Carolyn McSparren - House of Strangers

“Yes, sir.” Ann tossed two one-dollar bills onto the counter and started out.

A second low moan began to escalate. Behind her, Ann heard the assembled farmers snicker. “It’s okay, Dante,” she called to the giant mournful-looking black hound tied to a rail in front of the café. He shook the heavy folds of skin that hung from his cheeks, but he stopped howling. “Okay, boy, time to go to work.”

PAUL BOUVET had discovered on his first visit to Rossiter that the café next door to the Delaney mansion functioned as a sort of town clubhouse. He’d have to find some way to be, if not accepted, at least tolerated by the locals who ate there regularly. If his mother had come as far as Rossiter before she disappeared, someone might remember her. After all, thirty years ago there couldn’t have been too many strangers showing up in Rossiter.

He didn’t have a clue how to find out. He didn’t dare come out and ask. Nobody could know who he was or why he was here until he’d found out everything he needed to know. The private detective Uncle Charlie had hired never was able to trace his mother’s movements beyond the bus station in downtown Memphis. The trail went cold at that point and had stayed cold until six months ago.

All these years later Paul still believed he knew what had happened to her. All he had to do was prove it.

She would have called his father from the bus station. No doubt he jumped at the chance to pick her up there or meet her somewhere he couldn’t be identified. Mr. Hotshot Delaney didn’t want an inconvenient French peasant girl interfering with his life in Rossiter. She had to disappear.

So he met her, killed her and hid her body so well it had never been found.

What kind of man would do such a thing to a woman who’d loved him so deeply she’d left her own country for him, searched for him for six years and never stopped believing he loved her?

Paul had lived with the specter of his dead mother and her murderer—his father—for most of his life. It wasn’t any easier now that the murderer had a name.

The whole sordid story had to come out. His mother’s body had to be found and properly buried. Paul wanted the present generation of Delaneys to acknowledge the monstrous thing their father had done.

He wanted them to suffer as he had suffered.

He wanted them to be ashamed.

He slipped into a booth at the café, opened the Memphis newspaper and folded it in fourths as he had learned to do when riding on buses and subways in New York and New Jersey. He was surprised when the owner, a tall, handsome blond woman, set down a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. “Coffee?” she said.

Apparently one didn’t ask at this hour of the morning. One simply accepted that coffee was the drink of choice.

“Uh, thank you.”

“Cream’s on the table. What can I get you?”

“Plain wheat toast and a large orange juice, please.”

For a moment she stared down at him. Then she sniffed, went behind the counter at the end of the room and disappeared into the kitchen. He glanced at the group of farmers two tables away.

In a bar in France at this hour of the morning, the farmers would be on their third coffee and brandy. These men, who looked every bit as craggy as French peasants, were mopping up the last bits of egg with their biscuits.

Tante Helaine and Giselle would no doubt have turned up their noses at the food. But after years of grabbing godawful airline meals in flight and even worse in airports, Paul was happy with the menu at the café. These people served actual green vegetables, not simply fried potatoes.

“Wheat toast.” His waitress had returned.

“I think we’re going to be neighbors,” he said.

Instantly her face broke into a smile that lit her hazel eyes. “Wondered if you was him. Hey.”

As he was about to get to his feet, she flipped her hand at him. “We don’t stand on ceremony. I’m Bernice. Nice to meet you. Thought you was getting together with the chief this morning.”

“The chief? Not that I’m aware of.”

She laughed. “Buddy Jenkins, chief of police. He’s Jenkins Renovation and Restoration.”

“Oh, then yes, I am meeting him.” He checked his watch. “In about ten minutes.”

“You eat up. Buddy’s always on time unless there’s a law problem he has to handle. We mostly only get speeders out on the highway and drunk drivers.” She looked at him hard. “We have some drug problems in the county, but we sure as shootin’ don’t want any more.”

He smiled. “I’m sure you don’t. Thank you.”

As he bent to read his newspaper, he realized that all conversation had ceased. The farmers at the other table had swiveled in their chairs so that they could watch him. The moment he smiled at them, however, they turned away, hunched over and began to speak softly.

As a stranger moving to a small town, he’d expected to be checked out, but this was ridiculous.

He ate his breakfast, paid his bill, tipped the waitress generously, nodded to the farmers and left.

In Manhattan, piles of dirty snow still lined the streets. Here fifty miles east of the Mississippi River, the March wind was chill, but it smelled of fresh grass and newly turned earth. He’d been warned that west Tennessee summers were brutal, but he was ready to endure almost anything for this gentle early spring. Besides, he planned to install central air-conditioning in his new house.

At some point between the end of the Civil War and prohibition, Rossiter must have been prosperous. The small plaque that leaned against his front steps said that the Delaney house had been built in 1890. A dozen similar mansions along Main Street looked as though they dated from the early 1900s.

The railroad still ran along the far side of the open square that separated the town from the Wolf River bottoms on the north side, but the trains no longer even slowed to acknowledge the existence of the town.

