Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 02 - Rekindling Motives (11 page)

Aunt Madge and I had talked about a format for the meeting.
She had not been to the Food Pantry Committee meetings, but she is on the church’s Social Services Committee. Aunt Madge’s sense was that the former food pantry chair ran roughshod over any group she chaired, and this group would appreciate a participative style. Since I was looking for others to do more of the work than I planned to do, I wanted active involvement from the people here.

I listened as Lance Wilson talked about accounting rules for about 5 minutes, and finally said what I was waiting to hear, which was that we had a balance of $2,042.16 in the food pantry account.
It did not sound like much to me.

Monica Martin had been on the committee the longest, seven years.
In a soft voice she said she had taken the notes at most of the meetings she attended, and offered to continue to do this. I nodded, glad not to have to ask someone to do what I regarded as an onerous job.

Sylvia Parrett spoke in clipped sentences.
She had spent the last year trying to drum up additional donation sources and said she had urged, with no success, that they do food drives rather than working with just the main food bank in Lakewood or a couple of local grocery stores. “I guess I should have held that comment for when we talk about suggestions.”

I thanked her, and smiled at Aretha Brown as she began to talk.
“Reverend Jamison asked me to serve on the committee about two years ago. I came into the pantry and said I wanted to know the hours so I could put up signs in laundry mats. That’s where a lot of poor people go, you know. I guess he figured I’d bring another perspective.” She smiled almost grimly at Sylvia Parrett. I didn’t know what that was about, but figured their perspectives must differ.
What have I gotten myself into?

At this point, Scoobie hijacked the meeting.
“I have some suggestions for change,” he began.

I had not thought Sylvia Parrett’s back could get any straighter, but I was wrong.

“I think,” he continued, “that it would be good if we went to Mr. Markle’s store and the big store on the highway and asked if we could set up a donation truck sometimes.
Maybe have a big box in the stores all the time. We get the store to give people a discount to people who buy food for us. And we have a list of what we want at the stores. And if it could include Coco Puffs that would be great.”

I could tell by the sidelong glance he threw my way that he added the last part in hopes of irritating Sylvia.
It scares me that I know how Scoobie’s mind works.

Scoobie continued.
“We don’t have a lot of money, I know, but I have some ideas for raising some. That way we could maybe buy more turkeys and stuff at Thanksgiving. My best idea,” he looked up from his list and grinned at each person individually, “is to have a dunk tank at St. Anthony’s Spring Carnival. Get a lot of people, including all of us and every big shot in town, to let people donate money to see if they can dunk us in a big tub.”

To say the meeting went downhill from there would be a massive understatement.
If Aunt Madge had not been sitting next to Sylvia so she could put a hand on her arm Sylvia would have left. Aretha laughed so loud at the dunk tank idea that even Scoobie looked surprised. I think I was the only one who heard Monica Martin say, “I don’t even own a bathing suit,” as she hugged herself.

To his credit,
Doctor Welby got us back on track. “Brainstorming, that’s what we’re doing,” he boomed. “We used to do it at the state Medical Society meetings to develop ideas to offer to the government to improve Medicare.”

“Didn’t work, did it?” Lance Wilson asked.
He started to offer a comment about the government not balancing its books, but by that time I had taken courage from Doctor Welby and asked the others to continue with their suggestions to improve the food pantry.

Soon
I had a list of fifteen suggestions, including several on how to recruit more volunteers. Those were my favorites.

Though I did not expect to like her ideas (something Aunt Madge would chastise me for even thinking), in a way Sylvia had the best one.
“We need a name,” she said. “Something catchy. Something that will let people know what we do without making it sound as if there is a stigma attached to coming here.”

“We could have a contest,”
Doctor Welby said.

I managed to catch Scoobie’s eye to keep him from offering an immediate idea.
I wasn’t sure the group could take it.

CHAPTER NINE

MY TAILBONE WAS KILLING ME from being tense for so long during the meeting, so I let Aunt Madge cook supper and did not even set the table. Scoobie did that while I lay on the sofa with two pillows under my knees. It seemed natural that he drove back to the B&B with Aunt Madge. I wanted to talk to Scoobie about Mary Doris’ death and the fact that she had paid for the DNA tests on the skeleton we now knew belonged to Richard Tillotson. I had not decided whether to tell Aunt Madge this, and finally decided she’d find out anyway, which is my primary criterion for bringing up topics that might encourage her to tell me to stop poking my nose into what she perceives as not my business.

For the first time in my life something I said made Aunt Madge stop in her tracks.
“Mary Doris paid for the DNA test. And then she didn’t get to know,” she finally said.

I glanced at Scoobie before I said, “I think she knew.
She just wanted everybody else to know.” I sat up on the couch, wincing. “She thinks, thought, that Peter Fisher killed him.”

“You told me you talked about the photographs!”
Aunt Madge looked angrier than I’d seen her since the day I spit chocolate ice cream on Renée as my sister tried to make me sit on the porch swing instead of the front steps.

“I didn’t bring it up.
She did.”
OK, I encouraged her, but I didn’t ask.
I got up gingerly and moved toward the kitchen area. I intended to give her a hug, but Aunt Madge’s posture was not encouraging.

