The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco (3 page)

“Sounds like fun.”

Ivy walked out with Maud, turning to remind me that we were meeting tomorrow to plan an office offsite. She swayed. “Whoo—a bit dizzy.”

She looked pale.

“You okay?”

“Sure. My tummy’s a little squiffy; that’s all. Nine o’clock okay? My house. I’m working from home tomorrow—I get more done that way,” she said. “Clayton”—her boss—“thinks the offsite will improve office morale and efficiency.” She shrugged as if unconvinced but said, “Can’t hurt. Come with ideas for how we can make it fun—not the usual sit-around-and-stare-at-each-other office drill with trust falls and all that garbage.”

“Will do.” My mind churned through ideas as I waved good-bye. A team scavenger hunt, maybe? No, a geocaching event would be better. I’d have to get more details from Ivy about the number of people and the budget.

As I’d hoped, Brooke was the last to leave. She was still in the sunroom, grazing on the last of the tortilla chips. I was going to get on her again about not cluing me in about Doug and Madison, but something about her looked beaten down, and I sat across from her. “What’s wrong?”

She met my gaze and gave me a tight smile. “Troy and I are finally talking about in vitro. Or maybe adopting.”

“That’s great!” I knew she and her husband of
nine years had been trying to get pregnant for almost half their marriage.

“Not according to Troy Senior and Miss Clarice. Little Widefields are born naturally, not created in a test tube, and we certainly don’t want to contaminate the gene pool by adopting a baby with an unknown but probably deficient pedigree.”

She said it semijokingly, but I could tell her in-laws’ attitude grated on her. They’d disapproved of Troy marrying her during their junior year in college. Miss Clarice had told one of my mom’s friends that Brooke wasn’t “the right kind of girl.” I took that to mean she didn’t turn out like the “Perfect Wife” recipe Miss Clarice probably concocted in her cauldron: one tablespoon Junior Leaguer, a pinch of heiress, two teaspoons hypocrite, a dollop of Betty Crocker, and a half cup of Stepford wife. After the marriage, the Widefields had continued to drip poison about her into their son’s ear in a way that made me want to sock the self-righteous smiles off their rich little faces. Brooke had thought she understood what marrying into the richest and most powerful family in town would mean, but she’d been young and naive. Kind of like Princess Diana when she married into the royal family. The Widefields had wanted Troy Jr. to marry a girl with family political connections, not a cheerleader and beauty queen whose father ran a dry-cleaning business and whose mother was a school secretary. The elder Widefields envisioned Troy as governor someday, and they did not think Brooke was Mrs. Governor
material, even though she’d tried hard to live up to their expectations by not working, being active on charity committees, and keeping an immaculate house. “Tell them to go . . . take a flying leap off a tall cliff,” I said.

She slid a finger under her camisole strap, as if it were too tight. “I wish. It would help if Troy didn’t work for his dad.”

It would help more if he grew a backbone, but I didn’t say that. Her husband worked for the family auto dealership, a swath of shiny new and used cars out 330 on the way to Grand Junction. “You were born to be a mother,” I said, hugging Brooke as she stood to go. “So whatever it takes. You’re only thirty-two. It’s not like time is running out. You’ve got options. IVF, adoption, screwing like bunnies . . . whatever.”

She laughed and hugged me back. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Doug. I really didn’t know how serious it was.”

I saw her to the door, hugged her again, and watched as she drove off in a Widefield AutoPark Lexus. I bused the glasses and ate the last petit four and thought about time running out. Brooke still had plenty of time to have a baby, but I wasn’t even married. In fact, I didn’t even have a boyfriend, and my last date had spent the entire evening talking about his abduction by aliens. I’d made a mental note to hook him up with Maud (not in a romantic way), who had visited Roswell and firmly believed the government was hiding secrets about aliens at Area 51. It seemed that time had finally run out for me and Doug. The thought
made me droop as I washed the glasses and put them in the drainer to dry and wiped down the counters.

I wasn’t really a droopy kind of person, though—too optimistic by nature—so I straightened and made myself look on the bright side. I ran a business I loved and owned my own two-bedroom cottage, and engaged wasn’t the same thing as married. Not at all.

