The windows, and "Billie Jean," were next. The panes were so caked with grime I didn't even attempt to start with the Windex. Instead, I hooked up a garden hose and splashed water all over the old wavy glass, sending a dirty river seeping down over my previously pristine floorboards. Damn. I'd have to give the porch another rinsing later. But for now, I washed and polished and spritzed the eight tall windows that ran across the front of the house, inside and out, until they sparkled like crystal in the afternoon sunshine.
I'd saved the front door for last. I scrubbed away layer after layer of dirt and dust, finally revealing, to my surprise, a faded red paint job where I'd thought was previously a dull gray one. Jimmy Maynard had been right. Birdsong was meant to have a red front door. And a handsome door it was. From the look of the bare wood peeping from underneath the old paint, I decided it must be heart pine. There were six finely detailed raised panels, with a beveled-glass insert and beveled-glass sidelights, along with a fan-shaped transom above the door that I couldn't reach without a ladder.
With an old toothbrush I'd found under the kitchen sink, and "PYT" blasting into my ears, I worked brass cleaner into the large elaborately worked doorknob and faceplates, the knocker, even the faceplate around the cheap, splintered plastic doorbell. That doorbell would be my first rehab project, I decided. A door as grand as this one deserved better. I didn't know where I'd get something like a reproduction doorbell in Guthrie. This might take a little research. Fortunately, research was my forte. And at least, I knew, Guthrie had a public library, because I'd passed it earlier in the day.
With the porch rinsed off again, the windows clean, and the brass shining brightly, I decided to step back to take it all in. The iPod was playing "Thriller" as I moonwalked down the wet concrete steps, and a few steps away into the yard.
I stood there, bobbing my head and singing along, thrilled with my results. Once the top layer of dirt was removed, I could see, for the first time, that Birdsong really could be something fine.
But my elation was mixed with the overwhelming realization of all I still had to accomplish. It had taken me an entire day just to get this far. The yardman and his chain saw were gone now, and three head-high piles of vines and tree limbs were stacked at the curb. The good news was that the house was actually visible from the street now. The bad news was that I could see the full extent of Birdsong's state of decay. Ivy and kudzu crept over the side of the house, and had covered what little foundation plantings remained. My hands itched to start yanking at vines and limbs, but my arms were already screaming from the unaccustomed punishment I'd given them that day. No Pilates workout had ever left me this sore.
And the inside of the house. My God, I hadn't even started there. Did I have enough energy left to at least open the front door and start sweeping my way from the front of the house to the back?
A tap on my shoulder made me jump nearly a foot. I whirled around, wild eyed, to see a bemused Tee Berryhill standing there, holding a lethal-looking machete in one hand and a pair of long-handled tree clippers in the other. He was dressed in a navy blue suit, and once again, he had a necktie stuffed in the breast pocket of his jacket.
"Jesus!" I exclaimed. "Where did you come from?"
He reached over and tugged at my earbuds. "I've been standing here for five minutes, watching your dance routine. I called your name, but you didn't hear me. What the hell are you listening to?"
My cheeks burned with embarrassment. Had he seen the whole thing? The whole hip-swaying, finger-popping routine I'd done to "Billie Jean"?
"It's Thriller," I said lamely. "The rerelease."
"Wow," he said, walking up toward the porch. "It must work for you. The porch looks great. How long have you been working like this?"
"Hours?" I shrugged. "I lost track of the time."
And I had. The sun had slipped below the tree line, and the air had gotten chillier.
"It's after five," Tee said. He held up the machete. "I meant to bring these over earlier today, but I got caught up myself with a hearing in Milledgeville. Anyway, I see you beat me to the punch. You got the yard cleared out yourself? You're Wonder Woman!"
"Not really," I admitted. "I was wondering how I could ever tackle this disaster, but when I got back from the supermarket and the hardware store, there was already a guy here with a chain saw. Your dad sent him over."
"You got the Catfish running? Man, you don't waste any time, do you?"
"No time to waste," I said. "I did a walk-through this morning. And it's even worse than I expected."
He gave me a stiff pat on my shoulder. "Well, from the looks of things out here, you've made a good start. Are you ready to knock off for the day?"
"Yeah," I said, already feeling the energy seep from my body. "My mind wants to keep going, but my body says, 'Hell no.'"
"I vote for hell no too," Tee said. "Now, what about some food? I know for a fact that Ella Kate doesn't keep much in the way of food in the house. So Dad sent me over to bring you back for supper."
"Oh, no," I said quickly. "I'm a mess. And-"
"Come along," Tee said, gently taking my arm and tugging me toward the front door. "Day shift is over. I guess you didn't hear the mill whistle blow?"
"I haven't heard anything but Michael Jackson for the past few hours," I admitted. "Anyway, isn't the mill closed? Why would the whistle still blow?"
"It's a long story," he said, heading up the front steps. "We'll fill you in over supper."
