The Fixer Upper (6 page)

“S
o this is greater metropolitan Guthrie,” Becky said as we approached the courthouse square. She turned and wrinkled her nose. “Kinda bleak, Demps.”

I couldn’t argue with her. The town’s main street, called Confederate Avenue, was a short, two-block strip of tired storefronts, about half of them empty. It faced the courthouse square, where a granite plinth held a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier. The courthouse itself was a hulking dark brown brick affair that looked like it dated from the late 1800s. An awkward yellow-brick boxy building that screamed ’70s had been tacked onto the side of the courthouse. Two police cruisers were parked at the curb in front of the courthouse.

“Mr. Berryhill said his office is half a block down from the courthouse,” I told Becky. “Look for a dark green house with a red front door.” She nodded and drove down Confederate, while I scanned the street for signs of life. It was still cold and windy, but late in the day. There were cars parked along both sides of the street, but I saw only a couple of shoppers, who hurried out of the stores to their cars.

“At least there’s a restaurant,” I said, pointing to a storefront window painted with pictures of pies and steaming cups of coffee. “The Corner Café. But it isn’t even on a corner.”

“Semantics,” Becky said. “It’s a restaurant. And they obviously have pie. So, bonus points for Guthrie.”

She slowed the car in front of a dark green house with a front porch that had a signpost swinging from its gable: berryhill and berryhill, attorneys-at-law.

“You coming in?” I asked. She shook her head no. “I’ll just stay out here. Give you some privacy.” She hesitated. “I hate to bring it up, but
I’ll have to get going pretty soon. I’ve got a dinner meeting tonight. I tried to weasel out of it, but this is a new client, so it’s kind of a command performance.”

“I understand,” I told her. “Let me just talk to Mr. Berryhill and get the key, and I’ll be right out. Fifteen minutes okay?”

“Fine. Hey—what are you going to do about a car down here? I know you didn’t have one in D.C., but this is Georgia, honey. You’re gonna need a car.”

“I know. Mitch says he’ll pay for me to buy some kind of secondhand junker so I can get around. Maybe even a pickup truck!”

She hooted. “Dempsey Killebrew in a pickup truck? I want to see that.”

“I’m going native,” I assured her. “Pickup truck, blue jeans, boots, the works.”

“I bet you don’t even own a pair of jeans.”

“Do too. They cost a hundred and seventy-five dollars. Guess maybe I’ll have to get something a little cheaper to work in.”

“Have to go back to the hardware store and get you some Carhartts,” Becky said. “That’s what every well-dressed redneck wears for chores.”

I stood on the porch of the Berryhill law office and wondered what to do. In D.C., you just walk into a lawyer’s office. But this was Guthrie, and the office was in a house, and I’d already walked into one house today, and the spies had notified the authorities. There was no doorbell to ring, so that was out. I knocked. Three demure raps with my knuckles.

No answer. I pounded with the flat of my palm. Still no answer.

I turned the doorknob and stepped inside. I found myself in a small outer office, furnished with a desk and chair, a bank of file cabinets, and a couple of worn chintz-upholstered wing chairs. The chairs faced a small fireplace with a gas-log fire merrily burning away. Cozy, but empty.

“Hello?” I called loudly.

“Coming,” a male voice called from the back of the house. I heard footsteps on the wooden floors, and then a tall, angular man with a thick mane of silver hair and a neatly trimmed goatee popped into the office.

“Miss Killebrew?” He stuck his hand out. “Sorry about that. I was in the kitchen getting a cup of coffee. Scott, my secretary, left early to take his dog to the vet, so I’m just minding the store until my son gets back.”

I shook his hand. Carter Berryhill had long thin fingers and a firm handshake. “No problem,” I said. “I was a little uncertain about the etiquette of visiting a home office.”

“Home office?” He laughed. “Good Lord, no. I don’t live here.” He gestured toward the hallway he’d just come through. “Come on back and let’s chat.”

I followed him past two closed doors and into a large book-lined room with a desk overflowing with papers and files.

He gestured for me to sit in a high-backed leather armchair.

Carter Berryhill pushed his own chair back away from his desk. He looked me up and down. I did the same to him. He looked to be in his mid to late sixties, with sharp brown eyes, a longish nose, and reading glasses pushed up into his hair. He was casually dressed in brown corduroy slacks and a camel-colored sweater worn over a white dress shirt, a loosened burgundy necktie around the shirt’s collar. A brown tweed sport coat hung on the back of his chair, and he quickly slipped it on over the sweater.

