Hollyhock Ridge (11 page)

“The city has a contingency fund,” Kay said. “For years,
Stuart has syphoned money off of that fund to pour into his many schemes. For
the past two years he’s been depositing money from the fund into a bank account
in Pittsburgh. He reported it to the City Council as fees paid to a consulting
firm, however, the documents I just happened to have intercepted have his name,
Knox’s name, and one other interesting name listed as owners of this account.”

“Interesting how?”

Kay held out one of the statements for Claire to look at.

“Marigold Lawson?” Claire asked. “What is she doing mixed up
with Stuart and Knox?”

“Well, from what I can tell, Knox and Stuart have been
paying into this account for two years, but only Marigold has taken any money
out.”

“Campaign slush fund?”

“Except I don’t think that two years ago Marigold was
planning to run for mayor,” Kay said. “Stuart’s wife, Peg, was slated to run,
because they always alternated their four-year terms.”

“So what kind of dirt did Marigold have on Stuart and Knox
that would compel them to pay her this kind of blackmail money?”

Kay shrugged.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“I bet she didn’t disclose it when she signed up to run for
mayor.”

“Probably not,” Kay said, “which puts me in sort of a
picklish spot.”

“Did you tell the feds about this?”

She shook her head.

“Before he left office, I snagged these out of Stuart’s
briefcase and copied them,” Kay said. “I couldn’t very well admit that, could
I?”

“You sneaky devil.”

“Listen,” Kay said. “Stuart and Knox are facing federal
charges. They would love nothing better than for me to take the fall. Nobody’s
going to protect me, so I have to take care of myself; and if that means I have
to play their game better than they do, well …”

“You want me to find out what the bank account’s for.”

“It’s a lot to ask.”

“I’ll do it,” Claire said. “Evidently, I’m a bird dog that
needs to hunt.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Claire said. “Listen, I have some bad news about
Diedre.”

“I already heard about it,” Kay said. “What a terrible way
to die; all alone with no one knowing where she was.”

“You should have seen those storage units,” Claire said.
“You wouldn’t believe how much that woman had in there; no rhyme nor reason,
just stuffed in there like garbage.”

“Some sort of obsession, I guess,” Kay said. “My parents
never threw away anything useful because they had been through the Great
Depression. Papa bent old nails back straight, put them in a coffee can, and
Mama kept used buttons in a jar. She used the fabric from old clothes for
quilts and canned everything grown in our garden.”

“This is different,” Claire said. “I’m kind of a shopaholic,
but I take good care of what I buy: clothes, shoes, handbags, jewelry, accessories,
makeup … listen to me; even talking about shopping gets me excited. But my
point is, my closet in the L.A. condo was more of a shrine than clothes storage.
Diedre’s stuff looked like a mass of junk.”

“It’s a shame,” Kay said. “I feel sorry for her family.”

“Well, I’m just going to say it,” Claire said. “This means
Matt’s free.”

“Nope,” Kay said. “I’m not going there.”

“All right,” Claire said. “But I know you’ve thought about
it.”

Once again, Kay woke up to the sound of someone doing
something to her house. It was six a.m. This time, she took care to brush her
hair and put on some clothes before she ventured outside.

Sonny’s truck was parked outside, and his feet were sticking
out between the hollyhocks and foxglove, from underneath the crawlspace of the
house. Kay stooped down and tapped his boot.

“You want some coffee?” she asked.

“Yes, in a minute,” he responded.

“Come in whenever you’re ready,” she told him.

Kay sang as she started preparing breakfast for him, noticed
what she was singing, and rolled her eyes at herself. There was something about
making a big breakfast for a big man she knew would appreciate it that tickled
her, and she was amused by that. Although she vociferously defended the rights
of women to do anything men did and get paid the same for doing it, and she
wouldn’t want to make taking care of a man the central focus of her life, still
she was enjoying this little taste of domesticity.

When Sonny came in, he unlaced his boots and pulled them
off. She noticed he had a hole in the toe of one of his socks. Although she
noticed, she did not offer to sew it up for him. There were limits, apparently,
to this homemaking urge she was feeling.

“That smells wonderful,” he said, and rubbed his hands
together.

“Wash your hands, please,” she said.

He went down the hall to the bathroom and when he came back,
he said, “I’ll bring you a new refill valve assembly this evening.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Kay said. “Be sure to add that to
my tab.”

He tucked a napkin into the neck of his blue work shirt,
took up his knife and fork, and then looked at Kay.

“I could get used to this,” he said, and winked at her.

“Oh, go on,” Kay said, but she could feel her face flush.

He made multiple happy sounds as he consumed everything on
his plate, and was pleased to accept seconds of everything.

“I guess you heard about Diedre,” he said.

“It’s an awful thing to have happen,” Kay said. “I planned
to send a box from the bakery over to Matt’s later today.”

“Three storage units, that woman had; filled to the ceiling
with other people’s junk. Laurie said she must have been trying to get a
treadle sewing machine up on top of something and it fell on her.”

“I hope she didn’t suffer.”

“They said she died almost instantly.”

“That’s a small blessing, then.”

