"Since we're asking personal questions," I said. "What was that thing your dad said at dinner? About it being a waste of billable hours running a small-town newspaper?"
"Oh that. It's just his way of needling me about the Citizen-Advocate."
"That's a newspaper?"
"The Guthrie Citizen-Advocate. It's a weekly. Founded in 1908. Which we now happen to own, and which I now happen to be the publisher of. It pisses Dad off mightily."
"Why would you guys buy a paper if your dad doesn't want you to run it?"
"We didn't exactly buy it," Tee said with a chuckle. "We represented the wife of the former owner in her lengthy and highly entertaining divorce. Hammond, that's the guy who owned the paper, decided to get foxy and try to hide assets from Veronica, who was our client. It took us nearly two years to run him to ground, but we eventually did it. Luckily for us, the divorce judge had just been elected in our circuit, and he didn't give a rat's ass about Hammond's social standing. He was very annoyed that Hammond tried to hide a couple million dollars' worth of marital assets. So he awarded half the assets, including the Citizen-Advocate, to Veronica. Who, when it came time to pay our legal bills, balked at all the hours we'd worked on her behalf. We took it to arbitration, but long story short, the Berryhill law firm is now the owner of the Guthrie Citizen-Advocate. And you are looking at the publisher of record."
He grinned.
"You look pretty pleased with yourself," I observed. "Even if it does annoy your father. Do you actually know anything about running a newspaper?"
"I'm learning. We took over about eight months ago. It wasn't much of a paper, to tell you the truth. What people in the business call 'a shopper.' Which means most of the revenue-and content-was generated by advertising. It helped that we were the legal organ for the county, so we're guaranteed all the legal advertising."
"It makes money?"
"Not a lot," he admitted. "I've hired a new editor, who is also the sole reporter, and we've got a new sales staff-actually, the sales staff consists of Sally, who I hired away from a weekly down in Perry, Georgia. They're young, and enthusiastic. And don't tell anybody, but I'm having a ball. I've even written some editorials. Running a small-town newspaper is way more fun than doing trusts and estates."
"If you say so," I said, shaking my head.
"Dad thinks the paper is a total waste of my time, and the firm's resources," Tee said.
"I've heard that line before," I told him. "My dad never could understand why I went to all the trouble of going to law school, and then went to work as a lobbyist. He's just dying for me to cross over to the dark side and sue somebody."
Tee laughed out loud. "The dark side. Yeah. That's a good one. The dark side." He chortled, and I giggled, and pretty soon we were riding along in the night, laughing our collective butts off.
We were still laughing when we pulled up in front of Birdsong. I could see a single light burning in an upstairs window. Ella Kate's room. The porch light was off. I'd deliberately turned it on before leaving a few hours earlier, so I wouldn't have to navigate the perilously cracked driveway in the dark.
Tee saw me looking at the front of the house. "I'll walk you to the door. You should get that front-porch light fixed."
"It works just fine," I told him. "I think Ella Kate turned it off on purpose."
"Old bat," he muttered.
He trained a penlight on the ground and we picked our way slowly up the cracked and broken pavement.
"Thanks for dinner," I said, when we'd reached the front porch. "Both of 'em. I can make it from here."
"You sure?"
"Positive," I said, feeling awkward. I was too tired to invite him in, and anyway, I didn't want him getting any ideas.
"Okay, then. Well, good night," he said.
He was a couple of steps down the driveway when I called out impulsively.
"Hey, Tee?"
"Yeah?" It was so dark I couldn't see his face, which was a good thing.
"You know how I told you I wasn't sleeping with Alex? The thing is, he never asked. We were probably working up to it though. There was definitely something there. I'd be lying if I denied it."
"Oh." His voice was soft, disembodied sounding.
"He won't return my calls," I said. "I even went to his house. His wife wouldn't let me in."
"Dempsey?" He was walking back toward me again, but stopped when he was two feet away. "Why are you telling me all this?"
