Hidden Riches Read online

  The curl of Clayton’s lip and the jut of his chin spoke volumes. Clayton despised his hometown. Archer had heard plenty of the horror stories. Returning for the funeral had apparently opened wounds that had yet to heal, even after all these years and miles away.

  “Nostalgic,” Clayton practically spit. “Let me tell you about nostalgia around here.”

  He yanked up the sleeve on his shirt. “You see that!” He jabbed his finger at a zigzag scar on his arm. “That’s what’s it’s like to be a fag in a small town. I got sliced there. And there,” he said, yanking his undershirt up to reveal the six-inch scar along his side.

  “I know, Clay.” Archer’s words were low, soothing. “It was a long time ago. Things change. People change.”

  “Maybe in San Francisco, where we aren’t an abused minority. Here, it’s just like Hell.”

  “No one is attacking you. No one has even said anything.”

  Clayton shook his head. “You don’t get it, Archer. They don’t have to say anything. It’s just ingrained deep. Like bone marrow.”

  Before the argument could blossom into a full-out battle, a telephone call interrupted Marguerite and Winslow in their hotel room. Winslow was now having a heated conversation on the telephone with a creditor while Marguerite listened in on the other line in the room, although she was trying to keep her presence masked from their caller.

  “I most certainly am not ducking my financial responsibility,” he said. “Remember, it was I who called you today. I could have easily ignored your message.”

  The way we do all your telephone calls, Marguerite added silently.

  “My wife has had a death in her family,” Winslow said. “We are about to come into some money.”

  She glanced at her husband.

  We?

  In the twenty-odd years they’d been married, he’d set eyes on Ana Mae all of twice—the first time when they’d married, and the second time earlier today as she lay stretched out in a top-of-the-line casket at the Rollings Funeral Home. Now all of a sudden, he was the bereaved brother-in-law.

  “I don’t know how much the inheritance is,” Winslow said. “We have to wait until the reading of the will.”

  Margaret winced at what the collection agent said.

  She saw Winslow’s mouth tighten.

  “Yes,” he said, “I understand.”

  He replaced the receiver, and then she did the same on the telephone by the bed.

  A second later, a crash and a thump made her yelp in alarm. She hit the floor, taking cover.

  Her heart pounding, she crawled to the edge of the bed and peeked around it.

  “Winslow?”

  Her husband was on his knees in the middle of the hotel room floor. The telephone, yanked from one wall and thrown at another, lay on the floor amid pieces of what used to be a lamp.

  We’re going to have to pay for that, was her first thought after she realized they weren’t under attack.

  It took a moment for the sound in the room—like an injured animal keening—to register. When it did, her eyes widened.

  Winslow was crying. Actually crying.

  Marguerite tried to feel his pain, to empathize with him. She too was on this fast-sinking ship, stuck without a lifesaver. But she couldn’t cry. She was too angry. Angry that she’d married someone like him. Angry that the life she’d worked her entire life to build was tumbling down upon her, brick by brick, lie by lie.

  A cell phone trilled.

  Pulling herself up on the bed, Marguerite went to the phone that was charging on the bureau.

  “Hello?”

  A moment later, she held the phone out to Winslow. “It’s Abrams.”

  She didn’t need to hear his side of this conversation. She knew exactly what was being said.

  For the second time in her life, Marguerite wished she owned a handgun. It would be so much simpler to just end it all now.

  As Winslow talked to his attorney, she bent to pick up the big pieces of the shattered lamp.

  The conversation with Abrams lasted longer than she’d anticipated. On Winslow’s end, all she’d heard was a curt, “Yes,” “No,” or “I won’t agree to that.”

  It was over. All over.

  Marguerite did the calculations in her head. She had, by necessity, gotten very good at that lately.

  If Ana Mae had won one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, as Rosalee said, she’d probably tithed ten percent off the top to that weirdly named church of hers. Then she’d probably paid some bills. So at most, they were talking about maybe eighty grand left of the lottery money. Even if she’d earned a little interest on it, when the money was split three or more ways, the most they were looking at was thirty grand each. Close, but not nearly enough.

