Blind Dates Can Be Murder (24 page)

The work was exhausting because he was moving fast. Finally, breathing hard, Lettie asked him what exactly he was looking for.

“None of your business.”

“Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

He ignored her question and moved on to the kitchen, where he paid special attention to the pantry, taking out almost everything and even holding juice bottles up to the light to look through them. Lettie was putting the pantry back together again and Tank was going through the freezer when the phone rang. After four rings, the answering machine on the wall kicked on, the recording playing out into the room.

“Hi, thanks for calling. Sorry I’m not here. Leave a message.”

Lettie could hear a man’s voice speaking to the recorder, reminding Jo of a committee meeting at church on Thursday. Soon after that call came another, but this time the voice that began to leave a message was a familiar one.

“Hey, Jo, it’s Marie. I know you’re at your grandma’s right now. Call me when you get back.”

Lettie sat back on her heels, listening. It was Marie, the same Marie from lunch.

“We had a nice meal. Wish you could have been there. I invited Lettie to the movie Tuesday night. Hope you don’t mind. She seems so lonely, like she could really use some friends.”

Lettie swallowed hard, guilt surging up in to her throat. She shouldn’t be hearing this. It was none of her business.

“I know Anna got all ballistic on me last night about it, but I swear I would just love to give Lettie a makeover. I think there is some amazing potential under all that hideous hair and awful clothes. Can’t you just see it? I’m thinking red highlights, a little chin-length bob. Some winter tones for her clothes and makeup? Of course, the big glasses have to go, but she could get contacts. With all of that, she’d be a knockout. Then again, how do you say to somebody, you’re cute and all, but can I, like, totally change everything about you?” Marie laughed. “The thing is, she might not be so shy if she could get a little self-confidence about her looks.”

Tank seemed oblivious to the phone call. He finished in the freezer and moved on to the fridge.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to go on and on about it. I just felt like chatting. I’ve got a house showing, but these people are already fifteen minutes late. Why am I cursed with a world full of people who just can’t seem to get anywhere on time? Speaking of being on time, thanks again for holding a seat for me in church this morning. I hated to miss Sunday school, but that was the only time this other couple could see the house on Pecan. They’re such a pain, real picky, because she wants four bedrooms but he wants a refinished basement, and between the two of them I’m about to give up. If they ever do buy a house, that’ll be one commission I really earned…”

Marie continued to drone on for another full minute about her job in real estate before she finally concluded the message and hung up. The machine made a few clicks and then the room fell into a deep silence, punctuated only by Tank rooting through all of the food.

“Nothing here,” he said, closing the refrigerator door. “I’ll look in that building out back.”

Tank strode from the room, leaving Lettie to clean up after him. She finished with the pantry and moved on to the freezer, though she had completely lost her momentum.

Four words kept ringing through her ears, and though Marie’s message had been somewhat hard to hear, she couldn’t help replaying the best part in her mind, over and over:

She’d be a knockout
.

A knockout?

Lettie knew it wasn’t true, but still, that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about her.

13

D
anny couldn’t get over the beauty of Chimney Top, the gated community that was their destination. After they cleared the security check-in, Jo proceeded to drive down a long road that wound through deep woods, past a lake, and alongside a pristine golf course. She pointed out different houses as they went, but Danny was only half listening. He was simply spellbound with the beauty of the place. He couldn’t understand why Jo didn’t come there more often.

Her grandmother’s house was at the end of a cul-de-sac on a point that looked out over the lake. At at least five thousand square feet, Danny couldn’t believe it was merely a second home. Jo rolled to a stop in the circular driveway lined by deep gray flagstone.

“Unbelievable,” he whispered.

“Pretty massive, eh?”

“It’s just that you’re so down to earth and normal, Jo. I never think about the wealth in your family.”

Chewie was pacing back and forth in the backseat at the anticipation of getting out. Still, Jo took a moment to look Danny in the eye and smile.

“Thank you, Danny,” she said. “That means more to me than you could imagine. I don’t ever want to be thought of as wealthy.”

Jo leaned into the backseat and clipped the leash on Chewie’s collar.

“All of this money—it doesn’t do a thing for you, does it?” Danny asked as he got out.

Jo let Chewie from the car and pressed the button to extend his leash as he ran excitedly around in a circle on the driveway.

“I just don’t understand what money does for people,” Jo replied. “I mean, these guys have so much, and they’re some of the most unhappy folks I know.”

Danny had never really gotten to know the extended family, but certainly Jo’s mother, Helen Bosworth Tulip, was a bitter person and a terrible mother. Most of Jo’s childhood had been spent in misery, being shuttled all over the world while her father, Kent Tulip, worked to build up the international holdings of his in-laws’ company. Now Kent was the CEO of the worldwide conglomerate, Helen was an angry and isolated wife, and Jo was still nearly incapable of achieving intimacy with anyone, thanks to a childhood that had kept her from making more than a handful of lasting attachments.

