A Cut Above (27 page)

With every second that crawls by, I fidget more. I squirm in my chair. I tap my fingers, the toe of my shoe; I tug on the way-too-short scrap of hair at the nape of my neck—losing your hair in a house fire really stinks, literally. Finally, when Max decides to forgo dessert and asks for the check, I grab my purse, sling it over my shoulder, and head out.

“I’ll meet you in the parking lot,” I say. “I’m making a pit stop while you pay.”

Once outside, Max turns to me. “Where are you going in such a hurry? It seems to me we have no idea what to do . . . or, maybe more important, what not to do.”

“What do you mean? We have to hit the Internet, find the school’s website, and get their phone number. I want to know what the school knows about Doña Rosario. They may be the quickest way for us to track her down. Maybe she said something that would give us some idea what she was planning. Or maybe she said something that might lead us to their location. I just know in my heart that when we find her, we’ll find Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona too.”

“Can’t argue with that last part.”

He holds out a hand.

I take hold.

He goes on. “My laptop’s in the car. Want to hit one of those coffee shops with wi-fi? There’s one about three blocks away—that’s closer than the studio. Plus I could use a cup of java.”

While I do roll my eyes—I mean, the guy just ate a cow and a mutant giant lobster’s tail, washed down with an ocean of iced tea—I do recognize an opportunity when I see one. “Fine. But make it the closest one.”

He taps his forehead in an irreverent salute. “Aye, aye, Cap’n!”

I wince. “Sorry. I don’t really mean to sound so bossy. I just have this weird kind of bubbling inside. I’m afraid to let even one more second go by. If we waste time, something awful could happen to them.”

The grin he sends me is the picture of wry. “I’m with you. I want to find them too. Good thing that coffee shop’s so close. Let’s go hop onto the info superhighway.”

By the time we’re seated on two stools on stilts at the tall bistro table, Max with his ginormous cardboard vat of caffeine and me with the ’puter, I’m about to jump out of my skin with impatience and urgency.

I boot up the computer, then have to force myself to wait until I can start clicking away. Finally! Riverview Preparatory Academy . . . Riverview . . .

After a frustrating twenty minutes, I push the laptop away. “I can’t find anything other than a reference to a former governor’s wife who went there many moons ago.”

“What does it say about the school?”

“Nothing. That’s the whole point. It’s just a mention of where the governor’s wife graduated in a bio of the governor.”

“And there’s no other mention of the school on Google?” I shake my head. “That probably means it shut down years ago.”

I glare at the innocent if disappointing machine. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Maybe we need to go back to the studio and check the yearbooks a little closer. Maybe there’s something there we can use to track her down.”

“Good idea, but we don’t have to go anywhere farther than your car. I grabbed one of the books before we left.”

He grins. “Good work!”

“Now that you brought it up, I don’t remember checking the address, headmistress’s name, or anything like that back at the studio. I just looked at the books, and they jogged my memory of Doña Rosario’s library. Then I got that call from the chief.” I nod slowly. “We have to find that school—or someone there who can track down Creepella.”

We hurry out to Max’s SUV. I grab the yearbook from the vehicle’s backseat, and search like mad for the information we need.

Seconds later, I stab the appropriate page. “Look at that.

It’s in Simpsonville.”

Max stares at me, then holds out his hand palm up and folds his fingers toward his palm a time or two. “You’re going to have to give me more than that. I don’t see what’s so interesting about a Simpsonville address. I assume it’s close.” I huff out a gust of breath. “Of course it’s close—about a half hour drive from Louisville. More important, it’s about five miles from that flea market Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona love so much.”

“Do you have a picture of the ladies with you?”

“Always do. Right in my wallet.”

As we head out to the hall, he says, “I know the PD’s been out to the flea market, asking everyone if they saw Miss Mona or Aunt Weeby, but it won’t hurt if we do it too. The officers might have missed someone who stepped out when they went by.”

I give him a thankful smile.

“Hey, I’m pretty crazy about them too.”

“Let’s go find them.”

Back into Max’s SUV, ignoring the chief’s warning, which pops into my thoughts a time or ten. Max pulls out of the parking lot and into traffic. As he zips through town, then out to the road toward Simpsonville, I decide I’ll get further if I focus on praying. I mean, I have all these crazy questions worming around my head. And through the chief’s warning. Not to mention the memory of my disastrous encounters with the chief in the past year.

