Two Weeks Earlier
Cleta came out of the café with a carafe of boiling water to refresh my tea. “Kay called,” she told me. “She wants you to come by when you finish your breakfast.”
Trellis Island’s Eileen had finished her coffee and hightailed it to my cousin’s store. “Sure,” I said to Cleta. “Thanks for the message.”
“Kay is your cousin?” Bob asked, surprise coloring his voice. “How did she know where to find you?”
“Kay has her little ways,” I said.
“Do the two of you have a deep psychic connection or something?”
“No, thank heavens! You just don’t know how small Willow Falls is yet.”
He took a sip of coffee. “You said you inherited your parents’ house. Is that where you grew up?” he asked. I shook my head.
“No, my parents bought this one after I'd left for college.” When I had gone home for Christmas my freshman year I’d found that from now on I would stay in my parents’ guest room, that I no longer had a room in their house. They had seen nothing odd in the arrangement. “I haven’t decided yet if I want to keep it or buy something else.”
He nodded. “You probably keep seeing your parents in it.”
I nodded.
“Which might be a comfort depending on how you felt about them,” he continued.
Whether he was a reporter or not, it was too soon to have that conversation. I took a bite of my roll to buy some time. After I swallowed I said, “What about you? What brought you to Willow Falls?”
He shrugged. “I've been living in High Cross, and I got a chance to rent a place here for less money. I can write anywhere, but I recently got Jack and the new place has room for him to run around more than he could in the city.” He looked down at his pet, now sprawled on his side, panting gently.
“Is he a pound puppy?” I asked.
Bob shook his head. “I guess you could call him a rescue dog. I ended up with him when his former owner died.”
“Do you have a map of Willow Falls? I could mark the location of the dog park,” I offered. “Or if you want, I could take you sometime.” I tried to sound offhand.
“That would be great. Jack loves to play with other dogs.” Bob sipped some more coffee. I couldn’t tell if he wanted my company or a map, and I wasn’t sure how to ask. I'd used up all my brazenness with ‘are you married.’
Bob’s focus shifted to something beyond me. I glanced over my shoulder. Two women were crossing Maple, and a large black car paused before turning left onto Second Street. I turned back around. Bob was staring at the street, his fingers around the coffee mug white with the force of his grip. A more delicate cup would have been in shards.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He pulled his gaze back to me. “What? Yes. I—I thought I saw a car I knew.” He set the mug carefully on the table. “Not very likely though.”
“Somebody you knew in High Cross? Maybe they’ll circle the block and you can catch them.”
“Let’s hope not. Come to think of it, this guy might be perfect for Doris.”
“Ahh,” I nodded. “Not a friend.”
“Definitely not.”
I ate the last bite of my roll and put down the fork. “Well, thanks for breakfast,” I said.
“Could I tag along to your cousin’s store?” he asked. “I'd enjoy seeing it. Maybe I'll find something I've always been looking for. Oh, but I've got Jack.”
“That’s okay, she’ll love him. She’s between dogs herself right now but Emily Ann hangs around whenever I'm there. We use her as a prop to highlight whatever sofas Kay has in stock. Emily Ann is a total couch potato, unless she’s outdoors running. But if Doris is there the one running will be me.” I had a happy thought. “Unless you think we could get Jack to bite her.”
As we left the patio, Bob looked both ways along Maple Street, swinging his little pack over his left shoulder. If Doris was still around, she was safely inside one of the shops. We walked the half block to OKay Antiques, where Bob paused to study the display in the window. Kay and I had set up a cozy library corner, with worn leather-bound volumes in a glass-fronted barrister’s bookcase next to a plump little settee. A small, round oak table was near, its top covered with an embroidered cloth. A pair of wire-framed glasses rested on an old-fashioned novel by a green-shaded lamp. In front of the settee was a small Turkish carpet, with a pair of needlepoint slippers apparently kicked off and abandoned.
“Nice,” he commented, holding the door open for me.
I unclipped Emily Ann’s leash as we crossed the threshold. She started to climb into the display to curl up on the settee, but I said, “Emily Ann, go to Kay! You have to say hello before you lie down.” Obediently she walked over to Kay, gave her a nuzzle, then with her nose in the air and a sideways look at me went back and made herself part of the display.
Kay was at the sales counter wrapping a package to ship. She laid down the dispenser of heavy tape and grinned at us. She flicked me a sideways glance in a way I knew well. “Hey, Louisa.”
“Cleta said you wanted me. Kay, this is Bob and Jack. They’re new in town.”
Kay held her hand out over the counter. “Hi, Bob. Louisa’s got you off to a good start if she took you to the Bluebird.”
“That’s for sure. I will dream of that cinnamon roll. It's nice to meet you,” Bob said, smiling at my cousin and shaking hands.
She turned to me. “You will never guess who was just in here.”
“Doris Carter,” Bob and I said in chorus. Kay gawped at us. “We met her on the street,” I went on, “and Bob told her this was a good place to shop because he could see it over her shoulder and he thought it might get rid of her. Did she buy anything? Her money would have cooties on it.”
“I never take money with cooties,” Kay said.
“Did she recognize you?” I asked. “I figured you’d remember her.”
