The Fixer Upper (25 page)

I picked up one of the largest framed prints, and rubbed at a thick patina of dust on its glass surface. The subject was a hand-tinted exotic bird, maybe a toucan or a mynah. I squinted at the tiny writing on the bottom of the print—was this an Audubon folio? There were five more framed prints the same size, all of different birds, in the stack.

I had to suck in my stomach to thread my way deeper into the room. The sheer volume of stuff was overwhelming. Chairs and lamps and even packing crates filled with shredded newspapers—and china and crystal—were everywhere. I could only guess that the few family items that remained downstairs were only there because they wouldn’t fit up here.

Finally, I worked my way into a tiny bare space in the room. I had been right about one thing. Ella Kate apparently slept in a narrow single bed with a plain, rounded-off metal headboard that reminded me of a hospital bed. It was made up with white cotton sheets and an old green army blanket. Neatly folded at the foot of the bed was a pastel patchwork blue-and-white quilt.

It looked so unlike anything Ella Kate would own that I had to take a closer look. I unfolded the quilt. The fabrics—pale blue ginghams, purple calicoes, and green stripes—were worn to a tissuelike softness. The pattern was an appliqué design of straw-hatted boys in overalls. The quilt was too small to fit even a twin bed. Was it a crib quilt?

On the bedside table was a framed black-and-white photograph. It was a studio portrait of a young woman. She was in profile, chin up, eyes sparkling, lips slightly parted, as though anticipating something wonderful. Her sweater and pearls, not to mention the smooth combed bangs and ponytail, told me the photograph had been taken sometime in the 1950s, when the sitter would have been in her late teens. I recognized the subject immediately, Olivia Dempsey Killebrew. My grandmother.

There was a Victorian walnut-mirrored chifforobe on the wall beside the bed. I opened the door. Packed inside were decades’ worth of clothing—a time-traveled wardrobe of poodle skirts, cotton shirtwaist dresses, tulle-skirted prom dresses with sequin-dusted bodices, cotton blouses with prim Peter Pan collars, and stretchy side-zipped Capri pants. I let my fingertips trail across the hem of a black velvet cocktail dress with a red satin flounce at the hem.

None of these clothes could have belonged to Ella Kate, even before age and osteoporosis had started to shrink her to her present size. Ella
Kate was a wren who dressed in shades of dun. These brightly colored garments had belonged to a more exotic creature. Like my grandmother.

I sat down on the bed to try and take it all in. Ella Kate had been hoarding Birdsong’s furnishings and she’d created a kind of shrine to Olivia.

Sitting on a chest only a couple of feet from the bed was a pine blanket chest that held Ella Kate’s television—a fourteen-inch Zenith with a set of makeshift coat-hanger and aluminum-foil rabbit ears duct-taped to its top.

I sank down on the bed, and remembering my original quest, turned on the TV. It was already turned to WSB. The weatherman stood in front of a map of Georgia, droning on about power outages—twenty thousand customers in DeKalb, seventy thousand in Fulton. Trees and power lines down. The Georgia State Patrol had closed off Interstate 75 south of the airport, all the way to Macon, because of icy overpasses and numerous wrecks. The state department of transportation had dispatched dozens of sand trucks, but a spokesman was urging people to stay off the roads.

The next shot was of a miserable-looking blond reporter, huddled into a hooded coat, standing on an overpass at I-75 and the Lakewood Freeway. An unseen hand held an umbrella over her as she described an eight-car pileup on the roadway below.

“Shit.” The storm was worse than I’d thought. And if I-75—one of the heaviest-traveled roadways in the state—was closed all the way to Macon, then the secondary roads would be in even worse shape.

Where was Ella Kate? I could only hope that whoever had given her a ride to the animal hospital had had the good sense to pull off the road and wait out the storm.

I made my way to Ella Kate’s window—that same window from which she’d peeked out at me the night before—to check on conditions on the street outside Birdsong. The streetlight at the curb shone down on the icy, abandoned street. The trees in the front were bent double from the weight of the ice. Nobody was foolhardy enough to be out in this weather.

Maybe, I thought, if trees and power lines were coming down, I should think about moving the Catfish into the garage. I dreaded going out in the ice, but I dreaded even more being stuck at Birdsong without transportation.

That’s when it struck me. The driveway was empty. The Catfish was gone. And so was Ella Kate.

I
pressed my forehead against the cold window glass and shut my eyes. Ella Kate had gotten herself a ride, all right. She’d been so furious after our fight that she’d decided to drive to Macon by herself—a final show of defiance.

There was no time to sweep up the broken cat figurine or to try to hide the fact that I’d trespassed on the elderly woman’s privacy. I didn’t bother to shut off the television or the light, or even close the door.

