Southern Greed (4 page)

He was wearing a light blue silk shirt with fawn slacks and I could
n’t
quit looking at him.  “My name’s Adam Kramer,” He said, “May I call you Kathy?”

I frowned and remembered my mama telling me not to frown, that frowning caused wrinkles, “Why would you call me Kathy?  My name is Belinda Jenkins and I’m the assistant manager here at Toot
s
ies.  Can I help you with anything?”

I noticed that his eyebrows were quite bushy when he raised them, “You
can’t help me, but I think I can help you.  I have been watching you for some time and you bear a striking resemblance to someone I know.

“I have a proposition for you.  Is there somewhere we can go and talk?”

I caught myself frowning once again and reminded myself to quit.  I glanced around the store and made sure the girls were busy straightening up and I walked toward my office motioning him over my shoulder with a wave of my hand to follow.

I sat behind my desk and he looked ridiculous sitting in one of the tiny boudoir chairs.  He reached inside his shirt pocket and brought out a photograph and handed it to me.  It was a picture of a little girl of about five or six years old
.

The little girl was sitting in a swing smiling for the camera.  She had light brown hair with reddish highlights where the sun was hitting it.  Her hair
was in curls.  She had on a pretty green dress and I noticed her eyes were green.

I handed it back, “She’s a pretty little girl.  Is she your daughter?”  I was wondering why he was showing it to me when he spoke up and said, “This is you, when you were five years old.”

“That can’t be me,” I said.  “
F
or one thing I have blue eyes, not green, and I’ve never owned a dress that expensive.  My dad was a share cropper until he died in a tractor accident a couple of years ago.”

“Your eyes could be green with contact lenses.  And your name could be Kathy Boston.”  His eyes held mine and it dawned on me he wanted me to help him pull some kind of scam.

As I said, I was ripe for the picking and I had never done anything wrong in my life.  I can’t explain why I was willing to even listen to what he had to say, but I had never had any excitement in my life and he excited me to no end.

CHAPTER THREE

“Have you ever heard of an old money family named Boston?” He asked me.

I had closed the store and we were sitting in a d
iner a few blocks from there
.  We had walked here because I didn’t want to get into a car with him.

I shook my head, “No, I’ve never heard of them.  Do they live here in
Rehobeth
?”

He laughed, “If they lived here in
Rehobeth
, Georgia, you would have heard of them since only about three hundred people live here.
  No, they live over in Savannah
, what’s left of them.

“Miss Gracie Boston is the last in her line.  She is wealthy beyond anything you can imagine.  She
had one son who married in 1943
.  He married
a
nobody
and they had a daughter.  They named her Kathy.

“In 1948, her son, Howard and daughter-in-law Margaret were killed in an automobile accident.  They had their little girl with them, but she disappeared.”

I looked at him waiting for him to go on, “What do mean, she disappeared?”

“Well, both her parent
s
were killed outside of Savannah
on an old country road and when they found them, Kathy wasn’t with them.  They searched along the highway and in the woods thinking she must have wandered off somewhere but they never found her.”

“Gracie’s dying, Belinda.
  She hired me to find her granddaughter…”

“Oh my goodness!
  You want me to pretend to be her.  You want me to help you run a scam.” My hear
t
began to beat so hard, I thought I was going to faint.
  Because I wanted to do this but
knew it was wrong, that was what made it so exciting.

I had never done anything where I felt like I was thinking for myself.  I had never made a decision without first consulting my mama, my daddy, my teacher, my boss or my minister.  I wanted to grow up and decide for myself and suddenly I knew I would do this.

I looked
Adam directly in the eye without
mumbling like always did when trying to get someone else’s permission.  “I’ll do it,” I said and my heart sped up even more.

Why, you might ask, did I choose this thing as a rebellion tool?  I think it was because it was so wrong and outrageous and I knew I would go to hell for it if I didn’t redefine my beliefs.

I decided that if I was going to do this out of character thing, I would go all the way.  I quit my job without telling anyone, I moved out of my apartment without giving any notice, and worst of all, I didn’t tell my mama or my minister.

I knew I was letting everyone down and that’s what made the whole thing so appealing.  It was as if I was getting back at everyone for not allowing me to become who I was.  I was tired of pleasing everyone else and looked at this as a way to finally have my own life.  I didn’t want to be a good girl any longer.

As soon as I closed the store, I had Adam take me to my apartment where I packed a bag and left everything else.  I dropped all my keys, including the keys to the shop in the box
outside the apa
rtment office without any expla
nation.

CHAPTER FOUR

I had never even owned a car and hadn’t learned to drive.  I had been walking to work from my apartment and the house where I grew up was just up the hill from my apartment.

So, my whole life had consisted of living within a few square miles and being spoon fed a religion that I had never questioned until Adam came into my life.

We packed the few things I decided to take from my old life into Adam’s new 1966 Cadillac.  His car matched his deep blue eyes and the seats were white leather.

I was thinking I must have lost my mind as we sped down the main street of
Rehobeth
and down the hill out of town.

I had closed Tootsies at nine p.m. and we were well out of
Rehobeth
by
9:15 p.m.  Adam said we would stop around eleven and get a room somewhere.

