Death Comes Knocking (The Thea Kozak Mystery Series, Book 10)
Page 2
Beside me, she sighed. I already knew she didn’t want to talk about herself, so I didn’t say anything. Sometimes silence works better than chatter anyway.
After a few miles, she said, “This is not what I planned.”
“Coming here? Moving to Maine?”
She sighed again. “Having this baby alone, in a place where I don’t know anyone.”
It wasn’t much, but I said, “Well, you know me now. And I’m happy to help however I can.” I wasn’t sure how I could help. Invite her to prenatal classes? Offer to be with her when the baby came? The more I thought about it, the more depressing it seemed. No one should have to do this alone.
I tried not to think about my adopted sister Carrie. About what her mother went through and how it had warped her. Her mom assaulted by a relative as a teenager and then shunned by the family.
Jessica went silent again and I left it alone. She was probably thinking about all the things she’d have to do on her own. I really wanted to know why her baby’s father couldn’t be here, but it was not my business. Because the baby’s father had suggested a name and she’d accepted it, I didn’t think this was a case of 'seduced and abandoned.' There was a story she wasn’t telling. I focused on local things instead. I asked if she had found her way to the lake yet, and whether she liked to swim. Whether she’d gone to my favorite farm stand yet. “They have their own honey, and it’s wonderful. So are their berry jams.”
There was humor in her voice when she said, “Haven’t tried swimming yet, but I’m sure I’ll float.”
We both laughed. I had been swimming and yes, floating on my back was kind of hilarious. “At least I don’t feel quite so much like a blimp when I’m in the water,” I said.
“Blimp. Whale. We sure do put ourselves down, don’t we? Aren’t we supposed to be celebrating our fertility? Fulfilling our womanly duty?” she said.
“I think a lot of the people who are eager for us to fulfill our womanly duty will never have to become whales themselves.”
For some reason that made me giggle. I’m not a giggler, but sometimes there’s just a day when everything sets me off. Going baby gear shopping with another mom-to-be was doing it today. I could already picture the two of us wrestling a baby crib onto the roof of my Jeep.
“But you don’t know the sex of your baby, do you?” she said. “So how will you know what to buy?”
“Pink or blue, you mean?”
She made an affirmative noise.
“I like yellow. And green. There’s orange and tan. Red and white. And silly prints and little outfits with funny animals on them.”
“And those little decorated feet.”
“Cloth diapers or disposables?”
She sighed. “Disposables. Right now, my hovel doesn’t even have a washing machine. I’m working on that.”
“Better move fast,” I said, “these big box stores sometimes have a couple of weeks wait for delivery.”
I felt like an idiot as soon as I said it. She was probably doing her best. Despite her secrecy, it was clear to me that Jessica wasn’t here because she’d chosen to come and live in a decrepit cottage in a small Maine town. I wondered if she was hiding from something or someone or if she was on the run. I decided to pry a little. A bit unfair. She was stuck here with me. But if she didn’t want to talk, she could just say so, or use those fine evading skills she’d used yesterday.
“What made you decide to come here?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. She stared out the window and down at her phone.
I tried again. “I saw you arguing with someone in your driveway yesterday. A friend? A relative?”
She didn’t bother to evade. “Not that it’s any of your business, Thea, but that’s the person who’s helping me move. We were discussing…” She put a sarcastic spin on the word ‘discussing.’ “…her choice of that cottage. I’m…” A silence. “I’m pretty resilient. Not especially fussy. I can live anywhere. Tent. Army barracks. Trailer park. But I am not doing that to Amy. She needs a decent place to live. Which…whatever I might have said yesterday…is not this cottage. I’m working on it, but I told her I’m not a miracle worker and she’d better find something better. I guess you could say we had a difference of opinion. She insisted this was the best she could do at the last minute.”
A sigh. “I don’t believe her, which I said, and then she got huffy and said she was doing her best to help me under the circumstances. And then I said that I assumed she helped people like me under urgent circumstances all the time, wasn’t that her job, and she pretty much walked away. Well. Drove away in her little rented Honda, and after a while she came back with some groceries and we settled into a silent détente. For now.”
I wasn’t going to press her on the circumstances. It would come out eventually if she needed or wanted to talk about it, but my mind was throwing up all kinds of interesting scenarios. My best guess was that something was up with the husband, which meant Jessica needed to be hidden.
Freeport was the usual summertime scrum of tourists, but I know some secrets about finding parking, and pretty soon we were in an outlet store, oohing and aahing over adorable tiny clothes.
I’d wondered about her using a credit card and revealing her whereabouts, but she paid with a wad of cash. After hitting two stores, we put our packages in the car and got ourselves some lunch. People often think of Maine as a backwater bumpkin state, but we’ve got plenty of great restaurants. This wasn’t Portland, but the talent has spread up the coast. We had fabulous salads with greens and lobster and fruit and an interesting sesame dressing. We had hot-from-the-oven popovers, despite it being summer. We drank raspberry-lime rickeys in lieu of chardonnay. Then we went for ice cream, sitting on a bench in the sun, people watching.
