Nothing but Trouble Page 6

  PJ closed her eyes, savoring for just a second everything that cadence dredged up. Painted toenails under a hot sun, slumber parties on the screened porch, two girls spinning stories under quilted blankets, eating Cap’n Crunch out of the box, giggling behind their wrist corsages as Greg and Boone swaggered over from the punch table.

  “Trudi Lindstrom.” PJ turned and couldn’t believe how little time had changed her best friend. Her hair was still big—huge in fact—and long and curled with an iron. An oversize tee bagged at her waist, bearing the words Born to Shop over a chest she certainly didn’t have her senior year. Her face down to her feet suggested a rich, artificial tan, as if she still kept her weekly appointment down at the Surf and Spin Laundry and Tanning Bed.

  Trudi smiled at PJ as if she had a secret, one that couldn’t wait until Monday morning homeroom. “I can’t believe it’s you. I just can’t believe it! When did you get back?”

  “Just yesterday. I’m babysitting my nephew while my sister’s on her honeymoon.” PJ moved into Trudi’s embrace, holding tight. As she pulled away, her gaze fell on Trudi’s diamond. “Wow, that’s a stone. I heard you got married.”

  She peered into Trudi’s hazel eyes, searching for pain as Trudi waggled her finger. “Two years now. He’s a physical therapist and a massage therapist. He works out of our house, as well as a couple other places.”

  Like the Kellogg Country Club? PJ wrestled out a tight smile.

  “And we have a son.” She beamed, pulling out a picture. “Isn’t he a doll? He’s Jack Junior, but we call him Chip. He’s just a delight.”

  PJ took the snapshot. “He’s a cutie.” A year old, bald, and drooling onto a blanket.

  “Yeah. Mike’s so glad to have a baby brother.”

  Mike. The word dropped between them like a sack of flour. Thud. PJ’s air supply cut off with the rising poof of dust. “Mike. So you were . . .”

  “Yeah. Pregnant. With Greg’s baby. Thankfully Jack’s a great dad. We’re so lucky.”

  Lucky. And she said it without a hint of shadow in her voice. So maybe she didn’t have to pull Trudi into a corner, ask her hard questions in low tones. “How is Greg?”

  “Last I heard, he was in Stillwater, doing time for a nasty barroom brawl.”

  “Oh.” PJ handed her back the picture, noticing the rhinestones glued to the pink polish on Trudi’s nails. “Listen, Trudi, I’m so sorry that I didn’t keep in touch. I . . . should have.”

  Trudi said nothing, peering over her shoulder at the contents of PJ’s basket. “Where are the Cheetos?”

  PJ smiled.

  “And the Cap’n Crunch?” Trudi matched her smile, gentle, the past sweet inside it.

  “I can’t wait to meet Mike,” PJ said softly.

  “And Jack. He’s the greatest guy. Kind and handsome.”

  She might be ready to give the guy another chance. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  They rolled their carts toward the produce section. PJ picked up some apples and a container of caramel sauce. Fruit. Davy should have some fruit. “What are you doing these days?”

  “I run a day care out of my home. It’s attached to Jack’s office.” Trudi reached for a bunch of bananas. “Jack’s watching the kids right now. I’ve gotta get back with our morning snack.”

  Then she looked at PJ with an expression PJ should have expected from a woman who knew her secrets. At least the ones that had piled up until she left town ten years ago. “Does Boone know you’re back?”

  PJ hooked her foot on the edge of the cart. “I, uh . . . ran into him, yeah.”

  “Did you see that he’s a cop?”

  “I saw the badge.”

  “A cop. Chew on that for a while.” Trudi shook her head. “If that isn’t something for a high school reunion reality show, I’m not sure what is. But he does a good job, and people like him.”

  PJ closed her mouth at that. Of course they did. Boone had a charm that could noodle anyone’s common sense.

  “So, are you sticking around?” Trudi said it casually, the way she might ask if they could hang out later.

  “I . . . have to find a job, I guess.”

  “What do you do? Maybe I know someone.”

  Anything? PJ shook her head, not sure how to answer that question as they wheeled toward checkout. “I don’t know what I’m looking for yet.”

