Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 04 - Any Port in a Storm (18 page)

“You doing any better?” I asked.

She shrugged.
“A little. I miss him.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.
He was probably her first crush, or more, and right now she couldn’t see there would be more boys to fall in love with. All I said was, “Must be hard.”

“Did you ever lose someone you loved a lot?” she asked.

“Not through death,” I said, grimly remembering Robby. “There was Uncle Gordon, Aunt Madge’s husband, but I was too little to really get it.”

Alicia stared at me and then turned back to the ocean.
I noted that she was wearing less eye shadow and she was in shorts rather than tough-gal jeans.

“My mom said you didn’t do it,” Alicia said, still not looking at me.

“Your mom is right.”

“How did that mallet thing get in your car?” she asked.
This time she did look toward me, so I met her gaze.

“I wish I knew.
The night before they found it, my car was in the B&B lot. I usually don’t lock it. Anyone could have put it there,” I said.

“But why you?” she persisted.

“I don’t know. I guess it had to be someone who knows me or knew Hayden. They had to think that it made sense to put it there.”

“What do you mean?” Alicia asked.

“I was ticked at Hayden for spending time with you.”

Alicia stiffened.

“And Hayden and I more or less argued when I saw you two behind the pirate ship at…”

Alicia sniffed, and I saw tears coursing down her cheeks.
God, how insensitive am I?

“I’m so sorry, Alicia.
I shouldn’t have mentioned the ship.”

“Mom says I should get used to hearing about it.”
She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

“I suppose she means she wants you to be able to handle it if you hear people talking about it,” I said.

She shrugged and blew her nose on a tissue I’d handed her.

“Can I ask you a question?”
I watched her profile as she considered my request. She seemed to have a short struggle with herself.

She sighed.
“I guess so.”

“The day you came into Harvest for All, you said something about Hayden not wanting you to talk about something.”

“Oh, that.” She frowned. “It was kind of stupid. Are you going to tell my mom?”

“I hate it when you ask me that,” I said.

Alicia gave a brief smile. “It’s not horrible, awful bad. I did try to smoke a joint.”

Relief flooded through me.
I’d imagined she was going to tell me she and Hayden had slept together. “You said try?”

She looked at me solemnly.
“It smells really bad, worse than cigarettes. I only took one swallow.”

Thank goodness she had looked away, because I was trying very hard not to smile.
“Swallow?”

“Yeah.
I know I was just supposed to hold the smoke in my mouth, but when I got the smoke in there I wasn’t sure what to do with it.”

“Just the once?” I asked.

She nodded. “I told him I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to do it again. He said I was a goody two-shoes. I mean, he wasn’t mad. He thought it was funny.”

“I won’t tell your mom, but I think you and she should talk about it.
I imagine she’ll be thrilled.”

Alicia gave me the kind of look only a teenager can give an adult, and I laughed.

“Just think about it.
Okay, one more question.” When she didn’t say anything, I plowed ahead. “Scoobie saw you at the college cafeteria, Josh said he saw you guys on the boardwalk, and I think you were both on the beach that day there was the huge sand castle.”

She smiled.
“I saw him after. That was really fun.”

Aha.
If he wasn’t with her, he probably was the one who broke into my trunk
. “Were there other places you went? People who knew Hayden and who might talk to me?”

“Besides his brother?” she asked.

“His brother? I thought he only had sisters,” I said.

“His sister’s husband.
I don’t know his name, but his sister is Veronica. Her husband was down here a couple days before Hayden…before he died.”

“I met him,” I said, slowly.

She turned quickly. “Did you go to the funeral?”

“No, I drove to their house.”

“You what?” she said this very loudly.

I kept my voice even.
“I drove up there to say I was sorry he died, and to make sure they knew I didn’t do it. I took a plant.”
Why do I always talk about the plant?

She relaxed a bit.
“Were they nice?”

“I won’t pretend they were glad to see me, but they were polite.”

“Would you take me to see them?” she had a hopeful expression.

“You know what skewered means?” I asked.

“You mean, like, meat?”

“Yep.
Your mom would skewer me if I took you up there without her,” I said.

“She won’t go,” Alicia said.
“Even if we had a car.” Her tone was bitter.

“I know it’s hard.
And it doesn’t help if I say she has your best interest at heart.” I thought for a moment. “You might not see them now, but if it’s still important in a couple years, maybe then.”

