All the Single Ladies (28 page)

“Basically,” Mike said, “I have a three-­hundred-­and-­fifty-­square-­foot box with one closet. It's so small I get on my own nerves.”

We laughed our heads off at that.

“That's a great idea!” Suzanne said.

I was seized with worry again because Miss Trudie's death meant it was time for me to move too. It must've shown on my face.

“What's the matter?” Carrie said.

“What, me? Oh, nothing. I mean, I guess it's time for me to try and find—­”

Reading my mind, Suzanne said, “I don't want to hear a word of that kind of talk! Real friends don't let their friends live like Blanche DuBois, relying on the kindness of strangers! We are going to keep things just as they are, and Mike, you're welcome to be here anytime and so are you, Paul, and Harry is too.”

“This is truly excellent news,” said Harry, who had yet to spend one night in the house.

“As Miss Trudie would've said, the neighbors are going to think you're running a cathouse!” I said, and we all laughed.

Suzanne said, “Let them think whatever they want.”

 

On Thursday I went back to work. I had the eight-­to-­four shift. As soon as I got to the nurses' station Margaret said she had a message for me.

“Marilyn Brooks was over here first thing this morning. She says she has something important for you.”

“Really? Well, that's
awfully
nice. I'll go see her when I'm done handing out my morning meds.”

By ten thirty I put my cart away, took a walk over to The Docks, and knocked on Marilyn's door.

“Hey!” Marilyn said, all smiles. “Come right in!”

“Thanks! Well, don't you look snazzy?”

“Thanks! I got this outfit at Anthropologie downtown. And, thanks to you, I'm doing just great! Would you like a glass of iced tea?”

“Thank you. That would be great. It's as hot as the dickens outside, but what else is new?”

She walked toward her kitchen to get our drinks. I knew enough about her pride to let her handle the task alone.

“Well, at least now it's starting to cool off a bit. It
is
late September after all. I think I'm going to take that trip to Asheville in October with some of the other residents here.”

“Yes! I saw the sign-­up sheet for that. Asheville is so gorgeous when the leaves turn.”

She came back into the living room with two tall tumblers filled with iced tea, and mint sprigs too. I took a glass from her.

“Cheers!” I said.

“Cheers! Sit, sit! Marcus and I used to go there every year for at least one weekend. Poor Marcus.”

I made myself comfortable on her very cool midcentury sectional, took a sip of the tea, and placed my glass on a coaster on her Lucite coffee table.

“How's he doing?” I said.

“Not great. I'm afraid he's not long for this world. The disease has stolen him from me completely now. It's so sad.”

“I know, and I'm so sorry.”

“What can I do? Anyway, the reason I wanted to see you, other than to say hello, was because I took a book from the library and I found something inside of it. I didn't know what to do with it. And I know you better than the other nurses. I had not read
Gone with the Wind
in a thousand years, so when I saw it there on the shelf, I said to myself, Why not? It's a nice big saga that will keep me busy and out of trouble for a few days.”

My heart skipped a beat, and quite literally, I gasped.

“What did you find?” I said, knowing in my gypsy bones that whatever she had found had to do with Kathy Harper.

In the next breath I remembered that Kathy had owned a copy of
Gone with the Wind
.

“This. Here.” She handed me an envelope. “Open it.”

Inside was the birth certificate of a female child who belonged to Kathy Gordon Harper and David Inmon Harper and a death certificate for that same child, dated two years later. The cause was listed as an accidental drowning. There were newspaper clippings in the envelope that said there had been an investigation into the child's death, that the father was a suspect. Then another article stated the father had been cleared. The child's death was ruled an accident and the case was closed. But there was a glaring piece of information in the newspaper articles that caught my attention and held it. David Harper was the owner of Harper Grocery Stores. I may not have been so well traveled but even I knew of Harper Grocery Stores. There were at least two hundred of them all over the midwest and the West Coast. Their ads were everywhere and their charitable support to end children's hunger all around the world was very well known. The death of the Harpers' child must have been completely devastating to them, especially if there was a cloud of suspicion around it. I got the chills and shivered all over.

“Oh, dear. Are you all right?” Marilyn asked.

“I'm fine. I'm relieved. I'm so relieved you can't imagine. Do you mind if I take these?” I said.

