Social Graces
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Dixie Browning
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One
Standing in the middle of the bedroom, dangling a pair of Chanel slingbacks by the stiletto heels, with a sleeveless black Donna Karan slung over her shoulder, Val Bonnard stared at the partially open closet and listened for the scratching noise to come again. Shivering in the chill air, she glanced quickly at the window. With the wind howling a gale, it might be only a branch scraping the eaves. What else could it be? She was alone in the house, wasn’t she?
She was alone, period.
Swallowing the lump that threatened to lodge permanently in her throat, she glared at the closet door. It was ajar because there wasn’t a level surface in the entire house. All the doors swung open, and all the windows leaked cold air. The temperature outside hovered in the low forties, which wasn’t particularly cold for Carolina in the middle of January, but it felt colder because of the wind. And the dampness.
And the aloneness.
She was still glaring when the mouse emerged, tipped her a glance, twitched its ears, then calmly proceeded to follow the baseboard to a postage-stamp-sized hole near the corner of the room.
It was the last straw in a haystack of last straws. Grief, anger and helplessness clotted around her and she dropped onto the edge of the sagging iron-framed bed and let the tears come.
A few minutes later she sniffed and felt in the pocket of her leather jeans for a tissue. As if pockets designed to display starbursts of rhinestones could possibly harbor anything so practical.
Sniffing again, she thought, it’s not going to work. What on earth had she expected? That by driving for two days to reach a quaint, half remembered house on a half remembered barrier island she would not only escape from crank calls, but magically exchange grief for perspective? That a lightbulb would suddenly appear above her head and she would instantly know who was responsible for Bonnard Financial Consultants’ downfall, her father’s disgrace, his arrest and his untimely death?
Time and distance lent perspective. She’d read that somewhere, probably on a greeting card. She’d had more than two and a half months. Time hadn’t helped.
As for distance, she had run as far away as she could run, to the only place she had left. Now she was here with as many of her possessions as she could cram into her new, cheap, gas-guzzling secondhand car, in a village so small it lacked so much as a single stoplight. She had even escaped from those irritating calls, as there wasn’t a working phone in the house. Her cell phone with its caller ID didn’t seem to work here.
There wasn’t a dry cleaner on the island either, and half her wardrobe required dry-cleaning, most of it special handling. “Why not whine about it, wimp?” she muttered.
At least focusing on trivia helped stave off other thoughts—thoughts that swept her too close to the edge.
It had taken all her energy since her father had died to settle his affairs and dispose of the contents of the gabled, slate-roofed Tudor house that had been home for most of her life. Although stunned to learn that it was so heavily mortgaged, she’d actually been relieved when the bank had taken over the sale.
The rest had gone quickly—the disposal of the contents. Belinda and Charlie had helped enormously before they’d moved to take on new positions. She and Belinda had shared more than a few tears, and even stoic old Charlie had been red-eyed a few times.
In the end, all she’d brought south with her was her hand luggage, three garment bags and three banana boxes, one filled with personal mementos, one with linens, and another with the files she’d retrieved from her father’s study.
In retrospect, everything about the past eleven weeks had been unreal in the truest sense of the word. There’d been a bottle of special vintage Moët Chandon in the industrial-sized, stainless-steel refrigerator, waiting for her birthday celebration. Her father had bought it the day before he’d been arrested. “Belinda has orders to prepare all your favorite dishes,” he’d told her the night before, looking almost cheerful for a change. The old lines and shadows had been there, but at least there’d been some color in his face.
She’d asked several times before if anything was worrying him. Each time he’d brushed off her question. “Stock market’s down,” he’d said the last time, then he’d brightened. “Cholesterol’s down, too, though. Can’t have everything, can we?”
She’d chided him for spending too much time downtown and been relieved when he’d promised to take her advice and start spending more time at home, even though she knew very well he would spend most of it closed up in his study with Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.
For her birthday she had deliberately arranged to have dinner at home with only her dad instead of the usual bash at the club. She had planned to mellow him with the champagne and find out exactly what had been eating at him. But early on the morning of her thirtieth birthday a pair of strangers who turned out to be police officers had shown up at the door and invited her father to accompany them downtown.
She’d seen the whole thing from the top of the stairs. Barefoot and wearing only a robe and nightgown, she had hurried downstairs, demanding to know what was happening.
