Angel at Troublesome Creek Read Free Page A

place,” I said. The big old house on Snapfinger Road was drafty and in need of repairs, but it was the only real home I’d known since Daddy took a notion to pass on a hill and made an orphan of me. I frowned. “And I guess the furniture must be worth something. Delia would know.”
    “Delia? The black-market sugar neighbor who made that heavenly fudge cake?”
    “She used to have an antique shop,” I said. “And why do you keep carrying on about sugar? Sugar isn’t rationed. Obviously you didn’t get the message up there in your strawberry patch—or wherever—but World War Two has been over for fifty years.”
    Augusta sat so hard her little hat slid clear to the middle of her nose. “Now you’re joshing me,” she said.
    “I’m not in a joshing mood.”
    “Fifty years! My goodness … We did win, didn’t we? Tell me we won.
    I nodded. “At a price.” I thought of the losses on D day, and there was a monument here in the park to all the local servicemen who died in that war. Too many. And of course I’d read about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    “We have no way to measure time in heaven,” Augusta said. “No watches, no calendars—not even a sundial. Don’t need them.” She smiled. “Does this mean you can have all the sugar you want? And cheese and coffee? And gasoline—what about gasoline?”
    “That too.” I watched the woman’s face for any sign she was faking. She was either a very good actress or a genuine loony.
    “In that case,” Augusta said, “could I please have another piece of that cake?”
    “Be my guest. In fact, I’ll have one with you.” I hated to acknowledge it, but I was getting hungry. It was the first sign of an appetite since my whole life began to plunge into the basement.
    I uncovered the cake and looked at it closely. I could’ve sworn I’d served a larger portion than what appeared to be missing, but the chocolate cake looked as if it had hardly been touched.
    Augusta swung her foot as she watched me cut two generous wedges and fill glasses with milk. “Do you think we might drop by the shoe store this afternoon? I’d really like to get rid of these clodhoppers.”
    I made a face at the woman’s hideous footwear. “Good idea. But just how long do you plan to stay?”
    “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid!” Augusta raised her glass and drank. “As long as necessary, I guess, or until my mission’s accomplished.”
    “And what, pray tell, might that be?”
    She patted her milk mustache with her napkin and smiled. “I don’t suppose Bud Abbott and that tubby little Costello man are still making those amusing pictures? And what about that skinny young singer … Frank something or other? Oh, the girls used to swoon over him! ‘The Voice,’ they called him. Sang sweet enough to bring tears to a glass eye.”
    “Afraid not,” I said. “And you didn’t answer my question. Wasn’t your mission accomplished when you kept me from hanging myself?”
    “That wasn’t my mission at all. I thought I explained that. If you had really meant to kill yourself, I wouldn’t have been able to stop you.”
    “Then what?”
    “Time will tell. Maybe it has something to do with the way your aunt died. Or the way you choose to live—or should I say exist ? For heaven’s sake, Mary George, don’t you want to find out what happened here?”
    “Of course I do, but I can’t imagine why anybody would want to hurt Aunt Caroline. She was the sweetest, kindest person I’ve ever known.”
    Augusta nodded. “And that’s exactly why we’d want to put things right. Now, when was the last time you spoke with her?”
    “Must’ve been a couple of weeks ago. I usually call … called every week, but with that mess at the office, and then Todd, I let it get by me … . Didn’t want her to worry.” I stared at the lump of cake on my plate and pushed it away. I wasn’t so hungry after all. Come to think of it, it was a week ago today my chicken-livered fiancé had left his