by Kit DeCanti
“May I help you?” he asked. There was no question that his voice sounded worried.
“Hello, I’m looking for the Lombardi’s and I have this as an address for them,” Kat responded casually.
The man hesitated before answering. “Never heard of them!” he finally said gruffly and started to shut the door. Kat smiled her most disarming smile and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you. But do you know if they may have lived here before?” He paused and seemed to give it some thought, and then said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so rude, you just caught me in the middle of something.”
“I’m sure you are!” Kat thought, looking over the man’s shoulder she could see that the house was practically empty but what little contents were there seemed to have been ransacked.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Kat smiled again sweetly. “I don’t mean to interrupt or impose, but do you think I could use your phone. My cell phone is not getting a signal here,” she lied.
This seemed to momentarily put him off. Recovering quickly he said “Well, our home phone is on the blink, but you can use my cell phone. Come on in, but please don’t mind the mess… we are doing some remodeling.” The man turned and Kat bravely followed him into a large black and white tiled foyer, which was flanked by ornate twin stair cases curving up in opposite directions both leading to the second floor railed landing. Again, as Kat looked up she saw someone back out of sight.
“My cell phone is right there,” the man said pointing to a desk. Kat glanced around the room as she walked over to the desk which was also a mess. The drawers had all been pulled out and papers were scattered all over the desk top next to the phone. Kat reached for the phone and dialed her own cell number, which was set on vibrate.
“I know the difference between a remodel and a demolition and this is definitely the later,” thought Kat. There were large holes in the walls, cabinets ripped off the walls and what furniture was there was torn apart. She pretended to wait a moment and then began a fake conversation. “Oh, hi... yes, I’m here- but they are not. ….No. My phone won’t reach out, so the new resident has let me use his phone. … Yeah I know! It is awfully nice of him.” and again Kat smiled sweetly at the man who was standing across the room. “What? Oh, yeah, well you know how it is. …. Uh huh. Hmmm. Yeah. … You think? …. Okay. Well Maybe….” As Kat spoke she casually turned back and focused on the desk. She saw a handwritten note with “11 19” scrawled in either very young or very old handwriting. As she was reading it, the man suddenly pulled the note off the desk. Startled Kat jumped, and looked up into his glaring face, and then quickly said, “Well, okay, I’ll be there in about twenty minutes then. Bye.” Kat laid the phone back on the desk and walked quickly and nervously to the door, saying “Thank you so much! I won’t bother you any longer... I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.” She ran down the steps and quickly got into her car and drove off, not daring to look back for fear she would see the huge pickup bearing down on her.
When Kat got to the bottom of the hill, and well onto the main road, she finally looked in her mirror and was relieved when the only car behind her was a small car with a woman driving. Still she didn’t want to drive directly home, so she headed for Lakeport. She pulled to the curb on Main Street and crossing the street, she decided she could really use a massage, and hoped that the day spa would have room for a walk in.
An hour later, a much more relaxed Kat walked to her car. She paused as she started to open the driver’s door and literally jumped on the hood of the car to avoid getting sideswiped by the same little car that had been behind her coming off of Cobb Mountain. All she could see of the driver was that it was a woman wearing a hat and sunglasses. Shaken, Kat crawled off the hood on the other side onto the sidewalk and for the second time that month used a car to steady herself after a close call.
“What is going on?” Kat said out loud. “Can all this have to do with Mrs. Lombardi? It must! Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, and for there to be two incidents in such short amount of time, it has to be connected.” This later part was not out loud, but a jumble of thoughts in her head. Kat felt very afraid. She wanted to call Ron. She longed to feel the safety of his strong arms around her, but she knew that was not possible. She opened the passenger door climbed in and called her uncle.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Crossroads Inn Time B&B and Spa
Safe at home with her mom and sister; and her Uncle spending the night with them, a still shaken Kat climbed the stairs and pulled down her shades before turning on the light. She rummaged through her backpack looking for a DVD that the man-ager of the Featherbed B & B Resort gave her about a local B & B and spa called Crossroads Inn Time.
Peggy, the Featherbed’s manager had told Kat that the spa had groups for women who were having difficult times. Kat had had been mortified that she had been so trans-parent in her misery that a total stranger thought she needed help. She had accepted the brochure and DVD and thanked the woman, but had just stuck it in her back pack and forgot about it.
With all that had transpired since her stay at the Featherbed Railroad B & B Resort, Kat just didn’t know… And then her uncle… all that stuff he had just said to her down stairs- about how being reckless and risking her safety could be a sign of a deep-seated depression. And that maybe there was more than the break up with Ron eating at her.
Maybe her uncle was right about her. “Maybe I have been putting myself in danger for some psychological reason,” wondered Kat.
Kat knew Uncle Lenny worried about her little sister and her. And she understood that he felt a responsibility to look after them since his brother-in-law died, leaving Kat’s mom to raise her and Angel alone. And when Angel went through her troubles a couple years ago, Lenny had felt guilty that he had missed the signals. Kat also knew that since he and Auntie had no kids of their own he enjoyed being their father figure. But sometimes he was a bit too overly protective.
