Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery (7 page)

Rumble, mumble “...not contagious, I hope,” someone replied in a deep, slow voice.

So they're trying to cover up the old drunk's binge by pretending she's sick to their guest, too. She leaned down to massage her toe again. Why did they invite this guy while Emmeline's in her cups? Maybe the conversation she'd just heard was really a piece of politeness in which everyone was pretending not to know the obvious. After all, alcoholism wasn't all that easy to hide. She thought about her own Aunt Daisy.

When Aunt Daisy took up the bottle as a serious vocation, she'd put out the story that she was drinking a fifth of port a day on her doctor's advice. “To build up my blood,” she'd tell anyone brazen enough to ask. One day, she'd fallen down the front porch stairs and was too drunk to get up, just as Reverend Brown was passing by. That evening, Uncle Dan had locked Aunt Daisy in the attic until she'd dried out, thin blood or no thin blood. He'd told all the neighbors Aunt Daisy was just too weak with anemia to come out or to have any visitors. Blanche marveled at the many ways families insisted on acting the same, regardless of color or other differences.

Usually, Blanche hated waiting on table and being treated like just another utensil. But this evening she was disappointed when Grace told her she needn't stand duty in the dining room. She was curious about this guest. She couldn't recall exactly what Everett had said about him at lunch, but it had revolved around the lie that Emmeline had the flu and something taking only ten minutes. She'd looked him over as closely as she'd dared when Grace rang for more rolls. At least she'd learned his name, Archibald. He looked like a Hollywood version of a Southern gentleman: snow-white hair, glowing pink skin, and the kind of face people she'd worked for called Roman. Blanche understood this to mean a high forehead, a big nose, and no lips to speak of. While she was in the room, conversation either stopped or was nicey-nice talk.

After dinner, she carried the coffee tray into the sitting room, a small, bright room, across the hall from the living room, done in yellow and lime green wallpaper with chair cushions to match. An open liquor cabinet stood against the far wall. The furniture was white, with curved and carved arms and legs. Everett and his guest stood by the window. They were deep in conversation that only they could hear. Grace wasn't there and neither was Mumsfield. Blanche began pouring their coffee, but Everett dismissed her with a flip of his wrist.

She took her time doing the dishes. She searched for some news on the radio, but all she could find was a hillbilly whining and picking his banjo, and some rock and roll. When she turned the radio off, the songs of frogs and crickets and other night creatures seeped between the clink of the knives and forks as she washed and rinsed. It was her favorite time of summer evening. Light slipped over the horizon a few minutes before the dark took hold and created a small space between night and day where every object, every feeling, seemed starkly clear. She saw herself standing halfway between where she'd been and where she was headed. Part of her longed for Farleigh, a snatch of Taifa and Malik's bedtime bickering, the smell of their just-washed skin and milky breath. Part of her was already gone on the bus to New York, preparing for life in the city. Grace's entrance distracted Blanche from her thoughts.

“When Nate, who looks after the garden and grounds, arrives,” Grace told her, “we'll be going up to Aunt Emmeline's room. We'll need you both.” Grace's face was slightly flushed. “There's something I, that is, my husband and I...It will only take a mo...”

A soft sound came from the back door, something between a knock and scratching. Blanche opened it to a short, wiry old man whose skin reminded her of some deep red-black wood polished to a high sheen. He was clutching a grungy baseball cap and bobbing and weaving like a punchdrunk fighter. His denim overalls were faded to a watery blue. He gave Blanche a brief nod and slipped by her into the kitchen. She recognized him as the person she'd seen in the garden. Now she watched him bow and scrape and “Miz Grace” all around the kitchen until the object of his ass-kissing led them up the back stairs. If it's a put-on, he ought to be in the movies, Blanche thought. If it's for real, it's pitiful.

On the way upstairs, Grace kept up a constant trickle of questions and comments about the garden and the weather and the ducks on the pond. She and Nate laughed together over
little remarks that meant nothing to Blanche. She did notice that Grace was wringing her hands as though she were hoping to get gold out of them. The hollow laughter of a TV laugh track seeped from beneath a bedroom door that Blanche bet was Mumsfield's.

