“Whether you like it or not, Kim, rules are important. That’s how the world functions—laws and regulations. Everything needs order so the people in charge can have some control.”
“But you won’t even talk to me about what rules and regulations. We need to sit down and make a plan.”
“I’ll make the rules right now: Computers are still off-limits without you or me around. Helmets and kneepads still have to be worn while biking. Grandma watches the twins if they want to swim. And Luke’s kit goes everywhere.”
Kim tucked a tendril of her dark brown hair behind one ear. “Yes, Officer Finley.” She gave him a mock salute. “Aye aye.”
Derek gazed at her long, pretty neck and the soft sweep of her nightgown. He reached for her and took her in his arms. “Will that make it better, baby?” he murmured against her ear. “You know I love you. I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy. You are the most beautiful, amazing lady,” he said, tracing a finger down her neck. “All these years, and I finally found you. I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
“It wasn’t luck, Derek. God brought us together,” she said softly. “We have to trust Him to keep us strong.”
Confident that he had solved Kim’s latest crisis, Derek began unbuckling his gun belt. He was pulling it from his waist when he heard something slide off a shelf in the living room and land on the floor with a crash. In a split second, Derek had snapped his .40-caliber Glock from its holster and aimed it in the direction of the noise.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
“Ow! Ouch!” His mother’s voice echoed clearly into the kitchen. “Oh, nuts. Now what? Derek? Derek, honey? Is that you? I heard something … people talking … arguing. I can’t find the light switch, and I’ve knocked something off the piano, and, well … I’m barefoot. Derek?”
Letting out a deep breath, he felt the adrenaline rush begin to subside. He pushed his weapon back into the holster and snapped it shut.
Kim’s dark eyes flashed up at him. “We don’t have a piano,” she whispered.
“But we do have my mother,” he muttered back.
Kim laid her head against his shoulder. Derek wrapped one arm around her, flipped on the foyer light, and stepped into the living room to assess the damage.
“The meeting of the Tea Lovers’ Club will now come to order,” Esther Moore announced as she tapped her china cup with the side of her spoon.
Patsy Pringle watched in amusement as the clusters of tea drinkers ignored poor Esther. The group had been gathering around tables in a sunny corner of Just As I Am every Wednesday afternoon since the club formed. And from day one, Esther Moore had been trying to impose Robert’s Rules of Order on the others.
Several times Esther had referred to herself as the club’s president, only to be reminded that the TLC had no officers. She regularly took meeting minutes and kept them tucked away in her purse. But whenever she brought out her notebook to read, the whole room begged her not to keep any records in case someone had accidentally gossiped the week before. So far as Patsy knew, “no gossiping” was the only rule the group kept, and she had laid down that law herself.
“I have several updates from last week,” Esther said, still tapping her teacup. “I think you should all hear the minutes.”
Cody Goss, seated beside Patsy, began snickering. “Minutes,” he whispered to her. “Minutes are on a clock, not in a notebook. The big hand points to them, because Brenda told me that. … Hey, Mrs. Moore,” he called out, reaching clear across the table to bump her elbow for attention. Manners were not Cody’s strong suit. “Hey, nobody can hear what you’re saying, Mrs. Moore. If you want people to listen up, you might as well stop hitting your teacup with that spoon and just whistle.”
Before Patsy could react, Cody lifted his fingers to his mouth and blew. The earsplitting screech brought conversation in the salon to an instant halt as everyone clapped their hands over their ears. Everyone, that is, except Opal Jones, who was ninety-four and deaf as a fence post. She owned a pair of hearing aids but hated to wear them. While the echoes of Cody’s whistle died down, Opal took a sip of tea and then calmly rearranged her napkin on her lap.
“There,” he announced, grinning from ear to ear. “My daddy taught me how to get people to pay attention. Whistling is pretty easy if you practice.”
“Gracious sakes alive, Cody Goss!” Esther frowned at him. “You’ve nearly scared the dickens out of us.”
“Okay,” Cody said nervously, eyeing Brenda Hansen.
