The Fixer Upper (9 page)

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fter I’d showered and was changing into some respectable clothes, I could hear voices downstairs. At one point, I heard a dog’s sharp bark, then a woman’s voice, and Tee’s, and then a door slamming.

He was sitting on a bench in the hallway when I rejoined him.

“Was that Ella Kate?”

He jerked his head in the direction of the front door. “It was. I invited her to join us for dinner, but she politely declined. I believe she had a previous engagement.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Politely?”

“Her exact words were ‘I’d rather choke than eat with her and you two ambulance chasers.’”

“Oh dear.”

“At least she didn’t throw anything at me this time.”

Tee filled me in on Guthrie’s social strata on the drive over to his house.

“That house there,” he said, pointing to an imposing brick Colonial Revival mansion a few doors down the block, “belonged to one of the Dempseys. Dad could tell you exactly which one. Local gossips say that what money he didn’t blow on wine, women, and song, he lost speculating on the stock market. It’s changed hands a bunch of times over the years. Now it belongs to some dot-com genius. She’s not even thirty.”

“Nice house,” I said, pressing my face to the car window. “And I bet she didn’t even have to kill any spiders to get it that way.”

He showed me the mayor’s house too, a gray-shingled bungalow with a huge old oak tree in the front yard. A tire swing hung from the tree’s
lowest branch, and an assortment of brightly colored plastic toys lay on the ground around the tree. “He’s got triplets, all girls, four years old,” Tee said. “Poor guy, I don’t think he knows what hit him.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I know the feeling. My dad has twins that age.”

“You’ve got brothers who are four?”

“Half brothers. My stepmother is quite a bit younger. They’re little devils too.”

Finally, he pulled up to a charming white-frame cottage encircled by a low boxwood hedge and a dark green picket fence. A discreet wrought-iron sign hanging from the mailbox told me we’d arrived at berry hill.

“Oh!” I said with a sigh. “I love it already. Berry Hill. That’s adorable.”

He made a wry face. “The name was Mama’s idea. She even planted raspberry vines to grow on that fence, and there’s a patch of rabbit-eye blueberries out back. The birds eat up most of ’em now, but when she was alive, she put up enough jam to feed pharoah’s army.”

“How long has she been gone?”

He got out, came around, and opened my door, a true Southern gentleman. “Let’s see. She was diagnosed with breast cancer right before I took my bar exam, and six months later she was dead. So that’s, what? Ten years, I guess.”

“And your dad never remarried?”

He laughed. “Not for lack of trying. Every woman in this town under the age of eighty has done her level best to save ‘poor ol’ Carter’ from his pitiful life as a bachelor. He goes along and allows himself to be fixed up, but I don’t think he’s had a second date in all these years.”

I was about to ask about Tee’s own marital status, but now Carter himself was standing in the doorway, a clean dish towel wrapped around his waist and a glass of wine in his outstretched hand.

“Dempsey!” he said, giving me an impromptu hug.

“This is for you,” he said, handing me the glass. “I don’t figure you for a teetotaler.”

“You figured right,” I said, taking a sip. “And although I went to the
grocery store, I totally forgot to hit the liquor store.”

Tee and Carter laughed at my ignorance.

“Honey, you can’t buy liquor in Guthrie,” Carter said. “We’re dry as dust. You’ll have to drive over to the next county to BJ’s Bottle Shop if you want a drink of anything stronger than Coca-Cola. Or come over here to Berry Hill.”

He walked me into the living room, and I stood for a moment admiring my surroundings. With its walls of horizontal pine paneling, muted chintz-upholstered sofas and chairs, worn oriental rugs and gold-framed paintings, the Berry Hill living room looked like a room that was lived in and enjoyed. The fireplace was surrounded by bookshelves crammed with leather-bound books, and a leather club chair pulled up beside the fireplace held a folded-up copy of
The New Yorker
.

“What a nice room,” I said, pausing in front of a surprisingly good oil landscape.

“All of this was Sarah’s doing,” Carter said. “Tee and I just try to keep it from looking too much like a fraternity house.”

“You’ve done a good job,” I said, warming my backside in front of the fire.

“You should see what Dempsey’s done over at Birdsong, Dad,” Tee told his father, emerging from the other room with his own glass of wine. “It’s the first time since I can remember that you can tell what color the front of the house is painted.”

