Love Me If You Must (5 page)

Ahead of me, David put a box of Sugar Puffs in the cart. My heart did a flip-flop. Here was a guy who needed a woman to watch out for him. No one should consume that nasty sweetened cardboard.

“Here, try this granola,” I said, passing him my brand. “You’ll love it. And it’s good for you.”

He took the box from me and set it in the cart. With a moment’s hesitation, he put the Sugar Puffs back on the shelf.

I admired the way the ligaments played along the back of his hands. I could picture how well-suited those long fingers were for a computer keyboard. I knew they would be soft, gentle . . .

I cleared my throat. It didn’t seem fair of Rebecca to just leave him hanging like this. If she didn’t want to patch things up, she ought to at least give him the dignity of setting him free. She could step aside and give someone else a chance to erase the sorrow from his features.

My mind slid back to Tammy’s perfect figure. Unless I was mistaken, I wasn’t the only candidate interested in taking on the job.

Maybe I’d stop by the Beauty Boutique after all.

 
7

A song rolled off my tongue as I grabbed my groceries from the backseat and headed toward the house. I had more fun shopping today than I could remember. David was ever the gentleman. He didn’t ask too many questions, didn’t talk too much about himself. We’d been content just pushing a cart together.

He’d helped me load my supplies into the car at the grocery store, then followed me home, giving a friendly beep of farewell as he headed down the street to his own driveway. I could hear the slam of his car door two garages over even now.

I smiled, breathing in the bitter scent of crushed autumn leaves. It felt good to dip my big toe back into the pool of human companionship.

I paused at the steps to the back porch and wrinkled my nose at the cedar growing out of control against the house. I made a mental note to replace it with a short, tame barberry and plenty of wood chips. Then buyers could better appreciate the beauty of the turned spindles that followed the length of the rail, especially once all the trim got a fresh coat of white paint come summer.

I continued up the steps, reaching for the keys while trying to keep hold of the paper bags in my arms. The ring jangled free of my pocket. At the same moment, my toe kicked something soft.

I jerked back, expecting to see the mangled corpse of a jack-o’-lantern, a prank in keeping with the season. Instead, a cloth sack filled to the brim with ripe, juicy tomatoes awaited discovery.

I glanced across the fence to Brad’s backyard. Obviously, he decided to follow through on his promised delivery despite my less-than-stellar behavior. How sweet.

As I put away my grocery items, I replayed my afternoon with David. He’d been so attentive, unloading the cart at the checkout lane. I found it hard to believe he’d been raised a “commoner,” as he put it. David was nothing if not well-bred. And it had been a good long time since a man went out of his way to treat me like a lady. I knew better than to get my hopes up, but it never hurt to dream.

I went to the porch and retrieved the gift tomatoes. I unloaded at least a dozen of them into the veggie bin. I’d probably look like a tomato by the time I got done eating them all. If Brad had mentioned this peace offering before I went shopping, I could have saved a buck eighty-nine.

I closed the fridge. Outside, rain began pelting the earth. The wind blew a sheet of water against the kitchen window.

A crash of thunder ripped through the house, shaking the floor beneath me. Lightning followed close on its heels, flashing a brilliant white against the door to the basement as I passed by. For a split second, the outline of a woman appeared on its painted surface.

I screamed and fell backward. My head bumped against the wall behind me. The lightning flashed again. The panels were bare.

I gave a laugh of relief. I’d been nearly knocked unconscious by my own shadow. I rubbed the back of my head.

“Pull it together, Tish,” I said to the empty room. I stood up and patted the dirt off my backside, hoping to brush off a little imagination with it.

It had been only my shadow on the door, not some specter beckoning to free her wronged spirit. With Officer Brad and Lloyd & Sons as my witnesses, there was no body in my basement.

From where I stood, I could see that the bolt still secured the door. Even the swamp monster couldn’t get up here. Still, I wasn’t feeling very brave. I inched my way past, never taking my eye off the doorknob, expecting to see it turn any second . . .

I made it to the bathroom and flipped the lock.

How had I gone all afternoon without thinking of the body that was not in my basement? Obviously, being in David’s company helped. I could only hope that I’d get to spend more time with him—I had to do something to keep my sanity. It would be pathetic if the neighbors found me one day, locked in my bathroom, rocking back and forth on the toilet seat and ranting about a body in my cistern, when of course there was no body in my cistern.

