by Terri Thayer
She passed the stack with a fat red marker. Each one wrote her name down and stuck the tag on her shirt without a word of protest. Suzi embellished hers with the drawing of a daisy.
Building on her success, April sent around the envelope Deana used to collect the fee. To her relief, the stampers slipped money in it without her encouragement. They were well trained.
A cool breeze wafted in through the open door. April heard a car door slam and then the sound of the car noisily pulling away.
“Here comes Tam. I recognize that horsepower,” Rocky said affectionately. “Her husband has a thing for muscle cars.”
“Tammy doesn’t drive?” April said. Even in San Francisco she’d needed to drive to get to her clients. Out here, with no public transportation, she couldn’t imagine being without wheels.
“She has her husband to cart her around,” Mary Lou said. “He’s good about it.”
An out-of-breath woman lumbered in. She didn’t look like country-club material. She was wearing a bargain-store turquoise seersucker short set. Her sneakers were bright white with black polka-dot laces. But her face was red with exertion or something else. April couldn’t tell what.
“Sorry I’m late.” Her words came in short bursts, followed by large intakes of air.
“Oh, Tammy, what is it?” Rocky said, leaving her chair to put an arm around her friend. “You’ve been crying.”
“We lost another one.” She sat down heavily in the chair next to Rocky’s. She dropped the canvas bag she was carrying. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she half sobbed, half burped. Now that she was with friends, the tears flowed easily. Her words became incomprehensible.
“Take it easy,” Suzi said. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
Rocky rubbed her shoulder. Tammy took another shuddering breath and managed to get out a full sentence. “George Weber died on my shift last night.”
Suzi and Mary Lou shared a significant look. They looked to Rocky for guidance, but she was staring at Tammy, stroking her hair.
“Another one?” Suzi muttered. She quieted when Rocky shot her a look.
“They can’t put me through this again. I just can’t do it,” Tammy said. “They’re always blaming me.”
April busied herself with Deana’s stamping supplies, straightening the papers on the kitchen counter. She started to put two and two together. Tammy must work at the nursing home her mother had mentioned earlier. George Weber was the body Deana had gone to fetch.
Rocky said, “They couldn’t run that place without you, sweetie.”
“Damn straight,” Tammy said unconvincingly.
“Come on, Tammy,” Mary Lou said, shoving a kit her way. “You know there’s nothing you can do for him now. Do some stamping. Take your mind off things.”
April looked back at the table. The stampers were getting back to their projects. Rocky straightened and gave Tammy a squeeze on her shoulder and a fortifying smile.
Tammy wiped her eyes. She shuddered once. Her face was returning to a normal color. “I’m okay. Just mad, that’s all. George was a nice guy.”
She reached into her bag and brought out a pair of scissors. A long cord was attached to the handle. Tammy put the cord around her neck so the scissors rested on her ample bosom, accessible for quick work.
She finally saw April and stuck out her hand. “Sorry, that was rude. My name is Tammy Trocadero. It’s nice to meet you. April, right? I think you were a couple of grades behind me.”
April’s notoriety in high school was not her fault. She wanted to change the subject. And away from nursing-home deaths.
“Shall we get started?” April said, then, noticing one unclaimed kit on the table, she asked, “Is this everyone?”
Mary Lou said, “We’re missing Piper Lewis. She’s always late.”
That was another familiar name. When April had left town for college, the Lewis family owned the bowling alley and bar, a gas station with convenience store and a huge farm. A mini empire. Not rivaling the Winchesters, with their tentacles into all the old money in the valley, but impressive just the same.
Work on the project began. April found the group didn’t need her help. Deana’s kit was self-explanatory, and the stampers helped each other. She relaxed and picked up her sketchbook, letting the conversation eddy around her. She started to draw, the creative energy in the room feeding her own. This was not the way she’d expected to spend her first night back at home, but it was nice to have voices surrounding her instead of the empty air of the barn. And the even emptier space that Ken had once occupied.
“How long have you been stamping together?” April asked.
