by Mary Frame
“No, Charlotte, it’s fine.”
“Can I kiss you goodbye in front of your new friends?”
“Charlotte!”
Two mornings later, Paige is starting school.
I walk with her to the campus and we get her registered. The elderly woman in the office is a volunteer and half blind and any worries I had about getting Paige registered without some kind of legal guardianship documents is put to rest when she thinks I’m Paige’s mom anyway and doesn’t even ask for ID for me or a birth certificate for Paige.
Once she has her class list, Paige ditches me without a second glance.
“Make good choices. No conning classmates, but don’t be anyone’s patsy,” I call after her as she practically runs away from me.
Teenagers.
Yesterday, I even took her to the only store in town that sells clothes for people under sixty and bought her two new outfits, and this is the treatment I get.
I walk back home alone, make coffee, and sit on the porch. Mr. Bingel is out trimming his roses, so I have a pretty good time listening to him grumble.
It sounds like he’s reminiscing about how wonderful his life was before we moved in next door and how I never take the time to clip my own roses and his house would look so much better if “that girl” took care of her yard.
“Will you show me how to take care of my roses?” I ask loudly enough that he can hear.
Mr. Bingel studiously ignores me and continues with his snipping and muttering.
Jared runs by.
It must be eight thirty. He seems to run by every morning around the same time.
I wave, but he doesn’t even peep over at the house.
Sigh.
Gravy the devil cat is also outside. He’s found a sunny spot at my feet, perfect for cleaning his nether regions.
When he stops and lies still, I try to pet him and he hisses.
Everyone in this town loves me.
I finish my coffee around the same time Mr. Bingel finishes clipping his bushes. I don’t know how he maintains such a meticulous yard, and he’s never dirty. His gloves and shoes are always pristine, despite kneeling on the ground. It’s like even the dirt is afraid to offend him. Although, when he stands, he seems to be favoring his right hip. Maybe his bones are deteriorating from the force of his disapproval.
I know he’s lonely. No one ever comes over to see him, and he spends more time on his garden than anything else. Secretly, I think he likes us living next to him. Why else would he be coming outside, trimming his already perfectly groomed roses?
“You okay there, Mr. Bingel?”
He still ignores me, gathering his things and shuffling inside. I’m about to leave, too, since my task for the morning—bother Mr. Bingel into being my friend—has failed miserably, but before I stand up, a patrol car stops in front of my house.
Troy exits the vehicle and lopes up to the house with what I’ve come to recognize as his usual cocky swagger. He has a manila file folder in his hand.
“Hey, Ruby.” He takes a seat on the porch swing next to me.
“What’s up?”
“Don’t you already know?”
I sigh. “You brought me the case files from the mugging?”
“How did you know that?” His voice is filled with exaggerated incredulity. “Wait, don’t tell me. The spirits told you.”
“I’m not a medium, Troy,” I say with a smile. “The file is right there and it has Cassie’s name on it.”
His smile drops into an openmouthed stare. “You are psychic.”
“It’s a real gift.”
We laugh and he nudges me with his shoulder good-naturedly.
“So Jared said it didn’t go real well the other night,” he says.
“Yeah. I thought I had a lead, but it didn’t have anything to do with the mugging.”
“That’s okay.” He slaps my knee. “It’s still pretty weird that you knew about Jared buying those cupcakes for Mrs. Hale every day. He never tells anyone about that stuff. Anyway,” he puts the folder on my lap, “I thought maybe this might help you, you know, sense stuff or whatever.”
“Thanks.”
I should have thought to ask for the file myself. I really know nothing more than that Cassie was mugged outside the restaurant and a bag was put over her head.
I open the folder and glance at the contents. There’s a statement signed by Cassie with a list of what was in her purse, a picture of the bag used during the mugging, and photos of the crime scene.
“Where’s this bag from?” I pick up the photo and peer at it. It’s a large canvas bag with lettering on it.
