Neighbors? Grandparents? Friends? Hopefully, they weren’t there to spend the night, or they’d have to pull out the sofa bed. She’d decided to treat this whole thing like her freshman college-dorm days—a building full of rooms with a single kitchen and lobby/living room. She turned off the engine and hit the button to open the trunk. By the time she got around the car to unload her supplies, the old gentleman was lifting out two bags of groceries.
“I’m Victor Green, and I’m your neighbor to the left.” He nodded over his shoulder. “That’s Hattie Bell up there on the porch, and she’s your neighbor to the right. We know Gracie and Jamie from their week in the summer, but we ain’t seen you.”
“I was here about fourteen years ago, but only for a week,” Kate said.
“So you’d be the oldest wife?” Victor asked.
Ouch, that stung, even if he didn’t put emphasis on the word or even act surprised that they were all there at the same time.
“I might be,” she answered.
Hattie followed them inside and unloaded the bags, setting the food on the table while Victor went back to the porch. “Jamie told us what happened with Conrad. I’m not a bit surprised. I told Iris when she married him that he was a shyster and just out to get her money. A year later she was dead and he owned this house, plus he had all of her savings. Her poor daughter didn’t get a thing, not even the wedding rings that her father had given Iris. Poor Iris was only fifty-five when she had that heart attack.” Hattie lowered her voice to a whisper. “I always suspected that he had something to do with it. And”—she narrowed her eyes until they were mere slits in a bed of wrinkles—“I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t done the same thing before Iris.”
“Is the daughter still alive?” Kate asked.
“Oh, no, she died in a car wreck about six months after her mama.”
“And Iris was fifty-five?” Kate opened the refrigerator to find her sandwich gone.
“That’s right. Conrad said he was twenty-eight, but I always thought he was younger than that. He was a charmer, all right. Iris was a fool to think he was in love with her and not what he could con her out of,” Hattie said.
“Why are you telling me this?” Kate put away milk, cheese, and lunch meat.
“So all three of you understand that you weren’t the first, and if he’d lived, you wouldn’t be the last,” Hattie said. “And besides”—she giggled—“I’m nosy. I want to know what happens with the three of you living in this house together. You got to admit it could be a reality show. Maybe something like Hostile Sister Wives. Me and Victor have a ten-dollar bet going as to which one of y’all killed that son of a bitch. In memory of Iris, I’ll take whoever did it to dinner.”
A smile spread across Kate’s face as she put on a pot of water to boil for tea. “Did you see him—I mean, Conrad, very often? Did he come here and stay a whole week with anyone else other than Jamie and Gracie?”
“Honey, he showed up here all the time, but I never paid much attention to them. I did see him last winter with the redhead, and they stayed a week. Most of the time he’d slink in here with a different woman over weekends. He knew we didn’t like him, so we all ignored one another,” Hattie said.
“He came near the end of each month?”
“Oh, yes. How’d you know that?”
“Just a lucky guess.” She dropped four tea bags into the boiling water, covered the pot, and set it aside. While they steeped, she ran water into a plastic pitcher until it was half-full, added a cup and a half of sugar, and stirred it until it dissolved.
“Just the way I make tea. Your mama taught you well,” Hattie said. “Would you look at the time? Thirty minutes until Sunday night church services. Y’all are all invited anytime you want to attend. It’s the little white church on the north side of town. The one on the south side has been closed down for a couple of years now. We usually have a potluck after Sunday morning services, so bring along a covered dish if you want to join us for that.”
“Thank you for your help, Hattie.” Kate smiled.
“Anytime. Me and Victor will be popping in to check on you girls.” She grinned. “Like I said, I’m nosy, and besides, I’m old. That means I get to ask rude questions and say what I want.”
“Then I can’t wait to get old,” Kate said.
“’Bye, now.” Hattie waved as she crossed the room to the door and disappeared.
