Ellen McKenzie 04-Murder Half-Baked (15 page)

Finally he looked up. “Don’t worry about the car, Ellen.” The smile he gave me was as false as his teeth.

“I won’t,” I told him. My smile wasn’t any more
genuine
, but I did try. After all, he was a tired old man. But Rose was a tired old woman. She deserved some consideration also. I turned to go, but what he said next stopped me.

“Rose, is this Marilee the girl who used to work for me? The one you liked so much but who had the boyfriend who stole my cookies?”

“He didn’t steal. I told him he could have a couple. They were day old.”

“He didn’t look like the kind who would eat cookies. Doesn’t matter. He’s no good. Neither is she.”

Marilee had worked here? They knew her and her husband, Grady?
Santa Louisa was, indeed, a small town.

“She’s a good girl.” There was a tightening around Rose’s mouth as she defended Marilee but her voice was low, almost inaudible. “She went to work for Central Coast Catering after she left here and they loved her.”

“Central Coast. Is that the
—
?” Sal’s voice wasn’t low.

“Yes. The one you cussed at. Too bad. I hear they’re giving Bread and Butter Bakery a lot of business. Business we could have used.”

“Who?” Sal looked blank.

“That new place in San Luis Obispo.”

Sal’s face started to get red. He slammed down his mug and sputtered. “That Central Coast kid was nothing but a smart mouth. Telling me how to make rolls, telling me they were dry. What does he know? Thinks he’s some hotshot caterer, can go around giving me orders.”

“The ones we sent him were too dry. And he knows enough to be making money.”

I knew my mouth was gaping but I had never heard Rose talk back to Sal, not in the years I was growing up, nor in the year or so since I had returned. There was a glint in her eye
,
but her face remained expression
less
as she watched Sal’s get redder. He looked as if he was going to have a stroke. I started to wonder if I should grab the phone and call 911. But he glanced at me and took a deep breath, obviously trying to calm down. Rose set a glass of water in front of him and a pill. “Here,” she said. “Take this.”

He looked up at her, then back down at the pill. I waited for him to thank her, or argue, or complain about something. He didn’t. He glanced back up at her again, grunt
ed
, picked up the pill, and swallowed it.

“Call Central Coast, Ellen. They’re a good outfit.” He paused, pushed the water aside, and took a swallow of coffee instead. “Better not say I recommended them. I don’t think that guy likes me much.” He smiled down into his coffee mug, a more than self-satisfied smile. I’d make sure I didn’t mention Sal’s name.

“Thanks. I’ll call them right away.” I started to move toward the door. “I have an appointment, so I’d better get going. Sorry about taking your parking place. See you later.”

Sal waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. Rose walked over and gave me a hug. “Gina talked to me about the wedding cake. I’m so glad you like my fillings. I think a different one for each layer, don’t you? And I’m so glad you chose the tiny little flowers. It’s going to be beautiful. You’ll see. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
She was still smiling as I left.

I sat in my car for a moment, trying to pull myself together. I had a lead on a caterer and it sounded as if my cake was going to be the way I wanted. How that happened, I wasn’t sure, but I was sure that Rose’s easy abandonment of the poinsettia tower was due to Gina. I had to think of some special way to thank her. And I wasn’t to worry. Of course not. What did I have to worry about? I didn’t have enough fingers to tick them all off. But at least I was making progress. The caterer was getting a call right now,
and
the cake problem was no longer a problem—maybe. And I could tell my mother not to come prepared to cook. And—thanks to my niece and her winemaker husband—Dan had ordered a lot of truly wonderful champagne. I planned on making a huge dent in it. I might even start tonight.

“T
his one is perfect,” Anne sighed happily. “Don’t you think so, Mary?”

Aunt Mary beamed back at her. “I told you Ellen would find the perfect place.”

“Six bedrooms! I can hardly believe it.”

My enthusiasm was a little more tempered
—
by experience and by uneasiness about financing. But the house was perfect. “As soon as I saw this come up on the hot sheet, I knew it was the one. The house is good sized, but it’s the street that’s perfect. Large lots and a dead-end street.” After what happened with Janice, I had become a big fan of dead-end streets. The only traffic was people who lived there
,
so
a strange car, or truck, would be noticed. “You’ll need a conditional use permit, but I don’t think that will be a problem. We’ll make getting it a condition of the offer.”

