that buffalo in my yard?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Same old Mackie.”

Nobody but Burlin ever called me Mackie. For the first time in minutes I remembered Joe Riddley sitting in the dining room with nothing but a window screen to keep him from hearing every word we said.

Burlin was easy and relaxed, not the least bit worried about whether my husband was listening. “I wondered how long it would take you to get your dander up again. The buffalo is Lance’s mascot. See?” He fished in his pocket and handed me a red button with the white silhouette of a buffalo and navy blue words: BULLOCK GIVES YOU NO BULL.

He chuckled. “I asked Sarge to let him graze your yard a little this morning, figuring maybe it would get your attention and lure you out of the house.” He waved away my attempt to hand him back the button. “Keep it. We’ve got thousands.”

“I won’t wear it,” I warned. “I’m a magistrate, and I never display a political endorsement on my property or my person.”

It’s just as well I hadn’t expected him to be impressed. He shrugged and said, “Then put it in your jewelry box.”

I would drop it in my kitchen wastebasket, but I didn’t need to say so. Besides, he wasn’t giving me time to say anything. “I tried to see you last evening. We got to town before dinnertime, and I wanted to look you up before it got dark, but when I found the address listed in the phone book—a big blue house out in the country—there was a crew of kids playing softball in the front yard. I asked where you lived, and one of them said you moved here last month.”

“We did. That house was built by my husband’s great-granddaddy, and it’s a family tradition to deed it to the oldest child. We finally got around to doing that in August.”

“It’s gorgeous.” He looked at the front of our small brick home. “You must really miss it. It was real private, too.” He glanced back over his shoulder.

That reminded me how close our new neighbors were. They probably were hovering behind curtains, watching me entertain a man while wearing my pajamas. “I do miss the privacy,” I admitted. “After living for thirty-five years at the end of a gravel road, with the nearest neighbor a quarter of a mile away, having folks across the street feels a bit like living onstage.”

The truth was, I missed a lot of things about the big old house. I missed turning down our road after work and leaving the whole world behind. I missed eating on our big screened porch, or reading out there while fireflies punctuated the dusk. I missed sleeping where the only sounds were owls, nighthawks, crickets, frogs by our pool, and an occasional truck grinding gears up on the highway. I missed high ceilings and big dim rooms, the smells of new-mown hay, honeysuckle, and the gardenias I’d planted near the house. I even missed Joe Riddley’s noisy hunting dogs, who had stayed behind in their outside pen. I greatly missed my swimming pool.

But I wasn’t admitting more to Burlin than I admitted to anybody else, so I told him what I told them: “Some folks get real teary about leaving their homeplace, but Joe Riddley and I aren’t two of them. We like walking to work and church, and appreciate this little yard after taking care of five acres. We’re glad not to have stairs to climb, and our housekeeper finds it a lot easier to clean six rooms than eleven. Of course, she grumbles about our ‘little bitty kitchen,’ but she used to grumble about having to walk so far between the stove and the sink. Grumbling is Clarinda’s preferred mode of conversation.”

“You cry only in your own bathroom, right?” Burlin always did see right through my scalp to my private thoughts. It disconcerted me back then, and it annoyed me now.

“Not very often. I like this house. We brought most of the things we liked best with us—including some of Mama’s roses, which your dratted buffalo nearly trampled. If it had—”

His held up both hands and backed away, laughing. “Hey, it didn’t. I came to the rescue, remember? And I grow roses, too. What kinds do you have?” He headed in their direction with his usual purposeful stride. Burlin always gave his full attention to anything that interested him.

I sighed. Why hadn’t I paid attention when Mama was trying to teach me the graceful way to get rid of unwanted guests? Next thing I knew, we were standing side by side discussing varieties of roses, and Burlin was prosing on about his attempt to develop a new variety. Suddenly he interrupted himself to demand, “Have you stayed married all these years to the same fellow?”

“He’s changed a bit over the years, but he’s basically the same fellow. How about you?”

That was a low blow and I instantly regretted it. Thirty years ago, Burlin’s wife had been notorious for drunk and disorderly behavior. I’d felt a secret sympathy for the woman—any woman married to a Bullock would need some solace. In years since then, I’d seen pictures of Burlin with several other attractive women—most often his sister Georgia—but I hadn’t seen a picture of his wife in ages.

He rubbed one hand along his long jaw. “I didn’t do so good. I married a folk singer—she gave it up, of course, when we married—and she developed a drinking problem. Maybe you read about her accident—”

Everybody in America had read about her accident. During Burlin’s second term in Congress, Sperra Bullock ran over and killed a five-year-old boy in Virginia, then sped away. A bystander got the tag number, though, and she’d been arrested that same night. In court, she had tried to get off by claiming she was in an alcoholic blackout. That infuriated people. Then she got into several shouting matches and one hair-pulling fight with the mother of the dead child, who wanted the court to take Sperra’s five-year-old son away to atone for the loss of her own. It had been the kind of nasty, brawling case the media loves. Sperra went to prison and Burlin finished out his term. He never ran for another elected office.

“Was that why you decided not to run for re-election?” I asked now.

“Partly,” he admitted, “but I also decided I prefer to work behind the scenes. I had a history teacher back in junior high who said something I’ve never forgotten: ‘The history of Georgia is men who loved this state and cared enough about her to give their lives to making her great.’ That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”

He might have been on a stage, but I didn’t intend to stand there as an audience of one. “What finally happened to your wife?”

He shrugged. “What happens to every drunk who doesn’t quit. She went in and out of rehab for ten years, but she couldn’t lick the stuff. She died twenty years ago.” He moved so close I could feel his warmth through my thin robe. “I wouldn’t be this frank with everybody, but it was actually a blessing as far as we were concerned. She was neither a wife to me nor a mother to Lance after the accident. She couldn’t stand to be near him, in fact. The other mother claimed that Sperra didn’t deserve to have a child because she’d been so careless about somebody else’s, and that nearly destroyed her. She and Lance had been as close as any mama can get to a kid when she needs to suck a bottle half the day, but after that she couldn’t bear to hold him or touch him. Even having him in the same room could make her hysterical. She said she kept seeing that other little boy’s face over his.” He turned away to fondle a yellow rose, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “When she lost Lance, she lost everything.”

Tears clogged my throat. “She still had you.”

He shook his head and said softly, “She never had me.” He stroked the rose.

It wasn’t until he turned back toward me that I remembered again that Burlin Bullock was not only a politician, he was a darned good actor, and we’d just played a scene. I hoped Joe Riddley and my neighbors didn’t know they were supposed to be our audience.

“Don’t you have somewhere else you have to be?” I demanded.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little Swiss Army Knife. “Actually, I do. But before I leave, may I?” He pointed to the yellow rose. When I nodded, he cut it off and held it to his nose for a moment, then grinned and stuck it behind his ear. “Dashing, right?” He took it down and cupped it in one palm. “I’ve been experimenting with a new rose that I think is going to bloom this next year. Shall I send you a cutting? It’s a real spicy red. I’m thinking of calling it the MacLaren. Would you like that?”