Authors: Sara Rosett
I wrestled one of the folders out of the tightly packed box. Brent David McCarter. Ugh. I’d drop this off on their porch when they weren’t home so I wouldn’t have to see Brent again. As I closed the box and shoved it aside, I heard a clatter of claws and then felt heavy breathing on the back of my neck.
Three Ways to Lighten the Load
B
efore I could stand up, I was licked, sloppily, behind my ear and knocked onto the cool concrete.
“Rex. No,” I snapped and struggled to my feet. He loped back to Mitch.
“I think he likes you,” Mitch said.
“No, he likes you. He’s being friendly to me to make a good impression on you.”
Mitch grinned and I could have sworn he and Rex exchanged glances.
“See, I’m on to you,” I said. “You think you can get me used to him and then work around to getting a big dog of our own. No way.” I picked up the box. Mitch grabbed one side and helped me carry it to the Cherokee. Rex trotted along and waited while we shoved it inside. I slammed the hatch and sat down on the bumper.
“Maybe. Maybe a little dog. Someday. One that won’t overwhelm Livvy.”
Mitch sat down beside me. “But a big dog is protection. No one is going to even think about messing with you if you’ve got a dog like this around. As often as I’m gone, it would be good.” Rex sat down beside me. He moved his eyes and the brown spots over his eyes seemed to tilt imploringly at me. I patted him on the head.
“I’ll buy big water and food dishes with ‘Killer’ on the side and leave them on the porch. No one will know the difference,” I said.
“But then you miss the companionship.” Mitch looked pointedly at my side. I’d been rubbing Rex’s ears as we talked. I pulled my hand away. “Come on, let’s start dinner.” I headed to the house. “Watch out. The porch railing fell off today.”
Mitch leaned over and examined the braces. “Fell off? You’d think that would have come up in the home inspection if it was loose. I’ll grab a screwdriver and put it back.”
I went up the steps. On the way inside the door, my feet skidded. I gripped the door frame.
“Whoa, there, grace!” Mitch said as he lifted the railing onto the porch.
I leaned down and ran my hand over the green artificial turf doormat, complete with a daisy in the corner. It was one of the few things that the sellers had left, but it didn’t quite hit the decorating note I liked. I’d been meaning to buy a new one.
My fingers were glossy when I pulled them away from the mat. I sniffed. Butter?
“Hey, where did you put the screws?”
“Umm. Nowhere. I just propped up the railing. I figured
the screws would still be in it, if they weren’t rusted out.”
“There’s no screws.” Mitch scanned the grass where I’d propped up the railing. “Anywhere.”
Mitch and I looked at each other. Mitch’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Do you think someone came along and unscrewed the railing?”
“And sprayed the mat with cooking spray?” I held out my shiny fingers. “Who would do a crazy thing like that? We could have been hurt.”
Mitch rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe it was a prank.”
Later that night, I jerked the sheet across the tiny mattress and pulled with all my might. Why do crib sheets seem to be an inch smaller than crib mattresses? I struggled to work the edge down between the slats while Mitch walked with springy steps up and down the dark hall with Livvy. She had been very upset when she awoke with her pajamas and sheets soaking wet. We cleaned everything up and got Livvy back to sleep; then we stumbled down the hall and fell into our blessedly cool bed. The window unit pumped wonderful arctic air across our bed and down the hall to Livvy’s room. I curled up on Mitch’s shoulder with his arm tucked around me. Five seconds and Mitch was out, but I wasn’t. We’d written off the railing incident as a teenage prank—or possibly a squadron prank. Mitch didn’t buy this last idea, but I didn’t think it was beyond the realm of possibility. Kind of a welcome-to-the-neighborhood initiation joke. I heard Livvy shuffle around and shifted my thoughts to her. She’d been fussy and hadn’t wanted to eat. Maybe she was just coming out of a growth spurt and didn’t need
as much milk. I rolled over, smacked the pillow. Maybe she was fussy because she didn’t get enough to eat. I read an article about babies that got dehydrated. Was it time to start supplementing with formula?
