Chapter Seven
Libby read a couple of chapters of the book after the club meeting that evening and fell asleep with it still in her hands. She awoke sometime in the wee hours, sitting straight up in bed with clammy palms. In the nightmare, burglars and child molesters hid behind all kinds of furniture and waited until a little girl went to sleep to grab her.
“This is what I get for watching reruns of cop shows. Sure, they always catch the bad person, but not until after someone is hurt.”
She went to the refrigerator, poured herself a glass of milk, and drank it slowly. Afraid to close her eyes, she picked up the novel and started reading again. Sometime just after dawn, lightning lit up the room through the one window in the apartment, and thunder sounded like it was stomping on the roof of the old service station.
She laid the book aside and slept for another three hours without even a hint of a dream. When she awoke later that morning, she was fully rested—just like always. As a little girl, she had convinced herself that she was safe in a storm. Evil people didn’t go out when it was lightning for fear that they would be the first one to get struck. It was a silly notion, but it had worked.
Libby made herself a toaster pastry and a pot of coffee, had breakfast, and got dressed in a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt. No one would be at the store today, and she would be working in the office, so she didn’t need to dress up.
“I could get used to this,” she said as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “Heck, I could go to work in my sweats or pajamas, for that matter—and here I am, talking to myself again.”
That little bad habit, as Victoria had called it, had started way back before she could even remember—probably when she had been left alone in the back of Victoria’s old station wagon the first time. She’d never been able to get past it. She did try to curtail it when she wasn’t alone, for fear—there was that word again—that folks would think she had lost her mind.
A few minutes later, she went outside and half expected to see Elvis lying under the shade of the table. Then she remembered that he had gone with Benny and most likely wouldn’t be home until Thursday. “That is the reason why I had the bad dreams again,” she whispered. “I slept better when I knew Elvis was here to act as a guard dog.”
She felt an empty sadness without Benny and Elvis there to keep her company that morning. “That’s silly,” she scolded herself. “I haven’t even known Benny for a week, and I’m missing him.” She had known people at her previous workplace for months, and when they left, retired, or were fired, she hadn’t missed them at all.
She opened the door to the store and found Opal and Minilee sitting at a scarred-up wooden table with a pot of tea and a platter of cookies in the middle. Opal waved and Minilee nodded, and then they both motioned her over to join them.
“It’s break time, so come have some mint tea and chocolate cookies with us,” Opal said.
“Did the storm keep you up? We are too far out to hear the tornado sirens go off, but on bad nights, we keep the police scanner on so we know if we need to take shelter,” Minilee told her. “We’ve got a storm cellar out behind my house. If we hear that there’s a tornado coming toward us, we’ll call you, and you can hightail it over to shelter.”
Libby pulled out a third chair and sat down. “Thank you. A cup of tea sounds great.”
Opal poured a cup for her and then pushed the platter across the table. “Have one of Minilee’s double chocolate chip cookies to go with it. They’re really good.”
Libby picked up a cookie and bit into it. “This is delicious. What time did—”
A loud clap of thunder rattled the few windows in the store.
Minilee shivered. “I hate storms. Good thing you got here when you did, or you might have had to run between the raindrops.”
“How long have you been here?” Libby asked.
“Only an hour or so,” Opal answered. “We got an early start.”
As if on cue, hard rain hit the store’s metal roof, sounding like a wave of BBs.
Libby reached for another cookie. The mint tea and chocolate were a good combination. She’d have to remember to buy tea and a package of Oreos next time she went to the store. Might not be as good as homemade, but they would do in a pinch.
She remembered her grandmother saying those words—do in a pinch—lots of times and wasn’t even sure what it meant.
Opal raised her voice above the noise of the rain. “Did you enjoy the club meeting?”
“Yes, very much. And I read a chunk of that book last night. Y’all are right about it being very good. I’m afraid of the dark,” Libby blurted out, and immediately wished she could put the words back in her mouth. But in for a penny ... “I’m thirty years old, and I still sleep with a light on somewhere in my apartment. I didn’t even care that my college roommate teased me about having one on in our dorm room. Evil things come out in the dark.”
