by Ann Self
She sprang from her car, again taking notice of the beautiful clear day. According to the last report on her radio, the weekend was going to be unseasonably warm and sunny, maybe even a record breaker. New England weather could be amazing, she thought. The old saying—if you don’t like the New England weather, wait a minute—was quite accurate. It seemed like only a week ago she was dodging around piled up snow. Since Lucinda’s party on Sunday would spill out onto the terraced gardens and pool area, she knew the Whitbecks would be pleased with their turn of the weather roulette.
Rolling, tree-studded grounds around the stone mansion were already overrun with people festooning everything that didn’t move with twinkle-lights, arranging huge flower pots near the pool-side entertainment pavilion, and erecting striped canopies and adjusting strategically placed photocell lighting. Tomorrow the caterers would be coming and going, not to mention hairdressers, makeup people, and the media. The news people would undoubtedly swarm around the hive gathering fodder for “film at eleven”.
Jane yanked open one of the huge double doors of the north wing entrance and paused to glance back at her “illegally” parked car. It looked mighty grotesque, especially in the company of a shiny red Porsche and with a rejection sticker glowing on its windshield. She was going to have to seriously consider buying a new car, as terrifying as it was. The Buick was old and ugly, but there were no monthly payments attached to it.
She hurried into the wide front hall of the north wing, her sandals slapping on gleaming, varnished floor planks. The hall eventually narrowed into an interior corridor lined with box stalls and metal grilles, looking like a study in perspective. Jane took an immediate right out of the hall to enter the door to the show tackroom. Elliot would be pickier than usual this weekend so she wanted to move fast, just grab her bridle and re-park the junk against the south wing. She glanced at her watch: Only noon... She had plenty of time before any of the overnight guests showed up at four. Not even cutting it close. Jane froze and backed out the door as Mean Chicken sauntered towards the doorway from inside the tackroom, stepping like a toe dancer and making low conversational cackles.
“Oh great...someone must have shut you in here,” she groused. Sam and Reggie’s attempts to capture him had obviously not been successful—the bird probably sensed something was up and was keeping a low profile. She continued stepping back slowly to give the rooster room to exit, looking around wildly for a broom or some other weapon for protection. The monstrous rooster stood on thick yellow legs with murderous claws and vicious spurs capable of ripping open unprotected flesh, and anyone in bare legs and sandals was dangerously vulnerable. Reggie insisted the rooster must have had a gland problem or else he had gobbled up too much high protein horse feed because he’d never seen one so tall and hefty.
The feathered felon trained a beady eye on Jane for a few seconds, but she stared him down and held her ground. He left her unmolested, breaking into a trot down the interior corridor towards the distant intersecting wings of the barn, on some errand known only to his bird brain. Jane sighed in relief. As soon as she drove back to the west wing she would give Reggie and Sam a heads-up about Mean Chicken’s recent location. She watched the rooster disappear into the dusty mist of corridors, his claws echoing off the floor, before she turned her back on him.
Bridles and saddles hung in neat rows on gleaming African-mahogany walls in the tackroom. The odor of leather and oil was strong in Jane’s nostrils as she grabbed her show bridle off its peg and rushed back out to the corridor. She approached the front entry again and reached for the large door handle.
Jane was startled for a second by sparks of traveling sunlight that winked off a moving car and strobed through the front windows. She dropped her hand from the door and stepped sideways to peek out a window to see who drove in, and gasped at what she saw. No mistaking this particular black Mercedes SUV with its flashy round emblem, as it coasted into front parking slot right next to the old Buick.
“Oh my God in heaven!” she hissed between her teeth, watching Brian Canaday step from his vehicle, slam the door and do a double-take at her car. Another second and she would’ve run right into him wearing her ghastly drudgery outfit. Jane turned and sprinted back down the corridor of the north wing, bridle reins flapping wildly around her long bare legs, and the metal bit clanging like an alarm. She was only vaguely aware of people scattered throughout the barn as she ducked out a small side door on the right side of the wing. She clenched the metal bit silent in her hand and edged along the outside wall, back towards the front, hiding in the deep shadows of giant trees and sheltered from the parking lot by masses of ten-foot high rhododendron bushes. Her heart slammed against her ribs as she struggled to slip through narrow spaces between the ornamental shrubs.
