The Fixer Upper (29 page)

T
he three of us were sitting around the kitchen table. I brought out the dust-covered bottle of Jack Daniel’s I’d found at the back of the top shelf in the closet in Uncle Norbert’s study and held it up for the men’s inspection. “The seal’s never been broken,” I pointed out.

“Your uncle was not a teetotaler,” Carter said, “but he was a decidedly frugal man. This bottle was probably a Christmas gift from me, now that I think about it.”

I took three tumblers off the kitchen shelf, cracked open a tray of ice cubes, and apportioned four small cubes to each glass before pouring three fingers’ worth of whiskey into each glass and handing them to my guests.

As for myself, I topped the liquor off with a lot of water before rejoining Tee and Carter.

Carter took a sip of the whiskey and nodded approvingly. “Well, Dempsey,” he said finally. “That was quite a performance you gave tonight.”

“You were really, really scary looking, with the heels and the hair and all,” Tee agreed. “And that suit! I think I felt my balls shrink a little when you opened that front door.”

“Son!” Carter said, trying to look shocked.

“It’s all right, Carter,” I said, sipping my own whiskey. “I don’t know if I would have put it quite that way, but I definitely was trying to assert myself with Jackson Harrell tonight.”

“Because?” Tee said, looking at me quizzically over his glass.

“No offense, gentlemen,” I said, “but I am sick and damned tired of being pushed around by men.”

“Your father?” Carter asked sympathetically.

“Camerin Allgood showing up at his office put him over the edge,” I said. “He was so angry he was foaming at the mouth when he called tonight. He can’t fathom why I haven’t been cooperating with the FBI.”

“But you have,” Carter said. “They’re being completely unreasonable.”

“As is Mitch,” I said. “He’s even looked into hiring a new ‘top-notch’ criminal attorney to represent me.”

Carter shrugged and tried not to look hurt. “He’s your father. He’s concerned about your well-being. It’s perfectly understandable. I’d be happy to catch your new attorney up to speed on things, if you’d like.”

“I don’t want a new attorney,” I said quickly. “My father is not concerned with my well-being. He’s mainly concerned with his own reputation.”

“Surely not,” Carter said.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “My father cares about me. He just doesn’t respect me, or my judgment. And let’s face it, this mess I’ve gotten myself into hasn’t given him much reason to have confidence in me.”

“Your father is an idiot if he thinks you brought this on yourself,” Tee said hotly. “Does he know anything about this Alex Hodder character?”

“Tee,” Carter said slowly. “I’m not sure it’s your place to call Mitch Killebrew an idiot.”

“I’ve called him much worse,” I told father and son.

“The thing is,” I said, turning to Carter, “I really shouldn’t even have asked you to come over here tonight. But I was just so…shaken…when Mitch called to tell me the FBI had come to see him. And then, when Harrell showed up on my doorstep…I just, I don’t know, I was terrified.”

“You had every right to call me,” Carter said reassuringly. “I’m your attorney.”

“But your retainer,” I started. “The Catfish. Tee said it was totaled. And I don’t have any money of my own. Not even any collateral.” I looked around the kitchen. “The house is Mitch’s. He’s paying for all of this.”

“The Catfish is far from totaled,” Carter said. “Those old Crown Vic
torias were built to take a beating. I spoke to Shawn at the body shop this afternoon. He’s ordered new glass for the windshields, and he thinks he can find some other body parts at an auto-salvage yard he knows about down in Jackson. Shawn assures me he can have the Catfish back to you by the end of the week.”

“For real? But how much is that going to cost?”

“Not a thing,” Carter said. “Shawn’s girlfriend had an unfortunate shoplifting incident a few months ago. I worked things out with the judge and the merchant, and Shawn was truly grateful.”

I took a long sip of whiskey, and appreciated the slow burn as I let it trickle down my throat.

I took a deep breath. “There are some things I need to tell you. Both of you. Alexander Hodder is a lot like Mitch Killebrew. I think that’s probably what attracted me to him in the first place.” I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. I didn’t dare look at Tee.

“My father is successful and demanding, and my whole life, no matter what I did, I could never quite figure out how to win his approval. When I decided to go to Georgetown, and take out loans to pay for it myself, because he refused to, I really thought I was striking a blow for my own independence. And when I did well in law school, and graduated with honors, I do think Mitch really was proud of me, in his own way.

“Of course,” I added, “he was fit to be tied when I told him I was going to become a lobbyist instead of actually practicing law. Stephanie, one of my roommates in D.C.? She said I only became a lobbyist out of a perverse need to piss off my father.”

I took another sip of Tennessee courage, and plunged ahead with my shameful confession.

“I had job offers from other firms. But as soon as Alex Hodder interviewed me, I knew I’d take the job, if it was offered. It was, and I took it.”

