Leave It to Cleavage (7 page)

“Great sermon, Reverend,” Gus Summers said, as if he’d actually stayed awake to listen to it.

“Thank you, Gus. Blake.” The pastor smiled and moved on to greet the rest of his flock.

Blake and Gus lingered on the lawn, making conversation as the crowd thinned out. Out of the corner of his eye Blake kept track of Miranda Smith, watching her move through the thinning crowd in her grandmother’s wake. They made an arresting picture, the smaller white-haired woman with the tall dark-haired one behind her, both of them with their chins tilted at the same proud angle. With a nod to his grandfather he moved to intercept them. Gus fell into step beside him, smoothing a hand over his tie as they walked.

“Augustus.” Cynthia Richard’s voice rang out bright and clear as they approached. “You’re looking well.”

Blake watched his grandfather preen under the woman’s regard and saw him steal a quick glance his way to see if he’d noticed.

“You’re holdin’ up pretty well yourself,” Gus replied.

“Why . . . thank you,” Miranda’s grandmother said. “I baked brownies last night and thought you all might like some. I’ve got them in the car.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Blake smiled at the older woman, then at Miranda, who looked like she’d prefer to be almost anywhere but there. He peered over her shoulder and then pretended to visually search her handbag. “What, no food? And here I thought we were walking around with signs on our backs that read, ‘Feed Me.’”

Miranda raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, Chief,” she said coolly. “My grandmother taught me not to feed wild animals. It can make them dependent and unable to fend for themselves.” She paused. “And it’s dangerous to let them associate you with food.”

Gus guffawed and Miranda smiled with mock regret. “Did you forget to put nuts away for the winter?”

Blake laughed as Miranda Smith’s green eyes lightened and he couldn’t help wondering what kinds of things she was hiding behind them. Was it something as simple as marital discord? Or something more complex, as his anonymous caller had suggested? The questions, like the woman, intrigued him.

“I imagine we’ll survive,” Blake replied. “And I’m glad you don’t feel guilty about not feeding the . . . animals.” He leaned closer to Miranda and caught himself wondering why Tom Smith would go off and leave this woman alone for any length of time. He lowered his voice. “If there’s anything you
do
feel guilty about at any time, you be sure and let me know.”

“You bet, Chief.” Her tone said
NOT
. “You’ll definitely be the first.”

He held her gaze, once again trying to plumb her depths. He’d been fascinated by puzzles since childhood; that fascination was one of the things that had ultimately drawn him into police work. He prided himself on not giving up until he found and fit all the available pieces together.

Miranda Smith’s puzzle presented all kinds of interesting possibilities. He looked into her eyes once again and smiled. He could hardly wait to get started.

Up on the church playground, Andie Summers wiped at a grass stain on her navy wool blazer, then leaned back against the sturdy trunk of the old oak to stare up through the naked branches.

She was so focused on the winter sky above her that the tap on her shoulder almost sent her hurtling out of her skin.

“Who are you hiding from?” Jake Hanson’s freckles dotted the prominent bridge of his nose. He had dark hair that brushed the top of his shoulders and more than a couple of inches on her, which forced her to look up into his face as she barked her surprise.

“Jake the Rake” was Truro High School’s starting center. Even Andie had to admit he moved like a dream on the court, and she could definitely understand why the girls in her homeroom pretended to swoon when they said his name.

Andie had never been this close to him before, and had never felt the impact of the warm brown eyes focused entirely on her. She had the feeling he could see all the way inside her. He had a basketball in his hands.

Slowly, as if her heart wasn’t pounding and the blood wasn’t whooshing in her ears, Andie pushed off from the tree and took a step away from him.

“I’m not hiding,” she said. “I’m just checking out the view.”

Together they peered down at the parking lot, which was rapidly emptying. Her dad and great-grandfather were standing there watching the Ballantyne women get in their car. In a minute they’d be looking for her.

“Yeah, best parking-lot view in town.” Jake’s gaze swung back to her face. “I saw you in the game against Franklin.”

