The Burnt Island Burial Ground Part 11

"Could he mean the Lumbees?" Lindsay guessed. "He felt terribly guilty about something. Maybe what he said about the Burnt Island people has something to do with it? Maybe he wronged the Lumbees who used to live there? Or maybe it was his involvement in Hayes Pond. I don't know if you knew this, but he was one of the Klansmen who came to that rally."

"Angel told me about that the other day, after you and Geneva and her talked," Dunette said. "But I didn't know about him being involved before that. He never mentioned it to me."

"Maybe he was trying to make up for what happened," Lindsay said. "Was anybody hurt during the rally? Was any money stolen? He said his money was all ill-gotten."

"n.o.body got hurt except a couple of those Klan fools who got roughed up. And I never heard about money getting stolen. Besides, the South is full of old Klansmen, and you don't see them lining up to hand out checks just because they feel bad."

"I guess that wouldn't make much sense anyway," Lindsay agreed. "The Boughtflower family was already rich way before that happened. They built that factory before the turn of the century. There has to be a connection."

"Maybe he just didn't want to leave his money to his family. We know he didn't like that son-in-law, but maybe he didn't like any of them," Simmy speculated.

"He and Margo seemed to get along, and Jess was the apple of his eye," Dunette said. "No doubt about that. It was Jess, Jess, Jess, all the time. 'Jess is so pretty that the flowers write poems about her. Jess is so smart she drove her parents home from the hospital on the day she was born'. That admiration was the one thing that whole family had in common, including Jess herself. No way was he faking that. There's something wrong with this money, I can feel it."

Lindsay couldn't argue. There was definitely something fishy about Boughtflower's fortune. She recalled Boughtflower's dying words about wanting to return the money. Let them deal with it, he'd said.

"Well," Simmy interjected, "we don't really know what kind of relations.h.i.+p he had with them. Maybe when you came along, he just thought you were a nice person and deserved a bit of good luck. Did he ever ask you questions about yourself, like he was trying to find out if you were worthy of his gift?"

Dunette paused. "He did seem very curious about me, come to think of it, which was unusual because he wasn't big on chitchat. He asked me a lot about where I was from. I thought that was strange considering how he hired me. If he had any doubts about me, why would he have asked for me especially?"

"What do you mean 'asked for you especially'?" Lindsay asked.

"Didn't I tell you? I got a phone call out of the blue from Boughtflower's secretary about a year ago saying that I'd been recommended, and he wanted to hire me. I didn't know him from Adam. I thought it was strange, with him living so far away from Lumberton, so I kind of put her off. But she was persistent. She said he wanted me especially because he'd heard that I was good and did flexible hours, and he didn't let just anybody into his house. I was flattered, I'll have to admit, but part of me didn't believe it. Lord knows I'm a hard worker, and I got good references, but with my criminal record, I didn't understand why anybody would go out of their way to hire me.

"Anyway," she continued, "I told him that I had agreed to start work for a woman who'd just gotten out of the hospital, and I couldn't leave until she was better. He said he'd hire a different nurse for that woman and he'd pay me 25% more than whatever I'd agreed with her. I thought about it for a few days, and then decided to go for it. Since I could live with Angel, it would be much better for me financially, and because of the hours I'd have more time to study for my nursing cla.s.ses. It was also a way to got out of Robeson County and start fresh."

"Boughtflower has a secretary? Maybe she can shed some light on this whole thing," Lindsay said.

"I don't know where she is," Dunette said. "She was from Ireland and she went back there."

"Did she ever say anything that would help us track her down?" Lindsay asked. "Like mention her home town?"

"All I remember is that her name was Ellen, and she was Irish. I only talked to her a couple times on the phone. She left before I even got there, so I never met her. None of them ever talked about her either. She was like a ghost."

Chapter 15.

