Licensed for Trouble

by Susan May Warren

  Kellogg’s Main Street always embodied an old magic that stirred to life whenever PJ turned off the highway and onto the strip that edged the beach. Only a few sailboats beckoned to her from their moors in the harbor of the Kellogg Yacht Club. The beach had yet to be combed—leaves tossed by the nearby oak and poplar trees splotched the sand.

  Corn husks tied to lampposts and the occasional pumpkin edging a storefront doorway brought to mind the smell of piled leaves, the nip of morning frost.

  She passed the theater, took a left at the corner, and found Babies and Baubles in a tiny three-office building a half block from the beach. She squeezed the Vic between a shiny black Lexus and a white Pontiac GT, wishing her car came in a convenient compact edition.

  An elegant script on the door and window betrayed the clientele. Inside the aura of money portioned out in fresh gardenias, the classical music piped through the stereo, the chandeliers dripping from the ceiling and casting spotlights on the displays of designer handbags behind glass, jewelry hanging on glass racks. In the back, a baby section with European-looking prams with shock absorbers, hand-tooled high chairs, racks and racks of high-end baby clothes, lacy layettes. Everything for the well-attired baby and mother. PJ picked up a bear, checked the price tag. Put it back.

  A woman dressed in a black baby-doll dress and calf-length leggings looked up at her and gave her a white smile.

  Deena?

  Time had been generous. Deena wore her blonde hair up, her face as young as it had appeared in the yearbook. “Can I help you?”

  And with her greeting, PJ went speechless. What kind of PI went into a situation cold? She’d walked in without a plan, and now she’d probably have to buy something to get Deena to open up.

  She didn’t belong here. But . . . an heiress would.

  What would a Kellogg do?

  PJ smiled, aware that she wore a pair of old jeans and a jean jacket, her red hair down and finger-combed. She affected a lazy browse. “Just looking. My sister is having a baby.” She picked up a stuffed sheep.

  “That’s a sleep sheep. It plays four different soothing sounds to help your baby sleep better.” Reaching over, Deena pressed the quilted tummy. A whine sounded from the toy. “That’s a whale.”

  “It sounds more like someone is dying,” PJ said, handing her the toy. “Sorry.”

  “If you prefer, we have a dog that emits a pleasing scent. We just got him in—I’ll get one for you.” She disappeared into the back.

  PJ roamed the store. Think like an heiress; think like an heiress. Bix wasn’t here, and for the first time in years, PJ hadn’t a clue how to blend in, how to act a part.

  Deena returned, holding a floppy, long-eared, stuffed hound dog. “Here he is. You just have to push his tummy, and more smell comes out.” She gave the belly a little squeeze. The fragrance reminded PJ of something sweet—lavender, maybe, with a hint of baby powder. Oh yes, she already felt soothed.

  Deena stopped talking, her cool green eyes running over PJ. “I know you, don’t I?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “You look so familiar to me. Oh, I know—I saw your picture in the paper.”

  “PJ Sugar.”

  “I met a Sugar just last week.” She put the dog down. “What was her name? She bought a bathrobe. It’s out being monogrammed.”

  “It’s probably for my sister.”

  Deena walked over to the counter and typed on her keyboard. “Let’s see. Yes, here it is . . . Elizabeth Sugar. Monogrammed initials: EAB.”

  Elizabeth Ann . . . B?

  “It came in yesterday. Did you want to pick that up?”

  “Uh, no, actually, I’m here on official business. I’m looking for a woman named Meredith Bixby.”

  Deena’s smile vanished. “Why would I know her?”

  “I was looking in an old yearbook and I noticed you two were friends.”

  Deena turned, crossing her arms over her chest. “Now why would I ever be friends with that snake?”

  “But you were in high school.”

  “Oh, honey. People change.”

  “Like Bix.”

  Deena fingered her necklace. PJ noticed her bare hand and the strange look that crossed her face. “Oh no, not Bix. People like Bix don’t change. I changed. I got smart. ”

  “So you have no idea where Bix might be?”

  Deena gave a wry smile. “If she knows what’s good for her, a long way from here.”

