Spring Fever

“Mine, too,” A

“And Sallie doesn’t have a say in what happens to Quixie?”

“Nope,” A

“My, my,” Voncile said. “I’ll bet there were some fireworks when all of that came out. Especially the part about Sophie.”

“You already knew about Sophie, didn’t you?” A

The older woman allowed herself a small, private smile. “I guessed,” Voncile admitted. “But I never said a word to anybody. And I never will. I’ll take it to my grave.”

“I know Mason will appreciate that. But how did you know?”

Voncile cut her sandwich half into quarters, and then eighths, but she didn’t eat them. “Mr. Gle

“Young. Just twenty-six when she had the baby.”

“Mercy.” She shook her head. “Mr. Gle

A

“I sure do, honey. You were so serious and business-like. Such a good little worker. Mr. Gle

“And he was mine, too,” A

“Unlike some folks,” Voncile commented. “Miss Sallie just never did take to you, did she?”

“Sallie … had an old, silly grudge against my mother,” A

“Never,” Voncile said. “I always thought you were Mason’s one true love, even though I did get hoodwinked by that Celia. Mason is a good man, like his daddy. Did you know Mr. Gle

“Voncile,” A

“Go ahead and ask, honey. You’re wanting to know if Sallie knew about the other women, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” A

Voncile rewrapped the remnants of her sandwich into a neat wax-paper bundle while she thought about her answer.

“If she knew, she never let on to me,” she said finally. “But she wouldn’t have. She is a proud lady, and of course we didn’t really have that kind of relationship. As far as Sallie was concerned, I was just somebody who worked for her husband at the plant.”

“Did Sallie know about Gle

“I don’t see how she couldn’t have known,” Voncile said. “With them living in the same house. I sure knew about my Claude’s cancer. That man didn’t have a hangnail or a hemorrhoid that I didn’t have to take care of.”

That made A

She decided to confide further in Mason’s administrative assistant. “At the lawyer’s office today, Sallie said she had no idea Gle

“That’s not right. It can’t be right,” Voncile said. “Why, A

“What did he say?” A

“He sounded fu

“Did he agree to do that?” A

“He kind of laughed at me and said I was overreacting. He said Sallie was right there, and she’d take good care of him.”

“What time was that?” A

“Hmmm.” Voncile folded and refolded her paper lunch sack while she tried to remember. “It must have been around ten o’clock, because I needed to go out and do some last-minute Christmas shopping.”

A

“I tried,” Voncile said. “I called his cell phone before noon, when I got back from the store, but my call went straight to voice mail, so I called the house. Sallie answered right away, and I asked her how Mr. Gle

“Did you tell her he’d been having chest pains earlier in the day?”

Voncile’s face crinkled up in concentration. “It’s hard to remember—it was so long ago. I think I asked to speak to him, but she said he was taking a nap or something.”

“So you never did talk to Gle

“No,” Voncile said, frowning. “I tried later in the day, around three, maybe, but all I got was a busy signal. I tried and tried, for half an hour or so, but then I kind of forgot about it because we were getting my granddaughter’s angel costume ready for her Sunday School pageant. And then we drove over to Garner to spend the night with my daughter.”

Now it was A

She wondered whether Sallie was aware that her husband was having breathing problems and chest pains earlier in the day.

Voncile looked stricken. “Oh heavens. He must have had his heart attack right after I talked to him.”

“I don’t think so,” A

“But that was hours and hours after I talked to him,” Voncile said. “I thought … I mean, I always assumed he’d gone to the hospital earlier in the day, right after we talked. Are you sure that’s right, A

“Very sure,” A

Voncile crumpled her paper bag into a tight ball. “I just don’t understand. Why didn’t Sallie call the doctor? Or take him to the hospital that morning?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” A

51

Pokey Bayless Riggs stood on the doorstep of her brother’s bachelor pad, a contemporary two-story wooden structure with soaring beams and weirdly jutting angles located on the grounds of the Cherry Hill estate, just out of Sallie’s line of vision. She’d called in advance and left numerous voice-mail messages, but she had gotten no response. Now she was determined to have it out with him, face-to-face.

She’d been ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door with no luck. Finally, she took a step backward and, cupping her hands into a makeshift megaphone, began hollering, “Davis Bayless! I know you’re in there, you weasel, so you might as well let me in.