The Wedding Tree (32 page)

adelaide

I
stared inside the suitcase, then pressed the back of my cotton glove against my mouth.

“What?” Hope asked, her voice quavering. “What is it?”

I couldn't speak.

“Something covered by a blanket.” Matt moved aside so Hope could step up beside me. I continued to stare at the partially rotted pink-and-blue blanket, stained and dirty. A baby blanket—one I'd never seen before. My stomach and heart felt as if they'd swapped places.

“Do you want me to lift it?” Matt asked.

No.
Truth was, I didn't want to see what was underneath. I wanted to slam the lid and pretend we'd never found the damned thing. But I couldn't do that. I'd done that for all too long.

“I'll do it.” My hand shook. Covered in that flowered cotton glove, it didn't even look like it was attached to my arm as I peeled back that blanket.

Inside, something was wrapped in what looked like it had once been newspaper, but now resembled papier-mâché.

I tugged on it. It came off in big chunks. And underneath . . .

Bones.

I recoiled. “Oh dear Lord.” Hope's arm circled my shoulders.
Oh, Charlie—how could you?
A sob escaped my mouth.

“Wait.” Matt leaned in. “This isn't human.”

“What?”

He moved the newspaper. “The head shape is all wrong, and so are the teeth.”

Teeth? Babies don't have teeth!

“It looks like the remains of a dog,” Matt said.

“A dog?”
Hope and I breathed the words at the same time.

“Yeah.” Matt held back the paper and Hope peered in. “See the jaw? And there's some fur.”

“It's definitely not a baby,” Hope said.

Not a baby.
Not a baby!
My own bones went limp.

“There's something else in here.” Matt unwrapped something from the paper. As I watched, he pulled out an Old Crow whiskey bottle.

“Oh my. That's what Charlie drank.” I felt my legs go weak. Hope grabbed my arms and helped me to a chair.

“Did you have a dog?” Hope asked me.

“No,” Gran said. “Charlie always said they were too much trouble.” Actually, his mother had said that, and Charlie had just accepted it, like he accepted most pronouncements from his parents.

“Did you know anyone who did?”

“Well, sure. But not in Mississippi. We didn't really know our neighbors. We stayed to ourselves because of the false pregnancy.”

“This is the suitcase that was in the trunk of the car?”

“Oh, yes. I'm sure of it. I'd never seen a suitcase like that before.”

Matt continued to paw through the paper. “Look—here's a dog collar and a tag!”

He lifted a cracked leather collar and read the tin tag. “Sonny. Fourteen Belmont Street, Cratchatee, Mississippi.”

“Where's Cratchatee?” Hope asked.

“It's a small town east of Jackson.” I sank back in the chair and pulled off my gloves. Tears filled my eyes.

“Are you okay, Gran?”

I nodded, but my mind was reeling. “I don't understand. Why
would Charlie bury a dog? What happened to the baby?” Tears flowed down my cheeks. I tossed the gloves aside and wiped my face on my sleeve, my gut churning. “I was supposed to straighten out this whole mess. How am I going to do that now?”

“I thought the important thing was to find the suitcase and alleviate your fears,” Hope said.

“But this doesn't alleviate them!” I clasped and unclasped my hands in my lap, rocking back and forth in a chair that wasn't a rocker. “I still don't know what happened to the baby!”

“Are you sure there was one?” Matt asked softly.

“Yes. Positively. And now . . . well, now I guess I'll go to my grave not knowing.”

“Are you sure you
want
to know?”

I actually hadn't been sure before, but I was now. “Yes.”

Matt closed the lid on the trunk. “Well, then, I can track down this address and find out who was living there at the time.”

My chest fluttered with hope. “Oh, could you?”

Matt looked at Hope, and she nodded. He grinned at me, and he was so handsome, so confident, that for a moment it was like looking at Joe. “Sure thing, Miss Addie,” he said. “Sure thing.”

matt

B
efore we found the suitcase, I'd thought that all of Miss Addie's tales about dead babies and B-24 flights might be nothing more than the imaginings of a partially senile woman with head trauma. But as she filled me in on some of the details of what had happened sixty-something years earlier, I couldn't help but think what a reliable witness she'd make in the courtroom. She was coherent and exact. She told the story consistently from her own perspective, as an observer and participant. These were memories, not wild permutations of an injured mind.

Preliminary research online to find the address was nonproductive. The town map didn't even list a Belmont Street. A call to the tax assessor's office in Cratchatee County on Monday revealed that no property records prior to 1995 were available digitally, but were open to the public in files at the courthouse.

I called Hope. “Are you up for a road trip? I can take Friday off.”

So that's how we ended up headed to Cratchatee, Mississippi, the following week. We left at seven in the morning because it was a three-hour drive, but the time just flew. Hope and I talked about all kinds of things—movies and music, religion and politics, current events, and even our marriages. When I told her about Christine's sudden passing, her eyes filled with tears. She reached out her hand,
and I took it, and I drove like that the rest of the way, holding her hand.

