by Nina Wright
“Whiskey, that is the absolute least we can do for you. Tate still owes you a formal apology.”
Indeed, he did, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around the kid long enough for him to offer one.
“The reason I’m calling,” Stevie continued, “is that I’d like to buy you lunch.”
“You bought me dinner the other night,” I reminded her.
“Well, that hardly counts, given everything that’s happened.” She lowered her voice. “Listen, Tate is doing community service in addition to making restitution, but I want to personally thank you for your goodwill. You have been so gracious about this.”
“No problem,” I said.
“I wish I could sign you as my Realtor, but I don’t know if I’ll still have a job here next year.”
My ears pricked up in the hope of hearing new gossip that might translate into new clues to the Vreelander case.
“Why? Is the school down-sizing?”
“No. Well, let’s just say that it doesn’t help the career of The Bentwood School’s P.R., Marketing and Recruitment Director when her son, who attends the school, gets arrested.”
“Are you afraid George Bentwood will fire you?”
“He might have to if the PTO pressures him.”
“I thought the police agreed not to press charges, provided you and Tate settle everything with the affected homeowners.”
“That’s true,” Stevie said. “But you know our PTO. If they get a whiff of this, I’m afraid they’ll make such a stink about Tate smearing the school’s reputation that we’ll both be history.”
I didn’t know how to respond. Kimmi, Loralee, and Camo-Mom were only three members of the PTO, but they were the three members I knew and they scared me shitless. All of them were mean, not to mention that I was pretty sure Loralee was a cold-blooded killer.
When I didn’t reply, she said, “Please don’t think I’m trying to make you feel sorry for me. Everybody’s fighting some kind of battle, right? The police have been very reasonable, especially Chief Jenkins. She’s your friend, isn’t she?”
“Jenx and I go way back,” I said.
“I thought so. How’s her investigation into Mark’s death? Does she have a suspect?”
Before I could comment, Stevie said, “Sorry. You’re probably not allowed to say anything, are you?”
“The Michigan State Police took over the case,” I said.
“I see. Well, I hope they catch the guy soon. Just knowing there’s a killer out there makes people nervous. Our whole school is tense.”
“I think the whole town is tense,” I said.
Stevie surprised me with a short laugh. “Yeah, it isn’t just a problem for The Bentwood School, is it? Although, I’ve got to tell you, it’s not helping recruitment.”
“Really? It didn’t happen on your campus, and none of your students got hurt.”
“I know. Once everything settles down, I’m sure we’ll look good again. George is going to be Acting Headmaster for the rest of the school year, and that will give us stability. We’ll launch an official search for Mark’s replacement in the spring.”
She paused.
“Whiskey, I enjoyed our dinner the other night. If this thing with Tate hadn’t happened, I was hoping we could become friends.”
“We still can,” I told her.
“Great. Then I won’t take no for an answer. Even if I can’t buy real estate right now, I can buy you lunch. Today. Would you mind picking me up? We could eat at that new Italian café, if you’re up for it.”
“Sure, I’ve been meaning to try that place. You’re at work?” I said.
“I took another personal day to make sure the handyman I hired finishes all the repairs, but I live on campus, remember?”
I did remember. She told me how to find her cottage and added, “Tate’s back in class today. He’s such a strong kid. Nothing scares him for long.”
Because he’s a sociopath, I thought.
“You know, Tate might be home by the time we finish our lunch,” Stevie continued. “If he is, I’ll have him apologize to you in person.”
I looked forward to that about as much as I looked forward to an episiotomy. When Stevie said she would be ready to go to lunch in an hour, I told her that would work. In the meantime, I would tackle the stack of papers on my desk.
I had barely made a dent in the pile when I heard a knock on my door. Not Odette’s distinct three-rap rhythm but the same knock I used to hear on my locked bedroom door way back in my teen years.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Whitney, there’s something here that requires your attention.”
“Slip it under the door.”
“That’s funny, dear. No, this is something you’ll need to step outside to see.”
