A House by the Side of the Road (22 page)

“Why do I care?” she asked the dog. “Maybe Dan stole a lot of stuff from Mrs. Ehrlich and gave all his ill-gotten gains to a woman he was having an affair with. Is this any of my business? I mean, no one's been in my house
lately.
”

The dog regarded her silently.

“You're darn right, it isn't. Christine knows what's going on; Dan told
her.
And she's happy, which means that, if he's the man on the tape, he's obviously decided to dump Ms. Sultry. Christine doesn't care, so
why should I?
”

She had to get out, out into the cool, bright morning. She picked up the phone. Mike himself answered.

“I see you still have no secretary,” she said. “I need advice of the botanical rather than jurisprudential sort. Is the weather going to stay wonderful? What's the last frost date around here? And what's the nursery on the far side of town like? Any good?”

“I'm fine, thanks,” he said. “And you?”

“Hankering for flowers. So answer the questions, Counselor.”

“We haven't discussed my fee.”

“How about … a little bank in the shape of the Statue of Liberty? I'm going to New York on Friday; I could pick it up. Oh, never mind, I forgot. You're a lawyer. How about a great big huge bank in the shape of the Statue of Liberty?”

“How about a milk shake? If you're going to the local nursery, you'll be coming right by here. Unless you want exotic stuff, it's fine. Aunt Hannah had to range far afield to find her fanciest stuff. But it's got the basics. Stop by. We can go get a milk shake, and I'll give you my meteorological predictions and hold forth on the subject of frost dates.”

“At ten-thirty in the morning?” asked Meg. “Besides, I'm bringing my faithful canine companion.”

“No sweat. We'll go to the drive-in. They make a mean milk shake.”

She drove into town and parked outside a small white clapboard building with a lettered sign hanging from a cross-arm post. “Michael Mulcahy—Attorney at Law,” it said.

The front office, which was unoccupied, was thickly carpeted and held a huge, gleaming mahogany desk. A bell had jangled as she opened the door, and Mike stuck his head out of an office down a short hall.

“Come on through to my private waiting room,” he said, gesturing down the hallway past his office. “I'm on the phone. I'll just be a second.”

She glanced in his office as she went by. He was sitting in a high-backed swivel chair, his feet on an antique desk with curved legs. The surface of the desk was covered by stacks of papers and files, which had spread to the tops of wooden filing cabinets and glass-fronted bookcases. The floor was covered with a beautiful old Oriental rug. The “trappings,” as Christine had put it, were much in evidence.

Mike smiled at her and lifted one finger.

Meg dropped onto a burgundy sofa in a pleasant room at the back of the building. There was a tree visible outside the window, with impatiens planted thickly around the trunk. There were bookcases in this room, too, though they were neither as old nor as pretty as the ones in Mike's office. She sat gazing at the bookshelves and listening to what she could hear of Mike's conversation, which wasn't much.

He appeared in the doorway, jacketless and, as usual, tieless. “Let's go. Your animal may be chewing through the seat belts. She got a name yet?”

“I tried ‘Stella' for a few days. I liked yelling ‘
STEL-LA
' in a real deep voice. But it wasn't right.” She nodded at his office as they passed. “Impressive,” she said. “But I might point out that it's hard to see the grain in cherry when it's completely covered by file folders.”

Mike put a hand between her shoulder blades and shoved. “Keep walking. If you're not offering to come in and spend three or four days filing, I see no reason for you to mention the situation.”

At the drive-in, they sat in the front seats, leaning against the doors and drinking milk shakes while Mike answered Meg's questions. The dog lay on the backseat and ate a hamburger Mike had bought for her.

“A conservative wouldn't plant anything tender for another week or so,” he said. “But, heck, where's the joy in life without some risks? I put impatiens out behind the office four days ago. I wouldn't try, oh, torenia yet.”

“Well, you know the local climate better than I do, but it's so warm!”

He shrugged. “So, try it. Like I said, live dangerously. If you get charged with cruelty to flora, however, we never had this conversation.”