The spokesman for the pair had been stiffly polite. “Just a few questions, miss, that’s all.” But obviously that hadn’t been all. Her father had been ashen. Alarmed, she’d called first his physician, then his lawyer.
The next few hours had swept past like a kaleidoscope. She didn’t recall having gotten dressed—she certainly hadn’t taken time to shower, much less to arrange her hair before racing outside. Belinda had called after her and told her to take her father’s medicine to the police station, so she’d dashed back and snatched the pill bottle from the housekeeper’s hand.
They’d had only brief minutes to speak privately when the officer in the room with him had gone to get him a cup of water. Speaking quietly, as if he were afraid of being overheard, Frank Bonnard had instructed her to remove all unlabeled paper files from the file cabinet in his study and store them in her bedroom.
Confused and frightened, she had wanted to ask more, but just then the officer had returned. Her father had nodded, swallowed his pills and said, “Go home. I’ll be there as soon as I get through here.”
That was the last time she’d seen him alive. Before he could even be bonded out, he’d suffered a fatal coronary.
Now, peeling a paper towel from the roll on the old oak dresser, Val blew her nose, mopped her eyes and sighed. She’d been doing entirely too much of that lately. Great, gasping sighs, as if she were starved for oxygen.
What she was starved for were answers. Now that it was too late, she wondered if it had been a mistake to leave Greenwich. She could have rented a room, possibly even an apartment. If there were any answers to be found, they would hardly be found halfway down the East Coast in a tiny village her father had visited only once in his entire life.
On the other hand, the auditors, the men from the Financial Crimes Unit, plus those from all the various government agencies involved, were convinced they already had their man—their scapegoat—even though they’d made another token arrest. And even if she were to unravel the mess and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that her father was innocent, it was too late to bring him back. The best she could hope to do was to restore his reputation.
Light from the setting sun, filtered by ancient, moss-draped live oaks, turned the dusty windows opaque. So many things on the island had changed since she’d last seen this old house, she would never have found it without the real estate agent’s explicit instruction.
Just over a week ago she had called the agency that managed the property she’d inherited from her great-grandmother, Achsah Dozier. A few hours ago, following the agent’s instructions, she had located Seaview Realty. While the office was scarcely larger than a walk-in closet, the woman seated behind a desk cluttered with brochures, boxes of Girl Scout cookies and what appeared to be tax forms, seemed friendly, if somewhat harried.
“Marian Kuvarky.” The woman nodded toward the nameplate on her desk. “Glad you made it before I had to close up,” she said, handing over a set of keys. “I’d better warn you, though—I still haven’t found anyone to give the place a good going-over since the people who were renting it moved out. You might want to check into a motel for a few days.”
Val had come too far to be put off another moment. Besides, she couldn’t afford a motel. Even in the dead of winter, beach prices would seriously erode her dwindling funds. “I can take care of a little dirt, just tell me how to find my house.” She was hardly helpless. She had looked after a three-room apartment with only a weekly maid before she’d moved back home to Connecticut.
Ms. Kuvarky, a youngish blonde with tired eyes and an engaging smile said, “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Take a left once you leave here and turn off onto the Back Road.”
“What’s the name of it?”
“Of what?”
“The road.”
“Back Road. It’s named that. I had the power turned on after you called. I forgot if I told you or not, but the last renters left owing for two months. I would have had it ready to rent out again once I found somebody to do a few minor repairs, but like I said over the phone, my cleaner’s out on maternity leave. She says she’ll be back, but you know how that goes. I’m sort of coasting for now, trying to get through the slack season. I cleaned two places myself last weekend.”
Val had been too tired to involve herself in the agent’s problems. Her stomach hadn’t stood the trip well, as she’d nibbled constantly on junk food, more from nerves than from hunger. “I brought linens. You said the house was furnished,” she reminded Ms. Kuvarky.
The agent had nodded. “Pretty much all you’ll need, I guess, but it’s sort of a mishmash. I wrote to your father about the repairs—those are extra—but I never heard back. Anyway, there’s so much construction going on these days, even between seasons, it’s hard to find dependable help.”
Ms. Kuvarky had promised to call around. Val remembered thinking that if the place had a roof and a bed, everything else could wait.
Now she wasn’t quite so sure.
The last thing the rental agent had said as Val had stood in the doorway, trying to get her bearings in a village that had nothing even faintly resembling city blocks or even village squares, was “By the way, if you happen to be looking for work and know one end of a broom from the other, you’re hired.”
