by Sara Rosett
She snatched it out of my hand and removed my paper plate from the other hand. “They’re starting in there.”
As I left, Diana shoved the picture in a drawer and slammed it shut.
Chapter
Twenty-four
I slid into a dining room chair near the back of the room. The clipboards were already circulating as Jill reminded people of their assignments for the garage sale at the end of the week. She quickly moved on to upcoming events, like the next spouse coffee and the Christmas party. When she launched into the next fundraiser, a weekly sale of sandwiches and snacks at the squadron, “Monday Morsels,” I tuned her out, thinking of Joe’s arrival a few hours ago.
I couldn’t really tell any change in him. He was quiet and withdrawn. I wondered if the time away had helped at all. Maybe it had just delayed the awful reality of his empty house. He murmured something about picking up Rex in a few days after he got settled, which I thought was odd. Wouldn’t he want some companionship in that quiet, dark house?
I glanced around the room. Diana’s house was quiet, too, except for Jill’s voice. Had Brent taken the kids out for the night? I couldn’t picture him eating a Big Mac and guarding the Happy Meal toys at a McDonald’s playland while his kids climbed in the tunnels.
Jill finished up the business portion of the coffee. “Remember everyone, the garage sale is this Saturday. Show up fifteen minutes before the time slot you volunteered to take,” she commanded sternly. Then she announced, “We didn’t have time during the last coffee, but this month we will have a craft.” I checked out the supplies. Baby food jars and votive candles, aka candle-holders. Across the room, Abby crossed her eyes and I suppressed a smile. Why we had to incorporate craft time in the coffee like preschoolers, I had no idea. I was inherently uncrafty and had no use for a baby food jar with hot-glued gingham ruffles. I went in search of a bathroom. The half bath downstairs was occupied, so I climbed the stairs, hoping the rest of the house was empty.
I found the kids’ bathroom, decorated with a Mickey Mouse theme. I dried my hands on the red towels and walked quietly back down the ornate runner in the center of the hall. The open doors revealed the kids’ rooms, blue spaceships for the boy and yellow sunflowers for the girl. A closed door stood between these rooms, probably a closet. I decided to take a quick peek before I let myself wonder what I was looking for or mentally talk myself out of it.
Brent’s raised eyebrows and icy blue eyes met mine. It wasn’t a closet; it was a tiny office. Unlike the rest of the house, which had a hotel-like neatness, the office was a mess, with stacks of boxes covering most of the floor and papers scattered over the desk. No decorator’s touch in this room. In a glance, I took in the locked gun display case, a gray metal desk and file cabinet, the uncurtained window, and the plain white walls. He cocked an eyebrow and said, “Looking for something?”
“Just the bathroom,” I stammered and mentally told my heartbeat to calm down.
“Well, you’ve found my hideaway. Care to join me?” He slipped one paper under another, then grabbed his beer and pointed with it toward a small refrigerator tucked beside the file cabinet. “No one will miss you for a few minutes.”
“I’ll pass on the beer, but I did want to ask you a question.” I sat down in the metal folding chair to get a closer look at the paper he’d covered so quickly, but the Nevis bank statement hid all but a thin edge of the paper underneath. I could see part of a logo, a leaf or vine, on the bottom paper. “I want to know why you told Cass you were sorry. What did you do?”
His bottle paused in midair for a beat, then he took a swallow and set the bottle down. He smiled and brushed his golden hair off his forehead. “We just had a little misunderstanding.” He stood up and came around the desk, then leaned back on the front of it. He angled his long legs out, blocking my way to the door. Even though I’d left it open, I felt a trickle of unease nudge my heartbeat faster. He looked directly into my eyes and asked in a low voice, “Did she tell you about it?”
I swallowed. There was something about his directness and his sense of pent-up energy that made me nervous and aware of him. “In a roundabout way,” I hedged. “Has the OSI asked you about it?”
“The OSI?” He snorted and folded his arms across his chest. “Why would they ask me about it? It was a little misunderstanding. She was a beautiful woman.” He shrugged as if that explained everything.
