Beware False Profits (15 page)

I stopped on the porch and turned, avoiding the butterfly net as best I could. “Does he talk to you about it?”

“He’s never talked a lot. He’s a quiet boy.”

I didn’t counsel her to ask Tyler about the girlfriend. My relationship with Maura was tentative enough already. I didn’t want her to begin thinking of me as an in-law.

Maybe it was the heavy burden of so many questions to answer. Or maybe it was pawing through all that germ-laden merchandise in the toy room. Or maybe it was just my usual spring allergies. But when I woke up the next morning I didn’t want to raise my head off the pillow. The ceiling was as much as I wanted to see of the world. My nose itched, my eyes watered, and overnight my joints had gone on strike. I felt as washed-out and worn-out as one of Hazel Kefauver’s sweaters. In the rummage sale of life, I would be relegated to the bargain table.

“Ag?”

I turned and saw Ed standing over me, dressed in sweats.

“Is our will up-to-date?” I croaked.

“Not feeling too hot?”

“What time is it?”

“The girls are at school. Junie’s over at the Victorian working on her garden. I was going for a run, but if you need me…”

I pushed up to rest on my elbows. “I’ll be fine. At the most I’m getting a cold. It’s Monday, right?”

“That’s what the paper claims.”

“What are your plans?”

“Something tells me they aren’t going to include you. Don’t worry, I’ll entertain myself. I might head over to the college and do some research.”

Ed could easily spend a delightful day off in the stacks. I felt not an iota of guilt.

I levered myself up another inch. “Go ahead and enjoy yourself.”

“Then I’ll run in that direction. Will you feel good enough to pick me up later?”

I managed a nod. “Thanks for seeing the girls off.”

“Teddy’s back to her regular clothes.”

I felt no remorse for the loss of my princess. Cinderella belonged on a stage, and Teddy belonged on the jungle gym.

“She seems upset about something, though,” he said. “Do you happen to know what?”

“Not a clue.” Just like the rest of my life.

“Maybe you’ll have better luck talking to her than I did.”

“I’m sure if I work at it all day, enough sound will come out of my throat for a conversation.”

“I’ll get a pizza for dinner. Just laze around and feel better.”

He kissed me on top of my head, afraid, I’m sure, to risk contamination. Then he disappeared through the doorway.

I sat up a little straighter and saw that he had left orange juice and a slice of buttered toast beside the bed. “Thank you,” I called after him.

“There’s coffee in the pot.”

I figured the juice and toast and a shower might give me enough strength to get that far. And sure enough, half an hour later I installed myself at the kitchen table where the newspaper was already spread.

The
Flow
is short on national news and shorter on world news. But anyone who needs to know how much money Grant Elementary raised with their recent bike-a-thon, or how many times Brownie Kefauver said “huh?” during the city council meeting, can find that and more on our pages. For bigger news Ed and I rely on the
New York Times
. That’s usually my first stop, but today I went right to the
Flow
and turned to the obituaries.

Hazel Kefauver’s photo stared out at me, a younger, more attractive woman than the one I’d known. The younger Hazel had been blessed with abundant curly hair, and at that point in her life, still remembered how to smile. I wondered when she had forgotten and become the judgmental, rigid woman who died in the VIP tent.

I read a detailed account of Hazel’s life. She and Brownie had been married for twenty-four years, just missing their silver anniversary. Her parents and a brother had passed away before her. There hadn’t been children. I wondered if this had contributed to her dissatisfaction with life. Or had she chosen not to have them because children are naturally rebellious and messy, and she wouldn’t have been patient with either?

All this seemed to indicate that Brownie would be Hazel’s sole heir. Perhaps she had left something to charity, even the food bank, but from what I was learning about her, I wasn’t optimistic. At best Hazel would have attached so many requirements that the money was virtually useless. No one in need would be any richer now that she had passed on.

I noted that the funeral was planned for this afternoon and that somehow the Methodists had managed to make their sanctuary acceptable for the service. If I hadn’t been so happy with Closeur Contracting, I would have begged the minister for the name of their crew.

The telephone rang and I heard my mother’s voice on the other end. Junie had left me herbs for tea. I was to drink the resulting brew no matter how it tasted to build up my resistance to whatever I was coming down with. She would stop on the way home this afternoon and pick up a salad. Our dinner was beginning to sound like a feast.

Dutiful middle child that I am, I got up and put on water to boil.

I was feeling marginally better, but not good enough to leave home to order cabinets or get quotes on appliances. I had no reason to cook and no energy to work on the cupboard I was refinishing for our dining room. Reading about Hazel had given me the start of a headache, so a novel was out of the question.

I made the tea, added a dollop of milk to cool it, and held my nose. Even with nostrils pinched, Junie’s brew tasted like radiator scrapings. But my mother knows her herbs. If this ailment could be beat into submission, the tea would be the knockout punch.

And speaking of punch, the time was perfect to track down the punch bowl. I was alone, and I wasn’t good for anything else. Despite every urge just to head back to bed, I headed for the telephone and the church directory. Mabyn Booth was first on my list, but she wasn’t home. Mabyn is Fern Booth’s daughter-in-law, and at Christmastime I’d helped her get something of a handle on their relationship. Now I realized that episode had parallels to my new relationship to Maura. I wasn’t sure how I had suddenly become a mentor to two different women in our congregation, and where that might end. I needed some serious training.

On the best way to stay out of other people’s business.

My second call was to the woman Ida had mentioned in her butterfly rant. According to Ida, Doris had practically snatched Ida’s second box of glasses right out of her hands. Of course I knew that in any battle of that type, all bets were on Ida. I imagined poor Doris had already been halfway to the cash register before Ida got there.

