After two more days of hard labor digging up dead shrubs, I was looking forward to the weekend. I packed it in, said good- bye to the guys, and left for the train station. In a sea of sweaty, gray commuters, it was not hard to find Lucy Cavanaugh. Wearing dark aviator sunglasses and a large straw hat, her glossy ponytail swinging behind her, she might have been off to chat up her new film on the Croisette. If I didn’t know her, I would have hated her on sight. I stuck my grubby hand through the moonroof to signal to Lucy, and she sashayed over in impossibly high sandals, with a train case and a collection of tiny shopping bags bouncing on either side.
She leaned in the passenger- side window.
“I brought my entire medicine cabinet. What ever you need, I’ve got.”
“Hop in first. The natives get restless at any breach of train- station etiquette.”
She did a brief show- and- tell of her pharmacopoeia and saved the strongest medicine for last-Belgian chocolates, which I pronounced too beautiful to eat.
“We’ll see, Miss Holier- Than- Thou Health Freak,” Lucy said. “You manage to squeeze booze and coffee into your diet. How big a leap can it be to the really hard stuff?”
A blast from somebody’s horn broke up the girl talk.
“The light was green for two seconds.” Lucy turned around and gave the driver one of her best withering looks.
“As someone told me recently, we have everything here they have in the big city.”
The car behind us passed on the right, and the driver flipped Lucy the bird. “Including assholes, apparently,” she said.
She dug through her shopping bags until she found the item she was looking for. “This you’re gonna love… and it has zero calories.”
I was dubious.
“It’s a watch with a heart- rate monitor. I saw it and it screamed Paula. I bought one, too. I’ve been addicted to it since I bought them. You can even see how many calories you burn while you’re having sex.”
“That must come in handy when your mind wanders.”
On the way back to my place we caught up. Mostly gossip about former colleagues-who’s changed jobs, who’s sleeping with whom, who’s getting fat injections.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said, unloading bags in the hallway. “I’m gonna take a quick shower.”
“Good idea,” Lucy said. “I thought it smelled a little horsey in the car.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’d changed, but my tiny deck was positively transformed. Filled with candles, pillows, and two artfully thrown pieces of Provenзal fabric Lucy had bought on her last trip to Cannes, it looked like a scene from the Arabian Nights. Music was playing, the wine was breathing, and Lucy had snipped a few daffodils from my back garden and stuck them in a tall blue glass.
“You’re gonna make somebody a damn fine little wife one day.”
“I’m still trying to get you to come to Cannes with me for the next festival. Eat fatty foods, drink to wretched excess, ward off the advances of swarthy foreigners? Sound good? There’ll be exercise, too… You can climb up that damn hill to the old part of town two or three times a day.”
“I can do all that in Connecticut and not have to deal with the cheese and the chain- smokers. Not this year,” I said. “Halcyon is a make- or- break opportunity for me. And it’s gotten off to a rocky start.”
“To say the least. And I’m here for you, pumpkin.” She patted my hand.
“I’m glad to hear you say that, because I desperately need you this weekend.” At this point, I thought it wise not to mention it was for manual labor. I poured her some wine and gave her all the gory details of my find.
She voted for Dorothy Peacock as the mother. “I took care of a sick relative once. When I wasn’t feeling like a martyr, I wanted to strangle her. Believe me, it’s draining. The old girl probably just needed to kick back a bit, got caught unprepared, and had an unfortunate accident. Then the baby didn’t make it. Muy trбgico, but I think it happened a lot in the old days. High infant mortality rates back then.”
“I don’t know. From what I’ve read about her, a rebel, sure, but not crazy enough to bury a baby in the backyard with the pachysandra.”
“All right, what do you think’s going on in Cabot Cove, Jessica?”
“There’s something going on, but I’m not sure what.” I sipped my wine. “I bet that woman I met could tell some tales. The mystery lady with the shawl.”
“Yeah, yeah. What about the cops? Spill.”
“Well, one of them is kind of cute. My type. Smart, funny. The tubby one.”
“And?”
“And nothing. We’ve exchanged-” I paused, searching for the right word.
“What? The secret handshake? Precious bodily fluids?”
“No, you idiot. Meaningful glances,” I said carefully. “Badinage,” I said, dragging out the word for effect.
We were laughing by then and were more than a little toasted. Lucy polished off the rest of the wine while I went in the house for another bottle.
Inside, I realized I had the munchies, so I threw together a quick meal-cheese and crackers, tofu, and olives, and balanced them on a large painted tray.
“Want to give me a hand in here?” I yelled.
“Sure,” she said, opening the slider. “How’s the wacky neighbor? Seems quiet.”
“I’m almost afraid to say it, but he’s not so bad this year. I think someone is showing him some love.”
I put the tray down, and we started to pick.
“That’s all he needed, a little nooky?” She poked through the olives for a juicy Sicilian.
I shrugged. “Who knows? There are still loud bursts of music, but less often and for shorter periods of time.”
“So he’s either making the naked pretzel or just dispatching his victims more quickly.”
My ex had said only twelve- year- old girls needed to squeal every time they jumped in a pool. Chris thought the neighbor was a perv. I simply assumed he was a jerk.
“Let’s get back to your body,” Lucy said.
“One hundred and sixteen pounds, body fat twelve percent. Higher than it used to be.”
“Has anyone suggested that you might be getting just the tiniest bit obsessive about this fitness regimen? I meant the dead body, not the annoyingly lean and toned one I’m looking at.”
I reached daintily for an olive.
“What about sex in the big city? Don’t I get to hear about that?”
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
The wine nearly came out of my nose. “Since when?”
“I don’t know-more meaningless, bouncing- off-the- walls sex? Who needs it?”
“Didn’t you just say a little nooky works for most people?”
“Did I? Well, you know I’m not most people.”
Now we were giggling like twelve- year- old girls, and it barely registered when an engine started, a car sputtered and quietly crept away.