The Mulberry Tree Read online

  Arleen stopped talking and looked at Bailey for a moment. “Do you remember the time that man from Heinz was doing some business with James? I think we were staying in the house in Antigua then.”

  “No,” Bailey said softly. “The castle in Scotland.”

  “Oh, yes,” Arleen said. “That’s where you had the hundred-thousand-dollar kitchen put in and then lived in it. Jimmie said you were too cold in the rest of the house, but we all knew you couldn’t abide us.”

  “What about the man from Heinz?” Bailey asked, unable to look into Arleen’s eyes.

  “He ate some of those jams of yours, and he wanted to franchise you, but James wouldn’t let him. James said that you had no interest in having a business, but Bandy said behind James’s back that he was the only business you were allowed to have. Do you remember any of this?”

  Bailey kept her eyes downward. She’d asked Jimmie to ask the man from Heinz if maybe he could help her start a line of specialty items. All that day, Bailey had been a nervous wreck while waiting for the man’s answer. But when Jimmie came home that night with a huge bouquet of roses in his arms, she knew what it was.

  Jimmie had been wonderful that night, holding her, making her laugh after he said that the man had turned down her idea. Jimmie said, “I didn’t tell him who made the jams he was eating, because I wanted an honest reaction, but I can tell you that I wanted to hit him when he said they were ‘ordinary’ and ‘nothing special.’ ” When Bailey heard that, she’d had to work hard not to burst into tears. Over the years many people had told her that what she made was delicious and extraordinary, different from anything they’d ever eaten before. But it looked as though they’d been politely lying.

  When Jimmie saw that she was close to tears, he’d become very angry and said that he’d buy her a factory for making jams if she wanted one. “We’ll call them Lillian’s Jams,” he’d said. “Hey! I know what I’ll do. How about if I buy Heinz for you?” His righteous indignation had been so sincere that he’d made her laugh.

  But the rejection had so hurt Bailey that she hadn’t canned anything for months after. Now Arleen was telling her that the man from Heinz had wanted Lillian’s preserves so much that he’d had a contract drawn up giving Lillian complete control of that branch of the company.

  “You should have seen him at breakfast that morning,” Arleen was saying. “The man was nearly begging Jimmie. He said that the gourmet market was just opening up, and your products would be perfect for taking Heinz into it.”

  Bailey looked down at her hands and saw that her nails were cutting into her palms. That morning she’d wanted to go to breakfast and tell the Heinz man just what she thought of him. She’d wanted to show him all the blue ribbons she’d won over the years in contests and at fairs. But Jimmie had told her that he was going to “take care” of the man, and when he’d said it, his face had been full of rage. “Let me do it, Frecks,” he’d said. “I’m better at revenge than you are.”

  So Bailey had stayed in their bedroom until she saw the man get into the car that would drive him back to the airport. Later, she’d wanted Jimmie to tell her the details of what rotten thing he’d done to the man, but all he’d said was, “You can be sure that he won’t be coming around here again,” and the way Jimmie had said it made Bailey believe that he was her champion.

  “So how’s your life now?” Arleen was asking.

  “I—” Bailey said, but then couldn’t seem to form any more words. What was she going to say? That she was already living with another man, and cooking for him while he paid for nearly everything? And that she was going to be working for him, doing about one percent of the planning in the man’s new business venture? In other words, that in just a few weeks she had come close to re-creating her life with Jimmie.

  “I bought this place,” Bailey heard herself say as she thrust the brochure across the table at Arleen. “I’m going into business with two other women, and we’re creating a line of specialty foods.”

  “Really?” Arleen asked, looking at Bailey through a haze of cigarette smoke. “You in business?”

  “None of you ever really knew me,” Bailey said, taking a deep breath. “And none of you ever knew how deeply involved I was in Jimmie’s businesses. I did more than just follow him around, more than just—” She couldn’t say any more, as what Arleen had told her was ringing in her head. “A girl who didn’t have anything,” Jimmie had said. “Who was loved by no one on Earth and had no ambition to be anything.”

  “An empty bottle waiting for me to come along and fill her up.” She knew they were Jimmie’s words; she could hear him saying them.

  “And what about a man?” Arleen asked. “Or did Jimmie sour you for all men?”

  “There’s a man,” Bailey said, her jaw rigid. “Blue-blood type on his mother’s side. You’d probably know the family name if I said it, but I really would like to keep my anonymity.”

  “I understand,” Arleen said, then she smiled. “Blue blood is what James craved, isn’t it? It’s why he put up with people like Bandy and me. James could have all the money in the world, but he couldn’t go back and change his breeding.”

  “No, he couldn’t,” Bailey said. She exchanged a conspiratorial smile with Arleen, and in that moment, they were close to being friends.

  “You know something?” Arleen said. “I’m glad you aren’t in that kind of a relationship again. And I’m glad that the new man in your life isn’t a controller like James was, and that he isn’t the kind to stop you from having your little shop. And I hope he doesn’t stop you from finding out whatever it was that James wanted you to find out.”

  “What do you mean?” Bailey asked. Had Jimmie told people about the note he’d left his wife in his will? He seemed to have blabbed about a lot of other parts of their private lives.

  “It was just something that James said once. I’m sure it wasn’t important. But he said that after he died, he was going to ask you to find out something that he couldn’t.”

  When Arleen said no more, Bailey looked at her hard. “Okay, what is it that you want?”

  Arleen inhaled cigarette smoke so deep that it must have gone down to her toes. “There aren’t many men like James left,” she said softly, then waited for Bailey to figure out what she meant.

  “Ah, right,” Bailey said. Arleen meant that there weren’t many vastly wealthy men out there who had some deep need to surround themselves with people whose only claim to fame was that they “knew people.”

  “The rich ones today,” Arleen said, “are these boys from the computer world. What do they need introductions for? They want to stay up all night and play games on their computers.” She stubbed out her cigarette in Bailey’s salad bowl with such force that Bailey thought she might break a nail.

  Bailey just looked at the woman, her eyes asking, What do you want?

  “If you make a go of your little company, perhaps you’d like to have some good names on your masthead.”

  Bailey narrowed her eyes, unintentionally looking very much like her late husband. “Maybe I might like to have someone tell others about how wonderful my products are for say . . . one percent of the gross?”

  “Ten percent of the net,” Arleen shot back.

  “Two percent of the gross will make sure you do some work,” Bailey fired back.

  Arleen smiled. “I wish I’d spent a little time with you when James was alive. All right. Three percent of the net.”

  “Two,” Bailey said, unsmiling. “Gross.”

  “So what’s the name of this company that I own . . . two percent of?”

  “I have no idea,” Bailey said, then she smiled. “I haven’t started the company yet.”

  For a moment Arleen blinked at her, then when she realized that Bailey had lied, she threw her head back and really laughed. It was a good ol’ Texas girl hee-haw, something that Baroness von Lindensale would never have given into.

  Bailey couldn’t help smiling back, and when Arleen went i