To Live and Die In Dixie (2 page)

M
AC LEFT SOON AFTER Neva Jean; trout season was in full swing and he wanted to go play with his fishing tackle. I was home alone. Nap time.

The ceiling fan whirred lazily overhead, and as I dozed off I could hear the distant clatter of lawn mowers. When I woke up, Edna was dragging her suitcase into the kitchen from the back door, cursing up a blue streak.

“Hi, Mom, I'm home,” I called groggily.

I heard the thump of luggage dropping, then the squeak of our refrigerator door, and shoes being kicked off.

She shuffled barefoot out to the porch, set a glass of iced tea and an ashtray holding a lit extra-long menthol cigarette on the wicker end table, and dropped wearily into the love seat next to my chair. Her hair, which she'd had done before leaving for the wedding Thursday, was toppled to one side, resembling a silver-blue Leaning Tower of Pisa. She wore neatly pressed cotton slacks, a flowered blouse, and an expression that spoke volumes. She leaned forward, slipped her hand behind her back and unsnapped her bra, sighing at the escape from her elastic prison.

“The wedding was that bad, huh?”

“Hellish,” she said, dragging on the cigarette. “Your Aunt Olive may never recover. She cried all the way back from Swainsboro.”

“Tell,” I said, sitting up to get a better grip of the details.

She took a long drink of the tea, smacked her lips and leaned back in the cushions. “Well, it seems Sean forgot to mention to the family that his bride, the delicate Bambi Aurora, was six months pregnant and big as a house.”

“Bambi Aurora?” I repeated. “That's her name, for real?”

“Her mother saw a lot of Disney movies during her own pregnancy,” Edna said, shrugging.

“Aunt Olive took it pretty hard, huh?”

Edna's sister Olive is the only one in the Rivers family to have married money. She and my Uncle Bebo live in a big brick house in Dunwoody and actually belong to an honest-to-God country club. Appearances count a lot with Aunt Olive.

“Sniveled for four hours straight on the ride home,” Edna said. “And she had a cat fit when I lit up a cigarette in that new Coupe de Ville of hers. I ain't had a smoke since we stopped for gas in Dublin. Look at my hand shakin'. My nerves are shot.”

She held out a hand, which was actually quavering slightly.

Just then we heard a car shoot up the driveway.

Edna looked at me questioningly.

“Did you forget about promising to fix Neva Jean's hair for some Civil War wingding tonight?”

The kitchen door slammed. “Woo-ooh, Edna, Callahan, where are you?” she sang out.

Edna and I got up and went into the kitchen, where
Neva Jean was hooking a plastic garment bag over the pantry door. The green ball gown must have been in the bag, because Neva Jean had changed to a violently flowered turquoise housecoat.

“Take a look at the dress for inspiration, Edna,” Neva Jean ordered, lifting the plastic of the garment bag. She sat herself at the kitchen table, set down a pink train case on the table and flipped open the lid, revealing a mirrored interior packed with combs, brushes, hair spray, mousse, and more cosmetics than I'd owned in my lifetime. She reached inside, pulled out a plastic cape and tied it around her neck, then reached in again and brought out a can of Mountain Dew.

“Go ahead, Edna,” she commanded. “I touched up the roots this morning, and I've kept it damp. Make magic.”

I should state right here that my mother is not a licensed cosmetologist. But she has worked as a receptionist and part-time bookkeeper at the Salon de Beaute, owned by her good friend Frank, or François, as he insists on being called, for twenty years. You don't hang around a beauty parlor for that many years without learning your way around a set of hot rollers.

Edna let out a loud, martyred sigh, but she stubbed out her cigarette and moved over behind Neva Jean. “All right, let's get this over with,” she said, snatching the towel from Neva Jean's head. “You got any particular idea of what kind of style you want?”

Neva Jean glanced up from the mirror and plucked a folded magazine page from the depths of the case. “This is from a back copy of
Southern Coiffure
I been saving for ten years, for a special occasion,” she said. “Do me just like this.”

The model in the picture was a hollow-cheeked seventeen-year-old wearing black lipstick. Her hair had
been piled atop her head and teased into a maelstrom of platinum-colored whorls, ringlets, and terraces.

