by Sandra Hill
When Gabe, an architect from Durham, inherited Bell Forge and his grandparents’ mansion in Bell Cove, he’d discovered that one of his ancestors had a Big Game stuffed animal collection. The walls and every inch of space in half the mansion was loaded with the things. A taxidermist’s paradise!
“Only a gorilla,” Gabe replied.
“Too bad! Especially all those fish would have made a great backdrop for our event. Imagine a whale lying there with a pile of gold coins coming out of its mouth.”
Merrill’s jaw dropped and, yes, he was noticing the use of “our” event.
“I never had a whale,” Gabe sputtered.
“No problem. Betcha Del Brown over at The Honey Hole could get us a big fish. If nothing else we could borrow that marlin he has up on the wall of his fish shop. By the way, everyone, Del has a sale on halibut this week. Thanks for mentioning that in your paper, Laura.”
Laura nodded and said, “I’m partial to his red fish. Cooked with lemon on the grill . . . yum!”
“Are you people crazy?” Annie exclaimed. “We’re talking a big news story here, and you two are chitchatting about food. This scoop . . . I mean, this segment for The Morning Show . . . could give me the boost I need to move up to the networks.”
Meanwhile, Sam was glued to his cell phone, probably texting the story around the world.
Jeesh! Merrill had to get a handle on this runaway train.
“That’s it for today, folks. Sorry to see you go, but Harry and Gabe and I have work to do if we’re going to have a press conference on Wednesday.” He put particular emphasis on that day so that Doreen would get the message. No pirate nonsense!
By the time everyone left—even Gabe, who claimed to have an appointment in his Durham office that would probably keep him overnight, which was probably a lie—Merrill looked at Harry and sighed. “First things first. We need to warn the other team members that the cat is out of the bag.”
“More like the tiger’s out of the cage,” Harry said.
“We need a plan, that’s all. A strict plan of nondisclosure so that any reveals come from one source only.”
Harry nodded. “The phones are going to be ringing off the hook.”
“Just direct them to me, and I’ll choose which, if any, to answer. Also, we need extra security on the storage room. There’s a saying in historical preservation work, according to Bonita. When asked what’s the best way to preserve gold, the answer is, ‘Put it in a safe.’”
Harry laughed, but then he turned serious. “There is one thing I need to discuss with you.”
“Nah. That’s enough of that crap for today.” He waved a hand toward the remaining paperwork. “We can go over that tomorrow. I need to go celebrate.”
“How?”
“The best way,” he replied with a grin.
“Um, that’s what I need to discuss with you. Rather who I need to discuss.”
Merrill tilted his head in question. “Delilah?”
Harry nodded, reluctantly.
“What?”
“She’s a felon.”
Merrill couldn’t have been more shocked if Harry had stood up and kicked him in the gut. “No way!”
“Unfortunately, way! Her parole officer, a Ms. Gardner, dropped by last week and wanted to know if she’d reported her felony background to her employer?” Harry handed him the parole officer’s business card.
That news was alarming, but then Merrill laughed. “What’d she do? Rob a bank?”
“Accessory to armed robbery and murder.”
Another kick in the gut. “Impossible. Not Delilah.”
“She served five years in the women’s penitentiary in New Jersey.”
Finally, the missing piece of the puzzle. That accounted for Delilah ceding guardianship of her daughter to her grandmother. That accounted for her five years of celibacy. That accounted for so many things.
Merrill put up a halting hand when Harry was about to say more. Rising, he began to leave. “I need to be alone, Harry.” He jammed the card in his back pocket and said, “Make the calls to the other team members. We’ll talk tomorrow. I’m sorry to leave you with all this, but I just can’t . . .” He shrugged.
“Just one thing, my friend. Don’t do anything rash. You haven’t heard Lilah’s side of the story.”
Her side? Some omissions were so huge that they amounted to a lie. In essence, she’d been lying to him from the time they’d first met.
