Fortunate Harbor (16 page)

“I’m baking pies in my sleep.” Wanda stared up at a cloudless blue sky. A light breeze swept over her sunscreen-slathered skin, and, as always, she wondered how people lived anywhere other than Florida. “I used to bake pies just for fun, remember? Those were the days.”

Janya, beside Wanda, stared up at the same sky. “Those days were just one week ago.”

Waves rolled in just below them, and Wanda was afraid the sound and the sun might lull her to sleep right there, with her friends watching as she drooled and snuffled.

She was tired to the bone. One week into her new career, the only thing she was sure she had done right was close on Sundays and Mondays. Sure, she would have to spend Mondays making piecrust, cleaning and ordering supplies, but she’d already decided that on Sundays she wasn’t going to lift a finger. She was going to lie out on the beach with Ken or her neighbors, and she wasn’t going to so much as
eat
a piece of pie. Not
even when fresh strawberries were in season. Not even when Georgia peaches, juice running freely like a stream of pure nectar, were sitting in crates waiting to become peaches and cream pie.

Although that might be hard to resist.

“I gotta get more help,” she said to nobody in particular. Alice was lying on the other side of her, and Olivia, in a bright red bathing suit, was down near the waterline, prowling for shells. “But first I gotta get more business.”

“You may not want more…after you make forty…” Alice trailed off.

Wanda was alternately thrilled and terrified that on Wednesday she and Dana would be delivering forty pies to the Statler residence, in addition to making the usual number to sell at the shop. Unfortunately, for now, more help was a dream, and she was simply going to be tired and grouchy for a while. Just not on Sundays.

Olivia came back with her shells. Janya, who had brought a guide, helped identify them.

“This one is a banded tulip.” Janya held it up for the other women to admire. Frankly, Wanda didn’t care what a shell was called, but she was glad to see that Olivia, who had been moping because Lizzie was off somewhere with her mother, was perking up.

“This sharp one is called an auger.” Olivia sat down at Wanda’s feet. “I already have about a million. Lizzie likes to collect them.”

“Lizzie’s turned into a beach bunny. I never saw a kid who likes being out here as much as she does.”

“She even makes me tired.” Olivia held another shell high. “What’s this?”

Janya researched. “A kind of clamshell, I think. Yes, look.” She held out the book.

“Cal-i-co clam,” Olivia read upside down, before Janya handed the book to her.

“Lizzie does a lot of running around for a girl with asthma,” Wanda said. “That surprises me, since it seems like she’d have trouble catching her breath after a while.” She propped herself up and turned to Alice. “You know about the asthma, right? You and Dana worked out what to do if she has an attack when she’s staying at your house?”

Alice nodded. “Inhaler. But she’s never…needed it.”

Olivia looked up from the book. “Lizzie only has asthma if she spends time around cats. Last night there was a cat at the party we went to, but she didn’t pet it, and we were outside a lot, anyway.”

Wanda thought that was surprising. Dana had told her that they’d moved around so much because Lizzie’s asthma had demanded it. But then, kids played things down so they would look just like everybody else.

“I thought her asthma was worse than that,” she said out loud. “Maybe living here on the beach just agrees with her.”

“She said she used to wheeze, then she had shots, and now she’s okay if she’s careful. But she loves cats, so it’s not fair.”

“Give me a dog any day.” At that reminder, Wanda shaded her eyes and saw Chase streaking up and down the beach, perfectly happy to chase seagulls the way he had once chased a fake rabbit at the greyhound tracks. He had the same chance of catching either.

“Some people are allergic to dogs,” Olivia said.

“That would be worth worrying about.”

“Chase is a good watchdog.”

“Chase?” Wanda laughed. “He’d lick a burglar to death. He could sure outrun one, though.”

“He was barking a lot at Tracy’s old husband.”

Janya closed the book, since shell identification had ended. “When was that?”

“When Mr. CJ was over at Wanda’s poking around her yard.”

Wanda snapped to attention. “When was
that?
”

“I don’t know….” Olivia considered. “Friday afternoon, maybe. I saw him when Lizzie and I got home from school. Chase was barking so loud I thought he was going to jump through the screen and eat Mr. CJ. Mr. CJ didn’t stay around to find out, either.”