Edna glanced at the photograph and without batting an eye said “Sure.”

While I watched with wonder she divided and subdivided Neva Jean's brassy hair, deftly winding strands onto the rollers until Neva Jean's head sprouted a city-full of pink sponge rollers. The whole operation seemed to take no more than five minutes.

“Good thing I got Dad's curly hair,” I said, awed. “I never could get the hang of rolling hair like that.”

“It's a gift, Callahan, a gift from God,” Neva Jean said. “Your mama never spent a single day at a beauty academy, yet she can just glimpse a picture and instinctively divine just the right setting pattern. It's like Swannelle. He can replace a whole set of points and plugs in the same time most mechanics take to pop the hood. You either got it, or you don't. Your mama and Swannelle, they got it.”

Edna looked bored with the whole process. “Don't bother trying to flatter me, Neva Jean,” she said. “Now go get under the dryer in my room so I can get you combed out before Swannelle comes charging in here bellowing about your being late.”

Neva Jean gathered up her cosmetic kit and started toward Edna's bedroom. “Oh yeah. In all the excitement of the ball I almost forgot, Callahan. I think I lined us up a new customer for the House Mouse.”

“Who?”

“Better not be any more of Swannelle's deadbeat cousins,” Edna warned. “That crew has laid bad paper on us for the last time. Besides, the House Mouse doesn't do campers.”

“Now Edna,” Neva Jean said. “I told you those were Swannelle's second cousins. And this man is no kin to
anybody I know. He's loaded. He's an antiques dealer. Got a big ol' spooky-looking mansion in Inman Park. You know that redbrick castle-looking place you can see from the MARTA train? That's the place.”

“You mean Elliot Littlefield?” Edna asked. “I thought he was still in prison for that murder thing. Just how do you happen to know somebody like that?”

She smiled and waved an imaginary fan in front of her face. “That was years ago. And anyway, Swannelle says he got off on a technicality. I met him at one of Swannelle's last skirmishes. He's the head honcho over Swannelle's unit. When we were introduced, I mentioned where I worked, and I gave him a House Mouse card. He called me this morning and wants you to talk to him right away about cleaning his house.”

Edna's eyes had that glint. She pushed the phone across the table toward me. “Call right now,” she said. “That house, Eagle's Keep, I think he calls it, is huge. I've always wanted to see the inside of it. I hear it's loaded with gorgeous antiques. And you know they found the body in the tower bedroom in that turret. Call him and tell him we'll both come over to give the estimate.”

I reached for the scrap of paper Neva Jean held out and dialed the number.

It rang once, twice, three times before the answering machine picked up. In the background I heard the first few tinny bars of “Dixie.” A man's voice, deep and distinctively Southern, identified himself as Elliot Longstreet Littlefield, proprietor of Eagle's Keep Antiques and instructed me to leave a message at the beep. Before I could do so, the phone picked up at the other end. “Wait,” the same voice said, live this time. “I'm here. Let me turn this godforsaken machine off.
Just a minute.” I heard the receiver drop on the other end and then the sound of glass breaking.

“Damn,” he muttered. “That was my last Steuben highball. I'm sorry. This is Elliot Littlefield. Who's calling please?”

“Callahan Garrity, of the House Mouse Cleaning Service,” I said crisply. “My associate Neva Jean McComb tells me you're looking for some help.”

“That, dear lady, is the understatement of the year,” he drawled. “Beulah, the woman who has worked for me for years and my mother before me, has simply gotten too feeble to keep up with things. Now then, Miss…what was the name again, please?”

“Garrity. J. Callahan,” I prompted.

“Yes, I remembered it was an unusual name. I don't know if Neva Jean told you, Miss Garrity, but I've got a bit of an emergency here. The Eagle's Keep is on the Inman Park Tour of Homes next weekend.”

“Next weekend?” I said, relieved. “That's all right then. We can have the girls out by, oh, Tuesday or Wednesday, if we juggle the schedule a little.”