“Why would she do that?” Aunt Madge snapped as she took biscuits out of the oven.

“Too late to ask her,” Scoobie said. I think he regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, because he turned and went over to the train set on the floor.

“I think,” I said to Aunt Madge’s back as she scooped the biscuits into a basket, “that she wanted to talk about him.
She said he would never have left her, and she hoped finding him would prove that.”

I could see Aunt Madge’s shoulders relax.
I hated to have her mad at me. All she said was, “You can get the butter out of the fridge, Jolie.”

Scoobie’s eyes met mine and he wiped his hand briefly over his forehead in a ‘whew’ gesture.

AFTER DINNER SCOOBIE and I looked at a couple of the ledgers while Aunt Madge watched a detective show on TV and, I thought, deliberately ignored us. After twenty minutes of staring at pages of Peter Fisher’s apparent shorthand, I hadn’t learned anything except the price of baking ingredients in the late 1920s and that Peter was uncertain of how to spell yeast. He alternated between ‘ea’ and ‘ee.’

“Does your book have any figures about how much they made?” Scoobie asked, as he gently moved Jazz from her spot on his lap to the floor.

I flipped through pages, seeing only the usual routine information on quantities ordered, prices, and delivery dates.
“Nope.”

Scoobie moved his ledger in front of me.
“See, this one is for late 1928. At the end of it,” he flipped to a page that started approximately the last third of the book, “you start to see figures about how much money comes in each day.”

It took me a couple
of minutes, but I finally understood that the numbers represented money taken in. At the top of a page was the date, and at bottom of the far right column a figure that seemed to represent a day’s total. In between were sales. Sometimes there were names of customers next to amounts, sometimes product names, such as molasses cookies or tea cakes. Usually there were scratch outs by the day’s total, as if the person adding the numbers wasn’t very good at it.

“The first part of the ledger,” Scoobie flipped back to earlier pages, “shows the ingredients they bought.
What’s funny,” he flipped back and forth between pages at the beginning and end of the ledger, “is that it seems that they were buying more yeast and sugar and stuff, but they didn’t seem to have more money coming in.”

I could see what he meant and studied it for a minute.
“That could make sense if the income is only for the baked good and such, the legal sales. Maybe they recorded the liquor sales in another ledger.”

“I suppose so.”
Scoobie closed his ledger almost defiantly. “There were lots of other ledgers up there, but I gotta tell you Jolie, I’m not too keen about going through them.”

I lowered my voice, “You know who’s good with numbers,” I began, thinking of Lance Wilson.

“You better be talking about Ramona,” came Aunt Madge’s voice from the recliner she sat in as she watched TV. At the sound of her voice, Mr. Rogers poked his head up from where he had been resting it on his paws. Not seeing any indication that anyone was about to pet him or provide a treat, he resumed his lethargic position.

Scoobie grinned at me.
“Ramona is very good at numbers.”

I rolled my eyes at him as I shut the ledger I had been studying.
“That’s exactly who I meant.” Which was a lie. The one class I had with Ramona had been geometry, and she spent half the time drawing in the margins of the text book.

THE
NEXT DAY’S
Ocean Alley Press
had Mary Doris Milner’s obituary, with a notation that “services would be announced at a later date.” As Aunt Madge refilled coffee cups for the B&B customers in the breakfast area that adjoins her living area I read every word of the obit, noting that Annie was the first survivor mentioned. I thought it odd that her name appeared before her father’s – Annie was the grand niece, her father the closer relative – but figured it was because she had lived with Mary Doris in high school and visited her aunt so often in the senior home.

As the last B&B guest left the breakfast area Aunt Madge dumped coffee cups in the sink and sat next to me at her oak table, nursing a cup of tea.
“Why do you suppose they don’t announce the date of the service?” she mused, looking again at the obituary.

I hesitated, figuring she would accuse me of making too much of my conversation with Sgt. Morehouse yesterday.
In as offhand a way as I could manage I mentioned his concern that she had not been ill until just before her death, and that he found that odd.

Aunt Madge shook her head.
“Poor Annie. She shouldn’t have to worry about that. Mary Doris was ancient. She probably had a stomach flu and her body couldn’t handle it.”

Foul play seemed about as likely as a pale-skinned lifeguard in July, but I didn’t think Sgt. Morehouse would let the idea drop until he was sure Mary Doris died of a virus or something equally benign.
“I think I’ll give Annie a call.”

Aunt Madge shot me a look.
“To see if she’s OK. She was really close to her aunt.” I started upstairs to shower and dress before calling her. I had my foot on the bottom stair leading up to my room when Jazz flew across the floor in pursuit of a chipmunk, which darted under an antique washstand that sat in the hallway.

“Damn!”
I jerked back and the pain shot from my tailbone to knees. Fortunately, Mr. Rogers and Miss Piggy were outside. I looked at Jazz, poised in front of the washstand, ready to pounce. “I can’t believe that little thing can outrun you.”

Aunt Madge walked over and stood looking down at Jazz.
“I’d really prefer that Adam get the thing out of here. Cats play with their captives, and it comes down to torture.”