Kate removed the tea bags, squeezed all the water from them, and then poured the tea into the pitcher. When it was stirred well, she took a glass down from the cabinet, filled it with ice and tea, and carried it to her bedroom. She gulped down a third of the tea, set it on her dresser, and reached for her laptop. She opened a new folder and typed:
Information about Conrad:
Conrad came home at least one day toward the end of every third week. He would meet with his accountant to discuss his business and sign any tax papers or forms that she needed him to take care of. He’d draw out his monthly paycheck at that time, and he’d be at the house when I got home from the office. The conversation was always the same. He wanted me to divorce him. I refused. He’d have his evening meal in the dining room and I’d take mine to my bedroom. My house was simply a free hotel for the night.
She closed her laptop and drank the rest of the tea. When she went back for a refill, there was not one drop left in the pitcher. Her sandwich was gone and now her tea—it was the old proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. She marched out to the porch to find Jamie and Gracie sipping away at a glass each and Amanda on the other end of the porch chomping on the ice pellets left in hers.
“What’s your problem?” Amanda asked.
“That was my tea and it was my sandwich in the refrigerator,” Kate said.
“Well, pardon me,” Amanda said with a head wiggle. “I was hungry, and it was the only thing in the house. Conrad never said I couldn’t eat something that was left in the refrigerator. And I was thirsty, so I had a glass of tea. What do I owe you?”
“Being the first wife don’t give you the right to get all bitchy over a glass of tea,” Jamie said.
“Conrad is dead, so what he said in this house does not matter. And I’m not the first wife. I’m just likely the oldest one alive today. Didn’t Hattie tell you about Iris?” Kate propped a hip on the porch railing.
“Who is Iris?” Amanda asked.
Kate told them the story, continuing, “I have started a file with things I can remember, like how Conrad only came home a day a month to talk to his accountant—or maybe I should say he came to my house. If you’ll do the same, maybe it will help that detective to see that we aren’t guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.”
“I’m not doing one blasted thing,” Jamie said.
“Then if he finds us guilty, you’d better get your affairs in order as far as Gracie is concerned, and you’d better have someone designated to raise that baby, Amanda.”
“You are just trying to scare me.” Amanda frowned.
“No, she’s not. She might have money, but . . .” Jamie stopped.
Gracie picked up a couple of dolls. “I’m going to my room where it’s cool. When is supper, Mama? I’m hungry.” She slammed the screen door on the way inside.
Kate almost smiled as she remembered how she used to get into trouble from every single nanny she’d ever had for slamming the back door at her house in Fort Worth.
“But what?” Kate shook away the memory and glanced over at Jamie.
“Do you have children?” Jamie asked.
“No, I do not,” she answered.
“Then she has less to lose than we do if that detective makes a case against us,” Jamie said. “And she’s not trying to scare you. I can prove the days that Conrad was with me and Gracie with my credit card accounts. I charge everything to get the points and then pay it off at the end of the month. Until the past eight or nine months, he came home on Sunday night and we always went to McDonald’s for supper, and every evening after we had
supper at home, we went to Culver’s for an ice-cream cone. He said it was his way of spoiling Gracie since he didn’t get to be with her all the time.”
Kate set her mouth in a firm line. “He was spoiling her, but you paid for everything, right?”
Jamie shook her head. “He took care of the taxes and insurance on the house and paid the mortgage.”
“No!” Amanda slapped the arm of her rocking chair. “I wanted to buy a house instead of living in an apartment, but he said we had to pay off this cabin first. I’ve been giving him five hundred dollars a month to make an extra payment on this place.”
“He inherited this place and it’s paid for,” Kate said bluntly.
“Then where was my five hundred dollars going?” Amanda asked.
Kate shrugged. “Maybe to buy lots of flowers for other women.”
“Mama”—Gracie poked her head out the door—“I’m really hungry.”
“We’ll have to go to the store. Maybe we’ll get pizza,” Jamie answered.
