Mariner's Compass (12 page)

I finally located Scout in the detectives’ department, where he was being thoroughly spoiled, and headed outside. I sat in my truck planning my next move. Since I obviously had tonight free, I could nose around Morro Bay more, but first I had to make an obligatory stop at the folk art museum.

It was quiet at the museum today. Even our neighbors, the Coastal Valley Farm Supply and San Celina Feed and Grain Co-op, seemed unusually subdued. Usually the sound of noisy ranch trucks and customers picking up supplies filtered over to us here at the museum. Only a few cars were in our newly graveled parking lot, and the hacienda looked almost like what it must have a hundred and fifty years ago when the Sinclair ancestors lived there. I could almost picture a corseted lady standing on the second floor balcony under its red-tiled roof staring out to the green velvet hills, waiting for her husband to return from town or checking on the cattle.

D-Daddy Boudreaux, my very capable and loyal assistant, was bent over, whitewashing a section of the front wall where some vandals had knocked a chunk out of the adobe. He whistled a cheerful Cajun tune that had probably been passed down in his family for 200 years. At seventy-two years old, he’d been the most hardworking and reliable assistant I’d had so far.

“Looks great, D-Daddy,” I said, inspecting his work. “But everything always has since you’ve been here.”

He straightened up and beamed at me. His thick white hair caught the afternoon sunlight and glistened. He was still a handsome man, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by the senior ladies in our museum docent program. He looked at Scout standing calmly at my side. “Who’s the hound dog?”

“This is Scout. Scout, friend.” He sat down and lifted a paw, his red tongue hanging sideways from his mouth.

D-Daddy gave a delighted laugh and shook it. “What a fine dog. Where’d he come from?”

“My inheritance. I suppose you heard about it.”

He nodded. “Gossip flows round here like Mississippi floodwater.”

“I thought so. I’ll leave my current address and phone number in your mailbox. I’ll only be there two weeks, and I’ll be checking my messages at home, too. Since we’re basically all set for the exhibit, I’ll be in and out.”

He leaned against one of the long porch’s rough wood posts. “This man, he sound crazy to me.”

I laughed. “You’re not alone in those thoughts, but he’s dead so he can’t really hurt me, can he?”

D-Daddy shook his head doubtfully. “Even the dead have their ways of hurtin’ folks.”

“On that cheerful note, I’ll let you get back to your work. I’m going to make one last run-through on the exhibit.”

“Let me know if anything needs fixing, you.”

“Sure will.”

I walked through the double Spanish doors into the museum. A volunteer was rearranging handmade handkerchief dolls on one of the shelves of the gift shop. I waved at her and continued into the main hall.

The name we’d voted on for the exhibit was “From a Mother’s Heart.” We’d opened the entries to the public with the only criteria being that the item had to be handmade by or for the entrant’s mother or mother-in-heart. The response from the one article we’d run in the local free paper had been overwhelming, and eventually we were forced to turn people away. Recording and cataloging the entries had been a nightmare, and I’d spent a lot of days working until midnight getting the exhibit ready in time for Mother’s Day weekend. It had been hard, tiring work, but definitely worth it. This was by far the most heart-wrenching and provocative exhibit we’d presented. The stories that accompanied many of the pieces caused more than one set of eyes to tear up. And that was just among the co-op members and volunteers. No matter what type of relationship you had with your mother, it was a powerful one, maybe the most powerful of your life.

As I wandered through the exhibit, I marveled at the talents of these women, these mothers, and the love that emanated from their handwork. There were many baby quilts, of course. I’d hung those in a group in one corner of the hall. And a great many baby sweaters and booties, also a special grouping. But the scope of what women create while raising their families amazed me. There were handmade rivercane, pine-needle and corn-shuck baskets; birdhouses made from “found” items; rag rugs, which I’d discovered in my research were often referred to as salvage craft because of how scraps of fabric were ingeniously transformed into something useful; a couple of handmade brooms made of sedge grass and buckeye saplings. One braided handle broom made of palmetto fronds had been passed down through four generations of Houma Indian daughters and mothers. Upstairs I’d organized the displays of dolls and textile crafts other than quilts—samplers, tatting, embroidery, needlepoint, and lace-making.