I told her about growing up in Texas, and she told me about her childhood. I learned that her parents had married late in life, that her dad had been eighteen years older than her mother, and that her mom had been forty-two when Hope was born. Losing her mom had been a huge blow to her, and had left her so sad and lonely it had been easy for her opportunistic ex to take advantage of her.

Hearing how this jag-off had moved in on her when she was at her lowest point made me furious. I'm not a violent person, but I wanted to smack him in the face.

Our conversation flowed easily, covering both deep and shallow terrain, with a strong undercurrent of sexual tension. I was not only attracted to Hope; I also genuinely liked and respected her. She was smart, fair-minded, funny, and empathetic. Hanging out with Hope felt like hanging out with a friend I'd known for years.

My father had told me many years ago that the true test of a relationship was a road trip. All I can say is, Hope and I passed with flying colors.

The tax assessor's office was at the courthouse, which was located in the center of town. A helpful clerk told me that Belmont Street probably had been located outside of the actual town limits. Many dirt roads had existed in the forties and fifties that were no longer there or had been renamed.

A search of old records on microfiche showed that the street had been located about eight miles west of town and that 14 Belmont had been owned by an Edsel Wortner. Apparently the house had been torn down to make way for a new housing development in the sixties. No current listings for Wortners were listed in the Cratchatee records or any online search sites.

“You need to find some old-timers,” the assessor's clerk told us.

“Where should we look?” Hope asked.

“Well, there's the nursing home on Elm Street.”

“Most of the folks in there have dementia,” said a woman wearing a Realtor's name tag who was doing a title search. She'd been listening unapologetically to our conversation. “If I were you, I'd start with the downtown diner.”

So that's what we did.

A cowbell jangled over the door as we walked in. Sure enough, a couple of elderly men—one with an oxygen tube in his nose, chewing on an unlit cigar, and the other dipping snuff—sat in the back booth, sipping coffee.

A waitress with long blond hair had her back to us as she cleared the plates from a table. “Sit anywhere you like,” she called. When she turned around, I was shocked to see that her face was creased and wizened, her upper lip long and pleated like corrugated tin. Her monkey-ish face was about fifty years older than the lush mane of hair. The disconnect threw me. I stared for a moment before it hit me: she was a senior citizen wearing a Blake Lively wig.

Hope spoke up while I was still gathering my wits. “We're looking for some information. We found a dog tag with an address among my grandmother's things, and we were wondering if anyone here could tell us where the property is.”

“What's the address?”

I told her. She pulled her mouth to one side as she raked food off the plates into a trash can. “Never heard of that one.” She turned and hollered to the men in the back. “Buster, Willard—y'all ever hear of Belmont Street?”

“Hotchkiss Road used to be called that,” the one with the oxygen said. “My uncle used to live there.”

We headed to the back of the diner and introduced ourselves. The men returned the favor. The one with the oxygen was Buster.

“Can we sit down and buy you a cup of coffee?” I asked.

“We'd be delighted.” Willard scooted over in his booth and smiled at Hope. His large size left about six inches of clearance for Hope. “Our coffee is always on the house, but I wouldn't mind a piece of that pecan pie.”

“Gertie'll skin you alive if you eat that,” Buster said.

“What she don't know won't hurt her,” Willard replied.

“You think anything happens in this town that Gertie don't find out about?”

“Pshaw.”

I pulled up a chair for Hope, then sat down beside Buster.

Willard raised his hand. “Myrtle, darlin', would you bring me a piece of that pie? And don' you go lecturin' me or lettin' on to Gertie.”

“I won't play no part in you killin' yourself. I've got some nonfat yogurt in the back if you want somethin' sweet.”

“Hell,” he grumbled. “Can't get away with nothin'. My wife has spies all over town.”

After the waitress brought the yogurt, a Danish for Buster (who apparently had no wife watching his diet), and coffee for Hope and me, I started in again. “Were you all around during the late forties?”

“Hell, we've been here all our lives.” Buster took a swig of coffee. “Both of us have.”

“Any idea who Edsel Wortner was?”

Both men nodded. “He was a older German guy,” Willard said. “Some folks thought he was a spy during the war. Rumor had it he was sent to an internment camp.”

“What happened to his house?” I asked. “The records at the courthouse show he still owned it in 1948.”

“His daughter rented it out,” Willard said. “It was always run-down and trashy-looking.”

“Do you remember who lived there in September of 1948?”

“Ha! I can't even remember where
I
lived in September 1948.” Buster laughed loudly at his own joke.

“Why do you want to know?” asked Willard. He spit a mouthful of tobacco into a coffee can sitting on the table, wiped his mouth with the back of his red-splotched hand, then spooned a huge scoop of yogurt into his mouth.

“My great-uncle had a job that involved a lot of travel, and he
had a lady friend here,” Hope said. We'd discussed this on the trip from the courthouse; I'd advised Hope that older folks in Mississippi were so intrinsically polite they might be reluctant to talk about the scandalous behavior of a young woman's direct ancestor, so she might get better results framing the story around a more distant relative. She pulled out a picture of her grandfather—one of the few she'd found that fully showed his face. It showed a young man gazing at the camera with a tender expression—no doubt because he was in love with the photographer. “He was a drinker and a rounder. The lady ended up having his baby.”