Still, the things he said earlier made sense. And it got her thinking about the woman’s group that met at the spa that Peggy from the Featherbed told her about. She hadn‘t watched the DVD but maybe she would. Maybe she should. I couldn‘t hurt.
Kat stuck the DVD in the player grabbed the remotes and turned on the TV. She lay on the bed and snuggled under the quilt and pushed play.
Kat recognized the house on the title page. It was one of the prettiest historical buildings in the county. She hadn’t realized it had been turned into a bed and breakfast and spa.
The video led in with some dreamlike music and an attractive woman dressed as you would expect someone living in the huge multistory Victorian to be. The woman wore an old fashioned Victorian style dress in pale blue with her hair done up in a perfect Gibson and was gracefully seated on an ornately carved settee smiling with welcoming arms extended. The woman was youthful and yet, at the same time, motherly.
"Welcome to Crossroads Inn Time….” The woman in the video began. Kat watched intently hoping to find something to focus on other than the traumatic events of the day.
The serene background music and woman’s soft narration soothed Kat’s nerves and calmed her down. The words floated into Kat’s dreams as she drifted off to sleep.
Later sometime after midnight, Kat woke with thoughts of the group that met at the B & B in her head. From what Kat had seen, the theme of the video presentation seemed to be, “Don’t loose yourself”.
Don’t loose yourself. That stuck with Kat. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. It rung in her ears so loud that she couldn't get back to sleep! “What does that mean? Why does it feel so important? Does it have something to do with me feeling like I was losing my individualism since becoming a couple...?” Kat wondered.
“Had she been trying so desperately to be all things to everyone: fiancé, daughter, sister, niece, employee that she was replaced by what the woman in the video had called a 'non person'?
Kat didn’t want to go so far as to say she felt like a ‘non-pers
on’… but there were many times that she didn’t feel ‘real’… she felt unreal... and she felt weak.... not strong enough to cope with all that life kept throwing her. And just maybe it was true that to feel comforted from all the pain and emptiness, and to fill the void, she found one thing that made her feel right. The one thing that made her feel strong and in control. That made her feel connected to the here and now. Danger.
The thing was though, she never really felt strong… deep down, Kat still felt like the little girl who just lost her daddy.
Now, distressed by this revelation about herself, Kat lay wrapped in her quilt, rocking herself and whimpering.
"Don't loose yourself!” Kat muttered again and again until finally she drifted off to sleep again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Little Jimmy
By sunrise Kat was awake and having second thoughts about calling Crossroads Inn Time B & B and Spa. But one thing was certain she did need to make some changes. And she definitely needed a break from thinking about Ron and from the mystery on Cobb Mountain.
She needed to try and remember what made her happy. What was she interested in. Kat lay there trying to remember what she was like before Ron came into her life. “What did I do with myself?” she mumbled. “What made me happy?”
Kat decided to volunteer at an upcoming local children’s museum fund raiser that she had read about in the Record Bee. She had fond memories of volunteering at the museum when she was attending the local Jr. College, but she hadn’t been there for awhile and it would be great to see how they had progressed.
And this is one place that Kat could go where there were no memories tied up with Ron.
Instead of sleeping in Sunday morning, Kat headed into Clearlake and the children’s museum, planning to first stop to grab breakfast at Howard’s Grotto which was just up the street from the museum. She certainly was not going to go to breakfast at Lenny and Auntie’s; she was just not ready to face that yet.
Besides ever since her car accident she felt that Uncle Lenny looked at her diff-erently. Disapprovingly- yes, but something else, as well. Something she couldn’t put into words; but it definitely made her uncom-fortable. At first she thought it had something to do with her breakup with Ron. But now she felt it was … well she just didn’t know. She had not told him about the Lombardi mystery- so it couldn’t be that.
What ever it was, Kat would like to avoid those looks as often as she could. She wanted to be around happy approving people, and she was certain to find all that and more at the children’s museum.
A light hearted Kat walked up to the outer glass doors of the children’s museum and was nearly knocked down as a young boy bolted from the same door.
“Sorry!” he called looking over his shoulder obviously worried about more than hitting her with the door. Kat grinned and caught the door with one hand and as she was opening the second set of glass doors she met an older woman with the unmistakable expression of anger mixed with frustration. The boy must be escaping from her, Kat mused, which was reaffirmed when she heard the woman shriek “Jimmy! You come back here! I know what you did; now you come back right this minute!”
Kat looked in through the opening to the Prehistoric Exhibit and saw a group of kids gathered around the base of the sixteen foot volcano. Although she wondered what the boy had done, she dismissed it and turned right to go through the gift shop to the director’s office and get a volunteer form. But the girl at the gift shop counter stopped her, “May I help you?” she asked with a big smile.
“Hi, I am a former volunteer and would like to help out with your fundraiser,” Kat said to the clerk. The young girl’s smile turned into a grin, “Welcome! That‘s so great! I’m Cassie, assistant to the executive director…. and gift shop clerk,” she added grinning as she reached in a drawer and gave Kat a form. “We need all the help we can get!” Cassie then went into a long description of all the things the museum had planned for the fundraiser with an enthusiasm that made Angel seem calm. Kat chuckled and was glad she had thought of doing this.
