Murder Gets a Life (3 page)

Haley and Henry came in and sat down and Sunshine turned on the tape. The video camera scanned a beach that looked like a stage setting for
South Pacific
. A few twangy sounds must have been the wedding march, for suddenly three men attired in white suits appeared from behind a palm tree, walked a short distance toward the water, and turned. Long shadows stretching behind them placed the time as late afternoon.

“My baby has a beard,” Mary Alice exclaimed.

I looked closely and realized that the heavily bearded man was indeed my nephew Ray.

“The one in the middle is the preacher,” Sunshine explained. “The other guy’s name is Buck Owens. You know, like the country singer. He works on Ray’s boat.”

Buck must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. I don’t know anything about diving, but Buck looked like he might have trouble getting back to the surface.

“Here I come now,” Sunshine said. “Those high-heel shoes were terrible to walk in on that sand.” The tinkle of the ukelele got a little louder and Bride Barbie appeared beside the palm tree and slowly began her way across the beach toward the men.

“I love your dress,” Haley said.

“Thanks. There’s a wonderful bridal shop right there on Bora Bora.”

“I thought it was Pago Pago,” Fred whispered.

“Shhh.” I reached for his hand like I always do at weddings.

Buck Owens stepped out to meet Sunshine and escort her to the minister and Ray.

“Dearly beloved,” the minister began.

“Anybody got a Kleenex?” Meemaw asked.

It was a lovely wedding, very traditional in spite of the setting. By the time it was over, Sister had had to pass around a box of Kleenex, but that was fine. The bride was pleased with our reaction.

“I know Ray and I haven’t known each other very long, but we really love each other,” she said. Which brought on more tears.

“I’m going to go check on dinner,” Henry said. He was going to go call Debbie and we all knew it. It
had been only a few months since they had repeated those same vows.

“I’ll go help,” I said.

My sister is the only person I know who can give a dinner party and not lift a finger. Tiffany, the Magic Maid, cleaned up the house and set the table, Henry did the cooking, Haley served the drinks, and here I was, helping out with last-minute details. The boy Henry had hired would do the serving. When I got to the kitchen, though, he was sitting at the counter with his head in his hands.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“No ma’am,” he said, looking up. “Mr. Lamont never told me this party was for Sunny Dabbs or wild horses couldn’t have dragged me here.” He reached over, got a paper napkin, and held it against his eyes. He had a crew cut which made his ears appear huge and which gave him a vulnerable little-boy look. Crew cuts always get to me, reminding me of my boys when they were children. I was sure that under that napkin were a few zits.

“You’re a friend of Sunny’s?” Dumb question.

Just then Henry walked in. “Line’s busy.” He looked at the boy. “Something wrong, Dwayne?” Dumb question.

“I have to go, Mr. Lamont. I didn’t know this party was for Sunny and Meemaw.”

“That’s a problem for you?” Henry asked.

I swear, all the man would have had to do was look at the boy and see that indeed it was a problem.

Dwayne stood, wiped his eyes again, crumpled the paper napkin, and threw it into the trash compactor. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lamont. You can fire me if you want to.” And with that, he walked out and quietly shut the kitchen door.

Henry and I looked at each other. “What was that all about?” he asked.

“My guess is that Sunshine’s marriage has broken a heart. Is Dwayne a Jefferson State student?”

Henry nodded yes.

“He didn’t hear you and Haley laughing about the tape, did he?”

“No. He was in the basement getting the wine. He was back, though, when you came in and said it was Sunshine’s mother.”

“Oh, Lord.” Guilt.

“He’ll be okay.”

Henry, usually one of my favorite people, was ticking me off tonight. “Let’s get dinner on the table,” I said.

Henry glanced through the oven window. “Vulcan’s Buns need a few more minutes.”

Vulcan’s Buns. A Birmingham favorite named, of course, for the southern view. Fred was going to think he had died and gone to heaven.

Mary Alice came in. “Everything okay?”

“Dwayne Parker just left,” Henry said. “He said he didn’t know this party was for Sunshine. Apparently he’s a rejected boyfriend.”

“There’s probably a lot of those.” Sister looked into the oven. “Ummm. Vulcan’s Buns.”

