Doing It at the Dixie Dew by Ruth Moose Page A

funerals.”
    I had gotten a degree in art education and signed up to teach at a school in St. Tomsbury, Maine, where I met and moved in with Ben Johnson, a green-eyed bookshop clerk who read his wares, worried about energy conservation, world hunger, nuclear waste, and wanted to live in the jungles of Brazil because they were supposed to resemble the early days of the Earth. The bookshop lost more money every month and he kept denying it, emotionally and physically. If we talked, we fought, so Ben Johnson was reading something his every waking minute. I got tired of shouldering the whole load for someone who didn’t know that responsibility begins at your own kitchen table. When Verna Crowell called me to say that Mama Alice had fallen, was in the Raleigh hospital unconscious and would probably have to go to a nursing home, I came home to visit and stayed. I slept in my old bed, woke to the walls of my childhood and wanted them back. The week my grandmother died, I wrote for Ben Johnson to ship my things. They came two weeks later and I was surprised at how neatly fifteen years of my life fit into a dozen medium-sized boxes.
    Ethan Drummond hadn’t charged me a cent for settling Mama Alice’s estate. After the nursing home bills were paid, there was little left. After the fall, Mama Alice had required around-the-clock skilled nursing care, and it didn’t come cheap. I wanted her to have the best. She deserved it, and if it meant there was nothing left but the house and its contents then I would find a way to work things out.
    There had never been a question in my mind that Mama Alice fell. Until that second little note landed in my life. There was no question now, just a nagging “what if?” Sometimes the words seemed to stand just behind my shoulder and whisper loudly in my ear. I tried to brush them away.
    Ethan opened the door. “You-all can come on in now. I’m short a secretary this morning, so you’ll have to excuse things.”
    The lawyer Kingswood Heyman sat huffed up and hulking in a leather wing chair. He smiled slightly at Miss Lavinia’s cousin and gave a half wave with one hand, as if he’d really like to dismiss all of us.
    Scott stood. I took an old wooden chair that faced Ethan’s cluttered desk. I’d never seen it when it wasn’t at least a hundred papers deep in stacks and folders that slid and leaned, stuck out sideways in all sizes and colors.
    â€œSeems Mr. Heyman and his client are a little worried about some … er … missing property of Miss Lavinia Lovingood.” Ethan didn’t look at us; instead he fumbled with papers.
    At last, I thought, maybe we can find out what all the fuss has been about. That would be a relief. I’d been accused of murder in an offhanded way, searched in an unconventional way. And I didn’t know a darn thing about either or anything that was going on.
    â€œExactly what?” Scott asked. “What are they looking for?”
    â€œMiss Lavinia”—Kingswood Heymen stood, loomed rather, in front of us—“traveled this time with some of her jewelry. I won’t be specific, except to say it can’t be found. Not with her luggage, nor her handbag, and it’s not in her car. Stands to reason it was stolen, and you wouldn’t be the first innkeeper to let a sleeping person be relieved of some of their valuables, and, in Miss Lavinia’s case … her life.”
    Scott sprang at Heyman then and grabbed his lapels to pull him face-to-face.
    â€œStop,” I said. “Stop.”
    Ethan pulled Scott away. “Son, there’s no need for that. He’s got no proof.”
    â€œExcept the missing pearls,” the cousin piped up.
    â€œPearls?” I asked.
    â€œAmong other things,” Heyman said. “Family pieces acquired over a lifetime. They won’t be hard to trace.” He eyed me with a hard, unmoving stare and brushed his