Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery Page 16

  “What time did Bennie drop him off?”

  “After midnight. The paper said the sheriff died about three A.M. Plenty of time for Everett to get laid, leave, and go kill the sheriff,” Ardell said. “I asked Bennie to check around and see if he could find out who took that sucker back home.”

  ELEVEN

  Blanche was sweeping the front porch when Grace and Everett returned. Everett was the first one out of the car. The tightness around his eyes had increased. He strode quickly into the house. Grace walked slowly onto the porch. She had that tired-out and worn-to-a-frazzle look women often have after spending the morning with a peevish child. She seemed almost dazed.

  “We'd like some lunch, after all, please, Blanche. Something quick, please.”

  Blanche followed Grace into the house. In the kitchen, she gathered the ingredients for a mushroom omelet and a green salad. It didn't look like they'd found Emmeline. That was undoubtedly enough to put their nerves on edge. But was there more? She put just a touch too much salt in the omelet and made the salad dressing a bit too tart. She knew a poorly seasoned meal could be just the irritant to snap a person's nerves and make them say or do something rash.

  Despite the extra salt and vinegar, both Grace and Everett seemed to have swung from one extreme of appetite to the other. Neither of them had done more than sip coffee and crumble toast at breakfast. Now they ate as though they expected their meals to be cut off. They quickly finished the cold cucumber soup, and it was a good thing she'd made a six-egg omelet. They ate quickly and silently. But for all the attention they paid to the food, they might not have been eating at all. The air was full of argument. When Blanche had gone into the living room to tell them lunch was ready, Everett was speaking in a low, urgent tone, as though trying to convince Grace to do something she didn't want to do. Blanche had lingered outside the room before entering, hoping to hear what he was saying, but all she could catch was the hiss and pop of sparks flashing in the air, and Grace's attempts to dampen them. They'd stopped talking the moment Blanche entered. Everett was standing in the middle of the floor, his hands jammed deep in his pockets and his eyes sharp as butcher knives. Grace had pressed herself deep into her chair, as though pinned by a gale force wind.

  Now Blanche moved dishes and cutlery without a clink and walked lightly around the room, drawing as little attention to herself as possible. She hoped the need to continue their fight would overwhelm their discretion.

  “That will be all, Blanche. Thank you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Blanche slipped through the swinging door to the kitchen. The rumble of his voice began before the door was fully closed. She decided not to listen from the pantry. There was a watchfulness in Everett that made her cautious. She wiped the counter and made herself a sandwich. Later, a soft click on the other side of the dining room door made her turn expectantly. Everett looked like a person with a bad case of heartburn.

  “What did you want when you knocked on my aunt's door while we were out?”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Blanche only half-pretended to be confused. She tried to think back to exactly what she'd done outside Emmeline's door. She couldn't take her eyes off him, even though he was the last person she wanted to see.

  “Why did you knock on my aunt's door? What did you want?” His voice was as cold and hostile as his glare.

  “I didn't. I didn't knock on the door. I mighta bumped it while I was vacuuming the hall, but I had no call to knock. No, sir.” She held her voice firm and steady. She stood as still as she could, poised for his next question or move.

  She could feel his eyes on her face. He reached up and ran his hands through his hair repeatedly, then let his arm drop.

  “Perhaps she was dreaming,” Everett said at last.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Blanche smiled to herself and hummed her no-tune after he'd gone. It felt good to win a round with Everett and to be proven right about Emmeline's room being empty. But what a sneaky bastard! Still, he'd given her an opening. She was ready for Grace when she showed up later.

  “Is your husband all right?” Blanche demanded to know before Grace was fully through the doorway.

  Grace nearly dropped the heavy tray. “What do you mean? Why do you ask? What's happened?”

  Blanche snatched the tray from Grace's hands and flounced to the sink in mock indignation. She banged the tray down hard enough for the dishes to clatter, then turned, hand on hip, toward Grace.

  “He come in here accusing me of knocking on your aunt's door. As if I'd do such a thing after you told me not to bother her! I told him I didn't do it, but he acted like he didn't believe me. I don't appreciate being treated like I ain't telling the truth! I ain't got no reason to lie to him. He wasn't hisself, either. He acted...funny.” She made the final word sound like incipient insanity. “Real funny,” she added.

