by Jeff Shelby
Her face clouded with anger. “She wishes. Irv wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole.”
“Irv's a ten-foot putz,” Grandma Billie muttered. For someone who claimed to be hard of hearing, she was picking up every word we were saying.
“So they aren't friends, either?” I asked.
“Well...no.” Gloria averted her eyes as a wave of color washed over her cheeks. “They used to be...friends. But not any longer.”
The way she said ‘friends’ made me think she meant something other than friends. Who knew seniors were so…promiscuous?
“Irv saw through her, just like everyone else has,” Gloria said. She was looking at me again, and her eyes were hard. “She was kicked out of Apple Lake because she made such a nuisance of herself.”
“Kicked out? Of the community?” I asked, disbelieving. “Can homeowner's associations actually do that?”
“It’s the board,” Gloria explained. “Not a homeowner’s association. And she broke the rules, repeatedly, so she had to go. The board asked her to move out of Apple Lake because she had become such a problem. It had never happened before.” Her expression darkened. “Unfortunately, we can't keep her from coming on the premises, though. What is it, a restraining order or something? We don’t have one of those. But if she continues to cause disturbances like tonight, we might have to look into that.”
“I hate to tell you, Glo,” Grandma Billie interjected. “But you grabbed her first.”
Gloria glared at her mother again. “You are not helping, Mother.”
“Well, I'm not trying to help,” the old woman said, then cut her eyes to me. “Ask her what started all of this.”
“Mother!”
“Ask her,” Grandma Billie said with a sly grin. “Just ask her.”
Jake and I looked at Gloria.
She sighed. “It was a while ago. And she just took it all the wrong way.”
“She meaning Vivian?” Jake clarified.
Gloria folded her hands together and rested them on the table. “Yes. Vivian. She…she wasn't working out. They just weren't meshing.”
“Yeah. That was the reason,” Grandma Billie said.
“Shut up, Mother, or I'll wheel you back to your room right now.”
“Good,” Grandma snapped back. “I’m tired. It’s hours past my bedtime.”
“Would you like me to take you?” Jake asked, already half-standing.
She waved her hand, indicated he should sit down. “Let her finish.”
Gloria refocused. “She wasn't working out, as I was saying. They just decided to make a change.”
“Who did?” I asked. “I'm confused.”
“The GG's,” Gloria said. I raised my eyebrows, still not understanding, and she added, “Vivian used to be their lead singer. I replaced her.”
There was more drama in Apple Lake than at Emily's high school.
“They offered her a place in the band,” Gloria continued. “A different position. She could play the triangle if she wanted. But she refused. And she's been furious ever since.”
“Was she not a good singer?” I asked.
“She's a lovely singer,” Gloria said. “Beautiful voice.”
“So what was the problem?” Maybe the problem was that Vivian had been replaced by someone who very obviously could not sing.
Gloria unfolded her hands and started wringing them in the same way she had when Irv had showed up at her house. “There were multiple problems. Too many to name, really. And I can't even remember them all.” She forced her hands back to the table. “She just refused to be a professional and she has been awful to me ever since.”
“Go figure,” Grandma Billie said.
Gloria gave her mother one last icy glance, then smiled. “I need to get back with the band. We're going to play an encore. A sort of apology for what just happened. I will see you all after Born To Run!”
She hustled off toward the stage just as Emily and Will returned with their sodas. The girls followed a few seconds later, sad-faced because they had been unsuccessful in their wig retrieval efforts.
“Emily,” I said.
She frowned at me. She knew my tone, knew I was getting ready to ask her to do something she wouldn’t want to do.
“Would you and Will mind taking Grandma Billie back to her room?” I stole a look at the woman in the wheelchair. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly slack. She was either an excellent actress or she really had drifted off this time.
“Can we go, too?” Grace asked.
I glanced at Jake, who shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
“I’ll steer,” Will said.
“No, I want to push her!” Grace said. She scurried behind the chair and placed her hands on the bars.
“Mom asked me,” Emily informed them. “And I’m the oldest. And I have my driver’s permit.”
“So you’re more qualified to push a wheelchair?” Will asked in disgust. “You can barely back out of the driveway.”
Emily glared at her brother. “I can, too. Just not when there’s snow. Or traffic.”
Grace opened her mouth to object but I held up a hand. The last thing we needed was another brawl in the club, and more bodies tumbling to the ground. “Emily will be in charge of the wheelchair. Will can navigate.” I smiled at the younger girls. Sophie hadn’t spoken up, but I could tell she wanted a job, too. “The two of you can take turns opening and closing doors. And pushing elevator buttons.”
There was a little grumbling, but they all did as they were told. As Emily took control of the wheelchair, Grandma Billie opened her eyes and winked at me. She quickly resumed her position, tilting her head and relaxing her jaw.
I chuckled. She was quite the character.
Vern was plugging the amps back in and Gloria was tapping the microphone. Oscar was missing a drumstick and was on his hands and knees, crawling around the kit.
“So, do you believe all that?” Jake asked me.
“Believe that the kids would argue over who could push their great-grandmother’s wheelchair? Yes. Absolutely.”