She had always loved it here. What a happy environment to be in; kids learning while playing, and a happy bubbly staff.
Cassie stopped talking for a moment and peered over the desk as the elderly woman pulled the boy back in through the glass doors. “Poor Little Jimmy!” she muttered. “He is always in hot water. But this time I think he is really in for it- big time!”
“What did he do? “ Kat asked.
“Well… Little Jimmy- that’s what everyone calls him- he’s is obsessed with volcanoes, you see. Especially Konocti and the folklore about it. He recently heard about the caves up there and the folklore of how children went down the tubes, and came up in the lake… so he decided to try it with a doll and our Konocti exhibit. Of course he had to ‘borrow’ a doll, and the donor wasn’t all that willing. Especially since he used a bucket of water for a make shift lake.” Cassie smirked and pointed to a crying little girl holding a soaking wet doll.
As sympathetic as she was for the little girl, Kat couldn’t help laughing out loud; but she quickly covered her mouth to stifle it as she watched Little Jimmy being led to the crying girl with a stack of paper towels to dry the doll. He seemed genuinely sorry for being the cause of her dismay.
“I don’t know why people repeat such tales! It could only lead to trouble… at least this was just a doll!” Cassie grimaced. “People that repeat fables should make it clear that they are just that- tales!” she murmured returning to her inventory.
Kat returned to the task at hand, and began to fill out the form. After finishing she asked if she could take a look around. She walked across the hall and entered the Prehistoric Exhibit which seemed to have recovered from Little Jimmy’s escapade. Kat meandered into the second room of the exhibit peering into the model Pomo Indian Village, which was on loan to the museum from the high school; and watched kids playing in the child size village. Then Kat stepped into the “Pioneer Exhibit, and was admiring the faux rock fireplace mural that she had helped paint a couple years ago.
Kat was actually enjoying herself for the first time in a long while, and was about to walk down the hall to the rest of the exhibits when she saw Ron. He was helping the boy, Little Jimmy with a game in the Ecology Exhibit. Ron was evidently a volunteer and was working the Ecology Exhibit. To make matters worse the blond Wanda, his date from the concert, was also there.
Kat stood staring at them, but they were oblivious to her as they laughed at some privately shared joke.
Kat had learned from her uncle that Wanda was the new dispatcher for the Sheriff Department and is someone Ron knew from Sacramento prior to moving to Lake County.
Over come with emotion, Kat retreated back through the Settlers, Pomo and Prehistoric Exhibits planning on sneaking out through the entrance, but was spotted by Cassie before she could escape.
“Kat! So glad to catch you!” Cassie called to her, and hurried to her smiling, “I wanted to tell you how happy the Executive Director is to have you on board again! She asked me to find you and have you stop by her office; she’d like to give you your assignment.” Kat, fighting back tears and afraid Ron may have heard Cassie call her name, told Cassie that she suddenly didn’t feel well and that she’d come back another time and quickly walked out the front doors, hoping to drive off before seen by Ron and Wanda.
Walking to her car, Kat was relieved as she realized that Ron wouldn’t have recognized it because she was still driving the rental. She sat in the car trying to get control of herself before driving off, and looked wistfully at the butterfly garden, which she could see through the glass windowed sunroom. That’s where she was headed before seeing Ron. Kat had helped design the exhibit, but seeing it flourishing brought little joy at this moment. She thought back at how thrilled she had been to be asked to be on the planning committee.
“How happy and simple life was back then,” Kat said out loud through her tears. “Before I met Ron… and fell in love. Before the home wreckin
g, blond bombshell followed Ron to Lake County from Sacramento!”
Kat fumbled to get the key in the ignition- dropped it, picked it up and tried again. Then she tried to put the car in gear, but forgetting the configuration in the rental, she couldn’t and she started to cry out loud, pounding the steering wheel. “I want my car back! I want my life back! I want my Ron back! ” she screamed through the tears.
“Oh, well done, Kat!” She scolded herself, “You‘ll really gain your composure with thoughts like that. Get a grip, girl! For one thing he is obviously not your Ron, and never was. If he was, he wouldn’t have been such easy prey. Or maybe he was the one who called her to come to Lake County. Okay… enough!” Kat said out loud and finally drove off.
As Kat drove she tried to calm herself, “Okay, the worse is over… we have once more been in the same room… well the same building… he is still with her. We were once so in love and now we are as if strangers. Perhaps the love was only in my imagination. I guess I never knew him. But now I understand him. He can never forgive me… and even if he could I could never trust him again. He didn’t even try to talk things out. He didn’t even consider my feelings. He just couldn’t take his ego being bruised. Should I really want to be with someone so shallow? But the thing is… for a year he didn‘t seem shallow. He never once wore his ego on his sleeve. He always put my feelings first. Why couldn‘t he have been more patient… just waited a little while longer? Why didn‘t he try to talk things out? How could he be with someone else so soon?” Thoughts such as these webbed in and out of Kat’s mind until she thought she would surely go mad!
