Pearl Jinx

  “I don’t know if I can. It depends on how things go this afternoon.”

  “We could eat late . . . at seven?”

  Seven is late? “I’ll try, but how will I let you know if I can’t make it?”

  “Ya could call me on the phone.” Jonas grinned at him.

  “You have a phone?”

  “Jah. I need it fer my business.” He handed Caleb a business card.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Ya didn’t ask.”

  He punched his brother in the arm. “You have a beautiful family, Jonas.”

  “It’s yer family, too. Uncle Caleb.”

  They smiled at each other.

  But then a silver Corvette pulled into the lane beside the house, and out crawled the nurse of red-boots fame, except today she wore high-heeled sandals, tight black jeans, and a glittery yellow tank top. “Hi!” She waved. “I brought homemade lasagna. Anyone hungry?”

  Jonas’s jaw was practically sitting on his chest. “Don’t ya dare leave now,” he whispered to Caleb.

  Caleb figured it was his cue to leave Dodge. “Brotherly love only goes so far. She’s all yours.”

  Welcome to my wigwam, baby . . .

  “The tab so far is twenty thousand dollars. Are you sure they’ll pay for those kinds of damages?” Famosa was tapping away at a calculator on the library desk.

  “They better,” Caleb said. “Either that, or charges will be filed. Either way, they pay.”

  “We don’t have any proof,” LeDeux pointed out.

  “And really, Peach, why would the Amish do something so . . . violent?” Famosa wanted to know.

  “They think that I’m a bad influence. A shunned Amishman coming back, flashing a car, English clothing, and all the trappings of a world they consider evil. Temptation on the hoof. Throw into the mix my military background, and they consider me Lucifer in the flesh. Put me in a cavern that’s all dark and spooky, and they figure it’s the ultimate bad guy’s lair where I’ll be performing Satanic rituals, all to lure their young people away from the fold.”

  “If you’re Satan, mon Dieu, what’re we?” LeDeux pointed to himself, Famosa, and Mark, as if they were less devilish than he was.

  “My minions.”

  “Minions! Talk about! No way am I a minion,” LeDeux declared. “I’ve gotta be a fallen angel, at least.”

  “LeDeux, you are a moron,” Famosa said.

  “Why, thank you very much,” LeDeux replied.

  “Are they always like this?” Mark asked him.

  “Always,” LeDeux and Famosa answered for him.

  “Anyhow, stop worrying about the money, you guys. I’ll meet with my father and the church leaders tonight. Meantime, we’ve got to get these items shipped or picked up. Read the list back again, Mark, to see if we’ve missed anything.”

  Mark picked up the notebook in which he’d been writing. Luckily, he was right-handed. “Three air tanks, one wet suit, three sets of flippers, two twenty-foot and four thirty-foot lighting cables with bulbs, a caving ladder, six lengths of SRT nylon rope with accelerators and decelerators, two SRT harnesses, six safety helmets, and a bunch of small miscellaneous items. Oh, and I made arrangements for a new door to be built. Ironically, the carpenter is Amish, from over in Belleville. He won’t be able to come for three days, though.”

  “Okay, Famosa, you’re making a trip to the Jinx warehouse in Barnegat to pick up the diving equipment, right?”

  “Yeah, but some of it needs to be special-ordered and delivered here. No sense having them ship to Jersey.”

  He groaned. “And how long will that take?”

  “Two days with special handling.”

  “And I’ve gotta make a trip today to Pittsburgh to a lighting supply manufacturer,” LeDeux said. “Some of these cables we need aren’t available locally.”

  “I figure it’s going to take us five days to get back to the point where we were yesterday at this time,” Mark announced.

  The rest of them groaned at the delay. A simple job was evolving into a major project.

  “Well, both of you keep in touch in case we discover any other damage or equipment we need,” he told Famosa and LeDeux as they prepared to leave the library where they’d all been working. “We can at least start laying the cables tomorrow. And LeDeux, do not take any woman along with you. I need your focus to be on the project.”

  “Hey, I’m great at multitasking.” The Cajun fool actually appeared offended that he would think otherwise. “By the way, is it okay if I leave my aunt here?”