“Not what I meant,” he said, smiling. “I meant Gloria’s story. About Irv and Vivian and everything else.”
“Believe what she told us? Sure.” I glanced at the stage. The missing drumstick had been found, the amps were plugged back in, and Gloria held the microphone, poised and ready to perform their encore. “But do I think she told us everything?” I shook my head. “Not even close.”
FIFTEEN
Grace's shoulders slumped as we walked. “Are we ever going to actual Disney World?”
It was the next morning and we'd decided to hit up EPCOT. It was the park I'd always wanted to see the most. The pictures that friends had posted of the flowers and the gardens and all of the different countries always made me envious, and I was thrilled that I was finally getting to go. We'd consulted both the tour book and the app and saw that it was a low attendance day, so it was a no-brainer.
Given that, according to the kids, it was the park with the least-exciting rides and the most walking, it had not been their first choice for the day.
Particularly Grace's.
“Yes, we will get there,” I said. “Maybe on our next visit to Florida.”
She turned around, horrified.
“She's kidding, Grace,” Jake told her. He handed her a twenty-dollar bill. “Why don't you and Sophie go see if you can find Icees at the Japanese place? Catch up with us near England.”
She snatched the money and they took off running.
“What about us?” Will asked, pulling an earbud from his ear. “I'm hungry.”
“I have snacks,” I reminded him. I’d gotten up at the crack of dawn to hit up the grocery store, buying snacks along with other groceries so we could cook meals at the house.
Jake handed him a twenty. “Given that you won't eat in any other country, I'm assuming we can meet up with you in...America.”
He plucked the bill from Jake’s hand and stuffed
it in his pocket. “America The Beautiful. I'll text you guys and find you.”
“I'm coming with,” Emily said. “I want French fries.” She stopped. “Oh, wait. I could go to France and get a croissant, couldn’t I? Is that near the United States?”
“No, dummy. There’s this massive thing called the Atlantic Ocean between them.”
She swatted her brother. “I meant here, dork.”
“Why don’t you go find out?” Jake suggested.
But Will was already consulting the map of the park. “Yeah, they’re close by. You can have my change.”
“You can have a punch in the face,” Emily said as they walked off.
But they walked away together, and when Emily playfully shoved him, he just laughed and took off at a jog. She shrieked and ran after him, knocking the baseball hat off his head as she passed him.
“You have to stop plying them all with money,” I said to him when I was satisfied that they really were just goofing off and not fighting.
He laced his fingers with mine. “You give me no credit. It was all part of the plan.”
“What plan?”
“Look around, Daisy,” he said. “What do you see?”
“I see Norway over there,” I said, taking in the scenery surrounding us. “There's the Japanese pagoda. And some beautiful gardens I want to go walk through.”
“Let me rephrase. What don't you see?”
“Sweden?” It would have made much more sense if they’d put the countries in some sort of geographical order. I wondered if Disney had a suggestion box.
“Children,” Jake said, emphasizing the word. “You don't see any children. We have a few minutes to ourselves.”
I squeezed his hand. “Okay, that was probably worth the forty bucks,” I admitted.
“I'm aware.”
We strolled in the sunshine. The flowers in the gardens around the lake were gorgeous, vibrant colors that didn't show up in Minnesota until summer started. The water shimmered, the birds chirped, and the air was scented with the delicious smells of exotic cuisine. The humidity was virtually nonexistent and I was enjoying Florida more than I thought I might.
“Let's hear it,” Jake said, after we’d walked in silence for a few minutes.
“Hear what?”
We moved to our left, staying out of a Japanese family's photo by a Nordic ship. They all held their fingers in a peace sign, and I wondered what that signified.
“What you're thinking,” he said. “You were tossing and turning all night.”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was. But I felt the tossing and some turning.”
“I was trying to figure out how all of this is connected,” I told him.
“The parks? By boat and tram systems and—”
I frowned. “I meant Agnes Clutterbuck and your aunt.”
“Oh. Sure.” He repositioned his sunglasses with his free hand. “That’s been keeping me up at night, too.”
I nudged him with my elbow and he grunted. “I’m serious. It seems like this old lady is dead and no one really cares,” I said.
“She doesn’t seem to be dead. She is dead,” he pointed out.
I frowned. “You know what I mean. It's just kind of strange.”
It was. I hadn’t seen a single person express any sort of sadness over Agnes Clutterbuck’s death. There had been surprise, but no one had seemed terribly shook up by the news.
“If you hadn't noticed, there's a whole lot of strange at that place,” Jake said.
“I've noticed. But it still seems kind of weird. Why was Agnes in Gloria’s house? Did she die there or did someone actually kill her? And if she was killed – and it wasn’t your aunt who did it – then who did, and why did they put her in your aunt's kitchen?”
“I have no idea. To any of that.”
I didn't either, and he was right. It had kept me up. It seemed to me that if Agnes had been murdered and Gloria didn't have anything to do with her death, then someone went through an awful lot of trouble to make it look like she had.
The smell of cotton candy wafted through the air. I'd read once that Disney actually piped the smell into vents, so that the park smelled good and it made people hungry. I wondered if what I was smelling was real or Disney-generated. And I wondered about other secrets Disney had, little tricks that visitors had no knowledge of.