“I can say this to you, because you know the situation: they
did not have a happy marriage. Never did.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“With our church, you know how it is; Matty couldn’t do
anything but what he did, which was bear it as best he could. There’s no way
out for us, no full pardons for good behavior. My name is mud over there, on
account of Karla, and that wasn’t even my fault. My mother wanted me to get an
annulment, but what would that say to my girls? Me and your mother were only kidding
about our marriage, we didn’t mean it? No, thank you, I said. I haven’t been
back to Mass since then.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kay said. “I can’t imagine giving
up my church; it would be like divorcing my family.”

“They’ll be lining up for Matty, though,” Sonny said. “There’ll
be casseroles and homemade preserves as far as the eye can see. That’s the
difference between death and divorce.”

“He will need the support of his church family,” Kay said.
“It may help him.”

“I hope he can have some peace now,” Sonny said. “The best
thing he can do for that house is set it on fire. The cigarette smoke is in the
plaster; he’ll never get it out. The junk can be hauled away, but if I were
him, I’d tear it down and build a new house. Or sell it. There can’t be any
good memories there.”

“But their daughter might have some.”

“No,” Sonny said as he shook his head. “Nobody was ever
happy in that house.”

“When’s the funeral?”

“Tomorrow,” Sonny said. “You going?”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Kay said. “I’ll send some
flowers.”

“You know, this makes my brother a single man, a widower.”

“That was over a long time ago.”

“I wondered.”

“That’s ancient history,” Kay said. “We’re all different
people now.”

“I like how you turned out,” Sonny said. “I hope you don’t
mind me saying.”

“I don’t mind it,” Kay said. “I like how you turned out,
too.”

“I’m gonna make a list of everything that’s wrong with your
house, and you and I can prioritize it,” he said. “Maybe over dinner some
night, somewhere nice.”

“I’d like that,” Kay said.

“Good,” he said, and thumped the table for emphasis. “I’ll
have my people call your people.”

Kay laughed.

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” he said.

Kay liked it, too.

There they were.

Claire had scoured the Internet for over an hour and finally
beheld them, the perfect shoes; impossibly steep, wickedly black, plenty of toe
cleavage, with the requisite red sole. Not likely to be invited to a gala event
or premiere any time soon, Claire, of course, had no place to wear them, but
that hardly mattered. What mattered was the time it took to search for them,
the thrill of finding them so heavily discounted, with free shipping, in her
size, in the color she wanted, and the surge of pleasure she got when she
clicked on the red rectangle marked “place order.”

If she were a smoker, she would have lit up afterward.

Now what?

Despite her intention not to, she had already caught up on
all the latest celebrity gossip that didn’t concern her previous employer. It
had only been a few months since she was employed as the assistant to that
aging Hollywood she-devil, Sloan Merryweather, and already there were names she
didn’t recognize slated to perform in films she’d never heard of. She would
soon be just like everyone else, with no insider knowledge or connections.

It didn’t take long to become irrelevant in that world; it
could happen over a weekend during which your latest film tanked, or the
morning after an ill-advised drunken post on a social media site. Fans were
fickle and apt to turn on you, and industry power players only cared about the
bottom line, either the insatiable one in their pants or the career-making one
on the profit and loss spreadsheet. If you weren’t making them rich, you had
better be young, attractive, and willing to do anything,
absolutely anything,
to make it.

Claire looked around Sean’s office, where every flat surface
was covered in sawdust from Pip’s circular saw. Pip hadn’t bothered to show up
yet, probably wouldn’t now, especially since the cloudless sky was bright blue
and the temperature hovered in the mid-seventies. Just as well, she thought.
She was kind of glad for a reprieve from the whine of the power tools and the
whine of Pip begging her for more money.

Claire closed the web browser, stood up and went out the
open front door. Right before noon, the streets and sidewalks of Rose Hill
Avenue were busy, with plenty of tourists dressed in the expensive designer
version of outdoor sporting apparel, and wealthy parents shepherding their
teenagers to Eldridge College orientation events. Claire recognized the
frustrated sense of entitlement on display as the impatient parents negotiated
the tiny town, so lacking in valet parking, chain coffee shops, and expensive
antique stores, and not nearly quaint enough to warrant a longer stay than was
absolutely necessary.

She considered dragging the table outside again to watch the
parade, but felt too deflated, too lethargic to bother.

‘Am I depressed?’ she wondered.

Bored was more accurate.

She still hadn’t heard from the human resources office at
Eldridge, and although she loved her cousin Sean, she regretted her offer to
babysit his office space until he returned from the beach. More than anything,
she missed Maggie and Hannah, more like best friends than first cousins.

“You look like you want to kick someone,” Laurie said,
interrupting her brooding. “I hope it’s not me.”

“No,” Claire said. “I’m bored.”

“Good,” he said. “Close up shop and come have lunch with
me.”

“Did you find Diedre’s car?”

“Is lunch conditional upon that?”

“No, I was just wondering.”

“Why you are so worried about that poor woman’s car, I’m
sure I don’t know.”

