It was, without a doubt, the ugliest building I’d ever seen in my life.
There was silence. No one moved; no one spoke. Then, with a noise that started low and rose with a rush to a pounding height, the room erupted in anger.
Chapter 3
I ran as fast as I could, but my pursuer’s footsteps came closer and closer. I fell, rolling in a tumbling somersault. “Hah!” he shouted. “Now I’ll brrrring!”
I rolled the other way, desperate to escape his cold grasp.
“Mrrrr!”
I opened my eyes. Our cat, George, gazed at me disapprovingly.
The phone rang again. I tried to sit up, but the sheets and comforter had wrapped tightly around me in my nightmare struggles. I jabbed with my elbows and picked up the phone.
“Beth? This is Heather Kingsley. Listen, I wanted to catch you before you left the house.”
I rubbed at the sleep seeds in the corners of my eyes. Somebody’s mother. Emma. “Um, hi, Heather.”
“We need to do something about Agnes,” Heather said in her breathy voice. “And we need to do it fast. I already talked to Erica and Julie about my husband. You know Mitch? He’s a lawyer, and he says that Agnes doesn’t need the PTA’s permission to build, but—”
I gasped. “Oh, no.”
Heather paused. “He’s a good lawyer. Not one of those ambulance chasers.”
I gave the sheets a kick and jumped out of bed. “Sorry, Heather, but I can’t talk now. I’ll call you later.” If the clock on my nightstand was right, I had fifteen minutes to get the kids dressed, fed, and delivered to school. How could I have slept so late?
“Oliver!” I charged into his room and slapped on the overhead light. “Up! We’re late!” A small hand pushed a stuffed tiger to the side, and Oliver’s head peeked out of the covers. “Jammies off. Here, wear this.” I opened drawers and piled clothes onto his dresser. “Put the fire on, kiddo. Downstairs in three minutes.”
I hurried to Jenna’s room, but she wasn’t there. Her bed, however, was neatly made up and her pajamas were on the hook behind her door. I smiled. Typical Jenna.
No time for a shower. I rushed into the nearest clothing available and hurried downstairs. Jenna sat at the kitchen island, eating a bowl of cold cereal and watching the Weather Channel.
“How long have you been awake? Why didn’t you get me up?” I grabbed a bowl and poured cereal. “Oliver! Your breakfast is ready!” The phone rang.
“Beth!” The voice was so loud that I winced and held the receiver away from my ear. “Kirk Olsen here.”
I opened the refrigerator door and got the milk. Neal and Avery’s father. “Good morning, Kirk. I’m running late, so if you don’t mind—”
He ran roughshod over my words. “It’s That Woman. This addition is a hundred times worse than the time she changed the bus routes. A thousand times worse than the time she changed the school mascot from a golden retriever to a bulldog.”
I poured milk on Oliver’s cereal and put my hand over the receiver. “Oliver! Now! Sorry, Kirk. You were saying?”
Kirk Olsen had reached the middle of last night’s meeting when Oliver finished eating. “Kirk? Sorry, but I really have to go. Talk to you later.” I hung up the phone and looked at my children. “There’s no time to make sandwiches. I’ll give you money for hot lunch.”
Jenna’s face brightened; Oliver’s soured. My son had never been big on change. I kissed the top of his head. “Get your backpacks, you two. Time to scoot.”
I was reaching for my purse when the phone rang again. All my Nice Girl instincts screamed at me to answer. I took one step toward the phone and saw the kitchen clock. No. Couldn’t be done. I grabbed my purse and headed for the garage, ignoring a ringing telephone for the first time in my life.
“Alexander Graham Bell has a lot to answer for.” I pushed the OFF button on the store’s cordless phone and was sincerely glad the store had only two phone lines.
Lois laughed and got out her pen. “Fourteen.” She’d started a tally when the third anti-Agnes call came in. “Bet we hit thirty before closing.” Lois held out her hand. “Five bucks.” She’d barely finished the sentence when the phone rang again.
“No bets.” I handed the receiver to Lois. “If it’s the president of the United States, tell him I’m in the bathroom and I’ll call back. Anyone else, say I’m dead.”
Lois answered the phone and looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Hi, Marina. No, I’m afraid you can’t talk to her.”
I held out my hand.
“She’s here, but she says she’s dead.”
I wrestled the phone away. “I’m not dead yet.”
“You will be soon,” Marina said, chuckling.
I held the phone away from my ear, stared at it, then put it back. “Sorry?”
Marina’s sigh whistled in my ear. “Movie quote.”
“Oh.” I tried to think back through the movies we’d watched.
“Good guess, but no. Speaking of which, I’d guess your day has been busy.”
“Not with bookselling, it hasn’t. If one more person talks to me about the addition, my eardrums will shatter.”
“Well, we don’t want that. How would you be able to hear my latest news? Want to guess at today’s news flash?”
“Your neighbor’s black Lab has been seeing a poodle.”
“Better.”
“Your sister is quitting her stockbroker job and moving to Mexico City to teach orphans.”
“Better.”
“Um . . .” I scratched my cheek and suddenly remembered I hadn’t had a shower this morning. Ick. “I can’t think of anything better than that.”
“Think of Randy Jarvis.”
“Okay.” Nice guy, would probably fool the doctors and outlive us all.
“Randy.” She paused dramatically. “And Agnes Mephisto.”
“No.” I winced away from the idea of the three-hundred-pound Randy getting cozy with Agnes.
“Oh, yes.” Marina chuckled. “Give me another reason Randy’s car would be parked in Agnes’s driveway last Saturday night.”
I fished around for an explanation. “Randy’s good with car stuff. Maybe Agnes had something wrong with . . . with one of her tires. Randy was helping.”
“At two in the morning?”
“Why not? Agnes didn’t want to risk hurting her tire, so it had to be done as soon as she saw it, which was after she’d come home from a late movie. And car places put lug nuts on really tight these days.” I was liking this theory. A lot. “Randy was going to take the tire in and get it fixed—”
Marina started laughing. “Beth, with an imagination like that, you should write a book. You probably know where Randy was going to take this imaginary tire.”
Rynwood Auto, I thought. “Well, it could be true.”
“Ooo, Ms. Defensive. Only problem is it’s happened more than once. Kendra, put that down. Kendra, I said—” There was a crash and a child’s wail. “Uh-oh. Gotta go.”
I opened the top drawer of the undercounter filing cabinet, put the phone inside, and shut the drawer. “Lois, is Paoze here? I’m ready for a long lunch.”
Her gray head popped above a rack of young adult paperbacks. “He just came in.”
For part-time help I’d hired two University of Wisconsin college students, Sara and Paoze. Sara was as