“There’s sandwich stuff in the refrigerator,” Kate offered.
There was no way she was going to let a child go hungry, not even for the length of time it took to drive into Bootleg and get a pizza from the deli part of the convenience store.
“Oh, so she can have some of your food, but I can’t?” Amanda shot a dirty look toward Kate.
Kate ignored it and sat down in her favorite chair.
“Go on and play five more minutes,” Jamie told Gracie. “And then we’ll see about making sandwiches.”
“Okay, Mama. Can I get a glass of milk until then?”
Jamie looked at Kate.
“Of course, she can have milk. I’m not a monster.”
“Yes, you may,” Jamie said and waited until the door slammed again. “I teach school in inner-city Dallas. Shall we set down some classroom rules here, since we are all living in the same house?”
“Maybe I’m sorry that I didn’t ask before I ate the sandwich or drank the tea, but rules or no rules, I’m staying right here until September,” Amanda declared. “Aunt Ellie says I need to get my head on straight.”
“Apology accepted,” Kate said, ignoring the latter part of her statement.
“I vote that we each take care of our own space, keep things picked up in the living area, buy our own food, and do our own cooking. Any leftovers that go in the refrigerator are up for grabs unless we put our name on them,” Jamie said.
“Fair enough. Where’s the nearest store?” Amanda asked.
“About six or seven miles south in Seymour,” Kate answered. “Open until nine every evening. Hopefully the whole thing will be settled by the end of summer.”
“The business part might be all done and finished by summer’s end, but I’m scarred for life,” Amanda whined.
“Stop the dramatics. Think about him in bed with a fifty-five-year-old woman,” Jamie said.
“Yuck!” Amanda’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “My Conrad wouldn’t do that. He might have married her, but he didn’t go to bed with her.”
“Or all those women he brought up here toward the end of the month? You stupid enough to believe they weren’t screwin’ like minks?” Jamie argued.
“How do we know Hattie isn’t lying or just sayin’ those things because Iris was her friend?” Amanda asked.
“It’ll be easy to verify,” Kate said. “I can check his bank records as soon as the lawyers get this straightened out. I bet we see where he deposited your money, Amanda. There are probably receipts where he bought gasoline right here in Bootleg at the end of every month.”
“How could he do this to me?” Amanda whispered.
“You? Do you think you are the only one? He was cheating on all of us outside of being married to us,” Jamie said. “Grow up. How old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-eight,” Amanda said defiantly.
“Then stop acting like you are sixteen.”
“And you?” Kate looked over at Jamie. “I’m guessing you are about thirty-five?”
“Thirty-six,” Jamie said.
“I’m forty-four,” Kate said. “We were all about thirty when he married each of us.”
Amanda’s chin popped up two inches. “He married you for your money and Jamie to get a kid. He married me for love.”
Kate shook her head slowly from side to side. “Wake up and smell the bacon, girl. Jamie, how much is your mortgage?”
“Four hundred eighty-nine dollars and fifty cents a month,” Jamie said.
“Amanda”—Kate pointed at her—“your five hundred made her house payment so he could use his money to look around for rich women to fleece.”
“No! He wouldn’t do that,” Amanda declared. “If you are so smart, then why didn’t you divorce him? Oh, wait! Because he divorced both of you. When the papers show up, you’ll both feel like fools.”
Jamie pushed up out of the chair and stretched. “I’m tired of this crap. If you were serious about us using your food for tonight, I’m going to make sandwiches for our supper.”
“I was serious, and Amanda, he would never divorce me,” Kate said.
“Why? You are old,” Amanda said.
Kate took a couple of deep breaths. “Because the prenup said that if he divorced me he only got what he brought into the marriage, and that could fit into a suitcase. If I divorced him, then he was entitled to a lot more. He said on the day that he signed it that he loved me so much that he would never leave me. A year later he vowed to make my life so miserable that I would divorce him and give him what was legally his for marrying someone no one else would have.”
