Bitch Factor – Chapter 3
“Aunt Dixie! We might get snow!” Ryan bounded through the back door, enthusiasm bubbling ahead of him.
Hearing her nephew’ s bullfrog voice, which had started to change the past few weeks, Dixie’s own enthusiasm welled up. Ryan was the best part of every holiday. Maybe trimming the tree with him would rekindle her Christmas spirit.
“Snow? It’s seventy-five degrees.” She pitched the Parker Dann file on the buffet, out of sight, out of her indecisive mind, at least for the moment, and found Ryan halfway down the hall cradling two Tupperware containers. “This is Houston,” she told him. “We get rain, or maybe sleet. Once in a coon’s age we get hail. We never get snow.”
“Dad says every eleven years. Last time I was a baby. We have pictures!”
“I know we have pictures. Who do you think bought you that baby snowsuit, special overnight delivery from Denver — and you only wore it three days?” She ruffled his hair, an affection Ryan hated. But with his hands full, he was at her mercy. “What smell so great?”
“Chocolate chip cookies and pecan pie. I made the cookies!” He grinned, standing hunched over from the weight of his backpack. Dixie could see the bulge of his laptop computer stuffed inside, and a favorite game, Gorn & Tribbles, threatening to tumble out. “Where’s Mud?” he asked.
“At the vet, getting poked and clipped.” When Ryan’s grin faded in disappointment, she punched him playfully. “Hey, kid, who’d you come to see, anyway, that mongrel pup or me?” Aiming him toward the dining room, she copped a swift kiss. “Put the food on the buffet.”
Then Dixie turned to help her keep sister carry a pair of enormous shopping bags. Amy looked all cushiony and warm, in a rose pink nubby sweater and wool pants. Pearl earrings dangled beneath her blonde Bob. In high school, she’d been a knockout cheerleader, the girl everyone wanted to chum with. To Dixie — short, plain, brainy, a total nerd — Amy had been a goddess. You didn’t compete with a goddess, you worshiped her, even when she asked your help with homework work two grades harder than your own or when she cried in your room over a different boy every week, but especially when she knuckled your head and said you were the world’s greatest sister. Now Amy’s glamorous curves has softened and spread. “Happy fat,” Dixie often teased. “The downside of a contented lifestyle.”
“Here, Amy, give me one of those!” Dixie said now. Red and gold Christmas balls peeked from the top of the bag. “What is all this?”
“Christmas decorations. You didn’t buy anything new for the tree, did you?” Freed from carrying the shopping bag, Amy patted Dixie’s shoulder and tucked her hair back. She could win first prize in a packing-and-tucking contest.
Dixie waited until Amy looked away, then untucked her hair.
“I thought we could use the stuff from the attic.” Actually, Dixie had stopped at a Trim-a-Tree store, but the vast selection there had overwhelmed her. She hated shopping for anything that came in more than one color. Besides, her adoptive parents, during their fifty-odd years of marriage, had collected boxes and boxes of trimmings.
“Dixie, you’ll have enough Christmas ghosts in this old house without dredging it in memories.”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts — certainly not Barney and Kathleen. And Christmas would be damned empty without memories.” Dixie bit down on a grain of annoyance. Kathleen had been dead only eighteen months, Barney less than a year. She wanted to remember them, and she couldn’t understand why Amy, their own blood daughter, wanted to bury the memories like old bones. She stopped short of saying it, though, having promised herself no arguments tonight. But dammit, it was Dixie’s house, Dixie’s tree, and if she wanted to deck the place with cobwebs of Christmas past, why shouldn’t she?
“That porch has a loose rail,” Carl called from the doorway. The smell of smoked meat drifted down the hallway with him. Carson Royal had his faults, but no one could barbecue a yummier brisket. “What I’m saying, someone’s going to fall, and you’ll have a lawsuit. Mailman takes a tumble, sue you for everything you own and then some.”
