by Joan Rylen
“Good night,” Vivian and Wendy said in unison. They looked at each other, eyes wide, and said nothing for a while, waiting for Tracy and Brandon to get out of earshot.
“Holy crap, what do you make of that?” Wendy whispered.
“Do you think he heard us?”
There was a bang from inside, like something heavy fell or a door slammed. Raised voices came from the house.
“He must have,” Wendy said.
“I wonder if Kate’s asleep,” Vivian said.
“If she is, she may not be for long.”
The yelling continued for a few minutes. Wendy and Vivian sat on the porch, not saying a word. An engine started and tires squealed, then a vehicle raced down the driveway.
“Somebody’s in a hurry,” Wendy said and stood.
“Probably a good idea,” Vivian said, then she stood and tossed the remainder of her wine over the porch railing. “Let’s go to bed.”
They crept upstairs and found Kate snoring away.
“Guess they didn’t bother Sleeping Beauty over there,” Wendy giggled.
“I feel kinda bad,” Vivian said, “like it’s our fault Tracy and Brandon are fighting.”
Wendy contemplated that. “He’s under a lot of stress, I’m sure. Maybe it just touched a nerve that short-circuited, then went haywire.”
Vivian shrugged and started to walk into the bathroom.
“Let me hop in here real quick,” Wendy said. She emerged five minutes later in hot pink pajamas and wearing her glasses. “Goodnight.”
“Night.” Vivian went and brushed her teeth. Her tongue was a deep shade of purple from the wine. She ran hot water on her washcloth, squeezed it out, then lay it on her face to steam. She repeated the process two more times, then gave her face a good examination in the mirror.
A tiny little wrinkle marred the right side of her nose. I’ve got to start sleeping on my back. She was convinced it had developed because she slept on that side of her face most of the time. I know that’s it, she thought and ran water in the tub. She soaked for 20 minutes, then got out and dried off. She considered pajamas but then decided against it since Lucy wasn’t there. She crawled into bed naked, scooted to the middle and spread out.
She lay there for a while, thinking about the day. The alarm of Lucy being gone, the fall festival and seeing Larson, meeting Nicole, the print shop, Tracy and Brandon fighting. She went back to thoughts of Larson and how sexy he looked at the pumpkin drop. He was right up her alley. I bet he knows the intricacies of putting out all sorts of fires. Her hand slid down to her waist and lingered on her tummy. I’ve got a bit of a fire going on.
Lights passed through the bedroom and an engine sounded below the window. Vivian got up and peeked through the lace curtains.
To her surprise, Tracy stepped out of a Honda Accord and headed toward the house.
A cold breeze passed through the room, the chill causing Vivian to jump back into bed. She laid there, covers pulled to her eyes, listening to every step Tracy took, from the back door to the bedroom. Low murmurs passed through the walls, and soon after, the rhythmic thump of hard sex.
Vivian snickered as she rolled over and settled into her pillow. After a good half hour of listening to pants and moans, she grabbed Lucy’s empty pillow and shoved it over her head.
Enough of the makeup sex already!
27
Day 4
The squawk of perky birds once again woke Vivian and she rolled over, pulling the covers over her head. She glanced at the clock, 8:12 a.m. She could just hear Lucy yammering at her to get up and get moving. She rolled over again and grabbed Lucy’s vacated pillow and stuffed it between her knees. Ahhh, that’s better.
The pillow helped align her back, which hadn’t been the same since the twins. Lucy’s not here so I can steal her pillow. Damn… Lucy’s not here. The revelation propelled Vivian out of bed. She threw on pajamas, then shuffled into Kate and Wendy’s room and started clapping her hands.
“Up and at ’em! Time to rise and shine!”
Kate threw off her covers and padded to the bathroom. “Mornin’! I’m already awake and hungry. I’ll be ready for breakfast in 20.”
Wendy pulled her eye mask down further and snuggled into her covers. “What’s the rush? What are we doing today?”
Vivian leapt onto the bed and started jumping up and down. “In honor of Lucy, we should grab a quick, semi-healthy breakfast and then go carry rocks around or something, get some exercise.”
