Detour

by Lorena McCourtney

  “And then, when we finally convinced them we weren’t bill collectors, drug agents, or vengeful neighbors, that we were relatives with a mutual ancestry, they hit us up for money. Can you imagine that?” She gave an innocent rock an un-Magnolia-like whack with her walking stick. “I think I may give up on searching for people in my family tree.”

  Magnolia had made similar statements before, so I suspected this was only a temporary withdrawal. I waited what seemed a respectable length of time to change the subject and then asked if she remembered anything more about Kathy back in Missouri.

  “I didn’t really see much of her because her husband was so ill, and she didn’t stay there long after he passed away. It was an abrupt departure, as I recall. No services for the husband, no goodbyes.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t think she kept in touch with anyone.”

  No, she probably wouldn’t have, if she’d instantly rushed into marriage with Brian Morrison.

  We didn’t walk all the way to the cove, but we got far enough to see the cliff on the far side of Ghost Goat Mountain and the ocean in the distance, a rippling jewel on this sunny day, a ship far out on the horizon. When we got back to the motorhomes, Magnolia decided to take a nap until the husbands got home.

  I had too much on my mind to nap. Kathy Morrison had been Genevieve Higman back in Missouri. With a husband named Andy. Which was probably Andrew. I tried exploring for information with my cell phone but got frustrated with that and dashed off a text to my grandniece, Sandy, in Arkansas. Sandy isn’t a hacker, but, like so many of her generation, she was apparently born with a new gene that enables her to zip through cyberspace at cyberspeed. I asked if she’d see what she could find out about Genevieve and Andrew Higman, especially details of his death back in Missouri, and also information on Katherine and Brian Morrison.

  She texted back and said she’d see what she could find. She also said she had a little gift to send me. I said thanks and told her to send it to General Delivery in the closest town, Trinidad, California. I have to admit I felt a slight trepidation. Sandy is sweet and generous, and I always appreciate her gifts. Though I must admit they’re sometimes a bit . . . unusual for an LOL. Thong panties. Toe rings. A blue garter for our wedding. What would it be this time?

  Then I used my own snail-with-rheumatism pace on my cell phone to look for more recent information about Brian’s girlfriend in this area. I found Renée Echol on the website of a real estate agency in Eureka. Information was minimal, but there was a professional photo. She looked thirty-five-ish, with dark hair in a perky pixie cut and an equally perky smile. A cheerleader type aging nicely. She was quoted as saying she enjoyed her own home in Eureka so much that she had made it her goal to help others find homes that made them as happy as she was with hers. Very admirable. Maybe she’d been a beauty pageant contestant too, with world peace as her goal.

  Okay, I had something of a built-in snarky attitude toward Renée. Not fair, I reminded myself. I didn’t even know the woman, and Sheila could be totally mistaken about a backstreet relationship between Renée and Brian.

  The statement about having a home that made her so happy suddenly wakened a new thought. Was the real reason we were on this detour not just because an editor needed something to fill a space in his magazine but for some other reason entirely? Had the Lord led us on this detour for a different purpose?

  Chapter 7

  MAC

  Sheila was headed out for a bicycle ride, but she took time to show us the space where her friends had parked last summer. The grassy area sheltered by several trees was out behind her double-wide manufactured home, certainly enough space to accommodate both the motorhomes. Water and one electric hookup were accessible, but there were no sewer hookups. Sheila said her friends had visited a dump station at an RV park in Trinidad to empty their tanks every few days. Not ideal, but workable.

  RV living gives a wonderful freedom in life, and I’ve loved it, but it isn’t—as it’s sometimes optimistically pictured in magazine ads—all carefree fun. There’s all this grubbing around with hookups and wastewater tanks. Some people have maps showing interesting places all over the country; my old maps are marked with an X for “good dump station.”

  When we got back to the motorhomes, Magnolia got up from a nap and we all sat around their dinette and discussed plans. Magnolia and Geoff decided they’d stay a couple of nights at Sheila’s and then head on down to warmer temperatures in Arizona. I thought that would work for Ivy and me too, but she said there was something she’d like to check into before we left.

