Aunt Dimity Down Under (15 page)

“Since you haven’t answered my first question, I’ll ask it again,” I said. “Why are you doing all of this?”

“I told you when we first met that I wished you could see more of my country,” he replied. “Our merry chase has allowed me to show you a fair bit of it.”

“Not good enough,” I said flatly. “Try again.”

“I’m having a wonderful time with you,” he offered.

“Save the sweet talk for Teresa,” I scolded. “Try again.”

“Well . . .” He lowered his gray eyes to examine his fingernails. “I suppose it could have something to do with the day your husband saved my life.”

My mouth fell open, but before I could do more than blink, a booming voice rang through the quiet restaurant.

“A fellow American?
Of course
she can join us for dinner! Lead us to her!”

The Velesuonnos had arrived.

A
ngelo and Renee Velesuonno were originally from Yonkers, New York. They’d emigrated to New Zealand after falling in love with the country during a honeymoon tour of Australasia. They spent the winter months in Ohakune, where Angelo sold the best damned Buffalo chicken wings in the South Pacific while Renee worked as an oncology nurse at a hospital in nearby Waiouru. During the summer, they took time off to explore their adopted homeland.

It was a lot to learn within the first five minutes of meeting someone, but Angelo had retained a native New Yorker’s habit of talking at the speed of light as well as his New York accent.

The Velesuonnos appeared to be in their early thirties. Renee was a full-figured woman whose wavy brown hair fell to her shoulders. She had hazel eyes, a fair complexion, and an acerbic wit that surfaced in a counterpoint commentary that accompanied her husband’s tourde-force introduction. She’d wisely donned a warm beige sweater and black trousers before venturing forth into the damp night.

Angelo wore a striped button-down shirt and white chinos. He had a small paunch—the result, I suspected, of a fondness for Buffalo chicken wings—and he’d shaved his black hair close to his scalp. His brown eyes were as appealing as a basset hound’s and he was possibly the most hospitable man I’d ever met. As we took our seats at a table that had been hastily reset for four, he assured me that he and Renee
loved
meeting fellow Yanks, then waved off the menus and ordered dinner for all of us.

“Trust me, the duck is to die for,” he told me, “and the venison is out of this world,” he said to Cameron. “And don’t even think about picking up the tab,” he added firmly. “Dinner’s on me. Where you from, Lori?”

“I was born and raised in Chicago,” I said.

“I’m a Kiwi,” Cameron put in. “Should I sit somewhere else?”

“A comedian,” said Renee, rolling her eyes. “Just what I need, a Kiwi comic.” She pointed a finger at Cameron. “Stay where you are, Mr. Funny.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“And don’t
ma’am
me,” she said, wagging a finger at him. “When I’m ninety you can
ma’am
me, but until then, I’m Renee.”

“Yes, Renee,” Cameron said meekly.

The wine arrived and Angelo launched into a panegyric about New Zealand sauvignon blanc that seemed to me to be entirely justified. I limited myself to a small sip, however. The night was young and I didn’t want to lose focus. Something told me that it would take a fair amount of mental agility to get a word in edgewise with our genial host.

“What brings you to Ohakune?” Angelo asked, after Cameron and I had sampled the wine. “Hiking? Canoeing? Jet-boating? Spring skiing? Bird-watching?”

“None of the above,” I replied. “We came here to find a young woman named Bree Pym.”

“You hear that, Renee?” Angelo exclaimed. “How’s that for a coincidence? The kid shows up on our doorstep after all this time and now Lori’s asking about her.” He leaned toward me. “How do you know her, Lori?”

“Her great-grandaunts are close friends of mine,” I said. “They live in England and they’ve asked me to get in touch with Bree for them.”

“Renee and I have known Bree since she was ten years old,” he said.

“We spent six months in Takapuna,” said Renee, “while Angelo set up his business—”

“Got a chain of cafés,” Angelo interrupted. “They’re eating my wings in Paihia, Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, Queenstown,
and
Dunedin. Can’t get enough of them. Renee and me, we’re making out like bandits.”

“Angelo is the wing king,” said Renee, bestowing a tolerant smile on her husband.