  Do you have to? “Yeah, I guess so. Are you sure she isn’t going to be bored with you gone?”

  “Are you kidding? Tante Lulu finds fun no matter where she is. Besides, today she and Abbie went to Amos and Andy’s farm, remember, and after that to a flea market.”

  They all grinned, not just at the prospect of the two old ladies having gentleman friends, but because a mother would actually name her twin sons Amos and Andy.

  After Famosa and LeDeux left, Caleb asked Mark, “Are you okay with your grandmother having a boyfriend? I feel kinda responsible since I allowed Tante Lulu to stay here.”

  “Hey, anything that keeps my grandmother busy is fine with me. At least she’s not bugging me about hooking up with Lily if she’s gallivanting around with Tante Lulu.”

  “I thought you and Lily were back together.” After the way he’d seen them dancing at the tavern last night—Was it really only last night? Seems like a lifetime ago—he would have bet that the two of them were reconciled, back to being engaged.

  Mark’s face flushed, and he turned to avoid eye contact with Caleb. “That was last night. Now things are no different than before. Lily and I don’t have a future.”

  “I know it’s none of my business, but why the hell not?”

  “I’ll say it once. Then I’d rather not discuss it again. Lily and I had a dream, for as long as I can remember, of starting a home-renovation business. We would buy these fixer-uppers. She would do design work. I would do the carpentry work and fine wood detailing. We’d both paint the walls and refinish the woodwork. We’d renovate, then resell, then buy another. All Lily’s letters to me in Afghanistan were filled with ideas for our business. We even knew which places we wanted to target first. There’s an abandoned church over in Franklinville that would make a spectacular home, stained-glass windows and all.” He glanced pointedly at the space where his missing limb would be. “Not gonna happen.”

  “Can’t you have more than one dream? Can’t you and Lily open some other business? Maybe operate the cavern together?”

  He shook his head. “Lily has spent four years of college studying architecture, and has three more to go, just so she can do this. I’ve got to let her find someone else to do it with. Or else she can do it herself. If I stuck with her, she’d give it up. I just know she would.”

  “Architecture, huh? When she’s not stripping?”

  “She is not going to strip.”

  Caleb noticed that Mark used future tense, not past, but he figured he’d butted in enough. “Let’s go see if we can clear some of the debris out of the cavern. And shove the pity-party business. You can carry a rope or a helmet with one arm.”

  The house was quiet as they passed through, Tante Lulu and Abbie being gone. Lizzie was still at Jonas’s place, though he’d promised to pick her up tonight after his meeting with Dat. He would let her stay with him at the B & B for a few days, with Tante Lulu and Abbie as chaperones. He checked his watch. Claire had gone back to her cabin to meet with her buyer at noon. It was two o’clock now. She should be back soon.

  But no, his timing was off. Crossing the back yard, he saw that Claire’s station wagon had been driven across the grass and parked near the wooden bridge. On top were strapped a dozen or so skins of some kind. And Claire was on the other side of the creek, seated Indian style on the ground in the clearing in front of the cavern, using a small ax to cut the side branches off some lo
ng, thin striplings.

  Boner was in the creek yipping and yapping at something, probably a trout. Then, giving up, he began a grand pursuit of butterflies . . . running, skidding to a stop, doing a quick about-face on his tiny feet, then running and yipping in the other direction. Dog heaven, he supposed.

  It wasn’t Boner that got Mark’s attention, though. “What is she doing?” Mark was practically bug-eyed with disbelief.

  “Call me crazy, but I think she’s building a wigwam. No, I take that back. Call her crazy.”

  “Hi!” she yelled, standing and waving at them. Her hair, which appeared more red than auburn in the sunlight, was piled on top of her head. Her face had a nice summer-suntanny glow . . . or was it afterglow from their lovemaking? I can only hope. She wore another jogger-type bra, this time black, with a pair of black nylon shorts and white athletic shoes. She looked good enough to eat, and he meant that in the best possible way.

  “Uh . . . what are you doing?” he asked.

