South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [15]
“Wait a minute, you’re not sending me off on my own to do this.”
“Piffle. You’ll be fine. Just remember, for Mary’s, you’ve got to look for a big boulder and then the old Studebaker sitting in the woods—that was Jim Dollar’s truck, it quit out there one day back in 1962 and he just left it. I put it all on the map. Take the first left after that and go about two more miles.”
“No way. I don’t know these people, I’ve never even met them. I’ll drive but I’m not going to deliver.”
“Nonsense.”
“Gladys—”
“I can’t go. It’d seem like charity and that’s not what this is. This is just a case of I made too much meat loaf and we can’t eat it all, so you’re dropping some by and they’re helping me out, taking it off my hands. If I’m there it’ll be awkward. Plus it’ll take forever. Introductions, chitchat, gossip. Coffee. Or in Emil’s case, whiskey.” Gladys grinned as Madeline frowned even more stubbornly.
“I’m really not comfortable with this,” she said in such a stodgy way that Gladys wanted to pinch her.
“Oh, fiddle. You waited on tables at a busy place in Chicago for how many years, and you can’t drop off a few casseroles in McAllaster? Get going, you’ll be fine.”
Just then Arbutus called, “Glad,” from the kitchen door, her voice a little feeble, and Gladys seized Upon this. “Arbutus needs me. Don’t get lost.” With that, she strode Up the walk. She knew that Madeline was glaring, but she didn’t hesitate. She was counting on having known Joe well enough to know what his granddaughter would do. Blood would tell. Maybe. Pretty soon she heard the car start Up and pull away and Gladys smiled, pleased for reasons she didn’t articulate to herself.
No one was home at Randi Hopkins’s house, and Madeline was certain she had the right place. It was a shabby house painted mustard yellow, with colorful plastic toys strewn around the yard, and Gladys had said Randi had a child. Plus she had written “Ugly yellow house” on the map. Madeline left the box of food inside the front door after she found it Unlocked and hurried back down the walk feeling guilty, of what she didn’t know. Emil Sainio’s trailer seemed empty too. She knocked several times without getting an answer, but she couldn’t work Up the nerve to try the door—it would open so instantly into the man’s entire life—so she left his box on the step, hoping for the best. She got back in the car feeling more carefree. Maybe no one would be home at all and she’d be back at 26 Bessel drinking coffee with Arbutus within the half hour.
Mary Feather opened her door when she heard a car pull Up. She leaned in the doorway, bracing herself with her hands, her body angled forward by a hump in her back but her feet planted solid on the threshold. She wore denim overalls, rubber galoshes, a woolly cardigan over a long-sleeved Undershirt. Her white hair fell in braids along an angular face, and her eyes were bright, snapping blue. A black-and-white terrier squeezed past her and raced down the steps.
“Jack!” she cried in a gravely voice. The woman who’d gotten out of the car stopped as Jack jumped in ecstatic circles around her knees.
“Jack, get down, get back here,” Mary rasped, her voice even gruffer than usual. She’d had a start, her eyes playing tricks on her, seeing the face of a woman who’d been dead and in the ground for a long, long time. Ada Stone, she’d thought for one shocked moment. “Jack,” she rasped again, and after a few more leaps he trotted back to her.
Her visitor made her way forward, her arms full of boxes. “Hi, I’m Madeline Stone, I’m staying with Gladys Hansen?”
“I thought so.” Mary turned herself around to go in