15.
After I'd showered and was changing into some respectable clothes, I could hear voices downstairs. At one point, I heard a dog's sharp bark, then a woman's voice, and Tee's, and then a door slamming.
He was sitting on a bench in the hallway when I rejoined him.
"Was that Ella Kate?"
He jerked his head in the direction of the front door. "It was. I invited her to join us for dinner, but she politely declined. I believe she had a previous engagement."
I raised an eyebrow. "Politely?"
"Her exact words were 'I'd rather choke than eat with her and you two ambulance chasers.'"
"Oh dear."
"At least she didn't throw anything at me this time."
Tee filled me in on Guthrie's social strata on the drive over to his house.
"That house there," he said, pointing to an imposing brick Colonial Revival mansion a few doors down the block, "belonged to one of the Dempseys. Dad could tell you exactly which one. Local gossips say that what money he didn't blow on wine, women, and song, he lost speculating on the stock market. It's changed hands a bunch of times over the years. Now it belongs to some dot-com genius. She's not even thirty."
"Nice house," I said, pressing my face to the car window. "And I bet she didn't even have to kill any spiders to get it that way."
He showed me the mayor's house too, a gray-shingled bungalow with a huge old oak tree in the front yard. A tire swing hung from the tree's lowest branch, and an assortment of brightly colored plastic toys lay on the ground around the tree. "He's got triplets, all girls, four years old," Tee said. "Poor guy, I don't think he knows what hit him."
I nodded sympathetically. "I know the feeling. My dad has twins that age."
"You've got brothers who are four?"
"Half brothers. My stepmother is quite a bit younger. They're little devils too."
Finally, he pulled up to a charming white-frame cottage encircled by a low boxwood hedge and a dark green picket fence. A discreet wrought-iron sign hanging from the mailbox told me we'd arrived at berry hill.
"Oh!" I said with a sigh. "I love it already. Berry Hill. That's adorable."
He made a wry face. "The name was Mama's idea. She even planted raspberry vines to grow on that fence, and there's a patch of rabbit-eye blueberries out back. The birds eat up most of 'em now, but when she was alive, she put up enough jam to feed pharoah's army."
"How long has she been gone?"
He got out, came around, and opened my door, a true Southern gentleman. "Let's see. She was diagnosed with breast cancer right before I took my bar exam, and six months later she was dead. So that's, what? Ten years, I guess."
"And your dad never remarried?"
He laughed. "Not for lack of trying. Every woman in this town under the age of eighty has done her level best to save 'poor ol' Carter' from his pitiful life as a bachelor. He goes along and allows himself to be fixed up, but I don't think he's had a second date in all these years."
I was about to ask about Tee's own marital status, but now Carter himself was standing in the doorway, a clean dish towel wrapped around his waist and a glass of wine in his outstretched hand.
"Dempsey!" he said, giving me an impromptu hug.
"This is for you," he said, handing me the glass. "I don't figure you for a teetotaler."
"You figured right," I said, taking a sip. "And although I went to the grocery store, I totally forgot to hit the liquor store."
Tee and Carter laughed at my ignorance.
"Honey, you can't buy liquor in Guthrie," Carter said. "We're dry as dust. You'll have to drive over to the next county to BJ's Bottle Shop if you want a drink of anything stronger than Coca-Cola. Or come over here to Berry Hill."
He walked me into the living room, and I stood for a moment admiring my surroundings. With its walls of horizontal pine paneling, muted chintz-upholstered sofas and chairs, worn oriental rugs and gold-framed paintings, the Berry Hill living room looked like a room that was lived in and enjoyed. The fireplace was surrounded by bookshelves crammed with leather-bound books, and a leather club chair pulled up beside the fireplace held a folded-up copy of The New Yorker.
"What a nice room," I said, pausing in front of a surprisingly good oil landscape.
"All of this was Sarah's doing," Carter said. "Tee and I just try to keep it from looking too much like a fraternity house."
"You've done a good job," I said, warming my backside in front of the fire.
"You should see what Dempsey's done over at Birdsong, Dad," Tee told his father, emerging from the other room with his own glass of wine. "It's the first time since I can remember that you can tell what color the front of the house is painted."
"And that reminds me," I said. "Thank you so much for sending over your yardman. I had no idea how I was going to tackle that jungle. He worked wonders. Unfortunately, now you can actually get a good look at that paint Tee mentioned. Pink. Ugh."
Carter handed me a polished silver tray. Perched on top of a paper doily were an assortment of warm miniquiches. I took one and tasted. "Nice," I said, not bothering to hide my surprise.
"Don't be too impressed," Tee warned. "We've got a freezer full of this kinda stuff from the discount store over in Macon."
We sat by the fire and chatted for a while, doing that practiced little dance you do when you're sizing up new acquaintances for their potential as friends. The Berryhills, father and son, were easy to be around. I could tell by their verbal sparring that they were genuinely fond of each other.