I
left my office the next morning to meet Ivy Donner, having already coordinated with my assistant, Al Frink, who was off to supervise a breakfast for the Lions Club, chatted with a caterer about Madison and Doug’s wedding, and set up a date with a bakery for the happy couple to taste cakes. I would not be accompanying them on that expedition. (A) I didn’t need the calories, and (B) I was planning to organize this whole wedding without ever having to set eyes on Doug. Shouldn’t be too hard—he’d be busy at the law firm and my mind boggled at the thought of him giving a hoot about table favors or cake toppers. I cruised down Paradise Boulevard, the main drag in Heaven (its name changed from John Elway Avenue after the town rechristened itself), taking mental notes about the exterior of the grand Victorian homes interspersed with smaller cottages and 1950s- and ’60s-era homes. Before becoming a homeowner, I never noticed things like sagging gutters or cracks in driveways, but now they stood out. I admired the crimson paint
on a two-story home’s gingerbread before I turned onto Ivy’s street, where new townhomes stood in brick-fronted groups of four.

A maple sapling, orange daylilies, and bushy Russian sage made her front yard stand out from her neighbors’, and I wondered if she’d gotten Lola’s advice on what to plant. She had an end unit and I’d been there several times, including for a house-warming party three years ago and for book club meetings since. Her door was painted a shiny cobalt blue and I touched it gently with a finger, liking the slickness. Ivy didn’t respond to my knock, so I pressed the doorbell and heard it ding-dong deep inside. Still no answer. Standing on the covered stoop, I dug out my cell phone and called Ivy’s number. It went straight to voice mail. Unsure whether to be ticked or worried, I wondered if we’d gotten our wires crossed and she was waiting for me at her office. I dialed that number and got a young-sounding woman—an intern, maybe?—who told me Ivy hadn’t come in.

“Hm.” I tapped my cell phone against my teeth. Maybe Ivy was breakfasting on her back patio or working in the yard and hadn’t heard me. My two-inch heels sank into the dirt as I started across the springy patch of grass and around the side of the unit. Birds twittered from a greenbelt that bordered the property, and I heard the distant
beep-beep-beep
of a construction vehicle backing up. Other than that, it was silent. Most of the folks who lived in this community were professionals, like Ivy, and I suspected few people were home on a workday.

None of the backyards were fenced—against the covenants, Ivy had complained—and I turned the corner to see that Ivy’s small yard and patio were empty except for a lizard, which skittered away as my shadow draped it. My heels clicked against the cement patio, which was barely big enough to hold a George Foreman grill and a bistro table with two folding chairs. A terra-cotta pot held a water-deprived geranium. I sighed. I’d wasted my time coming over here. On the off chance, I knocked on the kitchen door. Using my hand as a visor, I pressed close to the window adjacent to the back door and peered in.

Breakfast dishes and a teapot sat on the table in the breakfast nook directly in front of the window. No Ivy in sight. I was turning away when a flicker of motion—I couldn’t say what—caught my eye. Frowning, I pressed closer to the window, the pane cool against my forehead. Something white and oblong twitched from just inside the hall that led to the front door. Was it—? A foot! Ivy’s foot. I froze. Ivy had fallen and hurt herself, or she had had a heart attack. But she was still alive; I was sure I’d seen her foot kick. I simultaneously dialed 911 and tried the door. Locked.

The emergency operator’s calm voice answered and I blurted out where I was and what the problem was. She said she was dispatching an ambulance, but I wasn’t going to wait. A couple of minutes might mean life or death to Ivy. I looked around, frantic for a way in, and saw the grill. Hefting it over my head, I slammed it against the
window beside the door, shutting my eyes against the storm of ash and glass splinters that flew up.

“Ivy!” Did the foot twitch? Careful to avoid slicing my wrist open, I reached through the broken pane and unlocked the door. My heart thumped like a hummingbird’s as the door swung in. Pushing through it, I was barely conscious of a variety of unpleasant odors as I raced to where Ivy lay. Sprawled facedown in the hall, blue nightie rucked up around her thighs, she was as still as death. Pools of vomit splotched the hallway. It looked like she’d been trying to reach the small powder room but hadn’t made it in time.

“Ivy?” I touched her hand. Her teal nail polish looked ghastly against the pallor of her skin. I chafed her hand. “Ivy, it’s Amy-Faye. There’s an ambulance coming. Hold on.”

