Authors: Mignon F. Ballard

Angel at Troublesome Creek (7 page)

BOOK: Angel at Troublesome Creek

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T
he wailing knifed through walls, crashed off the ceiling, and scraped at my eardrums like fingernails on a chalkboard. Even the African violets in the window seemed to droop, curling furry leaves around their fragile faces.

“‘A-a-ma-a-zing gra-a-a-ce, how swe-e-e-t the sound, that saved a-ah wretch like me-e-e … .’”

Miss Fronie was at it again, and it was amazing to me there was a window left unshattered in the house. After agonizing minutes of catlike screeching—warming up, she called it—my landlady plunged with gusto into her vocal repertoire, her volume tuned to torture.

Augusta huddled in Uncle Henry’s old brown chair with a knitted cap pulled over her beautiful hair, a wad of socks stuffed underneath to cover each ear. “How much longer?” she asked. Her seagreen eyes betrayed any pretense at tranquillity. Fronie Temple had broken the angel barrier.

“It’s good for your constitution,” I said. As awful as the singing was, I couldn’t deny a touch of satisfaction in this small, earthly dent in Augusta’s heavenly glowcoat.

Hairy Brown sat at the angel’s feet, ears perked, his large head following the sound. If dogs could smile, this one would be close to laughing. “I think he
likes
it,” I said.

While the two of us cringed, Hairy kept time with his tail. And when, after a blessed pause, Fronie squawked forth with her version of “The Holy City,” my tone-deaf puppy leaned forward on his haunches, lifted his shaggy head skyward, and joined in—not unlike people I’ve seen, who, filled with beer and camaraderie, gather around the piano to harmonize.

“‘Jer-u-sa-lemmm …’” Fronie trilled. “‘Lift up your gates and s-i-i-n-g!’”

And Hairy Brown did. His loud, high-pitched howling made Augusta clutch her padded ears and shudder.

“Hush, Hairy!” I yelled, pulling his wiry brown head into my chest. “She’ll hear you, be quiet.” But it didn’t do any good. Hairy gave an encore.

“You were going to have to ask her sometime,” Augusta said with what I thought was a slight note of I-told-you-so in her voice. “We can’t keep an animal this big out of sight forever.” And she reached down to scratch behind a floppy ear, which made the dog lean against her knee and bay anew with pleasure.

I’ll have to admit I was a little jealous. When Augusta was around, my puppy followed her about as though he thought she was his mother. Now he took time out to lick her hand.

“I guess you’re right,” I said, giving up on trying to muffle my musical hound. “Might as well get it over with.”

Maybe she hadn’t heard him, I thought as I plodded, head down, around to the front of the house where Fronie banged accompanying chords on the piano in her living room. She had moved on now to something that sounded vaguely like a hymn I used to sing in Sunday school, and if a song can be in pain, this one was screaming for mercy.

I saw his feet as I turned the corner, but it was too late. He held out a hand, stepped back to avoid me, but I was hell-bent on a collision. I smacked into him anyway.

“Oomph!” He was tall and good-looking. And I do mean good-looking. He stumbled, then steadied himself. “Sorry,” the man said, though of course it wasn’t his fault.

“Excuse me.” I tried to edge around him. This must be the tenant who lived above me, the one with extremely heavy feet. He’d been out of town on a sales trip, my landlady said, and peace and quiet had reigned.

Until now. I didn’t like the way he smiled at me—an invitation to start something. And I didn’t care for the way dark hair curled at his temples, or for those adorable little crinkles around teasing blue eyes. Bah! I thought. Humbug!

Now he held out a hand. “If you’re coming to complain, I warn you, it won’t do a bit of good. The best we can do is pray for laryngitis.”

A sense of humor, no less! And his teeth looked like a toothpaste commerical. I made a wimpy kind of noise and let him wrap my hand in his.

“You must be my downstairs neighbor. I’m Kent Coffey—glad I finally got to meet the lady who likes swing. Sometimes I hear it on your stereo.”

