Miss Julia Inherits a Mess (28 page)

“You didn't use enough sunblock,” I said as Sam, sunburned and peeling over a nice tan, stepped out of his car late that afternoon. “But, oh, I am so glad you're home. Did you have a good time? Wait till I tell you what happened here. Oh, Sam, how's Lloyd? Did he enjoy the trip? Did he catch any fish? What about Mr. Pickens? Did he behave himself? Well, come on in. I want to hear all about it.”

Laughing, Sam hugged me, and it felt so good to have him close. “Give me a chance, woman,” he said. “Let me catch my breath, and I'll give you a blow-by-blow account.”

Lillian came running out, greeting Sam with a barrage of questions along the same lines as mine. The three of us quickly unloaded the car, a task that included lugging in a heavy cooler.

“Look like we gonna be havin' lots of fish suppers,” Lillian said, brightening considerably upon finding the fish scaled, boned, and filleted.

“I'll take some to Mildred and Ida Lee,” I said. “Fish doesn't have many calories, does it?”

“Not 'less you deep-fry 'em in batter like I do,” Lillian said, laughing.

_______

Much later that evening, after supper and Lillian's departure, Sam and I sat together on the sofa in the library. His arm was around
me and, for a change, all was well with the world. Throughout supper, Lillian and I had peppered Sam with questions about his trip. We wanted every detail of the drive there and back, where they'd stayed, how often they'd gone out on the gulf, how their weather was, whether Lloyd had had a good time, and, finally, who had caught the biggest fish.

Now it was my turn to catch Sam up with the events of my week, and my mind was busily editing the account before speaking. Not that I recommend keeping important happenings from one's husband—not at all. I would say that it was more of an effort to protect him from worry and concern.

So I told him of Etta Mae's stay, her genius in deciphering the safe's combination, and our spending the nights in Mattie's apartment after the cellarette had gone missing.

“Good grief, Julia,” Sam said. “You didn't have to
sleep
over there.”

“Well, I did, too, because nothing else was stolen after that. One other attempt was made, but we foiled it.”

“Foiled, huh?” Sam gave me a skeptical look, then smiled and shook his head.

“But listen to this, Sam,” I said, eagerly moving along, “you won't believe what we found in Mattie's safe. I want you to see it before Diane takes it to Washington. We may never get it back after the folks up there get their hands on it.” And I described the sampler in great detail. Sam was appropriately impressed with the potential value of such an object, as he was when I told him about moving Mattie's furniture to an Atlanta auction house.

“You've really gotten a lot done,” Sam said. “But what about Mattie's nephew? What was he doing during all this?”

I was tempted to say,
Breaking and entering, larceny, and fraud,
but I refrained for fear that Sam would become so exercised that he'd never take another trip. So I told him of our suspicions of the man calling himself Andrew F. Cobb and of Mr. Sitton's confirmation that very day of his true identity.

“He's apparently missing now, and as far as anyone knows,
he's gone for good. Mr. Sitton says that a warrant will be issued if he fails to appear on his court date, but that's several days away and he could be anywhere by then.”

“It's confirmed, then, that he was not Mattie's relative?” Sam asked, giving it some thought. “But he wouldn't have been arrested for that, especially since he didn't try to get anything of Mattie's.” Sam looked sharply at me. “What else happened? Why would he suddenly disappear?”

So I told him an amended version of what had happened on Saturday night—that Smith-Cobb had stolen Mattie's safe, that he'd tried to outrun the law, that somehow Etta Mae had ended up in the backseat of his car, and that she had brought him into compliance by way of Mattie's loaded pocketbook.

I carefully deleted any mention of my tumultuous ride in that tin can of a trailer.

“So now all that's left,” I concluded, “is to wait and see what the furniture and the sampler will bring to Mattie's estate. Then I can distribute it to the beneficiaries, which I hope will bring gratitude and cool air to all the hopeful ones.”

Sam, smiling, just shook his head. “Every time I leave on a trip, I wonder what you'll be up to while I'm gone. I'm beginning to think that the most excitement and the best sightseeing is right here at home where you are.”

“Oh, you,” I said and leaned my head against his shoulder. It was so good to have him home.

_______

It took several months of anticipation, delayed planning, and a full measure of frustration before I was able to complete my duties as executor of Mattie's will. I had carefully added up—a number of times—the bequests so that I would know the exact amount to hope for and—if you want to know the truth—to pray for, if for no other reason than to forestall any lingering animosity over my handling of the disbursements.

I would need $140,000 to meet the demands of the will. I had
begun with $23,000 in Mattie's money market account, but that had been decreased to cover Diane's trip to Washington as well as her extended stay there while the sampler was authenticated—which, thank goodness, it was. In addition, Mattie's money market account paid for both Diane and Helen to spend a couple of days in Atlanta when the furniture was offered at auction. All told, that account was down to about $18,000, leaving me to pray for pennies from heaven to the tune of $122,000.

Mattie's checking account had been quickly depleted by the final bills from the water department, phone company, Duke Energy, Shell oil company, and the local Rite Aid drugstore. In fact, I'd had to tap into the money market account to cover them all, and I still had to pay Diane and Helen for their week's work in the apartment.

I quickly adjusted my prayers by rounding off the numbers—if the sampler and the furniture brought in a total of $125,000, I would be able to meet all the debts and all the bequests. I got short of breath every time I thought of how unlikely that would be, and got out pencil and paper to try to figure out how best to determine what percentage each beneficiary would receive. That made me gasp for breath.

But I began to breathe a little easier when Diane called from Atlanta to tell me that the furniture had been auctioned for an amount that would net the estate a total of $70,000, which was hard for me to believe. I looked at my own with an appraising eye, wondering how much it was worth. I was brought back to earth, though, when Diane reminded me of the percentage owed to her and Helen. Still, the furniture put me in a much better frame of mind than I had been in.