  “I figure security will be an issue till a new door is put on. Actually, even after, probably till the project is completed. So I’m putting up a wigwam. We can take turns sleeping out here, to keep watch.”

  “Couldn’t we have put up a tent?” Mark asked.

  She gave him a look that put him in the category of imbeciles and clueless men. “Why would we do that when all the natural resources are right here?” She waved at the forest behind her.

  “Oh. Okay. Sure. Thanks,” Mark said, but when Claire glanced away, he made a twirling motion near his head for Caleb’s benefit.

  Caleb moved closer to Claire, so close he could smell the shampoo in her hair . . . the same shampoo he’d used this morning in her shower. Pretending to examine the striplings she was working on, he whispered, “Dare I hope you and I have the first watch tonight?”

  She smiled at him. A big ol’ come-hither, big-boy, sex-on-the-rocks-comin’-up kind of smile. Words were unnecessary.

  For the first time today, since they’d discovered the vandalism, since the pathetic meeting with his mother and father, he was beginning to think his life was not so bad. Sex in a teepee—rather, wigwam—with a crazy woman. “Should I wear my loincloth?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

  “Only if you bring your tomahawk.” She was staring at the area where his loincloth might be.

  God, he loved a woman who knew her mind. Even if she was a little bit crazy.

  His corn was tasty . . .

  “You know, Caleb, the Native Americans got it right with their philosophy of life,” Claire told him two hours later as they stood on the bridge over the creek.

  He barely stifled a moan and put his face in his hands. It had been about ninety degrees out today. He was sweaty and irritable after having spent the afternoon pulling all the debris out of the cave, with Mark’s help. He had a headache that felt like a machine gun going off in his skull. Rat-tat-tat-rat-tat-tat-rat-tat-tat . . . And now Claire wanted to give him a lecture on Indian philosophy crap.

  She was watching him expectantly.

  Okay, I can tell her to shove it, that I’m not interested. But do I want to risk not having sex with her at least one more time? No-brainer there! “I give up. What did the Indians do right?”

  “They had this philosophy of planting called the Three Sisters. It involved planting squash, corn, and beans on the same hillock. The corn would grow tall and support the tendrils of the beans, and the squash leaves would spread out and help the ground retain moisture to nourish them all.”

  My brain feels like squash about now. “And this should matter to me, why?”

  “Tsk-tsk-tsk. Let me finish. There is great symbolism there. We, all people, cannot stand alone. We supplement and complement one another. We can grow only with the assistance of others.”

  Uh-oh! “I’m not going to like the point of this story, am I?”

  “It occurred to me after being on your parents’ farm yesterday that the Amish in general do a good job of following the Three Sisters philosophy. To me, the corn is like the father and mother, the bean sprouts all the children, and the squash the community.”

  She’s got a death wish. She’s got a freakin’ death wish, bringing up my family when I’m in this mood. Mark had already escaped to the house. Caleb started to walk away, in the direction of the wigwam she’d put together all by herself. Ducking down, he crawled inside, but not before giving Boner a black look that said, Come inside and you are hot-dog soup. It was surprisingly spacious and, more important, cool inside. The air was sweetly scented from a smudge pot next to a large Indian blanket covering the dirt. And it was surprisingly light because of the smoke hole in the ceiling, not that he expected Claire to do any smoking. Except in the sexual sense. God, what is this? Ghoul humor? No, horny man humor.

  She crawled in after him. “What I was trying to say is that it was downright cruel of your parents and community to toss you out to grow on your own. It’s probably why you’ve been such a loner. It’s why you are generally so dour. I saw it the minute I met you, your drive to succeed, despite your loneliness. The Three Sisters have let you down in the past, so you can’t trust anyone to do it again.”

  Dammit! Holy sonofabitch dammit to hell! God spare me from a man-analyzing woman. Why do they have to dissect every little thing? “I’ve done just fine, Claire.”

  “I know you have. More the credit to you.”

  “Where’s the ‘but’ in there?”

  “But I believe, to be really complete, you need to reconcile with your family and Amish community.”

  If a guy said that to me, he’d probably be flattened by now. “My mother already made it clear that the shunning would be resuming. So that horse has already left the barn, Dr. Phil.”