  A moment later, Winslow fell onto the camelback sofa. Marguerite sat at the desk in the room, her hands folded together. She didn’t look at her husband.

  “What did he say?” she asked. “Is it looking any better about the indictment?”

  4

  The Funeral

  The day of Ana Mae’s funeral dawned. By nine o’clock the air outside was sticky warm, throwing off the kind of heat that made you want to be not close to anybody—the kind of heat that smelled like tired.

  Since Ana Mae had left instructions with Everett Rollings about how she wanted things done, Rosalee and the Futrell sisters didn’t have to do much by way of planning a service.

  The change in venue from the funeral home to the Holy Ghost Church of the Good Redeemer meant the flowers that had been delivered to the Rollings Funeral Home needed to be taken to the church for the service. There were a lot of them, and Rosalee was the coordinator for the flower girls, the women who carried the flowers from the funeral to the gravesite. On short notice, she’d dragooned Zenobia Bryant into helping her.

  The two women were putting several arrangements in the trunk of Rosalee’s car when a big black limousine pulled up. It didn’t belong to the Rollings Funeral Home.

  “That look like the car the president be riding in,” Zenobia said.

  “It ain’t the president,” Rosalee said with some assurance.

  “How you know?”

  “No po-lice,” she answered. “If the president of the United States was coming to Ahoskie, North Carolina, we’d a knowed about it long for now, and there’d be plenty of them Secret Service agents all over town.”

  “So who you reckon that is?” Zenobia asked.

  “Probably somebody done got lost on the way to Charlotte or Raleigh,” Rosalee said.

  A moment later a car door opened and a tall thin white man strode around the car, opened a back door, and moved to the side.

  A portly older white man in a dark suit stepped out of the limo, said something Zenobia and Rosalee couldn’t make out, then leaned back into the open door, presumably talking to someone still in the shadows of the car.

  “Can we help you?” Zenobia called out.

  The short older man stood straight. He plastered a smile on his face and came forward, his hand outstretched.

  “He need to get out in the sun a little more often,” Rosalee muttered under her breath.

  “Good day, ladies. I’m looking for Rollings Funeral Home and Mortuary.”

  Rosalee pointed toward the sign, big as day on the side of the building. “You found it.”

  “Splendid,” the man said.

  The two women exchanged a glance.

  “The services for Miss Futrell are here?”

  “Not anymore,” Rosalee said. “It’s over at the church.”

  “The church? Which church?”

  Rosalee and Zenobia exchanged a glance, and then decided if somebody in a limousine was asking after Ana Mae’s funeral, it couldn’t come to any harm.

  They gave him the name, the address, and the directions.

  “Funeral start at eleven,” Rosalee told him. “Preacher likes to start on time. If you want a good seat, you better get there early.”

  “Very
good, madam. Thank you.” The man touched his forehead.

  “You got a fever or something?” Zenobia asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  The two women exchanged another glance.

  “You know Ana Mae?”

  “Thank you for your assistance,” the man said. Without another word of explanation, he strode back to the waiting car. He slid into the back. The chauffeur shut the door and walked to the driver’s side, and a moment later, the car sped away.

  Zenobia put a hand on her hip. “Who the hell was that?”

  “Look like Tony Soprano to me,” Rosalee said.

  “Nah, Tony Soprano had that beefy-looking face.”

  Rosalee waved a hand. “Whatever,” she said. “Let’s get the rest of the flowers and condolences and get them over to the church.”

  The Holy Ghost Church of the Good Redeemer was at standing-room-only capacity. Capacity for the congregation of the small church with the big heart was about three hundred people, plus the amen corner up front, three short pews off to the side for the deacons. Folding chairs lined the back wall and the side aisles, and people were standing in the spaces that were left over and just barely big enough to squeeze into.

