A Catered Halloween (21 page)

“Some more tea?” asked Libby.

“No, Libby. I’m fine, honestly,” said Sean.

Bernie leaned over him. “Are you getting any ideas?”

Sean looked up at her and smiled. “Actually, I am.”

“You want to tell us what they are?” asked Libby.

“Not yet. Maybe tomorrow,” said Sean. He went back to reading.

Libby and Bernie stood there and watched him. After a moment, they both gave him good-night pecks on his cheeks and went off to sleep. Even Bernie was tired. The whole thing with finding Bessie’s journal must have taken more out of her than she thought.

I
sn’t this just the way?
Libby thought bitterly as she stared at the clock on her nightstand. She desperately needed to go to sleep. She was so tired, she couldn’t keep her eyes open, but now that she was in bed, she couldn’t fall asleep. All she could do was stare at the numbers on the clock face: 2:30, 2:31, 2:33. She was now down to three hours of sleep before she had to get up. At this rate, she might as well get up and go downstairs and start baking. At least she’d be getting something done.

She pulled the comforter up and rearranged her pillow. Maybe she needed to get a new pillow. Then she turned over and stared out the bedroom window. The rain was smearing everything. The street lights outside looked blurry, and the houses across the street had disappeared behind a watery film. A branch of the maple tree she and Bernie used to climb up when they were young had twisted itself into a face.

Funny. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? It had a mouth and eyes. And a nose of sorts. Nostrils, actually.
She blinked. It must be a trick of the light. Then she blinked again, because she recognized the face. It was Bessie’s. Bessie was tapping at her window. The strange thing was, she wasn’t even scared. She was just annoyed. Very odd.

“Go away,” Libby told her. “Go bother someone else for a change. I’ve had enough.”

Bessie looked as if she were going to cry. “But I like you.”

“Well, I don’t like you.”

Bessie stamped her foot. “You are so mean.”

Then, before Libby could answer, Bessie was floating above her, around her. She was everywhere Libby looked. Something wet was falling on Libby’s face. Bessie’s tears. They were coming faster and faster. She was getting soaked. She felt as if her bed was floating. She looked down. Water was filling her room. It was carrying the bed up toward the ceiling. She was going to drown.

“I’m sorry,” Libby cried. “I didn’t mean it. I’m tired.”

“You swear?”

“I swear,” Libby said. At least it wasn’t sister swearing. All at once the bed fell, and she was on the floor again.

“We found your journal,” she told Bessie. “We dug it up. Isn’t that what you wanted to happen? Don’t you want everyone to know what’s going on?”

Suddenly, Libby found herself back at the Peabody School. The windows were decorated with cutout witches and pumpkins. Jack-o’-lanterns hung from the trees. Paper skeletons danced on the doors, while students in werewolf masks stalked the hallways. It was the night before Halloween, and she was watching Bessie talk to Ken.

“I don’t understand,” Bessie was saying. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Ken said.

Libby could tell from the way Ken was standing that he was clearly impatient with Bessie. Somehow Libby knew that this discussion had been going on for a half an hour and that Ken was more than ready to leave. And with every word that Bessie said, his interest faded a little bit more.

“But you are,” Bessie insisted. “You’re helping Amethyst cheat.”

“I didn’t know she was going to take the test,” Ken insisted.

“Then tell your dad.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” asked Bessie.

“Because I can’t, that’s why.”

“You can’t, because you like her.”

“I don’t like her at all.”

“Yes, you do.”

Just let it go
, Libby wanted to tell Bessie.
Just walk away. He still likes you. He likes you better than Amethyst, even though he doesn’t know it yet. He’ll come back to you
. But Libby couldn’t get the words out of her mouth.

“I’m going to tell your dad,” Bessie declared.

“Bessie, don’t,” Ken pleaded.

“I am,” Bessie said.

Why does Ken look so familiar
? Libby wondered as she watched letters come out of Bessie’s mouth and form themselves into words above her head.
Just like in the cartoons
, Libby thought. She was trying to read them, but the rain kept on getting in her eyes. Now the letters had turned into Scrabble tiles and had fallen to the ground. They were forming themselves into two
words. A name? A place? Whatever it was, it was important. It was more than important. It was crucial. Libby leaned over to get a better look, and suddenly, she was falling, down, down, down. The ground was coming up fast, but she was still trying to see the words. Then, just before she hit the ground, a name flashed through her mind.

Libby woke up with a start. She was covered in sweat, and her heart was hammering so hard, she couldn’t catch her breath. It took her a second to realize she was in her bedroom. She sat up.

