by Carol Schaal
Tami shifted on the sofa so she could see my face. “I told you once I’m stronger than people give me credit for, and that means I’m not gonna be pushed around.” She pointed a finger at me, and her look dared me to disagree. “So you wanna tell me what you offered for Bathing Beauty and what you had over Bernice that she wouldn’t sell to people she’s known for years?”
“You want another beer?” I asked. “’Cause I could use one.” Tami got up, went to the kitchen, and returned with two opened bottles of beer. She put them not-so-gently on’ the end table, not concerned about water marks. While she was gone, I retrieved my purse from the dining room. I took out my phone and found the information I needed.
“That’s my business lawyer’s name and phone number. I’ll email it to you. And I’ll call and give him permission to let you know about the contract.” Shades of my angry response to Maccini when he had a similar question went through my mind, but this time I fought hard to keep my voice friendly. “I had nothing on Bernice, and I didn’t know about other people in town bidding, and it was strictly business.”
If I thought my willingness to be open would mollify Tami, I was wrong. Her next words made the situation even more distressing.
“Sure, I’ll call him,” she said and pointed her beer bottle at me, “but do ya think he’ll explain why you never talk about your dead husband, why you keep your past such a damn secret? I asked D.J. and Kylie, thinking maybe you talked to someone near your own age, and they both said you always changed the subject.”
Her look of fury had not abated in the least, and I steeled myself for whatever else she was going to throw at me. It was worse than I expected.
“All this makes me think,” she said, her voice almost a hiss, “that maybe your dead husband was an abusive SOB, and maybe you killed Dennis because it’s your mission to rid the world of all its nasty men.”
32
When I finally got back to the condo, I poured myself a shot of bourbon. It was after midnight, too late to call anyone, so I was left to confront the mess I had made on my own.
My protestations of innocence to Tami did no good, she simply dismissed them with a wave of her hand. And I got no sympathy from Tami when I confessed to her about my past. She listened to my bare-bones recital about Drew’s death and the rumors about my involvement and my name change and search for a new life with a stony face, drained her beer, got up and came back with my jacket.
“That’s some story,” she said, throwing the jacket at me. “Ya got a number I can call to check that one out, too?”
I stood up, put my jacket on, and straightened my shoulders. I didn’t think it would help, but I had to make one last try at mitigating the confrontation. “I’m sorry I kept my life such a secret. You didn’t deserve my distrust.”
“Why,” Tami asked, “should I believe anything you say to me when you walked away from your own damn family? I’d say it’s been nice knowing you, but obviously I don’t know you at all.”
* * *
It’d been years since I’d had a hangover, and the idea of trying hair of the dog the next morning made me nauseous. I rinsed the dirty glass that was lying on the carpet near the recliner, where I’d left it after tossing down a couple slugs of bourbon upon my return from Tami’s. Drinking was not normally my thing, but the accusations Tami threw at me were an uncomfortable reminder of what I’d faced in Tampa.
My plans for a new life were starting to look like the burned remnants of the Bathing Beauty shop.
I plugged my dead cell phone into the charger, layered a sweatshirt and hoodie over jeans, unable to stand the smell of my jacket, and left the condo, pulling a knit beanie over my aching head. I hadn’t bothered to check the outside temperature, 12 degrees or 32 felt the same to me, too damn cold. Outside on the shoreline, the gray skies and cold wind matched my interior misery. I stared down at the sand, hands stuffed in pockets. A dog barked in the distance, and two exercise addicts bid me a cheery hello, but I kept my eyes down and walked and walked, then turned back and walked and walked some more.
Back at the condo, I stripped, showered, and dressed in black jeans, a dark gray T-shirt and a black pullover sweater, then stuck a bagel in the toaster and brewed tea. Sarah and I were meeting with a contractor that afternoon, but the rest of my morning was free. Free to try and make sense out of the enemy I had made of Tami, yes, but also free to see if I could make sense out of the events that Maccini and now Tami wanted to blame on me.