"I don't know," I said. "I guess...you seem like somebody I don't want to lie to. And you said I don't strike you as being that type of girl. But the thing is, I probably am that type of girl."
He shook his head. "No you're not." His face was pale and serious. I heard a soft hoot coming from the top of the camellia bush at the edge of the driveway, and then the fluttering of wings. Tee turned and walked away.
17.
I awoke Wednesday to the slow, excruciating drip of rain, and the sensation that I'd been beaten with a stick. Apparently my twice-a-week gym regimen in D.C. had failed to properly tone my housework muscles. A glance at my travel alarm clock told me I'd overslept. It was closing in on eight A.M. "Damn," I said, with a yawn. So much for my plans to spend the day working in the newly cleared yard. It wasn't until I finally managed to drag my aching bones out of bed that I made the depressing discovery that it was raining inside Birdsong, as well as outside. The dripping sound that had awakened me was actually coming from a spot on the ceiling only a foot or two from the window that overlooked the street. Water was already pooling on the floor, and an ugly brown mark stained the cracked plaster ceiling. And now that I was looking for it, I could see other, similar damp brown stains on the ceiling, close to the window. And yes, once I pulled up the edge of the braided bedroom rug, I could see that the worn pine floorboards also showed signs of water damage.
"Damn." I stumbled around the room, searching for something to catch the drips, finally coming up with a wide-mouthed china bowl, decorated with a delicate tracery of blue vines, that had been stashed on the top shelf of the closet.
While the rain fell softly outside, I hastily pulled on the work clothes I'd left folded on a wooden chair the night before, and ran around the house to perform a thorough rain check. The news was not good. I found a leak near the back door, in the kitchen, and another in the trunk room. I placed a couple of battered tin saucepans under each leak, and went back to the kitchen.
I was pouring water into the coffeepot when I heard a bedroom door open, and then the tip-tapping of a dog's paws coming down the hallway. Shorty pranced into the kitchen, and without giving me so much as a sideways glance began pawing at the back door. I looked around for the dog's mistress, but when Shorty's pawing turned to urgent whines, I unlatched the door and let him out. "Don't run away, okay?" I said nervously, poking my head out the door to watch him relieve himself on a tree trunk a few feet away.
"Shorty ain't goin' nowhere." The voice startled me so, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled around to find Ella Kate standing in the doorway with her customary peeved expression. She was dressed in another of her odd ensembles. Over her flowered, pink, calf-length housedress she wore a moth-eaten black cardigan sweater that sported a large gold G on its right breast. She wore thick, white-cotton tube socks, and over those, a pair of worn, brown-leather house shoes. Her fine, white hair had been scraped into a topknot that looked for all the world like a whale's waterspout.
Ella Kate shuffled over to the kitchen counter. She filled a teakettle and set it on the stove's front burner, which she ignited with a wooden kitchen match. From the cupboard by the sink she took a sturdy white porcelain coffee mug into which she spooned some of the Piggly Wiggly instant coffee.
"I'm brewing fresh coffee," I said, in what was supposed to be a friendly gesture. "You're welcome to some, if you'd like."
"Hmmph," she enthused.
"The ceiling leaks," I offered. "In my bedroom, and the trunk room, and even in here, right by the back door."
"Hmmph," Ella Kate chirped.
"I guess I'll have to get a roofer over here, right away, for an estimate."
She shuffled over to the back door and held it open. "C'mon, Shorty," she called. "Get your bidness done and be quick about it. I don't need you tracking mud into my clean kitchen."
I cocked an eyebrow. Her kitchen? And a clean one, at that?
Shorty ran into the kitchen and sat expectantly at her feet. "Good boy," she said, pouring dog food into a cereal bowl she took from the cupboard-the same cupboard that held the dishes I'd been eating from.
I poured myself a cup of the French roast coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table. Ella Kate stood and watched the dog eat. When the teakettle whistled, she poured boiling water over her own cup, stirred it with a spoon, then disappeared back down the hallway, cup in hand, the dog in her wake again. Seconds later, I heard her bedroom door open, and then close.