She’d been joking, of course. It might even come to that, Val told herself now, but at the moment she had other priorities. Starting with getting rid of her resident mouse.
The power was on, that was the good part. The bad part was that there was no phone. Or maybe that was the good part, too. A few crank calls had even managed to get through call-blocking before she’d left Greenwich, but they could hardly follow her to a place where she didn’t have a working phone.
There was no central heat, only an oil heater in the living room and an assortment of small space heaters scattered in the other rooms. She’d managed to turn the oil heater on. The thing hadn’t exploded, so she assumed she’d pushed the right button.
The water heater was another matter. She let the hot water faucet run for five minutes, but luke was as warm as it got. That’s when she’d discovered that her cell phone didn’t work. She’d tried to call Ms. Kuvarky, and the darned thing blanked out on her. No signal.
All right, so she would think of herself as a pioneer woman. At least she had a bed to sleep in instead of a covered wagon somewhere in the middle of the wilderness. She was thirty years old, with a degree from an excellent college—and although she was somewhat out of her element at the moment, she’d never been accused of being a slow learner. However, repairing major household appliances just might stretch her capability close to the breaking point. Sooner or later—probably sooner—she would have to look for a paying job in order to hire someone to do the things she couldn’t figure out how to do herself.
One thing she definitely could do was clean her house. That accomplished, she could start going through her father’s files, looking for whatever he’d wanted her to find that would enable his lawyer to reopen his case posthumously and clear his name.
There had to be something there. Otherwise, why had he made that strange, hurried request? He could’ve had no way of knowing that he’d be dead within hours of being arrested.
Bitter? Yes, she was bitter. But grief and bitterness weren’t going to solve any problems, either those facing her here or those she’d left behind.
She stood, crossed the small room and kicked at the baseboard. “All right, Mickey, your time is up. Sorry, but I’m not in a sharing mood, so pack up your acorns or whatever and move out.”
By no standards was the house she’d inherited from Achsah Dozier comparable to the one she’d left behind. The original structure might have been modernized at some point since she’d last seen it, but the white paint was peeling rather badly and a few of the faded green shutters dangled from single hinges.
At least the gingerbread trim on the front eaves was intact. She remembered thinking in terms of a fairy tale when she’d been told as a child that the fancy trim was called gingerbread. The fact that her great-grandmother had actually baked gingerbread that day, the spicy scent greeting them at the front door, had only enhanced the illusion.
Marian Kuvarky had mentioned that a few years before she’d died, Achsah Dozier had had part of the old back porch turned into another bedroom and bare-bones bath with its own separate entrance, in case she needed live-in help. Since her death, it had occasionally been rented separately. Val briefly considered the possibility and decided that she wasn’t cut out to play landlady.
On the other hand, unearned income was not to be sneezed at.
Dropping the shoes and dress she’d been clutching, she headed downstairs in search of cleaning materials. Before she could even consider sleeping in the room, she had to do something about the mice-and-mildew smell, either air it out or scrub it out. It was too cold to air it out.
It occurred to her that if Ms. Kuvarky had any idea of just how little she knew about the domestic arts, she would never have offered her a job cleaning houses, even as a joke.
Later that evening Val stepped out of the rust-stained, claw-footed upstairs bathtub onto a monogrammed hand towel. She hadn’t bothered to pack such things as tablecloths, dresser scarves or bath mats, knowing that short of renting a trailer, she had to draw the line somewhere.
She had augmented the lukewarm water with a kettle of boiling water brought up from the kitchen. One kettle wasn’t enough, but by the time she’d heated another one, the first would be cold, so she’d settled for lukewarm and quick.
Now, covered in goose bumps, she swaddled her damp body in a huge bath towel. Aside from being grimy and smelly, the house was also drafty. There was a space heater between the tub and the lavatory that helped as long as she didn’t move more than a foot away from the glowing element. At least with all the drafts, carbon monoxide wouldn’t be a problem. As for the danger of an electrical fire, that was another matter.
Note: have the water heater repaired.
Note: have the wiring checked.
Which reminded her—what about insurance?
“Welcome to the real world, Ms. Bonnard,” she whispered a few minutes later, flipping an 800-count Egyptian-cotton king-sized bottom sheet over the sagging double-bed mattress.
