Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 02 - Rekindling Motives (2 page)

After that lame attempt at humor, Jennifer let me leave the front of the room.
As she began to award the prize for most children – no doubt who would win that one – I made my way back to Scoobie. Standing next to him, finally, was Ramona. I could understand why she was late. She had taken the time to fix her long blonde hair into a stunning French twist, but she had done it in such a way that there were strands of hair along her neck at perfect intervals. Often known for dressing somewhere between a stylish hippie and a Gypsy, tonight she was in a sleek blue evening dress that was perfect for her height of five feet six inches. Clearly I, in a knee-length hunter green dress that I used to wear to the office, had not gotten the memo about how one is to dress for a high school reunion.

“You look terrific,” I said, as Scoobie reached for the box to examine the pipe.

“I should have told you people get dressed up for this.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “But you look good too,” she said, quickly.

“They should have given you a bong,” Scoobie said, handing it back.

“You’re the one who used to smoke that stuff, not her,” Ramona said.

“Jolie.
We need to finish.” Gracie Allen walked up and extended her hand to Ramona. She ignored Scoobie, which made me angry. Just because he lived in a rooming house and spent most of his time on the streets did not mean she was better than he. I was about to turn away when Scoobie caught my eye and winked.

“I heard you were trying to get rid of your grandparents’ dump,” he said to Gracie.

She stiffened. “It’s not a dump, just older and…”

“I’m sorry, that’s right.
I heard someone down at Java Jolt saying you were trying to dump their place.”

I had to keep my lips together to keep from laughing.

“I do want to sell it,” Gracie said, formally. She turned to me. “Would you be willing to come by and take a look? I’d really appreciate it. We’d pay you, of course.”

Since my budget is lean, thanks to my former husband’s draining our bank accounts to support his gambling hobby, I tend not to turn down a chance to work.
“As long as you go through Harry Steele, I’d be happy to do it.” This made Gracie happy, and I jotted Harry’s number on the back of a napkin she held out for me.

As Gracie walked away the band started to play and almost everyone made a beeline for the food.
I stepped back to stand next to Ramona while Scoobie joined the group loading their plates. She smiled at me broadly.

“What?”
I asked.

“Jennifer said I had to be sure you came, so you’d get your box of prizes.”

“Ramona! You tricked me.”

“Not really,” she said.
“I could tell you really wanted to come. Besides, you did get a bong.”

I laughed.
“I’ll probably use the bubble pipe with my nieces.” She was still smiling. “OK, it is a good place to meet people.” I had often visited Aunt Madge in the years since I’d lived with her, since my town of Lakewood, New Jersey was less than 40 miles away from Ocean Alley. However, Margo had moved to Connecticut, and Scoobie and I had lost track of each other, so I rarely ran into anyone I knew. If I was going to settle in here for awhile, I needed to meet more people than those who lived in the houses I was appraising.

Scoobie rejoined us.
His plate was piled high. “You two should get over there before all the good stuff is gone.” He picked up a roast beef sandwich and took a huge bite. “Isht good,” he said, between chews.

As Ramona and I walked toward the spread, someone touched my elbow.
“You don’t say hi when you bump into people?” asked an auburn-haired man.

“Sorry,” I said.
“All I saw were colored spots.”

“I’m Bill Oliver.”
My face must have reflected my blank memory, because he added, “Math class?”

“Oh, sure. You, huh, sat across from me.”
I racked my brain. Was he the guy who asked me to the junior prom? If so, he looked much better now, with broad shoulders that said he worked out.

“Yep,” he said, handing Ramona and me a plate and taking one for himself.

“Hey, Bill,” said Ramona, in her more typical airy-fairy voice. “You haven’t been in the store for awhile.”

“Nope.
I moved to Newark. Joined a dental practice up there.”

Instinctively I moved my tongue over my teeth to be sure there were no bits of food showing.
I felt like my awkward 11th-grade self. He joined a dental practice, and I had a room in my aunt’s B&B because I had less than $4,000 to my name, a car payment, and student loans.

“Deviled egg, Jolie?” he asked, lifting one off the tray with the small tongs.

“Sure.” He put half a deviled egg on my plastic plate and it skidded back onto the table. “Oh well.” I picked it up and popped it into my mouth.

“You’re as bad as Scoobie,” Ramona murmured.

“Yeah, Scoobie.” Bill glanced behind him. “I heard he’s had some tough times.”

“He’s doing better.”
I could hear the defensiveness in my voice as I tried to speak with the egg in my mouth.

“Scoobie says he majored in marijuana growing in college,” Ramona said, as she picked up a fork.
“He’s getting back on track.”

Bill looked dubious.
“I was down here a couple of times this summer, and I saw him on the boardwalk, wearing a knapsack. Looked like it had all he owned in it.”

I shrugged, which was difficult as I was trying to balance several olives and some miniature quiches.
“He has a room, spends a lot of time in the library. And he writes great poetry.”

“But how does he live?” Bill persisted.

I led the three of us toward some chairs in the back of the room, keeping my eyes alert for Scoobie. It occurred to me that I didn’t know what Scoobie did for money.

“He’s on some sort of Social Security disability,” Ramona said.
“But he’s getting a lot better. He’s thinking of taking some writing classes.”

Bill’s questions, which didn’t seem mean-spirited, were still making me uncomfortable, so I figured I’d turn the conversation to him.
“How long have you been out of dental school?”

This being a subject Bill was familiar with, he talked for several minutes about finishing undergraduate school a semester early so he could travel to Europe, going to dental school for four years, and then doing a one-year residency in pediatric dentistry, his specialty.
I half-listened as I looked for Scoobie. I spotted him dancing with Jennifer. She did not look to be having as much fun as he was.

