Arkansastraveler, p.1
arkansastraveler, page 1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Note from Author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Arkansas Traveler
A BERKLEY PRIME CRIME Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2001 by Earlene Fowler
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
For information address:
The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 0-7865-1730-1
A BERKLEY PRIME CRIME BOOK®
BERKLEY Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
First edition (electronic): October 2001
Berkley Prime Crime Books by Earlene Fowler
FOOL’S PUZZLE
IRISH CHAIN
KANSAS TROUBLES
GOOSE IN THE POND
DOVE IN THE WINDOW
MARINER’S COMPASS
SEVEN SISTERS
ARKANSAS TRAVELER
FOR JUDITH PALAIS,
Whose editorial talents
are only outweighed by her matchless
grace and kindness
and
FOR DEBORAH SCHNEIDER,
whose agenting abilities and steady good sense
are a balm and help to many
To both of you I offer
my deepest respect and affection
Many people helped me during the course of writing this book. My sincere thanks to each of them:
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God. —Psalm 25:1–2
To Clare Bazley, Veronica Carrillo, Tina Davis, Karen Gray, Jo Ellen Heil, Christine Hill, Jo-Ann Mapson, Pam Munns;
And always, a huge hug of gratitude to my husband, Allen—my best friend, the love of my life, forever and ever, amen.
Not much is known about the Arkansas Traveler quilt pattern. It is a fairly old pattern, most likely dated by quilt historians through its name. “Arkansas Traveler” was a popular folk song and skit whose origin has been traced back to the middle of the nineteenth century. It is usually credited to Colonel Sanford “Sandy” Faulkner, a Little Rock plantation owner who claimed the tale was inspired by a real conversation with an Arkansas backwoodsman. The Arkansas Traveler quilt pattern is actually more than one pattern—one is a spool-like design, the other is a four-pointed star made of diamonds. The patterns have also been called Secret Drawer, Travel Star, Spools, and Cowboy Star.
1
THE BIG-CHESTED man sitting at the crowded Waffle House counter wearing the red plastic hog-head hat grinned and winked at Elvia. Her full lips, painted an eerily similar shade of crimson, shot him a frown worthy of Queen Victoria. He chuckled and whispered something to his friend, who wore not only a hog hat, but a red-and-gray sweatshirt stating, BEWARE, I HAVE HOG MANIA.
“I’ve had enough,” Elvia said, pulling her beige cashmere cardigan closer around her. “You can take me home now.”
I laughed and eagerly perused the sticky plastic menu. It had been way too long since I’d eaten a gut-busting Waffle House breakfast. When we pulled out of Little Rock’s airport parking lot, my first glimpse of the towering black-and-yellow Waffle House sign caused me to cajole my friend into the restaurant’s pure plastic interior. Waffle House restaurants were a Southern staple, something of a cross between a Denny’s and a donut shop. I loved their unadorned, stick-to-your-ribs, grease-is-good workingman’s food. Truth be told, there were cold mornings fixing fence in San Celina when I’d trade my best broke-in Justin boots for a mess of their hash browns.
“We just landed an hour ago,” I said. “Give Arkansas at least twenty-four hours before you hightail it for the hills.”
“Benni, we are sitting in a restaurant, the term loosely applying, being gawked at by grown men wearing plastic pig faces on their heads. Need I say more?” She grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and irritably scrubbed at a dried egg spot on the table. “I can’t believe I agreed to come with you.”
“Elvia, it’s October. Hog hats are a fashion statement this time of year. No one looks twice at anyone wearing one. It’s football season, and they’re probably still high from yesterday’s triumph over ’Bama.”
“What’s a bama?”
“University of Alabama. The Arkansas Razorbacks kicked their Crimson Tide butts 27 to 6. The tide is ebbin’, and I can’t wait to lord it over Amanda.” I stirred my coffee, licked my dented spoon, then pointed it at her. “Even the most sophisticated Little Rock executives wear their hog hats with pride.” I didn’t dare let on that her beloved Emory, of the Perry Ellis suits and Hugo Boss ties, my own dear cousin who we were about to see in the next few hours, had a deluxe, custom-made hog hat that he treasured and wore to games and football parties without an ounce of embarrassment. The eyes lit up and glowed red when he pressed a hidden button. He was the envy of all his equally fanatic Razorback friends. “Besides, you said you wanted to see Emory on his home turf before your relationship went any further. Razorback football is a muy grande part of his turf. But I promise it’s not the only thing. You’ll love Sugartree.” I gave her a reassuring smile.
She rolled her dark brown eyes, not believing me a moment.
“Then you love Emory. That should cover a multitude of fashion sins.”
