Charming Grace (15 page)

My snitch, ‘Lt. Uhura,’ was a major Deep Throat inside the Bagshaw family, but I had no idea who she might be. She’d started writing to me by e-mail a couple of months before filming started.

“Mr. Noleene, Helen says to tell you,” one of the early notes relayed, “that she intends to keep Grace out of jail. Helen worries that Grace will cross the line and actually hurt Mr. Senterra. If you’ll help us prevent that, we’ll help you.”

“Grace is safe with me,” I typed back on the laptop I used to send Armand notes at Angola. I type like a gorilla. Big fingers, hunt and peck.
Plunk, plunk
. But I come across okay. Honesty beats typos, every time.

“You sound like a gallant man,” Helen answered by way of Uhura. “We’ve heard good things about you. We have sources. We hear you’re a gentleman and a knight of the realm.”

“Just a hired head thumper from the swamps,” I typed back, wondering who the hell was secretly talking me up.

“Humble, too, Helen says,” Uhura wrote back. “We like that in a head thumper. Besides, our sources say you’re a thinker, not a thumper.”

Sources
. Spy vs. spy. I tried to find out who their informant was, but so far, no luck. But if Grace didn’t know Helen and ‘Uhura’ were in cahoots for her sake, then who was
her
spy?

And who was mine?

Grace blamed Great Aunt Tess Bagshaw for dropping a dime on the gravel-pile scheme, but I’d met Tess when Stone schmoozed her at a Ritz Carlton pre-production cocktail party down in Atlanta, and I pegged her as a small-time Bagshaw gossip-lobber, not the person who was sending me info as Lt. Uhura. Ask Tess who
Uhura
was and she’d probably say a brand of cold cream.

Tess was nearly a thousand years old and looked like a cross between Queen Elizabeth and a prize-winning poodle with indigestion. “My sister in law, Helen, is no lady,” she told Stone in one of those syrupy bourbon accents that make old Southern ladies sound sly. “Oh, I could tell you tales about her if I weren’t a lady, myself. I feel it’s my duty to represent the Bagshaw family in this enterprise of yours, and to assure you that whatever you wish to say about Mr. Harper Vance is of no never mind to we
bloodline
Bagshaws—as opposed to being a married-into Bagshaw like Helen, who was just a little nothing when she snared a Bagshaw for a husband—anyway,
we
never approved of Grace marrying Harp, but of course he proved himself worthy of marrying a Bagshaw, eventually.

“Of course, Helen thought he was just peachy from the day Grace rescued him in the woods. What a scandal that caused! Grace’s daddy, James, has never really gotten over it. Grace was just
obsessed
with that ragtag boy from the start, and he loved her like ice cream loves ice. You do know his presence drove a wedge between James and Helen, and James and Grace, and it’s so sad but since Harp died Grace just refuses to forgive her daddy for never liking him. And then his niece showed up. Just showed up.
Mika
. It’s one of those
black
names, you know. And you know that . . . well . . . she’s not like
us
, of course, and it’s quite a shock when visitors spot her in the latest family reunion photo.

“Which is to say, Mr. Senterra, that there’s always trouble when a good family takes in people like Harp Vance, treating that boy like family, letting him corrupt young Grace and distract her from her goals and education. It’s a testament to good Bagshaw breeding that she turned out so well, anyway. Bless her heart.” The old lady cupped a hand around her mouth and whispered, “Grace’s mother was an
artist
from
Connecticut
, you know.”

I could see Stone’s mind laboring over Tess’s mix of spite and magnolia-scented nonsense—trying to figure out if she was trouble or a usable ally or just plain goofy. He liked his philosophy simple: Good vs. evil, Might Makes Right, Do Unto Others, black and white. Tess Bagshaw’s confessions about her kin fell into some gray spot, a no-man’s land of useful info tainted by bald-faced meanness. Should he encourage her to whisper more purple clues about the Bagshaws or should he be a
mensch
, as Kanda’s Wisconsin-Jewish mother was always calling him with dry respect. To Kanda’s dairy-farming family, the Stone man was as kosher as a gentile could get, but about as sophisticated as mozzarella cheese.

Finally I saw a light go off in his eyes. Stone came from a family of tradition-minded working-class Italian elders, and the rules of respect for old people were strict.
Always be nice to old ladies. Even if they’re nuts
.

“You’re a talkative little sweetheart, Tessy,” he croaked out nervously, “and I couldn’t make this movie without your support.” Then he turned her over to Kanda and told me to fetch him a double martini from the Ritz’s bar.

So, yes, Tess was no fan of her sis in law, Helen Bagshaw, that was for sure, and would definitely puff up as happily as a pearl-draped bullfrog at any embarrassment that befell Helen’s favorite granddaughter, but she wasn’t the one sending me trouble-making Grace Notes in snappy Star Trek lingo. No, whoever Uhura was, she had Helen’s blessing. Apparently, so did I.

Make Grace remember she’s alive
.

Helen didn’t understand. I was doing this because Grace made
me
feel alive.

Greetings to Grace

From: Gandalf The Computer Wizard

Look for a surprise visit from Boone. Stone is sending him back to Dahlonega early, expressly for the reason of charming you and preventing more trouble when filming returns there next week. Stone believes Boone has some influence over you. If this is true, please don’t forget what I’ve told you in response to your questions about Boone and his background. He is a true, good-hearted warrior, an Aragorn for the modern world, pledged in service to a thick-headed king, and he’s only trying to do his job. He’s loyal to Stone and to Stone’s family, but he thinks what’s happening to you and your husband’s story is wrong. He and I agree on that. So he’s caught in the middle, just like me.

The ‘middle’ is no place for wizards and warriors to be.