“And that reminds me,” I said. “Thank you so much for sending over your yardman. I had no idea how I was going to tackle that jungle. He worked wonders. Unfortunately, now you can actually get a good look at that paint Tee mentioned. Pink. Ugh.”

Carter handed me a polished silver tray. Perched on top of a paper doily were an assortment of warm miniquiches. I took one and tasted. “Nice,” I said, not bothering to hide my surprise.

“Don’t be too impressed,” Tee warned. “We’ve got a freezer full of this kinda stuff from the discount store over in Macon.”

We sat by the fire and chatted for a while, doing that practiced little dance you do when you’re sizing up new acquaintances for their potential as friends. The Berryhills, father and son, were easy to be
around. I could tell by their verbal sparring that they were genuinely fond of each other.

After a leisurely cocktail hour, during which time Carter disappeared several times to “check on my masterpiece,” as he put it, he decided everything was ready.

“Hope you like salmon,” Carter said, again tucking my arm into the crook of his elbow to escort me into the dining room.

“Love it,” I said. “But then, anything you serve me will be a treat. I’m not much of a cook myself.”

“Neither is he,” Tee said, taking my other arm and steering me toward my chair as Carter went back to the kitchen. “But that never stopped him. Salmon, little dinky roasted potatoes, and poached asparagus with dill sauce, which is what’s on tonight’s menu, is his company dinner. The rest of the week, it’s strictly by the book. Monday is rice and beans, Tuesday’s baked chicken, Wednesday is Hamburger Helper, and Thursday’s some kind of casserole made with the leftover chicken.”

“Are you complaining about my cuisine?” Carter asked, coming in from the kitchen with a platter of food.

“Not me,” Tee said, standing up and serving me a slice of the salmon, along with the aforesaid potatoes and asparagus.

While the men served themselves, I took the time to look around the dining room. The walls were painted a soft robin’s-egg blue, and cream-colored linen curtains hung from a bay window that looked out onto a back garden. A large crystal chandelier hung over the table, which was covered with a floor-length damask tablecloth. The chairs were Sheraton, with seat covers in a blue chintz. All the artwork was of large tropical birds—parrots, macaws, flamingos, and egrets—framed in heavy gilt-edged frames.

I got up to look at the largest print. “Is this a Menaboni?” I asked.

Carter looked pleased. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You know art?”

I sat back down. “Not a lot. But I’ve seen Menaboni prints in magazines. These are really lovely.”

“Sarah’s doing,” Carter said. “I’m just an old country lawyer. You could put what I know about art and antiques and all that mess in your hat. But she just loved that kind of stuff. Went to symposiums at the
High Museum in Atlanta, read books, and when we traveled, she always made it a point to go see the art museums and antiques shops. She loved to go to auctions best of all. She’d study the catalogs, read up on the history of anything she was interested in, and go in there ready to do battle. I told her she should have been a horse trader.”

I looked over at the sideboard, a massive, dark oak piece that held dozens of pieces of blue-and-white transferware china. “Is that Canton ware?” I asked. “It looks like the real thing.”

“It surely is,” Carter said. “Those plates were Sarah’s pride and joy. She bought them at an auction in New Orleans when we were down there for a bar association meeting. Never would admit to me what she paid. Not that I would have cared.” His face grew serious. “They were the last things she bought before she got sick.”

Tee raised an eyebrow. “How does a lobbyist-slash-lawyer happen to know about all this stuff?”

I blushed. “I’ll tell you my dirty little secret. I’m a closet interior designer. When I was in law school, stressed out over studying or finishing a research paper? While everybody else was out getting sloshed at the bars, I’d hole up in my apartment and read decorating magazines. I’ve got stacks of them, everywhere. Mario Buatta is my idol.”

Carter looked puzzled. “The race-car driver?”

Tee snickered.

“No, I think that’s Mario Andretti. Mario Buatta is a famous interior designer. The prince of chintz, they call him. But I’m also a fan of Charlotte Moss and Bunny Williams. Pretty silly, huh?”

“No sillier than a lawyer wasting billable hours running a small-town newspaper,” Carter said mildly.

Tee’s smile looked forced. “Here we go again.” He stood up and started clearing our plates, mercifully ignoring my half-eaten salmon. “Coffee, Dempsey? We’re brewing Starbucks tonight. We buy the whole beans in Macon.”