By the time Scoobie rejoined Ramona and me – after we ditched the very attentive Bill by using the time-honored method of going to the ladies room together – I had looked at pictures of Margo and Eddie’s three kids and the sonogram of the one on the way, and Ramona had told me that the reason Bill stayed near the door was that he was divorced from another classmate and they had a deal not to go near each other during the evening.
This seemed quite civil to me. I, on the other hand, have no idea where my ex-husband Robby is. Since he agreed to testify against a big-time loan shark who preys on gamblers, there’s a chance he’ll go into the federal witness protection program.

“Listen, Jolie,” Scoobie said in a low voice, “Want to help me stash some food?”

“You’re not serious.”

In response, he pulled a couple
of plastic food storage bags from his tux pocket, and grinned. “Health department rules say they can’t save the stuff, and the hotel won’t give it away. They’re afraid somebody would get food poisoning and sue them. Or not get it and sue.”

He took my elbow and guided me toward the table.
I suddenly realized that half the crowd had left.
Had I been talking to Margo that long?
“You know,” I took a bag from him, “I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Right.
That would be the one about being in cahoots with Michael Riordan over the murder of his mother?”

“You know very well that
George Winters just implied that because I hung up on him.” I had since decided that it was not a good policy to hang up on newspaper reporters.

We were at the long food table, and I took in what was left.
“What kind of stuff do you want?”

“I don’t have a fridge, so just get bread and crackers and cookies.”
He poured the remains of a bowl of crackers into his large bag. “Cheese would be OK. I can put it on the window sill.”

Feeling as if every eye in the room was on me, I stuffed cheese into the bag he had given me.
As I zipped it shut, he handed me another one. I put cookies and a bunch of deli bread slices into it. I was reaching for crackers when a camera flashed just to my right.

“This is great,”
George Winters said. “Reunion attendees load up for the ride home.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”
I moved a foot toward him and he just grinned. He has a cocky grin that seems to go with his red hair. I have thought several times that I could like George if he would stop writing about me. Which it seems he won’t.

“Wanna bet?”
George nodded to Scoobie. “You want a picture with Jolie?”

“Sure.”
Scoobie draped an arm over my shoulder and I glanced at him. He looked happier than I’d seen him since I’d come back to Ocean Alley.

“Smile for your fans, Jolie.”

WHEN I SAW THE
OCEAN ALLEY PRESS
the next day, I wished more than ever that I hadn’t stuck out my tongue. He had taken a second picture, at Scoobie’s insistence, but I knew that if the local paper printed a reunion photo, Winters would be sure it would show my screwed up countenance.

“Why were you holding those bags of food?” Aunt Madge asked as she leaned over to pick up my little cat, Jazz.

“Scoobie wanted to take home some of the leftovers.” We were drinking tea at the oak kitchen table. We were in her L-shaped open living area, which has a kitchen at one end and the bedroom and bath behind it. Guests are upstairs, so she has some privacy.

“That makes sense,” she said. “Adam is probably on a tight budget.”

Aunt Madge is the only one who calls Scoobie by his given name. I glanced at her as I scanned the page to look at more reunion photos. Today her hair was almost a honey blonde. She uses temporary color so she can easily change the shade of her shoulder-length hair, which she usually wears in a soft French twist.

There she sat, widowed for more than 20 years and reading the obituary section of the paper to see who she knew, getting ready to go upstairs and change beds in her guests’ rooms because her husband had left little life insurance and she, with a degree in art
history, did not have a lot of job prospects. Someone else might find it sad, or at least dull, but Aunt Madge never complains about a thing. Instead, she has used her creative talent to decorate her B&B and has developed some carpentry skills. She makes built-in shelves and small end tables, and she’s been working on a doll house for one of my nieces for ages.

She glanced at me and smiled.
“Did you see a lot of people you knew besides Scoobie and Ramona and Margo?”

“A lot of people who looked familiar and a few that I did remember.
And one woman who wants me to appraise her grandparents’ house. Gracie Allen. Her maiden name was…” I couldn’t remember.

“Fisher,” said Aunt Madge.
“It’s a great old house. One of the few older homes that wasn’t subdivided for apartments. Probably needs some work if she wants a decent price.”

“I think Ramona’s Uncle Lester is trying to talk Gracie into listing it kind of high.
That’s why she wants me to look at it.”

“You know the story?” she asked.
I looked at her blankly, and she continued. “About the house?”

I shook my head as I reached for my tea.
“What kind of story?”

“You’ll like it, lots of unanswered questions.”

I stuck my tongue out at her and she pointed her finger at the newspaper. “You said you were going to stop that.”

“What fun is a bad habit if you can’t do it at home?”

Aunt Madge shook her head, but I knew she didn’t mind what she has called my “somewhat impertinent view of the world.”

“Mrs. Fisher, Gracie’s grandmother, grew up there.
Let’s see, what was her name?” She paused for a moment, and waved her hand. “Doesn’t matter. She was one of four children, two boys and two girls.”

For a moment that sounded familiar, and then I remembered it was Margo’s goal.

“Mrs. Fisher, oh, Audrey Tillotson, that was her maiden name, got married in that house. Her brother Richard gave her away, because her father had already died. Why was that?”

I
waited patiently. Aunt Madge is not usually one to digress, so I figured she had a point. “Oh, of course. He died of the flu, but after 1918. Anyway, Audrey, Gracie’s grandmother, was married in 1929, not long before the Crash.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s part of the story.” She gave me a reproachful look and continued. “Richard was apparently nervous about his father-of-the-bride type of duties. He was pretty young himself, and he helped himself to a good bit of the rum punch before going upstairs to escort Audrey down the front staircase for the service.”