Mitch breathed deeply, on the verge of snoring. Down the hall Livvy moved restlessly, murmured a protest, and then was quiet. I’d been busy all day running errands, sorting out the garage, and fixing dinner. I had hardly played with her. She had spent most of the day strapped in her car seat, the bouncy chair, or napping. I shifted onto my back and felt a surge of guilt for not planning time to play with her. Mother guilt. No matter what I do, I’ll always question if I’m giving my family the best of everything. Every mom feels like this, I counseled myself, so go ahead and get some sleep or you won’t be awake enough to give Livvy or Mitch that quality time you’re so worried about. Livvy cried again, this time with more force. I padded down the hall.
She settled down when I rubbed her back. In the dim light, I could barely see her plump arm, clenching the blanket, and her back rising and falling with the steady rhythm of her breathing. She tensed but didn’t awaken when a string of sharp barks punctured the quiet night. It was Rex.
I lifted the edge of the mini blinds and a movement down the street caught my eye. A slender figure carried a small bundle and moved down the driveway of the house next door to Joe.
The person opened the driver’s door of the car parked at the end of the driveway and tossed the bundle inside. The brake lights came on as the car rolled silently out of the driveway and then coasted down the slight descent toward the park. At the corner, headlights flicked on and I faintly heard the engine. Rex’s
barks trailed off to low growls and then stopped as the car turned the corner.
I absently fingered the plastic pole of the blinds. The car, a small white two-door car, was usually parked there, but it was odd that the person had left without using the engine or lights. Mabel said Cass had asked questions about the people in the house. Mabel thought it was a drug house.
At least they weren’t messing with my porch railing. I checked Livvy one more time and ambled back to bed. I snuggled up to Mitch again, but it was a long time before I slept.
Late afternoon sun slanted through the windows when Abby knocked on the screen door and I motioned her inside. “Can you believe that the weather is finally cooling off?” Abby stepped inside. She wore a white T-shirt, purple shorts, and serious running shoes, although her shoes would be underutilized because we were going walking. As the first of my post-baby workouts, walking three nights a week, I intended to keep this walk sedate, a stroll really. Of course, Abby took her workouts very seriously. She plopped two sets of hand weights down on the kitchen counter. “And I was so envious of your A/C unit,” she added with a smile.
I gestured to the weights. “I think pushing the stroller will be enough added weight for me,” I said.
“Isn’t Mitch going to watch her?”
“He’s fixing the leak under our bathroom sink. I stepped on the throw rug in front of the sink this morning and it squished.”
Abby wrinkled her nose. “Yuck. Big mess?”
“Not too bad. That’s the good thing about hardwood
floors. We just had to mop up the water. I hope nothing else breaks. I’m tired of living the reality version of
This Old House.”
I left the weights on the counter, put the happy face key chain in my shorts pocket, and hitched them up to retie the drawstring in the front. I was wearing Mitch’s old blue workout shorts that had shrunk after years of washing. Mitch didn’t give up his clothes easily. I’d practically had to arm wrestle these shorts from him. For a man so laid back about everything else, he was very particular about his clothes. “I’ve got to get some more shorts. Nothing fits anymore. My maternity clothes are too big and my regular clothes are too small.”
I strapped Livvy in her stroller and we walked down the street to the park. The breeze was cool on my legs tonight and I almost wished I had brought a sweatshirt.
“I guess I’ll just buy a few pairs of shorts because it feels like fall is almost here.”
A few days ago a sweatshirt would have brought on heat exhaustion. But now I noticed the leaves on some of the trees were already fading to brown and gold. The wind whistled through the tops of the trees, whipping them back and forth. I tucked a blanket more snuggly around Livvy. I nodded to Joe’s house as we passed. “I need to stop and take in their mail on the way back.”
“Sure,” Abby said as she pumped her weights.
Dark clouds sliding in from the north infused the day with an overcast tinge. I’d better wait on watering Joe’s yard. It looked like it might rain. I made a mental note to find the box with our coats soon.
“Did you sub today?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I realized we were halfway around the park and Abby had said only a few words. “Abby, are you okay?” If she
wasn’t chatty, I figured Abby was coming down with something. She stopped, covered her eyes with her forearm, the hand weight pulling her hand down at an angle.
