Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost (13 page)

Two things were missing: a bathroom and Dumpster’s bedroom.

I found the bathroom soon enough by opening a door to what I had thought was a closet at the top of the stairs. Actually, it
was
a closet but instead of housing coats or clothes, it contained a shower, a toilet, and one of those minuscule half-circle basins in which you can only wash one hand at a time unless you have unusually tiny paws. I turned back to the living room and realized with a sinking feeling that it was in fact a
sleep
sofa in the middle of the room and that’s where Dumpster had to crash.

This was Franny’s life. No wonder she wanted to get out. I stood between the two rooms and tried to imagine what it must be like to have to cope with a screaming baby and a teenage son playing video games in this confined space. After you’d spent a

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day trying to run a store where nobody appreciated what you were trying to do, after you’d undertaken such physically back-breaking tasks as chopping wood and mowing lawns—not to have even a tub in which to soak your aching muscles. What did she do to escape? Not for the first time did I appreciate how incredibly lucky I was to enjoy such relatively spacious accommodations—there was only me, after all—both here at the Phillionaire’s cabin and especially in London where I had my parents’

five-bedroom house to myself. And it was free. But then presumably so was this apartment, left to Franny by her aunt along with the store.

I was confronted with the biggest jar of mayonnaise I’d ever seen when I opened the refrigerator. In fact everything was jumbo size, the ketchup, the milk, the mustard, the jam, and I had to take them all out before I could get to my lasagna. I found it strange that there was no other food in the refrigerator so I investigated the freezer and found it full of pizzas and frozen TV

dinners. I was depressed by the volume of Lean Cuisine meals that must be Franny’s staple diet. She clearly only had time to cook fresh food for her customers.When she closed the store for the night, did she only have enough energy to haul herself up the stairs, put Eliza down, and throw a frozen dinner in the microwave before she fell asleep beside her baby?

And then, having opened the fridge and the freezer, it was as if I couldn’t stop and I felt compelled to look in every cabinet and closet to see what other insights I could glean into Franny’s world. But there was nothing out of the ordinary and most of the space in the kitchen was devoted to a mound of plastic bags containing Dumpster’s paraphernalia and a pine chest in which I found a pathetically small pile of baby clothes together with little jars of applesauce.

Seeing these made me wonder where Franny kept her clothes

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so I wandered back to the bedroom and opened the only door I could see. Franny’s wardrobe seemed to imply a split personality.

At one end of the closet were jeans and cutoffs and plaid shirts and sweatpants, all evidence of her outdoor life in the country.

But at the other end was a small but exquisitely formed collection of fashion items, flirty “date” wear—little black dresses, tiny pencil skirts, frothy chiffon skirts, plaid miniskirts, leather pants, white jeans, lacy blouses, silk shirts. The labels alone were enough to make me draw breath. Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, Donna Karan, and, even more impressive, Prada, Gucci, Jil Sander, and Moschino. I was up on these names—I had once ghosted a
Vogue
editor’s fashion manual—and I knew what you had to pay for this kind of stuff. And underneath, row upon row of stilettos edged out the pathetic assortment of sneakers and work boots pushed to one side on the floor of the closet. Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik, Chanel.Where had Franny got the money for high-end shoes like these?

Hidden in a corner was a square vanity case—Louis Vuitton, what else? I have worked hard to overcome my many vices but I don’t seem to have much luck giving up snooping. I tell myself it’s part and parcel of what I do, that I need to have an inquiring mind and anyway, is nosiness in fact a vice?

I flipped up the lid of the vanity case expecting to see expensive items of makeup but instead I found a pile of photographs.

They were all of Franny, sometimes alone and sometimes with a well-groomed, wealthy-looking man, and not always the same one. In some of the pictures she appeared to be modeling, posing in front of a fancy car or a lake or some other exotic backdrop.