“I’m in the middle of a contract. Can it wait?”
“Probably not.”
I heaved the kind of loud, aggrieved sigh that usually belongs to a teenager, before I walked to the door, unlocked it, and cracked it open. My mother stood there smiling.
“What?” I said.
“You’re going to have to come to my desk,” she said. She spun on her neatly pedicured heel and headed for the lobby.
Muttering, I followed her. Even before I reached the front office, I saw what she wanted me to see. Beyond our storefront window, the first blizzard of the season was in progress as a howling wind powered a slanting curtain of white.
But that wasn’t Mom’s point. Standing on the sidewalk in the driving snow with a wide grin on his face and both arms raised, Jeb held up a hand-lettered sign.
I LOVE YOU, WHISKEY HOUSTON HALLORAN MATTIMOE!
PLEASE BE MY WIFE. THIS TIME IT’S FOREVER & EVER!
So help me, I started crying. I—who can scream, barf or faint without warning—almost never cry. Yet now I was bawling. Mom had her arms around me. By god, she was crying, too. Jeb was laughing, but through my tears and the snow, I saw his tears. They coursed down his red cheeks.
“Yes! Yes!” I shouted, nodding my head hard in case he couldn’t hear me.
“That boy has always loved you,” Mom said.
“Only since sixth grade,” I reminded her.
“Whatever. I’m going to be a grandmother! And I win the bet!”
I stepped back. “What bet?”
“Oh, I might as well tell you now. Years and years ago, a bunch of us mothers who had daughters about your age were at a party. We had a few drinks and made some wagers. We bet on whether or not our kids would ever have kids.”
“Wait. The mothers bet on their daughters?”
“Well, sure. Who knows ya better than your mom? Anyhow, I bet that you’d give me a grandchild and a son-in-law even though everybody else bet against you.”
I gaped at my mother for what seemed like a full minute. I could feel the saliva drying in my open mouth.
“Nobody thought I’d even get married?”
“Well, you were always extremely tall,” Mom said. “And flat-chested. Screw ’em. I believed in you. Enough to place a sizable wager.”
“How much?”
She whispered an amount equal to a respectable monthly house payment.
“And it’s been earning interest through the years,” she added, her eyes twinkling.
“Mom, you are something else. I’m just not sure what.”
I doubled over in laughter.
“Oh, look at that,” Mom cried.
Turning my head, I peered sideways through the front window. In the blowing snow, Jeb had adjusted the sign for my ninety-degree viewing angle, and he had turned it over. The flip side read:
NOW LET YOUR MOM GIVE YOU A BRIDAL SHOWER
”Oh no!” I shot straight up and confronted Mom. “No bridal shower! I hate showers. You know that.”
“That’s because you’ve never been to a fun one.”
“There’s no such thing as a ‘fun’ bridal shower.”
“Not true, Whitney, and I can prove it.”
&nbs
p; Jeb pulled open the front door. The wind roared, and he entered in a cloud of cold air and snow. Before I could speak, he had dropped the sign and was holding me. Pressed against mine, his mouth tasted like fresh ice and hot love.
“So you’ll give me the chance to get it right this time?” he whispered.
“Oh yes.”
“Sorry my hands are cold.”
With that he took my left hand in his left hand and, with his right hand, slipped a sparkling diamond solitaire onto the appropriate finger.
“This time you get an engagement ring,” he said.
“A nice one,” I cooed.
It was beyond nice. Although I’m not a girl who knows much about jewels, all girls know something about diamonds. This was a two-carat princess-cut on a platinum band.
“Whitney said yes to the shower, too,” Mom announced.
I hadn’t said yes to that, but Jeb and I were kissing again, so I couldn’t argue.
Behind me, I heard the door open and felt another blast of arctic air.
“This is supposed to be a place of business,” Odette intoned. “Please get a room.”
Still kissing Jeb, I waved my ring finger at her.
“When’s the bridal shower?” she inquired.