“Thanks for pointing that out, Carl. Cheers to you, too.” As they entered the living room under one of Kathleen’s needlepoint maxims — Visitors always give pleasure: if not the coming, then the going — Dixie congratulated herself on keeping the edge out her of her voice. Her brother-in-law could get under her skin quicker than anybody, but tonight Carl’s tiny barbs were going to bounce like water off a glass dome.
She mentally encased herself in a bubble … filled it with tranquility … and lifted the corners of her mouth. Yes, that would work. That would definitely work. She would enjoy this evening if it killed her.
“I see you haven’t stained the fence lately.” Carl shook his head. “Got to keep that wood treated, keep the damp out, or it’ll rot. I told Barney you’d never be able to keep this place up.”
Bounce… Bounce… Bounce…
“Too much work for a woman, running a pecan farm. Best thing is to sell the place now, while you can still get top dollar. What I’m saying, once you let it run down —”
“Carl, the same people are handling the orchard who handled it for three years before Barney died. You and Amy received the financial reports and your profits from this year’s crop.” Dixie dropped the bulging shopping bag near the Christmas tree, where Amy was already unloading ornaments. The room smelled pleasantly of wood smoke. By turning the air conditioner down to freeze, Dixie had felt justified in building a fire in the fireplace.
“Now, Carl, stop nagging,” Amy said, patting a huge red velvet bow into place on a tree limb. “Mom and Dad left the orchard to Dixie because they knew she’d take care of it.” She twirled a faceted gold ball. Light fragments darted around the room.
“All I’m saying is she’ll never get top dollar —”
Bounce … Bounce … Bounce …
What Carl was not saying was that he’d rather have thirty percent of a two-million-dollar sale to invest in the stock market than twenty-thousand-a-year income.
Actually, it had been Amy’s idea that Dixie inherit the family home and pecan orchard. From the day twenty-seven years ago when the Flannigan’s adopted Dixie as a troubled adolescent, they’d treated her as their own. Amy, an only child nearly three years older, had been eager to have a little sister. And Dixie had clung to all their love and attention like a flagging swimmer to a life raft — but she’d never hoped to inherit more than a few family mementos. Then the day Kathleen learned she had cancer, Barney called a family meeting to discuss the property. “I don’t want to run a pecan farm,” Amy had told her parents. “And Carl wouldn’t know how. I’ll never understand why Dixie loves this moldy old house, but she does, so she should have it. We’ll take the summer house in Maine.” After Barney’s death, the will specified that proceeds from the pecan farm would be split seventy-thirty in Dixie’s favor, with a provision that she could sell at any time. So far, she hadn’t wanted to.
A thunder of drums blasted from the stereo.
“Brian!” Amy shouted. “Turn off that racket.”
“It’s Christmas music, Mom.”
“Find a station playing traditional carols. And turn it down.” Amy handed Carl a string of colored lights. “Plug these in, would you, honey? I think they’re supposed to wink.”
Dixie opened one of the boxes she’d brought down from the attic. Some of the decorations were still in their original boxes, but older ones were wrapped in recycled gift paper. She found the beaded balls she and Amy had made in a craft class, then the salt and cornstarch gingerbread men Kathleen had baked and the girls had painted. She carried them to the tree. Amy had already tied several gold balls to the limbs with red velvet bows.
“Now, Dixie! We can’t use those things. They’ll upset the color balance. These are designer decorations. The latest fashion.”
“Gold balls and red bows. That’s new?”
“Look at the impressions in the gold. Computer chips!”
Dixie tucked the gingerbread men back in their box. “These beaded balls won’t clash there mostly red and gold.” Ignoring Amy’s exaggerated sigh, she hung the two ornaments in prominent positions, then stepped aside to let Carl work another string of lights among the branches.
“I said traditional!” Amy shouted at the paneled wall — on the other side, “Jingle Bells” was being rendered in something between rap and reggae.
