False Impressions (6 page)

Rocky said, “Most of them are people Mary Lou and Peter sold a house to.”

“This year?” April said. There were at least sixty couples here. It seemed unlikely that that many new people had moved in since last year.

“No,” Suzi said. “Once you’re on Mary Lou’s list, you never get taken off. She just keeps adding.”

That explained the number of people. Some were young couples, probably just starting out in their first home. Others were older, probably retirees who’d downsized.

Mary Lou steamed toward them, carrying a casserole dish. The tangy smell of barbecue sauce followed her.

“April,” Mary Lou said, stopping briefly. “I haven’t forgotten about looking for a rental for you. I downloaded a list. Come by the office tomorrow.”

Mitch’s head snapped around. “A rental?” He didn’t look angry, just surprised.

Mary Lou powered on past them into the kitchen. April stuttered. “I’m . . .”

Kit came up behind them, throwing her arm around Suzi and forcing the three women into a group hug. She didn’t know how grateful April was for the interruption. Mitch hadn’t been kept in the loop about April’s plans. She’d been waiting to see if anything was available that she liked before having that talk.

Suzi said, “What’s this your mother tells me? You’ve got a new house?”

“A foreclosure, right?” Rocky said. “I bet she got a sweet deal.”

April pulled back to look at Kit. Mary Lou had been talking about all the foreclosures in the valley for months.

Kit’s face grew troubled. “Yeah, Mom and Logan surprised me.”

She didn’t look too happy to April.

“Where is it?”

“Out Dowling Road, in fact, a couple miles past your farm,” Kit said.

“Way out there?” Rocky said.

Kit’s mouth twitched. Rocky’d hit a nerve. “I’d been hoping to be closer to town. With the twins, you know. But it’s nice. Three-bedroom ranch.” Her shoulders slumped. “It needs a lot of work.”

Mitch said, “Well, if you need any help . . .”

Kit smiled, glancing at her mother, who’d just returned with a silver ice bucket. She turned her smile up a watt, but it still looked fake. “We’ll get it done. Logan and I are going to be working night and day for the next week. The babies are staying with his mother.”

Rocky directed Mitch to a waiter carrying a plate of stuffed mushrooms. The two of them followed him into the family room. Suzi drifted away, following a conversation about the borough council meeting.

Kit looked guiltily at her mother across the room and leaned into April. “I know I should be more grateful but the place was trashed by the last owners. They pulled out the stove, smashed the bathtub.”

April put an arm around Kit. Kit took a deep breath, swiped at the tears that had leaked through, and leaned away. “It’s just not the place I’d pick. I wanted a two-story farmhouse on a town lot.” She took another breath, then said quickly, “I’ll be fine.”

April looked to see what Kit had seen that had changed her demeanor. Mary Lou had noticed their heads together and was heading their way.

She didn’t look happy. “Kit, please refill the punch bowl,” she said. Kit moved away and went into the kitchen. Mary Lou turned away.

April muttered, “Why do I feel like
I
did something wrong?”

Suzi, standing nearby, overheard April’s remark and said, “She’s a bear when it comes to her family.”

And yet her brother’s ashes live in a beautiful box in the funeral home’s basement, April thought. It just didn’t make sense.

The door opened and a cold wind blew in. April felt Rocky
stiffen next to her. “Oh, lordy, let the good times roll,” she drawled.

April looked around the crowd of partygoers and saw Officer Henry Yost enter. Her favorite neighborhood cop. She sighed.

“I wonder why he’s here,” Mitch said.

“Following me. Everywhere I go, I run into him,” April said. “He was at the council meeting last night giving me the evil eye. Did I tell you last week he gave me a ticket for going twenty in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone?”

Mitch patted her arm. “Henry just needs more to do. This town is too quiet for him.”

“Is that why the council is voting to get rid of him?” she asked.

Mary Lou appeared in front of the fireplace. She clapped her hands twice. The loud sound was lost in the din of conversation, but as people noticed her standing there, they quieted. April looked around. The crowd was suddenly all women. The men seemed to have vanished.

Mary Lou spoke earnestly. “I have a special treat for you tonight. Most of you know Officer Yost, the town’s preeminent law enforcement officer. He offered to speak about the safety of our community. He has years of experience with neighborhood policing, and he has joined up with Rosen Homes Realty to offer his services to you individually. His feeling, and mine, is that if he knows you, knows your name, learns your children’s names, he can offer his best services.”

“I’d keep him away from your sixteen-year-old daughters,” Rocky whispered.

April laughed. She knew she was being mean, but Yost had never been a friend to her family and was an easy target to boot. He was incompetent and inept, with an overinflated sense of importance.

Yost took his place in front next to Mary Lou. He was wearing his dress uniform with black leather knee-high boots like a motorcycle cop would wear. His hat was a version of the Smokey the Bear hat worn by the state troopers. His badge was shiny, as was his leather belt and holster. Image was everything to Yost. Considering he had to pay for all of it himself, it was an impressive outfit.

Mary Lou asked people to find a seat and get comfortable. Her son, Connor, home from college, had set up a computer to display a slide show on the wide-screen TV. A title card flashed: “How to Be a Good Neighbor.”

The newcomers seemed to be impressed.

“He’s working hard to save his job,” April said. “Maybe if he frightens the housewives into calling the cops every time they see a stranger, he can change the council’s mind.”

He started by talking about the dangers of not being aware of one’s surroundings. Self-defense was key. He just happened to be offering a course for women in protection techniques.

Rocky said, “Ranger Rick is milking it. Or is he more Dudley Do-Right?”

A woman with a tall ponytail turned and shushed Rocky. April giggled. The thought of Yost being more interesting than Rocky was ridiculous.