“We’ve known each other since school,” Suzi said. “We started stamping back then. We’d send secret messages to each other. Rebus puzzles.”
“What’s a rebus?” April asked. She thought she remembered the term from Highlights, but she couldn’t recall.
Tammy said, “You take simple images and string them together to make a message.”
“Like this,” Suzi said. She quickly drew a circle and a bird.
“I don’t see the meaning,” April said, after studying the proffered note.
Rocky looked over her shoulder. “Simple. Round Robin. We were far more sophisticated than that,” she said. “Try to get this one.”
She drew a prone stick figure, wearing a T-shirt that said, “Rocky.” Above that she wrote the word “over.”
She drew a line between the two, tapping her pencil for emphasis. April shook her head.
“Over my dead body, ” she said, laughing.
“Wow,” April said. “I guess your teachers could never bust you for passing notes.”
Tammy said, “They never caught on. It’s fun. Rocky and I still do it, just to keep our skills tight.”
“Her husband can never figure out what we’re talking about.” Rocky laughed. “It comes in handy when we’re planning our stamping sessions.”
“Did you hear Henry locked up Piper’s son Jesse again?” Suzi asked.
So, Aldenville’s part-time police officer Henry Yost was still harassing teenagers. He kept an eye on every kid over the age of thirteen. April remembered being chased by Yost one long-ago Halloween, dropping her dozen eggs in a neighbor’s flower bed as she ducked between houses to get home before he caught her. Every kid was a potential criminal in his book.
Mary Lou said, “Lucky for Jesse, he’s still a juvenile.”
Suzi said, “It’s not like Piper didn’t try with him. Remember last summer when she sent him to that boot camp out west somewhere?”
“He came back ornerier than ever,” Mary Lou said. “Only difference was that he knew how to forage in the woods and build a fire without a lighter.”
Tammy said, “That’s when the VFW building on Main Street burned.”
“What can you expect?” Rocky said. “His mother is Piper and his father is missing in action.”
Suzi explained, “Piper lost her husband when Jesse was very young.”
“Even when he was around, he never paid much attention to that kid,” Mary Lou said.
A wind knocked some of the papers off the table. All the stampers looked up and saw a tall brunette standing in the open doorway. From the expression on her face, she’d heard every word.
“It’s not Jesse’s fault that his father died,” the newcomer, who April assumed to be Piper, said. “Hi, everyone.”
“Plastic cups will be fine,” she said, crossing the room and handing April a box of white wine. Wine in a box. April cringed as she remembered the Russian River Valley Zinfandels she’d left behind.
Piper’s hair was swept off her face with a black headband. Her eyes were faded blue, the leached color of the sky on the hottest summer day, and narrowed.
Those eyes flitted about the barn. “This was my grandfather Leo’s place.” Piper’s sense of ownership raised hackles on April’s neck, reminding her of how she didn’t belong. Piper continued. “My father’s family b
uilt this barn in the 1800s. They hid provisions here during the Civil War. I think there’s a secret room underneath.”
April swallowed the need to say, My daddy owns it now. She didn’t want to get into that game. Being measured by one’s family was more dangerous for April than most.
Rocky sniffed as though she smelled sewage. “That’s fab, Piper. But the original barn was built by my great-great-great-great-great-granddaddy while your relatives were still tossing cabers in the Scottish Highlands. The Lenape Indians burned down that barn—twice.”
The two women stared at each other. Piper looked away first.
April had to keep the peace, for Deana’s sake. She didn’t want to be responsible for ruining Deana’s stamping business. “Come in and take a seat,” she said.
Piper parked herself at the head of the table, where April had been sitting. April gritted her teeth and smiled, moving her sketch pad out of the way. She put the cups and the wine on the counter and poured a glass for Piper. No one else asked for wine.
April’s cell rang. She walked away from the group, grateful for the interruption, cracking her neck and rolling her shoulders as she moved away. There was a tension in the air that she felt in her body.
“Hey, Dad.”
