Cliff squeaked down the hall in rubber shoes, and I cleaned the glass barrier between the patient sitting room and the clerks’ office. I saw with disapproval that Carrie’s new maid had been slacking off there. And the counter in the reception clerk’s area was just nasty.
“Want a cup of coffee?” he called to me after a few minutes had passed.
“No, thank you,” I said politely.
I was able to get on with the other rooms and the hall, and cleaned as fast as a dervish whirls until I reached the room in which Cliff was working.
The burly man was sitting at a desk, a headset on, and his fingers flying across the keys of a computer. His leg was moving slightly, and as I mopped behind him, I saw that he was operating a pedal. He wasn’t listening to music on a CD player, as I’d at first believed. He was listening to Carrie’s voice. I could barely hear it while I dusted. Carrie was saying, “temperature of one hundred and one. Mr. Danby said he’d had episodes of fever for the past two days, and his stomach had become very sore and tender to the touch. Upon examination, when the lower left quadrant of his abdomen was palpated…”
“You know anything about medicine?” Cliff said out loud, as I wiped the picture frames.
“No, not much,” I confessed.
“It’s like listening to a soap opera every day,” he said, as if I’d asked.
“Ummm,” I said, lifting an open magazine to wipe underneath, ready to set it down exactly the same way.
“How’s Tamsin doing?” I asked, just to stop him from asking me any more questions. I had seen his lips begin to form a phrase.
“She’s doing well, considering what a shock she got,”
Cliff said, his heavy face grim. He hesitated for a second, then said, “And considering this has ruined our new life here.”
That seemed a strange way to put it. Here I was thinking it was Saralynn’s life that had been ruined.
“It’s awful about the woman who was killed,” Cliff went on, echoing my thoughts. “But I’m Tamsin’s husband, so I can’t help worrying about her more than anyone. For someone whose joy is to help others, her life has been full of trouble this past couple of years.”
From what I’d seen, that was certainly true.
“You moved here from the Midwest?” I asked, trying to confirm the accent. I realigned a stack of insurance forms and put a stapler in the drawer below.
“I’m originally from northern Kentucky,” he said. “But we’ve moved a lot these past few years since we both got out of school. It’s been hard to find a place where we both can have the jobs we like and a good lifestyle.”
Jack and I were facing the same sort of problem right now. “So you’ve been here in Shakespeare for how long?”
“A little over a year, I guess. We really like it here, and Tamsin’s finally making friends.”
I wondered how long Detective Stokes had lived here. Quite a Yankee invasion we were having, here in little Shakespeare. And there was the new freckled officer G. McClanahan at the police department. I had no idea where he’d come from.
As I cleaned around Cliff Eggers’s bulk, as I bundled all my things back into the car, I deliberated over asking Tamsin about her allusions to problems in the past. Cliff seemed more than willing to talk, but I knew I’d feel uncomfortable discussing Tamsin’s secrets without her permission or presence.
The silent Winthrop house was just what I needed after the unexpected and aggravating presence of Cliff Eggers at Carrie’s office. Since school was out, I was a little surprised to find no one at home, and quite pleased. I was able to do things exactly in the order I wanted, up to the point when Amber Jean came in the back door escorted by about six of her friends.
Amber Jean was a whole different shooting match from her oldest brother, Bobo. She cast me a casual hello, as did two of her buddies, while the rest of them behaved as though I were invisible. Actually, I didn’t mind that so much. I’d rather be ignored than the center of attention.
The three boys in the group were around fifteen or sixteen, and they were going through the goofy, pimply awkward phase where they could be adults one moment and silly children the next. I’d met Bobo when he’d been around that age.
The girls were more mysterious to me. Since I’d been one, and I had a sister, I should have understood these teenagers better. But with these particular girls, maybe it was the money their parents gave them, maybe it was the “freedom” they had (which was really lack of supervision), maybe it was their mobility… they all had their own cars… Any or all of these factors made their lives different from any experience of mine.
I was relieved when the whole group trooped out to the pool. The boys pulled off their shirts and sandals and the girls took off various things. I supposed the shorts the boys were wearing could double as swimsuits, and the girls were already suited up under their clothing. They had small swimsuits on. Really, really small.
Amber Jean’s two-piece was screaming pink with a pattern of green leaves. She looked very attractive in it. She stuck her head in the sliding glass door and called, “Lily, could you bring us some lemonade and some snacks out to the pool?”
“No.”
She gaped at me. “No?” she repeated, and the closest of the boys began sniggering.
“No. I clean. I don’t serve.” I finished mopping the floor and squeezed out the mop.
Amber scrambled to catch hold of some superiority. “Okay, no problem,” she said in a clipped, cold voice. “Come on, guys!” she called over her shoulder. “We got to get the food ourselves!”
I invented something for myself to do in the master bedroom to get out of their way, and when I heard the sliding glass door shut again, I ventured out. The floor had still been damp, and they’d tracked all over it. I’d have to mop again. Well, that was my payoff for not serving. Taking a deep breath, I took care of the floor for the second time. I thought it possible Amber Jean would invent a second reason to come in, and I waited for a few minutes just in case. When she and her friends stayed out, I scrubbed the sink and polished it in uninterrupted industry.
Just as I’d cleaned the counters, Howell Three came in. This second son was Howell Winthrop the Third, but he’d been called Howell Three since birth thanks to his mother, who thought the nickname was cute. Reedy, slender, plain, and an honor-roll student, Howell was the bridge between Bobo (beautiful and moderately book smart) to Amber Jean (fairly pretty and book dumb).
“Hi, Lily,” Howell Three said. “Oops, sorry, the floor.” He took huge steps to get across the linoleum as quickly as possible.
“Quite all right,” I said. “It’s almost dry.” Now that he was on the carpet in the living room area, Howell Three heard the noise from the pool and looked out. A look of disgust crossed his face. “Amber Jean,” he said angrily, as though she was right by him. “She’s sunning with her top off,” Howell Three told me, sounding about ten years younger than his age, which I realized with some surprise was seventeen. “Lily, she shouldn’t do that.”
“Will she listen to you?” I asked, after some hesitation. I felt a little responsible in a roundabout way. If I had brought her drinks and chips, Amber Jean would not be exposing her breasts now. That made no sense, but it was a fact.
“No. I’m gonna call Mom,” he said, reaching a resolution. “I hate to rat on her, but this is embarrassing. She thinks she’s being cool, that they won’t talk about her, but that’s not true. Those girls and those guys, they’ll tell everyone.” He looked at me with some appeal in his face, but I had no authority to assume the role of Amber Jean’s mother. I doubted if Amber Jean would listen to me, even if I did speak; she’d probably just strip off her bikini bottom, too, to spite me.
So while Howell Three called his mother (she was at one of the family businesses meeting with an accountant) and got her promise that she was on her way home instantly, I gathered up my stuff and got out of there. The last thing I wanted was to witness a Winthrop family blowup.
And to think, I’d been so happy a month or two before when Beanie had called me to come back to work for the family. I’d missed the income the Winthrops had given me, and in a weird way, I’d missed them. What had I been thinking? Was I falling victim to the Mammy syndrome?
Shaking my head at myself, I went home for lunch.
The afternoon was supposed to be free, but I had messages on my answering machine.
“Lily, hey, we’re going to try to have our meeting tonight, since Tuesday didn’t work out. I hate to lose our momentum,” Tamsin said. “Oh, this is Tamsin Lynd calling. I hope I see you tonight, same time as usual.”
