“Actually, we have,” Bessie piped up. “It’s all rolling now, and we are not interested in your significant five percent, thank you, Susan.” Bessie’s use of Suzy’s Christian name elicited a sour look from the blonde woman. “I reckon you should go on and tell your boss that you couldn’t help him with this,” Bessie added, smiling at Suzy, whose friendly demeanor was quickly slipping.
“Now, you listen here, Annie Purdy--”
“Actually, it’s Annie Richards now. I’m sure you heard I got married and moved to New York City some time ago.” Annie smiled politely and moved to the jug of sun tea sitting on the counter. She poured some into a paper cup that her mother had thoughtfully brought from her old house, and took a small sip. With no ice, it was awful, but she wouldn’t dare tell her mother that.
“Oh, I heard all about your marriage,” Suzy replied. “I also heard he died and left you penniless. Some prince charming, huh?” Suzy’s mean streak was still a country-mile-wide, and it was practically glistening as she spoke. “Face it, hon, you had to move back here because that sorry husband of yours up and died and left you in a pickle, but I can get you right out of it.”
The sound of footsteps on the wooden floor behind Annie made her jump. She’d forgotten all about Rory for a moment, but as he entered the kitchen, he made his presence fully known. “Is there a problem here, Annie?” His voice boomed, and Annie jumped slightly.
Suzy eyed Rory languidly, looking him up and down like a tasty cake she wanted to devour. “Well, well, well...look what the cat dragged in!” She grinned and pushed her blonde locks back off her face. “You here to play knight in shining armor to your former flame?” Suzy had known that Annie and Rory were close in high school, and she’d taken no small amount of pleasure when they’d broken up. She grinned at Rory like a cat that had just spotted a juicy mouse and who couldn’t decide whether or eat it or play with it first.
“I’m here as her contractor, Suzy, what’s your excuse?” Rory’s tone was short and sharp.
“She came to try and buy the house,” Annie explained.
“She came to start trouble,” Rory countered. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, Suzy, but you’d better get on out of here if you know what’s good for you.” Rory stopped short of actually threatening the woman, but the tone of his voice clearly showed he meant business.
Suzy’s grin disappeared. “I’ll tell my client that you declined his offer,” she said to Annie. “You be careful letting this ex-con work on your house. You know he’s a vicious killer,” she added, grabbing her purse and heading back out the way she’d come in. Just before she stepped out the back door, Suzy spun on her heels and seethed, “You will be sorry that you didn’t just take my offer, Annie. You mark my words, you will be sorry.”
Silence reigned for a few moments after Suzy’s heels had beaten a track back to her car, and the sound of her car engine seemed to fill the room as the only sound for miles.
Annie was stunned by Suzy’s accusation. She turned to Rory. “What the heck did she mean by that? I thought you went to prison for hurting someone, not killing them,” she demanded.
Rory’s mouth was a tight, thin line. “She’s a liar, that’s what she meant by that.” He took a deep breath, then walked over to the sink and washed his hands.
Annie wasn’t letting him off with that answer. “What were you in prison for, exactly?”
Bessie poured him a glass of tea and handed it to him. He thanked her and took a sip before responding. “I got drunk and got in a fight with a guy,” he began. “During the fight, I hit him pretty hard with a chair, and he got hurt pretty badly. He almost died, but then he got better. So I went to jail for assault and grievous bodily harm, because the chair was counted as a weapon. Nevermind he’d just busted a pool cue upside my head,” he added, drinking more tea to wash down the words.
“Well, what were you fighting about?” Annie knew that she should probably just be satisfied with his answer, but she was still mad about having to deal with Suzy and even madder that it had been Rory who had finally made the woman leave.
“It doesn’t matter. The point is, I shouldn’t have been in there in the first place. I should have just stayed at home, not been out drinking and getting into fights. So now I don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Bessie asked.
