Kiki Lowenstein Books 1-3 & Cara Mia Delgatto Books 1-3: The Perfect Series for Crafters, Pet Lovers, and Readers Who Like Upbeat Books!

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  Anya read my mind. “Mo-om. I’ll be right out in front of the house. Geez. Give me a break. I’m practically a prisoner in my own home. And look, see? Here’s my cell phone, all charged and everything!” With that she grabbed Guy’s leash and flounced out, slamming the front door behind her.

  Gracie turned doleful eyes on me. I knew exactly how she felt. Her floppy ears drooped, and she set her big blocky head on her paws, watching the front door as though it were a living thing.

  “I guess we better get used to this, huh? Our baby is growing up.”

  After her walk, Anya was much more congenial, and the evening went by without a hitch.

  However, the next morning brought back a nasty child with a sassy tongue. Anya snarled every half-mile of our journey to the Science Center. “This place is for babies. Everyone else in my school is going to camp in Wisconsin or hanging at the mall. I hate this! Hate it! I don’t want to make clay models of the solar system and electric toys using batteries. It’s stooo-pid. And you’re mean to make me go.”

  Gripping the steering wheel hard so I wouldn’t be tempted to smack her, I said softly, “As long as that killer is loose, you aren’t like everyone else and neither am I.”

  “Huh, you just use that as an excuse.”

  I didn’t respond. She might be onto something. A crazed serial killer had a lot more elephants than “I don’t want you to go away for the summer because I’ll miss you” or “You can’t hang around the mall because you might get into mischief,” right? Wasn’t I within my parental rights to drum up whatever excuse I thought I could get away with?

  At least I didn’t stoop to say, “Because I’m the Mom.” Admittedly, I thought about it.

  When I didn’t take the bait, Anya turned her face away from me and stared out the window. Her jaw was set, her lower lip poked out. A few minutes passed. Then, in the sweetest voice imaginable, she asked, “Can we stop at McDonald’s?”

  I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. That mood swing took all of a few deep breaths. Oh, boy. Was this a preview of coming events?

  We pulled into the drive-up, and Anya leaned over me to yell into the squawk box, “A sausage egg McMuffin, two hash browns, and a large orange juice.” This was the kid who seemed on the path to anorexia only last month? The cashier named an amount that shocked me.

  I dug around in my purse, but Anya tapped my arm. “I’ve got it, Mom. Nana gave me money for kicking around. Want anything?”

  I ordered a breakfast burrito and a large coffee.

  Anya seemed rather pleased with herself as she counted money for the cashier. Yet another sign that my baby was growing up.

  After we finished our breakfast in the fast food parking lot, I dropped her off, and let myself into the store. Gracie followed docilely on her lead while Guy wrapped his leash around both of us as he did laps. Taking hobbled baby steps, I moved toward the stockroom. I unhooked Gracie and plopped Guy into a doggie play pen before calling my mother-in-law to thank her again for the flowers that were brightening up my rental house.

  Sheila brushed away my words of gratitude. “Anya’s eyes were red and crusty last time she spent the night. Cottonwood is in full bloom.”

  “Yes, several of our customers are sneezing and wheezing.”

  “I made an appointment for her with Andersoll, Weaver, and Sealander, the best allergy partners in town. Ralphie Andersoll and I go way back. I can’t wait for him to see my gorgeous grandbaby. I’ve been clucking over photos of his motley brood for decades. What do scrapbookers do when they have ugly kids?”

  No way was I going to touch that comment.

  Sheila paid no attention to my silence. “Unfortunately, I’m scheduled to play in a foursome for a charity match at the club the day of Anya’s appointment. You’ll have to pick her up early from science camp and take her to the doctor’s office on Thursday.”

  I hesitated. The office visit would be expensive, and ongoing allergy shots were not in my budget. On the other hand, I was fortunate Sheila could wrangle a spot on the allergist’s schedule for my child. I swallowed hard and figured I would find a way to make ends meet, even if I had to eat canned beans to do so. “Thanks so much for making the appointment. I’ll be glad to take her.”