  Grace drew herself up in a way that made Blanche think she was about to explode, but instead, tears welled in Grace's eyes. “I don't know what to do! I just don't!”

  Blanche clenched her teeth and forced herself to approach Grace and gently pat her shoulder. “Now, ma'am, you just sit right down here.” She eased Grace onto a chair, then left her side long enough to make her a glass of ice water in which she floated a slice of lemon.

  “You keep on like this,” she told Grace as she handed her the water, “and you're gonna make yourself sick.” She fetched the tissues from the counter and handed them to Grace. “Anybody can see you're a kind, sensitive woman. But you got too much on your shoulders.” Blanche's show of kindness brought on a fresh batch of tears. Blanche returned to her shoulder-patting position. “It's that aunt of yours, ain't it?” Blanche held her breath. She was hoping it would be easier to get Grace to talk about her aunt than about her husband.

  Grace nodded her head in the affirmative. “She's gone.”

  Blanche fell back, with a look of what she hoped was surprise and distress on her face. “Gone? What...She passed?”

  “No, oh, no! She's run off again!”

  “What you mean 'again,' ma'am? Run off where?”

  “It's not the first time. She...It's the drinking. She goes...She drinks with anyone who'll...” More sobs, until Grace heaved a great shuddering sigh and raised her head. “Please! Don't let him know I told you. He said it would be best not to..and to keep it from Mumsfield, too.” Her eyes glittered behind her tears.

  “That's all right, ma'am, I understand how it is, but it seems to me that he don't...” Blanche stopped and gave Grace a searching look, as if gauging whether it was safe to go on.

  “What do you mean? What about my husband?”

  “Well, ma'am, it just don't seem to me that he's all that much of a help to you, what with your aunt to look after and the house and all...”

  Grace discreetly blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “Please, I don't want to...I can't discuss my husband...He...”

  “Anything you say, ma'am. But it seems to me, what you need is a friend, somebody to help you with this mess.”

  As Blanche had hoped, her comment caused even more tears.

  “Oh, God, I hope he hasn't done anything awful,” Grace moaned. “I hope he hasn't...hurt anyone.” She looked beseechingly up at Blanche.

  “Hasn't what? Hurt who?” Blanche was in the back-patting business again.

  “He's so...He gets so angry. After the sheriff left last time, Everett was in a rage. He said...he said he was going to put the sheriff out of his misery. And the next day...”

  As much as she hated to do it, Blanche quickly raised her hand in a silencing gesture that startled Grace. A second later, the dining-room door swung open.

  “What's taking you so long?”

  Grace jumped at the sound of Everett's voice.

  Blanche turned to face him, shielding Grace with her body, giving Grace a few seconds to pull her face together.

  “We need to leave,” he announced.

  Grace rose slowly from her chair and followed her husband out of the roo
m. She kept her head down to hide her tear-stained face. She gave Blanche a bleak look before the door swung shut behind her. It wasn't until they'd left the house that Blanche realized she hadn't told Grace about the call from Emmeline.

  TWELVE

  Mumsfield was hungry when he got back. He bubbled on about carburetors and other things that smelled of grease while Blanche sliced ham and tomatoes for sandwiches. “Your cousins have gone out again,” Blanche told him.

  “I know, Blanche. I heard them talking. They went to find that drunken old bitch.” His voice was edged with something Blanche thought was anger. “Who is that drunken old bitch, Blanche?”

  “Mumsfield, honey, do you know what it means to be an alcoholic?”

  “Oh, yes, Blanche. Like Mr. Hoaglin, down at the garage. He always has a bottle that says 'Wild Turkey' in his back pocket. And sometimes he smells bad.”

  Blanche waited for him to give another, closer example, but he only looked at her expectantly.

  “Don't you know someone else who drinks too much sometimes?”

  Mumsfield was silent. Blanche could see him running through the list of his acquaintances searching for one with a drinking problem. “No, Blanche,” he said at last.