The flush of the toilet blended with the peal of a train whistle as an engine flew past. Funny, a sound I’d dreaded only last night was a comfort to me now. The blaring notes were rooted in reality. They strengthened me enough that I could open the door and walk back into the kitchen. There was no need to be nervous.

There was no body.

That night, after an evening topped off by a tomato salad and a romance novel minus the ghosts, I fell asleep to the sound of rain. I woke the next day to the coo of a mourning dove. Somewhere in between must have been more ear-splitting whistles, but my only conscious memory was of a dream that had me trapped in Deucey’s front seat, with Grandma driving.

“Your mother was always a good girl,” she said, smiling at me. Her white hair was arranged in perfect curls around her face. Red lipstick and drawn-on eyebrows made her seem younger than her years.

When I looked at her hands, wrinkled and old, gripping the steering wheel, that “something’s amiss” feeling came over me—the one you get when you meet someone in a dream, and all of a sudden you remember that in real life the person is dead. Suddenly I was scared. My legs and arms felt bolted to the bench seat. I watched, helpless, as Grandma’s face became an oozing mass of color, as if an artist had swirled his brush on the canvas to blot out a mistake.

The contorted mouth talked to me. “Why couldn’t you have been more like your mother?”

Then we were airborne, with the bottom of Mead Quarry racing up to meet us.

I was awake now, more so than after my usual two cups of coffee. And a good thing too. It was time to roll up my sleeves and get to work.

Milk sloshed over the edges of the bowl as I ate a hurried breakfast. I decided to strip the wallpaper from the front entry while waiting for Lloyd & Sons to arrive. I could accomplish the modest-sized project before lunch and feel like I was at least headed in the right direction.

I painted water over the ’70s pattern, gave it a few minutes to soak in, then scraped the layers off with a wide, flat-edged putty knife. It wasn’t the most effective way to rid the walls of their covering, but the obsessive-compulsive in me loved the way the paper came off in long spirals that piled up on the floor.

One wall was stripped bare when I realized Lloyd hadn’t arrived yet. I flipped open my phone and dialed up his cell.

“Lloyd here,” he answered in tandem with crackling airwaves.

“Tish Amble. I thought we were on for today.”

There was a pause while he tried to come up with a good excuse for stiffing me.

“Got tied up . . . crackle . . . deck repair . . . crackle . . . crackle . . . get the permit?”

“Permit for what? I thought you were taking care of all the permits.”

I could barely hear his reply as the signal cut in and out.

“. . . get the permit . . . for the cistern . . . by tomorrow.”

“By tomorrow? Fine. In fact, I’ll take care of it right now.”

The line was nothing but static as I jammed the disconnect button with my finger. What kind of contractor didn’t pull his own permits? It’s not like it took a college degree to get permission to knock down a stone wall.

I picked up the soggy paper shavings and dropped them in a plastic bag. Now I’d have to get cleaned up and face the village guardians myself.

But it would be worth it if it meant getting rid of that creepy pile of rocks once and for all.

 
8

The brisk October wind blew cold fingers of air down the neck of my jacket, slowly cooling my boiling blood as I stomped two blocks down to the village offices. Lloyd’s reliability quotient had dropped to a solid zero. What was I paying him for? I should fire him and use the money on a one-way ticket to Fiji. I could renovate a grass hut as my next project.

Leaves danced circles around me, then piled up in exhausted heaps against the brick storefronts. I pushed open the heavy glass door to the Village of Rawlings headquarters and stepped into a workplace as hushed as a morgue. The smell of new paper and copy toner greeted me. Behind the reception counter, a woman was absorbed with a collating project that involved six or seven multicolored sheets and an electric stapler.

I crossed my arms and waited. She showed no sign of slowing. After a few moments, I cleared my throat.

Without looking up, the clerk droned, “I’ll be right with you.”

My fingers tapped the denim of my sleeves. The pile that consumed the woman’s attention hadn’t shrunk a millimeter since I’d been standing there. I wondered at what point she would decide to do her job and assist me.

“Uh-hmmm,” I said with more insistence.

The nameplate on the counter identified the woman as Laura Boyd. I was about to say her name in not-very-nice tones, when she huffed and laid down the papers overflowing her fingers. She gave me a sharp glance.

“Can I help . . .” Her voice petered off into stunned silence. From her goggle-eyed stare, I concluded my notorious twin had preceded me once again.

No time for flabbergasted clerks. I had a deadline.

