Mookie got out of the car and loped into the Superette. Sonya pulled some papers out of her leather briefcase and shuffled them importantly. “I’m figuring we’ll contact the schoolteacher as soon as we get checked in,” she told him.
“Where are we staying?” Once upon a time, Derrick stayed only in three-star or better hotels. During his long climb from hellhole ratings to syndication, he’d learned to be content in chain motels. But if the motels he’d noticed on the outskirts of Rockwell belonged to any chain, it was the “Quickie Adultery” chain.
“I got us rooms in a bed-and-breakfast right in town,” Sonya told him without looking up from her papers. “The Hope Street Inn. I checked it out on the Internet. It looked cute.”
Just what he needed—a cute place to stay. “The Hope Street Inn sounds like a halfway house. Maybe a battered women’s shelter.”
“They’ve got private bathrooms, and fresh coffee and pastries in the morning. And the price fit into our budget. So—” she jotted something on one of the papers “—we’ll check in and then we’ll set things up with the teacher. I wanna get first crack at her, see if we can get her to agree to an exclusive.”
“Is she pretty?” Derrick asked. His curiosity was strictly professional; her appearance would influence how he approached her and how they filmed the story.
Sonya fished a file folder from her briefcase and pulled out some papers. “Here’s a photocopy of the original story in the Rockwell Gazette,” she said, handing him one sheet. “From other sources, I got that she’s twenty-seven, grew up in Brookline—not Brooklyn, Brookline. It’s a suburb of Boston.”
“What am I, an idiot?”
Sonya didn’t bother to answer that question. “She earned her undergraduate degree in English at Harvard, then got a masters of arts in teaching at Brown. Veddy veddy Ivy.”
“And she wound up in this rat hole. I’m glad I didn’t waste all that money getting a Harvard education.”
“Single, no kids, no pets. In high school she was the captain of the girls’ volleyball team, she served on the student senate and she did debate. While at Harvard, she coordinated a bunch of community-service stuff—a literacy project, a program that got uninsured city kids vaccinated. She sounds like a do-gooder.”
Nodding, Derrick glanced at the picture of her from the Rockwell Gazette story. If she was nice-looking, he sure couldn’t tell from the photo. It was smudgy and blurry. About all he could say with certainty was that she had dark hair.
When it came to interviewing women, he approached the beautiful ones in a flattering way. They knew they were gorgeous, and if he conveyed that he knew it, too, they believed he shared their worldview and were happy to open up to him. With plain-looking women, his strategy was different. He had to be more businesslike, less personable. If he flattered too much, they’d think he was a phony and refuse to open up.
In the case of Erica Leitner, he couldn’t be too hard-hitting. She was an overeducated bleeding heart. If he went at her aggressively, she’d shut him out. He had to approach her like a fellow Good Samaritan, interested in helping poor, uninoculated children and solving the mystery of the incredible box she’d dug out of her garden.
“The most important thing,” Sonya went on, “is to make sure she opens the box on camera—for us alone. If there’s a million dollars in there, I want the exclusive. You up for that, Derrick?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
Mookie emerged from the store, carrying a paper bag. Derrick’s spirits improved marginally. “Any luck?” he asked as Mookie slid behind the wheel.
“They had Johnny Walker, Derrick. Sorry.”
“Red or Black?”
“Red.”
Derrick let out a disgusted breath. Johnny Walker Red. Not even Black. The sooner they got this story and left, the happier he would be.
FERN HAD CLAIMED she wanted to see the box, but Erica suspected that she might have another agenda.
“We’ll make pasta,” she’d suggested when she’d cornered Erica in the faculty parking lot at three-thirty. “Pasta primavera and garlic bread. I’ll buy the ingredients if you’ll supply the wine.”
“I’d love to have dinner with you,” Erica had said, adjusting her sunglasses in the afternoon glare. “But isn’t this kind of sudden?”
Fern’s wounded look failed to convince Erica. “I didn’t know I had to book you weeks in advance. Come on. Where’s your sense of spontaneity?”
