Hotel Paradise (46 page)

The singing in the bus ebbed and flowed around me as we bumped along. I happened to look out the back window where a spewed-up cloud of dust made me think I surely must be seeing a mirage. For in its cloud I could swear I saw a pickup truck. It was. I went back past the last row of seats to stare out of the window and saw one of the Wood boys’ trucks just down the road. I squinted through the dust cloud and was able to see a license plate with ULB on it jigging up and down. Oh, good grief, Ulub was following the bus. With the sun making a silver skin across the windshield I couldn’t tell if it was just Ulub . . . and then I saw behind that another dust cloud and there was UBB.

I slumped down in my seat, really irritated that I’d gone to so much trouble just to get a ride on this bus, and then here they came when I didn’t need them. But I had, after all, told Mr. Root (and I bet he was with them, too) that I wanted a ride, and so they thought they were doing the right thing. Probably, they thought they were protecting me, too, watching over me. That anybody would want to protect me was a totally new idea, and I guess I felt grateful.

But what was I to do with them once we got there?

There was the Windy Run Diner. Ulub and Ubub loved the Rainbow, so I supposed they wouldn’t mind having coffee in the Windy Run. I recalled seeing big swirls of sweet rolls with butter icing on one of those domed cake plates on the counter. They’d love those.

What about Mr. Root? Probably he wouldn’t want to just sit—

And I sat up straight all of a sudden, as if the bus had hit a rut. I recalled that talk I’d had with Mr. Root on the bench outside Britten’s. He’d known a Queen, a woman named Sheba. And who was to say that this woman might not be the same as one of them who lived in that yellow-shuttered house? Who was to say she might not be this old friend of Mr. Root’s? As the bus bumped off the highway onto the Cold Flat Junction road, I thought about this.

Cold Flat Junction was as empty of people as before. The bus
drove along the street that divided the town and turned left into Schoolhouse Road, where I saw the church steeple glaring white as one of my mother’s meringues. The two trucks pulled up to a curb a little distance away. As I stepped down from the bus, a few people grinned at me and patted me as if for encouragement, as if one more sinner saved, and I thanked them. Then I cut off towards the pickup trucks, both sitting there belching smoke out of their exhaust pipes. Mr. Root was in Ubub’s and they both seemed really excited, as if this were an adventure. I said I’d go get in the cab of Ulub’s truck and they could follow us to the Windy Run Diner. Ubub’s face split in a big grin the minute I said “diner.”

Ulub said something indecipherable as I slammed shut my door and directed him to the diner. He seemed even more pleased than Ubub had. As we drove onto the unpaved road that was Windy Run, Ulub started singing something weird. I really had to admire him for being made so happy by something as unimportant as the prospect of eating in a diner. I sighed and shook my head. I guess I was just too used to Ree-Jane wanting to be the Countess of Kent.

Louise Snell was cutting up with the two men who looked like truck drivers, but I still didn’t see any trucks out there, so maybe they lived in Cold Flat. It made me nervous going in there again, for Jude Stemple could well have mentioned that I’d said I knew her daughter, but when she saw me she came right over and, with a big smile, said, “Well, hello.”

“Is this your dad?” She was wiping down the counter in front of us and nodding towards Mr. Root. I thought he looked kind of old to be my dad, but maybe not. I explained that these people were my friends from La Porte.

Mr. Root seemed pleased to have been mistaken for my father and beamed as he pulled a menu out from between sugar shaker and napkin holder. Ulub and Ubub did the same, though I wondered if I should order for them, since they always were used to Maud just setting things in front of them. I told them the sweet rolls here were really good and Louise nodded hard.

“Homemade,” she said.

They looked at each other and nodded.

“You want coffee, I expect,” I said helpfully.

They nodded again.

Then I said to Mr. Root, after I got my Coke, that maybe the
Queen he knew a long time ago might be one of the ones living here in Cold Flat. Oh, he doubted it, he said, and I said, well, but maybe. We went back and forth like this for a minute or two until I got him thinking and talking about how sad it was, time passing, and old friends being missed, and so forth, until Mr. Root was getting pretty sad. And to top it off, I said that these Queens might be related to the dead woman and might have something to do with Mary-Evelyn. Well, that convinced him, although I could tell he was pretty shy about just walking up to what might be a stranger’s door and announcing himself.

