Boo Who

by Rene Gutteridge

  Back in the kitchen, though, her thoughts turned once again to the missing Wise Men. In just a few days, she would have to put the Nativity set away. She still could not imagine who would’ve done such a thing! While her brother was here for the holidays, he’d done some minor investigating and hadn’t turned up a thing. She thought swiping someone’s Wise Men was pretty low, and if she ever found out who did it, they’d be hearing a word or two from her.

  After putting the finishing garnishes on the meatloaf, and attending to the decor on the table, she finally announced that dinner was ready. Wolfe and her father joined her in the dining room.

  When the sheriff finished saying grace, she said, “Dad, I’m worried about Reverend Peck.”

  “Oh?”

  “Church was crazy today. Weren’t you there?”

  The sheriff had stuffed his mouth, so he shook his head. After swallowing he said, “No. Thief wasn’t doing well this morning. I had to bring his food bowl to him and his water. After I scratched his tummy for over an hour, he finally decided he might want to go outside. But ten minutes later he wanted to come inside.”

  “Yes, well, back to Reverend Peck. He’d taken out half the pews, marked off only a handful of parking spaces, and made everyone pay a dollar for a bulletin.”

  “Really? Sounds like we have a newly converted entrepreneur on our hands.” The sheriff snorted out a laugh.

  “Dad, this isn’t a joke. Something’s wrong.”

  The sheriff sighed. “Something’s wrong with this whole town, Ainsley. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you see it? Mayor Wullisworth is just one example. Thief is another.”

  Ainsley stared at her food. “What are we going to do?”

  “Thief’s going to see a shrink.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”

  “Apparently he takes mammals as well as humans.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “He just moved to Skary. Dr. Hass.” The sheriff lowered his voice. “I only heard about him because Melb told Martin to take the mayor there. I don’t know how Melb knows about him, one can only guess. But he comes highly recommended.”

  “You’re taking your cat to a therapist.”

  “Look at him, Ainsley. He hardly moves. Remember how vibrant and alive he used to be? He’s near dead now. What would you propose that I do?” The defensiveness in her father’s tone made her try her best to be supportive. She glanced at Wolfe, whose expression could not hide the shock in his eyes.

  “Whatever you think will help, Daddy.”

  “I’m only telling you this, because maybe that’s what Reverend Peck needs. Maybe his head needs a doctor.”

  She sighed. “All I know is that in all my years of knowing Reverend Peck, he has never preached on the s word before.”

  “Shame?”

  “No. It rhymes with x.”

  “Extra shame?”

  “Sex, Dad.”

  With wide eyes, the sheriff diverted his attention to his potato salad and then matter-of-factly said the therapist’s phone number was on the refrigerator if she wanted to hand it along to the reverend. Then he took his meadoaf and went to the living room to finish watching the ball game.

  Ainsley looked at Wolfe, who was staring down at the table, deep in thought. “You okay, Wolfe?”

  “I can’t help but think this is all my fault,” he said, not looking at her.

  “What’s your fault?”

  “This town depended on me. I’ve let them down.”

  She grabbed his hand. “Wolfe! Don’t talk like that. None of this is your fault. This town has always struggled. For a few years you brought us prosperity, but it’s not your job to do that. And God has a plan for you away from your old life. You must know that, right?”

  Wolfe nodded. “But Ainsley, I’ll be honest. I’m miserable selling cars.”

  “You haven’t sold a car yet, have you?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Not a real one, anyway. Maybe if I do I’ll understand that high Oliver keeps talking about. But right now, it’s all I can do to roll out of bed and get dressed.” He shrugged. “Maybe I should be grateful. Maybe that’s what’s wrong. I’m not being grateful for what I have. Instead I want something different. I thought I wanted an ordinary life. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to make this better.”

  He smiled as he looked in her eyes. “You make it better just by being by my side. I can’t wait for you to be my wife. I can’t wait to see you in your dress on our wed—”

  “Dress! Oh no!”

