34.
When I saw the feds drive away in their government-issue navy sedan, I jumped up and gave Carter both the high five and a hug.
"Carter! You were brilliant! Did you see the way that bitch Camerin Allgood backed down? She practically tucked her tail between her legs when she ran out of here."
He grinned. "I have to admit, our little confrontation today was the most fun I've had in a very long time. We country lawyers don't often get a chance to back-sass government agents."
"You were awesome," I said. "I want to be you when I grow up."
"That's very flattering coming from a young lady of such high achievements as yourself," Carter said. "But don't delude yourself, Dempsey. We might have bested them in this skirmish, but those two are the FBI. They'll be back, and they won't back down until you give them everything they want."
"I don't care," I said. "I can prove everything I told them now. So Alex Hodder and Tony Licata can just...kiss my ass."
"Let me pose a theoretical question, if I may," Carter said. "Suppose those FBI agents do go away. Suppose they decide not to prosecute you. What's the next chapter in the Dempsey Killebrew story?"
I blinked. "I get on with my life, just like you said."
"Which life is that? Your life as a lobbyist in Washington? Or your life here, in Guthrie, fixing up Birdsong?"
My stomach lurched. Carter Berryhill could be a real buzz killer when he wanted to be.
"Dempsey?" He touched my arm gently. "I'm sorry. Your personal life is none of my affair. Please forget I asked."
"No...it's okay," I said haltingly. "It's a good question. I don't really know what happens next. Since I've been down here, things have been such a mess. I mean, Birdsong was so not what I was expecting. I thought I'd just, you know, slap a coat of paint on it, maybe change some light fixtures. But it's so overwhelming! Every time I start working on one thing, I discover something else that needs to be fixed. Or stripped, or sanded, or rewired, or replumbed, or replaced. It's, like, there's no end in sight. So I've just been, sort of, taking things one day at a time."
"Something tells me that's not your usual approach to life," he said with a smile.
"No," I said ruefully. "I'm used to approaching a project, analyzing it, breaking it down into compartments, and then checking off each compartment as it's completed. You wouldn't know it by the situation I'm in right now, Carter, but in my real-life world, I'm actually a very efficient, goal-oriented person."
"This is your real life, Dempsey," he said. "And contrary to your own, rather harsh assessment, I think you're doing an exemplary job with Birdsong. And not just the house either."
His kindness brought me to sudden tears.
"Stop being so nice to me!" I said fiercely. "You're making me cry, and I don't feel like crying. I feel like celebrating." I looked over at the handsome grandfather clock standing in the corner of his office. "God, it's nearly six. I've barely eaten today. I'm hungry! Where's Tee? I am totally sick of canned soup and cheese and crackers and Hot Pockets. Tee's been pestering me to go to dinner with him at that country club of yours. So let's go already. Let's go out to dinner, all three of us, to celebrate."
"Oh," Carter said. "Tonight? Well, I don't think Tee will be able to make it. He's got to cover the county commission meeting for that damned paper of his."
"Fine," I said. "It'll be just the two of us then." I tucked my arm in his, and did a serviceable job of fluttering my eyelashes. "Of course, you'll have to give me time to go home and shower and get gussied up."
"Oh, my dear," Carter said. "I'd like nothing better. But I'm afraid I have a previous engagement. You'll have to give the Berryhills a rain check."
"Of course," I said, laughing awkwardly. "Actually, I've got so much to do back at the house, I have no business going anywhere, except to work. Bobby Livesey is coming over tomorrow, and he wants to get started hanging the cupboard doors, and I haven't even begun sanding them yet. Never mind me, Carter. I guess I was just giddy from the relief of being out from under this Hoddergate mess."
"I'd love to take you out to dinner any other night, Dempsey," Carter said. "With or without my son."
"I'll hold you to that promise," I said, backing out of the office with as much dignity as I could muster.
