A House by the Side of the Road (19 page)

She rewound the tape and found the husky voice again. “You did wait until she'd died to take it, didn't you?” What did that mean?

The dog barked in the front yard, and Meg looked out the window to see the mailman slow and stop at her box. She ran out the door and through the gate, shouting to keep him from pulling away.

“Morning, Ms. Kessinger,” he said. “Not much today. You got something for me?”

“Just a question,” said Meg. “I haven't been getting the previous person's mail at all. Did she give you a change of address?”

The mailman shook his head. “No. She just had us hold it, like for vacation. Said she didn't have a new place yet.”

“Okay,” said Meg. “I thought, if something got delivered here by mistake, I should send it on. In Chicago, things keep coming to the previous resident, sometimes for years.”

“Well, you gotta expect that in a place like Chicago,” said the mailman. “Out here, we usually know when things change. 'Less it's addressed to ‘Resident,' we'll just hold it downtown.”

Christine's car edged around the mailman on the shoulder and pulled into the driveway. Meg walked alongside it until her friend had stopped.

“I've got, let's see…” Christine looked into her backseat. “Clover honey; raspberry, creamed honey; and beeswax candles.” She selected a jar. “Got anything to make toast out of? And I want to see the smoking ruins.”

“You can see them, although they're unimpressive,” said Meg. “But don't chew too loudly because I have something just the opposite, something extremely impressive, for you to listen to…” She stopped, swallowing hard at a sudden thought.

“Listen to what?”

“A poem about a dog,” said Meg, her face warm.

The taped conversation, confusing as it was, involved secrets and what seemed to be substantial and ill-gotten gains. What if the woman's voice belonged, not to Angie, but to Leslie McAlester? If it did, was her partner Dan?

*   *   *

“This is heavenly,” said Meg, spreading more of the creamed honey on a toasted bagel. The tape kept edging into her mind. It was hard to keep pushing it out. She concentrated on the honey.

“Tell me about it,” replied Christine. “The man is a genius. He grows the raspberries and mixes them in. My kids would live on it if I didn't think a bit of protein now and again was necessary.”

“He seems to dislike Mike,” said Meg. “It's hard to imagine anyone actually disliking Mike, unless he won a case against him.”

“He disapproves of him,” said Christine. “He disapproved of Hannah's will and thought Mike should have made it more precise.”

Meg's interest in the tape receded behind her surprise. “But he didn't ‘make it' at all,” she said. “And what you quoted about the linens was pretty precise.”

“Let me rephrase. John thought Mike should have persuaded her to be more precise about the descriptions of things. Any, as he put it, ‘reputable attorney' would have pointed out how vague it was. But nobody had any trouble figuring out what stuff she was talking about. There were no squabbles at all, so far as I know.”

“But why did Mr. Eppler care?” Meg had trouble thinking of the man as “John.” Maybe after living down the road from him for a few years she could manage it as easily as Christine did. “Didn't he get what he expected?”

“Who knows what he expected?” said Christine. She got up and took an apple out of the refrigerator. “Can I eat this?”

“Well, I won't have any dinner, but go ahead. It won't be cold.”

“Oh, great,” said Christine. “If God had meant people to eat apples that weren't cold, he wouldn't have put all these refrigerators down here.” She washed the apple at the sink and dried it on her jeans. “John inherited a sizable chunk of IBM stock,” she said. “Seems pretty precise to me. I doubt it was his own inheritance he was miffed about.”

“Then what?”

Christine, who was chewing, held up one hand to indicate a need for time.

“This is
good,
” she said, swallowing. “I don't know. He seemed to think Mike's getting the house was a case of coals to Newcastle. But the will was clear on that point, so I imagine John was just looking for something to quarrel about. Who knows? He surely couldn't stand Angie. Maybe that was it—he just extrapolated to Mike since she worked for him.”

Meg tried not to show how intense her curiosity about Angie was. “What's she like? All Mr. Eppler would say directly is she drives too fast.”