I insisted on paying, but Mr. Root told me my money was no good today, and we left the Woods happily munching their sweet rolls and said we’d be back in no time, there was someone Mr. Root wanted to visit.

He was still worried that either these weren’t the right Queens or no one would remember him, or other reasons for not doing this, as we walked out of the Windy Run Diner and down its few steps.

So I told him I’d do the talking. Which, of course, I didn’t intend to, as
I
wasn’t Sheba Queen’s old friend.

Mr. Root said it had been over ten years since he’d been to Cold Flat Junction, close as it was to Spirit Lake. But he remembered a lot of things as we walked along and seemed pleased at the remembrances. He said as we passed the general store that Elmer Fry, who’d once owned it, had been tossed in jail for having two wives. Mr. Root thought having two was punishment enough, and did the law have to go and add to Elmer’s suffering by giving him a jail sentence?

We passed the schoolhouse, and came to Dubois Road, and I asked him if he knew Jude Stemple. Yes, he did, but not very well. And then he asked me just what was it he was supposed to do at the Queens. I explained that he could just talk with them about anything, but preferably try to get them remembering. Remembering particularly about Rose Devereau.

“You think she knows something about that little girl, that Mary Ellen Devereau?”

“Mary-Evelyn. And my great-aunt Aurora says Ben Queen ran off with Rose Devereau.”

“Ah-ha!” he said, mashing his fist into his palm as if he’d just made all these important connections.

And there was the house, kind of springing up in our line of vision, old banana yellow shutters, and paint peeling all around the window moldings and off the porch railings.

Mr. Root paused on the weedy walk and slowly shook his head. “If it’s Sheba lives here, well, I ain’t seen her in—”

“Fifteen years, I know. Come on.” Afraid he was going to get
droopy or even start crying, thinking about the old Bathsheba days, I wanted to get him inside.

Well, I needn’t have worried about people recalling people, for when the thin, sharp-featured woman dressed in a muslin print came to the screen door, her mouth dropped open and she fairly wailed: “Elijah ROOT! In all my born days—”

She never finished that, but slapped the door open, nearly hitting me in the face and just clapped her rough hands one on each of his shoulders and shook him a little. They were about the same height, but she was more sinewy.

“Sheba, you hardly changed a day!”

That was certainly a big lie, and I stood there and listened to a few more before Mr. Root (whose first name, I’d only just found out, was Elijah) kind of turned me to her and said, “This here’s a friend of mine from Spirit Lake said she’d always wanted to come to Cold Flat and never got the chance and would I bring her?”

Grown-ups could lie without turning a hair. But that was all right, for Sheba Queen acted like I was a special friend and invited us in and said she’d get me some of her home-baked molasses cookies and lemonade. I never looked forward to getting food in other people’s houses, knowing it just couldn’t compare in any way, shape, or form to my mother’s.

We stood in the cool dark hall papered with horrible brown-and-green vines or something as she whisked through a parlor calling to a man who’d been hidden by the big wing of his chair that he should take us out to the porch.

Which he did, introducing himself as George Queen, Sheba’s husband. He seemed nice enough, but kind of gloomy and sad. He had a soft, uncommanding voice, and we all trooped out to the porch. Mr. Queen and Mr. Root took two rockers, pulling a third over for Mrs. Queen. I sat on the wooden swing so that I was behind them. That was all right with me; I could listen better.

Mrs. Sheba Queen came back with a tray full of lemonade glasses and nearly black cookies that I held out little hope for. All the while she kept telling lies about how young Elijah looked and how he still had that wonderful smile, and so forth. Mr. George Queen apparently had not known Mr. Root back then, so could neither confirm nor deny, but smiled pleasantly and nodded his head. Maybe his gloom and his faraway look was because of Fern Queen’s awful death. But
Mrs. Sheba Queen was pretty cheerful; it struck me as strange that she was chattering brightly away, as if she didn’t know Ben Queen’s daughter, her own niece, had been murdered. But she must know. The Sheriff had been to Cold Flat about a missing person twice, and must have told the family of the tragedy.

