The Accidental Florist jj-16

by Jill Churchill

  "Informally. I told her there would be a civil ceremonyand another in a church or hotel. I didn't explain why, but said she would be welcome to come to either or both." "And she said?"

  "That she'd think about it when I sent her a proper invitation."

  "I wish I could be a fly on the wall," Shelley said. "Call me the moment your luncheon with Thelma is over."

  Jane made a point of being early to arrive at the restaurant so she could choose a table where they could eat and speak in privacy. Jane was wearing a black skirt, hose, and heels and a bright yellow short-sleeved summer sweater. She went to wait at the bar and smoke one of her rare cigarettes to fortify herself. She'd already put it out, paid for her drink and the tip, when Thelma marched in the door.

  The waiter showed them to the corner booth. Thelma was dressed in her old-fashioned best, clutching a big purse and a maroon leather folder, which she put down next to her chair.

  "It's been a long time since we've seen each other," she said accusingly.

  "Only a month ago," Jane reminded her. "I had you and Ted, Dixie, and their darling little girls for Todd's birthday."

  Thelma frowned. "So silly of them to take on those Chinese babies. How can they pretend they gave birth to them?"

  "I doubt they're pretending any such thing,"Jane said.

  Ted, Jane's much younger brother-in-law, and his wife, Dixie, had been trying to have babies ever since Jane's kids were in grade school and never managed it. Jane admired them for finally, almost middle-aged, going to China to bring those pretty little sisters home with them. Jane thought they were adorable. Naturally this got Thelma's goat. Chinese granddaughters had never been among her priorities. They weren't "like us" she'd said at the birthday party in front of everyone. "They have straight black hair and funny-looking eyes."

  Jane, fuming over the memory, studied her menu.

  Thelma said, "I see you've already bought a drink."

  "It's just a mild Chianti. I won't get falling-down drunk, if that was what you're implying."

  Thelma glared at her. "I'll just have coffee."

  The waiter then took their food orders. Jane asked for a simple shrimp salad. Thelma ordered a chicken pot pie. The restaurant was famous for their pot pies done with real puff pastry and delicious vegetables and interesting spices.

  "While we eat, I'll come to the point,"Thelma said picking up the leather folder and bringing out a document.

  Thelma's copy of Steve's will. What on earth was she up to? Jane wondered.

  Thelma handed it over. "Take a look at this."

  "I don't need to,"Jane said. "I have my own copy in my lockbox at the bank."

  "Look through it anyway," Thelma ordered.

  Stapled to the back page was a typed notice of anamendment saying, "Should Jane remarry, this contract becomes null and void." There was Steve's signature below it, and two church ladies' signatures as witnesses.

  Jane's first impulse was to laugh at Thelma's incompetence, but she said quietly, "That's not anything like Steve's signature. You wrote it. You are a forger. And this is typed on that fake handwriting typewriter I gave you years ago. I'm going to audit the company books. If you dare try to enforce this, I'll take you to court and you'll either go to jail or be laughed out of court as a demented old woman and a forger. That's a crime."

  Jane fished in her purse and threw down a twenty-dollar bill and a five. "This will pay for my lunch with a good tip. You can take my salad home to eat yourself."

  Jane rose and walked out of the restaurant without looking back.

  "NO!" Shelley exclaimed.

  She put her head down on her kitchen table, half laughing, half enraged.

  "Yes. A forged addendum to Steve's will. I threatened to take her to court and hire an auditor to go over her books. I need to call Ted and warn him about this. I don't want him to think I distrust him."

  Shelley sat back up. "Can you conduct an audit?" "Why not?"

  "I think you'd have to get a court order or something. You're not a partner."

  "But I am. I'm listed in the real will as `his third share in perpetuity should he predecease me per stirpes should we have children.'"

  "What's per stirpes?"

  "By natural birth, as opposed to adoption. We didn't even have children when this was written. Nor did he plan to die before me. I threatened Thelma with going to jail for forgery."