“I need to apply for a permit.” I flopped my elbows on the counter and leaned toward her. “My name is Tish Amble and I’m at 302 South Main Street.”

“T . . . Tish Amble?”

“That’s my name.”

Ms. Boyd backed up into a desk, knocking over the pencil holder. She swung around, made a half-try to pick up the mess, then practically ran to a back office and shut the door.

I hoped that meant she was getting my application.

Her absence dragged on. An old-fashioned bell, the kind you ring for service, was sitting on top of a stack of last week’s local newspaper. My patience came to an end, and I gave the ringer a good workout. The ding, ding, ding, ding lowered my frustration level considerably, though whether it had the power to procure my application was yet to be seen.

From the direction of the back office, bobbing between bookshelves and file cabinets, came a head shaved smooth as a plum. I had only a moment to wonder if the owner used a double-blade or some kind of cream, before the man’s face, purple-veined with anger, wiped all curiosity from my mind.

“Laura tells me you need a permit.” His voice resonated off the plate-glass windows behind me and rattled my rib cage.

My body stiffened in defense. “That’s right.”

“At 302 South Main?” he asked.

“That’s correct.”

“For what?” The guy sounded like a grunting monkey.

“Removal of the cistern.”

“Nope. Can’t do it.” He thumped his fist on the counter.

“Pardon me?” My heels dug into the carpet.

“You heard me—302 falls in the Historic Preservation District along with the rest of Rawlings Township. Can’t touch the foundation.”

“Thankfully, the cistern isn’t part of the foundation.” I made my best attempt at a smile, but I’m sure it looked more like a grimace.

“It’s part of the original stonework. The committee won’t let you touch it. Believe me.” His head angled down and his brows angled up.

“Perhaps you could give me the chairperson’s name and I’ll check into it myself.” No village tyrant was going to deter me from reaching my goal.

“Sure. Martin Dietz.”

“Where would I find Mr. Dietz?”

“You’re looking at him.”

I drew a deep breath. First a cop for a neighbor, then a body in the cistern, now some demon-possessed zoning official. I needed to go home and ask God what I did to deserve all the potholes on my straight and narrow road.

“Mr. Dietz, what I need from you is the permit application. I’ll let the committee review it for themselves and make the final decision.”

Dietz flashed an evil smile. “It’ll be a waste of two hundred and fifty bucks, but suit yourself.”

He set the application between us on the counter. His look dared me to take it.

My fingers hesitated a bare instant before snatching up the triplicate form. He shouldn’t be so cocky. I’d faced officials with more hair and come out a winner. There was no way he could stop my project from going forward. I knew all the ins, outs, and secret passages of zoning laws. Completing the application and getting denied was a mere formality.

I gave him a final taut-lipped look and turned to go out. The coming victory would be one more notch in the holster of my staple gun. I couldn’t help but smile at the challenge ahead.

Lloyd the contractor arrived first thing the next day.

I greeted him with crossed arms and a tapping foot. I wasn’t about to let him off easy. “I couldn’t get the permit.”

“Permit? What permit?”

I rose up on my tiptoes to gain some height. “Hello? The permit for the removal of the cistern.”

“Huh?”

This guy was losing it. “You know. The one you told me to get when I called you yesterday.”

I couldn’t believe he’d forgotten our conversation already.

“I told you I would get the permit,” he said.

I wanted to knock on his cranium to jog his memory. “No. You told me to get the permit for today.”

His eyelids peeled back in a look of panic. “I said I would come by today. You went down to the village office?”

“Yeah. Why the big deal?”

“You saw Martin Dietz?”

“Yeah.”

Lloyd slapped himself in the temple. “You’ll never get the permit now.”

“What do you mean?” I was pretty sick of him raining on my renovation parade.

“I guarantee he took one look at you and decided you weren’t going to get a permit to flush the toilet, let alone remove a cistern.”

“Mr. Dietz is a public servant. He can’t deny me based on frivolous logic.”

“Mr. Dietz is a public tyrant. He’ll make your life so miserable, you’ll wish you were the one buried in the cistern.”

I stopped breathing. Did Lloyd think there was someone under the concrete in my basement?

He shifted his feet. “I don’t mean to say there’s a body in your cistern. I was just giving you fair warning. Don’t go after the permit. Box in the cistern and forget about it. Let it lie.”

My skin crept with déjà vu.

Let it lie. I’d heard those words before; three simple words that always rousted the rebel in me.

The cistern didn’t have a chance.