Doing It at the Dixie Dew by Ruth Moose Page B

lapels and his shoulders, brushed away any traces he’d ever been touched. Finally, he shook himself like an unfriendly horse that had been petted.
    â€œI’ve known this young lady all her life,” Ethan said, “and her family before her. They’re as fine as they come. You could trust her with your life. Most certainly a handful of jewelry. She’d never touch it.”
    Heyman pushed the cousin toward the door. The poor man looked as if he were being pulled by an invisible rope, eyes bulging, heels dragging. “We’ll get this straightened out if I have to jerk all the skeletons out of all the closets in this Podunk place.” Heyman banged the door so hard the glass rattled.
    â€œSorry,” Ethan said. “That man can’t get what he wants and get away fast enough to suit me.”
    â€œEthan,” I started, “you know—”
    Ethan waved his hand in the air like he wanted to erase all that had gone on in this room in the last half hour. “You don’t have to tell me. I know you didn’t have anything to do with the old lady’s death, much less some assorted pieces of junk. I got a feeling Heyman is the kind who tries to create a cyclone to try to cover up some of his own mess.”
    Scott shook Ethan’s hand and I hugged him, smelling tobacco and the same scent of aftershave I remembered from childhood, feeling the same rough wool of his jacket against my face. “Take care,” I said.
    Ethan’s voice followed us down the hall as he waved us out. “Bye,” he said and then repeated what he’d said earlier, “You two be careful.”
    â€œI think he’s right,” Scott said. “People in this town have been lucky. They’ve trusted too long.”
    â€œMama Alice never locked the back door in her life,” I said later.
    â€œWhat about Verna? Some of the other neighbors?”
    â€œThey’ve always been in each other’s houses … just like their own. They’d be offended by a locked door. Think it was the snootiest, most unfriendly thing they’d ever seen.” I laughed. I thought of all the times Verna Crowell had poked her head in the back door and hollered, “Yoo-hoo, Alice,” and just come on in. If no one was home, Verna had been known to borrow eggs, sugar, a cake pan, a steam iron, whatever she needed, and then return it a few hours later, laughing she bet we hadn’t missed it. The whole neighborhood had had a “my house–your house” kind of arrangement. Not anymore.
    Scott dropped me off at the Dixie Dew, which seemed too quiet with Ida Plum gone for the day and no guests. It was almost dusk when I realized I hadn’t seen Sherman all day. I checked his favorite sleeping places, under the back steps, the sunny side of the garage, the swing glider on the front porch. Nowhere. The food I’d put in his bowl this morning hadn’t been touched. That definitely wasn’t like Sherman, who ate like some other cat growled behind him ready to snatch his dish away.
    I checked the shrubbery around the front hedges, calling, “Kitty, kitty!” as I went. Sherman was named after the Civil War general and Southern scourge, William Tecumseh Sherman. I could scold, “William Tecumseh, stop that,” and it usually worked. Right now, I just wanted to find the cat. I wondered if I yelled, “William Tecumseh, come here right now,” the cat would appear at my feet.
    When I’d checked out the grounds around the Dixie Dew I started down the street toward Littleboro Cemetery. Sherman and Robert Redford had been known to romp over and around tombstones, hide under cedars and pounce at each other. Sometimes I thought Robert Redford saw himself as another cat, one with longer ears and a short tail. That rabbit was a riot. Verna Crowell sounded so funny when she talked about him. “I was sitting there watching TV, me and Robert