Hidden Riches (3 page)

“Delcie? M.J.?” she called. “Y'all home?”

JoJo looked at her sister. “No one's called us by those names in years.”

Also lost in the past for a moment, Marguerite only nodded, whether in answer to Rosalee or to JoJo's comment didn't really matter. Delcine had been dead and buried for almost twenty years. There was no need to resurrect her or her spirit right now.

“It's Marguerite,” she said as Rosalee bustled into the kitchen. She'd kicked off her shoes in the mudroom off the side porch, slipping into a pair of ratty slippers on the way in.

“And JoJo,” JoJo said.

“Uh huh. Okay,” Rosalee said, looking at the sisters as if both had lost their minds. “I came over to help y'all with the stuff. I know Ana Mae had a lot of it. And I know you two will probably be throwing a lot away. I can help you figure out what should go out and what can be given away. Ana Mae liked to help people, and if something she had could be put to some good use, I'm sure she'd like that. Like all of her fabric and whatnot.”

Marguerite managed to refrain from rolling her eyes. The only decent thing they'd found so far was the blend of dark Arabian coffee in Ana Mae's kitchen. A quick look around when they'd first arrived confirmed that all they really needed to clean out the house were a supply of trash bags and a couple of Dumpsters.

“We were just taking a break from sorting some things,” JoJo said. “Would you like some coffee? There's a lot of cake and pie.”

Rosalee headed to the counter. “Don't mind if I do,” she said, opening a cupboard and pulling down a mug. “Ana Mae always kept a pot going even though she preferred her fancy tea.”

After Rosalee settled at the table with a sliver of sweet potato pie and spooned what had to be a quarter of a cup of sugar into her coffee, the three women ate or drank in silence for a few moments. Then, dabbing her mouth with one of the paper napkins, Rosalee glanced between the sisters.

“I'm still trying to get over the fact that she's gone. I just can't believe it or get my head around it,” Rosalee said.

She pointed to one of the cakes on the counter. “Did Minnie Evers make that cake? That looks like the Tupperware cake set she uses for the bereaved. Minnie can put her foot in some pound cake. I think I'll get me a slice of that too.”

After cutting a generous slice of the rich pound cake, with its lemon drizzle topping, Rosalee came back to the table, pushed the sweet potato pie plate to the side and started working on the second dessert.

Delcine and JoJo shared a glance while Ana Mae's best friend wolfed down the cake. To keep from laughing, JoJo put her face in her own plate.

“So,” Rosalee said around bites, “what do y'all all think Ana Mae did with all that money?”

Delcine's head snapped up. JoJo's fork clattered to the table.

“What money?” they asked at the same time.

Using her fork, Rosalee leisurely cut herself another bite and looked from one woman to the other. “You know, the money. The lottery money.”

The sisters stared at each other.

Though one was fashionably thin and the other plump and pouty, with eyes wide, the familial resemblance between them was now unmistakable.

JoJo practically jumped in her seat. Delcine laid a hand over her sister's in a calming gesture.

“Rosalee, let me cut you another nice big piece of cake and you can tell us all about this lottery money of Ana Mae's.”

T
hat night, in the hotel room in Ahoskie that they couldn't afford but required to keep up the appearances of affluence, Marguerite and Winslow Foster had a fight. It started when Marguerite got back from Ana Mae's to discover her husband propped up in bed with a room service tray at his side.

“Have you lost your mind? There's a ton of food over at the house. I could have brought you a plate.”

Winslow grunted. “Could have,” he said. “But I see you didn't. So what's the difference?”

“You are working my last nerve, Win.”

“So? What else is new?”

“You don't even care, do you? We, your children and I, are about to be thrown out into the streets and you couldn't give a flying rat's ass.”

“Now there's an image,” Win said from the bed.

The look she gave him would have emasculated another man. Winslow, as usual, just ignored her.

She stripped off her blouse and skirt, carefully hanging the pieces in the closet. After swapping a pair of slippers for the black sling-backs she'd been wearing all day, she headed to the bathroom.

“Latrice called looking for you,” Winslow told Marguerite.

