“Interesting how?”
Kay held out one of the statements for Claire to look at.
“Marigold Lawson?” Claire asked. “What is she doing mixed up with Stuart and Knox?”
“Well, from what I can tell, Knox and Stuart have been paying into this account for two years, but only Marigold has taken any money out.”
“Campaign slush fund?”
“Except I don’t think that two years ago Marigold was planning to run for mayor,” Kay said. “Stuart’s wife, Peg, was slated to run, because they always alternated their four-year terms.”
“So what kind of dirt did Marigold have on Stuart and Knox that would compel them to pay her this kind of blackmail money?”
Kay shrugged.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“I bet she didn’t disclose it when she signed up to run for mayor.”
“Probably not,” Kay said, “which puts me in sort of a picklish spot.”
“Did you tell the feds about this?”
She shook her head.
“Before he left office, I snagged these out of Stuart’s briefcase and copied them,” Kay said. “I couldn’t very well admit that, could I?”
“You sneaky devil.”
“Listen,” Kay said. “Stuart and Knox are facing federal charges. They would love nothing better than for me to take the fall. Nobody’s going to protect me, so I have to take care of myself; and if that means I have to play their game better than they do, well …”
“You want me to find out what the bank account’s for.”
“It’s a lot to ask.”
“I’ll do it,” Claire said. “Evidently, I’m a bird dog that needs to hunt.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Claire said. “Listen, I have some bad news about Diedre.”
“I already heard about it,” Kay said. “What a terrible way to die; all alone with no one knowing where she was.”
“You should have seen those storage units,” Claire said. “You wouldn’t believe how much that woman had in there; no rhyme nor reason, just stuffed in there like garbage.”
“Some sort of obsession, I guess,” Kay said. “My parents never threw away anything useful because they had been through the Great Depression. Papa bent old nails back straight, put them in a coffee can, and Mama kept used buttons in a jar. She used the fabric from old clothes for quilts and canned everything grown in our garden.”
“This is different,” Claire said. “I’m kind of a shopaholic, but I take good care of what I buy: clothes, shoes, handbags, jewelry, accessories, makeup … listen to me; even talking about shopping gets me excited. But my point is, my closet in the L.A. condo was more of a shrine than clothes storage. Diedre’s stuff looked like a mass of junk.”
“It’s a shame,” Kay said. “I feel sorry for her family.”
“Well, I’m just going to say it,” Claire said. “This means Matt’s free.”
“Nope,” Kay said. “I’m not going there.”
“All right,” Claire said. “But I know you’ve thought about it.”
CHAPTER 5
Once again, Kay woke up to the sound of someone doing something to her house. It was six a.m. This time, she took care to brush her hair and put on some clothes before she ventured outside.
Sonny’s truck was parked outside, and his feet were sticking out between the hollyhocks and foxglove, from underneath the crawlspace of the house. Kay stooped down and tapped his boot.
“You want some coffee?” she asked.
“Yes, in a minute,” he responded.
“Come in whenever you’re ready,” she told him.
Kay sang as she started preparing breakfast for him, noticed what she was singing, and rolled her eyes at herself. There was something about making a big breakfast for a big man she knew would appreciate it that tickled her, and she was amused by that. Although she vociferously defended the rights of women to do anything men did and get paid the same for doing it, and she wouldn’t want to make taking care of a man the central focus of her life, still she was enjoying this little taste of domesticity.
When Sonny came in, he unlaced his boots and pulled them off. She noticed he had a hole in the toe of one of his socks. Although she noticed, she did not offer to sew it up for him. There were limits, apparently, to this homemaking urge she was feeling.
“That smells wonderful,” he said, and rubbed his hands together.
“Wash your hands, please,” she said.
He went down the hall to the bathroom and when he came back, he said, “I’ll bring you a new refill valve assembly this evening.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Kay said. “Be sure to add that to my tab.”
He tucked a napkin into the neck of his blue work shirt, took up his knife and fork, and then looked at Kay.
“I could get used to this,” he said, and winked at her.
“Oh, go on,” Kay said, but she could feel her face flush.
He made multiple happy sounds as he consumed everything on his plate, and was pleased to accept seconds of everything.
“I guess you heard about Diedre,” he said.
“It’s an awful thing to have happen,” Kay said. “I planned to send a box from the bakery over to Matt’s later today.”
“Three storage units, that woman had; filled to the ceiling with other people’s junk. Laurie said she must have been trying to get a treadle sewing machine up on top of something and it fell on her.”
“I hope she didn’t suffer.”
“They said she died almost instantly.”
“That’s a small blessing, then.”
“I can say this to you, because you know the situation: they did not have a happy marriage. Never did.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“With our church, you know how it is; Matty couldn’t do anything but what he did, which was bear it as best he could. There’s no way out for us, no full pardons for good behavior. My name is mud over there, on account of Karla, and that wasn’t even my fault. My mother wanted me to get an annulment, but what would that say to my girls? Me and your mother were only kidding about our marriage, we didn’t mean it? No, thank you, I said. I haven’t been back to Mass since then.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kay said. “I can’t imagine giving up my church; it would be like divorcing my family.”