He must have made a pass at her and she rejected him. “Did you talk to her at the squadron barbeque?” I eyed the distance to the door and listened for someone else in the hall, but the women’s voices were faint, barely floating up the stairs in bursts of chatter and laughter.
“No, I never got to talk to her.” His smile was still there, but it looked a little forced.
“She rejected you,” I said, pushing a little.
His tension seemed to evaporate and he shook his head. “She wasn’t interested in what I wanted. Fine by me. There are lots of beautiful women out there.”
“What about Diana? How does she feel about your beautiful women?” I bet there was a long line of women in Brent’s life.
He shrugged again, leaned back over the desk, and picked up his bottle of beer. “We have an understanding. She knows I admire women. She leaves me alone and I leave her alone. We don’t interfere in each other’s lives.”
I tried to keep the disgust off my face. After all, Cass rejected Brent before she died. Could he have been angry enough to kill her? Or maybe Diana was tired of being cheated on and killed Cass. But if there was a long line of women, why would Cass be the one to die? Diana couldn’t take it anymore? I would have thought that if Brent’s affairs upset Diana, she’d have killed him.
“That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard someone say about their marriage.” I jumped up, skipped over his ankles, yanked his door shut, and flew down the stairs.
When I entered the living room, Abby raised her eyebrows, as if to ask where I had been, but she didn’t move from the card table with craft supplies. Her jar was painted with wildflowers and now she was gluing lace around the edge. I was about to make the first move to leave when the doorbell rang. Since I was closest, I opened it. Who would arrive an hour late?
A woman in her fifties stood on the porch. Cigarette smoke drifted in the door. When she saw me her smile faded. “Di?” She asked hesitantly, then looked past me into the house and said with relief, “Oh, a party.” She took a last drag on her cigarette, dropped it, and crushed it with the heel of her purple tennis shoe before stepping inside.
Her short, flaming red hair extended in every direction around her face, but the back was flattened against her head. She had that artificial dark tan that makes me automatically think tanning bed. Her lined face showed her smoking and “sun worshipping” were not recent activities. Small eyes, rimmed in thick black liner, scanned faces as she chewed the remnants of scarlet lipstick. She adjusted her fuchsia wind suit trimmed in gold braid, then gripped my arm and said in a wave of cigarette and alcohol breath, “I’m Di’s mother Vera. Where is she?” She smiled, revealing yellow teeth. This had to be a joke. The thought of Diana and Vera being even loosely related was too far-fetched to be true. I realized the room had gone quiet.
“Diana,” I called as I turned around. Diana froze in the door of the kitchen, a dish towel knotted in her hands.
“Di!” Vera flew across the room and enveloped Diana in a hug. Diana stood as motionless as a fence post.
When Vera released her, Diana said in a low voice, “What are you doing here?”
“Just dropping in for a visit.”
“But you live in California.” Diana’s voice was angry and what else? Annoyed, embarrassed?
“I sold the mobile home and bought a Winnebago!” Vera grabbed Diana’s arm and pulled her to the front window. “See, there it is. Since you never come visit me, I figured I could see the country and come visit you. You won’t have to worry about anything. I’ll stay right there in Winnie! That’s what I call
it. A thing that big needs a name, like a ship.”
For a moment I thought Diana might pass out, but she seemed to remember there were people vividly watching the reunion. She smiled and said in a tight voice, “The kids are spending the night at a friend’s house, but let me go find Brent and tell him you’re here. Help yourself to something to eat.” She hurried up the stairs and the room suddenly seemed too quiet. At once the wives went back to their crafts and food, talking a little too loudly and shooting covert glances at Vera, who went to the buffet and filled a plate with her shoulders drooping. I can’t stand to see someone with their feelings hurt, so when Vera sat down on the couch, I sat down beside her and asked her what part of California she was from.