“And?” Amanda pressured for more.
“I inherited my mother’s stubborn streak,” Kate said as she headed inside the house.
CHAPTER SIX
Kate spread an old quilt out on the ground and sat down. The past two days had been a time of cool adjustment, sometimes a bit awkward, most of the time simply learning to stay out of one another’s space. She’d already said more than she’d intended to ever share with these women, and she’d given them permission to use her tea and her food. That was enough.
It would take more than listening to the gentle waves lapping against the grassy shore to comfort her that day. She wished that she was back in her office, where the carpet was every bit as plush as the soft green grass beyond the quilt. Once this was over, she would go home, put it all behind her, and never deal with those two snippy women again.
Gracie’s giggles drifted across the slight breeze—she had the spirit of an angel and the smile of an imp. It would take a heart of stone not to be even a little charmed by Miss Gracie. She skipped around the edge of the lake, running back and forth to the lawn chairs Jamie had brought up from the old boathouse for Hattie and Victor.
Kate smiled at the child, and a weight lifted from her soul for a moment.
Jamie sat at the end of the dock with her bare feet in the water. Amanda had propped her swollen feet on a chaise lounge up on the deck. If Kate turned her ear just right, she could hear country music coming from an old boom box that had been in the house fourteen years ago. At least she liked the same kind of music Kate did and not that hard rock stuff.
The hair on Kate’s neck prickled, and a chill chased down her spine in spite of the heat. She glanced up to see Waylon walking down the hill carrying sunglasses by one stem, the brim of his cowboy hat obscuring his eyes. Maybe, just maybe, he was going to tell her that the whole thing had been solved.
“So you are all still here?” He sat down uninvited on her quilt and stretched out his long legs. His short-sleeved, pearl-snap shirt hugged his body and biceps like it had been tailor made. “I figured one or all of you would last about twenty-four hours and then go scampering back to your own places.”
“I don’t scamper.” Kate’s smile at Gracie’s antics disappeared, taking the happiness with it.
He chuckled. “But you still aren’t best buddies?”
“Sure we are. We’re as close as sisters
. That’s what happens when you plan a murder together,” she said sarcastically. “I hope you came to tell me that you found out who killed Conrad and that you won’t be showing up here anymore.”
“Your wishes and hopes aren’t coming true this week.”
She didn’t know if it was a physical attraction brought on by that confident swagger that jacked her pulse up several notches or if it was anger that he would even entertain the asinine assumption that she would be involved in a crime.
He set his straw cowboy hat on the quilt and tossed his sunglasses inside it. “The sun was still bright when I left Dallas,” he said. “So, have you always worked in your family’s oil business?”
“I’m sure you have checked into my job, my alibi, talked to my mother, and know where I got my education and that I do not have children or pets,” she answered.
“A little prickly tonight, are you?”
“Wouldn’t you be if someone accused you of murder?”
“Maybe.”
Gracie’s dark ponytail flipped back and forth, and her bright-colored shorts and shirt flashed in the moonlight as she ran from the edge of the lake toward the dock. When she passed Kate’s quilt, she stopped.
“Kate, guess what? I just stuck my toes in the water and Mama said if it ain’t cold we can swim tomorrow.” She threw herself down on the quilt, barely missing Waylon’s hat and sunglasses. “And guess what else? Hattie says we need to go fishin’. Did you know about the festival? It’s got a carnival and rides and a Ferris wheel and funnel cakes and it’s all got to do with fishin’ so we need to practice?” She inhaled and went on. “I’m going to catch the biggest fish for little kids this year and get the prize. Hattie says it’s four tickets to Six Flags and I want to go. Daddy said he’d take me someday, but now he’s gone away and Mama will have to take me, but we will get some extra tickets so you can go with us if you want to.”
“Wouldn’t that be fun?” Kate smiled up at her, pausing the entertaining monologue.
The Barefoot Summer Page 6