  As if sensing my concern, she added, “They’ll send me the bill. The paperwork’s already done.”

  A huge wave of relief swept through me. “Sheila, I can’t thank you enough.”

  “If my son had been alive, or hadn’t been so stupid about whom he trusted, you wouldn’t have to worry about this.” Her voice broke with the weight of emotion, and we said our goodbyes.

  Neither Sheila nor I wanted to think about the financial shenanigans that ruined my late husband’s business. Auditors were still sifting through the wreckage and trying to track down hidden accounts in the Cayman Islands. I had decided to move on and not count on seeing one red cent. To do otherwise was too painful.

  I hung up the phone and stared thoughtfully at the dogs. In one way, Sheila was right. George’s bad judgment set in motion a string of life-changing events. But I am a grown woman, and it rankled I could only provide the barest of necessities for my child. Worse yet, if CAMPers avoided us after Yvonne’s death, I might not have a steady income at all.

  9

  My gloomy thoughts were interrupted as Dodie struggled through the back door with a box of supplies left over from the ill-fated CAMP crop. She brushed aside my offer to help. The plum-colored crescents under her eyes and her brusque manner underscored her bad mood. “I’ve had a dozen calls at home from women who want their money back. Despite the rain checks. Plus, the other stores want to meet with me to discuss what we need to do next. That’s code for ‘we want to toss you out of the program,’ Sunshine. This was all because of Yvonne Gaynor.”

  Then Dodie mumbled something in Yiddish.

  “Pardon?”

  “From a fool one has grief,” she translated.

  I now knew exactly how upset she was. Dodie trots out her pithy “old country” sayings when she is stressed. “They can’t blame us.”

  “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Sunshine. They keep repeating the same thing over and over. Word for word. They say they were traumatized. They don’t want rain checks. They say that to try to get together again would be disrespectful to Yvonne’s memory.” She lifted her shoulders and let them fall expressively. “They’re united in blaming this on me.”

  “Us,” I said in a moment of solidarity. If folks were parroting the same script, I’d wager someone was coaching them. And I bet I knew who. But blaming Ellen Harmon wouldn’t solve our problems.

  I decided not to tell Dodie about my discussion with Detweiler. Instead, I kept my fingers crossed that further investigation would prove Yvonne’s death had been accidental. Even if the offending substance had been aspirin, perhaps Yvonne had been exposed to it by mistake. I’d done a little research on my own and learned that back in ancient times, aspirin was derived from the bark of willow trees. Given the size and scope of the Botanical Gardens specimens wasn’t it possible that Yvonne had come in contact with a willow tree? Of course, that’s where my hypothesis failed me. How could Yvonne have eaten the bark without knowing it?

  “Are there more supplies still in your car? I can go and get them for you, Dodie.”

  My boss sank into her office chair. She appeared not to have heard me. Her face was hidden in her hands; her body slumped over her desktop. Built like a Valkyrie, Dodie seemed invincible, not only because she could make two of me, but because she had a warrior’s spirit. She was not a Pollyanna or a Suzy Sunshine, but an Unsinkable Molly Brown who rolled up her sleeves and made the best of tough situations. When George died, she was the one who had forced me to take charge of my life, reminding me Anya’s welfare depended on it. Through thick and thin, chipboard and vellum, Dodie stood by me. She refused to let me wallow in my misery. After I learned she’d been through her own personal hell, the accidental death of her teenage son, I
never questioned her right to tell me to “buck up.”

  It was difficult to reconcile my pragmatic boss with the haggard ghost sitting in front of me.

  “Dodie? Are there more boxes in your car?” I repeated myself.

  She turned blurry eyes to me. Their washed-out brown was as flat as a piece of Bazzill Basics cardstock. “Huh?”

  I left her office, ran to the refrigerator and grabbed a Diet Dr Pepper, the official store remedy for nearly all of life’s crises. “Drink this. You need caffeine. It’s going to be okay. Yeah, the women will complain, but they’ll get over it. So, give them their money back. Big deal. It’s not that much, and we’ll make it up some other way.”

