Fortunate Harbor (21 page)

Kitty announced the total goal, and everybody applauded.

The other teams followed suit.

Summer softball had taken the name Bases Loaded, and between the eight of them, they needed to lose a hundred and eighty pounds. Creative cooks, now called Calorie Crusaders, needed a hundred and fifty. The six photo pranksters, now the Meal Magicians, needed just a hundred and ten.

Finally the shuffleboard team, who had settled on Naughty Nibblers—in honor of the points shuffleboard players tried to “nibble” from their opponents—came up to the microphone. Tracy recognized most of them from their hours of practice on the center’s state-of-the-art courts. Two men and three women stepped forward. Tracy thought she was getting good at estimating the total pounds Kitty might suggest. She was guessing maybe at most a hundred for the five of them.

“Is somebody else coming?” Kitty asked the woman in the lead.

“We lost our sixth member,” a woman, who needed to lose about forty pounds, told Kitty.

Mr. Moustache stepped up from the back to join his teammates. “If we have to have six, I guess I can do it.”

Kitty glanced at Tracy, then back at Mr. M. “I don’t think we can let you,” Kitty said. “You don’t need to lose weight. That throws off the calculations.”

He didn’t seem surprised. Instead he turned to Tracy. “You’ve played with us, right?”

She frowned. “I think Kitty’s right. It’s not personal. I hope you realize—”

“Don’t go on and on, okay? My point is, you’ve played a game or two with us. We could say you’re an unofficial shuffleboarder, right?”

She had a sudden suspicion where this might be going. “Just for fun. I’m not really—”

“And you’re not on another team, are you?” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’re not on the staff team? Gladys said you didn’t join.”

“No, but I don’t really need to—”

“Then join ours. What can it hurt? We need six people, you’re available….” He gave the tiniest shrug.

She had no way out. She couldn’t refuse, not in front of all these people, including fellow staff members who were about to weigh in and join the fun. This was
her
project. She couldn’t act as if she found the idea distasteful.

“Okay,” she said with a smile. “But remember, the rule is that each participant needs to lose a minimum of ten pounds. You know that, right?”

He smiled thinly.

Tracy went on. “I’ve gained a little weight in the last couple of months, but not that much. So I don’t think I’ll qualify.”

Kitty saved Mr. M. from answering. “If you’re willing, we can see.”

Tracy took a good look at Kitty’s expression. She had a sudden premonition that this was not going to turn out well. She frowned at Mr. M. and lowered her voice to a whisper. “All this because of one little bird?”

“Of course not. It’s about supporting the rec center.” He paused for effect. “Although it
was
a very special little bird.”

Kitty now looked totally at sea. Tracy grimaced, then she stepped up on the scale.

The audience, who had only been privy to parts of the exchange, began to applaud. For all they knew, this was a promotional stunt.

Kitty asked a couple of questions, then took out her calculator at the same moment Tracy finally glanced at the scale’s display.

“Oh my God!” Tracy leaned over, wondering if she could be reading the number wrong. “There’s something wrong. There has to be.”

“Not very wrong,” Kitty assured her. “By my calculations, only about ten pounds wrong. You should have most of those off by summer’s end.”

Mr. M. held out his hand. “Welcome to Naughty Nibblers, and since it looks like you could use a few more games of shuffleboard, we’ll get you right on the schedule.”

After lunch Tracy had thrown all the snacks in her desk into the rec center Dumpster, and now she was starving. “There’s got to be something I missed.”

She jerked open drawers. “Brutal!”

She kept searching. “Thanks for nothing, world,” she said as she slammed the last one shut.

Now she was talking to herself, too. Maybe she was hallucinating from starvation.

She rested her head in her hands and wondered if last year, before Marsh and good old Wanda had started cooking for her, she had been this hungry. She’d been raised to see fat grams and calories in every bite, and virtue in nearly invisible portions. She
had gone out to lunch with girlfriends and turned up her nose at the bread basket, asked for salad dressing on the side, eaten, at most, half of what was on her plate, and never taken leftovers.

Of course, she hadn’t enjoyed eating, either. That was the difference. She and CJ had dined in some of the world’s most famous restaurants, and she had nibbled. Nibbled in Paris and Florence and New Orleans. Nibbled at Spago and Urasawa and Lawry’s. Now she was ready to nibble the paper on her desk. Creative Cooks’ steamed vegetables and slivers of chicken breast had already been a memory less than ten minutes after she’d consumed them.