  Trudi said nothing as she dug into her purse, handed the checker her cash card, then pressed a business card into PJ’s hand. “Call me.”

  Peppermint Fence Day Care. The flip side listed Jack’s Physical and Massage Therapy phone numbers.

  “Cute,” PJ said.

  “I’m sorry, but it was declined.” The checker handed Trudi back her card.

  “What? No, that can’t be right.”

  “I tried it twice. Do you have another method of payment?”

  “No . . . I . . .”

  “Here.” PJ handed over a twenty. “It’s probably just a glitch at the bank.”

  Trudi took her bagged groceries. “I don’t know what to say. Thanks, PJ.”

  “Don’t say anything—it’s the least I can do.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “Don’t you dare.” PJ paid for her groceries and followed Trudi from the store.

  The sun had crested the lake, fingers of gold gilding the tops of the cars in the parking lot, turning the tar to onyx. A family of ducks waddled across the lot. The scent of freshly mowed lawn lazed out into the breeze.

  Trudi one-armed her around the neck. “You look great, by the way. The old PJ, only better.”

  PJ let those words syrup through her, slow and sweet, as she pulled up to Connie’s house and wrangled the two bags of groceries out of the car. She waved to the postman approaching Connie’s box in his little truck. One arm hung out the window and he waved back. He looked like he should be slinging ale in some greasy pub rather than delivering the mail, with his combed-back dark hair and the well-muscled arm that PJ noticed as he gathered up the mail.

  The last mailman she remembered had been about eighty-five and went by the name Oscar. As in . . . Grouch.

  “You new here?” he asked as he handed her the mail.

  “Yes . . . and no.”

  “Name’s Colin.” Then he winked and pulled away.

  She lifted her hand in a wave, then sifted through the stack of bills and magazines, walking across the long, soft grass to the front porch. The sun kissed her shoulders, and with the birds chirruping in the oak hovering over the side of the house, she could feel the beach wooing her.

  Or rather, a trip to her mother’s.

  Only the hum of the refrigerator cut through the quiet of the house. PJ was putting away the ice cream when she heard shouting from somewhere beyond the family room. Russian-ish shouting.

  She rushed to Connie’s home office, a room outfitted for a contemporary Connie, with a mahogany desk, rich red walls, a leather sofa, and a sleek wide-screened laptop computer atop the L-shaped desk. It smelled of power. Of smarts. Of money.

  “What are you doing?” She found Sergei’s parents leaning over Connie’s laptop, Boris gesturing at the screen. Vera clamped his arm, clearly in an effort to calm him.

  “What?” PJ scrolled for the equivalent in Russian. “Shto? Shto?”

  Please, don’t let them have crashed the computer. She circled the desk and spied a Russian site. From the layout, it looked like an auction page.

  “What are you buying?”

  Boris stood, slamming the desk chair back on its rollers, and brushed past her, raving.

  Her Russian wasn’t as good as she hoped, because PJ netted absolutely nothing from the barrage spilling forth. Which was probably good because she remembered hearing something about Russians having more swear words than Americans.

  “What?” She schooled her voice low and calm, like she had when talking to an irate German Shepherd during the short-lived days of her paper route.

  Vera looked at her and began to exp
lain.

  PJ recognized a less than helpful “gift, Ukraine, Sergei.”

  Boris, however, had already tugged out his Russian-English dictionary and was paging through it. A tight hush fell between them. PJ wondered if this might have been how the White House felt during the Bay of Pigs.

  Then Boris ran his finger down the page, stopped, looked up at PJ, and grinned. “Keed.”

  What?

  He looked at Vera and nodded. “Keed.”

  Kid? They were trying to buy a kid?

  “I think you should stay off the Internet.” PJ reached over and closed the screen.

  Boris’s smile faded.

  Yes, those were probably curse words PJ heard on her way out of the room.