“Gloria seems to have a lot of...secrets,” I said, my mind drifting from Disney secrets to Gloria secrets.
“I would agree. But I don't know that this makes her a killer,” Jake said.
“I'm not saying she is.” I readjusted my hand in his. “For all we know, Agnes just dropped dead in her house.”
Jake nodded. “If anyone's capable of killing anyone, it would be my grandmother.”
I chuckled. “She's a bit...cantankerous. Smart as a whip, too. If anyone could pull off planting a dead body and getting away with it, it’s probably her.”
“She's an old battle-axe is what she is,” he said. “Wouldn't surprise me a bit if she didn't even need that wheelchair.”
I didn’t want to admit that the same thought had crossed my mind. “Be nice,” I told him.
He raised his eyebrows so high they were visible above his sunglasses. “That's the nicest thing I can think to say about her.”
I chuckled, then shivered, and he noticed. “What?”
“I don’t know. Just thinking about finding Agnes.” I shuddered.
“You'd think you'd be used to dead bodies by now.”
I tried to pull my hand from his, but he held on, laughing.
“You know what I mean,” I said, punching him in the arm.
“I do know what you mean,” he answered. “And I'm going to tell you what I always tell you. Just leave it alone. We're on vacation. I want to enjoy my vacation with my wife.”
“And our kids.” I grinned. “And your parents.”
He frowned. “They come in tonight, right? Or is it tomorrow? I can’t remember.”
“Tonight. Gloria is picking them up from the airport.”
As if on cue, Jake’s phone began to ring. He pulled it from his pocket and his frown deepened.
My parents, he mouthed before answering the call. “Hi, Mom.” He squinted and held the phone closer to his ear. “What? I can’t hear you.”
He held the phone away and tried turning up the volume. “Hello? Hello?” He sighed in frustration and looked at the phone.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“The line went dead. I couldn’t hear her.”
“Is everything okay?”
“I have no idea.”
The phone rang again. He handed it to me. “See if you can get it to work.”
“Me?” I squeaked. He was the one who knew about gadgets and gizmos, not me. But I reached for the phone. “Hello?”
The line was filled with static but I could just make out Mary Kay’s voice. “Daisy? Is that you?”
“Yes,” I said loudly, covering one ear and pressing the phone closer to the other. “I’m here. Is everything okay?”
“No, dear, I’m afraid not.”
My pulse quickened. “What’s wrong?”
Jake moved in closer.
“Oh, Daisy, we’ve caught the norovirus.”
“What? You’re sick? Where are you?”
“No, dear, we’re not sick. The ship is. We were delayed docking and we missed our flight.”
“Where are you?”
“Panama. We just got off the ship.” The line crackled. “Can you hear me? Are you there?”
“I’m here,” I said. I hit the speaker button so Jake could listen in. Static poured out of the speaker. “So is there another flight you can catch?”
“Don’s working on it,” she said. “He’s on the phone now with the airlines. We’re hoping to find something tonight.”
“And you guys are okay? Not sick or anything?” Jake asked.
“Jakey,” his mother sai
d, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “We’re fine, dear. Your dad has a little bit of indigestion but I think it’s from the barbeque ribs. You know how that sauce upsets his stomach.”
“Maybe you should wait a couple of days just to be sure,” Jake suggested.
His mother gasped. “And miss your grandmother’s birthday? Not in a million years. Your father would be devastated. We’ve already had to wait a hundred years to get to this point.”
The only person who’d actually had to wait one hundred years was Billie, but it didn’t seem like the right time to mention that.
“Ohh, your dad is signaling to me to wrap this up. I’m sure this is costing me a fortune. I’ll call just as soon as we know what’s going on. Love you both!”
The crackling and hissing stopped and the line went dead.
“Your poor parents,” I said, handing the phone back to Jake. “What a terrible way to end a cruise.”
“It’s going to be poor us if they bring back noro,” he said, frowning.
“Jake,” I chided. “Have a heart.”
“I do. And I also have a stomach.” He made a face. “A stomach that does not want to house – and then expel – the norovirus.”
SIXTEEN
Despite their protests, the kids actually ended up enjoying EPCOT, and despite our troubling conversation with Jake’s parents, we did, too. The kids rode Test Track six times, no one got sick on Mission: Space, and all of them asked to stay for the fireworks. Jake and I shared fish and chips and a beer in England, and as we headed back to the car we all agreed that EPCOT had totally exceeded our expectations.
We drove back to Apple Lake and a bright orange Volkswagen Beetle was parked in the driveway of our rental. Jake pulled the minivan in next to it and Gloria waved at us from behind the wheel.
“What is she doing here?” I asked.
“No idea,” Jake said.
She got out as we exited the minivan. Her sundress was light green this time, but the headband again matched.
“I was out running errands and thought I’d swing by real quick,” she said, smiling. “Didn't realize you weren't home yet.”
“We were at EPCOT,” I told her. “We stayed for the fireworks.”
“Oh, what fun!” she said, clapping her hands together. “I'm so glad you're having a good time.”