The Piaget’s watchstrap was starting to chafe. I slipped it off my wrist and set it on the tabletop, well away from our glasses.

“Alex knew I had a silly schoolgirl crush on him. He deliberately played me along, flirting and flattering me. I knew he was married. I’d
met his wife at social functions and at Alex’s birthday party. Of course, I convinced myself that their marriage was a sham. In my twisted little fantasy world, I figured one day, she would even give us her blessing and step out of the picture, since Alex and I were so obviously perfect for each other.”

I rubbed at the irritated skin on my wrist and glanced up at Carter, and then at Tee.

“Sick, huh?”

“The son of a bitch exploited you,” Tee said. He reached into his glass and pulled out an ice cube. He wrapped it in the paper napkin I’d given him, and taking my hand in his, gently pressed the cold, wet napkin to the reddened skin on my wrist.

I realized that I’d let my story get off track. And it was important that I get back on topic.

“Steph always said I had daddy issues. And she was right. Alex still thinks I have daddy issues. As far as he knows, I’m still the stupid, naive girl who called his cell phone nineteen times the night he fired me. As far as he knows, I’m still desperate for his attention and his approval. Alex underestimates me. And that, hopefully, is going to be his undoing.”

Carter raised one of those fluffy white caterpillar eyebrows of his. “Dempsey?”

“Don’t worry, Carter,” I said. “I’ve had my wake-up call. In a major way. It’s been painful, but totally worth it. I’m stronger and wiser. And just pissed off enough to do something about it. I have a plan.”

“I have no doubt,” Carter drawled. “Of course, I’ve only known you for a short time, but I can assure you that I have nothing but admiration for your intelligence, and your tenacity. The thing that brings me pause, however, is what I see as your alarming and emerging capacity as a schemer.” He glanced over at Tee, who was still holding my hand in his.

“Son? I would advise you to proceed with all due caution in your relationship with this young woman.” He nodded his head in my direction. “I have known her father’s maternal family for many years. And I can now tell you, without reservation, that she is a Dempsey, through
and through.”

Tee nodded gravely. He raised my hand to his lips, and kissed first the back of my hand, and then the palm.

“I’ll keep my eye on her,” he promised.

E
lla Kate was dressed and sitting in a wheelchair when I walked into her hospital room the next morning.

“You took your own sweet time gettin’ here,” she said, jerking her head meaningfully at the clock that hung on the wall next to the television.

“It’s only nine o’clock,” I told her, refusing to be badgered. “I had to fill out a lot of paperwork, and the nurse wanted to go over the doctor’s discharge orders with me.”

Her pale eyes narrowed. “What kinda orders? I’ll tell you one thing right now, missy. They ain’t puttin’ no more tubes up me or in me. No, ma’am. Not no way.”

“Relax, Ella Kate,” I said. “It’s nothing like that.” I held up two slips of paper. “Just a couple of prescriptions. One for pain medication, and then something to make your bones stronger. The doctor says you have osteoporosis.”

“What I have is bones that are seventy-nine years old,” she said tartly. “Unless you’ve got a ticket for a time machine there, I doubt there’s anything anybody can do about that.”

“You got me there,” I admitted. “I see you’re all packed up.”

Her bony hands clutched a wrinkled brown paper sack tight in her lap. “I got what I come with, so let’s get this show on the road.”

For the first time I noticed her apparel. Instead of her usual cotton slacks or housedress, or even a bathrobe, today Ella Kate was dressed in what appeared to be a set of green surgical scrubs so large that they fairly swallowed her.

“Uh, Ella Kate,” I said. “Where’d you get the scrubs?”

“You mean these pajamas?” She plucked at the fabric of the collarless
top and looked pleased. “Those fools in the emergency room cut my good dress all to pieces. I let ’em know what I thought about that. Raised such a ruckus I made ’em gimme something new to wear home. They’re nice and roomy, I’ll say that. The britches even have a drawstring.”

“Wow,” I said. “Comfort and style.”

“And free,” she said, nodding approvingly. “Now, let’s go before somebody decides to stick me with a needle or add something to my bill.”

“We’re just waiting for an orderly,” I said. “They won’t let me wheel you out to the car myself.”

“Probably afraid I’ll sue ’em if something goes wrong,” she said darkly. “Which I would. In a heartbeat.”

The door to the room opened then, and a tall, thin black woman in white scrubs looked down at her clipboard, and then at Ella Kate.

“Mrs. Timmons? Are you all ready to go home?”

“It’s Miss Timmons. And yes, I’m raring to get out of this place.”

“I know that’s right.” The woman smiled widely, showing a gold incisor. “You been settin’ in that wheelchair since I give you your bath this morning.”

“Let’s go already,” Ella Kate said, refusing to be jollied.

I followed behind the wheelchair, and when we got outside the hospital, Tee was parked at the curb in the Mercedes. He hopped out and ran around to help transfer Ella Kate out of the chair and into the car.