I devoured the bagel and cream cheese, finished my tea, took the dishes to the kitchen, and returned to the table with my laptop. I keyed in the password and looked for the file I had created earlier, which contained the names I’d entered of those who had been at Bernice’s wake. I had just started to scroll through the list when someone pounded on my door.
“Lauren, are you there? Lauren, answer the door! It’s, it’s me, Sarah.”
I closed the file and opened one that dealt with Bathing Beauty insurance, then ran to the door.
“Thank goodness,” Sarah said as she practically fell into the room, “I’ve been calling and leaving you messages for ages. Is, is everything all right?” She piled her coat, hat, and gloves on a nearby armchair and followed me into the kitchen. I pointed at the phone on the counter. “Sorry, forgot to charge it last night. What’s up? And do you want any coffee or tea?”
“No, we have to go. D.J., he’s borrowing a truck so we can move our inventory to a storage facility. We, we need to get to the shop.” She paused and took a good look at me. “You look pale. And why are you dressed in mourning?”
I looked down at my black and gray apparel. “Just a fashion statement. Goes with the week. Give me a minute and I’ll be ready.”
Seeing Bathing Beauty again was depressing. The shop looked so good from the front and so ugly from the back, with black marks marring the rear entrance and bits of ash still floating in the cold air. Unfortunately, after all the work we’d done unpacking inventory, it all had to be moved out before renovation began and drywall dust filled the store. Sarah said she had contacted D.J. and Tiffany the previous afternoon and told them we’d pay for their moving services. They were due in half an hour.
No one except Sarah had left a message on my phone. Which meant Tami had not had a change of heart and called me with an apology. And what about D.J.? Had Tami talked to him? Was I on his bad side now, too?
Sarah and I were in the middle of bringing summer merchandise up the stairs when D.J. and Tiffany arrived. Strands of pink hair peeked out from under her knit hat, but her cheerful hello was quickly replaced by a sad “Oooh, no,” when she saw the burned-out portion of the store. D.J. greeted Sarah and me with coffee and blueberry donuts. I relaxed a bit. Either he had not heard about my transgressions from his mother or had chosen to ignore them. The swirl of possibilities made my head ache.
“Seems like we were just unpacking all this stuff,” D.J. said, waving at the shelves. “Easy come, easy go.” He went back out and returned with several empty boxes he’d picked up from recycling bins scattered around the back alleys of downtown Alleton. “One of the shop owners came out and screamed at me like I was stealing something of great value from her,” he said. “But she calmed down once I told her who needed these. Oh, Cassandra wanted to come by but she’s at Waves End today.”
D.J. and Tiffany took over moving summer merchandise up from the basement while Sarah and I began the dispiriting task of removing products from the shelves. We also selected those containers too damaged to be sold. “Let’s take a picture of these,” I said, “and I’ll make a list to give to the insurance company. This is a lot of cash going up in smoke.”
Tiffany paused on one of her trips. “Maybe what’s inside can still be used,” she said. “What if I sort through and take some to different charities, like the place that houses abused women? I bet they’d love them.” She pointed to a plastic bottle of botanical shower wash, its lid covered with melted soot. “And I wouldn’t mind taking th
at one.”
The idea of giving some stuff to charity made the task seem less onerous. Sarah even began humming. Finally, the truck filled, D.J. jumped in and headed off for the storage facility a couple miles from downtown, Sarah and I following in her car. Tiffany offered to deliver the smaller boxes set aside for the charities and said she’d head home after that. Unloading took about an hour. Sarah also decided to go home, but D.J. and I voted to visit the roadside diner for lunch.
I had a lot of questions for D.J. and decided to use the direct approach, just as I had with his mother. My hope was that it would not end as disastrously as it had with Tami.
The usual diner chatter and the smell of bacon offered the comfort I so needed, and after D.J. and I ordered our lunch, a salad with grilled chicken for me, a cheeseburger for him, I dove in. “The police don’t seem any closer to solving these tragic events,” I said, adding honey to my tea and trying to act nonchalant. “Have you heard anything?”