“What'd she want?” Marguerite said, her voice carrying.

“What do you think she wanted?”

Marguerite came out of the bathroom, a pink moisturizing cream slathered across her face and neck.

Winslow was propped up on the bed, his hands down his shorts and a pay-per-view porno film on the television.

“That is really disgusting,” she said.

He grunted.

“Turn it off,” she told him. “There's something you need to know about Ana Mae's will.”

Clayton and Archer had a suite in a lovely and four-star-rated bed-and-breakfast inn that Archer had located via the Internet from San Francisco following Clayton's declaration that he would not spend a single millisecond in the Dew Drop Inn of Drapersville.

Archer lounged on a chaise in the sitting room, his leather attaché case and laptop with the law firm work he claimed he needed to do abandoned on the desk. He turned the pages of a hardback book fairly rapidly as he read.

When Clayton got off the phone with JoJo, he went in search of Archer.

“You are not going to believe this.”

Archer glanced up from the legal thriller he was reading. “What?”

“Ana Mae had money.”

Turning a page, Archer put his attention back on the book. “Everybody leaves a little something.”

Irritated at being shut out—again—Clayton went to the sofa and snatched the book from Archer's hand. He flung it across the room.

To his credit, Archer didn't snap, but he did sigh. He looked up at Clayton.

“So, it's going to be one of those nights.”

“Why don't you respect me?”

Giving Clayton wide berth, Archer got up and retrieved his book, smoothing the pages that had been bent.

“I'm sorry,” Clayton said.

“Yeah, whatever. I'm going to bed.”

“In the bedroom?” Clayton asked, his voice low, uncertain of what the answer might be, particularly given his recent display of temper.

“You can have it if you want it,” Archer said. “I'll sleep out here.”

Clayton closed his eyes. “Since this is our last . . . I mean, why don't you take the bed? I'll stay on the sofa.”

Archer met his gaze. “Is that what you really want?”

Shaking his head, Clayton sighed. “Is it really over between us?”

“Only if you want it to be.”

It took a few moments for Archer's words to sink in. When they did, a glimmer of hope unfurled somewhere deep inside Clayton. It had been like this between them for months—everything fragile, tentative. As if any abrupt moment or movement on either of their parts would shatter their relationship, more than a decade long, into a million pieces.

Clayton held out his hand. He hesitated for a beat, then Archer took it in his—the apology given and accepted.

“What were you saying about Ana Mae?”

“She left money. A lot of it, according to JoJo.”

“Where'd it come from?”

“The lottery.”

Archer's brow crinkled at that. “The lottery? The gambling lottery? Holy woman Ana Mae won money from playing the numbers? That doesn't sound right.”

“I was thinking along pretty much the same line. Maybe JoJo's had a few drinks or took a pill to calm her nerves.”

“Are they here at the inn?”

Clayton shook his head. “Lester and JoJo are staying at the house.”

Archer made a face.

“My thoughts exactly,” Clayton said. “I don't know why, though. If memory serves correctly, JoJo is allergic to cats. I wonder where she put them.”

“She must be doped up on Benadryl or something to be able to stay there,” Archer observed as they settled together on the sofa.

“Probably. None of us were particularly close, but if I had to guess, I'd say JoJo kept in touch with Ana Mae more than either Delcine or I did.” Then Clayton said, “Hmm, though now that I think about it, it may have been Delcine who was allergic. We didn't have pets growing up, but Ana Mae was always feeding some stray.”

“Is that right?”

Clay nodded and told Archer about one of the strays Ana Mae had been hiding in the house until Delcine or JoJo spent twenty-four hours sneezing and their mother found the kitten.

Archer waved away as inconsequential the topic of the cats and allergies. They weren't staying at the house on Clairmont Road, and that was all that really mattered.

For the next few minutes, the two men chatted companionably. Like surface friends, not at all like the confidants they used to be.

Talking about cats and Ana Mae back in the day meant they did not have to talk about the rift in their relationship, a divide that sprang up from nowhere a few months ago. Clayton, while a prominent, successful, and sought-after physician in his professional life, remained insecure in his personal life. Deep down, he was still the picked-on gay kid from small-town North Carolina, and all this trip did was reinforce that thinking—a character flaw he thought he had shed years ago.