Her stiff expression softened, corroborating my words. It had only been in the last month that she’d finally been able to admit she was in love with my fifth cousin, who was more like a brother to me. The day she admitted she cared for him, that their relationship had “possibilities,” he burst into my office at the Josiah Sinclair Folk Art museum, where I worked as curator, and danced me around the room singing “Goin’ to the Chapel . . .”
Emory had been in love with Elvia for twenty-four years, since the summer he was eleven and I was twelve. He had come to visit my family on our ranch outside San Celina on the Central Coast of California to heal from his mother’s recent death. Twenty-three years later, he’d moved back out West specifically to woo and win her hand in marriage. After a year of persistence, it looked like he was finally in the homestretch. Though she didn’t know it, the first month he came to San Celina he’d bought a two-carat, emerald-cut, platinum-set, blue diamond engagement ring. At thirty-six, I was finally going to be a matron of honor in my best friend’s wedding. If everything went as planned, that is.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” she repeated, smiling this time. “But it does feel as if he’s been gone for weeks, not days.” For Elvia, that was as close as she was going to get to a confession of undying love and devotion to a man.
Emory had come to Sugartree three days earlier to help our great-aunt Garnet, Uncle WW, and his daddy, Boone Littleton, get ready for Sugartree Baptist Church’s Homecoming festivities. Besides experiencing the beautiful state of Arkansas for the first time, Elvia was going to her first church homecoming, which is basically like a huge family reunion. Every person who’s ever been a member of the church (including those who left under less than stellar circumstances . . . homecomings were supposed to be a time of all-encompassing and retroactive forgiveness) comes back and catches up with those who stayed. Homecomings usually took place about once every ten years, and this year was a particularly special one since it was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the church.
“He’s called me four times a day since he left,” Elvia said, trying unsuccessfully to hide her pleased expression. Ideas for silly bridal shower games started swirling around my head.
“Men in love, they’re something else.” I sighed, remembering that intense time when you first discover you’re in love. Gabriel Ortiz, my own very sexy, blue-eyed second husband, could still inspire that longing in me, even after two years together.
Our waitress, a Waffle House classic in black pants and maroon apron with a wide cheerful smile and champagne-blond hair sprayed as stiff as our plastic menus, sidled up to our table.
“What’ll it be, girls?” she asked, gazing curiously at Elvia. There was no doubt Elvia was going to stand out in a state where the two major cultural groups were African-American and Anglo. Drop-your-jaw gorgeous and elegant as a Town and Country fashion ad in her cashmere sweater set and black wool pants, she was also the only dark brown skin in the cafe. From my trips as a child, I knew there were not an overwhelming number of Hispanics in Arkansas, and those who lived here tended to keep to t hemselves. Not for the first time did I wonder how the primarily white and black population of Sugartree was going to react to my best friend.
We gave the waitress our orders, and she yelled out, “Double order—scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, diced, and peppered. And one piece of toast.” She gave Elvia another curious look. “Hon, are you sure you don’t want anything else? Why, that little ole piece of bread wouldn’t make a maggot fat.”
Elvia’s upper lip twitched in horror at the woman’s graphic word picture. “Thank you, no. The toast will be fine. Butter on the side, please. What type of herbal teas do you carry?”
I snickered behind my plastic menu.
The waitress’s mouth twisted in a crooked smile. “I’m sorry, ma’am, all’s we have is Lipton.”
Elvia gave a small sigh. “All right, then, please just bring me some fresh-squeezed orange juice, low pulp. Thank you.”
“Excuse me?” the waitress said, her pencil frozen over her order pad. “Is she serious?”
“As a funeral,” I said, giving her an apologetic grin. “Just bring her the Lipton. And an extra plate, please. We’ll share my hash browns.”
“Over my dead body,” Elvia said when the waitress was out of earshot. “And what was all that she yelled about your potatoes?”
“Scattered means hash browns. Smothered is onions, covered is cheese, chunked is ham, topped is chili, diced is tomatoes, and peppered is jalapeño peppers. I ordered the peppers in honor of your Mexican heritage.” I grinned at her.
She grimaced back. “Do they come with a side of Tagamet? The toast will be fine.”
“Emory loves Waffle Houses.”
She glanced around the brown-and-orange decor, shifting uncomfortably in the molded plastic bench seat. Metal ashtrays sat proudly on every table. Practical round globe lights dangled over every booth. The air inside was so cold condensation rolled down the windows in long decorative drips in an effort to combat the often still-muggy Arkansas mid-October weather. It was standing-room-only at the counter this late-afternoon hour with men sporting watermelon-sized stomachs, gimme caps jammed on their heads advertising everything from Ozark’s Best hog feed to Wal-Mart to Bubba Paul’s Pulled Pork BBQ to Napa Auto Parts.
“Then let’s hope they never covet the California market,” she said.
Just as I’d almost finished my double order of hash browns, even convincing Elvia to take a bite or two (“You make me eat menudo every year,” I reminded her), the hog hat men stopped briefly at our table.
