I Still Dream About You: A Novel (34 page)

Miss Pitcock had somehow managed to obtain a photocopy of Edward Crocker’s will, dated January 11, 1935, and after pages of instructions dealing with numerous foundations and charities, Edward had specified that in the event of his death, the business and Crestview were to be willed to the Dalton family. But he had left the entire bulk of his fortune (including Edwina’s house in London) to Lettie Ross, his childhood nurse. There was not even a mention of an Edwina Crocker in the entire will! And who was Lettie Ross? If
the woman in London who had passed herself off as Edwina Crocker had been his mistress or even a distant relative, then why had Edward not left her a dime in his will? It didn’t make any sense. Oh, well, it was obvious that detective work was not as simple as Nancy Drew would have you think.

B
RENDA DIDN’T KNOW IT, BUT HER SISTER ROBBIE HAD BEEN
saving money to buy her a fifty-inch flat-screen television set for her birthday, in two weeks. This morning, Robbie had read that Costco was having a huge one-day sale on electronics, and the exact model Brenda wanted was marked down 35 percent. So that afternoon, with the help of two of her intern friends at the hospital, they borrowed an ambulance and ran out to Costco and bought one. Because she couldn’t trust Brenda not to go through every square inch of the house and the garage looking for her presents, they took it over to storage to keep until her birthday, so it would be a surprise. But it was Robbie and the two interns who got a surprise when they moved the chest of drawers.

The next person to be surprised that day was Brenda. When she came bouncing in the door from her Youth at Risk meeting, she was feeling pretty good, until she saw Mr. Crocker sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed and Robbie sitting right beside him.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” said Robbie.

“Uh-oh.” Brenda understood that this was one of those times when changing the subject with enthusiasm was just not going to work. She was busted and she knew it, so she sat down and told Robbie the truth.

After she finished, Robbie shook her head and said, “Brenda, do you have any idea how insane you are?”

Brenda blinked her eyes and tried to look as innocent as possible. “Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time.”

“And Maggie went along with this? That doesn’t sound like her.”

“I know, but you don’t understand: we
needed
this sale. Our office depended on it. Please don’t tell Maggie that you found him. Please.”

Robbie thought about it for a minute, then said, “Well, okay, I guess it won’t hurt anything. But why do you keep saying
he?
”

“Because we’re almost positive we know who he is.”

“Oh, really?”

“We think it’s Edward Crocker, the man who used to live there. There’s a painting of him in the house wearing this same exact outfit. Don’t you think that’s a pretty good clue?”

“I do. Except for one small detail.”

“What?”

“Your little friend here is a female.”

“WHAT? How do you know that?”

“Because I examined it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure; I know physiology. You can tell by the hips.”

Brenda was not happy to hear this news. “What were you doing examining my skeleton’s hips … and now that I think about it,
what
were you doing over at the storage unit in the first place?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” said Robbie. “Other people have secrets, too.”

Usually, as it was so close to her birthday, Brenda would have badgered Robbie until she found out what the secret was, but she had other things on her mind right now. She was wondering how she was going to tell Maggie that the skeleton was not Edward Crocker. After thinking it over, she decided that maybe she wouldn’t tell her. What Maggie didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

A
CROSS TOWN, AFTER
Ethel Clipp had poured herself a nice stiff drink, she was sitting in her living room in her purple velour pantsuit, looking out the window and watching the pigeons walking all over her yard. One big fat male pigeon was all puffed up, strutting around and pestering some poor female to death. Typical. It could have been her ex-husband, Earl. If she thought there was any truth to the reincarnation thing, she would have gotten up and gone out in the yard and swatted it.

After the divorce, that son of a bitch Earl had just disappeared. He just took off and hadn’t sent her a dime in alimony, not even a postcard. If it hadn’t been for Hazel, she never could have gotten those two kids raised, much less been able to send them to college.

And after her working so hard to make sure they had an education and would be able to get a good job, they both wound up weird as hell, and neither one of them had a job. Now, just like crazy Dottie Figge, who had flipped out and gone all Hindu, they said they were on some so-called spiritual quest and needed to devote time to discovering the “path to happiness.” Opal, her youngest, had just sent her a book. She said it was the most profound thing she had ever read. Ethel didn’t want to burst her bubble, but it seemed like a bunch of gobbledegook. Back in her day, going to church every Sunday used to be enough. But now everybody and their brother had some new lamebrained theory or philosophy they were pushing. Years ago, you used to have to wait until someone asked you to write a book, but now with self-publishing, every wing nut in America was writing one. Ethel thought that maybe she should write one. She had a philosophy, too. She even had a title:
Fools and Idiots I Have Known or Have Been Married To
. Her theory was very simple: there wasn’t a thing the matter with the world, just the people in it. They never learned, and they just kept doing the same damned stupid things over and over again. Animals were fine, but all humans were fools. Herself included, or she wouldn’t have married Earl in the first place.