His voice was deeper than most of the other boys’, and he had what looked like peach fuzz on his cheeks. Andie flushed. They’d lost the Franklin game by a good ten points.

He smiled and spun the basketball around on his fingertip. “You all were looking pretty good right up until that last quarter.”

“Yeah.” Andie remembered her shot bouncing off the rim and into the hands of Franklin’s center and felt her face fall.

He spun the ball again, then let it plop into his hands. “It happens.”

Andie bristled. “Not to me.”

He shrugged and spun the ball again. For a minute she thought he was going to ask her to shoot some hoops with him, but then a female voice floated up to them on the wind.

“Jake?”

They turned to see Mary Louise Atkins come up over the rise. She was a good four inches shorter than Andie, with a figure full of curves that had been poured into a pale pink skirt-and-sweater set under a gray wool coat. Her dark hair stirred lightly in the breeze, and her lipstick was the exact same shade as her sweater.

Mary Louise pretended to be out of breath as she came to stand next to Jake, even though Andie knew she did the mile in under seven minutes and worked out with a vengeance. Her eyes skimmed quickly over Andie before dismissing her.

“Hey, Jake, what are you doing way up here?”

Her affected southern purr made Andie want to hurl, and she automatically rolled her eyes. For a wild moment she thought Jake had rolled his too, but when she looked again he was smiling down at Mary Louise.

“Just talking basketball, ML. Nothing you’d be interested in.”

He gave Andie a friendly nod and slipped an arm around the other girl. Then they turned and walked down the hill, the girl chattering and shooting adoring looks at Jake, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder.

Andie watched until they disappeared from sight. Then she just stood there next to the tree, feeling tall and awkward and envious until, with a snort of disgust, she too, headed down to the parking lot. All the way down she wondered whether Jake Hanson even knew she was a girl.

Miranda spent Sunday afternoon in Tom’s study filling a yellow pad with notes and ideas on everything from new stalls in the Ballantyne ladies’ room—when you and your laptop spent long periods of time in one, you couldn’t help noticing its deficiencies—to developing a new product line. But her notes, like her thoughts, were an unsatisfactory jumble of images and fragments.

The house was too quiet. She could feel it pressing in on her as she stared out the study window.
Alone,
it seemed to say to her.
You’re all alone.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she answered back.

In the Dempseys’ yard next door the birdbath was frozen. In the bare branches of the tree beside it, a squirrel hung by its tail and feasted on the cylindrical birdfeeder, totally focused on its mission.

She’d won countless beauty pageants by focusing that strongly on one event at a time: Win the interview, move on to the swimsuit, then focus on the evening gown. Nail the stage question and let the points add up. That was the way to salvage things at Ballantyne.

Miranda skimmed down her notes until she reached the word “receivables.” If Fidelity National discovered the fake receivables on their own—and if she’d found them there was no way a team of accountants wouldn’t—she’d never get the chance to put the company back on a firmer financial footing. Because there would be no company.

There was also the chance they wouldn’t stop with just putting Ballantyne out of business. Even large financial institutions took the concept of fraud very personally. Fidelity National might not consider the matter finished until
somebody
went to jail.

Okay
. Miranda wrote the words “Stall audit” in big black letters and added three exclamation points. If she could put together the resources to guarantee the line of credit, this might actually be possible. She made a note to schedule a meeting with the bank.

Number two? She thought for a second and wrote “Find Tom” in big block letters and tried to push aside the ache that accompanied it. At night when she lay in bed wondering when he had stopped loving her and why, she was afraid to explore what, if anything, she still felt for him. He had taken such complete control in leaving that her feelings seemed . . . moot and too often contradictory.

One minute she never wanted to see him again; the next she wanted the face-to-face confrontation she’d been denied. But most of all, she craved an ending to this limbo he’d left her in. After her appointment with the bank, she’d meet the attorney she’d been referred to and find out what her options were. Maybe then she could move on.

Number three was a little easier and a lot more enjoyable: dinner with Gran.

