“Jo, help!” Deirdre cried. “I’ve glued my fingers together!”
CHAPTER 6
Jo stepped back and looked at the box she had filled with various craft items. It was the second of two. If she didn’t stop soon she’d have half her stock packed up to show to Bob Gordon at the country club.
“Charlie, I’m so glad you’re able to help out. There’s no way I could haul this stuff by myself.”
“It’s okay, Aunt Jo. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
That was the truth, Jo realized, with an inner sigh. Carrie had been confiding of late her continuing worries about her son and his apparent lack of drive. Since dropping out of baseball eighteen months ago, Charlie had done very little with his free time beyond the household chores his parents required of him. And those he had to be pushed and dragged through, according to Carrie, which only caused more tension between him and his father. Dan, once he’d accepted Charlie’s lack of interest in team sports, had tried to get him involved in some way in Dan’s home improvement business. But Charlie, while showing some budding skills in carpentry, had been such a source of aggravation with his reluctance to follow Dan’s precise directions that Carrie had insisted, for the sake of preserving what was left of their father-son relationship, that Charlie lay down his hammer.
That had left, however, large chunks of unfilled time in Charlie’s after-school hours, chunks which he had been occupying, when his parents weren’t around, with television and video games. Carrie feared his brain, which was capable in the past of generating As and Bs in school, was slowly turning to mush.
Jo, though not totally delighted with this current manifestation, was fond of Charlie, and wanted to do what she could to bring back the brightness she felt sure still lurked there. His showing up to help with the store clean-up the other night, though it was at Carrie’s instigation, had at least got him moving. It gave Jo the idea to ask Carrie what she thought of paying him a modest sum to help out now and then with store-related things. Carrie was all for it, and Charlie, characteristically, neither cheered nor groused, but simply showed up. Jo decided to take that as a positive sign and put him to work helping transport her things to the club.
“Do you know much about the country club?” she asked Charlie, as they drove out of the small parking lot next to the Craft Corner and onto the street.
“Uh-uh. My folks don’t belong. Too expensive. Some kids I know have part time jobs there, though.”
“Really? That might come in handy.”
“For what?”
“After I finish with the club manager, I want to talk to people who worked with Kyle Sandborn, the guy who was killed in my shop. See what I can learn about him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If you see anyone you know, maybe you could help me out there. You think?”
“Mmm.” Charlie’s enthusiasm was underwhelming.
The rest of the drive passed in silence until Jo pulled up to the entrance of the Abbotsville Country Club, marked by an ornate sign which hung from the arch between two open, wrought-iron gates. Jo drove in, and, as she progressed up the long drive, she sized up the main building. The club house had been built in the antebellum style, with tall white pillars and second-story veranda. However, the white vinyl siding gleaming in the sun signaled its age to be closer to five than a hundred and fifty five years.
Pseudo-historical had sprung up a lot in southern –and northern – Maryland, with developers aiming to appeal to the growing sector of nouveau riche. Carrie told her the country club had been flooded with applications within days of its opening, its high membership costs apparently not a problem for certain segments of Abbotsville and some of its newer, high-end suburbs.
Jo parked, and climbed out of the car to open her trunk. As she did so, she heard the thunk of tennis ball against racquet that came from the high-fenced courts to her right. Golf carts creeping along the path leading to the distant greens gave off a soft whirr. She pulled out one of her boxes and looked around. So this was where Kyle Sandborn had spent his days. It was certainly an agreeable spot. What, though, had made him so particularly disagreeable? Well, Jo thought, as Charlie reached for the second box and slammed the trunk closed, that was one of the things she aimed to find out. But first she had to track down Bob Gordon and convince him she could put together a proper craft show. Even snoops, after all, had bills to pay at the end of the month.
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Bob Gordon didn’t need much convincing. He positively beamed at having found someone willing to organize and set up the craft show, and seemed unconcerned with exactly how she went about it. A portly man of about fifty, he looked like someone who spent more time behind his desk or in the club dining room than utilizing any of the fitness or sports activities his club offered. He barely glanced at the various items Jo had so carefully packed up, and quickly bustled her over to the terrace which held tables for outdoor dining.
“This is where you can set up,” he said. “We can rearrange these tables any way you like, take away the chairs, bring in larger, folding tables, whatever. If the weather gets damp, we can pull down the awning or, if worse gets to worse, move it all inside.”
Jo took in the spacious area which faced the golf course beyond. “This will be perfect,” she said, delighted. She could hardly believe her luck, having half expected to be squashed into a dark corner near the gift shop..
“We like to include the ladies’ groups from our local churches and such, too. They raise a few dollars selling their homemade cakes and doilies, and it draws more people to the show. Your task, besides setting up and selling things from your store, of course, would be to coordinate those groups, as well as bring in a few other types of professional craftsmen. You know, maybe decoy carvers, or potters, things like that. It means a lot of time on the phone, and can sometimes seem like herding cats. Think you can do it?”
“No problem. Just give me your list of names, and I’ll get right to work on it. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Mr. Gordon.”
“Call me Bob. And it’s my pleasure. I’ve had to oversee this in the past, and it’s just not my kind of thing. The board, however, feels it’s good community relations for the club, and the members enjoy it.”
