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Authors: Mignon F. Ballard

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BOOK: Angel at Troublesome Creek
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Only a few weeks before I had received in the mail a yellowed, dog-eared newspaper photograph of a long ago Easter-egg hunt at Summerwood. It showed Sam, who must’ve been about ten, and me sitting on the lawn in front of the main building sharing a chocolate egg. It was the prize egg, which Sam had found, and since I didn’t find many that day, he had generously but oh-so-slowly peeled off the golden foil and divided his gooey treasure with me. A reporter snapped the picture and it made the Charlotte paper.
While dusting the living-room bookshelves, my aunt had discovered it in the pages of a book of poems where she’d placed it years before. She mailed it to me with a short but loving note.
When we saw this picture, your uncle Henry and I knew you were the little girl we’d been waiting for. A month later you were right here with us in Troublesome Creek—where we knew you belonged! Ran across this recently while cleaning and thought you’d like to have it.
With much love your aunt Caroline
 
I thought of Sam now as I had many times since Aunt Caroline sent me the clipping. Where was he now? And would he remember me? I glanced at Augusta Goodnight, whose lips were moving, but I hadn’t heard a word she’d said. “What?” I said.
“Hortense. I said your guardian angel was Hortense.” The woman studied her neat, pink nails. “Say, you wouldn’t have an emery board, would you?
“Oh, never mind,” she added, apparently noticing my chewed nubs.
“Hortense?
My guardian angel’s named Hortense?” I tried not to laugh. Didn’t want to offend her, maybe send her over the edge.
“That’s right. But she’s on R and R just now. I’m merely filling in.”
So I had a stand-in angel. With my luck, I could almost believe it.
“I’m usually in charge of strawberries,” she said. “Or at least five hundred acres of them. It’s a big place up there.”
“They have five hundred acres of strawberries in heaven? Why?”
“Oh, more than that! Much more than that. Think of all the people who say, ‘I don’t want to go to heaven if there are no strawberries.’ Same thing goes for animals. One of my best friends works on a puppy farm, another spends most of her time not calling cats. Cats hate to be called. Being ignored is pure heaven to them.” Augusta Goodnight looked gloomily into the empty coffeepot and turned away. “Of course I also dabble in flowers. We’ve so many of them there. I didn’t want to mention it, but I’m afraid you’ve over-watered those violets.”
I leaned over the table to face her. “Okay, since you seem to know so much, how did my aunt end up at the bottom of those attic stairs? Who
did
kill Aunt Caroline?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you that,” she said.
“What do you mean, you can’t tell me? Why not?”
Her eyes were wide and innocent. “Because I don’t know. I’m an angel, dear, not a clairvoyant. Besides …” Augusta Goodnight air-touched my face. “I imagine that’s for you to find out.”
 
“D
o I look like Nancy Drew?” I said. “Maybe you’d better go back to gardening.” I wasn’t doing such a great job of
living
. What made her think I could handle the puzzle of Aunt Caroline’s death?
“Don’t give up on me yet, I’ll get the hang of it again,” Augusta said with a smile that was truly radiant. “After all, I did all right for Lucille Pettigrew.”
“Who’s that?”
“Lucille Pettigrew—my last assignment—lived to be eighty-seven. Wanted to see her grandson home from France, and she did. What a grand day that was! I hadn’t been as thrilled since Luther Burbank himself complimented me on my Shasta daisies.” Augusta studied me with a slight frown. “Corporal Gordon Pettigrew. Wonder if he ever married that girl he was writing to. He’d be about your age—good-looking too. Took a shell at Normandy. Didn’t lose the leg, but I’m afraid he’ll always walk with a slight limp.”
“Are you talking about Normandy as in
France
? Just how old do you think I am?” I glanced at my reflection in the toaster and wiped a smudge from my cheek. I knew I wasn’t looking my best, but still—
“I know exactly how old you are, you’re twenty-six. They fill us in on background information before we come. That’s how I knew about your aunt’s storing tea bags in the garlic jar.”
Poor Aunt Caroline. The coroner said it looked as though she’d fallen from the top of the attic stairs. But what in the world was she doing up there? She always got out of breath climbing those steep steps, and I had made her promise she wouldn’t go up there alone. I didn’t think my aunt would go back on her word. The delicate hankie Augusta had given me earlier was in a damp wad in my pants pocket, but I used it anyway.
When I looked up, Augusta was beside me. She smelled of fresh strawberries and mint, and the touch of her small hand made me feel lighter somehow. “I know how terrible you must feel about your aunt,” she said. “But you will heal, I promise. It just takes time.”
“She wasn’t really my aunt,” I explained, “but she was all I had, and I loved her. She and Uncle Henry took me in when I was barely eight; except for my parents, they were the only people who ever really cared about me … unless you count this one little boy back at Summerwood Acres.” Sam. I remembered how he’d comforted me when I first came to Summerwood and was so afraid of the dark. “Night is just day painted over, Mary G.,” Sam reasoned. And I’ve never forgotten it. “He probably wouldn’t remember me now,” I said.
