Ciji Ware (67 page)

“Oh, stop!” Daphne said tearfully. “I wasn’t that bad. Admit it. Any normal person would have been
very
suspicious, given the circumstances.”

Sim shook his head vehemently. “Well, sure, but you don’t get off that easily. I already told you, but you don’t really believe me yet. I’m like a veritable old swan. My feathers are pretty scruffy, and I don’t fly very well anymore, but I plan to mate for life the next time.”

“I’ll give you a high-five for that one, Bird Man.”

“You’ll give me more than that,” he said, pulling her back into the circle of his arms.

“Sim,” she protested. “It’s one o’clock in the afternoon! Maddy and Althea are downstairs.”

“And later, you and I, Maddy, and Bailey have a big powwow set up with Francesca and Able Petroleum about settling the toxic dump case, but right now, you gotta show me how
much
you care.”

“Get outta here,” Daphne said, laughing and amazed by the emotional roller coaster she’d been on within the space of a single day.

Undeterred, Sim led her toward her own double bed. He turned to face her and expertly pulled off her “For the Birds” T-shirt. “You couldn’t have hated me
that
much,” he said, leaning forward to graze his lips against the base of her neck. “Even today, you’re wearing my photograph of the chickadees next to your heart.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she muttered, abandoning herself to the sensations radiating along the path of Sim’s kisses as he gently nuzzled the tops of her breasts. “I got dressed in a hurry last night.”

“Maybe your subconscious told you to wear it,” he mumbled.

She took a step back, cast him a sidelong glance, and put her hands behind her back to unhook her bra. “Well, guess what?” she said with a provocative smile. “All of a sudden, my conscious mind is telling me to take this
off
.”

Sim lent a hand in removing the rest of her garments and led her to the bed. “Pull down the covers, Harp Honey,” he drawled, “and let’s start playin’ some of that honky-tonk jazz.”

***

Sim and Daphne were jolted awake by sharp knocks on the bedroom door.

“Are you guys goin’ loll ’round in bed all
day
?” Althea said from the hall. “You’ve both got ’bout twenty-five phone calls waitin’ on you down here!”

Daphne pulled the top sheet over her head. “Oh, my God… I can’t face Cousin Maddy.”

Sim dove beneath the covers and kissed her soundly on the shoulder blade. “Don’t go there,” he advised solemnly. “Just tell yourself we had a long meeting up here about the toxic dump deal we’re going to do tonight, and descend the stairs with your head held high. And furthermore, don’t even
think
what your mother would say about your outrageous behavior today.”

“How did you guess?” she said, poking her head out from the bedclothes.

“I’m getting to know you
really
well.”

There was another sharp rap on the door.

“Now, personally, I don’t care a hoot what you guys are doin’ in there,” Althea said from behind the door, “but you’ve been in there—
doin’
it—for about three hours. Poor Cousin Maddy’s worried you’re gonna be more than love-starved if you don’t come down and have some supper.”

“Tell her we’ve just finished our strategy meeting and will be right down,” Sim called out gallantly.

“Oh, yeah. Right. You two are a riot. See ya downstairs. We’ve got a show to do tonight at ten o’clock, Miz Magnolia, in case it’s slipped your mind.”

“I’ll get you for that, Althea!” Daphne called through the door, scooting to the edge of the bed and thrusting one leg into her jeans.

“I completely forgot to ask,” she said to Sim, who was just as quickly donning his clothes, which were strewn across the floor. “With everything that’s been going on, how’d you do on the Trace? Did you ever find that flycatcher?”

“Nailed the last bird on my list on Tuesday,” he declared proudly.

Daphne froze, her left leg poised over her pants leg. “So your project is finished?”

“Oh, God, no,” Sim said, buckling his belt. “I’ve got to
write
the whole thing now, with the Audubon Society looking over my shoulder, might I add.”