“Spontaneity is take-out pizza. It’s not pasta primavera and garlic bread.”
Fern laughed. “Pasta primavera is the easiest thing to prepare. Easier than phoning Jimbo’s Pizza. I’ll bring all the ingredients. All you have to do is pick up a bottle of wine.”
“I’ve got wine. Why do you really want to get together for dinner?”
Fern again attempted to look offended, then grinned sheepishly. “I want to see the box, okay? You’ve already shown it to the whole world, thanks to that photo Meryl Hummer ran in the Gazette, and I’m your best friend, and I haven’t seen it. Except in the newspaper.”
Erica had decided she’d enjoy Fern’s company for dinner enough to let her see the box. She was right, after all—it had already been photographed and publicized. As long as Fern didn’t tamper with it—and she wouldn’t—where was the harm in showing it to her?
Besides, how often did Erica have the opportunity to learn how to make pasta primavera? Maybe if she mastered the recipe and her garden came through for her, she could prepare the dish with homegrown vegetables next fall. She could use up some of her overabundant crop of zucchini that way—if she ever got around to planting the rest of her zucchini seedlings.
She’d managed to listen to the day’s phone messages before Fern arrived at her house. Her answering machine stopped recording after fifteen messages, which was just as well. Today’s batch was all nonsense—a newspaper in Camden, Maine; a disc jockey from a radio station in Worcester, hoping to interview her live on his show; a professor from a college she’d never heard of, questioning the identity of “Abraham Gallen”; someone inquiring about licensing miniature reproductions of the box, to be sold in airport gift shops; an attorney who claimed to be representing the Rideout family; and a lot of calls from people she knew in town, reminding her what good friends they were. Obviously, they assumed the box contained great riches.
None of the messages was from Jed Willetz. She had no reason to expect a call from him, but yesterday she’d made him promise to return to town hall and double-check the property line between her house and his grandfather’s. She was sure the records would back up her claim of where the line was located, and it would have been courteous of him to apologize for implying that her garden had encroached on his land.
But he hadn’t done the courteous thing. Big deal, she’d thought as she’d changed from her school clothes into khakis and a cotton sweater. She and Fern would have a lovely dinner. She would learn how to cook something new and she’d show Fern the box, and who cared about Jed Willetz?
Once Fern arrived at her house, though, she had seemed less than eager to view the box. She emptied an array of ingredients from a couple of paper bags onto the kitchen table: a box of dry rigatoni, broccoli florets, carrots, plum tomatoes, a single green zucchini, a bulb of garlic, a bottle of olive oil, a long, skinny loaf of bread and a pale-yellow wedge of Romano. As she folded the bags flat along their creases, her gaze drifted to the window.
“Do you want to see where I found the box?” Erica asked, pulling her apron from the hook inside the broom-closet door and offering it to Fern.
“In your vegetable garden, right?” Fern answered as she took the apron. “Your backyard.”
But she was staring at the side yard. Beyond the side yard, actually. She was staring at the Willetz front porch.
“You came here to check out Jed Willetz,” Erica accused her.
Fern spun around and laughed guiltily. “I came here to make you a feast. You should be worshiping me. And pourin
g me a glass of wine. And getting me a cutting board and a sharp knife.”
“You want to drink wine while you’re using a sharp knife?”
“Okay, give me a dull knife.” Fern looped the neck strap of the apron over her head and tied the belt around her waist. “There. Do I look like someone from the Food Channel?”
“No. You look like a ninny who’d drop her panties for my next-door neighbor.”
“Is he your neighbor? Really? As in, he’s planning to stay in town for a while?” Fern peered eagerly out the window again.
“I have no idea how long he’s planning to stay.”
“I wish I had a neighbor like Jed Willetz. Fill a big pot with water and get it boiling, okay? I wish,” she said, breaking off a couple of cloves of garlic, “I had a neighbor as handsome as him, anyway. Do you know what it’s like to go down to my mailbox to pick up my newspaper every morning and come face-to-face with Angus Murray?”
