Bonita Faye Page 21

  A frown wrinkled his brows, but he nodded.

  “And would you use the front door? It might scare her if you came in the back this early.” I remembered the look of a brown uniform though my lead glass door. I wasn’t lookin’ for history to repeat itself, but it wouldn’t hurt to help it either.

  R.J. was almost through the door this time before I called after him again. He patiently returned to my table.

  “And, R.J., will you call her ‘Elizabeth.’ ” It was time that girl grew up to the name her mother had given her.

  “Can I get you some pie, Miz Adams?” I hadn’t seen the waitress at my elbow.

  “No, Frances. I think I’m going to go on a diet. The doctor says it will help my arthritis. I’ll just have some more coffee, please.”

  I sat and drank that last cup and thought about what R.J. had told me. If I had waited just one more day, if I had listened more to what R.J. had said about the investigation, if I hadn’t thought I had to solve the problem myself…if…if…if…When would I ever learn?

  Ain’t life funny? Everything was already in the works to take care of my problem, but no, I had to go and kill Baron Falkenberry a day too early.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The doctor was right.

  Losing weight did ease the pain in my knees. I was so small boned that carrying around all that extra weight just added to the misery.

  I might never have lost as much as I did ‘cept for Patsy.

  When I got home from the Black Angus that Sunday afternoon, I was so stiff, I couldn’t get out of the car. I had to sit and honk until Libby came out and helped me inside. Then she called Patsy.

  Libby was red eyed and her face was blotchy from crying, but all-in-all, I didn’t think she was as upset about Baron as she coulda been. She treated me as gentle as a baby as she helped me into bed.

  Patsy, however, was a tyrant.

  “Bonita Faye Adams, what on earth have you been up to? What have you done to yourself?”

  She stood over me, her hands on the broad hips that were the only sign that she had ever borne seven children, and her rosy face that had never seen a lick of makeup was screwed up as tight as the gray bun she wore on the top of her head.

  “Libby, get me the arthritis ointment and the hot pads,” she ordered.

  It was nearly three weeks before Patsy let me get up to even go in my own kitchen. She and Libby fixed all my meals, and to tell the truth, I wasn’t all that hungry, so all that low-fat, low-cholesterol food wasn’t so bad.

  The pounds melted off and the pain and Libby went away at the same time.

  She had decided to go to school in Norman and I wondered, but I didn’t ask, if it had anything to do with R.J. transferring to OSBI in Oklahoma City. If it did, I’d know someday.

  Before she left we had us a little talk.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Bonita Faye, for all you’ve done for me.” She put her pretty blonde head over on my shoulder and started to cry.

  “Now, Elizabeth. I’ve told you and I’ve told you that I don’t want to hear any more of that.”

  “But, when I think of how I came here. And how you’ve told me so much about my mother. Just when I’d lost her, I’ve found her in another way.” I’d given the girl all the mementos I’d kept of her mother’s, all but one tape cassette of a piano recital where Elly had played a Mozart concerto.

  Libby went on. “And Baron Falkenberry. What must you think of me? R.J. says you understand, but, oh, Bonita Faye, what a fool I was.”

  “We all are, Elizabeth, at one time or another over some man. It doesn’t mean you have to carry it around with you for the rest of your life.” She looked up at me and smiled. She was looking more like Elly every day.

  The first night after the girl left, I sat in my rocker in my living room wrapped in the old afghan. I waited for Harmon, but he never came. “That’s all right, Harmon,” I whispered anyway. “I know now that you’re dead. You just go on with whatever it is you have to do. And I’ll get on with living. I’m sorry I kept you so long.” Patsy woulda been mad if she knew I sat in that rocker all night long, sat until the early morning sun shown through my lead glass front door causing colored lights to dance on the living room wall.

  “Do you want me to put that in an overhead compartment for you, Mrs. Adams?” The stewardess was trying to help.

  “No, I’ll hold on to it, but thank you for asking.”

  “But, it will be almost four hours to Paris, even on the Concorde.”

  I smiled and said, “I remember when it used to take twelve. It’s all right, honey. It’s not heavy and I want it close to me.”