Sim could do that anywhere, Daphne thought. “Have laptop, will travel,” he’d said more than once. She watched him button his shirt and slip on his loafers. She hadn’t even had time yet to tell him the good news about Jazz Fest. He opened the bedroom door and she wondered, yet again, how they would cope with the geographic “challenges”—as Sim had called them—of their separate worlds.

Before she could raise such a thorny subject, Sim patted her gently on the derriere and said, “Come on, toots, let’s tuck into some red beans and rice. Believe me, we’re going to need our strength tonight when we tell old Jackie boy the news that he may not get to put that dump in Bailey’s backyard.”

“Tonight? But what about my show?”

“The settlement meeting is
after
the show. At his funeral home. One a.m. His call,” Sim said grimly, and Daphne wondered if he could be dreading any confrontation with Jack Ebert just as much as she was.

Chapter 29

Daphne peered through the windshield of Sim’s Range Rover. The former Livingston Funeral Home was located in a quiet business district at the edge of town. Her watch said it was five minutes to one in the morning. All was in darkness at the front of the low-slung redbrick building except for the handsome, new, hand-carved Ebert-Petrella signpost burrowed into the grass and lit by two small floodlights.

“Boy, do these places give me the creeps,” she announced under her breath, shivering at the memory of her last experience playing her harp at Farrell’s.

“Why do we have to meet here, of all depressin’ places?” Cousin Maddy asked, nodding in agreement. “And why do
I
have to come?”

“Your name is on the trust account with Bailey’s and Daphne’s,” Sim explained gently. “We might need you to cosign a letter of agreement at the end of the settlement conference if we’re able to hammer one out.”

“We’re not
bribing
anyone, are we?” Maddy asked, alarmed.

Sim laughed. “Boy Scouts like Bailey and me? No way! But the good doctor has some very interesting ideas about what to do with the benefit money and he’ll need you to sign off on them, too, if you agree.”

“Seriously, Sim,” Daphne chimed in. “Why do we have to meet on Jack’s turf? I hate this.” And besides, she was dead tired after getting no sleep the previous night and singing for ninety minutes at the Under-the-Hill Saloon, packed to the rafters with patrons from the visiting
Delta
Queen.

“Jack told Francesca that he doesn’t want anyone to know here in Natchez or up in Jackson that a settlement is being considered. But I think the main reason we’re here is exactly what you say. He feels more in control on his own turf.”

“I wonder about that…” Daphne murmured, reflecting upon her firsthand observations of Jack Ebert’s consistently unpleasant behavior around the family business.

Just then, Bailey Gibbs drove up in his old Ford with Francesca Hayes beside him in the passenger seat, along with an elderly gentleman sitting alone in the back.

“Shouldn’t Bailey have his own lawyer with him?” Maddy asked worriedly.

“Maybe that’s him,” Daphne said, nodding in the direction of the stranger.

“No, that’s not an attorney,” Sim declared. To Maddy he said, “There wasn’t time to get all the players involved, but don’t worry, we’re just trying to get the principal parties into one room to see if everybody’s in agreement about the proposal. If we can nail down the makings of a deal, then we’ll have Bailey’s lawyer review the legal language. C’mon. Let’s go in.”

Daphne glanced apprehensively at the building. “Now that we’re actually here, Sim, I’ve got butterflies playing hopscotch in my stomach. The two things I like least in the world combined into one: a funeral parlor
and
Jack Ebert. I can’t wait for this to be over.”

Bailey, Francesca, and the man Daphne didn’t recognize caught up with them on the walkway leading to the front door. Francesca had come to do battle dressed in a chic navy pinstripe suit and navy suede pumps that Daphne reckoned cost as much as her own entire fall wardrobe.

“Well, hello again,” Francesca greeted her smoothly, extending her hand. “And this must be your cousin, Madeline Whitaker. How do you do.”

“How’d you do,” Maddy echoed politely. Then she turned toward the elderly gentleman standing to Francesca’s right. “Why, Cyrus Drake! I haven’t seen you in the longest time. I’m Madeline Clayton Whitaker. I doubt you remember me, but I was Marcus’s wife. Clayton’s mother? Our boys played baseball together… oh, years ago, it was, and I do believe our great-grandmothers—or maybe it was a bunch more ‘greats’ than that—were cousins.”