“Mom made you say that.”
“Whitney, you know I can’t make anyone do anything,” my mother lied.
Odette, who knows the value of everything, scrutinized my ring. To Jeb she said, “Even if you can’t dress her every day, she will look good in that. We who must work with her thank you.”
When the phone rang, Mom answered it in her perfect office manager mode. She passed it to me.
“I hear congrats are in order,” Jenx said. “About damn time.”
“Did Jeb tell you this was coming down?”
“He didn’t have to. Everybody in town knew he was gonna pop the question. I’m calling about Pauline Vreelander. The docs think she’ll be able to talk soon, so I’m gonna hang around the hospital. I wanna hear how she landed at the bottom of the stairs.”
After I disconnected, Mom reminded me of my lunch date with Stevie. She also checked the Weather Channel. Conditions were supposed to improve soon. While visibility was still a problem, there would be little snow accumulation because the ground was warm. Jeb walked me to my car. Huddling against each other and still holding hands, we forced our way into the wind.
“I love your sign!” I shouted over the roar. “I’ll want to keep that!”
“Howard showed me how to use the table saw in Leo’s workshop. Nice guy. He’ll be good to your mom.”
If the weather had been better, we would have stood outside kissing, and I might have been late for lunch, but that wasn’t a temptation in the howling winter wind. Besides, Jeb had to go fetch Abra from home and take her to her pet psychic session. Sandra was with Anouk already. I tried not to imagine what the Frenchie might psychically impart to her “shrink.” No doubt she’d describe me as the mean stepmother—a role I seemed doomed to repeat. At least my doggie stepdaughter had agreed to get help.
I climbed into my car, waved good-bye to my fiancé, and rolled away toward The Bentwood School, eager to show off my brand-new rock to my brand-new friend.
40
High winds and low visibility meant that I had to concentrate during the drive from downtown Magnet Springs. All I wanted to do was stare at my ring. The vehicle rocked ominously, and I strained to see even two car-lengths ahead through the dense snowfall.
I was about halfway to The Bentwood School, driving less than twenty miles an hour on a rural road, when I passed something low and yellow-gold moving along the berm in same direction I was heading. Both shape and speed were familiar, but the location was wrong. What I had just seen belonged in a containment system. In my front yard.
Swerving sharply off the road, I squinted into my rear-view mirror. Abra appeared again, bursting through the wall of snow, long legs churning. Her ears floated like a shoulder-length mane, and her paws barely struck earth. I admired her timeless grace.
I flung open the door and tackled her.
She didn’t give up without a fight, but the fight was mainly for show, and for our mutual self-respect. If she had simply surrendered, neither of us would have been satisfied. Sandra Bullock notwithstanding, Abra and I needed to keep our relationship spiky. Otherwise, hating the Frenchie would be no fun at all.
A woman wrestling an Afghan hound into her vehicle during a snow squall isn’t a frequent sight, even in Magnet Springs. Hell, I hardly ever caught up with Abra, but to the driver coming toward me on the country road, it must have been a show-stopper. The man in the beat-up black pick-up braked, opened his door and shouted at me through the wind, “Hey, lady! That dog don’t wanna go with you. Try buying a pet!”
I thought about explaining the situation, but really what was the point? He watched for a while, shaking his head at my stubbornness. As if she were a contestant on reality TV, Abra amplified her performance with impressive snarls and lip curls.
“Crazy!” the driver yelled. I knew he meant me.
Finally, the man drove on, and the dog relaxed.
“Happy now?” I said.
Although I was being sarcastic, Abra did seem content stretched out on the back seat. I noticed that the “containment collar” was gone, proving that Jeb had a few things to learn about this beast. She wore Leo’s rhinestone-studded collar, a gift from the one human she would always adore, the good man who never came back. I hoped she would come to love Jeb, too.