“I’ll need a basket for them. Don’t you have one of those silver mesh bread baskets? Seems like I’ve seen one around here.”

“I think I do, but I don’t know where it is,” Sister said.

I left them and went back into the sunroom. I had seen Dwayne’s pitiful little pink scalp through his crew cut and it made me mad the way Henry and Sister both were just brushing him off. The boy was
hurting. I looked over at Sunshine who was talking to Haley and wondered what kind of swath she had cut through the male hearts of the Birmingham area. She turned and smiled at me. Probably a damn wide one.

Fred was sitting on the sofa beside Meemaw. He motioned for me to come join them.

“Honey,” he said, “Meemaw knows this guy named Gabriel who told her we were having Vulcan’s Buns for supper. I hope he’s right.”

“He is.”

“He’s always right,” Meemaw said. “He’s my channeler.”

“Well, he’s a good one,” Fred said.

“The best.”

My antennae had shot up. “Did you say a channeler? Like a Shirley MacLaine channeler who guides you, maybe, into strange places?”

“Sunny,” Meemaw called, “come here and tell these folks about Gabriel.”

Sunshine came over, followed by Haley. “What about him?”

“Just who he is.”

“He’s Meemaw’s channeler. If it hadn’t been for Gabriel, I wouldn’t have tried out for
Wheel of Fortune
and won the trip to Bora Bora.”

“A channeler?” Haley asked.

“You know,” Sunshine explained. “A guide. Meemaw first met him in…when was it, Meemaw? Nineteen eighty?”

Haley gave me an
Are they serious?
look. I shrugged.

“Nineteen eighty,” Meemaw agreed. “New Year’s Eve, 1980. A friend of mine, Lessie Greenwood, and I were driving home from bingo. Neither one of us
had won a dime in spite of Lessie only lacking I-19 for about ten calls on the cover-up game. Anyway, we were going down the cutoff road that used to lead to the old Locust Fork Bridge when a flying saucer blocked the road a couple of hundred yards in front of us. The saucer wasn’t in the road, mind you. It was this diamond-shaped thing up in the air with flames shooting out of it onto the road.
Swoosh, swoosh
, like a bellows. And it started going up in the air and then down almost to the ground. Then it started beeping. Loudest beep I ever heard. Lessie started screeching for me to get the hell out of there. Not that it took much urging. I turned that car around on a dime and got out of there. Called Junior Reuse, the sheriff, soon as we got to Lessie’s house. Told him it was a flying saucer about the size of a water tower down on the old cutoff road. All he wanted to know was how much we’d had to drink at bingo.” Meemaw sighed. “That Junior. Hadn’t got a grain of sense.”

“Tell them the important part though, Meemaw,” Sunshine urged.

“Well, when I got back to the car, I was shaking like a leaf, and I got in and just was sitting there trying to get up the nerve to drive home when this voice said, ‘behold, I bring you tidings of great joy.’”

“Gabriel?” Haley asked.

Sunshine laughed. “Meemaw thought she was pregnant. You know. Like the angel telling Mary about Jesus.”

Meemaw grinned. “I did. But it was Gabriel. He took me on the spaceship and showed me around. They were all real polite. Looked like E.T., every one of them. Asked my permission to give me a couple of shots that they said would have some side effects
sort of like cortisone. You know, like making my face puffy. But that the medicine would make me able to communicate with them whenever I wanted to.”

“Where was the ship from?” Haley asked.

Meemaw pointed to the window. “Out there.”

“Meemaw can get hold of Gabriel almost any time she wants to,” Sunshine said.

“But wasn’t ‘Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy’ what the angel said to the shepherds?” Fred wanted to know.

“That Gabriel’s a hoot,” Meemaw said.

Just at that moment, Mary Alice appeared at the door. “Supper’s ready,” she said brightly. “And guess what? Henry’s fixed Vulcan’s Buns.”

Now, I’ll have to admit that I usually come out on the short end of this sibling business. Sister has a knack for remembering small humiliations like my water breaking in the A & P when Haley was born. But oh, Lord, Gabriel was going to even up a lot of scores. We had barely taken our seats at the table when I informed Sister that Meemaw had been telling us a fascinating story about her channeler named Gabriel.

Sister’s eyebrows went up and she leaned forward. “How interesting.”