“Hey, in a way, at least my grandmother is the best of the lot. I don’t dislike her. We just don’t really click, you know? Or, when we do, it’s only on her terms.”

Once Chewie had calmed down, Jo and Danny led him up the front walk to the door. The butler who answered seemed to have been anticipating them. He greeted them, stepped out onto the stoop, and called to the gardener on a walkie-talkie. Moments later, the fellow came walking from around the side of the house.

“Hey, Chewie! Hey, Jo,” the gardener said. “Long time no see.”

They obviously had a routine here, and it included not letting the big slobbery dog inside the home. Danny didn’t really blame Mrs. Bosworth, considering the surroundings; Chewie might consume a Chippendale sofa cushion or something.

Once Chewie was happily running off with the gardener, the butler let Jo and Danny in. They followed him through the main hall to a beautiful room lined floor to ceiling with windows. There, in a wheelchair near a big stone fireplace, was Jo’s grandmother.

She was elegant woman, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, a neat pair of pearl earrings hanging from her earlobes. She wore a silk dressing gown with a blanket draped over her lap. She did not rise when they came into the room; she seemed so feeble, Danny doubted that she could. It was a bit uncomfortable as she and Jo greeted one another, but then it was his turn to be introduced.

“This is my friend Danny, Grandmother,” Jo said. “You met him once before, years ago, when we were just kids.”

The woman put her glasses on to study Danny more closely.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, ma’am,” he said.

“Danny, is it? You’re the one who lives in the house directly behind Jo’s house,” she said.

“Yes.”

“The two of you are fast friends.”

“Yes.”

“I remember you. She brought you along to a Christmas party at our house in Westchester County one year. You know why you passed muster with me?”

“Why?” Danny asked, smiling.

“Because a week later I received a note in the mail from you, thanking me for having you at the party.” She chuckled. “You couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, and the letter only had one sentence: ‘Thanks for letting me come to your party.’ But I was impressed, I’ll tell you that. There were two heads of state and a senator at that gathering, and none of
them
sent me a letter.”

Danny grinned. His mother had always been a stickler for thank-you notes.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m flattered that you remember.”

“Nobody writes thank-you notes anymore. Why is that? I suppose everyone’s too busy swimming the web and sending each other instantaneous messages and all of that.”

“Surfing the web, Grandmother.”

“Yes, well, whatever it’s called, it’s causing the breakdown of polite society. Tea. Would the two of you like some tea?”

The butler appeared in the doorway with a tea service. Jo and Danny sat as he put the tray on the table between them.

“Jo, dear, my hands have grown so shaky. Would you serve?”

“Of course.”

Danny watched as Jo did just that, her movements those of practiced efficiency and grace. As she used all of the little silver implements just so, he remembered that she had grown up in this world. She’d probably learned to use a tea service when she was just a little girl at the knee of her stern and exacting grandmother.

They all endured polite conversation. When their tea was finished, Jo excused herself to go to the restroom and then to check on Chewie. That left Danny alone with Mrs. Bosworth. While he was trying to think up some interesting line of conversation, she beat him to the punch.

“You’ve been around my granddaughter a long while,” she said. “Isn’t it about time you married the girl?”

Lettie stood waiting, wringing her hands. There was a separate building behind Jo’s house, and though Tank had a bit more trouble with that lock, he eventually got it open. They stepped inside to see what looked like a home office, with a desk to the left, a couch in the middle, under the back window, and a kitchen to the right.

It was no ordinary kitchen, though. The pantry held a variety of products and chemicals, all neatly labeled and lined up in what Lettie realized was alphabetical order. There was acetone, alcohol, ammonia, beeswax, borax, charcoal, cold cream…

As Lettie read the names on the containers, she remembered Jo’s occupation and she realized that this must be her test area, where she worked out the solutions to household problems.

Lettie didn’t think she’d ever seen anything so fun or interesting in her life. What a neat way to live! She could just imagine hiding away in this cozy little office, measuring out products to take out the latest, most stubborn stains, and spending hours trying different theories and ideas. A surge of envy sprung up within her, and she had to wonder how someone like Jo Tulip ended up doing what she did for a living. If Lettie had ever had the chance to design her own life—instead of falling victim to those who surrounded her—she might have chosen to do something exactly like this.

“You gonna help or what?” Tank demanded.

He was at the desk, and he had made a complete mess of the drawers and bins and book rack. Quickly, she ran over and got to work, straightening furiously behind him.

Danny’s eyes widened. Did she really just say it was time he married Jo?

“If I have my way, yes, ma’am, I would love to marry your granddaughter,” he told her, trying to recover from the shock of the moment. “Unfortunately, right now she thinks of me as just a friend.”