The Mulberry Tree Read online

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bailey said honestly, and she was glad that she wasn’t asking about whatever it was that made Opal look like that. On the other hand, she couldn’t resist asking, “What’s the Golden Six?”

  “Calburn’s claim to fame, that’s what,” Opal said, then told Carla to hush up when her daughter snorted in derision.

  “Now tell me more about your husband that died,” Opal said as she picked up an even smaller roller and pulled Bailey’s hair so tightly around it that her eyes began to water.

  It was while Bailey was under the hair dryer that Carla walked past her and dropped a folded piece of paper on top of her magazine. Without thinking, Bailey hid the note and later slipped it into her pants pocket.

  So now, Bailey removed the paper and looked at it. “Violet Honeycutt knows all about Calburn” was written on the paper. “Yellow house at the end of Red River Road.” Below that was a little map, showing that Red River Road was very near where she was now.

  Bailey gave her hair another brush, then went back to her car, smiling. For all that Carla’s manner and looks were off-putting, Bailey rather liked the girl.

  Using the little map, it was easy to find Red River Road. At the end of it was a pretty little farmhouse that had long ago been painted yellow, with dark brown trim around the windows. Huge willow trees almost hid the house from the road. As Bailey pulled into the driveway and saw the porch with the old rocking chairs on it, she couldn’t suppress the thought: Why didn’t you leave me a place like this one, Jimmie?

  She stepped up on the porch and knocked on the door, but no one answered. “Hello?” she called, but still there was no answer. When she left the porch and walked toward the back of the house, she saw a woman bending over a patch of vegetable garden. It looked as though she was setting out tomato seedlings. She was a large woman, wearing a huge, flower-printed sundress that had been washed many times. Her bare feet were in rubber thongs, and a big straw hat with half the brim torn away was perched on her head. Bailey could see only part of her face, but she looked to be in her fifties.

  “Hello,” Bailey said and the woman turned to look at her. She had a face lined by years of sun, and if Bailey didn’t miss her guess, a few drugs and quite a bit of booze. The phrase old hippie came to her mind.

  “Aren’t you just perfect?” the woman said, straightening up as she looked Bailey up and down. “You look like something off the page of a catalog.”

  Maybe Bailey should have taken offense at the woman’s words, but just a few months ago, no one would have ever said she looked like a catalog model. “That’s me,” she said as she held out her arms and slowly turned around. “I’m an Orvis-Norm Thompson-Land’s End special.”

  The woman laughed, showing that she had a couple of teeth missing on the bottom. “So what can I do you for?” she asked.

  But Bailey didn’t answer her question; her eyes were on the plants that the woman had just set into the ground. They weren’t tomatoes; they were marijuana. “Isn’t that illegal?” she asked softly.

  “Only if you’re selfish. I share what I grow with the deputy sheriff who looks after Calburn, so he says I have a real nice garden.” She squinted her eyes at Bailey. “You want to come inside and tell me what you came all the way out here for?”

  Bailey had to smile at that. She was used to spending the weekend in places you had to fly to. But it seemed that Red River Road was considered “all the way out here.”

  She followed the woman onto the screened-in back porch of the house, where there was a washing machine that had to be from the 1940s, plus a couple of well-used washboards. In the corner was a stack of broken wooden lawn furniture that should have been used for firewood, except that Bailey was sure she’d seen some just like it in a shop in Paris. Retro was all the rage there.

  They entered the kitchen, and Bailey could tell it hadn’t been changed in thirty years. The linoleum on the floor was worn through in places, and the cabinets were aged with grease and old paint. Along one wall was an old enamel range with an oven big enough to roast half an ox. Under the window stood an enamel sink: one enormous bowl, wide drain boards on each side, and an enameled backsplash with two faucets in it. It was an original version of the sink she’d bought for her farmhouse.

  “Awful old place, ain’t it?” the woman said as she settled her bulk into a chair, her back to the sink. Bailey had seen the exact same chairs for sale in exclusive Americana shops.

  “No,” she said honestly. “It’s the real version of what the rest of us try to copy.”

  The woman chuckled. “You look pretty slick, but I’m beginnin’ to like you anyway. Come and sit down and ask me what you want to. Unless you’d rather can tomatoes.” She said this last as though it were the greatest joke she’d ever heard in her life. That someone who looked as citified as Bailey did could put up tomatoes seemed like the ultimate joke.

  It was Bailey’s turn to give a smug little smile. When she looked into the sink, she saw that it was full of homegrown, still-warm-from-the-sun tomatoes. Some of them had holes in them because, obviously, the woman hadn’t bothered with the slugs, but Bailey knew she could save the fruit. Without looking at the woman seated at the table, Bailey opened a door beside the screened back door, guessing that it was a big pantry such as nearly all old farmhouses had. It was, and inside were hundreds of old mason and Ball jars waiting to be filled with the summer’s produce. On the floor were a couple of canning kettles and new boxes of sealing lids.

  “You talk, I’ll can,” Bailey said as she carried the canners to the sink to fill them. “I want to know why this town has been abandoned, and I want to know why Opal at the hair, uh, beauty shop was ready to shoot me when she thought I was trying to find out something about the Golden Six. What is that, anyway? I haven’t stepped into a union, have I? And I’m Bailey James, by the way. I inherited—”

  “The old Hanley place. I know,” the woman said, watching Bailey as she moved about the kitchen as though she’d always worked there. “Your husband died and left the farm to you, and Matt Longacre is moving in with you today. Patsy is thrilled to be getting rid of him. He never stops grousing about what slobs her two boys are. Of course Patsy spoils those boys to death, so Matt probably had reason to complain. I’m Violet Honeycutt.”

  “That’s what I was told.” Bailey was moving jars from the pantry to put them into two water-filled kettles to sterilize them. “What I want to know most is anything you can tell me about the farm I was given. Who lived there, that sort of thing. Did the Hanleys have any children?”

  “Who are you tryin’ to find?” Violet asked suspiciously.

  At that, Bailey sat down on a chair at the table and faced Violet. She knew her meaning was clear: if Violet wanted her tomatoes put up, then she had to answer questions, not ask them.

  Violet laughed. “Somebody somewhere taught you to do business, didn’t he?”

  Bailey did not move from her seat.

  Smiling, Violet opened a little wooden box on the table and withdrew a hand-rolled cigarette. “Mind?”

  Bailey just looked at her, waiting for the answers to her questions.

  “Okay,” Violet said, leaning back against her chair, lighting her joint, then inhaling deeply and closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, “The Hanleys used to own the place, but just because they moved away a long time ago don’t mean that their name was ever taken out of people’s minds as the owners of that farm.”

  Bailey got up, went to the sink, and picked up an old paring knife that had been sharpened so many times that the blade was curved inward. The original bird’s-beak knife, she thought, thinking of the expensive French knife she used.

  “Are you interested in the Hanleys?”

  Bailey hesitated in answering. It would be better to reveal as little as possible. “No,” she said. “I’m more interested in the sixties and seventies in Calburn.”

  “Ah, then you are interested in the Gol