I started up the Catfish's engine with no clear idea of where I was going or what I was going to do. Aimless, that's what I was. My first thought was that I'd take myself out to dinner. Who needed a date? This was the twenty-first century, right? I drove past Guthrie's two restaurants, and was surprised to see that they were both closed. Oh, right. It was Monday. Lots of restaurants were closed on Mondays. Out of desperation, I drove over to the Canton Buffet out on the bypass. Its gravel parking lot was full, and a line of people stretched out the door. I'd apparently found Guthrie's idea of a weeknight hot spot.
Suddenly, Chinese food didn't seem so appetizing. I drove over to Boulevard and pulled into the Bi-Lo shopping center, which was just outside the Guthrie city limits. frozen food festival! proclaimed a hot orange banner draped across the front of the supermarket. Ah yes, these were my people.
I loaded up my grocery cart with all the makings for a multiethnic food fest: frozen burritos, frozen egg rolls, frozen pizza. In an impromptu fit of international goodwill, I even dropped a box of frozen piroshkis into my buggy, wondering, as I did so, if anybody in the entire history of Guthrie, Georgia, had ever sampled a frozen piroshki. To wash down the entrees, I picked up a bottle of inexpensive chardonnay, selected purely because I loved the whimsy of its name, Dimmlylit Cellars. Out of guilt, I even made a run down the produce aisle, to pick up a bag of prewashed salad greens and an anemic-looking cucumber.
The store was mostly empty. As the checkout-line cashier rang up my purchases, I tried not to look too obvious as I scanned the tabloid headlines. The Star claimed it had witnesses who could prove that Princess Diana was living in a Mormon conclave under an assumed name. Since I was planning an evening of gourmet excess, I decided to add a helping of empty literary calories to the agenda. The cashier, a rail-thin middle-aged woman with a frizzy red perm laughed when she saw me add the tabloid to the conveyor belt.
"Yeah, I had to buy that one too," she said. "Where you reckon these magazines come up with this shit they print?"
"Dunno," I admitted. "But I guess it's a safe bet Prince Charles isn't going to sue them for libel, right?"
"That's the truth," she said. She cocked her head and gave me a closer look now that I'd established myself as a confidante. "Hey, excuse my manners, but aren't you the Dempsey girl who's fixing up that old house downtown?"
"That's me," I said lightly. I held out my hand, and we shook. "I'm Dempsey Killebrew," I said. "Mr. Norbert was my great-great-uncle, although I'm sorry to say I never met him."
She gestured at her name badge. "I'm Janette. Janette Hoover. Head cashier, like that counts for anything when there's just the three of us anyway, and Beatle, he don't count because he's only half days."
"Nice to meet you, Janette."
"You're the one from Washington, right?"
"Yes." I was hoping we were going to leave it at that. I took out my billfold to pay for my groceries.
"Listen," she said, her voice lowered in a conspiratorial whisper. "There's something I want to tell you, if you don't mind me saying so."
"All right."
"I just wanna tell you that I've seen them federal agents running around town the past few days, asking a lot of questions about you."
"Oh." I felt my face reddening. I had a sudden desire to join Princess Diana in that Mormon conclave.
"Makes me so mad I could just spit!" Janette fumed. "We got to get the government out of our private lives. From what I hear around town, they're trying to say you bribed a congressman, and I don't know what all. I think that's just a bunch of shit, ya know?"
"Well...thanks," I stammered. "I appreciate your vote of confidence."
"Every single one of those jokers up in Washington is a crook, as far as I'm concerned," Janette said. "And I know you've got Mr. Carter Berryhill working for you, so you must be good people. Mr. Carter, he handled my divorce, and my mama's divorce, and my sister's divorce too. Next time you see him, you tell him Janette says hey, will you?"
"I certainly will," I said, handing over my money.
She bagged up my groceries and then, glancing around to make sure no government types were spying on us, she casually flipped in copies of the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News. "On the house," she whispered. "Check out the article in the Enquirer about John F. Kennedy's love child with Marilyn Monroe!"