  The flowers—dozens and dozens of memorial arrangements, from carnations tied with raffia from the children at the Sunday school to bouquets and pots and sprays—just about rivaled the size of Ana Mae’s pink casket.

  Three church nurses in crisp white uniforms, white shoes, white hose, and jaunty white caps stood at each aisle with tissue boxes at the ready. Plenty of weeping and carrying on from the gathered mourners greeted the small family when they filed in and came down the center aisle for one last glimpse of the not so dearly departed.

  Delcine and Winslow Foster followed one of Mr. Rollings’s aides; behind them came Clayton and Archer Futrell, then JoJo and Lester Coston. As Ana Mae’s closest friends, Rosalee Jenkins and Zenobia Bryant also came in with the family processional.

  The siblings, stunned at the public outpouring of grief, wondered if they’d walked into the right service.

  They were in the right place, though. Ana Mae, laid out at the front of the church in her pink coffin and wearing what Rosalee declared to the sisters was her favorite blue suit, would herself have been embarrassed and amazed at both the turnout and the genuine grief expressed by the mourners.

  Archer leaned into Clayton. “Your sister was awfully special to these people.”

  “So I’m gathering,” Clayton said.

  They all sat in the first pew on the right side of the church. Delcine was on the center aisle, with Winslow sitting next to her. Clayton was to Winslow’s right, and Archer next to him, followed by JoJo and then Lester. On the second pew behind the Futrells sat Rosalee Jenkins and Zenobia Bryant.

  One of the nurses positioned herself in the aisle near Lester as if one of the family members might need medical assistance during the funeral. Not likely. All they wanted to do was get it over with and return to their regular lives, far from rural North Carolina.

  After Evangelist Buford Charles read the Scripture, an Old Testament text out of Isaiah and then one from the book of Romans in the New Testament, a stout woman got up. Wearing a black dress and a hat as big as a manhole cover, and carrying a white-lace-edged handkerchief almost as big as her hat, she made her way to the front of the church. She touched Ana Mae’s coffin, shook her head sadly, and then faced the congregation.

  “Giving honor to God, to all of the ministers and pulpit associates, and to the Futrell family, I want you all to pray for me while I attempt to sing this song for Sister Ana Mae.”

  She bowed her head, closed her eyes for a moment, and then lifted the microphone from the stand and to her mouth.

  Thirty minutes later, when she finished an a cappella rendition of “Amazing Grace,” Ana Mae’s favorite hymn, there wasn’t a dry eye in the sanctuary, and people were hollering out “Thank you, Jesus” and “Hallelujah!”

  Delcine and Winslow’s hands were clasped and their heads bowed. JoJo was on her feet waving her hands and crying “Glory!” Even Lester was choked up.

  The ushers handed out fans, and the church nurses tended to two people who’d fallen out in the spirit in the center aisle.

  Archer, while not the only white person in the church, was clearly the only one with his mouth agape. He turned to make a comment to Clayton and was astonished to see his longtime partner swaying in his seat, his eyes closed and his face contorted.

  Over the next hour, there was more singing, a lot of praying, a reading of the obituary—though anybody who could read had already done so since it was printed in the funeral program—and condolence messages from seemingly every church official, elected official, and civic group in all of North Carolina.

  “We’ve been here two hours, and they still haven’t gotten to the eulogy,” Archer whispered.

  “Shh,” Clayton said. “Welcome to a black funeral in the South.”

  “Oh, my God,” Archer moaned, as he rubbed his temples.

  Finally, the Reverend Toussaint le Baptiste rose and came forward in the pulpit.

  “Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here this afternoon to say our final earthly farewell to our beloved sister in Christ, Sister Ana Mae Futrell. I’m not going to be before you long . . .”

  “Thank God for that,” Archer muttered.

  The comment earned him a jab in the arm from JoJo and a pinch from Clayton.

  “. . . but before I begin, I think it’s only fitting that anyone who wants to say a word about Sister Ana Mae have the opportunity to do so.”