Let’s face it. Is there any way we’re going to find what the police didn’t? Is there any chance the Duo left a trail? Did they even make it to the flea market in the first place? The police didn’t learn anything there.

I don’t voice my questions for fear that Max will simply make a U-turn and head back to town. Even though the drive to the flea market is a short one—and in my occasionally logical mind I acknowledge that—the time in that rolling tin can of Max’s feels like a full eternity.

So I pray.

“Hang in there,” he says after a while. “I’m going as fast as I dare. Don’t want a ticket—it would slow us down.”

My only answer is a cross between a murmur and a grunt. I close my eyes and reach out to my heavenly Father again.

“Hey,” Max says a short while later. “We just passed a sign for the market. The turnoff’s in about a mile.”

Thank you, Jesus.

I barely wait for him to stop the SUV before I throw open my door and hop out. Picture of the Duo in hand, I rush toward the nearest one of the five long, skinny, warehouse-like buildings that make up the indoor part of the flea market. While it’s not as busy today as it could be, the booths aren’t exactly a vast wasteland either. I dodge and dart between customers so as to hit up a number of vendors.

I go booth by booth, but before long my enthusiasm droops. Before Max catches up to me, I’ve hit a lace, costume, and porcelain-dolls-for-grown-up-women booth, a gems and jewelry shop, an Amish furniture store—don’t they and their buggies live in Pennsylvania?—a cubby decorated with an endless collection of CDs by total unknowns, a platoon of vacuum cleaners in marching formation, and of all things, a salvage grocer (yes, he says he sells salvaged groceries—yikes!). None of the vendors has seen either of the ladies.

“What’s up?” Max asks.

Tears well up in my eyes. “Nothing. No one’s seen them.”

He wraps his arms around me. “We’re going to find them. God is merciful, Andie. Have faith.”

“Yes, I know he’s merciful, and sure, I have faith. But what if . . . what if he wants them with him? I know they’d be happy, but I don’t want to miss them that much. Not yet. I only came back home a year ago. Sure, it’s selfish, but I want more time with them.”

Max holds me tight as I sob. I don’t even care that shoppers give us a wide berth, gawking at us. When my anxiety— and waterworks—is spent, I look up at him through melted mascara-glopped lashes. “Sorry about that.”

I dig through my purse for a tissue to clean my raccoon eyes. It also gives me something to do while I get myself together again. “Sorry,” I repeat.

When I toss the tissue in a trash can, Max slips his hand around the back of my neck and rubs. “Don’t apologize. I can relate. I’m frustrated and worried too. Remember, I love them, and I’ve had even less time with them than you.”

“It’s so easy to forget how short a time I’ve known you.”

“Go ahead and forget it. I’m going to make up for that by sticking around for the long haul.”

My smile wobbles, but at least it’s a smile. I drop my cheek back on his chest and stare at the booth with the freaky dolls. Then an idea starts to take shape. But that booth owner isn’t the one to help me; I already talked with her and her dolls. I stare up and down the aisle until I spot someone who might help. She’s older than Noah’s Ark, has a warm, sweet smile, and a cheerful comment for everyone who walks past her. I send up a quick prayer.

“Come on!” I grab Max’s hand and drag him along.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see.” Once I reach my quarry, I give her my best smile and scan her junk—er . . . wares.

“Well, aren’t you the sweetest couple?” she asks as she straightens four blue-and-white plates before moving a cut-glass bowl to an empty spot next to a copper teakettle.

My impatience threatens again, but I bite it back. “Thanks. You have some beautiful things.” It’s true—some are beautiful, just not all. “Have you been selling here long?”

“Since before we had these snazzy buildings put up and our rent hiked up.” She waves. “Even before flea markets became fashionable.”

“You’ve seen a lot of local history, then.”

A woman walks up to the booth, picks up a small, funny-shaped blue and white pitcher, and studies it intently. The booth owner’s attention zigzags between her customer and me. “It ain’t happened around these parts if I ain’t seen it, hon.”

Behind me, Max murmurs, “Aha . . .”