I ran downstairs and got my cell phone.

He answered on the first ring.

“Dempsey? Are you all right? Is your power out? We just had a huge oak tree come down in the backyard here. It hit the shed, and most of my mom’s roses are flattened.”

“I’m fine,” I said breathlessly. “It’s Ella Kate. We had a fight this morning, and I was supposed to take her to Macon to get Shorty, but she was still so mad at me, she told me she’d get her own ride, and I just thought, well, she got a friend to take her—”

“Hang on,” Tee said. “Slow down. Where is Ella Kate?”

“That’s just it,” I babbled. “I only just now realized it. Tee, she took the Catfish! She left this afternoon, before it started storming. She wasn’t even wearing a sweater, and it’s freezing out, and she’s so shriveled up, I bet she can’t even see over the steering wheel. She hasn’t come back, and I just saw on WSB that there are trees down everywhere, and all kinds of wrecks, and the highway patrol has closed off I-75. And she’s out there! I don’t even know where to begin to look, and I don’t have a car—”

I was sobbing, but I didn’t care.

“We’ll take Dad’s Mercedes,” Tee said. “Dress warm. I’ll be there in
five minutes. And don’t worry. Ella Kate’s old and skinny—but she’s too damned mean to die in an ice storm. Not yet anyway.”

After I hung up, I ran upstairs and put on a pair of Norbert’s long johns, and over that my heaviest pair of wool pants. I put on a pair of cotton socks, and over that a pair of hunting socks, and over that my only low-heeled boots.

Getting dressed calmed me down some. I called the animal hospital where we’d taken Shorty, but all I got was a recorded message telling me that it was after hours, and in case of an emergency I should dial the on-call vet.

I repeated the number to myself while I stabbed it into my cell phone.

“Hello? Is this the vet from Mid-Georgia Animal Hospital?”

“Actually, this is Verna, Dr. Shoemaker’s assistant,” the woman said. “Do you have an emergency?”

“I do. My, er, cousin brought her cocker spaniel, Shorty, into the hospital yesterday. He ate my panties. Ella Kate was supposed to pick him up this afternoon, and she left, but she hasn’t come back, and I’m terrified she’s caught in the storm—”

“Your pet’s name is Shorty?”

“My cousin’s pet,” I corrected her. “Did she pick up Shorty today? Her name is Ella Kate Timmons. She’s kind of elderly and she’s not supposed to be driving—”

“Ma’am?” The woman’s voice was slow and annoyingly syrupy. “Could you slow down? You’re breaking up and I’m not sure what it is you want me to tell you.”

“Ella. Kate. Timmons.” I enunciated each word slowly and loudly. “She’s eighty. Did she pick up her dog today? The dog is named Shorty.”

“Ma’am? I’m not at the hospital, so I’m not sure which pets got picked up. I can tell you that we closed early, because of the storm.”

“You closed?” I was on the verge of tears again. “How can an animal hospital close? I thought you were like an emergency room. Emergency rooms don’t close.”

“Ma’am? Dr. Shoemaker had to go out on a call to a barn fire in Jackson. We’ve got six burned horses we’re treating, and the vet techs
are both with her. We called as many clients as we could to tell them about the closing, but with the storm and all, we’re doing the best we can. All the pets at the hospital are fine, and we should be open in the morning, if the roads are all right and Dr. Shoemaker can get back.”

A horn honked outside. “Never mind!” I shouted, and I disconnected.

I grabbed my ski parka from the hall closet, and at the last minute stuffed a heavy, metal, army-surplus-looking flashlight in the pocket. I ran out the front door and was only two feet from the edge of the porch when I slipped on a patch of ice and fell flat on my butt.

The floor was so slick I couldn’t gain any footing to stand back up. Instead I butt-walked forward until I was able to pull myself up on the wooden stair-rail. The front walkway looked just as dangerous, so I cut through the lawn, planting each boot firmly in the ice-crusted grass.

It was a relief to haul my frozen wet ass onto the red leather upholstery of Carter Berryhill’s Mercedes.

“You okay?” Tee asked sympathetically. “That was a nasty fall you took.”

I grimaced and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Mostly just my ego is bruised.”

He caught my hand. “You’re cut,” he said evenly.

The palm of my right hand had a nasty red gash that was seeping blood. “I’m okay,” I repeated. “I can’t even feel it, I’m so cold.”

Tee reached across me and opened the glove box. “Dig around in there,” he instructed. “Dad usually has Band-Aids or at least a fast-food napkin.”

I found a yellow paper napkin and blotted my hand with it.

“Where to?” Tee asked.

“Toward Macon,” I said. “I called the animal hospital where Shorty’s being treated, but they closed early today because of the storm, so they couldn’t even tell me if Ella Kate made it in to get him.”