“If Lucy wanted us to do that, she shouldn’t have left us,” Wendy said and made no move to get up.
Vivian hit her with Kate’s pillow. “Wendy, get up!” Pow! She smacked her again. “You need to call sexy-beast Wade first thing.”
Wendy threw off her eye mask, snatched her pillow and hit Vivian. “You sure we should call Agent Nelson and not Antonio’s FBI contact?”
Vivian was tempted to smack Wendy again with the pillow, but grabbed Wendy’s phone off the nightstand and handed it to her instead. “I saw the way Wade looked at you. He really cared about you. Antonio may have some pull, but Wade would be willing to help you more than some random FBI agent that’s super busy.”
Wendy sat up and cleared her throat before dialing. She put the phone on speaker when Wade answered. Vivian could picture his broad shoulders, green eyes and dark brown hair.
“Nelson.”
“Hey Wade, it’s Wendy Schreiber.”
He paused. “Good to hear from you. How’ve you been?”
They chatted for a minute before Wendy got to the purpose of the call. Wade already knew she and Jake were engaged and now she filled him in on Jake’s disappearance, the other cellphone, fake name and the bio behind it.
“I asked a cop friend of mine in New Orleans to look into this yesterday and he suggested I contact the FBI for help. I don’t want to get you into any trouble, but could you look into any of this for me? Something is really wrong and I’m sick to death with worry. Jake is not the kind of man to just up and disappear, leave his family,” she paused, “or me.”
“There are a few avenues I can look into. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
“Thank you, Wade.”
“Of course, anything for you.” Click.
Wendy set the phone on the nightstand and swung her feet off the bed but didn’t get up. She gazed at the ground, then looked up at Vivian with misty eyes. “What if he can’t find anything?”
“He will. I just know it. Now let’s get ready to kick butt today.” Vivian opened Wendy’s drawer and threw a bra at her.
Wendy caught it with one hand and smacked Vivian with a pillow in the other. Wendy ran into the bathroom before Vivian could really get the pillow fight going. Wendy’s feistiness was good, but Vivian wanted the last smack.
The girls got ready and went down for breakfast. Brandon greeted them in the dining room wearing an apron with flames on it that read “Hot! Hot! Hot!”
“Good morning,” he said, spatula in hand. “We’re serving up waffles with locally bottled maple syrup, sausage and bacon. Be ready shortly.” He set down the butter dish and went back into the kitchen.
Wendy made herself and Kate a cup of coffee while Vivian dunked a tea bag in hot water. They sat down at the table and looked out the window at the lake.
“Y’all up for a walk after breakfast?” Vivian asked. “Maybe not up to Lucy standards, but still get us moving?”
Wendy nodded but Kate said, “I didn’t sleep so good. I might want to take a nap after I eat.”
“But we just got up!” Vivian noticed dark circles under Kate’s eyes. “Why didn’t you sleep?”
“I had a visit from my grandmother last night. She gave me a cryptic message.”
“Oh, lord,” Wendy said. “Two strange death dreams and now a visit from a dead relative. There’s something’s strange about this house.”
Tracy walked in carrying a big plate stacked with waffles. “Hi, there. Who’s hungry?”
<
br /> Vivian hoped Tracy hadn’t heard that. “I’m starting to think we’re the strange ones, especially Kate with those dreams!”
“This dream didn’t make any sense, so I don’t know why it kept me up, but it did.” Kate stabbed a waffle and put it on her plate before continuing, “I wrote it down.” She pulled out an old receipt from her pocket. “ ‘Water and dirt make mud, but flames singe the heart. The book holds the key to the senior moment.’ See. Complete nonsense.”
Vivian politely waved off the waffles and spooned fruit onto her plate. Tracy fumbled the plate as she tried to put it down in the middle of the table. Vivian grabbed it and as she did noticed that Tracy’s two middle fingers on her left hand were taped together. “Did you jam your fingers?”
“I tripped in the kitchen early this morning and bent them backward. Don’t think they’re broken. I’ve done that before and it sure hurts.” She scurried toward the kitchen.
