“Isn’t it a mess? I have to keep a trickle charger on the battery.”
I had to agree it was a sorry heap. Once bright red, the finish had faded over the years to a dull pink, and the chassis sat crookedly on four tires, all completely bald.
It took only a few minutes to load the boxes into the back of the truck-they were bulky but quite light-and lock up the house. Soon we were bouncing down the drive-the shock absorbers also belonged in a museum-and I kept looking through the rear window to make sure the boxes were still with us, hoping I’d used enough bubble wrap. As Connie turned right to follow the road into town, I slid sideways on the dry vinyl seats. No seat belts, either.
Just past the Baxter farm, the narrow road curved sharply right and widened into Church Street, named for St. Philip’s Episcopal nearly a half a mile away, at the stoplight where Church Street intersected with High. Church Street wound through a pleasant, tree-lined, residential neighborhood, dominated by large family houses built in the twenties and thirties. About halfway down, Connie slowed and pointed to a modest gray dwelling on our right, with a wraparound porch and neat white trim.
“That’s the Dunbars’,” she said.
A familiar truck was parked at the head of the drive, and behind it sat a black Lexus with Virginia plates. “Wonder who that is?” I asked. Connie shrugged.
At the stoplight Connie turned left on High. Just past the cemetery she spun the wheel sharply to the left and pulled into one of the unmarked parking spaces in front of Ellie’s Country Store.
I hadn’t been there for several years, but I was pleased to see that Ellie had made an effort to retain the old-fashioned cracker barrel atmosphere of the place. Outside, a wooden porch extended across the front of the building, decorated with turn-of-the-century farm implements, milk cans, and painted metal signs advertising Nu grape, Dad’s root beer, Norka ginger ale (Tastes Better!), Glendora coffee, and various brands of chewing tobacco. Inside, Ellie had added a wood-burning stove since the last time I had stopped by and had scattered a few solid-looking wooden crates about, sturdy enough for customers to sit on. Between two of the crates sat an old nail keg that served as a table for a well-worn chess set. A modest selection of groceries and sundries occupied shelves that ranged out to the right of the door, and on the left a counter ran the length of the room. Behind the counter double doors led to the kitchen. I heard the chink and clink of dishes and glasses being washed.
Ellie had an alcove in the back where she handled UPS. When we came in, she was standing there with a customer, weighing a large box.
“It’s going all the way to California, Mrs. Foster. That’s why it’s so expensive. They go by zones.”
Mrs. Foster, a scrawny woman wearing blue jeans and a turtleneck shirt, simply said, “Oh,” and opened up her wallet to extract two new ten-dollar bills.
We were almost up to the counter before Ellie noticed us. “Oh, hi, you two.”
“I’ve got some boxes for you, Ellie.”
“Okay. I’ll be with you in a minute.” She leaned over the counter and shouted toward the kitchen, “Bill! We need your help out here unloading some boxes!”
Bill, whom I took to be in his mid-twenties, appeared immediately. He wore khaki bermuda shorts, a T-shirt covered in food stains, and a five o’clock shadow. “No problem,” he grunted. A man of few words.
While Bill slapped back and forth in his cheap rubber sandals, helping Ellie and Connie get the boxes ready for UPS, I selected a bottled iced tea from one of the upright glass-fronted coolers standing near the window. I took it to the cash register just as a heavyset woman I assumed was Ellie’s daughter, Angie, emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel that she had tucked into the waistband of her jeans. She had Ellie’s unruly light brown hair, and I noticed a certain resemblance around the eyes and mouth.
“Hi, there. Can I help you?”
“I’m just waiting for my sister-in-law over there.” I pointed with my drink.
“Oh, you must be Hannah.” She squinted at me. “Sorry! I didn’t recognize you at first.”
I noticed her checking out my wig and decided I’d make it easy for her. “I’ve lost some weight lately.”
“Lucky you!” Angie, who had a good thirty pounds on her mother, gathered up a roll of fat at her waist and pinched it between her thumb and index finger. “I could stand to lose some myself.”
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to that. Darn right? I covered the silence by examining the candy bars and packs of gum displayed prominently near the cash register. I selected a Milky Way Dark, one of my vices, and laid it on the counter. “Want a candy bar, Connie?”
Connie didn’t even turn around. “After those doughnuts? Are you nuts?”
“Just having a fading spell. You work me too hard.”
“Why don’t you order us some lunch?”
Angie took our order for two crab cake sandwiches and a single order of fries on the side-they were for Connie-writing it down with a nubby pencil on a green order pad. She tore off the page and shoved it into the kitchen through a square window that had been cut in the wall, where Bill, who apparently served as cook as well as UPS assistant, picked it up.
While I gulped my iced tea, Angie rang up a bottle of dish soap and a box of raisin bran for a bearded sailor who looked as if he had just returned from a round-the-world cruise. After he left, letting the screen door bang shut behind him, she perched behind the counter on a tall stool.
“My mom tells me that you found that body yesterday.”
I nodded without taking my mouth from the bottle.
“Mom thinks it’s Katie Dunbar.”
“That’s what everyone thinks, Angie, but that’s because she’s the only person who ever went missing from Pearson’s Corner. It could certainly be somebody else, you know. Anybody could have dumped a body out here.”
“I hope it isn’t. Katie, I mean. I’d hate to think of her lying all alone down there in that cold, cold water.” She stared at her hands, which lay folded in her lap. “Course I’d hate to think of anyone ending up like that. But Katie… well, she was my best friend.”
“She was?”
“Oh, yes! We were on the cheerleading squad together. Everyone said we looked like twins.”
I studied this doughy young woman who was sliding into middle age far too early and tried to reconcile what I saw sitting before me with a perky blond youngster shaking pom-poms and shouting “Gimme a J, Gimme an O!” I couldn’t do it.
Angie began twisting the towel. “I still remember Katie at the homecoming dance. She was so happy! She couldn’t sit still. Just flying around the room in a gorgeous satin dress, blue like the sky. It cost the earth, too. Three hundred dollars! Katie showed me the receipt.” Her voice was a husky whisper, as if she were sharing a great secret. “She danced with all the guys on the basketball team, even though she came with Chip.” Angie reached behind her to rearrange a tin box of crackers that must have been cutting into her back.
“After she disappeared, I kept thinking about that night. Playing it over and over, trying to remember if I missed anything.” She leaned back against the shelves and closed her eyes. With one graceful hand, she beat out a slow, imaginary rhythm in the air. Suddenly her eyes snapped open, and she stared at me. “We had real bands then, you know, not disk jockeys like they have today who just sit on their duffs all night and play CDs.”