  “What?”

  “I forgot! I was supposed to go to the tailor yesterday! I made the dress an inch too long.” She hopped up from the table. “I’m going to have to reschedule. But when? I’m supposed to go pick out invitations and design the cake—oh and get bridesmaids’ gifts. Have you booked the rehearsal dinner yet?”

  “Already done.”

  Relief settled her panicked heart. “Okay, good. At least that’s done.” She went to the kitchen and got her folder. “I have to keep up with this list. I’ve got to pay attention, or I’m going to forget something important. Sweetheart, will you excuse me? I’ve got to go write out exactly how we want our invitations worded, okay?”

  Wolfe nodded, and she bounded upstairs, her mind stretching itself in ten different directions. She was usually so organized. Why did things seem so discombobulated?

  She went to her desk drawer to get the invitation catalog. But after five minutes of searching, she couldn’t find it. A familiar tightening of the throat made her sit on the bed and try to hold back the tears.

  She didn’t remember reading anything about a meltdown in her mother’s diary.

  CHAPTER 18

  MELB DABBED THE TISSUE to the corner of her eye, the way she knew a proper woman should. If she could say anything for those romance novels she used to read, they’d taught her some manners. Because what she really wanted to do right now was wail and carry on and blow all of her problems into a Kleenex.

  She looked at Dr. Hass, who seemed somewhat dismayed that she was even shedding tears. What kind of therapist hadn’t seen a person cry before? Maybe it was that she got splotchy. Since she was a kid, she’d been plagued by splotchy crying. Her friends would cry and look adorable. She would cry and look as if she’d rolled in poison ivy.

  “I’m just desperate,” Melb continued. “I have less than a month to my wedding day, Dr. Hass. And I keep eating and eating.”

  “Did you start a hobby?”

  “Oh yes. And I’ve been faithful to it. It’s actually fun. I’ve been owling.”

  “Howling?”

  “Owling. It’s this thing you do with owls. Anyway, it has relieved a lot of stress. But I’m still tempted to eat what I shouldn’t, and when I shouldn’t. I think, Don’t eat that cookie. And my body hears, Eat three cookies.”

  “You say you’re stressed. About the wedding?”

  “Well, not just about the wedding. That’s part of it. Certainly trying to drop this much weight to fit into my wedding dress has been stressful. But I’m also feeling guilty.”

  “About?”

  Melb tore up her tissue, then looked at Dr. Hass, her bottom lip quivering. “The wedding budget. Oliver and I sat down and agreed on a budget, and I’ve completely blown it.”

  “He’ll understand.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He runs a very tight ship at his car business, and if there’s one thing I know about Oliver, he doesn’t fool around about money.”

  “But if you two are to be wed, don’t you think honesty is the best way to start out the marriage?”

  Tears streaked Melb’s cheeks as she nodded. “That would be nice, Dr. Hass. But obviously you’ve been reading too many self-help books. Sometimes in real life, the truth is better left buried until one can fix it so that the other one never knows what happened.”

  “What’s your plan to fix it?”

  M
elb rubbed the bits of Kleenex up and down her cheeks. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Melb,” Dr. Hass said, “I can’t fix your problems by lying for you, or coming up with a scheme. But I can tell you how to find peace in your heart about this situation, and possibly lose weight too. You say that you’ve been getting stressed. A lot of people eat when they are stressed. You say you are under stress because you are hiding this secret about overspending on your wedding budget.”

  “That sounds right,” Melb admitted.

  “So it seems to me, the solution lies in confession.”

  “Confession?” Melb choked on the word.

  “You must confess to Oliver what you have done.”

  Melb shook her head. “No! I can’t do that!”

  “Melb, do you believe you will find peace in your heart if you don’t?”

  “I may not find peace in my heart,” Melb retorted, standing up, “but I will find a piece of pie!”

  “Excuse me?” Dr. Hass asked.