“No, of course not. Did you know about this child? I'm so sorry if I've upset you.”

“Don't worry. I'm fine. I knew the child's mother. This may have just given us the last piece of information we needed to solve a very big puzzle.”

“Well, good! I'm glad I could help!”

I got up to leave.

“Marilyn? Thank you. Thank you for saving this for me. If you find anything else in the library books?”

“I'll call you right away,” she said. “Lisa? By the way?”

I opened the front door to leave then stopped, turning back to her.

“Yes, ma'am?”

“How well do you know Mr. Morrison?”

“Well enough,” I said. “Is that handsome devil flirting with you?”

“No, I don't think I would call it flirting exactly,” she said, and looked a little sheepish. “But if you're calling him a devil, that must mean he has a reputation.”

“Let's just say he likes the ladies,” I said.

“Gotcha!”

I hurried back to the office, grabbed my phone from my purse, and called Paul.

“You gotta be kidding me,” he said when I told him.

“Nope! Do you want to come over for burgers and watch Carrie's and Suzanne's faces hit the floor when I tell them the news?”

“Only if you'll let me do the grilling. I wouldn't want to miss this.”

“You are about the sweetest man I've ever known,” I said.

“What about the sexiest?”

“Okay, yes, that too! You're so silly.”

I stuck my nose in Harry's office. He had been amazed and horrified to hear the story of Wendy Murray and Kathy's estate. He was at his desk.

“Sherlock Holmes reporting in. You got a minute?”

“Sure! What's up?”

I told him the story and showed him the documents.

“Holy crap. That's terrible about the baby, but it's not unusual for the death of a child to cause a divorce. And you know what? I would shake out the rest of Kathy's books and see what else you can find. And I'd put something in the newsletter asking residents to give us anything they come across.”

“Of course, and I will, but, Harry, this means we can find
him
! He can identify the stuff Wendy's holding and put an end to that madness! All we have to do is get his phone number or his e-­mail from his website. We've found him!” I blushed from head to toe and knew my body temperature had to be over a hundred degrees.

“Want me to look him up?” Harry offered.

“Yes! Please!”

With a few clicks of his mouse, he was there.

“Come see. Is this your man?”

I went around his side of the desk, and there was the face of a man named David Inmon Harper in one of those corporate head shots on the company's website. There was an e-­mail address to reach him directly, a phone number for the business, and a street address of the headquarters. Quickly, I copied down the information. I was so happy I was just a blither.

“Oh my God, Harry. This is major. Thank you, I mean, this is incredible.”

He sat back in his chair and said, “Gosh, I just love watching grown women get so worked up! Now, get out of here. I've got a mountain of work to do.”

“Oh, fine,” I said, and turned to go.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “What do you think this means for Suzanne?”

“Justice. And it might mean a lot of money, Harry. A lot.”

“And here I was harboring the wicked thought that she might be after mine. Shame on me.”

“Sure. Listen, I'm making burgers on the grill tonight and I'm saving this news until I get home and they're all there. You want to join us?”

“Paul coming?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Oh, what the hell. I can wash my hair anytime.”

“You know what, Harry?”

“What?”

“Sometimes you're actually funny, in a ‘blond joke' kind of way.”

Late that afternoon, I walked my dog, set the table, and got the burgers ready to go on the grill. I decided to call my parents to discuss Marianne and her husband.

“Mom?”

“Well, there you are! Your father and I decided it was best to let you cool off for a few days.”

“I don't know. I think I'm still in shock. I can't believe that she really married that stupid idiot. Can you? What could she possibly see in him?”

“Please, I've been weeping since Saturday.”

“Me too. And Miss Trudie died. We had to bury her this week. It's just been a terrible week all around.”

“Oh, come on. Didn't you tell me she was ninety-­nine years old?”

“Yes, Mom. But that doesn't mean I won't miss her.”

“Okay. I understand that. But you always have had such a problem with loss. You know that, don't you?”

If I'd been in the room with her then, I might have strangled her dead two times. But she wasn't going to change and I wasn't going to teach her anything. So I let her words slide in through my right ear, out of my left, and visualized them disappearing into dust motes and then nothingness.

“Yes. But now I'm afraid I've lost Marianne again.”