“It’ll be great exposure for my new shop too. Plus, in a setting like this, all the items can’t help but look amazing. Your grounds and facilities are beautiful.”
Gordon’s smile broadened. “We try our best. Look around some more, Ms. McAllister, if you like. Get familiar with the layout. I’d take you myself, except I have prospective members coming. I’ll have someone get you a copy of our file – names, phone numbers, lists of things we did in the past. If you have any questions after you look it over, just give me a buzz.”
With that, Bob Gordon trotted off, surprising light on his feet for his size, and clearly delighted to have delegated away a necessary but somewhat burdensome task.
Jo turned to Charlie, who had shadowed her mutely the entire time. “Guess we didn’t need to bring all this stuff after all, huh? Let’s drop it back in the car, and take up Mr. Gordon’s carte blanche.” At Charlie’s puzzled look she rephrased, “Let’s look around.”
From the car they headed toward the tennis area, Jo remembering what Javonne Barnett had said about Kyle working at the tennis desk. She led Charlie along the winding walkway past the tennis courts and found the door to the tennis shop. On entering, they encountered several women of various ages in tennis togs milling about, apparently gathering for scheduled matches. The young woman behind the desk, wearing a green polo with the Country Club’s logo, was showing a new racquet to one, and a college-aged boy knelt on the floor farther back, unpacking cans of balls.
The players heads swiveled toward Jo and Charlie, but not recognizing prospective opponents, quickly turned back to chatting with each other. Jo sensed Charlie’s reluctance to wind through this unfamiliar, overwhelmingly feminine scene, and encouraged him with a smile. “We can hang around the app
arel shop over there,” she said, “until things clear out a bit.”
They lingered over tables stocked with visors, sweat bands and tennis socks, Jo fingering idly through racks of tennis shirts, shorts, and warm-ups, Charlie shifting from foot to foot, until finally the lively group drifted out to the courts and the prospective racquet customer left. Jo headed over to the desk as the young woman there was re-hanging the demo racquet. She turned, and flashed Jo a smile.
“Hi. Can I help you? Need to reserve a court?”
“No, we’re kind of just looking around.”
“New members?”
“Actually, I’ll be handling the fall craft show here this year for Bob Gordon. I’m Jo McAllister. I own Jo’s Craft Corner.”
Jo paused, watching as the young woman, whose name tag identified her as, “Tracy”, connected the dots. Her pale complexion flushed. “Jo’s Craft Corner. That’s where Kyle...?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it was.”
“God, that must have been awful.”
Jo nodded. “It was.”
Jo gave the girl a moment. As Tracy’s cheeks faded back to her normal shade, Jo noticed the fellow working on the tennis balls looking over at them.
“Were you a friend of Kyle’s?” Jo asked the girl.
“Um, yeah, I mean, he worked here and all. We weren’t always here at the same time, though. But I knew him. Just not real well.”
“I met him for the first time on that day,” Jo said. “He didn’t seem very happy to be working a clown gig.”
Tracy smiled. “No, I wouldn’t think so. Kyle, I think, was planning to be the next Johnny Depp or Leonardo DiCaprio, or something. He was always talking about his latest role at the playhouse, and how it was going to be a springboard to a career in New York or Hollywood.”
“So working here was pretty much a stop-gap for Kyle?”
Tracy’s co-worker behind the counter snorted loudly. “You could say that,” he said, picking up the now-empty packing box and sauntering over as he compacted it. “That is, if you could call it working at all.”
“Ryan! Kyle’s dead!”
“Yeah, and it’s too bad, and all. But it doesn’t make him any less of a jerk when he was alive.”
Tracy winced at the harshness of Ryan’s words, but Jo noticed she didn’t correct him.
“You didn’t care for Kyle, I take it.”
“Who would? He was a pain in the butt most of the time, always talking like he was some big-deal actor getting ready for his next role, putting up with all us little people. He only actually worked when Mr. Gordon happened to be around.”
“That’s not true,” Tracy protested. “I know for a fact he stayed late sometimes when he didn’t have to, if the mixed doubles teams finished late.”
“Yeah, and you know why?” Ryan planted one elbow on the counter and leaned toward Jo. “He was spying on them.”
“Spying?”
“He called it ‘doing character studies’, which was a load of crap. He was sneaking around, eavesdropping on everyone’s conversations.”
“For future roles?”
Ryan laughed. “Yeah, right. Plus he dramatized everything, turning the stuff he picked up into some kind of soap opera plot, like he was directing a movie or something, and everyone around him were actors in some screenplay.”
“Yeah, actually, that’s right,” Tracy joined in. “Kyle tried to convince me once that a couple of the mixed doubles people were having an affair. I couldn’t see it. These were two really nice people who just happened to need a partner to play in the league. They liked tennis, not each other, I mean, not in that way. It seemed pretty over the top.”
Ryan grinned, nodding. “He once told me Mr. Gordon must be embezzling funds from the club, and you know why?”
Jo shook her head.
“Because he showed up one day driving a new Lexus. Like Gordon couldn’t afford it? He makes, well, I don’t know what he makes. But it must be enough to afford a Lexus. Kyle said he was keeping an eye on him.”