  “I’m hungry. And our time’s up anyway. Don’t you watch the clock?

  For crying out loud, were fifteen minutes over, and I’m not paying another dime!”

  “Melb, please, wait.”

  “Dr. Hass,” Melb said, “if I wanted to hear the word confession, I’d go see the reverend!” She slammed the door behind her.

  Martin Blarty was feeling slightly self-conscious as he sat on the back porch of the mayor’s house in a pair of shorts that hadn’t seen the light of day in three decades, along with his legs. Pasty didn’t really begin to describe his skin, and though it was just he and the mayor, it was still mortifying nevertheless. Not to mention the fact that the scene was complete with beach towels, Hawaiian breezes (a concoction of red punch, pineapple juice, and rum, but since the mayor had forgotten two out of the three ingredients, it was really just punch), sunglasses, and a Beach Boys tape playing in the background.

  The mayor had insisted Martin join him, and Martin, trying to remember Dr. Hass’s advice, decided to let him continue his fantasy, while at the same time dropping subtle hints about reality.

  A little hard to do in this bizarre setting.

  The mayor was chitchatting about this and that, and Martin decided this might be the time to drop some sort of remark about how broke the town was. But suddenly the mayor blurted out, “Maybe I need to find a wife.”

  Martin’s mouth was wide open because his words had been stopped in their tracks. But it remained wide open as he tried to process the mayors words.

  “It’s time. I’ve been a bachelor for far too long, Martin. And what good are the sunny days without someone to share them with?”

  Martin thought he was doing awfully well sharing the sunny days with his friend. Who else would wear shorts in forty degree weather?

  Martin was glad when the mayor got up to go fill their glasses with punch. His emotions ran the gamut, from being utterly angry and despising the mayor for being completely incapable of handling Skary’s dire situation, to feeling sad that the man he thought was so strong had turned out to be so weak.

  When the mayor returned to the porch, with a fresh layer of sunscreen on his nose and two glasses of punch, Martin decided to try again at bringing up the strange new visitors he’d spotted.

  “Probably tourists,” the mayor quipped. “You know they all look the same. Wide-eyed, cameras ready to take a picture of anything deemed interesting, fanny packs wrapped around their bulging waists.”

  Martin wanted to retort, but it was useless. The mayor was only an echo of who he used to be, and though he didn’t want to ignore Dr. Hass’s advice, he also felt that the only way to truly get the mayor back on his feet was to figure out how to save this town. And figuring that out, he believed, meant getting back to the basics of what this town was originally about. He felt sure the town’s history was the answer to its future. In the back of his mind, he outlined a plan to call a town meeting in hopes of gaining more information.

  But finding Skary’s history was going to be the trick.

  There was one person in this town old enough to know and keen enough to remember. But a visit to her house was like walking under a ladder. Bad things were going to follow. First he was going to have to get some pants on.

  “Come in, Marty,” Missy Peeple said, surprised by the visitor but nonetheless cordial.

  “Martin,” he said. “Please, not Marty.”

  “Why can’t I remember that?” she chuckled. “I guess I’ve always been a sucker for rhyme, Mr. Blarty.”

  “I’m sorry for stopping by unannounced.” He entered, taking off his coat.

  “You smell like sunscreen,” Missy said, raising a suspicious eyebrow. Marty always was a strange one.

  His eyes darted away. He shrugged and took a seat on the couch. Only her curiosity about his visit made her decide to drop the sunscreen inquisition. “Coffee?”

  “No, thank you. I’d like to get to the point of why I’m here.”

  “All right.” Missy managed to make it to her chair without her cane. She covered her legs with her quilt and then put her attention on Marty, who looked anxious. “What is it?”

  “As far as I know, you are the oldest resident of Skary.”

  It is true.

  “Well, as you know, the town is in trouble.”

  Missy Peeple could not help the expression she knew tightened her skin and narrowed her eyes, drawing her mouth into a straight line. Of course she knew! It was because of this town’s sudden interest in conscience that she was not able to save it in the first place. Now, of course, he needed her help.

