Miss Julia Renews Her Vows by Ann B. Ross Page B

home with me.”

Chapter 11

    She didn’t want to do it, declaring at first that nobody was going to run her out of her own home. But as we began tackling the cleanup, I kept on at her.
    “Just for tonight, then,” I said. “You can’t stay here after your home has been invaded like this. We’ll get the worst of it today, then we’ll come back with Lillian tomorrow and really clean this place up.”
    She began dipping out the mess in the sink, filling a trash bag with cornmeal, sugar and the rest, muttering to herself the whole time. “What if the drain got stopped up. Where would I be then?” In a few minutes, she cried, “Somebody poured syrup in first. How disgusting!”
    I busied myself straightening the living room, which was part of the kitchen, or vice versa; who knew? I put the cushions back on the sofa and the easy chair, then drew up an ottoman to sit on while I restacked the books in the particleboard bookcase. Interested in her reading choices, I noted one book on home care for invalids and another called Professionalism on the Job —both textbooks. There were a couple of books by J. A. Jance, a new paperback by Charlotte Hughes and several secondhand looking Sue Grafton paperbacks. In fact, most of her library, if one could call it that, consisted of paperback editions, but at least she was a reader, and that said a lot.
    “Etta Mae,” I said, rising with difficulty from the ottoman, “I’ll go back and start separating your clothes. I’ll just fold and stack them, then you can put them where they belong.”
    “You don’t have to do that,” she said, as she scrubbed the counter. “I’ll be through here after I sweep.”
    “I don’t mind at all. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can leave.”
    She didn’t dismiss the idea, so I figured she’d come to terms with leaving the trailer, even if for only one night.
    Walking into her bedroom, I glanced around, realizing how much I was learning about Etta Mae Wiggins’s private life—as, I assumed, the deputies had, too. The books one reads and the state of one’s bedroom can certainly tell a tale. And what struck me most in that room was not the mattress on a frame with no headboard or the cheap dresser with drawers hanging out or the pitifully small lamps on the floor, but the elegant étagère on the far side of the room. A beautiful French—or maybe French-inspired—piece made of fruitwood with carefully detailed inlay and a glass bow front.
    I had to go over and touch it, my breath catching in my throat as I ran my hand over the fine wood. But it was so out of place I couldn’t help but wonder how and where she’d gotten it. Then I saw the reason it was in a single-wide trailer on the outskirts of Delmont, North Carolina. One of the slender, gracefully curved Queen Anne legs on the back side had been replaced with a straight stick of wood. Damaged goods, I thought, then my heart gave a compassionate lurch as I realized that Etta Mae had attempted to match the finish by painting the stick with brown shoe polish.
    I had been so taken with the piece of furniture that it was only then that I took notice of what was on the shelves in the étagère. Barbie dolls! Each one was arrayed in the finest apparel and displayed one after the other on the three shelves. Of all the things in the world to collect, I thought, who would want Barbie dolls?
    Well, obviously, Etta Mae Wiggins, and who was I to criticize? I turned to the bed and began separating sweaters, underclothes, skirts, uniforms, T-shirts and blue jeans. Actually, it wasn’t a difficult job, once I started, for Etta Mae didn’t own a large wardrobe. Now, if it’d been Hazel Marie, I’d have been folding and hanging clothes the rest of the day and into the night.
    I heard Etta Mae’s boots stomping down the hall as she came back to the bedroom. “I still can’t get over this,” she fumed. “They did it on purpose, I know they did.”
    “I’m beginning to believe it,” I