The Fixer Upper (36 page)

“Somebody’s had some lessons,” Jimmy said, never taking his eyes off them.

Tee leaned toward me. “Shall we join them?”

“Maybe something a little more upbeat,” I begged off. “I haven’t waltzed since seventh-grade cotillion.”

“Baby, I hate to break it to you,” Tee drawled, “but Dad’s been dragging me to dances here at the club for years, and this is about as upbeat as it gets.”

Nonetheless, the band did break into some beach music a few numbers later, and Tee and I had our first dance together. It was “With This Ring.” We sang along to the band, and I managed to do a respectable shag, which, Tee said, only reaffirmed his opinion that I was totally the girl for him.

When we got back to the table, laughing and out of breath, Lynda and Jimmy were just getting up for the next dance. Carter, being Carter, asked Shirlene to dance, and Tee and I escaped out to the terrace.

I was glad of the cool night air, and gladder still for my pashmina, and the warmth of Tee’s arms around me, as he expertly eased me behind a huge camellia bush. “Let’s blow this pop stand,” he said, nuzzling my neck. “I love the way you look in this dress, but I’m gonna love gettin’ you out of it even more.”

“Can’t,” I said, glancing around to make sure nobody was watching. “Remember? We came in your dad’s car? Anyway, my mom’s staying with me, remember?”

“She won’t care,” Tee said. “Your mom’s having the time of her life.” He pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. “C’mon. I can call us a cab. We can be back at my place in half an hour.”

He kissed me deeply, as if to seal the deal.

“Mmmm,” I said, full of regret. “There aren’t any cabs in Guthrie.”

“Sure there are,” he said. “Ace Ballou at Town and Country Cab. He’s parked outside at the curb right now, just waiting to take home Guthrie’s finest who are too drunk to drive and too old to walk home.”

“Last I heard, your place had a tree on the roof.”

“Your place then,” he said. “It’s after nine. Ella Kate will be asleep.”

“Lynda’s taken over my bedroom. I’m sleeping on Norbert’s twin bed. And anyway, what do we tell everybody at the table? ‘Sorry—we’re going home to do the mattress dance?’”

He laughed at that one. “I don’t give a damn what you tell ’em, as long as it’s bye-bye. Hell, for that matter, we could go out to the Mercedes for a little while. I’ve got a set of keys—”

I gave him one long, deep, meaningful kiss, then pulled away. “Tempting, Tee. Very tempting. But we just can’t. Not tonight. I’m getting cold, and people are going to start assuming we
are
doing the mattress dance out here if we don’t go back to the table.”

He grumbled, but allowed himself to be dragged back inside. Lynda and Jimmy Maynard were alone at the table, looking very cozy, with Jimmy’s arm draped casually around her shoulder and their heads touching. Lynda was giggling at something he was saying as I sat down.

Carter and Shirlene walked up just then too, and I saw, at a glance, that Shirlene was not nearly as amused by Jimmy as my mother was. As Shirlene sat down, I stood up again. I tugged Lynda’s arm.

“I’m going to the ladies’ room,” I announced. “Mom, want to freshen your makeup?”

She didn’t even glance up at me. “No thanks,” she said.

I tugged her arm again. “How about freshening mine? My hair’s a mess, and you always could do it better than me.”

She turned around to give me an annoyed look, but I shot her my look back, so, with a sigh, she excused herself.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked when we were in the ladies’ room. “You never liked the way I did your hair. And your makeup is just fine.”

I took my lipstick out of my bag and reapplied it anyway. “It’s about Jimmy,” I said, turning to her. “Lynda, you need to turn off the charm.”

“What? We were just flirting. It’s all very harmless.”

“To you, maybe. But Jimmy’s like a diabetic in a candy store. He can’t resist a pretty lady. And the thing is, I’m pretty sure he and Shirlene are trying to get back together.”

“Well, who’s stopping them?” she said, a note of annoyance in her
voice. “And what do you mean—back together?”

“They were married once. To each other. I don’t think she ever really got over Jimmy. And he’s just lately starting to realize what he’s missing out on. Don’t screw that up for them. Please?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she said, clearly exasperated with me. “I’m just trying to have a little fun. Why are you being such a Goody Two-shoes all of a sudden?”

“What about Leonard? Why don’t you go home and have fun with him?”

She pulled a tissue from the container on the bathroom counter and began blotting her lips with it. “Leonard’s not a whole lot of fun these days,” she said. “Not since good ol’ Ed showed up.”

“Ed? Who’s Ed?”

She arched an eyebrow. “ED,” she whispered. “As in erectile dysfunction.”

A tiny giggle echoed through the tiled bathroom. We both whirled around in time to see a woman emerging from the first stall.