As a matter of fact, if Ana Mae hadn't died, necessitating this trip across country, Clayton couldn't at all be sure that Archer wouldn't have moved out of their Pacific Heights home.

But gathering his courage, Clayton broached the topic that had been on his mind since he'd gotten the call that Ana Mae was gone.

“Thank you for coming out here with me.”

Archer took his hand. “I know how much you hated this place. I didn't want you to be alone. Not at a time like this.”

A tremulous smile curved Clayton's mouth. Maybe things between them weren't as bad as he'd imagined. Maybe they would sleep together tonight after all.

But before Clayton could nestle into the comfy crook of his lover's broad shoulder, Archer moved away. Clayton bit back a sigh.

“Do you think Ana Mae knew that her preacher is queer?”

That brought Clayton up short. He almost choked. “What?”

“That reverend. Le Baptiste. He's as queer as you and I.”

Clayton shook his head. Getting up, he went to the bar and poured himself a glass of chilled Riesling, then mixed a martini for Archer. “Don't be ridiculous. If there's one thing I know about this town, they do not tolerate homosexuals very well. And definitely not homosexual ministers.”

Archer accepted the drink, sipped from it, then muttered, “Well, if he ain't now, he used to be.”

In her bedroom, in her house around the corner and down the street from Ana Mae's, Rosalee stared at the ceiling, trying to somehow come to grips with the fact that Ana Mae was gone. Really, truly gone. Tomorrow they would put Ana Mae in a grave.

“They may as well do the same thing with me,” she thought.

Ana Mae Futrell was her best friend in all the world. Rosalee didn't know how she was supposed to go on without the routine they'd established. Without coffee over cinnamon rolls. Or dissecting the preacher's sermon while flouring up chicken for frying.

Rosalee closed her eyes. Rocked back and forth in her bed. Trying to hold back the tears. Trying, and failing, to dam all the emotions.

“Think about after,” she said. “Just think about after.”

She'd been stunned, then flattered when Everett Rollings told her she needed to be at the reading of Ana Mae's will. Rosalee couldn't imagine what her friend had left for her. Even though Ana Mae had hit the lottery, there wasn't never no evidence of it in her house or in the way she lived. She still cleaned houses and ironed clothes for her regulars. Just like her mama did.

Thoughts of Sister Georgette, long gone on to glory, made Rosalee smile. Now there was a true Southern lady. Despite Delcine's airs—imagine wanting people to call her by that fancy name Marguerite? Who ever heard of such—and despite JoJo's over-the-top clothes and makeup, the fact was neither of them could hold a candle to their mama.

Georgette Howard Futrell—Sister Georgette to everyone who knew her—raised 'em all. But only Ana Mae got any common sense and decency. Maybe that was because she always remembered where she came from and gave people the love they needed.

Ana Mae was a friend's friend, and Rosalee's grief, which she kept bottled inside during the daylight hours, came pouring out at night when she realized that Ana Mae was well and truly gone.

“Lordy, Lord,” she whispered as the tears started up again. “I'm sure gonna miss you, Ana Mae.”

“Trust me,” Clayton said. “No preacher of Ana Mae's is gay.”

“If you say so.”

“What do you think will happen tomorrow?”

“We'll bury your sister,” Archer said.

“I mean with the undertaker, or rather the lawyer,” he said, sampling his wine. “And that's a perfect example of why I escaped this place. Only in small-town North Carolina would you have an undertaker who is also the lawyer.”

Archer smiled, amused. “Actually . . .”

“Don't tell me. You know someone at home who is a mortician-attorney.”

“No. What I was going to say is I think the town is kind of charming. Nostalgic even.”

The curl of Clayton's lip and the jut of his chin spoke volumes. Clayton despised his hometown. Archer had heard plenty of the horror stories. Returning for the funeral had apparently opened wounds that had yet to heal, even after all these years and miles away.

“Nostalgic,” Clayton practically spit. “Let me tell you about nostalgia around here.”