Gone South (15 page)

She thought of the vintage jewelry she’d acquired piece by precious piece at yard sales and flea markets. It had little monetary value, but a thief wouldn’t know that. She could imagine worse scenarios than theft too. Drugs, violence, even murder. Her spine tingled with cold.

“She wouldn’t … do anything violent, would she?”

“No. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He smiled. “But if flies had pockets, she might pick ’em.”

Tish stood up. “I’ll get on home. I guess we’re done here anyway.”

“Not quite.” George took a slender green book from a bookcase behind him and handed it to her. “Read this. It was written when the memories were fresh. Some of the stories were likely embellished through the years, but the basics are accurate.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

Small, elegant lettering marched across the worn cover.
The Proud History of Noble, Alabama, as told by its citizens and recorded by Miss Eliza Clark
.

“One of Marian Clark-Whoever’s ancestors?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am. I’m afraid so. There’s a bookmark where the info about the McCombs starts.”

“You were ready for me, huh?”

“I’d like the book back when you’re finished, please, so don’t let Mel steal it.”

Tish opened her mouth to say the girl with the warm brown eyes and cheerful smile surely wouldn’t steal a musty old book, but George’s stony expression made her shut her mouth and walk to the door without further comment.

George still couldn’t quite grasp it. Mel was really back in town and staying with Letitia McComb. He turned to walk downstairs.

Dunc and his wife should have taken their daughter in. She’d burned that bridge behind her, though, and they’d taken a match to it on the other side.

Mel must have found Miss McComb’s offer downright irresistible—the way George had found the lure of the garage irresistible.

He found Calv in the back room, solemnly spreading the new batch of 1920s-era sheet music over the battered Formica surface of the worktable. He was sorting the pages into his usual categories: extra fine, fine, and trash.

He looked up with curious eyes. “Did you tell her?”

George nodded.

“She take it all right?”

“Pretty much.” George slipped his hands into his pockets. His right hand found the key to the padlock.

Calv returned to his sorting. “Did you talk to her about the garage?”

“Yes sir. We’re in.”

The delight on Calv’s face made it worth every penny. “The Lord’s gonna restore the years the locusts have eaten.” He hooted and slapped his thigh. “The blessing of the Lord is gonna make us rich, and He’ll add no sorrow with it.”

“Well … there may be one small sorrow this time. A skinny little sorrow, about five feet tall.”

“Huh?”

“Mel’s staying with her.”

Calv’s smile faded. “You mean Mel Hamilton?”

“Do we know another Mel? Of course I mean Mel Hamilton.”

“That was really her, then. The girl I saw on the sidewalk.”

“Yes sir, apparently it was.”

“She’s staying with this Letitia?”

“Yes.” George squeezed his eyes shut against his own insanity. “But I’m still putting my car in Letitia’s garage tomorrow morning.”

“Say what? Say
what
?”

George wheeled around and walked out. He didn’t want to discuss Mel’s hankering for fast cars.

The living room reeked of cigarette smoke when Tish walked in. “Oh no you don’t,” she said. “Not in my house.”

A matchbook lay on the coffee table. She recognized it as the kind she’d stashed in a kitchen drawer. If Melanie had rummaged through drawers, she might have helped herself to more than matches.

In the kitchen, Tish opened the drawer where she’d placed her Victorian napkin rings. There they were, the silver plate gleaming. She pulled them out and dropped them into her purse for temporary safekeeping.

She saw no sign of the food she’d picked up at Bag-a-’Cue. Not on the table, not in the fridge. Tish checked the trash and found the bag, crumpled and empty. Melanie had devoured two huge barbecue sandwiches and all the fries.

Tish returned to the living room. “Melanie? Where are you?”

No one answered, but light spilled from the doorway of the guest room.
Melanie lay curled up on the bed, sound asleep, her hands under her cheek. On the floor were her filthy, worn-out sneakers and filthier socks.

Tish spread a blanket over the girl. Turning out the light but leaving the door ajar, she then took her purse up to her bedroom, still cluttered with unopened moving boxes.

She pulled the four napkin rings out of her purse. She’d always loved their unusual design of cherries and leaves. Somehow, they’d ended up at a yard sale in rural Michigan where the items on the next table included tractor parts and goat collars. Seeing them again made her homesick for the farmlands and orchards of her home state. More than that, she was homesick for a place where she’d had friends. Acceptance. Community. Here? She might be an outsider forever.

She found the box labeled
jewelry
, still taped shut, and scratched out the word with a fat black marker. She wrote a new label—
old magazines
—and hid the box under an empty duffel bag in the back of her closet. She tucked her purse out of sight there too, and hid the napkin rings in the pocket of an ugly windbreaker at the back of the closet. Later, she would buy a safe or a locking cabinet. If she could afford one.

After gathering some clean clothes for her guest, she headed downstairs again. She left the clothes on the chair in the guest room and retired to the couch with George’s book. She opened it where he’d left the bookmark.

