The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club (6 page)

“Bet you figured that out when you were in the school band.” He chuckled. “As I recall, the slices of silence were the best part of pep band.”

She gave his forearm a smack.

“Hey, I'm agreeing with you. In a slightly unusual way.” He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Too much stuff makes a place feel tight. Like there's no room to breathe.”

So he did get it.

“Guess we're more alike than I thought, then,” she told him. “I cull my stuff each spring. It's the only way to make sure I own my things instead of them owning me. The one exception I make is for books. There can never be too many.”

She picked up both their empty plates and carried them to the kitchen. Then she dished up the blackberry cobbler, and put the bowls into the microwave to warm.

“I thought the built-in shelves would handle my collection,” she rattled on, “but judging from the number of boxes marked ‘books,' I'm probably going to have to buy another shelving unit and squeeze it into the bedroom somehow.”

The microwave dinged. She took out the cobblers and scooped some of Jake's homemade ice cream on them. It looked and smelled like heaven in a bowl.

“I'm talking too much,” she said as she carried their desserts back to the table. “Silence is restful, too.”

“That's okay.” Jake shrugged. “I like listening to you. Besides, if someone starts doing an imitation of a windup monkey, it's best to let them wind down on their own.”

“A windup monkey!”

“Yeah, you know.” He made motions in front of himself as if he were clanging a pair of cymbals. “A windup monkey. You obviously have something you want to talk about, but you're not sure how to start. Instead of asking what's really on your mind, I figured I'd let you go on about whatever you want till you wear yourself down. Eventually, you'll come out with it.”

Lacy straightened her spine, bristling. “What's really on my mind is that I don't like being called a windup monkey.”

“Look, most guys who get wounded tend to suffer in silence, but every now and then when I was in the hospital, a jarhead would start blabbing a blue streak about everything and nothing—anything to keep from talking about what was really eating him.” Jake scooped up a bite of dessert and then went on. “I'm just saying that stress is stress whether you get it on a battlefield or in a boardroom. You need a way to get rid of it. I didn't mean to tick you off, Lace.”

But he had.

Mostly because he was right. She wanted to talk to someone about a lot of things—about how she felt about losing her beautiful Back Bay shop, about Bradford's betrayal, about Daniel and his on-again, off-again marriage, about how she was ever going to pay back that awful loan, and most especially, what would she ever find to do with herself in Coldwater Cove? Her list of challenges was overwhelming. But she couldn't tell him about any of that.

Life in Boston had taught her not to trust anyone, men in particular. Opening her heart was an invitation for it to be stomped on. She could only rely on herself.

“I hate to eat and ask you to run,” she said, “but please finish your dessert. I have so much to do here and I'm the only one who can do it. I need to get back to work.”

“Really? Is that how they do it in Boston?”

“Do what?”

“Dump unwanted dinner dates.”

“Jake, it's not like that.” And since when did this become a date? “But you're right. I do have a lot to deal with right now. I just can't talk to you about it.”

“How about Danny?” Jake pushed away his nearly untouched cobbler. “Is he the one you can talk to?”

“No. They're my problems. I'll deal with them on my own without help from either of you,” she said, upset that he was making her feel defensive when she'd done nothing wrong. “But you have to admit you've got a reputation for having the attention span of a gnat when it comes to relationships. Have you forgotten that, of the two of you, you're the one who is the player?”

“
Was
the player. I haven't been that guy for a long time.” Jake rose and headed for the door with a seemingly lovesick Effie meowing after him. He stopped at the threshold. “Just remember one thing, Lace. People change. Danny Scott is the one with another woman on the string now.”

The door banged shut behind him. Lashing herself with her long tail, Effie scowled at Lacy.

“Give it a rest, cat. Jake leaves all the girls sooner or later. Don't think for a skinny minute that you're any different.”

 

—Ethel Ringwald, waitress who's liberal with both dessert portions and advice

 

 

 

“Y
ou were the best cub reporter I ever had, so I'm guessing you remember the drill. Your main focus will be writing general interest stories. You'll cover school activities, the Rotary Club, town council meetings, that kind of crap.” Wanda Cruikshank, publisher, editor and Coldwater Cove media maven, stopped rattling off Lacy's proposed list of assignments long enough to blow a long stream of smoke at her office's dingy ceiling. Wanda was rail thin with leathery skin, a testimony to too much time in a tanning booth frying her outsides while too many Marlboros crisped up her insides.

Knowing how ridiculously easy it was to make the front page of the
Gazette,
Lacy had dropped by to make sure Wanda didn't run a piece about her return to Coldwater Cove. Somehow, the conversation had turned into an interview for the open reporter position.

“What about the crime beat?” Lacy asked, wondering if the job would put her in contact with Daniel too often for her comfort. He had promised to come if she called, but separated was still married. She wasn't going to mess with that.

