“Fat chance.” Shoving his glasses up on his nose, Dean headed for the basement stairs.
“Where are you going?”
He made the face of a man who once a month scrubbed the concrete floor with a stiff broom and an industrial cleanser. “I’m after sweeping up the rice.”
“You’ve had a busy twenty-four hours, Claire. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I have a vicious headache.” Cradling the old-fashioned receiver in the damp hollow between ear and shoulder, she fought with the childproof cap on a bottle of painkillers. Teeth clenched, she sat the pill bottle on the table and pulled power. The bottle exploded.
“Claire, what are you doing?”
There were two pills caught in the cuff of her bathrobe. “Just taking something for my headache.” She swallowed them dry.
On the other end of the phone, Martha Hansen sighed. “You aren’t the first Keeper who’s had to apologize to a bystander, you know.”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever had to do it.”
“It’s the first time a bystander’s ever been involved in what you do.”
Claire opened her mouth to disagree, then realized that her previous involvements with bystanders were not something she wanted to discuss with her mother. Nor, she acknowledged with a small smile, were they something she had to apologize for.
“Claire?”
Pleasant memories fled as the current situation shoved its way back to the forefront of her thoughts. “At least I needn’t worry about it happening again. Dean’s too nice a guy to even think of doing it on purpose.”
“And Jacques?”
Her lip curled. “Jacques is dead, Mom. He can’t affect anything.”
“Ah. Yes.”
Claire decided she didn’t want to know what that meant. Had the phones been Touch-Tone, she’d have suspected Austin had been talking to her mother behind her back. Since there was no way the cat could use a rotary phone…All at once, this conversation was not making her feel any better. “I’d better get dressed and get back to work.”
“I hope it helped you to talk about it, Claire. You know you can call any time. Speaking of calling, you haven’t heard from your sister, have you?”
She could feel her jaw muscles tightening up. “No. Why?”
“We had a bit of a disagreement, and she stormed out of here last night. I’m not worried, I know where she is, I was just wondering if she’d spoken to you.”
“No.”
“If she does call, would you please explain to her that turning the sofa into a pygmy hippo for the afternoon might be very good transfiguration, but it’s rather hard on the carpets and it confuses the hippo.”
A dry, tearing sound, the sound of something large and ancient clearing its throat, pulled Dean up from the basement. Fighting against the natural inclination of his legs to get the rest of his body the hell out of there, so to speak, he made his way to the dining room where he found Claire on her hands and knees, surrounded by pieces of broken quarter-round, ripping up the linoleum.
“She’s venting frustrations on inanimate objects,” Austin explained from the safety of the countertop. “You should consider yourself lucky.”
“Boss?”
She shuffled backward and tore free another two feet of floor covering before the section detached from the main. “There’s hardwood under here. We’re going to refinish it.”
“But I thought…”
“Congratulations.”
“…that you were after working on closing the site.”
“To close the site, I need to study it. To study it, I need to get close. To get close, I need to be calm.” Claire ripped up another ragged section. “Do I look calm?”
“I guess not.” Amazed by the extent of the mess, Dean wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t rather have faced the demon he’d expected. “But what about the front counter, out in the lobby.”
“I know where the front counter is, Dean.” She tossed aside a crumbling piece of linoleum. “I’m not asking you if you want to refinish the floor, I’m telling you we’re going to.”
Dean glanced over at the cat who looked significantly unhelpful. “Where’s Jacques?”
“Staying out of my way.”
“Ah.” He cleaned his glasses on his shirttail and squinted unenthusiastically at the exposed wood. “Should I go rent an industrial sander?”
“Yes, you should.” Claire rolled up onto her feet and headed down the hall toward the office.
“Why should we be the ones who suffer?” Dean muttered at the cat as he turned to follow. “She was in the wrong.”
“And you’re just going to keep that thought to yourself, aren’t you,” Austin told him.
Dean knew the envelope Claire pulled the money from—Augustus Smythe had paid him out of it every Friday. He could’ve sworn it had been empty on Saturday when he’d unlocked the safe. “Where did you get the cash?”
“Lineage operating funds.” Claire tossed the envelope back in the safe and closed the door. “When people, or institutions, or pop machines lose money, it becomes ours, available to draw on when we need it.”
“This is where lost money goes?” Fanning the bills he counted four twenties, three tens, and a five with Mr. Spock’s haircut penciled onto the head of Sir Wilfred Laurier. It was a remarkable likeness. “What about socks?”
“Socks?”
“Where do lost socks go?”
Claire stared at him as though he’d suddenly sprouted a third head. “How the he…heck should I know?”
When Dean returned just before noon, all the furniture in the dining room had been rearranged on the ceiling and the linoleum had been completely removed. It was still lying around in messy heaps, but it was no longer attached to the floor.
Tired and filthy, Claire watched appreciatively as he wrestled the heavy machine in through the back door. Having actually been able to accomplish something had put her in a significantly better mood.
They ate soup and sandwiches sitting on the counter, discussing renovations in perfect harmony. Two hours later, the debris bagged, Claire left to finish sorting through Augustus Smythe’s room while Dean used the sander.
As the layers of glue and old varnish began to disappear, he grew more confident. Finished with the edging, he began making
