Miss Julia Renews Her Vows (13 page)

“She have orange hair?”

“Well, it’s mostly gray now, but the ends are orange. She tried to get me to give her a dye job, but I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. She’d have my hide if it didn’t turn out right.”

“Etta Mae,” I said, coming to a conclusion, “I think I know who she is.”

“Yes’m, I do, too.”

“No, I mean I think I
really
know who she is. I think she’s Francie Pitts, and if she is, you could be in more trouble than you know.”

“Oh, don’t say that! I already know I’m in trouble.” She sprang up from her chair and began pacing the floor, wringing her hands in agitation. “How much more could I be in?”

“Wait, Etta Mae, I didn’t mean it that way. Come sit back down, and let’s talk about this.” I could’ve kicked myself for overstating the case and increasing her anxiety.

She slid back into her chair but remained tense and visibly upset. “Do you know her? You know what she might say about me?”

“If this Fran Delacorte is the woman I know as Francie Pitts, then, yes, I do know her. But I can’t be sure without seeing her. The thing of it is, Etta Mae, the one I know has been married and widowed a half dozen times and has that many names she can call herself. And the one I know has also just moved here from Florida and is living now in a cottage at Mountain Villas. LuAnne Conover told me all about it, because Francie used to live here in Abbotsville and we all knew her then. But I haven’t seen her in several years, so really it could be somebody entirely different.”

But I didn’t think so. My mind was running in overdrive, trying to think of what it would mean to Etta Mae if her patient was the same woman who’d buried so many husbands and, if LuAnne’s report was correct, was even now being viewed as a person of interest in the death of one of them.

But if Etta Mae’s patient and the woman I knew as Francie Pitts were one and the same, why would she draw attention to herself by falsely accusing Etta Mae just when the Coral Gables police were looking so closely at her?

Uh-huh, and maybe that was the reason. Maybe she thought that by appearing the wounded victim of a theft and a vicious attack, she would elicit a little sympathy and put the Florida investigators off the track.

“All right,” I said, making up my mind. “Here’s what we have to do. First of all, we have to find out if it’s Francie Pitts we’re dealing with. Then we have to find out if she’s specifically accusing you.” I thought for a few minutes as Etta Mae waited with anxious eyes for whatever I’d come up with. “And I guess we should find out how badly injured she is. The Francie I know is entirely capable of exaggerating anything that happens to her. Why, for all we know, she’s lying up in bed, enjoying all the attention she’s getting.”

“Well, I don’t know, Miss Julia,” Etta Mae said with some skepticism. “From what the deputies let slip, she was knocked out cold and was still not fully coherent three days later, which is why it took ’em so long to come after me. That doesn’t sound too good.”

“No, it doesn’t. But I’m telling you, Etta Mae, Francie Pitts could dramatize anything. Everything she talked about and everything she did was always bigger, better, more unusual or worse than anybody else’s experiences. I wouldn’t put it past her to be making more of this than there actually is.”

“Well, but,” Etta Mae said, “it might not even
be
Francie Pitts. It might be Fran Delacorte and she’s really been hit over the head and now has brain damage that’ll keep her confused and crippled for the rest of her life. And it looks like she’s telling everybody that I’m the cause of it!” Etta Mae’s hands were about to be wrung off her wrists, the way they were twisting in her lap.

“Well, there you have it,” I said, trying to give her some hope. “If she’s confused from a blow on the head, what good is her testimony? No court is going to take that kind of testimony as irrefutable evidence of guilt.”

“Oh, don’t talk about going to court! I can’t stand this, Miss Julia, I just can’t. I’ll never be able to work in this town again if patients can’t trust me. And to be accused and tried, even if I got off, why, it would ruin me forever.”

“It’s not going to come to that, so just get it off your mind. Look, Etta Mae, we need to know more than we do. And I know who can tell us. I’m calling LuAnne Conover and putting her on the case. If she can’t find out, nobody can. And there’s one more thing we can do—or
I
can do. If it is Francie Pitts, and LuAnne will know if it is or not, I can visit her in the hospital.”

“But, Miss Julia, you’re sick. You can’t be visiting anybody.”

“Oh pooh, I’m going to be well in a few hours, don’t you worry about that.” I glanced at the bedside clock, relieved to see that it was almost four o’clock. Eight was slowly approaching—the time when Sam had promised the pastor to be at the counseling session.

A sudden sinking spell flew over me that had nothing to do with Etta Mae’s problem and everything to do with that meeting. I could just imagine Dr. Fowler with a smirk on his face, sidling up to Sam and intimating that he knew his wife intimately, or even flat-out telling him of that shameful episode when I’d lost all sense of myself.

But one thing was clear: I couldn’t suddenly recover my health at one minute past eight o’clock. I’d have to watch the clock and be back in bed with a relapse by ten o’clock when Sam came home. Surely a caring husband wouldn’t demand an accounting from a woman so obviously ailing.

After sending Etta Mae home to pack a suitcase for several days of in-house private-duty nursing, I telephoned LuAnne.

Dispensing with the usual social niceties, I plunged right in as soon as she answered the phone. “LuAnne, what’s the latest word on Francie Pitts?”

“Oh, Julia, I was just about to call you. You’ll never guess, but Arley Hopkins told me that she’s in the hospital with a huge bump on her head and a concussion. Somebody attacked her! And Arley said she even has bruises on her neck where somebody tried to choke her. And I mean right in her own home on the grounds of Mountain Villas. And you know they advertise how safe it is out there.”