She got up and went to the glass door, looking outside. The place was teeming with parents on their way to watch softball, and all the shuffleboard courts were in use. She wondered if she just offered herself as a sacrifice, would the shuffleboarders beat her over the head with their cues instead of asking her to slowly starve herself to death?

“Maybe I’ve been substituting food for sex,” she muttered. “Maybe if I just hop into bed with somebody, the pounds will melt away.”

“I’d be happy to test the theory.”

She whirled and found a jeans-clad Marsh standing several yards behind her, a navy blue Rays cap under one arm. She put her hand against her heart. “You snuck up on me!”

“I did no such thing. I made enough noise to wake a giant. And what was that about hopping into bed?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I was not talking
to
you or
about
you. I had no idea you were standing there.”

He didn’t smile exactly, but he came close. “You’re sure? I think you knew, at least subliminally. I think you wanted me to hear that.”

“I think I want you to go watch your son’s softball game and leave me alone.”

“The other game’s just finishing up.”

“Where’s Sylvia?”

His almost smile disappeared. “Why does it matter?”

She didn’t like his tone. “It doesn’t to me, but it matters to Bay. He’s been looking forward to her watching him play.”

“Why are you talking to my son about Sylvia?”

Maybe she was irritable from hunger. Maybe she was exhausted. She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again and waited until she had breathed deeply. Twice. It didn’t help much, but the pause said plenty.

“What are you asking, Marsh? Do you think I’m pumping Bay for news about you and his mother? Maybe I’ve been asking him where his mother sleeps at night?”

“It sounded that way.”

“I’m in charge of the youth camp. I talk to the kids. They talk to me. They tell me all sorts of things without my asking questions. Today one girl told me her grandmother died yesterday. It’s not the kind of thing I’d ever think to ask, is it?”

“I doubt you were having a relationship with the little girl’s grandmother.”

Anger shot through her. It shot through tingling fingers that yearned to slap him and vibrated through her knees. Most of all, it resonated in her voice. “You’ve overstayed your welcome.”

His shoulders drooped just a fraction. “Yeah, maybe.”

“For the record, Bay told me he was going to practice extra hard this morning so he would get another home run. Then he said, without a bit of prompting, that Sylvia promised him pizza if he did.”

“Damn.” He brushed a lock of hair off his forehead, which
was good, because until he had attacked her, she’d been itching to do it herself.

“If it’s important to you, Marsh, I’ll distance myself from your son the same way I’ve distanced myself from you. But I’m not going to push him away if he comes to me. I have a job, and being available to the kids is part of it.”

“I’m sorry. I know that. The two of you are fond of each other. He talks about you a lot.”

She imagined that infuriated Sylvia. Or maybe Bay was smart enough to know when it was best not to mention Tracy. Because the last thing the kid wanted was to make his mother angry.

“You and I don’t seem capable of having a pleasant conversation anymore.” She looked beyond him to the doorway, but nobody was there. She hoped Sylvia was outside with her son, but judging by Marsh’s response, that was not the case.

“I wanted to see how you’re doing.” He paused. “I miss you.”

“It doesn’t show.”

“I’ll never look back on these weeks as among the finest in my life.”

“Then send Sylvia packing.”

“You know I can’t.”

“You know what? I
don’t
know. You say you’re putting up with her so she’ll get to know Bay and maybe become a better mother. Well, where are the signs it’s working? She’s not here to see his game. Even if he makes a home run, how will she know? How will she measure whether he’s finally good enough at
something
to rate pizza for dinner?”

The sound of her voice hadn’t even died before she realized she had blown it. She was talking about Sylvia, not about
them
. By doing so, she had given Sylvia the upper hand, and now Marsh would have to defend both himself and his ex, because
that’s what people under attack always did. And in defending Sylvia, he would be drawing closer to her. It was a foolish strategy, no matter how good it had felt to utter the words.

“Stop!” She held up her hand. “Don’t say a thing. It’s none of my business. Bay’s not my kid. He’s yours, and he’s hers. And I don’t want to be in the middle. Put her name on your deed. Give her a gold-plated key to your front door. It’s up to you. I don’t know why we’re talking about it.”

He didn’t speak for a moment, but he clenched his jaw, and his gaze seemed to drill holes everywhere it landed.

“How’s CJ?” he asked at last. “I hear he’s still in town.”

“He is. And I’ll ask how he is when I see him tonight.”

“So while my little family’s off having pizza, you and CJ will be hanging out together?”

“Henrietta Claiborne invited us on a dinner cruise. She and CJ are old friends.”

“Edward Statler, Henrietta Claiborne… When’s the governor flying in to pay homage?”