Patsy knew Brenda had been making a valiant attempt to teach Cody some social skills. The look on Esther’s face would have withered most people’s confidence. But Cody was cut from a different cloth.
He glanced at the ladies gathered around the room and said, “I’ll help anyone learn how to whistle. I’m good at it.”
“Thank you, Cody,” Brenda spoke up. “Maybe after the meeting. Outside.”
“Okay.” He nodded and poked a bite of chocolate cake into his mouth.
“As I was saying,” Esther resumed while she fished around in her purse for her meeting notebook, “I believe we should begin. Kim, would you like to introduce your guest?”
Kim Finley stood and laid a gentle hand on the shoulder of the slender, deeply tanned woman beside her. “This is Derek’s mother, Miranda Finley, from St. Louis. She’s here to spend time with the twins while I’m at work.”
“Well, isn’t that nice,” Esther commented. “We’re pleased you could join us this afternoon. I guess Derek is watching Luke?”
Kim reddened slightly at the obvious reference to her son’s medical problems. Patsy hadn’t been able to talk to Kim last Sunday at the dock, though she had tried. There were just too many people—Cody, Steve and Brenda Hansen, and Miranda Finley had all clustered around her and the twins. Even with that many people clamoring for Kim’s attention, Patsy knew how private her friend was. Kim wouldn’t want to discuss her son’s diabetes in such a large group.
Acknowledging Esther’s question with a nod, Kim sat down beside her mother-in-law. Miranda had been chatting with everyone at their table. Patsy was pleased to note that Miranda’s short, spiky hair tipped with pale blonde highlights was going to need regular care at a good beauty salon. Her roots were showing already.
“First I’d like to catch us up on last week’s items of discussion,” Esther continued. “One of our dear founding members, Ashley Hanes, was kind enough to ask her husband to build a bridge over the Hansens’ drainage ditch. Brad completed the project last week, and he did a lovely job. But with the summer construction business heating up, he doesn’t have time to paint it. Would some of us like to take on that job?” By now she had her notebook out and was running a pencil down her list.
Patsy decided to check the tea bag supply. These women tended to deplete it in a hurry. Cody could just about gulp a teacupful in one swallow.
Besides, she didn’t need to hear the minutes. Patsy knew more about the goings-on in Deepwater Cove than anyone. While she styled hair or painted fingernails, her customers talked. Sometimes she had trouble concentrating on the topic, like when they were explaining how to crochet an afghan or deal with the latest hitches in Social Security or Medicare. But usually she listened.
As Patsy restocked the tea bags and sugar cubes, she noticed Brenda Hansen across the room. The lovely blonde woman reminded Patsy of a golden yellow crocus bud emerging from a deep blanket of snow—the first sign of spring after a long, bleak winter. Hope flourished in her bright green eyes, and joy radiated from her glowing pink cheeks. If Patsy guessed right, Brenda was beginning to fall in love. And the object of her blossoming affection was none other than her good-looking husband himself.
“All right, we’ve got a painting committee,” Esther said, keeping a fragile hold on her authority as the women began to refill their teacups. They had started murmuring again, so Esther raised her voice a little. “Now, Brenda and several others—including me, if I may say so—pitched in and
fixed up Patsy Pringle’s front flower bed the other day. How do you like it, honey?”
Patsy sat down again and nodded. She wasn’t much for speeches. “It was a real nice surprise when I drove up to my house,” she said. “I like it just fine. Thank you all for helping me out.”
“You’re welcome,” Cody replied, though Patsy was fairly sure he hadn’t been a part of that particular project. In fact, Cody spent most of his time going from the salon to various houses in Deepwater Cove—dusting, mowing, gutter cleaning, window washing, and doing myriad other tasks the neighbors paid him to perform. A couple of weeks ago, Brenda had helped him open a bank account, and Patsy imagined the boy would be close to a zillionaire before—as he liked to put it—he crossed the Jordan and passed on to glory.
“Does anyone else have a project they want help with?” Esther asked. When no one volunteered right away, she continued. “Then let’s turn our attention to new business and catch up on our members. Opal, how’s your colon?”
