In Plain Sight

by Lorena McCourtney

  “And I like her. I mean, we’re not Velcroed or anything, but she can be fun. Though I’d like her better if she’d try a little harder with the other kids. And with her stepmother too.”

  “The Dumpling?” I guessed.

  “Right.”

  “Maybe it’s because of the baby. Maybe the baby makes Skye feel insecure, or like an outsider.”

  “Baby?” Sandy gave me a blank look. “What baby?”

  “The stepmother’s baby. Skye said that first night I arrived that she had to go home to take care of the baby while her stepmother went to the health club.”

  Sandy burst out laughing. “It isn’t a baby like with bottles and diapers. It’s Baby.”

  “It’s not a baby, but it’s baby?” I was beginning to feel as if we were stumbling around in some old Three Stooges routine.

  “Baby is—oh, you’ll just have to see Baby for yourself,” Sandy said, still laughing. “Just don’t try to put a diaper on him. Though he’s so sweet he probably wouldn’t mind.”

  “Fine,” I muttered, feeling a bit miffed that I seemed to be out of the loop. “So, tell me more about the Dumpling. I assume she has a real name?”

  “Tammi.”

  “She and Skye don’t get along?”

  “Skye doesn’t give Tammi much of a chance. I mean, Tammi can be a pain all right, but she really tries to be nice to Skye. She isn’t one of those evil stepmother types.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Tammi’s, well, I guess you can tell from what Skye calls her, a little plump—”

  “If plump is a crime, half the country would be guilty.”

  “Tammi buys all these exercise and diet books. They’re scattered all over the house. She has a new one that must weigh ten pounds. And she has all these gadgets. Stretch bands you’re supposed to exercise with. A huge ball that you’re supposed to roll around on or something. A thing she calls a slantboard, and all kinds of weights and stuff.”

  “If she wants to lose weight, exercise is important.”

  “Right. But Tammi never actually does anything with all that stuff. It’s like she thinks she’s going to drop pounds just by reading the books and buying the equipment. It drives Skye crazy.”

  “But the stepmother goes to a health club, doesn’t she? Maybe she does her real exercising there.”

  “We sneaked in and watched her one time,” Sandy admitted. “She walked about ten minutes on the treadmill and then went out for a double latte.”

  Not a program for successful weight loss, I had to agree. But still, hardly enough to warrant the level of Skye’s apparent antagonism. “That’s all Skye has against her? That she’s plump and doesn’t exercise enough?”

  “Oh, Skye gripes about other stuff. Like all the eggplant and tofu Tammi is always trying to feed her. Tammi wants to be a vegetarian and make Skye one too, but then Tammi gets a burger attack and runs out and scarfs down about three double cheeseburgers. And Tammi wanted them to get matching outfits one time.” Sandy rolled her eyes, apparently sympathizing with Skye on that point. “And she is, well, you know … a stepmother. Skye doesn’t say it, but I think she wishes her folks would get back together.”

  “I think many children of divorce feel that way.”

  “But Tammi tries, and Skye won’t give her a chance. I’m sure she’s the one who talked Mr. Ridenour into letting Skye have the car.” She paused. “I think maybe she even paid for it. Skye said Tammi inherited a bundle of money from her grandmother.”

  Two mothers competing to see who could buy Skye’s affection? I wondered if, perhaps subconsciously if not deliberately, Skye wasn’t playing the two women against each other to see what goodies she could collect from both sides.

  Motherhood can be a rough game.

  “Who makes the decisions on Skye’s wardrobe?” I asked.

  “Well, uh, Skye mostly. Tammi’s pretty lenient.”

  “Whatever became of that crocheted top you made?”

  “Mom told me it required some, umm, alterations before I could wear it.” Sandy gave me an unexpected look and smile. “You’re really curious about people, aren’t you, Aunt Ivy?”

  Oh dear, caught. “Any time I ask something that’s none of my business, you just tell me,” I said hastily.