Lindsay woke up unusually early the next morning still mulling over the revelations about Boughtflower's will. Why had he sought out Dunette? Had he already planned to leave his fortune to her, or was he simply looking for a caring and attentive nurse to shepherd him through his final days? Why had he entrusted Jess with his affairs, knowing that she had complete control of all his finances, only to disinherit her in his will? Why had he apparently strung the Philpots along financially right up until the end, instead of warning them that they would receive nothing in his will? Was Boughtflower's secretary the "somebody else" he'd told Lindsay was helping to ensure that his wishes were carried out? If so, where was she? And, of course, there was still the lingering question of his confession about hiding a body and stealing money from the inhabitants of the Burnt Island.

She'd called Mike the previous night to see if he could shed any light on the legal ramifications of the bequest. He'd spoken with Dunette briefly and offered to pay a visit to the Law Offices of Marshall Pickett, LLC on her behalf first thing Monday morning to see if he could discover the reason for the strange distribution of Boughtflower's a.s.sets. Because it was Sunday, getting more answers would have to wait at least a day.

In her stocking feet, Lindsay padded quietly through the house. The sun shone brightly through the windows, and for the first time since her fight with Warren, she felt strangely contented. Kipper's glitter-painted nails click-clicked on the floor as he walked alongside her down the hallway toward the kitchen. Simmy's buzzsaw snoring could be heard through her closed bedroom door. Lindsay realized that, for the first time in four months, several days in a row had pa.s.sed since she'd last given any thought to Leander Swoopes. The raw anxiety that had plagued her seemed to have been dulled slightly, although she wasn't entirely sure why. By all external measures, her life hadn't improved. She'd had an emotional breakdown at work and been sent home by her boss. The police were no further in their attempts to discover the ident.i.ty of W. Doer. Her heart still contracted into a painful, tight ball every time she thought about losing Warren. And yet, something inside of her had definitively s.h.i.+fted.

She made herself a cup of coffee and paged through the Sunday News & Observer. The paper contained an almost comically brief obituary of "the beloved patriarch" Otis Boughtflower, stating that the former owner of Boughtflower Textiles "died peacefully" and was "resting in the arms of Our Lord." It went on to describe how he had been survived by "his loving daughter, Margo, her husband Yancy, and his beloved granddaughter Jessica." Only the almost inhuman corpulence captured in the memorial picture marked Boughtflower out from the twenty or thirty other people eulogized in the paper. Lindsay thought for a moment what a truly honest obituary for Boughtflower might look like. Something like, Otis Boughtflower, closet racist, glutton, and misanthrope, died painfully, gasping for air and fearing eternal d.a.m.nation. His grumpiness, anger, and bizarre secrecy about his past, possibly involving murder and robbery, will be remembered by those few who he allowed to know him. He is survived by a confused and angry family, who feel they've been jilted out of a fortune that should have been theirs. No doubt, frank obituaries would improve readers.h.i.+p.

The sun streaming in through the kitchen windows already felt warm. The rising heat of early May in North Carolina's Piedmont would be counted in many regions of the country as summer weather, but here the high 70s and low 80s of May were merely a precursor to the real heat and humidity still to come. Lindsay considered how to fill the three hours that remained until the start of her 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. s.h.i.+ft.

During the time she'd lived with her father, the question of what to do on a Sunday morning had never once arisen. In fact, the entire week had been structured by church activities. Sunday morning, two services. Sunday night Bible study. Wednesday evening, the Awana children's ministry met. Sat.u.r.day nights were for potlucks. Since moving back to Mount Moriah and beginning her chaplain job, however, she'd been an infrequent churchgoer. One obstacle was her work schedule; the frequent night s.h.i.+fts threw her weekend sleep schedule into disarray. The main problem, though, was her father. The church he'd founded had grown into one of the largest congregations in the region, but frankly, she didn't like it. People would spontaneously arise to share their testimony with the congregation, and the praise band's leader seemed to favor songs with t.i.tles like, "Truckin' Home to Jesus" and "Whole Lotta Holy." There was altogether too much hallelujah handclapping and glory-be hand raising for Lindsay's taste. For someone who'd spent so much of her life in church, she had an odd aversion to wors.h.i.+ping in a large group. For her, G.o.d was most readily seen and felt in personal reflections and one-to-one interactions. Worst of all, though, at Jonah's church the straight-backed wooden pews made you feel like you were atoning for a lifetime's worth of sin in the s.p.a.ce of an hour and fifteen minutes. But in a place as knit-together as Mount Moriah, it was nearly impossible for her to try out another church's Sunday service without setting tongues wagging.

