Hey Diddle Diddle, the Corpse and the Fiddle, page 15
part #2 of A Callie Parrish Mystery Series
The most impressive structure was a large, probably ten-by-twenty-foot marble miniature Greek temple. "Mitchell" was the name engraved over the door.
"How do we know when we find the right one?" Rizzie asked.
"I'm looking for one with 'Jones' on it. Pulley Bone Jones is Melena's brother, so I think the family name is Jones."
Rizzie and I wandered off in different directions. We moved slowly, reading the family histories engraved on some memorials. Many plots were bordered with bricks or stones. Some graves were neatly kept while others grew scraggly weeds. Wisteria grew up several of the larger monuments, draping lavender flowers down to the ground. Miniature azaleas planted on some sites were opening in spring blossoms of pink, violet, and white, and one grave was covered with daffodils, a soft blanket of yellow flowers.
"I've found it!" Rizzie called from the very back of the churchyard. She stood in front of a concrete block structure about twelve feet square and eight feet tall. When I reached her, she pointed to a painted sign over the door with the name "Jones" in old English style.
Otis wanted to know whether the door was bricked or mortared in. If so, we'd need a brick mason to open the crypt. If the caskets were aboveground, this vault probably wouldn't hold more than four caskets, two on each side. How many were already in there? What was the chance the vault stood over underground graves, which would require diggers as well as a mason if Melena wanted Fred's casket buried?
"Not quite so fancy as some of the others," Rizzie commented as she absentmindedly pulled a vine from a crack in the wall.
"Newer, too. I doubt the Jones family could afford marble or granite, now or whenever this was built."
The blocks stopped with just one row on either side of the door. The opening was wide, plenty of room to pass in a modern casket, and it wasn't cemented shut. A large metal, looked like steel to me, door was hinged on one side and held closed on the other by four hasps with heavy padlocks. The locks looked new. "Gonna need keys or a hacksaw to find out exactly what's inside," I said.
Rizzie touched the door, rapped her knuckles on it. "What ya doing," I asked, "trying to wake the dead?"
A nervous giggle escaped her lips.
"I don't know why I did that. I was thinking about the crypt in the legend about a girl who was buried alive. She had diphtheria or some horrendous disease and they thought she was dead, but it was just a coma. Years later, they opened the crypt and found her skeleton at the door with the finger bones splintered and ragged from trying to escape."
"Oh, yes," I interrupted and lowered my voice to a witchy ghost-story tone. "And after that, the door wouldn't stay closed. No--matter--what--they-did!" I wiggled my eyebrows at Rizzie.
"Yeah, that one. I wondered if that's why there are so many locks. I mean, I doubt there are grave gifts in there to worry about being stolen. Who are they locking out?"
"This isn't the vault in that legend. That's in a church cemetery on Edisto Island. It was a marble building with a thick, solid marble door, and it was lots older than this. I believe the girl was buried in about 1850."
"Have you ever seen it?"
"My brother Jim stopped and showed it to me one time when we went to Edisto while he was home on leave. The marble door was lying on the ground broken into three pieces."
"Could you see the coffins inside?"
"No, they were buried underground beneath the cement floor."
"Then how did the girl get out of her casket?"
"Jim said that the caskets were originally stacked in there on biers, but the family buried them after they found the girl's skeleton."
Rizzie shivered slightly in the warm sunlight. "Are we done here?" she asked. "This is a little spooky."
"You're not scared, are you? The Surcie Island graveyard
didn't seem to make you feel skittish." I turned and walked toward the car. Rizzie took baby steps with those long legs of hers so she stayed right by my side.
"I know, but I've been in and out of there my whole life," she said. "This is different. I'm not psychic or a medium or anything, but it was almost like I could hear sounds coming from in there."
"Not likely. I assure you that either there's no such thing as ghosts or if they do exist, they don't hang around their physical remains or I'd have seen one at sometime working at the funeral home." Buh-leeve me. That's what I said, but my arms broke out in goose bumps.
When we reached the car, I pulled a roll of tape and a flyer from the box on the backseat, went back, and taped Jane's picture on the front door of the church. If a member of the congregation had opened the door while I was on the porch, I would probably have tee-teed my panties.
The drive into Adam's Creek was slowed by stopping at every little store to ask permission to post a flyer. No one refused. Most people had heard about the "missing blind girl."
Several people said they'd been praying for Jane. I thanked them sincerely. I'm not in church every Sunday, but I do believe, and I'd been praying a lot myself since yesterday.
"Do you have any special place you want to eat?" Rizzie asked.
"Not really. What about you?"
"Ever been to the Burgerarium?" she asked.
"No, never even heard of it, probably couldn't pronounce it if I had. Where is it?"
"Right up here on your left."
I saw the sign, pulled in, and parked. Hoped the food would be Gullah. My bad. The name said it all. It was a burger joint.