Doris was home, cordial, and one more dead end. She was, however, delighted with her glasses, which she had set up in her basement bar. I hung up wondering why all these women, none of whom seem to have serious financial problems, didn’t just head to the nearest discount store and buy glasses in a pattern they chose at a price they could afford. What was it about this “bargain” that had set them off?

And where in the heck was the biggest bargain of all? The American Brilliant punch bowl?

I’d struck out. Next I was going to have to confess my sins to somebody and beg for help. The problem was I didn’t know who.

I tabled the search until I could talk to Mabyn. My headache was getting worse, and I was in no condition to make decisions with such grave consequences attached.

I was putting the directory back in the drawer when the telephone rang again. I claim no special knowledge of universal laws, except one. The telephone always rings when you don’t feel like talking. I believe with every fiber of my being that telephones are close genetic relatives to cats. A phone can sense when you’re not feeling well and perform accordingly. After a meal Moonpie always chooses laps according to the degree of indigestion. Unable to leap on unsuspecting abdomens, the telephone rings incessantly.

Ours was still ringing. I answered with no enthusiasm.

“What is
wrong
with you?” Lucy asked at my lackluster tone. “Deena’s got a whole year before she turns thirteen, and Teddy probably won’t take calculus for another year or two. Celebrate while you can.”

“I woke up feeling like leftover French toast.”

“Poor baby. What’s on your calendar for the day?”

“Either a nap or checking out some odd newspaper clippings that Maura found on Joe’s side of the closet.”

“I’m heading to Give Me a Break. Latte or a mocha? I’ll treat.”

“I haven’t combed my hair. You won’t hold it against me?”

“Cut it like Cilla’s. You’ll never have to comb it again.”

Twenty-five minutes later I was still gazing in the hall mirror trying to figure out whether anybody would notice a transformation from medium brown bob to George Clooney casual, when Lucy walked in.

“If I looked like Cilla, I could pull it off,” I said.

Despite the minutes that had passed Lucy knew what I was talking about. “She’s an Amazon, isn’t she? So gorgeous. Do you think Joe knows she’s in love with him?”

I pictured the two of them on stage at the Pussycat Club. Joe as Cher, Cilla as Sonny. I thought with a lot of makeup tricks, she might be able to pull it off, although she would always be better looking.

Lucy handed me a steaming mocha topped with whipped cream. The largest size. If Junie’s herbs hadn’t cured me, this would speed the process.

“So what about these newspaper clippings?”

Between turning my head one way and the other in front of the mirror, I’d gone upstairs to get the clippings out of my dresser drawer. Things had been too chaotic when I returned yesterday to spend any time looking through them. Now I led Lucy to the coffee table where I had spread them out. We took a seat on the sofa in front of them and began.

“What are we doing?” Lucy asked.

“Just read them all, and I’ll do the same. Then we’ll see if there’s anything that jumps out at us.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Look for a common thread.”

The first article I picked up concerned a car dealership in Burlington, Vermont, that had awarded salesperson of the year to a woman named Henrietta Clay. There was a photograph of Henrietta and the owner of the dealership with the rest of the sales staff and a customer or two fanning out behind them.

“Maybe Joe Wagner kept a collection of the most boring articles in the universe,” Lucy said.

“What was yours about?”

“Bank of Boston is giving free booklets on Finding Financial Security in the Twenty-First Century.”

“Let’s hop a plane.” I told Lucy about good old Henrietta.

We read another batch in silence. “A PTA in Dedham, Massachusetts, raised money to fight illiteracy by holding a used book sale,” I said. “And I have a real estate ad for a new development. If this is what housing costs in the Boston area, I’m glad Ed didn’t take the church he was offered there. We would have lived in a furnished room.”

“Some hairdresser in Quincy won a prize for cutting the most heads of hair for charity on Valentine’s Day,” Lucy said. “They called the event the Cupid Cut-a-thon.”

“Think she could make me look like Cilla?”

“You’re forbidden to cut your hair until you feel 100 percent well.”

“You have noticed the one similarity, right?”

“New England,” Lucy said.

I leafed through the others just slowly enough to see that all but one mentioned Massachusetts or Vermont. There were more articles that seemed of no relevance, an obituary, an interesting piece about custom window seats. I wondered how a window seat would look downstairs in the Victorian under the bay window. I’d have to check with Junie, but I thought maybe her customers would like a place to sit and look at fabric or pattern books, and we could build storage underneath.

The odd duck was an article about a man in Florida who was convicted in a Social Security scam and sentenced to a stint at Leavenworth. I read it out loud. The date, like the name of the paper, was gone. But the article mentioned a law passed the previous year that had made it possible to increase the length of his sentence. I did the math and figured the article had been published three years before.

“I bet Simeon Belcore isn’t a happy camper about now,” I said. “Leavenworth can’t be much of a vacation spot.”

“Shame on the guy for stealing money from Social Security. That’s a privilege only the United States Congress should enjoy.” Lucy looked up. “Did you say Belcore?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I saw that name.” She shuffled through papers. “Here, in the article about the hairdresser. One of the men who was shorn for charity was named Belcore. Ben Belcore.”

I picked up the article about the PTA and felt a tingle that said we were on to something. Either that or I had moved on to chills and fever. No Belcore was mentioned in the article, but on closer examination I saw the link.

“There’s a Belcore in this photo. I can’t tell from the text if he’s a tutor or a nonreader, but it says Z. Belcore.” Z. Belcore was standing behind somebody else, and he was wearing a cap. No clues there.

We checked everything else. Except for the real estate ad, there was a Belcore in every clipping. A Belcore built custom window seats. One of the lucky souls in the photo of customers receiving Bank of Boston booklets was named Belcore. Even the obituary mentioned Belcore. It was the deceased’s sister’s married name.

“Wow.” I set my last clipping on the table.