Cyrus Drake, a rangy man with a caved-in chest and a pinched look on his face, summoned a wan smile to his thin lips. He looked to be in his late seventies, and unwell.

“Yes, of course, Miz Whitaker,” he said, bowing in a courtly fashion, though the effort appeared to cause him some pain. “My boy, Avery, spoke of your son often. I was so sorry to hear of your loss.”

“You’re kind as can be to say so,” Maddy replied with a bleak smile.

Daphne was astonished that the neighbor she understood Bailey had been feuding with over the proposed sale of the Drake property to Able Petroleum—not to mention their long-ago rivalry for the hand of Caroline Minger—was going to take part in the “summit meeting” chauffeured by his old nemesis.

The group of six entered the building. Maddy whispered in Daphne’s ear, “Nothing much has changed. Looks just like it did when the Livingstons owned the place. Remember Marcus’s viewin’, Daphne, darlin’?”

“I sure do, Maddy.” Daphne gave her cousin’s hand a gentle squeeze. It couldn’t be easy for her to return here, even to aid a worthy cause.

Daphne glanced at her watch. It was now just after one. The visitors passed through the foyer and proceeded down the carpeted hall toward a room at the end of the corridor.

“Oh, Lord,” Maddy murmured. “Don’t tell me we’re meeting in
there
?”

They entered a room much like the one at Farrell’s where Daphne had played at Abigail Langhorn’s funeral. Jack was dressed in a dark blue suit not unlike Francesca’s pinstripe. Without any pleasantries, he suggested they all take chairs that were placed around a sort of altar arrangement in front of the rows of mourners’ seats. Daphne realized instantly their makeshift conference table was the bier on which the casket normally rested while family and friends came to pay their respects.

“I propose we get right down to business,” Jack said brusquely. “Mr. Drake, Able Petroleum has made you a generous offer for your land—above fair-market value, I might add.” He paused and heaved an audible sigh. Then he cast Francesca an irritated glance. “I was informed by Ms. Hayes here, that you may have changed your mind?”

“I might,” Cyrus said with a faint wheeze. “And I might not. Depends.”

“Depends on what?” Jack snapped, looking angrily around the room as if each person present were a declared enemy.

“Depends on what everybody’s offerin’.”

“I’m to blame for Cyrus having second thoughts,” Bailey spoke up. “Now that we have twenty-five thousand dollars earned by our benefit concert, I thought, ‘why spend all this on lawyers’ fees?’ So, I called up Cyrus this mornin’, and I told him I’d put every dime toward buying twenty-five of his one hundred acres that are closest to my land as a kinda buffer zone—that is, if you still seem determined to build your toxic dump in Adams County. Cyrus was kind enough to say he’d consider it.”

Jack suddenly looked like the alligator that had swallowed an angel fish. “Well I’m afraid that’s not at all acceptable to us, Mr. Drake. Y’see, Able Petroleum is only interested in securing
all
one hundred acres to meet company standards for such facilities, y’see what I’m sayin’?” He shot a triumphant look at Sim and Daphne, adding, “We’ve offered top dollar, and if you sell off those twenty-five to Doc Bailey, here, Able Petroleum will immediately withdraw its offer.”

Cyrus Drake’s expression conveyed his disappointment. He glanced at his long-time neighbor and shrugged. “Sorry, Bailey. I thought maybe we could work somethin’ out here, but I don’t want to leave a mess for my children, y’understand? Twenty-five thousand dollars doesn’t go very far these days when you don’t have good insurance, and I’ll probably have to go into a nursin’ home at some point.”

Bailey patted his former rival on the sleeve and nodded. “I understand… surely I do.” The next instant, however, his expression was alight with a new thought. “Well, what about this? I pay the same amount for the
entire
one hundred acres?”

Everyone around the table exchanged puzzled glances.