one

“Is Joy nervous or is she just cold?” Francine whispered to Charlotte. “Her microphone is shaking.”

Francine McNamara and Charlotte Reinhardt shivered in the cold morning air as they stood and watched their friend Joy McQueen fumble the intro for her television spot again. Joy was the correspondent on senior living for the local ABC affiliate as well as an occasional reporter for Good Morning America. She’d landed the job after she and the other members of their Summer Ridge Bridge Club gained widespread notoriety for a skinny-dipping party with an uninvited guest. A dead body. Francine would later quip during a Dr. Oz show on seniors staying in shape, “I don’t usually have that effect on people.”

“She’s cold. That Channel Six jacket they make her wear is form-
fitting enough to look stylish, but it has no insulation whatsoever. And God knows Joy needs the insulation. How many seniors our age can wear those skinny jeans the kids have without looking ridiculous?”

Francine had to admit Joy’s wardrobe alone made her look a good ten years younger than the other seventy-somethings in their Bridge Club. Joy was thin as a rail. She could shop at J.Crew and leave with a bagful of clothes that actually fit. Francine, though more physically fit than the rest of them, was usually assumed by clerks to be shopping for her grandchildren. Which, truthfully, was usually the only reason she would set foot in J.Crew.

“Joy, what’s wrong with you today?” Marcy Rosenblatt, Joy’s forty-something agent, pulled off her headset and let it dangle around her neck. Marcy served as the cameraman for the segment because the Bridge Club did not want people from the news station around. Coverage of the opening day of the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival was designed to divert attention from their real reason for being there: another bucket list item they didn’t want anyone to know about. Though Marcy wasn’t a part of the Bridge Club, she knew what was going on. “You usually whip this stuff out in two takes, ten minutes maximum.”

Joy threw her an icy stare. “I’m cold.”

“Told ya,” Charlotte whispered. “And I don’t blame her. The skies were clear last night and the temperature got down to freezing. It may be early October, but the frost, as they say, is on the punkin’.”

Francine raised an eyebrow at Charlotte’s paraphrase of the James Whitcomb Riley poem. Charlotte, a white-haired, short, plump woman wearing an orange down jacket, looked like a pumpkin with frost on her top. Francine, on the other hand, was tall and wearing a tan Burberry raincoat that was not warm but long enough to cover the rented costume underneath it.

“By the way,” Charlotte added, “have I told you yet that you look like a flasher in that raincoat and those high-heel laced-up leather boots? Aren’t you cold?”

“Yes, I’m cold. And if Joy doesn’t get the intro done soon, I’m going to yank that microphone away from her and do it myself.”

Francine had high hopes for Joy’s next try, which was going well until Marcy cut her short. “You’re a professional,” Marcy said. “I need more enthusiasm. Tell me how these bridges are living history. Use that line from five takes ago about practically being able to hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves coming through the bridge a century ago when the structure was rebuilt after the fire. Then introduce Francine to tell the story of her great-grandmother. Then get out. The segment isn’t supposed to be that long, anyway.”

Joy paused for Marcy to get the camera going.

“All this week we’ll be out here in Parke County at the Covered Bridge Festival,” Joy said in reporter mode. “Today’s opening isn’t for a couple of hours, but I wanted you to get a look at one of these historic bridges this morning.” She stood off to the side so Marcy could do a close-up. “This is the Roseville Bridge. Two hundred sixty-three feet long with beautiful barn-red siding and a shingled roof that protects anyone inside. Can’t you just hear the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves echoing through the expanse as it pulls a carriage across? I’ve got a story for you today from Francine McNamara, whose great-grandmother was one of those carriage riders at the turn of the twentieth century.”

Joy indicated for Francine to join her on camera. Francine hurried to do so before Marcy demanded another take.

“Francine, tell us a little about this bridge and how it fits into your family’s history.” She tilted her microphone toward Francine.

“My great-grandmother became the black sheep of the family as result of riding through this very bridge. She was secretly in love with her carriage driver, and when she was being driven from Rockville back to the family homestead, a storm blew up. While they waited out the storm, the physical attraction was too much. With no one to chaperone, they surrendered to temptation.”

