Angel and I extracted ourselves from the toolshed at the back of the garage, dusty and warm and fairly covered with cobwebs. The toolshed was an area I had overlooked during my house renovation. You could tell Mr. Julius had intended to use it often: There was pegboard lining the walls with hooks still protruding, and a workbench with a powerful fluorescent light overhead had been added. He had also altered the doors, apparently: They were extra-wide doors that swung back completely. Now it held some boxes of tools Martin had apparently not opened since he had been transferred to Chicago and lived in an apartment instead of a house. The boxes were keeping company with a lawnmower whose pedigree I could not figure out; perhaps it had been Jane Engle's. Assorted rakes, hoes, shovels, a sledgehammer, and an ax filled out our tool repertoire. Everything was grimy.
So, as I say, when Angel and I emerged, we weren't at our best. "Look at you, Roe!" Susu said in some amazement. "What on earth have you been doing?"
"Rearranging the garage," I said, not untruthfully. We had done a certain amount of straightening since we were in there already. "Susu, this is Angel Youngblood, a new arrival to Lawrenceton."
Susu said warmly, "We're so glad to have you here! I hope you like our little town. And if you don't have a church home yet, we'd just love to have you at Calgary Baptist."
I wished I had a camera tucked in my pocket. Angel's face was a picture. But underneath the gritty life she'd led in the past few years, Angel Dunn Youngblood was a true daughter of the South. She rallied. "Thank you. We like it here very much so far. And thanks so much for inviting us to your church, but right now Shelby and I are very interested in Buddhism." I turned to Susu in anticipatory pleasure.
"How fascinating!" she exclaimed, without missing a beat. "If you ever have a free Wednesday noon, first Wednesday in the month, we'd love to have you come speak at the Welcome to Town Luncheon."
"Oh. Thanks so much. Excuse me now, I'm expecting Shelby to come home to eat in half an hour or so." And Angel retired gratefully, bounding up the stairs to their apartment. I was relieved to see a little smile—a nonmalevolent smile—on her thin lips as she shut the door behind her.
"What an interesting woman," Susu said with careful lack of emphasis.
"She really is," I said sincerely.
"How on earth did she come to be living in your garage apartment?" We began to stroll toward the house. Susu looked pretty, and a few pounds heavier than she'd been the year before.
She'd just had her hair done in a defiant blond, and she was wearing sky blue polka-dotted slacks with a white shirt.
"Oh, her husband is a friend of Martin's."
"Is he any bigger than her?"
"A little."
"No children, I guess?"
"No ..."
"Because I hate to think what size baby they'd have."
I laughed, and we began to talk about Susu's "babies," Little Jim and Bethany. Bethany was heavily involved in tap dancing, and Little Jim, the younger by a couple of years, was up to his brown belt in Tae Kwan Do. "And Jimmy?" I asked casually. "How's he doing?" "We're going to family therapy," Susu said in the voice of one determined not to be ashamed. "And though it's early to tell, Roe, I really think it's going to do us some good. We just went along for too long ignoring how we were really feeling, just scraping the surface to keep everything looking good for the people around us. We should have been more concerned about how things really were with us."
What an amazing speech for Susu Saxby Hunter to have made. I gave her a squeeze around the shoulders. "Good for you," I said inadequately and warmly. "I know if you both try, it'll work."
Susu gave me a shaky smile and then said briskly, "Come on! Show me this dream house of yours!"
Susu's dream house was the one her parents had left her, the one her grandparents had built. No house would ever measure up to it in her sight, and she was fond of dismissing our friends' new homes in new subdivisions as "houses, not homes!" But she pronounced this house a real home. "Does it ever give you the creeps?" she asked with the bluntness of old friends. "No," I said, not surprised she'd asked. Old friends or not, quite a lot of people had asked me that one way or another. "This is a peaceful house. Whatever happened."
"I'll bet sometimes you just wonder where they are."
"You're right, Susu. I do. I wonder that all the time."
Susu gave a theatrical shudder. "I'm glad it's yours and not mine," she said.
"Can I smoke?"
"No, not inside. Let's sit out on the porch. I have one ashtray to go out there on the porch furniture."
There was now a swing attached to the roof of the porch, and some pretty outside chairs arranged in a circle including the swing. There were two or three small tables available, and I found an ashtray for Susu to use. While we sat and talked of this and that, Shelby Young-blood pulled into the driveway and waved as he emerged from his car. We waved back and he ran up the stairs to his apartment to his Angel.
"Wow, he is big," Susu commented. "Not a looker, is he?"
"I think he is," I said, surprising myself.
"And you're the woman married to Hunk of the Year."
"Shelby is attractive," I said firmly. "I may be married, but I'm not blind."
"All those acne scars!"
"Just make him look lived-in."
"Does Martin come home for lunch?"
"So far, no. But he's still catching up from the time we spent away."
"Jimmy had Rotary today. Let's go in the kitchen and scrounge around for lunch." We ate ham sandwiches and grapes and potato chips, and talked about my honeymoon and the latest meeting of the Ladies' Prayer Luncheon. My old friend Neecy Dawson had objected to the guest speaker's theology in loud, persistent terms, casting the ladies into a turmoil, and causing not a few of them to express the opinion it was time Neecy met God face to face. "She was a friend of Essie Nyland's, wasn't she?" I asked casually. "Neecy? Yep. Essie was a good friend of my grandmother's, too, outlived her by twenty years, I guess. Miss Essie died... what? Six years ago now, must be. Neecy's still going strong. She still knows everyone in this town, what they've done, and when they did it."
It struck me that I could have a profitable conversation with Miss Neecy. She'd told me of the arguments between the Zinsners when they built this house. It was that conversation that had given me the idea that there might be several hidey-holes the bodies of the Julius family could be in. That was the reason for the ground-zero search Angel and I were conducting. "You remember when the Julius family vanished?" I asked. I picked up Susu's empty plate and my own and carried them over to the sink, admiring my new stoneware as I did every time I looked at it. Earth tones in a southwestern pattern... why on earth I, a native Georgian, felt compelled to have southwestern dishes I do not know.
"Yes," Susu said. "I'd just had Little Jimmy. You were working at the library, I think you'd only been there a year, right?"
"Right. Over six years ago, now." We shook our heads simultaneously at Time's inexorable march.
Susu looked at her watch and gave a little shriek. "Woops! Roe! I was supposed to pick up old Mrs. Newman at the beauty parlor ten minutes ago! I'm sorry, I've got to run! I invited myself and then I stick you with the dishes," she wailed, and yanked her car keys out of her purse on her way out the front door. I stuck the dishes unceremoniously in the dishwasher, started our supper pork chops marinating in honey and soy sauce and garlic, and sat down to make one of those lists that were supposed to make me much more efficient.