My mind was still churning.
How was it that Ricardo Bruno hadn’t mentioned that he had been to Ocean Alley to see Hayden not long before he died? Ricardo certainly didn’t have to tell me that, but my instinct was that he was keeping this point from his wife as much as from me.

GEORGE INSISTED that we walk Megan and Alicia home, and he kidded with Alicia until she almost acted like her pre-Hayden self. I could tell how pleased Megan was, but she said nothing. When George and Alicia got a few feet ahead of us, I said, “Looks like you’re dialing back a notch with her.”

She nodded.
“For a woman who has no children, your aunt is very smart.”

“Ah.
Well, she had me to practice on,” I said, remembering how Aunt Madge had kept Megan from going over to the teens’ pin-the-tail-on-the-skeleton game.

“She said that most of the year you lived with her she told you the opposite of what she wanted, and then you did what she really wanted.”

“Damn. I hate it when she’s so smart.” I scowled, and Megan laughed.

We caught up to George and Alicia, and he and I watched as Megan and Alicia walked into their apartment building.

“Afraid to be alone with me?” I teased.

“Probably,” George said easily.
“But I also know there’s a peeping Tom making the rounds in this neighborhood.”

“Ugh!”
I looked behind me.

“For a couple more days, the police are going to be quiet about it.
Then if they don’t catch him we’ll do a story.”

“Why do you wait?”
We were walking back toward the boardwalk.

“I keep telling you, it’s a small town.
If the police have a decent reason for something, we try to go along with it.”

“And their reason is…?”

“They don’t think he knows they’ve heard about him. They’ve got people all over a few blocks, and a couple homeowners have been told so they can keep their lights out and look out the window,” George said.

“I’d still rather know,” I said, and glanced right and left.

“Yeah, most people would. So far he hasn’t hurt anyone, and they figure if he knows they’re on to him he’ll just move to another neighborhood.”

George took my hand and swung it gently.
“So, Ms. Gentil, what do you do for fun?”

“Besides annoy Aunt Madge and walk the dogs?” I asked.

“A truly exciting life,” he said.

“Pretty quiet compared to when I lived in Lakewood,” I said.

“Lots of friends?” he asked.

“Mostly couple friends,” I said.

He looked puzzled for a moment, then he got it. “People you and your husband did stuff with. Keep in touch with many of them?”

“Nope.
A few of them sent Christmas cards, but it’s probably as awkward for them as it is for me.”

“Not hardly,” George said.
“Did he steal their savings?”

I flushed a deep red.

“Jeez, I’m sorry, Jolie. I guess I’m kind of fumbling here.”

I smiled at that.
“You’re supposed to be good with words.”

“That’s what they say around the newsroom.
But…”

A car horn blared about ten feet from us, and we both jumped.
The man at the wheel of the Ford sedan rolled down the window. “I knew it!” He sped away.

“You know him?” I asked.

“My editor,” George said, with a glum expression.

“Whoops.”

“Yeah, whoops. Oh, well. It’s not like he didn’t suspect.”

“Suspect?
We just did this,” I raised our joined hands a few inches, “tonight.”

“Yeah, but he caught on pretty quick that I wrote some of the things I did just to get your attention.”

This feels good.

“You want some more attention?”
George pulled me to him and we kissed for what seemed like half an hour.

I felt warm all over, and I liked the feel of his arms at my back.
And maybe anywhere else.

NOW WHAT? The question had been going through my mind all Saturday morning. I felt like an eighth grader with her first crush. Do I tell Ramona? What would Aunt Madge think if George spent the night?
And am I being just a teeny bit presumptuous
?

I was sitting at Aunt Madge’s oak kitchen table with the newspaper spread in front of me.
I didn’t usually work on Saturday, but I was still depressed because I had less work. I tried to get Aunt Madge to let me change the sheets in the one guest’s room, but she shooed me out.

The classifieds didn’t have a part-time job I was interested in.
I don’t mind cleaning, but I figured the hospital wouldn’t hire me to be a custodian and I’d be more likely to drop tubs of dishes than make it to the kitchen, so the family restaurant on the highway wouldn’t hire me to be a dishwasher.

I was about to close the newspaper when I noticed
Mister Rogers had walked to the area in front of the kitchen sink and was poking around on the floor. “What do you want?” I asked. When he shoved his paw under the space under the bottom kitchen cabinet I got up and walked to him.