  As far as she was concerned, she’d done all she could. Her life savings was gone, and she was still eagerly awaiting Skary’s transformation into a haven for cat lovers. Yet this town was all too willing to accept another fate. Why should she risk anything more to help save it?

  “What about it? Shouldn’t you be talking with the one man who is responsible? Boo could’ve stopped all of this from happening if he’d had the sense not to fall in love. Have you heard the man is selling cars? What is wrong with him?”

  Marty cleared his throat. “I don’t blame Boo. A lot of things have happened over the years to make Skary what it is and isn’t today. But I still think there is hope to save our town.”

  An eternal optimist always prompted a lengthy sigh. “So why are you here?”

  “I believe in the deepest part of my heart, Miss Peeple, that the key to our future lies within our past.”

  “Is that so?”

  “If we understood our roots, maybe we could find an identity again. Maybe we could understand why we were born, so to speak.”

  Missy threw off the quilt and rose, gesturing for Martin to get her cane. After he did, she walked over to the table where she always kept a pitcher of water. Pouring herself a drink, she cleared her mind of anxieties, trying to convince herself she held the power in this situation. But that wasn’t exactly true anymore. In a desperate, perhaps noble, attempt to save Skary, Indiana, she may have made one fatal mistake.

  She turned back to Marty, forcing calm into her voice. “Martin, do you really believe anybody cares why this town was born? People go about their day-to-day business, forgetting who is responsible for their well-being, mindless of who might help them in their future. All they know is how to get through the day.”

  “I agree. But maybe knowing about this town could spark something, you know? Maybe it will cause a resurgence.”

  “Every day more and more people leave. I noticed just yesterday that the fish and tackle shop is closing.”

  “I know,” Marty sighed. “Tha’ts why I’m desperately seeking the truth. The trouble is, the truth does not seem to want to be found.”

  “Oh?”

  “Records, documents, everything related to Skary’s history seems to have vanished. Rather, it has been taken. I don’t know why, but I intend to find out. Right now, I was hoping you would know about this town, Miss Peeple. I was hoping you’d
heard stories your forefathers had told, that perhaps you’d written something down, or maybe had a journal passed down through the generations. I know the basic history of Skary, like when it was founded and what was built where. But I need to know the heart, do you understand? I want to understand why it came into being.”

  Missy shuffled over to a nearby window, staring out at her limited view of the town. People and cats scurried here and there. Marty wanted the truth. But the truth would mean everything she had worked a lifetime to achieve would suddenly be ripped from her. It meant a sacrifice she was not willing to make.

  Besides, she reminded herself, she no longer held the keys to the truth. She’d entrusted those to Wolfe Boone. She wasn’t sure why. She only knew that perhaps the man who had wrecked their town should hold a new burden on his shoulders. Maybe that burden would be to find out the truth and then to decide what to do with it. Or maybe the burden would come in finding out the truth too late, and knowing he could’ve done something about it.

  At any rate, she’d wiped her hands clean of it. She had told him that the key to the town was inside the pages of his book. Whether he wanted to find the truth or not was up to him.

  Missy turned to Marty. “I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know anything. My family did not share any secrets, if that’s what you are after.”

  “Not secrets. Just truth.”

  Missy shook her head. Her body told her to sit back down. “I have no stories to tell. Only the story of my own life, which may come to an end very soon.”

  Marty’s perpetually dull eyes lit with interest. “Why would you say that?”

  Missy dismissed the thought of drawing sympathy … more like pity … from Marty. “I am old, after all. That is why you’re here, isn’t it?” She smiled.

  Martin rose and went to the front door. “Thank you for your time.” Heavy disappointment rang in his tone.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t help more.”

  Her visitor nodded and then left quietly. Missy could not identify the emotion that strained her throat. Remorse? Relief? Whatever the case, it was nothing a good hard peppermint couldn’t cure.