“My, my, my—a real soap opera of a situation,” Willard said.

Hope nodded. “We're trying to find out what happened to the baby. The problem is, we don't know the mother's name. When we found the dog tag with the address, well, we thought it might be a clue.”

Buster squinted at the photo. “I don't recognize him.”

Willard took the photo, looked at it, and shook his head. “I'll tell you who might—Darlene Lynch. She's in the nursing home on Elm Street.”

“Yeah.” Buster nodded. “Darlene might know.”

“She was the hostess at the Red Lantern honky-tonk out on the highway,” Willard said.

“What's the connection to the Wortner place?” I asked.

“It was kind of a flop house within walking distance of the bar,” Buster explained. “When customers were too drunk to go home or needed a private place to hoochy-cooch . . .” He cast Hope an apologetic look. “Pardon my French, ma'am. Anyway, the Red Lantern put 'em up there. For a fee, of course.”

“Is Darlene still in her right mind?” I asked.

“Don't rightly know. Probably as right as it ever was.” Willard looked at Buster, who let out a loud guffaw. “Just know she'll be easy to spot. She's always had a tower of flame-red hair.”

Hope's face lit up. “Thank you. Thank you very much!”

It worried me, how optimistic Hope looked. She seemed to think this was all going to work out.

I had a bad feeling that even if we got the information we wanted, She would end up disappointed or heartbroken.

A separate, self-protective part of my brain sent up a warning flare. Maybe I should be worrying about just how much I was worrying about Hope.

•   •   •

The nursing home smelled like canned peas, urine, and floral air freshener. We were told that Darlene was in the middle of playing spades in the activity room. An aide went to ask her if she wanted to see visitors, and came back with word that we were to wait until the game was over. Hope and I cooled our heels in the lobby for twenty minutes.

Finally an aide wheeled in an elderly woman with a heavily sprayed beehive of bright red hair. She wore a boldly flowered, muumuu-looking thing that showed a disconcerting amount of crepey décolletage.

I introduced Hope and myself. “How do you do,” she said, extending her hand to me with the palm down, as if she expected me to kiss it. Not sure what to do, I took it and bent over it. Hope extended her hand, too, but Darlene ignored it.

“We were wondering if you knew this man.” Hope handed her the photo of her grandfather.

She looked at it for a long moment, like a poker player regarding her cards. “Who is this to you?”

“He's my great-uncle,” Hope said. “We understand he got a girl pregnant, and we were wondering what happened to the baby.”

“Ah.” She handed the photo back to her. “And why do you want to know?”

Hope briefly explained, substituting “great-aunt” for “grandmother” and leaving out the part about the suitcase. “So . . . can you help us?”

“With what, dear?”

Hope glanced at me, her optimism visibly dimmed. “With what really happened to the baby.”

She cut her eyes away in a cagey manner. “Well, now, I don't want to betray any confidences.”

I leaned forward. “Please, Miss Darlene. It would mean a great deal to her aunt. She's very elderly, and she says she can't die in peace until she knows what happened to her late husband's baby.”

She cocked her head to the side. A loose piece of skin under her chin wagged like a turkey's wattle. “Elderly, huh? I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the elderly.”

I suppressed a smile. She was probably in her late eighties, but apparently didn't think she herself fell into the category.

She narrowed her already narrow eyes. “You say your uncle is dead?”

Hope nodded.

“Well, in that case, I suppose I might be persuaded to tell you what I know.” She gave me a long look, the kind that had subtext. “Let's go outside so I can have a smoke.”

It took a few moments to get an aide to punch in the code that allowed us to exit. I pushed Miss Darlene's wheelchair out to an ash can beside a concrete bench by the parking lot. She drew a Virginia Slim out of a jeweled cigarette case hidden in a pocket of her muumuu. I took the lighter from her and lit her cigarette.

“Thank you,” she said, batting her eyes at me and drawing a deep drag.

“Can you tell us about the woman and the baby?” Hope prompted.

“I'm not sure I can exactly remember.” Miss Darlene cast me another sidelong glance.

I pulled out my wallet and took out two twenties. “Perhaps this will jog your memory.”

She gave me a sly smile. “It might be starting to come back to me.”

I peeled off another bill. Miss Darlene took all three, snaked them into her wrinkled décolletage, and blew out a mouthful of smoke. “First of all, the baby wasn't his.”

Hope's eyes flew wide.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. Real sure. Joan was pregnant before she ever met the man in your photo.”

“Joan—that's the name of the mother?”

She nodded. “Joan Johnson. She was a waitress at the Red Lantern. She'd had an affair with a smooth-talking huckster a month earlier. He said he sold oil field equipment, and he scammed Tommy Joe Harmon out of nearly four thousand dollars—which was a lot of money back then, let me tell you—and then he up and left town.” She took another drag from her cigarette. “A month later, Joan finds out she's in a motherly way.”