Beware False Profits (8 page)

Okay, I thought I’d settled this with myself yesterday. Nobody knows how they’ll react in a brand-new crisis. Still, I’m pretty sure that if Ed just up and disappeared, I would be worried sick. I would be bugging the police and calling every hospital in the state, sure something awful had happened to him.

Because why else would Ed be gone?

Maura was worried, too, but I wasn’t sure she was worried about Joe. She seemed more worried that he might be choosing to stay away.

I reached across the table and stopped her in the middle of cutting muffins into quarters and fanning them out like the petals of a daisy. I slid my hand over hers and squeezed.

“Were you and Joe having problems, Maura? Because I get the feeling you think he might just be holed up somewhere, refusing to come home.”

She gave a small unconvincing shake of her head.

I sat back. “I can’t help unless I know what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on. It’s just that…” She shook her head again. “Well, Joseph’s been working long hours lately. And we fought about it. I felt…feel that he should be here with his family in the evening. I keep a lovely home, make delicious meals; he should be here to enjoy them. I finally told him. Do you think that’s what drove him away?”

I wondered how anybody could be this naive, or this out of date. Maybe June Cleaver worried that Ward was so tired of the Beaver’s antics he planned to divorce her, or Harriet Nelson was afraid Ozzie might leave the family to escape Ricky’s singing, but I seriously doubted it. Some of those traditional fifties housewives are still alive and well in our Women’s Society, and I can tell you they are sharp, gutsy women, not at all afraid to demand their rights. Maura was a mystery to me. I was growing more convinced it was now
my
job to help her get up on her feet and walking.

“That sounds like a perfectly normal argument,” I said, feeling my way. “Not at all the kind of thing that drives people apart.”

“I just keep imagining he’s angry at me, and that’s why he doesn’t come back. If I could do it over, I wouldn’t say a word to him.”

“Why
was
he working such long hours?”

“I never asked.”

Joe is such a personable guy, I couldn’t imagine it would have taken more than a “So what happened at work today?” to get the whole story.

I tried a different tack. “Do you happen to know where in New Jersey he grew up?”

She offered the muffin plate, and I took a quarter. Every piece was exactly the same size. If I’d had time to dissect them and count crumbs, I was sure I would find them equal.

“I don’t think his childhood was happy,” Maura said. “When I asked about it, he was vague. Joseph’s always vague if he doesn’t want to talk about something, and I learned not to pin him down. I think they moved a good bit. I got the feeling his father couldn’t hold down a job. But that was just a guess.”

I felt a touch of remorse. Maybe Joe was vague about work, as well. Maybe when Maura tried to find out how things were going, he clammed up. And didn’t we have proof that this generous, open guy kept secrets?

I made a mental note to find out what had been going on at the food bank to keep him so occupied into the evenings. And I repeated yesterday’s note to myself not to be so hard on Maura.

“If you think of anything he might have told you, will you let me know?” I asked.

“Of course. I appreciate your help, Aggie.” She smiled, and this time the smile was genuine and warmed her face.

“Just two other things, then I have to go. Do you have copies of your credit card bills or recent receipts? I thought maybe I could track his movements in New York and make some calls.”

“Joseph paid all the bills. I never even opened them.”

“Do you know where he filed them afterwards?”

She bit her lip. This time she actually looked chagrined. “No. He may have paid them at work. I think he did a lot of family business on the computer there.”

“So he did all the paperwork?”

“We each had our roles. I guess that’s unusual these days, but it worked for us. I never paid a bill, he never cooked a meal.

“Will you look around and see if you can find any records? Of course if you do, you might want to be the one to make those calls.”

“I’ll look, but I’m sure there’s no reason you shouldn’t see them.”

“Good.” I got to my feet. “Oh, the last thing? Do you have any recent photos of Joe? Just in case?”

She looked relieved. “Finally, something I can help with.”

On my way out we stopped in the living room, and Maura opened an album on the table. I could see it was one of those cleverly done scrapbooks, with stickers and pages that folded out, and little mementoes glued in place. She thumbed through to the end and lifted a photo from a silver paper frame that had held it in place.

She handed the photo to me. “I have a lot more. I’ll get them together for you. But here’s a start.”

We both stared at the photograph. Joe was looking up at us, a big, hunky Italian guy with the world’s greatest smile.

“The house feels empty without him.” Maura looked up at me. “You’ll try to find him, Aggie? Everybody says you’re good at figuring things out.”

I wasn’t sure that anything I figured out was going to make her life happier, but I nodded.

Outside the ribbons of the Morris dancer dolls were fluttering in a light spring breeze, and the morning sun was smiling in the sky. I could almost feel the gaze of friendly neighbors peering through windows to be sure all was well on the street.

Here in the Village, with its charming houses and well-tended yards, it was hard to imagine that the rest of the world wasn’t exactly the same. Husbands never disappeared. Chocolate fountains never splattered. Women, even angry women, never died at charitable events. Standing here I could see why Maura found the real world confusing.

Suddenly I wasn’t quite so sure this neighborhood and those neighborly gazes were completely benign. Despite the smiling sun I got a chill down my spine. It was time to move on.

In my van again I headed toward the Victorian to see what the newest carpenter on a growing list had accomplished on our renovations over the weekend. I pulled onto Bunting Street and parked, telling myself I should sit a moment to admire what Lucy and I have accomplished.

The house that will be Junie’s quilt shop was designed and constructed in Stick Victorian style at the turn of the twentieth century. Although it was easy to miss before we began our renovations, the house has always been well proportioned and gracious.

