Fortunate Harbor (20 page)

She heard a rattle and a sharp scraping noise, and she figured the men were coming in through the side gate Mrs. Statler had mentioned. Her brain was spinning, but dizziness was the lone result. She realized the moment she heard voices she should have leaped for the door. She might have had time to get out, although that was iffy. She started forward and saw Janya come around the edge of the pool. Janya glanced toward the pool house, frowning; then suddenly she saw the open door and her expression turned from irritation to horror.

Janya looked right at Wanda, then at the men coming around the side of the pool house. As if she hadn’t even considered what to do, she took one step to the side and gracefully toppled into the pool.

Now Wanda was horrified. Before she could do a thing, the two men came around the house, saw the woman in the pool shrieking—and who would ever have thought Janya could shriek with that kind of conviction?—and rushed forward to help her.

When the men’s backs were well and truly turned, Wanda slipped out of the house and gently shut the door behind her until the lock clicked.

She waited a moment until the men were both trying to haul a sputtering, screeching Janya out of the pool, before she, too, rushed forward to help.

“Who are you?” Edward Statler, a dignified silver-haired man in an expensive suit looked both annoyed and suspicious.

“I’m so sorry!” Wanda came from behind them and helped Janya get to her feet, now that the man had gotten her out of the pool. “We were just delivering the pies for tonight’s party and we were on our way out. Your wife asked us to lock up and leave by the gate. I realized I’d dropped… the check your wife left me. I went back to find it and Janya here was…”

“I was waiting,” Janya said in a hoarse voice. “And when I heard voices… I was startled and…”

Wanda picked up the cue. “She must have stepped backward into the pool. Or tripped.”

CJ laughed. “It’s okay, Edward. Wanda and…Janya?”

Janya nodded, water flying emphatically in all directions.

“Wanda and Janya are friends of Tracy’s,” CJ went on. “Good friends. They’re on the up-and-up. Sally told me she was getting her pies for the party from Wanda’s shop. I’m going to get towels.”

“Please…you don’t need to,” Janya said. “I’ll be—”

“Don’t you dare leave until we dry you off a little.” CJ unlocked his door and disappeared into the pool house. Wanda waited for an angry bellow that never came. He emerged with two fluffy beach towels, and Janya took one to hurriedly dry herself.

“Well, we really made a splash, didn’t we?” Wanda cleared her throat and tried to smile at her own joke. “I sure hope the pies make just as much of one. And we’re so sorry. Aren’t we, Janya?”

Janya narrowed her eyes. “Yes,
both
of us are sorry.” She handed the towel back to CJ. “The best thing I can do is go home and change,” she said. “Thank you both for your help.”

“We’ll just let ourselves out,” Wanda said. “You’ve been so kind.”

CJ was smiling, and even Edward Statler seemed to find the whole thing funny. Wanda hoped that neither man’s suspicions had been raised. If the pool house had security cameras, too, they would get a real thrill if they reviewed the tapes of her rifling through CJ’s papers.

She wondered why that possibility hadn’t occurred to her before.

Janya started toward the gate, and Wanda followed. The men had their eyes trained on them, or rather on the lovely Indian woman whose soaked clothing was clinging to her curvaceous young body. Once they were through the gate, Wanda began to breathe easier. Until she glanced at her friend.

“What would you have done if I had not thrown myself into that pool?”

Wanda didn’t know. She slung her arm over Janya’s shoulders and didn’t care if she got wet or not.

“The real question? What would I do without Janya Kapur as my neighbor? That’s the question I don’t ever want to have to answer.”

Before the advent of Henrietta Claiborne, summer at the rec center had looked busy. Now, with Losing to Win gaining momentum, Tracy had put in so much overtime she was afraid some night soon, she might not remember the route back to Happiness Key. The center had showers; there was fast food nearby. She had even stored toiletries and an extra change of clothing, just in case some morning she really did wake up on the rec room sofa.

