“What backseat?” I coughed out, tears coming out of my eyes.
Jack’s grin only got bigger.
“I was reading the other day in a magazine that the stick shift of a sports car can be used as a marital aid. Do you want me to show you how?”
I laughed until my stomach hurt.
And for those few precious moments I forgot all about my bills and my divorce and the man I had been married to and his threats. Jack and I sat on the picnic table, watched the red-gold sunset, listened to the birds chirping as they flew home, and watched the river roll by.
Then we took the long way home. I think we drove through three states. Jack had taken the top off of his car, so I just leaned back into the seat and smiled as the summer air hit my face. I caught the faint smell of honeysuckle and the rich, dank aroma of the dark bottomland that bordered the river. I watched the stars come into focus. The full moon rose and reflected enough sunlight to light the winding roads and the gentle waves in the water.
By the time we pulled up to 1010 Burning Church Road, it was ten o’clock.
Jack turned off the roaring engine and we both looked at the house. The lights were on from the third floor to the basement. It looked like a Christmas tree.
“Are you planning to pay the salaries of the utility executives all by yourself?” Jack asked. “Or are you having a party?”
I sighed. Obviously, there was a crisis in progress. Never a dull moment.
“Maybe Imani’s home,” I said hopefully. “And she’s … taking a tour of the house.”
Jack gave me “nice try but no cigar” look. I shrugged my shoulders. Well, it was a pleasant thought, anyway. Together we trudged up the walk to the front porch and braced ourselves for whatever drama was waiting.
Gloria’s face was ravaged by tears, her hair was all over her head, and she was wringing her hands and chain-smoking in the house. Becca was doing her best to comfort her.
“Troy’s disappeared again,” Gloria said flatly.” I can’t find him anywhere. I tucked him into bed. And now he’s gone! I-I went to check on him, and he wasn’t there!”
“Gone?” I barely had the words out before Jack took the stairs two at a time, reaching for the cell phone clipped to his waist as he ran.
Gloria had dissolved into sobs, so Becca finished the story.
“We were on the porch, talking, and the phone rang. Gloria went to answer it. While she was in the house, she went to check on Troy and—”
“And he wasn’t there!” wailed Gloria.
I frowned. Was he off on another one of his adventures? Or had he run away? Troy was not happy about his parents’ separation, especially now that Butch was out of the hospital.
“Do … do you think that Butch would …” I hated to finish the thought.
Gloria raised her red, swollen eyes to meet mine.
“I thought about that. No. Butch wouldn’t do something like this. It—it just doesn’t make sense!” She sniffled. Becca continued to hand her tissues.
“Have you called the police?” A missing child was nothing to fool around with.
“Have you looked everywhere?” Jack’s voice boomed from behind me.
Gloria blew her nose and Becca shook her head.
“No, not everywhere. We were just heading outside when you two showed up. Why?”
Jack shrugged his shoulders.
“Both of the bedroom windows are securely shut and one of ’em has the air conditioner in it. It hasn’t been moved. So, I’m willing to bet that he didn’t climb out of the window. He must have sneaked out the back door while you two were on the front porch. His Spiderman shoes are gone.”
Gloria stopped dabbing her eyes.
“Troy never goes anywhere without his Spiderman shoes,” she said.
Jack’s lips began to curl up.
“And a kidnapper wouldn’t take the time to gather up a kid and his favorite sneakers.”
“Let’s check outside and go to the end of the block. Isn’t there a little boy on Park Street that Troy likes to play with?”
Jack took Bear and went down the street, Becca and Gloria combed the churchyard across the way (Troy liked to go “ghost hunting” over there), and I took Wells and went back over the house and through the yard.
“Come on, Wellington,” I said to the pug trotting obediently by my side. “Let’s go check the rose garden.” Wells sniffed in agreement.
The moonlight was so bright that I didn’t need the industrial-sized flashlight that I was carrying. We walked down the cobblestone paths through the rows of Gloria’s well-tended roses and I could see the colors of the blooms.
