But just because she felt better about things didn't mean the house did. She had tried and tried to calm it all afternoon, but the removal of that wall had been traumatic. "It's cosmetic surgery," she explained. "That wall was a goiter. It hurts to have it removed, but you're glad it's gone. The room is beautifully proportioned now, and the windows are in just the right places on the wall."
She heard a sliding sound and turned to see Don's wrecking bar creeping toward the hall. "Stop it," she said. "He'll just find it anyway, and he'll think I moved it."
The wrecking bar stopped.
"I've got to look into this shower thing," she said. "I vaguely remember that cleanliness was next to godliness. But will it ruin the bounce in my hair?" She walked out of the room, up the stairs.
As soon as she left, the wrecking bar slid on out of the room and down the hall. And the workbench moved even closer to the cot, butting right up against it, sliding it an inch or so out of position. Then all was still in the parlor once again.
12
Garlic
The Weird sisters acted as if Don's coming over that afternoon were a visit from royalty. Well, to a point—presumably they wouldn't have had Prince Charles sit down in the kitchen with a cup of tea while he watched them prepare bread and a bean-and-bacon soup for that night's supper. But apart from the setting, they couldn't have fussed more over him or spoken more solicitously if he had been the prince himself. Don couldn't decipher their game, other than his certainty that they still hadn't given up hope of him abandoning his renovation of the Bellamy house.
"The secret," Miz Evelyn was saying, "is to use only a dash of seasoning, just the faintest hint of it. That way you don't smother the natural flavors of the stock and the vegetables."
"Miss Evvie," said Miz Judea, up to her elbows in bread dough, "will you be a dear and put away the flour and sugar bins for me so I have room to lay out the loaves?"
Miz Evelyn stepped away from the stove and picked up the two bins from the table. As she headed for the pantry, she went on with her commentary. "If I let Miss Judy here make the soup, she'd drown everything in garlic and peppers."
While Miz Evelyn was out of sight, Miz Judea rushed to the spice rack, grabbed a jar of garlic powder, popped off the shaker top and poured about a third of it into the soup. Then she replaced the top, set it back in its place on the rack, and returned to her bread before Miz Evelyn came back in from the pantry.
"Miss Judy's a wonderful cook," said Miz Evelyn, "but she has no subtlety."
Miz Evelyn stirred the soup pot, then lifted the wooden spoon to take a taste. "There," said Miz Evelyn. "Just the right amount of garlic. You can only just barely taste it."
"That's why Gladys likes Miss Evvie to make the soup," said Miz Judea. "Garlic makes her fart, the poor dear." She looked at Don with a steady gaze—did not so much as wink.
There is no untangling the complicated webs they weave in this house, he thought. Maybe it was time to get down to business. "You ladies told me that if I have any questions about that house..."
"Oh, we'll know the answer," said Miz Judea. "Or Gladys will, anyway."
"Well I was down in the cellar with the heating and plumbing contractor, and we noticed there was a break in the foundation behind the old coal furnace. It's all plugged up with rubble, but I wondered if maybe it was a root cellar or—"
"He found it!" crowed Miz Evelyn with delight.
"Took you long enough," said Miz Judea.
"Well I wasn't looking for it," said Don. "What is it?"
Miz Evelyn's voice got low and conspiratorial. "A rum runner's tunnel."
"That house was a speakeasy during Prohibition," said Miz Judea. "They'd sneak the booze up the tunnel from that gully out back."
"And whenever the cops raided the place," said Miz Evelyn, "they'd sneak the city council out through the tunnel."
The two of them broke up laughing at the memory.
"Oh, those were the days, those were the days," said Miz Judea.
"You were here then?"
Miz Evelyn answered him. "Both of us came here in '28. Shared a room upstairs."
"The one you been tearing apart," said Miz Judea. "Feels so good."
"You lived in a speakeasy?" asked Don.
"We weren't in the speakeasy part," said Miz Judea.
"We were in the bordello part," said Miz Evelyn.
Don couldn't think of a thing to say about that. But his silence was an answer all the same. Miz Judea laughed and hooted, while Miz Evelyn clucked her tongue and shook her head.
"What's so shocking?" said Miz Judea. "We were ladies of the night. It got me out of a sharecropper's cabin and it got Miz Evvie down from the mountain."
"Sorry," said Don. "I... you just don't look like..."
"He can't imagine us being young and pretty enough," said Miz Evelyn.
Judea slapped another loaf into shape and dropped it into a well-oiled pan. And another—slap slap slap slap slop and she slid the breadpan aside and pulled over the next.
"It was fun at first," said Miz Judea. "An adventure. All those men with money, clean-smelling. You got to remember where we were from. But when we got tired of it, lo and behold, the house wouldn't let us go. Prohibition ended and it became just an old whorehouse and the men got worse and worse and we were stuck. Then my young cousin Gladys came looking for me."
"It was Gladys who got us out," said Miz Evelyn.
"The house still holds onto us, though," said Miz Judea. "We could never get farther than this carriagehouse."
"Not for long," added Miz Evelyn.
"Once a strong house like that gets hold of you, it takes real power to get free. Gladys, now, she—"
Don set down his teacup. "Ladies, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but have you really been living next door to that house all these years because you believe it has some kind of magical hold over you?"
"Oh, he's an educated man," said Miz Evelyn, as if this were a well-known joke.
"I know, I know," said Miz Judea. "Young and skeptical."
So they were back to the mumbo-jumbo. Well, Don knew what he had come to find out—that gap in the cellar wall was a secret back door with a tunnel leading down to the gully. Someday it might be worth digging out the rubble and exploring it, but in all likelihood it had long since collapsed inside and what he really ought to do was seal it over so it didn't make a prospective buyer nervous. He pushed back his chair. "Thanks for answering my question, ladies. And for the tea."
Miz Evelyn was crestfallen. "Are you sure you won't stay for some of this soup?"
"No, sorry," said Don. "Too much garlic. Makes me fart."
Miz Evelyn looked shocked and offended. Out of the corner of his eye, Don caught Miz Judea's glare—she could no doubt cook a goose in flight with a look like that, and baste it, too. So Don grinned at Miz Evelyn and rose from the table. "I was joking, Miz Evelyn. I have no doubt your soup would be so good I'd eat it all and leave nothing for the two of you."
"Three," said Miz Judea, a bit of acid in her tone.
"Oh, Mr. Lark, you joker!" said Miz Evelyn. "What a caution!"
Don tipped his nonexistent hat to Miz Judea, then to Miz Evelyn. "Ladies, you are a constant marvel and I'm glad to have you as neighbors, even if only for a year."
Miz Evelyn giggled, and as he left Don heard her saying, "He makes a pretty speech, don't he, Miss Judy." He didn't hear Miz Judea's reply.
Don was hungry and he figured Sylvie must be, too. Whatever she'd been scrounging for food over the years, it was about time she stopped and got something decent. As long as she was his tenant, after a manner of speaking, he couldn't very well let her starve or risk food poisoning. So he drove down to the new standalone Chick-Fil-A on Wendover south of I-40 to buy a few dozen nuggets. Which wouldn't be as good as the Weird sisters' soup, maybe, but also wouldn't leave him beholden to anybody, which was just as important.