Francine was getting ready to add another sentence, but Joy whipped the microphone away. “Oh, my! What happened to them then?”

“When my great-grandmother showed signs of being with child, the obvious questions led to the carriage driver being dismissed. She was married off quickly to a widower who needed someone to help him take care of his family.”

“Did they ever get back together?”

“We never knew. She outlived her husband but she didn’t marry after his death. My grandmother, her daughter, wanted to believe they found each other again before they died, but we have no record that it happened.”

Joy brought the microphone back in front of her and looked straight into the camera. “The story of star-crossed lovers and the Roseville Bridge. We’ll be bringing you more from the Covered Bridge Festival tomorrow. I’m Joy McQueen.”

Joy and Francine held their poses for a few seconds.

“And we’re out,” Marcy said. She held up a hand. “High five!” Joy clapped it in the air.

Francine was relieved to have it over with, and now that they had established their alibi, she wanted to move on. “I’m freezing in this outfit. I’ll see you inside.”

She hustled into the covered bridge and made her way toward the center, where they had set up a photo shoot. A carriage much like the one her family had owned a long time ago was in the middle of the set, surrounded by lights. Jonathan, her husband, was inside the carriage waiting. Francine stopped when she reached the circle of lights, taking in the warmth. “That feels glorious.”

Jonathan stuck his head out. “What took you so long?”

“Joy had issues. It’s fine.”

Francine heard Charlotte’s cane clicking on the floor of the bridge as she caught up. “How come you didn’t mention the fire?” Charlotte asked as she made it to Francine’s side. “The one that burned down Roseville Bridge the first time.”

“It had already been rebuilt. It really isn’t pertinent to the love story. Besides, I was in a hurry to get my part done once Joy got through hers okay. She’s not usually like that.”

Charlotte stood in front of one of the lights, hogging its warmth. “I’ll say. She’s usually quite the talker.”

Francine unbuttoned her raincoat. “I guess I’m warm enough for the photo shoot.”

“Good,” Charlotte said. “Yours is the last photo we need for the pinup calendar.”

As Francine pulled off the jacket, she wondered why she’d even suggested the complicated photo shoot for her part in the calendar. The idea of doing racy photographs had been Charlotte’s. Each of the women had made a Sixty List of the top sixty things they’d like to do before they died. Francine didn’t understand why this one was so important that it couldn’t have waited until after the Covered Bridge Festival was over. As far as she knew, Charlotte wasn’t going to keel over anytime soon. But once Charlotte got a notion in her head, it was hard to change. Francine had learned over the years it was often easier just to humor her.

She was surprised, however, that Jonathan had been so accommodating. He’d agreed to re-create the historic scene between long-ago lovers, arranged for the carriage and the horse, made the trip from the horse barn to the Roseville Bridge this morning in time for them to do the photo shoot, and even went with Francine to the costume shop to try on his clothes. “Might as well make sure they fit,” he’d said. Francine wondered if maybe this hadn’t been something of a fantasy turn-on for him.

She handed her raincoat to Charlotte and stripped off the white blouse that she’d worn over the costume. At first she’d been appalled at what the costume store had in stock as a “naughty Victorian,” but Jonathan’s reaction had been so eye-popping she’d decided to go with it. Her undergarment was a lacy see-through chemise with its hemline shortened so that it dropped only a few inches below her buttocks. Over that was a red and black lace corset that emphasized her bust. The boots were a little too dominatrix for her, but it was a package rental.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Charlotte held up the raincoat.

“I don’t know. It’s not warm but it’s my good raincoat, so I don’t want it on the dusty floor. We can’t have it in the carriage. It would be historically inaccurate.”

“Like your entire outfit isn’t historically inaccurate.” Charlotte looked around for something to hang it on.

“Let’s call it a variant on historically accurate. At least we know they wore chemises and corsets.”

Francine opened the door to the carriage and placed the blouse in a corner where it wouldn’t be seen by the camera. She was thankful Jonathan had tied the horse to a tree outside the bridge. She felt a general unease around large animals. And as Joy said, animals can be unpredictable and you don’t want to be upstaged by one. Joy’s other camera, the one she used for photography, was sitting on a tripod aimed inside the carriage’s open window. Francine pointed to it.