He looked around the room and leaned in a bit. “Cops aren’t telling us anything except ‘The investigation is ongoing.’ That one detective really upset Mom. She says he practically accused her and Dad of killing Bernice.”
I’d heard that from Tami but shook my head in apparent surprise. “That’s crazy. Why would he think that?”
“Who knows? Guess they can’t solve anything yet and are looking for any suspect they can find. It’s terrible.”
“Have they given you a hard time yet? Sarah and I have both been through the wringer with that Maccini guy.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I got the same treatment. And I couldn’t come up with an acceptable alibi for the day Bernice died, so I guess I’m still a suspect.”
I grinned at him. “Ah, he wasn’t buying that you were with one of your many girlfriends?” I asked, hoping to pin him down without it being too obvious.
“You’ve been talking to Mom,” he said, his cheeks turning a light pink. “She’s always giving me a hard time about all my ‘groupies,’ even though I try to tell her most of them are only friends.”
The waitress, a teenager who looked cute in the diner’s uniform of a red-and-white striped shirt with a red apron over black pants, chose that moment to deliver our lunch. After a few bites, D.J. said, “I’m going back to school in a couple weeks, which means Mom will be by herself. That worries me, but she keeps saying she’ll be fine.”
I noticed he had not answered my question about where he had been on the day Bernice died but couldn’t think of any way to bring it up again. I also couldn’t think of an easy way to tell him about my past, to confess to the secret I’d been keeping since before he met me. But I wanted him to hear it from me because Tami would no doubt put the worst spin on it.
The waitress came by, and I ordered more tea. “Hope you’re not in a huge hurry,” I told D.J. “I need to talk to you about something.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re not about to confess to murder, are you?” he asked, which drew a startled look from the waitress, who was refilling his coffee.
“No, and that’s not even funny.” My response seemed to reassure the waitress, who gave me a quick smile and moved on to the next table. “I do confess, however, to keeping some things about my past a secret. Your mom knows about this, and it’s time I told you, too.”
The waitress returned with my tea, and I waited until she moved away to start detailing my background. D.J. listened closely, not saying a word until I was done.
I took a sip of tea, afraid of what was to come. But he reached over and tapped my hand. “Tell me, which do you prefer? Lauren or Victoria?”
The question broke the spell of tension at the table, but, like his mother, D.J. had more to ask. “I don’t understand why you moved away. People can be mean, yeah, but that doesn’t seem like a good reason to run.”
I struggled to explain, telling him that even my brother and favorite aunt had agreed that a new start might be a good thing.
“You don’t know how awful it was,” I said. “It seemed like everywhere I went, people were whispering about me. Finding my car vandalized with ‘killer’ graffiti sent me to a counselor, who spent a year helping pull me out of my grief and anger. The worst was my sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, who didn’t even want Greg to invite me over for meals when her family was present.” The memory of Carmen essentially disinviting me from a July Fourth picnic made me blink away tears.
D.J. patted my hand again. “That’s rotten,” he said. “But maybe the only way to solve things is to go back and face it all head-on.”
If only it were that simple. He had no idea how much I longed for home, even though going back would mean living with constant whispers and sidelong glances, maybe even more nasty graffiti on my car. I sighed.
For now, however, my immediate concern was whether to tell him about his mom’s reaction to my confession. Before I could work out the words, D.J.’s phone buzzed.
“Hey Kylie,” he said, then listened for a couple minutes, his eyes growing wide. “Is she going to be okay?”
My heart sank. He had to be talking about Evie.
“Okay. I’m with Lauren right now, and we’ll drive over. It’ll take us about 15 minutes or so to get there. Hang tight.”
He disconnected the call. “Evie’s in the hospital, but she’s doing okay. I told Kylie we’d stop by. She’s pretty shaken up.”
“I’ll get the check,” I said. “Meet you at the truck.”