“How’d you know it was me?” her father whined.
When April didn’t answer right away, he answered his own question. “Oh, that blasted caller ID. I hate that people know it’s me on the phone. What’s wrong with a little surprise?”
April cut him off. “So, what’s up?” Her father’s rants about technology could last hours.
“Did you find the key okay? Get the notes I left you?” Ed’s tone was worried, more than usual.
“It was under the mat right where you’d said it would be. And your notes were very helpful.” His “notes” filled a loose-leaf binder with emergency numbers, warranties and an illustrated map to the gas shutoff.
Ed said, “Sorry I couldn’t be there. I spent all day on the phone to Italy, tracking down these fixtures the client wants.”
April knew the last place he’d wanted to be was stuck for hours in the barn with his ex-wife, Bonnie. “No worries. Mom and Deana helped me. We were done in no time.”
“We’re meeting the client, Mrs. Harcourt, at nine tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
Mrs. H. was the woman who was restoring Mirabella.
She bit back the statement that she was never late. “I won’t be.”
Ed wasn’t finished. “Don’t park in front of the house. Look for a drive that goes straight back. That’ll take you to the—”
April interrupted. “Servants’ entrance?”
“No, not for the past fifty years,” Ed said. “Be cool. I don’t need to hear any of your California everyone-is-equal BS tomorrow. This is a rich client, April, and we need to treat her right.”
“Dad, I know how to conduct myself.” April wondered if her father knew how many millionaires lived in San Francisco. Granted, most of the ones she’d worked with had decidedly middle-class backgrounds, but rich people, whether newly fortunate or the latest in a lineage, were the same.
“And bring your sample boards. Mrs. H. will want to see your ideas.”
April felt her panic rise. “What sample boards? I thought this was just a walk-through. I’ve got to see what the place looks like. I don’t even know what stage the renovation is in.”
“I’ll give you the tour tomorrow. The walls were stamped, but they’ve been painted over a zillion times. You need to have designs ready to show Mrs. H.”
“You could have told me,” April protested. A couple of heads cocked her way, so April lowered her voice and moved further into the great room.
“Just do it, okay,” her father said. “I don’t want to screw this up. Use my computer, go online. Get some ideas, make a few sketches. Just something we can show the client tomorrow.”
April swallowed her anger. There would be no sleeping for her tonight. “All right, but I have a question for you. When do you think I’ll get paid?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”
“You promised me I wouldn’t have to wait.”
Ed’s voice faded. “You’re breaking up. I can’t hear a thing. I’m hanging up. See you in the morning.”
“Dad . . .” she protested.
His voice was suddenly clear. “Drive carefully. Officer Yost has been handing out speeding tickets left and right.”
There was dead air. Hopefully, pretending to have bad cell coverage was her father’s idea of a joke, and he’d come through with her advance. She needed that money.
She glanced at the huge schoolhouse clock that dominated the stone wall. It was only eight o’clock. Deana had said the stampers liked to stay until ten or later. April sighed. How would she ever get the sketches done for tomorrow’s job?
She dialed Deana’s cell. Maybe she was finished with her body and could come by and help out. There was no answer.
“April, I’m not doing this right. Can you help me?” Tammy called out.
She squared her shoulders. It was her and the stampers. The faster they finished, the quicker she’d get to her research. She leaned over Tammy’s shoulder and picked up a brush. “Try this. If you drag that brush, you’ll get a fine line and then a fat line. See that?”
“Cool. Thanks. So you’ve just moved back?” Tammy asked April as she drew the brush across the page. She drew with such expertise that April knew this had been a ploy to talk.
“First day back in town,” April said.
“And you’re going to work on Mirabella?” Tammy asked. She shrugged as though apologizing for eavesdropping. This was a woman tuned in.
No harm in telling Tammy. “I am. I’ll be restoring the walls to their original finishes. Are you a nurse?” she asked, hoping to deflect Tammy’s interest in her.