Carl anchored the light string, then stood back to scowl at the electrical outlet.
“Must be fifty years old. This whole house likely needs rewiring. Cost you a bundle, changing all that wire.”
… bounce… bounce… bounce …
As Dixie resumed her exploration of the boxes from the attic, Brian charged into the middle of them. He found a snow family Kathleen had bought one Christmas — snowman, snow woman, two snow babies, the Flannigans’ names embroidered on their hats.
“Cool!” Ryan carried them to the tree. “I remember these. Gramma used them every year.”
Amy heaved another martyred sigh. “Put them somewhere inconspicuous, please, Ryan. Carl, what’s wrong with those lights? They’re not winking.”
“It’s the wiring. Old wiring’ s not going to work with these new-style lights.”
“I think you have to replace one of the bulbs with that special bulb in the plastic bag,” Amy pointed out. “Dixie, maybe you should consider selling this house — or rent it out — and move closer to town. There’s a nice place for sale right down the street from us.” She paused, then, offhanded, like it was nothing special, she added, “The nicest man has joined our choir.”
Dixie felt bad news coming like a blast of cold air.
“You mean Mr. Snelling, Mom?” Ryan rummaged through the attic boxes for more treasures. “Snelling’s old, and he stares at everybody over the top of his glasses.”
“Old? Delbert Snelling is younger than me!” Amy pinched her son playfully on the ear. “And your Aunt Dixie’s not getting any younger.”
Dixie had turned thirty-nine in November.
“Anyway, I invited him to dinner Christmas night —”
“Amy! I ask you not to fix me up —”
“Now, Dixie, this isn’t a date. I just thought … well, the poor man doesn’t have any family here, not a soul. I know how you hate to see anybody spend Christmas alone.”
True. But what a coincidence that this solitary soul happened to be near Dixie’s age and unmarried. Amy would never understand that some women preferred solitude. She believed people should be paired off like socks.
“My empty stomach tells me it’s time to set the table,” Dixie announced, making a beeline for the dining room. Dating had never been her strong suit. Men she met were always too tall, too short, too macho, too sensitive, too rude, or too quick with a lasso. In college, she’d dated sporadically, and in the years that followed had enjoyed several long-term “situations,” but she always bailed out when they looked like becoming permanent.
Kathleen’s good China gleamed behind the glass doors of the oak hutch. Dixie lifted down four plates, inspected them for dust, then set them around the oak table. The room rarely was used anymore, but until the final stages of Kathleen’s illness, every Sunday had found it filled with noisy good humor and the mouthwatering aroma of peaches and cinnamon.
Kathleen had made the best peach cobbler in Texas, attested to by a State Fair blue ribbon that hung framed on the dining-room wall, under another of Kathleen’s needlepoint maxims — When you make your mark in the world, watch out for the guys with erasers.
Dixie moved Carl’s brisket to a carving plate, then peeled plastic covers from a bowl of coleslaw and the pecan pie. Flannigan holiday meals always included dishes made with the rich meat of paper-shell pecans — from pecan rolls at breakfast to tuna-pecan sandwiches at lunch to pecan stuffing and buttered-pecan ice cream at dinner. Each Christmas eve, the family would gather in the kitchen, Kathleen rubbing oil on a turkey in a blue granite roaster, Barney chopping pecans from the family stash. Heat from the stove turned their faces rosy. Kathleen, her knot of white hair sprigging loose to halo around her face, always looked happiest in her kitchen, and Barney sang the goofiest Christmas songs. While
Amy mixed cookie dough, Dixie, who’d never been much of a cook even under Kathleen’s watchful eye, had kept the dishes washed. Flannigan holidays were a buzz of mundane activities made festive with wacky moments, colorful trappings, and marvelous food.