Opal was adjusting her pearls as she gazed out the window toward the forest on the other side of the highway. She looked so peaceful sitting there, and Patsy thought how comforting it might be to go deaf.
But Esther was clearly anxious for a report from Opal. Ashley Hanes tapped her shoulder, and Opal looked around in surprise.
“Your colon!” Ashley shouted. “Mrs. Moore wants to know how it’s getting along!”
“My colon? Well, mercy.” Opal narrowed her eyes at Esther for a moment; then she turned to the others. “If you must know, yesterday I ate some chocolate pie that my sister Mabel brought over. I’m not supposed to, but I did. Boy, oh boy, did I pay for it. You betcha. Besides that, I planted tomatoes again this year, and I’m going to eat ’em, too. I know I shouldn’t, but why not?”
“Because you had cancer,” Ashley reminded her loudly. “They took out most of your colon!”
“I know what they did. Good gravy.” For a moment, Opal pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. Then she spoke up again. “I hear tell somebody drowned in the cove. Who was it?”
At that, everyone turned and looked at Kim Finley. With all the attention suddenly focused on her once again, Kim shrank back into her chair. Patsy’s heart went out to her. Kim had been through a lot more than people knew.
Luke and Lydia had been the only bright spot in Kim’s desolate life until three years ago, when Officer Derek Finley of the Missouri Water Patrol walked into Dr. Groene’s office needing a root canal. Then he came in for a filling. And a good polishing. And some whitening. By the time his teeth were so shiny they could knock you over when he smiled, Derek had won Kim’s heart.
The little family was about as happy as they come, but this past spring the warmth of their love had been hit full force by Luke’s diabetes diagnosis. And now Kim’s mother-in-law had moved into the Finley household. Patsy was no psychologist, but it didn’t take much to figure out that could turn into a recipe for disaster.
“The drowning?” Kim asked, as if she wasn’t quite sure what Opal had been referring to. “I haven’t heard anything new. Derek is working on it, but he can’t say anything about an ongoing investigation.”
“An investigation!” Esther cried out, as though she had struck gold. “Does that mean there was some kind of crime?”
Kim shifted in her chair. “Most deaths call for an investigation. Accidental or not.”
“I haven’t read about the drowning in the local paper since the first mention of it,” Brenda said. “Do they have any idea who it was, Kim?”
“Yeah, who was it?” Ashley echoed. The young redhead wore a skinny tank top and a necklace of homemade beads. “Brad doesn’t like the idea of someone drowning so near us. He says Deepwater Cove is too quiet a part of the lake for people to go around drowning. It’s not like Party Cove or the main channel, where they’re always drinking and acting crazy. He thinks that because Derek is having to spend so much overtime looking into the death, the drowning might be a murder.”
“Murder?” Esther exclaimed. “Now, that doesn’t seem possible. Not around here. We’re so peaceful. Parents and neighbors are always out watching the kids swim. Kim, could it have been a murder?”
As she sat amid the busy, nosy flock of women, Kim Finley reminded Patsy of a lone, straight oak tree rising above the forest floor. Strong, quiet, faithful, she looked like someone you could rely on, a friend who would never betray or hurt you. But a blast of chilly wind had torn at her leaves, turning them from green and gold into brown, fragile wisps. She wouldn’t die, and she wouldn’t collapse. But she might be facing a winter that would threaten her to the core.
“Derek and I don’t discuss his work,” Kim told the women. She squared her shoulders and spoke almost defiantly. “If there’s a crime, the press will report it. There are confidentiality laws, of course, but that doesn’t stop the television crews and newspaper reporters. I doubt the drowning is anything unusual. Lake of the Ozarks is known for its troubled waters. Last year we had the most BWI arrests in the state. The Water Patrol worked more than a hundred and fifty boating accidents with nearly a dozen fatalities. Derek does his job, and he does it well. But the last thing he wants to talk about when he comes home is drunk boaters and drownings.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Esther said. She appeared slightly put out that Kim hadn’t succumbed to the group’s pleas for details. While canvassing the neighborhood in his golf cart, Esther’s husband usually picked up every snippet of local gossip to be had. Charlie related the news to Esther before he told anyone else, and the Moores took pride in knowing everything about everyone—or as they put it, having a deep concern for the welfare of the Deepwater Cove community.
