Bowled Over (5 page)

“He’s a Yorkie-Poo, a rescue dog,” Jaymie said, smiling down at them. “He was found at a puppy mill, just eight weeks old, his leg caught in the chicken-wire cage. It was so badly infected, they had to amputate. I was just supposed to foster him past the surgery and recovery, but…” She shrugged. “That was three years ago.”

Dani laughed as she stood. “Who could resist, right? I normally like bigger dogs, but this little guy has loads of personality.”

She had never thought she would find herself liking Kathy’s best friend so much from the very first moment of meeting her. Every circuitous approach seemed dishonest and sneaky. “You’re Dani Brougham, right?” she blurted out.

The woman’s smile died. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“You’re a friend of Kathy Cooper’s.”

Her smile was reborn and lit up her blue eyes. She swiped sandy bangs out of her eyes and said, “Yeah, sure. You a friend of Kathy’s?”

“I was, once upon a time. Something happened, though, and there was some kind of misunderstanding, and she…we don’t speak now. Maybe she’s said something about it to you. I’m Jaymie Leighton.”

The woman’s expression was blank. “Nope, sorry. She’s never mentioned your name.”

“Not once?”

“Not once.” The woman paused for a moment and looked into the middle distance, her eyes unfocused. Then she looked back into Jaymie’s eyes. “Hey, did you and she have some kind of run-in yesterday?”

“Um, yes. Yes we did.”

Dani sighed and shook her head, then bent down and hefted a heavy bag of feed onto her shoulder, standing with the assurance of a weightlifter. “Look, I’d just let Kathy cool down. You must have really ticked her off,” she said, her head tilted sideways to accommodate the heavy bag of feed on her shoulder. “She came out yesterday to the farm, going on and on about how she was going to get back at all her ‘enemies.’ I told her to cool her jets, but she just said I didn’t understand, that some things were unforgivable, and that she’d make sure somebody suffered.”

“Who?” Jaymie asked, following as Dani headed to the front of the store. “Make sure
who
suffered?”

Dani passed the clerk, told him what she was taking and said she’d settle up next week, then sailed out the door with Jaymie and Hoppy trotting after her. She tossed the feed into the back of the pickup, then jumped into the cab of the truck and revved the motor, backing out of the parking lot while she said, out the open window, “I don’t know who. Her
enemies
, plural, she said, whoever they are. Let it blow over. I’m sure it will be fine. Kathy’s really a good egg. Gotta go; I’m on a tight schedule today. Bye!” She tore out of the parking lot in another hail of gravel and tooted her horn, before blasting off toward the highway out of town.

*   *   *

C
OMFORT FOR
J
AYMIE’S
perturbed spirits was as close as her stack of vintage cookbooks, her fenced backyard and
a cup of tea. It was after lunch. She had already taken care of the next day’s rental baskets and organized the food pickup for them, so now she had some free time for herself. Denver lay in the shade provided by her Adirondack chair, while Hoppy sniffed the fence line. Her next-door neighbors, Mimi and Grant Watson, were back in town, and their purebred toy poodle, Dipsy, was the bane of Hoppy’s existence, but he just couldn’t leave her alone. She snapped at him, growled, barked through the fence, and then ignored him when they were in company together. Hoppy was neutered, but Jaymie wondered if his obsession was a kind of hopeless crush on Dipsy.

The Watsons lived in their Queensville home in summer but wintered in Boca Raton, near Alan and Joy, Jaymie and Becca’s parents, so they had brought with them a few things for Jaymie and Becca, including a vintage book on Floridian cookery that had a recipe for Key lime pie she just had to try. Her mom
had
been listening to her during their phone calls this past winter after all, Jaymie realized.

Becca and her best friend, Dee, pulled in beside Jaymie’s ancient van in the lane behind the house. The Leighton home was one of the old ones in the center of the village, with no laneway in front but a carriage lane and stable behind. The stable was now a garage, of course, weighed down with trumpet vines, orange flowers draped elegantly, disguising the elderly structure. When Becca was staying, she used it for her much nicer and newer car, while Jaymie’s rust bucket van baked or shivered in the elements.

“Hey, you two,” Jaymie called out, smiling as she noticed how Dee had quite a few boxes of junk to transfer to her car, which sat in the guest parking in the lane. “Did you leave anything untouched?”

“No, so you can come help me carry boxes,” Becca said,
unlatching the gate and opening it. “I found a few things you’ll like, too.”

Oh no,
Jaymie thought, getting up and strolling down the stone walkway that bisected the backyard. While she loved shopping for vintage kitchenware, she hated others doing it for her. She knew what she wanted, but others tended to think that anything old and kitcheny was right up her alley. Valetta was particularly bad at this; she enjoyed thrift-store shopping almost as much as Jaymie, but bought more for her friends and relatives than she did for herself. Jaymie had finally had to say that while she appreciated the thought, an avocado green plastic ice bucket from the seventies was not going to find a home in her kitchen.

But she obediently helped her sister unload and carry stuff up to the house. Three boxes contained serving pieces for Becca’s thriving business. Rebecca’s RLB China Matching could help anyone—for a price—find a replacement for their grandmother’s broken Spode platter, or a tea set to go with their Minton dinner service.

Becca’s miracle find for Jaymie was a big box of vintage cookbooks, and just a quick look through, as she set it on the trestle table, convinced Jaymie that Becca too had finally figured her out. Some of the titles were kitschy:
The Book of Can Cookery, The Photo Method for Bread Baking
and
Anty Drudge’s Cook Book
. She couldn’t wait to dig in!

Of course Becca had to spoil her anticipation. “But you had better really go through and get rid of some. I couldn’t just take a few because the whole box was up for bids, but we just don’t have room for it all.”