So much for our cozy little coffee klatch.
While my own coffee cooled, I dug the Guthrie telephone directory out of a kitchen drawer. It was only slightly bigger than a pamphlet. I found the number for Bobby Livesey, the handyman Carter had recommended, and dialed it, but got only a recording, promising that if I'd leave a number, Bobby would call back, "just as soon as I possibly can."
"Yeah, right," I muttered, chin in hand, listening to the hollow chink of raindrops meeting saucepan.
After I'd finished my bowl of cereal, and placed the rinsed-out bowl on the highest shelf of the kitchen cupboard, where Ella Kate presumably couldn't reach it, I decided to mount a frontal assault on the inside of Birdsong.
I plugged in my iPod, and thumbed it to a selection of songs I'd listened to back in D.C., during my infrequent stints of jogging. When Sheryl Crow started singing "All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun," I knew I'd found a tempo to work with.
By noon, and with the help of some serious dance tunes from Fergie, Gwen Stefani, and Madonna, I'd mopped, dusted, and scrubbed my way through the kitchen and the rest of the rooms downstairs, discovering, along the way, two more threatening dark patches in the ceiling.
When I got to the foyer though, I suffered a serious loss of momentum. The bare light bulb cast a gray gloom over the assortment of junk arrayed around the room. Sweeping up the plaster chunks and thin layer of dog hair did little to improve the room's look. What this room needed, I decided, was a total and complete clean sweep.
I knocked purposefully on Ella Kate's door.
"Who's that?" Her voice was muffled.
I rolled my eyes. Who else would it be?
"It's Dempsey. I need to speak to you, please."
"Me and Shorty are busy." I could hear canned laughter from a television set in the background.
"It's important, Ella Kate."
Footsteps. She opened the door a crack and poked her head out. Her pale blue eyes narrowed and her thin lips pursed. "What's so important it can't wait until Golden Girls is over?"
I took a deep breath. "I wanted to let you know that I'm getting the house cleaned up and cleared out. What would you like me to do with all the stuff in the foyer?"
"What stuff?"
"All that junk," I sputtered. "A barrel of rakes and brooms? Buckets of fake flowers, all those old paperback books? And that dressmaker's form? I need to know what you'd like me to do with all of it?"
Her nostrils flared. "Junk? That happens to be my property, missy. You just keep your mitts off of that stuff and leave it be." She slammed the door to announce the finality of her decision.
I took another deep breath. Was I going to let an octogenarian squatter get the better of me?
"Ella Kate!" I rapped on the door. "I'm sorry, but this is my father's house, and he's asked me to get it cleaned up and ready to sell. You can't leave that junk in the foyer. If you don't get rid of it, I will."
The door swung open. She stalked down the hallway with Shorty at her heels. A moment later, she was dragging the fifty-pound sack of dog food back toward her room. It was nearly as big as she was.
"Here," I said, coming to her aid. "Let me help you with that."
"Leave me alone!" she said, slapping my hand away. "You've done enough already. Those tools are perfectly good gardening tools. I was gonna put 'em in the shed myself, once the weather cleared and my bursitis quit acting up."
"I'll be happy to move them to the shed," I said. "Now, what about the books? And the flowers? And the dummy?"
She continued to drag the dog food sack toward her room. "I save the flowers to put on graves in the family plot over at Greenlawn. Put 'em out in the shed too, if you wanna be like that. That dressmaker's form is a real antique. Norbert's mama used it, and her mama before that."
"Could it go up in the attic?" I asked gently. "Or would you like me to move it to your room?"
"Do what you want," she muttered. "It ain't my house, so I guess it ain't for me to say."
I sighed. "I'll take it up to the attic and try to find a nice dry spot for it. Now, what about the books?"
"The books are for the ladies over at the nursing home. I can't lift 'em, and since the sheriff took my license away, I can't tote 'em over there myself."
"I'll load them into Uncle Norbert's car and drop them off if you'll give me the address of the nursing home," I promised.