“They’ll be lining up for Matty, though,” Sonny said. “There’ll be casseroles and homemade preserves as far as the eye can see. That’s the difference between death and divorce.”
“He will need the support of his church family,” Kay said. “It may help him.”
“I hope he can have some peace now,” Sonny said. “The best thing he can do for that house is set it on fire. The cigarette smoke is in the plaster; he’ll never get it out. The junk can be hauled away, but if I were him, I’d tear it down and build a new house. Or sell it. There can’t be any good memories there.”
“But their daughter might have some.”
“No,” Sonny said as he shook his head. “Nobody was ever happy in that house.”
“When’s the funeral?”
“Tomorrow,” Sonny said. “You going?”
“No, I don’t think I will,” Kay said. “I’ll send some flowers.”
“You know, this makes my brother a single man, a widower.”
“That was over a long time ago.”
“I wondered.”
“That’s ancient history,” Kay said. “We’re all different people now.”
“I like how you turned out,” Sonny said. “I hope you don’t mind me saying.”
“I don’t mind it,” Kay said. “I like how you turned out, too.”
“I’m gonna make a list of everything that’s wrong with your house, and you and I can prioritize it,” he said. “Maybe over dinner some night, somewhere nice.”
“I’d like that,” Kay said.
“Good,” he said, and thumped the table for emphas
is. “I’ll have my people call your people.”
Kay laughed.
“Now that’s what I like to hear,” he said.
Kay liked it, too.
There they were.
Claire had scoured the Internet for over an hour and finally beheld them, the perfect shoes; impossibly steep, wickedly black, plenty of toe cleavage, with the requisite red sole. Not likely to be invited to a gala event or premiere any time soon, Claire, of course, had no place to wear them, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was the time it took to search for them, the thrill of finding them so heavily discounted, with free shipping, in her size, in the color she wanted, and the surge of pleasure she got when she clicked on the red rectangle marked “place order.”
If she were a smoker, she would have lit up afterward.
Now what?
Despite her intention not to, she had already caught up on all the latest celebrity gossip that didn’t concern her previous employer. It had only been a few months since she was employed as the assistant to that aging Hollywood she-devil, Sloan Merryweather, and already there were names she didn’t recognize slated to perform in films she’d never heard of. She would soon be just like everyone else, with no insider knowledge or connections.
It didn’t take long to become irrelevant in that world; it could happen over a weekend during which your latest film tanked, or the morning after an ill-advised drunken post on a social media site. Fans were fickle and apt to turn on you, and industry power players only cared about the bottom line, either the insatiable one in their pants or the career-making one on the profit and loss spreadsheet. If you weren’t making them rich, you had better be young, attractive, and willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to make it.
Claire looked around Sean’s office, where every flat surface was covered in sawdust from Pip’s circular saw. Pip hadn’t bothered to show up yet, probably wouldn’t now, especially since the cloudless sky was bright blue and the temperature hovered in the mid-seventies. Just as well, she thought. She was kind of glad for a reprieve from the whine of the power tools and the whine of Pip begging her for more money.
Claire closed the web browser, stood up and went out the open front door. Right before noon, the streets and sidewalks of Rose Hill Avenue were busy, with plenty of tourists dressed in the expensive designer version of outdoor sporting apparel, and wealthy parents shepherding their teenagers to Eldridge College orientation events. Claire recognized the frustrated sense of entitlement on display as the impatient parents negotiated the tiny town, so lacking in valet parking, chain coffee shops, and expensive antique stores, and not nearly quaint enough to warrant a longer stay than was absolutely necessary.
She considered dragging the table outside again to watch the parade, but felt too deflated, too lethargic to bother.
‘Am I depressed?’ she wondered.
Bored was more accurate.
She still hadn’t heard from the human resources office at Eldridge, and although she loved her cousin Sean, she regretted her offer to babysit his office space until he returned from the beach. More than anything, she missed Maggie and Hannah, more like best friends than first cousins.
“You look like you want to kick someone,” Laurie said, interrupting her brooding. “I hope it’s not me.”
“No,” Claire said. “I’m bored.”
“Good,” he said. “Close up shop and come have lunch with me.”
“Did you find Diedre’s car?”
“Is lunch conditional upon that?”
“No, I was just wondering.”
“Why you are so worried about that poor woman’s car, I’m sure I don’t know.”
“It bothers me,” Claire said. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Not in the least,” Laurie said. “Stolen, probably, or rolled over the hill behind the storage unit; I didn’t bother to look. Found or not, she’s still dead, killed by her addiction to acquiring other people’s junk, for feck’s sake, and I don’t think finding her ratty old clunker is a good use of my staff’s time, even if Itchy or Scratchy had a clue how to go about it.”