Sitting at a plastic booth, we both ordered sweet iced tea. "You're gonna love this." Rizzie grinned. "The cook pats out each hamburger and grills it after you order. No prepackaged patties. My two favorites are the pimiento burger and the chili burger, so I combine them. One bite and you'll be hooked." When the server brought the teas, we ordered two custom pimiento-chili burgers.
"It'll take a few minutes," Rizzie said. She leaned across the table and whispered, "You know why I really want to learn to embalm?"
"I've already told you Otis or Odell can come to the island whenever the time comes, but why would you want to embalm?"
"When I was little, I heard that story about the girl being buried alive and ever since then, I've worried about that happening to Maum. The place back there gave me the creeps."
Neither of us would say it, but I knew what Rizzie was thinking. Embalming prevented anyone in a coma from suffering the fate of the buried alive in those scary Edgar Allan Poe stories.
"There were things about death and burials that psyched me out before I started working for Otis and Odell, but now I've got used to the job, it never bothers me at all," I lied.
"Did you know I've never been to a funeral except on Surcie? Even when I was away at college, no one I knew died, but I know I want Maum embalmed."
"No problem. I told you we can handle it."
"And I'm so glad there are no small children in the family. Tyrone is the youngest and he's too old for passing."
I took a sip of tea. "Passing? What do you mean?"
"When someone dies and that person has a close child or grandchild, the little boy or girl has to be handed back and forth over the coffin to keep the dead from haunting them. I was passed over my grampa. It terrified me. I was afraid they'd drop me in on top of the dead body."
I'd heard about this Gullah custom, but I didn't know it was called passing. Rizzie's eyes filled with tears, and I changed the subject. Besides, even though talking about death didn't usually bother me, the conversation mixed into my fears for Jane and made me feel squeamish, too.
The waitress, whose name was Shirley according to the tag pinned to her very ample chest, arrived with the two fattest burgers I've ever seen. The buns were big, and the layers stuck out of them. The meat was thick, about threequarters of an inch, sitting on a bed of chili that dripped out over the bottoms of the buns. Melting pimiento cheese separated the meat from lettuce, tomato, and thick slices of onion.
My brothers always accused me of having a big mouth. I proved them right when I took a bite. "This is the best burger I've ever eaten," I said and wiped my mouth with a paper towel from the roll on the center of the table.
"Can't beat 'em," Rizzie said. The food was too good to ignore, and we talked very little as we ate, paid, and returned to the car. After another hour of nailing and taping flyers about Jane on telephone poles and in windows, we headed back to St. Mary.
When I dropped Rizzie off by her truck at the mortuary, she asked, "Do you work tomorrow?"
"Only if they really need me."
"Want to search the island again?"
I hesitated, not knowing what might happen between now and then, hoping Jane would be home by tonight.
Rizzie said, "I'll call you tomorrow morning at low tide from the inlet." She held up her cell phone. "This thing is worthless on the island except at the inlet." We exchanged numbers. The old Chevy popped and snorted as Rizzie drove away.
Chapter Twenty
Never in a million years would Jane have believed what
I did after Rizzie left the parking lot. I pondered stepping inside and talking to Otis or Odell. I considered going home and playing with Big Boy. I thought about going to McDonald's drive-through for ice cream, but I was too full of that giant hamburger. The sheriff had promised to call on my cell phone as soon as he knew anything. There was no reason to go to his office.
I, Calamine Lotion Parrish, who goes to her dad's house only when required by family obligation or to borrow something, wanted to go home. Not home to my duplex apartment. Home where I'd spent my childhood. Home where I hoped I'd find Daddy and some of my brothers.
Headed toward the home place, my mind was full of Jane. Memories of Jane. Fears for Jane. Everywhere I looked, I saw her face. Not only in my mind. With my eyes. We'd plastered the town with flyers, and driving along, I saw how thoroughly we'd accomplished our goal to be sure everyone knew my friend was missing and to call the sheriff with any leads or sightings.
I've often called my daddy's house the most depressing building in the county. In the state. Possibly in the nation. It's covered with dark gray shingles because they were on sale real cheap. The black roof and trim add to the Munster effect. Every time I drive up the long driveway, the colors depress me, but today gray and black became comfort colors. I needed home.
Ex-cuuze me. If I hadn't quit swearing when I stopped cussing, I'd have sworn nothing could have been funny so long as Jane was missing, but that would have been a lie. At least, when I pulled up and saw what I saw at my Daddy's house.
I smiled. I burst out laughing. I roared so hard that I had to brake the car to a stop so I wouldn't run off the driveway into the ditch.
Spanish moss and blooming wisteria waved from the old live oaks arching across the drive. Scraps of white cloth draped the shrub bushes planted along the front of the house. My brother Bill rushed frantically around the plants, pulling off the pieces of white. When I realized what he was collecting, I guffawed so hard I did wet my pants, but just a drop or so.
The white cloths weren't towels. Clothes. My brother was grabbing underwear off the bushes. When he looked up and saw me, he ran even faster and stumbled. Undershirts and jockey shorts flew from his arms, fell from the air, and landed all around him.