Suddenly I understood that Franny had had another life in the recent past, before Eliza had been born, before she had decided to leave it all behind and move out here and try and turn a two-bit mom-and-pop convenience store into Dean & DeLuca. Had she in

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fact been a model? And who were her elegant escorts in the photographs?

I was so wrapped up in Franny’s past I forgot I was supposed to be quiet. I replaced the photos, pushed the case back to where I had found it, and closed the closet door.With a bang.

What was I thinking? Eliza woke up gradually with a little shuffling in her cot and a whimper or two but within minutes she was thrashing around with both little arms and legs in the air, her crying increasing in volume. She stopped for a second when I leaned over the cot and peered at her, probably more out of surprise than anything else because as soon as she had got her breath back, she let rip once again. When she started to bawl, I picked her up and began to carry her around the tiny space of the apartment but she must have sensed I was nervous and unsure of what I was doing because she didn’t stop crying.

I was bewildered when I laid her down on the changing table and discovered her diaper was neither wet nor soiled. Franny had said she had fed her so she couldn’t be hungry. What could be wrong?

An hour later I was at my wits’ end. Eliza’s face was furious and desperate and a virulent shade of puce in color. I couldn’t reach Franny because she’d left her cell phone behind, my mother was on her way to Venice and I couldn’t think who on earth to call for baby advice—until all at once I had a brain wave and picked up Franny’s phone.

Cath sounded befuddled with sleep to begin with and then she hurled abuse at me so loudly I almost dropped Eliza.

“Are you insane, Lee? It’s one thirty in the morning. I was up with Marcus till about half an hour ago and I had just got back to sleep. You just don’t think, do you? You’re so self-absorbed, so self-indulgent, so sel”—she struggled for a second and came back with—“fish.”

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Well, she was right. I had completely forgotten London was five hours ahead. I was so used to picking up the phone and asking Cath for advice that I’d sort of imagined she was just around the corner as usual. I stumbled out an apology but Cath wasn’t a particularly gracious woman. She was never one to brush aside your remorse and move on. She always had to make you suffer so I had to listen to more haranguing until in desperation I shifted the receiver and let her get an earful of Eliza’s bawling.

When I got back on I cut her off quickly, said I knew exactly what she was going through with Marcus and then explained why, culminating in a plea for help.

“What do I
do,
Cath? Should I call a doctor? How can I get her back to sleep?”

“How long has she been crying?”

“Almost an hour.”

“Is that all?” The scorn in Cath’s voice made it sound as if Marcus cried for months on end. “No, I don’t think you need to call the doctor just yet. Here’s what I suggest, Lee, because I really don’t want to get into this for too long. I need to get some sleep before it’s time for Marcus’s next feed. Think about it, at least you’re going to be relieved later on. If you were the mother you wouldn’t get off so lightly. Tell me, does this baby have a pram nearby?”

I remembered the baby carriage behind the cash register.

“Yes, downstairs.”

“Well, take her out in it for a while. Walk her up and down.

The motion should get her back to sleep. I once took Marcus to Sainsbury’s one night just before they closed and wheeled him up and down the aisles.Worked like a treat.”

I thanked her profusely. I wanted to ask her how she was getting on in our house, what she had thought of the Phillionaire, I wanted to tell her about Shotgun and Franny and the little haven

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of paradise I’d found myself in at the beach. But most of all I wanted to ask her about Tommy.

It would all have to wait. Cath was right, and my mother had been too. I should have called Cath much earlier and maybe I should have let Tommy know I was going to America. But once again I defended my action—I hadn’t canceled the wedding, he had. I might have done it unconsciously but I had wanted to pun-ish him. I had wanted him to worry about me, to miss me. I had wanted him to be the one to seek me out—and he had but he had found Cath instead and I had no one to blame but myself.

Cath’s plan worked a treat for Eliza as well as Marcus. I wheeled her out of the store in the baby carriage and up and down the Old Stone Highway where the smell of burning char-coal wafted tantalizingly from every backyard I passed and reminded me that Jesus’s lasagna was waiting for me.