This was where my contribution to the exhibit hung—an embroidered sampler made by my mother when she was eighteen and pregnant with me. To anyone else it looked just like another printed cross-stitch sampler, the kind that was popular back in the fifties and sixties. In the center was the requisite baby in a cradle. In each corner was a different picture—a stork, a baby rattle, a bottle, and a pair of tiny shoes. My date and time of birth were stitched across the bottom. A fancy multicolored alphabet made up the border. Nothing special in terms of artistry, but very special to me because it was the only thing I owned made by my mother.

My first memory of the piece was when I was twelve years old and my father, without a word, hung it in my bedroom. I never asked him where it had been for six years, why he hadn’t shown it to me before. Daddy never talked much about my mother. What little I knew of her came from Dove, her mother-in-law. Dove said my mother had been an only child, like me, and pretty much kept to herself. Her parents had died in an automobile accident when she was sixteen, and she was taken in by her distant cousin, Ervalean, Emory’s mother, in Little Rock. Ervalean was only three years older, but mature enough to encourage my mother to finish high school. Mama was seventeen when she graduated and went to work as a waitress. She met my dad when he came to the city to pick up tractor parts and ate breakfast in the cafe where she worked. They married three months later, when she was still a month shy of her eighteenth birthday.

None of this was written on her biography under the sampler. Instead, I told about how she much liked to sing and that she loved green beans, pink roses, Judy Garland movies, pecan pie, and the singer, Kitty Wells.

At least, that’s what Dove told me.

I straightened the sampler and stared for a moment at the black-and-white crinkle-edged picture I’d hung next to it. It must have been taken someplace in Arkansas, since I appeared to be about two years old. She perched me on her hip, standing in front of an old country store with a Standard Oil gasoline pump. Her hair was very light and teased into a bouffant that fit the year written on the back—1960. She was smiling, squinting into the bright sunlight. I was staring at whoever was taking the picture, my round baby face on the edge of tears.

She was so young. I’d long passed the age at which she died—twenty—five—and it often struck me how strange it was to think of myself as experiencing ages, physical changes, and even feelings that my mother never did. I still remembered myself at twenty-five, strong and healthy and, in my youthful mind, invincible.

But not really. Because somewhere deep inside I knew, I’d known since I was six, that life hung on a fragile thread.
How scared she must have been.
How full of despair knowing that her child would grow up unprotected by her. A few times I’d asked both Dove and Daddy if there was something, anything she told them to tell me. Daddy’s blue eyes would turn cloud-gray, and he’d turn back to whatever he was working on, saying, “She loved you, Benni. You were her life.”

Dove told me all she knew, which wasn’t much. “Alice was not one for chitchat,” she’d say. “Kept to herself. She always seemed kind of . . . I don’t know . . . sad. Even when she was smiling. But she lost her own folks so early. She had lots to be sad about, I reckon.”

With a finger I touched her face in the picture. “Mama,” I whispered, testing the feel of the word on my lips. After all these years, it felt strange, like a foreign word for which there was no translation into a language I knew.

“Benni?” D-Daddy’s voice from the entrance hall jerked me out of my thoughts.

“Coming,” I called back.

He handed me a stack of envelopes. “Mail’s here.”

I flipped through it quickly, then said, “There’s nothing of any importance. Can you just put it on my desk? I’m going over to the Historical Museum and see what’s cooking with their latest project.”

“That new mayor man,” D-Daddy said, shaking his head. “He’ll be the ruin of this town, yes, sir.”

“You’re not the only one who thinks so,” I agreed.

The Historical Museum was usually closed on Monday, but I followed my instincts and was rewarded for doing so. Through the windows of the front door I could see Dove and three of her fellow historical society members sitting around a small foldout table. I tapped on the glass and was let in by June Rae Gates, my former seventh grade math teacher.

“Benni, it’s so good to see you,” she said. “We were just talking about you not five minutes ago.”

“All positive, I hope,” I said.

“Maybe,” she answered gaily. “Maybe not.”