That thought, plus estrogen in overdrive, made me suddenly weepy. I got past it by looking again at the new ornament on my hand. It wasn’t the diamond that mattered; it was Jeb. Somehow he had kept on loving me through rages and across miles, all the way home again, and now we were building a family together. Just like Irene Houston had wagered we would. Besides having a baby, we were adopting two dogs who happened to hate each other, which reminded me that Abra was supposed to be on her way to pet psychic therapy.
“No wonder you bolted,” I said over my shoulder just as my cell phone rang.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Jeb began.
“Yes, I will, but you’re not going to believe this.”
I told him my story first in order to relieve his pain. Jeb had returned to Vestige to find the front yard Abra-free. At first he thought he just couldn’t see her through the veil of snow, then he decided she must have returned, via the doggie flap, to our warm dry kitchen. Sure enough, her “containment collar” was in the kitchen, but not her royal highness.
“I can’t figure out how she got it off,” Jeb said.
“Here’s everything you need to know about that: she’s an Afghan hound, the Houdini of dog breeds.”
Jeb pointed out that she was due at Anouk’s within an hour. For a musician, my fiancé often exhibited an amazing awareness of time. Because I didn’t want to be late for Stevie, and he didn’t want to keep Anouk waiting, we crafted a plan. Jeb would drive to The Bentwood School and transfer Abra from my vehicle to his. According to Stevie’s directions, I would have to park in the school lot and walk about a hundred yards to her cottage on campus. Jeb would probably arrive minutes after I got there; I would leave my car unlocked so that he could unload the furry cargo. Man and dog would be gone by the time Stevie and I left for lunch.
Abra had spent herself on the run from Vestige and the faux fight with me. When I pulled into The Bentwood School lot, she was sleeping so hard that she didn’t respond to the vehicle’s stopping. Typically she was ready to tear out the door the instant I applied the brakes.
Thick snow was still flying in a gusty wind, making it hard to see even as far as the main building on campus. The grand Victorian mansion loomed ahead of me like a pale shadow. I shook off a flash of creepiness by reminding myself that the building was filled with children.
Stevie had told me to follow the sidewalk around the right side of the mansion to the quadrangle in the back. Her cottage wou
ld be the second structure on my right, just past Alumni Hall. I gave thanks that the wind and snow were at my back, pushing me along and making it slightly less difficult to see. Passing the mansion, I noticed that the windows were too high for me to peer inside. Idly I wondered which classroom Chester was in right now, and which room Tate was in.
A long low frame building—yellow with pale blue trim, like the school—hove into view. This had to be Alumni Hall, plain and functional. Was it used as a gathering place for self-congratulatory graduates? More likely, alumni had donated the funds to construct it, and the building housed auxiliary classrooms or maybe a meeting space.
Beyond it, as Stevie had promised, lay her house. Drawing close, I could appreciate how quaint it was. Designed to resemble a small English cottage, it, too, featured the school’s colors in the yellow wood siding, pale blue shutters and blue peaked roof.
Curtains were drawn in the windows. A sign only slightly smaller than the one Jeb had used to propose hung next to the front door.
YALE COTTAGE
Aha, I thought, as I rang the bell. Here was another misrepresentation, or perhaps not. If the data on the flash drive were accurate, only the latest Bentwood had failed at that fine institution. For all I knew, back in the glory days of George’s family and their school, many alumni may have graduated from Ivy League colleges.
Stevie’s face registered surprise when she opened the door.
“Am I early?” I said.
“No. Your hair is full of snow.” She laughed. “I didn’t know the weather had changed. I’ve been on the computer. Come in and sit down. You need to get warm.”
The door opened directly into a comfy living room, appointed in floral patterns and overstuffed upholstery. All that it lacked was a roaring fire in the country-style hearth. Stevie indicated the wood already in place.
“If you have time after lunch, I’d like to light that,” she said. “We can have coffee or hot chocolate.”
She asked if I were still willing to drive to the Italian café. I was; I didn’t expect the storm to worsen.
“I hear their ravioli alla ricotta is to die for,” Stevie said.