  Dodie reached for the cola. “Thanks. I haven’t even checked the answering machine here at the store. I didn’t feel like it.”

  “I’ll do it.” This felt odd. Usually, Dodie oriented my emotional compass due north, zero degrees past nonsense. She ran the store like a well-drilled military operation. The ding-ding-ding of an internal alarm sounded inside my head.

  Perhaps there was more to this than Yvonne’s death. I pulled up a chair and asked, “What’s going on?”

  In response, she turned her face away.

  “Look, we’ve known each other for years. You’ve had my back every step of the way. It’s my turn to return the favor. What’s wrong?”

  The words poured out. A week ago Monday, her husband Horace’s boss called him into the executive’s office and let him go from his job at RCC, a local telecommunications company. Since he was six months from retirement—and had never had a performance review below superlative—the Goldfaders were caught totally off-guard. All their benefits disappeared when the boss told Horace: “We’re letting you go.”

  “Is that legal?” I did a quick calculation. This all happened before our horrible CAMP outing. I knew from experience that events tend to gang up on you. It’s not one straw that breaks the camel’s back; it’s the cumulative straws piling up and weighing you down.

  “I doubt it,” Dodie said. “In the meantime, we’re without health insurance.”

  “How’s Horace taking this?”

  “He’s in shock. He couldn’t even bring himself to open the Yellow Pages and find a lawyer. I had to do it for him. That’s not like Horace. Usually, he’s very proactive,” whispered Dodie.

  Her voice broke as she added, “He sits in a chair all day long and stares out the window. Doesn’t even move. He has devoted most of his life to that company. Horace knew the president and worked beside him when they first opened their doors. He feels betrayed.”

  She examined her wedding band carefully where it cut a deep imprint into the puffy flesh of her ring finger. “You see, Horace was a company man. When they said, ‘Jump,’ he said, ‘How high?’ He gave up a lot. Time with our son, Nathan, and our daughter, Rebekkah. He thought he’d made a good trade, security for family time. My darling husband is now doubting every decision that he made.”

  I knew how that felt. You thought you’d been making good choices. Then, suddenly, your life was turned upside down, and you questioned everything.

  “Give him time,” I said. “He’ll get over it. Horace is a good man.”

  “You got that right.”

  Dodie’s husband only came up to her shoulder, but he exuded a happy masculinity that expressed itself in a can-do attitude. Horace made no secret of the fact he adored his wife and supported her in every way possible. The few times I’d seen them together he watched Dodie with misty eyes, his face aglow with love for her.

  “Yip, yip, yip!” Guy broke the downbeat mood in Dodie’s office. I grabbed a hollow dog toy and dabbed a half a teaspoon of peanut butter inside. Sniffing the air cautiously, his rocket of a tail moved back and forth at the speed of light. I smeared a second toy with a lighter coat of peanut butter, in deference to Gracie’s touchy tummy and offered her a similar distraction.

  “New guest,” I said, gesturing to the Jack Russell as Dodie came out to see the noisemaker. “His name’s Guy. He’s a wild man.”

  The freedom to bring pets to work with me is a big perk of my job. Dog sitting money covers the cost of feeding Gracie and adds enough padding in my budget for Anya and me to see a movie once a month. Even though she claims no interest in owning a dog, Dodie has a real soft spot for my charges. Typically, she loves to give my guests a cuddle. It’s not unusual to find her sitting in front of her computer with a canine companion on her copious lap. Today, she wasn’t one bit interested in the perky dude with the black patch around his eye.

  “How do things stand for Horace now?” I asked. “With the lawyer, that is.”

  “The attorney is confident that RCC will pay a settlement, of some sorts, but it’s going to be a long, drawn-out process.”

  Even as Dodie shared this good news, her mouth was slack, and her expression dull. Some part of her was beaten, whipped, defeated. I didn’t know how well-capitalized Time in a Bottle was. We’d never discussed it. It wasn’t really any of my business.

  The one-two punch of the miserable CAMP event and Horace’s firing sent her back in-to the memory of a childhood marred by poverty. As immigrants to this country, her folks had scrambled to make ends meet.

