Hollyhock Ridge (9 page)

“Sounds like fun,” Ed said.

“And it was,” she said, “but that’s all I did all day long.
I need to be working. I need a project, a challenge.”

“You’re like a bird dog that needs to hunt,” Ed said.

“I’m not sure I like that comparison,” Claire said.

“See, some dogs are bred to be active and hunt, and other
dogs are bred to be companion animals and are more laid back. If you try to
make a hunting dog be a house dog, he’ll go nuts, tear up the furniture, and
chew the table legs. It frustrates him. If you try to make housedog hunt, it
scares the hell out of him, and the first time he hears a gunshot he’ll run off
and you’ll never see him again.”

“You’re not making it any better by elaborating,” Claire
said. “Don’t you have any analogies where I’m a beautiful caged songbird or a
brilliant, crime-solving cat?”

“Why don’t you write a book?” Ed said. “People seem to love
tell-all books about celebrities.”

“Not gonna happen,” Claire said.

“I thought your confidentiality contract disappeared,” he
said.

“I’ve thought about it,” she said. “There’s a literary agent
who still calls to make offers. I like celebrity gossip as much as the next
person, but it’s like eating junk food; I don’t always feel so good afterwards.
I could write a book so salacious it would ruin careers and get a hit put out
on me, but what would I have accomplished? I don’t want to look back on my life
and have to face that kind of book as the biggest contribution I made to the
world.”

“Well said.”

“I don’t know that teaching rich kids how to apply theater
makeup is going to be all that worthwhile, but at least I’d be teaching someone
how to do something constructive instead of destructive.”

“I hope it works out.”

“When do you start?”

“August first,” he said. “I’m a little nervous.”

“Oh, you’ll do fine,” Claire said. “You’re a born teacher
and you love journalism.”

“A dying art,” he said. “I may as well teach them how to
make the paper and ink.”

Pip came out, greeted Ed, and then lit up a joint.

“You can’t do that out here,” Claire said.

“All right, Mom,” Pip said.

He licked his fingers, pinched out the end he had just lit,
and tucked it back into his bib overall pocket.

“I’ll see you later,” Ed said, and left.

Claire watched him go. A sitting duck, that man, too naïve
for his own good. She hadn’t come up with a plan yet, but she wasn’t through
thinking.

Pip took the seat Ed had just vacated. He reached for
Claire’s cup so she scooped it out of his way.

“I just want a sip,” he said.

“Get your own,” she said.

“Can’t, I’m broke.”

“You’re always broke,” she said. “Stick with a job more than
two minutes and you’ll have money.”

“Don’t lecture me, Claire,” he said. “We’re not married
anymore.”

“And yet you still come to me with your hand out, expecting
me to take care of you.”

“You owe me for that condo.”

“I paid every payment,” Claire said. “You saddled me with
that ludicrous mortgage and then took off.”

“My name was on the deed.”

“You signed away your rights in the divorce settlement.”

“I didn’t read that thing. It was, like, a gazillion pages
long.”

“And yet you signed it.”

“Ten bucks,” Pip said. “Please, Claire. I’ll pay you back as
soon as Sean pays me.”

“No,” Claire said. “No, no, no, no, a thousand times no.”

“I hate you, Claire.”

“Prove it,” she said. “Cut me out of your life forever.”

Pip’s eyes filled with tears.

“You’re all the time busting my balls,” he said. “I’m
trying, Claire, I’m really trying.”

“Your hot, salty tears no longer have an effect on my cold,
icy heart.”

“They killed Courtenay,” he said. “She was the only one who
understood me. She was the only one who ever really loved me.”

“That was awful,” Claire said. “I know you miss her.”

“Knox did it,” he said. “He had her killed to shut her up.”

“He was implicated but not arrested,” Claire said. “Anne
Marie’s assistant said Knox conspired with her, but there’s no proof.”

“Where’s Anne Marie now?”

“Back in California,” Claire said.

“But Knox is still around here somewhere,” Pip said. “He
owes me.”

“Leave him alone,” Claire said. “People seem to have
accidents or drop dead all around that guy.”

