Mind Your Own Beeswax (21 page)

Her dental office organization skills gave her a giant step up to the head of my employment list. Not that anyone else was on the list at the moment. As it turned out, Ali didn’t need money as much as she needed to get out of the house and the dental office.

“I love T. J. to death,” she said after laying out her professional history. “But I need some breathing room and going to work someplace else, like here, will give me that. It’s not the easiest thing for a family to live
and
work together.”

Tell me about it, I could have said. Working with family members took either nerves of steel and incredible bravery or total stupidity and desperation.

“But you’re his receptionist,” I said, ready to sign her on no matter what she said next. “What will he do? How will he replace you?”

“I’ll still do scheduling for him and paperwork in the mornings. I just want to work here two or three afternoons every week. And I can work Friday nights, since T. J. has rotary club meetings.”

I couldn’t believe my good luck. Between Carrie Ann, Holly, and me, we could handle mornings and early afternoons. That would give me wiggle room later in the afternoons with Ali and the twins. Things were definitely looking up.

And the biggest bonus of all? A reliable employee like Ali would keep my mother out of the loop.

“I can stay at the store and help right now,” my new best friend, Ali, said. “I heard about what happened with Johnny Jay. Why don’t you slip out the back door and take the afternoon to regroup? Go ahead, we can handle the store.” Ali shooed me with her hands.

A few minutes later, I was slinking down back alleys with one mangy mutt under my arm and two happy carefree feet. I cut through Patti’s yard and made it into my house undetected. After showering, changing into clean clothes, and munching on a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich, I sank onto the sofa for a nice long rest.

My cell rang. Holly.

“You can come out now,” she said.

I’d forgotten to let Holly know I’d made my escape from the store. She still thought I was in the backroom.

“I hired Ali Schmidt,” I remembered to tell her, a bit late.

“So that’s why she’s hanging around asking questions.” Holly’s tone was a bit frosty, like maybe I should have passed that news by her already. Or first, before making the decision. I ignored her tone. No way was that ever going to happen. Once I let her in on management decisions, I’d lose my reign. Or reins.

“Show her around and put her on the schedule starting immediately,” I said as authoritatively as possible.

“ATM (
At The Moment
) I
am
training her. Until now I was fielding reporters’ questions. But I’ll get to the schedule ASAP.”

“You’re not saying anything to the press, are you? Please don’t talk to them.”

“I’m not.”

“And don’t give them my home address.”

“Gotcha.”

We hung up, and my thoughts turned to Patti’s recent overtures of friendship and the way she’d stuck up for me, even though I knew her motives were a bit self-centered.

When I was married, I let the part of my life go that included female friends, sad as that was to admit. I opened the store and worked such long hours, I didn’t have any extra energy for friendships. But for the last few years I’ve craved more female interaction. I wanted to have a best girlfriend, or as Holly would say a “BF.”

Then a flash of insight came to me while I lounged around with Dinky, hiding from the world.

Best friends aren’t something we pick out ahead of time, like a prime cut of beef. People traipse randomly through our lives, starting out as basic acquaintances. Sometimes they move up to a new category, sometimes they sink down.

Like Lori Spandle, who’d slept with my husband and would never be one of my friends. She lacked the basic requirements of friendship—loyalty, commitment, and a whole lot of acceptance of me just the way I came.

But others? One day, out of nowhere, some of those acquaintances and casual friends become something more.

In my life, for example, I suppose I have to count my sister as my best friend. Even though we rag on each other, we still love each other to death. Then there’s Carrie Ann, my cousin, who I’ve known my whole life, and can count on in a crisis.

Holly, Carrie Ann, and I have shared experiences, memories, secrets, and we know one another’s faults and failures like they are our own.

What about Patti Dwyre? As much as I didn’t want to accept it, P. P. Patti had managed to pass through the acquaintance stage, although she was branching into something as yet totally undefined and a bit frightening. We had a ways to go before I’d consider her a true friend—if ever.

“So to sum up my current circle of friends accurately,” I said to Dinky, “they consist of a chronic text-speaker, an alcoholic, and the town snoop.”

Dinky’s ears perked up and she barked back at me like she was actually responding.

To be perfectly honest with myself, I must have an equally flawed character to fit in so well with them, although I couldn’t think of exactly what was weird about me at the moment.

Psychoanalysis wasn’t my strong suit, especially when it came to my own personality and motives, so I stood up from the sofa, shook off the heavy thoughts, and decided my next step.

I peeked out into the street. No reporters lurking. So I took Dinky out into the backyard to check on my bees.

Spring is a busy time of year for beekeepers, but most of the hard work had been done earlier in the season. I still inspected the hives on a regular basis, hunting for mite invasions and making sure the queens’ egg productions were right on schedule, a sure sign that they were healthy and the hive was thriving.

To prevent more swarms (that last one making me feel like a sorry sort of rookie who needed to pay more attention to detail), I added additional honey supers to most of the hives. “Adding honey supers” is beekeeping lingo for adding an extra box for honeybees to store more honey. It’s like putting an addition on a family’s house, only on a much smaller scale.