The smell of cheap liquor and cigarettes had been replaced in Emmeline's room by the pungent fragrance of eucalyptus. A humidifier sent a jet of mist into the overheated room. Emmeline was hiked up on a mass of creamy white pillows edged with pink embroidered roses. Her blue satin bed jacket was trimmed with white lace. A matching cap covered her Little Orphan Annie Afro. Her eyes were red-rimmed but keen. She observed her visitors from over a linen handkerchief she held to her nose and mouth.

“Why, Miz Em, it sure is good to see you!” Nate performed a kind of jerky bow as he moved beyond the foot of the bed until he was near Emmeline's side. Blanche hung back, watching from just inside the door.

“I sure am sorry to see you feeling sss...sss...so...” Nate stuttered and stumbled through telling Emmeline how sorry he was that she was ill. Emmeline clutched her handkerchief closer to her face and seemed to shrink into her pillows. She flashed her eyes at Grace. Grace opened her mouth and reached out her hand to Nate, but whatever she intended was forestalled by a knock on the door. Everett ushered Archibald into the room.

“Cousin Archibald.” Emmeline spoke in a high, sweet whisper that was very different from the bitchy whiskey rasp Blanche had heard earlier.

Archibald crossed the room to the far side of the bed and set his briefcase on the table by the window. He took the hand Emmeline held out to him.

“Cousin.” He bowed low over Emmeline's hand. His silver hair gleamed in the light from the window. “You can't know how much it means to me that you asked to see me, personally, after so long. I...”

Emmeline lowered her handkerchief and coughed a quick succession of loud barks in Archibald's direction. He flinched and took a quick step back from the bed. “Don't try to talk, my dear.”

Emmeline coughed again. Archibald snatched his own handkerchief from his breast pocket and brought it quickly to his mouth and nose. After a few moments, his eyes widened and crimson crept up to his forehead. He looked quickly down at Emmeline, who was once again hidden behind her handkerchief. By the time he shifted his gaze to see if Grace and Everett had noticed, he had already stuffed the offending handkerchief back in its proper place. Blanche saw laughter in Emmeline's eyes.

Archibald opened his briefcase. The minute she saw that sheath of heavy, thick, clothlike paper, Blanche knew they were there about money. Archibald fussed with his papers while Everett fetched the rolling tray from the other side of the room. He pushed it to the bed so that it extended across Emmeline's lap.

“I really do hate to bother you, Cousin, but you did insist that I come today.” Archibald laid the papers on the tray in front of Emmeline. “If you'll just sign here.” He used his pen as a pointer.

Emmeline lowered her handkerchief and produced a series of loud, dry coughs. This time, Emmeline wasn't the only cougher. Blanche had to manufacture a cough of her own to cover the grin that sprang unbidden to her face when Archibald practically threw the pen on the tray and jumped away from the bed as though his life depended upon putting distance between himself and his cousin.

Blanche was now positive Emmeline was making mischief. She tried to catch Nate's eye, to see if he'd noticed it, too, but he had eyes only for the baseball cap he was squeezing to death between both hands.

Emmeline was reading through the four or five sheets of paper Archibald had given her. She ran her eyes down each page in a leisurely fashion, then picked it up and turned it face
down on the tray with slow, deliberate movements before going on to the next page. Every once in a while she coughed into the handkerchief she still held to her mouth. Warning shots, Blanche thought. The air in the room was as charged as a thunderstorm.

“It's a wise change, if I may say so.” Archibald cleared his throat. “All the other items, of course, remain the same.” Archibald moved a tad closer to his cousin. His eyes seemed to implore her not to infect him any more than she'd already done. “The bequests to the servants, the generous gift to the Daughters of the Confederacy...”

He petered out as the old lady continued to read, or at least pretended to read.

Grace was breathing through her mouth in short, quick bursts. Her hands were white-knuckled fists at her side. Everett lay his hand on the small of Grace's back for just a moment. She gave him a poor excuse for a smile, but Everett never took his eyes off Emmeline.

There was a light coating of sweat on Everett's forehead. And Blanche could almost feel Nate concentrating on the baseball cap in his hands. Did Emmeline's teasing Archibald account for all the tension bunched in the room? Blanche doubted it.

“Of course, I agree with you,” Archibald said, as though responding to something Emmeline had said. “Mumsfield's a fine lad, a clever boy...all things considered. But managing an estate as large as yours is a complicated business. Better to have older, more...er...ah...capable members of the family in charge of his affairs.” He smiled over at Everett and Grace.