I still didn’t know much about her, but she had a keen eye for human foibles and a wicked talent for description. We laughed so hard we almost spilled our cones, and neither of us cared.
“The things people wear,” she gasped at one point, as an overweight fellow in clinging short shorts and a tank top went by.
“And the things you can’t unsee.”
What I wanted to unsee was the man’s hairy purple belly thrust out under his top and draped over his shorts. I know. We’re all supposed to be accepting of every body type and fat shaming is taboo. But we didn’t shame anyone, we just giggled like a pair of snarky middle school girls.
On the way home, we headed to Target to look for cribs and car seats, and giant packages of teeny newborn diapers.
The truth was that shopping for baby things was fun. More fun when there were two of us.
We were having a grand time until we came out with our full carts, stowed our treasure in the car, and drove to the loading area to pick up her crib. The guy brought it out in its giant cardboard box, dumped it at our feet, and started to retreat.
I was about to say something when Jessica said, “Stop! You hold it right there.” When the man turned in surprise, she said, in a voice that didn’t suggest helplessness, “Can’t you see that we need help?” She said it in a deliberately loud voice, so all the other people around us who were loading grills and outdoor furniture stopped to see what was up. A woman after my own heart.
Once it became clear that what was up was two very pregnant women who needed to get that crib onto the roof of a car, we had all the brawny male help two women could ask for. Brawny men and a skinny, fit-looking woman in her seventies who produced rope and bossed our volunteers around like a pro.
We laughed about that as we rode home, until she said, “But Thea…now we have to get it off.”
“Easy,” I said, “we’ll get your tall, blonde houseguest to help.”
“She’s not a…” But Jessica stopped. “Sure. That’s a great idea.”
She sure didn’t like the other woman, but it sounded like Jessica was stuck with her. I tried making conversation about the cottage and whether the woman could find her something better. This time, I didn’t ge
t her attempt at cheerful deflection. I got tears.
“It’s a pit. I’m furious that they put me there, and while she says she’ll try, she doesn’t seem to care that it’s unfit for me, never mind my baby.”
There was silence for a while and then she said, “Forget I told you that. Please.”
When I dropped her off, we did tap the other woman to help unload it and carry it inside. I introduced myself, but the woman didn’t reciprocate, so I labeled her ‘Honda woman.’ Honda woman was supposed to be helping Jessica get settled, but her standoffish reluctance on top of Jessica’s meltdown made me very sorry for my new neighbor. I went home not much more informed than I had been the day before, but more certain that, in a pinch, Jessica could take care of herself. And that if Honda woman was all she had for help, she’d have to.
Interesting. A mystery in my own backyard. And a morning having fun. Most days, fun wasn’t in my vocabulary.
The rest of the day was not so much fun. No more tiny socks or cute little outfits. My dance card was full. I might be working from home, but the work at EDGE never stopped. Even though we were consultants to independent schools and it was summer, the work, and the crises, real or perceived, just kept coming. The looming prospect of the fall semester always sent our client schools scurrying to get things done.
Along with reports and surveys, helping to write crisis management plans and honor codes, there were the crises themselves. That was my specialty, so it was me Sarah called to report that a school in eastern Maryland had a cheating scandal involving their summer school students. They needed our help, they wanted someone on campus right now, and I was the person for the job. Should she book me a flight tomorrow?
It was summer in Maine, with all the good things that entailed. Swimming, poking around in my first ever attempt at a garden. Working on the house. Sitting out on the back porch sipping mocktails (and real drinks for the person who wasn’t pregnant) and eating salads. The last thing I wanted was to leave my little oasis and fly to a hotter part of the country. Especially since pregnancy was already making me hot, and not in a good way. But handling campus emergencies was my specialty, and expanding EDGE Consulting’s reach into other parts of the country was part of the new business plan Suzanne and I had made.
I had a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so I said, “Book me an early flight for day after tomorrow and email me the details and names of my contacts. I’ll call and let them know when I’m coming and get the scoop on their problem.” Then, even though I didn’t want to be away from Andre even for a night, I said, “And book me a hotel, just in case.”
“Will do,” she said. “It’s so nice to be back working at EDGE again. I was never happy after you guys moved the business to Maine.”
“And I discovered you were irreplaceable. How are the kids doing?”
“Loving it. Making friends at summer camp. Playing outside until dark. They are having a perfect childhood. If they miss their dad, I’m not seeing it. I think they’re just grateful that the fighting has stopped.”
Sarah had been my secretary back in Massachusetts before Suzanne’s husband got a job as headmaster at a Maine private school and we’d moved the business. The move had made it easier for my relationship with Andre Lemieux, the Maine state police detective I met when he was investigating my sister Carrie’s death. It had meant, though, that we’d left Sarah behind. She couldn’t just move her husband and family. One is not supposed to be pleased about a failed marriage, but Sarah’s had been pretty miserable, and I was over the moon when she told me she was divorcing, moving to Maine, and wondering if she might get her old job back.
