AFTER STEVE KISSED me good night at the door, I waited until I saw him pull out of my driveway before I started digging through the contents of the box that had been screaming for my attention the last four hours.
With the black fur ball at my feet as the least judgmental witness to my snooping that I could ask for, I still felt as if I were invading Naomi’s privacy by rifling through her belongings. But she wasn’t here to protest, and someone needed to make some effort to investigate the “murder” that her neighbor had reported, right?
Steve would be quick to answer that the someone in question shouldn’t be me, but he wasn’t here either. So I snapped on a pair of the latex gloves I carried for the occasional death scene investigation and pulled the lid off the box.
Ten minutes later, I had sorted the contents into three piles, covering most of my dining room table top.
The sizable collection of ballpoint pens embossed with the name and address of local merchants indicated only one thing to me: Naomi liked her freebies. I remembered my grandmother once telling me that Naomi’s late husband had been a vice president at Chimacam Bank, so I wasn’t surprised to see the bank’s logo on the better pens. Same deal with the ones with the ergonomic grips from Durand and Terry Realty. Obviously, companies serious about wooing clients with money were willing to spend a little more to entice them to sign on the dotted line.
Mixed in with the pens were some pencils, an assortment of rubber bands and paper clips, a box of staples, a ruler, some felt markers, an eraser, and a book of postage stamps. It was the typical array of stuff I’d expect to find in a desk, so it looked all the more that someone had emptied a drawer or two into the banker box.
My second pile contributed to the weight of the box but as Leland Armistead had suggested, there was nothing the least bit elucidating about two reams of paper and a few gently used ruled tablets.
That left six file folders, each thick with paper and each with a handwritten label: Phone, Utilities, Bank, Insurance, Medical, and House.
Leafing through the Phone and Utilities folders, it became immediately apparent that Naomi was a stickler for organization, with every account statement filed by date. This also held true for the Bank, Insurance, and Medical folders. But they had something else in common: Not one of them contained a statement for the last three years. Maybe that was why it all got dumped into a mislabeled box and left behind. There were no family keepsakes, no cards or letters to evoke loving memories. It was just a lot of paper that I guessed no one particularly cared about.
I wasn’t so sure that should be the case, though, when I opened the House folder and found a comparative market analysis done almost two years ago by Durand and Terry. A signed sales agreement followed along with several pages of handwritten notes. Clearly, Naomi had once intended to sell her home. Yes, this still came under the heading of old news and might accomplish little more than to explain how she came by some of the nicer pens. But if Naomi’s family had plans to sell her house as part of settling her estate, they might find this information helpful.
“All the more reason for me to go over there tomorrow,” I said to Fozzie, who was stirring at the base of my chair while I helped myself to a couple of pens. “What do you think, blue or black?”
Fozzie responded by resting his head on my thigh as if I should spend this moment petting him instead of helping myself to someone else’s office supplies.
I tossed the pens back into the box and then ran my hand over his ear. “It’s not like anyone’s going to notice a couple of freebie pens going missing.”
That ear twitched as if it couldn’t believe the rationalization it had just heard.
“Don’t give me that. You know it’s true.”
Fozzie shot me a sidelong glance.
If I hadn’t been looking down at a dog, I would have sworn that he rolled his eyes.
“Stop with the judgment. That’s reserved for humans.” Especially latently maternal types who would be returning home on Saturday. “Do you know what’s for dogs? Cookies!”
Fozzie raced to the kitchen, his toenails tapping in a happy dance in front of the pantry where I kept his bag of biscuits.
“Welcome off that moral high horse, because you, my dear doggy, can be bought.”
* * *
Two hours later, I was lying in bed with a snoring dog watching my ex-husband’s fiancée gush on an entertainment show about her five-carat diamond ring when my phone rang.
No one I knew would call me after midnight, with the exception of my mother, who tended to do her best griping about her latest reviews at this hour. Also an overdue pregnant lady with breaking news.