But she had to admit the crowd appeared to be fascinated. Yost was pandering to their fears. He talked about the two break-ins as if the Jesse James gang had suddenly come alive and started robbing houses. Not that a traveling salesman had left his laptop in his car in plain sight. Or that a boyfriend had broken into his girlfriend’s apartment and taken the TV he’d paid for. Not exactly like living in the Tenderloin.

Yost said, “You need to make sure to secure your premises. Don’t leave your garage open when you’re at home. If you’re working in the backyard, lock your front door.”

Most people in Aldenville were more in danger of a raccoon trashing their house by coming in through the cat door than an actual burglar. But Yost wouldn’t be in business without fear. Fear was what drove people to call the police.

“Secure premises,” Rocky said in a funny voice.

“Got it,” April said, laughing.

The older generation in Aldenville didn’t lock their doors most of the time. April had come home many times to find Grizz and Charlotte asleep in their recliners with the front door wide open. She couldn’t decide if she felt more or less safe because they never bolted the door. She didn’t want to invite trouble, but it was nice to feel it unnecessary to lock up tight.

“Is there a drug problem in town?” an earnest-looking woman with long earrings and a sparkly headband asked. Her brow was deeply furrowed as she sipped her red wine. The oversize glass was filled.

“Drugs have not been an issue,” Yost said. He’d succeeded in scaring the natives.

“What about the meth house that exploded last winter?” April said, not quite loud enough to be heard by Yost. A woman close to her reared back and shot her a look. Rocky smiled, full of teeth.

“Let’s get out of here,” Rocky said. She’d heard enough.

“Outside?” April asked hopefully.

“Have you forgotten its five degrees out?” Mitch said, putting an arm around her shoulder and pulling her close. “You’ll freeze your cute little California butt off.”

“That’s true.” She had forgotten. It was going to take more than one winter for her to forget that going outside was not an option for several months unless there were skis strapped to her feet and down enveloping her body. And, quite possibly, earmuffs.

“We can go in the basement,” Rocky whispered. “There’s a huge rec room downstairs.”

April followed Rocky, trying to sneak away without Yost noticing. He wouldn’t be above heckling her like a comedian calling out to a bathroom-goer. People parted reluctantly, craning over their heads to see the next slide. A big-haired woman grumbled as Mitch stepped on her foot. Finally they saw the carpeted set of stairs leading from the kitchen to the lower level.

The threesome clambered down the steps as if someone were after them.

The stairs ended at a wall covered in blue denim. They turned the corner and went down three more steps. April couldn’t believe her eyes. The room was filled with guys.

“Wow,” April said. “So this is where all the men got to.”

“I didn’t get the memo,” Mitch said. “This is unbelievable.”

They stopped in place, overwhelmed by the space. To say the rec room was decorated in a sports theme was like saying the Taj Mahal was ornate. Every sport was represented. There were pennants from Penn State strung prayer-flag style from the ceiling. The walls were painted in Yankee blue and white pinstripes. A Philadelphia Eagles helmet had been made into a lamp. Hockey jerseys were framed like precious art.

They heard the crack from the pool table before they noticed it. Mitch practically skipped into the room. “What an awesome man cave,” Mitch said admiringly.

“Maybe we should start doing team logo stamps,” Rocky said, her head swiveling.

“Thanks, but no.” April shuddered. There was probably money to be made, but she didn’t want to be the one making stamps like that. There was no room for creativity in that world.

April’s eye roamed over the velour pit sofa, the gigantic television that was playing a pregame show, sound muted. The neon lines of the jukebox played across the ceiling. An antique Pong arcade game stood in one corner, the ball bouncing mesmerizingly across the screen.

The effect was the design equivalent of a dog whistle, a décor appreciated only by the male gender.

Rocky nudged her, pointing with her chin. Across the room, an old-fashioned pine bar with a tufted, nail-headed red pleather front had empty bar stools. A kegerator was barely visible through a thicket of men holding beer steins. Mary Lou would never allow that upstairs.

“No wonder Yost has a captive audience,” April said. They made their way across the room. Mitch tripped over his feet as he tried to take it all in.

They sat at the bar, catching their breath. No one was bartending, so they helped themselves to glasses of wine from the open bottle.

Rocky grabbed a pool cue from the rack on the wall and sashayed over to the pool table. “I’ve got winner,” she said to the two guys playing.

“You can play now,” one of them said, checking Rocky out thoroughly. She grinned at his perusal. He was young for her and married, judging by the ring on his finger, but that wouldn’t stop her from flirting.

The other bowed with a flourish. “By all means, break,” he said as the married guy racked up a new game. Rocky grinned and put a ten-dollar bill on the table’s edge.

“Winner takes all,” she said, wriggling herself into position. Most of the men in the room stopped to take notice of her butt. She stayed there longer than she needed to, then stroked the cue.

“Think there’s any unattached men in the room?” April whispered to Mitch.

“Let’s hope so,” he said.

April and Mitch were on an active hunt for a boyfriend for Rocky. She was spending too much of their time with them. April looked around. She hadn’t been single long enough to develop any instincts for who was married and who was not, but she looked for wedding bands and well-pressed shirts.

She saw Kit’s husband. He was dressed in a fisherman’s knit pullover with neatly pressed jeans. His hair was swooped up in the front with gel. April left Mitch watching his sister play pool and went over to say hi.

She slowed as she got closer, realizing she was interrupting a conversation about guns.

April had forgotten what a staple a gun cabinet was in a Pennsylvania home. Lovingly made of the finest hardwoods, decorated with brass hardware and leaded glass, the locked cabinet had a permanent home in many living rooms, like a breakfront or hutch. Logan had this one open and was showing another guy about his age a pair of pearl-handled small revolvers.