Today, though, she decided to throw on a dress and head over to the large, red brick building on the edge of town that housed Jonah's church. As usual, when it came to dealings with her father, guilt was her major motivating factor. Despite the fact that she'd behaved like a sullen teenager after finding out about his relations.h.i.+p with Teresa Satterwhite, Jonah had uncomplainingly helped Lindsay and Simmy move into her house. He even put contact paper down in her new kitchen cabinets and mowed the overgrown lawn. She hadn't managed to apologize to him or thank him properly, and she knew that an appearance at the 9 a.m. service would go a long way towards making amends.

Because she'd arrived at the service a few minutes late, there were almost no seats left. Lindsay was surprised at how much the already-large congregation had grown even since her last visit. Although it hadn't yet been made public, she knew that Jonah had recently been invited to give the sermon the summer after next at the big annual "Singing on the Mountain" gospel event at Grandfather Mountain, a huge honor that would no doubt add to his prestige and make it more likely that his church would soon need a bigger sanctuary.

Lindsay was ushered into a pew near the back and seated next to Courtland Bugbee Jr., a surly and chronically sweaty thirty-something man. By dint of their both being single, straight, and human, over the years Courtland Jr. had frequently been mentioned by various middle-aged churchgoing women as a potential romantic partner for Lindsay. He smiled at her in his strange, leering way when she sat down beside him, and she shuddered involuntarily when her warm hand touched his clammy one while reaching for the same hymnal. He smiled again and scooted closer, until she found herself sandwiched between his meaty, khaki-clad thigh and the wooden arm of the pew.

During the sermon on the parable of the Prodigal Son, she tried to catch Jonah's eye. It was no easy task. He had a charismatic, animated style of preaching, which often meant that he spoke with his eyes shut, waving his arms around as if he were being attacked by a swarm of wasps. At last, he noticed her and smiled warmly in her direction. She hadn't told him she'd be there, but she half-wondered if he'd chosen the subject matter specifically because of her visit. As she glanced over the gathered congregants, their faces turned to her father with rapt attention, she caught sight of Teresa Satterwhite's glowing, orange hair, which blazed like a traffic cone in a row near the front. Lindsay's heart fluttered as she scanned the pew next to Teresa for Warren, but of course he wasn't there.

The service pa.s.sed swiftly, despite Courtland's encroachments on her personal s.p.a.ce, and after the final hymn, Lindsay rose to leave. There was no point in staying to try to speak with Jonah. She knew from many, many hours of waiting after Sunday services when she was younger that her father would be surrounded by a mob of paris.h.i.+oners for the foreseeable future. The key was to leave before she could be accosted by any of the church's resident busybodies. She moved quickly through the crush of people, stopping for quick greetings with some of the families she'd known for years. She made the appropriate ooh-ing and aah-ing noises over the babies that'd been born since her last visit, and paid the necessary homage to the deacons, all the while skillfully dodging the cadre of older women who made it a hobby to ask intimate questions about her personal life and give her "helpful" tips about makeup and hair care. The scrutiny had become ten times as intense after all of the publicity surrounding her run-in with Swoopes. It was as if all the women's suspicions about her being not quite normal had been confirmed.

She had almost reached the narthex of the church when she felt a hand take hold of her elbow. "Well, Miss Lindsay, look at you! It's been an age and a half."

Lindsay turned to face the squat, flat-faced form of Coletta Bugbee. The woman was an amazing baker of Nutt y Buns, but she was also the undisputed queen of the church's gossipmongers and know-it-alls.