Vivian leaned across the table toward Kate and Wendy. “I wonder if that’s true.”
“She and Brandon don’t seem to have the best relationship,” Kate said. “Do you think he pushed her and she fell?”
“They sure did let each other have it last night,” Wendy said, “but then there was the boom-chica-bao-bao going on.”
Vivian snickered. “I heard that, too.” She opened a yogurt and dropped three grapes into it. “That would be some pretty rough lovin’. Maybe it was an accident.”
“I’d accidentally break a few of his fingers, and his face, if he did that to me,” Kate said.
“Back to your dream, Kate,” Vivian said. “What was it exactly? Let me see that note.”
Kate repeated the message and handed over the receipt. “Best I can figure, she’s talking about Brandon’s first wife’s drowning with the water and his second wife being buried with the dirt, but I don’t understand the rest of the message at all.”
“I agree with you,” Wendy said. “What flames have we seen on this trip?” She took a sip of her coffee as Brandon walked into the room. Wendy spewed coffee everywhere, then coughed.
Brandon grabbed a couple of napkins and handed them to her. “You okay?” He patted her on the back.
She coughed a few more times and gave a thumbs up.
“We haven’t had a guest croak on us yet. I’d rather you not be the first.”
Vivian’s eyes got big and she mouthed ‘Oh my god’ to Kate as Brandon set down a plate of bacon and sausage.
“How is everything?”
The girls all nodded their approval, no one able to say anything.
Vivian waited for him to return to the kitchen before busting out laughing. “There were some flames!”
Kate picked up a piece of bacon. “I actually like that apron.”
Wendy blotted the coffee off of her waffle. “He’s awfully cheery for a guy who just received confirmation that his wife is dead.”
“Maybe it’s a relief to finally know for sure,” Kate said. “I mean, he’s been living in limbo for years.”
“Unless he knew all along,” Wendy countered. “It’s not too late to check out, you know.”
Brandon walked back into the room with a pitcher of milk. “I always like milk with my pancakes. Any takers?”
Vivian nodded yes.
Brandon poured Vivian a small glass of milk and set the pitcher beside her and walked out.
“Holy shit, he almost walked in at the wrong time,” Vivian said. “Think he heard us talking?”
“He didn’t act like it,” Kate said. “Tracy’s the one with broken fingers and bruises.”
“If we’re staying, we need to search this house,” Wendy said. “Something strange is going on here. Two dead wives and a bruised and broken third? It ain’t right.”
Kate looked at her. “Do you think…?”
Wendy shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Brandon seems nice enough to us, but he was an ass to Tracy last night, and then what’s with the other two wives?”
Vivian talked around her final bites of yogurt. “I can see an accident, like a drowning, happening, but the missing wife turning up dead and buried, that is beyond weird. We can’t put Little Plum into jeopardy.”
Kate shoveled another piece of sausage onto her plate. “Like I said, if I felt like we were in danger we’d be out of here. Something’s strange, but I don’t think we need to leave.” She sniffed the air. “Y’all smell that?”
Vivian sniffed a couple of times. “All I smell is delicious maple syrup. This fruit’s not cutting it.”
Wendy pushed her plate away, alarmed. “It’s smoke. Something’s on fire!”
28
Vivian got up from the dining room table and looked outside. “No need to freak out, the fire’s outside.” She sat back down and polished off her milk. “I wish I could do that at my house. Instead I fill up a hundred bags. Seriously.”
Eighty yards from the house, a big pile of leaves was smoking and flames licked up one side. Brandon walked out from behind the pile squirting lighter fluid on the leaves.
“Geez,” Kate said, standing next to the window. “For a second, I was afraid the house was on fire. Old wiring, you know?”
Tracy bustled through the kitchen door again and picked up the breakfast dishes. “I’ll be heading into town for a while this morning. Can I get you anything before I go? Brandon will be busy burning leaves and branches around the property.”
The girls looked at each other, and no one said anything. Finally, Wendy answered, “We’re good, thanks.”