Augusta consulted a small notebook she’d taken from her seemingly bottomless handbag, and apparently finding nothing there, put it back with a click of the catch. “We don’t know that,” she said, “so we’ll just have to find out, won’t we? But first, I think you should decide what you’re going to do.”
“Do?” I hadn’t thought further than jumping off the kitchen stool in the back hall with a rope around my neck. And I don’t care what Augusta Goodnight says, that rope seemed sturdy enough at the time!
“With your life. You have to have someplace to live, work—unless, of course, you’re independently wealthy. Did I overlook that in my notes?”
I would’ve laughed had I been so inclined. Not only was I not wealthy, Aunt Caroline had left several outstanding debts. Large debts. Already creditors were breathing down my neck, and there was barely enough to pay funeral expenses. “I guess the first thing to do is try and sell this place,” I said. The big old house on Snapfinger Road was drafty and in need of repairs, but it was the only real home I’d known since Daddy took a notion to pass on a hill and made an orphan of me. I frowned. “And I guess the furniture must be worth something. Delia would know.”
“Delia? The black-market sugar neighbor who made that heavenly fudge cake?”
“She used to have an antique shop,” I said. “And why do you keep carrying on about sugar? Sugar isn’t rationed. Obviously you didn’t get the message up there in your strawberry patch—or wherever—but World War Two has been over for fifty years.”
Augusta sat so hard her little hat slid clear to the middle of her nose. “Now you’re joshing me,” she said.
“I’m not in a joshing mood.”
“Fifty years! My goodness … We did win, didn’t we? Tell me we won.
I nodded. “At a price.” I thought of the losses on D day, and there was a monument here in the park to all the local servicemen who died in that war. Too many. And of course I’d read about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“We have no way to measure time in heaven,” Augusta said. “No watches, no calendars—not even a sundial. Don’t need them.” She smiled. “Does this mean you can have all the sugar you want? And cheese and coffee? And gasoline—what about gasoline?”
“That too.” I watched the woman’s face for any sign she was faking. She was either a very good actress or a genuine loony.
“In that case,” Augusta said, “could I please have another piece of that cake?”
“Be my guest. In fact, I’ll have one with you.” I hated to acknowledge it, but I was getting hungry. It was the first sign of an appetite since my whole life began to plunge into the basement.
I uncovered the cake and looked at it closely. I could’ve sworn I’d served a larger portion than what appeared to be missing, but the chocolate cake looked as if it had hardly been touched.
Augusta swung her foot as she watched me cut two generous wedges and fill glasses with milk. “Do you think we might drop by the shoe store this afternoon? I’d really like to get rid of these clodhoppers.”
I made a face at the woman’s hideous footwear. “Good idea. But just how long
do
you plan to stay?”
“Here’s lookin’ at you, kid!” Augusta raised her glass and drank. “As long as necessary, I guess, or until my mission’s accomplished.”
“And what, pray tell, might that be?”
She patted her milk mustache with her napkin and smiled. “I don’t suppose Bud Abbott and that tubby little Costello man are still making those amusing pictures? And what about that skinny young singer … Frank something or other? Oh, the girls used to swoon over him! ‘The Voice,’ they called him. Sang sweet enough to bring tears to a glass eye.”
“Afraid not,” I said. “And you didn’t answer my question. Wasn’t your mission accomplished when you kept me from hanging myself?”
“That wasn’t my mission at all. I thought I explained that. If you had really meant to kill yourself, I wouldn’t have been able to stop you.”
“Then what?”
“Time will tell. Maybe it has something to do with the way your aunt died. Or the way you choose to live—or should I say
exist
? For heaven’s sake, Mary George, don’t you
want
to find out what happened here?”
“Of course I do, but I can’t imagine why anybody would want to hurt Aunt Caroline. She was the sweetest, kindest person I’ve ever known.”
Augusta nodded. “And that’s exactly why we’d want to put things right. Now, when was the last time you spoke with her?”
“Must’ve been a couple of weeks ago. I usually call … called every week, but with that mess at the office, and then Todd, I let it get by me … . Didn’t want her to worry.” I stared at the lump of cake on my plate and pushed it away. I wasn’t so hungry after all. Come to think of it, it was a week ago today my chicken-livered fiancé had left his sorry-to-hurt-you message on my answering machine. One
week ago.
And they had buried my aunt only yesterday.
“Do you remember what she said?” Augusta went to the window where she held aside the blue-flowered curtain to watch passing traffic. “My goodness!” she said, her eyes widening.
“Nothing special,” I answered. “She was expecting her bridge club this week—today, in fact, and said she was giving the living room a thorough cleaning.” That was when Aunt Caroline had found that old picture of Sam and me at the Easter-egg hunt. I smiled, remembering how my aunt always covered her dress in a huge red striped apron and tied her curly gray hair in a rag before attacking the enemy: dirt.
