Chapter Three
At eight o’clock, in concert with the chime of the pendulum clock, Lily O’Ree-Fenwick packed her daughters off to school, shooing them out of the house as though a busy day awaited her.
With her back against the door, she breathed a sigh of relief. Two down, one to go. She scolded herself. The thought made her sound like she lived a life of drudgery.
Why, then, was she unhappy?
She couldn’t explain the feeling.
Her tall, dark-haired and gorgeous husband, Abbott, had made partner of Spalding, Noble, Spalding and Critch only four years after joining the firm. Totally devoted to her, he spoiled her mercilessly.
She loved him. That was a fact. No other man had interested her since she met him eighteen years ago, and after fifteen years of marriage, that hadn’t changed.
But his touch no longer sent goose pimples bristling over her skin. His ‘I love you-s’ no longer made her feel like the luckiest woman in the universe.
Disgusted with herself, she looked around at the kitchen she had spent immeasurable hours designing and decorating. The expensively furnished room with every convenience imaginable offered her no pleasure, and neither had it yesterday or the day before that.
Contrary to her belief that the completion of the construction of their Cape Cod house would bring her immense joy and satisfaction, it had, instead, brought her to the finish line. She had her perfect family, her perfect home, her perfect life and nowhere to go from here.
Lately, more often than not, her days began with negative thoughts. She groaned and determinedly turned her attention to her daughters.
At ten years old, Maya, like the fabled Tuesday’s child, was full of grace and a little lady at all times. She styled her dark hair in a pageboy, and not only used bigger words than Lily, but knew the meaning of them all.
While Maya was like her and Abbott in many ways, eight-year-old Kira had nothing in common with any of them. She and Abbott often joked that Kira had been switched at birth, baby elves having fairy-ed away their biological daughter to a faraway land. Had she not inherited her father’s smoky gray eyes, dimpled chin and Lily’s wild red hair and freckled face, they might have seriously considered looking into the possibility that their baby and Kira had, through a mix-up in paperwork or a switch of ID wrist bands, been transposed at birth.
Lily jumped to the side when the door hit her.
“Gawwwd, Maw-um, why were you leaning against the door?” Kira asked, pushing the door wide open. “I forgot the other part of my science experiment in the fridge. Mrs. Davidson would have a bird. That would mean she would have to change her schedule all because of me.” She crossed her eyes.
Kira had lost her two front teeth over the weekend and her smile made Lily want to giggle. She choked the laugh down and stared at the wet globs of mud clinging to the sides of Kira’s navy Mary Janes. “I’ll get it for you.”
“It’s okay. You don’t know where it is, and it’ll take too long to explain it to you.” She ran across the imported ceramic tiles, bits of mud resembling brownie crumbs thrown free from her shoes sprinkled the floor.
Only God knew where Kira found a mud puddle in a drought. Hampstead hadn’t seen rain in two months.
She studied her daughter. One knee sock had fallen from below her knobby knees and found sanctuary at her ankle and her shirttail had escaped the waistband of her tartan skirt. One of her three braids had come undone. Kira liked to trend-set. The thraids, as she had dubbed them, hadn’t caught on quite like she anticipated, though.
All in all, she looked put together in a hurry, when, in fact, Lily had supervised the thirty-minute preparation for school as she did every morning.
“I’m sorry I’m a doofuss,” Lily said, needing to hear a compliment, but realized the second the words left her lips the mistake she made. No one ever asked a question of Kira unless you wanted to hear the terrible truth.
Kira, holding a pink plastic container in her hand, ran back across the kitchen, sending more debris scattering across the meticulously clean floor. At the door she turned and said, “You’re not a doofuss, Mom. You’re just getting a little slow. It’s to be expected at your age.” She bobbed her head, causing her pigtails to fox trot on her shoulders.
Lily had turned forty last week and didn’t feel one year of her age until that moment. She tweaked Kira’s nose. “I’ll have to work on that. What’s in the container?”
“Mouse turds. Gotta go. Don’t forget you have to pick me up today. Remember I’m trying out for the boys’ baseball team after school today.”