“If you have cafés all over New Zealand,” I said, “why did you choose to live here? Didn’t you realize how close you’d be to Mount Ruapehu? ”

“Ohakune’s a
great
place to live,” said Angelo, slapping the table. “Not too big, not too small, and lots to do. And I’m telling you, Lori, we feel safer living next door to a volcano than we did walking down the street back home. There are too many angry people in the States and way too many guns.”

“It’s not a good combination,” said Renee. “I should know. I’m a nurse.”

“Here they use guns to kill possums and deer and wild pigs—not each other,” Angelo went on. “And let me tell you, possums are a real problem in this country—they demolish native trees—so don’t go feeling sorry for them.”

Cameron made a gallant attempt to get the conversation back on track. “So you spent six months in Takapuna . . .”

“Rented a nice little beach house,” said Angelo, without missing a beat, “right around the corner from the Pyms. Used to run into Bree all the time on her way home from school. Nice kid—good manners and sharp as a tack. We kept in touch with her for a while after we moved to Ohakune.”

“What’s all this about ‘we’?” Renee demanded. “
I
was the one who kept in touch with her.”

“And
I
kept in touch with her through
you,
” her husband retorted. He turned back to me. “Her grandma died about a year after we left—God rest her soul—and we stopped hearing from Bree after that. You know how it is. Kids are so busy these days.”

“Since when is a person too busy to send e-mail?” Renee grumbled. “It takes two seconds.”

Angelo ignored her and continued talking to me. “You cannot imagine how shocked I was when Bree walked into the café, Lori. I’m telling you, I was
floored
.”

Renee snorted derisively. “You didn’t even know who she was until she told you.”

“True,” Angelo admitted. “Bree’s not a little girl anymore, and when we lived in Takapuna, she didn’t have short hair.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Bree cut her hair?”

“It looks like she sawed through it with a butter knife,” Renee informed me. “If she had it done at a salon, she could sue for damages.”

“That’s the style,” Angelo objected. “It’s cool.”

“If looking like an escaped lunatic is cool, then her new hairstyle is cool,” Renee conceded.

“Enough about her hair already,” said Angelo, giving his wife an exasperated glare. “A girl like that, she could shave her head and she’d still be a knockout.”

“Bree’s a pretty girl,” agreed Renee.

“She was looking for work,” Angelo continued, “so we fixed her up with a job cleaning rooms at The Hobbit.”

“The Hobbit?” I said.

“The Hobbit Motor Lodge,” Renee clarified. “It’s up the road. You passed it on your way to the Powderhorn.”

“And let me point out that The Hobbit’s been around for a long time,” said Angelo. “The original owner was a Tolkien fan way before they started making these movies.”

“A lot of us were,” I said. I hesitated briefly, then asked, “Why didn’t you give Bree a job at your café?”

“I had a full crew,” Angelo replied. “Besides, the season was winding down. Renee and I were getting ready to close up shop here and head for our condo in Wellington.”

“We like the theater,” said Renee. “And the restaurants.”

“And the museums and the night life,” Angelo added.

“It makes a change from Ohakune,” Renee concluded.

Two waitresses arrived with our dinners, sending Angelo into a spirited digression concerning the freshness of the locally grown produce and the rich flavors of the hormone-free meat.

“No hormones, no antibiotics, no factory farms,” he said. “They don’t mess with Mother Nature in New Zealand.” He slapped the table again. “In this country, food tastes the way it’s
supposed
to taste.”

He waited until Cameron and I had tried each other’s dishes and given them rave reviews—which was easy to do, because both the duck and the venison were sensational—before he returned to the topic of Bree.

“We let her use our guest room while she was here,” he said. “To tell you the truth, we were a little concerned about her. She seemed kind of . . . moody.” He paused to savor a forkful of caramelized leeks before going on. “When we asked how things were going in Takapuna, she didn’t have much to say. Never talked about her grandpa or school or anything. She used to be as perky as a fantail, but now?” He shook his head. “Do you know what’s up with her, Lori?”

“A lot,” I said. “More than any eighteen-year-old should have to handle on her own. First of all, her grandfather died six weeks ago. . . .”

Angelo’s expressive brown eyes became somber as I told him and Renee everything Cameron and I had learned about Bree’s splintered family. When I finished, Renee folded her arms, tossed her head, and let out an explosive sigh.

“I
knew
it,” she said. “I
knew
there was trouble at home. The minute I saw her hair, I knew there was trouble at home. Didn’t I tell you there was trouble at home, Angelo?”