The toolshed wasn’t wired for electricity, so I shone the flashlight’s wide beam in every corner. I disturbed a few sleeping field mice that would now have to run for their lives, because CW and Ice Tray were patrolling the grounds. A couple bags of peat moss were stacked against the back wall, and mulch, several bags of fertilizer that stank to high heaven, and the rest of the gardening and yard tools were neatly arranged in the shed. But no Troy.
Wells and I came out and I replaced the padlock. Now what?
I glanced over at the coach house. Dana’s blinds were drawn, as usual, and there was no light escaping from the windows, plus the Mercedes was nowhere to be seen, so I assumed that she wasn’t there. Her apartment would be locked and there was no way that Troy could get the key, so I wasn’t worried about that space, but I figured I’d better check the garage below.
As we headed toward the coach house, Wells started to bark and ran ahead. I tightened my grip on the flashlight. Except for Wells’s barking, everything was silent. I walked as quietly as I could toward the coach house.
The dog ran around to the back of the coach house and stood beneath the old maple tree that had stood in the yard for four hundred years. He kept barking and jumping. But he wasn’t growling and he didn’t sound angry. He sounded happy.
“Wells?”
I turned the flashlight’s beam across the patch of grass next to the tree. There were pieces of wood scattered around on the ground. They looked suspiciously like the wooden stakes that Troy had fashioned for his vampire-hunting escapade. The light bulb clicked on.
I looked over my shoulder. I thought I heard a noise.
And then I heard it again.
“Opal! Opal! Up here!”
I looked up.
Troy was perched on a branch in the old tree. His backpack was overflowing with wooden stakes.
“Troy! What are you doing up there? We’ve been looking for you everywhere! Your mom’s worried sick!”
“Shhhhhh!” He put his finger to his lips. “Looking for the vampire! They come out when the moon is full,” he said breathlessly in a loud whisper.
I started to smile and then I started to giggle.
“Troy, Miss Drew isn’t here tonight,” I told him. Wells would not stop barking. “Shush, Wells! Troy, get down from there right now.”
“I can’t!” came the loudly whispered response. “I’m stuck!” he wailed.
“What do you mean you’re stuck?” I asked. A really stupid question.
“My foot is stuck! Can you come up and get me?”
I shined the light down his leg and saw the red, blue, and black Spiderman sneaker wedged between two branches.
Thank you, Lord. I have not yet had enough challenges today. And when was the last time that I climbed a tree? Forty years ago when my brother and I were playing pirates and the oak tree in the backyard served as the crow’s nest. Climbing a tree is like riding a bicycle, isn’t it? You never really forget how. Do you?
“Wonderful,” I said, shedding the jacket of my brand-new cappuccino-colored knit outfit, and hiking up the dress to my thighs. I kicked off the sexy little snakeskin mules that Bette had forced me at gunpoint to buy and looked up.
“I didn’t have anything else to do tonight anyw
ay,” I mumbled as I began to scale the tree. “Anyway, how hard can it be? I only did this four decades ago. It’s just like it was yesterday.”
Well, it wasn’t yesterday. Climbing a tree is a bit more challenging than riding a bike, and it’s a real ordeal if you’re wearing a knit dress and a lace thong. I dropped the flashlight. Why was I trying to carry a flashlight and climb a tree at the same time anyway? My dress ripped, which was wonderful. The check hadn’t even cleared the bank yet. And Wells wouldn’t stop barking.
Thank God for moonlight.
I fumbled around in the heavy foliage until I reached Troy, perched on a thick sucker branch, his little face contorted.
“You OK?”
He sniffled.
“Yeah, but my foot really hurts.”
I balanced myself on the branch and reached down for his sneakered foot.
“You have it squeezed in here pretty tight,” I said, trying to gently move it around.
“Ouch!” he yelped.
“Sorry, Troy, this might not be easy. I can’t believe that you climbed up here!” I said, trying to distract him. I was afraid that he might have a sprained ankle.
