By the Book (13 page)

“Oh. Thank you,” she said, taking the plate. And again to save time, she took the old lady’s arm and turned her toward the staircase. “Here, let me help you back down. I’m running a little late this morning, but I’ll take this with me. I’ll thank you again during my coffee break.”

“We thought you had a little more time yet. You don’t usually leave this early,” the woman said, stepping down slowly and carefully, so unsure of each step that they might as well have been moving. “We thought some tea and a muffin ...”

“Oh, no,” Ellen said with a small laugh, gently supporting her and trying hard not to hurry the old bones down to the landing. She knew
no
was enough, that an explanation wasn’t necessary, but this was Mrs. Phipps, after all. “I don’t really have time for tea this morning. I’m going in early because I want some extra time at lunch for some errands I want to run. ...” And, recalling that Mrs. Phipps was the Queen of Errands, she added, “I don’t have a minute to spare today.”

“Oh.”

Every rule in the little green book flashed through her mind, and still she couldn’t stop herself. “Can I have a rain check on that tea?”

“Yes. Yes, of course, dear. We’re always happy to see you. Any time you have free, we’ll have tea.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Phipps. And thanks for the muffin,” she said, lifting the dish towel once they’d reached level ground. With muffin in hand, she hurried down the hall toward the back of the house, calling, “Have a good day, Mrs. Phipps.”

“Quincey First Federal. This is Ellen,” she announced into the telephone. It was midmorning and already the people of Quincey were showing frequent signs of stress and concern over their finances. Ellen was worried about them. “How may I help you today?”

“You can come across the street and let me kiss you, for a start.”

There was half a second of panic and confusion before the voice registered. She laughed.

“I’d love to, but I haven’t even had time for a coffee break this morning,” she said, eyeing the crumby remnants of Mrs. Phipps’s muffin on the tissue in front of her.

“I noticed. I almost brought you a cup, to help wash down your muffin.”

“My ...” She laughed and swiveled her chair to the big picture window. Across the street he waved his cordless phone at her. “Is your eyesight that good? Or have you been using binoculars?”

“If I had, I’d know what
kind
of muffin it was.”

“Blueberry.”

“Ah. Thank you, that was driving me nuts.”

They grinned at each other. There were a lot of things driving them nuts; the distance between the bank and the camera shop was definitely one of them.

“Guess what I found out this morning,” he said. He almost shuddered at how eager he sounded. Sharing wasn’t exactly his forte, but he could hardly contain himself. So strange, it was as if his left hand were telling his right hand what it was doing, what it was feeling and sensing, as if he needed to share with her to feel balanced and more coordinated, to feel whole.

“What?”

“I stopped by to check on my father this morning, to see if the doctor had anything new to say.”

“And?”

“And he didn’t, but that’s not it. What I called you about.”

“Okay.” She waited expectantly.

“His nurse came in while I was there and started cleaning up his room, you know, putting his bath things away and getting ready to change the sheets and throwing out dead flowers. ...” He hesitated, as excited about his news as he was about sharing it. “So I thanked her, for the flowers.”

“Why?”

An incredulous noise. “I thought she’d been bringing them. Her or some charity organization, or a group of little old ladies who bring flowers to sick people to cheer them up. Sick people with no families—”

“You didn’t bring them?”

“No, I ... I didn’t think ...” He didn’t think his father would notice or appreciate flowers. “No. I wish I had.”

“So, who’s been bringing them? I don’t think nurses do that.”

“They don’t usually,” he said with a small laugh. “She thought I was crazy. Told me that if nurses brought flowers to every sick person they cared for, there wouldn’t be a single bloom left on the face of the planet.”

“Who’s been bringing them, then?”

“Well,” he said, rather pleased with his investigative results, “apparently my father has a lady visitor every afternoon.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I sometimes check on him in the morning and I usually go every evening, but since I opened the shop, I’ve been skipping afternoon visiting hours. It never occurred to me that anyone else had been visiting him.”

She smiled at him through the window. “So you’ll be taking a long lunch today too.”

“Too?”

“I have some errands to run.”