Her fingers half curled around mine. It gave me hope, yet made me feel utterly useless. I had no idea what to do. There was no bleeding to stop and her heart was still pumping, so CPR was out. A blanket. She needed a blanket. I spied an afghan draped over the love seat in the living room straight ahead. Stepping around some vomit, I retrieved the afghan and tucked it around Ivy where she lay on the floor. Red welts stood out vividly against her waxy skin. Could this be an allergy attack of some kind? Was she in anaphylactic shock? Her eyelids flickered.

“Ivy? Can you hear me? It’s Amy-Faye. Help is on the way.” Where was the damn ambulance?

“Can’t see . . . blurry. Clay . . . didn’t mean . . .”
Her eyes were mere slits, but I thought they were focused on me.

I picked up the faint sound of the siren and almost sobbed with relief. “Just a few more minutes, Ivy, okay? I’m going to open the door.”

Her fingers tightened around mine and then let go. Her hand fell limply to the floor. I hesitated, then jumped up, sped down the hall, undid the dead bolt, and flung the door wide. Sunshine flooded the dim hallway and I blinked. A fire truck slewed around the corner, closely followed by a police car. I jumped up and down to attract their attention, and then hurried back to Ivy when the fire truck nosed into the curb.

Kneeling beside her, I stroked her short hair. Her breaths came in shallow, irregular gasps. “You’re going to be okay, Ivy. You’re going to be okay.” I didn’t know if she heard me. The first responders surged in and I got out of their way. I edged into the kitchen as they worked on Ivy, loaded her onto a stretcher, and had her out of the house in less than five minutes. One of the EMTs told the lone police officer to “find out what she took—find the bottle.” It took a moment to register, but then I realized he thought she’d overdosed on meds of some kind. My hand covered my mouth and my gaze swept the small kitchen.

It was an ordinary kitchen with newish midrange appliances, walls painted cream, canisters lined up on the counter, and bright Fiestaware dishes stacked in glass-fronted cabinets. I’d knocked over small pots of basil and mint when I broke the window, and their dirt mingled with the glass and ash on the
floor. The faucet dripped and I turned it off. Nothing jumped out at me, no prescription bottle on the counter or knocked to the floor, no open bottle of vodka or scotch. A half-eaten bowl of oatmeal with walnuts, a slice of cantaloupe, and a teacup and teapot sat on the table with the
Heaven Herald
open to the second page. The rest of the cantaloupe waited on the counter, a piece of cling wrap stretched over it, and the crumpled oatmeal packet lay on the floor near the trash can. A ladder-back chair painted red was pushed well back from the table, as if Ivy had gotten up in a hurry. It was all excruciatingly ordinary. I was sure Ivy sat in that very chair and read the paper every morning while she ate her breakfast. Tears stung and I wiped them away. I couldn’t kid myself: Ivy was very, very sick. The scent of the herbal tea mingled with the smell of crushed mint and basil but couldn’t overcome the less pleasant odors, and I tried to breathe through my mouth.

Trying to remember what diseases gave you diarrhea and made you throw up, I thought of cholera and food poisoning. I didn’t think Ivy had traveled outside the country recently, so cholera was a long shot. Before I could give it any more thought, a suspicious voice said, “Who are you and what are you doing?”

I turned. The young police officer had returned to the house after seeing Ivy loaded into the ambulance. Short and with a reedy build that made me think “middle schooler” rather than “law enforcement professional,” he was staring at me suspiciously, brow furrowed and jaw thrust forward. His gaze landed on the glass and grill and traveled
to the broken window. “Hey, someone broke in!” His hand went to his gun.

“That was me,” I said, raising my hand slightly. “I saw Ivy on the floor and called nine-one-one, but then I had to get in to try and help her, so I broke the window. Is she going to be okay?”

The cop shrugged uncomfortably, wrinkling a splotch on his shoulder that might have been baby spit-up. “That’s for the doctors to say, ma’am. How did you come to find the victim?”

I explained about our meeting while the cop rifled the kitchen cabinets and bagged the containers of aspirin and allergy medications he found. He had to stand on a chair to get into the cabinets over the stove. “Wait here,” he told me, heading toward Ivy’s bedroom and bathroom. I heard the sound of drawers sliding open and cabinets snapping shut and imagined him ransacking Ivy’s medicine chest, pawing through deodorant and dental floss and birth control pills, invading her privacy. He emerged five minutes later with more childproof-capped bottles to add to his collection.