She knew better than to defend CJ, but she knew a lot of things, and how much impact was that having?

“He’s the kind of man who makes friends easily,” she said. “CJ’s fun to be around.”

“A friendly felon. It has a certain ring.”

“His conviction was overturned, so he’s not a felon, and he seems to be trying to put a life together for himself. In the meantime, he’s been a big help to me.”

“Oh, good. That’s a relief.”

She ignored the sarcasm. “He has a lot of skills, and I see no reason not to take advantage of them.”

“Maybe CJ’s the right one, then, to help melt those pounds you mentioned.”

She couldn’t believe he had said that. She exploded. “Shall we talk about sex, Marsh? About who’s doing it with whom, and where, when and why? Because CJ’s still living in the Statlers’ pool house, but Sylvia’s living with
you
.”

He was silent a long moment; then he shook his head. “I think this is it, Tracy.”

She didn’t pause to think. There had been enough of that. “I’ll tell you what, breaking up’s getting old. So let’s agree whatever we had is over for real, okay? No need for another repeat. No need to test the waters. We’re done. Finished. What do you say?”

“No need to say anything. You’re surprisingly articulate.”

“Let me add another verbal gem, then. Goodbye.”

He looked as if he wanted to say more but knew there was no more to say. He finally turned without any hint of ceremony and left.

Tracy swallowed tears and wished she could call him back. There was only one good thing that had come out of Marsh’s visit.

She had definitely lost her appetite.

Tracy got home in time to try on five dresses before she settled on a beaded black sundress. She had never been particularly fond of it, since the modified A-line design hadn’t done much to show off her assets. But now that her assets were larger than life, the dress was her new best friend.

Theoretically, she knew moving from a comfortable size three to a snug five was not the end of the world. After the weigh-in, Kitty had pulled her aside to caution against losing more then ten pounds. For her height and body type, ten was more than enough to shed, and there was no reason ever to be as thin as a rail again.

Except that once upon a time Tracy’s entire identity and most of her conversational repertoire had revolved around staying painfully thin. So what was she now? Fat, unloved, unhappy…and had she mentioned fat?

She forced herself to find jewelry that would improve the dress. She forced herself to find shoes. And when her mind veered toward Marsh, she forced herself to think about dress
sizes again, which were as much bad news as she could handle at the moment without breaking down. If she started by desensitizing herself to an expanding waistline, maybe eventually she could progress to Marsh, whose absence in her life could not be fixed by eating lettuce instead of French fries.

For Christmas Alice had crocheted her a black angora shawl flecked with gold that was as lacy as a spiderweb, and before she went to do her makeup, Tracy set it on the purse she was taking tonight. She was just doing her eye makeup when somebody knocked on the front door. She heard Wanda’s familiar voice.

“You home, Ms. Deloche?”

“I’m in my bedroom.”

Tracy heard footsteps, then the sound of the refrigerator opening and closing, before Wanda wandered through the bedroom doorway and made herself at home on Tracy’s unmade bed.

“Brought you pie,” Wanda said without introduction. “Had some leftovers, on account of Sunshine running a special on éclairs, and I know you love my piña colada.”

Tracy wondered how many calories one slice of Wanda’s amazing piña colada pie was worth, and how many days of exercise it would take to work it off.

“Yum, I’ll eat every bite,” she told her friend—and, sadly, she would. “It’s the good news in a day filled with bad.”

“Wanna tell Aunt Wanda?”

“Not while I’m lining my eyes.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Bad enough that I need gossip to take my mind off it.” What Tracy really needed was a slice of pie, but she wasn’t going to let that happen right before dinner. She had learned
something
from Kitty. “How’s the shop?”

Wanda shrugged. “Good days and bad, like today. Mrs. Statler was happy with my pies. Last Friday I got a nice order from one of her guests, so she’s passing on my name. Hopefully word will keep spreading.”

“I still can’t imagine Janya falling in that pool. It’s just not like her to be so clumsy.” Tracy glanced at Wanda, who was frowning. “Wait a minute. Something’s up,” Tracy said. “I didn’t hear the whole story, did I?”

“Well, see, here’s the thing. Janya didn’t really
fall
in. More like she went in on purpose.”

“What? She was in the mood for a swim and couldn’t resist?”

“More like she was protecting me.”

Tracy’s day had been difficult. She figured even following the text in a third grade primer might be hard this evening. But following Wanda was impossible.

She nearly jabbed the eyeliner brush into her pupil when she turned. “I don’t get it. How could jumping in the pool protect you? Were you drowning? Had you gone in first?”

