She beams when she sees us. “Well, helloooooo!” she says. “Gustavo and Reneé, I presume? Do come in, do come in!”
We do.
“Lucinda!” she hollers over her shoulder. “We have guests!”
A lady appears from who knows where. Jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. She smiles at us. “Coats?” she says, extending her hand, and we pass them to her before she disappears around a corner to the right.
I take in the foyer (that’s what these areas just inside the front door of a big-ass house are called, right?), and though everything looks sort of antique and unassuming, I bet my britches this lady could bathe in hundred-dollar bills. She claps and bounces on the toes of her white Reebok Classic high-tops, then busts a spin move and heads down a hallway to the left of a curved staircase.
Zan and I exchange a Look.
“Down here in the drawing room!” Maybelle chirps. Her pink-crowned head pokes out of an open doorway down on the left.
Along the walls are pictures that progress in age: from monotone photos of jolly-jowled white men, to a sepia photo of a couple in wedding garb, to a series of Polaroids spread across four frames, to what look like modern-day photos of three different white families with children. The hardwood floors creak and groan, and the air smells of dust and lemon furniture polish, but it just adds to the old money feel of the place.
The drawing room (snort) is jammed with gorgeous furniture that looks like it would fetch a fortune on eBay. There are a couple of winged-looking chairs, a long velvet couch, and a fancy-shmancy chaise lounger thing all arranged around a squat coffee table with bowed legs in the center of a massive rug—surely Persian or some such. There’s an ornately framed mirror hanging over the mantel and a brilliant blaze roaring in the fireplace.
“Come, come,” Maybelle says from one of the chairs. “Lucinda made tea and a sampling of cookies.”
This is an understatement. There are three pots of tea and six varieties of home-baked cookies on the table. Zan and I take seats on the couch, then he pours each of us a cup and proceeds to pile a plate with cookies and offer it to me. “So Ms. Carver—”
“We can dispense with the formalities, dear.” She winks. “Maybelle is fine.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly call you by your first name, ma’am. My father would have my head.”
“A gentleman, eh?” Maybelle looks at me. “What a lucky girl you are! You know, it’s wonderful to see you kids mixing things up these days!”
Zan coughs beside me. “Oh, we’re not—”
“I had a liaison between my first and second marriage,” she goes on. “Lionel was his name, and he was a black man. This was all before I found the Lord, mind you, but that Lionel really knew his way around a lady, if you catch my drift.”
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Abraham.
“There was also Eduardo.” She looks at Zan. “When you said your name was Gustavo, I expected you to look like him. Anyhow, he taught me a thing or two about haciendo el amor.”
Zan clears his throat, and I’m glad because I’m on the verge of spitting out my tea. “Sounds like you’ve had a fascinating life,” he says.
“Oh yes. Very blessed! Now what may I do for you interracial lovebirds?”
Can I leave? I’d really like to leave now.
“Well, as I mentioned during our phone chat, Ms. Carver, Reneé and I are doing a project on the history of Norcross,” Zan says. “I understand your late husband’s grandfather was the first mayor?”
She nods once. “My first husband’s grandfather, but yes. Yes, he was.”
She even talks like a person who’s never had a financial care in the world.
“Got it. And the first town hall was here in this house?”
She smiles and looks around the room. “Correct. As a matter of fact, you’re sitting in the room where the city was named.”
Okay, that’s actually pretty cool.
“How long have you lived here?” Zan says.
“In the town? My whole life!” she replies. “I’ve ventured away here and there, but there’s no staying gone. My friends and family are here, my church is here—”
“What church do you go to?” I blurt.
Zan pinches his lips together, but come on. Opportunity much?
“I’ve been a member of Victorious Faith Chapel since its inception fifteen years ago.”
“Oh wow! You must be pretty plugged in there!”
I see Zan’s jaw clench now, but (thankfully) Maybelle laughs. “You happen to be looking at the director of guest services!”
“Really?!” Okay, maybe laying it on a little thick now, Rico…
Maybelle doesn’t seem to notice my theatrics. Just points to a massive wooden chest in a corner of the room. “The drawers of that cabinet contain visitor cards for the past three years,” she says. “Not to toot my own horn, but since I took over, the guest-to-member conversion rate has increased eighteen percent.” She smiles demurely and bats her eyelashes.
I gasp. “Za—I mean, Gustavo, this is fate!”
Zan is smiling, but I can tell he’s not breathing.
“What do you mean, dear?” Maybelle says.
“Well…I work at a—consignment shop, and a lady brought in a bag of clothes the day before Christmas Eve. I found a…a brooch as I was sorting the clothes.”
Zan sips his tea.
“The owner of the shop is also a jeweler, and when I showed it to him, he said it’s probably worth a fortune. I know I’d be devastated if I lost such a treasure, so I’ve been trying to find the lady ever since.”
“Oh my.” Maybelle puts a hand over her heart, intensely moved, it seems.
“I remember asking about her Christmas plans, and she said she was going to visit your church for the Christmas Eve service…she’d never been before.”
“Perhaps I met her then!” Maybelle says. “There were sixty-two guests who filled out cards that night….Do you have her name?”
Zan looks at me with his eyes all alight.
“I never got her name, but I have a picture of her on me. I’ve been carrying it everywhere.” I stand and pat my pockets, hoping Macklin takes a frickin’ hint.
“I have it, actually,” Zan says (thank God, who, if he’s real, will likely smite us for all these lies we’re telling). He shifts to pull the picture out of his back pocket and passes it to me. “You dropped it in the hallway.”