“I thought if the vampire woke up, I could put a stake through her heart … and …”
I was untying the shoelaces. My best bet in getting Troy off his perch was to free his foot and come back for the sneaker later.
“Put a stake through her heart? Your momma told you to give up on that idea. Vampires aren’t real! There! Got it!” I jerked his little foot free from the sneaker.
“Owwww.…” Troy howled, and Wells started barking again.
At that very moment, the window shades in Dana Drew’s apartment flew up and a blaze of light fell across our faces. The window opened and Dana Drew leaned out. I was so startled that I almost fell out of the tree.
“Hi! It’s you guys! I wondered what all the racket was about! Great! You’re just in time! I could use some help!”
Troy and I would have answered, but we were busy picking up our jaws from the ground.
Dana Drew was wearing a black leather corset with a row of small silver buckles going down the front, a leather miniskirt, and thigh-high four-inch-heeled leather boots. She was holding a riding crop in her hand. I tried not to speculate on its purpose. In the background of the sparsely decorated apartment the chauffeur, dressed in a golf shirt and khakis, sat in a straight-backed chair. That in itself was not remarkable. The fact that his feet were tied up with ropes and his chest was wrapped in chains was. His hands were free, however, and he was reading what looked like the Wall Street Journal. He smiled at us from behind his gold wire-rimmed glasses and gave us a halfhearted wave.
They were magicians. That’s it, magicians.
“Ah, some help?” I asked with a forced smile. I felt a little awkward sitting in a tree talking to a, er, vampire standing in an open window. She, on the other hand, acted as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Yes,” she said in the unfamiliar midwestern voice that she had revealed briefly once before. “I’ve got Tim, that’s my husband, tied up in the chair, and I can’t get the ropes untied. Could you lend me a hand?”
Well, this sure seemed to be an evening of getting people out of tight spots.
“Uh, oh, sure,” I said as if this were a routine request. “I … uh, we’ll be right down.” Then I realized that there was a child present. And Troy’s eyes were as big as dinner plates. What we had just seen in Dana Drew’s apartment looked like a lot of things, but vampires it wasn’t. I decided that I would send Troy off to the house with Wells before I went upstairs to help Dana.
“But I wanna go,” whined Troy. “I want to see the vampire!”
I handed him his backpack and his twisted-up sneaker and pointed in the direction of the house.
“Take Wells and go,” I said.
“But—”
I glared at Troy.
“No buts.”
“Oh, all right,” he said as he scuffled off, Wells following at his heels. “I never get to have any fun.”
Once on the ground, I used my cell phone to call Jack and call off the body search.
“She’s a … what?” Jack’s voice was breaking up.
“I’ll explain later.”
I thought I heard laughter, but maybe it was just static.
Chapter Fourteen
“Tim, you’ve met Opal Sullivan. Opal, this is my husband, Tim Jablonski.”
“Nice to meet you, Tim.” I tried to keep my expression pleasant and my voice neutral. How do you exchange social pleasantries with someone who is, er, restrained? Plus, I was having a little trouble unlocking the chains that Dana had wrapped around his abdomen. I glanced around the room. There was an interesting array of paraphernalia neatly displayed on tables and shelves, including a selection of chains and feathers. Eclectic is the word, I think. Not a kiln or a potter’s wheel in sight.
“I guess you’re not a sculptor,” I told Dana as I helped her untie the cords at Tim’s ankles.
She smiled sheepishly.
“It was the only thing I could think of at the time. Actually, I’m a—”
“That’s OK,” I said quickly, handing her the cord. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear this story. Facetiously I added, “As long as you aren’t a serial killer or a vampire.”
“A vampire!” Dana’s Transylvanian accent was long gone. She looked at her husband, who shrugged his shoulders.
I nodded. “Yes. Troy was vampire hunting.”
“Really! He thinks there’s a vampire in your house?” She was genuinely intrigued by the prospect and not at all aware that it had anything to do with her.