  * * *

  PJ had just turned eight the first time she left home. She remembered the crisp air redolent with decaying loam, pumpkins with saggy eyes peering out from doorsteps, and cornstalks hung from front porches, tied with baling twine. Auburn leaves crunched under her feet, and a slight northern wind bullied the cowboy hat she’d pulled over her jacket hood as she hustled down the road, kicking stones before her with red galoshes. She balanced a stick over her shoulder, and a handkerchief tied to the end held a soggy peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and a few stolen peanut butter cookies. Enough to get her through the night, during which a wagon train headed west would find her and collect her for their journey to the Oregon Trail and the Little House on the Prairie. And should they happen to run into any renegade outlaws, she knew just how to handle them—with her six-gun cap shooter tied to her leg.

  PJ traced her first escape route as she drove toward her mother’s home, remembering how big the hill had seemed, how cold and ominous the pond, dotted with shiny oak leaves. She’d reached the railroad tracks crossing Chapel Hills when her father pulled up in his ’85 Jaguar, a sleek green lizard, rolled down the window, and stuck his elbow out. He looked regal with his thick black hair, those rich green eyes, a grey worsted wool suit against a black tie. “It’s gonna get cold, PJ,” he said. “And your mother has stew on.”

  PJ still made a face, even in her memories.

  He had laughed. “All good cowgirls eat stew.”

  PJ remembered the way she crawled into the car, sliding on the sleek leather seats, smelling his cologne. He wouldn’t be home long—probably had a meeting to attend somewhere—yet for that moment, he’d been her champion.

  She still missed him most in the fall. “Your cowgirl finally left town, Daddy.”

  Pulling up to the house, PJ let her VW idle in the driveway, noting the differences in the colonial. The basketball hoop had vanished, along with the cherry tree in the front yard. The evergreens loomed dark green and shaggy along the side of the property—at least they blocked the view of the Haugens’ modern monstrosity, as her mother called it. Art deco—giant glass blocks on end or even on their points. PJ always wondered what it might be like to live in that crystal palace, all that light shining in, the sound of rain splattering against the glass.

  “PJ, I see you sitting out there!”

  Her mother had appeared at the door, just an outline through the screen of the mudroom entryway.

  PJ got out, stepping over a few loose bricks on the cobblestone sidewalk.

  Elizabeth held the door open for her. “Seems like ages.”

  “It has been ages,” PJ said, noting the wide-leg capris that did nothing to camouflage her mother’s cast.

  “Well, you’re here now, and I’m so glad, because I have a little project for you.” She patted PJ on the shoulder. “I’m glad you wore your cleaning clothes.”

  No, she’d worn her best plaid shorts and her favorite green tee.

  “Don’t forget to take off your shoes.”

  PJ shook off her flip-flops and followed her mother through the house, albeit slowly, thanks to the crutches that did wonders for slowing her down. “You got granite countertops.”

  “Of course.”

  “And took out the screened porch.”

  “I know. I wanted a room we could use all year round.”

  We. PJ didn’t ask who that might be since, to her knowledge, her mother lived here alone. Indeed, a CSI specialist moving through the house might find scant evidence anyone lived here. Not a dish in the sink, a magnet on the fridge. A freshly shaken chenille carpet under the honey oak table—now how did her mother do that? Even the pillows in the family room lay plumped and undisturbed on a set of bourbon brown leather furniture.

  “You finally recarpeted the family room.”

  “Twice, actually.”

  PJ dreaded what she might see as they climbed the stairs. Five bedrooms for four people—she always wondered why her mother never filled them. Had been afraid to ask. She noticed her mother’s door remained shut. But the guest bedrooms hosted new wallpaper, pillowy comforters, fresh flowers on the cherry bedside tables.

  “You running a B and B, Mom?”

  Elizabeth frowned at her. “What?”

  PJ peeked into Connie’s room. Once blue with buds of bachelor buttons in a high border of wallpaper, now the walls were creamy white with green ivy twining the windowsills and down the edge of the closet. “If not, then you should be.”

  “Sometimes I just don’t understand you.” Elizabeth stopped outside PJ’s old bedroom door, hand on the knob. “Now, I don’t want you to be distressed by what you see. I just didn’t know what to do.”

  “What did you do, put a match to the room?” Yet an unfamiliar nostalgia cottoned her chest, and with everything inside her, she longed for pink and eyelet.

  “For crying out loud, PJ.” Elizabeth opened the door.