Lily noticed the emphasis Kira had put on the word “boys”. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll pick you up.” She bit her tongue to keep from suggesting again that she try out for the girls’ team. They already had that discussion, or rather argument, and she wouldn’t subject herself to the debate again.
Kira looked up at her with an expression that Lily had come to recognize as a prelude to a tactless suggestion. “Are you sure you won’t forget between now and then? Maybe you should write a reminder in the palm of your hand.”
“Good idea. Now go before you miss your bus. I misplaced my car keys so I won’t be able to drive you.”
“Aw, Maw-um.” She rolled her eyes and heaved a breath too loud and too strong for such a mite of a girl. “You forgot Dad’s still home, haven’t you?”
“No, I haven’t. Now skedaddle before I ask you why you put mouse turds in my refrigerator without asking permission.”
That motivated the little imp out the door as Lily knew it would.
She went to the counter and poured coffee into a China mug thinking how time had changed her. Her wants and desires didn’t seem as vital as they once had. Maybe that explained her funk.
Sunlight streamed through the window. As the morning sun warmed her face she watched a black-bodied, white-tailed Kaibab squirrel race across the dew-slicked grass. Suddenly, as though sensing imminent danger, he came to an abrupt stop. Standing motionless, his eyes, high on each side of his head allowing for a wide field of vision, scanned the yard. After a moment of careful scrutiny and apparently satisfied his life wasn’t in jeopardy, he skittered to a nearby blue spruce and disappeared amid the branches.
She heard Abbott enter the kitchen, but didn’t turn. He hugged her from behind and nuzzled her neck.
“Girls got off okay?” he asked.
With a nod and a forced smile, she faced him.
“Who were you talking to just now?”
“Kira. She forgot half her science experiment in the fridge.”
He walked to the table. “This is the first I’ve heard of a science experiment. What is it?”
She took a sip of coffee. “I didn’t know about it, either, until a few minutes ago. She didn’t say, but it has something to do with mouse turds. Truthfully, I was scared to ask.”
“Mouse turds?” He frowned as he sat and placed a linen napkin in his lap.
As he stared into space, Lily could virtually see his mind working to come up with an experiment involving a rodent’s excrement.
After a moment and with a look as empty as a gambler’s pocket book the day before payday, he said, “You should probably expect a call from her homeroom teacher today.”
She laughed, thinking she’d best look for her car keys because, undoubtedly, that meant a trip to Kira’s school before the day ended.
“Where did she get the…er ..ingredient for her project?”
She shrugged. “I’m hoping someone in her class has a pet mouse. Maybe she conned Laurie into taking her to a pet shop when she was shopping with her and Amie on Saturday.”
“Both are welcome alternatives to what I prophesied.”
“I tried not to picture our daughter in a dumpster knee-high in refuse.” She stared down at the floor, thinking about what Kira had said. “I wonder what the other half of the experiment is.” She smiled when he cocked a perfectly aligned black brow.
“The mouse??
?? He crossed his eyes, like daughter like father.
She laughed. “Okay, Mr. I-Got-An-Answer-For-Everything. Why did she keep the mouse turds on ice?”
With not a second lost to thought, he said, “Spit balls.”
Lily curled her lip in distaste and hiked one brow, refusing to ponder the image the suggestion invoked. “I’m sorry I asked. You have a discovery today?” She set a bowl of oatmeal with strawberries before him on the place mat and poured coffee into his mug.
“Yes. How’d you know?”
“You always wear your blue blazer and gray flannel pants when you do.” Some things never changed, at least with Abbott.
“I didn’t realize; I suppose I do. Mom called last night while you were at Bonnie’s. How is she feeling, by the way? I’m sorry I couldn’t wait up for you, but I was zapped.”
She acknowledged his apology with a nod and a smile. “Bonnie’s getting there. It’s a bad sprain. She can’t put any weight on her foot at all.” She sat across the table from him.
“She’s lucky to have a friend like you.” He spooned sugar over his oatmeal and added milk.