“I don’t know why it bothers me,” Claire said. “It just does.”
“You should be an investigative reporter,” Laurie said. “Maybe your boyfriend, Mr. Pulitzer, could employ you as an intern at the erstwhile Sentinel. Considering the average age of his subscribers it should be called the Incontinent.”
“I’m used to being much busier than I am right now,” she said. “I need a project.”
He spread his arms wide.
“And here I am, desperately in need of organizing.”
“No, really,” she said.
“But I’m completely serious,” he said. “I’m starting a new job on Monday and I need somewhere to live, some decent clothing, and a haircut.”
“Scott will probably let you rent his place as long as you want,” she said. “I can help you with the clothes and the haircut.”
“So let us convene in yonder bistro, where I’ll buy you a well-organized salad with the dreaded dressing on the side,” he said. “We’ll make a list and then prioritize it.”
“You’re patronizing me,” she said.
“Only a little,” he said.
“I’m having lunch with Kay,” she said.
“Then dinner,” he said.
“I have to stay in with Dad tonight,” she said. “Melissa has been generous, but I don’t want to take advantage of her.”
“Then let me bring dinner to you and your father,” he said. “Say sixish?”
“You don’t know how he is now,” she said. “He’s not the man you remember and he may not remember you.”
“I’ll go with the flow,” he said. “If it upsets him for me to be there, I’ll leave.”
There was a screech of tires and a bang as two vehicles collided at the sole traffic light in town. Laurie closed his eyes and groaned.
“Is it bad?” he asked her. “You look. I don’t want to.”
“It’s tourist on tourist, not local,” she said. “Out-of-state plates, luxury car and SUV.”
“I guess I better get involved,” he said. “No sense in bothering Miss Marple or Monsieur Poirot.”
“Sorry you hate your job so much.”
“I wish with all my heart I had become a history professor,” he said. “See you later.”
Kay had a small table set for lunch on her front porch. A steady breeze carried with it the scent of honeysuckle and newly mown grass, and the sky was a brilliant blue. Bees were hovering around the flowers she had planted by the porch; they especially seemed to love the purple cone flower and Shasta daisies. Multi-colored hollyhocks waved in the breeze; the Heavenly Blue morning glories that twined up the trellis were just about to close for the day.
Kay took a deep breath of fresh air and allowed herself a moment to enjoy the simple pleasures of a good front porch. She wished she could curl up on the glider with a book and an iced tea and not have to go back to work this afternoon.
As soon as Kay went back to the kitchen to fetch the iced tea, there was a knock on the front door.
“You’re early,” she called out, as she wiped her hands on her apron and went to greet Claire.
But it was Matt Delvecchio peering in through the screened door.
Kay’s heart beat faster, as it always did when she saw him. She had been thinking about him more than usual since his wife disappeared, and even more so after word came that Diedre had died. She had always been careful to maintain a cordial distance between Matt and herself, since everybody above a certain age in Rose Hill knew what had happened between them in high school; in a small town, no news was old news. You were your past, for better or worse, as long as you lived there.
“I guess you were expecting someone else,” he said, and Kay thought she detected an accusation in his tone.
“Claire is coming for lunch,” she said, as she opened the screen door.
Matt stepped in and Kay realized she had bee
n holding her breath.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” Kay said. “Come in and have some iced tea; I was about to pour myself some and there’s plenty.”
Matt sat down on one side of her kitchen booth and Kay poured some Blackberry Sage tea over cubes in a glass.
“This is good,” he said after he tasted it.
“It’s decaf,” she said. “I had to give up the good stuff when I got high blood pressure.”
“It’s hell getting old, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she said as she sat down across from him. “How’re you doing, Matt?”
“It was a shock,” he said. “Not knowing where she was, and then, well …”
He looked out the window, his eyes shiny with tears. It was all Kay could do not to put her hand over his. She handed him a tissue instead.
“How’s Tina doing?” Kay asked him.
“She’s on her way,” he said. “My mother’s taking care of everything.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kay said. “It’s a terrible thing to have happen.”
“She was a pack rat, you know that,” he said. “Everybody knew it. She couldn’t help herself. I tried everything; she wouldn’t talk to Father Stephen about it, and if I tried to get rid of anything she’d just about have a stroke. A few years ago one of her stacks of junk fell over and killed our cat. After that happened I gave her an ultimatum; not one more thing could come into that house that we didn’t eat or wear. It seemed to get better after that. I didn’t know she had found other places to put it all. I had no idea she had rented those storage units. It’s embarrassing. It looks like I didn’t know my own wife.”
“It’s an illness,” Kay said. “She couldn’t help it.”
“If you want to know what I think, it was the devil,” he said.
“Oh, now, no,” Kay said. “You don’t really believe that.”
“I do,” he said. “Or it was God punishing us for the sin we committed when Tina was conceived out of wedlock.”
Hollyhock Ridge Page 10