Tracy struggled to pick up their three plates plus the waffle platter and coffee cups, so Vivian pitched in and helped her to the kitchen with the dishes.
“Y’all usually burn leaves here?” she asked. “We just have to rake them into bags and they get picked up.”
Tracy set the dishes on the counter. “They pile up this time of year, and if we don’t keep up with them, they’d just about bury the house. No leaf-pick-up service around here. We just have to burn them. Safely, of course.”
“That smell makes me crave s’mores.”
“What are you girls going to do today?”
“Larson is taking us out on the lake later this afternoon in his boat. We’re going on a walk around here for now, get some exercise.”
“The smoke from the leaves can be pretty thick with all the piles we’ve got, but I have a couple of ATVs you can ride.”
“Kate probably shouldn’t ride those, being pregnant and all. We’ll figure out something. Thanks, though.” Vivian left the kitchen and joined Kate and Wendy upstairs.
Kate lay on the bed and Wendy had her laptop open, clicking away. Vivian walked to the closet and opened the door. “I know just the place to start the house search.” She knelt down and tugged on the crawl space door. “I didn’t see this until yesterday after Lucy took her suitcase.” It didn’t open easily, and Vivian fell back on her butt when it finally gave.
“What are you doing?” Kate walked up behind her and peered into the closet. “Oh.”
Vivian looked through the door at a couple of boxes, some cobwebs and darkness. “I’m not crawling in there.” She took a sniff. “Musty and full of spiders. No way.”
“Me, neither.” Kate smiled and rubbed her belly.
Wendy moved around Kate and stood behind Vivian. “Good find, Viv! Nobody has to go in there, I can reach the boxes. Let’s snoop.”
Wendy reached for the top of the two boxes and pulled it toward her. It moved easily but kicked up dust, making her sneeze. She got it through the door and set it on the empty luggage rack next to the closet. Then she grabbed the other.
Kate locked the door to both rooms. “I know Tracy’s gone and Brandon’s burning leaves, but just in case!”
Vivian coughed as she opened the flaps to the top box, then brushed off her hands before reaching in and picking up an old framed picture of a little girl riding a tricycle. Several more pictures of the same girl progressively aging were in the box, along with a porc
elain-faced, blonde-haired baby doll. “I’m not picking her up.”
“This old thing?” Kate asked, grabbing the doll. The eyes rolled back in the head, and Vivian yanked the doll out of Kate’s hands and tossed it back into the box.
“Don’t touch her. She’s evil looking. You don’t want to bring bad things to you and Little Plum!”
Kate laughed and reached for the doll again.
Vivian slapped at her hand. “I’m serious. She’s creepy. Leave her alone.”
Wendy picked up a picture of a girl skiing on a lake and took the cover off the back. “Says ‘Mary Beth, age 14.’ Looks like she knew what she was doing.”
Kate reached in the box for a white, satin photo album trimmed in lace. A big puffy heart on the front read “Our Wedding Day.” She opened the album and looked at several of the pictures, then turned it to show Vivian and Wendy. “Look at this.”
Brandon and Mary Beth stood frozen in time, hand in hand, wearing tux and gown at a church altar. Her face was draped in a veil, and she carried a colorful bouquet of flowers. A brass candelabra with 12-inch tapers glowed behind them.
“Brandon looks so young,” Wendy said. “Almost like a teenager.”
“They both do,” Kate said.
The girls flipped through the entire album.
“How long ago do you think this was?” Vivian asked.
Kate turned to the back where an invitation had been carefully laminated, surrounded by dried flowers. “Fourteen years ago.”
“Wow, three wives and he’s not even 40!” Vivian closed the album, and a plume of dust shot into her face.
Wendy coughed. “Yeah, and two of them are dead.”
Kate set the invitation in the box, then closed up the remnants of Mary Beth’s life. “I think it’s sweet that he kept these, but I guess it’s hard to just throw away your past loves and your wedding photos.”
Wendy put the box back into the crawl space. “Yeah, but why here and not in a desk or cabinet or somewhere more normal?”