The name beside the picture of the first old woman who had died in Tulsa, in the obituary on the phone of my old friend Ross Whitaker, was Paige Dalton Morrow, granddaughter in law. The name beside the second old woman, in Biloxi, was Page Danforth. The name that Hunter had spoken to me at the bridal shower was Paisley Hartman.
Three towns, three names, and a face in each photograph that I had seen not ten minutes earlier in the mirror of the basement ladies room. I stood in the hallway of the church with my cane, and my knees went soft.
Ross, who had been a state investigator for thirty five years before he retired, did not waste a minute. He took the phone back, thumbed through three more screens, and nodded slowly. “Glenna,” he said, “I have seen this kind of pattern before. A woman marries into money and arranges an accident. In two of these cases, there was a lawsuit afterward that went nowhere. The families were afraid of the scandal. This is the first time anyone has caught her in a church.” He called a colleague at the sheriff department on his personal cell phone.
Hunter stood in the hall with his hands hanging at his sides. He is a sweet, trusting boy, and I watched the color leave his face as the truth reached him. “Grandma,” he said at last, “she told me she was from Charlotte. She said her parents died in a car accident.” I took his hand. I said I was sorry, more sorry than I could say, and that his heart had done nothing wrong. “Come, honey,” I said. “Let us go and greet your guests.”
An old banker learns to count slowly when a robber smiles at the window, and the same patience can bring a swindler to the altar in her own good time.
We went to the front of the church together. The organ was playing, softly, and two hundred guests were seated in their finest, fanning themselves with programs. The pastor, who knew me from thirty years of Sunday services, saw my face and came down the steps. I whispered a few words in his ear. He listened with great gravity, nodded once, and stepped back to the pulpit. He announced, in a perfectly calm voice, that there would be a short delay due to an unforeseen matter, and invited everyone to remain in their seats.
Paisley entered at the back of the church a few minutes later in her white satin gown, on the arm of a cousin of the groom. She was radiant. She smiled at the guests and at the flowers and at the pastor. She walked down the aisle with measured steps, all grace and innocence, until she reached the third pew and saw two deputies in plain clothes standing beside Ross Whitaker. Her smile did not vanish. It simply stopped. For a half second she looked like a person who had stepped off a curb that was not there.
She turned and tried to run, but a deputy was already at the door. There was no struggle, no screaming. She stood in the center aisle in a ring of white satin and looked at me. I held her gaze. I said, quietly, in the voice I use for the very worst of customers, “Honey, at my age I hear everything, even over the hand dryer.” Her face changed then. The mask fell, and what lay beneath was cold and old and tired. She was led out through the vestibule, and the heavy door closed behind her.
There was no wedding that Saturday. But there was a reception. I would not let a hall of food go to waste. The guests, who by then had heard the story in whispers, gathered in the fellowship hall and ate chicken and rolls and cake from the buffet, and Hunter stood at the head table with his hands on his hips and made a speech. It was short and clumsy and very brave. He thanked his grandmother, who had saved his life, and he promised everyone present that he would never again marry a girl he had known for six months.
The case took a year. Paisley, whose real name proved to be Sheila Mae Kruger, was tried in three states, and received a sentence of twenty two years. Hunter moved into my house for the winter, and we spent long evenings on the porch with hot tea. In the spring he found a job teaching shop at the middle school. In June, at a church picnic, he met a quiet young woman named Beth, who taught music. She had no interest in money, and, as far as I could tell, very little in his dealerships.
I wore the navy pumps to their wedding two years later, the same ones with the little gold buckles. Beth had asked me, with a shy smile, if I would sit in the front row and keep an eye on the groom. I said I would be delighted. After the ceremony, I took off my shoes under the table at the reception and rubbed my feet, and Hunter came over and knelt beside me and said, “Grandma, they saved my life, those shoes.” I told him they were only shoes. We both knew better.
