Part 1 (1/2)
Shadow of an Angel.
by Mignon F. Ballard
Acknowledgments.
I would like to thank Laura Langlie, whom I'm fortunate to have as an agent and friend; my husband, Gene, for his sustaining love and valuable help over the years; St. Martin's' Hope Dellon and Kris Kamikawa, for helping to make Augusta ”fly,” and my patient family for loving me anyway.
-M.F.B.
Chapter One.
Things got off to a rotten start when I found Cousin Otto dead in the ladies' room.
Of course, at first I didn't know it was Cousin Otto, and I certainly didn't know he was dead! All I could see were those big brown shoes in the stall next to mine when I bent to retrieve a roll of bathroom paper making a pathway across the floor. (Apparently the people responsible for the upkeep of historic Holley Hall had never thought to replace the broken tissue spindle.) My neighbor's shoes were at least size twelve, scuffed at the toes, and obviously not on intimate terms with a buffing brush. I peeked again. Blue nylon socks stretched beneath creased khaki trousers. Had I wandered into the men's room by mistake? Gasping, I drew up my feet before I remembered seeing the tampon dispenser on the wall when I came in. Unless nature had taken a drastic turn, I was in the right place.
The man next door was terribly still. Did he know I knew? He was mortified, naturally. Maybe if I stayed where I was for a few minutes, it would give him a chance to escape.
It was then I noticed the small gold earring-or it looked like an earring-wedged in the corner of my stall. Whoever had dropped it would probably be glad to have it back, and I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the trinket and put it in my s.h.i.+rt pocket, intending to turn it in to the academy's hostess later.
Surely by now the man to my left would realize he'd made a really big ”oops!” and vamoose. I sat, afraid to breathe. Go on, I urged under my breath. Get out!
Nothing. Well, I couldn't wait forever. To heck with him!
It wasn't until I was was.h.i.+ng my hands that I noticed the reflection in the mirror. Beneath the side of the stall toward the sink, the knuckles of a large hand-a man's hand-hung, barely brus.h.i.+ng the floor. I've heard of being embarra.s.sed to death, but this was going to the extreme.
Forgetting decorum, I pounded on the stall. ”Are you all right? Do you need help?
”Listen, we all make mistakes,” I persisted. ”I'll leave if you like, but please answer me. Is anything wrong? Are you sick?”
Still no answer. Beneath the stall's door I saw the feet in the same slightly turned in position, the arm dangled in a most unnatural way. Not a good sign.
”There's a man in the ladies' room,” I announced to Gertrude Whitmire, who was at the reception desk that day. ”I'm afraid something's wrong with him; he's not moving.”
She skewered me with her sharp blue eyes. This woman had taught history to generations-including mine. Wordy Gerty, we called her. She was was history, and I knew she suffered no s.h.i.+lly-shallying. history, and I knew she suffered no s.h.i.+lly-shallying.
”What do you mean, he's not moving?” She was on her feet and halfway down the hallway before I caught up with her.
”In that last stall,” I directed. ”I can't get him to answer.”
The metal door trembled under the pressure of her pounding. ”Who's in there?” the woman demanded in a voice loud enough to bring even the comatose to attention, but there was no reply.
”Stall's locked,” she informed me. ”You'll have to crawl under.”
”Me? I can't do that!”
I had come to Angel Heights, the home of my fore bearers, to seek spiritual renewal in a peaceful retreat after my husband's sudden death and, I hoped, to smooth an uneasy relations.h.i.+p with my grandmother. This was not what I had in mind.
”Yes, you can. You'll have to.” Gertrude Whitmire patted her ample hips as if to explain why I would be the better choice.
Still I shook my head. I didn't care how many years she'd been ”yes, ma'amed” at Angel Heights High. I was not not crawling under that awful booth. crawling under that awful booth.
”If we can find something for me to stand on, maybe I can reach over,” I said, wilting under her look of utter disgust.
Soon afterward a chair appeared, and I came face-to-face with Cousin Otto. My relative is never one to turn down a drink, no matter how early in the day, and I thought he'd probably tied one on at lunchtime and wandered into the ladies' room by mistake. He smelled of liquor and urine, and I almost gagged until I finally got the door unlatched. My first instinct was to block Gertrude Whitmire's view so she couldn't see who it was. How dare this disgusting man embarra.s.s the family this way!
Too late. ”Is that Otto? It is, isn't it?” The woman wedged her head over my shoulder, almost nudging me into Cousin Otto's lap. His head sagged to one side, and he clutched what looked like a balled up handkerchief.