“Abby, are you crying? What’s wrong?”
She dropped the weights to the ground and leaned over to wipe her eyes on the edge of her T-shirt. “I’m worried.” She straightened up, blinking. “Jeff’s been acting all strange. And then last night an investigator, a detective from the OSI, came to our house and asked a bunch of questions about Cass’s death. It was awful.”
“I’m sure it was routine stuff. They’re probably talking to everyone.” Even I could hear a hint of doubt in my tone. “What’s the OSI?”
“If I understood it right, it’s like the FBI for the Air Force. Office of Special Investigations.”
Oh. Maybe not so routine. “What did they ask about?”
Abby swallowed and looked up at the gray sky. “About the barbeque and when Cass yelled at Jeff, and about bees. It was so weird.”
“Okay. What did Jeff tell them?” This didn’t sound good for Jeff.
“He said Cass saw the name of a deer lease on that paper and she was furious because she thought hunting was wrong. She wanted to know who else was in the lease with Jeff, so she could go after them, too.” Abby took a deep breath. “Then they wanted to know where Jeff and I were every second of the barbeque.”
“And you were together, right?”
“No. I followed Jeff outside. I tried to find out what was going on, but he was so mad he didn’t want to talk at all. He was smoking! He’d bummed a cigarette off someone and was smoking.”
“I didn’t know he smoked.”
“He did. A little in high school, to be cool, but then his uncle died of lung cancer and Jeff stopped. Scared Jeff to death. Or life, I guess. Anyway, I knew he needed to cool off, so I went back inside.” Abby picked up the weights and we slowly resumed our walk.
So Jeff had been smoking and I’d read that smoke calmed bees down. It probably did the same thing to wasps. Great. A public argument, specialized knowledge of bees, and smoking. I bet the investigators were combing the trash cans around the squadron for wasps. How could there not be wasps with the food and trash from the barbeque? Now Jeff had motive, means, and opportunity. I hadn’t wanted to even consider that Jeff might be involved in Cass’s death. Jeff was a friend. He was nice. Despite his hefty build he was gentle and careful with Livvy when Abby insisted he hold Livvy “for practice.”
But how well did I know Jeff, really? Weren’t we all capable of doing shocking things to protect ourselves? The news was full of people saying they couldn’t believe their nice, quiet, normal neighbor killed someone. The smidge of doubt grew into full-fledged suspicion.
Abby interrupted my thoughts. “Then the questions were all about bees. Did he have a hive? Did he have all the special equipment? Had he ordered any bees lately? They think he killed Cass. I mean, sure, his parents keep bees, but that doesn’t mean he used them to hurt Cass.”
“You know she died from an allergic reaction? To wasp stings. Joe told me.”
“Right. Bees, wasps, what’s the difference?” Abby’s eyes were glassy. “The worst part is he’s lying. I can tell.”
She saw my shocked look and said, “Not about Cass. I know he didn’t hurt her, but he’s lying about something and it scares me.”
Except for Mitch and the Security Police, no one knew I’d found the wasps. Even though no one from the Security Police had asked me to keep quiet, I felt compelled to keep the information to myself. I felt terrible. I wasn’t about to tell Abby I’d set in motion an investigation that put Jeff in the role of prime suspect. I wanted to reassure her and tell her I knew Jeff didn’t do it, but the words stuck in my throat. This was awful. I knew Abby needed to hear something encouraging. “Abby, I’m sorry. I’m sure they’ll find whoever did it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Abby nodded, sniffed, and picked up the pace. “So you were asking about my class.” She had a six-week assignment filling in for a teacher on maternity leave.
“It’s going all right. Third grade. I don’t think they get my jokes. But I need to go shopping, too. I need some pants. How about we go to the mall? Have you been there yet?”
“No. It’s somewhere in the North Valley.” We huffed and puffed, or more accurately Abby sailed around the park, while I huffed and puffed. She’d regained her quick stride and outwardly she looked fine, except for her puffy eyes and quiet manner. She wasn’t her usually bubbly self. She said Jeff wasn’t lying about murdering Cass, but she was so worried. Maybe she wasn’t completely sure of Jeff’s innocence, either.