“When did this fear of the dark start?” Opal asked. “My fear of spiders came about when I was about five years old and woke up to find a tarantula on my pillow. It was just sitting there, staring at me. I woke up the whole house screaming. I wanted Daddy to kill it, but he took it outside and turned it loose in the barn. I wouldn’t go back in that place and was glad when a tornado blew it away a couple of years later.”
Libby had never thought about the time frame before, but now it made sense. “Up until I was ten years old, I had a babysitter when my grandmother went to the casino. Mary Lou was her name, and that year she graduated from high school and went to college. She was a short girl, and I was almost as tall as she was. Victoria decided that I was big enough to stay by myself on the evenings when she and her friends gambled. Looking back, that’s probably when I became afraid of the dark.”
“Whew!” Opal gasped. “That’s awful young to be left alone. I’m surprised that the authorities didn’t take you away from her.”
Libby didn’t tell them about spending hours in the back of a station wagon, with no one to talk to but herself and her Barbie doll. “There were strict rules. I wasn’t to call my friends on the phone or tell anyone I was by myself. I was told to lock the doors, stay inside, and go to bed at ten o’clock, just like if she was home. The only reason I was to open a door was if the house was on fire, and then only after I had called 911. I was told to only watch kid shows on television, but I disobeyed and binge-watched old reruns of cop shows and scary movies that played late at night.” Libby had never told anyone that bit of news—not even Amanda—but admitting it to these two elderly ladies wasn’t embarrassing.
She took a sip of her tea. “I don’t want anyone’s pity. I’m sure there are lots of kids who lived in much worse conditions than I did.”
“Did you ever break any other rules?” Minilee asked.
“No, ma’am,” Libby replied. “Victoria was a handful when she lost at the poker table. I didn’t want to tempt fate by making her mad at me.”
“Smart girl.” Opal’s face was deadpan serious.
“What about storms?” Minilee asked. “When you were left all alone, did thunder bother you?”
Libby shook her head. “No, I liked those nights. I don’t know if I read a book that had a line or two in it or where I got the idea, but I was and still am convinced that evil stayed in at night when it was storming. Those were the times I slept the best.” She pushed back her chair, finished off the last sip of her tea, and took a step toward the office. She had walked down memory lane enough for one day. “I should be getting busy with filing the hard copies of last week’s sales and trying to make a dent in organizing that messy office.”
“Our break time is over, too,” Opal said. “We’re only going to work until a little after noon today and then come back tomorrow to finish dusting and arranging things. What’s on your agenda for the rest of the day and tomorrow?”
“From the looks of the desk, it’s going to take me a few hours each day to get all that filing caught up. Benny meant it when he said he didn’t like to do the office work. There must be a month’s worth of filing in there.”
“Oh, honey!” Minilee’s mouth turned up in a smile. “That is an understatement if there ever was one, and it’s what made us fuss at him to hire someone. He’s a crackerjack antique dealer, but even just a few hours in the office makes him cranky.”
“You can expect him to spend more time on the floor as soon as you get settled in, and you’ll be the only one doing the computer work, even on days when the store is open,” Opal told her. “This week is so you’ll get used to the system.”
“Work is work,” Libby said. “If he tells me to sweep the floors and clean the bathrooms, that’s what I’ll do. If he wants me to file and print out receipts, then I’ll do that.” She thought again of Tatum and wondered where her next job would take her if she had to move after the six-month contract was finished.
Minilee stood up and put the leftover cookies into a plastic bag. “Now, that is a wonderful attitude. You want to come over to my house for supper tonight? We’re just having beans, summer goulash, and corn bread, but you are welcome to join us.”
“I’d love to,” Libby answered. “What time—and what is summer goulash?”
“That’s potatoes, crookneck squash, and okra all fried up together,” Minilee told her.
“And we eat about five o’clock.” Opal picked up a dust rag. “We’ll just have frozen peaches and the rest of the cookies for dessert, so don’t go asking if you can bring anything.”