Lynda bristled. “It’s not funny.”

The woman scuttled out of the room without even pausing to wash her hands.

And then we heard a toilet flushing, and the rustle of satin, and then an older woman, walking slowly on flat-heeled shoes, emerged from the second stall.

She looked from me to Lynda. “No, honey, you got that right. It sure as hell ain’t funny.”

“D
empsey?” Carter tapped me on the shoulder and held out his hand. “May I have the honor of this dance?”

The band was playing a slow song—“The Twelfth of Never”—and couples were drifting out onto the dance floor, including Lynda, who’d managed to drag Tee out of his chair.

I hesitated. “Carter—I’m a terrible slow dancer. I’ll step all over your toes.”

“Never!” he said, leading me onto the floor. He took my right hand in his, and gently touched the small of my back. “Just relax and follow me.”

True to his word, Carter was a superb dance partner. In a moment, we were gliding around the dance floor, and if we weren’t exactly Fred and Ginger, at least we weren’t Fred and Wilma.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you all evening,” Carter said, his voice low. “But I can’t seem to pry you away from my son.”

“You’ve been pretty popular with the ladies yourself,” I pointed out.

“Oh, women humor me because I’m so old,” Carter said. “Anyway, I wanted to hear how it went on your trial run with the FBI today.”

“You knew about that?”

“Oh yes. In fact, they dropped off the agreement from the U.S. attorney’s office before they went over to see you.”

“Does it look all right?”

He shrugged. “I think we’ve gotten the best possible deal from them that we’re going to get. We didn’t get everything I would have liked, but I’m satisfied now that the Justice Department will not pursue charges against you. And that we have it in writing.”

“Thank God!” I said. “Now all I have to do is face down Alex Hodder,
and get him to say just enough about his relationship with Tony Licata to land himself in prison.”

“Can you do that?”

“We’ll see,” I said. “The agents make it seem very simple and cut and dried. The spot they picked for the meeting is a little church way out in the country. They’ve already got it wired for film and sound. So all I have to do is get him to talk about Licata and that weekend in Lyford Cay. The thing is, I just don’t believe he’s ever going to admit—even to me—that he instructed me to hire that call girl for Licata. Even when we talked on the phone he tried to tell me I’d ‘misunderstood’ his intentions. He’s such a slippery slimeball.”

Carter nodded thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t worry too much about getting him to implicate himself. The simple fact that he is coming down here to pay you to hand over the only real hard evidence against him in this bribery scheme should be enough to prove a public-corruption charge against him. These people at Justice aren’t stupid. They say and do some stupid things, yes, but they are not unintelligent. I have a feeling they probably have other evidence against Licata—and your Alex Hodder—that we don’t know about.”

“God, I hope so,” I said fervently. “I truly cannot wait for this whole ordeal to be done with.”

“After Monday, the worst of it should be in the past,” Carter said. “Have you thought about what happens after that?”

“You mean a trial, that kind of thing?”

“I mean you,” Carter said. He looked down at me and smiled. “What happens to Dempsey Killebrew after her involuntary exile is over?”

I guess I blushed.

“Will you listen to me?” Carter said, tsk-tsking. “I sound like a high school guidance counselor. I guess it comes with age, this compulsion to pry into other people’s lives. Do as Tee does, my dear, and ignore me.”

“You’re not prying,” I told him. “You’re a friend. A good friend.” I grinned. “Are you wondering if my intentions toward your son are completely honorable?”

He threw his silver head back and laughed. “Something like that.
You’ll have to forgive a father for wanting to see his son happy. And may I say, you seem to make him very happy, Dempsey?”

“He makes me happy too,” I said. “He’s not like any other man I’ve known before. He’s sweet and thoughtful, and honest and good. You’ve raised a fine man, Carter Berryhill.”

“His mother did all the heavy lifting,” Carter said. “I was busy building my law practice, but she made sure I did the things a father is supposed to do with his son, Boy Scouts, sports, hunting, that kind of thing. Sarah was really the one who made him into the man he is today.”

“I have a feeling you did it together,” I said.

The music ended, and Carter eased me off the dance floor and back in the direction of our table. “I’m sorry you never met Sarah,” he told me. “I think she’d have liked you. And I know she would have loved knowing our son had found somebody as special as you.”

I turned and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Now you’re going to make me cry.”

“I’d be happier if I could make you stay,” he told me.

A
fter a Sunday taken up with driving Ella Kate to church and Sunday school, and afterward, working her way through an entire paperback sudoku book, Lynda had obviously gotten bored quickly with Guthrie and my life there. When I got downstairs Monday, at seven
A.M.
, she was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a tumbler of wheatgrass, dressed in a chic hot pink pants suit. Her suitcases were sitting by the door.