"I guess that would be all right," she said reluctantly. A moment later, she slammed the door in my face again.
I smiled despite the rebuff. Score one for Dempsey in this round.
I borrowed a plastic rain scarf from the dressmaker dummy, picked up the barrel of rakes, and made a dash for the driveway. It took three trips, but soon the boxes of books had been safely stowed in the enormous trunk of the Catfish.
Now, I thought, grimacing, it was time for a trip to the attic. I couldn't help but remember what Tee had told me about bats emerging from Birdsong's eaves. I decided to leave the rain scarf in place-just in case.
The dressmaker form wasn't heavy, but it was bulky. It bumped along behind me as I dragged it up the stairs to the second floor. I'd found the door to the attic on an earlier exploration of the house. It was narrow, and the steep stairs up to the attic were narrower still. The dummy barely fit through the door.
As I climbed the crude wooden stairs, the attic's smell wafted down to me-a mixture of decay, mothballs, and dust. I was out of breath when I reached the top step. In the half-light filtering through the room's grime-covered windows, the attic reminded me of an elephants' graveyard, with the hulking, dust-covered carcasses of cast-off trunks and furniture and wooden crates arrayed about the space.
I found a frayed cord, and a yellow lightbulb bathed the old wooden roof timbers with a weird amber glow. I scanned the room nervously, on the lookout for marauding bats. Thankfully, I saw none. What I did see were the sources of several leaks, with rain drops steadily dripping through the ceiling and down through the floorboards. I trundled the dressmaker's form to a corner of the attic that showed no signs of water damage, and then scurried around placing every container I could find under the leaks.
When she was high and dry, I looked around the room. Another time, I might have spent the whole afternoon exploring the attic. I'd been a bookish little kid, and as a preteen, had gone through a serious Louisa May Alcott period, when I longed to be like Jo, of Little Women, scribbling away in some cozy rooftop garret. In an earlier time, I'd gobbled up stories of pirates and treasure chests. The kid in me longed to start rummaging through all those mysterious crates and trunks.
Today, though, I had work I needed to get to. And a roofer to track down. Just as I was turning to go back down the stairs, I caught a glint of light from the far corner of the room. As I got closer, I saw that the source of the glint was an elaborate, triple-tiered crystal chandelier, which seemed to be hanging from the roof rafters by some sort of pulley.
I gazed up at it in admiration. Three tiers of crystal arms protruded elegantly from its center shaft, and ropes of dusty crystal beading festooned each of the arms. This, I thought, had to be the missing light fixture, either from the foyer or the dining room. It would come downstairs soon, I vowed. But not today. Not until I had a handyman with a strong back and a knack for old wiring.
With the foyer cleared of Ella Kate's junk, I could finally get a good look at the room's graceful lines. For the first time, I noticed the wedding-cake ceiling moldings, and the detailed wooden wainscoting. On either side of the door I discovered a pair of crystal-drop wall sconces that I hadn't noticed before. There was even a deep coat closet, which had been hidden behind the stacks of book boxes. Its door was solid mahogany, and the handle, like all the other door handles in the house, was crystal, with a finely etched brass back plate.
Under all those layers of junk and grime, I was discovering that Birdsong truly was a gracious old lady of a house.
After I removed each of the crystals, soaked them in a sinkful of ammonia water, and replaced them on the sconces, I screwed new forty-watt bulbs into the fixtures and held my breath as I flipped the light switch near the front door.
Magic! It was still rainy and gray outside, but now, with the front door's glass inset and sidelights cleaned, the floor mopped and the sconces functioning, the foyer looked positively elegant. I stood there, turning slowly, grinning like an idiot, soaking up the immensity of my accomplishment.
"Hmmph."
I hadn't even heard Ella Kate leave her bedroom. She stood in the doorway to the foyer, holding a squirming Shorty in her arms, a cracked patent leather pocketbook tucked in the crook of her right elbow.
"It's pretty, isn't it?" I asked.