Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 07 - Vague Images (21 page)

He seemed to relax
. “We…enjoyed one another’s company.”

You can’t really ask whether the bedroom was the most enjoyable room, so I took a leap
. “I heard you were practically engaged.”

Logan’s jaw tensed and he raised his voice slightly
. “That is prepos…not true.”

“People do infer too much, I guess.”  I held his gaze.

“Sometimes people don’t understand that friendship can be just that.”  His words were spoken sharply and quickly, and I wondered if he had rehearsed them.

“Sure. I’m lucky to have a lot of friends.”

He stood. “If you should hear anything you think the Board needs to know, will you contact me?”

I stood, too
. “Surely, but I can’t imagine what that would be.”

He moved toward the door
. “I guess I’m trying to say if you need more information you don’t need to go to a lower-level employee. You’re welcome to come to me.”

I extended a hand
. “Thank you. Will we see you tomorrow?”

He laughed, and it seemed he caught himself before he made it clear it was a derisive laugh
. “No, no. Always a busy calendar, you know.”

And yet you have time to deliver gift baskets for Harvest for All.

I stood back from my living room window a bit so I wouldn’t be too obvious as I watched Jason Logan drive away. I didn’t like having him in my house. Especially since I thought his motive was to see if I would be a problem to him. I had no doubt that if he thought I was about to associate him with Tanya Weiss’ murder, he would be a big threat. I just wish I knew if he could be implicated.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE HFA/SHOP WITH A COP FUNDRAISER would start in about an hour. I looked around the parking lot. Sergeant Morehouse had been right about the community center being the perfect location. We had a lot more African American and Latin attendees than at any other fundraiser, and that was a good thing.

Thanks to Lance’s insistence that we abide by the Farmers’ Almanac prediction, we had a warm October day for the festivities
.

I roamed through the parking lot with my clipboard and its to-do checklist trying to strike a balance between being helpful and making sure volunteers were doing what they were supposed to do
. If I ever perfect that skill, I’m going to bottle the aroma and sell it to charities. Most volunteers like to do things their way, rationalizing that since they are giving their time all choices should be theirs. In a lot of ways they can, but last year Lester stapled his business card on the back of a clue for our scavenger hunt. Now I pay more attention.

At the almost full bake sale table I had to tell two women from First Prez to put on the thin plastic gloves the Health Department requires us to use
. They were both in their early forties, and the blonde frowned. Her red-headed friend said, “Oh, right. Remember that intestinal bug we all got after the Sport League picnic last year?”  Her friend agreed and I made a mental note to only drink soft drinks at League events.

Scoobie and George were overseeing the set-up of the corn-toss boxes
. They had to be a specific distance away from where someone tossed the bags of corn, and the hole at the top had to be an exact size. Since we’d bought our boxes from the American Legion, I knew most would meet specifications, but we weren’t requiring that people who regularly played use our boxes. They did have to have them on site early, so we could inspect them.

We hadn’t had time to paint our boxes, so Aretha and Daphne had the great idea of buying a bunch of static cling figures, the kind you put on window glass, and taping them to the boxes
. Somehow they had found a bunch that would usually have been sold at Thanksgiving time. They had a food theme, featuring ears of corn (of course), pumpkins and squash. I’d have to remember to compliment the two of them.

The boxes need to be at a forty-five degree angle and sit twenty-seven feet apart
. When it appeared there might be grumbling about the measurements, Scoobie got Aunt Madge to oversee placing tape measures so the boxes were the same distance apart. Few people argue with octogenarians, especially when their hair is a newly died carrot orange.
What’s that about?

George also said we had to be careful not to put the Lions Club and Kiwanis’s boxes near each other
. When he’d stopped in at the Sandpiper Bar for a ginger ale the other day, George had heard something about wagers among the players on those two teams. I was glad we didn’t sell beer at our fundraisers. Father Teehan always chimed in about that and said the Knights of Columbus men wouldn’t play well if we did.