  I was curious, of course. Maybe even a little uneasy. I dearly love my wife, even if she does have this tendency to get involved in dead-body and murder situations. I sometimes think, if there is a murder anywhere within gunshot distance, Ivy will gravitate to it. Or maybe they gravitate to her.

  Right now, what she wanted to do was go over and say goodbye to Kathy. I was surprised. Kathy had finally acknowledged Ivy’s and Magnolia’s past acquaintance with her, but she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the reunion. But maybe women feel some need to try to repair old acquaintances, because Magnolia wanted to do it too. So, while Geoff and I moved the motorhomes to Sheila’s pasture, Ivy kept the pickup so she and Magnolia could drive over after they did the goodbye thing with Kathy. We planned to thank Duke and tell him goodbye later, before we actually left the area.

  At Sheila’s, Geoff and I maneuvered the motorhomes into place, got the water and electricity connected, and the jacks lowered to level and stabilize both motorhomes. I checked the gauge showing contents of both our gray and black water tanks. We were good for several more days. Geoff and I got out canvas chairs, and BoBandy explored the pasture.

  Even though this was not a convenient detour, not the honeymoon Ivy and I had anticipated, Sheila’s big field was a nice place, peaceful and quiet, with a pleasing scent of damp earth and grass. Ivy talks to the Lord all the time. I don’t feel quite that familiar with him yet, but I could comfortably say, Thanks, Lord, and fall asleep right there in the chair.

  IVY

  Brian’s Porsche still wasn’t in the carport, but Kathy’s Honda was now parked near the door of their living quarters. Kathy answered my knock quickly enough, but she didn’t open the door more than enough to peer out with one eye.

  “We just stopped by to say goodbye,” I said. “We’ll be parking over at Sheila’s for a couple of days, but we may not see you again before we leave.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s nice of you. Goodbye, then.”

  I don’t know what I expected. Not a tearful farewell, of course, but something more than this. Didn’t Kathy want to know about any of the neighbors on Madison and Jefferson Streets? What the area was like now? What we’d been doing since she lived there?

  Apparently not. Was she afraid a chat might get into messy details of her first husband’s death and the timing of her marriage to Brian? Her hand clutched the door so hard her knuckles looked like white knobs. She was definitely stressed about something.

  Finally I said brightly, “We appreciate you and Brian letting us stay here in the parking lot. It’s been good seeing you again.”

  She did not prolong the conversation. “You, too.” She didn’t slam the door, but I heard the quick click of the dead bolt on the door.

  Magnolia and I looked at each other as we walked toward the pickup Mac had left for us. “Was there anything unusual about Kathy’s husband’s heart attack? Any investigation?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t think so.” She stopped short. “Why? What are you thinking?”

  “Just curious.”

  Magnolia frowned, perhaps remembering other instances of my curiosity, but she started walking again. “It happened in the middle of the afternoon. Franny and I . . . you remember Franny Lisbon? No, I guess you wouldn’t. She bought the Lithgow place after you left and got in a big to-do with the city about those two potbelly pig
s she kept in her backyard. Anyway, Franny and I were sitting out on our patio drinking tea, and we heard a nearby siren. That’s all there was to it. I didn’t even know what had happened until that evening.”

  “It was on the news?”

  “Oh, no. Franny came back over and told me. Franny always knows what’s going on in the neighborhood.”

  A polite way of saying Franny Lisbon was gossip central on Madison Street and surrounding area. “Does she still live there?”

  “Yes, I believe so. Why?”

  Yes, why had I asked? Madison Street was old news. I’d sold my house there before Mac and I married. Most of the old-timers are already gone from the neighborhood now, and I don’t keep in touch with anyone but Magnolia. Magnolia and Geoff had sold their place once, gotten it back when the buyers ran into financial difficulty, and were now thinking about selling it again. I wasn’t suspicious enough of Kathy to consider contacting this Franny who always knew what was going on . . . was I?

