He leaned against the ancient refrigerator and crossed his ankles. "I think it"s quite possible your aunt destroyed it."
"No way. It was her most prized possession. Why would she?"
"She refused to share the painting during her lifetime. Why would she want to share it after her death? And not to put too fine a point on it, why would she share it with a niece she considered a bit of a tart?"
"Because she believed in family, that"s why."
He picked up the box of doggie treats she"d just dropped. "What"s this?"
"I"m poor. They"re nutritious." She s.n.a.t.c.hed them away and tried not to brush against him as she put the c.o.ke in the refrigerator.
"b.u.g.g.e.r. That dog showed up the same time you did. He"s yours, isn"t he?"
"Believe me, I"m not proud of it." She set the c.o.ke on the top shelf.
"You told me to call the pound."
She was pleased to hear a note of outrage in his voice. "We"re all ent.i.tled to our fantasies."
"If you dislike the dog so much, why do you have him?"
She knelt down to put the doggie treats under the sink. "Because Gordon was Emmett"s, and n.o.body else will take him. I tried to give him away, but he has a personality disorder."
"Rubbish. He"s a splendid dog."
"He"s just sucking up."
Apparently he decided she"d had enough fun because he began wandering around the kitchen, inspecting the gla.s.s-fronted cabinets and the old appliances. The china k.n.o.b on the bread box came off in his hand. He smiled as he examined it. "It"s unfortunate that you"re having such a hard time finding work."
"Now don"t you go worrying that arrogant big head about it." Her knit top rode up as she stretched to put a bag of chips on the top shelf. She knew he noticed because it took him a few beats too long to pick up the thread of the conversation.
"I almost feel sorry for you," he said. "You have a dog you don"t like, no one will give you a job, and you"re broke."
"On the other hand, I still have my charm."
He propped a shoulder against the wall and tossed the china k.n.o.b from one hand to the other. "I believe I mentioned that I might have a job for you. Are you desperate enough yet?"
She nearly choked on her spit. "I figured you were funnin" me."
"I"m fairly certain I"ve never funned anyone."
"My mistake. Does the job involve letting you feel me up again?"
"Would you like it to?" The way his eyelids fell to half-mast told her she wasn"t the only critter around who knew something about playing games.
"I"d worry so much about frostbite." Curiosity overcame her need to dish out the c.r.a.p. "What did you have in mind?"
He inspected the bread box, then took his time s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the k.n.o.b on while she held her breath. When he was finally satisfied, he turned back to her, his eyes shrewd. "I need a housekeeper."
"A housekeeper?"
"Someone who keeps house."
"I know what the word means. Why are you offering the job to me?"
"Because it"s more temptation than I can resist. The cherished daughter of Frenchman"s Bride forced to sweep its floors and serve on bended knee the man she tried to destroy. The Brothers Grimm as interpreted by Colin Byrne. Delicious, yes?"
"The minute I find Tallulah"s butcher knife, you"re dead." She jerked open the nearest drawer.
He took his time moving out of stabbing range into the living room. "On the practical side...maintaining Frenchman"s Bride is nearly a full-time job, and it"s cutting too deeply into my writing. This would be six days a week, from seven in the morning until after dinner. Long hours and, it goes without saying, each one as difficult as I can possibly make it."
"Where the h.e.l.l is that knife?"
"You"ll answer the phone, take care of grocery shopping and simple meal preparation, although I suppose that will be beyond you. The household bills have to be organized, the mail sorted, laundry done. I want an efficiently run household with absolutely no effort on my part. Do you think you could manage that?"
He made no effort to hide his smug contempt, and she told herself she wasn"t this desperate yet. Except she was.
He named a salary that lifted her spirits, and she shot into the living room. "I"ll take it! You mean for a day, right?"
From across the room, Colin watched Sugar Beth"s entire face light up and knew he should feel like a cad. He didn"t, of course. He hadn"t felt better since the day she"d arrived. "Don"t be foolish." He gazed down his nose at her. "That"s for the entire week."
She looked as though she was choking, and he didn"t try to hide his smile. The idea of offering her a job had come to him that day at the depot. He"d had time to think about it since then, but until he"d seen her standing on the curb in those tight jeans, cell phone pressed to her ear, looking like a very expensive hooker, he"d rejected the idea as far more trouble than she was worth. Then the wind had caught her blond hair and sent it streaming behind her head like an advertising banner. She looked so untouched by the harm she"d caused, and right then he"d changed his mind.