Peeking between branches and pink blossoms, Jane was astounded to see that Brian recognized her car and was examining it closely. She thought she had been so clever, but being inside the car, one tended to forget it stuck out like a sore thumb. She comforted herself with the thought that at least he didn’t know who the driver was. She held her breath and melded into the tall thick shrubbery, keeping herself as motionless as possible, mindful of his special-forces training. She watched Brian standing behind her car—hands on hips—looking at the ugly Buick in stunned amazement. Fat blossoms brushed her face and seared her senses with perfume. She crouched slightly to see between leathery leaves, leaning on her knees with the bridle pooled at her feet.
Brian slowly circled the Buick, his attention riveted on the sorry vehicle. He stopped and shook his head, and then just stared it again, as if he had never seen anything like it outside a junkyard. He pushed the bumper with his foot to see if the suspension system was as bad as he remembered and the car creaked and swayed in place. He bent to look in the windows and Jane cringed at what he would see: threadbare front bench seat, cracked and sprouting foam and covered with an old bath towel, rusted floorboards with a pavement-viewing hole, a drooping headliner that was tacked back up in strategic places with a Swingline stapler, empty candy wrappers, shopping bags, and an embarrassing old plastic basket holding her freshly laundered clothes, complete with the slightly frayed undies.
Jane bent her head and whispered “Oh God!” to the ground, wincing in embarrassment. She looked back up to spy between the branches and scanned her brain to think of what other embarrassing things she might have left for his amusement. He was now looking at the buckled, sun-warped back deck. She recalled leaving sunglasses, old maps and a riding whip there. Nothing as bad as the underwear.
Brian walked to the front and gazed at the rejection sticker on the front passenger-side windshield, and tapped the window and nodded as if it were a joke. She took one hand off her knee and clasped it firmly over her mouth so no betraying sounds could pop out.
Another car approached.
Damn damn damn! she chanted in her mind. Elliot’s buff-colored Lexus sedan pulled in and parked next to Lucinda’s Porsche. Elliot slid out and shook Brian’s hand enthusiastically, and Brian began to talk and point at the Buick.
Elliot frowned at the still creaking junk as he conversed with Brian, nodding his head and obviously answering a pack of questions. Both men had their suit coats off with loosened ties, and Elliot had his arms folded as he talked with Brian, snapping his head back and forth between his guest and the Buick. The sun glowed on Elliot’s pink scalp as the rake-over lifted in the breeze, despite the weight of hairspray. He began to look extremely perplexed as he clapped down silver strands and listened to what Brian had to say.
“Oh, fine...” Jane sighed under her breath. She grabbed up the bridle and turned to make a break back to the barn, and nearly plowed into Lucinda. Jane was startled that anyone could materialize that close to her in such a confined space—even if she was thinner than the branches.
“Any reason why you’re hiding in the bushes spying on my father and Brian Canaday?” Lucinda demanded.
Jane slowly straightened up in the glar
e of large silvery eyes that darted over her face. They were spiked with mascarared points, looking more like the teeth of a Venus Flytrap than lashes. The windows to her soul were nothing anyone wanted to see.
“I, ah, shouldn’t have parked my car in the front. Your father with be very upset with me...” Jane glanced back through the branches, but the two men had gone into the barn. She turned back reluctantly to face Lucinda, who was vibrating with a low-level cunning. Like a wildebeest.
“And why are you wearing shorts?” she demanded. “You know it’s against the dress code for barn help...I guess you’ve decided to break all the rules in one day?”
“No...not really, that wasn’t my intention,” Jane explained with a rush, still darting looks through the branches. “Well—I’d just better go move the car before any more guests arrive!”