Aurora stopped by to say hi. “Heard what happened,” she said. “There’s something about you that has started attracting negative karma.”

“Like I’m being punished?” To tell the truth, I didn’t know exactly what karma was, but Aurora was about to give me her interpretation.

“No, no, it isn’t punishment. You create karma with every single one of your actions. Even through your thoughts.”

“So I’m thinking myself into problems?”

“Nothing happens by chance. You’re in the process of learning a lesson.”

“Have you been talking to my mother?”

Aurora, usually serious about everything, chuckled. “No, I haven’t seen her. This experience is between you and Johnny Jay. The outcome depends completely on what you do next.”

I watched her walk away, heading for Moraine Gardens across the street. She’d left me feeling way too responsible for things I couldn’t control. Or could I?

By the time the evening news came on, I was back in the house, perched in front of the television set next to Holly, with Dinky in the middle, chewing on a miniature rawhide bone. The newswoman started with the feature story, what she termed
a chilling event
that had taken place in the small community of Moraine.

And our police chief was the star of the show.

Unfortunately, so was I.

Holly and I watched, glued to the TV, while Johnny Jay and I were shown in my backyard. The footage was slightly shaky, since Patty had been excited at the time. And she’d been hanging out her upstairs window, so a tripod was out of the question.

In those few seconds between spotting Johnny and getting bowled over, I hadn’t had time to think too much about the confrontation between bully-boy Johnny and me, other than that he had no right and I preferred
not
to eat dandelions, grass, and rainy muck.

And really, he hadn’t actually hurt me much. I guess it was all that childhood conflict between him and me that had me accepting his abusive behavior as perfectly normal, considering the source.

Witnessing the scene as a playback was not only surreal, but Johnny Jay looked and acted like a man who had lost his mind as well as control of his actions. I should have been scared to death.

“That must have really hurt,” Holly said, watching the police chief kneel on my back. “He had you in a hammerlock. If I’d been there, this never would have happened. I would have used a full nelson on him first and finished with a few illegal moves to make him squeal.”

I reached over and gave her a playful punch. “But then you would have deprived me of all this aftermath glow. No way. I’m enjoying it.”

“You are too weird for words.”

But I wasn’t paying attention to her because the action on my television screen went live. Johnny Jay came out of the police station in fully decorated uniform with his hat in his hands, his hair slicked down, and a look of humility on his face. The amazing thing about Johnny was how sane he could appear. His outward appearance was one of trim, clean-cut, well-dressed, boyish good looks, proving that first impressions should
never
count.

I could see residents milling around in the background, lots of them Kerrigans, who bore their own kind of grudge against Johnny Jay. They were carrying signs that clearly called for his termination. Was he about to resign from his long tenure as police chief? And give up all that brute control?

Wow! I felt more powerful than him for a change, responsible for a revolution about to take place right before my eyes. We were overthrowing our government. Or something like that.

That karma thing was going to work. I focused on positive thoughts. Please, let Johnny Jay get what he’s deserved his whole life.

“The town board just arrived,” Holly pointed out with a grin the size of Lake Michigan, as town supervisors filed through the crowd, looking uniformly somber.

With our town board members behind him and a whole lot of residents who’d never liked the police chief circling around the news cameras hoping to make televised statements of their own, Johnny Jay took the microphone and started spewing rhetoric:

“Do I have a psychological problem with authority?” I asked my sister.

“Probably,” she said. “Shhh.”

“Yeah, right, what a liar!”

“Shhh . . .”

Holly and I jumped into the air, bouncing on the sofa, high-fiving each other, and yahooing at the top of our lungs. Dinky ran for cover, dragging her bone with her.

I popped the cork on a bottle of champagne I’d been saving for a special occasion. Occasions didn’t get much special-er than this.

We toasted to justice, long in coming.

“We don’t know what we’ll do without him,” I shouted. “But we’ll be thrilled to find out!”

Our jubilation lasted as long as the first glass.

Because I suddenly realized Johnny Jay would blame all of this on me.

I had to get out of town.

During champagne pour number two, I mentioned Johnny’s revenge issue and how he’d now focus entirely on giving me his worst. “I wasn’t exactly safe before, imagine now.”

“You can’t leave Moraine,” P. P. Patti’s voice piped up out of nowhere, startling me into a shriek.

There she was, in the doorway, dressed in dark clothes with a black ball cap pulled down low over her face.

“Where did you come from?” I said, narrowing my eyes. Don’t tell me my neighbor had let herself in my back door without knocking or ringing. How long had she been listening? “Don’t you believe in announcing yourself like everybody else?”

“That’s a cold way to greet a friend,” Patti said.

Which was perfectly true. Patti had saved the day by exposing my enemy for what he was. I should be grateful. I also should ask her to work on Lori Spandle next. Maybe Patti was my karma.