Éclair and Present Danger (8 page)

A
cup of chocolate chips—check.

A half teaspoon of baking powder—check.

Three-quarters of a cup of brown sugar—check.

Winnie looked up from her list of ingredients and shook her mixing spoon at the four-legged creature eyeing her with boredom from the windowsill. “You have no idea how lucky you are that you came out of Bart's house all on your own.”

Lovey yawned, her mouth opening wide enough to display her long pink tongue. When she was done, she stood up, walked around in a circle, and then dropped into a ball, clearly undaunted by Winnie's reprimand.

She kept talking. “I get that you're not happy about this situation. I'm not, either. But Gertie was my friend, and she left you in my care. One way or the other, we're going to have to make this work. I'm doing my part by providing you a litter box, food, and a window bed. How about meeting me in the middle and at least
pretending
you like me?”

“Knock, knock . . . It's me, dear.” Bridget peeked around Winnie's always-open door, gave a quick scan of
the kitchen and living room, and then cocked her head ever so slightly. “Winnie, dear? Who were you speaking to just now?”

“Myself, apparently.” She loosened her grip on the spoon and used it to wave her neighbor into the apartment. “If you stick around for a while and you're game, I have a new dessert I'd like to try out on you.”

Bridget crossed the entryway and stopped at the edge of the counter. “Will this one have a cute little rescue name, too?”

“I'm working on that.” Winnie returned to her drawer of measuring tools and selected the sizes she needed for the next two ingredients on her self-made list. She pointed the four-ounce cup at Bridget's left hand. “Are you heading off to work?”

“I'm
here
to work, dear.”

“I don't understand.”

“I'd like to talk to you—on the record, of course—about the Emergency Dessert Squad.”

She lowered the cup back down to the counter, bouncing her attention between her latest recipe and Bridget. “While I think I can be up and running on a limited scale as early as Monday, I'm not sure anyone will be calling. Maybe we should wait until I have customers.”

“A piece in the paper will
get
you customers, dear.”

“That makes sense, I guess. So? What do you need from me? To let you”—she let go of the cup and used her fingers to make air quotes—“
overhear
something about my new business venture?”

Bridget's stare was so intense, Winnie recovered the measuring cup and took a half step back. “What? Your column is called ‘Overheard.'”

“My column is, yes. But I'm going to interview you for a full article that will run in this weekend's paper . . .”

“Oh. Wow. Thanks, Bridget. That would be fantastic.” She looked at the mess in front of her and then back at her
neighbor. “Um, do you want me to put this on hold while you ask me questions?”

“First, I want to know why you were talking to yourself when I arrived. Is everything all right, dear?”

Winnie used the one-cup measuring tool to scoop sugar, and the three-quarter-cup tool to scoop white chocolate chips. One by one, she added each ingredient to the first of two bowls and then gave them a quick mix. “Mostly. But, honestly, how do I get Lovey to like me?”

At the mention of the feline, Bridget inventoried the floor around the counter and the various seating options in the living room before finally locating Lovey in her spot in front of the window. Within moments, the cat was awake and purring as Bridget lovingly scratched around her ears and under her chin. “Just do what I do, Winnie.”

“I would if she'd let me get close. But she doesn't. Every time I try, she hisses at me.”

“Have you tried bribing her, dear?”

“Bribing her?” Winnie set the dry ingredients to the side and moved on to the next bowl and the eggs, milk, and oil waiting to be mixed together. “With what?”

“Kitties love tuna. And the leftover soupy part of vanilla ice cream.”

With expert hands, she cracked each of the trio of eggs against the side of the bowl and watched as the yolk slid down the inner edge. “I suppose I could give that a try—later. Doing it now might seem like she's being rewarded for her misbehavior earlier.”

Bridget stopped rubbing Lovey's neck. “Misbehavior?”

Winnie wrapped her fingers around the mixing spoon once again and pointed it at Lovey. “Do you want to tell Aunty Bridget what you did today? Or should I?” The cat turned her head and her attention toward the bird's eye view of Serenity Lane she favored. “Okay, fine. I'll tell her.”

With her free hand, Winnie poured in the oil and the milk and began to mix. “Lovey, here, decided to cross the
street, run around the back of Bart's house, and wiggle her way through a gap in the basement screen.”

“And?”

“Mr. Nelson came over and managed to coax her back outside.”

Bridget folded her thinning arms against her chest and cast a knowing smile at first Lovey, and then Winnie. “You should have called Master Sergeant Hottie.”

She stopped mixing and stared at the woman. “You are as bad as Renee, do you know that?”

“We just want to see you happy, dear.”

“I
am
happy, Bridget. It's just been a stressful few weeks with the pending demise of the bakery and then thinking I might be getting a reprieve by way of Gertie's will.” She returned to the liquid mixture and the next handful of ingredients still to be added. When everything was in, she mixed again. “But things are looking up now.”

“It
does
certainly seem as if this new business idea has given you a lift. And I'm glad about that. I truly am. But you're young. You should be out dating instead of spending your evenings sitting on the front porch with old fogies like Parker and me.”

“I love my time with you. I always have.” She added the dry ingredients to the second bowl and swapped her spoon for the electric hand mixer. Slowly, she moved the bowl in a circle with one hand while holding the beaters steady with the other. “Why should I waste my time on something that's probably not going to go anywhere?”

“Because it could.”

Winnie looked down at the creamy mixture taking shape in the bowl and tried to think of something clever to say in response. But there was nothing. Bridget was right. She had the drive for a career down pat. It was just the rest of her life that seemed rather rudderless.

