“YOU’RE A LIFESAVER,” Rox said, grabbing a spoon to dig into the butter pecan ice cream she had asked me to pick up for her after work.
“I’m here to serve.” I waited for Rox to waddle past me in her thick socks before putting the turkey sandwich I bought her into the refrigerator. “But promise me that you’ll eat at least half of this sandwich. The tryptophan might help you sleep.”
She scoffed. “If all this sugar doesn’t have any effect, you think a couple of slices of turkey will?”
“It’s worth a shot. And speaking of sleep, shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“My back is killing me, my heartburn is worse when I lie down, and I’m pretty sure that my hair is now in a permanent state of bed head. So, no, I don’t need to be in bed right now.”
Leaving the spoon in the ice cream container as if she’d staked her territory, Rox placed her hand over her belly and grimaced.
“What is it?” I asked. “More heartburn?”
“Cramp.” She blew out a breath. “There. Gone.”
“You’re having cramps, too?”
Rox turned that grimace on me as she grabbed her spoon. “Don’t even think about suggesting that it’s the ice cream. This junk is the only thing that’s getting me through the day. Well, that and the movie channel package that Eddie got me so that I wouldn’t go completely stir-crazy.”
“Gee, pregnancy sounds really fun. I had no idea of the joy I was missing out on.”
“You’ll probably be like my worst nightmare, Raina. All glowy in her supermodel perfection instead of puking for the first three months.”
“Yeah, I want to be like her,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness from seeping into my voice, but one glance at Rox told me that I had missed that mark by a mile.
She shook her head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought her up. Being a preggo has made me stupid.”
I gave my best friend a hug. “If it makes you feel any better, I’d rather be like you.” In a heartbeat. “But maybe just puke for one month.”
“Oh, trust me.” Rox paused for an unladylike belch. “You’d rather be glowy.”
“Pretty sure I don’t get a vote when it comes right down to it.” I was also sure that what I might want was a moot point if Steve didn’t want the same thing.
* * *
Five minutes after I left Rox’s house, I pulled into the Bassett Motor Works lot and parked next to the Jaguar that Georgie had texted me was ready.
Climbing out of the SUV, I glared down at the fancy replacement rim gleaming under the setting sun and thought of how much Chris had once loved his Jag.
After all the money it had cost me over the last sixteen months, I felt no love toward the beast. But I also didn’t feel cursed, blocked, misaligned, or otherwise spiritually out of sorts because of its presence in my life.
The Jag had been doing a decent job of getting me where I needed to go.
Most of the time.
With minimal oil drips from a leak that Georgie swore had been fixed.
And it was comfortable to drive.
As long as I didn’t think about sitting on any of the bad vibes that Chris had left behind.
“Hiya, Char,” Georgie said, emerging from the garage with his dog Rufus trotting behind him. “She should be good to go.”
For the amount he expected me to pay before my car left the lot, she had better be purring like a kitten. “Great.”
Georgie turned toward the office thirty feet behind us. “Want to settle up so that you can give your granny back her car?”
“Let me ask you something first.”
“Shoot.”
“Having worked on the Jag a few times …” Way too many times. “What’s your opinion of it?”
“Honestly, she’s gettin’ a little long in the tooth, but she’s still a beauty.” He gave me a lopsided grin while his dog curled into a ball at his feet. “Just a feisty one.”
My favorite mechanic could have been describing my mother.
“If you were me, would you be thinking about selling it?”
Pulling a red shop rag from the pocket of his grease-stained overalls, he wiped his hands. “Chow Mein, I woulda done that after we fixed the oil leak, but you gotta realize. You’re not gonna get much for it.”
“What? You just finished saying it was still a beautiful car.”
“She’s got almost two hundred thousand miles on her. Nobody who doesn’t wanna spend time with her under the hood is gonna want her.”
Since my husband didn’t want to touch me toward the end, that sounded way too much like a cheap shot. “If I could find a buyer, what do you think I could get for it?”
Georgie thumbed in the direction of the office. “Wanna go inside and find out?”
Less than two minutes later, he scratched his scruffy red beard while frowning at the computer monitor on the counter. “You’re not gonna like this.”
I was really tired of hearing him say that to me. “Just give it to me straight.”
“Best I can find for the same model year is twenty-seven hundred.”
“That’s it?!”
“Oh, your car wouldn’t sell for near that much. Not with all your miles.”
Again, that sounded like a snide remark. “Yes, but it has those new tires and the brake job you just did. That has to count for something.”
Georgie stared at the monitor. “It counts toward makin’ it a safer car,” he muttered while Rufus picked up and whined at the door as if he wanted to escape the tension rising in the office.
“Are you serious?”
He shrugged as if I were asking him a trick question.
“So it’s either keep on sinking money into this car or practically give it away.”
“Well, I guess you could put it that way.”
Swell. “What would you do?”
“If I were you?”
I nodded.
He leaned his elbows on the scarred wooden counter separating us and grinned. “I’d leave her here with my mechanic to sell on consignment.”
“Meaning what, exactly.”
“I sell her for the best price I can get and keep five percent.”
Since I was facing a repair bill in excess of what I’d get out of that deal, I had another idea to float out to my prospective salesman.
I penciled it out on a page in my notebook. “Your five percent would probably be close to one hundred bucks. What if I paid you your commission now and signed the Jag over to you, and whatever you sell it for, you keep.”