I waited a beat before responding.
“Maybe you should ask Scoobie to sleep on the sofa one night.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said.
“Harry said he’d get me a small live animal trap. Then I can catch it and release it in someone else’s yard.”

“Didn’t you say there were two?”

All Aunt Madge said was, “Hmmm.”

ANNIE’S HOME NUMBER was unlisted, so I called her office to see if I could talk them into giving it to me.
I was surprised when the secretary put me through to her. “Annie. I didn’t think, I mean…”

She politely cut me off.
“Prosecutor Small said I didn’t have to be here, but it’s easier than sitting at home.”

“That makes sense,” I said.
“I was just calling to see if you were okay. She was,” I paused, “your aunt was the liveliest ninety-four year old I ever expect to meet.”

Annie gave a small chuckle.
“She was so excited about the photos you were going to show her she had me go out and buy a couple of small frames. She was going to ask you to make her copies of a couple of them.”

Anxious to overcome the lump in my throat, I told her I would be happy to make copies of a few pictures Annie picked out.
I doubted Gracie would mind. There was a pause of several seconds before Annie said, “I don’t think so, Jolie. I have a lot of pictures of Mary Doris, and I want to remember her the way I knew her.”

Though I was surprised, I figured she was entitled to her thoughts.
I remembered that Mary Doris had said she had few photos from the time she spent with Richard Tillotson, having characterized photography as a hobby of the rich in the 1920s. “Would your mom or dad like any, do you think?”

Annie’s laugh bordered on harsh.
“They rarely spoke the last 15 years.” As if sensing the tone of her response, she added, “I’ll let them know you offered. Listen, Jolie, I have to get ready for a deposition.” She hung up.

Aunt Madge, sitting next to me nursing a cup of tea, said, “If Gracie doesn’t want those albums, the historical society here would likely love to have them.
”

The phone rang, a loud tone since the portable receiver was sitting on Aunt Madge’s oak table.
It took me a few seconds to decipher Scoobie’s excited voice. “Remember I told you I was going to play some of those numbers?”

“Uh, play…” I stuttered.

“The lottery, some of the strings of numbers from the ledgers. I just won $50.” His excited voice was loud, and Aunt Madge looked interested.

My brain clunked into gear and I remembered Scoobie talking about the lottery one day in the library. “That’s great.
You going to spend it all in one place?”

“I’m taking you to lunch today.
Where do you want to go? Any place but Java Jolt is OK with me.”

Aunt Madge gave me an amused look as she stood to carry her tea mug to the sink.
I thought for a couple of seconds. “What about Newhart’s? Aunt Madge got me hooked on that.”

“Great.
I’m at the library. Darlene’s letting me use her phone. You can pick me up any time after noon.” He didn’t wait for me to agree before he hung up.

“So,” Aunt Madge said, “Scoobie’s flush.”
She started toward the stairs, likely to check the room of her one guest to see if they had used all their towels or left a note saying clean sheets were needed.

After apologizing for the tenth time that my tailbone and I could not help, I pulled the file of food pantry folders to me.
Sylvia Parrett was managing the name contest, with suggestion boxes in several churches and the library. That was a big help, but I still had to figure out what we needed to order from the food bank in Lakewood.
This food pantry gig is old already
.

NEWHART’S IS A CASUAL place that is popular with summer tourists and year-round residents as well.
Arnie Newhart gives large servings and the blue plate specials he serves in the off-season are always a bargain. Mostly it’s fun to look at all the local photos and memorabilia that line the walls. A couple of years ago Arnie inherited a bit of money from his mother and he replaced the Formica tables and wobbly metal chairs with booths around the walls and wood tables with Windsor-style chairs that look as if they were built to last a long time.

As we ate crab cakes and clam chowder Scoobie enlightened me on how he had picked the winning combination of numbers.
“This one page had so many erase marks it caught my eye. Looked as if they couldn’t figure what their take was for that week. Anyway, I needed six numbers, so I took their final daily sales tally from each day – because they were closed Sunday. Everything cost so much less back then that all the numbers were under fifty.”

He bit into the second half of his crab cake and I pointed at him with my soup spoon.
“If I’d known it was that easy I’d have waited ‘til you won a bigger pot and we could go into New York to see a show.”

“Ish too much.”
He swallowed a bite. “I can’t make too much in a month or I lose my benefits, and I haven’t figured out how to live life without meds yet.” He grinned at me. “And anyone who knew me before I got clean and sober and went on meds would be sure to tell you I need them.”

“Right.”
Since I had not seen Scoobie in this phase of his life, I had a hard time envisioning him drunk or seriously stoned. “You still thinking about becoming a radiology tech?”

Before he could answer, someone near the door said, “Hey Scoobie.
Heard you came into some money.” It was Ramona’s boss, Roland, and his smile was friendly.

Scoobie grinned back.
“Yeah, it’s a lot to me.” Roland gave a thumb up gesture and moved to a table on the other side of the small eatery.

Scoobie pulled one of the small ledgers from a pocket of his coat and opened it to a page marked with one of the several ribbons that extended from the top of the binding.
“See, today I’m going to use the numbers at the bottom of this page.”