  He could tell that disturbed her. Hah! It disturbed him, too. He had been in a crouch position, the ceiling of the wigwam not being high enough to accommodate his six-foot-four frame. Now he dropped down to his knees, then rolled over, flat on his back, arms folded under his neck, and stared at the smoke hole. Could Sparky crawl up the side of the wigwam and drop down on me from that hole? he wondered.

  “You didn’t let me finish.” She knelt beside him on the blanket. “I was going to say, barring a reconciliation with your family, you should plant new beans and squash to complement you in the future.”

  This would be laughable if it weren’t so intrusive. “Aha! I get it now. We’re back to the sperm bank business. If I had a wife and kids and a farm, everything would be just hunky-dory.”

  “No, that’s not true. My mentioning a baby was only a slip of the tongue to begin with.”

  He raised a brow in disbelief.

  “I mean it, the baby business is off the table. Not an issue.”

  He reached for her wrist and pulled her down beside him, putting an arm around her and resting her head on his chest. He kissed the top of her head, then said, “So where do we go from here?”

  “Can we pretend I never said those words?”

  If only! “I can’t give you the things you want, Claire. I have no idea what I’m doing today, let alone tomorrow. I’m all screwed up inside. I can’t fulfill my own expectations, let alone someone else’s. Not yours. Not Lizzie’s.”

  “Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong. I really don’t have expectations of you. Hopes, maybe, but not expectations.”

  He doubted that.

  “Let’s just enjoy each other while you’re here, and let it go at that. That should work for both of us.”

  He doubted that even more.

  Somehow, in the course of their conversation, Caleb had removed her bra, rearranged her on top of him, and slid his hands under the back of her shorts, cupping her bare ass. It was probably some subconscious effort to put her on top so that if Sparky dropped in, he would hit her first. Hah! Nice try, cowboy! My putting Claire there in the saddle has nothing to do with snakes. Well, not the reptile kind anyway. Trying for a change of subject, he asked, “So, I’m a stalk of corn, huh? What does t
hat make you?”

  She smiled, though the smile didn’t reach her sad eyes. Then she slipped her hand between their bodies, taking his cock in her hand.

  He about went cross-eyed at the sheer mind-blowing pleasure. At least his headache was gone.

  “Hmmm. I could be the tassel on your stalk.” She loosened her hair with her free hand and brushed it across his chest. “Or I could be the bee who comes to prick your corn. Is your corn sweet?”

  A choked laugh escaped his lips. “The only one doing any pricking is gonna be me. And I’m damn sweet when I want to be.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  When he did in fact “prick her” and was embedded in her tight clasp up to the hilt, he confessed, “For what it’s worth, baby, I liked hearing those words from you.”

  Her response was a long, muscle-fisted, spasming orgasm that said without words, from the inside out, clear as a sailor’s grody chant, “I love you.”

  God help me!

  Chapter 12

  The lady had plans . . . big plans . . .

  “We’re plannin’ a party, a real fais do-do here on the Spruce Creek bayou,” Tante Lulu told Claire the minute she entered the B & B kitchen.

  Claire had gone home to shower and gather her laptop and Park Service files. She and Mark were going to work together for a few hours, piecing together data gathered in the cavern with historical data, including the journal entries. After that, she was going out on a dinner date surprisingly offered by Caleb this afternoon. Caleb was out at his father’s place, for a rescheduled meeting with the Amish church leaders. She’d offered to go with him, but he’d declined the offer, telling her Jonas would “cover his six.”

  At Abbie’s motion offering a glass of lemonade, Claire sat down at the table with them. Just for a moment. “A party, huh? What’s the occasion? There’s not a lot to celebrate.”

  “Bite yer tongue, girl.” Tante Lulu wagged a forefinger at her. Her hair was gray and curly today. And she wore a pretty floral print dress with short sleeves. On her feet were white orthopedic shoes, a concession, Claire supposed, for the trek around the flea market. Abbie also looked good in a black-and-white polka-dot sundress with white sandals. “St. Jude’s been workin’ overtime on you. You best be grateful.”