"What's going on? Is the clothes dryer broken?" I managed to call through my giggles.
"Help me!" he shouted. "Hush and help me get all this up before Pa and John get back."
Plucking my brother's unmentionables off the plants reminded me of my younger years when we'd had no clothes dryer and had to hang everything on clotheslines out back on wash days. When I started wearing bras, I was embarrassed to have them seen outside. I tied a string from my window curtain to the closet doorknob and hung my underwear on that to dry. I posted a big "Do Not Enter" sign on my bedroom door.
In the house, Bill said, "Bring 'em in here," and headed toward his room. We dumped everything on his bed, and he pulled the door closed behind us when we went back to the living room.
"Thanks," he said. "Do you want a Coke?"
"No, I'll take a beer." This was a long-standing routine. I always asked for a beer at my dad's house, and my family always turned me down. Puh-leeze. I'm over thirty, been married and divorced, but the men in my family still think of me as a little girl, too young and innocent to drink. At least they give me soda. It could be a glass of milk.
I sank into Daddy's old couch and accepted the can of Coke Bill brought to me from the kitchen. His can was Busch. The favorite brand of beer at the Parrish home place was whatever was on sale when one of them shopped.
"Did you hang your clothes out there to dry?" I asked Bill, only half teasing.
"No, Molly did that." He paused, then added, "Thanks for helping me get them in before Pa and John saw 'em. They went to the sheriff 's office to meet some woman who called here looking for you. Said she'd lost your cell number and the sheriff wouldn't give it to her."
"What woman?"
"I don't know. Wanted to talk about Jane. Said her husband died."
"Delgado?" I asked.
"That's it!"
"Her husband was the fiddler who was killed at the bluegrass festival."
"Yeah, Pa and John told me about that. Anyway, she was at Harmon's office looking for you, so they went to meet her."
"And how'd your underwear get in the front yard?"
"You know I've been staying at Molly's house most of the time, so a lot of my clothes ended up over there. She brought 'em back while I was at the Piggly Wiggly and left them on the shrubbery." He waved toward a large bouquet of mixed spring flowers stuck into a pitcher on the dining room table.
"Who are those for?" I asked.
"They were for Molly, but I doubt they'll make any difference, so I may give them to Lucy instead."
"And who's Lucy?"
"New girl I met at the Quick Stop. I pumped her gas for her. We got to talking, and I've been showing her around St. Mary. She just moved here."
"Thought you were serious about Molly."
"I am."
"Then why are you running around with this Lucy and how did Molly find out about it?"
He bristled, squared his shoulders, and answered in an argumentative whine. "I ain't running around with Lucy. Nothing between us. Just been showing her around town."
"Don't you speak to your sister in that tone." The voice was gruffer than Bill's. Daddy stood in the door with John right behind him. "What's the matter? Did Molly catch you with that new skirt you been chasing?"
"No, somebody told her they'd seen me with Lucy, and she won't listen to a word I say." Bill gave me a pleading glance that I read to mean, Please don't tell them about my underwear.
John laughed. "A town this size can be seen in one day. You should have known Molly would hear about you driving all over with that blonde."
"You've seen her?" I asked.
"He had her over here for dinner Friday night while you were at the festival," John answered.
"Get me a beer so we can set down and talk to Calamine," Daddy said. He sat in his recliner while Bill and John got him an Ice House.
"This woman who was married to that midget . . ." Daddy began.
I interrupted him. "Fred Delgado wasn't a midget. The term is 'little person,' and if you're not going to call him that, at least refer to him as a dwarf, not a midget. His arms and legs were short, but his body was full-size. He was probably an achondroplasic dwarf."
"Talking to you is like talking to a dictionary," Daddy grumbled. "How'd you know that anyway?"
"I had a little person student when I taught kindergarten. I read up about it then." I paused before adding, "Now, what does Melena Delgado have to do with you?"
"She was looking for you. Said she'd lost your cell number and called here thinking you lived here. Asked me if I'm your husband. I had to laugh at that, but I told her about your divorce and taking back your maiden name."
"Thanks for putting my business on the street," I muttered.
"Everybody in town knows all about it. If I didn't tell her, somebody else would." He slugged down the rest of the beer, crushed the can in his hand, and tossed it to Bill, who took it to the kitchen. "Anyway, John and I went and met with her and Wayne Harmon at his office. She wants to hold a vigil for Jane."
I burst into tears. He said "vigil." I heard "memorial service."
John, the oldest and most demonstrative of my five brothers, pulled me close and wrapped me in a hug as I sobbed against his chest.
"Jane's not dead," I cried, "not dead."
"Nobody said she's dead," John comforted. "Vigils are for the living, too. They're to show support for finding the missing person. Besides, after Mrs. Delgado left, Wayne said that sometimes a vigil provides clues about who might be a person of interest in a kidnapping case."