We all stood in the living room of what was about to, hopefully, become the new Grace House, looking around, congratulating ourselves on what a wise choice this was.

“The kitchen is huge. Plenty of space for the girls to experiment with baking.” Anne walked toward it again. “Look at all this storage and the laundry room! The set tub in the laundry should work for the cosmetology students. I can install a big mirror and
—
well, maybe not a mirror. We had one girl who never did learn to cut hair, and the result was
—
we finally got her a job as a nurse’s aid.” She looked around once more, her face all smiles. “The wallpaper has to go, but that’s a small thing. This stove looks pretty old, though. Do you think it works?”

Aunt Mary, a woman who knows stoves, walked over and started to fiddle with knobs. Flames lit and went out, the oven ignited, the broiler roared. “Seems to. Let’s run the dishwasher.”

I was busy taking notes, jotting down things I particularly wanted the home inspector to look at, if we got that far, wondering if the listing agent had a termite report yet, making a list of questions to ask her, all the while watching Anne and Aunt Mary mentally move in.

“That long dining room table will be wonderful right there.” Anne waved her hand at the huge empty space by the French doors in the breakfast room. “This is much bigger than we have now. We’ll need more chairs.”

“I’ll take that up with the board,” Aunt Mary said, “and you’ll need more beds and chests, more towels and bed linen. Hmm. I wonder
—
”

“Watch it,” I told Anne, “she’s about to raid one of her rummage sales.”

“You could do worse,” I was told tartly.

Anne smiled. “Most of our things are donated. I gave up years ago expecting anything to match. Room is what we need and the ability to provide a safe, clean environment for these women and their kids while they
sort
their lives out.”

“Speaking of that,” Aunt Mary said, “did you get Janice away safely?”

All traces of Anne’s smile faded, and she shook her head. “They’re safe for a
while, but there’s a whole lot of legal work ahead. This jerk’s not going to shrug and walk away.” She paused, a thoughtful look on her face. “You know, I don’t think I could do a women’s shelter. Dealing with the problems our women bring is just about as much as I can handle.”

The picture of Janice’s defeated eyes, the two children clinging to her the only thing that gave her the courage to try to escape, swam into my mind. “But you got them away. They’re safe now.”

“For the time being.”
She looked around the house and started to smile, as if she could see the next wave of women and children who would make
their
home
here
while work
ing
their way out of the hopeless trap their lives had become. “This place seems perfect, don’t you think, Mary?”

“Yes. I don’t think we could do better. It’s an old house but it looks in excellent condition and the price seems fair. Ellen, you did a good job of putting together those comparables. I’ve never seen that done before and it really helps. I’ll present all your information to the board, but I’m sure they’ll agree with me.”

So was I. There wasn’t one person on it
who
wouldn’t bow to her wishes. The deal was as good as done. Well, not quite. We had to get the seller to take our offer, but I planned on writing one he couldn’t refuse. At least, I hoped I could. I still had to find out where the money was coming from, and neither Anne nor Aunt Mary seemed to have a definitive answer.

“If you’re sure, I’ll start to draft an offer for both of you to approve, but I need more information before I can finish it.”

“Like what?” Aunt Mary looked as if she had no idea what I was talking about. She probably didn’t.

“Like, who has the authority to sign the offer? Can either of you or do you have to call a board meeting and get everyone’s approval? And how are you going to take title? Is the board a corporation, a nonprofit, or what? And
…
how about money? You have equity in Grace House but not enough to buy this one. Besides, the old one isn’t sold yet. In this market, that could take awhile. Unless you have enough cash in the bank to buy this one, we’re going to have to
find
some kind of financing. Do either of you know how we’re going to do that?”

Aunt Mary and Anne looked at each other, equally blank faced.

“I thought you’d take care of all that,” Aunt Mary said.

“I will, as soon as I know what to do.”