  The van came for Sandy and her gear Saturday morning. Before I could get lonely, however, a guy who identified himself as Jerry from the Christian rock band called to ask if they could come over and practice that afternoon. I said Sandy was gone for the week, and he apologized for calling. I had a few qualms, but I said, “Why don’t you come over anyway?” And they did.

  Their basement music was loud enough to rattle my four-poster bed upstairs, but after the first few ear-splitting, floor-shaking minutes—and the shock of their trademark blue hair—I rather enjoyed them. And they seemed to enjoy the nachos I fixed. I invited them to come again.

  Just after they packed up their instruments and left, a man I didn’t recognize arrived in a black pickup and rang the doorbell. I considered not answering. Could this be a Braxton scheme to lure me out? But that old mutant curiosity gene got me again. I couldn’t just let the doorbell ring. Although I did put my ear to the door and say “Who is it?” rather than just flinging it open.

  “Mrs. Malone? Is that you? Sgt. Yates. I just thought I’d stop by and see if everything’s okay.”

  I opened the door then. This was the deputy from the county sheriff’s office whom Mike had contacted to check up on Drake Braxton, although the deputy was in jeans, not a uniform, today. A long and lanky, brown-haired guy, fortyish but with a face that would have looked almost boyish if not for a nasty scar cutting through his right eyebrow. Bullet wound? Knife? Whatever, it gave him a tough, don’t-mess-with-me air that I found both intimidating and reassuring.

  “Thank you. I appreciate your concern.”

  “You’re getting along okay? Nothing suspicious going on? No strange cars or people in the neighborhood?”

  “No …” I momentarily thought about telling him about the man with binoculars down on the dock, but the guy certainly hadn’t threatened me in any way, and I didn’t want Sgt. Yates thinking I saw boogeymen around every corner. And I didn’t want to cause some innocent guy problems. “Although there are a lot of people walking by on the trail, of course. Especially on weekends. And a couple of times cars have pulled into the driveway and just turned around and left.” I hadn’t thought much about the car incidents at the time, but who knows?

  “I’ll just take a look around, then, if it’s okay with you.”

  I followed as he circled the house. He paid special attention to the windows, parting the shrubs and bending them back so he could inspect the ground underneath. Looking for tracks, I supposed. Mike and DeeAnn used to have a lawn, but several years ago they’d taken out the grass and put in shrubs and decorative rock and bark for easier maintenance. It makes for a nice, woodsy ambiance, but the shrubs and bushes could also offer concealment for evil-intentioned Braxtons.

  “Been getting any strange phone calls? Hang-ups, anything like that?” Sgt. Yates asked as he studied an indentation in the bark mulch.

  “No. Nothing unusual. As you may know, Mike and DeeAnn had a security system installed.” Guiltily I realized I hadn’t set it since Sandy left. “They’ve called several times and really seem to like Hawaii.”

  He checked the windows fronting the porch, tested the roll-up and side doors on the garage, and peered under the tarp covering the wood for the fireplace. When we were out front again, he said, “Well, I don’t think anyone’s been prowling around the house. Though it wouldn’t hurt to have some of those shrubs near the windows trimmed back.”

  “I’ll see about that.”

  “And give me a call if anything makes you uneasy, okay?” He handed me a card listing office, cell, and home phone numbers.

  At the last minute, just as he was opening the pickup door, I changed my mind on holding back about the man on the dock. If th
e guy was up to something concerning Leslie Marcone, it would be unfair of me to keep quiet just because I didn’t want Sgt. Yates thinking I had a boogeyman complex.

  So I told him what I’d seen. For the first time an innocent explanation of the man’s concentration on Leslie Marcone’s house occurred to me. “Of course, maybe he was just interested in the architecture of the house. It is a rather unusual place. Especially that matching boathouse.”

  “Could be,” Sgt. Yates said with the skepticism of one who takes nothing for granted. He took out a well-worn black notebook and asked me to describe the man.

  I couldn’t tell him much beyond the hayseedy clothes. The slouch hat had covered the color of the man’s hair and the sunglasses the color of his eyes. “But he was about medium height, with a stocky build. His face was rather narrow, and he had a really deep tan.”

