“I’m so sorry to hear about your daughter,” Claire said. “I can’t imagine how hard that is.”
Jan shrugged her shoulders and stretched out her neck, as if preparing to lift a heavy weight.
“As if that’s not enough to deal with, my husband took up with a younger woman; he’s with her in Hawaii now, playing resident physician at some swanky resort. He said he didn’t want to go through raising kids again, like we had a choice! I tried to do it all myself, but that’s impossible. My parents are getting on, just like yours, but they offered to help and I jumped at the chance. I tried to get them to move to Charlottesville but you know how they are at that age. It’s not my ideal scenario but when does life ever fulfill that fantasy?”
“Everyone here seems very nice,” Claire said. “I’ve only been volunteering for a few weeks but it seems like a well-run show.”
“It is, I’m sure,” Jan said. “I’m used to a much tighter ship, with more emphasis on bringing up the census and keeping the costs down, but that’s the difference between a for-profit and a charitable organization.”
“We’ll have to get together,” Claire said. “I’m living with my parents, too.”
“Listen,” Jan said. “How lucky are we to have them? I don’t know what I would have done. I slept in last Saturday for the first day in over a year. It felt so good I cried like a baby; just the relief of having someone to help shoulder the responsibility.”
Using her cell phone, Jan showed Claire pictures of her grandkids. They reminisced for a while, until Jan mentioned that she had done her first medical internship at Pendleton General Hospital.
“Did you know Sophie Dean or Jillian … it’s McClanahan now, but I don’t know what her maiden name was.”
“Did I? Oh my goodness, you mean, as in, the big soap opera they had going on with Chippie McClanahan? That was crazy!”
“I’ve heard bits and pieces about it,” Claire said. “What happened?”
“It was just like that movie, All About Eve,” Jan said. “Jillian came in and boom, boom, boom; she took Sophie’s job, her fiancé, and her friends. That Jillian was a piece of work, and you were either on her side or on her enemy list, and, buddy, you did not want to be on that woman’s bad side. I felt sorry for Sophie, but I was an exhausted intern and I only heard about most of it from the intern in the NICU. She was on Team Sophie, of course.”
“I’ve met them both, and I really like Sophie,” Claire said. “Maybe we can all get together some time.”
“That’d be great,” Jan said. “Listen, I better get back to my rounds. Next time you volunteer, page me.”
“I will,” Claire said.
They said goodbye in the hallway and Jan was walking away when she suddenly turned back.
“I’ve just remembered something,” Jan said. “I was taking a nap in my car one night in the hospital parking lot and I heard a noise, looked up, and saw the weirdest thing. Sophie Dean was slitting the tires on her own car. She didn’t see me, and I heard later she blamed Jillian for it. I never told a soul what I saw; I didn’t want to get involved. But it just goes to show, doesn’t it? Nobody’s as innocent as they claim to be.”
Claire thought about this on the way home.
Maybe Sophie had spray-painted her own garage, as well.
When Claire arrived at Hannah’s farm, where she was supposed to meet Hannah and Maggie to go swimming in Frog Pond, they weren’t there. Sam, holding Sammy, directed her down the hill.
“They’re already down there,” he said, chuckling. “They’ve been working on a project.”
“Me’s going to be a nastronut,” Sammy said. “Me’s going to the moon.”
“Good for you, Sammy,” Claire said, and shared a friendly smile with Sam.
Claire walked down the hill to Frog Pond, and out onto the gray cedar dock that had stood there since she was a child. She shielded her eyes and looked far out toward the other side of the pond, where she could see something, but wasn’t quite sure what it was.
“Hey!” she yelled, and then whistled.
Hannah whistled back and they began moving toward her. It wasn’t until they were halfway across the pond that she could see what they were rowing.
“Oh my Lord,” she laughed.
The flotation device was made up of five tractor tire inner tubes lashed to a sixth in the middle, so that the outer ones were like the petals of a big tractor tire flower. In the middle tube was an oversize tin washtub filled with ice, through the middle of which was stuck a large beach umbrella. Claire assumed the ice was chilling some good beer, and she couldn’t wait to taste it.