“Can’t we make the offer and find out about those things later?” Anne looked so disappointed I almost said “sure
,
” but luckily some degree of professionalism took over. “Not if you want the seller to accept your offer. He’s going to have to know how and when he’s going to get his money, and he will want to know that whoever is making the offer is authorized to do it. Anne, if you sign it and you have no legal authority to do so, then if one of the board members or whoever legally represents Grace House in business transactions says they don’t think this is a good deal, or you don’t have
the authority
or can’t get the money, the deal is off. No seller would take his house off the market for that kind of offer, especially not now
,
with prices
dropping
daily and buyers few and far between.”

Aunt Mary and Anne looked at each other again
,
but this time they grinned.

“We need someone legal, who knows all the answers to your questions, right? I know just who to call. How about if I meet you at your office
at
say
…
four o’clock? Anne, can you make it then?”

Anne was beaming. “If you can get in touch with him by then.”

“Who’s ‘him’?” There was a conspiratorial tone here I wasn’t sure I liked
.

“You’ll see. Mary, I’ll meet you at Ellen’s office. Can I walk through one more time? I just want to make sure
…”

“Of course. Take all the time you need.” I took a quick peek at my watch and pushed away all thoughts of the mountain of paperwork stacked on my desk. It looked as if I was going to add one more file to that mound, at least if Aunt Mary got the right answers from whoever it was she was going to call.

One of them produced a tape measure and they
went
to work
.
“This dining room will make a great play area for our preschool. That eating area in the kitchen is so big I won’t need this room to eat in. And look at this.”

Anne flung open inside French doors to expose a small room whose function was not immediately obvious. There were open shelves above dark cupboards along two walls, a cabinet that contained a shallow sink on a third.
Beside it was a swinging door that opened into the kitchen. I had one of those between my kitchen and dining room. I’d always liked the slightly old fashioned feel of it and the fact that you didn’t have to look at dirty dishes in the sink when you had guests for dinner. The fourth wall had a large window that looked out on a neglected rose garden but it saved the room from being as dark as a cellar.

“This must have been the butler’s pantry at one time.”
Anne circled the room, pulling out drawers, running her fingers over the shelves, peering into the cabinet under the sink. “I think it was two rooms. A butler’s pantry and a storeroom.
See? There was a wall there once.”

Aunt Mary circled the room the other way. She stopped and examined the beam Anne had pointed
ou
t. “I think you’re right. I’ll bet that window was added later also
;
just look how different it is. These shelves and the sink are newer. I’ll bet they held the good dishes and platters, serving dishes, that kind of thing.” She pushed on the swinging door, confirming that it opened into the kitchen, and stopped to examine the chandelier. “This looks as old as the house.”

I made another note on my list. Inspect wiring on chandelier.
“
As old as the house
”
meant about one hundred plus
a few years
.

Anne continued her tour. “I’ll bet those drawers were for tablecloths. And these were for silverware. Look how shallow they are. They’ll be great for computer paper and stuff like that.” She handed Aunt Mary one end of the tape. “I think this is going to be our classroom. I can get a desk along that wall, and another over here
…
these shelves will hold tons of books and the computer
. W
here are the outlets?

I watched them, amused. They were both so excited, planning all the things this house could offer. It was like watching a couple of kids planning a new fort. Only what they were planning was no game. This house had to be many things to a lot of people. Each discovery they made, each new use they found room for, would make life just a little bit better for the women who would soon inhabit
the house
. I looked at my “things we needed to inspect” list and added
“
outlets.
”

Anne’s cell phone rang. Her “hi” was bright, but it changed quickly. “Is she all right?
He’s doing what?” She listened for a moment, face pale with anxiety. That didn’t last long either. “He didn’t.” Anger replaced anxiety, staining her cheeks red, compressing her mouth into a narrow straight line.

Aunt Mary and I looked at each other and strained to hear whom Anne was talking to and what was happening.
Whatever was going on, it didn’t sound good.

“Where is she now? Good. Is anyone else hurt? All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She snapped her cell phone shut and turned to face us, eyes bright with anger. “Marilee’s gone into labor. She’s at the hospital now.” Her hand was shaking a little as she pushed the phone into her purse.