While Mary Ellen Carlyle lay dying of consumption in a convalescent home, knowing her adored husband and all four of their sons had sacrificed their lives on the altar of the Cause, foul carpetbaggers and Yankees invaded the family home. Perhaps it was by God’s mercy that the grieving widow and mother perished far from home, never knowing that Nathan McComb, that liar and blaggard from the North, had stripped her beloved abode of its remaining treasures
.

Fancying the mahogany mantelpiece and marble hearth that Hudson Carlyle had bought at a great price, McComb hired a crew of darkies to disassemble it in the Carlyle manse and then assemble it again in the home he was building on South Jackson Street
.

Tish looked up at the fireplace. A mahogany mantelpiece, a marble hearth. She went back to reading.

The entire edifice is polluted with the fruits of his thievery, from delicate drawer-pulls to elegant doorknobs and sturdy door-hinges
.

The house still stands at this writing, a vile monument to McComb’s rapaciousness and greed. Although the home was long ago sold into the hands of innocents who knew not its history, our town’s long-established families still remember the evil that swooped down upon us from the North
.

Long may the people of Noble hold the Carlyle name in honor and remembrance, while giving the name of McComb the contempt it deserves. Nor let us forget the wife, Letitia McComb, that most unchaste and unkind of women. Undeserving of the name of “lady,” she will forever share the infamy and dishonor of her spouse
.

Unchaste? Tish closed the book, her cheeks burning. It was a pack of lies, though, put together by people who’d lost almost everything in the War—everything but their pride and their hatred for Yankees. And at least some of the locals believed every word of the book was true.

No wonder the woman at the bank had changed her friendly tune when she saw the name on the driver’s license. No wonder the burly guy at Bag-a-’Cue had relished repeating her distinctive, old-fashioned, infamous name to announce
her presence. She was lucky the kitchen crew hadn’t slipped something nasty into the barbecue sauce.

Or maybe they had. She shuddered.

Mel was the one who’d eaten it, though. Every bite.

Tish opened the book and read that scathing account again. Surely there was another side to the story. Those old letters might shed some light on it. Once she’d set up her computer, she’d find them and scan them.

Idling at a red light, the 454 engine made the long hood tremble. Tuxedo black, the original color.

George wished he was seventeen, cruising Main on a Friday night with one of those cute cheerleaders who’d always ignored him. But he was a couple of years from forty. It was a Thursday morning, a workday. And his passenger was a prissy little fluff ball with no brain to speak of. He groaned at the memory of his mother dressing her little dogs in sweaters this time of year.

The light changed. Letting out the clutch, he unleashed the beast. The bass vibrato bounced off the brick buildings, waking a laugh from deep inside him.

Then unhappy thoughts intruded. Mel might have swiped some valuables already, or she might have thrown one of her legendary tantrums. Worse, the kid might have used her angelic smile to win Letitia’s trust and pave the way for some con game.

He slowed for the turn onto South Jackson. Daisy put her paws on the window and peered out, shivering with so much excitement that her leash shivered with her.

“Calm down, dummy. You don’t live on this street anymore, okay?”

She let out a faint yip.

Maybe he should count his blessings. Daisy was the quietest dog his mother had ever adopted. If he had to be stuck with the surviving dog, at least she wasn’t one of the loudmouth yappers.

He downshifted, turning into the familiar driveway, and the growl of the engine made him grin. He finally owned a muscle car—a ’70 Chevelle SS 454, no less—and he’d wangled his way back into the garage that Calv had been so rudely evicted from. They had plenty to work on too, from brakes to wiring problems to upholstery.

George’s smile fell away. Mel sat on the porch steps, knees together, feet splayed out, a cigarette in one hand and a Coke can in the other. She turned her head, giving the car a faint smile—of mockery or approval? He couldn’t tell. She gave no sign that she recognized him.

He cranked the window down. “Hey, Mel.”

She squinted at him through a blue haze of smoke. “George? What are you doing here?”

“That’s what I’d like to ask you. Letitia let you spend the night?”

“Tish, you mean? She sure did. She’s nice.” She glowered at him. “I can’t believe nobody wanted to be honest with her about the McCombs.”

He tried to bury the defensiveness welling up inside him. “We hashed it out, last night. Part of it, anyway.”

“So, why are you here?”

“Dropping off my project car. I don’t have a garage so she’s letting me rent hers.”

Leaving her Coke on the steps, Mel stood and sauntered across the shaggy lawn. She was wearing baggy jeans and a Detroit Pistons sweatshirt, very different from the semi-Goth styles she’d favored for a while. He hoped they were borrowed, not swiped, from Letitia’s closet.

“Doesn’t look like a project car,” Mel said.

“Nice paint job, isn’t it? I bought it that way, but there’s still plenty of mechanical work to keep me busy.”