O
N
SATURDAY MORNING, BRENDA AND HER SISTER TONYA WERE AT
the factory outlet mall for the annual Kate Spade March Madness handbag sale. They had arrived at five
A.M
. to make sure they got in the front of the line, and by seven, the line was already around the block, with women waiting to stampede through the store and grab as many bags as they could. When the doors finally opened at eight, Brenda shouted for Tonya to go to the left, and she would go to the right. Brenda had been rushing around the store for about ten minutes when she began to feel ill. She felt a burning pain in her chest; she was hot and sweaty and was suddenly having trouble breathing. She should have gone home, but this was a once-a-year sale, so instead, she ran in the ladies room and threw cold water on her face and headed back out again. When she did, she caught a glimpse of her sister across the room, and Tonya held up a bright red bag in triumph, and Brenda started over to that side of the store to try to find one just like it. She needed a red bag, too.

M
EANWHILE, ACROSS TOWN
at Avon Terrace, Maggie was busy with her last-minute details again. Finally, after weeks of waiting, her
deposition and all the paperwork involving the wreck had been completed, and yesterday, the Conways had called and said that the insurance company had finally agreed to cover all the costs of the fence and a new sign. When Maggie had heard from them, she had gone back to the river, this time with her snakebite kit in hand, and left all her jumping-in-the-river items.

Yesterday, she had ordered a car to pick up a Mrs. Tab Hunter at eight-thirty in the middle of the block. Maggie had been up since seven, and now all that was left for her to do was put out the package with her Miss Alabama crown, sash, and trophy for Audrey and a box with her new clothes labeled for the theater out in plain sight, where they could be seen.

She had paid off her credit card, and yesterday she had put her last check for half of the commission on Crestview in the mail to Babs.

She made the bed and checked off the last items on her list. Clean towels in the bathroom, new soaps in all the soap dishes, ant traps under the sink. She then went back to the kitchen and put the “To Whom It May Concern” envelope and the envelope addressed to Lupe with the watch and, this time, one thousand dollars in cash on the kitchen counter, and did a last look around the room. She realized that after today, the two envelopes would be all that was left of her.

All she had now was just enough money to pay for the cab ride to the river. Oh, well. At least she hadn’t left owing money, and that was something, she guessed. She then unplugged the toaster and the microwave oven and locked the kitchen door. She grabbed her purse and went down the hall to the front door. But when she tried to open the outer glass door, it wouldn’t budge. Something heavy stood in the way. She looked down and saw a huge cardboard box with a card taped to the top, addressed to her from Sweet Home Alabama Goat Farm. Oh, Lord. How had they gotten in the gate? It was too early for mail, so the gardeners must have put it on her stoop, thinking they were doing her a favor. She reached down and opened the card; inside was a photo of Leroy the goat, along with a note.

Oh no, that really was very sweet of them, but why today, of all days? It was obviously some kind of food because the box had
PERISHABLE, PLEASE REFRIGERATE
written all over it. She couldn’t leave it sitting out on the stoop in the sun—nothing smells worse than spoiled goat cheese—so she pulled the box inside the foyer and opened it and saw that they had sent twenty-four cartons of goat yogurt and at least ten pounds of a variety of goat cheeses. She had just spent over an hour cleaning out her refrigerator. She tried to think of someone she could give it to, but who would ever want this amount of goat products? She couldn’t think of a single person, and she couldn’t just leave it sitting in the foyer. There was nothing she could do. She was going to have to take it all out and put it in the refrigerator, and hopefully, Lupe would find it on Monday and take some of it home. As she was busy unloading the box, her phone rang, and she was so rattled, she completely forgot that she wasn’t going to speak to anyone and picked it up. “Hello.”

“Hey, it’s me.” Maggie winced when she realized what she had done. It was Brenda. Too late. Now she was caught.

“Can you hear me?”

“Just barely … where are you?”

“I’m at the Kate Spade sale. We got here early this morning, and I just got six bags for half price. I’m standing in line right now, waiting to pay for them.”

“Oh, great, honey, that’s wonderful.” Maggie tried to sound interested and still concentrate on getting all the yogurt into the refrigerator.

“What are you doing?” asked Brenda.

“Oh, just putting a few things away. What’s up?”

“Listen … I don’t want you to get excited, but I may or may not be having a heart attack. But if I were, what would be the symptoms?”

Maggie was suddenly alarmed. “
What?
What makes you think you’re having a heart attack?”

“I said,
may be
. I didn’t say I was.”

“Oh, my God. Have you called Robbie?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because. I don’t want to hear her say ‘I told you so’ until I’m sure.”

“Are you having chest pains?”

“Uh-huh, sort of. Off and on,” Brenda said as she moved one step closer to the check-out counter.

“Are you short of breath?”

“A little.”

“Brenda, don’t fool around with this. You get out of that line right now and go get help.”

“I can’t. I haven’t paid for my bags yet.”

“Forget the damn bags! You find somebody right now and tell them what’s going on, and I’m not hanging up until you do!”