recalled a similar slender build and fair coloring. Something of Chan’s forehead was in her brow, and her eyes were blue like his even though hers had the same feline tilt as Dixie’s. There was something familiar about the way her small lips quirked that I couldn’t quite place until I remembered that Evelyn’s smile had also been delightfully asymmetrical.
“Judge/fudge/budge/grudge—if you’re a judge, do you have one of those little hammers?”
I nodded.
“Did you ever hit anybody with it?”
“No, I just bang it to make people be quiet.”
“You probably wish you had one now,” said Pell with mock severity.
Lynnette laughed and chattered brightly as she spooned Cheerios from a dark red cereal bowl. I gingerly sipped the orange juice Pell handed me. My stomach considered rebellion, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
“Grandmama’s talking to Aunt Millie and Uncle Quentin and Shirley Jane,” she told me. “They’re maybe going to come see us soon.”
I glanced at Pell and a slight shake of his head let me know that Lynnette had not yet been told of Chan’s death. I couldn’t fault Dixie for putting it off as long as possible, but it did limit conversation at the breakfast table. Instead, we discussed how much money Lynnette could expect to make off the Tooth Fairy in the next year or so, we heard how her cousin Shirley Jane was half a year younger but none of her teeth were loose yet, and we were given a demonstration of how nicely she could print our names.
“Next year we’ll write cursive. Daddy already showed me how to do a capital L. See?”
I learned that the school she attended was out this way from Lexington and close enough that she’d been staying with Dixie most of the spring because of Chan’s frequent trips to Texas and Malaysia. Normally, a baby- sitter drove her back and forth, “But Grandmama said I could stay home today.”
She doodled a wiry creature with four legs and a long tail on her paper. “Does this look like a monkey, Uncle Pell?”
Before he could answer, she said abruptly, “I wish Daddy wasn’t going to make us move so far away. Malaysia is even farther than Aunt Millie’s house and we have to drive all day to go see her.”
“To Frederick, Maryland?” Pell scoffed. “Four and a half hours tops.”
“Well, it
From their easy familiar manner toward each other, I guessed that Lynnette must have ran in and out of Pell’s house since birth.
Pell offered to fix me toast and scrambled eggs, but my stomach still felt too queasy for anything except coffee and juice. He thought that the soup kitchen wouldn’t open its door before noon, but he knew the number of a locksmith who agreed to meet me at my car so I could pick up my suitcase and the garment bag that held my judicial robe. At least, we agreed to meet where I’d left my car the day before. My back bumper carries a small shield that identifies me as an officer of the court plus stickers for temporary parking at several courthouses around the state, but that was no guarantee that some overly zealous traffic officer hadn’t had it towed.
“Take my van,” Pell said. ”I don’t keep any set schedule during Market Week and if you’re not due in court till ten, you can come back here and change and I’ll drop you at the courthouse.”
I started to demur but then Dixie let herself in the back door. She looked almost as haggard as I felt, and after I’d hugged her and heard that Chan’s sister was on her way, I accepted the keys to Pell’s blue Ford Aerostar and took myself off so that they could tell Lynnette in private.
My car had a parking ticket tucked under the wiper blade; otherwise my rendezvous with the locksmith—“Jimmy’s my name, and jimmying’s my game”—went off smoothly. Ol’ Jimmy had a door open before I finished writing a note of explanation on the back of the ticket in case that officer came back, then he put my suitcase and garment bag in Pell’s car and offered to get me a new set of keys for a price. I told him I’d let him know.
The morning paper had a little box on the front page:
“Lynnette took it as well as could be expected, I suppose,” said Pell as he drove me over to the courthouse an hour later after I was freshly dressed, combed and lip-sticked. “Cried a little and then said she didn’t mean that she really didn’t want to go to Kuala Lumpur.”
“Oh Lord.”
“Yeah. We both told her that wasn’t why her Daddy died, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to get her some counseling to make her believe it. Dix, too, for that matter.”
“Oh?”
“It was tearing her to pieces that Chan was moving Lynnette halfway around the globe.” That long lank of straight gray hair fell boyishly across his eye and he pushed it aside with a heavy sigh. “She’s going to have a hard time making herself believe she’s not glad he’s dead.”
“Dixie’s lucky to have you next door,” I said as we headed downtown.
Rush hour was past, but the Market vans and buses that shuttled between downtown and satellite parking areas were out in full force.
“Have you two known each other long?”
“Since first grade at Sedgeneld School over in Greensboro. She was in the third grade and the bus stop was in front of her house. About the fourth day, some big kid—big to me anyhow—tried to take my lunch bag and she sailed in and bloodied his nose.”
I smiled, remembering a few noses I’d bloodied in school myself.
“Both our fathers had taken off before we could walk, but Mrs. Babcock and—”
“Dixie’s
He raised his eyebrow at the surprise in my voice.