He didn"t plan to destroy her, but he b.l.o.o.d.y well intended to see some flesh wounds, or, at the very least, a few honest tears of regret. Even a forgiving person would have to agree that he deserved more than he"d gotten so far. Putting that chain across her driveway had been like going after an elephant with a peashooter. This, on the other hand, should do the job right.
She tightened her grip on the chair, still dazed by the insulting salary he"d offered her. "No human being could possibly be that cheap."
He regarded her imperiously. "Don"t forget you"ll be eating my food, doubtless using my telephone. Then there"s the miscellaneous pilfering one expects from the help." Her blue eyes snapped like pompoms. "Just to prove I"m not unreasonable, I"ll take the chain off the driveway." He paused as inspiration struck. "And, naturally, I"ll provide the uniform allowance."
"Uniform!"
Oh, yes. Having her slink around his house in tight pants and seductive tops would be too much of a distraction. Just watching her put away groceries had tested his self-restraint: the stretch of those long legs, the four inches of rib cage that had shown when she"d reached for the top shelf. This was the downside of being male. His body didn"t recognize poison, even when his mind knew it was there.
"You"ll be a housekeeper," he said. "Of course you"ll need a uniform."
"In the twenty-first century?"
"We"ll discuss the details on your first day."
She clenched her small, straight teeth. "All right, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. But you"re buying the dog food."
"My pleasure. I"ll expect you tomorrow at seven." He began to leave, but he still wasn"t quite satisfied. He needed to make absolutely certain she understood exactly how things would be, and he searched his mind until he found one last nail to hammer in her coffin.
"Let yourself in the back door, will you?"
Colin Byrne"s housekeeper! Sugar Beth stomped around the carriage house until Gordon got so aggravated he clamped his jaws around her ankle and refused to let go until he was sure she knew he meant business. She bent down to examine the skin, but he was too wily. "One of these days, fatso, you"re going to leave marks, and then you"re out of here."
He lifted his leg and licked himself.
She stalked upstairs hoping a good long soak would calm her down. The bathroom had a claw-footed tub and a single window with a yellowed shade. She dropped her clothes on the old-fashioned black-and-white honeycomb tiles, clipped her hair on top of her head, and tossed some ancient lily of the valley bath salts in the water. As she settled in, she tried to look on the positive side.
She"d already combed every inch of the depot, the carriage house, and the studio, and she only had one place left to look. Frenchman"s Bride. There was nowhere else for Tallulah to have hidden the painting. But why hadn"t she removed it before Byrne had moved in? Unless she"d been too ill by then.
Lincoln Ash had arrived in Parrish during the spring of 1954. Until then, he"d been living in a cold-water flat in Manhattan and hanging out with the equally impoverished Jackson Pollock at the Cedar Bar in Greenwich Village. The established art community had sneered at the work of "the dribblers," as they tagged them, but the public had begun to take notice, including Sugar Beth"s grandmother, who considered herself a patron of the avant-garde. She"d agreed to provide him with room and board for three months, a studio where he could work, and a small stipend. In return, she"d have bragging rights as the first woman in northern Mississippi with her own artist in residence. Griffin had been sixteen at the time, and he loved telling people that he"d learned to smoke cigars and drink good whiskey from Lincoln Ash.
The water had nearly reached the rim of the tub, and Sugar Beth turned off the faucet with her foot. She thought of Frenchman"s Bride with its deep closets and odd-shaped cubbyholes. More enticing, the secret cupboard in its attic...Her grandfather had ordered it built "in case those fools in Washington ever decide to bring back Prohibition." Did Byrne know about that cupboard? Tallulah certainly had.
She wouldn"t consider his theory that Tallulah had destroyed the painting, but as she sank deeper into the tub, an equally alarming thought hit her. Byrne had bought the house. Did that include its contents? What if he owned the painting now? She knew nothing about property rights, and she couldn"t afford to hire a lawyer. If she found the painting, she"d simply have to get it out of the house without tipping him off, which wasn"t an enticing proposition. But she"d risk that and a lot more because selling the Ash painting would finally give her the money she needed to keep Delilah at Brookdale. As for supporting herself, she"d go back to Houston and wait tables until she could get a real estate license.