  “Would you know him if you saw him again?”

  “I’m not sure,” I had to admit. “Maybe.”

  “Did you see a vehicle?”

  “No. Most people walking the trail leave their cars at the city park.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing except that he seemed awfully nervous and jittery for a man who wasn’t … up to something.”

  “Okay, we’ll keep him in mind in case anything unusual happens.” Sgt. Yates flipped the notebook shut and put it back in his pocket.

  “Do you know the woman who owns that house?” I asked. “I often see her jogging on the trail, but she seems somewhat … aloof.”

  “No social butterfly, from what I hear. But about all I really know about her is that she doesn’t have a criminal record.”

  “You checked?” I asked, surprised.

  “A neighbor across the road complained that she’d stopped him from using the boat landing on her place. The previous owner had always let him use it to put his boat in the water and tie up at the dock.”

  “Was stopping him illegal?”

  “Not as far as I know. We told him it was a civil not criminal matter and that if he thought he had rights to use the boat landing he should contact a lawyer. He got quite irate and had a number of uncomplimentary things to say about paying his taxes and not getting any service, bureaucrats feeding at the government trough, etc., etc.” Sgt. Yates’s smile was wry, as if neither complaint was unfamiliar.

  “I wonder why she stopped him?”

  “I suppose she figures it’s her boat landing and her dock, and she’s entitled to private use of it. But the neighbor said he suspected she was doing something illegal on the property, drugs or something, and the reason she wouldn’t let him in was because she didn’t want him to see what was going on there.”

  That thought startled me. Could some illegal activity be why Leslie Marcone was so aloof and unfriendly? And why the man with binoculars was studying her house?

  “Did you search her place?”

  “No. We hadn’t sufficient evidence of possible illegal activity to ask a judge for a search warrant.”

  “Could this neighbor simply have been trying to make trouble for her?”

  “Certainly a possibility. As it turned out, he wound up in more trouble than she did.”

  “Really?”

  “After we didn’t rush out to tell the woman she had to let him use the boat landing, he took matters into his own hands and rammed her gate with his pickup. He denied it, but paint from the pickup was all over the gate, and dents in the pickup matched the spokes in the gate. He didn’t have a record either, however, and with this being a first offense, he didn’t get any jail time, just a fine for malicious mischief. He replaced the gate with a new one, and I haven’t heard of his having problems with any other neighbors, but the man has a mean streak, that’s for sure.”

  “Could the man I saw on the dock have been him?”

  “The description doesn’t match.”

  “It sounds as if it could be a rather scary situation for Ms. Marcone.” This gave me a different perspective on her unfriendly attitude. Perhaps her wariness with strangers was justified. “I understand she lives there alone?”

  “I believe so.”

  “She’s apparently rather wealthy.”

  “Given what those Vintage Estates places cost, I’d say that’s probably true.”

  “Did you use fingerprints when you checked on her criminal record?”

  “No. We didn’t have any reason to ask for them.” The scarred eyebrow lifted. “You suspect her of something?”

  “Well … a pretentious taste in housing, if nothing else.”

  He laughed. “Agreed.”

  “Does she have a job somewhere, or maybe an office at home?”

  Sgt. Yates tilted his head and crossed his arms. “Mrs.

  Malone, are you pumping me for information?”

  “Now why would I do that?” I put a hand to my chest in righteous indignation.

  “Good question. But since you’re the woman who sent a killer to jail, after first putting him in the hospital with a concussion …” He gave me a speculative appraisal, as if wondering how a harmless-looking LOL had managed to do that.

  “But there’s no dead body involved here,” I said. A non sequitur, I suppose, but I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate.

  “True. So let’s keep it that way, shall we? No dead bodies.”

  “I’m all in favor of that.”

  “And if any of this Braxton clan show up, you remember that it’s our job to take care of them, not yours, okay? You call me if you see or hear anything.”

  I waved his card and smiled brightly to show I was prepared to do exactly that.

  “I’ll stop by again in a few days,” he said.