“Did any of these people realize he was, ah, studying them?”
“Probably not,” Ryan said. “He could be pretty smooth about it. But who knows?”
Indeed, Jo thought.
The phone rang. As Tracy reached for it, a player rushed in from the courts holding up a racquet with a broken string. Jo could see their discussion about Kyle was at an end, and she drew Charlie away from the desk and out the door.
They walked a few feet down the path before Jo turned to the teen. “What did you think?”
“About this guy Kyle?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sounds like Ryan didn’t like him much.”
“I got that too. Did Ryan sound believable to you, or did he seem to be putting it on a little thick about what Kyle was doing around here?”
“I don’t know.” Charlie looked down at his shoes for a few moments. “That girl Tracy is pretty hot.” Charlie flashed an embarrassed grin. “Maybe Ryan was trying to impress her. Or maybe Kyle was always hitting on her and it ticked Ryan off.”
“Ah, I hadn’t thought of that. Some good points, Charlie.”
Charlie threw Jo a hint of a smile, then gazed back at his shoes, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “But I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe Kyle really was a jerk.”
Jo could confirm that part, at least from the way Kyle had behaved at her Grand Opening. But were his actions here at his job as over the top as Ryan claimed? And if so, who else might have noticed?
They reached the car, and Jo searched through her pockets for her keys As she unlocked the passenger door, she noticed Charlie looking off toward a small group of grounds workers walking toward the golf course with a cart of tools, a couple of them probably high schoolers.
“Anybody you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Like to go over and talk to them?” she asked, feeling on a roll from the tennis shop and eager to keep it going.
Charlie shrugged. “Uh-uh,” and climbed into the car.
Jo looked back at the group longingly. She weighed her chances of success at strolling over, commenting on the weather, and casually turning the topic to Kyle Sandborn. The scale tipped heavily toward ‘not good’. She sighed, and slid behind the wheel, deciding what she learned from Tracy and Ryan would have to do for now.
CHAPTER 7
Jo settled in the cubicle she called an office the next morning, eager to start working on the craft show while Carrie dealt with customers. Bob Gordon had sent over a thick packet containing information on the club’s past craft shows. She started by calling Phyllis Lenske, head of the Ladies’ Sodality at St. Adelbert’s, who had hosted a high-grossing table last year.
“Another show? Oh, how nice,” Phyllis responded. But Jo’s hand, which had moved to pencil the group in, halted as Phyllis quickly qualified her interest with, “Let me check with Mary Louise, first. She’s having knee replacement surgery, but I really can’t remember if it’s this month or next. And we would definitely need Susan Crosby to pitch in, but I’ll have to find out when she and her husband are taking that cruise to the Bahamas,” as well as several other problems that stood in the way of a definite answer.
Jo got an enthusiastic response when she called the office of the Abbotsville United Methodist Church, but then she was given the numbers of several more women to call who “may or may not be available for the project. And thank you so much for thinking of us....”
Even the professional craftsmen she contacted left her hanging, some describing their schedules as in flux and saying they would therefore need to hold off on a definite answer for a bit. “But really, what a nice opportunity it sounded like.” Others responded only with messages on their answering machines that promised to get back to the caller “very soon”. It quickly became clear why Bob Gordon had been so happy to give her the job.
“Arrgh!” Jo cried, after hanging up from possibly her twentieth unproductive call. “Herding cats is right. Gordon must
be dancing in his office right now.”
“I thought the phrase was ‘herding chickens’.” Carrie looked over from the stamping section where she stood, filling out an order sheet.
“No, it has to be cats. A chicken might at least gift you with an egg for your efforts. Cats give you nothing, and the harder you try, the more they secretly laugh at you. These people are cats, and they’re all rubbing their paws beside their phones right now, saying, ‘Hee, hee, she thinks she’s actually going to get cooperation from us, snicker, snicker.'”
“Spoken as one who never owned a cat, or course.”
“There’s a good reason for that.” Jo got up from her chair and stretched her tired back. “And as soon as I think of it, I’ll let you know. What’s on our agenda for tonight?”
“The scrapbooking workshop. But you’re on your own for that. I’m going to ‘Parents’ Night’ at the school.”
“Oh, yeah. Guess I better bone up on scrapbooking some more. They never taught it at Art School, you know, mostly because it didn’t exist at the time.”
“We all kept scrapbooks as kids. Mine were always a mess, though, just pages with everything I wanted to save thrown in – awards certificates, school pictures, dried corsages. This is a lot different, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely. This is a real art form, Carrie. Each page is decorated according to the theme of the entry, snapshots are trimmed to set off the subject, and everything is arranged on layers of beautiful papers. It can be quite elaborate. And the range of tools available,” Jo moved over to the scrapbooking section, pointing out the stock, “embossers, calligraphy pens, paper punchers, special paper trimmers –.”
“Sounds like a great hobby to encourage,” Carrie said with a grin. “The more enthusiastic the scrapbooker, the better your business.”
“Right! Tonight’s workshop, though, is for beginners, of which I still consider myself one.”
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