The doorbell rang, and Marla groaned.
“Just as I’m about to get some truly juicy gossip about Aspen Meadow’s renowned asshole spa owner,” she said, “my car-service guy arrives. Dammit! Now you two need to hold that thought, because I want to hear all about Victor Lane when we get together next.” She eyed the platter. “May I take a couple of crab cakes, Goldy? I’m so hungry.”
“Yeah, sure. I made lots extra for Billie Attenborough’s shindig. And don’t forget your pie.”
I loaded her down with goodies, and she took off for the front door, where whoever was there was persistently knocking.
“Oops, it’s not my guy,” said Marla, as she checked the peephole. “It’s an Attenborough,” she singsonged, “incoming!” She put her platters of food down on the hall table.
“Already?” I asked.
“Yes yes,” Marla singsonged again.
“I haven’t called her all day. She’s going to be angry,” Jack said dejectedly.
“Charlotte, darling!” Marla swept the front door open. “Don’t tell me you’re not coming to the dessert fund- raiser to night at my place? Don’t break my heart.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Charlotte trilled. “What are you doing here, Marla? Don’t you have guests to get ready for? You smell like liquor. Where’s Goldy?”
Jack uttered a swear word under his breath.
“In the kitchen!” Marla sang. “Oops, there’s my car service!” She picked up her food platters and sashayed out. “See you later, everybody!”
I knew I should have been more ready for Charlotte, but I wasn’t. The thought occurred to me that maybe she should tend to Jack. Charlotte Attenborough had been a nurse in her previous life, before her well-insured husband died of his bleeding ulcer. According to Marla, Charlotte had used the insurance money to buy a struggling local magazine with the uninspiring name
“Goldy, do you have my new contract?”
“No. Sorry, Charlotte,” I said. I didn’t offer any excuses, such as having my godfather’s best friend found dead in a ravine, dealing with a combative biological father at a wedding, or even actually having had another wedding reception to cater today. “I’ll get right on it.” I turned to my computer, booted it up, and began typing changes to our contract that would reflect additional guests and a change of venue. “Would you like a drink, or some food?” I asked as I pressed Print. “We have lots of everything.”
“Jack,” Charlotte said, surprised, “what are you doing here?”
I stopped what I was doing to turn back to them. I’d told Tom that Charlotte was perfectly preserved. Like jam? he’d asked. I’d merely shaken my head.
I knew Billie was thirty-six, and Charlotte had made a point of telling me she’d given birth to her only child when she was twenty. But there was no way Charlotte Attenborough was in her midfifties; she was sixty-five if she was a day. She wore her short gray-blond hair swept up in what boys from the fifties would have called a ducktail. She was at least five feet eight inches tall, but the ramrod-straight way she held her slender self, shoulders back, abs tight, made her look more like six feet. This night, she wore a midcalf, dark gray sheath-style dress. Despite its fashionable draping, her attire gave her the look of a drill sergeant.
“Well?” she said to Jack.
As if on cue, both of our family’s animals—a big, floppy, exceptionally affectionate bloodhound named Jake, and a long-haired feline named Scout—made their presence known at our back door. I’d called them to come in when I’d first arrived home, but neither had been interested then.
“I’ll let in the pets.” Jack leaped up from his chair and went to the back door before I could say,
Which, in retrospect, would have been a very good idea, but not nearly as much fun. Charlotte, who clearly did not like dogs, flinched when Jake came bounding in. She screamed when he jumped up on her and muddied her impeccable sheath. The thick mud on his paws might not have done so much damage to Charlotte’s dress if she hadn’t then shrieked, “Stop, you!” and tried to whack Jake away. Even though I called him and tried to snag his collar, Charlotte’s recoiling move made Jake want to be friends even more, so that he sprang up again on Charlotte, who tried to bat him away. “You stupid dog!” she cried. “Go away!”
Jake, who didn’t like to be called stupid, began whimpering, and again vaulted up on Charlotte, who had turned her backside on him, which meant Jake’s paws landed on the reverse side of the sheath, which I figured was now pretty much ruined.
“I’m so sorry, Charlotte, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating. My godfather, who had tried less successfully than I had to contain Jake, slumped in defeat on a kitchen chair.
When I finally managed to snag Jake’s leash, I led him out of the kitchen. Scout the cat, who was much better at figuring out when he wasn’t wanted, had already slunk away. I managed to corral the two of them in the pet-containment area, where I gave them a perfunctory drying off with fresh towels that I kept in their little home for just this purpose.
Oh, Lord, but I wished Tom would come home.
“Well, Charlotte,” I said in my conciliatory voice when I returned to the kitchen, “again, I’m sorry. Would you like to see the contract?”
She was at our sink, where she was rubbing her muddied dress with a wet paper towel. When she faced me, her eyes were slits. “This is a disaster,” she said, and a cold finger of guilt ran down my spine.
“Dogs do get muddy when it rains,” Jack said, attempting mournfulness. “It’s, what do you call it? A force of nature.”
“Stop it,” Charlotte retorted. “I’ve been trying to phone
Now Jack’s voice was genuinely mournful. “My best friend was found dead in a ravine, Charlotte.”
She turned to him, startled. “Who, Finn? What was he doing in a ravine?” Her tone implied that death could be avoided if one could but stay out of ravines. Jack just shook his head.
“It was a car accident, Charlotte,” I said in a low voice.
“Was anyone else hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“This is a tragedy,” she said to Jack. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks,” said Jack disconsolately.
Nobody said anything for a few minutes, and so I took a deep breath. “Now, Charlotte, here are the contract changes.” I handed her the sheet.
She perused the paper. “This looks fine.”
Charlotte kept glancing at Jack, who would not meet her gaze. I reflected once more on how much beyond me it was to know how or why these two had managed to keep a relationship going for a day, much less four months. Charlotte was elegant, perfectionistic, and expected to get her way, even if she had to pay for it. Her house in Flicker Ridge looked like a furniture showcase. Jack was generous, openhearted, and a slob, and the house he was renovating looked like a tornado had blown off the roof and thoroughly jumbled the interior…and no one had bothered to clean up since.
From the beginning of their odd relationship, I’d suspected that there was more desire to keep things going on Charlotte’s side than there was on Jack’s. He told me he’d been gentle, but firm, when she said she wanted him to stop spending so much time with Doc Finn. Doc Finn was his friend, and Jack wanted to go fishing and do…well, what ever his friend wanted. Charlotte had said he should want to spend more time with her.
Jack had demurred. But Charlotte had persevered. In fact, the previous month, she had confided to me that she expected to become engaged to Jack very soon. After a couple of weeks had gone by, I’d gently hinted around to Jack about this, as in, “Do you think you’d ever be wanting me to do your wedding reception?” He’d shaken his head at the suggestion, and told me he had no plans to get married again. His first wife had died of cancer before