Meg dropped him back at his office and went to the nursery, where she spent a happy hour wandering among the seedlings. When she drove home, it was with the seat next to her full of primroses.

“Look at these!” she told the dog, who had refrained from jumping into the front and crushing them. “If you could see colors, you'd be stunned. This one is almost purple.”

She had dug a bed near the front porch the day before, so it would take only a half hour to set out the plants. The nursery also had racks of seed packets, and she had bought pole beans and lettuce. A stop at the hardware store had gleaned her a spade, a rake, a hoe, a garden fork, and a trowel, most of which clattered against the hatchback window every time she hit a rough spot in the road.

The earth was soft and dark. When she had carefully tipped the plants out of their plastic pots and loosened the dirt around their roots, she set them in place and pressed the soil down firmly. The dog lay near her on the grass.

“Later, maybe tomorrow, we can put in beans and lettuce,” said Meg. “I realize you don't care about such things, but human beings think they're good. What? So do rabbits? But that's why I let you live with me … so I won't have to put up a garden fence. Haven't we gone over this? Your job description's pretty clear: Keep strangers out of the house and the garden.”

Jane showed up promptly at three-thirty with Harding, and Meg's prophetic abilities were borne out when the girl put the dog on a long rope. He obeyed her commands eagerly and quickly, as long as nothing distracted him. When a robin flew down onto the grass nearby, however, she had to haul the rope in, hand over hand.

“You ready to try to get the message across?” asked Meg.

“I guess…” said Jane reluctantly. “I know he has to learn.”

“Okay,” said Meg. “We'll entice him to do evil. Entrapment, I know, and it wouldn't stand up in court, but we're not going to court. I, for one, think the FBI should be able to get away with it. How moral is morality that's never tested?”

“What's entrapment?” asked Jane.

“A setup,” said Meg. “And it'll save us time if we set him up instead of waiting for a brave squirrel.”

She whistled for her dog and took a tennis ball out of her pocket. “I've discovered she can chase this for hours. Now, Harding's going to want to chase it, too. Or her. So he'll take off when she does. Don't call him until he's almost played out the rope. Then yell loud and clear. Remember, use his name and the command.”

A moment later, Harding found himself on his back in the grass.

“Don't repeat the command,” said Meg. “Just tug him in gently and then make a big deal about what a good dog he is for ‘obeying' you.”

By the time they went inside to get something to drink, Jane was the proud handler of a dog who came when he was called.

“Of course, he still needs to practice a lot,” said Meg. “And don't try it off-lead yet. We've got some tricks to use with that, if we need them. Do you want pop or lemonade?”

Jane chose lemonade. “I asked Mom why you call soft drinks ‘pop.' She says it's because you're from Chicago. Do people in Chicago really talk differently?”

“Sure,” said Meg. “Out here, you all say, ‘Oh, look, there's a police officer.' In Chicago, we say, ‘Cheese it, Louie! The cops!'”

“Uh-huh,” said Jane. “I bet.” She hitched herself up onto the cabinet next to the sink. “You really know a lot about dogs. You're almost as smart as Mrs. Ehrlich.”

“No,” said Meg, sitting down at the table. “I'm sure I'm not. I just like dogs and had them all the time I was growing up. And I read a lot.”

“So did she,” said Jane.

Meg was uneasy about the ethics of involving Dan's own child in efforts to reduce her nervousness about him. But, after all, she was trying to
reduce
it.

“You said that somebody inherited Mrs. Ehrlich's best silver. I thought you inherited her silver.”

“I did. Just not her best silver.”

“Well, who got that?”

Jane shrugged. “I don't know. She told me I would, but she must have changed her mind.” She looked at Meg challengingly. “People are allowed to change their minds. The silver I did get is very nice.”

“Of course,” said Meg, aware that Jane would brook no criticism of her late friend. “It's just that, from what you've said about her, it sounds like you were a really special person to her.”

“Yes,” said Jane. “I was. But she must have had a reason.”

She emptied her glass and shook it slightly, clinking the ice cubes. “I didn't even know she had two sets of
good
silver, but I guess she did.”