Mr. Root brought it up. He did this by way of extending his sympathy to them in their hour of grief. I think George Queen was truly grieved, for he had to turn his face away. But she was just putting on. I could tell from the way she made so much of now what she hadn’t given a thought to before. I didn’t judge her for not being sad or even shocked over Fern’s murder. I only judged her for putting on this act.

But none of that was important; Mr. Root had got them—or at least her—talking about the Devereaus. For she started sniffing in that prim way, that self-righteous way some women do when speaking of those they don’t like.

And she did not like Rose Devereau.

“We told him he shouldn’t ought to marry a Devereau girl. Crazy, every one of them!”

I had stopped creaking the swing and held it at a slant with my feet on the porch floor. Frozen there.

Mr. George Queen spoke: “Now, now. Ben was pretty wild, Sheba, we both know—”

“We know nothing of the kind, George Queen! That’s all gossip.” Whipping her face around like a rattlesnake, she said to Mr. Root: “Ben just ought not to have married that girl, he’d ought to have kept on with Lou, that’s what!” Helpfully, for Mr. Root’s sake (they’d forgotten I was here), she added, “Louise Landis. Did you know Louise? Well, she was Ben’s girl, and even then when she was no more’n eighteen, nineteen, you could see she had sense. Real growed-up for her age, and she’d’ve settled Ben right down. But no, he had to have that crazy Rose Devereau.”

George said, thoughtfully, “Real beautiful, Rose was. Just as pretty . . .” His voice trailed off.

I was glad he’d defended her. Even though I thought Rose Devereau should never have left Mary-Evelyn like she did.

“And that little sister of hers, one that drownded . . .” Sheba frowned in an effort to recall her.

I sat right up to listen, but her voice fell again to a whisper. I strained to hear.

“. . . Can’t remember her name . . . Mary something—”

“Mary-Evelyn.” I said it out loud without even thinking.

They all looked at me, Bathsheba turning to peer around the back of the tall rocker.

“Well, for heaven’s sakes, child, how’d you ever know that? It’s been forty, fifty years back.” Turning back, she said grimly to the two men, “Less said about
that
business, the better.” She gave a quick nod back in my direction, adding, “Little pitchers . . .”

I stuck my tongue out at her back. You could almost see the self-righteousness sprouting like wings from her narrow, muslin-covered shoulder blades.

“Poor, poor Fern,” she whined. She had taken the handkerchief she’d tucked into her sleeve band and was blowing her nose as if she’d been crying. Which she hadn’t. There was more low-voiced talk and I heard, “It was no more’n she deserved!”

I sat forward.
What
was? Than
who
deserved? Did she mean Rose? Or Fern?

Mr. Root slid me a glance. “Now, what was that, Sheba? What do you mean, there?”

Oh, bless Mr. Root! I wanted to clap.

“Well, Elijah, you living in Spirit Lake, so near and all, surely you must’ve heard about Rose. It was all over the papers.”

“No, I never did. See, I might not’ve put two and two together, not knowing all this history you’re telling.”

George broke in, “Telling wrong, too.” He sounded disgusted.

“No I am not. It’s just you always sided with Rose Devereau against your own brother!”

“You know that ain’t true, Sheba! That ain’t the way it was.” He slapped the arm of his rocker. “Anyways, siding with Rose was siding with Ben. You just don’t want to believe that. Only thing they ever didn’t see eye to eye on was Fern.”

That set Sheba Queen off again with her “Poor Fern”s.

George Queen just flapped his hand at her in a “be quiet” gesture. “Poor Fern my eye.” He said it so soft I wondered if anyone heard it except me.

“You always sided with Rose about what to do about Fern. Rose was against Fern, her own daughter! She wanted to send her to some institution . . . ’cause she was too lazy to care for her.”

“You don’t know nothin’ about it, woman.” George sounded
angry enough to spit. “Ben Queen never sided against
any
member of his family, Sheba.” He lowered his head, rested it in his hand, and shook his head slowly back and forth, as if he’d rid it of some old misery. “How you can think either of them was against Fern, I don’t know. It’s as well she’s dead. Finally.” His voice was heavy with sadness.

Sheba was halfway out of her chair with rage. “Your very own niece, you say that about your own
blood
!” And just for something to add to his crime, she pointed at me. “De-
nounce
your own kin before strangers!”