Seven Threadly Sins (22 page)

The evening had become too chilly for the flip-flops I’d been wearing for picnicking and wading in the shallows. I put on warm socks and sneakers. Since I didn’t plan to do any snooping, I pulled a pale blue jacket over my sweater.

Clay knocked on the patio door, and I let him in, complete with the picnic basket. “Here’s your lunch for tomorrow,” he said.

“Yummy. Thanks!” I gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Hey!” he complained. “Not fair when my arms are full.”

Smiling, I turned around and led him to the counter nearest the fridge. “Set the basket here, and let’s unpack it.”

He did, and handed me containers of potato salad, chicken, corn bread, and cake.

I found spaces in the fridge. “There’s more than enough for one person for lunch,” I said. “Maybe you’d like to come here for supper tomorrow night and we can polish it off?”

His warm smile nearly undid me. “I’d like that. It turned out the beach was a little too public. That Loretta! She doesn’t know when to give up.”

Flustered by the affection in his eyes, I said, “Leave the dishes in the sink. I can wash them after I get back.”

“I’ll come with you and help.”

Suddenly, washing dishes had become a romantic activity.

I unpacked the dishes into the sink and pushed the basket out of the way.

“Now,” said Clay, “about that conversation we were about to start when Loretta interrupted us.” He pulled me into his arms.

But it turned out that even the inside of my apartment was too public. The cats leaped onto our shoulders and meowed in our faces. The dogs wormed their way between our knees again.

And that’s when the tapping started.

I
looked past Mustache, who was teetering on Clay’s shoulder. “We’ll have to continue this conversation later,
again
,” I whispered into Clay’s cheek. “Dora’s peeking in.”

Clay tightened his arms around me. “So? Let her.”

Giggling, I squirmed away and opened the door.

Dora marched in. “Sorry to interrupt whatever you were doing with your
friend
. He phoned me a few minutes ago and said he was calling a sudden meeting of his design team, in the TADAM mansion carriage house.
I’m
ready to go.”

“We were just heading that way,” I told her. “Clay’s letting me drive you in his truck, and he’s walking there to meet us.”

“We could all fit in your car,” she pointed out sensibly. Then she made a face of pure revulsion. “Your skunky smell is horrible. Would you two mind if I didn’t come along? It’s giving me a headache. Besides, I really want to finish the place mats I’m weaving.”

I teased, “That’s your real reason for not coming along!” I suspected, though, that she wanted to give us more time
alone together. I had to admit, “The carriage house probably smells worse than we do. I think the skunk sprayed inside it last night.”

She pushed the dogs inside and backed out to the patio. “Sometimes I think you folks have no sense. Enjoy!” She headed down the hill toward Blueberry Cottage.

Clay and I followed her out, and I locked up. Although we could walk to the carriage house, Clay drove us there.

He stopped in front of the TADAM mansion. “I called Ben to come to the design meeting, too, and he was going to call Haylee.”

“Subtle.”

He gave me a teasing smile that made me forget to breathe. “I do what I can. Ben and Haylee should be along in ten or fifteen minutes. I should leave room for him to park, and anyone else who might drive here tonight.” He leaned forward to stare past me at the three-track “driveway” leading toward the carriage house. “Might as well use the driveway. There was a fair amount of junk in that carriage house that will need to be removed before Mona can use it as a theater. Maybe I can enlist Mona and the rest of you to help me load some of it into my truck and take it to the dump.”

Would that be before or after our dish-washing date? Either way, the evening was shaping up to be very romantic. Or something.

He backed down the driveway. Tendrils of unclipped privet, lilac, and forsythia brushed the truck.

As Loretta had told us, the police tape was gone from the carriage house. Lights were on inside it. I hopped out of the truck and met Clay at the back. He was carrying a manila envelope. He pulled the carriage house’s person-sized door open and let me enter first.

Loretta’s voice came from a back corner, near where Paula had been sitting the night before. “There you are.” She stood. She looked cold in the tight shorts and tank top, but maybe the tall boots helped keep her from shivering. “I think I found where the skunk goes in and out.”

I pinched my nose. “I hope it’s out, not in, but it smells like it’s in.”

“It sprayed Paula in here last night,” Loretta explained, though I knew that. “The smell lingers a long time.” I knew that, too.

Clay pointed near the door. “I’ll use some of those concrete blocks to plug the hole.”