  PJ wrote down her number—next on her list would be to get business cards—and handed it over to Deena.

  “PJ Sugar . . .” She looked up with a smile. One filled with way too much recognition. “Aren’t you the one who burned down the country club a couple years after I graduated?”

  PJ smiled at her. Shook her head. “Nope. That was somebody else.”

  Deena flicked the paper between her fingers, and PJ saw her hold on to it until she got into her car.

  Then she crumpled it and dropped it into the trash.

  * * *

  Connie stood over her KitchenAid mixer, whipping up a batch of Toll House cookies, as PJ walked in, untied her Converse, and padded into the kitchen. PJ hardly recognized her attorney sister with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing yoga pants and a rumpled Harvard sweatshirt, apparently playing hooky from another day of work. “Who are you?”

  “An endlessly hungry pregnant woman.” Connie scooted out a stool with her foot. “Tell me about the mushroom house.”

  “What are you doing home?”

  Connie pulled out a cookie sheet. “I’m using my sick time—I probably have a month accumulated. Just until I get over morning sickness.”

  PJ eyed the bowl of cookie dough. “That’s not breakfast, is it?”

  “Elevenses.” She pulled out a spoon from the drawer. “Are you going to keep the house?”

  “I’m not sure—but I came over to tell you that Mom is on a cruise.”

  Connie put down her spoon. “Come again?”

  “She’s on a cruise. She told the neighbor, but not us. How do you like them apples?”

  “Huh.” Connie considered that for a moment, scooping another spoonful of cookie dough. “Weird.”

  PJ got out a spoon. “Yep.”

  Finally Connie pulled the bowl toward herself and began to spoon dough onto the pan. “I should attempt to actually cook some of these for Davy.”

  “That’s it? No panic? No indignation?” PJ swiped a fingerful of dough and licked it off. “Mother hasn’t been on vacation in ten years. And now she’s, what, cruising the Caribbean?”

  Connie dropped the final ball of dough onto a pan. “Maybe she’ll get a tan.”

  “Connie. What if something happens to her? Don’t you listen to the news? People get thrown overboard, attacked by pirates!”

  “Please. Pirates?” Connie slid the cookies into the oven, closed the door, licked the spoon, and then let it clatter into the sink. “Don’t worry.”

  “I am worried. It feels weird—like I suddenly don’t know her. And apparently, she’s buying bathrobes, only not for you. Sorry.”

  “Buying bathrobes?”

  “One, at least. With the initials EAB.”

  “I don’t even know anyone with those initials.”

  “Yes, you do—Elizabeth Ann . . .”

  “Browning? Buckwheat?”

  “Funny. Did Mom change her name?”

  “It’s probably a gift for some friend at the club. Calm down.” Connie opened the fridge and pulled out a container of milk.

  “Did you know that she had a friend in college named PJ?”

  Connie set the milk on the counter. “No, I didn’t. I wonder if she named you PJ after her friend.”

  “She didn’t name me PJ, actually.”

  Connie grinned. “Oh, that’s right.” She took down two glasses. “Maybe that’s why she freaked out when you started calling yourself that. Of course, I always knew you were a PJ.”

  Connie poured the milk, then turned w
hen the buzzer sounded and moved the pan of cookies to the higher oven rack.

  As PJ watched her, Connie’s written words from the past slipped back to her. “Why did you write that in my yearbook—about me being amazing?”

  Connie looked at her, flicking her hair from her shoulder. “What?”

  “My yearbook. You wrote that I was most likely to be amazing.”

  “Maybe I was being pithy. But to me, you were sort of unbelievable.”

  “Please tell me that is good.”

  “Of course. I watched you from the outside of your vortex, always wishing I could be in it. You did amaze me.”

  “But I was always in trouble.”

  Connie lifted her shoulder. “It looked more like fun to me.”

  “Do you have significant memory loss? I was grounded for half of high school.”

  “But the other half, you were out with Boone. Having all the fun.”

  Maybe she was. She hadn’t seen Connie’s face in the powder-puff football pictures, the homecoming shots. “Sorry. I should have invited you in.”