Meemaw went through the whole story again. The flying saucer, Junior Reuse (“I didn’t know he was called Junior,” Sister interrupted), the voice in the car.

Henry looked at me questioningly. I smiled and widened my eyes.

“And you can get in touch with Gabriel any time?” Sister asked Meemaw.

“Just about it.”

“That’s fantastic. When you talk to him next time,
will you ask him about Bell South? Ask him if the stock’s going up. I’m thinking about buying some more.”

“I don’t think Gabriel does the stock market,” Sunshine said. “Does he, Meemaw?”

“Won’t hurt to ask,” Meemaw said. “Can I have another one of those rolls?”

“Let me stick them in the microwave a minute so the butter will melt,” Sister said. On the way by my chair, she managed to get my hair caught in the wire basket. No way I’ll ever win.

O
n August mornings in Alabama, the sun comes up heavily, almost groaning with the effort. The morning newscasts are filled with warnings to drink lots of liquids, be on the lookout for signs of heatstroke, and check on the elderly.

“I’ll call and check on you,” Fred said, going out the kitchen door. I threw a spoon at him.

I’ve lived here all my life, long enough to have a great respect for the heat of August and a greater respect for the inventor of air-conditioning. Also long enough to know that the earlier you can do any outside activities, the better off you are. Consequently, I threw on some old khaki shorts and a tee shirt that Haley had given me which has
MY MOTHER IS A TRAVEL AGENT FOR GUILT TRIPS
on it (she thought it was funny), and went to collect Woofer for his morning walk.

He was curled up in his igloo doghouse, cool and comfortable. I rattled his leash and said, “Walkeeze” like I had seen some famous British dog trainer do on TV. He looked at me as if I were crazy. Didn’t I know there was an inversion, whatever that was?
That old dogs and people were dropping like flies in the August heat and pollution?

“Out,” I said. “We’ll make it a short one this morning.”

We circled several blocks sedately. Joggers passed us, sweat bouncing from them in little rainbows as their feet hit the pavement. The way I figured it, Woofer and I were going to have to call 911 for at least two or three of them before we got home. But I was wrong, fortunately.

Actually, I had worked up a pretty good sweat myself as we headed toward home. Mitzi Phizer was getting her morning paper and saw us coming.

“You’re crazy,” she announced.

Woofer collapsed at my feet and agreed with her. I took the paper away from Mitzi and fanned Woofer and me both.

“Keeps the old joints oiled,” I said.

“Long as the old heart keeps clicking. Your face is red as a beet.”

“I’m going to hop in a cool shower in about two seconds.” I handed the paper back to Mitzi.

“What’s Ray’s wife like?” she asked, taking on the job of fanning Woofer and me.

“Cute. Looks like a Barbie doll. And I swear, Mitzi, her grandmother looks like a Cabbage Patch doll. Round face and squinty eyes.” I grinned. “Sunshine kept calling Mary Alice ‘Mother Crane.’ All I could think of was Mother Goose. I’ve got a sneaking idea that’s going to come to a screeching halt, though. The Mother Crane bit. Every time she said it, Mary Alice’s eyes rolled up a little.”

Mitzi laughed. “That little Barbie doll’s got a hard row to hoe with Mary Alice as her mother-in-law.”

“We’ll see. Somehow I got the idea that Sunshine
Barbie may not be such a pushover. It may be tit for tat.”

“Then poor Ray. Keep me posted.”

“I will.” I managed to get Woofer into a standing position with a lot of sweet talk and shoving.

“Look at that. That poor dog’s a hundred and five and out in this heat.”

“He’s fine,” I said. But when I got home, I let him come in the kitchen to drink a big bowl of water. While I went to shower, he stretched out over the air-conditioning vent. I knew it was totally unsanitary; dog dander drifted through the air like snow. But the paint on the cabinets was dry, and I could always mop and dust.

There were two messages on my answering machine, both of which were expected. Debbie wanted me to call her. What did I think of her new sister-in-law? Was Henry teasing her about the porn movie and the channeler? Call her as soon as I could. She had the cell phone in the bathroom with her. The other message, of course, was from Sister. Call her immediately.

The call to Sister would be shorter, so as soon as I got out of the shower, I dialed her number.

“Where have you been?” she asked without any preamble.