I got up hurriedly. “Only if you let me help with the dishes.”

“Absolutely not!” Carter exclaimed. “I’m looking forward to hearing all about your budding friendship with Ella Kate.”

“Not until I’ve at least loaded the dishwasher,” I said.

He followed Tee and me into the kitchen. It was a small room, probably last modernized in the 1960s, but with its yellow-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor and white-painted wooden cabinets it exuded warmth and cheer.

Tee was filling the kitchen sink with soapsuds. “No automatic dishwasher at the Berryhills’,” he told me. “We kick it old school around here.”

“I happen to like doing dishes old school.” I picked up a dish towel and handed it to him. “How ’bout I wash and you dry, since I don’t know where anything gets put away.”

“Scandalous,” Carter harrumphed, sitting down on a red metal step stool in the corner of the room. “Letting a guest do the dishes.”

“Start the coffee, Pop,” Tee instructed.

In a matter of minutes, we’d washed, dried, and put away the dishes, and the three of us were gathered around the enamel-topped kitchen table sipping coffee.

“Now, tell me about Ella Kate,” Carter said, stirring another spoonful of sugar into his cup.

I held my mug under my nose and inhaled happily.

“Not much to tell. I think she’s avoiding me. Last night, she only opened her bedroom door long enough to tell me where I couldn’t sleep. By the time I got up this morning, she was gone. Although she’d taped a bill to the refrigerator door.”

“A bill?” Tee asked.

“I helped myself to some of her groceries,” I admitted. “But I paid her back.”

“What’s this about telling you where you can or cannot sleep?” Carter asked, frowning. “Dempsey, I assure you, I have made it quite clear to Ella Kate—both personally and in writing—that Birdsong belongs to your daddy. Not to her.”

“It’s no big deal,” I said. “There are three bedrooms upstairs. Four if you count the trunk room. I’m perfectly comfortable in the room I chose. Although,” I said wryly, rubbing my lower back, “I think my first big purchase is going to be a new mattress. The one on my bed
might have come to Georgia by covered wagon.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Carter said. “All the Dempseys were tight as ticks when it came to money. And old Norbert, he was so tight he squeaked when he walked.”

“I still can’t help but wonder why Ella Kate took such a strong and immediate dislike to me,” I said.

“It’s not you, per se,” Carter told me. “I think she just flat out resents anybody named Killebrew. She and your grandmother Olivia weren’t just distant cousins. They were best friends, from back when they were little-bitty girls. I think they were roommates at one of those women’s colleges, Tift, or maybe it was Wesleyan, or Agnes Scott. Anyway, they did go off to school together freshman year, but then Olivia met your grandfather Killebrew, at a party, and the next thing anybody knew, they’d run off and gotten married.”

“Sounds romantic,” I said.

“The Dempseys didn’t think so,” Carter chuckled. “They were fit to be tied. And poor old Ella Kate was left out in the cold. Olivia was always the live wire. Without her at school, I think Ella Kate was just a lost soul. She came home to Guthrie and never did go back to school.”

“But that’s what? Fifty or more years ago? I didn’t have anything to do with that. And neither did my dad.”

“Maybe she’ll warm up to you,” Carter said.

“And maybe pigs will fly,” Tee retorted. “Look, Dad, maybe we need to be more proactive with this Ella Kate thing. If Mitch Killebrew intends to sell Birdsong once it’s been fixed up, she’ll have to leave eventually anyway.”

Carter sighed heavily. “You’re right, I know. But I honestly don’t know where she’d go. She’s got no close kin around here anymore.”

“Didn’t Norbert leave her anything?” I asked. “After all those years she took care of him? God! No wonder she hates us.”

He reached across the table and patted my hand. “Calm down, my dear. I didn’t say she didn’t have the means to leave. I can’t discuss another client’s financial affairs, but don’t you fret about Ella Kate. Between the investments she made with her own little pension money, and what
Norbert left her, that old lady is sitting pretty. She just happens to like sitting in somebody else’s house. And Tee’s right. It’s time we had a serious talk with her about the future. She’s got to face up to facts.”

I put my cup down and stretched. “Well, there’s no big hurry. I don’t know how long it will take me to get the place shaped up. There’s so much to do! I guess I’m going to have to start seeing about getting some bids for things like wiring and plumbing.”