“You look like a Dempsey,” he said finally. “Course, I can see some of your daddy’s family looks in you too, the cheekbones especially, but the eyes, that odd slate blue, and those dark eyebrows and lashes, that’s Dempsey through and through. Norbert had amazing eyes, even in his late nineties. How is your father? Haven’t seen him since he was just a little thing.”

“He’s fine,” I said politely. “People always say I have my mother’s eyes.”

He shook his head. “They don’t know the Dempseys. You rummage around enough over at Birdsong, you’re sure to find some old family photos. You’ll see.”

“About Birdsong,” I started.

“You gave Ella Kate quite a start, driving up there like that,” he said. “I guess maybe we should have warned her you’d be coming to town. She burned up my ears about it, let me tell you.”

“Ella Kate?”

“Ella Kate Timmons. She’s some kind of kin to you. Second cousin maybe?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know her.”

“Sawed-off little thing, gray hair, white Supp-Hose? Always bundled up, even in the summertime? She was walking Shorty when you pulled up to the house. Ran off and called me and ripped me a new one, if you know what I mean.”

“The old lady at the house? She’s the one who told you I was there?”

“That’s right,” Berryhill said. “Ella Kate Timmons. She sort of took care of old Norbert these last years.”

“Why was she upset with you?” I asked. “In fact, why was she upset with me? As soon as I told her my name, she had some sort of fit, and then she just ran away.”

I heard a door open somewhere in the house, and then footsteps. The office door opened, and a younger version of Carter Berryhill stepped inside.

“Dad—” He stopped short when he saw me. “Sorry. Didn’t know you were with a client.”

“Come on in, son,” Berryhill said. “She’s actually your client. Miss Dempsey Killebrew, meet my son, T. Carter Berryhill the third.”

“It’s Tee,” the younger man said, shaking my hand. “And I’m pleased to meet you. By the way, my sympathy on the loss of your great-uncle. Mr. Norbert was an institution around Guthrie.”

Tee Berryhill stood a shade over six feet tall, which was just a shade under his father’s height. His hair was reddish blond, and he was clean shaven, but other than that, he looked remarkably like his father. He was dressed in a dark pin-striped suit, with a red-and-blue-striped rep tie stuffed in the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry I never met him. This is my first trip to Guthrie.”

“Miss Killebrew went by Birdsong and got Ella Kate all stirred up,” Carter Berryhill told his son. “I was just about to explain Ella Kate when you came in.”

“It’s Dempsey,” I said quickly.

“You met Ella Kate?” Tee asked. “I can’t wait to hear Dad explain her to you.”

“She was walking her dog in front of the house when my friend and I pulled up,” I explained. “We didn’t see the house, not at first, with all the trees and overgrowth. So, I just asked her where 375 Poplar was, and then, when I told her my name, and she got a good look at me, she just sort of freaked.”

“Burned up the phone lines calling me and cussing me out,” Carter told Tee.

“Why is she so upset?” I asked.

The two men exchanged looks. Carter shrugged and looked away.

“Uh, Dempsey,” Tee said. “Ella Kate took care of your uncle for a long time these last years. She just sort of assumed he would leave the house to her when he died. And when we told her about Norbert’s will, and how he’d left the house to your daddy, well, she just went off.”

“Went off? How do you mean?”

There was that look again.

“She’s really pretty harmless,” Tee said. “Hell, I don’t think they even make ammo for that shotgun of Norbert’s anymore. Really, once you get to know her, I think the two of you will get along just fine.”

“She has a shotgun?”

“It’s a lot cheaper than a burglar alarm,” Carter said with a laugh.

My own look of alarm let them know I wasn’t amused.

A thought suddenly occurred to me. “She’s living at Birdsong? I could tell someone had been there recently. So it’s Ella Kate?”

“That’s right,” Carter said. “Tee’s been working on getting her used to the idea of moving.”

“Not making a lot of progress,” Tee admitted. “The last time I went over there to talk to her, she set Shorty on me.”

“Son, that dog is downright elderly,” Carter said. “He probably doesn’t have a tooth in his head.”

Tee pulled up the right leg of his pants and displayed a nasty oval-shaped bruise on his shin. “You think not?”

Now it was my turn to be upset. “You’re telling me there’s a shotgun-toting, dog-siccing, crazy old lady living in my house? Essentially
squatting there? What am I supposed to do about that? I can’t live with somebody like that.”