  Blanche sat down across the table from him. She extended her hands across the table toward him, palms up, although she didn't touch him. “Mumsfield, honey,” she began, “sometimes, when people we love do something we don't like, we pretend the thing we didn't like didn't happen.” She hesitated again, but he said nothing, only watched her face, waiting.

  “Sometimes,” Blanche went on, in a slightly different direction, “people who are close to us tell us not to believe things we know are happening. Do you understand, Mumsfield, honey?”

  “Sure, Blanche,” he told her without a moment's hesitation.

  “Well, I think your Aunt Emmeline drinks too much gin sometimes and that's why she doesn't want to see you. And your Aunt Grace tells you your Aunt Emmeline is sick so you won't find out she's really drunk.”

  Mumsfield sprang forward in his chair. “No, Blanche! Aunt Emmeline does not drink too much!” He shook his head from side to side, not with vehemence but with certainty, like a person looking out on a sunny day while being told it's raining. “A little sherry for the blood, my boy, is all the strong drink one needs to imbibe,” Mumsfield added in his Emmeline voice.

  “Is that the way she sounds to you? She sounds different to me,” Blanche challenged him.

  “But she never talked to you, Blanche.” Mumsfield gave her a sympathetic smile.

  Blanche felt her face flush with embarrassment. Despite her contention that she had more respect for Mumsfield than his own people, she too had fallen into the trap of not really listening to what he was saying. He'd tried to tell her about Emmeline any number of times.

  Blanche turned her head and stared out the window while she worked what Mumsfield had just told her into the mosaic of what she already knew. She chuckled to herself and at herself. So the fox was being outfoxed, she thought. All those tears! Could they really have been phony? Or had Grace decided she was in too far and wanted out? But why tell me the so-called Emmeline was out on a binge at all? Why trust an employee you didn't know very well with that information? Unless, of course, you wanted to keep her ignorant and on your side. At any rate, it was now obvious what the sheriff had had on Everett and why the sheriff had been killed. But how had the sheriff found out? She turned her head and looked at Mumsfield.

  “Did you tell the sheriff that old drunk wasn't your Aunt Emmeline?”

  “Yes, Blanche.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Mumsfield shouldn't worry. He said Aunt Emmeline was safe and just fine, and that he would take care of everything and everything would be straightened out in a few days. He said Mumsfield should—”

  “Should not tell Cousin Grace and Cousin Everett?”

  “Secret, Blanche. Police business.” The words burst from his mouth. She could see his shoulders rising in tension as her questions caused a frown to crease his forehead.

  That rotten bastard! He must have really gotten his jollies putting this boy on. In this part of the country, people didn't bother to pretend the USA was a classless society. Now she understood why Mumsfield had taken the sheriff's death so hard. He'd had no one else to turn to once the sheriff was gone. He'd undoubtedly noticed that she didn't want to talk about his Aunt Emmeline. And even though the sheriff was dead, he couldn't go to Grace or Everett.

  “Oh, baby, I'm so sorry.”

  “But where is Aunt Emmeline, Blanche? Mumsfield is...I am so worried about her.” The tears he'd been trying to hold in came spilling down his cheeks.

  “I don't know where she is, Mumsfield.” It was only a partial lie. Now that she knew about the switch, she was almost sure Emmeline was dead, probably in the cellar in the house in town. Why else would they lock the door to the cellar when Mumsfield said the freezer and washing machine were kept down there? Blanche felt sick from having lived among these people.

  “What exactly did you hear your cousins saying?” she asked him.

  Mumsfield's face fell into the stony, speaking-in-tongues expression he always wore when he imitated people. The voice that now came out of his mouth was pure Grace, only this was the voice of a Grace whom Blanche had never seen, a Grace so angry her words sizzled.

  “I told you she'd be more trouble than she's worth. But you insisted. Now she's out there staggering around the countryside about to...”

  Mumsfield's voice slipped into a lower register and became Everett. “She won't get far.”

  “It doesn't matter how far she gets. What matters is who she meets, who she talks to,” came the reply from Grace.

  “Remember, Grace, she can't give us away without giving herself away as well. She won't talk.”

  “Perhaps not while she's sober. But how long do you think that will last?”