“I don’t drink, and I certainly don’t go looking for fights,” he added, finishing off the tea and setting the paper cup down solidly, sending an unmistakable message of finality. “M’am, that was mighty good tea, but it would be better with some ice. I was thinking of running to the store and getting some cold drinks, I could get a bag of ice, too. Would the boy like to ride with me?”
Annie’s chest tightened. Could she trust Rory with her son? Common sense said that of course she could, after all, she’d known Rory for most of her life. But her heart wanted to keep her present and her past far away from each other, at least for now, until she’d had a chance to sort through her own memories and feelings. Her head won out.
“I suppose that’d be fine, Rory.” She asked him to wait for a minute, and she went to her truck and pulled a twenty dollar bill from her purse. When she returned to the kitchen, Rory and her mother were laughing over some shared joke, and Annie felt the tension of a few minutes ago fade away.
“Here, Rory, could you pick up some headache tablets for me,” she asked, passing him the money. “I guess it’s the dust, but I’ve got an awful headache coming on,” she explained, “and I have no idea which box we put the acetaminophen in.”
He pushed the money back into her hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got some in my camper, I’ll just go and grab the bottle for you.”
“Are you sure?” Annie didn’t want to be beholden to the man. It was hard enough maintaining a professional relationship after their stormy past, but she was determined to keep their interactions purely professional.
“Of course, I’m sure. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it,” he replied cheerfully. Whatever had riled him up when Suzy had been here was gone from his demeanor now, and he seemed much friendlier and more relaxed than Annie had seen him all day. She watched him go to his camper and retrieve the headache pills, then she stepped out the back door to the kitchen and yelled for Devon.
“What?” He replied, putting his moodiest teenage expression on. Annie noted that the kitten was now curled up in his arm on its back, eyes closed and purring loudly.
My son the cat whisperer, she thought and suppressed a laugh. “Somebody looks pretty comfy,” she said, pointing to the ginger kitten.
“Yeah, his name is Tiger,” her son replied, stroking the kitten’s soft underbelly. “I think the mom just ran off or something. I haven’t seen any more kittens, but he’s pretty friendly now that I’ve held him for a while.”
Annie looked down at the kitten and gently moved its tail from between its legs. “He’s a she, sweetie,” she explained.
“Oh, are you sure?” Devon looked crestfallen at first, then his face brightened. “That’s okay. I can just call her TigerLily instead.” He eyed his mother suspiciously. “What did you want?”
“Just to see if you wanted to ride to the store with Rory. He’s going on an ice run and thought you might like to join him.” Annie didn’t expect him to say yes, but he surprised her.
“Yeah, that would be cool,” he said. “But you have to look after my cat. Don’t put her down, or she might run off and get hurt,” he instructed his mother.
“Darling, you do realize that she has been living on her own here already? She was fine before we came, and I’m sure she’ll be fi--”
“Mooomm,” he groaned. “Please, just put her someplace where she won’t get hurt, at least until I can figure out a way to get the barn door open and make a bed for her in there.”
“You don’t want her sleeping in your room, with you?” Annie asked, watching in amusement as her son’s eyes grew large.
“You mean I can keep her in t
he house?”
“You’ll need a litter pan, but I don’t see why not. It might do you some good to take care of a pet. It will give you something to keep you busy until I can get you enrolled in school,” she added.
The smile left his face for a second. “Okay, whatever. But, just for now, promise me you or grandma will look after her until I get back from the store, okay?”
Annie agreed and took the kitten out of Devon’s arms. She pulled the twenty from her pocket and pressed it into his hand before moving the now-squirming kitten up on her shoulder. “Here, you can get yourself some snacks. Be good for Rory,” she added as he turned towards Rory’s beat up old truck.
“Thanks, Mom, I will.”
Annie watched as Rory and Devon piled into the truck, and she kept her eyes on the truck until it was out of sight, round the bend in the long driveway that led to the road running past her farm. “I guess we’d better go check on my mother, huh, TigerLily?” She asked the mewling kitten. “Better not leave her alone for too long in that house, or she might just do something crazy like track down all the other people from my past,” she sighed and carried the little ball of fur back into her new old home.