“It was a dream,” Libby said out loud. “Just a dream.”

But it hadn’t felt like that at all. It had felt real. This was what she got for going along with Amber’s nutty schemes and eating too much ice cream. Whenever stuff like this had happened in the past, her mom had always told her it was because of something she’d eaten before bedtime.

She wanted to believe that now, but even then she had known it wasn’t true. Despite what her mom had said, these dreams were different. And Libby thought that her mom had known it, too. She just hadn’t wanted to talk about it, the way she hadn’t wanted to talk about other stuff. Libby still remembered when she’d had the dream about her grandmother dying right before she did, and she’d gone and told her mom. After the funeral, her mom had told her not to say anything to anybody about stuff like that.

“People will think you’re weird,” her mom had warned her. And even though Libby had only been nine at the time, she’d understood that her mom had meant “more weird,” and she’d never told another living soul about her dreams—except for Bernie—ever again. Eventually, they’d stopped happening. This was the
first one she’d had in a long time, and now that she’d had it, she remembered why she’d hated those dreams. They totally freaked her out.

Libby pulled her comforter, which wasn’t supplying much comfort, over her head and told herself to go back to sleep. Instead, she spent the rest of the night tossing and turning and trying to remember the name the Scrabble tiles had formed just before she fell, but the name kept skittering away from her, hiding in the recesses of her mind.

“A
nd I thought I had circles under my eyes,” Bernie said when she saw Libby the next morning.

Libby grunted. She was on her third cup of coffee. Usually, she had just one, but this morning was a notable exception.

“Maybe you should go as a bag lady tonight,” Bernie suggested. “You know, bags under the eyes, bags—”

“Ha-ha. I get it. You don’t have to explain. You’re really going to do this?” Libby asked.

“This” was the cosmetic surgery consult. Bernie looked fine to her. She looked more than fine. The truth was Libby would have killed to look like her sister. Bernie had gotten the good nose, the high cheekbones, and the clear complexion.

Bernie nodded. “You betcha.”

Libby took another sip of her coffee. Under other circumstances, she would have tried to talk Bernie out of going, but she was too preoccupied with last night’s
dream to bother arguing that cosmetic surgery was dangerous and a total waste of money.

“Good luck,” Libby said and turned back to survey the to-do list she had tacked up on the fridge.

When Bernie told Libby she was going to pay a visit to Zachery Timberland after her appointment, Libby merely nodded, because she was trying to figure out, as Julia Child would have said, the order of battle for the day.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Bernie asked her. Given everything that had to get done, her sister should be in a frenzy by now.

Libby kept her eyes glued to the list on the fridge. “Why are you asking?”

“Well, ordinarily, I’d think you’d tell me to come right back to the shop. After all, we’re going to be pretty busy today.”

Libby turned and faced her. She had a grim look on her face. “Why?” she said. “Just because it’s Halloween night, and we have that dratted Haunted House to deal with, not to mention three large pickup orders between four- and five-thirty, and we’re already behind because the chicken hasn’t been prepped, and we need to do the onions and the peppers, not to mention hollowing out the pumpkins for the pumpkin and apple soup, as well as all the muffins, pies, cookies, and cakes that still have to be made?”

“Something like that. I’ll call Amber and Googie.”

“I already have,” Libby informed her. “They’ll be here in half an hour.”

Bernie reached for a semi-stale pumpkin bar, one of several that they’d forgotten to put away last night, broke off a piece, and ate it.

“You know,” she said. “I think I like these better this
way. They have more texture. We might even be able to incorporate them into the brownie bars.”

Libby grunted. Bernie hated when her sister got this way.

“Well,” Bernie continued, trying to be positive, “at least everything will be over tonight.”

“Will it?” Libby asked. “I don’t see how.”

“Why won’t it be?” Bernie replied, and then she realized what Libby was really talking about. “You mean the case?”

Libby nodded. “Yes. What were you talking about?”

“Our catering gig.”

Libby reached over and grabbed one of the pumpkin bars and nibbled on it. “Not bad,” she conceded. “As for the Haunted House, if I never see that place again, it will be too soon for me.”

Bernie looked at her carefully. Something was definitely going on behind those bangs and glasses. “Did something happen last night after I went to bed?”

Libby shook her head. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Because you seem kinda weird this morning.”

Libby put her hands on her hips. “So now I’m weird? Thanks a lot. That’s certainly helpful.”