  “It's too late to go over that. We'll look for her after breakfast,” was Everett's reply.

  Mumsfield paused and took a deep breath. When he spoke again it was in his own voice. “Is she dead, Blanche?”

  Blanche watched him closely, not knowing quite what to expect. “I don't know for sure, Mumsfield, but we've got to find out.”

  “Yes, Blanche.” He dried his eyes.

  She took Archibald's phone numbers from her apron pocket. He was the one who'd accepted the phony Emmeline's signature. He had some stake in this, too. Her only other choice was to call the police. The idea of voluntarily putting herself in the hands of the sheriff's office didn't warrant a moment's thought. She went to the phone and dialed.

  When the receptionist had finished turning the names of the partners in Archibald's law firm into a meaningless string of sounds, Blanche asked for Mr. Archibald Symington and was passed on to a more precise voice. This voice told her Archibald would be in conference for the rest of the day.

  “Please tell him Miz Emmeline Carter would like to see him at her country place at his earliest possible convenience,” Blanche told the woman on the phone. “And she asks that he please bring the letter she recently sent him.”

  The precise voice developed a coat of ice when Blanche asked her to repeat the message, but she'd been too well trained to take orders not to do it.

  The woman who answered the phone at the second number, which Blanche assumed was Archibald's home number, was more interested in who Blanche was than in giving out information on when Archibald was expected to return. Blanche left the same message and hung up.

  Now she could only wait. It was a hard prescription. Waiting for some prime-aged white man to show up and set things right had the ring of guaranteed failure. She sank slowly onto the chair across from Mumsfield.

  Mumsfield moved his glass around on the table. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “I'm scared, Blanche.” He let go of his glass and stretched his damp, chilly fingers out toward her. Blanche gave his hands a sq
ueeze.

  “Me, too,” she told him. “But we can't just sit here with our knees knocking. You gotta go get Archibald,” she told him. “Those people in his office ain't paying me no mind.”

  Blanche fetched the phone book, looked up Archibald's office address, and wrote it down on half the sheet of paper she'd taken from Grace's room. “Here.” She handed the paper to Mumsfield. “Anybody in town can tell you how to get there.”

  Mumsfield fidgeted in his chair. He shook his head from side to side.

  “You want to know where your Aunt Emmeline is, don't you? You want to find out what happened to Nate, don't you?”

  “Nate?” he asked.

  “Somebody killed him.” She watched his eyes widen.

  “I can get a ride from the gas station,” he told her. Blanche gave him a hug.

  “But you mustn't talk to anyone else about it.” He nodded his head in response. “And when you get there, make them take you right to Archibald, no matter where he is. Can you do that?”

  Mumsfield began rocking from side to side. He swung his arms back and forth as he swayed. “I must see Cousin Archibald, now. Now! I must see Cousin Archibald, now. Now!” he chanted over and over, faster and faster. He looked as though he were on the verge of flying to pieces. Blanche wondered if she'd taxed him too much.

  Just as abruptly as he'd begun, he stopped. “Like that?” he asked and gave her a mischievous grin. Blanche was truly impressed. She went with him to the front of the house and opened the door for him. She watched him walk down the drive and stared her growing affection for him in the face. She didn't like what she saw. But she knew it was useless to deny it. She believed that every person was unique. She also believed some people were more obviously special than others. And Mumsfield was very special, at least to her. She didn't know if he was able to connect with other people the way he did with her, but each time they talked, she came away feeling that if they just had the time, they could learn to talk without words.

  For all his specialness and their seeming connectedness, Mumsfield was still a white man. She didn't want to shower concern on someone whose ancestors had most likely bought and sold her ancestors as though they were shoes or machines. Would she always find some reason—mental challenge, blindness, sheer incompetence—to nurture people who had been raised to believe she had no other purpose in life than to be their “girl”? Had the slavers stamped mammyism into her genes when they raped her great-grandmothers? If they had, she was determined to prove the power of will over blood. When Mumsfield was out of sight, she slowly closed the door and thought about her next move. Given what a sly boots Grace had turned out to be, Blanche decided to give her room a more thorough search.