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “Shh!”

  “Now I know this isn’t on the program, but I don’t think Sister Futrell or the family will mind.” He looked at Delcine, who shook her head. A rousing round of “Amens” rolled through the deacons’ area, and the organist played softly as people rose across the sanctuary and lined up for a turn to sing Ana Mae’s praises.

  A bald-headed deacon with pop-bottle glasses passed a hand-held microphone over, and the first of about twenty people in line testified about the sweetness of Ana Mae’s spirit, the time she cooked dinner for my family when I was laid up by sickness, the quilt she made me, the Sunday school lesson she taught us.

  Bringing up the rear was a pudgy white man in his late fifties or early sixties. He resembled the actor Tom Bosley and cleared his throat twice when he took the microphone.

  “Good afternoon. My name is David Bell, and I wasn’t going to come forward,” he began, his voice starting to quiver.

  A gasp from the second pew had a few heads turning.

  “But when I heard that Ana Mae was gone, I just . . . ,” He started crying.

  “Take your time, brother. Take your time.”

  David Bell pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes, then his brow.

  “I’m sorry about the display of emotion,” he said, “but Ana Mae, she just meant the world to me. I’ve listened to everyone else say what a good woman she was, and I, I have to agree. We, we’ve known each other a long time and whenever she came to visit . . .” He sniffed again, and again he got encouragement from the mostly black congregation to take his time.

  “Whenever she came to visit, we’d talk for hours, just hours. She loved this town and all of you,” he said. “And I, well, I loved her.”

  He broke down crying again as the congregants applauded his testimonial.

  Delcine leaned forward and across her husband to tap Clayton’s knee. “Howard’s father?” she mouthed.

  Clayton shrugged and looked down at JoJo, who was also intensely studying David Bell.

  So was Rosalee in the pew behind them, and Reverend Toussaint in the pulpit, and all of the folks who’d spent the last few days wondering about Ana Mae’s mystery son.

  David Bell was clearly torn up, and he’d intimated that he and Ana Mae spent a lot of time together. Could that have been time between the sheets?

>   Bell handed the microphone to a deacon and made his way around the flowers and over to the front pew where the family sat. He reached in his suit jacket pocket and pulled out something.

  “If there is ever anything I can do for your family, please don’t hesitate to contact me,” he said, handing a small, cream-colored card to Delcine, one to Clayton, and another to JoJo. “You have my deepest condolences.”

  One of the nurses, anticipating that he might fall out from grief, stood nearby and walked at his side as David Bell made his way up the center aisle and back to his seat in the rear of the church. Dozens of pairs of eyes followed his path.

  Then, as yet another preacher launched into yet another long-winded prayer, the three Futrell siblings and their spouses studied the business cards they’d been given.

  DAVID Z. BELL

  CHAIRMAN AND CEO

  THE ZORIN CORPORATION

  The company’s Columbus, Ohio, address and telephone numbers were embossed in the same rich coffee-colored ink as his name.

  As the man of the Futrell house, Clayton had been designated as the family spokesman today, a job Delcine thought was rightfully hers as the oldest. So when his name was finally called to give reflections on the life of his older sister, Clayton rose.

  The pulpit overflowed with preachers and holy women, so many that folding metal chairs from the funeral parlor had been brought in to accommodate all of them. More flowers in sprays and bouquets and memorial tributes filled every other spot.

  The flowers alone astonished every single one of the Futrells. Who knew people cared that much about Ana Mae? Since Delcine spoke at the wake and Clayton would now speak at the funeral, JoJo had been the designated family member who would collect the cards. They’d go through them later. Not that any of them actually knew the people who had sent them.

  Forcing his mind back to what he was supposed to be thinking about, Clayton unconsciously straightened his tie, then put the first foot on the three steps leading to the pulpit and microphone.

  Reverend le Baptiste cleared his throat. Loudly.

  Clayton put his right foot on the next step.