“Can we talk about something else for a little while?” Winnie powered off the mixer and set it to the side. A peek
over her shoulder confirmed that the oven had, indeed, reached the proper baking temperature.

“Such as?”

“Whether Bart had decided to sell the house prior to his death.” She poured the mixture into the prepared pan and then popped it into the oven. When the timer was set, she turned back to face her neighbor. “Maybe being there, without Ethel, had simply become too much for him.”

Bridget returned to the window, pushed the simple sheer curtain to the side, and looked across the street, her back to Winnie. “There is no way Bart would have sold that house. Just think about all those pictures he had around his living room—pictures highlighting nearly fifty years spent loving Ethel. Think about the case on the fireplace mantel that held his beloved coin. Think about all of the parties they had in that house along the way, all the milestones that were celebrated there.”

“Pictures and coins are portable, Bridget. They could have just as easily been displayed around a condominium or an apartment in an assisted living facility. And as for the memories, they were in his heart and his head.” She carried the empty bowls, measuring tools, and mixing spoons over to the sink. Normally, she'd wash them right away if for no other reason than to ensure they were at the ready for her next baking whim. But today, she left them and wandered over to the window and Bridget. “Ethel's death really took its toll on him, Bridget. You know that. Maybe he'd realized it, too, and decided it was time to make a change.”

The curtain fell back into place as Bridget turned to face Winnie. “Bart wouldn't have sold. I'm as sure of that as I am that Parker is a certifiable pain in the neck.”

She ignored the woman's slap at Mr. Nelson and stayed on point. “Why? He was painfully lonely in that house without Ethel. Maybe he just didn't want to be there all by himself anymore. Ethel was quite a lively personality. Having her there one minute and gone the next would be tough.
Especially for someone who'd doted on her the way Bart did.”

Bridget gestured toward the living room and, at Winnie's nod, walked over to a chair and sat. “Late last week, I was on the way home from a meeting at the paper when I saw Bart sitting on his front porch. I waved and mentioned the vitamin C I'd stopped to buy at the pharmacy—I'd woken with a horrible cold that morning, dear—but he didn't respond.”

“Okay . . .” Winnie perched on the front edge of the couch opposite from Bridget and waited for the woman to continue, the anguish in her friend's eyes impossible to miss.

“Well, you know how I am, Winnie. I couldn't leave well enough alone. I couldn't just assume he was sleeping or simply preoccupied with his thoughts. I had to get to the bottom of why he hadn't waved back at me.” Bridget picked at a nonexistent piece of lint on her flowered skirt and then leaned her head back against the chair. “What I ended up doing, though, was interrupting a rather pleasant memory of a trip he and Ethel had taken after Mark had moved out on his own. There Bart was, sitting on his rocker, smiling and laughing in a way I hadn't seen him do since it became apparent Ethel wasn't going to pull through.”

“That sounds lovely,” Winnie said. “But I don't understand what that has to do with your absolute conviction Bart hadn't decided to sell . . .”

“When I stepped onto his porch and he still seemed completely unaware of my presence, I clapped my hands.” The woman closed her eyes as if the image accompanying her words had become too painful. “Bart's smile disappeared, his laughter stopped, and the utter sadness that crept over his face left me wishing for a sweater to combat the chill I felt to my very core. I apologized, of course, but it was too late. My need to be noticed and acknowledged had snapped Bart back into reality.”

“You couldn't have known, Bridget.”

Slowly, Bridget's lashes parted to reveal a regret that seemed far bigger than the situation deserved. “Bart said something that made me realize what I'd done, and so I asked him to tell me about the trip, hoping desperately that revisiting the moment again would bring his happiness back. But it didn't work. He was
sharing
the memory rather than
experiencing
the memory the way he had been when I clapped.

“It was like . . . it was like I'd taken Ethel from him all over again.”

Something about the way Bridget's voice cracked made Winnie stand, bypass the coffee table between them, and crouch down beside the woman. Reaching up, she took Bridget's wrinkled hand in hers and caressed it gently with her thumb. “Bridget, don't.”

“That's when Bart told me that Ethel was still with him—in the living room where they watched television each night, in the kitchen where they sat across the table from each other, and in their bed where he'd held her as she fell asleep for virtually all of their nearly fifty years together. He told me that when his grief became so great, he would go into one of those spaces and simply feel her.” Bridget flipped her hand inside Winnie's gentle grasp and squeezed. “That's why I'm absolutely certain that those flyers you saw yesterday had nothing to do with Bart. And why I'm absolutely certain that he knew nothing about them, either.”

Once again, Mark Reilly was back in the forefront of Winnie's thoughts . . .

“Okay,” she said as her thoughts moved ahead into the processing stage. “Then how could Mark have honestly thought he could put the place up for sale without Bart's say-so? I mean, what was he going to do when the place sold? Say, ‘Oh, by the way, Dad, a moving truck is coming to deliver the next family, so you gotta go'?”

But even as she lost the male-sounding mimic to her voice, she knew it was a silly thing to say. After all, if Bart were dead when the sale happened, there would be nothing to say, no cajoling to be done. Mark could simply put the place up for sale, sign on the dotted line, and pocket the money.

Then again, anyone with a brain in their head knew Bart was old. His health had been declining even before Ethel's death. So why not just wait? Why jump the gun?

Winnie stood but remained beside Bridget's chair, one question after the other firing from between her lips. “Do we know for certain that the house was to go to Mark upon Bart's death? And if it was, is the printing of a few flyers really enough proof? Do we take this to the police?”