“No, you haven't. She's still your daughter and I wouldn't bet five cents on the longevity of that marriage. Your father says it might not even be valid. An Elvis marriage? Come on. I mean, we never saw a marriage license, did we?”

“I had not thought of that, Mom. Did Dad look this up on Google?”

“Google? Siri? Safari? TripAdvisor? How should I know where he gets his information? But he does have serious doubts. What does your handsome boyfriend think?”

Handsome boyfriend. Oh, boy.

“Well, he's not as blunt as Dad, but he thinks her anger is temporary, that she'll eventually calm down. Even my friend Carrie says to wait and see. It's so ridiculous that it's hard to take it all seriously.”

“You're right. It seems like the only kind of decision Marianne knows how to make is a wrong one.”

“I agree. But here's the killer: Mark! How could he do that to me?”

“Because he's a narcissistic son of a very bad word.”

“He sure is. Should I go out there? Should I call him?”

“No, and say what? ‘Why did you hurt me?' Are you serious? Leave them alone to stew in their own juices for a while. They'll come around. So tell me. Are you going to be moving again?”

“Not right away. Suzanne wants me to stay. And Carrie got married, did you know that?”

“I don't know Carrie, and so no, I didn't know.”

“Well, she's the other friend . . . oh, never mind. Anyway, her new husband has moved in with us now.”

“What's this? Are you living in a hippie commune? Let me get your father. Alan! Alan!”

“Oh, Mom. No. Please! It's not like that.”

Sometimes she could be so exasperating.

We hung up and I began pacing the floors, with Pickle on my heels, of course. Waiting for Suzanne, Carrie, and Mike to come home from work was like watching a pot of water, waiting for it to come to a boil.

Carrie and Mike had moved all her things and much of his into Miss Trudie's rooms, and it looked so cozy. Miss Trudie would have approved. In the few days Mike had been in residence, I'd decided it was pretty sweet having a man around the house. As long as he was there, I wouldn't have to carry bags of groceries or dry cleaning up the steps. He wouldn't let me. He was a perfect gentleman. But meanwhile, where
were
they?

“Come home!” I called out to the thin air.

I was still staying in my room and Carrie's former bedroom was now designated as the guest room or the snoring room. In other words, now that Mike was here and on occasion Paul, if and when they started honking like rhinos in the wild in the middle of the night, they were redirected to the extra bedroom.

Harry had not yet been awarded sleepover status but it was only a question of time. The longer Suzanne held out, the more creative he became in the ways he tried to lure her into the sack. Last night, he brought her gelato from BeardCats and fed it to her, telling her she was too thin. And the night before, he brought her some kind of French perfume and told her he had dreamed they were in Paris together, drinking wine and eating foie gras, and Edith Piaf was singing “La Vie en Rose” somewhere in the distance. Two mornings ago he appeared at seven thirty and made her banana pancakes while Jack Johnson sang the “Banana Pancakes” song in the background on his iPad. I had no idea Harry Black could be so adorable but I knew he also had to be at his wit's end. Soon Suzanne was going to be on the receiving end of the I'm-­a-­man-­and-­I-­have-­needs-­you-­know speech. Poor Harry. I really felt for the guy. We all did.

Finally! I heard a car and I snapped out of my fog. Oh, I know, I could've called Suzanne and Carrie at work, but I wanted to see the look on their faces when they heard the news.

“You're not going to believe my good news or my bad news,” I said as soon as they reached the front porch.

“What?” Carrie said.

“Give us the bad news first,” Suzanne said.

“Kathy Harper had a baby who drowned.” I handed them the newspaper articles and the death certificate. “This was found in a copy of
Gone with the Wind
that belonged to Kathy. A resident at Palmetto House found it.”

“Merciful God!” Suzanne said. “How terrible!”

“Oh Lord. I wonder if her heartbreak caused her cancer?” Carrie said. “The poor woman!”

Suzanne and I stared at her.

“What? They say there's a mind-­body connection between illness and happiness, don't they?” Carrie said.

“Actually, you're right. There is a lot of thought on that. Anyway, here's the good news. I found David Inmon Harper. He's the David Harper of Harper Grocery Stores.”

“Get out of town!” Carrie said.

“Where is he?” Suzanne said.

I held up the piece of paper with his contact information on it.