“Maybe you could hang it here, at least until Joy gets back to take the photos,” she told Charlotte. “Where has Joy gotten to, anyway?”

“I’ll go find her.” Charlotte threw the coat over the camera and started back toward the entrance to the bridge. Francine noticed Charlotte seemed to be more interested in checking out the features of the bridge than hurrying to retrieve Joy. Or maybe she was tired.

“What happened to Joy and Marcy?” Jonathan asked as she climbed in the carriage.

“I have no idea. I want to get this photo shoot done as much as the next person.”

“I am that next person, and I definitely want it done.”

Francine eased into the space next to him. He lifted the wool blanket he was using to stay warm and she nestled under it, trying to get comfortable. Jonathan’s costume was a white, long-sleeve shirt unbuttoned to the navel and the pants a working coach driver would have worn, well-constructed but stiff. His boots were shiny, black, and heavy. “I really appreciate your humoring me.”

“When you said we were going to re-create a historical event, I thought maybe you were getting into reenactment, not something out of your family’s scandalous past. Until then, I didn’t realize your family had a scandalous past.”

“Didn’t want to scare you off at first, but now that we’ve been married forty-eight years, I supposed it was okay to let it out.”

“I still find it hard to believe it was Charlotte’s idea to do a nude calendar.”

“It’s not a nude calendar. A sexy pinup calendar. Like men used to hang in their garages back in the 1940s, when times were innocent.”

“You know what I mean. I can’t believe Charlotte had that on her Sixty List.”

The items were still something of a secret to anyone except the ladies, but the fact that the Summer Ridge Bridge Club members had lists wasn’t—not since the Friederich Guttmann Incident. Guttmann was a race car mechanic whose body had been discovered at the skinny-dipping party, high on Joy’s list (#10 Go Skinny-Dipping). The whole nightmare ended with Charlotte checking off her top item (#1 Solve Murder Mystery), though it hadn’t been as easy as all that. Francine shuddered at the thought of Friederich’s dead body, even though she felt secure with Jonathan right beside her.

“It’s not even all that far up on the list. Something like thirty-nine, Be a Sexy Calendar Girl.”

“I’m sorry, but the last one of your friends I want to imagine nude is Charlotte.”

“Jonathan!” Francine said disapprovingly. She may have agreed with him in a physical sense, but Charlotte was her best friend. And besides, it was not fair to assume that just because a woman might be older, or overweight, or had a face that looked a bit grumpy when she wasn’t smiling, that meant she didn’t have a sexy side or wouldn’t look desirable under the right conditions. “First of all, I’ve seen Charlotte’s photograph. She is not nude, and it reveals a side of her that people never see. I’m sure Philip found her desirable.” Philip was Charlotte’s husband who had died in his mid-fifties of a heart attack.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He leaned over and kissed her, then brushed his lips against her ear. “But you are still a ‘ten’ on my sexy list.”

His warm, gentle breath in her ear made shivers go down her spine. “Let’s not do that in here, okay? We’re just pretending for the camera.”

Jonathan’s finger’s loosened the strings of her corset. “I think we need to see a little more cleavage.”

“Jonathan!”

“Come on. She doesn’t intend to distribute this calendar you’re making, does she?”

“Goodness, no. None of us would have agreed to participate if she had. This is just for us.” She affected a Southern accent. “It’s supposed to be a surprise for our gentlemen friends.”

Jonathan kissed her bare shoulder. “Not to worry. I’ll still be surprised when I see Charlotte’s sexy side.”

She gave him a quick kiss on the lips to stop him from taking this any further. “This outfit is so scratchy I’ll be applying hydrocortisone cream like it’s body lotion for weeks.”

They heard the echo of footsteps in the bridge. “Francine and Jonathan, you’re still in there, aren’t you?” Joy called out in her chirpy voice, the one Francine tolerated better in the afternoon. At half past nine in the morning in the middle of the Roseville Bridge where they could theoretically be discovered at any moment, the voice was grating.

“We’re here,” Francine answered. “Where did you go?”