”Ye G.o.ds!” Gertrude Whitmire's breath was hot on my neck and smelled of the chocolates she kept hidden in her desk. ”Well, Arminda, you were asking for your cousin. Seems as if we've found him.”
This was my grandmother's fault. If Vesta had stayed at home just this once to pa.s.s along the key to the home place, I wouldn't be squashed in this toilet practically sitting on Cousin Otto.
”I'll probably be on the golf course when you get here,” my grandmother had told me, ”but you can get a key to the Nut House from Otto. He volunteers over at Holley Hall every other Sat.u.r.day-if he's sober, that is.”
Vesta liked to refer to our family home as the Nut House because it stands in a pecan grove, she said, but I suspected this was only part of the reason.
Failing to find my grandmother at home in her newly acquired condominium, I had dutifully inquired after my cousin at the town's one historic site.
Gertrude Whitmire hadn't seen him, she'd told me earlier, but directed me to the upstairs library, where she said he usually spent his time. Finding that room empty, I had taken advantage of the facilities, planning to stroll about the grounds until my cousin returned from what was obviously a late lunch.
”So, what do we do now?” I quickly shut the door and backed away from the pathetic tableau, stepping on my own feet and Gertrude's, as well.
”Get him out of here, of course, and as soon as possible. We can't have people in here gawking. It's a wonder some tourist hasn't stumbled in here already.”
The only museum-goers I had seen that day were an elderly couple chuckling over a cla.s.s picture in the hallway and a handful of young boys tussling over a football on the lawn. On a sunny Sat.u.r.day in early November, it seemed, people had better things to do than poke about the musty remains of what once had been a school for young women.
Gertrude lowered her head, bull-like, and stepped forward, determined to do her duty, no matter how distasteful. ”I suppose it's up to us, Arminda, to see that your cousin gets home to sleep it off.” She emphasized, I noticed, the fact that Otto was my relative and left me no choice but to follow suit.
But as soon as I touched Otto Alexander's cold, stiff hand, I knew my cousin would be a long time sleeping this one off. I think I screamed, but my cry was cut short by a look from Gertrude that had the same effect as a splash of icy well water.
Later, in the building's austere parlor, we waited for the coroner by a gas fire that wasn't much warmer. Above the marble mantel, a dark portrait of Fitzhugh Holley, long-ago head of Minerva Academy and Angel Heights's contribution to kiddie lit, smiled down at me as if amused by the situation.
His grandson wasn't. Hugh Talbot, florid and fiftyish, bore little resemblance to his ancestor in the portrait. In the likeness over the fireplace, blue eyes gleamed behind rimless spectacles, and lips turned up in a slight smile, as if the subject of the painting might be dreaming up additional antics for his lovable storybook characters, Callie Cat and Doggie Dan. He wore his sandy mustache neatly trimmed above a firm, beardless chin. The portrait had been painted from a photograph, Cousin Otto once pointed out. The professor died in his thirties while saving one of his students from a fire. A pity, I thought. So young and so handsome-like my own Jarvis.
Don't go there, Minda! The thought of Jarvis, whose zany sense of humor and boyish sweetness made me love him from the start, could send me back into that dark pit of self-pity, and I didn't want to go through that again. The thought of Jarvis, whose zany sense of humor and boyish sweetness made me love him from the start, could send me back into that dark pit of self-pity, and I didn't want to go through that again.
”I just can't believe this!” Hugh Talbot repeated for the umpteenth time. ”What in the world made Otto go into the ladies' room? What could he have been thinking?” He paced the room, watching for the arrival of the coroner. ”Do you suppose he had a heart attack? It was probably his liver. All that alcohol, you know.”
He patted his toupee, which was at least two shades darker than his graying reddish hair. A lonely tuft of his own hair stuck out over his forehead like a misplaced goatee. ”I'm sorry, Minda,” he added, as if in an afterthought. ”I know this must be difficult for you after what you've been through and all, but this isn't going to be good for the academy-not good at all. And on the toilet, for heaven's sake! I don't suppose we could move him, could we?”
”Certainly not! You know better than that.” Gertrude, Hugh's older sister, stood as if to block the doorway and prevent any foolish action on his part. ”I put 'closed' signs on both entrances and gave the couple from Kentucky a rain check. Other than that, we'll have to leave things as they are.” Despite her pretense at calmness, Gertrude Whitmire's breath came fast, and her face was almost as flushed as her brother's.