as I was sorting the clothes.”
Zan sips his tea.
“The owner of the shop is also a jeweler, and when I showed it to him, he said it’s probably worth a fortune. I know I’d be devastated if I lost such a treasure, so I’ve been trying to find the lady ever since.”
“Oh my.” Maybelle puts a hand over her heart, intensely moved, it seems.
“I remember asking about her Christmas plans, and she said she was going to visit your church for the Christmas Eve service…she’d never been before.”
“Perhaps I met her then!” Maybelle says. “There were sixty-two guests who filled out cards that night….Do you have her name?”
Zan looks at me with his eyes all alight.
“I never got her name, but I have a picture of her on me. I’ve been carrying it everywhere.” I stand and pat my pockets, hoping Macklin takes a frickin’ hint.
“I have it, actually,” Zan says (thank God, who, if he’s real, will likely smite us for all these lies we’re telling). He shifts to pull the picture out of his back pocket and passes it to me. “You dropped it in the hallway.”
“She was a tiny older black lady with little white Afro.” I unfold the picture and pass it to Maybelle.
She furrows her brow, turns the photo to the right, and cocks her head to the left.
Then she smiles. “Christmas Eve, you say?”
“Yes.”
Maybelle nods. “This is Ethel.”
I look at Zan…who’s already looking at me. “Ethel?” we say simultaneously.
“That’s her name. I remember her quite clearly. The light-up sweater she had on was a little tacky, but she came up at the end of the service for prayer and I walked her out.”
This rich old white lady would hate on Ethel’s sweater.
Maybelle sighs and shakes her head then.
My mouth goes dry. “What’s the matter?”
“She’s one of the ones who got away,” she says. “We tried to contact her but never got a response.”
Uh-oh. “Do you think she, umm…?” Based on the lack of color in Zan’s face, I’d say he knows what I’m about to ask. “Do you think she passed?”
“Oh, I doubt that.” Maybelle flicks the thought away. (Whew!) “We were probably just a bit too hip for her tastes. Women like Ethel tend to grow up Baptist, Holiness Pentecostal, or AME. Very traditional worship-wise—hymns and old Negro spirituals, that type of thing—and they rarely stray from the King James Version. You two familiar with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?”
Oh boy, here we go….
“We’re Catholic, ma’am,” Zan says.
Maybelle fights so hard to hide her displeasure, I almost bust out laughing. “Oh” is all she says.
The air in the room goes a little sour, so I decide to just take the plunge. “Do you think you could give me Ethel’s contact information? I’d really like to get her bracelet bac—”
“I thought you said brooch?”
And shit.
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry. Her brooch. Her…elephant brooch.”
She eyes me for a few seconds, then sighs. “Unfortunately, it’s against the VFC Code of Ethics to give out anyone’s contact information without their express permission. If you’d like to leave your phone number, I can make an attempt at contacting her myself, but as I mentioned, no one was able to get ahold of her after her visit.”
And scene.
She looks at her watch. “If the two of you would like a tour of the house for your project, now would be the time. I’ll need to have my bath soon.”
“That sounds like a fabulous idea, Ms. Carver,” Zander says. “Thank you for offering.”
“Right this way.” She stands and heads toward the drawing room door.
We follow suit, and I jab him with a good glower—don’t see a point in the façade now.
But he just winks at me. Which, despite the death of our quest, makes my insides go gooey. (Insult to injury, I tell you.)
When we get into the hallway, Zander pauses and puts a hand on his stomach. “Ahh…Ms. Carver, might I use your facilities?”
Maybelle looks a little grossed out (which is kind of funny), but she says, “Yes, of course. Second door on the left there,” and she points down an adjacent hall.
“You lovelies can go ahead and begin the tour since I know we’re pressed for time,” Zan says. “Tell me, was there butter in any of those cookies?”
Maybelle is clearly aghast. “Of course there was butter! They’re cookies.”
“Ah. Right. Definitely go ahead. This could take a whi—” His face goes blank. “Oh boy, gotta go now.” And he pivots and rushes around the corner.
For a