by Maris Soule
“Wade doesn’t need to see this woman behind my back,” I said. “She’s the sheriff’s department’s forensic photographer. They work together.”
“Well, I’m glad I don’t have your problem,” Tamara said. “My husband owns several businesses and often has to be away, traveling. If I thought Alan was being unfaithful . . .” She shook her head.
“I am sure my husband is not being unfaithful,” I said firmly.
“Okay, enough about husbands,” Connie said, “I want—”
The loud wail of an emergency vehicle siren pierced the air, followed by the grinding of brakes. Connie stopped talking, and we all looked toward the windows. I couldn’t tell if it was a fire engine or an ambulance, but it had stopped right outside of the church.
“I want to see what’s going on.” Tamara left our group and went over to the windows.
“What do you see?” Connie asked and stood.
Tamara looked through one window, then the other. “I see a Kalamazoo Safety Patrol car parked in the church’s driveway and a fire engine on the street.”
Connie headed for the windows, then Maria and Sarah. Finally, Anna and I got up and went over, though I wasn’t sure why we bothered. Even standing on our toes, the two of us couldn’t see out. The bane of being short.
Connie became our eyes. “There are two patrol cars now. Lots of people milling around. Oh, oh. Whatever happened, it can’t be good. Here comes an ambulance.”
I heard the ambulance’s siren. Heard the siren turn off right outside of the church. Connie said something about going up to see if she could help, then talked herself out of it. “Nothing I could do that the paramedics can’t,” she said.
Since I couldn’t see anything, I drifted back to my chair. The others soon followed. We were all subdued after that. To my relief, Wade’s fidelity or infidelity was forgotten, and Connie demonstrated a new exercise that she assured us would help us when we went into labor. We tried it, but with little enthusiasm. I think we were all bothered by what was going on outside. Connie ended the session earlier than usual.
When I came out the back door to the parking lot, I was hit by a cold blast of air. Two Kalamazoo Public Safety vehicles were now parked by the side of the church, blocking that exit from the lot. For a second I thought about walking up to the street and asking one of the officers what had happened, then decided against the idea. Picking up Jason so we could go out for pizza was more important than being a gawker. I was halfway to my car when Anna called from behind, “P.J., wait.”
I paused.
“I need some professional advice,” she said the moment she caught up with me. “I think a well-known, well-liked woman in this community is embezzling, but before I report it to anyone, I’d like a second opinion.”
Chapter Three
“Embezzling?” I repeated.
“Yes.” Anna waited until Sarah walked by, then went on. “I’m on the board of the charity: Homes4Homeless. That’s written as one word with the numeral four. It’s fairly new.”
“Actually, I’ve heard of it. Some of my clients have donated to the charity.”
“Okay. Good.” She smiled. “Well, anyway, having been homeless myself when I was younger, I’m all for the idea of finding homes for the homeless. So, a couple years ago when a friend asked if I’d be on the board, I agreed. Since then, I’ve even volunteered at some of the charity’s money-raising events and I’ve gotten to know many of the regulars.” Anna paused and lowered her voice. “Have you heard of Madeline Welkum?”
“Yes.” The woman’s name often appeared in the Kalamazoo Gazette, usually in connection with social events, and recently had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the state senate. “Is she connected to Homes4Homeless?”
“Connected? She created the charity.”
That I hadn’t heard.
“Yes. She’s the CEO and director. And if you’ve ever seen her on TV or met her in person, she’s rather imposing.” Anna laughed. “She reminds me of Maleficent from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.”
I had seen the woman on TV and agreed, in part. Madeline Welkum was tall, slender, and had a haughty, almost regal, way of holding herself. On the other hand, I’d never pictured her as a villainess. “You think she’s evil?”
“Oh, no,” Anna said. “At least, I hope she isn’t. The problem is—”
“I talked to the police out front,” Connie said, coming up beside us. “They wouldn’t say much about what happened, just that the driveway by the church was going to be blocked for hours.”