The topper came when the sampler was offered for sale by Sotheby's in New York. Just as I'd hoped, several museums wanted it, so the bidding started at $35,000 and went up from there. Diane had flown to New York for the auction and called me as soon as it was over.

“Julia,” she said, breathless with what she had to say, “you
should've been there. You won't believe what happened! Three museums were bidding and they took it up to forty-five and almost stopped. The auctioneer was about to bang his gavel when a bid came in over the phone offering fifty-two. Immediately one of the museums went to fifty-five, and the phone bidder jumped to fifty-eight. The museum came right back with sixty-two, and that's when the phone bidder stopped. So the Smithsonian got it for sixty-two thousand dollars—can you believe that!” Diane was giddy with excitement. “Of course, Sotheby's will take a percentage, but you can be very pleased with the remainder.”

“Oh, I will be, I'm sure,” I said. “But, Diane, who was bidding on the phone?”

“We'll never know, but it had to be a private collector of some sort. But whoever it was did us a wonderful favor—the sampler was going to go for forty-five and he got it up another seventeen thousand dollars.”

“Yes, and I can use every penny of it.” After heartily thanking Diane for all she'd done and suggesting that she hurry home, I hung up the phone with a much lighter heart and a considerably less-burdened mind.

Later, though, as I was telling Sam about the auction, I wondered aloud about the identity of the private collector who had so adroitly pushed the museum to a record-breaking bid.

“Sam,” I said, little flashes of suspicion darting through my mind, “would that be something a sociopath would do? I mean, it would have to be somebody who had convinced Sotheby's that he could back up his bid, and it would have to be somebody with the gall to impersonate a wealthy bidder—if it wasn't a wealthy bidder to begin with—and somebody who could melt away scot-free if he happened to win the bid.”

“You're thinking what I'm thinking?” Sam asked.

“Well, I wouldn't put it past him to be
able
to do it, although why he'd
want
to is beyond me.”

“Maybe,” Sam said in a musing sort of way, “maybe he was paying Mattie's estate back for that cellarette he took—if he took it.”

“Oh, my goodness, you think?” I sat bolt upright at the thought. “That would mean I'd have to rethink everything I ever thought about him—if it was him.”

Sam laughed. “Then again, maybe he just enjoys fooling people, seeing how far he can go without getting caught.”

“If that's the case, I'd say he's gone pretty far. Nobody's caught up with him yet, and I kind of doubt anybody ever will.” I stopped and thought about the man I had assumed was Andrew F. Cobb, thinking of his slight build, his roughened hands, and his sly, ingratiating smile. “If it
was
him, it's as if he's a wandering mischief maker, stealing a little here and there, disturbing the atmosphere wherever he goes, and having his own fun, sometimes at the expense of others, and occasionally, for no particular reason, for their benefit.”

Amused, Sam said, “You make him sound like another Loki—if that's who was doing the bidding.”

“Well, whoever,” I said, unfazed by Sam's reference to some mythical character. “I'm beyond looking a gift horse in the mouth, whatever name he uses.”

_______

The day finally arrived, some months later and after several days of tutelage by Mr. Sitton, when I could trot around to the several beneficiaries, handing out checks like John Jacob Astor passed out dimes to the masses.

LuAnne was elated to receive her check. “Oh, my! At last I'm going to have some Christian Louboutins—I just love those red soles, and I've never been able to afford them. Bless Mattie's heart, I know she'd love for me to have at least one pair.”

“I'm sure she would,” I said, with only a slight roll of my eyes.

Mildred smiled—a little sadly, I thought. “I think I won't cash this. I'm going to frame it, just to remind me that Mattie was thinking of me even though I rarely gave her a thought. We never know what people really think of us, do we, Julia?”

Callie Armstrong laughed her head off. “Is this real? Five thousand dollars? I can't believe it. Mattie is going to send half
my brood to camp next summer, and I'm going to bless the day I met her.”

Hazel Marie cried, then with tears streaming down her face said, “Oh, Miss Julia, this is just the sweetest thing. Who would've thought that Miss Mattie was so wealthy and so generous with it?”

“I'll tell you all about it, Hazel Marie,” I said, “when I get through with my rounds. Believe me,
nobody
would've thought it.”

Norma Cantrell, the pastor's receptionist, looked at her check, sniffed, and said, “Well, this is a surprise. Guess you never know about people, do you?”

Carl at the Shell station wiped his hand on his greasy coveralls before accepting the check. He looked at it, then at me, then blinked several times. “Is this right? The amount, I mean?”

“Yes,” I said, “she wanted you to have five thousand dollars for taking such good care of her car.”

He stood staring at the check until it started shaking in his hand. Then he covered his face with his other hand, turned away from me, and murmured, “'Scuse me, I got to call my wife.”

That's one,
I thought to myself as I left the Shell station,
who
can really use the money. Good for you, Mattie
.

When I passed her check to Sue Hargrove, she stared at it almost as long as Carl had. Then she smiled. “I certainly didn't expect this, so most of it will go to the Boys and Girls Club. I'll save enough to buy a dozen or so petits fours. Come for tea tomorrow, Julia, and we'll eat them all in honor of Mattie.”

I should've waited until Roberta Smith got home to hand over her check. She nearly disrupted the entire library when I caught up with her behind the reference desk. “Five
what
!” she almost shouted, her eyes bulging. “Is that really five
thousand
? Oh, Julia, do you know what this means? I'm going to
England
! I'm going to walk where Jane Austen walked, actually
walked
! Oh, bless Miss Mattie's heart. Oh, this is wonderful!”