"h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Bugbee. How are you?" Lindsay said, silently cursing the adorable newborn baby who'd distracted her attention from her busybody evasion mission.

"I'm just fine, honey. Just fine. But how are you? We were all so sorry to hear that you and that nice Warren Satterwhite have parted ways. That's such a shame. We'd all been thinking we were gonna get to have a double wedding. Father and daughter with mother and son-wouldn't that have just beat all?" Mrs. Bugbee's shoulders rose in what might have been a nonchalant shrugging motion, but since the woman almost entirely lacked a neck, it was difficult to tell what emotion or concept she intended to convey. "Well, I guess it was too good to be true," she continued.

Lindsay tried to form words, but her thoughts were drowned in a sea of hurt and anger. She'd felt uplifted and optimistic that morning, but those positive feelings had evaporated in an instant. Apparently the entire church knew about her father's relations.h.i.+p with Teresa Satterwhite, and about her broken engagement with Warren.

"I couldn't help but notice that you were sitting with my Courtland," Mrs. Bugbee continued quickly.

"Yes, ma'am," Lindsay said.

"It is just a bafflement to me that he can't find a good woman to settle down with." Lindsay waited for the usual full-court press attempt to get her and Courtland Jr. to interact. Instead, Mrs. Bugbee made the same philosophical up-and-down motion with her shoulders. "There's bound to be somebody out there for you, too, honey. But, you'll have to be careful. That's two broken engagements now by my count. You were engaged to that Northern boy, too, right? I remember getting a wedding invitation a few years back. Anyway, mind what I say. You don't want to get a reputation."

"A reputation?" Lindsay repeated the words coldly.

"Well, you know what I mean, honey," Mrs. Bugbee said with a t.i.ttering little laugh. "Nice, single men like Warren Satterwhite and my Courtland Jr. don't grow on trees, you know. And time is ticking away. It's different for women," she continued, placing a consoling hand on Lindsay's forearm. "You think you have all the time in the world..."

Lindsay felt an arm encircle her waist and caught a whiff of a subtle, flowery perfume she recognized.

"I just know how much Lindsay appreciates your concern, Coletta. But I'm sure the only thing she has a reputation for is being a lovely, intelligent young woman who would be a credit to any man."

Lindsay's eyes widened in shock when she realized that her savior-the person so expertly steering her away from Mrs. Bugbee and out the front door of the church-was none other than Teresa Satterwhite.

"Do you think it's stuffy in here, sugar?" Teresa continued, addressing Lindsay. "Because I sure do. Positively claustrophobic! Let's get some fresh air." She was originally from Richmond, and her Southern accent dripped like honey when compared with the tw.a.n.g that peppered the speech of most native Mount Moriahans.

Once they were outside, Lindsay turned to Teresa. "Thank you, Mrs. Satterwhite," she said.

"Please, call me Teresa. We're practically family."

Lindsay studied Teresa's face for some indication of what she meant by "practically family," but all she saw was the same mask of flawless makeup and perfect composure that Teresa perpetually wore. Was Teresa still counting her as a daughter-in-law-to-be? Or had she taken on the role of stepmother-in-waiting?

"I'm so glad you decided to come today. Your daddy must be so happy to see you here, and besides that, it'll give the old biddies something to talk about all week," Teresa said with a conspiratorial wink. "Take some of the focus off me and your daddy's romance."

"I should really come more often. I know how much it means to him. Besides, I felt like I owed him one after how I behaved the other night," Lindsay said. "I'm sorry, by the way. I wasn't at my best."

Teresa raised her eyes heavenward. "None of us were. That was the most embarra.s.sing thing that's happened to me since my skirt blew over my head at the Junior a.s.sembly Cotillion when I was 12."

Lindsay smiled. This was one of the only one-to-one conversations she'd ever had with Warren's mother, and she had to admit that she was finding Teresa far less stiff and judgmental than she'd expected. Usually when they were together, Teresa was so busy doting on her son, and Warren was so busy basking in the glow of his mother's affection, that it was hard for Lindsay and Teresa to interact with each other.