“The firm is at your service,” he told them. “And, of course, I personally will be glad to—”

He was cut off by a hacking cough from Emmeline. He stepped back until his butt bumped against his briefcase on the table behind him. Emmeline snatched up the pen and signed the last page, coughing as she wrote. Blanche felt rather than heard a collective sigh from Grace and Everett. Archibald looked a little
shocked. Was it the old lady's quickness with the pen that surprised him?

He grabbed the will before Emmeline could cough on it again. He held it gingerly, as though it were one of those smallpox blankets the early settlers gave to the Indians. Blanche half expected him to whip out a pair of rubber gloves. He laid the last page on the table beside his briefcase and motioned Blanche and Nate closer. He handed the pen to Blanche and pointed to a line beneath Emmeline's signature. Blanche wished she'd said she couldn't write. But at least it didn't sound as though Mumsfield was being cut out of his money, only having it handled by his cousins. Blanche wrote her name in a round, girlish hand on the line next to Archibald's manicured pink-white finger. It occurred to her that just because Mumsfield's cousins were handling his money was no reason to assume his money was safe. Archibald took the pen from her and handed it to Nate. Nate leaned stiffly over the table and signed his name in shaky script.

“I'd like to stay and chat, Cousin, but I can see that you need your rest.” Archibald stuffed the pen and the will in his briefcase and moved quickly toward the door. Emmeline coughed again, as if to hurry him along. Everett followed him out of the room.

Grace dismissed Nate with a nod and a vague smile, and told Blanche that Everett would lock up. Nate followed Blanche down the back stairs.

“What do you make of all that?” Blanche asked him.

“I sure wisht I wasn't in it.” His eyes looked older than dirt. His shoulders drooped. “You ain't from round here, is you?” He gave Blanche a searching look that took in her hair, and her feet, and all in between. Including, she thought, some parts that don't show.

“Farleigh,” she told him. “But I been living in New York for a while.”

“Figures. You talk like city. Fillin' in for them Toms who works for 'em in town, hunh?”

Blanche nodded. “What about you?”

“I been working for this family since Miz Em was a girl. Come here to work when I was twelve years old. So was Miz Em. We got the same birthday, ya know.” Nate hooked his thumbs in the straps of his overalls. “I worked for her daddy and her daddy's daddy. Outlived both them suckers.” Nate chortled a vicious little laugh and headed for the back door. “I was looking forward to going to Miz Em's funeral, too,” he added. “But now...”

“Why you say that? She ain't dead yet, and neither are you.”

Nate hesitated. “Miz Grace is one of them kinda people always worried about her standin' in the community—that's how she puts it, like she was some kinda church or the government or something. That's how I know it's got to be him that's behind this mess.”

“What mess? You mean the new will?”

Nate went on talking, but he didn't answer Blanche's questions. “I never thought he was much. Course, he thinks plenty of hisself. Hardest work the man does is brushin' back his hair. Unless you call gamblin' and runnin' after women 'work.' He's kinda like a pet Miz Grace bought to show off to her friends. To prove she could get her a man, too, I guess, even though he is a hand-me-down, so to speak.” Nate rubbed his jaw. His whiskers rasping against his hand sounded like shifting sand.

“Maybe I made a mistake,” he said. “Maybe I was wrong 'bout him bein' too lazy to cause any harm 'cept to run through Miz Grace's money quick fast and in a hurry. Or so they say.”

“I still don't understand,” Blanche told him.

Nate opened the back door, then turned to look at her. His eyes called her to attention. “You don't need to understand,” he told her. “I wisht I didn't.” He put on his baseball cap. “You look after yourself, Miz City.” He tipped his cap in her direction and went quickly out the door.

Blanche followed him and called softly to him to come back. Nate waved to her over his shoulder, shook his head from
side to side, and kept on going. Blanche could tell from the way he shook his head that it was useless to run after him. He was through talking to her for the night. Tears of disappointment sprang to her eyes. She hadn't realized how tightly she'd latched on to him, the only black person she'd been with since she'd left home for the courthouse. Once she'd gotten a glimpse of who he really was, she wanted to ask him how it was that Mumsfield didn't know about Emmeline's alcoholism, what it was that made Grace so nervous, and why had he changed into a statue in Emmeline's room. But he was gone, and she was standing there being a meal for the mosquitoes. She swatted at one buzzing near her ear.