By the time I got back to Birdsong, I'd mapped out a plan for the evening. I would uncork my bottle of Dimmlylit wine, drop in a couple of ice cubes, and enjoy a leisurely dinner while perusing the literature I'd just gotten. Eventually, I promised myself, I would get around to sanding those cabinet doors. But first, I was determined to celebrate my small victory over the FBI.
It had gotten dark out, but I noticed, with appreciation, that Ella Kate had thoughtfully turned on the porch light for me. Maybe, I thought, her attitude toward me was thawing. Maybe we'd even share a piroshki or an egg roll tonight.
I heard cheery whistling as I picked my way up the broken concrete sidewalk toward the house. Did I say cheery? Definitely not Ella Kate.
"Hello?" I called out. As I got closer to the front porch, I smelled fresh paint fumes.
"Well, hey there, lady," Jimmy Maynard called. I stepped up onto the porch. He'd been painting, all right. In fact, the whole wall had been transformed with a soft green shade of paint that looked suspiciously like dill pickle cut with 25 percent white.
I set my grocery bags down on the porch and gaped.
"You're speechless with gratitude, right?" He wiped his hands with a rag. He was dressed the way I'd seen him dressed every other time we'd met-in golf clothes. Tonight he wore a pale yellow polo shirt topped with a blue-and-green-striped sweater vest, worn over khaki shorts. He wore Top-Siders and no socks. Despite all the painting he'd done, there was not a drop of paint on him that I could see, and the porch floor was similarly tidy.
"I don't know what to say," I said finally. "You're amazing, to say the least."
He'd rigged up a work light on a tripod, and it was aimed at the wall he'd painted.
"Amazing." He grinned, and his even white teeth shone in his deeply tanned face. "The lady says I'm amazing and she hasn't even seen my best work yet." He dropped a kiss on my cheek. "But you will, darlin', you will."
"Should I ask what you're doing?"
He shrugged. "I was at the Benjamin Moore store this morning, buying some decorator white for one of my rental properties, and I started looking at paint chips, and I said, dammit, Jimmy, if you don't put a coat of dill pickle on Dempsey's house, nobody will. I came over here, knocked on the door, and nobody was around. I went on and ran some errands, and when I came back by, Ella Kate came to the door and said you'd gone out-she didn't know where, or when you'd be back. She tried givin' me the old Ella Kate skunk eye, but I flung it right back at her."
"You've painted the whole front of the house," I said, walking back and forth. "I can't believe it. In one afternoon."
"Well, not the whole front," Jimmy said. "Just the first floor. I thought you might think I was pushy if you came home and found my extension ladders set up and everything. Fortunately for you, Birdsong hadn't been painted in so long, most of that old pink paint had flaked right off. I ran a palm sander over the front here, cleaned it up with my Shop-Vac, got her primed, and just did manage to get a base coat down before it got too dark to see."
"I don't know what to say."
"Say you like it. Say you love it. Say you'll have dinner with me and stay over for breakfast too."
I laughed despite myself. "You're something else, Jimmy Maynard."
"I'll take that as a yes then," he said.
"Yes, I like the paint. Yes, I'll have dinner with you. But that's as far as it goes," I warned.
"We'll see," he said, and then he began to whistle again.
35.
Jimmy promised to put away my groceries while I ran upstairs to shower and change. I paused in front of Ella Kate's door on my way to the bathroom. I hesitated, then knocked. "Ella Kate?"
She opened the door a crack and looked out at me.
"Did the vet call? Any news about Shorty?"
"He's doin' good," she said. "They told me we can carry him home tomorrow night, probably. Unless he has a setback or something."
"Great," I said. "I'm so glad he's all right."
She closed her door without any more idle chitchat.