“The sheriff's office sends over their blotter, you know, tickets, fines, and whatnot. We print them on page four once a week, but we don't generally do anything more with it.” Wanda ran a hand through her impossibly dark hair. Sure enough, a thin strip of silver glinted in her part. “Our readers don't want hard news. They want feel-good stuff. If they want to be depressed, they can always watch CNN.”

“Well, at least there's a bit of local politics in the council meetings,” Lacy said. That qualified as hard news. It provided a sop to her conscience and might help her when Uncle Roy, the real journalist in the family, came down from Des Moines for a visit and demanded to know why she was selling out by writing for a small-town paper. “Can I do a design column?”

“Fine, kid. Go with that. Just remember who sells furniture and paint in this town and where they spend their advertising dollars. No directing
Gazette
readers to some dot-com site.” Wanda smiled at her as if she were a not-too-bright child. “I'm sure you'll get the hang of it.”

Then she offered Lacy a salary that would be an insult in Boston, but was considered a living wage in Coldwater Cove. It would keep body and soul together.

So long as she didn't mind renting out her soul from time to time.

“I'd liked to use a pen name for my byline,” Lacy said, remembering Daniel's warning about someone Googling her. She explained—off the record, of course, and as cryptically as possible—about her unsettling business in Boston and the need to keep a low online profile.

“OK, but the pen name needs to be something locals will still get. Gazette readers like to feel they've got the inside track about town. What's your middle name?”

Hand-me-down family names were a good way to remember someone special. Lacy understood that, but unfortunately, her dad had been really attached to his maiden great-aunt on his mother's side.

“Dorie,” she admitted.

“Dorie it is, then. And your mom was a Higginbottom, wasn't she? We'll use Dorie Higginbottom for your byline.”

She sighed. Her mom always claimed the best thing about marrying Lacy's father was getting to change her name to something as ordinary as Evans. Her dad liked to joke that if his last name had been Filpot he'd have never caught her.

“Oh, you'll be in charge of the ‘Ago' columns, too,” Wanda added.

“‘Ago' columns?”

“Yeah, people like them a lot. Every Friday we run articles from past editions of the
Gazette
—you know, a hundred years ago, seventy-five years ago, fifty, and so on. Gives the historical flavor of the area.”

I bet even a hundred years ago “a good time was had by all.”
“Are back editions archived online?”

“You wish. Only starting about three years back. We got hooked up with that cloud thingy then. Before that, the
Gazette
is stored on microfiche and for the really old copies, there are paper files in the dungeon.” Wanda meant the musty basement.

Words seldom failed Lacy. A few choice ones came to mind now—archaic, obsolete, and downright Paleolithic. But she couldn't say them out loud if she intended to take the job. She thought about her looming loan payment and swallowed hard.

“When do you want me to start?”

“Right now. A few things may be different since you were here last. Let me give you the nickel tour.” Wanda shooed her out of her office.

The
Gazette
was housed in a limestone brick structure, circa 1890. The ceilings were high and trimmed with dark oak crown moldings, a remnant of Victorian charm. The office was located near the Opera House. Lead glass windows on two sides allowed in a good amount of light. Unfortunately, sometime in the '70s, Wanda had done a remodel. She knocked down most of the interior walls except the ones that formed her office, and left the relic of a water closet untouched. Unfortunately, that room really could have benefited from a wrecking ball.

“This, if you'll remember,” Wanda said grandly as she swept around a space that was chopped into sad cubicles by half walls upholstered in beige fabric, “is what we like to call the ‘bullpen.' That's Georgina. She's our office manager. See her about setting up direct deposit and filling out your tax stuff.”

Georgina looked up from filing her nails and shot them a toothy grin. When she said hi, Lacy recognized her voice as the same Georgina who'd been gossiping with Heather Walker in the graveyard on Lacy's first day back. Adorned with an eyebrow ring and an improbable pink streak in her hair, she must have been in middle school when Lacy graduated.

Knocking on thirty suddenly felt old.

“Deek here is our resident geek.” The gangly fellow flinched when Wanda clapped a palm on his shoulder. “He takes care of the office network and manages our online
Gazette
.”

“Lacy Evans.” She offered him her hand.

From behind thick spectacles, he stared at her fingers for a few blinks but didn't move to shake them.

“The human hand is home to one hundred and eighty-two different types of bacteria.” His voice crackled, the last gasp of a puberty that had gone on for too long and with too little positive effect. “And that's if it's a healthy hand.”

“Oh, er, good point.” Lacy resisted the urge to rub her undoubtedly germ-laden palm on her skirt.

Wanda continued the introductions. “You remember Marjorie Chubb.”

Lacy nodded. The Iron Lady, so called for her iron-gray hair, had been in charge of the
Gazette
's classifieds since the Flood.

“Besides doing the classifieds, I'm also the captain of the Methodist prayer chain, so I hear about everything that's important. If you ever need an idea for a story . . .” Marjorie laid a finger aside of her nose in the time-honored gesture of collusion.

Deliver me, O Lord, from the Methodist prayer chain,
Lacy prayed silently and with fervor.

In the cube next to Marjorie was Tiffany Braden.