Wanda had hoped the story was more interesting. “Tracy said he’d be poking around. He’s helping her get things figured out here. What needs repair. What she can do to make improvements.”

“Do we want improvements?” Janya asked. “Will this man, who caused her so much trouble in the past, improve us right out of our houses because we can’t afford them any longer?”

“My house…is fine,” Alice said.

Wanda wasn’t sure. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see what old Mr. CJ is up to. In the meantime, I’m going to get my toes wet on this pretty beach while I can. Anybody want to join me?”

Janya stretched. “I will wade. If we are going to be looking for a new place to live, we should enjoy this one now.”

Wanda was surprised at such a negative sentiment. “You don’t really think Tracy would let that happen, do you?”

“Mr. Craimer put this land in Tracy’s name, and she has never really understood why. With his unfortunate history, would it not be possible he has
more
plans she doesn’t yet understand?”

“But there’s an easement. It can’t be developed.”

“I have not lived in this country as long as you, but can you
tell me that there is no corruption? That agreements are not overturned? That if there was something wrong with the title, perhaps, that Mr. Craimer might establish claim to the land again and turn over the easement so he could create his Happiness Key after all?”

“Overturn,” Wanda said. “
Overturn
the easement, and I am surprised that you’d be thinking that way.
I’m
the one who thinks that way.”

“Perhaps I am learning from you?”

Wanda wasn’t sure that was such a great idea, but she couldn’t help feeling proud anyway.

Tracy had never been much of an overachiever, not unless she counted all the hours she’d spent at spas, surgeons and salons to improve whatever beauty Mother Nature had bestowed. But since Henrietta Claiborne had materialized, Tracy’s workload had increased dramatically. So on Sunday morning, with the banquet now last night’s memory, she got up and headed to her office, fondly called the rec room because of its cavernous size and decor. With youth camp looming, she had very little time to pull together plans for the new fund-raiser if the participants were going to spend the summer together agonizing over every calorie. Overachieving or not, she had to get moving right away.

By the end of Sunday afternoon the program had a name: “Losing to Win.” She’d written up a proposal to go over with Henrietta and some key members of her staff tomorrow. She’d written a tentative description for the next newsletter and roughed out a press release headlined Waist Time with Your Friends at the Henrietta Claiborne Recreational Center.

At five she pushed away from her desk, tired and actually
sorry she was done for the day. As little as she liked overtime, working was better than facing an empty house. The neighbors had other plans for the evening, so Tracy was on her own. She considered a movie or just wandering around the Palmetto Grove mall, but she was exhausted from her long week. Instead she packed up and headed home, only to discover she was not alone after all.

These days she only knew one man who drove an Aston Martin like the one parked in front of her house. She zipped into her driveway and sat for a moment, wondering why CJ was parked there and where he had gone. They hadn’t spoken since Henrietta had gushed over him at the banquet, right before Maribel stomped across the room to pull him away for the evening.

Maribel and CJ had been seated at one corner of the table where Tracy had ended up. Sylvia and Marsh had adorned the other, like diabolical bookends. Tracy had spent the evening trying not to look in either direction while she chatted with two neighboring women, one who regaled her with tales of a tennis championship she had won twenty years before, and the other with tales of her pole-vaulting grandson. When not called upon to respond, Tracy had mentally weighed that night against the one back in Bel-Air when CJ had told her that life as they knew it was over.

She hadn’t been able to determine which was worse.

Now, with nothing else to do, she stayed in her car and considered her alternatives. She could head to a remote beach and watch the sun go down. She could ask Alice for refuge and brave another crochet lesson. She could rearrange the plants on Janya’s porch so the laws of Feng Shui were satisfied.

Or she could find her ex-husband and see what he was up to.

Never let it be said that she had learned nothing from the days of her marriage. Keeping an eye on CJ was as vital as a regular bikini wax. Ignore either for too long, and the result was anything but pretty.