“Out walking Woofer.”

“You’re crazy. It’s a hundred and twenty out there today.”

“Feels like it,” I agreed.

“I’m going to have lunch at the Starlight Cafe. I thought you might want to go.”

“Where’s the Starlight Cafe?”

“It’s this nice new restaurant in Blount Springs. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

I thought for a minute. It didn’t take long to figure out why the Starlight Cafe was her restaurant choice. “How far is Blount Springs from Locust Fork?”

“Just a little ways, now that you mention it. We might even come back that way.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. I’ll pick you up a little after eleven.”

“The Starlight Cafe?”

“Dress casually.”

My next call was to my niece, Debbie Nachman Lamont, one of my favorite people in the world. She hadn’t felt like going to work, she said. Richardena, the nanny, had taken Fay and May to Mothers’ Day Out at the church, and she, Debbie, was lying on the bathroom floor on a float from the pool. She wasn’t sure, but she might have had a couple of near-death experiences.

“But you weren’t sick like this with the twins,” I said.

“I know. It’s Henry’s fault.”

No way I was going to touch that. Fortunately, she asked about Sunshine, and I got to relate the events of the night before. The porn movie got what I hoped was a chuckle out of Debbie.

“Sunshine’s mother?”

“So help me. Her name’s Kerrigan. I like the name, don’t you?”

“Just talk, Aunt Pat.”

So I told her about Gabriel, the channeler. This time I know I got a chuckle.

“You’re kidding!”

“So help me. Your mama asked Meemaw to check with him on Southern Bell stock.”

“Was she serious?”

“God knows. Probably figured it wouldn’t hurt.
Sunshine said Gabriel didn’t dabble in the stock market.”

“Oh, Lord, Aunt Pat. I wish I hadn’t missed it.”

“There’ll be plenty more family fun for you to get in on. Your mama’s informed me that she and I are having lunch at the Starlight Cafe in Blount Springs today. Needless to say, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to the Turketts’. Want to lay bets on where we go snooping after lunch?”

“Aunt Pat, I have to hang up.”

The phone went dead. Bless her heart. I got a second cup of coffee and settled down at the kitchen table to read the morning paper while I rubbed Woofer with my bare toes. I was relaxed; I was peaceful; I felt kindly toward the whole world. How was I to know this feeling was to be short-lived? Easy. I’ve been Mary Alice Tate Sullivan Nachman Crane’s sister for over sixty years.

Lunch was nice. Sister was right; the Starlight Cafe was charming, an old home that had been converted into a tearoom, all wicker and gingham ruffles. We were seated on a porch that had probably once served a family as a sleeping porch. Now glass-enclosed, it afforded a view of a swift creek coursing around boulders and, beyond that, deep woods.

I sank down in a chair and sighed with pleasure. The waitress brought us glasses of sweetened iced tea along with the menus.

“How do you find these places to eat?” I asked Mary Alice.

“If you and Fred would branch out a little beyond Morrison’s Cafeteria, you’d find them, too.”

I was too relaxed for any adrenaline to surge.
“Morrison’s has the best egg custard pie in the world.”

“That’s true,” Sister admitted. “Just the right amount of cinnamon.”

I sipped my tea and looked at the menu. I was expecting the usual tearoom fare, chicken salad, soup of the day. Instead, the menu claimed the Starlight Cafe served Funky Monkey, Et Tu, Brute, and Pinkies, along with several other unrecognizable dishes.

“What the hell is this?” Sister asked, squinting at the selections listed on a plastic laminated star.

I shrugged; Sister motioned for the waitress.

Blenda (somewhere there had to be a sister named Glenda) came over grinning. “Isn’t that menu just the cutest thing?”

“I don’t understand it,” Sister said.

Blenda giggled. “You’re supposed to guess. I’ll give you a hint, though. This is what you’d get if you ordered Pinkies.” She curved her little finger around.

“Boiled shrimp,” I said.

“Right. You’ve caught right on.”

“Et Tu, Brute is Caesar salad.” I was getting into this.

“Don’t even guess at Funky Monkey,” Sister said.

“Oh, it’s just chicken salad,” Blenda said. “We sort of cut out a bell-pepper monkey and put it on top of it.”