“Hold on to this for me,” she said, shoving the brown paper sack at him. He put it on the seat of the car and then put a hand under her arm, to lift her out of the wheelchair.

“I ain’t crippled,” Ella Kate snapped, starting to push herself out of the chair. But her face turned white, and she sank back down into the chair with a little gasp of pain.

“We’ll give it a minute,” Tee said kindly. And after a moment or two, Ella Kate clamped her lips tight and allowed herself to be slowly lifted and settled into the backseat of the car, surrounded by a bank of pillows we’d brought.

She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the leather seat
and breathed heavily from the exertion of the move.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning around from the front seat. “I know you’re in pain. We’ll get you home and into bed just as quickly as we can. Shorty’s waiting for you. He wandered around the house for an hour last night before settling in on your bed. I think he’s been missing you.”

“Fine,” she muttered, keeping her eyes closed. And a moment later, I heard her snoring softly, her mouth slightly ajar.

She was still sleeping when we got to Guthrie, so Tee took me by the drugstore, to get her prescriptions filled, and to pick up the walker I’d arranged to buy.

When we finally got to Birdsong, Ella Kate was still sleeping. I sent Tee ahead to unlock the door, and to give me a moment alone with the old lady.

“Ella Kate?” I touched her shoulder, and she shuddered awake. “We’re home,” I told her.

“Good thing,” she said, yawning widely. “I never could get no sleep in that durned hospital. Them nurses wake you up every hour on the hour to stick you or take your temperature or just ask you how you’re sleeping.”

I took a deep breath. I’d been dreading this moment. “Ella Kate,” I started. “The doctor says that with your hip injury, you can’t be going up and down stairs.”

“I can walk!” Ella Kate protested. “She done told me I can walk fine.”

“Yes, I know you can walk. But the stairs would be dangerous. So…I moved your bedroom downstairs.”

“Moved?”

“Yes, ma’am. We cleaned out Norbert’s old study. I scrubbed it, and got rid of all the magazines and bugs. And we put your furniture in there. Not all of it, of course, but the things that would fit. You’ll need to have room to maneuver around with your walker. You and Shorty.”

Ella Kate fixed me with a death stare. “You went into my room. You touched my things.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“You got no right,” she said bitterly. “Birdsong might be your daddy’s house, but them things are mine. Norbert give ’em to me. They ain’t a thing in that room that a Killebrew can lay claim to. Livvy’s things, those are Dempsey family property. Not yours. Not your daddy’s.”

“You’re right,” I said gently. “They’re your things. And I’ve put as many of them as would fit into your new room.”

Tee opened the back door of the Mercedes. “Ella Kate? Ready to come home?”

“I ain’t got no home,” Ella Kate said, turning her back to me. “Reckon you can just tote me inside and drop me down any old place like a sack of taters.”

We got Ella Kate into the house and her new bedroom. She bore the move—and the obvious pain—in stony silence. Her stoic expression softened only slightly when Shorty jumped up onto the bed and covered his mistress’s face with passionate licks. I put her pill bottles on her bedside table, along with a glass of water, and set her walker beside her bed.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Did they feed you breakfast at the hospital?”

“Get out,” she said.

I closed the door behind me and went out to the kitchen to join Tee.

“I think you’re growing on the old bat,” he said jokingly, offering me a cup from the pot of coffee I’d made earlier in the morning.

“It’s a good thing she can’t really get around yet,” I told him. “Or climb the stairs to my room. Otherwise I feel sure I’d wake up in the middle of the night and find her standing over me with a dagger or a loaded pistol.”

“You’re exaggerating,” he said. “I’m sure she’s grateful that you saved her life. Hers and Shorty’s.”

“I’m beginning to have second thoughts about that whole episode.”

“She does seem a tad more hostile toward you than usual,” he admitted. “Any idea what that’s about?”

I set my cup down on the table and stood up. “Follow me,” I told him.

Tee stood in the doorway to Ella Kate’s room and gaped. He stepped inside and made his way between the crowded banks of furniture and knickknacks. He pointed at the stacks of photographs of Olivia Dempsey Killebrew.

“Does this creep you out the way it creeps me out?”

“It did at first,” I admitted. “And then, after I finally pestered Bobby into telling me what he knew about this whole family-feud thing, it all started to make sense. I get why she hates my father and anybody named Killebrew. And I get why she’s so permanently pissed off at the world.”

Tee picked up an old black-and-white snapshot. It was of two young girls, and from the looks of their hairstyles, had probably been taken in the late forties or early fifties. The girls were dressed in oversize white men’s shirts and dungarees with rolled-up cuffs. They were barefoot, seated on a porch swing, with their arms wrapped around each other, grinning goofily into the camera lens.

“Do we know these people?”