“Going somewhere?” I asked, trying not to look too hopeful.

“Home,” she said, blotting her lips with a paper napkin. “Leonard called last night. He’s missing me something awful, poor lamb. So I called the airline, and had my ticket changed. My flight leaves Atlanta at noon.”

“But…I thought you two were…on the skids?”

“No! What gave you that idea?”

I poured myself a cup of coffee. With Lynda gone, I was going to miss having my coffee made for me in the morning. But I was confident I would be able to bear up under the burden.

“Well, you did. Sort of. I mean, Saturday night you said he’s no fun since ‘ED’ came along, and I guess I assumed—”

“Leonard and I are soul mates,” Lynda said earnestly. “You don’t give up the kind of connection we have just because of something physical, like sex.” She looked over the rim of her glass at me. “Someday, Dempsey, I hope you’ll experience the kind of awesome, life-changing relationship Leonard and I have forged together. The sex part is just a little bump in the road right now. We’ll get past that, because on a higher plane, spiritually I mean, we are perfectly in tune.”

“That’s great, Mom,” I said. “You had me kind of worried Saturday
night, with all that heavy flirting you were doing. I guess at your age, sex is kind of beside the point anyway.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “My age? My age? My lord, what kind of junk do you young girls get into your heads these days? Sex is never beside the point! Sex
is
the point! I told Leonard last night that he either goes and gets the little blue pill, or I replace him with something less complicated—like, say, something that takes triple-A batteries.”

“Lynda!”

“He got the message. That’s why I’m leaving today instead of the end of the week. Although I do hate to leave you in the lurch.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said quickly. “I’ll miss you, but Carter feels sure that after my meeting today with Alex Hodder, the feds will be more than ready to cut me some slack. So you see—there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

She got up and rinsed out her tumbler, then put it in the dish drain. “I wish I believed that, precious.”

“Why wouldn’t you believe it? The feds even signed an agreement, promising not to prosecute me.”

“It’s not your legal predicament that has me worried anymore,” she said. “Now that I’ve met Carter Berryhill, I feel confident you’re in the best possible hands. It’s your life that has me worried.”

“What’s wrong with my life?”

She pressed her lips together tightly. “You accused me of trying to make you over. I’m trying hard not to.”

“So, it’s not just about my clothes? Or this house?”

“Oh, Dempsey,” Lynda said. “This is going to sound so California flaky to you, I know. But I don’t care. I just don’t want you to wait till too late to find your bliss.”

“My bliss?” She was right. It did sound flaky.

“The thing that makes you absolutely certain you are in the right place, doing the absolute right thing, and with the right person beside you. Look at me! I was nearly fifty when I found my art, my real talent. My niche in life. And then Leonard and I found each other, and it all came together. I spent all that time searching, spinning my wheels, desperately unhappy. I couldn’t raise you. Not properly. I was still raising
myself all that time. I blamed your father for years, but really, it wasn’t him. Well, okay, some of it was him—he can be such a rigid, unbending, cold—”

“Mom,” I warned.

“Right. He is your father. Anyway, I don’t want that for you, sweetheart.”

She looked around the kitchen, got up, and ran her fingertips across the top of the island Bobby had built for me. “This room has such a nice vibration, Dempsey. It feels like it has a soul. Does it feel that way to you?”

“Actually, it does,” I admitted. “It still needs a lot of work. But I love knowing that I laid the tile, and I stripped the floor, and I sanded the cabinets.”

She nodded. “You put your heart into this room. You’ve put it into the house too, haven’t you? I couldn’t see that when I first got here. All I could see was the enormous job you had ahead of you. I was afraid this old white elephant of your father’s would suck the life out of you. My therapist says I’ve done a lot of work getting past my past, but I guess the truth is, I still resent Mitch. And his relationship with you.”

I put my arms around her neck. “Aww, Mom. That’s sweet. But our relationship isn’t all that great right now. Anyway, he’s not you. He’s not my mom. He can’t fix my hair, or make me a gorgeous necklace, or restyle my parlor.”

“Even when you don’t want it restyled,” she added.

“I wanted it. I just didn’t know I wanted it,” I told her.

Thump. Slide. Thump. Slide. Ella Kate and her walker were slowly making their way down the hallway. Shorty ran ahead of her, his nails clicking on the worn floorboards. I got down his bin of dog food and filled his bowl, which he attacked as soon as he entered the room.

“I’m gonna miss that old girl,” Lynda said. “I know she’s been a pain in the neck for you, but she’s got spunk. The universe should have worn her completely down by now, but it hasn’t.”

“More like the other way around,” I said wryly, bending down to scratch Shorty’s ears.