“So, what’s going on, ladies?” I asked, sitting down on a folding chair.

“We’re planning our assault on Mr. Boxstore Billy,” said June Rae. “We’re bringing out the big guns and going to—”

“Be careful what you say around her, June Rae,” Dove said. “Don’t forget, she’s with the establishment now. She’s married to the fuzz.” Dove smiled at me innocently. “How’s things in Morro Bay?”

I laughed out loud. “The fuzz? The establishment? Too much
Mod Squad
being watched, girls. What’s going on here? Has the Gray Panthers been recruiting you all?”

Dove’s eyes lit up. “We called the AARP, but I clean forgot all about them! Make a note, June Rae. So, how’s the search going?”

“I’ll tell you, but you all have to promise to keep it quiet. Emory wants to do a story on it, and he’s afraid someone’s going to scoop him.”

“Loose lips sink ships,” June Rae said. “You can trust us.”

I told them about Gabe having the house searched by bomb and drug dogs, my new neighbor, the scrapbook, the wood carving instruction clue, the James Dean memorial picture, and the funeral services the next day.

“Look for the murderer in the funeral guests,” Goldie Kleinfelder said. She once owned a stationery store and still did calligraphy on the side.

I laughed. “Goldie, no one’s been murdered. Mr. Chandler died of a heart attack. I’m only looking for clues as to why he chose me as his heir.”

“Are you sure it was a heart attack?” Edna McClun asked. She’d been an extra on two
Diagnosis Murder
episodes when she visited her sister in Los Angeles recently and now considered herself an expert on murder.

“I’m positive, ladies,” I said. “He had a heart condition. He had diabetes. The coroner would have done an autopsy if there had been any doubt. It was just his time to go.”

“Or maybe someone decided it was his time to go,” Edna insisted, not willing to give up so quickly.

“You all watch too much television,” Dove carped, slamming the flat of her hand down on the table. “We’ve got more important things to think about. Any particular reason why you’re here, honeybun?”

“Nope, just checking to see how things are going. Looks like you’ve got everything under control. Anybody bake this morning?” I looked hopefully at the empty paper plates in front of them. That was actually my underlying motive for dropping by. All these women were Mid-State Fair blue ribbon winners, and they never had a meeting without someone bringing goodies.

“In the back room,” Dove said. “Then get out of here. I have a hard enough time keeping these old ladies on the subject without you coming by and stirring things up.”

They were all protesting and laughing as I walked behind the counter at the front of the museum and into the back room where they kept their coats, purses, and various office and personal supplies. Sure enough, it was Edna’s turn, and she’d made lemon bars and chocolate-cinnamon muffins. I grabbed two of each and stuck them in a plastic sandwich bag I found in a drawer.

“So,” I said, walking back into the main room, “what do you have planned for Mayor Billy anyway?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Dove said, pushing me between the shoulder blades out the door. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

She closed it with a determined click of the lock.

Only half joking, I prayed as I walked down the steps.
Please, Lord, soften the judge’s heart and let her sentence be suspended.

6

I SPENT THE rest of the day looking through the house one more time, hoping I’d missed something. The mail came, bringing only a catalog for wood carving supplies. Back in the kitchen, I laid out all my evidence or clues, or whatever they were, on the round table.

The
Treasure Island
book with the inscription to G. from G.

The knife with the initials G.M.

The autograph book.

The flat white stone.

The picture of the James Dean monument with the mysterious number.

I stuck the picture in my purse. Tomorrow, after the funeral, I would drive out on Highway 46 to the monument.

I picked up the book and flipped through the pages again, hoping for something I’d missed before—an underlined word or sentence, or perhaps a piece of paper stuck between the pages.

Nothing.

I read through the autograph book again and decided to write down the names of the people in my notebook. Maybe somewhere in my search I’d run across them, and there were too many to remember offhand.

That left one last thing to do. Something I’d been putting off because I had no idea what to say. Gabe had neatly listed all the information his private investigator buddy had found on a piece of San Celina PD stationery. Just the sight of his neat, dark handwriting made me miss him.