“Well, you know CJ lives in the Statlers’ pool house, don’t you?”

“Don’t tell me Janya was trying to protect you from CJ?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. See, here’s the thing….” And Wanda explained.

“You were in CJ’s house? Going through CJ’s things?”

“Not his things, exactly. Not his underwear or his prescriptions or his refrigerator. Just a big mess of papers lying all over the place. They more or less called to me and insisted.”

Tracy squinted at her reflection. What had started out as artfully applied eyeliner now looked like Cleopatra’s handiwork. She faced her friend. “You went into a man’s house and rifled through his papers, Wanda. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I found some good stuff.”

“Well, darn, tell me more!”

Wanda nodded. “That’s what I thought you’d say, only Janya wasn’t so sure. She made me wait to tell you until I checked everything out.”

“Janya’s not made of the same stuff you and I are. She was born kinder.” Tracy reached for the makeup remover pads and began to wipe her eyelid. “Talk fast. I have to leave for the yacht club in five minutes or I’ll miss the cruise.”

“Well, la-dee-da! We certainly can’t have that.”

“Wanda!”

Wanda went through the entire story, detailing what she’d seen and admitting that she had “borrowed” a few pages she was sure CJ would never miss.

“They were just bad copies,” she said. “Not like they were originals. He can always get more.”

Tracy had been listening carefully. “So what do you think it’s all about?”

“I think I stumbled on two separate things. One was all the drawings of Happiness Key. Land, houses, po-ten-tial houses.”

“You know CJ’s been talking about renovations and putting up some new houses where the old ones stood.” Tracy started the eyeliner again and this time she made sure to keep her hand steady. “It makes sense he’d have detailed maps, surveys, statistics, deeds, all that stuff, if we’re talking about developing Happiness Key, although what’s
never
made sense is his interest.”

“Okay. I guess. So that leaves the second bunch of papers, and they’re a lot more interesting.”

“More than—” Tracy looked at her watch “—three minutes’ worth?”

“I’m going to give it to you fast, seeing as you’re leaving.

The other papers were on Creative Development and Investment letterhead, and I don’t know why CJ had them, unless he’s doing some work with Statler. Lists of houses that had been sold, the purchase price, long lists of whatever needed to be done to them, who bankrolled the mortgages—which were always for a hundred percent of the purchase price. Then a bunch of loan applications.”

“Sounds like the kind of thing a development company would normally have on hand, Wanda. What’s the big deal?”

“Big deal is I drove by the house I had the address and information for.”

“That you
stole
, you mean.”

“That would depend on your definition. See, I think maybe CJ stole it first, because he sure didn’t want anybody to see he had it. Looked to me like he’d shoved it back behind a sofa pillow when somebody came to his door.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched.”

“Maybe, but here’s the thing. Something
is
going on there. I know for sure. Like I said, I drove by the house. That paper I took claimed the new owner planned to do all kinds of work on the place, so he got a loan from a local bank for a hundred percent of the appraisal—which was more than the purchase price—so he could renovate. I could tell that much from what I have. And I can tell you what I saw. Not a thing was
ever
done to that house. Those repairs? Not a one of them was started, much less finished. The house is an abandoned dump. Probably in worse shape than when they bought it and spent the bank’s money not fixing it up. And it’s been foreclosed on, so now it’s just sitting there.”

Tracy was confused. None of this made sense to her. “I don’t see how this works.”

“I’ll explain, ’cause now I understand it better. Somebody buys a house, okay? And they get the house appraised, as part of the loan process, but the appraisal’s a fraud. The house is appraised for more than the asking price. A lot more. So then they go to the bank with that figure, and they tell them they need all that money because they have to make a long list of repairs. The bank’s got the appraisal and figures everything’s okay. They’ll have a renovated house worth more than the appraisal, even if the new owner defaults.”

Tracy’s head was swimming, but she nodded as if she understood every detail.

“So then the new owner’s got a big new mortgage that’s worth a whole lot more than the house. He pays the original purchase price, then he takes all the extra, and pays off whatever appraiser helped him get that far, and he walks away. He doesn’t make a single mortgage payment, and the bank is left with an abandoned house that’s only worth a fraction of what they loaned. And we won’t even talk about what that does to the price of all the other houses on the block.”

Tracy started on mascara, and when she’d finished that, she moved on to her lips and finished them before she spoke. “Maybe you misunderstood. We’re not financial geniuses. What do we know about the housing market or bank loans?”