“Oh my,” I said, my worst fears for Etta Mae confirmed. “Do they know who did it?”

“No, but Arley said they have their eye on somebody. All they need is a little more evidence, then they’ll make an arrest. And it can’t come too soon, as far as I’m concerned. Imagine, Julia! Somebody’s walking around town who’s capable of such a thing. Makes me shiver to think about it.”

“So she’s really injured? I mean, she’s not just putting on, is she? You know how she is.”

“Well, Julia, I would think that a bump on the head and bruises on her neck qualify as real injuries. But I know what you mean. She would certainly make the most of whatever happened to her.”

“Well, let me ask you this, LuAnne, what’s her condition now? Can she have visitors?”

“I haven’t the slightest. Arley didn’t say, but who’d
want
to visit her?”

“I might. Just to be neighborly, if nothing else.”

“You know what you’ll get, don’t you? Thirty minutes of moaning and groaning and feeling sorry for herself and poor-little-me carryings-on. I wouldn’t recommend it, Julia, I really wouldn’t. She’ll hang on to you like a leech if you do. And she’ll make you feel obligated to be at her beck and call from then on.”

“You may be right,” I said. “I’ll have to give it some thought before doing anything. I’m a little under the weather myself, so I probably won’t.” But I probably would if making a hospital visit was the only way to find out what Francie was saying about Etta Mae.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” LuAnne said. “Does that mean you won’t be at the counseling session tonight?”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” I said, making myself sound a whole lot worse than I was. “I’ve been in bed for two days almost. But are you going? I thought it was mainly for the young marrieds.”

“Well, here’s the thing. Pastor Ledbetter called this morning and asked Leonard and me to come. Seems they didn’t have the reponse they thought they’d have—hardly anybody signed up for it, and he’s afraid of hurting that doctor’s feelings if nobody’s there. So I said we’d be glad to attend. I’m hoping that Leonard will benefit from it. If anybody needs enriching, he does.”

I couldn’t disagree, but LuAnne seemed not to understand that the sessions were for couples, not just for half a couple—my own husband showing up alone notwithstanding. Of course, what she’d told me about a lack of congregational response to Dr. Fowler’s offerings thrilled me. Maybe he’d lose heart and go back where he came from.

“Sam’s planning to be there, too,” I told her. “The pastor asked us to attend, but I’m too wiped out to get out of bed.”

“Well, you know, I might just stay home, too. It’s the men who need something like that. Maybe with just Sam and Leonard, they’ll decide to make it a men-only course, and we’ll see some changes around here.”

As soon as I hung up the phone, it rang again with Sam on the line, asking how I was feeling.

“Not so well,” I said, hating to be less than truthful, but every time I thought of facing Dr. Fowler, I felt decidedly unwell. “I was so hoping to be able to go to that meeting with you tonight, but, Sam, I’m just not up to it.”

“Well, I’ve decided not to go, either. I’m staying home to look after you, and I just called Ledbetter to let him know that we won’t be there.”

My heart took flight at that announcement, and I sat straight up in bed. What could be better than neither of us in Dr. Fowler’s line of sight and subject to his possible reference to a certain episode?

“Oh, Sam, you don’t have to do that,” I said, but quite pitifully to confirm how badly I needed him. “But I’ll be so glad to have you home.” My voice got a little quavery. “I’ve missed you today, especially since I’ve felt so bad.”

“Did you call the doctor?”

“Uh, well, I have a call in now.”

“That decides it, then. I’ll be home in a little while. You need anything from anywhere?”

“Just you,” I quavered, hung up the phone and lay back in blissful relief that Sam would be spared a potentially humiliating and marriage-damaging revelation.

It was barely an hour later when Etta Mae returned, bearing a suitcase that Lillian helped her lug upstairs and deposit in the sunroom. And only a few minutes later both of them showed up in my bedroom, Etta Mae in white nylon pants and top with white running shoes on her feet and a clipboard in one hand and a black doctor’s bag in the other. She was taking her new position seriously, which portended bad news for me.

Lillian pulled two chairs close by the side of the bed, sat down in one and said, “Now you got somebody know what she doin’ to look after you, so we gonna get to the bottom of this. Go ahead, Miss Etta Mae.”

“Okay, I’m ready.” Etta Mae clicked her pen and poised it over the clipboard. “Now, Miss Julia, when did your symptoms first present?”

I frowned, wondering how closely she intended to question me. “You mean, when did I get sick?”

She nodded. “I need to know everything so I can chart your progress. That’s what a private-duty nurse does.”

“Oh, okay. Well, it was yesterday, just as the pastor started his sermon, that I suddenly felt unwell.”

She jotted that down. “And how did you feel? Nauseous? Dizzy? Weak? Did you have any kind of stabbing pain or did you just feel faint?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“All of what you said.”

“Where did you have the stabbing pain?”

“Uh, in my stomach.”

“In your actual stomach or was it lower down in your abdomen?”

“Both.”

“What about vomiting or diarrhea?”

“Yes, I’ve had that, too.” Well, I’d certainly had both at one time or another.

“Okay,” Etta Mae said, pulling out a plastic tube from her doctor’s bag. She unsheathed a thermometer and put it under my tongue. “We’ll see if you have any fever, and I’ll check your pulse and blood pressure, too.”