“Oh. Yes. Late too. Afternoon visiting hours are from two to four.”

“Aren’t you dying to know who it is? I am,” she said, the excitement in her bubbling in her voice. “I won’t be able to think of anything else till I know.”

He laughed. “You have three lines blinking there. Get back to work. I’ll call you later, as soon as I know.”

“Okay. Jonah?”

“Yes?”

“I’m looking forward to tonight.”

His smile flashed in the window across the street. She squinted. It was a deep-down happy smile. She’d seen it before. He used it every time he was deep-down happy, whether it had anything to do with her or not.

“Me too. See you later.”

“You’re making it way too easy for him,” Vi said, stepping around the petition before Ellen could connect to a blinking light. “Men like a little chase before they catch their prey.”

Ellen cast her friend a torpid glance, pushed a red button, and made her announcement, then added, “Do you have that account number handy, Mrs. Walker? Good. One moment please.” She put Mrs. Walker on hold and while she looked up her account on the computer, said, “It’s not like that, Vi. We don’t need to play games. We don’t want to. We like being honest with each other. Telling each other what’s on our mind, how we feel ... it’s ... I don’t know. It feels so natural and right to be with him. Mrs. Walker? Yes, check number seven-fifty-two was written for the amount of $45.67 on July seventh. Yes, ma’am. You’re welcome.” She pushed another button and repeated the procedure. “I’ve never felt this way before. It’s different than anything I’ve ever known.”

Vi smiled, though her expression was thoughtful as she studied her friend’s face. “Good for you, kiddo. I’m glad for you. In fact ... you look”—a vague shake of her head—“different. New vitamins? Or is it love?”

Ellen giggled. “Yes. I think so.” And she thought of her little green book. “And more. A new outlook on life.”

Vi’s brows rose with interest. “What triggered this spontaneous evolution?”

She glanced out the window. “He did. And you did. You helped. You were right, you know. I used to be way too nice. I’m standing up for myself now. Taking what I want. It feels great.”

“Like the loan officer position when Mary has her baby?”

“Yes. I told Joleen I’d quit if I didn’t get it.”

“Did you know Lisa Lee was interested in it too?”

“Sure. But I have seniority. I should have it.”

“I didn’t know you were all that interested in loans,” she said, a furrow forming between her eyes.

“I’m not. But it’s not like it’s a permanent position. And it can’t hurt to know that stuff. Don’t worry. I won’t leave you here to handle customer service alone for very long.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” she said. There was an odd tone in her voice as she slipped back around the partition.

Ellen thought she almost sounded angry, but about what? The blinking lights were multiplying like rabbits on her phone. She shrugged and pushed another button.

Vi wasn’t going to be any happier with her when she didn’t come back from lunch on time on such a busy day, but that couldn’t be helped. Neither of her errands were the emergencies she’d told Joleen about, but with the right attitude those little white lies that never really hurt anyone and that everyone resorted to now and again were becoming easier and easier to tell people. Besides, how many times had she covered for Vi over the years? A hundred zillion times? She’d get over it.

Especially if Ellen showed her what her first mission had accomplished.

Most days Gerald’s Ladies’ Apparel was a little too rich for Ellen’s tastes, and particularly for her pocketbook. But today it was the only place to go to get what she wanted. And Vi would wholeheartedly approve when she told her she’d finally bought something there. Vi swore they had a better selection of ladies’ lingerie than most of the X-rated catalogues she subscribed to.

Sure enough, in less than thirty minutes she was in the fitting room, a teal blue negligee slinking over her skin like something spun by elves and sprinkled with fairy dust. She stood sideways in the mirror, one shoulder of the robe drifting loose to her elbow, her hair full and curly, her eyes bright ... and she smiled. She didn’t look too nice now. She looked like a well-equipped femme fatale. A temptress.

Her heart fluttered with nerves and excitement. Jonah may have been around the block a few more times than she had, but his wandering days were over. She giggled at her reflection. Who would have believed that someone as nice as she was could ever harbor such wantonness? Not that she was actually wanton; she wouldn’t know where to begin to be genuinely wanton. She was just crazy in love and acting like it, doing what came naturally. Maybe that was the difference, then. Maybe she’d never loved anyone else enough to wrap herself in shimmering teal blue silk and give herself to them like a gift—heart, soul, and body. Maybe she’d never thought of herself as being special enough or unique enough to be a gift before. ...