“Then you’re probably from around the area.”

“’Course. I was born here.” She turns to the woman who’d asked about the pitcher’s price. “That’ll be twenty-two fifty. It’s a genuine, Occupied Japan, Blue Willow gravy boat and ladle, without even the tiniest chip on it.”

They haggle some, and after the spirited back-and-forth, agree on a price of eighteen bucks.

The buyer hands her a twenty, and the booth-keeper fumbles in her apron pocket for change. When the customer’s gone, her gravy boat clutched to her bosom in absolute joy, my new friend turns back to me.

“Sorry, hon. I do need to make a living.”

I take the hint. “How much is that bowl?”

She points to the amber cut-glass piece she’d rearranged as we walked up. “This one?”

“Um-hmm.”

“Fifteen, for you.”

Before I can get into my wallet, Max hands her a twenty. As the saleswoman gets the change, I fight to curb my again-stampeding impatience. She gives him his five, wraps my new “treasure”—you know I’ll never hear the end of this from Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona, don’t you?—while I gnash my teeth.

“So you grew up here in Simpsonville?” I finally ask.

“Not in Simpsonville proper, but out a ways. We did always go to church in town, though.”

“Did you ever hear of Riverview Preparatory Academy?” “Oh sure,” she says, her tone dismissive. “That was that school where rich folks too busy to grow their own kids sent their girls. Us townies always felt so sorry for them.”

Hmm . . .
“Can you tell me how to get to the school? I’m having trouble finding a listing or an address for it.”

“That’s ’cause it closed down back in the early seventies. Not too many free spirits wanted to go to a fussy, dressy, and awful pricey girls’ school back then.”

Rats!
“Did any of the students stay around this area? How about the teachers?”

She shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you.”

Think, think!
Nothing brilliant comes to mind. So I thrust out the picture of the Duo. “I’m looking for my aunt and her friend. Have you seen them?”

“Mona and Weeby?” she asks. “’Course I seen them. They bought a real nice brass spittoon from me yesterday. It’s not often I come up with spittoons. Or chamber pots. Didn’t have none of them, though.”

So they’re Mona and Weeby to her. Chummy, don’t you think? “You seem to know them. Had you met them before?”

A couple walks up and points at the crystal candelabra the vendor has sitting front and center on the antique chest of drawers at the back of her booth. She brings the beautiful piece forward, they ooh and aah, and money changes hands.

My impatience soars. I tap my toe, cross my arms, stare at glass tchotchkes.

The saleswoman smiles at me. “Mona and Weeby are two of my best customers. Regulars, you know?” She turns and grabs a sheet of newspaper to wrap the candelabra for the ecstatic new owners.

“I’m sure I’ve seen a bunch of things they’ve bought from you. But you know, something you said rang a bell for me. Is there a chance you and Miss Mona might have met while you were girls? She went to the Riverview Preparatory Academy, you know.”

“You don’t say?” She shakes her head. “Couldn’t tell you if I saw her or not. Might have. But us townies didn’t get any chances to even say boo to them girls. They were kept behind the fence all the time.”

“A fence!”

“Looked more like a jail than anything else to me.”

Poor Miss Mona. She certainly had gone the opposite way. She was warm, kind, generous, and didn’t have a snooty bone in her body. “I can’t imagine going to a school like that.”

“Well, you don’t have to do much imagining. You can go look at the place if you want. It’s been sitting empty for years now, and what’s left of the fence is a mess. But it ain’t far from here. If you want to go see it.”

Wow! A break. Umm . . . maybe.

What kind? Beats me, but in the absence of other clues, hints, ideas, or anything that might help us, visiting the school feels like doing something. “Sure. Can you give us directions?”

Max takes over—I’m not exactly gifted in the sense-of-direction category—and before long, we’re headed back out the way we’d come in.

He aims his remote lock widget at his car. “Is there any reason we’re going out to some dilapidated old school?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“Nope. And that’s driving me crazy. But is this idea any better?”

“Now you know where I’m coming from.”

“I knew all along, but I hoped you might have had another brainstorm back there. One that gave you a hint what to do.”

“I should be so lucky. I don’t have any ideas, good or bad. I’m just curious.”

“Do you think they might have taken a side trip out there?”