“Can I get a turkey sandwich on white and a cup of the soup of the day, whatever it is?” Sister asked.

“It’s angel wings today.”

“I’ll have an Et Tu, Brute,” I said quickly.

Blenda grinned. “Back in a minute.”

There were a surprising number of people in the restaurant, or so it seemed to me. It was a weekday, and the Starlight Cafe was out in the woods, not a
place where you could walk in off the street and order a BLT to go. It made me think we were going to get some good food.

And we did. The angel wing soup turned out to be a chicken noodle made with shell-shaped noodles which could possibly, with a wild flight of imagination, be called angel wings. “Taste it,” Mary Alice said. “Just taste it, Mouse. I don’t think even Henry can do this good.” I did, and motioned for Blenda so I could order a bowl, too.

Everything else was just as good. We ended up with huge slices of chocolate roulage and coffee.

“Lord!” I sighed with satisfaction and pushed my chair back from the table.

“You’re not going to the bathroom, are you?” Sister asked.

“Probably. Why?”

“I knew it. You’ve switched over from anorexia to bulemia.”

“I decided it was more fun.”

Mary Alice frowned.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Sister. Once and for all, I don’t have an eating disorder.”

“Well, well.” We both looked up into Cabbage Patch eyes. “What a surprise. What brings you into this neck of the woods?”

And Mary Alice without the slightest hesitation or look of guilt said, “Well, hey, Meemaw. We’ve been to see a friend in Rainbow City. We were on our way home, and Patricia Anne said she’d heard of this great place to eat so we thought we’d try it. Are you here for lunch?” Sister pushed out a chair. “Join us. We’ve had our lunch, but we might try another piece of roulage.”

Meemaw shook her head. “I’m just here to get
Sunshine some soup. She’s feeling a little poorly today, said she’s just craving some of the Starlight’s chicken soup.”

“Oh, do you live near here?” said Miss Innocent with a roulage crumb still on her chin.

“Right down the road. Down in what everybody calls the Compound. The Turkett Compound. Why don’t y’all let me get the soup and then follow me home? I know Sunshine would love to see you.”

Mary Alice smiled. “How thoughtful. We’d love to.”

Fifty, even forty years earlier, I would have had the option of leaping across the table and throttling her. The urge was still there, but gravity had done a number on the old bod. The best I could do was a scowl which she, of course, ignored.

“What luck, running into Meemaw like that.” We were in Sister’s Jaguar following Meemaw’s old Chevy down the road. “We couldn’t have planned it better.” Sister turned on her right-turn signal as Meemaw suddenly took a ninety-degree turn into a thicket. “We’d have had trouble finding this place.”

“We don’t have any business nosing around,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course we do. And you heard what Meemaw said about Sunshine craving chicken soup. I’ll bet she’s pregnant. Ray’s daddy got me pregnant on our honeymoon.” Sister slowed. “Lord, that’s not much of a road, is it?” The Chevy seemed to have disappeared like Brer Rabbit into a briar patch. “Oh, well, maybe it gets better.”

It didn’t. Fortunately, after a few hundred yards, we came into a clearing and Sister stopped abruptly.

Five large house trailers were pulled into a circle.

“The Blount County Indians must be acting up again,” I said, the last effort I made at being humorous that day. I looked over at Sister and she was doing the Macaulay Culkin palms-against-cheeks again.

“Oh, Lord, Mouse. The washing machines are in the yard.”

“So is everything else,” I said. And it was true. The “everything” ranged from tires to old bicycles. Several dogs untangled themselves from various forms of scrap and eyed us silently.

“Are those pit bulls?” Sister asked.

“I don’t know; I don’t plan to find out. And where did Meemaw go?”

As if in answer to my question, Meemaw stepped from behind one of the trailers and motioned us to come that way. Sister pulled the car up and let the window down.

“You can park right here.” Meemaw pointed to a space between two trailers. “This is Kerrigan’s place.”

“What about the dogs?” I asked.

“There’s sticks all around. If they get too close, just act like you’re gonna hit them. I don’t think they’ll bother you, though.” She pointed to her right. “This is my trailer. Won’t take but a second for you to get over here, but I’ll wait right here for you if you’re scared of the dogs.” She turned toward the trailer and screamed, “Sunshine! We’ve got company.”