"I meant what I said to Mrs. Bugbee," Teresa continued. "Your relations.h.i.+p with Warren is n.o.body else's business, and I will not allow Coletta Bugbee to fan the flames with that kind of gossip. And how dare she say you're not good enough for Courtland Jr.? As if that lumpy little son of hers is in the same league as my Warren."

So that's what this was about, Lindsay thought. Teresa had to ensure that Lindsay's reputation was preserved in order to uphold her son's reputation. If Lindsay was thought to be a bad prospect, then by extension Warren would be tarnished for having been engaged to her. Lindsay tried to conceal her annoyance. Teresa was circling the wagons to protect her darling son, but in this instance, at least Lindsay would benefit from being inside the circle.

"Anyhow, these things have a way of working out for the best," Teresa replied, patting Lindsay's hand. "Just look at me and your daddy. We both thought we'd had our one chance at love. After Warren Sr. died, I couldn't see how I'd ever find somebody who could hold a candle to him. And I bet your daddy felt the same way about his former wife. But here we are." While they'd been talking, Jonah had emerged from the church and was standing on the lawn speaking with two of the deacons. Teresa looked across the lawn at him with open admiration.

As she regarded them, Lindsay felt a tug-of-war inside her mind. The part of her brain that had done extensive Clinical Pastoral Education training reminded her that anger, hurt, and jealousy were normal reactions when children, even adult children, were coping with a parent's new relations.h.i.+p. The other part of her brain told the CPE part that it could go to h.e.l.l. There was no way she was letting this tangerine-haired Southern belle, this picture-perfect priss of a woman whose oh-so-perfect son had dumped Lindsay in her hour of need, wheedle her way into Jonah's life.

She withdrew her hand from Teresa's as if it had been burned. "Well, I better be getting to work. I'm sure I'll see you around."

Without a backward glance, she swept across the parking lot, firmly in the thrall of some very unchristian thoughts.

Chapter 16.

Lindsay walked through the front lobby of the hospital at the end of her s.h.i.+ft that evening feeling almost buoyant. Despite the emotionally turbulent start to the day, she'd managed to make it through her entire s.h.i.+ft with her equanimity intact. It helped that, for once, her s.h.i.+ft had been filled with a steady stream of glad tidings-babies safely delivered, cancer treatments proving effective, and patients' small prayers being answered. A whole s.h.i.+ft without a tear being shed by her, the hospital's staff, or the patients had become a rare thing, and she was grateful for it.

"I thought you'd stood me up."

As usual, Lindsay had been lost in her own thoughts and hadn't noticed Adam Tyrell leaning up against a wall near the hospital's front entrance. Right near the spot where they'd agreed to meet. For dinner. That night.

"Adam! Hi."

"Did you forget? I should've called to remind you," he said.

Adam wore a cornflower blue b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt with an almost imperceptible flower pattern. It was the kind of trendy item of clothing that would leave most men in Mount Moriah scratching their heads in wonderment, but Adam wore it with a natural sophistication.

"Oh, no. I mean, yes," Lindsay sputtered.

"Don't worry about it," he said, the corners of his sensuous lips turning down in disappointment, "if you're tired or whatever."

She thought for a brief moment about calling the dinner off. She was tired, and it had been a terrible, terrible week. She'd agreed to it only reluctantly at the outset, and that seemed like a lifetime ago, before she'd pa.s.sed through her emotional crisis, when she was still engaged to Warren. Without the safe berth of that established commitment, she felt lost. When she was in a relations.h.i.+p, a dinner with a single man seemed less dangerous. Nothing could happen; she was spoken for. But going out with a single man as a single woman, even if he didn't know she was single, would be casting herself out into a stormy sea. Looking at Adam's shy, attractive face as he ran his hand through his wavy, black hair, however, she decided that dinner with this single man might be just what she needed to perk up her spirits.