“You don't understand,” he said, interrupting. “I'm hosting the kick-off brunch for the Inman Park Festival tomorrow. I've got sixty people due at my front door for Bloody Marys and mini-quiches at eleven
A.M.
tomorrow and this place is a shambles. Can I count on you?”

“Just a minute, please, I need to check with my office manager.”

I covered the receiver with my hand and looked over at Edna. “It's got to be cleaned tonight. Big party tomorrow, and the place is a mess. What do you think?”

She wrinkled her brow in thought. Neva Jean shook her head emphatically. “Include me out, ya'll. This ball is the social event of the season. Ya'll just call Baby and Sister and them. I'm not working.”

I turned back to the phone before Edna could answer. “Uh, exactly how big is the house, Mr. Littlefield, and how heavy a cleaning are we talking about here?”

“Eight thousand five hundred square feet. Three stories. I need the works. Wood floors waxed, stained-glass windows cleaned, silver buffed, that kind of thing.”

I repeated the words after him, while Edna's fingers began to fly over the adding machine keys. I winced. “We can handle it,” I said, “but since this is a rush job and we'll have to have several girls, we'll have to charge our deluxe rate.”

“Well, how much?”

“Let's see, four girls, plus myself supervising, figure six hours, rush rate…”

“Does he sound desperate?” Edna asked in a stage whisper. I shook my head yes. “Tell him nine hundred and fifty. We start at six and we're out by midnight or he pays a two-hundred-dollar-an-hour surcharge.”

“That fee will be nine hundred and fifty dollars,” I repeated dutifully, “we'll be there at six and—”

“Fine,” he said. “Have your people here at four
P.M.
, twenty-seven eleven Jasmine Way. I'll be out but the florist will let you in. I'm assuming your people are bonded. There are a good deal of very valuable collectibles in the home. I don't know if you know this about me, but my specialty is in Civil War artifacts. In fact, I've just acquired an old diary that may prove to be the finest thing in its field—”

“We're bonded,” I said, cutting him off. I wasn't really interested in hearing about some rusty pile of old guns and knives. “And my girls have never had any problems with breakage or pilferage. Good-bye.”

I hung up the phone. Neva Jean beamed. “Nine hundred fifty bucks. That's some job. Do I get a finder's fee?”

“You get paid one fifty for four hours of work if you show up,” I told her. “Otherwise, you know the rules. If we get a callback from Littlefield, you get first shot at it.”

I turned to my mother, who had pulled the phone back toward her. “Call Ruby right away before she goes to her missionary society meeting,” I told her. “I'll get Jackie on the house phone in my bedroom. What about Baby and Sister? They could help with some of the dusting and the silver polishing.”

Neva Jean snorted. “Ruby's church choir left on a bus trip to Jesus World up in Charlotte last night. Remember?”

“Damn,” Edna said. “That's right.”

“And Jackie's a good worker, but she's too scrawny to push big furniture around or deal with that floor-waxing machine. No way ya'll can clean a house that big in only four hours. Tell you what. The ball don't start till eight o'clock. I'll work from four till seven. Edna, you can comb me out there, and Swannelle can pick me up on the way. He'll want to leave by ten anyway, he always bitches that dancing aggravates his old softball injuries. I'll have him drop me off at Littlefield's on the way home.”

“And?” Edna said expectantly.

“And I get paid two hundred. In cash.”

Edna and I exchanged glances. Neva Jean had us over a barrel and she knew it. With Ruby gone we'd need Neva Jean's muscle. Jackie is fast and hardworking, but she only weighs about ninety pounds, and the Easterbrooks, Baby and Sister, who are both in their seventies, can only do so much. Sister's legally blind and Baby's almost stone deaf.

“All right,” I sighed. “But don't you dare tell the other girls how much you're getting paid. And you better be back from that ball by ten o'clock or I'll come hunting for you myself.”

E
AGLE'S KEEP IS AN ATLANTA landmark: a Victorian Gothic behemoth that commands an entire block of Inman Park, dwarfing the not inconsiderate houses around it. Like every other crime buff in Atlanta, I'd read all about the mansion, its eccentric owner and the sensational murder that had occurred there in the late 1960s.