“Everywhere.” She smiled, but her eyes were shiny. “I’ve never much liked to stay in one place. Diana. She likes to be called Diana now. I’d forgotten that.” Vera shook her head. “I can’t call her anything but Di.” They must not have been in touch for a long time if Vera didn’t remember what name her daughter liked to use. Jill arrived with coffee for Vera.
“What kind of gig is this? One of those parties where you try to sell crap like baskets or candles?”
Jill explained about the spouse coffee and the activities connected with the squadron.
Vera said, “I remember when she met Brent at a tennis tournament. She was so excited. An officer! She thinks she’s so different from me, but look at her life. Moving around every few years, just like her ma. She’s not so different.” Vera patted her pockets and pulled out a worn quilted cigarette case and a lighter. She looked around for an ashtray, but didn’t find one, so she used her empty plate instead. She blew out a long stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
Diana and Brent clattered down the stairs and I stood up with relief and moved out of the cigarette aura. Brent gave his mother-in-law an awkward air kiss near her cheek. Diana waved away the cigarette smoke and strode off to the kitchen with the ash-filled dish. The meeting broke up and Abby and I escaped. No one seemed to want to linger, but I didn’t think the family reunion was going to be that pleasant after the company left.
We crunched quickly through the piles of leaves on the sidewalk. “So where did you disappear to?” Abby asked.
“I went upstairs to find a bathroom and ran into Brent. There was something … I don’t know what it was, but something about that conversation with Brent tonight that bothered me,” I said.
Abby snorted, “Brent’s smarminess?”
“No, it was something else, but I can’t figure it out.”
“Did you know he latched onto me at the barbeque after you left The Hole?” Abby made a face. “I couldn’t get away from him. Finally, I told him to back off.”
I wished I could be so bold. “What do some women see in him?” I asked.
Abby shrugged. “Irene, you know, the fluffy blond one, I saw her at the Comm. She couldn’t stop talking about him. She says he’s the squadron heartthrob. ‘It’s his energy. The tension vibrates off of him.’ You can stop laughing. She did say it just like that.”
“In that same breathless way?”
“Yes.” Abby’s defensive face broke into a smile. “It cracked me up too, at the time. I think he’s a jerk.”
“You weren’t with him when he met me in the hall at the parking lot door,” I said to Abby.
“No, I don’t know where he went after I ditched him.”
So there was a window of time he was unaccounted for. Maybe alone in the parking lot before Mitch went out there. “What about Diana? I wonder if she stayed in the squad.”
“I don’t know, but I did see her while Brent was hanging around me. She didn’t say anything, just stood on the other side of the room and gave him the evil eye over the rim of her Coke.”
At that moment, a rumbling sound came from the darkness beside me, then I collided with a dark green trash can. Helen’s tiny, stooped form emerged from behind it. She clutched her flat chest. “Oh, it’s just you girls. You gave me a fright. I thought you were the Peeping Tom.”
“What?”
“Well, you see, I forgot to put my trash can out before dark, and I’ve been inside fretting about it. The truck comes at different times. I’m afraid I’ll miss getting it out. So I finally decided to run it out here as fast as I could and get back inside. So sorry I bumped you. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Helen, this is Abby, a friend of mine.” I performed the introduction and crossed my arms to keep warm in the frigid air.
“What Peeping Tom?” Abby asked.
“That man over there. He’s been parking there for days. He leaves in the middle of the night and comes back early in the morning.” Helen flapped her hand at a gray Ford parked a little up the street. “In fact,” her voice stopped quivering and grew stronger, “I’m getting damn tired of worrying about what he’s going to do next. I’m going to tell him to get out of here, or I’m calling the police.”
“Helen, don’t. That’s not a good idea,” I said.
“You girls are here. He won’t do anything with witnesses.” Helen was spry for her age. Before I could grab her arm, she trotted off across the street and banged on the driver’s window. “Get out of here or I’m calling the police,” she shouted.
We crossed the street. “Helen, let’s go inside,” I said.