I directed Tee to follow the route Ella Kate and I had taken two days earlier. He drove as fast as he could, dodging downed trees, and in a couple of places, power lines. The Mercedes’s radio was tuned to an all-news station, reporting the path of destruction the ice storm had taken.

“I-75 is closed down all the way to the Florida border,” Tee told me.
I can’t ever remember an ice storm as bad as this one—and as late as it is.”

“She’s out here somewhere,” I muttered, swinging my head from one side of the road to the other. “She’s gotta be.”

“Maybe not,” Tee offered. “Maybe she picked up Shorty and decided to go off on a junket or something. You said the weather was still all right when she left the house.”

“But she would have had plenty of time to get there and back, unless something happened,” I said. “And anyway, she wouldn’t just go off and take Shorty on some kind of pleasure trip. He had surgery yesterday. She’s been worried sick about him.”

He glanced over at me. “Why did Shorty need surgery?”

I looked out the window, not daring to meet his eyes. “He…ate a pair of my panties.”

I heard the strangled sound of laughter.

“Not funny,” I said dully. “He could have died. He almost did. Because of me.”

“Sorry,” Tee said sheepishly. We’d come to a fork in the road. “To the left?”

“Yes,” I told him. “To the left, and then a quick right.”

“How far is the hospital?” he asked.

“Maybe…forty miles from Guthrie?”

The trip that had taken forty-five minutes one day ago now took an hour and a half. Three times we had to stop, get out of the car, and drag tree limbs from the roadway. Finally, we got to the veterinary clinic. The parking lot was empty, the neon sign turned off.

“Now what?” Tee said, turning in the seat to face me.

“I don’t know,” I said, biting back another onslaught of tears. It was nearly ten o’clock. Ella Kate had been gone for more than six hours. She could be anywhere—or nowhere.

“Hang in there, kid,” Tee said, giving me a crooked smile.

I fished my cell phone out of my jacket pocket. “I’m going to start calling hospitals,” I told him.

“Check the jails too,” Tee advised. “If somebody got between that old lady and her dog, no telling what she might have done. Let’s just
backtrack. Maybe we overlooked something. A motel or something, where she might have pulled in to wait out the storm.”

I called all the Macon-area hospitals Tee suggested, but none of them had any record of admitting a mean old lady named Ella Kate Timmons—or her equally testy cocker spaniel. And I called three different sheriff’s departments to see if any of them had worked a wreck involving a bulldog-red Crown Victoria driven by a feisty old lady. Nobody had seen Ella Kate Timmons.

The icy rain had finally subsided, but the roads were so treacherous that we literally inched along at slightly over five miles an hour. Fortunately, most of the citizenry of middle Georgia had decided to take the weatherman’s advice and stay off the roads.

When we got to the fork in the road where we’d turned from Guthrie, I had an idea. “Turn the other way,” I told Tee.

“But that’s the wrong way,” he protested. “That’ll take you to Pecan Springs.”

“Ella Kate hasn’t driven in nearly a year. It was rainy and windy, and she’d only been to the vet clinic once before, and that was with me driving,” I said. “She was probably scared and confused. Maybe she just took a wrong turn.”

He nodded agreement. “No harm in checking it out.”

We’d gone only a couple of miles when I spotted a darkened roadside restaurant, surrounded by a large asphalt parking lot. The place had once been called the Cozy Cabin, but a large for sale sign was tacked to the parking-lot billboard.

“Turn in!” I told Tee, pointing to the far edge of the lot. There, half hidden under the splayed-out branches of a fallen pine tree, was the Catfish.

I was out of the car before Tee could turn off the ignition. The Mercedes’s headlights illuminated the damage in sickening detail. The tree trunk rested squarely on top of the hood of the red Crown Vic. I could see the sparkle of glass from the shattered windshield scattered on the asphalt. The Catfish’s roof was caved in, and the pine branches obstructed my view into the car’s interior. My gut twisted. If Ella Kate was in the car…

I ran over to the driver’s-side door, and tried to push the branches aside. “Ella Kate,” I screamed. “Are you there? Ella Kate?”

Tee was beside me now, yanking at the tree limb. “Can you see anything? Is she in there?”

I pulled the flashlight out of my pocket and aimed it at the door. A long smear of red trailed down the driver’s-side window.

“Oh my God,” I said breathlessly, my hands shaking so badly I dropped the light.

Tee picked up the light and held it aloft. When I looked again, I could see a woman’s head, gray hair covered with a faded blue scarf, slumped against the door. And suddenly, a small brown-and-white head, bobbing up and down inside the car, barking furiously, pawing at the blood-streaked window.

“Shorty!” I cried. “We’re here, buddy. We’re right here.”