Рита Браун - Scarlet Fever

Behind their hands many a person whispered, “Why couldn’t it have been Drew?”

Weevil, seated next to Betty, rose, walked to where the Shaker pegs were lined up by the front door, grabbed Betty’s heavy hunt coat and his own. He returned.

“Thank you, Weevil.”

He helped her put it on.

“I could do that,” Morris offered.

“Thank you for thinking of it.” Betty beamed at him.

Betty, Weevil, and Drew propelled Morris to the front door. Drew lifted his own lamb fleece coat off a peg.

Weevil filled him in. “No coat. Took almost a half hour for him to stop shivering.”

“You know, I’ve an extra in the car. I’ll run out and get it.” He opened the door and a wedge of frigid air pushed in.

“I don’t want to go.” Morris’s eyes glazed over. “I hate him.”

“He’s your brother,” Betty said soothingly.

“So what? He talks to me like I’m an idiot. I forget things, Betty. I do, but I’m not an idiot. I built nuclear reactors. I know things.”

Weevil’s eyebrows raised and Betty nodded in agreement.

“You built Three Mile Island. You worked on big projects.”

“I remember all that,” he said as his brother came back through the door, handing Morris a down jacket.

Betty moved to Morris’s right side while Weevil took his left. Both intuited that if Drew touched his brother, resistance would accelerate.

They walked him to Drew’s brand-new BMW X5. Had to have cost at least seventy-two thousand, with every gadget known to the Germans.

Drew paused for a minute. “Damn, he really did plow through that fence. I’ll pay for it, obviously.”

“The good news is, Cindy coaxed Clytemnestra and Orestes into their barn and closed the door,” Betty noted.

“Thank God the cow didn’t attack the Range Rover.” Drew exhaled.

Weevil noticed the enormous cow giving them the evil eye from her barn window. “Don’t count her out. Best to get the wrecker here before she gets out tomorrow morning.”

“Good point.” Drew smiled at him then opened the door and slid behind the wheel, while Morris would not close his door.

Betty kissed him on the cheek, closing the door, and Drew quickly locked it.

The two staff members walked back to the house, the snow and ice crunching underfoot.

“When did his dementia start?” Weevil asked.

“I don’t truly know. I noticed a change four years ago. Little things. He’d forget a name, lose a reference. The lapses became more pronounced until finally he drove to Roger’s Corner.” She mentioned a convenience store out in the country. “Didn’t know where he was. Roger called Drew. Ultimately he took his brother in and now has a part-time housekeeper. I guess you’d call him that, he’s a nurse, really, I don’t know, but it’s a young man who watches him. Morris has a son, but he’s not a success story. So far he’s not done much for his father. They fight then Morris fights with Drew.”

“The nurse must have been off duty today,” Weevil noted.

“Maybe. Sad. The whole process is so sad.”

They gladly stepped inside, peeled off their coats.

“I didn’t think I’d be here so long.” Weevil walked over to Sister. “Let me get the hounds back.”

“Fortunately, their trailer is closed up and full of straw, but yes, it’s a good idea. None of us could have predicted the accident. Better he took out Cindy’s fence than one of us.”

Weevil motioned for Tootie, and they left together.

The breakfast—hunt tailgates or food at a member’s house are called breakfasts, no matter what time the hunt is over—was breaking up.

Cindy said to Sister, “Hope we hunt at Mud Fence Saturday. The weather report is not promising.”

“There’s time between today and Saturday. I’ll worry about it the night before,” the tall, silver-haired master replied.

“You’re good at that.”

“Worrying?”

Cindy laughed. “Not worrying.”

“I have Gray to do that for me.” She lifted her eyebrows as her partner walked over.

“What?” the handsome man, mid-sixties, said.

“Worry. I told Cindy I don’t worry because you do it for me.”

“I don’t worry. I think ahead.”

She looked at him, light brown skin, a thin military moustache gray over his upper lip. “Whatever you say, darling.”

He smiled back. “You’re up to something.”

“Me? Never.”

She was, but she would wait to see that desk first.

CHAPTER 2

February 22, 2019 Friday

“Take it out now,” Aunt Daniella instructed Yvonne Harris, Tootie’s mother.

Pulling down the oven door, heavy hotpads on her hands, Yvonne withdrew the square pan, placing it atop the stove. “Got it.”

“Now put a towel over it until it cools.”

She opened a drawer, pulled out a red-striped kitchen towel, carefully draping it over the pan.

“The secret to spoon bread is getting it out of the oven in time. That and a tablespoon of Duke’s mayonnaise when you stir the batter. Don’t tell about the mayonnaise.”

“Won’t. Smells good.” The former model inhaled the enticing fragrance, as did Ribbon, her half-grown Norfolk terrier, spoiled rotten.

The ninety-four-year-old woman, in fabulous shape, one of the great beauties of her generation, leaned back in the kitchen chair, watching Ribbon clean the plate. “What a good idea.”

Yvonne smiled. “Makes washing dishes easier. I hate a dishwasher.”

Ribbon licked the empty batter bowl Yvonne placed on the floor.

“How’s your fox?”

“Comes and goes. Ribbon pays him no mind. Sometimes I look out the back and there he is, curled up in the special doghouse filled with old towels and rags. I’ve grown quite fond of him.

“I was so obsessed with making spoon bread I forgot to ask you if you’d like a drink. I have your favorite bourbon.” Yvonne had both Blanton’s and Woodford Reserve.

“Too early but I’ll have a cup of tea. I see your shiny teapot over there.”

“Sister gave me that.” Yvonne filled the pot, turned on the flame. “Heard the cold was numbing yesterday. Tootie, tough nut, actually admitted she was glad to go in. She also told me about Morris Taylor driving a Range Rover through Cindy Chandler’s fence.”

Aunt Daniella nodded while the water came to a boil. “Gray called to tell me the same thing.”

Gray and his brother, Sam, were Aunt Daniella’s nephews, the sons of her departed sister, Graziella, herself a beauty but not wild like Aunt Daniella. Free-spirited as she was and remained, the lady excelled at covering her tracks.

“Shouldn’t he be in a home? Some kind of structured living?”

“According to Drew, Morris’s mind is like a house. The upstairs lights go on and off. A few are now definitely off and some downstairs are flickering. He says he can take care of him, plus he has a part-time male nurse.”

“But driving? How did Morris get the keys?”

“I don’t know. And there’s so much attention paid to dementia now. When I was young I remember a few older people becoming forgetful but I can’t say that they completely lost it. Then again, diseases carried us off earlier. Perhaps in time they would have become a blank.”

Yvonne poured the tea. “Can’t say as I saw anyone when I was a kid. Then again, other things can hide it, I suppose. Drinking, drugs. People assumed that was the problem. How’s your tea?”

“Hot. What kind is it?”

“Assam. Tootie, who is beginning to pay attention to such things, said the Range Rover and Drew’s BMW X5 were new, or almost new.”

“The Taylors are not on food stamps. They inherited the insurance company. I suppose Drew will get by but it will fritter away when he dies. Morris has a useless son. Really, Drew should sell it now while Taylor Insurance still has a good reputation. I read about your ex-husband building an auto manufacturing plant in Zimbabwe. The government…well, the dictator, really…gave him all manner of enticements.”