I helped him. The blocks were an old style of dense concrete, and surprisingly heavy. Loretta poked around in other corners. I hoped she wouldn’t scare up any skunks or other furry critters. I wanted to suggest we should simply leave the carriage house alone until the smell went away. Even if the actors consented to work inside it, would audiences stay after they’d taken a whiff?

The piece of super-sticky stabilizer was still on the handle of a lawn mower. “Don’t go near that white thing over there,” I told Clay, “unless you want a lawn mower attached to you for the rest of your life.”

He laughed. “That was how I felt the summer I was thirteen and started my own yard work company.” He raised his voice. “Did you hear that, Loretta?”

“The summer you were thirteen?” she repeated. “I wish I’d known you then. You must have been adorable.”

It was undoubtedly true, but I didn’t enjoy hearing her talk about him in that syrupy tone.

He corrected her. “I meant did you hear what Willow said? Not to go near that white stuff hanging from the lawn mower? It’s very sticky.”

“I heard.” She knocked against a broken pitchfork that went clanging down onto a pile of other rusting gardening implements. “Paula wrapped the stuff all over herself and couldn’t get loose.” Loretta peered into the carriage house’s one stall. “What shall we turn this stall into, Clay? Wouldn’t it be fun to repurpose it into something cute? With these half-height walls, it could be a cozy dining nook.”

And the tenant could feed his or her guests hay.

We’d closed the skunk’s passageway as well as we could with the concrete blocks, which cut off some of the fresh
air. I ran back to the door and opened it as far as it would go. The big swinging doors, though, were not only blocked in the closed position with a long two-by-ten across the outside, they had settled into the ground, and to free them, we’d need to dig for hours.

Where were Ben and Haylee? I couldn’t blame them if they’d decided not to join us in this putrid place. The ten or fifteen minutes weren’t up yet, however.

Clay picked up his manila envelope and tapped it against the leg of his jeans. “Loretta, didn’t you draw a bathroom just about where you’re now proposing a dining nook?”

She giggled. “Half walls? I don’t think so. Oh! How about topping the half walls with glass blocks to let in lots of light but still allow for privacy?”

“If that’s what you’d like,” he said in a totally neutral tone. “We’d need to shore up the walls beneath the glass blocks to hold the weight.”

“You could do it, Clay.” That woman could really gush. “Or panels of frosted glass. Did you bring my sketches? Is that what’s in the envelope?” She stared hungrily toward his hand.

“No. I brought something else you might like to see. Which school was it where you knew me in fifth grade?”

I knew she’d said fourth grade, and I was certain that Clay knew that, also.

She flashed her cute dimples at him. “That’s just it. I can’t remember the name. Wasn’t it one of those common school names, like Roosevelt?”

“Harry S. Truman?”

She studied him for a second.

Clay looked totally honest and innocent.

“I think that was it,” she said slowly, “but I was young and had no idea who Truman was. All those old presidents’ names sort of got mushed together in my mind.”

Clay opened the flap of the envelope. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you from those days.”

She pouted. “No, you weren’t noticing girls yet. It was the great tragedy of my young life.”

Give me a break.

“And my mom scanned and e-mailed me the class photo.” He pulled a photo out of the envelope. “I printed it. I couldn’t find you in it. Can you?”

She practically galloped to his side. “Let’s see! Where are you?”

He pointed to a tall, thin, serious boy with dark brown eyes.

“I’d know you anywhere, Clay. See why I fell for you?”

“No,” he said.

Yes
. I couldn’t see anyone with curly auburn hair, or anyone who resembled her at all, except one girl with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Is that you?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “I had jeans and a sweatshirt like that.”

So did nearly every other girl in the picture.

“No, that’s Velvet,” Clay said. “She was my next door neighbor.”

“Velvet?” Loretta said. “What a name. Sounds like she could have been one of the residents of that stall over there.”

“Don’t you remember her?” I was sounding like something else that may have resided in that stall over there, but one that meowed instead of whinnied.

“Of course I do. Let’s see if I can pick out Chief.” She pondered the picture. “Isn’t this fun?” she asked.

Fun? Maybe. Informative? Definitely.

She apparently gave up on recognizing Chief, which was just as well, since there were no German shepherds in the picture. She pouted. “I don’t see myself. Maybe I was out sick that day.” She snapped her fingers. “No, I remember now. Aren’t class photos taken early in the year, like September or October? We moved there near the end of fifth grade, and I was at Truman only during May and June of fifth grade.”

Moved “
there
.” Once again, she’d avoided naming the town.