Youth camp, which had started last Monday, had been her first priority. At least those activities felt familiar, since she’d organized and run the camp last summer, too. She had great counselors, a full schedule of activities and field trips, and, so far, no problem kids. Even Bay, last year’s boy-in-the-ointment, was behaving, making friends, and struggling to be number one at everything. Last summer he’d done everything possible to get tossed out of camp, so he could go live with his mother. This summer Sylvia was living right
down the hall, so he was doing everything he could to impress her.

Tracy wasn’t sure which was worse.

This morning, Losing to Win was finally having its debut. The committee had decided to organize weight-loss teams from the center’s activity groups, since their members already knew how to pull together. A publicity blitz, plus some not so subtle arm-twisting, had resulted in six teams. Young mothers, senior swimmers, summer softball. Plus creative cooks—they had been a natural, since weight gain came with the territory; photo pranksters—who had been made to promise they would not Photoshop their “before and after” photographs; and finally, the shuffleboard team.

Tracy still had hopes for more. Eight would be perfect, but a summer forgoing barbecued ribs, potato salad and strawberry shortcake in favor of salad with low-fat dressing was a hard sell. Plus each team member was required to ante up five dollars a week toward the new nursery, an amount to be matched by local businesses that were sponsoring teams and again by Henrietta.

There were compensations, and Tracy had played them up. At summer’s end the winning team would be selected, using percentage of weight lost as the standard. Palmetto Grove’s premiere hotel had agreed to donate massages and the use of their extensive spa facilities for half a day. The grand prize winner, the single participant who lost the highest percentage of their body weight, would receive an entire package of treatments, plus dinner and a night in a luxury suite.

And the others? They would have healthier, slimmer bodies to console them. If all went as planned, thousands would be raised to renovate the nursery, everyone would have fun, and the sponsors would receive plenty of publicity.

Before she headed upstairs for the opening festivities, Tracy slipped into the ladies’ room to splash cold water on her face. She felt the way she might if she’d been dragged for miles behind a Jet Ski. Next year maybe the center would raise money by competing for hours slept. The team with the most would win, and that was one competition she would be happy to enter.

She was halfway out the door when a small body slammed into hers and tumbled to the ground with an “oof!” Several other boys scooted past, but Tracy corralled the familiar one and set Bay back on his feet.

“Here’s the thing about doors,” she said. “They open, and people come out of them, which is why it’s a good idea to stay close to the middle of a hallway so you can avoid collisions.”

“My group’s got the softball field. We want to practice before our big game this afternoon!”

She dropped her hands. “Then go get ’em, tiger. But watch out for other people on the way.”

Despite the initial rush, now Bay seemed in no hurry. “My mom might come and watch us play.”

Tracy wondered if Sylvia would show up. Marsh had been at swim team practice on Wednesday. Tracy had seen him from a distance, but not to speak to. The only time she’d ever seen Sylvia at the center was the evening of the banquet. And she was suspicious that Sylvia had come that night not to see her son deliver his lines, but to be seen herself. Palmetto Grove’s finest had been in attendance, and networking was always good for job prospects.

She hoped for Bay’s sake that Sylvia would come this afternoon to cheer him on, even if there was no one in the stands to impress.

“I’m going to pitch.” Bay’s golden-brown eyes—an uncom
fortable reminder of his father’s—were glowing. “And I got a real home run at our last game.”

“Good for you.” She held up her palm, and they high-fived.

“Mom says if I get another one today, she and Dad will take me out for pizza.”

Tracy wondered why Sylvia and Marsh just didn’t take Bay for pizza on general principles. Who cared if the kid made a home run? At his age, winning and losing was as much about remembering to run after a ball as it was about skill. Bay already felt he had to work hard to please his mother. He didn’t need more pressure.

She wondered if she ought to talk to Marsh, then realized that these days, she was the last person who could. Anything she said would sound like a criticism of Sylvia. And although there was, in her view, a lot to criticize, she was in the unique position of not being able to say a word. Everything would sound like sour grapes.