She shook her head. “I’m just an aide.” She drew another squiggle on the page. “Rocky’s dad used to own that place,” Tammy offered.
April glanced Rocky’s way. Now she made the connection. Rocky was one of those Winchesters.
Rocky shrugged. “Used to,” she said, her face impassive. April wondered why her father had given up the mansion. Was he dead? If so, why had Mrs. Harcourt inherited the house and not Rocky? This was awkward. She must have stepped right into some family drama.
Tammy gave Rocky an apologetic shrug.
Rocky said, “Aunt Barbara bought the place from Dad.
Her dead husband, Harry Harcourt, left her plenty of money.”
Suzi changed the subject. “Isn’t today Jesse’s birthday, Piper?” she said.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “June 14. I remember his birth like it was yesterday. I fell in love with him the first moment I set eyes on him.”
Tammy said, “He’s out on bail, right? Are you doing anything to celebrate?”
Piper didn’t answer but shot Tammy a withering glance. Tammy returned to daubing the edge of her page.
Suzi said, “God, remember the night he was born? Your graduation party, Rocky? Jesse was born the day after we got out of high school. Well, the middle of the night, really.”
April froze. It couldn’t be the same night. “When did you graduate?” she asked warily.
Suzi said, “1993.”
April had been just finishing her junior year. She’d heard about Rocky’s party that day. Everyone had. Plenty of kids crashed it. She’d been one of them.
“I graduated high school in 1978,” Mary Lou said dryly. The others laughed. Mary Lou pointed to her daughter. “2005,” she said.
Suzi ran her tape gun over a page and glued down a pretty swirly pink paper. “We almost didn’t get her to the hospital on time.”
Mary Lou said, “Ahem. My daughter is listening. Your party stories are not meant for everyone’s ears.”
Rocky did a long scan of Kit’s belly. “Your daughter looks like she’s had a few good times of her own.”
Mary Lou smirked at Rocky. Kit ca
me to her own defense.
“Mom, really,” Kit said. “I’m twenty-one. Do you really think I didn’t party?”
Mary Lou pointed a hole punch at her daughter. “It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s me. I’m too young to know the truth about your high school years. You lived through it, I didn’t know anything at the time, and I don’t want to know now where you did your underage drinking.”
“Nicole Munson’s basement,” Kit said quietly, her eyes twinkling. Her mother covered her ears. April laughed. Bonnie had had the same head-in-the-sand attitude.
Rocky put a hand on Mary Lou’s arm. “Mary Lou, sweetie, I know this may come as a shock to you, but your daughter is no longer a virgin.”
Everyone laughed, and Mary Lou stuck out her tongue at Rocky. That was enough to change the subject.
“That’s enough talk about sex, drugs and partying. What did you all bring to share?” Mary Lou said.
“Okaaay,” April said. She tried to remember the last time she did show-and-tell. It had to be Mrs. Whitebread’s third-grade class. Still, the process had to be the same.
Mary Lou took out pictures and passed them around. “Kit and I have been painting furniture for the nursery. We cut stars and moons out of sponges and stamped the drawer fronts. It really came out cute.”
The rest of the group murmured their approval, except for Piper. She kept her head down, only surfacing to blow embossing powder off her page. She gave Mary Lou’s pictures a cursory glance and went back to her project. Her arm was positioned in front of her page to ensure privacy. April wondered what she was doing that was so secret.
Mary Lou looked to Tammy, who said she had nothing to show. Suzi passed around her garden journal again. It was clear her love of plants permeated her life.
Rocky pulled out her portfolio. She handed out the papers she’d purchased, but a collage underneath caught April’s eye.
“May I?” she asked, picking it up when Rocky nodded yes.
The collection of stamped images on the page was thick and layered. April thought she saw a baby doll, leaves and a bird. She thought she saw a hammer. A ghostly image of a building was rendered, covered in brambles.
“Is this yours? It’s wonderful,” April said, admiring the colors and the disturbing, three-dimensional quality Rocky had produced on a flat piece of paper.