“Avast, me Matie!” Hannah called out when they were close enough.
“How do you like it?” Maggie asked.
“It’s genius,” Claire said.
“Come aboard the dread pirate ship, The Black Frog!” Hannah called out. “We need a pirate flag but I didn’t have any black fabric. Maggie and I want to get your mom to make us one; do you think she would?”
“Of course she would,” Claire said, as she sat back in one of the outer tubes. “This is officially the best boat ever, in the history of all boats.”
Hannah had on cut-offs and a bikini top, and her skin was deeply tanned. Maggie, wearing leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt, was shading her fair, freckled face under a wide-brimmed hat. Claire didn’t own a pond-appropriate bathing suit, so she had worn her black sports bra and cut-off shorts again.
Claire leaned back and savored the chilly water and the warm sunshine. Hannah handed her a beer.
“Drink up, me hearties,” she said.
“How was your second visit with Eugene?” Claire asked her.
“He’s still got the lisp, but he’s talking really well,” Hannah said. “It’s the weirdest sensation, like talking to an altogether different person living in Eugene’s body.”
“We thought he was slow because of his disabilities,” Maggie said. “Turns out he’s a smart person trapped inside a speech impediment.”
“What did he say?”
“He’s mad, so mad,” Hannah said. “I told him it was okay to be pissed off, but if he wants to get out of there he better start acting like a sane person.”
“Are they treating him okay?” Claire asked.
“Seems like it,” Hannah said. “I know a couple of the nurses so I told them the whole story. Your boyfriend, Doctor Lovemuffin, thinks he’ll be out tomorrow.”
“I have to go to the hospital with the attorney to pick him up,” Claire said. “I can’t take him back to his house, he can’t stay with me, and I’m certainly not going to suggest Chip and Jillian take him in.”
“I already talked to him about it,” Hannah said. “We’re going to fix up the barn loft for him.”
“The lab?”
When Simon and Lily had owned the farm, Simon had used the barn loft as a lab for his agricultural experiments, which mainly concerned developing an extra potent, drought- and pest-resistant marijuana plant.
“We cleaned it up today, and Ed and Scott are going to move some furniture up there this evening. It’ll be nice for him. If we can get all his rocks out of his mom’s house, we can set up his shop in the barn. First, Scott has to get permission from Chairman Meow.”
“Any progress in the police investigation?” Claire asked Maggie.
“Scott won’t tell me anything,” Maggie said. “Skip and Frank are forbidden to talk to either of us.”
“Skip will crack first,” Hannah said. “I know how his tiny brain works. I have a plan involving beer and nacho-flavored chips.”
Claire told them about meeting Jan at the hospice house.
“Poor her!” Hannah said. “She was such a brainiac. I copied off her all the time and she was always so nice about it.”
“Boo hoo, she’s a doctor,” Maggie said. “She’ll be just fine. She can cry into a big bag of money.”
“You’re such a witch,” Claire said. “Anyway, listen to what she told me about So
phie Dean ...”
After they rehashed their gathered evidence, and went over various, increasingly ludicrous potential murder scenarios, they floated for a while in silence, Hannah and Claire sipping their icy cold beers, Maggie nursing her usual root beer.
Claire closed her eyes and listened to the classic summer sounds of her youth: the chirping crickets, the peeping frogs, the buzzing of the occasional locust, and Hannah’s long, musical burps.
“If you could go back in time, knowing everything you know now,” Claire said, “what age would you go back to, and what would you do differently?”
“Back to when I first met Gabe,” Maggie said. “I’d punch him in the nose and throw him out of the bakery.”
“Your mother would’ve loved that,” Hannah said. “What about you, Claire?”
“The summer I was seventeen,” she said. “I made so many life-changing mistakes that summer, and I would do everything differently.”
“But then you would have missed out on your world travels,” Hannah said. “You wouldn’t have met all those movie stars and stayed in all those classy hotels.”