“Of course I remember her. I still want to punch her for that trailer trash remark she made at the funeral,” Kay snorted.
Bob’s eyebrows rose. “Trailer trash?”
I made a quick motion to stop her from saying more. It didn’t work.
“Doris is one of those people who thinks anyone from the Midwest grew up poor and barefoot,” she said. “She stood in the middle of Louisa’s living room after Roger had just been buried—”
“Kay,” I said.
“—and had everyone laughing about the ‘trailer trash way to redecorate’ because Louisa had thrown out a bunch of Roger’s things. Well, first she threw Roger out—”
“Kay!”
“—after which she dumped everything he owned on the front lawn, where it all got rained on, which you could pretty much count on in Seattle. After years of putting up with him, Louisa finally turned into something off an afternoon talk show and started chucking silk underwear and titanium tennis rackets and—”
“Kay! Bob is not interested in this,” I said from between clenched teeth. I wished I had one of the specially-ordered tennis balls that had gone with the titanium tennis racket, to stuff into Kay’s mouth.
“—and she threw his computer out an upstairs window, and probably six hundred CDs, and—”
I raised my voice. “At least Doris isn’t here now.” And at least she didn’t say all this embarrassing stuff to Bob, who looked amused. “Did she speak to you?”
Kay switched gears effortlessly. “She barely registered my presence. For a lawyer she’s not very observant. She strolled in, looked at a couple of things, and asked me if we ship large pieces. I said no and she left.”
“But we ship large pieces all the time,” I protested.
“Not to her. Her money has cooties on it, remember?” She looked down and noticed Jack. “Say, you are a cutie pie. What was your name? Jack? Those are impressive ears. If they went up instead of down you could be a Jack rabbit instead of a Jack dog.”
His tail whirled at his name and the short front legs pranced a little. He looked ready to do some bunny hopping if that was what was called for.
“Mind if I look around?” Bob asked. He gestured toward a looming hulk of oak across the room and walked toward it. “I can't figure out what this piece of furniture is supposed to be.”
Kay shook her head ruefully, following him. “Ah, yes, my Albatross. Isn’t it hideous?” The piece in question stood by the wide arch that led into a larger showroom, stuffed with furniture and an incredible variety of objects that someone might someday want. The Albatross was a monstrosity of quarter sawn oak. “I must have been out of my mind the day I bought it. I was at an auction and I'd bought a couple of really good pieces for fabulous prices. I guess it went to my head.”
She ran her hand over the oak surface as she walked around the piece. “It’s a combination of a sideboard and desk, with room for wine bottles and a place to hang a few clothes. I think it was custom made for a rich eccentric who lived in one room or something. All it lacks is a bed that lets down out of one side. I thought it was funny at the time but I am never going to sell the darned thing. You’ll probably have to bury me in it because I can't see it leaving the store any other way. You’ll need to line up more than six pallbearers though, it weighs a ton and a half. Oh well, everyone’s entitled to a few mistakes, right?” She gave the Albatross a friendly pat. Turning to me she said, “Say, Louisa, I need you to run an errand for me. Bob, could you excuse us for two seconds?”
He nodded and said, “Sure.” He turned to the Albatross and began opening drawers.
Kay grabbed my wrist and towed me back to her office under the stairway that leads up to her apartment. Closing the door, she hissed, “Louisa, where in the world did you pick him up? Edward the mailman was here saying you were at the Bluebird with a man who has a golden aura, and Eileen from Trellis Island came in and said she’d seen you with Jeremy Irons. Except she thinks he has a better butt than Jeremy Irons.”
“I didn’t pick him up. I wouldn’t know how. I came out of the lawyer’s office and our cars are identical and I was trying to put my key in his lock—”
“Well, as long as it wasn’t the other way around,” she sniggered. “After all, you did just meet.”
I ignored the interruption. “—and he thought I was trying to steal his car. Then the dogs met each other and we started talking and he hasn’t met anybody here yet so we went to the Bluebird. That’s it.”
“That’s it, huh? You seemed very chummy when you walked in here.”
“Grow up. We’re not in high school any more. He’s a nice person but I've only known him about an hour.”
She reached over and gave me a hug. “Well, an hour is a good start. I like him. Your taste in men is improving.”
“But Kay, he told me he’s a freelance writer. What if he really picked me up because he’s writing something about Roger?”
She blinked. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Because Roger died in the stupidest circumstances and got himself plastered all over the papers. Maybe he’s doing an article on lawyers who die undignified deaths. I don’t know.”
“Louisa, no one cares about how Roger died,” she assured me. “It's been six months. Old news is dead news.”
I bit my lower lip, wanting to believe her. “Do you really have an errand for me?”
“Of course not, that was just to get you alone.”
“What’s he going to think when I come back empty handed?”
“Stop worrying about what everybody thinks. He’ll think I gave you a very small errand. Or that we were talking about him. Here.” She picked two pieces of a broken plate out of the wastebasket and thrust them into my hands. “You can say you’re taking this to be repaired.”
“Do you want me to take it for repair?” It was a nothing plate as far as I could see.
“No, take it home and throw it away. And throw away some of your worries at the same time.”