“Must have been a bad accident,” Anna said.
“Which means, from what my husband has told me, the evidence gathering will take hours.” I glanced at the street that ran behind the church. “Thank goodness this lot had has two exits.
“I’m sure it helps with the traffic situation Sunday mornings.” Connie gave a shiver and gathered her jacket close around her body. “Aren’t you two getting cold standing out here? You don’t want to catch a cold before the baby’s born. There’s nothing worse than being all stuffed up and having a difficult time breathing while in labor. Trust me, I know.”
I was starting to feel cold, but I hadn’t wanted to interrupt Anna.
“You’re right, Connie,” Anna said. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee, P.J.”
“No can do.” Although the smell of coffee no longer made me throw up, as it did the first three months of my pregnancy, I didn’t have the time. “As I said earlier, I have to pick up my stepson and take him out for a pizza.” I dug into my purse, pulled out a business card, and handed it to Anna. “Give me a call. You can either tell me more over the phone or we can figure out a time and place to meet.”
Anna took the card and frowned. “P.J. Benson? I thought you said your last name was Kingsley.”
“That’s my married name. I decided to keep my maiden name as my business name.”
“You and Maria,” Connie said.
It took me a moment to understand what Connie meant, then I remembered Maria had said she could barely pronounce her husband’s last name, much less spell it, so she’d kept her family name. “The difference is,” I said, “I use Wade’s last name for everything else.”
“If I were ever to marry,” Anna said, “I would keep my last name. I like Carr. It’s easy to spell, easy to remember.” She slipped my business card into her jacket pocket then clicked open her car door. “Tomorrow a good time to call?”
“Far as I know. I’ll probably be home with Jason.”
I said goodbye and started toward my car. Connie walked with me. “So has your stepson accepted the idea that he’s going to have a sister soon?”
“I think so. Wade and I have talked to him, told him this baby won’t change how we feel about him, but I really wish this wasn’t happening so soon after the death of his mother. I know he’s still mourning the loss of her.”
“You said you’ve taken him to a therapist. Right?”
I nodded. “She said we need to keep Jason involved in the pregnancy so he feels a part of the process, which is why we let him pick a name for the baby. He came up with Paige.” I still had to smile, remembering Jason’s enthusiasm for the name. “Turns out there’s a girl in his class that he really likes, and her name is Paige. Joy is Wade’s mother’s name, so our baby will be Paige Joy Kingsley.”
“Paige Joy,” Connie repeated and then chuckled. “Another P.J. It’s perfect.”
I agreed. “The therapist also thinks having the baby at home will help.”
“I’ll make sure he feels like he’s a part of the experience.” Connie patted my shoulder. “It’s all going to work out fine, P.J. You’ll see. Relax and enjoy these last few days when you don’t have a baby demanding your full attention.”
Relax. I wished I could. The closer I got to my due date, the more nervous I felt.
At her car, Connie and I said our goodbyes, and I walked on to mine. I’d just gotten in when my cell phone chimed. The call was from Ken Pa
get, the computer whiz who had helped me several times over the last twelve months. Ken and I have become friends, but I was usually the one who called him—when I was having computer problems—not the other way around.
I pressed accept, but before I even had a chance to say hello, I heard a whispered, “Did they get there in time?”
“Get where? Who is this?” I didn’t recognize the voice.
“It’s me, Ken.”
“Uh-huh.” I wasn’t convinced. The caller might be using Ken’s phone, but Ken usually called me Pajama Girl.
He must have sensed my doubt. “It is me, Pajama Girl. I . . .” he stammered. “I did something really stupid.”
“Stupid like what?”
“Is your husband home?”
“I don’t know. I’m not home; I’m in Kalamazoo.”
“Do . . . Do you know where he is?”
Ken sounded nervous, his voice cracking as well as the whispering. Something was wrong. “Wade left the house before I did,” I said. “Some sort of an emergency. Why? What’s the problem, Ken?”
