When we reached the hotel, we found Savannah snoring. I quietly set the tape recorder on her nightstand, spread the photos across the bed, and started for the door. “Aren’t you going to stick around to see what happens?” asked Granny.
“I know what’s going to happen, Granny,” I whispered. “You turn on the tape. You’re already dead.”
It wasn’t long before Savannah’s shrieks registered about seven point five on the Richter scale, which was nothing compared to the intensity she hit when she saw Langston. I almost felt sorry for him. Savannah’s rage was a lot to endure with a hangover as big as his ego.
At Granny’s insistence we left Langston cowering before Savannah and returned to the St. James Building to thank Monty. The edifice lay crumpled, reduced to dusty rubble. Experts had blown the old girl’s underpinnings, collapsing her safely on top of herself. I watched workmen hauling away chunks of her with heavy equipment. Granny had disappeared.
Suddenly she burst through the sidewalk. “Dallas, look!”
“Would you stop that!” I said, much too loud.
People stared. I smiled and moved aside.
“The foundation is exposed! Monty’s right there!” Granny shoved my face to the gap, leaned through the fence, and pointed. “If they’d just chip away at that corner, they’d find him.”
I tried the teeth talk again. “They’re not chipping anything, Granny. They’re knocking hell out of it.”
“They can’t do that. They’ll pulverize him. He’ll never get a decent burial.”
The workman thought I was crazy, but for a hundred bucks he didn’t care. He stopped laughing when he removed a chunk of concrete and brushed away some soil and Monty’s skull stared back at him.
That was my cue to disappear. I wasn’t hanging around to explain how a ghost told me about Monty.
All was right with the world. Mother began systematically returning wedding gifts. Granny was so ecstatic she spent most of the time bouncing around the ceiling upside-down.
In order to soothe her frazzled nerves and mend her broken heart, Savannah had gone on the would-be honeymoon cruise with Nana Nelle in attendance. That allowed Grandpa to puff his way into oblivion with all the cigars that Nana wouldn’t let him touch when she was around.
Langston dropped by to bid me farewell. (Wasn’t that sweet?) He had the strangest idea I was somehow responsible for Savannah’s current mood. He handed me a newspaper. “What do you know about this?”
“It says they received an anonymous note with words cut from old newspapers, saying that the bones in your old building belonged to one Monty McDougal.”
“It says my great-grandfather shot him.”
“Chill out, Langston. They can’t execute your great-grandfather. He’s already dead. The police aren’t remotely interested.”
“The media is interested.”
“So it seems.”
“Perhaps you’ve never realized how well I know some of your employer’s most important clients, Dallas.”
“Thanks for your concern, but not to worry. I have some great photos. If I run into cash flow problems, I can always part with a few to the National Enquirer.”
Langston paled right through his tan.
Just in case he might be worried about my physical safety, I also assured him that I had a friend who would take good care of those photos should anything unforeseen befall my person.
The next day Monty’s elderly daughter claimed his remains, and I feel certain that Monty has gone on to his reward. Granny, on the other hand, came home with me, and now she says she can’t depart for the next world from any place other than Donner House. “I might miss Rhett.”
If I ask her why she didn’t just go back with Mother and Nana and Grandpa, she ignores me.
In the meantime, life with Granny Grace is somewhat akin to taking up housekeeping on a rollercoaster. I never know when she’s going to pop up between my nose and my date’s.
I just hope that, when I finally get some time off to take Granny back to Donner House, Great-grandpa Rhett will be waiting with open arms. Otherwise I have this chilling notion that Granny just might hang around until I go through the Pearly Gates with her.