  “It’s okay. I couldn’t have kept up with you, anyway.”

  “Stop doing that.”

  “What?”

  “Being so nice. Calling me amazing. Why do you do that?”

  “Hey, I’m an attorney. I try to look for the innocent parts of a person.”

  “Yes, but I was hardly innocent. I remember you standing in the hallway upstairs, watching me sneak out of the house.”

  “Oh, well, that was pure fun for me. I couldn’t believe you scaled the porch. Or that Boone caught you. I was so jealous of you and Boone.”

  “Me and Boone?”

  “He was crazy about you. I wished I had a boyfriend.” Connie pushed a glass her direction. “It seemed like everything came so easy to you.”

  “No, you were the one things came easy to. You fit right into the life Mom wanted for you.”

  Connie took a sip of her milk. “That didn’t mean you couldn’t fit in. You never saw yourself as a Sugar.”

  PJ twirled the glass on the counter. “Because I’m not one.”

  The clock ticked. The fridge gave a moan.

  Nothing from Connie. Until, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  PJ lifted a shoulder. “I’m adopted; let’s not forget that. And it’s not like we’re even remotely alike. You’re tall and dark; I’m a redhead—”

  “Blonde, actually.”

  “In my mind, I’m a redhead. And I’m hardly tall.”

  “You’re just right.”

  “Not for a Sugar.”

  Okay, really, she hated how pitiful she sounded. She took a drink, then licked her lips. “You know I’ve always felt different. Strange.”

  “Like an alien, I know.” Connie responded to the buzzer again, taking the cookies out to cool. “But it’s not because you weren’t accepted.” With the spatula she began to scoop the cookies onto the cooling rack. “It’s because you didn’t really want to be.”

  Didn’t want to . . . “Excuse me, I spent most of my life trying to fit in. Of course I wanted to be accepted.”

  “No, you didn’t. Because then it meant you had to be like us. ‘Fit in a box,’ I think I remember you saying once. It’s why you liked it so much when Boone called you NBT.”

  “I didn’t like it.”

  “Of course you did. You thrived on it. Because if you were trouble, then no one could expect more from you. No one could make you be a Sugar or anything else. You liked being trouble.” Connie handed her a cookie on a napkin.

  She liked being trouble. PJ stared at the cookie. Maybe she did. Then. Not necessarily now. “What if I don’t want to be trouble anymore?”

  “Then don’t be.” Connie refilled her milk. “But then who are you going to be?”

  PJ raised her glass. “I thought I might try on Kellogg for size.”

  Connie finished unloading the cookies, turned off the oven, and scooped up her car keys. “Show me the house. I want to be a Kellogg too.”

  The sun had already tipped the scales toward the back half of the day as PJ pulled up to the gate, unlocked it, and then drove up the long, cracked drive to the mushroom house. She noticed the cavern in the lawn where she’d plunged into the ground only the day before, but in the daylight, the house again marched off the pages of a storybook, and for the first time since Boone had declared it uninhabitable, a future panned out before her. Flowers in the boxes hanging below the leaded windows. The ivy cleaned off, the wooden garage doors painted a cherry red. The lawn mowed, and the flower garden reseeded, overflowing with lily of the valley and roses and perhaps a row of variegated hosta.

  “Wow. It’s pretty rough, isn’t it?” Connie said, getting out of her car, parked behind the Vic.

  “It’ll clean up.”

  PJ walked to the door, opening it with her key. “Brace yourself.”

  The house didn’t flummox Connie. She wandered the length of it like PJ had yesterday, and PJ watched her catalog the disrepair. Yet, in Connie’s eyes—a woman who had taken her Craftsman home and restored it, one fixture at a time—PJ saw the potential, the hope.

  Finally Connie came outside and stood on the flagstone with her. “I think you can do this.”

  Most likely to be amazing.

  PJ slipped her hand into her sister’s. “Really?”

  “Well, you’ll always be a Sugar. But live here? Yes. Fix it up?” She turned to PJ. “Of course.”

  They watched the lake, the way the ripples caught the sunlight. A few fishing boats motored through the water.