Sorry about the delay in this week’s reports. As you can see from my new Internet forwarding address, I’ve been reworking my personal matrix. Reality sometimes creeps too close to home, you know? But I remain your friendly, anonymous source for the inside news on Stone Senterra.

Gandalf

So, according to a Senterra insider whose real name I did not know but whose information I’d come to trust, Boone was being sent to charm and manage me. I could only hope there was something
left
to charm and manage. I was about to be killed by an unhappy horse named
Snap
. One of the three maniacal equines Harp had rescued just one trailer ride ahead of the dog-food factory. Snap was a lanky, washed-out gray who’d had a hard life and bore the scars to prove it.

When one of the Down’s cats made the mistake of climbing the gate into Snap’s stall to chase a mouse, all hell broke loose. Snap cornered the yowling tabby—a favorite of Harp’s named Tangerine—and tried to turn him into meow meat. I was alone at the Downs that morning, and I heard the commotion. By the time I darted inside his stall Snap was whirling in circles with his head down and teeth bared, gnashing at the jumbled straw bedding as Tangerine alternately bounced off the walls then tried to burrow in the straw and hide.

“Snap, stop it!” I yelled uselessly, and grabbed him by the halter. Snap decided to take out his grief and his cat issues on me, so he dragged me around the stall, slinging his head, rearing, banging me against the walls, and trying to bite me. If there were a headline that summed up that moment plus my attitude toward life, it would be this:

Grace Hangs On. Bless Her Heart
.

I just knew I wouldn’t let go, even when he slung me against a wall so hard that I saw stars and bit my tongue. Black clouds began to close in, and I had one last, coherent thought of being found in the stall, trampled and half-eaten by the Hannibal Lecter of horses.

The next thing I knew, I was hearing French. The language, that is. Spoken in Boone Noleene’s deep, soothing voice. To me, to Snap, to both of us. Coaxing phrases. Beauty queens know a language or two, so I translated.

“Stop dancing, horse, rest, easy, easy. Stand still. Cats aren’t for eating. Women aren’t for slinging.”

This was spoken like a love poem with just enough firm undercurrent to give the poem a hard spine. At the same time, I felt Boone’s long arm go around me from behind, and I let go of Snap. My ears rang. I sagged against Boone while he held onto Snap’s halter with his other hand. “Now, now,” he went on, in French. “Nothing to be so afraid of. Be still. There, that’s how. I won’t hurt you. You know it.”

“Yes, I’m beginning to think so,” I answered groggily.

Snap quieted, looking at Boone as if hypnotized. The big gray even craned his head and lipped the cuff of Boone’s soft shirt, the same color as the horse. Tangerine darted out the stall door, which Boone had left half open in his hurry to save me.

I twisted inside Boone’s embrace and looked up at him. “What kind of voodoo do you do so well?” We were so close his breath brushed my face. He leaned over me slightly with both feet braced wide apart for balance as he anchored the horse. His arm fit perfectly around the small of my back, pulling me into a new moon curve against his hard body—head back, breasts up, pelvis forward, legs lagging behind, knees weak. He really did have a fascinating face, rough, elegant, with fine scars and a fighter’s nose, his eyes dark and intense and just a little bit hopeful. “So you have me figured,” he said in a low voice.

“Voodoo queen?”

He slid a gentle hand up the big gray’s head, and spoke again to the horse in French. Maybe he thought I couldn’t translate, or maybe he hoped I would. “Holding a fine woman,” he said, “is worth a horse bite or two.”

“But I might bite, too.”

He blushed a little. “Holding a fine woman . . . ” He let his voice trail off, but arched a brow.

I stared at him. The ruddy color in his cheeks got to me. “Help me out of here before Snap comes out of his hypnotic stupor and bites both of us.” Boone half-escorted, half-carried me out of the stall. I turned to look at Snap, who hung his big, gray head over the stall door and eyed Boone with dewy affection. Down the way, Harp’s other two horses, Bug and Forrest Gump, poked their heads over their stall doors and admired Boone, too. Bug whinnied at him. Forrest Gump made kissy puckers, as if lipping an invisible lollipop.

“Amazing,” I said. “The only other man they liked was—” I stopped.

Harp
.

Boone carried me into the spring sunshine. The mountains towered around us and the air smelled sweet. He set me down in a pristine barnyard of neat graveled walkways and white board fences. He kept his arm around my back. My body remained willfully bent in his direction. I latched a hand in his shirtfront. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

My legs recovered and I stepped away. The warm spot where his arm had circled me remained like an invisible hug. I gave him a furtive once-over that was too obvious. Soft loafers, soft corduroys, soft gray shirt, hard body. “I knew you were coming here. I just didn’t know when.”

“Oh? Your spy is pretty good, chere. I just left Alabama yesterday.”

“I hear a freak spring hurricane nearly washed Stone and his first day of filming into the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Yeah. He thinks you’re putting Methodist voodoo on him.”

“I only asked
one
minister to pray for a hurricane.”

He frowned. “What else are you up to? What else do you know from your spy?”

“That you’re supposed to spy on
me
. Make friends with me.”

“No. I’m not here to spy. I’m here to be your pal. Your link to the fine world known as Stone Senterra Land. Your manly manservant. At your service.”

“Too bad for you. I’m leaving tomorrow for a week.”

“I know.”

“So you knew I had a trip scheduled.”

“Yep. I know all about your work. In between scaring movie stars you travel around talkin’ to high school students. You talk up the Harper Vance Scholarship Fund. Your cousin Dew’ll go with you, for company. She helps you manage the fund. You used to think Dew was a snarky little pampered sissy, but you and her turned into best friends after the rest of the family put the thumb screws on her for liking the ladies a little too much.”