First she unlocked her front door and peeked inside, sure CJ would be perfectly capable of letting himself inside with a credit card or a set of skeleton keys. But the house looked empty, unless he was sleeping in her bedroom. And the man had to know better than to head that way uninvited.

Outside, she circled the house and wandered through what passed for a yard. CJ wasn’t hiding behind the stands of oleander, and she certainly wasn’t going to make her way toward the marsh, in case she scared up another gaggle of bird-watching seniors. In the weeks that had passed since that evening, she had made a campaign of sucking up to the rec center’s shuffle board, who had been so furious that night. She was making progress. While not forgiving her, they no longer left anonymous photographs of the masked booby on her desk as silent reminders that she was on popularity probation once more.

When the circle took her back to her driveway, she considered which way to turn. She didn’t have to think for long. She saw CJ coming from the direction of Wanda’s backyard, but he didn’t notice her. He stopped about halfway between Wanda’s and Tracy’s cottages, knelt, then took something from his pocket and fiddled with it for a moment before he began to brush the sandy soil away from the spot with his fingers.

She took her time approaching him, hoping to catch him in the act, but when her shadow fell over the ground at his feet, he didn’t even look up.

“I was about to give up on you,” he said.

“I gave up on you a year ago. I guess it’s your turn.”

He got to his feet easily, without pushing himself upright. Apparently he’d made good use of the prison yard at Victorville, or he’d made up for it since. CJ had always kept himself in terrific shape. As much, she thought, to get a head start when necessary as for concerns about health.

“Mind telling me what you’re doing?” she asked.

“An amateur survey. Figuring out approximate lot sizes with my handy-dandy little GPS.”

“And why would you do that?”

“Part of trying to figure out what, if anything, you can do here to make this a thriving little community with houses worth money, instead of these wrecks you have now.”

“I resent the term
wrecks
. Play nice, CJ.
Dumps. Shacks.
“

He turned his most spectacular smile on her, and darned if she didn’t feel herself basking just a little.

“Do you know why I married you?” he asked.

“You needed arm candy, and I was easy.”

“You always stood up to me. You were never wowed, never afraid. You were all about yourself, and nobody else, not even CJ Craimer, got in the way of that.”

“A selfish little fluff ball.”

“Come on, there was always a lot more to you than that. I saw it as strength, a healthy ego. Maybe you were a little shallow, but you were a lot young, too. I figured you’d age well.”

She lifted a brow in question. “Did you plan to keep me around that long? You dispensed with your first two wives about the time their boobs began to sag.”

“I wasn’t much of a bargain. Mandy and Gina just went on to better things. By the time you came along I was more promising husband material. Besides, you weren’t as needy.”

“Right, that’s me. Oprah calls weekly, begging for tips.” The flattery was having an effect, and that worried her.

“I’d rather have been sitting with you at the banquet.”

Now
that
was just like CJ. Pull down the defenses a little, then move in for the kill. Clearly he knew she’d been uncomfortable last night. Now he was using his knowledge to make her feel closer to him, and darned if it wasn’t working.

“Well, if you had been, you could have helped me come up with a plan.”

“For what?”

“To keep Henrietta from playing matchmaker.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“It’s clear Henrietta thinks you and I should get back together. She told me Maribel has no class. And for some reason beyond my comprehension, Henrietta adores you.”

She looked away to compose herself. “CJ, she’s insisting you and I come on a sunset dinner cruise on her boat next Monday night. She asked me to invite you. You’re going to say no, of course.”

“Have you seen her…
boat
?”

“No.”

“
Yacht
’s the correct term. An amazing vessel, too. We’ll have a wonderful time.”

“Wait! We can’t play along with this.”

“TK, Nanette can’t make you marry me again. She’s not that powerful. She’s just an old woman in love with lovers. She wants happy endings for everybody, and we didn’t get ours, so she’s trying to fix it. What are you afraid of? If there’s nothing left, she’ll see that. She’s as shrewd as she is rich.”

“Did you ever invest money for her? Manage any property? Give her any financial advice whatsoever? Is she
taking us out to the middle of the gulf so she can dump us off the side?”