“You know what?” She ruffled what there was of Bay’s hair. “Don’t worry if you don’t get a home run, okay? You’re a good teammate, and maybe it’s somebody else’s turn today. Just tell your mom and dad you played your best. That’s worth pizza any time.”

He grinned, and again she was reminded of his father. “I gotta win,” he said, almost as if he was talking to a younger child, explaining a fact of life in words she might understand. “That’s what counts.”

“Playing well, having fun and being a good sport,
that’s
what counts.” She wondered when she had actually started to believe her own words. Nowadays when she mouthed these good sportsmanship platitudes—and mouthing them came with the territory—they actually sounded like gospel.

“I gotta go.”

“Yep, you gotta.” Tracy waved him off, then watched him sprint the rest of the way to the door.

The interlude with Bay meant she arrived at the kickoff a minute or two later than she’d planned. Luckily things seemed to be going well.

The event was scheduled to last all morning, and they were serving a nutritious, low-calorie lunch at the end. Judging from something that smelled suspiciously like steaming broccoli, the creative cooks were putting the finishing touches on the meal.

Chairs, a projector and a screen had been set up in the front, as had an industrial-sized digital scale. The center’s new weight loss guru, a perky middle-aged cheerleader named Kitty Wallace, was setting up a PowerPoint presentation. Role model Kitty, with her washboard abs and Michelle Obama arms, would conduct a weigh-in for each team, perform voodoo rituals to determine how many pounds each person should lose, then talk about diet strategies and nutrition. Tracy had convinced both the daily and weekly newspapers to send reporters and photographers, who hadn’t yet arrived. Unfortunately, Henrietta wasn’t going to be here. She was preparing for tonight’s intimate little gathering of about twenty on her yacht. Tracy was looking forward to it, since once she was on board, she couldn’t work anymore.

Gladys was bustling about with stacks of folders Tracy had made up for the participants. When she saw Tracy, she dropped them unceremoniously on the nearest chair and came right over.

“Senior swimmers dropped out. They’re doing so well in their meets, they think they’ll be on the road too much to participate. Besides, they’re already in great shape. If they each lost
just a couple of pounds they’d cinch it. There’s not a one of them whose BMI needs a tweak.”

Tracy had known the senior swimmers were the iffiest of her teams. They hadn’t been enthused from the get-go, and she’d had to work and work to get them to say yes.

She thought out loud. “We can do this with five, but we won’t raise as much money. And the more people we include, the more excitement we generate.”

“It’s time to have a staff team, Tracy.” Gladys held up her hand. “I know all your objections, but with senior swimmers gone, it’s a natural for us to step in.”

Tracy and Gladys had discussed this for the past week. Tracy worried that pitting the staff against rec center members might cause hard feelings. Gladys believed it would be a bonding experience, everyone rooting for everyone else, with renewed insight into what friends and competitors were undergoing.

“A morning at the spa,” Gladys said. “Nobody’s going to care that much if they win or lose. It’s not half a million dollars and national television exposure. It’s going to be all for one and one for all here. And I need this.”

Tracy could argue with everything but that. Indeed, Gladys and Woody both needed the competition to make them pay more attention to their health. “But we need at least six people,” she countered, staying away from the personal. “That’s the minimum. And some of the groups have as many as nine.”

“I’ve got six!” Gladys ticked off names. Clearly she’d been busy. In addition to herself and Woody, she had recruited two instructors, a maintenance man, and the woman in charge of the center’s extensive swimming program.

Tracy knew when she’d been beaten. “I guess we’re set, then.”

Gladys looked pleased. “Here come the Shuffleboarders. Go make nice.”

Tracy pasted on her most winning smile, although she knew with this particular group, a smile meant little. Last year their leaders, the shuffle board, had taught her a lot more than how to play a better game of shuffleboard. They’d knocked her personal disk off the shuffleboard court of real life a few times, and she could admit—with a certain amount of annoyance—that she had needed it.

Now she approached them warily, as she had ever since the unfortunate bird-watching incident.