She’d pulled on a pair of navy satin pajamas, a Peruvian hand-knit sweater jacket and a pair of slipper socks. January or not, wasn’t this supposed to be the sunny south?
Fortunately, she’d crammed two down-filled duvets in around her suitcases, one of which she’d immediately tossed over the ugly brown plaid sofa downstairs. The other one was miles too large for the double bed, but its familiar paisley cover was comforting. That done, she collected a pen and notepad and settled down for some serious list making, ignoring the reminder from her stomach that except for pretzels, popcorn and two candy bars, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Starting early tomorrow she had a million things to do to make this place even marginally livable before she could concentrate on searching her father’s files for evidence of his innocence.
Nibbling the white-tipped cap of her Mont Blanc, she reread the shopping list. Table cloth—one had standards, after all. Mattress cover—she definitely didn’t like the looks of that mattress, even after she’d flipped it. Oh, and a bath mat. She’d have to ask where to buy linens here on the island.
On to the next list. Tea, bagels, other foods, preferably already prepared. Wrinkling her nose, she added mousetraps to the list. And cleaning supplies.
A clean house was something she’d always taken for granted. After graduating from college she’d lived in small apartments, first in Chicago, then in Manhattan—always in upscale neighborhoods. She had moved back to her father’s house after he’d suffered his first small stroke, and soon after that she’d gotten involved with a few of the local charities. It was what she did best, after all—manage fund-raisers for worthy causes. She had frequently acted as her father’s hostess, although most of his business entertaining had been done at the club.
Looking back, it had been a comfortable way to coast through life. Not particularly exciting—no major achievements—but certainly comfortable.
“Definitely room for improvement,” she murmured, her voice echoing hollowly in the old house.
Tired, hungry, but oddly energized, she surveyed her surroundings. Gone were the familiar French wallpaper in her old bedroom, the mismatched but well-cared-for semi-antique furniture, the faded oriental rug and her eclectic art collection. Here she was confronted by gritty bare floors, dark with layers of varnish—naked, white-painted walls, dusty windows, and the lingering aroma of mouse spoor.
Okay. She could handle that. The sand, she’d quickly discovered, hid in the cracks between the floorboards so that each time she went over it with a broom, more appeared. She could live with a little sand. This was the beach, after all. Even if she couldn’t see the ocean from here, she could hear it.
She added window spray and bathroom cleaner to the list, hoping there would be directions on the bottles in case she got into trouble. More paper towels. Sponges. Rubber gloves, although she probably wouldn’t be able to wear them without her hands breaking out. Her skin was inclined to be sensitive.
Note: take down the for rent sign on the front lawn.
The lawn itself was a mess, but once she was through scrubbing the entire house, maybe she could paint the front door a bright color to deflect attention from that and the rest of the peeling paint until she could afford to landscape and repaint the entire house. There was nothing wrong with old, but she preferred old and charming to old and neglected.
One more note: find position that pays in advance.
Leaning back on the two down-filled pillows, she closed her eyes. “Dad, what am I going to do?” she whispered. “Charlie, Belinda—Miss Mitty, where are you when I need you?”
The only sound was the plaintive honking of a flock of wild geese flying overhead. It was barely nine o’clock. She never went to bed before eleven, often not until the small hours of the morning.
Her last memory before sleep claimed her was of her father being led outside to an unmarked car while she stood in the doorway, too stunned even to protest. One of the officers pressed her father’s head down and urged him into the back seat.
It had been Sunday, the morning of her birthday. Belinda had made blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Frank Bonnard, an early riser, had evidently been in his study. He’d been dressed in flannels, an open-necked white shirt and a navy Shetland sweater when Charlie had answered the door. Val remembered thinking much later that if the ghouls could have stuffed him into a pair of orange coveralls before marching him out in front of the single reporter who had probably tuned in on the police radio and followed them to the Belle Haven address, they’d have done it.
That had been only the beginning. Within hours, the press had swarmed like locusts. Shortly after that the phone calls had started. Despite all the blocking devices, a few people managed to get through with variations ranging from “Where’s my money?” to “Frank Bonnard owes me my pension, dammit. Where is it? What am I supposed to do now?”
The calls had ended when the police had put taps on all three phone lines. Not until recently had she wondered why they’d ceased. How could the callers have known their calls could be traced?