Shoving the legal pad aside, Miranda called her grandmother to let her know she was coming, then placed their usual order at Ling Pow’s. She didn’t intend to spill all the sordid details, but she did need a sounding board. And she also needed assets to pledge.

Gran’s cottage was a cozy guest house on the grounds of the home she’d grown up in. After her husband’s death, Gran had passed the big house down to Miranda’s parents, along with the running of Ballantyne, and thrown herself into the renovation of the once derelict cottage. The two-bedroom home sat on the far side of a small orchard and allowed her to set up housekeeping at what she had declared the perfect distance from her daughter: far enough away to maintain her independence and close enough to impose her will . . . at will.

Some of Miranda’s happiest childhood memories had been made in this cottage, where her grandmother’s unconditional love and approval had been a welcome relief from her mother’s more demanding form of affection. When Miranda turned sixteen, she’d been given her own key, and in the years that followed, Gran and her home had provided an important demilitarized zone in the escalating war between Miranda and her mother.

Late each spring Gran decamped for her house near the summit of Ballantyne Bald, where the higher elevation kept the small lake cold year-round and no air-conditioning was required even on the hottest summer days. Her wedding gift to Miranda had been the adjoining lakefront acreage on which Miranda’s small retreat—and Tom’s love nest—now sat.

But Gran spent winters in the lovely stone cottage with its blazing fireplace and old mullioned windows. It was a place for kicking off one’s shoes and curling up for a good read or whispered confidences. Miranda had learned to navigate the waters of small-town life from this life raft. Tonight she planned to ask for an oar without revealing where she intended to paddle the family canoe.

While Gran stoked the fire, Miranda deposited the “to go” cartons onto the farm table in the great room, then went back to the kitchen for plates and chopsticks.

They took seats across from each other at the scarred wooden table, and for a few moments the only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the rustle of cardboard as they served themselves.

Miranda began to relax as they chatted idly. Being with Gran was so much easier than fielding her mother’s fitful attempts at communication, which swung between snippets of unsolicited advice and not-so-silent bouts of parental disapproval.

Miranda did not look forward to the day Joan Ballantyne Harper discovered her daughter had been dumped. And she sincerely hoped there were no pageants for almost-middle-aged women without husbands, for her mother to try to push her into.

She looked up and caught her grandmother eyeing her.

“So what do you hear from Tom?” Gran asked.

“Not, uh, much.”
Make that nothing
. As always the
whys
of it stalked her.
Why
hadn’t Tom shared the problems at Ballantyne and allowed her to help?
Why
hadn’t he loved her enough to stay and face the consequences of his actions?
Why
had he needed lingerie and other women?

“He’s gone inland to find new suppliers.” God, she hated lying to her Gran.

“Tom certainly has an eye for satin and lace,” Gran said almost conversationally.

Miranda froze as the silence stretched out between them; she actually had to clamp her mouth shut to keep from dumping the truth in her grandmother’s lap.

“Well, perhaps in this case no news is good news,” Gran finally said. “Tell me what you’ve been doing at Ballantyne.”

“There are a few things that Tom has,” Miranda cleared her throat and looked away, searching for words that would prevent an outright lie, “left me to take care of.”

“And do you want to talk about those things?” Her grandmother, too, seemed to be choosing her words with care.

“Not exactly.” Once again Miranda longed to lay down her load and go on about her life . . . or what was left of it. But she was the one who’d chosen a man who’d trashed the family business and then run off. With her father unavailable, it was her responsibility to try to clean up the mess. “But I do need to ask you for something, Gran. And I need to ask it on our old terms—no questions asked.”

“You mean like when you took your mother’s Volvo and transported that sow and her piglets in it? Or the time you faked a fever so you wouldn’t have to participate in the seed-spitting competition at the Miss Watermelon pageant?”

“I thought older people were supposed to get feeble and forget things,” Miranda said. “Do you remember every single thing I asked you to keep to yourself?”

“Just the highlights, darling. Your exploits have always helped keep me young, though I must say your life hasn’t been anywhere near as entertaining since you married Tom.”