"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."
50.
I sat at the kitchen table and stared down at my cell phone. I'd spent the past hour rehearsing what I'd say to Alex, and how I'd say it. You can do this, I told myself. You have to do it. His cell number was still programmed into my phone. All I had to do was touch the line with his number, and it would dial. All I had to do was work up the nerve.
The Jack Daniel's bottle was sitting on the countertop, right where I'd left it the night before. I opened the freezer and took out one of the aluminum ice cube trays. I took one of the tumblers from the dish drainer and filled it with ice cubes, and then I poured three fingers of courage over the ice.
It wasn't five o'clock. It wasn't even noon. I tipped the glass to my lips and took a swallow. It burned going down. I took another swallow, and this one didn't burn nearly as much.
When I'd downed the whiskey, I picked up my cell phone and tapped the icon for Alex Hodder's cell phone number. It rang once, and I got a recording telling me the number had been changed. I should have figured as much after the last time Alex had called me from a blocked number.
I tried calling the Hodder and Associates number, and got a recording saying the number had been changed to an unlisted one "at the request of the recipient." "Who ever heard of a lobbying firm with an unlisted number?" I muttered.
Damn. Reluctantly, I dug out the business card Jackson Harrell had given me on his first visit. I got the Atlanta field office, and asked for Harrell. The receptionist told me he was away from the phone, but invited me to leave a voice message.
"Agent Harrell, this is Dempsey Killebrew. I've been trying to reach Alex Hodder, but all the numbers I have for him have been changed or disconnected. So I may need your help with that."
I hung up and fumed. The kitchen counter was still waiting to be tiled, but I didn't want to start a new project until I could complete the job in one sitting. I walked out into the parlor and took another look at the peeling wallpaper there. I'd been itching to strip it from the walls, but it was nowhere near the top of my to-do list.
No matter. I was in the mood to tear down or rip up. Wallpaper seemed like a fine medium with which to work out aggression. I dragged a ladder into the parlor, then I ran upstairs and donned my work clothes-Norbert's overalls, a T-shirt, and the Chuck Taylors. I slipped the cell phone into the bib pocket of the overalls.
Back in the kitchen, I poured a cup of Spic and Span into the bottom of a bucket, and filled it halfway up with the hottest water I could stand. Then, taking a big sponge and a pair of rubber gloves and a plastic drop cloth, I went out to the parlor. I climbed up the ladder and with the sponge slopped soapy water at the top corner of the first strip of wallpaper, trying to make sure the liquid saturated the old paper. I wet the whole strip, from ceiling to floor. I waited five minutes, then, removing the rubber gloves, I picked at the edge of the wallpaper with my fingernail, worrying it away from the wall little by little. I slathered on some more soapy water, and was rewarded with the sight of the paper bubbling up as the chemicals dissolved the old glue. Finally, I grasped the upper edge of the first strip of paper and slowly pulled it away from the wall. I managed to pull off a two-foot strip of paper before it tore.
I was starting to soak down the bottom half of the wall again when I heard clattering noises from the front porch. I climbed down and went to the door.
Jimmy Maynard stood on the porch. He'd laid out a canvas drop cloth over the whole length of the porch floor, and was now leaning a tall aluminum extension ladder against the front wall. The day was sunny, but the temperatures were in the low sixties, and Jimmy was dressed, as always, in a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts, a paint-spattered Margaritaville T-shirt, and immaculate Top-Siders.
"Well, hey, Dempsey," he said. "How's it goin'?"
"Jimmy," I said, looking around the porch. "What on earth are you doing?"
"Finishin' what I started," he said.
"Jimmy, I can't have you painting my house," I protested. "I can't pay you for this. It's just not in the budget. I've got a new roof to pay for, and we've still got bathrooms to do."
His face colored deep red, and he stubbed at the floor with the toe of his shoe. "Uh, look, Dempsey. See, this is my way of apologizin' to you for the way I cut up at the country club the other night."
"Now wait," I said.
He shook his head obstinately. "Naw. I made an ass of myself and embarrassed you in front of half the population of Guthrie. Shirlene was right. It was inexcusable. And I want you to know, I've been on the wagon ever since. Well, not from beer, but whiskey. Definitely whiskey."
My lips twitched with suppressed laughter, and I hoped he wouldn't smell the Tennessee sour mash on my own breath. "You weren't that bad, Jimmy," I said. "Let's forget it-deal?"