“I hardly know her,” said Christine. “So all I know is what anybody who so much as glanced at her would know. An absolute knockout. Not at all classy, but whoa!”

“What people of
your
generation call ‘a red-hot mama'?”

“Gosh, Meg, you're just so funny,” said Christine dryly. “It's no wonder John doesn't think much of her. He didn't get to be the president of the Chamber of Commerce, on the board of directors at the savings and loan, and the chairman of Saint Paul's building committee by approving of people like Angie. She reels men in. They walk around looking dazed. It's all quite deliberate. The few times I saw her, like at the Fourth of July picnic in town last year, she flirted with every man in sight. Including Dan. Especially Dan. It drove her nuts that there was a man in town who didn't have his tongue hanging out. And her taste! Well, I can't criticize her taste in men too much, I guess, but her taste in general, though expensive, is pretty flashy. Her car, for example, is purple.”

Meg's stomach knotted at the mention of Angie's flirtation with Dan. She tried to think of something, anything, to say.

“Purple?”

Christine leaned sideways to toss her apple core across the room into the wastebasket. “Purple. T-top. Spoiler. A Firehawk, and she knew how to drive it. She needed all eight cylinders.”

“Well,” said Meg, “to each her own. Why did a woman like that live in a place like this?” Her house—it felt already so much like her house—just didn't go with a purple sports car.

Christine laughed. “Because she spent all her money on her
car.
”

“Where do you think she went?”

“I don't know. I don't care,” said Christine. “Ask Mike; he's the one she worked for.” She carried her cup to the sink. “I've got to go get some things done before baseball practice. Can you come for supper after? Fast, easy. Bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches?”

Meg had forgotten about practice, which was scheduled for when Jack was supposed to come over. She'd have to call him and change their plan. When was she going to get her work done? In Chicago, it hadn't been a problem to work at home. There wasn't anything else to do at home.

“Sure,” she said. “I'd like to.”

*   *   *

Jack wasn't at his house or at his studio, so Meg left messages at both places. She spent the rest of the afternoon resisting the breeze through the windows in her office. As she started out the door with her bat in her hand, the phone rang.

“Standing me up, I hear,” said Jack. “What did I say? Or have you decided you don't care if your furnace blows you to kingdom come?”

“If I thought it would,” said Meg, “I'd skip baseball practice. The furnace is just slow, not dangerous.”

“And you'd know, right?” He laughed at her.

“I asked Dan,” said Meg. “I had a fire in the attic. It started in one of those junction boxes you warned me to cover. Scary, yikes, and all that. So I got paranoid and—”

“You had a
fire?
”

“Uh-huh. I put it out and got an electrician and things are fine now, but it made me nervous, so Dan checked the furnace.”

“You're okay?”

“I'm
fine.
”

“Well, can I still come by? You make better coffee than I do. How about Wednesday morning? About six?”

“You're kidding.”

“Yeah. You're probably a real witch at six.”

“I am never a real witch,” said Meg. “But, just to be on the safe side…”

“Around eight?”

“Great.”

*   *   *

Christine hit fly balls to half the team while Meg worked with half on the fine points of base running.

“Try it again, Suzanne. A double again; you're being waved on to second. This time, try to hit the
inside
of first base with your
right
foot.”

The girl looked down at her feet, then back at Meg and nodded. She stepped to the plate and picked up a bat.

“Okay. Swing! Go!” Meg clicked the stopwatch and observed the speedy child with approval as she tore down the baseline, fists clenched, arms pumping. She hit the inside of the bag and made an efficient turn.

“Yeah!” shouted Meg. “See how much faster that is?”

She timed the rest of her group, then waved them over to her and chose a tall, cheerful boy with dark hair that had been curly the week before and was now cut so short he looked like an army recruit. “Spence! What do you do when you're on second with first base open and the batter hits a grounder to the leftfield side?”

The boy recited the answer. “Wait until I see the ball in the air toward first before taking off for third. Never run into a tag.”