He gets closer, peering over my shoulder. “It’s from this old Greek restaurant that closed down a few years ago. Jared already checked into it when we couldn’t get any usable prints from the bag—fabric is too porous. Apparently, when the restaurant shut down, all of their bags were auctioned to the same buyer. They don’t know who it was because it was done through a resale agency.”
“Which resale agency?”
“Jared’s looking into that. It’s his job to find out all those hard-hitting details.”
“What’s your job?”
“To look pretty.”
I laugh.
“Come on, Ruby. You can’t deny it. I make this look good.” He nods his head slowly and purses his lips.
“You’re right, I can’t deny it.”
“So listen, Tabby wanted me to invite you and Paige over for dinner tomorrow night at her place. It’s a weekly thing we do. There will be a few close friends and she thought you might like to meet some more people. I’ll be there, and so will Jared, Ben, and you’ll get to meet Mrs. Olsen. A good time will be had by all.” He nods sagely, and for some reason, I don’t believe him.
“I’m not sure,” I hedge. “We’re really busy right now. Paige just started school today and the grand opening is in a week.”
And I still have to get upstairs to the office and look over video files for information. Hopefully something better than those damn cupcakes.
“You realize if you say no to me now, Tabby will be all over you like red on a fire truck. She will drag you kicking and screaming if she has to. She doesn’t like hearing the word ‘no’ about anything. And don’t tell her I told you this, but you’ve probably figured it out for yourself. She doesn’t have many friends, at least not in the same age range.”
My resolve wavers. Paige will probably want to go, too. And I’ve never been good at telling her no.
I nod. “We’ll go.”
“Awesome.” He slaps me on the knee again as he stands, leaving the file with me. “Dinner starts at six.” He turns and points at me. “I’ll pick you guys up.” He doesn’t give me a chance to argue, waving goodbye and jogging back to the patrol car.
Chapter Twelve
“How was school? Everything you ever dreamed?”
Paige rolls her eyes. “It was school. There were teachers and kids and learning. And that’s it.” She stalks past me toward the stairs. I’ve been lying in wait in the front office, unloading one of Ruby’s shipments. This one has crystals and herbs and an assortment of clothing from wavy scarves to tie-dyed shirts.
Paige stops before leaving the room and smiles at me. “I made a friend.”
Then she runs off.
“It better not be a boy!” I call after her.
As soon as she disappears up the stairs and no one is watching, I do a happy dance. She likes school! Well, she doesn’t hate it, at least. If she did, she would have let me know right away. And a friend! Even though we have to leave in a few months, before Ruby gets back, at least she’ll have some kind of normal memory to take with her and hopefully the ability to make even more friends in the future. The thought of leaving, starting over somewhere else, makes the happy dance falter. I wanted consistency and normalcy for Paige, not running away, not having to move. Again.
I have to talk to her about the dinner at Tabby’s, and about what I found o
n the videotapes while she was at school, but I’ll have to wait.
I know Paige well enough that she’ll need a few minutes to decompress. She’s always been a pretty social child, but she wears out easily when she’s around a lot of people for extended periods. Especially new people.
I put a frozen lasagna in the oven and start on a salad, waiting for her to emerge from the bedroom. I got a small paycheck from the police department, but it was only enough to buy some supplies for the grand opening and cover us for food for the week. Mostly premade, frozen, or microwavable food. But food is food.
She finally comes down to the kitchen, no longer in her new clothes but dressed down in her ratty flannel PJ pants, hair up in a messy ponytail.
“Tell me about your friend.”
“Her name is Naomi. She lives a couple of blocks away. Can I sleep over at her house?”
A sleepover! It’s like we’re real people. I force my features to remain calm. “When it’s not a school night and I can meet her parents.”
She grins and leans a hip against the counter, watching me chop tomatoes.
“I’m glad you had a good day.”
“What about you?” she asks.
