Angel at Troublesome Creek (19 page)

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Authors: Mignon F. Ballard

BOOK: Angel at Troublesome Creek
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“What?” Kent almost walked into a tree.
I laughed. “That’s just something Aunt Caroline used to say,” I explained, seeing his concern. “I was joking, Kent. I’m fine. Really.”
At least as far as I know
. I patted the small key in my pocket. Soon I was going to find out.
 
T
he day, which started out sultry but sunny, had darkened with my mood, and now it looked as if it might rain before we could get to the post office and back. Hairy didn’t care, he was just glad to be outside, and would have sniffed every tree and post along the way if I hadn’t kept a firm hand on his leash. Kent and I walked almost at a run, leaving no time for conversation, and I was glad. I wasn’t in the mood for casual chatter.
“Do you want to go inside?” I asked Kent when we reached the gray stone building on the corner, but he shook his head. “I just came along for the company,” he said, and with exaggerated puffing and panting, leaned against the side of the building.
I laughed and handed over Hairy’s leash before I went inside. Kent really was a good sport. Maybe I had kissed him off too soon. Hadn’t he always been agreeable? Maybe too agreeable. I couldn’t manage to break that fragile thread of doubt. “I’ll just be a minute,” I said, searching my pocket for the key. “Gotta pick up my mail.”
Did he know why I was here? I’d like to think Kent’s eagerness to accompany me was strictly because of my sparkling wit, keen intelligence, and remarkable beauty, but some pious puritan voice inside said “Get real!” It had to be something else. Maybe the man just wanted exercise.
I stepped inside the small, stifling lobby, and it didn’t take long to see I was alone. The post office had been closed for over an hour and the inner doors were locked. With the key in my fist, I searched the boxes in the niche at the far end of the room. Number 284 was one of the larger ones on the bottom row. The whole time I stooped there to open the box, I sensed an imminent threat and resisted an impulse to look over my shoulder.
Silly! Cut it out. You’re doing this to yourself
! I thought. But my fingers fumbled with the lock until at last I drew out the brown-paper-wrapped package inside. I hadn’t realized how my hands were shaking.
The parcel, about the size of a cigar box, was addressed to me in Aunt Caroline’s familiar script, and seeing her handwriting again reminded me of the hurtful, empty place she left behind.
Treetops bobbed and whispered in the rising wind as I came outside, and warm air from the pavement rose around us like a sauna. Kent glanced at the package under my arm. “Starting your Christmas shopping early, or is it your birthday?”
“Neither.” I took the leash and darted for home. A raindrop fell. Perfect timing. “Friend of mine in Charlotte finally returned my book. I let her read my anthology by Southern woman writers—thought she’d never get it back to me.”
“Oh,” Kent said. He looked bored. I kept my arm over the local postmark.
“Want me to carry that?” he asked when the package slipped a little.
I clutched the bundle tighter and smiled, breaking into a run. “Race you!” I said.
We were about two-thirds soaked by the time we got home. “Aren’t you going to ask me in for a cup of hot something?” Kent wanted to know. “Okay,” I said with little enthusiasm, but he didn’t get the hint. “Just give me a minute and I’ll let you in the front.” But first I took Hairy in the back so I could towel him dry in the kitchen.
I hadn’t had dinner and no cup of anything was going to be enough for me. I looked in my freezer. “I can offer veggies and pasta in a lemon dill sauce or macaroni and beef,” I said to Kent, thumping my offerings on the counter. Maybe he’d go home.
He didn’t. Kent Coffey made a face and shrugged. “I’ll take the macaroni.”
“Then go wash your hands.” I waved him away. “Maybe I can find some soup to go with this.”
As soon as I heard the bathroom sink running I shoved my aunt’s package in the freezer and piled two bags of broccoli on top. By the time he returned I had our dinner in the microwave and had set two places at the table. “What took you so long?” I asked when he finally appeared in the kitchen. I knew very well what took him so long. He’d been poking about my living room, looking, no doubt for the mysterious package. I thought I knew now why Kent had followed me to the post office. He wanted whatever was in that package. The knowledge made me nervous, but I pretended innocence. It was safer that way.
Kent was quiet over dinner, and I don’t think it was just because of the food. I had the feeling he wanted to tell me something, but didn’t know how to go about it.
“Kent, is something on your mind?” I asked later as I rinsed tomato soup from the pan.
He sat at the table nursing a cup of coffee, turning the mug in slow circles. “Funny, I was about to ask you the same thing,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I know something’s going on, and that you could get hurt. I like you, Mary George. I don’t want to see anything happen to you.”
“Is that a threat?” I squirted soap into the pan. I would squirt him too if he made a move in my direction.
“Just call it a warning.” Kent Coffey pushed his empty mug aside and stood. “I think you should get away from this place—and the sooner the better. Get out of here, Mary George.”
Soap bottle in hand, I watched him turn and walk out my back door. It was the second time that day a man had left me standing speechless. I didn’t waste any time locking the door behind him.
It wasn’t quite dark, but I went from window to window closing blinds, drawing curtains, shutting out whoever might be
out there.
Rain thudded on summer-baked soil and sprayed the windows, pine branches brushed the roof.
The package was as cold as a Popsicle when I took it from the freezer, then, with Hairy Brown curling on the floor beside me, tore it open behind my locked bedroom door.
I recognized the old Bible at once. The curling cover was the cheap black kind made to look like leather, and my grandfather’s name, Douglas Kincaid Murphy, was printed in tarnished gold on the front. My hopes began to fizzle. Obviously the value of this Bible wasn’t in its cost or appearance. I would have to look further than that.
I found the note from Aunt Caroline tucked just inside the cover, and it apparently was written in a rush because I could barely recognize the handwriting.
Mary George,
Please note family tree in front of Bible. Seems you have a living relative after all—but probably not for long, so time is of the essence! An uncle Ben (your father’s uncle) now lives in Hunters’ Oak where you were born. Saw a story about him in the Charlotte paper the other day. Seems he used to be quite an adventurer and was presumed dead at the time your parents were killed. (See enclosed article.) Anyway, he went on to make quite a lot of money in real estate, etc., never married, and has no heirs—
yet
! I recognized the family name and the town, put one and one together, and came up with a sizable amount.
Made a call to “Uncle Ben” and told him all about you, but naturally he wants to meet you, and also wants proof. Bring your birth certificate—you have a copy—and this Bible along, but hurry! The old fellow’s probably close to ninety and getting more senile by the minute. Oh—housekeeper’s a tyrant—name’s Milford. Watch out for him!
Now, listen, my dear girl, be on your guard as I’m afraid you have competition. There have been just too many questions, and I don’t feel completely at ease. Let’s hope it’s my imagination, but I’m renting this post office box for good measure, and if you’re reading this, you’ve received the key. Do get in touch with this old gent as soon as you can, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go there alone.
Always,
Aunt C.
 