She raced away from Lucinda’s open mouth, plowing through shrubbery—catching a rein on a branch and yanking it off—and sprinting to her car, trailing twigs and leaves. She jumped into the Buick, tossed the bridle onto the back seat and started the car with shaking hands, ripping it into reverse much too quickly. Tires spun on sand left over from winter, making a horrible wine before they caught and propelled her backward in a dustbowl. Jane nearly scraped the rear panel of Brian’s Mercedes as she cranked her car back around. She shoved the car into drive and slapped at the wheel like a wild woman, straightening her tires quickly and roaring away, leaving rubber doughnuts on the pavement.
Jane winced at the sound of the tires peeling. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention from the big-wigs in the front office, but she was so juiced full of adrenaline it was impossible to make controlled movements.
Lucinda was somehow standing in the slot she had just vacated, drop-jawed and aghast, batting away dust. Jane glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her turn and run into the barn. “Great! She can’t wait to rat me out, she’s really got her teeth into something now.” Her face began a flameout. She turned right instead of left, and drove off the estate.
She would not be home today, even if she had to hide all day at the movies.
“Madeline, be home, be home!” Jane chanted, as she rolled north, back down the highway towards Brockton. Because it was Saturday, there was a fifty-fifty chance her best buddy since her junior high school days would be at home in her Brockton townhouse.
Madeline Fanning was now a Medical Psychologist on staff at a large Boston hospital, and was also involved in researching criminal and forensic psychology. Like Jane, she had never forgotten her days as a poor child on public assistance. Madeline had been given up for adoption at birth and then removed from abusive adoptive parents at five, making the rounds from one foster home to another—once even being featured as “Wednesday’s Child” on the evening news begging for a home. Madeline always figured it was her chunky, unflattering glasses magnifying big sad eyes that scared away prospective parents. Her only new home would be a college dorm, many years later.
During their school years, besides the hairdos-from-hell, Madeline had the added deathblow of wearing glasses as thick as bulletproof windows in a bank. On the plus side, she was gifted with a razor wit, a brilliant mind, and a keen interest in the workings of the human psyche. Madeline had attended college on full scholarship, spent three years in postgraduate training in theory and research at Boston General, earned a Fellowship for her master’s degree, and then returned to work at Boston General, while simultaneously attending college classes in the evening studying for her Doctorate.
Madeline took up running, jogged off sixty pounds, got fitted with contact lenses that freed her lovely hazel eyes from their glass prison, and defiantly grew her mouse colored hair out to shoulder blade length. With only the slightest nudge from a hair stylist, her hair turned a luxurious blonde, and Madeline could now only be described as a knockout. Although contact between Jane and Madeline had become infrequent and sporadic lately, they had the kind of friendship that could survive long stretches with little nurturing. Then they would just take up right where it left off without missing a beat.
Jane dropped two bags of groceries at her feet on the brick and flagstone entry to the elegant gray townhouse. The complex obviously had a large budget for landscaping as it could have passed for an arboretum rather than a developed community of homes. She rang the bell and listened to muted chimes.
Be home... She didn’t see Madeline’s Jaguar, but there were several garages around the complex.
The door was wrenched open. Madeline shrieked “Jane!” and jumped out to hug her friend. Madeline was wearing a chef’s apron over a gray Nike tee shirt and sweatpants, and was almost totally covered in flour. Her long blonde hair was skimmed back in a band and wisps sprouted from her forehead like feelers.
“Hello Madeline, long time no see,” Jane greeted.
“Long time no see?” Madeline jumped back to hold her friend at arms length. “That’s putting it mildly. I thought that barn out in the sticks had swallowed you up forever! Get in here. Oops, sorry, I got flour on you, but I don’t suppose it will hurt that outfit. Good God, are you ducking in here to hide from the fashion police?”
“I’m hiding from a lot of things,” Jane answered cryptically. Madeline looked at her closely with her trademark ‘evaluation squint’ and then glanced down at the shopping bags. She dusted at her face with her forearm. “What’s with the groceries, did you come to cook too?”