Bernie gave an exasperated sigh. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I mean weird as in off, as in something is bothering you.”

“Well, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Bernie asked her, noting that Libby was looking at everything but her.

“Positive. Aren’t you going to be late for your ap
pointment? Can’t keep the plastic surgeon waiting, can we.”

“It’s a consult.” Bernie ate the rest of the pumpkin bar while she thought. Something was definitely wrong. “You didn’t have a fight with Marvin, did you?”

“Marvin and I are fine.” Libby reached for another pumpkin bar and practically inhaled it.

Bernie studied her some more.

“Stop looking at me,” Libby told her.

Bernie snapped her fingers. “I know. You had one of your dreams, didn’t you?”

Libby blushed.

Bernie scrutinized her for a moment longer. “You did, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Bernie said gently.

“Maybe the dreams aren’t bad to you,” Libby flung back. “But that’s easy for you to say because you’re not the one that has them. You might feel differently if you did.” She turned back and began studying her list with a great deal of intensity.

“So you’re against miscegenation?” asked Bernie.

Libby turned back to her. “What are you talking about?”

“You believe there shouldn’t be any mixing.”

“Mixing?”

“You know. The dead should stay in their world, and the living should stay in theirs.”

Libby burst out laughing. “I guess I do.”

“So you’re a deathist.”

“Deathist?”

“Deathist. Like a racist. You’re prejudiced against dead people.”

Libby laughed harder. “You’re nuts,” she said when she could talk again.

“I know.”

When Bernie went out the door, Libby was still laughing, which somehow made Bernie feel better.

It was so ironic, Bernie thought as she slid into her car. Libby had a gift that some people would give anything to possess, and she refused to have anything to do with it. But wasn’t that the way it always was. Bernie, for example, usually wanted men that were totally wrong for her, while she was uninterested in those that were suitable. Fortunately, Brandon was turning out to be the exception to that rule. The operative words here were
turning out
, because, if truth be told, she still didn’t entirely trust him yet.

Bernie sighed as she turned on the ignition. It was going to be a long day, and she didn’t enjoy starting it this way, but you had to go with what you could get in the appointment department. The drive over to the doc’s office took five minutes. Since she was booked for the first appointment of the day, her behind hadn’t even had a chance to hit the expensive leather-covered seats, the ones that she’d seen in an architectural magazine and that cost five thousand dollars each, before she was called in. Fifteen minutes later, she left, armed with a price list and an extensively illustrated brochure that described all the procedures Dr. Cornelius Love did.

“Is that your real name?” Bernie had asked when she’d walked into his office.

Dr. Love had laughed and turned the conversation back to her, which probably meant that it wasn’t. Having that last name in school would have been…well, it would have been awful. She was still thinking about Dr. Love as she thumbed through the brochure. The words that came to mind as she did were “yuck” and “blech,” although “gross” was fitting as well. Bernie
didn’t consider herself squeamish, but looking at the color photographs made her want to throw up.

Maybe Libby’s right,
Bernie thought as she put her car in drive and headed over to Zachery Timberland’s house.
Maybe I should forget about this
. On the other hand, those lines on her forehead and the folds between her nose and her chin were only going to get worse. It was better to do little maintenance jobs over time than to do a face-lift when she got to fifty. Those really did look awful unless they were done by someone very, very good, and even then you couldn’t be sure. Look what had happened to Joan Rivers.

And the doc was kinda cute—not that that was a good reason to choose him to do this. But it certainly wouldn’t hurt. God. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Maybe she’d try microdermabrasion first, and if that didn’t get rid of the lines, she’d go the Botox route. Who knew? By then they might have even come out with a new product.

With that settled, she gradually started thinking about Bessie’s journal again and about Amethyst and whether or not she’d gotten married. She was definitely playing a long shot here, but she was running out of ideas.

She had half a mind to turn around and go back to the shop and start making the dough for the pies, but the way things were going, Bob Small was going to go to jail for Amethyst’s murder for sure—unless she, Libby, or their dad came up with something. And if her dad did what he wanted to do—which was to demonstrate that Marvin could crawl in and out of the ceiling in the Haunted House—that would be another nail in Bob Small’s metaphorical coffin. But fortunately, she’d pretty much convinced her dad to leave things alone. For the moment.

What she’d said was, “Why help Lucy?” And her dad had agreed. Marvin had been incredibly relieved. And she was happy, too, because the more she knew about Bob Small, the more unlikely it seemed to her that Bob had killed Amethyst. Like Libby, she just couldn’t imagine him doing something like that. Shooting someone in a fit of rage, yes; but something that took lots of advanced planning, no.