  I decided I’d remember the name, just in case I ever needed it.

  Well, maybe I wouldn’t remember it. My mind occasionally slips into some sticky pit, more euphemistically known as a senior moment. I wrote the name on a scratch pad in my purse as soon as we reached the pickup. Just in case. I also remembered, with regret, that I hadn’t asked Kathy for her dinosaur cupcake recipe.

  MAC

  Geoff and I were still sitting outside when Ivy and Magnolia arrived in the pickup. It was such a nice evening, with a spectacular sunset, that I got out the barbecue, and when Sheila got back from her bicycle ride, we invited her over for steaks. It wasn’t until later, when Ivy and I were getting ready for bed, that Ivy brought up the subject she’d been waiting to talk to me about.

  “I’ve been thinking about that property by the cove where the old cabins burned down.”

  I was surprised. I’d assumed she wanted to talk about something to do with Kathy and Brian and the dead husband. “Thinking about it in what way?”

  “Thinking it might be a great place for a home.”

  “Really?” I cycled that around in my brain. A beautiful spot, yes, if you ignored remnants of the old fire. But— “It doesn’t exactly fit our requirements as a place to settle down permanently.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Ivy agreed. “But the view of the cove and ocean is spectacular, and we both like walking on the beach.”

  The burned-out ruins as a site for a home hadn’t occurred to me before, but now that Ivy mentioned the idea, I could see possibilities. Yes, great possibilities! A garden. A place for BoBandy and Koop to prowl and run. Privacy. Fishing in the cove or surf. Walking the beach together. “It would take a lot of cleanup work. With a bulldozer, not a broom.”

  “We could live right there in the motorhome until we could have a house built.”

  “It wouldn’t be like trying to find a house that suits us,” I mused. “We could build exactly what we want.” I nodded. The site had growing appeal. “Are you serious about this?”

  “Yes. Quite serious. And the place does fulfill one of our most important requirements.” Ivy smiled. “No murders. No dead bodies.”

  “We’ll check it out.”

  IVY

  Mac finished his article about the dinosaur park and, using the Wi-Fi connection through Sheila’s internet service, sent everything to the editor the next morning. Magnolia and Geoff stayed two days, and we spent the time doing touristy things. “Goofing off” would describe it. Sheila went along a couple times to show us places to go and things to do. We had to take Magnolia and Geoff’s Subaru, of course, and once Sheila took us in her SUV. Our pickup wasn’t big enough for all of us.

  The giant redwood trees in the Lady Bird Johnson Grove we visited deserved the term “awesome.” We strolled through the Old Town part of Eureka, drove around to look at the much-photographed Carson Mansion and other Victorian houses in Eureka, and ate at a restaurant right beside the picturesque bay at Trinidad. I was surprised, when we passed the dinosaur park on our way out to show Magnolia and Geoff the cove late one afternoon, to see an empty spot in front of Duke’s trailer where the old blue pickup usually stood. Had he actually driven it somewhere? Or maybe he’d decided he’d never use it again and gotten rid of it?

  I was a little sad when we watched the familiar magnolia mural on the back end of Magnolia and Geoff’s motorhome go down the road on Thursday morning, but we’d keep in touch and probably meet later in Arizona. Unless buying the cove property and staying right here worked out. Did I want that to happen? Maybe!

  Even with the earlier interest Mac had expressed, I was surprised when, as soon as Magnolia and Geoff were gone, he immediately suggested we drive into Eureka and see what we could find out about the property. I wasn’t eager to work with Renée Echol, so we picked a real estate agency just by spotting a sign on a small white office on the edge of town. An older man with a weathered complexion stood up behind a desk to greet us. We exchanged names—his was Delmer Johnson—and Mac told him about the property that interested us.

  “Sure, I know the place. It was listed at one time, but I think it’s been off the market for a while. Let me check.” He sat down and clicked keys on the computer, talking even as his fingers sprinted over the keyboard. “I haven’t been out there for a long time. Has the mess from the fire been cleaned up?”