“Angus is a nice man,” Erica called over from the sink, where she was filling her largest pot with water.
“He looks like a squid. I don’t know how Norma can stay married to him. I mean, ugh. She goes to bed every night with a man who looks like a squid.”
“I’m sure that in her eyes he’s gorgeous. Love is blind.”
“Well, I’m not in love or blind, and seeing Angus first thing in the morning is awful. I’d much rather see Jed Willetz.”
Erica had to admit that seeing him first thing in the morning wouldn’t be the most unpleasant experience in the world. Seeing him any time of day was a treat.
Yesterday, when she’d gotten home from school, he’d almost seemed to be waiting for her. She’d actually suffered a little pang of disappointment that he hadn’t been out on his grandfather’s porch when she’d come home today. Which was stupid, of course. She wasn’t going to make herself silly over the guy. He was her temporary neighbor; that was all. And possibly her adversary, if he decided to contest the property line.
The scent of the raw garlic Fern was mincing filled the room, so heavenly she nearly forgot all about Jed and the box and all the annoying phone messages that had been jamming her machine. She cranked a corkscrew into the bottle of Chianti Classico, one of several bottles of wine she’d brought back from Brookline during her last visit home, because none of the stores in Rockwell carried decent vintages. Erica wasn’t a wine snob, but the stuff sold in Hackett’s had screw tops. For the rare occasions when she desired a glass of wine, she thought it best to import the stuff.
Her phone rang and she cursed. Fern eyed her curiously. “Expecting someone?”
“You don’t know what it’s been like here.” She pressed down the metal levers to raise the cork and filled two goblets with wine while the phone rang a second and a third time. “The calls never end. I had fifteen messages when I got home today, all about the box.”
The machine clicked on. Through the speaker, Erica heard a familiar voice: “Erica? Darling? It’s your mother. I just called to say hello, nothing urgent, Daddy and I are both fine, thank God. So give me a call when you’ve got a minute.” She hung up and the machine clicked off.
“She doesn’t know about the box,” Fern commented.
“How would she know? She doesn’t subscribe to the Rockwell Gazette.”
“I thought mothers knew everything. If I ever have kids, I intend to know everything.”
A knock on the back door startled them. Erica glanced wistfully at the knife Fern had in her hand; as a Rockwell native, it probably wouldn’t occur to Fern to remain armed until the identity of the visitor was known. In another year or three or seven, Erica promised herself, she would no longer want to have a knife with her when a stranger showed up at her door.
Her visitor was no stranger, though. Through the window in the top half of the door, she recognized Jed Willetz’s silhouette.
So did Fern. “Well, look who’s here!” Before Erica could answer her own door, Fern was turning the knob and pulling the door open. “Jed Willetz!” she greeted him heartily. “I heard you were back in town.”
He made her day by recognizing her. “Fern…Bernard? Or is it Fern Something-Else now?”
“Still Bernard,” she told him, her eyes glittering as if someone had lit sparklers in them. “Still available.”
Smiling vaguely, Jed turned to Erica. She hoped her eyes weren’t glittering the way Fern’s were. Just because the man deserved his own gallery in the Museum of Hunky Guys didn’t mean she wanted to turn into a silly, simpering flirt in his presence. “Hi,” she said curtly, then took a sip of wine.
“Okay,” he said. “I checked the records. The property lines are kind of iffy, but I’m not going to push it.”
A begrudging admission at best, lacking the proper contrition. She took another sip of wine to keep herself from thanking him.
He dug his hands into the pockets of a pair of well-worn jeans. He had on another snug T-shirt, topped by an unbuttoned flannel shirt. Didn’t he know that grunge had gone out of style years ago? Why the hell did grunge look so good on him, anyway?
“So…you ladies are cooking up a feast, huh,” he observed.
“A big feast,” said Fern, sending Erica a pleading gaze. “More than enough for two.”