  I looked down at the paper shopping bag that we were arguing over. Sticking up through the thick swaddling of tissue paper was the handle of my orange Fiestaware pitcher. That and my Van Gogh postcard were all I’d brought with me that meant anything. And I’d filled the Fiestaware pitcher full of rose petals from my favorite bush when I’d left my little house in Poteau, Oklahoma, for the last time.

  As she walked on down the aisle to help another passenger, I wondered what that stewardess had seen when she looked at me. Just a scared, little old gray-haired lady clutching to a misconception of treasure, or a mature woman excited about going on one of the most thrilling adventures of her life.

  Probably the old lady, I thought as the space-age plane left the runway. I hadn’t been too impressed with what I had seen behind the attendant’s eyes that were almost the turquoise blue of Patsy’s. “That girl hasn’t lived long enough,” I said under my breath, but my thoughts were of my best friend that I had left behind.

  Patsy had wanted me to go. Had even helped plan my itinerary and make reservations, but I still hadn’t wanted to leave her until she finally agreed that she’d make her first trip to France in the spring. “I’d like to be there when Michel and Sary’s first grandchild is born,” she’d said.

  So we’d gone on with the plans which were a lot more thorough and detailed than when I first flew to Paris over forty years ago.

  Although the plane was going to Paris, I wasn’t going to stop there, not even to spend one night with Simone, Denis and Robert at the Hotel Regina in Boulogne. They didn’t even know I was coming anyway.

  No, I was going to take a sleeper train to Geneva, Switzerland, and from there, a day coach to Aigle, where I’d catch the narrow-gage railroad up to Leysin. Claude was living there, semi-retired, since Didi’s death in a car accident outside Stockholm two years ago. I hadn’t seen his chateau in Leysin, but he had sent me postcards and it looked like a mountain village a Heidi would have loved.

  Claude didn’t know I was finally ready to come to him either. For the first time in my life I was going to surprise him.

  I carried my shopping bag with me when I went to the restroom on the plane. While I was washing my hands, I glanced in the mirror. “Well, hello,” I said. My soul was peeking through today.

  When I settled back down in my seat and the Concorde was speeding toward France, I felt like Wonder Woman at the controls of her invisible airplane. I felt in charge, but only of my immediate destination.

  The glimpse of my soul in the restroom had reassured me that Billy Roy’s death was squared away. If I believed, I had to believe that.

  The other one, the Falkenberry one, still bothered me some. When I’d asked Baron to meet me at the Runestone, was murder on my mind? Had I really wanted to see the leaves from the higher vista or had I known that a fall from the lower plateau was unlikely to be fatal? Was it premeditated murder or impulse that caused me to shove Baron Falkenberry off that cliff? Did I know that no one was ever going to suspect, much less question, a half-crippled old woman about a death at the end of an extremely physical trail?

  Whatever the answers, the results were out of my hands. I remembered what Didi had told me years ago.

  “What did you s
ay? Can I help you, Mrs. Adams?” I looked up at the girl with no history in her eyes and shook my head. “No, I’m just talking to myself.”

  What I hadn’t intended to say out loud, but wasn’t sorry that I had, was, “Offer it up. I’m tired of being in charge of what comes next. I’ll just offer it up.”

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Margaret Moseley has been making her living as a writer since she was eighteen, beginning on the original Fort Worth Press in Fort Worth, Texas and continuing with work for ad agencies, television, and major corporations. Her stunningly original first book, Bonita Faye, was a finalist in the Edgar Award for Best New Novel and earned her wide, and richly deserved, acclaim.

  Moseley was born in Durant, Oklahoma, raised in Fort Worth, Texas and for twenty years lived in Fort Smith, Arkansas. During her time in Arkansas, she was a personal friend of the Clintons and campaigned for them as an Arkansas Traveler at the time of the 1992 election.

  She is the author of four additional mystery novels: Milicent LeSueur, The Fourth Steven, Grinning in His Mashed Potatoes, and A Little Traveling Music Please, all of which are being republished by Brash Books.

  Moseley is married to computer guru and novelist Ron Burris. They live in Euless, Texas, with their rescued beagles Miss Sadie and Miss (The Terror) Matilda.