Twisted

ask what happened?”
    She hesitated for a minute and Ralston picked up on it immediately.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t’ve asked. It’s—”
    But she interrupted. “No, it’s all right. I don’t mind talking about it. A fishing accident last fall. At Billings Lake. He fell in, hit his head and drowned.”
    “Man, that’s terrible. Were you on the trip when it happened?”
    Laughing hollowly, she said, “I wish I had been, I could’ve saved him. But, no, I only went with him once or twice. Fishing’s so . . . messy. You hook the poor thing, you hit it over the head with a club, you cut it up. . . . Besides, I guess you don’t know the Southern protocol. Wives don’t fish.” She gazed up at some of the pictures. Said reflectively, “Jim was only forty-seven. I guess when you’re married to someone and you think about them dying you think it’ll happen when they’re old. My mother died when she was eighty. And my father passed away when he was eighty-one. They were together for fifty-eight years.”
    “That’s wonderful.”
    “Happy, faithful, devoted,” she said wistfully.
    Loretta brought the tea and vanished again with the demure exit of a discreet servant.
    “So,” he said. “I’m delighted the attractive woman I picked up so suavely actually gave me a call.”
    “You Northern boys are pretty straightforward, aren’t you?”
    “You betcha,” he said.
    “Well, I hope it’s not going to be a blow to your ego when I tell you that I asked you here for a purpose.”
    “Depends on what that purpose is.”
    “Business,” Sandra May said.
    “Business is a good start,” he said. Then he nodded for her to continue.
    “I inherited all the stock in the company when Jim died and I became president. I’ve been trying to run the show best I can but the way I see it”—she nodded to where the accountant’s reports sat on the desk—“unless things improve pretty damn fast we’ll be bankrupt within the year. I got a bit of insurance money when Jim died so I’m not going to starve, but I refuse to let something my husband built up from scratch go under.”
    “Why do you think I can help you?” The smile was still there but it had less flirt than it had a few minutes ago—and a lot less than last Sunday.
    “My mother had this saying. ‘A Southern woman has to be a notch stronger than her man.’ Well, I am that, I promise you.”
    “I can see,” Ralston said.
    “She also said, ‘She has to be a notch more resourceful too.’ And part of being resourceful is knowing your limitations. Now, before I married Jim I had three and a half years of college. But I’m in over my head here. I need somebody to help me. Somebody who knows about business. After what you were telling me on Sunday, at the club, I think you’d be just the man for that.”
    When they’d met—he’d explained that he was a banker and broker. He’d buy small, troubled businesses, turn them around and sell them for a profit. He’d been in Atlanta on business and somebody had recommended he look into real estate in northeastGeorgia, here in the mountains, where you could still get good bargains on investment and vacation property.
    “Tell me about the company,” he said to her now.
    She explained that DuMont Products Inc., with sixteen full-time employees and a gaggle of high school boys in the summer, bought crude turpentine from local foresters who tapped longleaf and slash pine trees for the substance.
    “Turpentine . . . That’s what I smelled driving up here.”
    After Jim had started the company some years ago Sandra May would lie in bed next to his sleeping form, smelling the oily resin—even if he’d showered. The scent had never seemed to leave him. Finally she’d gotten used to it. She sometimes wondered exactly when she’d stopped noticing the piquant aroma.
    She continued, telling Ralston, “Then we distill the raw turpentine into a couple different products. Mostly for the medical market.”
    “Medical?” he asked, surprised. He took his jacket off and draped it carefully on the chair next to him. Drank more iced tea. He really seemed to enjoy it. She thought New Yorkers only drank wine and bottled water.
    “People think it’s just a paint thinner. But doctors use it a lot. It’s a stimulant and antispasmodic.”
    “Didn’t realize that,” he said. She noticed that he’d started to take notes. And that the flirtatious smile was gone completely.
    “Jim