Jaymie stuck her tongue out at her sister behind Becca’s back, and Dee, as she stood watching in the door of the summer porch, smothered a laugh.

“I saw that,” Becca said, then chuckled.

It was a girls’ evening. Valetta came over after work, and Dee had stayed. They were hanging out with Jaymie and Becca to make the food for the next day’s picnic. The plan was to make enough for all their families, so the kitchen, by the time the sun started down, was unbearably warm, and the four women sat out in the backyard with glasses of lemonade, fanning themselves against the heat wave that had just begun to make itself felt across the Great Lakes Basin.

In the kitchen, boiled potatoes and bowls of pasta were cooling to be made into salads. Jaymie had intended to try a recipe from one of the vintage cookbooks from the box Becca had brought home,
The Lilly Wallace New American Cook Book
, from 1943. But looking at it again, it appeared too complicated; she’d have to make not just one but two dressings, homemade French and homemade mayonnaise. Instead, she riffled through her grandmother’s well-worn handwritten recipe book and found Grandma Leighton’s classic potato salad. Much better!

She also couldn’t resist making something quite different, a weird-looking lime jelly mold was chilling in the fridge. Jaymie was fascinated by the recipe’s description of it as “elegant enough for guests, nutritious enough for the children, and sure to be the belle of your buffet ball!” There were always lots of exclamation points after such dubious claims. Shredded cabbage and carrot, along with frozen peas, peered mysteriously through the brilliant green miasma of lime gelatin. If she put wobbly eyes on it, it could pass for an alien life form. Like fruitcake, it was doomed to be an inedible conversation piece, but if it got a few laughs, it would serve its purpose.

The topic of conversation turned to Becca’s new gentleman friend.

“So, Becca, tell us about Kevin,” Valetta said, leaning
forward to pet Denver. The cat slunk away into the slanting shadows beneath the holly bushes.

“Not much to tell. I met him at a show.” She was talking about an antiques show, one of the many at which she rented space during the year, to show her wares and cultivate customers. “He’s into vintage electronics. He’s got the most amazing collection of Bakelite radios and old cameras.”

Dee and Valetta exchanged glances. “So, is this husband number three?” Dee said.

Becca threw a handful of grass at her friend while the others chuckled. After husband number two, a charming but feckless “entrepreneur,” ruined her credit and left her almost penniless, then fled back to England, Becca had sworn she would never marry again. That oath was two broken engagements ago.

The conversation turned to Jaymie’s dilemma with Kathy Cooper. Of the women, Valetta knew her best.

“Craig’s partner, Matt Laskan, came into the office while we were talking and said to Craig that he’d seen Kathy, and that she was still talking about the move,” Jaymie said. “He asked Craig if he had told her yet that the move was a no-go, but Craig shushed him. What did that mean? Do you know, Valetta?”

Valetta shook her head. Dee shrugged.

“I do know that after Kathy and Kylie’s dad died, Kathy tried to get her mom to sell the farm and move into town,” Valetta said. “She had a realtor come out and appraise the property, and she even scheduled a guy to come and get rid of the junk. But Mrs. Hofstadter got out her twenty-two and told the appraiser and the junk guy to get off her land.”

“Really?” Jaymie said. “Sounds like Kathy comes by her ornery nature honestly. I don’t know Mrs. Hofstadter well. When we were kids, Kathy always came to our place.”

“Mrs. H. isn’t ornery, she just doesn’t want to move,” Valetta said. “You can’t make someone do that.”

“I remember how Kathy seemed to me when she came over, when you guys were kids,” Becca said. “I felt sorry for her. She always looked like she was afraid to say anything. What made you two friends?” she asked Jaymie.

Jaymie thought about it. “Propinquity?”

Her eyes wide, Dee said, “Wha…? You use the weirdest words sometimes.”

“I read,” Jaymie said with a faked snooty sniff, and the others laughed. “I mean that Kathy was just always there. I don’t even remember
how
we became friends. But she kind of hung on.”

“Mom always made sure she had second helpings of cake, and I saw her one day squirrel some away in her pocket. I don’t know if it was for later, or what,” Becca said.

“She took stuff home for Kylie, I think,” Jaymie mused. “They were as close as two sisters could be, even though they were so far apart in age.”

“Poor Kylie. I really feel sorry for the little guy, Connor, though,” Valetta said. “He is such a sweetie, but his mom is a mess.”

“I heard about Kylie’s boyfriend dying in Afghanistan,” Jaymie said. “How terrible for her!”

“It was two or three years ago, though,” Dee said. “She should have snapped out of it by now. She has a child to look after.” As a mother herself, the only one of the four women with children, she was inclined to be more judgmental of poor parenting.

“That’s why Kathy is so attached to her nephew, I guess,” Valetta said. “She had to step in when Kylie was taken down by depression. Kylie is getting better now—she’s
really
trying—but as far as Kathy’s concerned it’s too little too late.”

“I’m beginning to feel bad that I haven’t tried harder to end this stupid ‘feud,’ or whatever it is, between Kathy and I. She sounds like a basically decent human being. In some ways.” Jaymie shook her head, remembering what Dani had said about her anger at her “enemies.” “But she sure can hold on to a grudge.” She collected all of their lemonade glasses. “Well, ladies, if we are going to finish the salads and get some sleep before the big day, we had better get moving.”

“Agreed,” Dee said. “I have to make fried chicken first thing in the morning—in this heat wave! Ugh!”

Many hands make light work, as Grandma Leighton always said. They were done by ten, and the other two women left. Daniel phoned, and Jaymie talked to him for five minutes, then went to bed with a romance novel she was dying to read. She was asleep in five minutes.

Three