On Friday morning I called people in several insurance offices in Vigland, people I knew from a loose network of working together in the past. Some said their offices weren’t looking for anyone at the moment, but they’d be happy to keep my résumé on file. I took the résumé I’d typed up (am I the only person in the world still using an old electric typewriter instead of a computer?), ran off copies at a photocopy shop, and dropped them off.
One woman I talked to confided that when another local office had an opening a few days ago, they’d been inundated with ex-F&N employees. “My daughter over in Seattle says the Internet is the only way to go when you’re looking for a job these days,” she added.
I felt vaguely dinosaurish. “A whole different world from how job hunting used to be.”
“Right. But it’s how all her friends do it. Though they’re looking mostly at big-corporation-type jobs, I think.”
“Thanks. I may have to try that.” But Vigland didn’t have any big corporations, and relocating was far down on my list of life choices. Thinking I might do better in Olympia, I expanded the job search to an employment agency over there that afternoon. The woman nodded approvingly when she saw my résumé.
“Looks good,” she said. But she also said finding the right job could take time, especially if I wanted to stay in insurance, because they were getting so many applications from F&N people.
I assured her I wasn’t welded to insurance.
“SO MONDAY I try the city and county government offices and the schools,” I told Joella on Saturday. It was a warm evening, and we were sitting barefoot on my back patio, sipping lemonade. “I was offered a job with the county years ago, but I decided to go with F&N instead.”
“I got my job through a newspaper ad. Though it isn’t the kind of job you’re looking for, of course.”
“I’ll try that too.”
“Are you thinking any more about a limousine service? I still think it’s a great idea.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a problem.”
“Okay, no limousine. But you’re going to get it back one of these days.”
The phone rang in the living room. I set my lemonade glass on the little metal patio table and padded in through the sliding glass doors.
“Hey, sidekick, how’re you doing? Got that murder figured out yet?”
Fitz! I was surprised and a little annoyed at how glad I was to hear from him. Glad enough that I let the “sidekick” thing pass without a challenge. “I’m working on it. You’re back at the marina?”
“Yeah. We won’t be going out again until Tuesday.”
I gave him a rundown on my activities, including the possibility of Jerry’s father-in-law being involved in the murder and my finding out that Jerry had never actually been divorced. Which gave me the irrelevant thought that perhaps what the world really needed was a detective agency specializing in investigating the jerks who wander into a single woman’s life. Call it the CTBO Agency, for Check the Bum Out. I didn’t mention to Fitz my phone call to the chiropractor’s office, which I felt put my sleuthing talents in a somewhat less-than-complimentary light.
“So how was your trip?”
“Great. Caught a nice lingcod. I was thinking maybe we could get together tomorrow and cook it.”
“I already have something planned for tomorrow, but . . . hold on a minute.”
I carried the cordless phone out to the patio and covered the mouthpiece with my hand. “Hey, what would you think about Fitz coming along tomorrow?”
“Coming along where?”
“Your birthday celebration, of course. We may be missing the limo, but we’re going to do limo-dogs anyway.”
“Oh, that’s a lot of bother,” she protested, but I’d already seen her eyes light up.
“So what about Fitz?”
“Sure. Invite him to come along.”
I did, and he agreed, and I said we’d pick him up at the marina about one thirty. Then Joella suggested that since it was her birthday, I really should come to church with her first.
“You’d use your birthday as coercion to get me to church?” I protested indignantly.
Joella just smiled her sweet smile. “Whatever works.”
SO I WENT to church with her the following morning, and I ventured one small prayer: Thanks for bringing Joella into my life, and please help her make the right decision about her baby.
Okay, that’s two. Does God have a quota, especially from an outsider like me? Or maybe I didn’t have to be an outsider? An interesting thought, though I wasn’t sure I was ready to act on it.
Afterwards we went home to change clothes, then to the grocery store for wieners and onions and buns and everything that went with them. Plus Greek salad from the deli, because Joella was looking at it with such longing, and a big fat dill pickle for her, too, because she said she hadn’t had one in a zillion years. I’d baked a cake before going to bed the night before, so I also bought a box of birthday candles.
Fitz, in khaki shorts and forest green T-shirt with the ever-present sailboat logo, was waiting in the parking lot when we arrived at the marina. He had long-handled forks for roasting wieners over a fire, plus chili left over from yesterday’s lunch on the boat.
It was a glorious day for a birthday, a picnic, or anything else. The tide was almost out when we reached the park over on the far side of Hornsby Inlet, the long, narrow channel of water that connects Vigland Bay with the main part of Puget Sound. A nice stretch of rocky beach lay exposed below the picnic area.
I’d brought kindling and wood saved from a tree that blew down in my yard a couple winters ago, and Fitz had a fire blazing and crackling in minutes.
“We’ll let the fire burn down until we have good coals for roasting the wieners,” Fitz said. “That’s the best way to do it.”
So how long did that good advice last? Just long enough for Joella and me to thread wieners on our long forks and gleefully stick them right into the blaze. Where a few seconds later they were blackened, burned, and splitting. The fat in mine even caught on fire, and I whirled it merrily like a Fourth of July sparkler.
We both piled our garlic-flavored buns high with onions and mustard and pepper-jack cheese, which Joella declared, between chomps of big dill pickle, was “exactly the way limo-dogs should be!”
“Limo-dogs?” Fitz said. He was still waiting for the fire to burn down to those nice coals.
So we had to explain the concept of limo-dogs to him, and then he started singing a song about a long, black limousine. I couldn’t tell if he was massacring a real song or making up an incredibly bad one as he went along, but by the time he motioned us to join in on the chorus, which was, “And then I painted my long black limo pearly blue, and we all ate chili beans and Mountain Dew,” we were all giggling.
By then he’d given in and had a burned weenie of his own. The chili he’d put in a pot over the fire was hot, and the next round of limo-dogs we smothered in chili. With Greek salad on the side. I stopped there, but Joella and Fitz went on to third and fourth limo-dogs.
Afterwards I brought out my gift for Joella, an inexpensive watch to replace the one that had conked out. Then to my surprise, and Joella’s, too, Fitz also had a gift stuck down in the plastic bag in which he’d brought the pot of chili. “I’ve had this for a while, so maybe today is a good time to give it to you.”
It was a little book of stories and songs to read and sing to a baby, and I was as touched as Joella by something so sweet. Although I also guessed this meant Fitz didn’t know she was considering giving the baby up for adoption.
Then I stuck twenty-one candles on the cake, with Joella giggling that it looked like a chocolate porcupine, and we sang “Happy Birthday” while she gave a mighty puff and blew them all out.
She gave us both big hugs after we ate cake, Joella claiming an outside piece with the most frosting. “Thank you both so much. This is a twenty-first birthday I’ll never forget.”
Which turned out to be true in a way none of us anticipated at that moment.