I had no idea where Jimmy Maynard planned for us to have dinner, but as I stood in front of my closet, I decided any place, even the Canton Buffet, would be a treat, because it was a change. I didn't want to get too dressy, because I didn't want Jimmy thinking that I thought this was a real date. But on the other hand, he had just painted half of my house. The least I could do was put on something other than Uncle Norbert's flannel shirt and overalls. In the end, I put on a gauzy white embroidered peasant blouse with a drawstring neck, and a turquoise-and-yellow cotton skirt that fell loosely to my ankles. I felt funny about the blouse's low neckline, so I fished around in my jewelry box until I came up with one of my mother's necklaces. You'd have sworn it was some expensive Navajo turquoise and silver antique at first glance, but Lynda had proudly told me that the green "gems" were in reality bits of smashed Heineken bottles she'd found on the side of the road, set into aluminum strips made from flattened-out soda cans. I had dangly drop earrings to match, and when I twirled in front of the cloudy old mirror on the back of the closet door, I felt strangely lighthearted and carefree. It was the first time since I'd moved to Georgia that I'd worn makeup-and earrings.
Jimmy gave an appreciative wolf whistle when I walked into the parlor. He put down the paper he'd been reading-the National Enquirer-and stood up. "Well, Miss Dempsey Killebrew," he said. "You do clean up nice. Now I guess I'll have to go home and change into something that won't make you embarrassed to be seen with me."
"Not at all," I said. "You look fine. I just felt like dressing up tonight. It's sort of a celebration, actually."
"I'll want to hear all about it," he said. "Right after I slip into something a little more comfortable."
We pulled into the driveway of his house, which was, as he'd promised, only a few houses down from Birdsong. "I'll wait in the car," I told him. I was secretly feeling a little uneasy about being alone in a house with a man who'd cheerfully told me-from the first moment we'd met-that he planned to seduce me.
"Awww," he said. He put one finger under my chin. "I swear, I'll be a perfect gentleman. Come on inside, I'm a real estate agent, I got to show off my place, you know."
I don't know what I'd been expecting, but I can honestly say I wasn't expecting what I saw when I walked through the door of Jimmy Maynard's tidy brick Colonial Revival cottage.
"Wow."
The inside of the house was light years away from the outside. It had been totally gutted, leaving exposed whitewashed roof beams and rafters, and exposed air-conditioning ductwork. The wooden floors were stained ebony, and finished with a high gloss. I was standing in one large, multipurpose room. A kitchen-all high-tech and industrialchic stainless steel-was situated at one end of the room, at the other, a wall of glass blocks sectioned off what I supposed was the only private space in the house, the bathroom and bedroom. Each wall was painted a different, bold color-tomato red, cadet blue, school bus yellow, acid green. The furniture was contemporary-and surprisingly good. I walked over to a scooped-out white leather lounge chair.
"Is this?"
"Yup," he said with a smirk. "Eames. Walnut base. Signed and numbered, original leather upholstery. I bought it for ten bucks from a guy who sets up at a flea market at the drive-in in Atlanta. Told me he got it out of a dentist's office."
I walked over to the sofa, a low-slung chrome and black leather creation with characteristic strapping. A white tulip Saarinen table stood to the side of the sofa. "And this?" I asked, patting the sofa.
"Florence Knoll," he said. "Now this, I did buy off eBay. I got it for two hundred bucks, but of course, the seller hit me up for another two hundred bucks in shipping."
"And it's worth?"
He showed me the teeth again. "Last time I checked? A couple thousand."
"You're really into contemporary furniture," I said. "I'm impressed."
"I'm impressed that you're impressed. You sure you're a lobbyist?"
"I read a lot of shelter magazines. You sure you're not gay?"
He laughed. "Touche."
He pointed toward the kitchen. "There's a bottle of wine in the fridge. Pour a glass for both of us, and make yourself comfortable. I won't be but a minute."
I wandered over to the kitchen. The refrigerator was the one I'd lusted after, a glass-doored Traulsen. I saw the wine, and took two glasses from a rack that hung over the sink. I poured two glasses-and took my own glass over to the sofa.