Clay slid the photo into the envelope. “Too bad. I guess I should get my mother to send me the next year’s photo.”

Loretta shook that mane of hair. “No. We moved away that summer.”

The woman had an answer for everything.

“Let’s go up to the hayloft,” she said. “To see if we can put a tiny bathroom up there and still have room for a bed and a closet. Wouldn’t it make a spectacular sleeping loft?”

Clay pushed gently at one of the thick wooden posts holding up the loft.

“It’s sturdy enough,” Loretta urged him. “Look at how well the stairs are built.”

We followed her to steep wooden stairs leading to a landing halfway to the loft. The planks were thick, solid wood.

Clay walked around the downstairs and tested more posts. None of them seemed to budge. He peered up at the joists underneath the loft and at the underside of the loft. He took his time.

Fidgeting, Loretta prodded at the outer walls as if examining the inside of the building’s tongue-and-groove cladding for signs of dry rot or insect damage.

Finally, Clay announced his decision. “I think it’s safe for one of us to go up there. I’ll be careful. Willow, get ready to call 911 if I fall through a hole.”

I could tell he was joking, but Loretta again said that she was certain it was safe.

Staying close to the wall, he climbed the stairs until he was out of sight.

Loretta ran up the stairs after him. “See?” she crowed from the loft. “It’s perfectly safe, even with two of us walking around.”

Clay called down, “Willow, don’t come up here.”

Loretta objected. “What a thing to say! She’s tall, but despite what Antonio said, she’s not
that
fat, and she can’t weigh
that
much.”

Thanks for the compliment.
I wasn’t fat at all. Maybe, someday, I would have to watch what I ate, but between rushing around inside In Stitches and my frequent long walks with my dogs, that day had not yet arrived.

Clay answered, “Willow weighs hardly anything, but I’d just as soon not have another person up here. Two of us may be pressing our luck.” He raised his voice. “And stay out from underneath the loft, too, Willow. Okay?”

“Sure.” I moved all the way to the back wall near the stall. From there, I could see only the top of Loretta’s head. She was near a shuttered window in front. Years ago, when the stall had an occupant, hay would have been loaded through that window, stored in the loft, and pitchforked down to the horse as required. Clay was beside the railing. He took a measuring tape out of his pocket. With his arm extended, he couldn’t quite reach the peak of the ceiling. He checked the tape and wrote something in a notebook.

“Aren’t you going to measure the floor, too?” Loretta asked.

“We already know the entire floor’s dimensions,” he said. “You measured them from downstairs.”

“I did?”

“You noted on your sketches where the posts are.”

“Oh,” she said, “I guess that would work, wouldn’t it?”

“For a ballpark figure, which is all we need at the moment, yes. But I’ll measure the area where I can stand up without banging my head on the ceiling.”

“Thinking of living here?” Did she know how flirtatious her teasing sounded? Probably.

“No, but you wouldn’t want your tenants knocking themselves out, either.”

“No one is as tall as you are.”

Gush, gush, gush
.
I wanted to run outside and breathe air that was untainted by skunks and Loretta’s insincere praise.

But Haylee and Ben should be along soon, and at least Loretta was entertaining.

Floorboards creaked beneath her as she investigated
the inside of the building’s front wall. All I could see of her was the top of her auburn curls, then she must have bent over, and I couldn’t see her at all.

Clay’s measuring tape twanged. If I’d been up in the loft, I’d have helped him hold the other end of it. Loretta could be missing an opportunity. But I supposed that since I was below them, on the dirt floor, she figured she was scoring points by being closer to him.

He made notes, then moved to the railing and hooked the end of the tape over the edge of a floorboard.

Suddenly, he went still. I knew him pretty well. Something had surprised him. He glanced down at me, put a finger to his lips, and pulled a white square from between the floor and the bottom of the railing. He stood, studied the white square for a moment, turned his upper body toward me and away from Loretta, and slipped the white square underneath his T-shirt.

“Did you find something?” Loretta pounded toward him. “Let me see.” Her voice was sharp.

“Just my note—”

“No, that envelope. That’s
mine
.” She reached toward him. “You were always good at keep-away on the playground in fifth grade, too.”

Fourth grade.

“You never met me before Saturday night.” His words were firm.

“You just don’t remember.” She elbowed him.

Clay tilted toward the railing. It did not quite come up to his knees. Arms and legs flailing, he toppled over it and landed with a horrible
thunk
on the packed earth floor of the carriage house.