grinned. "Okay. How about Missing Mildred?"
I was glad when David pulled into the bus station a few minutes later. I stayed in the car with Lizzie while my grandmother and David went inside with a recent photograph of Mildred.
"They think Mildred's dead, don't they?" Lizzie said, watching them disappear into the building. "Maybe whoever killed Otto kidnapped her and is holding her for ransom in a cave somewhere."
"Why would they do that, Lizzie?" I asked.
"I don't know. Why would anybody want to kill Otto?" She linked her arm in mine, and we waited silently for her dad and Vesta to come back with a clue that might help us find Mildred.
But I could tell from their grim faces our trip to Rock Hill had been a waste of time. "The woman who sells tickets said she might've seen Mildred, but she couldn't be sure," Vesta told us. "And the man who works with her couldn't remember seeing her at all." My grandmother sank into the front seat with a moan, and that bothered me almost as much as Mildred's disappearance. Vesta Maxwell is not your everyday, run-of-the-mill moaner. In fact, she's not the moaning type at all.
"There's the police—," I began.
"I know, I know. I suppose we could take legal measures to find out if Mildred charged a bus ticket on a credit card or wrote a check for her fare," Vesta said.
"Of course, if she paid cash, we'd have no way of knowing," David said.
I wished he hadn't. It was a long, quiet drive back to Angel Heights.
We found Gatlin waiting with exciting news when we returned. Dr. Hank had finally agreed to sell the building next door. "Of course it's gonna take him a few days to get those old records out," she said. "I've talked with a couple of contractors about getting an estimate on the work that needs to be done."
"Let's hope the walls remain standing," Dave said, shaking his head. "Hank's old records might be the only thing holding them up."
"You'd think he'd be excited for me," Gatlin said later that night as we drove to see Pluma Griffin's niece in the assisted living center on Chatham's Pond Road. "I know it's a gamble taking a chance on this tearoom-bookshop idea, but there comes a time when you just have to hold your breath and jump in."
"David's just wary," I said. And with good reason, I thought, but for once I had sense enough to keep it to myself. "He'll come around when you get an opinion from the contractors."
My cousin didn't respond, but sat in the passenger seat with her arms folded and stared stonily ahead. "I left him to get Faye to bed and see to Lizzie's homework," she said a few miles down the road. "Still, I think he was glad to see me go."
"Probably," I said. "You're scary when you're mad."
"Boo!" Gatlin laughed. Finally relaxing, she noticed the loaf of date-nut bread I'd brought along that Augusta had wrapped in star-spattered cellophane. "You've been baking again? Looks good—what is it?"
"Date-nut bread." I shrugged. "All those pecans…I do live in a nut house."
"You belong in one," my cousin said. "And I don't believe for one minute you've become this domestic overnight. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were hiding a gourmet cook in the pantry." She closed her eyes and sniffed the rich, dark loaf. "She doesn't take orders, does she?"
"What makes you think it's a she?" I asked, and laughed. Gatlin laughed, too, but I could tell by her look she was kind of shocked that I'd even joke about having another man in my life. Frankly, I surprised myself.
I had found the loaf cooling on the kitchen table when I'd reached home earlier, but Augusta was nowhere around. Walking into a house without Augusta in it jolted me more than I was prepared to admit, and I sensed an urgency in her absence that gave me sort of an angelic kick in the pants.
Dusk had fallen early as it always does in mid-November, and although it was not yet five-thirty, backyard shadows enfolded the house and its surroundings in an indigo cape. I stepped out onto the back porch and called her name, and in the distance I heard her humming a song that would probably be familiar if Augusta could stay on key. She approached almost noiselessly in a swirl of autumn leaves, her purple, moon-splashed scarf billowing about her, long necklace glinting green and azure as