Bob Small seemed so clueless, which, of course, was why he’d gone to jail in the first place. If he wasn’t clueless, he would have been able to see through Amethyst. Or, to be perfectly accurate, he wasn’t so much clueless as thinking with his dick—but maybe that was the same thing.

This case was like a huge, tangled skein of wool. Every time she, Libby, or her dad thought they were making headway, they ended up in the same place they had been before. Which was why she was going to Zachery Timblerland’s house at 8:35 in the morning. He probably wasn’t even there. He most likely was on his way to his office. But it was worth a try. As her father always said, “When in doubt, do something. Don’t sit around like a lump.”

Maybe her visit would shake Zachery up a little. Hopefully. She’d read a statistic somewhere that most homicides were solved within the first seventy-two hours, or they were not solved at all. Well, they’d certainly gone past the seventy-two-hour limit, that was for sure. And with that in mind, Bernie turned onto Smith Street and took that straight to Zachery Timberland’s house.

He lived in an odd little cul-de-sac off of Meadview Drive. The street wasn’t marked, because someone had driven into the street sign last year, and the town had
never replaced it. You really had to know it was there to be able to find it.

At one time the cul-de-sac had been the site of a proposed development. Five houses were supposed to have been built on the site, but the builder had gone bankrupt after he’d put up Zachery’s. Since Zachery had already purchased his, he was stuck because no one wanted to buy him out. Other developers had bid on the site, but for one reason or another, none of the deals had gone through, so Zachery’s house sat in lone splendor on what was now an extremely large vacant lot.

Despite the
DO NOT LITTER. VIOLATORS WILL BE FINED TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS
sign, piles of leaves, Styrofoam peanuts, and crumpled-up pages of newspaper littered the grass. Three kitchen chairs sat over to the far left, waiting to be claimed by the winter. A little farther on, someone else had disposed of two bags of trash, which were now spilling their guts out onto the ground.

Bernie shivered. You could do whatever you wanted here, and no one would ever know. It was not a comforting thought. Even if she had a couple of big dogs, she wouldn’t want to be living here, Bernie decided as she turned onto Dewdrop Lane. It was too spooky. She preferred to live close to people rather than to be isolated. She shook her head. Halloween was getting to her. More to the point, she realized, was the fact that there were no neighbors she could talk to.

She was relieved to see that there were two cars in the driveway of the Timberland residence. The first one, she knew, belonged to Timberland, because she’d seen it parked behind his office. She wondered to whom the second vehicle belonged as she pulled in behind it, got out of her car, and marched toward the front
door.
This is going to be interesting
, she thought while she rang the bell.

The house itself was a nondescript, generic Colonial, the housing equivalent of a pair of Wal-Mart blue jeans. It was rendered even more so because everything on it was painted beige except for the dark brown front door.
Just like his office
, Bernie thought. Either the man had a severely limited color palette, or he’d gotten a real good deal on the paint.

At least the foundation plantings weren’t beige. But they were tightly pruned, and the driveway was immaculate. The word
constipated
came to mind. She rubbed her arms while she waited for someone to come to the door. It had turned out to be way colder than the weatherman had predicted. The kids were going to have to wear jackets over their costumes tonight when they went trick-or-treating.

She was remembering how much she’d hated that when she heard Timberland say, “Coming.” A moment later the door swung open. Bernie could see he was not a thing of beauty in the morning. He had stubble on his chin. His belly was hanging out of his sweatpants, and he had man boobs, a fact his suits had managed to hide. Her mom had always said it was amazing what a decent tailor could do, and she’d been right. Zachery Timberland had a very good one.

“You,” he said when he saw her. “What do you want?”

Then, before Bernie could reply, she heard another voice. It was a young woman. Probably his girlfriend from the sound of it. Bernie cursed under her breath. It looked as if this trip was going to be a waste of time, after all.

“Who is it?” the unknown woman trilled.

“No one,” Timberland shot back.

“No one? How rude,” Bernie countered. “I’m sure your company wouldn’t like to hear how you treated a potential customer.”

“Oh sure,” Timberland sneered. “You’re just so excited about the prospect of buying insurance from me that you had to come straight to my house.”

“And who’s to say that isn’t the case?”

“And I’m the queen of Sheba.”

“I didn’t know you were a woman. But now that I look more closely, I can see the beginning of boobs. How are the hormones working out?”