5
Secret Discoveries
The electric company sent out a man who looked too old to be working with electricity, but Bessie assured Annie that Charley was good at his job. It took him all of an hour to get the electricity switched back on, and Annie celebrated by bringing her coffee maker into the kitchen and making coffee for everyone.
“I won’t be able to sleep all night after drinking this,” Bessie stated, but Annie doubted that. Her mother could drink a pot of coffee at midnight and still drop off to dreamland by twelve-oh-five.
Devon plugged his charger in and recharged his cell phone, relieved that he wouldn’t have to spend the entire evening without its use. “Today’s generation just can’t spend five minutes away from a screen,” Bessie complained. “In my day, we spent our time outdoors, down at the fishing hole or going to the pictures with our friends.”
“Is that how you met grandad, Grandma?” Devon rarely asked questions about his grandparents, especially since Annie’s father had passed away five years before. His question surprised both Annie and Bessie.
“No, I met your grandaddy at school. We were high-school sweethearts,” she sighed, “kind of like your mother and Rory.”
Annie’s cheeks went pink, and Devon’s mouth fell open. “You and Rory used to date? Gah, mom--TMI!”
“Oh, my gosh, get over it! And it’s not TMI, it’s common knowledge. It’s also the past, and I’m not discussing my dating history with my teenaged son.” Annie took a swig of her coffee and quickly changed the subject. “Now, before everyone gets settled in down here, we need to think about unloading the truck so we can transport furniture tomorrow. We need to be out of mom’s house by the end of the week, and I’d just as soon get moved in as quickly as possible.”
“Oh, we can sleep here tonight, if you want.” Bessie sipped her coffee and grinned. “I bought a couple of those inflatable air mattresses over at MegaMart. I even bought an electric pump so we wouldn’t have to blow it up with our mouths.”
Devon chuckled. “Grandma Bessie, you sly dog! You thought of everything!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a canister of cat treats. “I thought of some things, too,” he added, opening the canister and tipping a few out into his hand for TigerLily to eat. The kitten had been curled up in his lap, but she bolted to attention when she smelled the treats. “I bought a little litter box and some cat litter so TigerLily can sleep with me tonight. I’ll take the small back bedroom for now,” he offered, “until Mom can clear out the attic for me.”
Annie shook her head. “We don’t know what the attic looks like, Devon. It could need a lot of work, and it probably isn’t properly insulated. Don’t get your heart set on turning it into your own bachelor pad.”
Rory appeared in the doorway, wiping his brow with a tattered red handkerchief. “Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” he stated simply. “Which would you like first?”
Annie and Bessie looked at each other, then back at Rory. “Hit us with the bad news, son.” Bessie sat her coffee cup down and braced herself for the bad news.
“You’re going to need a few rooms rewired. It looks like mice or rats got in and did some damage to some of the electrical systems. Charley showed me some of it, but I found a little more damage up in a couple of the bedrooms.”
“Is it safe to stay here?” Annie hoped this wouldn’t be a big setback to their schedule. Bessie’s realtor had made it clear that they had to be out of her old house by the end of the week.
“Oh, yeah, I think so. It’ll just take me a couple of days to sort out the damage because I need to open up a couple of walls to get to the wires.”
Annie’s eyes went wide with worry. “A couple of walls?”
Rory grinned. “Don’t worry, I will put them back better than they were before I started.”
“And what’s the good news?” Annie asked, biting her bottom lip.
“There’s no termite damage,” he said solemnly. “Actually, the good news is that most of the repairs seem to be cosmetic. They may take a while, and some could inconvenience you a little, like the electrical stuff, but on the whole, I think you have a really sound investment here.”
Annie grinned. “Thank you, Rory. You don’t know how glad I am to hear that!”
Rory thought for a moment that she would hug him, but she didn’t. He turned to Bessie. “Would you like some help carrying those boxes in, Mrs. Purdy?”