  "You didn't!"

  "I did. And I'll do it if she tries to pull this off. The awful woman."

  Shelley grinned. "You should lock your mother-in-law and Mel's mother in a room and wait and see who comes out alive."

  Jane laughed. "What fun that would be."

  "So you just walked out on her?"

  "I threw down a twenty and a five and told her to take my meal home when it came and walked straight out of the restaurant."

  "You're a better woman than I am," Shelley said. "I'd have thrown a glass of ice water in her face first."

  "She'd have had me arrested for assault." Jane giggled. "At least I gave Thelma a good scare. I forgot to mention that she doesn't seem to consider Ted and Dixie's children as her grandchildren. When Ted and Dixie brought them to dinner for Todd's birthday, she acted as if they weren't even there."

  "Why not? Because they're Chinese?"

  "Of course. She's a bigot as well as a forger."

  "Jane, how have you managed to put up with her for all these years?"

  "The same way you put up with Paul's sister Constanza. She's the same kind of snoopy, overbearing woman. We could put Thelma, Addie, and Constanza in a locked room and see which one comes out alive."

  Shelley laughed and said, "So you didn't eat lunch. Neither have I. Let's go back to the restaurant and gorge." "What if Thelma's still there?"

  "Who cares?"

  "You're right. I was really looking forward to that shrimp salad I ordered."

  Thelma had left and both Jane and Shelley had the shrimp salad. Unfortunately the same waiter who had earlier taken Jane's order took the same order again. Seeing his confusion, Jane said, "I had an emergency call on my cell phone and had to leave. The emergency is over. I hope the lady I was with took my order home."

  "So she did," the waiter said. "And she looked quite angry as she left."

  Jane didn't speak until he was gone and grinned at Shelley. "Mad as a hornet."

  When they'd both finished eating, Shelley said, not surprisingly, "Let's go shopping for what you want to wear for your other mother-in-law's wedding."

  They found a long, slim black almost floor-length silk skirt that fit Jane perfectly. She wanted to see it at least three times from the back. "That's the view the whole audience will see."

  To their delight, the clerk tapped at the dressing room door and said, "There is a matching jacket for this. Would you like to see it?"

  "Oh yes," the two of them said in unison.

  The clerk returned with the jacket in two sizes. The first looked droopy. The second was perfect. Cut in a princess style to show off that she still had a waist, she said, "I'll take this, too. Thank you."

  Shelley said, "You haven't even looked at the price tags."

  "I hope both are expensive. It would make me happy to spend what Thelma thinks I wouldn't be able to afford if she'd put herself in such a greedy, grasping plot to take away my third of the pharmacy profits."

  Shelley grinned. "You're absolutely right, Jane. Now let's see if we can find a blouse in carmine red while you're in a throwing-away money mode."

  They failed to find the right blouse at the store where they got the suit, and Jane said, "That's okay. In fact, it's a good thing. We should have checked at the tux place to see if they have carmine cummerbunds. Or we could make some to match when we do find the right blouse. But we could pick the shoes today."

  "I don't think so. We probably need to make sure you have the right color carmine shoes."

  Chapter

  TEN

  T

  hey struck out on finding
a good blouse and Jane said, "I'm sick to death of shopping. Maybe I have something at home I could wear."

  This turned out to be every bit as fruitless as shopping, but Jane made the best of it and purged a lot of things she hadn't worn for at least three years.

  "Jane, that's a great skirt and jacket but you look more like a widow than a bride, to tell the truth. It would be great for a cocktail party."

  "But I am a widow."

  "Of course you are. But for this ceremony you should look like a bride, not a widow."

  "You're right. But I might take this outfit back. I'm never invited to cocktail parties."

  "Neither am I, except for Paul's meetings with his managers. But it would be great for fancy dinners, and it really flatters you."