The calls had stopped, but not the nightmares. Both asleep and awake, she had replayed the scene that morning back in late September a thousand times. A pale, stiff-faced Charlie stepping back from the wide front door to allow the two men inside. Her father emerging from his study and carefully closing the door behind him. Belinda, one plump hand covering her mouth as she stood in the dining-room doorway.
In less than twelve hours her father had been dead. Pestered by reporters, auditors and men in bad suits who seemed to think they had every right to invade her home, Val had tried desperately to cram her emotions deep inside her and lock the door. When confronted, she’d quickly learned to answer with one of several replies that included, “I don’t know,” “No comment,” and “My father is innocent.”
A part of her was still in hiding, but she had to know the truth, even in the unlikely event that the truth turned out to be not what she wanted to hear. Back in Greenwich she’d been too close for any real objectivity. Here, once she settled down to it, she would be able to think clearly. Then at least the callers who wanted to know where their money was would have an answer, even if it was one that wouldn’t do them any good.
Valerie Bonnard slept heavily that night. Sometime before daybreak she awoke, thinking about the mouse she’d seen and all the others she’d heard and smelled. Were mice carnivorous? They were grain-eaters, weren’t they?
Oh, God…now she’d never get back to sleep.
Eyes scrunched tightly shut, she rolled over onto her stomach. On her own firm, pillow-top mattress, prone had been her favorite sleeping position, never mind that her face would be a mass of wrinkles by the time she reached forty. On a mattress that sagged like a hammock, it was a toss-up as to which she’d succumb to first—strangulation or a broken back.
Grax, if this was your bed, no wonder your back was rounded, she thought guiltily. Her great-grandmother’s given name had been Achsah, pronounced Axa. As a child, Val had shortened it to Grax. From her one brief visit, she remembered the old woman with the laughing blue eyes and short white hair. Wearing a duckbill cap, a cotton print dress and tennis shoes, she’d been working in the yard when they’d driven up. On their way to Hilton Head, her parents had taken a detour along the Outer Banks so that Lola, Val’s mother, could introduce them to her grandmother.
To a child of seven, the trip had seemed endless. Her parents had bickered constantly in the front seat. Odd that she should remember that now. Looking back, it seemed as if it had been her mother who was reluctant to take the time, not her father.
They’d spent the night at a motel, but they’d eaten dinner in the small white house in the woods. She remembered thinking even before she’d smelled the gingerbread that it looked like Aunty Em’s house in the Wizard of Oz.
Grax had served boiled fish—she’d called it drum—mixed with mashed potatoes, raw onions and bits of crisp fried salt pork. As strange as it sounded, it had turned out to be an interesting mixture of flavors and textures.
Her mother hadn’t touched it. Her father had sampled a few forkfuls. Val, for reasons she could no longer recall, had cleaned off her plate and bragged excessively. She’d eaten two squares of the gingerbread with lemon sauce that had followed.
That had been both the first and the last time she’d seen her great-grandmother. Two years later her parents had separated. Her father had been given custody—had her mother even asked? At any rate, Lola Bonnard had chosen to live abroad for the next few years, so visitation had been out of the question. Val had gone through the usual stages of wondering if the split had been her fault and scheming to bring her parents together again.
She would like to think her mother had attended Grax’s funeral but she really didn’t know that, either. Her relationship with Lola Bonnard had never been close, even before the divorce. Since then it had dwindled to an exchange of Christmas cards and the occasional birthday card. It had been her father’s lawyer who’d handled Grax’s bequest, arranging for someone to manage the house as a rental. At the time, Val had been living in Chicago working for a private foundation that funded shelters and basic health services for runaway girls.
“I’m sorry, Grax,” she whispered now, burdened with a belated sense of guilt. “I’m embarrassed and sorry and I hope you had lots and lots of friends so that you didn’t really miss us.”
No wonder the house felt so cold and empty. How many strangers had lived here since Grax had died? There was nothing of Achsah Dozier left, no echoes of the old woman’s island brogue that had fascinated Val at the time. No hint of the flowers she’d brought inside from the Cape jasmine bushes that had once bloomed in her yard. Lola had complained about the cloying scent and without a word, Grax had got up and set the vase on the back porch.
Val made a silent promise that as soon as she got the house cleaned and repaired, she would see what could be done with the yard.
But first she had to go through those files, discover what it was her father had wanted her to find there, and clear his name. Frank Bonnard had been a good man, an honest man, if something of an impractical dreamer. He didn’t deserve what had happened to him.