Georgie stroked his chin. “You wouldn’t be trying to get out of payin’ your bill now, would ya?”
Absolutely. “Sell it for a good price and you’d come out ahead.”
“Don’t think Dad would go for it.”
His dad was the big dog at Bassett Motors that Junior, affectionately known as Little Dog, worked for. “Want to run it by him?”
Georgie disappeared for two minutes, and then returned, followed by Rufus. “Three hundred to make sure that we turn a profit on this deal.”
He stood behind the counter like the football player he used to be, poised to block me as soon as I made a move.
That told me that he expected me to make a counteroffer. “Two hundred.”
“Two-twenty-five.”
I extended my hand. “Deal.”
* * *
“Are you sure you don’t want something more substantial?” Gram asked fifteen minutes later, while I stood in her kitchen and ate a biscuit left over from last night.
“Nope, I’m on a diet.” Lately, a fat-laden carbohydrate diet much like Rox’s, which I needed to knock off before my belly got as round as hers.
Gram pursed her lips while she filled her teakettle. “Some diet.”
“I know. Fozzie and I will have to go on a long walk tonight.”
“Speaking of Fozzie, I assume that you—”
“Cleaned the interior of your car?” I licked my fingers clean and saluted her. “Yes, ma’am, and thanks again for letting me borrow it.”
She looked at me over the rim of her trifocals. “I also assume that all’s well between you and your mother now.”
It was as good as it was going to get. “Yep.”
“And there’s a plan for doing something with that car outside?”
“I wouldn’t call it a plan, but I’ll be driving it over to my house tonight.”
“And then after that?”
Leaning against her checkerboard counter of blue and white tiles, I stared down at my espadrilles. “I haven’t gotten that far.”
“It seems like a very nice car. Probably a heckuva lot more reliable than the one that Chris stuck you with.”
“About that. I sold it tonight.”
Gram’s mouth gaped open. “To whom?”
“George Jr.” I skipped the part about not making any money on the deal.
“Then you’re obviously keeping the Subaru.”
“I haven’t figured out the details yet.”
“What’s to figure out? You need a car, and there’s a perfectly good one right outside.”
“I can’t just let her fix me up with a car like some sort of fairy godmother.” Much as I could use a sprinkle of pixie dust to make getting through life a little easier.
“Then return it and buy one yourself. Really, I think you’re making this too complicated.”
Probably. But the complication was not being able to afford a new car right now.
“I will.” Maybe. “After I’m done with—” I clamped my mouth shut before Naomi’s name spilled out.
Gram removed her steaming kettle from the burner with more force than necessary. “Don’t tell me.”
“Okay.” Fine with me, since she’d most certainly blab to Steve.
“You’re still trying to prove that Naomi’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“Uh …”
Gram waggled a finger at me. “Don’t bother denying what you’ve been up to.”
My heart skipped a beat as my mind raced to figure out how much she knew.
“Alice told me how you and Lucille were coming up with some outlandish theories about Robin being the one responsible for her mother’s death.”
“It was more Lucille’s theory than mine, but it wasn’t completely—”
“Charmaine Digby, you cannot seriously suspect that girl of harming her own mother.”
Not by herself I didn’t. Plus, given what I’d found out about the Carpp brothers, I wasn’t inclined to totally align myself with Lucille. “I don’t know what to think beyond what we talked about last week. Even you and Alice agree that the way Mrs. Easley died was just plain weird.”
“That doesn’t mean that you should be out there playing detective.”
My grandmother had definitely been spending way too much time with Steve.
“I’m not. I’m just doing the basic fact-finding that as a deputy coroner I would do with any unusual death in the county.”
As creative fibbing went, I thought that was pretty good until I saw Gram plant her hands on her hips.
“Fact-finding with Lucille’s help?” She rolled her eyes. “Facts are typically optional with that one.”
“Lucille just happened to offer up an opinion about how she thought that night might have played out.”
“I bet she did,” Gram said, filling her cup.
“Okay. To play out how that conversation went with her, what do you think led to Naomi Easley being found dead in that bathtub?”
Gram folded her arms while her tea steeped. “I have no idea.”
“If you knew that Robin was responsible for her mom’s accident at the house two years ago, would you be a little more inclined to think that Lucille wasn’t just talking out of her ass?”
“Charmaine!”
“Excuse me, her bottom if you prefer.”
“Either way, you don’t know the story behind that fall Naomi took.”
“Not every detail of the story.” I locked onto Gram’s gaze to let her fill in the rest of the blanks.
She sharply inhaled. “No. You don’t mean—”
“Afraid so. Robin practically admitted it.”
“To you?”
I nodded.
Gram furrowed her brow. “But that doesn’t mean that she was trying to kill her mother, does it?”
“No, but there was obviously some tension there that helps to explain why Naomi kept away from the house after the accident.”
“Certainly Stevie had all this information at the time of his investigation.”
I doubted that he spent as much time trying to get Robin to open up as I had. “I don’t know. We don’t talk about that kind of stuff.”
“Well, I think you should assume that he would have talked to all the family members, especially Hailey. She’s always been very close to her mom.” Gram turned to sugar her tea. “I know she’s one of the first people I would’ve wanted to have a chat with.”
I couldn’t agree more, especially on that last point.
Maybe a ferry ride into Seattle could be arranged for tomorrow.