“What do you have?”
Miss Piggy got up from her spot by the sliding glass door and made toward him. I stooped and reached for whatever he was pawing and he shoved my hand away with his snout.

“You know you don’t eat off the floor,” I said to him, and shoved his snout out of the way and picked up a half-eaten muffin.
“Wow, are you in trouble.”

Aunt Madge walked into the room as I was putting the chewed muffin in the sink.
“Drat. I knew there was one more prune muffin left.” She scowled at him. “Bad dog.”

Mister Rogers
wagged his tail and I laughed. “I guess you won’t just have to hide the prunes. Now it’s the prune muffins.”

“Out!” she said, and guided both dogs to the door and let them out.
She walked back to the sink where I was wiping the floor with a damp paper towel. “I stopped making the prune danishes because there was a glop of prune paste in the middle, and they went after those. This is the first time for the muffins.”

“Maybe you could try a prune bread,” I said, with as innocent an expression as I could muster.

“That’s a suggestion I can do without.” She took a fresh teabag from its paper wrapper and put it in a mug. I automatically turned up her electric kettle.

“Sit down, Jolie.
I have an idea.”

“Good.
What can I do?” I asked, assuming she was going to let me do more than load the dishwasher.

“Not you, me.
Harry and me,” she said.

“Does it involve wedding cake?” I asked.

“Don’t be a twit, Jolie. I think we need to know more about Hayden’s relationship with his parents.”

“What good will that do?” I asked.

“From what little we know, he didn’t seem close to them.” She warmed to her topic. “Exactly what kind of ‘emotional loss’ are they really suffering? It’s got to be horrible to lose a son, but if they barely saw him, or kept having to bail him out of trouble, what kind of relationship did they have? Why is it worth half a million dollars of your or the city’s money?”

I stared at her for a few seconds.
A couple nights ago I had told her what George and I had learned about Hayden’s post-high school life, but she hadn’t seemed especially interested. “How are you going to get a handle on that?” I asked.

She sat across from me and reached for her kettle.
“I’m going to find a way to meet them.”

“They probably wouldn’t talk to you.
Remember, the Brunos called Morehouse to complain about me going to their house.”

“Did I say I was going to announce myself as your aunt?” she asked.
“They’ve lived in the same area all their adult lives, and they’ve gone to the same church. Harry and I are going to Sunday Mass in Matawan tomorrow.”

I stared at her.
“You’re going to a Catholic Mass to learn more about them?”

“We won’t sit in the choir loft by ourselves, we’ll mingle.”

Great.
Morehouse told her I sat in the choir loft with George during the funeral.

When I said nothing, she added, “We know how to genuflect, even if the Presbyterians don’t do it.”

My mind was still trying to absorb the idea of Aunt Madge trying to mind someone else’s business. “Why do you think they’ll open up to you?”

She waved her hand.
“It’s not so much them as some of the other people at their church. Catholics have coffee and donuts after Mass. We’ll say we’re new in the area and we’re parish shopping.” She looked very pleased with herself.

“Aren’t they kind of pre-assigned a parish based on where they live?” I asked.

“I hear they don’t always do that anymore.” She looked at me with suspicion. “It’s a good idea. Why don’t you like it?”

“I heard…I heard that Hayden sold drugs to tourists here, and he had…”
How do I tell her about the hydroponics equipment without saying I went into Louie’s pawn shop?

“Spit it out, Jolie,” she said.

“He had pawned some hydroponics equipment. George thinks he used it to grow marijuana or something.” Good, blame George! “It didn’t seem like equipment he would have had the money to buy. Maybe other people in his family did it with him,” I finished, lamely.

“I didn’t say I was going to walk up to someone and ask for his criminal history,” Aunt Madge said.
“Or offer to buy pot.”

I had to smile.
“Would you know what to pay?”

“You’re avoiding my question.”

She squeezed excess water from her teabag and looked at me over the rim as she raised the mug to her mouth.
The steam split at her chin and some went on each side of her head. I had an image of her in a Halloween movie, and tried to maintain my composure.
Really, none of this is funny
.

“Jolie.”
She said this quite sharply. “I don’t think we can sit around and let them think they can sue you. Before you know it they’ll get some hearing or something scheduled and you’ll have big attorney fees.”

“What if they heard you asked questions and figured out who you are?
At the very least they’d tattle on you to Morehouse. Maybe they’d…I don’t know, hurt you somehow?”

“Rubbish,” she said.

“I’d worry about you.”

“Don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot, do you?”