Holidays now were the times Dixie missed her adoptive parents most. She knew that’s why Amy had insisted on coming over this evening to trim the tree. Shortly after Kathleen’s death, when Barney started moping around looking like he wanted to join her, Dixie had moved back home. Six months later, despite Dixie’s best efforts, Barney was dead, too.
This would be her first Christmas alone in the house.
She sliced a fresh loaf of bakery bread, her solitary contribution to the night’ s meal, and arranged it in a basket under one of Kathleen’s embroidered dishtowels. A boyish hand slipped under the towel and snatched a slice. Ryan had come up quietly behind her.
“Snelling isn’t really so bad, I guess.” He picked up a carving knife and began drawing designs in the butter.
Dixie took the knife away and gave him a handful of utensils to arrange beside the plates.
“You think I should meet him? Think he’s prime uncle material?”
Ryan shrugged. “Mom thinks you should get a life.”
“I have a life. Only it’s not the kind your mother wants me to have.”
“Mom thinks I need an uncle to round out my extended family.”
“What do you think?”
He picked at a stray bit of meat that had clung to the foil cover. “I think if I had to live all alone I’d be lonely.”
Dixie winced. Sometimes Ryan’s perception at twelve was sharper than her own at thirty-nine. “Sometimes I do get lonely, but not because I’m alone. I get lonely for … people I miss.”
“Like Gramma and Granmpa Flannigan?”
“Sometimes. And like you, and your mother. That’s when your beeper goes off with a message to call your Aunt Dixie.” She goosed him lightly in the ribs. “What do you think? Think I need a life?”
He rolled his shoulders again in that lazy shrug, then turned to peel the plastic lid off the plate of cookies on the buffet. After a moment, he said, “I think, if I was you, living here in Gramma and Grampa’s house, with all their things here, but not them, I’d be sad.”
Dixie studied the framed family pictures on the bottom shelf of the hutch and searched for sadness in those familiar treasures. She didn’t find it.
“Mom says there’s lots of guys around who wouldn’t mind being an uncle.” He opened the Parker Dann file, where she had tossed it on the buffet, and stood flipping the cover lazily back and forth. “She says, pick up any newspaper and read the personals.”
“Did you tell her some of those guys are creeps you wouldn’t want for an uncle?”
The shoulder roll again. “She says the men you meet doing the work you do are creeps.” He hurried on, tugging a crumpled page of newsprint from his pocket. “Look at this. Some of the ads are guys with motorcycles and speedboats.”
“Hey, whose side are you on, kid?” Dixie could hear Amy’s influence in Ryan’s words. She was used to Amy trying to pat and tuck Dixie’s life into her own idea of perfection, but
Ryan had always thought his aunt’s work was “cool.” And what he thought mattered. Dixie couldn’t help wanting to be a hero in her nephew’s eyes.
“I’m on your side,” he said. “I asked mom if I could stay here and keep you company during school break.” He dipped his head. “She said you wouldn’t be home enough to notice.”
Unfolding the paper, he showed her an ad he’d circled in red marker.
“‘DWM, forty-five,’” she read. “Divorced white male? ‘Six-foot-five, two hundred pounds’?” At five-four, 120 pounds, Dixie would feel dwarfed by such a man. “The age is okay, I guess.”
“Look at the best part. He likes to hang-glide and bungee jump. That’s dangerous stuff, like you chasing criminals.”
“Dangerous?” She grinned at him. “Bungee jumping is insane.”
Then her gaze fell on the file Ryan was fingering, and she remembered she needed to call Belle Richards. Frankly, she didn’t want to risk missing Christmas with her family just to chase down some drunk driver. She should call now, give the attorney enough time to hire another skip tracer.
“Hey, I know her!” Ryan was looking down at the file. The Richards, Blackmon and Drake label was plastered on the front.
“Ms. Richards? Sure, you met her in the summer.” In August Ryan had spent a week with Dixie, and she’d taken him by the lawyer’s office.
“I mean Elizabeth Keyes, the girl who was run over.”