Elliot Littlefield had been convicted of the murder of a young runaway girl he'd picked up on Atlanta's Tenth Street “Hippie Strip” during the heyday of the city's version of Haight Ashbury. The conviction had been overturned on a technicality so quickly that he'd barely had time to get settled into jail before being set free again.

The murder charge alone would have been enough to make Littlefield unpopular in most neighborhoods. But Littlefield compounded his sins in a number of ways. Neighbors couldn't fail to notice the steady stream of young girls coming and going from the mansion. “Shop assistants,” Littlefield called them, and a few of them supposedly had worked in the antiques shop he ran out of the mansion's carriage house.

That antiques shop was a sore subject in Inman Park, whose neighbors had fought a twenty-year-long uphill battle to gentrify what had declined into a seedy slum of broken-down bungalows, boarding houses and dilapidated apartment buildings. Eagle's Keep, with its rose red brickwork and elaborate gingerbread picked out in shades of sand and ivory, should have been the pride of the community, as it had been when a Yankee department store magnate had built it in 1893. But a century later, neighbors claimed Littlefield's clients hogged precious on-street parking, and his practice of renting out the mansion for large fund-raisers and noisy parties also set their teeth on edge.

Twin Confederate flags fluttered in the breeze from flagpoles mounted on either side of the front door of Eagle's Keep that day.

“Uh oh,” Baby said, from the back of the van. “I don't like the looks of this.”

“Something tells me this ain't the Inman Park NAACP headquarters,” Jackie chimed in.

We all piled out of the van and I opened the cargo door to unload the cart full of cleaning gear.

“I wonder which room they found that girl's body in,” Edna said, peering up at the twin turrets disappearing into leafy green treetops.

“Somebody say somethin' about a cup of coffee?” Baby asked. “I'd like me a Coca-Cola if it's all the same.”

Sister grabbed Baby's arm for guidance and leaned her lips up against Baby's ear. “They talkin' bout a body in this here house,” Sister shouted. “Right here in this house we fixin' to clean.”

“That's nice,” Baby replied, patting her sister's arm and guiding her carefully over the curb. “Step up here now so you don't take a fall.”

Jackie clasped her arms around herself and shivered, despite the warmth of the late afternoon. “No kiddin', Callahan,” she said. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies. And I ain't even been inside yet.”

“Now look ahere, missy,” Neva Jean said, addressing herself to Jackie, who stood staring at the flags. “Just because Mr. Littlefield happens to fly the Stars and Bars don't mean he's the Grand Lizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Lots of people who are interested in history fly the Rebel flag. It don't mean nothin' against colored people. Why, me 'n' Swannelle got a Confederate flag on the pickup truck. Jackie, you know how I feel about you. Why, if I had a colored sister, you'd be it.”

Jackie glanced over at me and shook her head. “I know, Neva Jean. And if I had to have a redneck bleached-blond honky for a sister, I'd pick you too.”

“That's sweet,” Neva Jean said, pecking her friend on the cheek. “Come on, let's get in there and get busy before I have to leave for my ball.”

We pressed the doorbell, setting off a sonorous set of chimes somewhere inside, and waited. And waited. Finally, a woman pulled the heavily carved door open. A green apron was wrapped around her skeletally thin body. She was short, with spiked mahogany-colored hair and a harried expression. “Yes?” she said, looking expectantly at our tatty little group.

“Callahan Garrity, House Mouse,” I said, preparing to enter. The woman's face remained blank. “You know, the cleaning service?” I added. “Mr. Littlefield said someone would be here to let us in.”

The woman sighed loudly. “Hi. I'm Danielle DeClerc, the florist. Mr. Littlefield told me the same thing. But when we got here an hour ago, no one was around. I'd have left, but he is a good customer. So I went around to the back of the house and went in
through the utility room.” Noticing my questioning look, she added, “It was unlocked. I figured his assistant had to run out for something. But if we didn't get in here and get started right away, there'd be no way my arrangements would be ready for this party tomorrow.”

I gathered my supplies and motioned to my troops to follow me inside. “Well, if it's all right with you, we'll come in and get started too. We only have a few hours to get it all done.”