“Live?” Carter said. “You weren’t planning on living at Birdsong, were you? I mean, we just assumed you’d get a room at the Econo Lodge, or maybe rent a little place in town. Birdsong’s all right for Ella Kate. She’s used to it. But now, you don’t want to be living in that place. It hasn’t exactly been kept up so well.”

“It’s a disaster,” I told him. “I only saw a couple of rooms inside, but the place is a total derelict. Crumbling plaster, exposed wiring, mildew. We had no idea. But yes. I am planning on living there while I get the house rehabbed and ready to sell. Didn’t my father tell you that?”

Tee looked at Carter, who looked away.

“I meant to tell him about Ella Kate, and about Birdsong,” Carter said. “But we just never actually had a conversation about the fine points. He called to tell me you were coming down, and that the plan was for you to get the house ready to sell.” He gave me a sad smile. “It never occurred to me that you might plan to try to live there.”

“Well, I am,” I said, standing up. “In fact, I’ll be moving in today. As in, right now. My friend is waiting outside, and she needs to get back to Decatur. I’ll just get my things out of her car, and maybe one of you can call me a cab to take me back over to Birdsong? I want to get moved in and take a look around before it gets too dark.”

“I’ll take you over there,” Tee said quickly. “I’ll have a talk with Ella Kate too, while I help you with your stuff. If you’re sure that’s what you want to do?”

“I’m sure.”

Carter shook his head sadly. “The Econo Lodge would be better. Satellite television. Free continental breakfast. They’ve got heat too.”

“Birdsong,” I repeated. “I’ll be staying at Birdsong.”

B
ecky was talking on her cell phone when I came out of the law office with Tee Berryhill in my wake.

“Sorry for the delay,” I said, making the introductions.

“Tee is going to give me a ride back over to Birdsong and help me get moved in,” I said. “That way you can get on the road before traffic gets too terrible.”

Becky gave Tee a friendly smile, and I knew she was sizing him up. “That’s really sweet of you,” she told him, getting out of the car. “Dempsey’s going to need a friend down here.”

“He’s the lawyer handling the estate,” I said quickly.

Tee flashed a grin. “I’m fairly friendly—as lawyers go. Look here. I’m parked in the back of the office. I’ll pull around and we’ll get you loaded up.”

A couple of minutes later, Tee pulled his car to the curb in back of Becky’s Honda.

“Oh, a Prius,” Becky said. “How do you like it?”

“I love it,” Tee said. “Course, you take a lot of ribbing in a town like Guthrie when you show up driving a hybrid. Down here, if it ain’t a Caddy, it’s either a Ford or a Chevy. I must have gotten half a dozen heavy-duty extension cords from my wiseacre buddies. Even my father refers to it as ‘the granola mobile.’”

But when Becky opened the trunk of the Honda and he got a look at my large rolling suitcase his smile disappeared. “Oh,” he said, blinking owlishly. “Man. I’m not sure that puppy will fit in my car.”

Before he could stop me, I’d pulled the suitcase out of the Honda.

“Go on,” I told Becky. “I don’t want to make you late for your dinner.”

“I hate leaving you like this,” Becky said. “And I really hate the idea of you staying alone in that spooky old flophouse.”

“I won’t be alone,” I said cheerily. “Remember the old lady walking the dog? We’re going to be roommates.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll call you later and explain everything then,” I said. “And I’ll be fine. Really. It’ll be like camping out.”

“You never camped out in your whole life,” she reminded me. She stuck her head out of the car and called to Tee.

“Hey. Can’t you talk some sense into this girl? Make her check into a motel for a few days?”

He shrugged. “My dad tried to tell her it’ll be pretty primitive at Birdsong. I got the impression your friend has her mind made up.”

“Damned straight,” I said briskly. I pounded her car door. “Shoo! Move along.”

“Call me,” she repeated. She drove off, and I immediately started having doubts. But it was too late. Tee Berryhill had dragged my suitcase over to his Prius and was busily wedging it into the minuscule trunk.

“Your friend seems nice,” he said when we were ready to leave.

“Becky’s a sweetheart,” I said. “We’ve been friends since boarding school days. I was the new girl—my parents had split up and my dad had taken a job in Orlando, and I didn’t know a soul at St. Catherine’s. Her parents had gotten a divorce too, so she knew what that was like.”

“St. Catherine’s,” he murmured. “Is that in Georgia?”

“Richmond, Virginia,” I said quickly. “Mitch moved a lot for his job, and he just thought it was better for me to be in a school where I’d have some sense of stability.”

He nodded. It was dusk now, and as we passed the darkened shops on Confederate, I felt a deep chill sink into my bones.