When we pulled into a very plush looking hotel, he looked over at me and smiled, “Is this okay?  I’ll get a suite if they have it so we can have our own rooms.”

I didn’t know what a suite was but I wanted my own room so I nodded.  I felt like a backwoods hick but didn’t want him to know how I felt.  He probably saw me as a hick anyway.

I walked into the lobby trying to pretend that I was used to this.  The lobby was filled with huge leather chairs and potted palms.  The carpet on the floor was so thick my feet almost got lose when I walked on it.

I walked around the lobby trying to appear that I was used to this luxury while Adam checked us in.  The bellboy who showed us to our room took Adam’s suitcase and looked
around for mine.  “We packed everything together,” Adam said and
I
felt ashamed that I didn’t have any luggage.  I had put my things in a cardboard box.  Adam went down and got it later.

The bellboy showed us the suite and I had never seen anything so beautiful except in magazines.  Everything was furnished in gold and avocado green.  There was a large sectional sofa in light gold and the curtains were gold.  The carpet was green.

Both bedrooms had large double beds and used the same color scheme. 
After the bellboy left, Adam told me to pick out a bedroom and then we ordered room service.

We ate lobster and steak in the dining area
of the suite
.  I had never had lobster and loved it.  Adam had ordered wine, both red and white.

He had poured me a glass of both the red and white wine and now asked,
“You didn’t want any wine?  Would you rather have something else, coffee, tea, coke?”

I started to reply like I always did, like I had be taught, no
,
brainwashed to reply, “I’m a Christian and don’t put anything in body to harm it.  I treat my body like a temple.”

I almos
t said that, but instead I picked up the glass of red wine and downed the whole glass.  I was used to drinking sweet iced tea and didn’t understand that you don’t drink wine the same way.

He laughed, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone drink down a glass of wine with such gusto.”

I was trying not to gasp, but after holding it in for awhile I started coughing.  He hit me on the back thinking I was choking, “Go down the wrong way?” He asked and I nodded.

After the first glass of wine, I was feeling mellow and we began to talk. 
He told me he grew up in the South also, but unlike me, he wasn’t raised to go to church.  “I’ve always tried to do the right thing, t
hough,” He said.
 
“
This thing I want you do is not about money really, although that is a part of it, I won’t lie about that.

“But, it’s more than that, Belinda.  I have grown to love Gracie and she wants to see her granddaughter one more time before she dies.
  I want that for her.  Do you understand?”

I nodded and waited for him to go on.  I loved his soft smooth voice and could have listened to him all night.  He took my hand in his and smiled at me and my heart melted.  I was falling in love with him.  I know what you’re thinking, but look, I already told you, I was ripe for the picking.

I could see, or thought I could see, that he really cared.  He continued to talk telling me he had one sister who
worked for Miss Gracie as her secretary and lived in the mansion.

“Do you live in the mansion also?” I asked.

“No. I live in an apartment not far from the mansion. 
I met M
iss. Gracie through my sister and she asked me if I thought I could find you.  I’m in real estate.  I sell houses.”

“How did you know to come to
Rehobeth
, of all places, to look for me?”

“That was pure luck.  I was going through your charming town and saw you coming out of the local drugstore.  I got a room at the boarding house and I have been watching you.

“I thought you looked so much like the five year old Kathy, I could pass you off as her, with some g
reen contacts, which reminds me
we have to get you some green contacts.”

I nodded and then asked, “Who else lives in the mansion?”

“Well, there are all the servants, too many to name but there’s the housekeeper who is over all of them, her name is Mrs. Dover.  She’s been with Miss Gracie since Miss Gracie first inherited the mansion, about 35 years.

“Let’s see, then we have Professor Murphy, Eugene.  He’s there to write Miss Gracie’s memoirs.  He has a son, Ronnie, age five, who is a holy terror.”

“I like kids.  I teach Sunday School,” and as I said that I began to feel guilty for leaving my class.

“Don’t feel guilty, Belinda,” He said like he could read my mind.
  “You know, I already feel like I know you, and I really like you, I like you a lot.”

That made my heart speed up and I reached for the red wine.  I sipped it and liked it better than the white.

CHAPTER FIVE

I had slept like a log.  It must have been the wine.  I learned something about drinking.  It broke down al
l
inhibitions.  You didn’t have to monitor what you said.  It seemed to give you courage.  I like it.  I like it a lot.

Adam was waiting for me when I came out of my room.  He had already ordered breakfast.  I had never been big on breakf
ast but the bacon, eggs, cheese
grits, and coffee was delicious.  It was my first cup of coffee and I liked it as much as the wine.

Adam encouraged me to talk about myself and I told him about my limited experience in life.  When I told him about the reverend Jacobs raping me and no one believing me, he stopped me.

“You mean to tell me that this son-of-a-bitch raped you and they believed him over you?
  Doesn’t that make you angry?”

“You’re not supposed to
get angry.  It’s sinful,” I said and he actually snorted.

“What a bunch of crap.  Let me see if I got this right.  You
can’t have your feelings, s
omeone can abuse you and it’s supposed to be just hunky dory.  No wonder you’re so uptight.  You must have so many pent up emotions, it’s a wonder you don’t have ulcers.

“Do you realize you can sit here and tell me all these horrors about your life and you’re totally detached?  Do you realize you have been brainwashed?”