“Thank you,” Libby said. “I’ll see y’all then.”
When she reached the office, she stood in the middle of the chaos and sighed. She had visions of trashing everything in the room and starting all over with a clean slate. But that would never work, especially if the IRS came snooping around, wanting to see the books. She had lived through the nightmare of an audit at her old job. She opened the top drawer in the first cabinet to see how Benny liked his hard copies arranged.
“Sweet Lord!” she gasped.
Two huge spiders crawled up over the top of the disarray and dropped to the floor on long, spindly webs. She quickly killed both of them, cleaned up the mess with a napkin, and tossed them in the trash. Those kinds of critters weren’t new to her. Being around antiques all her life had toughened her up when it came to spiders, crickets, roaches, and even mice. But not once in all her past had she ever seen such a mess. She groaned when she slid open a second drawer and found papers crammed between files and a few that had slid under the faded green folders. Even beginning to make a dent would take days and days.
“How did you find anything?” she muttered.
The old landline phone—gold, with the receiver on the cord—rang right beside her hip and startled her so bad that she came close to jumping right out of her skin. That was another thing she’d heard her grandmother say whenever she won a large amount at the casino.
Every time the bells and whistles went off, telling the whole place that someone had won a bundle at the slots, I almost jumped right out of my skin. But that was my lucky sign. When someone else won big money, then I nearly always raked in the chips next.
Libby picked up the receiver and hoped that when she checked the other file cabinets, they would be in perfect order. “Sawmill Antiques, Libby speaking,” she said, but her voice sounded a little breathless in her own ears.
“Hey, this is Benny. I’m just calling to see how things are going. I figured you might be in the store this morning,” he said.
“These file cabinets are a mess,” she crabbed.
“Yep, but you’re going to put them to rights, aren’t you?” he asked with a chuckle.
“If I’m going to work in this office, it’s got to be in order. To get it in shape is going to take some serious overtime,” she answered.
“Just keep track of your time. There are some sheets in the left-hand drawer of the desk. Use one of them to write down your hours,” he said. “Organize the cabinets any way you want since you’ll be taking care of all that from now on.”
From now on? her inner voice screamed.
“I’m looking at six four-drawer file cabinets. Do you really want to keep everything in them?”
“They date back to when my grandpa first started the business, and everything was done on paper. I got the computer program up and running when I took over, so the last four or five drawers are mainly backup hard copies for tax purposes. But to answer your question, yes, I do want to keep everything. It’s all like a big old history book to me.”
“Do you want me to enter any of it into the program?”
“Just the last five years’ worth,” he answered. “What if you ignore the old files right now and start organizing the ones for the past five years? Those are the ones we definitely need to keep in order. But look, Libby, I don’t care about the hours or the money—and with your experience, I’m sure you don’t need me to bird-dog you.”
“‘Bird-dog’?” she asked.
“It’s my grandpa’s old saying and means that I’d have to tell you every little thing—or in the case of a huntin’ dog, point him in the right direction,” Benny replied with another chuckle. “And one other thing: I’ll be home tomorrow evening. I’ve got a whole trailer full of merchandise for us to catalog, price, and put into the computer files, so Thursday will be a full day for both of us. I’ve got another call coming in. See you soon.”
The line went dead. She put the receiver back on the base and walked over to the last cabinet in the row. The papers in the bottom drawer were dated four years before, so she closed that one and tried the next one.
“Yep, here we go,” she whispered. “First drawer from the top of this one is where it all started five years ago.” Fifty-two file folders, each one representing a week in that year, with hard copies of each sale, plus one file folder marked TAXES. The hanging green folders looked as if a tornado had snatched them out at random and then put them back in the wrong places.
Libby sat down on the floor and removed every one of the file folders, lined them up on the floor, and then cleaned the dead spiders and cobwebs from the drawer. Her plan was to go through each file folder and organize it before replacing it. She liked things filed front to back.
“He said it’s my office,” she declared, “so I’m doing it my way.”