It’s over.
Maybe it was never meant to be. She certainly fought hard and long not to have a relationship.
It’s over.
Besides, she never said she loves me. I told her, though. I said those three crazy-ass words. More fool, I!
It’s over.
But Harry says there are two sides to any story. Maybe I should ask for an explanation.
No, it’s over.
It has to be.
Definitely.
Probably.
Maybe.
“Another thing . . . and I know you don’t need another thing at the moment, but your family has been trying to contact you all week.”
They’d been trying to contact him, too. He’d just hit delete on both voice mail and text messages. From everyone.
“Your mother is in a hospital in Hatteras.”
“What? Oh, shit!” He’d thought they were gone by now, back to Jersey. “What’s wrong?”
“I have no idea.”
It had to be serious. His mother was the type who abhorred strange places for intimate things, whether they be the bathroom in a restaurant or a doctor’s examining room in a strange city. She would prefer her own Princeton Medical Center and longtime GP Dr. Phillips.
Once he’d left the building, he hopped onto Delilah’s cycle and rode through town, aimlessly. The skies were getting darker and the wind was picking up, a prelude to the predicted storm to hit tonight or tomorrow. Which did nothing to lighten his mood.
As he rode, he thought, Did I really think this morning that life is good?
Talk about jinxing oneself!
Life sucks!
Could he forgive her? Would she even want his forgiveness? That was the question.
No. The better question was, where could a guy go at three in the afternoon in a staid little town like Bell Cove to get knee-walking drunk?
Chapter 16
Who was it that said trouble comes in threes? How about fives or tens? . . .
It was a day of highs and lows for Delilah.
High, when reunited with her daughter, and the knowledge that soon she would reap rewards from the treasure that might finally make her financially stable. And high, of course with the anticipation of being with Merrill later. Maybe tonight would be the night she would be able to say those three magic words. She certainly felt them. High on love. The best kind of high, she decided.
Low, when she had to deal with her grandmother and all she’d been up to in Delilah’s absence. The woman was freakin’ unbelievable.
Nobody was home when she arrived at the diner/motel property. Her grandmother had never been an early riser unless she had to be. Where could they be in the morning? And what a mess the place was! Dirty dishes in the sink. Unmade bed. Laundry on the floor in various rooms. Wet towels on the floor of the bathroom. Avon products all over the damn place.
Her grandmother had never been a super house cleaner, but it had never been this bad. Not in Delilah’s memory, anyhow.
In her defense, her grandmother hadn’t known she’d be back so early today. But this just showed how they lived when Delilah wasn’t around. Unacceptable!
There was a binder notebook on the kitchen table, the kind her grandmother always used to keep track of her Avon customers, what they’d bought, the price, the date, a notation where they would need a reorder on a certain date, or observations about the person that might lead to a sale.
“Oh, my God!” Delilah said when she flipped through the pages. Her grandmother must have sold Avon produ
cts to every single person in Bell Cove, and she was scalping them with these prices. The total must be over a whopping thousand dollars, or two.
Some of the notations read:
“Ike bgt case Wild Country body wash, tried to sneak a feel. The old fart! Twin brother Mike, much nicer, still old fart. And they’re psychiatrists! Or maybe just psychos. Ha, ha.”
“Melanie Lewis . . . Natural blonde, my patootie!”
“Gave Harry depilatory. No more unibrow. Dandruff problem.”
“Try rosary society at Our Lady by the Sea. Pitch spiritual charms & angel fragrance figurines.”
“Wrinkle creams for all ladies at Patterson house.”
These were only a few of the entries. There were dozens. But then she noticed one in particular.
“Sell remaining Elvis figurines to Delilah for diner and motel. Family discount?”
Hah! Discount for a family member! With a question mark! How about free, you old bat?
Just then, she heard the clatter of metal on metal, a loud muffler, then an engine continuing to run when it was turned off, until it petered out. Immediately followed by car doors slamming and a young voice screaming, “Mommy! Mommy! You’re home!”