Once there must have been a station. Probably it had stood where the small park with the shiny, ornate Victorian bandstand now perched across the parking lot from the café.

The café stood on one corner of what remained of the town square. About the time the Delaneys decided to build a fine house and move into town from their plantations, the area must have been a crush of mule-drawn wagons piled high with bales of cotton. Probably the café hadn’t existed then. He doubted the high-and-mighty Delaneys would have chosen to build their mansion next door to a café.

The pickup trucks and stock trailers parked haphazardly in the area now were not nearly as romantic.

Bank, mom-and-pop grocery, and dingy pool hall sat on the south side across the street from the café. Three handsomely restored row houses formed the west side. The lower floor of the first held his real-estate agent’s office and the second a florist shop. On the front porch of the third building, a twelve-foot black wooden grizzly bear advertised something, but Paul couldn’t begin to guess what.

Those few small stores constituted the entire business district of Rossiter. The nearest shopping mall was more than twenty miles away, on the road to Memphis.

Paul checked his watch and sauntered along the sidewalk toward his house. His house. He still couldn’t believe he’d done such an insane thing. He didn’t generally operate on impulse.

The sidewalk was dangerously buckled and broken by the roots of several giant oaks and magnolias in his front yard. Didn’t the city council, or whatever passed for government in this village, pay attention to things like dangerous walkways? Perhaps nobody in Rossiter actually walked.

When he reached the snaggle-toothed brick path that led up to his front porch, he simply stood and gloated. His house was younger, smaller and less splendid than Tara, but it must have been imposing in its day.

Unfortunately, at the moment it looked like an aging whore trying to cadge money for her next drink.

“I own your house, Daddy, you bastard,” Paul said louder than he’d planned.

Behind him he heard tires squeal. A squad car with the Rossiter seal slid to a stop by the curb. A man climbed out of the driver’s seat.

Paul had met Buddy Jenkins only once before, just after his bid to buy the house had been accepted. At the meeting in his real-estate agent’s office, Buddy had worn jeans and a University of Tennessee sweatshirt. They’d spoken on the telephone a number of times while Paul was winding up his affairs in New Jersey and storing his few possessions, but Buddy had never mentioned he was the chief of police.

In a town like this, being chief of police probably wasn’t a demanding job. No wonder he’d started his renovation company.

At first Paul had been reluctant to give the restoration contract to a local construction firm. How could anybody working out of a town the size of Rossiter be any good?

But when he’d inquired about renovation and restoration experts in the Memphis and west-Tennessee area, Buddy Jenkins’s name had come up repeatedly at the top of the list. After Paul checked out the mansions, theaters, government state houses and private homes that Jenkins had restored, he’d decided to hire the man.

“Don’t know if you can get him,” Mrs. Hoddle, his real-estate agent, had said. “He’s usually booked up pretty far in advance. But because the house is in Rossiter, you may be able to convince him to do the job for you.”

Buddy’s preliminary estimates on doing the job had taken Paul’s breath away until he found out what his New York friends were paying to renovate their brownstones.

Paul wanted the job done right. Now that he had committed to this crazy charade, this crazy crusade, being able to resell the house for a profit would make his victory even sweeter.

“Hey, Mr. Bouvet,” Buddy Jenkins said as he came forward and stuck out his hand. In uniform the man looked even larger. His starched shirt was perfectly pressed and tailored to his barrel chest and broad shoulders. His boots were spit-shined. What little hair he had left was cut in a gray fringe that barely showed against his tanned skin.

Jenkins probably carried 250 pounds or more on his six-three frame. God help the drunk driver who gave this man any lip. At six feet even and 175 pounds, Paul felt almost small by comparison.

“Ready for the bad news?” Jenkins said happily.

“Not really, but there’s no sense in putting it off.”

“First the good news. In three months or so this old place can look better than it’s looked since the day the Delaneys first moved in.”

“Three months?”

“Maybe five.”

“And the bad news?”

“Come on, I’ll walk you through.” Buddy reached into his pocket and drew out a key.

“If you don’t mind, Buddy, I’d like to use my key.”

“Sure.” Buddy grinned. “First time you’ve used it?”

“Since I had the new locks installed.” The front door was original, complete with an etched-glass oval in the center. Although the original brass lock remained, the shiny new Yale lock was the one that worked. Paul thought he’d feel a surge of triumph when he stepped into the house again. He felt nothing.

“Let’s start in the basement,” Buddy said. “We’ve got a temporary permit for the electricity, so we can see while we replace the wiring.”

“All of it?”

“Every whipstitch,” Buddy said. “Phone lines, too.” The old oak floors echoed their footsteps. “Watch your head.”

Over the next hour Paul listened to Buddy’s litany of disaster. Maybe the house hadn’t been such a bargain, after all.

“Need to jack up at least one corner of the house to replace sills,” Buddy said. “Termites.”