  I watched the pickup disappear down the driveway. A nice man. Concerned. Caring. Helpful. But with a hard core of no-nonsense lawman.

  Good. Exactly the type of person I wanted keeping an eye on me.

  It was church on Sunday, of course, and afterward some ladies invited me to dinner with them at an all-you-can-eat chuck wagon place. Since I feel financially obligated to eat as much as possible in such eating establishments, I spent the rest of the day in an overstuffed state of lethargy. On Monday I tackled a job I’d brought along, identifying and organizing jumbles of old photos into an album.

  But by Tuesday afternoon I was feeling rather at loose ends. Little cooking to do for just me. House all vacuumed. Laundry all washed and folded. A steady drizzle had started. It might be a jogging day if you were a Leslie Marcone, but I didn’t want to get out in it. Then I remembered something my mother did every spring, and on impulse I decided it would be a good job for today.

  I strung a clothesline across the covered patio between the house and garage, then dragged down the braided rag rugs from my bedroom and draped them over the line.

  I didn’t have a regular old rug beater like my mother always used, but I got out a broom and started whomping. Oh my, did the dust fly! Whomp, whomp, whomp. Even though the rugs had been vacuumed, whomping gets way down deep where vacuuming never penetrates. And there’s a satisfaction in whomping that mechanical vacuuming can never provide.

  I’d done the first rug and was starting on the second when I got that peculiar feeling you get, that prickle between your shoulder blades that tells you someone is watching.

  The prickle spread to a tightening of my scalp. I paused, broom held upright. When you have Braxtons after you, a feeling of being watched is not good. In a best-case scenario, it means they have your whereabouts targeted. In a worst-case scenario, it means one of them is standing behind you ready to bash you with a 2x4 or put a bullet in your back.

  I sprinted through my limited options. Run for the door and lock it? Make a dash for the T-bird and floor the throttle? Drop to the ground and scuttle like a crab to the woodpile?

  No time for any of that. Not if my watcher was as close as my between-the-shoulder-blades radar warned.

  I took a firm grip on the broom handle and whirled.

  6


  “I saw you from down on the trail. It’s a pleasure to see someone taking such a conscientious attitude toward her work. I haven’t seen anyone actually beating rugs since I was a little girl at my grandmother’s. Did Mrs. Harrington tell you to do this?”

  “No, I just thought it needed doing.”

  “That’s very commendable. I admire initiative and hard work.”

  I lowered the broom and stared in astonishment. The Mystery Woman, who had looked through me before, was now studying me with a faint hint of warmth in her ice-blue eyes. She wasn’t actually smiling, but she was speaking to me. In cordial tones.

  “Well, uh, thanks,” I said.

  “You’re Mrs. Harrington’s housekeeper?” At my blank look, she added with a certain impatience, “This is the Harrington house, isn’t it? DeeAnn Harrington, the bookkeeper.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “How much is she paying you?”

  I blinked at the blunt question. I could see now that she was somewhat older than I’d thought earlier. At least midthirties.

  “Well, uh—”

  She waved a dismissive hand, apparently impatient with my stumbling. “My former housekeeper is no longer with me, and I’m looking for a replacement. I believe you would be suitable. Not many housekeepers are industrious and dedicated enough to do what you’re doing here. I can offer you more than the Harringtons are paying,” she stated, although I’d still given no indication of what my position as the “Harrington’s housekeeper” paid.

  “You’re offering me a job?” I was astonished on several counts, not the least of which was the nerve I felt it took to snatch a housekeeper out from under a current employer’s nose. Not that I was an employee, but she thought I was.

  “Five hours a day, 9:00 to 2:00, perhaps a little longer if I need you. Six days a week, Sundays off. The usual housekeeping duties, plus you’ll prepare my midday meal at 11:30, which I take as the main meal of the day. Eleven dollars an hour. Cash. No health insurance or other benefits.”

  Having never been a hired housekeeper, nor been in the position to employ one, I had no idea if this amount was paltry or exorbitant. “Don’t you want references?”