Pip got up, and went off down the street. Claire wondered if
he would come back that day, but she didn’t bother to ask; he’d just say he
would and then not show up. Claire sipped her drink, closed her eyes again, and
tried to get back to the deep-thinking place.

“Excuse me, Miss.”

She opened her eyes. It was Laurie.

“Did you procure a permit to put this table out here on the
sidewalk?”

“No, but I did sleep with the chief of police last night,”
Claire said.

“Well, all right, then,” he said as he sat down, “even with
no hanky panky involved I think this is still covered.”

“What could I get with hanky panky?”

“The key to the city,” he said, “and quite possibly a street
named after you.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“How’s your head?”

“Better,” she said. “I plan to drink four more of these
before my very busy work day ends. I’ve got so much to do, as you can plainly
see.”

“How about some lunch?” he asked. “I could go fetch us
something to eat out here, all alfresco-like. Très parisien, très déjeuner à
l'extérieur.”

“Plan approved,” she said.

He cocked his head to the side and regarded her with a wry
smile.

“I’d like a do-over some night this week,” he said. “This
time a little less inebriated.”

“Plan denied,” she said.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get you fed and hydrated and
then I’ll try again.”

“Off with you,” she said. “I’ll have sparkling water and the
Salad Niçoise, dressing on the side.”

When Laurie returned, with a salad for her and a club
sandwich for himself, he spread out their lunch on the table as if he were a
waiter, and draped a paper napkin over her lap.

“I hope madam will enjoy her repast,” he said. “Bon appétit.”

“Merci,” she said, and removed her sunglasses.

“Quelle horreur!” he said. “I take back my dinner offer. Je
refuse.”

“Your French is decent,” she said, “but it’s cruel to taunt
a hung-over person, don’t you know that?”

“I saw the expectant father over here earlier, pestering
you,” he said. “I almost arrested him for loitering with the intent to bore you
to death.”

“He’s too busy crocheting baby blankets to bother with me,”
Claire said.

“Are we entirely convinced it’s actually his impending
bundle of joy?”

“The latest information from my confidential sources
indicates it is not.”

“Oh well,” he said. “If it hadn’t been the not-so-ex-wife
showing up pregnant it would have been something else. Kidnapping, false
arrest, amnesia …”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, that you and Monsieur
é
ditorialiste are star-crossed lovers, doomed to stay apart
until the third act. You can’t get together now; it’s too soon. Meanwhile,
you’re free to waste time with me.”

“He had a big crush on me in high school,” Claire said. “I
didn’t know that until I came back this year. If I had stayed in Rose Hill and
not run off with King Dipshit to California, Ed and I might be married with a
bunch of kids by now.”

“So time-travel, why don’t you? Go back to high school, back
old Ed up against a locker, and rock his world. You wouldn’t have stayed with
him; he’d have lost you at J-school, where all that rarified hubris lit the
righteous fire in his belly. Just think of all the earnest protesting you’d
have had to do against anything the slightest bit unfair. Think of all the
recycling and volunteering; all those poor people you’d have to care about. It
gives me hives just thinking about it.”

“I oughta slug you,” she said.

“Yet you’re smiling.”

“How is it that you can encapsulate all the things that
irritate me about Ed, but you completely miss the point of why I’m attracted to
him?”

“Enlighten me,” he said. “I’m eager to learn.”

“He’s steady,” she said. “He’d never run off and leave me
for some twenty-year-old floozy he met in a bar.”

“Ouch.”

“He’d be loyal and faithful and I could count on him.”

“Sounds more like a dog than a man,” he said. “Tell me this,
Claire. Does he make your knees weak when he kisses you?”

“Yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact he does.”

“Still too boring,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather fight
crime with me?”

“Speaking of which,” she said.

“To change the subject,” he said.

“Did you get my message about Diedre?”

“If you’re going to do my job for me, you should also have
to fill out my paperwork.”

“She’s a hoarder,” Claire said. “Every day she scouts out
yard sales in the newspaper and then goes from one to the other, buying
things.”

“Except her husband says she’s reformed,” he said. “Three
years ago he gave her an ultimatum: either stop acquiring things or he was
leaving. Not anything as drastic as a divorce, mind you, because their religion
precludes that, but he was planning to move back home to live with his
parents.”