  Jane sat down on the heap of clothing now on her bed waiting to be recycled to a battered women's shelter and said, "Okay. I've made a nondecision decision. I'm keeping the skirt and jacket and I'm wearing the emerald dress to both the real and fake wedding. Mel loves it when I wear that dress and very few people will know I'd already worn it for the civil wedding. And we can forget all about matching fabrics for the cummerbunds for the tuxes."

  With this shopping victory stalled out for all time, Jane was relieved that she could get on with real life. Going out to lunches with Shelley or dinners with Mel, doing research for her next book, gawking at the rapid progress of the room addition. She also kept asking the workers questions about what they were doing. They were kind to her. She brought them iced tea and sodas to ensure they'd remain tolerant of her.

  The room was almost starting to look like a room, not a place to roller skate. Timbers were going up, firmly attached to the foundation.

  She was told that electricity had to be next. There were several copies of Jack's blueprints. The overall structure. Where electrical lines went. Where windows of precise dimensions would be put in were marked as such. Where phone lines went. There were even water and sewer lines chalked out so Mel could have his own bathroom and sink.

  Jack himself was there for at least an hour every day, overseeing the work. Sometimes he stayed longer.

  "This is the fastest, most professional crew I've ever had the luck to put to work. A few of them are new to me, Jane."

  He looked so smug about this that Jane was compelled to compliment him. And she meant it, too. He cared about how his projects turned out, and zealously pursued a timely, perfect completion.

  "Your workers have been very polite about my uninformed questions."

  "I know. They say you're the nicest lady most of them have ever worked for."

  Jane actually simpered at the compliment. But she added, "There's a truck behind my car and I need to run an errand. Could you ask someone to move it? I'll park mine on the street when I get back."

  She drove to the nearest public phone she could find and called her brother-in-law Ted. She feared that Thelma might be around and see the caller ID of her home phone.

  "Ted, it's Jane. Don't say anything. Just let me ask you a favor. Your mother has forged a codicil to Steve's will cutting me out if I remarry."

  Ted said, as if this was an ordinary business call, "That doesn't surprise me."

  "Furthermore, I suspect she's hired a detective to keep track of where I go and how I'm dressed."

  Ted's response was simply, "Ah."

  "Here's what I'd like to do," Jane said. "Meet with me at the McDonald's down the street to the north of my house. You get there by eleven-thirty and I'll arrive ten or fifteen minutes later. Surely if there is a detective following me, he won't bother to come inside."

  "Done."

  When Jane arrived Ted was sitting as far from a window as it was possible to be. She joined him. "Was someone following you?" he asked.

  "There was a black car parked down the block that turned in here just two cars behind mine."

  "Jane, I can't tell you how sorry I am. My mother should be put away somewhere. She's always been a rude woman. Now she's out of control. Right in front of our daughters she called our girls `Chinks' without realizing how offensive it was. Poor Dixie cried all night. But I knew that my mother wouldn't be able to negate the adoption of the girls. Every single step was done correctly."

  "I'm sorry for you, too, Ted. You have to spend a lot more time with her than I do. And thank goodness the girls aren't old enough or know enough English words to realize they had been insulted."

  "It's getting harder and harder to put up with her," he admitted. "Dixie says she'll never allow my mother to be around the girls again, and I agree."

  He went on, "As for the detective, I think I can easily put a stop to it. I do my mother's taxes every year andkeep her checkbook balanced monthly, and this year there was a suspicious check for a thousand dollars that she wouldn't explain. She just said it was none of my business. But I still have the check in the file and it was endorsed by a detective agency. I thought at first she'd hired them to try to find something wrong with the adoption papers and get the girls sent back to China, and I knew that it was all in perfect order, so I didn't give it another thought. I'll call them off you. I'll also tell her I know what she's doing and put a stop to it. I'll tell the agency she's demented."

  "Ted, you're a good man. I owe you a big thank-you."