“Well, not in my house, exactly. Here, in the coach house,” I said slowly.
Dana gasped.
“Oh, my goodness!” Unconsciously she put her hand over her heart. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. This woman was standing in front of me dressed in the most provocative black leather clothing that I had ever seen. (OK, I lead a sheltered life.) Of course, she had taken off the spike heels and was now wearing yellow Tweety Bird house slippers, but there was a riding crop tucked in her belt.
“I’ve never noticed anything unusual in the coach house. It’s as quiet as a church when we’re here,” she said sincerely. She leaned closer to me and lowered her voice. “Has he ever seen the vampire?”
“Dana, he thinks that you’re the vampire.”
“Me, why …” She stopped and frowned. But only for half a second.
“Oh,” she said, looking down at the polished buckles on her Merry Widow. “I can see where he’s coming from.”
Then she started laughing. We all started laughing.
Troy couldn’t believe that vampires really ate pizza, hamburgers, and ice cream and drank soda. We convinced him that, over the centuries, they had broadened their diets beyond the usual blood-based foods. He also tried to argue a case for staying up. But by now, it was obvious that Dana wasn’t a vampire and that whatever she really was would not be an appropriate bedtime story for a ten-year-old boy regardless of how hard he pleaded.
“To bed, Troy!” his mother ordered, pushing him toward the stairs.
“Mom,” Troy wailed in protest. “I never get to have any fun!”
“No, you don’t,” his mother said. “Now, go!”
“Don’t start until I get Troy settled in bed,” yelled Gloria as she took the stairs two at a time. “I want to hear this from the beginning!”
I poured iced tea, Becca grabbed a soda, and Jack served up giant-sized scoops of chocolate chip ice cream. Whips and chains go better with sweets.
“La Dana Drew” was gone in an instant.
In her place was Dana Drew Jablonski, wife, mother of three, PTA vice president, and second soprano in the choir of First Presbyterian. The Junior League meetings didn’t start until Ms. Jablonski arrive
d. If they only knew.
Without the sunglasses and the long Cher-style black wig, Dana Drew was an average-looking woman with brown eyes and short highlighted blond hair. She looked like a million women that I had seen on the street or at the mall.
She laughed when I told her that.
“You are absolutely right.”
“And the accent?” Gloria asked.
“Greta Garbo.”
I snapped my fingers in triumph. “I knew it!”
“I thought it was Marlene Dietrich,” Becca murmured.
Dana shook her head. “My maternal grandparents are Swedish. It was easier. With the research I’m doing …” She stopped and raised her eyes toward the ceiling. “I just find it hilarious that you thought that I was a vampire!” Dana grinned and laughed. “That never occurred to me. I figured that you would make me for a Goth extraordinaire.”
“The vampire theory was Troy’s. Just be glad I came along when I did. He had a whole backpack full of wooden stakes!”
“And garlic necklaces,” added Jack, handing Tim a mixing bowl of ice cream. I looked at Jack, surprised. He shrugged his shoulders. “All of your garlic bulbs are gone.”
“Troy …,” I growled.
Gloria landed at the bottom of the stairs with a thump. “OK, I’m back. And I want to hear everything. From the beginning. Then I’ll have to figure out how to tell Troy the G-rated version!”
“I don’t think there is one,” said Jack under his breath. I elbowed him.
“I don’t know where to begin really,” Dana said, fiddling with one of the buckles on her bustier.
“Start at the beginning, honey,” Tim urged as he lapped up a soupspoonful of ice cream.
“About fourteen, fifteen years ago, I was a grad student. Three-quarters through the MBA program, I realized that I hated every minute of it. I was at my wits’ end! With every day that passed, I was more and more bored. And more and more panic-stricken. What was I going to do with this degree? And how was I going to pay back my student loans? I hated international finance! Tim and I met in the securities law class—”
“It was love at first sight,” Tim interjected, with his mouth full again.
The Shade of My Own Tree Page 18