“An emergency in Zenith?”
“He did say it was at the trailer park.” And Zenith did have a mobile home park just past the grocery store, about a half mile from the one and only blinking stoplight at the center of the village. “Why?” I repeated.
“He’s homicide, isn’t he? They wouldn’t call him unless someone was dead, right?”
Wade was a homicide detective and did investigate murders. “What is going on, Ken? Why do you want to know where Wade is, and why are you whispering?”
“I’m whispering because I’m at a meeting. I found Jer—” He didn’t finish, but immediately, in a loud voice, yelled to someone, “I’ll be there in a minute.” He was whispering again when he came back to me. “I’m sorry, P.J., I shouldn’t have called you. It’s just . . . Damn, I really screwed up this time.”
He hung up before I had a chance to ask how he’d screwed up, and for a second I simply stared at my phone, my thoughts in a jumble. As much as I liked Ken and respected his computer abilities—I was the one who recommended him when the Zenith Township Office needed a part-time IT person—Wade doesn’t think highly of Ken. Mostly, I believe, because Ken was arrested last summer for marijuana possession. He and his friend, Jerry, were found with a lot more of the weed than is legal. It was Ken’s first offense, and he was given a slap on the wrist, but his friend took off for parts unknown.
“I found Jer—.” Did he mean his friend Jerry?
I put away my phone and started the car, but I kept wondering what was going on. Had he found Jerry and wanted to turn him in? Did something go wrong? How did Ken screw up?
I just didn’t know.
Chapter Four
Grandma Carter was standing outside her front door, smoking. I have noticed she doesn’t smoke around Jason. Much as I love her, I wish she hadn’t smoked around me when I lived with her. I’ve had years of being exposed to secondhand smoke.
Grandma isn’t a big woman—I think I got my short height from her—but she has more energy in her seventies than I’ve ever had. I also inherited my curly brown hair from her, though her hair is now a salt-and-pepper gray.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said when I reached her. “There was some sort of an accident in front of the church where we meet. Police cars everywhere. I had to take side streets to get around the area they had blocked off.”
“No problem,” she said and gave me a quick hug.
I glanced at the door in front of me. “Jason inside?”
“He’s mopping my kitchen floor and dusting in the living room.” She chuckled. “That will teach him to bet he could beat me at checkers.”
“I warned him about you.”
She grinned. “Took you a while before you learned not to challenge the Pro. Also, I think something’s bothering him.”
“Like what?”
“He wouldn’t say, but while we were making cookies, he sighed a lot.”
“Sighed a lot?”
“Yeah, sighed and seemed distracted. Maybe it’s nothing, but I figured you should know.” She shrugged. “So, how’d your baby meeting go?”
“All right. Pretty much the usual. Complaints about lack of sleep and having to run to the john every half hour. A lecture about the benefit of staying physically active, and that we shouldn’t be afraid about giving birth.”
“What about you? Are you still afraid? Still worried that you’ll end up like your mother?”
I shrugged, but I couldn’t deny it.
“You realize she started showing signs way before she actually gave birth to you. Had delusions. Some paranoia.”
“You’re not making me feel better, Grandma. Just last week I couldn’t find my wallet and went paranoid. I accused Jason of taking it. Even blamed a neighbor who’d stopped by to talk to Wade. And then I found it, behind the recliner, Baraka’s tooth marks and doggy slobber clearly marking him as the thief. Oh, and delusional? Wade’s still giving me a bad time for waking him out of a sound sleep to kill the monster spider in the shower.”
“Yes, but in your case, I’ll bet there really was a spider in the shower. Your mother saw things that weren’t there.”
“I hate spiders,” I said, a shiver running down my spine as I remembered the one in the shower. “And it was really big.” Maybe not monstrous, but big. “For the rest of the day, I felt as if spiders were crawling through my hair and up and down my arms.”
“You’ve always been afraid of spiders, P.J., so stop worrying about becoming schizophrenic.”