“You did,” Angelo acknowledged. “Poor kid. Sounds like her dad was a real piece of work. He wasn’t in the picture when we knew her. Just her grandma and grandpa.”

“And she still doesn’t know her dad’s dead?” Renee inquired.

“Not unless she’s gone back to Takapuna,” I replied.

“She told Renee she’d
never
go back to Takapuna,” Angelo informed me.

“Which is another reason I knew there was trouble at home,” said Renee.

“She stayed with us for ten days,” Angelo continued, “then she quit her job and took off for Wellington. That was about . . . what?” He glanced at his wife for confirmation. “Three weeks ago?”

“More like a month,” Renee corrected him.

“She left with two Finnish girls she met at The Hobbit,” said Angelo.

“Kitta and Kati,” said Renee. “Ringers.”

“Lord of the Rings fans,” I said knowledgeably.

“Fanatics,” Renee corrected me. “Do you know what they call Mount Ngauruhoe?
Mount Doom
. And Ruapehu, according to them, is
Mordor
. I ask you. . . .” She clucked her tongue and peered heavenward.

“Kitta and Kati are hardcore Ringers,” Angelo agreed. “The only reason they came to New Zealand was to visit movie locations. To tell you the truth, it’s not a bad idea. The crazy director is using the whole country as a soundstage—North Island and South Island both. He’s filming in all sorts of back-of-beyond places you’d never see on a normal tour.”

“Kitta and Kati have seen more of New Zealand than we have,” Renee added.

Angelo nodded. “When they were done climbing around on Ruapehu—”

“Mordor,” Renee interjected, rolling her eyes.

“—they headed for the film studios down in Wellington,” Angelo went on, “and Bree tagged along with them. We gave her a few bucks and told her to have a good time. It beats scrubbing toilets, and if you don’t have fun when you’re young—”

“—you’ll have fun later on and your husband won’t like it,” said Renee.

I groaned. “We’ll never be able to find Bree in Wellington. It’s a big city, isn’t it?”

“It’s the capital city,” said Angelo. “But New York it isn’t. And we can tell you exactly where the girls are staying because we gave them the keys to our place.”

I blinked at him, nonplussed. “You gave three teenaged girls the keys to your condo?”

“Kitta and Kati aren’t teenagers,” said Renee. “If you ask me, they’re a little long in the tooth to be chasing elves, but”—she shrugged—“to each her own.”

“They’re nice women,” Angelo declared. “Sure, they’re a little whacky when it comes to Tolkien, but they’ve got their feet on the ground. We wouldn’t have encouraged Bree to go with them if we thought they were bad news.”

“We rent out the condo in the winter,” said Renee, “but our tenants left early, so we figured, why not let the girls use it? It’s better to have someone there than to leave the place empty.”

“And it beats sleeping on a park bench,” Angelo put in.

“Have you been in touch with Bree since she left?” I asked.

Angelo shook his head. “You know how it is. When a girl’s having fun, she doesn’t stop to think that people might want to hear from her.”

“Have you tried calling her?” I asked.

“Can’t,” said Renee. “We don’t have phone service at the condo.”

“Renee and I use cell phones,” said Angelo. “You’d think Bree would have one, wouldn’t you? Most kids walk around with cell phones glued to their ears these days, but not Bree.”

“She probably can’t afford one,” I said. “Her father liked to gamble.”

“A real piece of work,” said Angelo, pursing his lips in disgust. “Bree deserves better than that.”

“Her great-grandaunts are two of the finest people you could ever hope to meet,” I assured him. “I think it would give Bree a boost to know that a pair of little old ladies in England care very much about her.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” said Angelo. “So you’re going to Wellington?”

“No other choice,” I replied. “I just hope she’s still using your condo.”

Renee pulled a pen and a pad of paper out of her purse. “I’ll give you the address and our phone numbers. Call us when you get there, will you?”

“Of course,” I said.

“If we’d known Bree was in trouble,” Angelo said soberly, “we would have done more for her. But you know how it is. If a kid doesn’t want you to know something, you’re not going to know it.” He waved the waitress over, ordered English toffee pudding with custard for all of us, and sat back as she began clearing the table. “So, where have you two been so far?”