Since her replacement couldn’t be trusted to do anything right, getting her job back was not a problem. Now, with a handful of new staff, and Sarah competently running my life, things at the office were great.
With a business trip on the horizon, I went to my closet to see if anything in my current wardrobe of circus tents looked sufficiently professional. I called myself a whale, but I actually looked like a tall, slim woman who had accidentally swallowed a basketball. That should have made finding clothes easy, since plenty of summer dresses hang loosely from the shoulders. Those cute summer dresses, though, have some major drawbacks. They all seem to be designed for women with fashionably small chests, and I had an unfashionably large one. Fitting both a full bosom and a basketball presented challenges, never mind finding something that wasn’t so short people would think I’d forgotten to put on pants. To complicate things further, I like clothes with pockets, which few pieces of women’s clothing have.
As I stared into the closet, I wished I could wear wildly colorful clothes like my new neighbor. But getting an agitated headmaster and an upset faculty and staff to take me seriously would not work so well if I showed up looking like a hippie. It’s bad enough that I have wild hair unless I straighten it with brushes and product. I settled for a sleeveless A-line jersey dress—black, of course—and a flowing black and white flowered linen cardigan. My feet hadn’t swelled, at least not yet, so my smart, strappy sandals would do. Their modest wedge heel puts me over six feet, which helps to command a room.
Pressing down the chorus of “I don’t wanna” that the trip engendered, I decided that if I had to be away on business later in the week, today I got to play in the garden. When Andre came home, we’d go to the lake and swim, and then he could grill some fish while I boiled corn and made a salad. My first ever ripe tomato was waiting on the kitchen island, and in one of my raised beds, I had so much lettuce I could feed a family of five. So far, the bane of Maine farmers—the cuddly and destructive woodchuck—hadn’t found our yard.
I put on my grubby garden pants and was about to tie on my sunhat when duty pulled me to the desk. I printed out Sarah’s email, scanned the brief description of Eastern Shore Academy’s problem, and called the headmaster’s number.
When a male voice answered, I said, “Dr. Kingsley? It’s Thea Kozak.”
I got a confused-sounding, “Thea Kozak?”
“From EDGE consulting. This is Eastern Shore Academy? I’m looking for Dr. Kingsley.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” the man said. “Dr. Kingsley has just stepped away from her desk. Do you want to hold or go to voicemail?”
Sarah had neglected to tell me that Dr. Kingsley was a woman, and I’d failed to do my homework. “Can you take my number and ask her to call me?”
He took my number, still sounding confused. I could only hope that he’d remember to give it to her. Then, tucking my phone in my pocket, I headed out to the garden.
This time I got out the door, across the deck, and down the steps. I was reaching for my trowel when I was interrupted by the phone again. The caller ID said that it was Dr. Kingsley. I sat on the step and answered.
“Ms. Kozak. It’s Denise Kingsley, here at Eastern Shore. Thank you so much for getting back to me. Has your staff explained my problem?”
“Not in very much detail, Dr. Kingsley. It would be great if you could go over it.”
I dumped my hat and gloves, trowel and garden trug on the steps and went back inside, pulling up a fresh page on the computer so I could take notes. I put the phone on speaker and set it beside me. “I’m ready,” I said. “Tell me about your situation. My secretary said you had a cheating problem?”
“A cheating problem, yes, but more like a cheating and hacking problem. Do you have much computer expertise?”
I didn’t, but I knew someone who did. I knew the Sherlock Holmes of computers.
“Not my area,” I said, “but I have an expert we can call on if necessary.”
“Excellent. And I understand that you’ll be with us tomorrow?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
She made a disappointed sound, then asked, “And can he…your computer expert…join us?”
“I will see if she can. She’s in great demand, as you can imagine, but she usually makes time for me.”
Ha! I wasn’t the only one who made assumptions.
I thought the sender should be pretty easy to trace. I wondered why the school’s computer people couldn’t have handled it, so I asked the obvious question: “Why do you need an outside consultant, Ms. Kingsley? Is there something unusually sensitive about the students involved?”
She sighed. “I’m afraid so. This is our special summer ‘catch up’ program for minorities and challenged students who will be joining us in the fall. We have a post-high school year that’s very popular, and I guess you could call it a pre-post high school summer program for students who are further behind. This is kind of embarrassing, but things are so charged these days that even the suggestion that we’re accusing someone of cheating can become such a big deal that—” She hesitated, and added, “especially when we’re dealing with minority students.”
“So if there’s an allegation of cheating in this population, it’s better if it comes from an outside expert?”
“Exactly. Thank you for understanding. I probably shouldn’t say this aloud, but frankly, it bothers me that we can’t hold everyone to the same standard. That we can’t be open and honest about our process as well as our rules. You work with a lot of schools there at EDGE, so you and Suzanne know how common cheating has become. It’s almost like a game to some of these kids. We do our best, but sometimes it seems like they’re always a step ahead.”