“Good,” said Meg. “Now, let's say you're on third. There's a fly ball. What do you do?”

He hesitated, unable to deal with the generality of the question. “Infield or outfield? he asked. “Is the infield fly rule in effect? How many outs are there?”

Meg smiled. “Good answer,” she said. “Let's get specific.”

She took the team through the possibilities, reminding them of why they would have base coaches.

The players rotated. When Meg and Christine had gone through the same routines again, Meg called the children in.

“First game, Saturday, at three. I want you here
no later
than two-thirty for warm-ups and so we know who's here. Anybody not going to make it?”

There were no raised hands.

“Good. Let's pass out uniforms.”

*   *   *

“Finish your book report, Teddy,” said Christine. “Ask Jane about the spelling. Meg and I are going to get supper ready.”

“Guests are not normally expected to work,” said Meg, taking a tomato out of boiling water and peeling it. “At least you could assign me something simple, like setting the table.”

“Fine,” said Christine. “Set the table. It does make more sense for me to do the really complicated stuff, like making toast. We'll eat here in the kitchen.”

“How many places?” asked Meg, taking a stack of plates out of the cupboard. “Will Dan be here?”

“No,” said Christine. “He's catching up on stuff at the office, so he'll just eat there.”

“Does he have one of those nifty black lunch boxes with the curved top for the thermos? You know, the kind all the big strong men carry in one hand, with their hard hat in the other?”

“No. He throws a bagel in a sack,” said Christine. “But when he's working at the office, he uses the kitchen there.”

“That must be some office.”

“Not really. It's just a few rooms, but it's comfy,” said Christine. “Sometimes he has to spend a lot of time there.”

She dropped bacon onto a paper-towel-covered plate and looked around. “
Glass
glasses? Are you nuts? For you and me, fine. But give the kids those big plastic ones. I've spent enough long hours on my hands and knees getting tiny glass shards off the floor.”

Meg went back to the cupboard, reflecting. Christine was so … well,
serene.
Was it better to mention the change in her mood, or to ignore it?

“You and Dan, uh, seem to be getting along,” she said at last.

Christine jumped back from spitting bacon grease. “Uh-huh,” she said. “Things are going to be fine. I'm sorry I was so moody and dramatic.”

“Don't be. It was totally reasonable. So, everything's straightened out?” Who was Leslie McAlester? Had Christine found out? Why was she so closemouthed all of a sudden?

“Pretty much,” said Christine. She was not going to provide details. “So how are things with all your boyfriends?” she asked. “The attention still making you jumpy?”

It took Meg a moment to catch up with the adjustment in topics. She moved a fork closer to its plate and put one hand on her hip. “Just what makes you think I'm jumpy?”

“Come on!” said Christine. “Mike likes you. Jack likes you. Both of them are adorable. There are at least forty women in town who would trade places with you in the blink of an eye. And you're pussyfooting around like maybe they're both fortune hunters or something. You don't have a fortune I don't know about, do you?”

“Oh, please!” said Meg. “I wish.”

“So are you, despite your assurances otherwise, still getting over Jim?”

Yes, thought Meg. I guess I am. “What's wrong with a little hesitation? It's not like I've run screaming from the opportunity to get to know either of them. I just stop short of clutching at their ankles, which seems entirely reasonable.”

“You stop a lot short,” said Christine. “I think maybe either Mike or Jack would have a better chance if he were less attractive.”

Meg thought about that. “I think maybe you're right,” she said.

*   *   *

The dog ran ahead of Meg down the path toward the creek. The moon was out and Meg rarely needed to switch on her flashlight. She sat with her back against a tree near the edge of the water, listening to its gentle sounds. The dog rustled through the undergrowth. Meg pulled her sweater closer around her shoulders and hugged her knees.

Was Angie Morrison the woman on the tape? If not, who was? And whom was she talking to? Why had she made a recording and then hidden the tape? Had someone been searching Meg's house for it?