“And she’d been to see Dr. Kiker; he’s our family doctor.”
Augusta dropped the curtain and whirled about. “Ah!” she said. “So your aunt was in poor health?”
“Nothing that couldn’t be controlled. High blood pressure—sometimes she had dizzy spells. That’s why I didn’t want her in the attic, but she was on medication.” I swallowed to keep my voice from shaking. “My aunt was only in her midsixties, she should’ve had a lot of years left. Dr. Kiker thinks she must’ve forgotten to take her medicine and had one of her swimmy-headed turns, but I think he’s full of beans!” I stood abruptly, scraped my plate in the sink, and switched on the garbage disposal.
I heard the legs of a chair skidding across the floor behind me, and then a soft thud, followed by Augusta’s frightened shriek. “What on earth are you doing under the table?” I asked.
“Get down!” Augusta yelled. “We’re being blitzed!”
“It’s only a garbage disposal.” I reached out to her. “Come on, I’ll show you how it works.”
But Augusta held back. “Does it always come on like gangbusters? I thought we were being attacked.” The woman straightened her pert hat, which didn’t seem to have suffered from her dive under the table, and smoothed the frilly collar of her blouse. Angel or not, she really was quite vain. “I don’t suppose you’ve looked up there yet?” Augusta said.
“Where?”
“In the attic. Look, maybe somebody gave your aunt a push, maybe not, but there must have been a reason she was taking a chance on those stairs. Something important. Maybe we can find out what it was.” Augusta waited for me by the kitchen door. “Well? Come on, then.”
And bossy too, I thought as I followed her up the narrow stairs.
It didn’t take long to figure out somebody had been there before us.
 
 
I hadn’t been in the attic since the week after Christmas when I came here to put away tree decorations, and at first I thought it looked much as I’d left it.
Except for the ceramic dog. The cookie jar with the chipped ear that always sat by the kitchen window. Aunt Caroline kept it filled with molasses crisps and snicker doodles, and I had broken the lid when I was about nine. But after I left home to take that job in Charlotte, my aunt didn’t bake much anymore, and the ceramic dog was banished to the attic.
Now it sat in the middle of the floor in a box that once held the coffee maker I gave my aunt for her birthday. Gently I touched the top of its glossy head. Most of these things could be disposed of at a yard sale, but this I meant to keep. Just behind it to the left, a fold of yellowed lace cascaded from the trunk Aunt Caroline’s mother had taken to college. It looked as though someone had dropped the lid in a hurry, leaving the contents in a tumble, and when I opened it, that’s exactly what I found. Fringed shawls and satin slippers, lace-trimmed dainties, and the quaint cloche hats I’d loved to dress up in were tossed about as if somebody had wadded them up and thrown them there. The musty smell stung my nose.
“Would you look at this! I used to have a pair just like them!” Augusta snatched up a wrinkled pair of kid gloves the color of weak tea. Digging into the jumble she found a shimmering Champagne-colored dress with beaded flounces, which she held to the light. “Looks just about my size. This flapper style makes your hips look trim, don’t you think?”
I didn’t answer. I had moved on to a box of sheet music my aunt used to play at weddings. Somebody had stuffed it there in a hodgepodge with dog-eared edges, and I didn’t think it had been Aunt Caroline.
“Somebody’s been up here,” I said, but Augusta was too occupied with other things to pay attention. Now she twirled about the attic flapping an ostrich plume fan and humming an unfamiliar tune. “Aunt Caroline wouldn’t have left her mother’s trunk in such a mess,” I said as she floated by, “and what’s this?” Inside a garment bag thrown over an upturned chair, I found the wedding dress my aunt usually kept in the big oak wardrobe at the far end of the attic.
“I know it’s out of style,” Aunt Caroline had said, “but if you ever want to wear it, you know it would make me happy.” I had tried it on when I was twelve and could barely get it buttoned. It couldn’t be larger than a size six—probably perfect for Todd’s new sexpot girlfriend. It would make me happy, I thought, if I could just fit into it.
I smoothed the rumpled dress and hung it back in the wardrobe, looking about to see if anything else was out of place, then turned to find Augusta Goodnight standing beside me. I hadn’t even heard her cross the room—which in those heavy shoes was something of an accomplishment.
“Seems as though somebody was looking for something,” Augusta said. “Do you think it could be the same person responsible for your aunt’s death?”
“But what would they be looking for? She didn’t have anything valuable, and she was still wearing her watch and rings when they found her.” I moved a stack of old textbooks from a rickety ladder-back chair and sat, past worrying over dust and white pants. What kind of person would want to hurt Aunt Caroline? I didn’t want it to be true. Surely my aunt’s death had been an accident!
BOOK: Angel at Troublesome Creek
10.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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