“I’m proud of you, Dempsey,” Lynda said quickly. “For stepping in
and taking care of her.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Everybody’s up mighty early around here,” Ella Kate said, pushing her walker into the kitchen.

“Lynda’s decided it’s time to go home,” I told the old lady. “I tried to get her to change her mind—”

“No you didn’t,” Lynda said. “You’re just as glad to have me out of your hair as I am to go.”

Ella Kate looked from me to Lynda. “You two have a fuss?”

“Not at all,” Lynda said. “I came because I thought Dempsey needed me. It turns out I needed to see her more than she needed to see me. I was worried about her, but I can see now that she’s made a real life for herself here in Guthrie.”

“I have?”

Lynda stood beside Ella Kate and helped ease her into her wooden chair. “Don’t you think she’s worked wonders on this old house, Ella Kate?”

“I reckon,” Ella Kate said. “You got any coffee left?”

I fixed her a mug and took it over to the table. She took a sip and nodded her approval. “Your mama makes coffee a lot better’n you do.”

“She does everything better than me,” I said. “But I’m trying to learn from her example.”

Ella Kate thought about that. She jerked her head in Lynda’s direction. “How many times did you say she’s been married?”

I gasped, but Lynda threw her head back and gave a belly laugh. “Only twice,” she protested. “I know lots of women who’ve been married more times than that.”

“You married to this Leonard fella you’re livin’ with?” Ella Kate demanded.

“Well, no, but we’ve been together for six years,” Lynda said. “That’s longer than I’ve ever been with any man before. It’s my personal best.”

“Huh,” Ella Kate said, shaking her head. She looked at me. “What about you and that Berryhill boy? You ain’t studying shacking up with him like your mama does, are you?”

“Ella Kate!” Lynda protested.

“I knew Sarah Berryhill,” Ella Kate went on, as though she hadn’t heard. “Now that was a fine Christian lady. But once that breast cancer took ahold of her, she was just eat up with it. I believe that’s the biggest funeral I’ve been to around here since Olivia passed. The Berryhill boy’s a lawyer, ain’t he?”

“His name is Tee,” I put in. “And you know good and well he’s in practice with Carter.”

“I hear the son is runnin’ the newspaper these days. I reckon he wadn’t too good at lawyerin’. Not as good as his daddy, anyhow.” Ella Kate looked at me plaintively. “You got any eggs and bacon in the house? I b’lieve I got my appetite back this morning.”

“Tee’s a fine lawyer,” I said, skipping over the subject of breakfast. “But he loves journalism, and he wants to give back to this community. He’s doubled the paper’s circulation since he took over running it, you know.”

“I don’t take a paper these days, but if I did, it would be the Atlanta paper,” Ella Kate said grandly. “Norbert always took the
Atlanta Constitution
. He liked to read the sports section. I like the Sunday funnies and Ann Landers. Does your boyfriend’s paper have Ann Landers?”

“Ann Landers is dead, you know,” Lynda said, apropos of nothing. She went to the refrigerator and took out a carton of eggs. She set the eggs down on the counter and grimaced as she brought out a package of bacon.

“Here,” I said, taking the offending meat from her. “I’ll fix her breakfast. I’m not trying to chase you off, but I guess you better get on the road before you get tied up in Atlanta traffic.”

“You’re right,” Lynda said. She planted a kiss on my forehead. “Good-bye, sweetheart. Call me tonight and let me know how your meeting turned out.”

“I will,” I promised.

“Be strong,” she said, hugging me. “I’m going to visualize you strong. And that snake in the grass Hodder, I’m visualizing him in prison.

“And you!” Lynda said, wheeling around to face Ella Kate. “You take care of yourself, will you? No more joyriding around in stolen cars. And look after my girl too, will you?”

“Huh!” Ella Kate said, trying to suppress a pleased grin. “You comin’ back for the wedding?”

“Wedding?” My mother and I said it in unison.

“Wedding,” Ella Kate said firmly. “I ain’t fixin’ to live under the same roof with anybody livin’ in sin. It ain’t right. I don’t care if her mama does it that way. That’s California. But this is Guthrie, Georgia. In Guthrie, we go to church and stand up in front of God and pledge our troth. And then we have cake and punch in the church parlor. And cheese straws. Gotta have cheese straws.”

“Is there going to be a wedding?” Lynda asked.

“He hasn’t asked me,” I said, blushing.

“He’s fixin’ to,” Ella Kate volunteered. “The boy’s goofy over her. Anybody can see it.”

“Well then,” Lynda said, picking up a suitcase in each hand. “That settles it. I’ll definitely be back for the wedding. And who knows? Maybe I’ll even bring Leonard along. Wouldn’t that just set your father’s teeth on edge?”

“I’m not even engaged,” I said weakly. But nobody was listening.