“I didn’t know that,” Claire said.

“He came in to file the missing person’s report,” Laurie
said. “I did ask questions. I’m not completely disinterested in your local
domestic disturbances.”

“But the lady out on Hollyhock Ridge said Diedre bought
quite a bit of stuff the day she disappeared.”

“So where’s she putting it?”

“Someone else’s garage?” Claire mused. “Not her sister’s;
they’re barely speaking.”

“A storage unit,” he said.

“Give me two minutes and I can print out a list of every
place within a fifty-mile radius. Care to accompany me?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“You’re supposed to warn me to stay out of it,” Claire said.

“I’ve only got a few more days in Rose Hill,” he said. “I’d
like to spend as much of that time as I can with you.”

They took Laurie’s truck. Claire immediately searched the
radio stations until she found a pop music setting.

“How can you stand that drivel?” he asked her.

“Normally, I love it,” she said. “Today it makes my head
hurt.”

Laurie changed it to a traditional vocal jazz program on
Public Radio and then sang along.

“Who is that?” she asked.

“Rosemary Clooney,” he said. “She also wants me to
straighten up and fly right. You women and your demands.”

“Is that the music your dad listened to?”

“No, my dad was a Merle Haggard and George Jones man,” he
said. “My mother preferred classical music. I found this all on my own.”

“I like it,” Claire said. “It’s sweet.”

“It can be heartbreaking,” he said. “It can be everything
all at once.”

“My cousin Maggie listens to this kind of music,” Claire
said. “Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. She plays it in her bookstore.”

“Do you mean to tell me that I’ve been pursuing the wrong
Fitzpatrick all along?”

“I used to work in a strip club,” Claire said.

“All right,” Laurie said. “That was a bit of a non sequitur,
but do tell.”

“When I moved to California, I couldn’t afford to take the
additional training hours required to get a license to do hair there, so the
only place that would employ me without a license was a strip club. I didn’t
take off my clothes; I did the strippers’ hair and makeup.”

“Sounds reasonable enough.”

“That’s how I met the woman who I worked for, for the next
twenty years. She started as a stripper, became a dominatrix, then a porn
actress, had plastic surgery, changed her name, and became a famous film actress.”

“As one so often does,” he said.

“She paid me an enormous amount of money to do her hair and
makeup, plus menial, personal assistant-type things,” Claire said. “Mostly I
was paid to keep her secrets, which are quite valuable, as you can imagine. In
Rose Hill terms I am filthy rich.”

“Why’d you quit?”

“My dad got sick,” she said. “My mom needed me.”

“Do you miss it?”

“No,” Claire said. “I kept expecting my life to get better,
to be happier, and sometimes I thought I had found it but it never lasted. You
can get tired of luxury and first class travel when you’re lonely all the time.
I wasted twenty years of my life getting rich on the coattails of someone
else’s fame instead of having a family and putting down roots.”

“So, what you’re telling me is that you practiced cosmetology
in Rose Hill without a license? I’m going to have to arrest you now. I hate to
do it, but like your married boyfriend, Ed, I’m so honorable and full of
integrity that I have no choice.”

“Ed doesn’t know any of that.”

“I see,” Laurie said. “So why tell me?”

Claire shrugged and looked out the window.

“It’s either one of two things,” he said. “Either you care
so little what I think, or you care so much. I know what my preference is, but
I’d hate to delude myself.”

Claire continued to watch the scenery fly by, and for a
little while, Laurie was content not to talk. Finally, after about ten minutes
of what felt to Claire like companionable silence, he reached out and pushed
her shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m an alcoholic. I got drunk after my wife
died, because it felt like getting blasted in the chest with a double-barreled
shotgun, and I stayed drunk until last October. While I was drunk, I married
the most inappropriate person I could find, and made a huge mess of everything.
I couldn’t have self-destructed more neatly if I’d poured gasoline all over my
life and lit a match. I’ve let down everyone who ever loved me or counted on
me. My mother died disappointed in how I turned out. I lost my best friend, I
quit my job, and I never liked being a police officer to begin with; I just
didn’t know how to do anything else and it’s what my old man wanted me to do.
How’s that for honesty?”