After a leisurely cocktail hour, during which time Carter disappeared several times to "check on my masterpiece," as he put it, he decided everything was ready.
"Hope you like salmon," Carter said, again tucking my arm into the crook of his elbow to escort me into the dining room.
"Love it," I said. "But then, anything you serve me will be a treat. I'm not much of a cook myself."
"Neither is he," Tee said, taking my other arm and steering me toward my chair as Carter went back to the kitchen. "But that never stopped him. Salmon, little dinky roasted potatoes, and poached asparagus with dill sauce, which is what's on tonight's menu, is his company dinner. The rest of the week, it's strictly by the book. Monday is rice and beans, Tuesday's baked chicken, Wednesday is Hamburger Helper, and Thursday's some kind of casserole made with the leftover chicken."
"Are you complaining about my cuisine?" Carter asked, coming in from the kitchen with a platter of food.
"Not me," Tee said, standing up and serving me a slice of the salmon, along with the aforesaid potatoes and asparagus.
While the men served themselves, I took the time to look around the dining room. The walls were painted a soft robin's-egg blue, and cream-colored linen curtains hung from a bay window that looked out onto a back garden. A large crystal chandelier hung over the table, which was covered with a floor-length damask tablecloth. The chairs were Sheraton, with seat covers in a blue chintz. All the artwork was of large tropical birds-parrots, macaws, flamingos, and egrets-framed in heavy gilt-edged frames.
I got up to look at the largest print. "Is this a Menaboni?" I asked.
Carter looked pleased. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "You know art?"
I sat back down. "Not a lot. But I've seen Menaboni prints in magazines. These are really lovely."
"Sarah's doing," Carter said. "I'm just an old country lawyer. You could put what I know about art and antiques and all that mess in your hat. But she just loved that kind of stuff. Went to symposiums at the High Museum in Atlanta, read books, and when we traveled, she always made it a point to go see the art museums and antiques shops. She loved to go to auctions best of all. She'd study the catalogs, read up on the history of anything she was interested in, and go in there ready to do battle. I told her she should have been a horse trader."
I looked over at the sideboard, a massive, dark oak piece that held dozens of pieces of blue-and-white transferware china. "Is that Canton ware?" I asked. "It looks like the real thing."
"It surely is," Carter said. "Those plates were Sarah's pride and joy. She bought them at an auction in New Orleans when we were down there for a bar association meeting. Never would admit to me what she paid. Not that I would have cared." His face grew serious. "They were the last things she bought before she got sick."
Tee raised an eyebrow. "How does a lobbyist-slash-lawyer happen to know about all this stuff?"
I blushed. "I'll tell you my dirty little secret. I'm a closet interior designer. When I was in law school, stressed out over studying or finishing a research paper? While everybody else was out getting sloshed at the bars, I'd hole up in my apartment and read decorating magazines. I've got stacks of them, everywhere. Mario Buatta is my idol."
Carter looked puzzled. "The race-car driver?"
Tee snickered.
"No, I think that's Mario Andretti. Mario Buatta is a famous interior designer. The prince of chintz, they call him. But I'm also a fan of Charlotte Moss and Bunny Williams. Pretty silly, huh?"
"No sillier than a lawyer wasting billable hours running a small-town newspaper," Carter said mildly.
Tee's smile looked forced. "Here we go again." He stood up and started clearing our plates, mercifully ignoring my half-eaten salmon. "Coffee, Dempsey? We're brewing Starbucks tonight. We buy the whole beans in Macon."
I got up hurriedly. "Only if you let me help with the dishes."
"Absolutely not!" Carter exclaimed. "I'm looking forward to hearing all about your budding friendship with Ella Kate."
"Not until I've at least loaded the dishwasher," I said.
He followed Tee and me into the kitchen. It was a small room, probably last modernized in the 1960s, but with its yellow-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor and white-painted wooden cabinets it exuded warmth and cheer.
Tee was filling the kitchen sink with soapsuds. "No automatic dishwasher at the Berryhills'," he told me. "We kick it old school around here."
"I happen to like doing dishes old school." I picked up a dish towel and handed it to him. "How 'bout I wash and you dry, since I don't know where anything gets put away."
"Scandalous," Carter harrumphed, sitting down on a red metal step stool in the corner of the room. "Letting a guest do the dishes."
"Start the coffee, Pop," Tee instructed.
In a matter of minutes, we'd washed, dried, and put away the dishes, and the three of us were gathered around the enamel-topped kitchen table sipping coffee.
"Now, tell me about Ella Kate," Carter said, stirring another spoonful of sugar into his cup.
I held my mug under my nose and inhaled happily.
"Not much to tell. I think she's avoiding me. Last night, she only opened her bedroom door long enough to tell me where I couldn't sleep. By the time I got up this morning, she was gone. Although she'd taped a bill to the refrigerator door."