“Wasn’t worth it,” Claire said. “It was all fake, every bit of it. I was wasting my time on a thrill ride instead of living a real life.”
“You would’ve been bored out of your mind here,” Maggie said.
Claire was remembering having a similar conversation with Laurie, when he had expressed the same opinion.
‘I always liked Maggie,’ Laurie said in her head. ‘She’s a fierce amazon woman with a glorious Titian mane.’
Claire mentally batted him away like a fly.
“What about you, Hannah?” Claire said.
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” she said. “I’ve got it made.”
“The funny thing is, Claire, she really means it,” Maggie said.
“Whaddaya mean?” Hannah said. “I love my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anybody’s for any amount of money.”
“That’s great,” Claire said. “I’m glad somebody’s happy.”
“What’s happy got to do with it?” Hannah said. “I’m only happy about twice a week for five minutes. I’m saying I’m glad I have what I have, that I’m grateful for it.”
“Compared to most people in the world,” Maggie said, “you’re a rich woman, living in a rich country, with a healthy child, who’s been immunized, has plenty of food to eat and clean water to drink.”
“And Blue Moonshine Slershies,” Hannah said. “Don’t forget about those.”
They could now hear the sound of male voices in the distance, laughing as they came down the hill toward the dock.
“Shiver me timbers!” Hannah said. “I hear the sons of a biscuit eater. Batten down the hatches, man the cannons, and prepare to fire!”
Hannah pulled a large, plastic water cannon out of the pond, where it was attached to her inner tube with twine. Maggie searched through the ice until she found a water gun.
“I’m unarmed,” Claire said. “What’ll I do?”
“Smile and wave,” Hannah said. “You’re the bait.”
Chapter Five
Claire took Sammy firmly by the hand as she led him across the hot cinders that covered the pool parking lot. He had his inflatable swimmies on his arms and was carrying a water gun.
Claire hadn’t been to the Rose Hill Community Pool since she was a teenager. It made her cringe to think of the idiot she’d been back then. At the tender age of seventeen she’d seduced her ex-husband Pip while hanging out there, where he was a lifeguard. Her face burned just thinking about what they had got up to in the women’s shower room after hours. She’d been an inexperienced child in the body of an adult woman; Pip had been Pip, which is to say, an idiot child in a man’s body, a condition that had never changed.
Claire paid for them to get in.
“Me wants a Moonshine Slershy,” Sammy said. “Please, Claire, please, please, please!”
“After we swim a while,” she said.
“How long is a wile?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know,” she said.
They passed through the showers, where they were supposed to rinse off before they got in the pool. Claire didn’t plan to get her hair or face wet if she could help it, so she kept moving. Outside on the concrete patio that surrounded the pool, people had beach towels and beach chairs set up, and children screamed and laughed hysterically.
What was it about a large body of water that made their voices so shrill, Claire wondered.
‘And yet you claim to long for your own child,’ Laurie said. ‘Methinks you like the idea more than the actual practice.’
“Shut up,” Claire said.
“Me no shut up,” Sammy said. “You’s shut up. You’s mean, Claire.”
“Sorry, Sammy, I wasn’t talking to you,” Claire said. “Let’s get you in the pool.”
“Me no like the big pool,” Sammy said.
“I know, Sammy,” Claire said.
“Me only goes in the big pool with Daddy.”
“I know, Sammy, Hannah told me.”
As soon as they got within ten feet of the kiddie pool, Sammy pulled his hand free and shouted to the children in the water, “Me’s coming! Me’s going to shoot you with me’s water gun!”
Claire noticed a couple of mothers removing their toddlers from the water, while casting not-so-discreet shade toward Sammy as they did so. Claire had learned it was best to ignore those kinds of people, with their bubble-wrapped children, whenever she took Sammy somewhere. Luckily, there were some other children present whose mothers were a bit more relaxed, so he had plenty of playmates.