With the black and silver shopping bag from Gerald’s in hand, she walked out onto the sidewalk, sucked in a lungful of that oh-so-perfect day, then chugged right along to her next assignment.
I think I can. I think I can. I know I can
pumped through her brain as she drove by the bank and the camera shop again, beyond the street she lived on, farther than the turnoff to the hospital, and then a few more miles until she pulled into the parking lot of a place called Krane’s Krap. Junk, Junk, and More Junk, the sign said.

The Town Council had been after Tom Krane to change the name of his establishment for as long as she could remember. It was the misspelling of the second word that invariably put a halt to the legal actions taken against him. As children, she and Jane and Felix would herald their every sighting of the place by reading the signs, out loud and in unison, to make their mother cringe—and because it was just plain fun to say.

She still smiled every time she drove by. You had to respect a man who would dare such a thing in the first place, then defend it for so long. And she knew Tom Krane a bit from his dealings with the bank. Though not exactly someone she’d choose as a bosom buddy, he was a practical man who refinanced his loans when interest rates dropped enough to make a significant difference in his payments, and he made no effort to hide the fact that he didn’t appreciate the bank’s service charges. In, fact, Joleen had taken to quoting him in her sporadic pep talks. “All our customers are thinking, ‘When I pay a service fee, I expect some service.’ ”

Personally, the few times she’d waited on him, he’d seemed like a gruff but reasonable man. It was his reasoning she would address today, she reminded herself, as she opened the door to the front office.

It wasn’t the sort of place women frequented. Therefore no concessions were made to aesthetics or cleanliness or order or anything else the female of the species generally contributed to the civilized world. Without mincing words, it was poorly lit, filthy, smelly, and, in general, a dump.

Stepping gingerly, as if she might step in a pile of testosterone and ruin her shoes, she approached a burly, unshaven gentleman sitting on a rusty stool behind a makeshift counter made of plywood.

“Ma’am.”

“Hi.” She cleared her throat of the I-don’t-belong-here-but sound and replaced it with a don’t-give-me-attitude-cuz-I-know-how-it-works tone of voice. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Krane if he isn’t busy.”

Busy doing what? she wondered. Sweeping the junkyard out back? Rearranging piles of rusty metal? Sorting hubcaps maybe?

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. And then in a booming voice that shook the boards under her feet, he bellowed, “Tom!”

“Yeah,” a voice boomed back, and the boards vibrated in another direction.

“Woman here to see you,” he said, with the same amount of air that it would have taken him to say “Someone here to see you.” But no. And he said
woman
with the same intonation he might have used for the word
alien
or
invader
or ...
Purple People Eater.

Now, she wouldn’t have sworn to it, mind you—she wasn’t good at waiting under the best of circumstances—but it seemed to her that no matter what he was doing, he could have come, handled their business, and been gone again, ten times over, in the time it took Tom Krane to make an appearance. It also seemed as if his slowness were deliberate, but she wouldn’t have sworn to it.

However, he was pleasant enough when he finally arrived.

“I know you from somewhere,” he said, frowning at her from the doorway behind the burly man on the stool.

“The bank, Mr. Krane. Quincey First Federal,” she said, in case he patronized more than one bank. She wanted to make this as simple, clear, and to-the-point as possible. She sensed he’d appreciate it. “I’m Ellen Webster. I’ve waited on you several times.”

“Webster,” he said, obviously recognizing the name.

“That’s right. I’m here to see you about the money my brother owes you.”

He was a tall, thin man who despite the summer heat was wearing a plaid flannel shirt over a gray T-shirt with jeans. Physically he didn’t look as if he could crush a beer can, but there was something in the way he stood and angled his head that told her if she believed that, she was sorely mistaken. His eyes were hooded and narrow and keen ... and intimidating when aimed directly at her.

“I don’t know your brother.”