  "No, you don't. You just confirmed for me that Mom is truly around the bend. Not only dotty, but downright mean as well."

  "As we're already here, I'll treat you to a burger, fries, and a drink. Just so you leave the restaurant before I do."

  "It's a deal. I hate to say this, but I love fast food."

  Jane watched Ted leave. The black car followed her home at a distance when she left ten minutes later.

  When Jane got home, she called Shelley and said, "Take a

  little walk with me down the street. You'll enjoy it." "Why?"

  "You'll see,"Jane said cheerfully.

  Shelley joined her as they approached the black car parked down the block. Jane led Shelley to the driver's

  side of the car, and tapped on the window. The driver rolled down the window and said, "Who are you and what do you want?"

  "You know perfectly well that I'm Jane Jeffry, and that Thelma Jeffry hired you to follow me around and report where I'd gone and with whom. As of tomorrow, you won't have this job. Thelma Jeffry has been put in a nursing home for terminal dementia. Have a good day."

  "Ma'am, I just do what my boss tells me to do."

  "Your boss is going to assign you to follow someone else around. Let's go home, Shelley," she said as she walked away.

  When they returned to Jane's house, they were both laughing hysterically.

  As Jane was pouring them cups of fresh coffee, she said, "I sneaked away to have a heart-to-heart talk with Ted Jeffry at lunch. He says he'll get rid of the detective. He thought Thelma was trying to get their baby girls sent back to China when he saw the endorsement on one of her checks. He knew she didn't stand a chance of pulling it off. Dixie won't ever let Thelma near the girls again because last time she visited Ted and Dixie, she called the girls `Chinks.'"

  "Oh no. I didn't realize how truly evil she is."

  "Ted knows now. I'm sorrier for him than I am for myself And I'm not sending her invitations to either of the weddings. I dearly hope I never have to see or speak to her again."

  "I'll bet that goes for Dixie, and possibly Ted, too."

  "I believe he's ready to do all he can to put her out to pasture," Jane said.

  "How can he do that?" Shelley asked.

  "Ted's bright and angry and loves his wife and little girls. He'll find a way."

  Mel called Jane around five that afternoon and said, "I'm hungry for a Chili's burger. Want me to order pickup and bring it over? My treat."

  "Oh, please do. Shelley and I were just sitting here lamenting about empty fridges."

  She gave him her order, asked Shelley what she wanted, and guessed at what Todd would want.

  "Why is he doing this?" Shelley asked.

&nb
sp; "He probably has something to tell us, something we won't want to hear since he offered to pay for all three dinners."

  "I'll run to the grocery store to get prepared sandwiches and microwave mac and cheese for Denise and John. Anything you want?"

  "Yes, an iced angel food cake and some Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream. It's Mel's favorite dessert. Mine, too." Jane fished a ten-dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to Shelley.

  The dining room table was set for four places by the time Shelley returned. Mel showed up at five-fifteen and they unloaded the dinners. When Todd had gone through his cheeseburger and fries, he asked if he could go back

  to his computer and was given permission. Mel was still on his second helping of cake and ice cream, so Jane and Shelley waited patiently to hear what he had to say.

  Pushing his plate away, he said, "Jane, a bit of bad news. My mother wants my sisters to be bridesmaids. She's got her heart set on it."

  Jane smiled. "No. You already told me that both your sisters eloped to escape the kind of killer bash wedding your mother would plan for them. Remember?"

  Mel nodded.

  "So call your sisters and ask them if they want to do that to me?"

  He grinned. "I'll do it right now. I know they won't want to."

  When he returned to the dining room, he said, "Done. In fact, sorted out before I even called. They are coming to the wedding, but just as guests."

  "Good."

  "Can we go outside and look at my office to see how it's coming along?"

  "I thought you'd never ask."

  The three of them went out in the backyard and walked around looking at the current status. Piles of Sheetrock were piled on big planks covered with plastic in case of rain.