IVY
We found the North Coast Community Church without any problem, an old-fashioned little white church with a big bell in the belfry. We took seats in a middle pew.
I immediately spotted Sheila standing in the aisle several pews ahead of us. As Brian had said, quite a bit younger than Duke. Flaming red hair, a purple beret jauntily dipped to one stylish eyebrow, and a purple-and-yellow plaid cape swirling as if she might levitate with it at any moment. On me this would have been an ELOL look. Eccentric Little Old Lady. But on her it was artfully sassy, a bold statement of personal style. I was fascinated by her large, dramatic gestures as she talked to another woman sitting in the pew. What was she describing? An oversized watermelon? A whale with wings?
The service began with a combination of old hymns and newer praise songs. The young pastor played guitar, along with an older woman on keyboard and a young woman on drums. The pastor’s interesting message was about the different responses of the two criminals who were crucified with Jesus and how this relates to people’s reactions to Jesus today. I was glad we’d come. After the final prayer, several people greeted us, and Duke was right. Sheila rushed over to introduce herself and pepper us with nosy questions. I told her we’d met Duke.
Sheila flung up her cape-clad arms in a theatrical gesture of despair, a Batwoman in plaid. “Duke is a wonderful man, but I’ve been trying to get him here to church for years.”
An admirable project, but if she went about it in the same way she apparently tried to bulldoze him into marriage, I had to think the effort might be doomed to failure. Although she had strong shoulders under the cape and looked capable of dragging him to church or altar, or anything else she had a mind to do.
“I’m taking minestrone soup and lasagna over to Duke’s for dinner this evening,” she added. “Would you come join us?”
Inviting us to dinner at Duke’s place without checking with him first struck me as a bit forward, but to my surprise, Mac jumped on the invitation. “Sounds great! How about if we bring salad?”
“That would be wonderful! Kathy and I are always trying to get Duke to eat more vegetables. And having visitors will be good for him.”
We settled on six-thirty for dinner. She gave us each a big hug, and I found myself liking her more than I expected. She might be a bit pushy, but she really did seem to have Duke’s welfare at heart.
We’d barely gotten back to the motorhome when Brian knocked on the door and said he could take Mac through the park now to take photos. Mac hastily changed to jeans and rubber boots, grabbed his camera, and they took off. I had texts from teenage grandniece Sandy in Arkansas and Mac’s ten-year-old granddaughter Elle in Montana. I answered both, and then the cell phone tinkled with an incoming message. I was delighted to see who was calling.
“Magnolia!”
Magnolia and Geoff are old friends and neighbors from back in Missouri. They’d come up to Montana for our wedding and then taken off in their motorhome on another of Magnolia’s genealogy expeditions. Most people investigate genealogy by internet these days, and Geoff helps Magnolia do some of that, but she likes to accompany that cyberspace research with in-person pursuit. Often with rewarding results, although a few people have been less than welcoming about the arrival of a large woman enthusiastically claiming a family relationship of some distant degree.
“Are you in Arizona yet?” Magnolia asked. “We thought we’d come down to wherever you are for a while too.”
Magnolia and Geoff and I had often arranged meetings in various places around the country when I was on the road alone. Although back then I was also hiding from the murderous Braxtons, who were intent on making roadkill out of me. Thankfully that’s all over now, various Braxtons awaiting trial or incarceration back in Missouri. I explained that we’d taken this detour to the Northern California coast and I wasn’t sure how soon we’d get to Arizona.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Somewhere in Oregon. Where are we, dear?” Magnolia said in an aside to her husband, Geoff, who did all the driving. A brief conversation between them ensued. “We’ll be there tomorrow! Oh, this is wonderful, especially after the experience we just had.”
I gave directions on how to find us. “Just watch for the triceratops out front. You can’t miss it.”
I expected her to respond with a puzzled silence, or at least a question about what is a triceratops, but Magnolia rose to the occasion, as she often does.
“Oh yes, that’s the three-horned one, isn’t it? With the big ruff on its neck. See you soon.”
I had to shake my head. How did she know that? Even after all these years of friendship, Magnolia can still surprise me.
Looking out the window, I saw Mac and Brian returning from their photo excursion. When they reached the motorhome, I opened the door and invited Brian in for coffee.
“Thanks, but I’d better get back and see how Kathy is doing. She’s headed into one of her killer migraines, so I’ll say goodbye for her. We’ve enjoyed meeting you. And you folks have a good trip on down to Arizona.” He backed off with a smile and a wave as if we were already on our way.
“We aren’t leaving yet,” Mac said. “We’re having dinner with Duke and Sheila this evening.”
“And Magnolia and Geoff are arriving tomorrow. She just called,” I added by way of explanation to Mac.
“Hey, great!”