“You're gonna need all the time you can get,” Danielle warned. “This place is a sty. I'm surprised Beulah let things get this out of hand.”

She stepped out of the way to allow us to bump the cleaning cart over the raised threshold of the entryway. It wasn't until we were all assembled inside, our cleaning equipment in a pile around us, that we had a chance to notice the surroundings.

“Holy mother,” Edna whispered.

“Uh oh,” Jackie said.

The entrance hall of Eagle's Keep soared thirty feet above us. The walls had been papered in a forest green moiré, but you couldn't appreciate much of the paper, what with all the stuffed wildlife. A whole jungleful of dead hunting trophies seemed to be emerging from those walls; snarling tigers, glassy-eyed lions, fierce-looking boars, and horned beasts of every description. In between the trophies the walls were dotted with medieval-looking crossbows, muskets, daggers, swords, and other weapons. A chandelier made entirely of animal antlers hung from a heavy gold chain, casting weird shadows on the wall. At our feet, a zebra-skin rug stretched over the white marble floor.

“Wow,” Neva Jean said. “Swannelle'd have a fit to see this.”

“Just look at that,” Jackie said, nodding toward the
wall facing the door. “Thought you said Confederate flags didn't mean nothing.”

The fancifully carved Victorian sideboard was eight feet long and covered with a collection of military headgear. I recognized the mashed kepi of the Confederate foot soldier, a dull gray-green metal doughboy's helmet from World War I, some plumed and gilt-covered hats of a vaguely Eastern European flavor, a World War II leather flying ace helmet, and yes, holding pride of place in the display, the distinctive spiked helmet of a Nazi SS officer.

Danielle noticed our stares. “Make sure your girls are careful,” she said crisply. “I don't want to be blamed for any breakage. If you need me, Rodney, my assistant and I will be in the kitchen. We should be cleared out of here in another hour or so. We'll try not to leave it a bigger mess than it was when we got here.”

“Good,” Edna muttered. She'd been walking around the entry hall, taking a grunge inventory. A heavy film of dust covered the sideboard and its millinery display. The lower drawers of the cabinet stood ajar, and papers and more hats spilled out. Cobwebs stretched from antler to antler of the hunting trophies and the floor beneath my feet felt sticky in places. Beside the sideboard, a sagging cardboard carton overflowed with old newspapers, crumpled circulars and empty wine bottles.

“Cat piss,” Edna said, sampling the air like a sommelier sniffs a Bordeaux cork. “I smell cat piss.” As she said it, an ancient one-eyed Siamese slunk from the entry hall and disappeared toward the back of the house.

With Edna kicking at imaginary hair balls and denouncing the urinary habits of incontinent felines, the girls and I did a quick survey of the downstairs. Things were as bad or worse in the other rooms. Each was stuffed with magnificent, ornate Victorian furniture,
musty-looking oil paintings, tarnished silver, assorted gewgaws and spotty Oriental rugs, and an appalling amount of plain old dirt.

“We look hard enough, we'll probably find poor old Beulah the cleaning lady in here,” Edna griped. “Cleaning this mess probably killed her.”

“How many hours did you say we have to get this place clean?” Jackie demanded.

“Midnight,” Neva Jean volunteered. “But it'll never get done with ya'll standing around like statues.”

“She's right,” I said. “It's bad, but we've seen worse.”

“Don't know when,” Edna said under her breath.

“Let's get started,” I continued. “Jackie, you and Sister and Baby get started down here.” I lowered my voice a notch. “Watch Sister, for God's sake, and don't let her get near the crystal or china. In fact, you better sit her down somewhere and let her get started on the silver. Baby can tell her if she's missing any spots.”

Jackie nodded her head in agreement. “Right,” she said. Then, louder, “Ladies, we're gonna start downstairs, in the dining room. Miss Baby, we need you to dust, and Miss Sister, you do such a fine job on the silver, would you take care of that for me, please?”

Neva Jean ran ahead of us up the heavily carved oak stairway to the second floor. “Ya'll bring the cart up,” she called. “I don't want to break a nail.”