“Well, now, yes, that would be wonderful, Rory!” Bessie put her coffee cup into the sink. “Annie, we’d better get those rooms swept out really well and dusted. I can’t sleep in a dusty room or my allergies will go berserk.” She pointed at Devon. “You’d better go pick a room and get it cleaned up, too, young man.”
To Annie’s surprise, Devon did as his grandmother told him without question or complaint. “Will wonders never cease?” She put her own cup in the sink and followed Rory and Bessie to the truck, where they started unloading boxes. Butterflies fluttered in Annie’s stomach as she realized that they were really about to spend their very first night in their brand new home. She even managed to stop thinking about Rory every single minute, and she focused instead on getting as many things into the house as she could before it got dark. Although the electricity was on, there weren’t any exterior lights that she could see around the house. Once it got fully dark, it would be hard to see where they were walking between the truck and the house.
They carried the boxes to the parlour on Bessie’s instruction. She told her daughter that she wanted to unpack the kitchen items first and then take the bedroom items up last so they would have enough time to clean the bedroom properly. Annie had no idea that her mother had packed a mop, bucket, and cleaning supplies along with the air mattresses, but when the older woman handed the items to her, Annie realized that she meant business.
Annie swept and mopped the floor of the largest bedroom, then she brought the mop back downstairs to tackle the kitchen. She was three steps from the bottom of the stairs when she slipped in a small puddle of water. Sometime between losing her footing completely and landing on top of a passing Rory, she wondered when she’d managed to spill the water on the stairs.
“Oh, my god, are you alright?” She scrambled to get her feet back under her and to get off of Rory’s back. His timing was perfect for her, not so much for him.
“Ow,” he groaned, pushing himself up off the floor. “Guess we oughta stop bumping into each other like this, huh?” He grinned, and Annie groaned.
“Well, I guess the only thing injured is your sense of humor, because that joke was on its last legs.” She offered him her hand and helped him up, then surveyed the mess around them. Her bucketful of dirty water had spilled, leaving a dripping mess down the bottom few stairs and the floor below them. “Crap. I’m supposed to
be cleaning up, not making things worse.”
Rory picked up the bucket without saying a word and retrieved the mop from where it had flown. “Go check on your mom. She’s too quiet, and that makes me nervous. I’ll clean this up, then maybe we can go take a look at the barn door before the sun sets and it gets too dark out there.”
“What’s your obsession with the barn?”
“It’s not an obsession, Annie, it’s practical. If the barn’s in good shape, I can stash my tools in there and work when it’s raining. If the roof on the barn’s as good as this one, you’ll have a pretty useful building on your hands.”
Annie nodded. “That makes sense. I’ll go see what mom’s doing, and you just come get me when you want to go out there.”
Annie headed into the kitchen, which was empty, and started to feel a little worried. Bessie hadn’t said anything about leaving the house, but it was still daylight, so there was a chance she’d simply gone outside to get something from the truck. Annie stepped outside into the late afternoon sunshine and called for her mother, but she got no reply.
“Mama, where are you?” Annie began to feel a moment of panic. She knew that Bessie couldn’t be upstairs, she would have seen her while she was cleaning. Could she be somewhere else downstairs? Annie went back into the house and headed towards the living room, passing Rory on her way. “Have you seen my mother?” She knew the answer to her question before she asked it, but asked anyway.
“No, why? Is she missing?” Rory put the cloth that he was holding on the banister. “Did you check outside?”
Annie nodded. “Do you think she could have fallen down somewhere? Maybe she went to the pond?” There was a large pond behind the house, Annie had seen it from upstairs. Maybe her mother had decided to walk to it and sit for a while.
Before Rory could reply, they heard a banging noise from the kitchen. They ran back into the room, but it was empty.
Bodies & Buried Secrets: A Rosewood Place Mystery (Rosewood Place Mysteries Book 1) Page 3