  “No, it still looks pretty bad,” Mac said.

  “What caused the fire?” I asked.

  My mind tends to ramble around in crime possibilities, so I was thinking arson, but Delmer said, “A malfunction in the old electrical system, as I recall. Everything out there was old as the hills, of course. I guess you know it used to be a little resort with some rustic cabins?”

  “Kate’s Kabins,” Mac said.

  “Right. Did you folks have in mind something like that? Maybe a bed-and-breakfast?”

  “We’re thinking it might be a nice place to build a house just for us,” Mac said. “But it may be a larger and more expensive piece of land than we’d want to buy.”

  “I don’t remember the price, but I’m sure it was hefty. Even with that burned mess on it, any property with ocean frontage like that is pricey. But it isn’t all that large a property.” He glanced up at us, and I suspected he was trying to decide if we were richer than we looked. “Size of the property was a problem when some big resort outfit looked into buying it a while back. Regulations now require a much more extensive and expensive sewage system than what that old resort had, and there just wasn’t enough space there. Especially since so much of the property is swampy. That may be a problem for any kind of commercial enterprise there.”

  “Would it be a problem for a homesite?”

  “Probably not. A septic system for a private home doesn’t have to be anywhere near that large. The company tried to buy the old dinosaur park for more space.” He laughed. “Shrewd old guy out there let them wine and dine him. People said he always ordered lobster or prime rib when they took him out. But he wasn’t really interested in selling all or even part of it, and they finally figured that out. Although, if you ask me, he’d have been smart to grab the money and run. Take life easy in his old age instead of coping with deteriorating dinosaurs and aggravating tourists.”

  “He still lives there, but he has someone running the place for him.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know that.”

  “His property is quite some distance from the old cabins,” I said. “I can’t imagine how buying it would help a resort company.”

  “Actually, his property adjoins the resort property. It’s kind of complicated, as I recall. The road to Kate’s Kabins goes through that old guy’s property, and I don’t think there ever was a legal easement for it. Probably just one of those old-time handshake deals from way back when. He must have forty or fifty acres. The dinosaur park takes up only a small part of his property.”

  We certainly hadn’t known that. From what Brian had said, we’d assumed the
four or five acres in the park was all Duke owned.

  I admired Delmer Johnson’s multitasking abilities as he worked the computer and talked to us at the same time. I really have to concentrate when I do anything on the computer or I find myself stumbling around in anything from a medical site about obscure but horrendous diseases—and checking to see how many symptoms I have—to a site offering to tell my future if I’ll just provide my date and place of birth and favorite color. And my credit card number, of course. But Delmer Johnson zipped smoothly from screen to screen as he tapped keys and at the same time talked about the old resort and a cousin’s wedding he’d gone to there long ago.

  “You’ve never really seen a wedding until you’ve been to one with seagulls,” he added, laughing, but before I had time to picture the calamities possible in a seagull-attended wedding, he announced that yes, the listing on the property had run out some time ago.

  “So it was never sold?” I asked.

  “The last I heard, the heirs were still squabbling.” A few more clicks, and then the agent peered more closely at the computer, obviously surprised about something. “It hasn’t actually sold yet, but there’s an option to buy on it. A local real estate agent, Renée Echol, has it. It was written up just a few days ago.”

  I couldn’t tell if it was the sale that surprised Delmer Johnson or if the surprise was the identity of the buyer, but he was definitely surprised.

  Mac and I looked at each other. Brian’s girlfriend had an option on the property? What did that mean?

  It didn’t necessarily mean anything, of course. Renée was probably a smart investor who knew local real estate and was quietly snapping up the property as an investment for the future. Or maybe she already had another buyer lined up. I wasn’t convinced of Brian’s romantic relationship with her, no matter what Sheila said. Sheila’s pejorative view of Renée may have been colored by her previous run-in with the woman.