Jane hefted up the bags. “It’s a long sad story. Got a cup of tea and an ear?”
“Sure thing, no problem. Take refuge in my humble abode. Coffee okay? I just put on a pot of freshly ground hazelnut. Here, let me grab a bag. You picked a good time, I’m baking my brains out.”
Jane stepped into the refreshing cool of the climate-controlled townhouse.
“If I can just put some of these things in your fridge so they won’t spoil...” Jane winced at the dispirited tone of her own voice. She knew Madeline, of all people, wouldn’t miss it.
“I’ll take care of them. Give me that bag too, and sit down right there.” She indicated a cozy breakfast nook that looked like an antique store with a bay window. “I now have a victim for my new pumpkin muffin recipe. I’ll pour some coffee, and you can tell me why you showed up on my doorstep in Raggedy Anne clothes looking like a bag lady.”
“It’s one of those times when I had a lot of work to do and didn’t plan for anyone to see me.”
“And don’t tell me,” Madeline said, hastily tossing Jane’s perishable items in her large stainless refrigerator, “you ran into someone important, like we all do when we run out in a heap. Like the Pope.”
Jane managed a chuckle. “Almost as bad. It was a close call, one of the worst people possible to see me like this.” She slumped into an antique nineteenth-century Directoire chair in the dinette and admired the rest of Madeline’s collection. Her friend had a great passion for old furniture from the Burgundy area of France. The kitchen table was a Louis XV farm table, and held a stack of college text books. There was a nineteenth-century hutch in French oak holding her pewter collection, a carved eighteenth-century buffet in cherry and a wooden wine pitcher filled with sunflowers. The walls were tinted the palest shade of baby blue and hung with framed prints and watercolors. The room’s large bay window kept an overgrowth of evergreen trees and shrubbery from growing into the dinette.
“Now you’ve really got me curious! Who in the world could rattle you like this?” Madeline demanded as she dashed around in her kitchen.
“You’d never guess in a million years.” Jane replied as she listened to the ticking of a tall Mobier case-clock in the corner, admiring its mandolin shape and hypnotically watching the large pendulum. Madeline cleared the table of books, filled mugs with coffee and clanked around in a mad rush to get back and hear the story.
“So, Jane...dish it out. Who almost saw you, and what chased you out of Southbrook and made you look so haggard and stressed?” She ripped off her apron, swatted excess flour from her
jeans, slid the band out of her long hair and then deposited two steaming mugs of coffee and a plate of perfectly shaped pumpkin muffins on woven placemats. Jane looked pointedly at the plump, slightly orange confection and raised an eyebrow at Madeline. Madeline defended herself: “I run three miles a day. I can eat a little of the good stuff without fear.”
“Very good, Madeline, you really have it together.”
Madeline sat and scooted her chair in. “Naah! If I really had it together, I’d have my own private practice—not to mention getting married and having two-point-five kids.”
Jane laughed. “Soon, good buddy, soon. I can see it coming. You are brilliant, gorgeous and I see nothing but great success ahead for you.”
“Hey! Who’s helping who here?”
“After the long boring tale you volunteered to listen to, it’s the least I could do.”
“I won’t be bored. Why do I have a feeling this is so far from boring? I’m all ears—talk!”
As was her habit, Jane piled copious amounts of sugar and cream into her coffee. Somewhere Sam was wincing. She took a long, bracing drink and sat back to bring Madeline up to speed, pouring out the whole gruesome story as the clock ticked on and they inhaled their coffee. After twenty-five minutes of listening to Jane’s accounting of everything that happened from the Boston shopping spree to the present, Madeline’s jaw hung slack. “Brian Canaday!!” she cried. “Our Brian Canaday? The Canaday International Brian Canaday?”
“The one and the only...”
“And you just ran into him shopping, just like that? Right out of the blue! Right in the middle of Boston.”
“Hit me right behind the knees—last thing I ever expected.”
“It sounds like a Hollywood movie,” Madeline declared.
“Doesn’t it? But I don’t think this one will have a Hollywood ending.”