Augusta, of course, and her Benny Goodman collection. I let this pass, still, he waited expectantly. Here’s where I’m supposed to get all coy and silly, say something clever. Well, I had been through this before. Hadn’t Todd the Bod been all smoothness and smiles? Until he met his female counterpart in the Body Beautiful.

“Mary George Murphy.” I extracted my hand and made myself turn away. It was hard not to look at him. My head came to his shoulder, I noticed as I walked past. Perfect for dancing—if I were interested in that sort of thing—which, of course, I wasn’t. I wasn’t a very good dancer, always felt clumsy somehow.

“Well, guess I’ll be seeing you,” he said after me.

“Sure,” I said. But I didn’t mean it.

Fronie Temple saw me through her window and motioned me inside. I sidled through the entrance hall with my hands at my sides, afraid I might break something. The room was filled with bric-a-brac, and little crocheted doilies like huge snowflakes covered every available surface—except for the piano. That was draped in a pink fringed shawl, and in the center, shattering roses wilted in a huge blue vase. The roses reminded me of my landlady, once bright and beautiful, now past their time. One advantage of looking rather ordinary, I thought, is that old age wouldn’t be such a jolt.

A really awful painting of Fronie as a young woman hung over the mantel, flanked, I learned later, by pictures of her former husbands, the late Mr. Temple—“Tempie,” she called him—whom I remembered vaguely, and the one before him, whom I didn’t.

“Mary George! Come in, I hope my singing isn’t a nuisance.”

Nuisance wasn’t the word I’d choose. “No, of course not! I’m afraid I’m the one who should apologize. I came about the dog.”

“Dog?” She removed her bifocals to reveal faded blue eyes.

I sighed. “I have this puppy … .” Oh, hell, Mary George, get on with it! “This very large puppy. You must have heard him ‘singing?’”

“That was your dog? My goodness, I thought we were being stalked by the Hound of the Baskervilles! You didn’t tell me you had a pet, Mary George.”

I thought about the new paint job, the shiny kitchen floor. I couldn’t blame her if she threw me out. But where would we go?

“I didn’t have one,” I explained. “Well, not until I started working for Doc Nichols at the animal clinic, and this dog was going to be destroyed … . Oh, Miss Fronie, he’s such a sweetie! I just couldn’t let anything happen to him. And then there were those break-ins.”

You are totally evil, Mary George Murphy! You haven’t heard about any break-ins. But surely there must’ve been some around here
, I thought.

Fronie Temple held a plump hand to her heart. “What break-ins?”

“Petty things mostly. No place is immune to crime, Miss Fronie, not even Troublesome Creek.” How many times had I heard Aunt Caroline say that? And she was right. But I didn’t think the person who murdered my aunt was after valuables.

“We are kind of isolated here,” I reminded her. “And living alone like this, I just feel safer with a dog around.” Hairy Brown had barked twice in the few days I’d had him here—once at a cat on TV and again when he woke from a nap and caught sight of his tail.

Fronie looked at her hands, twisted a rather large ring on her finger. She was going to tell me to leave, I just knew it.

“He’s very clean,” I said. “And smart! I haven’t had a bit of trouble training him. Usually I come home for lunch, so it’s not a problem to take him out for a few minutes … .”

She rubbed her arm, glanced out the window. “It’s always been my policy—”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should’ve asked. I’m sure Doc Nichols will board him while I look for another place.”

“It’s always been my policy … not to have a policy,” Fronie Temple said finally. “Animals, as well as people, deserve to be considered on an individual basis. Now, when do I get to meet this mammoth puppy of yours?”

If I hadn’t been afraid of smearing her makeup, I would’ve hugged her neck. Jamming my hands in my pockets so as not to break any doodads, I headed for the door. “Right now,” I said. “Just follow me—and I promise you’re going to love him!”

Hairy Brown gave my landlady the once-over, then wallowed shamelessly at her feet and allowed her to tickle his tummy.