"I'm sorry. I did forget. But I'm here now, and I haven't eaten."

"Great! My car's out front, if you want me to drive."

"I'll drive," she said hastily. The Lindsay of last year might have gotten into a handsome stranger's car, but the post-Leander Swoopes Lindsay wasn't taking any chances. "Actually, do you mind if I just make a quick phone call before we go? I need to let some people know where I'll be and who I'll be with."

"No problem. I'll just page through this...selection of literature about s.e.xually transmitted diseases," he said, frowning at the brochure stand mounted against the lobby wall, which was packed with informational flyers.

Lindsay returned his smile and stepped into a quiet alcove. She called Simmy to make sure she'd be okay on her own. Although she knew that Dunette had stopped by earlier to help her with her physical therapy exercises and make her dinner, she didn't like leaving the older woman by herself for nearly an entire day.

"Don't be silly," Simmy said, after Lindsay related the situation to her. "I'll be fine. I can't wait to hear how it goes. Or better yet, bring him back here after your date and then I can ask him myself over breakfast tomorrow morning."

"It's not a date, and he's definitely not going to be spending the night."

"You can't go into it with that att.i.tude, honey. Rebound s.e.x is the best kind of s.e.x. Well, after make-up s.e.x, that is."

"Goodnight, Simmy. I'll be home by 10."

"I'll put some condoms in your nightstand drawer, just in case."

"Why do you even have condoms?" Lindsay began. "You know what, never mind. I'll see you by 10."

On the drive to the Olive Garden, Adam put Lindsay at ease almost immediately, telling stories about his difficult early life and asking her questions about her own strange childhood on the Outer Banks. He hadn't seemed to mind that he had to move a mountain of junk mail, candy wrappers, and coffee cups in order to sit down in her car. She hoped he didn't notice that-thanks to her mother's car "borrowing" shenanigans a few months before-she had to start her car by finessing a thin piece of metal that looked like the end of a screwdriver into the ignition.

The conversation continued after they'd been seated at a booth in the back corner of the busy restaurant and ordered a bottle of wine to share.

"It's unusual to meet someone who had such a c.r.a.ppy childhood and turned out okay," Adam said in response to her story about helping to water her parents' marijuana plants as a child.

"What about you? You seem to be doing all right. And it sounds like you and your mom had a pretty rough time of it. Her illness, losing her job, bankruptcy, moving from place to place. Did your father ever help out at all?" Lindsay asked.

"He really wasn't in our lives," he said.

"I'm sorry. That must've been hard."

"It was. But it toughens you up, you know? Teaches you how to run your life, instead of letting it run you. Some of the people I work for are wildly successful. Private islands, mansions, servants. They have everything, but they wouldn't be able to survive a day without all their comforts. Growing up like I did lets me know I can make it no matter what."

"I feel that way, too, sometimes. Other times, I feel like my whole soul is just covered in scars, you know?"

"Scars are thicker than regular skin. Remember that," Adam said. His rich, cinnamon-colored eyes locked eyes with hers.

Lindsay's whole spine tingled under his penetrating gaze. She could feel the color rising in her cheeks. "She must be proud of you. Your mother," she said.

"I do what I can for her, you know? I want her to have all the things we couldn't have when I was young. I just want to be a good son." He took a sip of wine. "So your parents were both in jail? That's pretty wild," he said.

"Tell me about it," Lindsay said wryly.

"What are they doing now?"

"Well, my dad's a preacher and my mom's...back in jail."

"Does this have something to do with that guy? The kidnapping?" Adam said, taking a casual sip of his wine.

Lindsay's mouth fell open in shock. It was as if she'd just flipped the channel inside her head. She'd been watching a lighthearted romantic comedy, and now she suddenly found herself back in the horror movie that had played out a few months before. When she didn't reply to his question, Adam continued.

"That must've come out of nowhere," he said. "You're probably going to think I'm some kind of psycho, but I Googled you. There were news stories from earlier this year about how you and your mother and another lady were held hostage by an escaped convict."