“We’re invited to dinner at Tabby’s tomorrow night. Oh, and I found something of interest on the videos that we might be able to use.”
Her eyes light up. “You did?”
“I’ll show you after dinner. And after you get your homework done.”
She groans. “Cruel sister.”
“Yep.”
She eats in record time, chatting about the kids at school—there aren’t many of them—and the teachers—they’re all nice—and Naomi—who’s a year older than her and oh so cool.
Homework is only a few pages of math, which she flies through without needing assistance. Thank god, because I don’t know anything about math. I went to so many different schools growing up and wasn’t enrolled consistently. I barely scraped through my GED when I was sixteen.
When she’s done, we head upstairs to the office.
“Here.” I hand her the file that Troy brought me. “Check out the picture of the bag used in the mugging.”
She peers at it while I warm up the computer.
“Check this out.” I turn the screen toward her and show her the video footage I found at the restaurant. It’s another elderly woman, but this time instead of disappearing cupcakes, she’s piling some leftovers into a canvas bag.
“It’s the same type of bag.”
“Troy said the bags are from an old Greek restaurant that’s not around anymore. And they sold all the bags to the same person before they left town.”
“Another old lady.” Paige gives me a look. “We better make sure this intel is good. What if she bought them from someone else or something?”
“Which is why we need to get more information, and I know how we’re going to do that.”
“How?”
“See this?” I point at the paused image on the screen. The woman is wearing a button-up vest covered in giant green cats.
Paige nods.
“Tabby told me about someone in town who only wears cat-covered clothes. Mrs. Olsen.”
“The same lady she calls her grandma?”
“Yep. And guess who’s going to be at Tabby’s dinner party this weekend?”
“Mrs. Olsen.”
“Right.”
“So how exactly are we going to find out if she’s the mugger?”
“We’re not.” I give her a pointed look. “I’m going to track down these bags. I just have to get her alone,” I say with a grin.
~*~
The next day, Troy picks up Paige and me, and we arrive at Tabby’s right after six o’clock. The first thing I notice is Jared standing in the corner, talking to a blond woman. Her back is to me, and I don’t think I’ve seen her before.
It’s not remarkable to me that he’s talking to a woman, but he’s smiling.
It’s not a large smile. Most might not even notice it, but there’s a definite curving of his lips and tilting of his eyes. If it was just the lips, I might excuse it as a false smile, but the eyes never lie.
For some reason, it bothers me.
I’ve never seen him smile like that.
Maybe because when he’s around me, he mostly frowns.
The second thing I notice is Tabby talking to Ben the bartender, and she’s also smiling, but there’s tension around her eyes.
Fighting again, I suppose.
In total, there are about half a dozen people gathered in her living room having pre-dinner drinks. Jared, the mystery woman, Tabby, Ben, an elderly lady who must be Mrs. Olsen because she’s wearing a sweater with a giant orange cat on the front, and another older woman in a wheelchair with her head back, mouth open, eyes shut. She’s either sleeping or dead. I hope she’s sleeping. I can’t tell if she’s breathing.
Everyone is dressed casually, and I’m glad because I don’t own much more than the worn jeans and faded T-shirt I’m currently wearing.
When Tabby sees us, she comes over and gives both Paige and I hugs before introducing us to the people we don’t know.
The mystery blond is Eleanor Rogers. She’s the town librarian. Eleanor looks like her name sounds, regal with a thin face and a thinner nose. She’s pale and her eyes are serious behind her wire-rimmed glasses.
Mrs. Olsen is the sweater-cat lady and also definitely the woman from the video. Paige immediately sits next to her and starts asking her about where she got her sweater.
The sleeper is Miss Viola. Tabby can’t make introductions since the woman is apparently passed out. “Too many Moscow Mules,” Tabby tells me.
“Introductions are done, let’s go get a drink,” Troy says, leading me in the direction of the kitchen.