She didn"t fall asleep until well after midnight, and then a nightmare awakened her. She lay there for a moment, skin damp, heart thumping, the dream still with her. Usually she found Gordon"s snores irritating, but now the raspy sounds coming from the bottom of the bed were a comforting reminder that she wasn"t entirely alone in the world.
She"d dreamed about Winnie again. Not the sophisticated woman she"d seen in the antique store last week, but the insecure girl who"d hidden behind her hair and stolen what Sugar Beth wanted the most.
Daddy, you were a real jerk, you know that?
She could never recall exactly how she"d come by the knowledge of her father"s other family-bits and pieces absorbed here and there, snippets of conversations, glimpses of her father in places he shouldn"t have been. Eventually she"d come to understand some of the subtler dynamics of his relationships with the two women in his life. Diddie was Griffin"s mercurial un.o.btainable Scarlett O"Hara, Sabrina his nurturing, loving Melanie Wilkes; but her earliest memories were merely of her father walking away.
"Watch me do a cartwheel, Daddy."
"Not now, Sugar Beth. I"m busy."
"You"re coming to my dance recital, aren"t you?"
"I don"t have time. I have to work so I can pay for those shoes you"re scuffing in the dirt."
She"d approach him with a book to read, only to have him stand up before she could crawl in his lap. He"d walk off to make a phone call just as she brought him a painting she"d done to please him. She suspected flirting came so easily to her because of the a.r.s.enal of little-girl tricks she"d used to get her father"s attention. None of them worked.
She"d been in third grade when she"d discovered she wasn"t her father"s only daughter, and it had all happened because of his disapproval over her schoolwork.
"You got a C in arithmetic? You have the brain of a flea, Sugar Beth. One more thing you inherited from your mother."
He didn"t understand how torturous school was for her. All that sitting when she wanted to giggle and dance, to jump rope with Leeann and play Barbies with Heidi. To decorate cupcakes with Amy and lip-synch Bee Gee songs with Merilynn. One day after he"d made her cry with another lecture about how stupid she was, she came to the conclusion that her bad grades were the reason he didn"t love her.
For six whole weeks she"d tried her hardest to change that. She sat still in cla.s.s and finished every bit of her boring, boring homework. She listened to the teacher instead of talking, stopped drawing happy faces all over her workbooks, and, in the end, she"d gotten straight A"s.
By the time she brought her report card home that April afternoon, she was nearly sick with excitement. Diddie fussed over her, but it wasn"t Diddie"s approval she craved, and as she waited for her father to come home, she imagined how he"d smile at her when he saw what she"d done, how he"d swing her up in his arms and laugh.
"What a smart daughter I have. I"m so proud of you, my Sugar Baby. Give your daddy a big kiss."
She was too excited to eat dinner. Instead, she sat on the veranda and waited for his car. When it grew dark, and he still hadn"t appeared, Diddie told her it didn"t matter and made her go to bed.
But it did matter. On Sat.u.r.day morning when she awakened to discover he"d already left the house, she grabbed her precious report card-that magic pa.s.sport to her father"s love-and sneaked out of the house. She could still see herself flying across the yard to her pink banana-seat bicycle and tossing her report card in the basket. She jumped on her bike and took off down Mockingbird Lane, sneakers pumping, her lucky horseshoe barrettes warm against her scalp, her heart singing.
Finally, my daddy"s going to love me!
She no longer remembered how she"d known where to find the house he sometimes stayed in with the other lady, or why she"d thought he"d be there that morning, but she remembered the tidiness of the brick bungalow, the way it sat back from the street with the curtains drawn over the front windows. She"d left her bike in the driveway behind his car, taken her report card from the basket, and raced for the front steps.
The faint sound of his voice coming from the back of the house stopped her. She turned toward the stockade fence that surrounded the tree-shaded yard and approached the partially opened gate, the report card clenched in her sweaty hands, a giddy smile taking over her face.
As she peeked through the gate, she saw him sitting in a big lawn chair in the middle of a flagstone patio. His yellow shirt was open at the collar, revealing the shiny tuft of dark hair there that she was never, ever allowed to pull. Her smile faded, and a creepy feeling came over her, like she had big spiders crawling up her legs, because he wasn"t alone. A second grader named Winnie Davis lay curled in his lap, her head against his shoulder, legs dangling, looking like she sat that way every day. He was reading a book to her, using funny voices, just like Diddie did when she read to Sugar Beth.
Spiders were crawling all over her now, even in her stomach, and she felt like she was going to throw up. Winnie laughed at one of his silly voices, and he kissed the top of her head. Without being asked.