As I stood by the table, pulling on my hoodie, our waitress came over and handed me the bill.
“Even if he makes you pay,” she said, “I’d keep him. He’s a doll.”
33
D.J. drove fast, and I expected to hear sirens blaring behind us, a police officer pulling him over for speeding. But it wasn’t until we neared the hospital that we were blasted by sirens, as an ambulance whooshed into the emergency entrance.
He parked in the general lot and we rushed to the information desk, where a receptionist told us Evie was in the intensive care unit.
“Are you family?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “She’s my niece. Her other aunt is waiting for us up there.” D.J. gave me a surprised look, but fortunately the receptionist didn’t see it.
“That was quick thinking,” he said approvingly as we walked to the elevator. “I forget about all the rules these places have.”
“I’m not going to lie to the ICU nurses,” I said, “but it seemed the quickest way to get to the waiting area without the receptionist reciting all the regulations.”
Kylie was in the ICU waiting room, and she jumped up when she saw us, sloshing her coffee on her jeans. She made a beeline for D.J. and gave him a big hug. “Oh, thank you for coming. I’ve been so worried. Christie and Tom are with Evie now, and she’s conscious and asking to go home and play, which is a good sign. The docs say she’ll pull through, but this really scared me.”
“What happened?” I asked when Kylie finally ended her hug with D.J.
“We’re not sure. I was on my way back from Chicago and couldn’t be here, so Evie was at home, eating lunch with Christie, who took a break from work. Suddenly Evie got dizzy and collapsed. Christie says it was Evie’s normal food, so no one is sure what caused the problem. But Evie’s system is so fragile that it could be anything. And I’m not sure Christie is as careful as she should be. Evie’s never had any problems when she’s with me.”
D.J. and I got some bad coffee from the vending machine and sat with Kylie, who occasionally jumped up to go around the corner and peek in at Evie.
“You can only have two people in there at once,” she said, “and Christie and Tom are staying by Evie’s side. I’m just waiting until one of them needs a break, then I can visit with her for a bit.”
She sighed. “Still no word on a donor match for her. I put the word out on social media to some Asian-American groups in Michigan, and I’m hoping we’ll get someone.”
“It’ll happen,” D.J. said, although to
my ears his reassurance held more hope than certainty.
A woman with short dark hair walked into the room. Kylie introduced us, but I already knew she was Christie, Kylie’s sister. The two had the same cute pug nose and high cheekbones.
“The best news! Doctors say Evie is on the mend,” Christie told Kylie. “Tom’s going back to work. I’m grabbing a late lunch, so you and D.J. can go keep her company if you want.” She looked at me. “Join me for coffee? I’m excited to finally meet you. Evie talks about you, and it’d be good for us to get to know each other.”
Kylie and D.J. headed off to Evie’s ICU room, and I followed Christie to the hospital’s coffee shop, which was filled with people chatting in high, nervous voices. Christie ordered a turkey roll-up while I stuck with hot tea. “Thank you for working on the donor match project,” she said. “Kylie’s friends really came together on that. It means a lot to Tom and me.”
“No problem. I just hope a match can be found.”
Christie rubbed her eyes. “At least her disease is under control now, but I’m afraid she’ll have to start having lots of immunosuppression work until a match comes through. That won’t be fun, but she’s such a trouper.”
We chatted for a bit about the medical options available, then Christie switched subjects. “It was good to see D.J. here. Do you suppose he and Kylie might get back together? She’s had a tough time the last few months, lost a big client, missed an investment opportunity, spent hours taking care of Evie.” She tore away pieces of her turkey roll-up. “They were a good couple. I think she saw him as the one, but then it all sort of fell apart.”
“Any idea why? They don’t discuss that with me.”
“Not sure. I asked Kylie, but she was kind of vague. I think D.J. might be a bit of a ladies’ man, maybe isn’t ready to commit to one woman yet. Ah, well, I can’t run their lives. I’m just thankful Kylie has the time to watch over Evie. Tom and I would be helpless without her.”