“How can I not worry?” I said. “I just turned thirty, a common age for schizophrenia to show up in women.”
“So, if it happens, it happens. There’s nothing you can do to prevent it. What you need to do is start enjoying your pregnancy.”
I patted the large lump that protruded beneath my breasts. “I guess for the most part I have been, but it’s a little hard to enjoy something that kicks my sides, gives me heartburn, and presses against my bladder. Which reminds me, may I use the bathroom?”
“Sure.” Grandma laughed, snuffed out her cigarette, and followed me into the house.
* * *
I let Jason choose where we should go for pizza, and I let him choose what he wanted on the pizza, so I was a little surprised when he only ate half a slice. “Too many cookies?” I asked when he sat back in the booth and stared out the window.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“They are good.” I’d had one before we left Grandma’s house. She’d kept a few for herself and sent the rest home with me. “Should I freeze them so you can take them to school on Saint Patrick’s Day?”
Jason looked at me. “Will they still be good?”
“They should be. It’s less than two weeks away. We can put green frosting on them.”
He shrugged and looked back out the window. “Okay. Maybe they’ll help.”
“Help?” That wasn’t a response I expected. “Help with what?”
“Nuttun’.”
“Come on, Jason. What’s up? Why do you need help at school?” His last report card had indicated he was doing well. His second-grade teacher had even written positive comments about his work ethic.
“There’s just a couple of kids. They don’t like me. So maybe . . .”
“How do you know they don’t like you?”
Again, he shrugged. “I just know.”
Since he still wouldn’t look at me, I had a feeling it was more than that. “How? How do you know?”
“They . . .”
He clenched his lips and squeezed his eyes closed, but I still saw a tear slide down his cheek. “Honey, what is it?” I asked as I scooted out of my side of the booth—the edge of the table rubbing the top of my extended belly—and moved over next to Jason.
“Nuttun’.” He repeated as I put an arm around his shoulders and drew him closer.
“It’s more than nothing,” I said. “Now, tell me what’s up. What do these k
ids do that makes you think they don’t like you?”
“They push me. At least one does. And he calls me names. The others just laugh.”
“And why does the one push you?”
“I don’t know,” Jason mumbled into my side.
“What kind of names does he call you?”
“Piglet.” Jason did look up at me. “He said, since my dad is a pig, I must be a piglet. And he called your house a pigsty.”
I would admit I’m not the neatest person around, but I certainly wouldn’t classify my house as a pig pen. “And what do you do when he says these things?”
Jason again lowered his head, his words barely above a whisper. “Daddy said I shouldn’t fight.”
“Hmm.” I wasn’t sure how to respond. I’m the stepmother, the figure portrayed as evil in so many children’s stories. Should I give him advice? I don’t want to contradict anything Wade has said.
“I think we need to talk to your dad,” I said. “Shall we box up this pizza and head home? Maybe your dad will be back.”
Chapter Five
Wade didn’t get home until Jason was already upstairs in bed. I had planned on watching the eleven o’clock news. I thought there might be something about the accident in front of the church, but I fell asleep in the lounge chair in the living room sometime around the middle of my ten o’clock show. It was my dog, Baraka, rising from where he’d been lying next to the chair that woke me. Wade had pulled into the driveway.
I was waiting in the kitchen, Baraka by my side, when Wade came into the house. A giddy sensation stirred within me. From the first time I met him, Wade has had that effect on me. It’s not just his looks, though he does remind me of Nicolas Cage, with maybe a bit of Tom Cruise mixed in. A tall Tom Cruise.
No, it’s more than his physical appearance. It’s the self-assured way he carries himself, his subtle sense of humor, and his devotion to his family. Although I haven’t been around his parents much, I love the way he spars with his sister, Ginny, and acts with his son. It was breaking Wade’s heart when he thought his ex would move to California and take Jason with her. Although I’m not glad she’s dead, I am glad things turned out as they have.