  PJ stood still, that cotton expanding to fill her throat, cutting off her breathing.

  Preserved. Nearly to the hour she left it so long ago. Her mother had made the bed, pulled up the floral sheets and matching bedspread military tight. The clothes from her graduation party—a white sleeveless top, a pair of dress pants—lay folded on her desk chair.

  The calendar read May 29.

  Her clock flashed 12:00 a.m., a power outage fatality.

  The room even smelled like the high school girl she remembered, as if she’d misted her Clinique Happy just moments ago. She advanced slowly onto the pink rug, staring at her softball trophies, her letter jacket slung over the bubble spindle of her bed frame, wallet senior pictures of her friends—a big one of Trudi—lined up in a row on her tall dresser.

  Her prom dress hung limp in the open closet. PJ hooked her toes around the white stilettos she’d worn and wiggled one on, rising suddenly on one foot. “Back then, I could nearly look Boo—”

  Her mother’s eyes sharpened.

  “Nothing.” She shook off the shoe, and it hit the back of the closet. “I can’t believe you haven’t touched this room. After all these years.”

  Elizabeth ran her hand over the floral bedding, as if smoothing out the ripples of time. PJ had a picture, fast and stinging, of her mother standing right there, staring out the window, breathing in the lingering fragrances PJ left behind.

  “I’m sorry that I . . . that it took me so long to come back, Mom.”

  Elizabeth sighed, adjusted the pink pom-pommed pillow on the bed. “I need to remodel this room. So, could you clean your stuff out?”

  With everything inside her, PJ wanted to close the three feet between them, to pull her mother against her. To remind her of the little girl who baked her a cake for her birthday and carried it home from Trudi’s house on her bicycle.

  But that wasn’t the Sugar way.

  PJ ran her fingertips over the gold mock Oscar she’d won in theater class. “All my stuff?”

  Elizabeth smiled as if PJ might be the maid who’d just comprehended her English instructions. “Yes. All of it. Before you leave town again.”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  The phone rang.

  “I can get it.”

  “No, you stay here and get started.” Elizabeth eased by her on her crutches.

/>   PJ reached out and steadied herself on the bed, her bones suddenly brittle. “Before you leave town again.” Because one never knew when she might have to leave town.

  Clearly her mother was planning on it.

  She walked over to the bookcase and pulled out a Nancy Drew book. The Secret of the Old Clock. She blew the dust from the worn pages. How she’d loved mysteries, fancied herself as Nancy, the supersleuth. She put the book on her desk, her hand dropping to the top drawer, her thumb running over the pewter pull.

  She opened it. And sure enough, her prom pictures lay on top.

  Her finger traced Boone’s smile.

  “Oh no.”

  Her mother’s voice traveled through the halls from her bedroom. Something in it made PJ turn, close the drawer, step out into the hall.

  “That’s just terrible.”

  PJ moved closer to the bedroom door, spying her mother through the crack. She’d sunk down onto the bed—a burgundy tapestry comforter PJ didn’t recognize—shaking her head. “Of course. Thanks for calling.” She hung up the phone, her shoulders slumping.

  “What is it, Mom?” PJ opened the door, noticing her father’s pictures neatly lined up on her mother’s chest of drawers.

  “I can’t believe it. Right here in Kellogg. Oh.” Her hand covered her mouth.

  “You’re scaring me a little. Is it Connie? Sergei?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “It’s just horrible. Ernie Hoffman’s been murdered.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew it was a dream. Still, it felt real, nearly like a memory. PJ clutched her history book to her chest, the spiral-bound notebook catching on the straps of her camo-patterned tank. “Boone, stop it, I’m late for class.”

  Across from her, over Boone’s shoulder, a poster announced the upcoming prom in silver glitter and blue swirls. The early smells of summer leaked in through the open windows, the redolence of freedom and the fragrance of warm grass on bare feet. Students filled the halls, the roar and laughter backdropping Boone’s murmurs against her neck.

  “Boone!”

  Of course, he didn’t listen, never did. He stood firm, bracing one hand over her shoulder, against the lockers, while the other caught in her long blonde hair. PJ looked down, watching it twine through his fingertips. “Hoffman will kill me. Again.”