“I'll break her nails and her neck,” Edna said, but she started to push the trolley toward the stairs.

“Let's leave it down here so the sisters don't have to climb these stairs,” I said, grabbing a mop, a bucket and a plastic caddy full of cleaning sprays and powders.

Edna got the broom and dustpan and a gallon jug of Pine Sol. “If Littlefield doesn't have a vacuum upstairs, Neva Jean is hauling ours up the stairs, nail or no nail,” she declared.

At the top of the stairs, I paused to catch my breath while Edna stopped and lit a cigarette. I glared at her, but she waved aside my silent protest. “Cigarette smoke is a natural deodorizer,” she said, blowing a puff in the air to demonstrate. “It's a scientific fact.”

“Littlefield said there were four bedrooms and two baths on this floor,” I said, trying not to gasp. Some day soon I've got to start working out. “You take the north end, Edna, and I'll take the south. We'll meet in the middle.”

“What about Neva Jean?” Edna said suspiciously. “Where's that girl gotten to?”

“Up here,” a muffled voice called from above our heads. “There's a bunch more rooms up here,” she wailed. “I ain't even looked at 'em all, but the one I'm in now looks like a library of some kind. Books all thrown on the floor, papers everywhere. More of those animal heads and statues and shit. And it don't look like it's been cleaned since Christ was a corporal.”

“Too bad,” Edna said, stubbing her cigarette in an ashtray that was sitting on a small table in the hallway. “Come down about six-thirty and I'll comb you out.”

Reluctantly, I headed for the door at the end of the hallway, and pushed open the paneled wood door.

A carved gilt mirror took up one whole wall of what had to be the master bedroom suite and the damndest bed I'd ever seen took up most of the other. It was a four-poster affair, each poster made of a grinning blackamoor holding aloft a palm frond that supported a swagged and fringed gold brocade canopy. A pedestal on either side of the bed held marble busts; one of Robert E. Lee, the other reminded me of Jefferson Davis.

The room was in total disarray. Clothes were strewn about, chairs overturned and the drawers of a massive
carved and inlaid chest of drawers had been pulled out and the contents dumped on the floor. The door to a walk-in closet stood ajar. Inside, most of the clothes had been tossed in a heap.

“What a pig,” I moaned.

Edna appeared at the doorway. “That's an understatement,” she snapped. “My rooms look this bad or worse. I don't care what you told this Littlefield character. Forget midnight. If we get this place sorted out by eight
A.M.
it'll be a miracle.”

“I know,” I admitted. “I had no idea it'd be this bad. How does one man living alone make such a mess?”

“He's a man,” Edna shrugged.

A scream cut short her diatribe. It was followed by a series of short, hiccupy shrieks that sounded like they were coming from the third floor.

“Must be even worse upstairs,” Edna said. “You know Neva Jean's got a high tolerance for crud.”

“Call-A-Han,” Neva Jean screeched. “Ed-Na. Come Here. Come Here. It's Aw-Fullll.”

“I don't think this is about dirt,” I said uneasily. “We better get up there.”

We raced up the stairs, sidestepping books, papers, and what looked like a month's worth of dirty laundry.

Neva Jean sat on the floor in the third-floor hallway, slumped against a doorway. Her hands covered her face and she was gasping.

“Don't look. Don't. Go. In…Girl…dead…She's dead…Oh my God, the blood.”

Edna had her hand on the doorknob. “Don't, Ma,” I said sharply. “Take Neva Jean down to the kitchen and get her something to drink.”

My mother's face got that stubborn look, her lower lip pooching out, her eyes glittering dangerously. “Fuck that,” she said. “I'm having a look. You forget, I was
almost killed in an alley underneath Rich's.” She stepped over the slumped woman at her feet and started into the room. From where I stood I could see only a glimpse of the room, but the glimpse included the sight of a spatter of blood on the light blue sprigged wallpaper, and out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a very pale, very lifeless woman's hand flung across the bed.

I glanced at Edna. Her lips moved silently, forming the words to a Hail Mary. I grasped the doorknob and pulled the door shut before Edna could see more. Before she could see what I wished I hadn't.