“Woo Pig Soieee!” The man in the sweatshirt gave the official Razorback call. “Here you go, ladies.” He tossed a red-and-white lapel button on our table.
“Go, Hogs,” I replied with a smile. He touched the rim of his hog hat and dipped his head.
Elvia picked up the button, frowning at the backs of the laughing men. It said, “Hogs Smell Good.”
“¡Ay!” She closed her eyes for a second. “I want to go home.”
“It’s going to be fine,” I said, taking the button from her hand and pinning it on my T-shirt. “You’re going to have a ball.”
“¡Ay!” she moaned, then crossed herself and muttered a quick Hail Mary.
2
WE CLIMBED BACK into my rented Ford Explorer and started driving north. Sugartree, a small town of about five thousand or so, was an hour north of Little Rock. Late-afternoon shadows clung to the pine and black gum trees that lined the highway. Always the first trees to signal fall, the black gum leaves had already started turning a glossy deep carmine. I rolled down my window and inhaled a deep breath. It had been ten years since I’d been back to Arkansas. That trip I was twenty-six and married to Jack Harper, my childhood sweetheart and late first husband. Though the memory of driving on this road with him wasn’t as painful as it might have been if I didn’t have Gabe in my life, the smell of the piney woods did cause a twinge of sadness as I remembered the three weeks Jack and I had spent here. I mentally nudged that feeling away and recalled instead my earlier summers here with Dove. Some of my best childhood memories involved Sugartree, including my first kiss behind the Dairy Queen when I was twelve years old. I pressed down on the accelerator in my eagerness to see Sugartree again.
“When did Gabe say he could get away?” Elvia asked, looking pointedly at the speedometer. I eased up on the gas pedal.
“He has a meeting tomorrow with his department heads, then he’s taking Scout out to the ranch and catching a ride with a friend down to L.A. He’s going to spend Monday night there, then fly in Tuesday.”
“When’s your father coming?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, he’s not. Arturo’s the only person he trusts to watch the ranch, and he had to drive down to Mexico because his mama’s sick. Daddy said it didn’t matter, that he didn’t have any great desire to see Arkansas again. Personally, I think he’s relieved. There’s a lot of memories of my mother in Sugartree.” My mother died of breast cancer thirty years ago when I was six years old, and my father had never remarried, instead pouring his whole life into our cattle ranch outside San Celina. I’d been raised by him and his mother, my gramma Dove, who’d moved out from Arkansas right before my mother died.
“How long has Dove been here?”
“She and Isaac drove out about a week and a half ago. I got another frantic phone call from her last night. She and Aunt Garnet started squabbling the first day she arrived and haven’t stopped. Apparently there’s a ruckus going on with Sugartree Baptist Church because of talk about a merger with another church. Some people aren’t happy about it. But, according to Dove, attendance has dropped drastically in the last few years with young people moving down to Little Rock or leaving Arkansas altogether. The only financial hope Sugartree Baptist has is joining with another church. The other Baptist church is also having attendance problems and is losing the lease on their building. It’s going to be razed to build a motel and cafe. And, surprise, surprise—Aunt Garnet and Dove view the merger quite differently. Dove is a lifetime member, so she gets a vote, which irritates some people, specifically her sister.”
“So what’s the problem? Sounds like a merger is the perfect solution.”
I glanced over at her. “You don’t know Baptists. They are the most fiercely independent people there are. Not to mention hardheaded. Changing a Baptist’s mind once it’s set is like whittling steel.” I gave a half-hearted laugh. “I can say that ’cause I grew up one. But that’s not the real problem.”
“What is?”
“To put it plain and simple, the church down the road is African-American, and that doesn’t sit well with a lot of old-timers in both churches.”
Her sculpted eyebrows came together in a small scowl. “Oh, come on, Benni. This is the nineties.”
“And this is the South. Some white people are still annoyed they lost the Civil War or, as some of them call it, the War of Northern Aggression.”
“So I imagine Cinco de Mayo is not a holiday they celebrate with great enthusiasm.” Only someone who knew her as well as I did would hear the almost imperceptible catch in her voice.
I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, mi amiga. Anyone who treats you with any disrespect will have Emory and me to contend with. And you know how creatively evil he and I can be when we put our heads together.”
She pushed a strand of smooth black hair behind her ear. “I’m not worried.” The apprehensive glint in her eyes said otherwise.
A flood of love and protectiveness for my friend welled up inside me. I so wanted things to work out between her and my cousin. I knew that the differences in their backgrounds were a very real obstacle, just as it was and still is for Gabe and me, but I also truly believed that love was greater than any differences, greater than any prejudice. I refused not to believe it.
“Wait’ll you meet Emory’s daddy,” I said. “He’s a character and a half. It’s good you like chicken.”