She'd been behind Lacy in school by a couple of years. The pulled-together young woman was dressed in a tailored navy pantsuit. Compared to Tiffany, the rest of the staff seemed to have confused the concept of business casual with “business rumpled.” A degree in something from Bates College hung in Tiffany's cube on the half wall.

Coldwater Cove was proud to be the home of the tiny private school with a reputation for academic excellence. Of course, some folks equated excellence with snootiness, but the Bates College crowd didn't care. Aside from its liberal arts emphasis while the rest of the world was going tech-happy, Bates offered degrees in a handful of obscure disciplines. Its graduates were pretty much guaranteed
not
to land a job in their field of study.

Her sister, Crystal, had stayed in Coldwater to earn her degree in medieval poetry before going on to become the dean of admissions for the college. What an exhaustive knowledge of Chaucer had to do with sorting through admission applications was a mystery, but Crystal made it work, as she did everything, perfectly.

Tiffany Braden might not be using her bachelor of arts in sock puppetry or whatever it was she'd studied, but she must have learned something.

“Tiff's our rainmaker here at the
Gazette,
” Wanda told Lacy with undisguised pleasure. The young Ms. Braden sold advertising space to unsuspecting merchants in town and did it well. Lacy guessed that her Braden family connections had more to do with her sales than her degree from Bates.

“And here's you.” Wanda steered Lacy into the cubicle in the corner, which had a decent window looking out on the Square and another with a view across the side street. Unfortunately, the Secondhand Junk-shun occupied most of that view. The shop full of dubious treasures was her mom's delight and the bane of her dad's existence.

Lacy checked her watch. “I really didn't expect a job offer today. The cable guy is coming by my place at three,” she told her new boss.

The Internet that came with the TV package was her main interest. She intended to stay off social sites, but that didn't mean she couldn't keep up with things in Boston by lurking. However, if a strange person was going to enter her apartment at three o'clock, she needed to get there a little earlier to make sure her attack cat was securely shut up in the laundry.

Her Highness, Effie the Snarling, had been presented with a can of tuna last night after Jake left, but the cat didn't strain herself by showing any gratitude. Being the feline queen meant she wasn't required to acknowledge Lacy's existence other than as a food delivery system.

Evidently, primo albacore served on a Melmac plate was no more than her due.

“Get yourself squared away in your new place, then,” Wanda said. “Stay as long as you can today to get acquainted with how we do things. We'll talk about deadlines tomorrow.”

Lacy didn't feel guilty about leaving early. Sometime soon, she'd have to stay late. The previous occupant of her cube had left enough rubbish and files in the drawers and cubbies to fill a couple of big trash bags. After waiting a full five minutes for the tired desktop to boot, she decided to bring in her own laptop to sign in to the
Gazette
's system tomorrow. Then with a bit of reluctant help from Deek, which he'd undoubtedly make sure involved no physical contact whatsoever, she'd set up her passwords and poke around the network.

The place smelled of ink and newsprint. Lacy inhaled the scent clear to her toes. She had expected to feel as if she were going backward by working at the
Gazette,
but surprisingly enough, there was a freshness about it instead.

Of course, that might have been because Wanda limited her smoking to her office. She kept the door closed so as to capture and enjoy the full benefit of her cigs for herself.

The office hummed, a low clatter of clicking keys as the people around her pounded out their work or at least mimicked the appearance of industry. Lacy started to feel as if she was where she should be. For now, at least.

Then she heard the whispers.

“I'm telling you, he's moving out of the house today.”

Lacy leaned toward the voices, then stopped herself.
Dang! Shades of the cemetery.
She was getting to be a world-class snoop.

“Why? It's not like he has to share it with her.”

Lacy suspected Georgina and Tiffany were the whisperers. She couldn't imagine Deek caring enough about another germy-handed human to indulge in gossip, and matronly Marjorie wasn't the sort who would stoop to it unless it was in conjunction with the prayer chain.

“I heard a rumor about why she left him. It explains why he's moving out of the house, too.”

No names were mentioned, but Lacy wondered if they were talking about Daniel and his wife. He hadn't said anything about moving when he'd stopped by her place. She quit trying to straighten her desktop and pushed her chair closer to the beige cubical wall so she wouldn't miss anything.

“I heard he lost the house in a poker game.”

“Nooo.”

“I wouldn't bet against it.”

One of the pair—Lacy couldn't say which for certain—tittered over the lame wordplay. If Lacy were a gambler, her money would be on Georgina as the giggler. Upon hearing the laughter, Wanda, sensing not everyone's nose was being ground to nubbins on their grindstones, burst out of her office like an avenging angel.

“Am I the only one around here with a deadline?” she bellowed. “Back to work.”

Lacy tried to focus on her desk again. Surely the gossips were wrong. She'd never known Daniel to gamble. Heck, he never even bought a lottery ticket. He was the poster boy for the straight-arrow type.

Or at least he had been.

“Thank you for that update, Jake Tyler. Now get out of my head,” she muttered under her breath.