“What do you mean?” asked Meg. “You hadn't ever seen the set you got?”

“Oh, she never used her
good
silver. Or her good china. She hadn't used it for years because she didn't hardly ever have company anymore, not for meals anyway. So she put it all away. Except for one spoon from her
best
silver. She thought it was so pretty she kept it downstairs and took medicine with it. That's how I know what it was like. She showed me the spoon in her bedside table. It was beautiful, with fancy flowers all over the handle. The handle was…” She drew curves in the air. “…sort of like that, and the spoon part was pointy. Not sharp, but like you could use it for grapefruit.”

She sat swinging her legs gently. “It had Tiffany's name on the back—you know, the girl who always throws her bat—so I asked if it used to belong to someone named Tiffany, and she explained. She said someday I'd have it and a lot more just like it and knives and forks and everything, even a special piece to use for serving asparagus. She said I should think about her when I used it. She got it from her husband's grandmother, and she always thought about her when she used it. And then…”

Jane twisted sideways and looked out the kitchen window. In a moment, she went on. “And then she laughed, and she said she had put it in her will for me, because I was her good friend, and I was really young, and that meant someone would be thinking about her for a long, long time. But I'll be thinking about her for a long, long time anyway.”

“I know you will,” said Meg. “I hope the person who got the best silver does, too, whoever that is.”

“Well,” said Jane bitterly, “it's a little late for them to be thinking about her, isn't it?”

*   *   *

At six o'clock, the Laundromat was nearly empty, and Meg had her choice of washers and dryers. She drove home feeling productive, with the backseat full of clean clothes. As she pulled into the driveway, she saw her dog racing through the meadow, her wide-set legs making her appear to be churning up the ground as she ran. She leaped upon Meg as she got out of the car, alternately barking joyously and whining.

“Yeah,” said Meg. “You've bonded, all right. I like you too, pup.”

She sat for a moment on the stoop of the kitchen door and let the dog dance around her until the greeting ritual had run its course. It was another beautiful evening. She breathed deeply. The air was cool and sweet, and no thumping bass from passing car radios pulsated through it.

“So it's a little dull and lonely here, compared to Chicago,” said Meg. “There are nice things, too, don't you think?”

The dog scratched at the door.

“Oh, all right,” said Meg. “Just because I don't feel like eating yet doesn't mean
nobody
's hungry.”

The kitchen was dim, and Meg could hear the hum of the refrigerator, laboring to maintain its minimal cooling. She switched on the light and smiled at her sight of the room, then felt loneliness swell again. Curtains in a flowered pattern of pink and blue and pale green hung at the window, a gift from Christine, who had made them from another of Mrs. Ehrlich's vintage tablecloths. Christine had helped with other things, too. She'd dragged Meg to the First United Methodist rummage sale, where they'd found an old juicer that worked with a lever instead of an electric switch and a set of old, brightly patterned tin canisters. It was, as Christine had said, a wonderful kitchen.

Except for the floor. It was silly to fixate on the kitchen floor when so much else needed to be done. The floor was
fine.
But, thought Meg, this room was the only room so close to perfect, and it could actually
be
perfect if the floor were right. If the wood in the traveled part was in nearly as good condition as the wood under the cabinets …

The dog cleaned the last of the food from the bowl on the floor, looked up, and barked.

“All right, I'll do paying work,” said Meg. “But that
isn't
the last of the dog food, so don't get all frantic on me. I can spare a half hour to aim a hair dryer at a few tiles and see what's under here. Then I'll do real work. And I'll write every minute tomorrow.”

She chose a spot in front of the sink—the spot that would have sustained the most damage. When the dryer had persuaded the adhesive to let go, she carefully pulled up a tile. She looked at the floor, then moved on to the neighboring tiles. Fifteen minutes later, she sat back on her heels and stared at the results in dismay.

The varnish had worn away, that much was clear. What was also clear was that a liquid had soaked into the bare wood, and a large, irregular stain marred the narrow maple boards.