  “I need to pick up Davy. But tell me . . . when are you moving in?”

  “How about now?”

  Connie turned to her, and for the first time, her smile dimmed. “Right now? Without electricity? or decent plumbing?”

  PJ led the way back through the house. “Connie, trust me, I’ve lived in worse.”

  Connie stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I don’t want to know. Listen, if you need to move back into my place for a while, until you fix this place up . . .”

  “Nope. It’s my creepy house. I’m going to live in it.”

  “Of course you are.”

  PJ stood in the drive watching Connie pull away, feeling a surreal ownership. The wind moaned in the slatted cedar boards and rustled the dead foliage clutching the house.

  Oh, hush.

  Opening her trunk, PJ pulled out a box of memorabilia —mostly mismatched dishware, some bedding. She’d pick up her duffel bag from Jeremy’s place tonight. Closing the trunk with her hip, she carried the box inside.

  “I’m home.”

  Her voice echoed through the barren rooms. Hiking through to the end, she nudged open the door to the maid’s quarters. It overlooked the side yard—and the pond where Joy had died. A slanted roof gave it a cozy lean-to feel. The blue carpet was rutted in places, yet it matched the baby blue–tiled bathroom, with the cracked silver-plated mirror and the claw-foot tub.

  A single bed with a bare mattress and a weathered French country frame jutted like a pier into the center of the room. A matching bureau took up the nook in the inside corner.

  Home, sweet home.

  “Hello?”

  PJ dropped the box on the bed. Barely held in a little scream.

  “Hello?”

  It didn’t sound like Jeremy or even Boone. Oh, where was her pepper spray when she needed it? She opened the box and fished around for something heavy, lethal.

  Her hands landed on her hardcover Bible. Well, they did call it a sword. She scooped it from the box and held it like a two-by-four over her head.

  “Hello? Anybody here?”

  Footsteps. PJ tiptoed out of the room, then flattened herself against the doorframe. The steps echoed down the main hall.

  She crouched down and slunk across the kitchen, under the counter. Peeked out along the side.

  He looked harmless enough.

  Wiry, tall, and solid, in a brown canvas jacket and a p
air of very faded blue jeans, work boots, a Twins baseball cap that hid the color of his hair, her intruder had shoved his hands into his pockets, as if he had been out for a stroll on the beach and accidentally found his way to her living room. Clean shaven, and about her age, he wore a faraway expression on his face. Especially when he stopped to stare out the bank of windows to the lake, as if, for a moment, he might not actually be in the room.

  She pounced out, holding the Bible over her head. “What do you want?”

  He whirled around. Emotion flickered in his eyes, not surprise, but something else—a wariness, a reaction she couldn’t pinpoint before surrender took its place. His hands went up. “Whoa there. I come in peace.”

  PJ kept her distance. “Then what are you doing trespassing?”

  “Uh . . .” He glanced around, as if searching for her reinforcements.

  Sorry, bub; it’s just me and the Word of God. Should be enough.

  But just in case, “I called 911.”

  “Aw, you didn’t have to do that.” He made to lower his hands.

  She gave him a look and raised the Bible.

  He put them back up. “Fine. Really, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just looking for someone. PJ Sugar.”

  “What do you want with her?”

  “Are you PJ?”

  “Maybe.”

  This time, he did lower his hands. “My name is Max Smith. And I . . .” He advanced toward her a half step, then stopped and wore an expression so morose, so desperate, she let the Bible fall to her side.

  “What?”

  “Well . . . I need you to find me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Max Smith looked like a guy not easily lost.

  “I’m sorry, could you say that again?”

  “I need you to find me.”

  Yes, he definitely looked like he knew his way around . . . life, perhaps. Over six feet tall, he stood with his hands once again pocketed in a demeanor that bespoke casual. But with the hard yet earnest brown eyes and the coiled energy radiating off him, he reminded her of . . . well, Jeremy. The eye inside the storm.

  Especially when the sunlight sided against her and crept behind a cloud, shutting off the earnestness in his eyes. The room turned brisk.