“Where do people shop?” I asked. “Is there a Target or anything like that?”

“No such luck,” he said. “We had a Wal-Mart out on the bypass, but that closed down a couple of years ago. For groceries, you’ve got Piggly Wiggly or Bi-Lo. There’s a Family Dollar store, you passed that on the
way into town. Anything more than the basics, you’ve gotta head down to Macon, or up to Peachtree City.”

“Oh.” It was starting to sink in. I was really and truly in the sticks.

He must have seen the depressed look on my face. “Guthrie’s not such a bad place,” he said quietly. “The economy could be better, but the folks down here are the real thing. Most of ’em, anyway.”

“I’m sure it’s a wonderful place,” I said. “I don’t mean to downgrade your hometown. It’s just…I’ve been living in D.C. It’ll be an adjustment, I’m sure.”

“You mind if I ask what you’re doing, moving down here? I mean, Dad told me you’re a lawyer, been working as a lobbyist. Seems like a pretty high-flying life to give up and move to Guthrie.”

I grimaced. “My job ended. Sort of…unexpectedly. And I thought I’d take a little time, maybe reevaluate my career path, before I just jump into another job. Mitch told me about Birdsong, and it seemed like an interesting opportunity.”

While I was speaking, my inner voice was editing: Talk about major lobby-lingo double talk. Interesting opportunity? Face it, Dempsey, you’re outta work, no prospects, no money, no home. Guthrie’s your only shot.

“Interesting?” Tee said. “Yeah, it ought to be interesting, at the very least. What do you plan to do for transportation?”

I gave him a pretty smile. “That’s where you might help me out. I guess I’ll be buying something to drive. But I’ve been living in D.C. for so long, I can’t even remember the last time I owned a car. Any thoughts about where I can pick up a set of basic wheels?”

“Well…” He pondered the matter. We’d arrived at Birdsong. It looked even gloomier at nightfall. From the curb I could see one tiny light shining through the underbrush.

“There’s the Catfish,” he said finally. “Ella Kate used to drive it, but I think the sheriff finally sweet-talked her into giving up her license after she drove up over the curb trying to park at the courthouse. It ain’t pretty, but it runs.”

“The Catfish?”

“Your uncle Norbert bought it at a government-surplus auction. It’s
a Crown Victoria—you know, like a police cruiser? I’m guessing from the mideighties. It’s about the size of the
Queen Mary
. Probably gets roughly the same gas mileage.”

“A police cruiser?”

“Well, to be specific, I think it was a Georgia Highway Patrol car. But Norbert had it painted. Bulldog red, of course. He was a big UGA fan.”

“Oh.” I sat there looking at that dim light shining through the tangle of weeds and trees. What had I gotten myself into?

“Hey,” Tee said softly. “Why don’t you just let me take you over to the Econo Lodge? Just for tonight. I could pick you up in the morning, bring you over here, give you a proper introduction to Ella Kate. It’ll all look better in the morning, I promise you.”

I bit my lip, sorely tempted to accept his offer. But no, I decided. Now or never.

“That’s very kind of you,” I said, my hand on the door. “But I really just need to get myself established here. You know, dig in my heels and get started?”

He laughed. “You’re tougher than you look, aren’t you?”

“We’ll see.”

He half-carried and half-dragged my suitcase up what was left of the driveway, cursing softly as branches and vines slapped at our faces and snagged on our clothes. “You’re going to have to get a bush hog in here first thing,” Tee muttered, holding a thick branch aside to let me pass.

“First you’ll have to tell me what a bush hog is,” I said, standing at the foot of the front steps and staring up at the house.

“It’s kind of like a tractor,” he explained, stopping beside me. He glanced down at his wristwatch.

“It’s after six. Full dark. According to my dad, Ella Kate goes to bed with the chickens.”

“She keeps chickens?” I had a visual image of hens roosting in the rafters of my new bedroom.

He chuckled. “You really are a city girl. She goes to bed really early. Gets up early too. With any luck, Ella Kate’s already tucked in her bed, fast asleep. And the two of you can have a proper meeting at breakfast.”

When we got to the front door, I took out the key and fitted it into the lock. The doorknob turned, with some effort on my part, but the door wouldn’t budge. I gave Tee a worried look. “Is there a dead bolt?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. If Dad told Ella Kate you were coming over tonight, she just might have rigged up something to keep you out. I wouldn’t put it past the old turkey.”

Another poultry reference. Unsettling.

“Is there another door?”