According to the enclosed article, dated several weeks before, Benjamin Franklin Murphy had fallen in love with Western Europe while serving with the Special Forces during World War II. After the war he returned to the States and struck out on his own to earn his fortune out West in ranching, land, oil, and stock investments. The writer portrayed my great uncle as sort of an eccentric who loved travel, theater, and the finer things in life, but kept pretty much to himself except for a select circle of friends. The last thirty years of his life had been spent in France and Italy, where he owned luxurious homes, and during this time he had broken ties with family and home. Now, apparently in his dotage, Ben Murphy had come home to Hunters’ Oak, North Carolina, to live his remaining years in the house where he’d been born, and was seeking legitimate heirs whom he felt might deserve financial help.
I wanted to jump up and down and holler. I could certainly use the money; it was the “deserving” part that stymied me. As I slowly refolded the article, another part of me came to life, a part that was buried so deep I hadn’t even known it was there. I remembered the big, white house in Hunters’ Oak where my grandmother had lived, remembered the peeling paint on the wide front porch, and a rag doll named Lucinda. Dressed in blue calico, the doll sat under the huge Christmas tree in the room with the bay window. My grandma Ola had made her for me the Christmas I was four, just before she died. Except for my recent dream, I hadn’t thought of Grandma Ola or Lucinda in twenty years.
Somewhere outside a car door shut, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been for Hairy Brown. The dog rose from the rug by my bed, ears alert, and padded to the window, a growl low in his throat. The rain had stopped, but water dripped from the eaves, making it difficult to hear. I switched off my lamp and tried to peep through the blinds.
Through the unpruned shrubbery that screened my view I saw Kent’s car parked closer than usual to the house, but that was all. The backyard was steeped in soggy silence, and I watched for a while from the window to see if anything moved, but all I saw was an occasional glimmer of a puddle in the light from Fronie’s kitchen.
“Good boy,” I said to Hairy. “It’s probably just Kent coming back from the Hound Dog with his supper after that awful meal I gave him, but if you hear anything else, you let me know.” I stroked him between the ears and turned on the light.
And that was when I noticed the red blinking light on my answering machine. Two blinks for two calls. Both were from Delia. I had been so eager to open Aunt Caroline’s mysterious package I hadn’t glanced at it when I got home.
“Where did you go?” Delia said in her first brief message. “Thought you were coming by. Call when you get home. If you don’t reach me here, I’m at Phoebe Martin’s. Talk to you later.”
The second was more urgent. “Now I’m worried. Tell me you didn’t open that box alone. Mary George, something’s not right. You get back to me now, I mean it!”
She had a point. Something definitely wasn’t right. She and Sam had cooked something up behind my back—at least I supposed it was Sam. And for the first time I began to wonder if I might have been mistaken. How did I know this man was the Sam Maguire I’d known at Summerwood? After all, I hadn’t seen him in twenty years.
Oh, don’t be silly, Mary George! He looks the way Sam would look and knows the things Sam would know—even calls me Mary
G. It had to be Sam. Yet people change, do things, even commit crimes we’d never suspect them of doing: the ones whose neighbors were always reported as saying, “Why, he was such a pleasant fellow, kind to animals, and helped old ladies across the street. He wouldn’t harm a soul!”
And what about Delia? I
knew
Delia Sims, had known her most of my life. Surely she wouldn’t do anything to hurt my aunt or me. Delia had come to an intersection in her life and didn’t know which direction to take. Like me. If somebody had steered her wrong, I was sure she
thought
she was doing the right thing. My neighbor was lonely and she looked on me as her friend. Now I had let her down.
I called her home and left a message, thankful she was still playing bridge at Phoebe’s and I wouldn’t have to explain. “Just called to let you know I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Don’t worry.”
I couldn’t tell her about the Bible. Not yet. Couldn’t take the risk of anyone else finding out.
Hairy paced the room whining until I finally let him out. He did his business quickly and galloped back inside, but his uneasiness continued, and so did mine. I made a cup of tea and sat down again with the Bible. It gave me a sense of belonging just holding it, seeing my name on the family tree.
My great-grandparents, Sarah and George Murphy, had three sons: Douglas (my grandfather), Benjamin, and Horace. Benjamin never married and had no children—at least none that he was claiming. Horace married and had two offspring: Eleanor, who died in infancy, and Fain, who was killed in the Korean conflict. My grandparents, Ola and Douglas, had one son, also named George, who had only me. Unless one of them had a child “on the wrong side of the blanket,” as my aunt used to say, I didn’t know where my competition would come from.
I looked at the clock. Not quite ten. Would ancient Uncle Ben still be awake? I just couldn’t wait until morning.

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