I nodded. “That’s my grandmother Olivia on the right, and Ella Kate on the left.”

“Hey,” he said, looking from the picture to me. “Dad told me your grandmother was the hottest ticket in town back in the day. He was right. Olivia was a stone fox. And you look just like her.”

“Thanks,” I said, doing a little curtsy.

“And Ella Kate was a brunette!” he said. “Nowhere near as cute as your granny, but definitely a long way from the dried-up old prune she is today.”

I sighed. “Well, she hasn’t had an easy life, that’s for sure.”

“That’s what Dad always says,” Tee agreed. “Although he’s never supplied me with any of the specifics. I guess I’ve known Ella Kate my whole life, but I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t the meanest old lady in town. She’s only maybe ten years older than Dad, but I’ve never thought of him as old. Not like Ella Kate.”

“Your dad is the youngest sixty-something I’ve ever met,” I said. “I
know his life hasn’t always been easy, especially after losing your mom to cancer. But compared to Ella Kate, he’s had a happy, fulfilled life. He had your mom, and you, and a home, and work that was meaningful, and friends.”

Tee looked down at the snapshot of the two young girls. “And Ella Kate had a girl crush. On your grandmother.”

“Or something like it,” I said. I gave him the shortened version of what Bobby had divulged to me about Olivia’s rushed marriage to my grandfather.

“Oh.” Tee raised an eyebrow, and the way he did it reminded me exactly of the way Carter raised his eyebrows to express amusement or puzzlement. In the midst of all this discussion about family dynamics, it gave me great hope, for Tee, and for whatever future we might have together.

“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly. The town must have been abuzz with gossip. The newlyweds and the baby moved in here at Birdsong, with Olivia’s parents. I guess they gave my grandfather a job in management at the mill. And Ella Kate came back home to Guthrie and got a job at the mill too. Although Bobby made a point of telling me she ‘wadn’t a lint-head.’ I think she did something in accounting. She didn’t have a whole lot of other options open.”

“But the happy couple didn’t stay happy for long,” Tee commented.

“Nope.”

“How old was your father when they split up?”

“Maybe two? He’s never talked that much about his childhood, or his parents. According to Bobby, everybody in town assumed Big Mitch basically blackmailed Olivia’s father into keeping quiet and letting him take the baby.”

“And Olivia stayed behind in Guthrie,” Tee said.

“Right here in Birdsong,” I said. “Bobby says his wife’s auntie reported that after that Olivia was never the same again. She died when my dad was nine.”

“I think I see where this is going,” Tee said. He put the snapshot on the pile with the others. But I picked it back up and slipped it into the
pocket of my slacks. Tee was right, I could definitely see something of myself in this picture of Olivia.

“The auntie came in to Birdsong, to help out with the washing and ironing,” I told Tee. “One morning, she came upstairs, to this bedroom, I suppose, to ask Miss Olivia a question about something. Only Miss Olivia wouldn’t wake up.”

“Suicide?”

“The official story was ‘heart trouble.’ But she couldn’t have been more than twenty-five or so when she died.”

“Ooh,” Tee said in a mock whisper. “The journalist in me smells a cover-up.”

“And the romantic in me smells heartbreak,” I said. “Come on.” I tugged him by the hand. “Let’s go back downstairs. This is all making me very sad. And it’s too early in the day to be sad.”

Tee pulled me close to his chest. “Don’t be sad,” he said, turning my chin up for a kiss. “Just because your grandfather was a prick, and your father is kinda, sorta a prick, that doesn’t mean all the men in your life are destined to be monsters. For instance…me. I’m not a monster.”

I put my arms around his neck and kissed him soundly. “No. You’re definitely not a monster, T. Carter Berryhill. You are definitely one of the good guys.”

He smiled. “Keep that in mind, young lady.”

I winced. “Do me a favor, will you? Don’t call me young lady?”

His cell phone rang then. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the readout screen. “Oops. Gotta run. It’s deadline day at the paper, and then I’ve gotta get over to the courthouse and file a will for probate. How about you? Are you playing nursemaid to Ella Kate all day?”

“Not all day,” I said. “I’ll hang around this morning, in case she needs anything, but after that, I’ve got a trap to set.”

“And a rat to catch?”

“Hopefully.”

Tee put his cell phone back in his pocket. “You really don’t have to do this, you know. I think these FBI agents are full of crap. They don’t have enough to make a case against you, so they’re using you to do their job.”

I stepped out into the hallway and closed the door to Ella Kate’s room. “I really do have to do this, Tee. Alex Hodder used me. Now it’s my turn to use him. And after this is all behind me, I can start thinking about what comes next.”

“Us,” Tee said firmly. “That’s what comes next. You and me.”

I patted the pocket of my slacks and felt the snapshot of my grandmother in happier days. “We’ll see.”