Joy stuck her head in the carriage so she could look at them as she updated them. “False alarm. We thought we heard a car coming, which would have completely shut this photo shoot down. I stationed Charlotte out there in case.” The bridge had only one lane, a quaint remembrance of long-gone, gentler days. Since there was no other way across Big Raccoon Creek, an oncoming car would have forced them to hook up the horse and pull the carriage out. The Roseville Bridge was one of the less-visited bridges, quite a distance from the center of the Festival in Rockville, but they still needed to rush to get the photo shoot done.

“I’m not trying to be difficult,” Jonathan said, “but I already talked the owner of the horse and carriage into opening early so I could get this here for the photo shoot. I don’t want to return it late.”

“This is the perfect time for an old cliché,” Charlotte cracked. “Jonathan, hold your horses.”

“What are you doing here?” Joy asked her. “I thought I stationed you at the front.”

“The lights make it toasty warm in here.”

Joy removed Francine’s coat from the camera and dropped it on the dirty bridge floor.

Francine winced.

“Since you’re here,” Joy said to Charlotte, “move that light a little to the left.” She looked through the lens of the camera and flicked into “director” mode. “Jonathan, I need to be able to see your boots in the picture. Spread your legs a little more. Are your pants unbuttoned? I can’t tell from this angle. Francine, prop yourself a little higher above him and open that corset more. We want to see more … eager flesh. And smile, for heaven’s sake. This is forbidden love. You’re supposed to be delirious with anticipation.”

“She’s delirious, all right,” Charlotte muttered.

“I heard that, Charlotte,” Francine said. “Shouldn’t you be guarding the bridge?”

“Marcy’s doing that. I talked her into it.”

That must’ve been some talk, Francine thought. “But what about the other end?” While the intersection of Coxville Road and County Road 350W was the busier end, it was always possible cars could come from the Coxville Road side.

“That? It’s a gravel road, for heaven’s sake. We’d hear someone coming a mile away.”

“We’d still have to move for them,” Francine argued. “There’s no quick way around the bridge. They’d need to go through it.”

“Quiet!” Joy said. “All the more reason to get this finished.”

Joy began snapping photos. She took the camera off the tripod and moved around, photographing Francine and Jonathan from a variety of angles and making them shift positions. She gestured to Francine. “I need passion. Remember, you’re Victoria. You’re the one who instigated seducing your coach driver. Jonathan, could you look like you’re enjoying it more?”

“Of course,” he said dryly. He tossed the blanket aside. “Though I think he and Victoria were fifty years younger than we are when they were doing it in a carriage.”

Francine bent down and gave Jonathan a long, sexy kiss. “You mean you’re not aroused?”

Jonathan pulled Francine down on top of him. “Joy, step back from the carriage. I’m confident we can give you what you’re looking for.”

Joy’s camera clicked away. “I like your attitude. Francine, could you come up for air? We need to be able to see your heaving bosom.”

“My heaving bosom? Do you need for my thigh to quiver too?”

“Let’s see Jonathan’s manhood,” Charlotte joked.

“Let’s not,” Jonathan said. “And Charlotte, get back to guarding the front of the bridge.”

“Easy for you to say in the heat of passion and with all those warm lights pointed at you. It’s cold out there. If the Rock Run Café on the hill opened earlier than eleven o’clock, I’d be up there getting a cup of coffee.” Charlotte didn’t budge.

Joy continued to look through the lens of her camera. “That’s good, Francine. Push yourself up over Jonathan a little more. Good shot of your boobs. And let’s see a little more hunger in your eyes.”

“For heaven’s sake, I’m not going to eat him.” The words no sooner left Francine’s mouth when she realized what she’d said. She laughed, a little embarrassed at first, but then it rolled into a satisfied chuckle.

“That’s perfect!” Joy’s camera continued to snap photos. “Loved that look of surprise when you realized what you said, and then the wide eyes. Now give me determination. Show me you want this as much as he does.”

“Glad you’re almost done,” Charlotte cracked. “Because otherwise I’m going to have to leave my post and hope there’s a vibrator in those woods down by the creek.”

“Charlotte!” they exclaimed in unison. It echoed in the bridge.

In the instant that followed, they heard shots.

And not the kind Joy was taking.