When Lucy and I got our first glimpse, the exterior was a nondescript beige. For the update, Junie suggested a color that falls somewhere between a muted mauve and lavender. Junie’s psychic ability may be questionable, but her color sense is extraordinary. Now the front porch is spruce green, the shutters black, and the considerable amount of trim is a warm cream or soft rose. The effect is charming without drawing negative attention to itself on a street with a mix of residential and commercial buildings.

The tired, overly disciplined evergreens were dispensed with last month to be replaced by a variety of blooming shrubs and beds of perennials. Junie always wanted to tend a garden, and now she’ll have one. Once the forsythia and Japanese magnolias that will block out the parking area have grown tall enough she has plans for a patio with a fountain in the back. She envisions an annual summer tea on the lawn for her best customers, and many additional happy hours with her granddaughters.

Junie will love being the proprietor of a quilt shop, and she’ll love living here—if Lucy and I can only make it happen. The problem is that we never planned on doing anything as extensive as this project, so we quickly reached the point where our own efforts weren’t enough. We were knowledgeable and talented enough to do simple flips, and we even assembled a list of contractors in our price range who were capable of doing required rewiring and plumbing. But despite following every lead, we have yet to find a crew who can install a kitchen, build attractive shelves and counters for merchandise, and change the basic configuration of the rooms upstairs, which will be Junie’s apartment.

The first team we hired installed a bathroom countertop backwards, so the backsplash nestled against our belly buttons. The second framed in a closet on the wrong side of what would be Junie’s bedroom so that the biggest window could be curtained by caftans and poodle skirts.

Two more failures followed these, both companies recommended, both incapable of swinging a hammer without error.

Now we’re praying—Lucy in her bat mitzvah Hebrew and me in Unitarian-Universalist—that our fifth try will be the last. Hank Closeur, of Closeur Contracting, seems knowledgeable and receptive. Best of all, he and a couple of his men will be moonlighting, working on weekends and evenings, and giving us a price break because of it. We don’t want to stretch Junie’s budget any tighter than we have to.

I realized I was sitting in the van pretending to view with pleasure the progress we had made when in reality, I was just afraid to go inside and discover more mistakes. Junie is a welcome guest in our home, but she’s ready to move on to this new phase of her life, and Ed and I are ready to pack the boxes.

Conquering my sense of dread, I made the trip up to the front porch and peered in the window first. Nothing seemed amiss in the front of the house. In fact, from what I could tell, nothing was different. That didn’t bode well.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Sometime toward the end of the last century the downstairs had been remodeled so the floor plan was open and inviting. Luckily Junie liked it just the way it was, envisioning bolts of fabric in what was once the living and dining area, books and patterns in what had been a small kitchen, and notions in the study. Lucy and I had hired a crew to help demolish the kitchen and haul everything away but the fridge, which would eventually go in what was now a mudroom, for the employees to use. Another crew had refinished all the red oak floors. Now it was time for shelves along the walls, an island built to Junie’s specifications, and a checkout counter in the front hallway.

Hank’s first assignment was the island, where fabric would be laid out and cut, old quilts would be spread to determine what repairs could be done, and new projects shown off to the quilt store staff and customers. Junie said the island would be the heart of the room, a focal point for anyone walking in the door. All well and good, but Hank’s vision of the island was clearly quite different. Somehow, despite every caution, despite chalk marks on the floor exactly where Junie wanted the island to go and plans and materials that were sitting on the other side of the room, Hank or someone on his crew had begun to construct it just a few feet from the fireplace. In fact, so close to the fireplace that circling the island would be impossible for any woman with hips.

And Junie definitely has hips.

There was, as always, good news and bad. The bad news was the placement. The good news was that they’d done so little work on the island I could probably pry out the poorly driven nails anchoring it to the floor and move it myself. With one hand.

I have a problem with technology. In our troubled relationship I’m more or less the jilted lover, constantly pleading for explanations and one more chance. I’m convinced if I try harder, read enough books, I’ll win technology over.

My newest attempt to please is a cell phone. These days I’m away from home enough to need one, and Ed insisted. Seems I’ve had too many close calls lately, never mind I’ve never met a murderer willing to wait while his victim-to-be dials 911. Still, my daughters have almost lost hope I’ll ever be cool, and this was a stopgap measure. So last week I bought a nuts-and-bolts version and the cheapest wireless plan I could find, and attempted to join the twenty-first century.

Anyone can punch in numbers, even the technologically challenged. Now I fished for the phone resting in my pocket and made the attempt. I punched in Hank’s number, which is the numerical form of Closeur. Words instead of numbers are a plague on the universe, and I was so slow, so careful, that the first two times the call didn’t go through. The robot operator got tired of waiting and cut me off.

I finally connected. The phone rang twice, then somebody answered. Unfortunately, that somebody answered in Chinese, or at least that’s my best guess. I apologized in English and hung up. I hoped I’d reached San Francisco and not Beijing.

The fourth time was a charm. I was mastering this. Pocket calculators next, then iPods. Someday e-mail without Deena loading the program and retrieving my messages.

I waited until the woman who answered got Hank to the phone, then in my most professional manner I told him everything that was wrong. Just as he was about to answer, the line went dead.

I know there’s a redial function on my phone. With a manual, a glass of wine, and Deena sitting close beside me, I’m sure someday I’ll find it.

I found a pad and pen and wrote Hank a note detailing everything I’d said on the telephone. I left it on what passed for carpentry and hoped that the next time I saw this room, the damage would be undone and a beautiful new island would be standing between our chalk marks.

Clearly on top of everything else, technology has addled my brain.