Dixie Browning – Beckett's Cinderella (страница 2)

“Money, the root of all evils,” Beckett had mused when he’d checked in with his cousin Carson just before leaving Charleston that morning.

“Ain’t that the truth? Wonder which side of the law old Lance would’ve been on if he’d lived in today’s society.”

“Hard to say. Mom dug up some old records, but they got soaked, pretty much ruined, during Hurricane Hugo.” He’d politely suggested to his mother that a bank deposit box might be a better place to store valuable papers than a hot, leaky attic.

She’d responded, “It’s not like they were family photographs. Besides, how was I to know they’d get wet and clump together? Now stop whining and taste this soup. I know butter’s not supposed to be good for you, but I can hardly make Mama’s crab bisque with margarine.”

“Mom, I’m nearly forty years old, for cripes’ sake. While I might occasionally comment on certain difficulties, I never whine. Hmm, a little more salt—maybe a tad more sherry?”

“That’s what I thought, too. I know you don’t, darling. Just look at you, you’re turning grayer every time I see you.”

According to his father, Beckett’s mother’s hair had turned white before she was even out of her teens. All the girls in her high-school class had wanted gray hair. “It’s one thing to turn gray when you’re young enough to pass it off as a fashion statement. It’s another thing when you’re so old nobody gives it a second thought,” she’d said more than once.

For the past fifteen or so years, her hair had been every shade of blond and red imaginable. At nearly sixty, she scarcely looked more than forty—forty-five, at the most.

“Honey, it’s up to you how to handle it,” she said as he helped himself to another spoonful of her famous soup, which contained shrimp as well as crab, plus enough cream and butter to clog every artery between Moncks Corner and Edisto Island. “PawPaw tried his best to find these people, but then he got sick.”

Right. Beckett’s grandfather, called PawPaw by family and friends alike, was as charming an old rascal as ever lived, but at the age of one hundred plus, he was still putting things off. Cheating the devil, he called it. When it came to buck passing, the Beckett men took a back seat to none.

Which is why some four generations after the “crime” had been committed, Beckett was trying to get the job done once and for all.

“What’s the latest on the new tropical depression? You heard anything this morning?” Carson had asked.

“Pretty much stalled, last I heard. I hope to God it doesn’t strengthen—I’ve got half a dozen ships in the North Atlantic using the new tracking device. They all start dodging hurricanes, I’m going to be pretty busy trying to find out if any of them are being hijacked.”

“Yeah, well…take a break. Go play fairy godfather for a change.”

“Easy for you to say.”

When his mother had called to say that PawPaw had had another stroke, Beckett had been in the middle of negotiations with an Irish chemical tanker company that had been hijacked often enough for the owners to feel compelled to contact his firm, Beckett Marine Risk Management, Inc. “Just a teeny-weeny stroke this time, but he really would like to see you and Carson.” She’d gone on to say she didn’t know how long he could hang on, but seeing his two grandsons would mean the world to him.

Beckett came home. And, as Carson was still out of commission, it was Beckett who’d gotten stuck with the assignment.

So now here he was, chasing an elusive lady who had recently been spotted selling produce and God knows what else at a roadside stand in the northeast corner of North Carolina.

“PawPaw, you owe me big-time for this.” Beckett loved his grandfather. Hadn’t seen much of him recently, but he intended to rectify that if the old guy would just pull through this latest setback. Family, he was belatedly coming to realize, was one part anchor, one part compass. In rough weather, he’d hate to be caught at sea without either one.

So, maybe in a year or so, he thought as he crossed the state line between North Carolina and Virginia, he might consider relocating. He’d incorporated in Delaware because of its favorable laws, but that didn’t mean he had to stay there. After a while, a man got tired of zigzagging across too many time zones.

Pulling up at a stoplight, he yawned, rubbed his bristly jaw and wished he had a street address. He’d called ahead to rent a four-wheel-drive vehicle in case the chase involved more than the five-lane highway that ran from Virginia to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Having experienced back roads of all descriptions from Zaire to Kuala Lumpur, he knew better than to take anything for granted. So far it looked like a pretty straight shot, but he’d learned to be prepared for almost anything.

“We’re out of prunes,” came a wavering lament from the back of the house.

“Look in the pantry,” Liza called. “They’ve changed the name—they’re called dried plums now, but they’re still the same thing.” She smiled as she snapped her cash box shut and tied a calico apron over her T-shirt and tan linen pants. Uncle Fred—her great-uncle, really—was still sharp as a tack at the age of eighty-six, but he didn’t like it when things changed.

And things inevitably changed. In her case it had been a change for the better, she thought, looking around at the shabby-comfortable old room with its mail-order furniture and hand-crocheted antimacassars. A wobbly smoking stand, complete with humidor and pipe rack—although her uncle no longer smoked on orders from his physician—was now weighted down with all the farming and sports magazines he’d collected and never discarded. There was an air-conditioning unit in one of the windows, an ugly thing that blocked the view of the vacant lot on the other side, where someone evidently planned to build something. But until they could afford central air—which would be after the kitchen floor was replaced and the house reroofed—it served well enough. Both bedrooms had electric fans on the dressers, which made the humid August heat almost bearable.

Liza hadn’t changed a thing when she’d moved in, other than to scrub the walls, floors and windows, wash all the linens and replace a few dry-rotted curtains when they’d fallen apart in her hands. Discount stores were marvelous places, she’d quickly discovered.

Shortly after she’d arrived, Liza had broken down and cried for the first time in months. She’d been cleaning the dead bugs from a closet shelf and had found a shoe box full of old letters and Christmas cards, including those she’d sent to Uncle Fred. Liza and her mother had always done the cards together, with Liza choosing them and her mother addressing the envelopes. Liza had continued to send Uncle Fred a card each year after her mother had died, never knowing whether or not they’d been received.

Dear, lonely Uncle Fred. She had taken a monumental chance, not even calling ahead to ask if she could come for a visit. She hadn’t know anything about him, not really—just that he was her only living relative except for a cousin she hadn’t seen in several years. She’d driven all the way across the country for a few days’ visit, hoping—praying—she could stay until she could get her feet on the ground and plan her next step.

What was that old song about people who needed people?

They’d both been needy, not that either of them had ever expressed it in words. We’re out of prunes. That was one of Uncle Fred’s ways of letting her know he needed her. Danged eyeglasses keep moving from where I put ’em. That was another.

Life in this particular slow lane might lack a few of the amenities she’d once taken for granted, but she would willingly trade all the hot tubs and country clubs in the world for the quiet predictability she’d found here.

Not to mention the ability to see where every penny came from and where and how it was spent. She might once have been negligent—criminally negligent, some would say—but after the lessons she’d been forced to learn, she’d become a fanatic about documenting every cent they took in. Her books, such as they were, balanced to the penny.

When she’d arrived in May of last year, Uncle Fred had been barely hanging on, relying on friends and neighbors to supply him with surplus produce. People would stop by occasionally to buy a few vegetables, leaving the money in a bowl on the counter. They made their own change, and she seriously doubted if it ever occurred to him to count and see if he was being cheated. What would he have done about it? Threaten them with his cane?

Gradually, as her visit stretched out over weeks and then months, she had instigated small changes. By the end of the year, it was taken for granted that she would stay. No words were necessary. He’d needed her and she’d needed him—needed even more desperately to be needed, although her self-esteem had been so badly damaged she hadn’t realized it at the time.

Uncle Fred still insisted on being present every day, even though he seldom got out of his rocking chair anymore. She encouraged his presence because she thought it was good for him. The socializing. He’d said once that all his friends had moved to a nursing home or gone to live with relatives.