“Of course.” She looked past him, to me. “Hi, Annike. Have you seen Nancy? We were supposed to meet here.”
“I didn’t see her inside.”
Lucy glanced toward the cafeteria. “I should hope not. She’s not up to one of Peggy’s classes, yet.”
“Why here?” asked Sarkisian.
She rolled her eyes. “You haven’t met my ex-husband, yet, I take it? This is easier than going to the house or even trying to call. Just because I want to avoid him doesn’t mean I want to avoid my daughter.”
“I’ve met Mr. Fairfield,” Sarkisian said. “He’s been somewhat upset about your dating Clifford Brody.”
She flushed. “I know. I only did it because… Well, I wanted to go out to dinner rather than stay home and cook it all the time. I wanted to go to a concert or a theater, and have someone to go with. All Adam ever does is work or watch television. I wanted to have some fun. And Cliff asked me out, and I knew it was Cindy who’d kicked him out and filed for divorce, so it wasn’t as if I was contributing to breaking up their marriage.”
“But your husband blamed Brody for your not going back to him?”
“For awhile, I’m afraid so. He couldn’t believe that nothing would drag me back there. But I did tell him when I stopped seeing Brody a few weeks ago.”
“When…” Sarkisian stared at her. “You stopped seeing Brody and Mr. Fairfield knew?”
“Of course. I thought it would make life easier for Nancy if I told him. I just didn’t mention I was seeing someone else. There she is,” she added as a small silver older model Toyota pulled up behind her own car.
Nancy climbed out and waved, then hurried over to give her mother a warm hug. “I miss you,” Nancy whispered.
“It’ll be all right, soon,” Lucy told her daughter. “I’m getting a raise and I’ll be able to move out of that wretched room and into an apartment of my own. Then you can come stay with me until you go back to school.”
“But Dad…”
“Your being there hasn’t stopped him from drinking. Maybe your absence will make him wake up and realize he has to grow up and take care of himself.”
Nancy nodded, though she didn’t look convinced. “I told him I was coming out to get a video.” She glanced at me. “Do you think Gerda will open the store for me?”
“Ask her. She’s just inside, talking to Peggy.”
Lucy and Nancy started for the cafeteria. I hung back with Sarkisian. “There goes Adam’s jealousy motive for killing Brody,” I said.
He nodded. “If only we could eliminate other people as easily. Well, back to work, I guess.”
“Have fun.” I waited where I stood while my Aunt Gerda emerged, accompanied by Lucy and Nancy. As a group we strolled down the street, past the few darkened shops and offices.
There stood Brody’s. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to it, now. And to all the records inside, all the clients who would be left in the lurch. And here was me, recently without a job. I could take over, it would be so easy to step into an already established business. Compared to the work I’d been doing at Hastings, Millard and Perkins, Inc., doing local accounts and taxes would be easy. The word ”boring” hovered in my mind, only to be dismissed. By the end of this weekend, I’d be so SCOURGEd out, I’d be grateful for a good dose of boring.
But then, on the realistic side, I couldn’t see Doris Quinn, or even Cindy, endorsing me. Unless I paid them a hefty fee to do so. Whichever of them inherited the business would try to sell it intact and at a fee that would leave me so deeply in debt I’d never dig myself out.
The relief that accompanied that thought surprised me. I didn’t really want to be an accountant anymore. But that was probably just the bad taste left in my mouth from my last job. More likely, I just didn’t want anything to do with Brody’s business. Whoever took over his work would probably discover he’d been a considerable crook.
We passed Aunt Gerda’s old cafe on the other side of the street and reached her new business, only one store away from the corner. She unlocked the door, let us in, switched off the burglar alarm, then flicked on the lights.
The place always amazed me. Shelves of books lined one wall, sticking endwise into the room to allow for the maximum amount of storage. She stocked everything from old hardbound classics to paperback mysteries, romances and science fiction, anything that the residents of our small town might enjoy to help unwind from their high-tech jobs. She’d told me she had an amazingly high turnover rate, with books rarely staying on the shelves for more than a month.
Along the other side of the room stood heavy display cases holding collectible figurines and plates and a few pieces of silver. She made it a point never to stock anything truly valuable, to avoid the insurance costs and the danger of break-ins. Since I’d been in last, she’d added a display of skeins of handspun yarn, some of her weavings, and a rack with movable arms that displayed about twenty quilts.
The back wall held the movies. You could look through the catalogues she’d created that displayed the covers by category, stick on a “rented” tag, then tell her what you’d selected. Then she’d find it in the filing cabinet drawers where she kept them all stored. A fairly efficient system, all in all.
While Nancy and Lucy browsed through action/adventure, arguing the merits of Roger Moore versus Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, the door opened and a couple of other women came in. One went to the books, and another to the catalogue labeled “Comedies”. More people, apparently attracted by the lights, began to drop in. Nancy settled on a Roger Moore, Lucy chose a Pierce Brosnan, and three of the others argued the humor-and vulgarities-of some of the recently released comedies. Gerda beamed at them all. Probably deciding how much turkey chow she could buy at the local feed store from this night’s profits.
Peggy stuck her head around the door. “So when did you decide to start opening nights?”
“I’ve obviously been overlooking a huge window of opportunity,” Gerda agreed. “But what I really need is for someone to invent a vending machine where the customer just runs their card through, and out would pop the video of their choice, with all their information saved for my records.”
“Excuse me?” Barbara Hatter appeared in the doorway, and Peggy moved aside to let her in. She looked every bit as mousy as she had at the breakfast, with those large, sad brown eyes that tore at my heart. “Oh, I didn’t know you were so crowded.” She started to back out.
“Barbara!” Lucy Fairfield cried. “You look like you’ve gone through the wringer since I saw you last. What’s wrong?”
So much sympathy, so much warmth, accompanied those words, that tears sprang to the mousy little woman’s eyes. “Oh, Lucy, I’ve missed you!” she cried, and embraced the other woman. Lucy had that effect on people. “I-I just came in to see if I could rent something soothing for tonight. Dave’s working, and the house gets so lonely.”
Soothing, not companionable, she’d said. I couldn’t help but think of Dave’s distress.
“Come over here, sit down and tell me all about it.” Lucy wrapped an arm about her shoulders and led her to the tiny table with its two chairs where Aunt Gerda ate her lunch and served tea to friends. “Now,” Lucy went on as she pressed Barbara Hatter into one of the seats. “I hear Dave’s been upset over something. Anything I can do to help?”
“No.” The tears slipped down Barbara’s cheeks. “There’s nothing anyone can do. That horrible man-” She broke off.
“Surely not Dave!” Lucy exclaimed, but softly, so as not to attract the attention of the other customers.
Gerda inched closer, and so did Peggy and I. None of us are gossips-at least, not the unkind variety. We honestly cared. If someone were in trouble, the SCOURGEs put their heads together and came up with some way to make life a little better. Except in my case, I remembered, reflecting on the weekend they’d let me in for.
“No.” Barbara dragged out an already damp-looking handkerchief and applied it to her eyes and nose. “That Brody.” She spoke the name with loathing.
“I know,” Lucy agreed as if she hadn’t been dating the man. Or maybe because she had. “What happened?”
“Dave…” Barbara swallowed, then forged ahead. “Dave invested all our savings in some scheme Brody hatched. We lost everything. Everything! All our savings, our retirement money, our emergency fund. All gone. And then-” She broke off.
“What happened, then?” Lucy’s voice was so gentle, so soothing, it could caress a confession out of a hardened criminal.