At the welcome sight of Rox’s name, I muted the TV and tossed back the cover, propelling Fozzie to the floor. “Is it time?”
“No,” Rox said with a sigh of irritation that rivaled my dog’s. “Sorry if I woke you for a false alarm.”
I dropped back onto my stack of pillows. “You didn’t. I was just watching TV.”
“Me, too. In between trips to the bathroom now that this kid is playing footsie with my bladder. How’re you doing?”
I was in no mood to provide an honest answer to that question. “Me? I’m fine and dandy.”
“Sure you are. Not to pile onto everything that’s been going on the last couple of days, but Raina Lassen is talking about her engagement on channel thirteen.”
“Good grief,” I said, changing the channel. “What show hasn’t she appeared on this week?”
“It’s not just the ring she’s showing off, she’s making the rounds with other news.”
“The baby.”
Rox sharply inhaled. “I thought that was just a celebrity gossip magazine rumor.”
I pointed at my flat screen as if Rox could see me. “Look at her. There’s a reason she’s wearing that linen tunic. It’s hiding a bump.” As opposed to the tunics I wore to hide my butt.
“Hunh. Maybe. Since they’re focusing in on that rock on her finger it’s hard to tell.”
“Keep watching for a wide shot. That hand is going to rest on her belly any minute now. And not just because of the weight of that gaudy rock.”
“Don’t be bitter. It’s a beautiful ring and you know it.”
Didn’t mean that I had to like it. “Whatever.”
Rox didn’t respond for several seconds except to yawn.
“There,” I said, pointing again when Raina’s hand swept over a nonexistent wrinkle at her waistline while the host drooled over the calendar she was promoting. “That’s a definite baby bump.”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Yep, she’s preggers, all right. All glowy and everything, which I find totally depressing, considering how all I did in my first trimester was puke.”
She was depressed? As the first Mrs. Christopher Scolari, it was all I could do to not cry at the sight of this super-human.
“It’s unfair is what it is,” Rox added.
I couldn’t argue with her on that point. My sense of justice had felt under assault since the moment I caught Chris cheating on me with his sous-chef. “No kidding.”
“How come when I wear linen I get so wrinkled it looks like I slept in it, and she looks as smooth as silk?”
“Some people live charmed lives.” And on that point Raina and Chris were perfect for one another, no matter how much it pained me to admit it. “Wrinkles aren’t allowed.”
“She’s what, twenty-two? Twenty-three?”
“Something like that.”
“Her time is coming, and speaking as the owner of a hundred new stretch marks thanks to the small human I’ve been incubating, possibly sooner than she realizes.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “You’re a good friend, but you don’t have to say that for my benefit. I’m okay.”
“Sure you are. I know you and what you went through with that man. This can’t be easy.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I wrapped my arm around Fozzie, who had jumped back up to curl next to me. “All that is ancient history.”
“Chris leaving you high and dry a couple of years ago is ancient history?”
“Twenty-two months.” But who was counting?
“A whole twenty-two months. Definitely plenty of time for you to get over it, and all this happy news about your replacement should roll off you like water off a duck’s back.”
My eyes blurred with tears as I held Fozzie close. “You betcha.”
“What does Steve say about all this?”
“Not much.”
“You haven’t talked to him about it, have you?”
What was I supposed to say to my other best friend who had made it very clear over the years that we wouldn’t be having any heart-to-heart discussions about our feelings?
I wiped my eyes. “It hasn’t exactly come up in conversation.”
“Char, you need to talk to him.”
“I will.” Maybe.
“Really talk to him, as in have an honest conversation about how you feel about all this.”
“Uh-huh.”
“In the meantime, you know you can talk to me. Day or night, because until Junior decides to make his grand debut, I won’t be sleeping.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that, but don’t worry about me. I really am okay. It’s just been a crappy little week.”
“But it’s only Wednesday. There’s still plenty of time for this week to improve,” Rox said at the same time that Fozzie released a noxious dog fart.
“That could happen.” But it clearly wasn’t going to start happening tonight.