“In the kitchen. Around the back of the house. Are you absolutely positive you want to do this? The Econo Lodge has a cocktail lounge. It’s still happy hour…”

I pushed a strand of hair behind my ears. “This is my family’s property. I have every right to be here. Your father said so himself. You can go. But I intend to stay. You don’t happen to have a flashlight in the car, do you?”

He sighed and held up his key ring, which held a tiny penlight.

We left the suitcase and haltingly made our way around to the back of the house. The shrubbery was sparser on the side of the house, but our way was littered with all manner of junk—old garbage cans, garden equipment, wooden crates full of empty Coke bottles, beat-up bicycles, even the rusting carcass of an ancient Volkswagen bug propped up on concrete blocks and draped with kudzu vines.

“Hey,” Tee said, waving the penlight over the bug. “This looks just like my dad’s old VW. I wrecked it when I was seventeen—”

“Who’s out there?” A high-pitched voice pierced the darkness, startling both of us. “I hear ya, you know. I’m old, but I’m not deaf. Speak up now, or I’ll get my shotgun. I can use it too.”

The dog started barking, staccatolike.

“Christ,” Tee said, under his breath. “Miss Ella Kate! It’s me, Tee Berryhill.”

“Who’s that? Shorty, hush!”

The dog stopped barking.

Tee grabbed my hand and began pulling me toward the back of the house, where a yellow light shone down on a small porch stoop.

Ella Kate Timmons held up a withered hand to shade her eyes from
the glare of the porch light. Her white hair stood up wildly around her head, like a barbed-wire halo. She was dressed in oversize men’s blue flannel pajamas, with an old green army fatigue jacket as a bathrobe. In one hand she held the cocker spaniel’s leash, and in the other she held what looked like the shotgun Carter Berryhill had mentioned.

“Miss Ella Kate,” Tee said breathlessly. “It’s me. Tee Berryhill. Carter’s son. We didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Well, you did,” she said waspishly, jerking on the dog’s leash. The dog whined and strained against it.

We’d been edging slowly toward the back porch. The old lady took a step backward when she caught sight of me.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Dempsey. Remember?”

“What’s she doing here?” she demanded, turning toward Tee. “I don’t want her here. I told your daddy that.”

“Now, Miss Ella Kate,” Tee started. “We’ve been over this already. Dempsey’s father is Mitch Killebrew. He’s Norbert’s great-nephew. Remember Mitch?”

“Little pissant,” the old lady retorted. “Pulled the cat’s tail. If he’d a been mine, I woulda wore his britches out.”

“I’m sure he regrets bothering your cat,” Tee said soothingly, still inching his way toward her, with me in tow. “That was a long time ago. He was just a little boy back then. He’s a grown man now. And this is his daughter, Dempsey.”

“Hi.” I gave her a friendly little finger wave, keeping my eyes on the shotgun.

“You were in my house,” she said flatly. “I seen you. You and that other girl.”

I hesitated. This was no time to argue property rights. Not with an old lady who had both a firearm and a mean dog on her side.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I rang the doorbell and knocked. And the door was open. I didn’t realize anybody was living here. It’s a, uh, beautiful old home.” Surely God would forgive me for lying to an old lady.

“It’s a mess!” Ella Kate said sharply. “It’s a mess. And I’m a mess.” Her face crumpled. She turned and fled inside the house, leaving the dog sitting on the porch, eyeing us warily.

“Now what?”

Tee walked haltingly up to the dog, his right hand extended, palm up. “Hey, Shorty,” he crooned. “Good old Shorty. How ya doing tonight, Shorty?”

The dog eyed Tee suspiciously. He backed away an inch, and then stopped. Tee got a little closer, then dropped down on his knees, at eye level with the dog. He kept his hand held out, and after a moment, the dog began licking it.

“Good boy,” Tee murmured, scratching the dog’s ears tenderly. “Good old Shorty. You like ol’ Tee, don’t you?” The dog wriggled, then flopped onto his back, rolling deliriously back and forth as Tee scratched his belly.

“How do you think Shorty feels about Yankees?” I asked, still keeping my distance.

Tee looked up. “Oh, I don’t think it’s Yankees he hates. If he’s anything like Ella Kate, it’s the Killebrews he hates.”

Despite the warning, I bent down and gave Shorty my hand to consider. He gave it a friendly lick.

Tee stood up. “Come on, then,” he told me, holding the kitchen door open. “She didn’t shoot you and Shorty didn’t bite you. That’s about as warm a welcome as you’re apt to get tonight.”