When we returned twenty minutes later, I knew enough to leave Eliza asleep in her pram downstairs while I rushed upstairs to put the lasagna in the microwave. Franny’s extensive cable package beckoned—how much did
that
cost?—and I slumped in front of the TV, shoveled pasta into my mouth, and wondered what I’d do if Franny didn’t come back till the middle of the night and I had to deal with another of Eliza’s tantrums. Maybe next time I’d wheel her all the way to the beach and walk her home to my cabin by the light of the moon.

Taking my responsibilities seriously, I turned the TV down from time to time to see if she was crying. Nothing. Not a peep.

Until eventually I decided to go down and see if she was still breathing.

I didn’t find out whether she was or not, because the door to the Old Stone Market was wide open and the pram was gone.

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IHAVE NEVER MOVED SO FAST IN MY LIFE. I CHARGED

out the door and skidded to an abrupt halt beside the white picket fence in front of the picnic tables where Franny served breakfast and lunch. A quick look up and down the Old Stone Highway confirmed my worst fears. There was no sign of Eliza, although I don’t quite know what I expected to see—a six-month-old baby trotting down the middle of the road?

I didn’t have a clue what to do. Should I call the police or go running around Stone Landing looking for her?

A car approached and I flagged it down.

“Have you seen a baby in a baby carriage?” I asked the startled driver who gawked at me suspiciously, as well he might given my demented state.

But his passenger leaned across him and said, “Well, we over-took a man pushing a baby carriage five minutes back. He’s coming this way.”

I thanked her and set off along the Old Stone Highway. I had been walking for about ten minutes and was about to despair when I turned a corner and ran straight into Scott Abernathy pushing a baby carriage. Eliza was fast asleep—but not for long.

I snatched her up into my arms and screamed at Scott in a voice that even I could hear was shaking with hysteria.

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“What are you
doing,
Scott? Just what do you think you are doing with this baby?”

“Hey, calm down.” He reached to touch my arm and I literally jumped away from him. Eliza was awake now and staring at me, scrunching up her little face in that oh-so-familiar expression she adopted just as she was about to start bawling.

“I was taking her for a walk,” he said. “Where’s the harm in that? She was asleep, I was just giving her a little fresh air.”

“But what gives
you
the right to just walk up and take her?

Without telling anyone?”

“Well, what gives you?” he countered and that was when I remembered what Rufus had told me. Scott was Eliza’s father. But he didn’t know that I knew that.

“I’m babysitting her. Franny’s out with—” I stopped. It didn’t seem like the best idea to tell Scott Franny was on a date with his brother.

“I didn’t know that, did I?” He sounded so reasonable. “I thought Franny was upstairs and she wouldn’t mind.”

“Well, she’s not there,” I repeated. “And the store’s closed.” As I said that I remembered that I hadn’t locked the door behind me.

In fact I’d left it wide open. Anyone could walk in and take something.

“I wasn’t looking to buy anything,” he said. “I needed to see Franny. She knows me. Pretty well, as a matter of fact.”

The look on his face was close to a smirk and I wanted to hit him, but I restrained myself.

“But she never seems to be there,” he went on. “Every time I go around there’s no sign of her.What’s she doing with the baby, I ask myself, out at all hours? I came by the night our parents had their dinky little ceremony and—”

I bristled silently. How dare he refer to my mother and Phil expressing their love for each other as a “dinky little ceremony.”

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“—admittedly it was late and I was pretty drunk but where on earth was she? There were no lights on and her truck was gone.

Came back again the next night, same thing.”

Well,
this
was interesting. Here was Franny insisting Dumpster had been home with her on the nights when Sean Marriott and Bettina were killed, and she hadn’t even been here herself on either night. I thought about asking Scott if Dumpster had been there but then decided I didn’t want to get into discussing Dumpster with Scott.

Instead I changed the subject. “I think the most important thing right now is to get Eliza home and then I think you should leave.”