She went outside and caught her daughter on a running leap into her arms. She kissed her all over her hair, which was done in a French braid (her grandmother’s work, to her credit) and smelled of Avon’s Wacky Watermelon kids’ shampoo, her cheeks, which were sticky from whatever she’d had for breakfast, and her neck, which still carried the scent of pure baby skin, even if she was five years old.
“I have missed you so much, little girl. Bunches, and bunches, and bunches.”
Wriggling down to stand at her feet, Maggie said, “I’m not little anymore. I growed an inch las’ week. Gramma said so.”
“Now that you mention it . . .”
“Did you bring me a dog?”
“No, I did not bring you a dog.”
“Maybe tomorrow?”
Delilah crossed her eyes at the conniving little imp.
Then Maggie raced toward the back door, yelling back at them, “I gotta pee.”
Delilah directed her attention to her grandmother then. Her hair was braided same as Maggie’s, but that was where the similarity ended. She wore tight red spandex yoga pants that would require a crowbar to get on and off, white athletic shoes with pink pom-pom anklet socks, and a red tank top with a sequined logo, “Yes, They’re Real!”
She gave her grandmother a kiss on her heavily made-up face, barely avoiding the honey-scented e-stick hanging loosely from her lips, then surveyed her unusual attire—unusual for her. “Where were you?”
“Teaching a prebreakfast exercise class over at the Patterson house.”
“What? You don’t get up till ten unless you have to, and you once said that exercise is for losers born with the wrong genes.” And you were smoking those stinking e-cigarettes the whole time, no doubt!
“Can’t a gal turn a new leaf?”
“New leaf, huh? Does that mean you plan to stay?”
Her grandmother’s face turned pink. “For a while. It’s not as bad as I expected.”
“That’s a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one.” She gave her grandmother another once-over and sighed. There were so many things wrong with a grandmother in spandex, but Delilah had much bigger concerns where the old lady was concerned. “Don’t you think that, at your age, it’s time to cut back?”
“Age is relative. And, by the way, don’t take this the wrong way, sweetie, but you need an Avon Anew Brightening Clay Mask for those frowny wrinkles.” With those words, she swanned off toward the patio, with a swing of her too-perfect hips.
Delilah refused to let her grandmother get the last word, and she stomped after her. “I saw your notebook. Are you paying sales tax on all those products you’ve been selling around Bell Cove?”
Her grandmother’s face flushed again, but maybe it was just rouge. “Who says I have to pay sales tax?”
“The government does. Jeez, Gram, don’t tell me you never paid sales tax in Jersey over all those years when you were an Avon Lady.”
“I did when I worked for the company, and they took it out of my checks, but it wasn’t necessary when I sold my own stock.”
“It was necessary, Gram.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Ignorance is no excuse.”
“Are you callin’ me ignerent now? Good golly, girl, is this all the thanks I get for helping you out? Complain, complain, complain. Maybe I should go back to Jersey, after all. At least Jimmy the Goon never nagged.”
“Just threatened to break a few bones.” Delilah realized that she could have chosen a better time to lay out all her concerns and said, “I’m sorry, Gram. I do appreciate everything you do for me and Maggie.”
After that, Delilah gathered up all the dirty laundry in her apartment and added it to the huge piles in the back of Merrill’s pickup truck, and she and Maggie were off to the Laundromat. With the skies turning grayer, she wanted to get the truck emptied before the rains hit.
They filled three of the commercial-size washers and two of the regular ones, with Maggie getting great delight over being able to sort whites from colored or dark fabrics. Her stuffed dog, whom she’d named Randy—not to be confused with Annie’s dog, Sandy, which was impossible, since this one was more like Pluto—sat on the folding table while they worked.
The little girl hadn’t stopped talking since they left the motel parking lot.