“I’ve got to take these to the hospital,” he said self-importantly. “Give me your name, address, and phone number and someone will contact you.”

“Okay.” I provided the information and left with him. “What hospital is she at?” I asked as he climbed into his patrol car.

“St. Mary’s in Grand Junction.”

I nodded. Grand Junction, with a population of about sixty thousand, was the largest city in the region, about thirty minutes west of Heaven. It had the closest hospital with an ER. He screeched away
from the curb and I stood there, looking around in confusion, arms hanging heavy at my sides. I felt like I’d run a marathon—not that I know what that feels like. Taking a deep breath, I held it for a minute and then blew it out. I needed to let the Readaholics know that Ivy was ill and then drive to the hospital. I wondered if the police had thought to notify her brother, Ham Donner.

My business was all about checklists, and I made a mental one now. Call Brooke and get her to alert the other Readaholics. Call Ham Donner. Call Al and tell him to cover the two meetings with clients I had scheduled for the afternoon. Drive to the hospital. I got in the van and headed for Grand Junction while I used my hands-free device to call Brooke. No answer. I tried Lola’s number.

“Bloomin’ Wonderful,” she answered.

“Lola, something terrible.” I filled her in. “Can you let all the Readaholics know? I’m on my way to the hospital.”

“Of course I’ll make the calls. And I’ll pray for her. I thought she looked a little peaky last night.”

The call to Al was easier. I merely told him a friend was ill and asked him to take the afternoon’s meetings.

“Will do, boss,” he said. “Anything I can help with?”

At my request he found Ham Donner’s phone number, and I steeled myself and called him next. “Ham, it’s Amy-Faye Johnson.”

“Amy-Faye!”

The broad smile in his voice told me he’d completely missed the urgency in my voice. No surprise—
Hamilton Donner wasn’t exactly tuned in to other people. He might be Ivy’s brother, and I might have known him since the Donners moved to Heaven a couple of years before it became Heaven, and even gone out with him once in a moment of total insanity, but that didn’t mean I liked him. Almost three years older, he’d been only a year ahead of us at school and had joined the army after graduation. The military had kicked him out—something to do with a bar fight, I’d heard—after five years and he’d drifted around the West Coast for a while before returning to Heaven. I’d heard talk of him dealing drugs and selling goods that “fell off the back of trucks,” but I hadn’t asked Ivy about it. She was still in touch with him, but she’d quit talking about him after his first arrest.

“I knew you’d come around eventually, sugar. Drinks Friday night at Rollie’s? And then we—”

I cut in on his recital of hot date activities, which probably included a monster truck rally and a tobacco-spitting contest. “Ham, Ivy’s sick. Really sick. An ambulance just took her to St. Mary’s.”

“What?”

“I was meeting her at her house and I found her passed out in the hall.”

“Drunk? Overdose?”

Sudden fury that he would judge Ivy by his own low standards made me snap. “No. Ill. Ill enough to maybe die. So stop being an ass and get to the hospital. I’m on my way there now.” I hung up and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

*   *   *

I swept into the hospital forty minutes later, having been delayed by roadwork. I was sweaty from jogging from the far corner of the parking lot, and the air-conditioned lobby felt like a walk-in freezer. Heavenly. The cool air on my damp skin gave me such a sense of well-being that for a moment I was sure Ivy was going to be all right. I’d gotten myself in a tizzy over nothing. She was probably tucked up in a hospital bed with an IV for dehydration, sleeping off the aftereffects of food poisoning. Her cantaloupe might have been contaminated with listeria—hadn’t there been a big problem with that last summer?—so maybe the docs were giving her antibiotics, too. I hurried to the information desk and gave the volunteer Ivy’s name, ready to hear that she had been moved from the ER to a room, and hoping she could have visitors.

Brooke hurried in while the volunteer was typing in Ivy’s name. “Lola called. Is Ivy okay?” Concern creased her face.

“Oh.”

We swung to face the volunteer. Her kindly, wrinkled face was surrounded by a graying halo of crinkly hair. She pursed full lips. “Um. Well, yes. Ivy Donner, you said? Are you relatives?” She looked from me to Brooke.

“Friends,” I said tersely, made uneasy by her obvious discomfort. “How’s Ivy? Where is she?”