  Something similar happened to me last fall when I was told George died owing his business partner a half a million dollars. Every step toward resolution of the problem had been a struggle, fighting my childhood demons and facing new adult tests of my mettle.

  “How can I help you, Dodie?”

  “Summer is the doldrums for scrappers. Put on your thinking cap. We need exciting programs that’ll get customers into the store and make them open their wallets.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  10

  Each time the door minder buzzed, I expected to see Bama walk in. Ditto when I heard Dodie move from the back room to the sales floor.

  Not that I minded working alone with customers. I loved helping women discover how much fun they could have with their scrapbooks. I did find it odd that Bama wasn’t here to help us, especially when it came to dealing with angry CAMPers. Boy, oh, boy, there were plenty of unhappy people who’d left messages on our answering machine in Dodie’s office. From the phone next to the cash register, I dialed a code and accessed the recordings.

  When I tried to call them back, none of them were home. I breathed the proverbial sigh of relief and put my energy into re-stocking the CAMP merchandise. The make-and-take pages from the crop had mostly been untouched, so I labeled boxes and stored them away. That kept me busy until lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich washed down with copious amounts of iced tea.

  Happy for a little fresh air, I walked the dogs. Avoiding entanglement with Guy’s lead kept me on my toes. He was a busy boy, sniffing, peeing, and racing about, zigzagging wildly as he caught a scent or saw something interesting. His tail moved as quickly as a hummingbird’s wings. Unsure about Guy’s flight path, Gracie stayed close to me. As we meandered up and down residential blocks behind our store, I contemplated ways to replace our store’s lost income from the CAMP disaster.

  Our first priority would be setting things right with the croppers who had attended the CAMP event. Besides the trauma of seeing Yvonne die, most of them were worried about their cameras. I made a mental note to call the police and ask when the cameras would be returned.

  Back at the store, I put Guy and Gracie in the doggy playpen. I was refilling their water dish when the door minder buzzed loudly. Running to the front of the store, I nearly slammed into Roger.

  “The cops took Mom in for questioning.” He could barely choke out the words. “They came an hour ago. She was cleaning a house, and they made her go with them. She called me as they loaded her into the squad car.”

  “Questioning Mert about what?”

  “About that woman who died on Saturday.”

  “Come with me.” I led the way back to the office. “Dodie? You’ve got to hear this.”

  Roger repeated w
hat had happened with Mert. Dodie’s face closed down in an angry scowl. “Do you know which police force it was? Where they’ve taken her?”

  What everyone calls St. Louis is actually a metro area with 91 different municipalities. It’s wasteful, it’s ridiculous, and it causes all sorts of havoc. However, once given power, people are loathing to give it back. Despite all sorts of studies proving that this does not serve the citizenry well, the status quo prevails.

  “I don’t know who took her or where. She was sneaking in a call to me when they took her phone away.” Roger’s voice shook with emotion. His hands were jammed deep into his pockets and the tips of his ears were white.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Dodie said, as she put a hand on his shoulder.

  “When did this happen?” I flipped open my cell phone and hit the speed dial for Detweiler. His voice mail answered, and I left a message for him.

  “Thirty minutes ago. Took me a while to get here. I was in class at Meramec Community College.”

  “Should I call Bonnie Gossage?” I asked Dodie. Bonnie was a regular customer who’d suspended her legal career to give birth to her son Felix. (Someday I intended to ask Bonnie what on earth possessed her to give that poor child such a bizarre name.)

  “Mom said not to do anything. She was really clear about that. She told me she’d call if she needed help.” Roger paused, got a hold of himself, and added, “I figured you would want to know.”

  “Of course. You did the right thing.” I patted his back.

  Dodie’s eyes blazed angrily and a flash of her old self came through loud and clear. “This is ridiculous. What are they doing hassling Mert? Yvonne’s death was an accident. An allergic reaction.”

  It was all I could do to keep from blurting out an answer. Fortunately, I didn’t need to. Dodie’s eyes widened as she suddenly understood. “They must think Yvonne was murdered!”

  11