The three old men she’d first been introduced to last year were here with a handful of others from the Palmetto Grove Shuffleboard team. Roger Goldworthy, who she always thought of as Mr. Moustache because of the razor-thin line above his top lip, approached her. She greeted him warily.

“It’s nice to see you here. Are you, umm… one of the participants?”

He snorted. She was glad he saw the humor. He weighed maybe a hundred pounds, and his pants were gathered in folds under a tightly cinched belt. She suspected he couldn’t find pants that would fit outside the boys’ department.

“We had plenty without me,” he said. “Or we thought we did until about an hour ago. Sally just dropped out. She’s going in for surgery, and that doesn’t seem like a fair way to lose weight.”

“I hope it’s not serious,” Tracy said. Sally was a dimply octogenarian who could slam a shuffleboard disk into prime position with her eyes closed.

“Knee replacement. She’ll be at our next tournament on crutches and still beat the competition.”

“Bad news for her and Losing to Win.”

“She won’t be doing any bird-watching for a while, but what’s the need? Her life list’s already as long as my arm, and somebody scared away the only masked booby for a hundred miles.”

Tracy smiled sweetly. “Do you have anybody else who could replace her?”

His lips curved into something approximating a smile. “We’ll just have to see.”

She didn’t have time to question him. Gladys was pointing toward the front, where Woody had taken his place at the microphone to welcome everybody. Tracy joined her, and they stood together.

Tracy thought that under the circumstances, the turnout of close to a hundred was great. Serving lunch helped, plus friends of team members had come to cheer on the competitors. And a lot of people were probably interested in hearing what Kitty had to say about weight loss and health, but maybe not quite ready to commit to the competition.

Woody had a droll sense of humor and used it to warm up the crowd. Nervous titters turned to gales of laughter by the time he’d finished, and his announcement that he was joining a team himself met with wild applause. Tracy realized Gladys had been right all along.

He introduced Kitty, who proved immediately she was the right person to lead the charge. She had everybody up and stretching and greeting their neighbors; then, guessing that there might be shy people in the audience who wanted to join a team, she promised that nobody would ever be embarrassed by anything that happened during Losing to Win. She suggested a new team called Losers Anonymous that would be part of the fun, only the members would never have to admit it.

She promised the audience that she would be taking secret registrations and doing secret weigh-ins.

“She’s good. That’ll be our sixth team,” Tracy whispered to Gladys.

“Don’t you mean seventh?”

Tracy broke the bad news in another whisper. “The Shuffleboarders are down a member, so they won’t make the minimum, but maybe somebody will step up to the scale.”

Gladys made a worried noise. “Whoever joins them had better tow the line. Those folks play to win.”

Tracy’s attention wandered. She had a list one mile long of things she hadn’t done in the two weeks she’d been working nonstop. She figured when things slowed down, she could fight off loneliness by doing laundry and grocery shopping, maybe even look over CJ’s plans to see if there was any prayer she could start to renovate the cottages. And whose would she start with? That difficulty alone might make the entire idea unfeasible.

Kitty had launched into her own weight loss story, and Tracy half listened. Kitty claimed she’d once weighed close to two hundred pounds. Her cholesterol and blood pressure had been out of control, and none of the diets worked for more than a pound or two. Finally, desperate and depressed, she got involved with a program that put her in touch with other people in the same boat. For Kitty, the camaraderie and support had made all the difference. Just the way they would make the difference in Losing to Win.

“She’s absolutely perfect,” Gladys whispered. “I can feel myself losing weight just listening to her.”

Tracy hoped it was going to be that easy, since by summer’s end, they really needed something to show for all this work.

Finally the time came for the teams to stand up and be
counted. Tracy had volunteered to be Kitty’s recorder, so she went up front, and the weigh-in began. First the young mothers group, who had decided to call their team Big Mamas, weighed in. Only Kitty and Tracy saw the scales, and Kitty made her calculations on paper and handed the verdict to each woman. Some of the moms were only ten to fifteen pounds overweight. In the end, the team of six needed to lose a hundred and ten pounds.