“It bothers me,” Claire said. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Not in the least,” Laurie said. “Stolen, probably, or
rolled over the hill behind the storage unit; I didn’t bother to look. Found or
not, she’s still dead, killed by her addiction to acquiring other people’s
junk, for feck’s sake, and I don’t think finding her ratty old clunker is a
good use of my staff’s time, even if Itchy or Scratchy had a clue how to go
about it.”

“I don’t know why it bothers me,” Claire said. “It just
does.”

“You should be an investigative reporter,” Laurie said.
“Maybe your boyfriend, Mr. Pulitzer, could employ you as an intern at the
erstwhile
Sentinel
. Considering the average age of his subscribers it
should be called the
Incontinent
.”

“I’m used to being much busier than I am right now,” she
said. “I need a project.”

He spread his arms wide.

“And here I am, desperately in need of organizing.”

“No, really,” she said.

“But I’m completely serious,” he said. “I’m starting a new
job on Monday and I need somewhere to live, some decent clothing, and a
haircut.”

“Scott will probably let you rent his place as long as you
want,” she said. “I can help you with the clothes and the haircut.”

“So let us convene in yonder bistro, where I’ll buy you a
well-organized salad with the dreaded dressing on the side,” he said. “We’ll
make a list and then prioritize it.”

“You’re patronizing me,” she said.

“Only a little,” he said.

“I’m having lunch with Kay,” she said.

“Then dinner,” he said.

“I have to stay in with Dad tonight,” she said. “Melissa has
been generous, but I don’t want to take advantage of her.”

“Then let me bring dinner to you and your father,” he said.
“Say sixish?”

“You don’t know how he is now,” she said. “He’s not the man
you remember and he may not remember you.”

“I’ll go with the flow,” he said. “If it upsets him for me
to be there, I’ll leave.”

There was a screech of tires and a bang as two vehicles
collided at the sole traffic light in town. Laurie closed his eyes and groaned.

“Is it bad?” he asked her. “You look. I don’t want to.”

“It’s tourist on tourist, not local,” she said. “Out-of-state
plates, luxury car and SUV.”

“I guess I better get involved,” he said. “No sense in bothering
Miss Marple or Monsieur Poirot.”

“Sorry you hate your job so much.”

“I wish with all my heart I had become a history professor,”
he said. “See you later.”

Kay had a small table set for lunch on her front porch. A
steady breeze carried with it the scent of honeysuckle and newly mown grass,
and the sky was a brilliant blue. Bees were hovering around the flowers she had
planted by the porch; they especially seemed to love the purple cone flower and
Shasta daisies. Multi-colored hollyhocks waved in the breeze; the Heavenly Blue
morning glories that twined up the trellis were just about to close for the
day.

Kay took a deep breath of fresh air and allowed herself a
moment to enjoy the simple pleasures of a good front porch. She wished she
could curl up on the glider with a book and an iced tea and not have to go back
to work this afternoon.

As soon as Kay went back to the kitchen to fetch the iced
tea, there was a knock on the front door.

“You’re early,” she called out, as she wiped her hands on
her apron and went to greet Claire.

But it was Matt Delvecchio peering in through the screened
door.

Kay’s heart beat faster, as it always did when she saw him.
She had been thinking about him more than usual since his wife disappeared, and
even more so after word came that Diedre had died. She had always been careful
to maintain a cordial distance between Matt and herself, since everybody above
a certain age in Rose Hill knew what had happened between them in high school;
in a small town, no news was old news. You were your past, for better or worse,
as long as you lived there.

“I guess you were expecting someone else,” he said, and Kay
thought she detected an accusation in his tone.

“Claire is coming for lunch,” she said, as she opened the
screen door.

Matt stepped in and Kay realized she had been holding her
breath.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” he said.

“Don’t be silly,” Kay said. “Come in and have some iced tea;
I was about to pour myself some and there’s plenty.”

Matt sat down on one side of her kitchen booth and Kay
poured some Blackberry Sage tea over cubes in a glass.

“This is good,” he said after he tasted it.

“It’s decaf,” she said. “I had to give up the good stuff
when I got high blood pressure.”

“It’s hell getting old, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she said as she sat down across from him. “How’re
you doing, Matt?”

“It was a shock,” he said. “Not knowing where she was, and
then, well …”

He looked out the window, his eyes shiny with tears. It was
all Kay could do not to put her hand over his. She handed him a tissue instead.

“How’s Tina doing?” Kay asked him.

“She’s on her way,” he said. “My mother’s taking care of
everything.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kay said. “It’s a terrible thing to have
happen.”

“She was a pack rat, you know that,” he said. “Everybody
knew it. She couldn’t help herself. I tried everything; she wouldn’t talk to
Father Stephen about it, and if I tried to get rid of anything she’d just about
have a stroke. A few years ago one of her stacks of junk fell over and killed our
cat. After that happened I gave her an ultimatum; not one more thing could come
into that house that we didn’t eat or wear. It seemed to get better after that.
I didn’t know she had found other places to put it all. I had no idea she had rented
those storage units. It’s embarrassing. It looks like I didn’t know my own
wife.”