“That’s what I thought. So I showed everything to Kenny, and I told him I’d gone by that house and something was mighty fishy.” She came over to the mirror. “And you know what he told me? He told me to stay out of it. He told me to stay way,
way
out of it. Not to tell anybody what I’d seen or done, and put some miles between me and the Statlers and that husband of yours, Tracy. And he told me he wasn’t supposed to say even that much.

Tracy felt her stomach drop a good inch. “CJ?”

“I’m not even supposed to talk to you about that no-good ex of yours, only I know you haven’t really shucked him off like you ought to. And what would I think of myself if you got caught smack in the middle of this?”

“Did you tell Ken where you got the information? Did you tell him you stole it?”

Wanda looked past Tracy’s shoulder, although there really wasn’t anything to see. “Not the whole version.”

Tracy could just imagine what Wanda
had
told her husband. “Does Janya know?”

“She’s not exactly dying to be in my company these days.”

“Nobody else knows?”

Wanda shook her head, but not in agreement. “I told Dana. She’s right there in the shop with me every day, and she went with me when I drove by that house. She got out and peeked through windows, too. She was a real support until…”

“Until what? You stole somebody else’s papers?”

Wanda lifted her chin defiantly. “Until I asked her to come along and tell Kenny what we’d seen—or rather, didn’t see—at the house. Then she acted like I was a rattlesnake shaking my tail right at her.”

“Why do you think she reacted that way?” Tracy asked, although she suspected this was a different subject entirely.

“I don’t know. She’s the best manager I could ask for. She’s good at everything. But I notice she’s a lot better with women than she is with men. Kenny’s noticed it, too. He’s good at noticing things like that. Comes with the territory. He says she’s so short with him when he sees her at the shop, she’s almost rude, like a woman trying to hide something.”

Tracy was on information overload. “I don’t know what to
say about any of this. I’m about to go on a dinner cruise with CJ, and I can’t get out of it. Henrietta Claiborne’s the hostess, so my job’s on the line.”

“You’ll be careful? You’ll watch out? And you won’t end up at his place tonight?”

“Wanda!”

Wanda held up her hands. “I’m a mother. I can’t help myself.”

“Not my mother, you’re not.
My
mother pushed me into CJ’s arms.”

Wanda put a sympathetic hand on Tracy’s shoulder. “Being a mother is a lot more than giving birth, although that’s one heck of a wake-up call. But some of us are fit for it and some aren’t, and the Good Lord can’t always tell the difference, I guess.”

Tracy managed a smile, although she thought right now she really had very little to smile about.

If she’d thought the day couldn’t get any worse, on her way to the Sun County Yacht Club, Tracy glimpsed Marsh and Sylvia outside Gonzalo’s. As she roared by, she saw Bay between them, one hand firmly tucked into each of his parents’. She couldn’t see his expression, nor did she want to. She’d witnessed Bay’s biggest grins and knew this one would be a double wide.

At least maybe Marsh had heard
something
she’d said. Or maybe poor Bay had just gotten that pizza party home run after all.

At the yacht club, she gave her keys to the valet and walked along the promenade beside the water. The clubhouse looked like something a freaked-out Scarlett O’Hara would have designed after that nasty old War of Northern Aggression, but Tracy knew from one lone evening there that the food and service were both first class.

In addition to a pool and golf course, there were four piers
with a total of seventy floating slips—she’d asked the valet, who had pointed her in the right direction and given her a rundown. Each slip was equipped with a storage locker, running water, sewer pump and all the luxuries, like electricity, cable television and telephone service. Henrietta’s slip was along the pier farthest from the clubhouse, where the largest yachts were berthed.

As she drew nearer, Tracy saw CJ. He was standing at the end of the pier, chatting with several people beside a yacht roughly the size of New Mexico. Henrietta wasn’t going to be giving up many of the pleasures of home this summer. Tracy wondered if the yacht came with a masseuse and a cook. Henrietta had room to house a small circus if she needed entertainment.

CJ stopped talking and smiled at her as she approached, then excused himself and walked down the pier to meet her. He wore an elegant gray sport coat and a shirt several shades darker. CJ always carried himself like royalty, a stance easy enough for someone with his wide shoulders. For a moment she felt like the same young woman who had, at their first meeting, immediately set out to make him hers.

It lasted only seconds before her internal alarms began to sound, but she was painfully aware that she had, at least temporarily, succumbed.

“I remember that dress.” He sounded as if the memory was a good one.

She kept her voice cool. “You probably remember everything in my closet, CJ. I haven’t exactly been haunting Rodeo Drive since they stuck you away.”

“I gave this one to you.”