Tabby follows us there. “Ben is such a bag of dicks,” she says once the door to the living room swings shut.
“Then why did you invite him?” I ask.
She pulls a bottle of beer out of the fridge, opens it, and hands it to me. “Because he’s Troy’s best friend.” She waves a hand toward her brother. “We have dinner every week, ever since we were kids.”
“Don’t blame me,” Troy says, hands up. “You could have totally uninvited us both and I wouldn’t have complained.”
“Don’t be an ass. You know we never miss weekly dinner.”
“You could not invite Ben,” Troy insists. “I wouldn’t care.”
“I have to.”
“Why? You guys drive each other crazy.”
“I know. I should just fuck him and get it over with.”
Troy chokes on his drink and coughs a few times. “Dude,” he says with a grimace, “I don’t want to hear that.”
“What?” She makes a belligerent face at him and takes a swig of her own beer. “Come on, Ruby.”
She grabs my arm and leans in to whisper into my ear as we walk toward the living room. “Mrs. Olsen invited Eleanor. She’s been trying to hook Jared up with her all year. I thought she had given up, but then she called me today and told me Eleanor was coming. You’ll have to tell me what you think later. Any visions of wedding bells when you touch her.” She laughs and waggles her eyebrows at me.
I take a long drink of the beer in my hand.
After a few minutes of chitchat in the living room, the timer on the stove dings, and Tabby calls us into the dining room for dinner.
Mrs. Olsen maneuvers Miss Viola to the table, and then everyone gets situated in their seats. I end up sandwiched between Mrs. Olson and Jared.
There’s a spaghetti casserole that Mrs. Olson made—I know this because she tells me three times between sitting down and passing the dishes around the table—along with a fancy salad that Tabby prepared and garlic bread that Jared brought.
The conversation flows around me as I dish food onto my plate.
“Tabby says you’re psychic,” Mrs. Olsen says to me.
“Ruby’s helping Jared and Troy catch the Castle Cove Bandi
t,” Tabby says.
“How are you helping?” Mrs. Olsen asks.
“Well, it’s a bit complicated.”
“Can you tell the future?”
“I give people readings. I can’t always see specifics, but if people have questions they’re trying to answer, or need guidance in some way, I might be able to help.”
“I have questions. Like why are all these people still single?” She gestures around the room and then looks over at me with a gleam in her eye. “I hear you’re single, too.”
“Um.” I shoot Tabby a dirty look. “Yes,” then carefully add, “but I’m not looking for anything right now.”
Mrs. Olsen harrumphs. “Well. That’s a shame. We’ve run outta females of appropriate age, and this big lug over here”—she points at Troy with her fork—“needs a woman.”
He pauses, his food halfway to his mouth. “What the hell, Grandma?”
She keeps talking. “It’s been forever since we’ve had a wedding here in town. Kids these days either leave or stay here and stay single. It’s terrible.” Her eyes focus like a laser in Jared’s direction. “Like this one here.” She motions to him with her fork. “There’s only a few single women who are nice and have decent jobs, like Eleanor over there.” Eyes swing in that direction.
I feel bad for Eleanor for a moment, she squirms so much under the attention, but Mrs. Olsen doesn’t seem to notice or care. Or both.
I take a long drink of my beer and hope the attention stays off of me.
“But what do they do about it? Nothing.” She harrumphs again. “And don’t get me started on Tabby.” I smother a laugh.
“Grandma,” Tabby says calmly, “I will stab you with my fork.” She holds it up as proof.
The words roll right by Mrs. Olsen. “There’s a fine young man working in her shop. What’s his name? Peter?”
“Jack,” Tabby says through clenched teeth. “And it’s not happening.”
I can’t help but glance over at Ben. He doesn’t show any reaction other than his hand clenching slightly around his fork.
“You young people don’t even date anymore, it’s terrible. Your generation does nothing but Chatbook and Twatter and Snapface.”