“Are you sure?” Their schools were miles apart.
“Yeah. We met last year, during the Kids in the Arts project. Remember, my drawing won a district honorable mention. So did Betsy’s story. And after the accident, a safety cop came to talk to us about it.” Ryan turned to the newspaper photo taken in the courtroom. “They’re going to fry this guy that killed Betsy, aren’t they?”
*
Watching the taillights on Carl’s Buick fade into the night, Dixie mentally ticked off the places Parker Dann was most likely to be found at 9 o’clock two nights before Christmas. According to the depositions in his file, the man’s closest friend was a bartender at the Green Hornet Saloon. A neighbor woman, obviously an admirer, had called Dann “a charming, thoughtful gentleman who always ran the lawnmower over her front yard when he finished cutting his own.” Perhaps the neighbor invited the “charming gentleman” over for some Christmas cheer.
In addition to the Green Hornet, Dann frequented neighborhood coffee houses, restaurants, movies — places where people were likely to congregate. He didn’t travel, except for work-related trips, which had ceased with his arrest and subsequent release on bail. Most of Dan’s bumming-around time appeared to be spent within a few city blocks.
All through dinner, Ryan’s words had kept nagging at her: They’re going to fry this guy … aren’t they? Sure. If he didn’t skip the country while the judge and jury were opening their Christmas gifts. When Amy offered to serve the pecan pie, warmed in the microwave and topped with buttered pecan ice cream, Dixie had slipped into the bedroom, phoned Belle, and agreed to keep an eye on Dann over the holidays. What could it take, an hour maybe, to check out his favorite haunts? Once she found him, she’d slap a tracking transmitter on his car — an expensive little toy that would let her know if he exceeded a fifty-mile radius from Houston. Then she’d go back to celebrating Christmas.
When Carl’s taillights finally turned the corner, Dixie shut the front door and began to seal up the Christmas boxes she’d brought down from the attic. A brass horn clattered to the rug. She picked it up. Amy’s designer tree had turned out fine, but a few pieces from the family collection might help the red and gold spectacle fit in better with Dixie’s traditional living room. The brass horn had adorned the Flannigan tree every Christmas Dixie could remember. She clipped it near a red bulb that immediately warmed the brass with a rosy glow.
About to close the box again, she noticed a string of crystal snowflakes. She had always loved those snowflakes — and the tree needed a spot of white.
During dinner, she’d also figured out how to handle Amy’s holiday matchmaking: simply play along. Later, while she and Amy were loading the dishwasher, Dixie “confessed” that she looked forward to meeting Delbert Snelling. She could pretend to be smitten when the day actually arrived — “Delbert’s really the nicest man, Sis, just as you said” — which would keep Amy from dragging up any other strays. At the same time, Dixie could come off so obnoxious that Snelling would never call her for a date. By the time Amy figured it out, the holidays would be long past.
Hanging the last ornament, a pudgy Santa face fashioned from cotton and yarn, Dixie pronounced the tree finished. She tossed the empty box in a corner, unplugged the lights, and heaved a resigned sigh: might as well start looking for Parker Dann. By now, he should be mildly sotted and easy to find. She grabbed his file from the buffet and her jacket from the closet.
As she strode through the kitchen, a piece of paper fluttered on the refrigerator door, anchored with a magnet Ryan had made in art class — a ceramic heart framing his school picture. Dixie stopped to look. On the notepaper, a neatly printed block read:
SWF, thirty-nine, brown hair, brown eyes, and still pretty foxy. Likes awesomely dangerous sports like downhill dirt biking. Sometimes brings her twelve-year-old nephew.
Below that, Ryan had scrawled: Dear Aunt Dixie: I’ll put this on the Internet tonight and scan in a snapshot of you from when we went swimming last summer. You’ll have loads of replies by New Year’s. So don’t worry about old Snelling.
Come Back Next Week for the next chapter in Bitch Factor.
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