The magic report card slipped from her fingers. She must have made some sort of sound because his head shot up and he saw her. He set Winnie aside and leaped to his feet. His heavy black eyebrows collided as he glowered at Sugar Beth. "What are you doing here?"
The words stuck in her throat. She couldn"t explain about the magic report card, about how proud he was supposed to be.
He stalked toward her, a short-legged, barrel-chested banty rooster of a man. "What do you think you"re doing? Go home right now." He stepped on the report card, lying unseen on the ground. "You aren"t ever to come here, do you understand me?" He grabbed her arm and dragged her back toward the driveway.
Winnie followed, stopping just outside the fence. Sugar Beth started to cry. "W-why was she sitting in your lap?"
"Because she"s a good girl, that"s why. Because she doesn"t go places where she"s not invited. Now get on your bike and go home."
"Daddy?" Winnie said from the fence.
"It"s all right, punkin"."
Sugar Beth"s stomach hurt so much she couldn"t bear it, and she gazed up at him through an ocean of tears. "Why"s she calling you that?"
He didn"t bother looking at her as he pulled her farther away from the house. "Don"t you worry about it."
Sobbing, she turned back toward Winnie. "He"s-he"s not your daddy! Don"t call him that!"
A swift, silencing shake. "That"s enough, Sugar Beth."
"Tell her not to call you that ever again!"
"Settle down right now, or you"ll get a spanking."
She"d pulled away from him then and hurled her small body down the drive, running past her pink banana-seat bicycle, out onto the sidewalk, sneakers thudding, her little girl"s heart exploding in her chest.
He didn"t come after her.
The years pa.s.sed. Sometimes Sugar Beth caught glimpses of Griffin in town with Winnie, doing all the things he never had time to do with her. Bit by bit, she began to understand how he could favor one daughter over the other. Winnie was quiet. She got good grades and loved history the same way he did. Winnie didn"t throw temper tantrums because he wouldn"t take her to Dairy Queen, or get dragged to the front door by the chief of police for underage drinking. And Winnie had certainly never given him heart failure her senior year because she"d skipped her period and thought she was pregnant with Ryan"s baby. No, perfect Winnie had waited until after Griffin died to do that. Most important of all, Winnie wasn"t Diddie"s daughter.
Sugar Beth hadn"t been able to punish Griffin for not loving her, so she"d punished Winnie instead.
Gordon stirred at the foot of the bed. Sugar Beth rolled to her side and tried to will herself back to sleep before the memories took her any farther down that dark path, but her mind refused to cooperate.
Senior year. The after-school poetry showcase Mr. Byrne had required his cla.s.ses to attend...
At the end of the performance, the stage had fallen into darkness, and two figures smeared with yellow fluorescent paint stepped into a dim puddle of black light. Stuart Sherman and Winnie Davis. Sugar Beth no longer remembered anything about the poem they"d dramatized. She only remembered that something made her turn toward the back of the auditorium, and there she saw Griffin standing under the exit sign. The father who"d been too busy last October to spend five minutes waiting on the courthouse steps so he could watch her ride through town on the back of Jimmie Caldwell"s vintage Mustang convertible with the homecoming crown on her head hadn"t been too busy to come see his other daughter recite poetry. She knew what she was going to do.
She lingered after the showcase with Ryan and some of his friends in the parking lot until enough time had pa.s.sed, then she announced that she needed to get the eyelash curler she"d left in her gym locker. The sound of the shower greeted her as she"d made her way inside the almost empty locker room. Winnie, with her yellow fluorescent face and neck, her painted arms and feet, was the only girl in the showcase who"d needed to clean up before she could go home. Sugar Beth worked quickly, and as she left the locker room, she envisioned the yellow paint washing down the drain and taking her father"s illegitimate daughter right along with it.
"Guess what," she"d announced to the boys as she returned to the parking lot. "The girls" locker room"s empty. Y"all"ve been threatening since soph.o.m.ore year to go in there. This"ll be your last chance before we graduate."
It hadn"t taken any persuading to get them to follow her: Deke Jasper, Bobby Jarrow, Woody Newhouse, and Ryan, of course, the most important person in her plan. Woody and Deke started scrambling for paper so they could slip notes through the vents in their girlfriends" gym lockers. They were making too much noise, and she shushed them. "Some of the teachers might still be around."