Erica relented. Inviting Jed to join them for dinner wasn’t the same thing as throwing herself at him. And she wasn’t about to throw herself at him, anyway. Fern would be in charge of that part of the evening’s entertainment. “Do you want to have dinner with us?” she asked.
He eyed the food on the table and drew in a deep breath. The air vibrated with the scent of garlic. “Well, I was planning on having a peanut butter sandwich for dinner,” he said, shooting Erica a grin. “Let me think about it.” His smile was almost as good as an apology. Damn it, it was better than an apology. She turned her back on him and reached into the cabinet for a third wine goblet.
Fern’s energy level kicked up a few notches. “How’s that water coming?” she asked. “Are you watching it?”
“If I watch it, it won’t boil,” Erica said, filling the glass and handing it to Jed. He took it and his smile grew gentle. She sensed an apology in it. Or something, some intangible message—she wasn’t sure what. She ought to forgive him for the property-line misunderstanding and cheer up. She ought to forget about all the phone messages, including the one from the Rideouts’ attorney, and especially her mother’s call. She knew what would happen when she phoned her mother back, as she eventually would. Her mother would tell her that Rockwell was a ghastly place and she’d list all the reasons why. Her mother had visited Rockwell only once in the three years Erica had lived here. One time had been enough. “This place gives me the willies,” she’d declared. “It’s too quiet and small. It makes me claustrophobic. And you can’t buy a good bagel anywhere. I’m not talking about those doughnut-shaped things they were selling at that supermarket—well, it’s hardly a supermarket, they carry only two brands of toilet tissue—but real bagels. I don’t know how you survive up here.”
“The water’s boiling,” she informed Fern.
Beaming, Fern launched into high gear. She emptied the box of rigatoni into the pot, then dug through Erica’s cabinets until she found a skillet and set it on another burner. Stepping out of her way, Erica glanced toward Jed and found him gazing at her.
“She’s a better cook than I am,” she explained.
“I’m glad she’s doing the cooking, then,” he said before taking a sip of his wine. “Are you still getting lots of calls?”
She sighed. It wasn’t his problem, but he appeared sympathetic, so she said, “Glenn Rideout seems to have hired an attorney.”
Jed choked on his wine, coughed a few times and let out a laugh. “What does he need an attorney for?”
“To intimidate me, I guess. To make me share my newfound wealth with Randy.”
“What newfound wealth?” Fern called from the stove, where she was sautéing vegetables in garlic and oil. “Erica, would you slice the
bread? Inch-thick slices. Thanks. Anyway, if you’re wealthy, I think you ought to share the wealth with me, not with Randy. I’m a much better friend.”
“Hire a lawyer and take a number.” Erica found another knife and settled in at the kitchen table with the loaf of bread. “There’s no million dollars in the box. If it turns out to be a historical artifact, I’m going to donate it to a museum. I don’t know why Glenn Rideout is dragging lawyers into this.”
Jed took another sip of wine and shrugged. “If the box is worth something and you donate it to a museum, Rideout’ll demand half the tax credit.”
Erica sighed. She didn’t want to think about tax credits. She didn’t even want to think about the box. She wished it had been found in someone else’s backyard. “Fern, do you know any lawyers?”
“Around here?” Fern snorted. “You’d be better off finding someone from Boston. Don’t you agree, Jed?” she asked, peering over her shoulder at him.
“I haven’t lived here for twelve years. What would I know?”
“Does your dad have a lawyer?”
“No. He could probably use one, though,” Jed muttered.
“Is your father in legal trouble?” Erica asked. She pictured the thin, silent man she’d seen wandering in and out of John Willetz’s house. What might he need a lawyer for?
Jed snorted, then strode to the table with his wine and slumped into the chair across from her. “When it comes to my father, you never know.”
She waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn’t, she asked, “Have you and he made arrangements for your grandfather’s ashes?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Once Jed and his father had made arrangements, he would bury his grandfather’s ashes and leave town. Which really shouldn’t matter to her, one way or another—as long as he didn’t sell his grandfather’s house to someone who looked like a squid.
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