Charlie, a retired mail carrier, had once told Patsy his intuition was so finely tuned that he could tell what was in a letter just by lifting the envelope. The mere sight of stilted writing on an address or a stamp stuck on sideways had taught him trouble was headed for the recipient. Charlie had six senses, he liked to tell people: sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch … and mail. The last, he insisted, was the most dependable. He could read the mood of a family by the glint in their dog’s eyes. He knew what was happening in a household by the way the curtains were drawn, the grass mowed, or the sprinklers set. A neighborhood kept no secrets when Charlie Moore was on his rounds. And even though he had retired, Deepwater Cove still benefited from the daily patrols he took in his golf cart.
But Patsy was proud of Kim for sticking to her guns. If Derek wasn’t supposed to discuss his work, then so be it. Patsy had done her share of trying to pry information about the drowning out of Officer Finley, and she felt pretty bad about it.
As Kim was obviously not going to say another word, Esther wrote something in her notebook of meeting minutes. “Thank you for that report, Kim,” she said. “And now I’d like to find out more about the new shop moving into Tranquility. Brenda, we hear it’s a restaurant.”
“Was it a man or a woman?” Cody asked in a loud voice before Brenda could respond. “The dead person in the water—was it a him or a her? Because if it was a him, then maybe nobody would come looking. My daddy told me that hims can disappear off the face of the earth and nobody might miss them. But people would look for a her. She might be a mother or daughter or sister, and that means someone loves her and wants her to come home. That’s how it is with women, but a man could run off and even take his son with him. And if that man was not someone’s favorite person in the world, and if the son didn’t know but to do as he was told, then the two of them could leave forever. That’s how it could be.”
The hush in the tea area was broken only by the whine of a blow-dryer over in the salon. Was that what had happened to Cody? Patsy had heard that a letter found in the young man’s pants pocket told how he came to be wandering around the lake homeless, filthy, and hungry. Cody’s father wrote that his wife had died. Was that true? Or was it possible that the man had run off with Cody when he was just a little boy? Had no one ever gone looking for t
he two of them? Could there be a woman somewhere—an aunt, a sister, or even a mother—who might want to know what had happened to that child?
Patsy glanced at Brenda, who had gone pale as a sheet. Then Patsy looked at Esther, whose mouth hung so far open it looked like her teeth might drop into the teacup. Last, Patsy focused on Kim, who wasn’t moving a muscle.
She had the most awful feeling that no one would say anything, and then Cody might blurt out something even more shocking.
But Kim, bless her heart, chose that moment to stand up and settle her purse strap on her shoulder. “I don’t know if the person who drowned was a man or a woman, Cody,” she said. “But I do know that we would all miss you very much if you suddenly disappeared.”
Cody beamed. “That’s because I’m in the club. And I work hard to keep everything span. And I take showers and wear clean clothes.” His face sobered. “Swimming is not for me, though. I am not a fish.”
“I won’t go near the water either, Cody,” Esther sang out as she put her notebook away. “No one cares about that, honey. We love you just the way you are. Say, did you eat all the chocolate cake, Cody? I noticed it was cut into squares, the way I like it.”
“Me too! I’ll get you a piece, Mrs. Moore. There’s lots left.”
Cody leaped up and headed for the dessert counter as the women broke into relieved chatter. Patsy leaned back in her chair and watched as Kim Finley crossed the salon and disappeared through the front door.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kim didn’t know when she had ever looked forward to a weekend so much. Or dreaded one so intensely. As she gathered up her purse and car keys in the staff room at Dr. Groene’s office, she heaved a deep sigh.
“Everything all right?” The dentist’s gentle voice drifted in from the doorway. “I hope I haven’t overloaded you this first week back in the office, Kim. We had a few cases I just couldn’t put off any longer. Old Abe is about to lose his teeth. If we don’t take some action, he’s going to lose every last one of them.”
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