Harry was overseeing the formation of teams
. We asked that groups sign up in advance, but it wasn’t a requirement. We just wanted an idea of how long it would take to run through the first round of games. We had plenty of boxes and bags, since teams that brought their own had to agree to let other teams play rounds at the teams’ boxes, if we didn’t have enough of our own.
What are we going to do with all those boxes when today is over?

There would be a first round with probably dozens of teams (not all playing at once), and each round would have half the number of teams of prior rounds
. I hoped we’d be done with all the games in less than two hours, but had no idea.

Because there were a number of single people or couples who wanted to play on a team, Harry was trying to accommodate individual requests and match singles with teams that were short a player
. Unfortunately, Ramona’s Uncle Lester was offering advice. His voice carried, and I was glad it was now mostly volunteers in the community center parking lot.

“See, Harry, if you make a team all men, they’re sure to win
. You gotta mix up men and women. To be fair, you know?  And tall and short people.”

I was passing the spot where Ramona was setting up her table to do caricatures for a donated fee
. “How is it that you’re related to someone like that?”

She stood
. “I’ll try to get him away from Harry.”

Just then Lester saw me
. “Jolie. You on a team yet?”  He started toward me.

“I’m not going to…”

“You gotta play, kid. Everybody’ll root for you.”

George yelled from about ten meters away
. “Then they don’t know her.”  He and Scoobie high-fived, so I ignored them.

Lester had reached me
. “The thing is, I’ll be overseeing a lot of activities, and I don’t think…”

Ramona joined us
. “You know what, Jolie?  I think you and I should be on a team together.”

Lester’s eyes brightened
. “I could…”

“No, Uncle Lester,” she said, in super sweet tone
. “It’s going to be all women.”

Lester took the hint and walked back over to badger Harry.

“Good one, but I’d probably be lousy. I’m still not balancing well.”

She gave a rather determined smile
. “A couple women from my yoga class wanted us to be part of a team. We hadn’t talked about all women, but in honor of my uncle, I think we’ll go that route.”

“You probably won’t win with me on your team.”

“No worries.”  She walked back to her table of charcoal pencils and art paper.

My final stop was the long row of tables that had large baskets of food and gift items
. Two especially large ones were going to be raffled, and the others would be part of a silent auction. Unless there weren’t many bids, then we’d push more raffle tickets.

“Aunt Madge
. Wow.”  There were probably thirty baskets, and a couple of local florists had volunteered to wrap them in colorful pieces of plastic. She, or someone, had also rounded up a few other prizes, one of which was a bicycle from the company that rents beach gear. Could be a lot of raffle ticket sales.

“It is impressive,” she said
. “And Mr. Markle said that probably forty people said they were buying at his place for either the baskets or the canned food donations.” 

“Oh, that’s great
. If he goes out of business it would be a disaster for the food pantry.”

“I don’t think he will,” she said, as she lined up the papers and pens for silent auction bids
. “When Reverend Jamison made a pitch for people to come or donate, he said they should really go to Mr. Markle’s store for canned goods or whatever. Because he’s such a strong supporter of Harvest for All.”

Scoobie walked up and caught the end of her comments
. “And George said Father Teehan made some kind of joke from the pulpit about people needing to go to confession if they went to a big box store.”  

“Don’t want to be overly critical of those stores
. They donate, too.”  Sylvia and Aretha had walked up. As usual, Sylvia’s tone was kind of like a bossy teacher.

“Good point,” Aunt Madge said, quickly
. “Sylvia, I’d like some help setting minimum bids for the silent auction.”

Aretha looked at me and rolled her eyes as they began to walk away
. “We should be good for all shifts of volunteers. I didn’t get anyone for the bake sale table, though. Monica said she wanted to handle it by herself.”

“Oh, boy
. I’ll see if she changed her mind.“ Scoobie left us and walked toward the large table of breads and sweets.

“Aretha, you really got a lot of volunteers in a short period of time
. Thanks so much.”

She gave me the kind of evil grin Aunt Madge has been known to send my way
. “I told them we’d have a soup supper for volunteers. You’re cooking. You’re lucky your house isn’t big enough.”

Ohhh-kaaay
. One more event.