“He’s ignoring me. Won’t even look at me!” She jerked on the handle, the door opened, and a bundle thudded into the street at our feet. A human bundle.
An Everything in Its Place Tip for an
Organized Move
If a moving company is packing your household goods, find out what items they will not pack. Banned items usually include
Fertilizer
Batteries
Candles
Nail polish
Certain cleaning fluids
Propane tanks
Plan to move these things yourself, give them away, or dispose of them.
Chapter
Twenty-five
Abby put her arm around Helen and pulled her back. I tentatively touched the pale wrist a few inches from my ankle. Cold. I jerked my hand back and said, “Let’s go back to your house, Helen. We need to call the police.”
She nodded and leaned into Abby as they crossed the street. In her living room, she collapsed into her threadbare rocker-recliner. “You call.” She pointed to an early cordless phone. “I’m too shaky.”
I picked up a phone the size of a brick and dialed. Abby watched out the window until the first flashing light disturbed the still street and then she went to make coffee.
An officer arrived, took our names, got the basic facts, and said he’d return. In the kitchen, Abby opened and closed cabinet doors. “Did you see his face?” I asked. “The man that fell out of the car?”
She paused with a coffee filter in her hand. “No.”
“I did when I checked for a pulse. It was his profile. I think it was the man who talked to Gwen in Tate’s.”
“Oh, boy. We’re a few houses down from Gwen and Steven’s.” She added two more scoops of coffee. “It’s going to be a long night.”
I moved a rusted push mower over an inch to make room for a wheelbarrow brimming with water hoses and decrepit gardening tools. It was Friday, one day until G-Day, garage sale day, and I was in my garage trying to make room for the old baby strollers, knickknacks, and beat-up furniture that had been dropped off during the last few days in preparation for the garage sale. I knew some early bird bargain hunter would knock on my door at six tomorrow, asking to look around “real quick.” I paused to rub my eyes. I was still tired from my late night with the police two nights ago. They had more questions than I could answer.
Today was overcast and chilly, so I’d kept one of the garage doors closed. Livvy snoozed limply in the compartment of the front carrier. She jerked at the screech of tires in our driveway but didn’t wake up. I went outside. Jill slammed her car door and hurried down the sloping driveway to me. She said a breathless greetin
g and dropped two grocery bags inside the garage. “Last minute donations,” she explained on her way back to her car. I stood still in her flurry of motion. “It took me forever to get up Rim Rock Road. Some sort of accident had traffic backed up for miles. I’m behind schedule now.” She pulled two card tables from her trunk and carried them inside. On her way back she paused beside me, pulled a tiny notebook from her fanny pack, and checked her watch. “I was supposed to pick up some more dishes from Gwen for tomorrow, but I’m not going to make it to the bank if I do that. Run over there and pick them up for me, will you?”
It was more a command than a request. Jill, already walking backward to her car, flung instructions as she went. “It’s third from the corner on Twentieth. Brick, red door, black trim, and shutters. Everything is in boxes on the back porch. No one’s home. Just grab it and go. Thanks.” She hopped in the car and roared out of the driveway, barely missing Mabel, who was on her walk. Mabel waved to me, never breaking her stride, which sent her orange poncho fluttering out behind her.
I set up the tables and arranged the last-minute items, muttering under my breath the whole time. I need to learn to say “no” more often. Of course, Jill hadn’t given me a chance to get a word in edgewise.
I was too polite. I need to learn to interrupt. I sighed and went to get my keys. “Two more days,” I muttered, “and this will be over.” I gently transferred Livvy from the carrier to her bed with only a few grunts and a half-cry. A miracle.
On my way out, I leaned over Mitch’s shoulder. “I’m going to pick up some last-minute donations. Livvy is sleeping.” He was off this afternoon: no flying and no paperwork to be done in the squadron. One of the benefits of being active duty was that he had a lot of time off from the squadron, which helped to balance his weeks-long TDY trips and his ever lengthening deployments. In the middle of paying bills, he dropped his pen on the open checkbook and turned to me. “Where are you going?”