“What did your mom want?”
“She called to see if Maya was feeling better.”
“Calliope’s not in any trouble?” This surprised her. Her mother-in-law was the only person she knew who could get into more mischief than Kira.
He shook his head. “Apparently not.”
Not that she didn’t take Abbott at his word, but Lily found that hard to believe. The woman always had two reasons for calling. She usually led with the mundane and secondly with the curve that hit between the eyes. “She didn’t need you to bail her out of jail?”
“Not this time. She did ask, though, where she could,” he stopped to make air quotes, “score some drugs.”
Lily repeated after him. “Score some drugs. Oh God.” She immediately became fearful for her mother-in-law, picturing her in a slum neighborhood and thugs surrounding the bite-size woman. “Maybe you should alert your father to prepare him.”
“I probably should, but it may be nothing. I don’t want to worry him unnecessarily.”
“Did you ask her why she wanted to know?” She waited patiently while he finished the last of his breakfast.
He dabbed the napkin at the corners of his mouth. “She said she was conducting a survey for the youth center around the corner from the villa.” He took a sip of coffee, clucked his tongue and looked into the mug. “Is this a different blend?”
“I thought I’d try something new. It’s a change from the same old. Do you like it?” There was that word again - change.
He nodded. “It’s good.”
She fingered the rim of her coffee mug. “Do you believe her?”
“Mom? Not on your life.” He laughed. “Her stories are getting more credible, and she’s getting more convincing, though. If I hadn’t known better, I might have fallen for the story.”
“Maybe you should prepare yourself for an SOS from her today or a call from the police.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I think that’s why she pushed me into law and thanks to her, I’m getting quite adept at practicing criminal law.”
Keeping a straight face, she asked, “How many sons can say that?”
He chuckled, finished his coffee, picked his dishes from the table and put them in the dishwasher. “What are your plans for today?”
“I thought I’d clean the upstairs linen closet.” She hoped that would not be the highlight of her day.
“I’ll call later. Maybe we can have a late lunch.”
“I’d like that.” She forced happiness into her eyes.
After she closed the door behind him, feeling bleak from the doldrums, she sat at the kitchen table.
When the telephone rang thirty minutes later, she still sat in the same chair in the same position.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” she mumbled as she stood to answer the phone. “Hello,” she said, pleasant enough and expecting the voice on the other end of the phone to be Kira’s homeroom teacher, Mr. Woodrow.
“Lily?” a female voice asked.
“Yes.” Lily could not understand why, but her heartbeat accelerated. The woman sounded strangely familiar, yet she couldn’t put a face to the voice.
“This is Dallas Hall. We met last weekend at the annual policeman’s gala.”
Lily searched her memory, but couldn’t remember meeting her and with a name like that, she surely would. “I’m sorry. I―”
“Roberta Crouse introduced us. You were standing behind a potted fichus, sipping a whiskey sour, and I jokingly suggested there were better hiding places. You laughed and countered with ―”
“Like a limb on the seventy-five foot oak on the front lawn?” Now Lily remembered. “Blond pixie-cut hair, blue eyes, midnight blue Pura Vida’s chiffon cocktail dress with satin trim.”
Dallas laughed, a throaty laugh that wrung a chuckle from Lily.
“I hope you don’t think this forward of me, but I was hoping you could show me around Hampstead. The hot spots, best restaurants, that type of thing.”
“Right. You just transferred in from the Bracebridge PD. Fifty-fifth division Central Field, if memory serves.”
“Yes. Good memory. Can you spare the time?”
“Are there guns and handcuffs involved?”
Dallas laughed that throaty laugh again. “Only if you want there to be.”
“Why don’t we hold off on that until we get better acquainted?” Lily found herself smiling, the first smile that came freely in a long, long time. “How’s today sound? I don’t have anything planned.”
“Sure. Where shall we meet and when?”
Lily rhymed off the name of a mom and pop delicatessen on Averdeen. “See you at one.” She placed the receiver on the hook, smiled and danced her up the staircase and into the bedroom she shared with her husband.