It was twenty minutes before we would let people in to play, and probably forty people waited at the edge of the community center parking lot
. Some of the people who played on regular teams had brightly colored shirts with team names, and a lot of people had on Harvest for All tee-shirts. A quick look at the parking lot showed more cars arriving every few seconds.

I had looked from the lot back toward the bake sales tables when something registered i
n the back of my mind. I scanned the parking area. Several cars were coming in, and a green sedan was leaving! I took several quick steps in that direction, but it was too late to catch a plate. The car had already pulled into traffic.

Scoobie and George were a good twenty meters away from me. And what would I say to them? Follow that car?
It’s nothing. Someone just pulled in to see why lots of people were at the community center.

Laughter drew my attention.
Alicia and her group of high school friends were piling corn bags next to each of the boxes, four next to each. Clark and a couple other guys were pretending to throw bags at the girls, and they were pretending to be fearful.
Forget the car. Bean bags are the only thing to be afraid of today.
Or so I hoped.

I watched the teens measure between the boxes to make sure that t
wenty-seven feet separated them. It would be a really long pitch, and I was glad we’d borrowed a couple clown-face beanbag toss boards for young kids. Those were on the edge of the lot, so kids didn’t get hit with adult-thrown corn bags that went off-course.

I sighed
. It was so much to keep track of. Plus, despite tying my sneaker really tight, I could feel my foot starting to swell a bit. I plopped on a picnic table bench and stretched my leg in front of me.

Daphne sat across from me
. “Bet you wish you were at the library. Cooler than out here.”

“And it would mean this was finished
. I get so nervous before these fundraisers.”

“Really?  You always look like you know exactly what you’re doing.”

“What an opening.”  Scoobie sat next to Daphne and looked at me. “I think we’re good to go. Dr. Welby’s going to help Lance collect the five bucks from people who will actually play, and I gave him a hand stamp to use when they pay.”

Uh oh
.
“What’s on the stamp?”

“Not telling.”  He walked toward Dr. Welby and Lance.

“Do you know?” I asked.

Daphne shook her head
. “All I know is he got Ramona to order it for him from one of the Purple Cow’s suppliers.”

My brow unfurrowed
. “Can’t be anything bad.”

“He wouldn’t do anything…untoward,” she said.

“No, just embarrassing.”  I stood and walked toward the two refreshment trolleys a couple of the boardwalk vendors had set up. They would retain some of the money for the food they bought to sell, but planned to donate most of what they would take in. I used to be surprised that they were so willing to do this, but when I talked to Aunt Madge about it one day she said it was because they saw the contingent of hungry, homeless people on the boardwalk all summer.

“You folks all set?” I smiled at the woman who had made what looked like hundreds of candy apples
. Next to her was her friend who operated the salt water taffy store. She had boxes of the stuff piled on the table in front of her. I thought that the two women were in their mid-sixties, though decades of sun and cigarettes had given them finely lined faces, so they could have been younger.

“We are
. We’ll have half the town on a sugar high in an hour.”

Great
. That should enhance their throwing arms.

Dr. Welby’s booming voice quieted everyone
. He had a megaphone, but really didn’t need it. “In five minutes you can come up to the corn toss boxes.”

Someone yelled, “Corn hole boxes,” but Dr. Welby ignored them.

He continued. “We won’t start the contest itself for forty-five minutes, to give everyone time to sign up for a team and read the rules, which are posted behind me. And do some practice pitches. Play nice. The ER is busy on weekends.”

There was general laughter, and people came into the area with corn toss boxes and spread out to look at them, buy food, and decide if they wanted to bid for a gift basket.

I walked over to where Lance and Dr. Welby were busily collecting money from their spots seated opposite each other at a large picnic table. I caught Dr. Welby’s eye and waved a thanks for his opening remarks. I hate to stand in front of crowds and talk.

“Jolie?”  I looked at a woman in her early forties, who looked very fit and tall
. She smiled. “I’m Ramona’s friend. She said to tell you our team is the Power Women, and the most important thing is that if we play her Uncle Lester’s team, we beat them.”

I smiled
. “Does she think that’ll be hard?”