Claire unhooked the lawn chair from her shoulder and set it down in the grass underneath one of the pool-provided beach umbrellas. She took off her wide-brimmed beach hat, her designer sunglasses, and her rhinestone-studded sandals. She didn’t plan to get any more sun than was unavoidable during the hottest part of the day, the better to stave off the inevitable aging process of her skin. She kept her eyes fixed on Sammy while she applied sunscreen, and ignored the curious looks of her fellow child-minders. She wasn’t here to make friends, and she didn’t intend to stay one minute longer than the hour she had promised Sammy.
‘Returning to the scene of the crime, eh?’ Laurie said.
There were no good memories at this pool.
A young woman arrived with four rowdy children and spread out a beach towel in full sunlight. Claire guessed the children’s ages were from two to eight. The woman had no beach tote full of the supplies like the other mothers or babysitters, nor the ubiquitous bottle of sunscreen they all slathered on their charges every half hour; just kids, beach towel, and bikini.
Thin, but curvy in all the right places, long blonde hair, and deeply tanned skin, she had an enviable figure for a mother of that many children. Her bikini was miniscule, and there were no tan lines. Claire decided she must be the nanny, not the mom.
‘No woman with half a brain would hire someone that hot to mind their children,’ Laurie said.
As soon as she was settled, she shooed the children off to “go play,” and reclined in the sun, oblivious to the disapproving stares of the assembled.
“She’s not even watching that baby,” one mother hissed to another. “It can’t be more than three.”
“She’ll leave it for us to do,” the other mother said. “She’s one of those.”
“How their children survive is beyond me,” the first said.
“Survival of the fittest,” the second said. “Like mongrel dogs.”
Claire agreed that the mother was a little too slack for her toddler’s best interests, but the term “mongrel” got her back up.
Snobby witches.
The two older children ran off to the big pool, and the next-to-smallest tended to the smallest in the kiddie pool. Claire watched with interest as they encountered Sammy, who showed them his gun and then let the littlest one play with it.
Claire was pleased to see Sammy playing
nicely with these two newcomers. Just then a shadow fell between her and the pool and she looked up to see her ex-husband, Phillip Deacon, also known as Pip.
“Hey, Claire,” he said, and dropped down next to her chair, water streaming off his dreadlocks and the bleached-out orange swim trunks that hung off his beautiful rear end.
‘Look at those eyes,’ Laurie said. ‘He’s higher than panties up a flag pole at summer camp.’
Pip was built like the masculine equivalent of a brick shit-house, long, lean, tanned, muscled, and golden-haired, but was completely and utterly “do-less,” as they said around these parts. His official trade was construction, but his hobbies of pot-smoking, fornicating, napping, and money-borrowing took up most of his time. If work avoidance had a poster child, it would be Pip Deacon.
Claire watched out of the corner of her eye as the snobby witches put their heads together and whispered. She knew the type. They might look down their noses at Pip in the daylight, but they also might fantasize about him while their pudgy, soft husbands got busy on top of them in their darkened bedrooms later that night. Pip had been known to break up marriages once the bored wives decided to turn fantasy into reality.
‘One might be led to think you were still interested,’ Laurie said.
“What are you doing here?” Claire asked, still keeping her eye on Sammy.
“Jessie’s here with the kids,” he said, and gestured to the two children Sammy was playing with.
The penny dropped, her mind machinery whirred, and Claire realized who the slacker mom was. She’d never actually met the child-bride, Jessie, but she’d heard a lot about her. Pip met her while doing construction work on her parents’ palatial beachfront estate. Jessie’s mother was a successful executive in the film business, and her father was a plastic surgeon. Part of what rankled was that Claire had got him that job.
“Are you two back together?”
Pip shrugged.
“Sort of.”
“How’d that happen?” she asked. “I thought her parents paid for your bail on condition that she get a divorce.”
“They did,” he said. “They also paid for her to finish Massage Therapy School. As soon as she graduated, she decided to come here. They’re not happy, but there’s nothing they can do about it. She’s going to work for Gwyneth at the inn.”
Sunflower Street (Rose Hill Mysteries Book 8) Page 9