“Is this Mister Merrill’s truck? Where is he? Will he tell me another story? Maybe Annie and Andy had a cousin named Lester, who was a clown in the circus, and his mommy and daddy were lion tamers . . . or act-o-bats.”
“That’s some imagination you have there, kiddo.”
“Can I have a dog?”
“Can I have a magic elf who could do painting, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and general contracting work to fix up the diner and motel? All for free.”
“Huh?”
“It was a joke, honey.”
“Oh, will my new school have a playground?”
“Probably.”
“Can you get me a Grinch storybook? Ms. Patterson says they have a grinch contest here at Christmas.”
“You’ve seen the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, but I don’t have the book. Elmer says Gramma has a great butt.”
“He shouldn’t say things like that to her.”
“He didn’t say that to her. He was talkin’ to Rah-ool. But Gramma says that all the time anyhow.”
“It’s okay if a lady says it about herself, but other people . . . men, in particular . . . shouldn’t say it to her.”
“Huh? When I grow up, I’m gonna have a great butt.”
“I’d rather you have a great brain.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“Can I have a dog?”
Delilah reached across the truck seat and tweaked her daughter’s chin.
And so it went the entire day, including when they walked down the street, while the machines were churning away at the Laundromat, to the secondhand clothing store, Out of the Closet.
The owner, George Saunders, took one look at Maggie as she skipped in with Delilah, and said, “Lilah, you are in such luck! Lance just sent me a half dozen boxes of children’s clothing from the Hatteras shop. Some rich folks did a closet cleaning.”
George and his partner, Lance, owned a dozen upscale thrift shops throughout the Outer Banks and into South Carolina down to Myrtle Beach. What didn’t sell in one community did well in another.
“I just called Sally Dawson over at Sweet Thangs to come look-see, but she has only boys . . . three growing boys. So, no conflict with you. Wanna see?”
“Of course.”
Maggie was already off to the side eyeing a pair of red sparkly Dorothy (from The Wizard of Oz) shoes. They would probably be
too big, but she could grow into them, Delilah supposed.
“They’re still in the boxes in the back room, so they might be wrinkled.”
“No problem.”
And he had been right. The boxes were a gold mine of little girl bargains. The usual Gap and Old Navy jeans and tops, with some Kalliope Kids outfits tossed in. But then, there were a few high fashion dresses from couture designers—a pink tulle dress over black-and-white polka dots from some French boutique, and a Lanvin leopard print dress to die for. At fifty dollars each, that was expensive for a thrift shop, but way below the original prices well over five hundred dollars. George gave them to her, a repeat customer, for a combined discount price of sixty dollars. Still expensive, but Delilah figured she had to have some way to celebrate the treasure hunting success.
Not that she wasn’t going to celebrate in another way tonight. Which reminded her that she hadn’t heard from Merrill all day. She checked her cell phone. Nope. No replies to the three previous text messages she’d sent, either. Which was unusual for him. But then, this was an unusual day.
Back to shopping. Delilah discovered that her daughter was a mini fashionista, a born shopper. The deciding factor on any dress was whether it passed the twirl test. Pants couldn’t be so tight they would hinder running. Tops couldn’t be scratchy. And orange was an icky color.
It was fun shopping with her daughter, and she even found a few things for herself. Some of them were chosen by Maggie, who proclaimed, “You have a great butt, too, Mommy.”
From the mouths of babes!
“I heard that,” Sally Dawson said with a laugh. She’d just arrived with her three little boys in tow. “Be prepared. The things your kids say will embarrass you. The trick is to embarrass them first.”
Three adorable boys, with short brown hair and freckles like their mother but pale blue eyes that must come from their father, one of them missing his two front baby teeth, stood behind Sally, looking like they wanted to be anywhere in the world but a clothing store. Three bicycles were parked outside. They all smelled like something sweet, cookies probably, having come from their bakery down the street.
Glancing at Delilah’s overladen shopping cart, Sally made a face. “You got here first.”