“I suppose you’ve met our upstairs neighbor,” Miss Fronie said, looking about. She seemed to approve of the room. I’d finally found a place for everything, except what was under my bed in a box.

“Briefly,” I said. “Kind of reminds me of one of those glamorous movie actors from the fifties.”

Fronie Temple smiled as she adjusted a dangling earring. “Looks a little like my first husband. But he seems quiet enough, minds his own business.”

She paused at my kitchen door on her way out. “I like that ivy on the shelf by the window, Mary George. Nice touch. Did you ever find that jar you were looking for?”

“Not yet, but I’m not giving up.” I had called several of the people I remembered being at the yard sale, but none of them had purchased the ceramic dog.

I followed her to the door. “Miss Fronie, did Aunt Caroline ever mention a male visitor, one who came on a regular basis?”

“Oh, you are naughty, Mary George! Shame on you! You know your aunt wasn’t like that.” Fronie laughed as she gave me a playful pat.

“I don’t mean like
that
. Delia said she’d seen somebody over there from time to time.”

“Maybe Delia Sims was a little jealous,” Fronie said in what I’m sure was meant to be a teasing voice. “You know there was a little conflict there.”

“No, I didn’t know,” I said.

Fronie frowned. “Never did learn what it was. Tempie and I came here soon after we married, you know, and I’ve never heard anyone mention it, but there was a strain between those two.”

And there’s a strain on your brain
, I thought as I closed the door behind her. My aunt and Delia Sims had been good friends as long as I could remember. If there had been a problem between them, Aunt Caroline would have told me. Wouldn’t she?

With Hairy curled on the rug by my bed, I slept well that night for the first time since Aunt Caroline died. But each time the phone rang I had to force myself to answer, dreading to hear Todd Burkholder’s voice on the other end of the line. To be honest, a secret part of me gloated at the delicious justice of rejecting him, but Todd’s rekindled interest annoyed me and I didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with it. Thank goodness he hadn’t called again since that first night, and I hoped he had gotten the message. I almost put him out of my mind.

Until the next day.

We had a waiting room full of sick animals and a terrified cat crying to get out of her carrier. Earlier, a boxer had escaped from his owner and cornered a whimpering Chihuahua behind the settee.

When the phone rang for the third time in five minutes, I tried not to sound impatient. “Animal clinic.”

“Mary George? Don’t you dare hang up on me. We’re going to talk.”

“No, we’re not. Where did you get my number?”

“That woman who lived across from you. What’s her name? Valerie. Said you’d moved back home and were working for a vet. Duh, Mary George, this was the only one in the phone book!”

I remembered chatting briefly with my neighbor when I went back to Charlotte to close my apartment and collect the rest of my belongings. Naturally it didn’t occur to me that Todd the totally odd would come sniffing along behind me.

“I mean it, Todd. Don’t call me here, or anywhere else, again!”

And he didn’t—for a couple of hours at least. By the end of the afternoon we had worked our way to the last three patients—a cat with a kidney infection and two dogs waiting for microchip implants.

The electronic identification chip is a new method for keeping track of animals. It’s about the size of a grain of rice and is inserted into the pet’s skin with a large needle. I had Doc Nichols implant one in Hairy Brown before I took him home. Now if he ever gets lost and turns up at an animal shelter, the microchip will cause a scanner to beep and display his identification number. Unlike a dog tag, the chip is supposed to last a lifetime and can’t fall off. At the clinic we’ve inserted one or two a day since the technique became available, and although it only takes a few minutes, it had been a busy day, and all of us were ready to go home.

I was reviewing the next day’s appointments and wondering how we could possibly fit them all in when the telephone rang again. Oh, please! I thought. Don’t let it be an emergency! Doc Nichols was just finishing the last implant.

“I’ll see you after work,” Todd said. “Your place. Be there.”

“You’re hallucinating, Todd. Have you been eating funny mushrooms?”

BOOK: Angel at Troublesome Creek

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