Brian’s response was less enthusiastic. His heavy eyebrows drew together, and the smile flattened to a stiff line. “We’ve been glad to have you folks with us, but we can’t have a whole contingent of RVs staying here. There are regulations even out here in the country, you know.” He sounded very righteous. The property owner defending his territory from marauding RVs. “We’ll have to ask you to move along.”
“We can be gone by tomorrow, but I really need more information from Duke first.”
“No longer than tomorrow,” he ordered.
After he stalked off, I said, “I wonder if Kathy really is having a migraine or if that’s an excuse to keep us from seeing her again. I don’t think she wants any more discussion with me about our having met before.”
Mac nodded. “I’m interested in finding out what Sheila knows about the Morrisons when we have dinner with her and Duke this evening.”
Which, I realized now, was why he’d responded so quickly to Sheila’s invitation.
“Brian was very adroit at keeping himself out of the photos I took,” Mac added. “He laughed it off, saying it was because he always comes out looking like something the dinosaurs dragged in, but he was quite determined about it.”
“So you didn’t get any photos of him?”
Mac winked at me. “I wouldn’t say that.”
***
We ate a late lunch, and then Mac suggested we take the rough gravel road that went on past the dinosaur park and see if it went to the beach. It did, and Mac parked the pickup under a wind-twisted coastal pine near a cove with a sandy beach. Beyond the cove, wild waves surged around offshore rocks, spray shooting skyward in geyser bursts. Within the protected area of the cove, however, the waves lapped almost gently. An old wooden dock stuck out into the cove, a handful of seagulls and even a couple of seals in residence.
Looking back, we could see the western side of the hill on which the dinosaur park was located. This side broke off in a steep cliff with a jumble of broken rocks below it. More forested land separated the cliff from the ocean.
“I wonder what that used to be?” I asked as we also surveyed the burned skeletons and foundations of what had once been several buildings near the cove. It didn’t look like a recent burn, but it wasn’t old enough for brush and trees to obliterate the site. Tall weeds and blackberries were making a strong attack on it, however, growing around crumbling foundations and surging up through the old asphalt of a parking area.
We took off our shoes to stroll along the sandy beach and afterward put them back on to wander around the burned buildings. The whole area had the lonely feel of a vanished civilization, but it was still a lovely setting with a magnificent view. The wind came up and skittered balls of sea-foam across the shoreline.
It was almost dark by the time we got back to the motorhome. I’d just started a salad when someone knocked on the door. Mac was in the bedroom changing his jeans to go over to Duke’s for dinner. I opened the outside door warily. I expected to see Brian again, perhaps returning to wave a shotgun and a list of unfriendly county regulations about RV parking at us. Instead, Sheila stood there in the early darkness of coming winter. She was still wearing the plaid cape and purple beret, but she’d changed to snug black pants and high-heeled boots.
“Hi. I came over to bring you some lasagna and soup and tell you we won’t be able to have dinner with Duke this evening.” She handed me two plastic containers. “I’m really sorry, but his knees are bothering him again, and the pain pills make him kind of woozy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. We were looking forward to an evening with both of you. But thanks so much for the soup and lasagna.” I sniffed the warm, spicy scent drifting from the containers. “Smells wonderful! Come on in for a few minutes, won’t you? We didn’t have much chance to get acquainted at church this morning.”
Sheila managed the step up to the motorhome gracefully. In her spike heels I’d probably have somersaulted through the door. Which makes me sigh. I used to love wearing high heels. I still do, but it takes a very special occasion, and a certain reckless disregard for consequences, to wear them now.
We sat down and talked about the weather and Duke’s bad knees for a few minutes. I thought about the pickup parked out by the trailer and asked if Duke still drove.
“He hasn’t driven for quite a while. I always take my SUV when we go anywhere. I suppose he could still drive, though I’m not sure he should drive. But you know men and their vehicles.” Roll of eyes. “Take away their ride and you’d think you’d cut off some vital part of their anatomy.”
Mac came out of the bedroom, and I explained about the change in dinner plans. He expressed regret and then sat down with us and asked about the burned ruins we’d seen over near the beach.
“Oh, isn’t that a terrible eyesore?” Dramatic fling of hands from Sheila. “The county has been trying to get it cleaned up ever since the fire a few years ago, but the owner died and the heirs have been squabbling, and it still looks like a disaster area. Some big resort outfit wanted to buy and build there, but nothing ever came of it.”
“What was it before it burned?” I asked.
“Kate’s Kabins. One larger building with rental rooms and a small restaurant, plus a half dozen or so rustic cabins. All outdated, but some families stayed for a week or two and came back year after year. They gave the dinosaur park some business. Kate’s dead now, of course.”
Mac headed the conversation in a different direction. “We got the impression from Duke that you might have a few reservations about the Morrisons.”
Sheila’s dramatically lined eyes looked mildly alarmed at our knowing that. “I’m not fond of Brian,” she admitted. “Kathy is okay. But she hates it here.”
“Hates it? She told me she loved it here.”
“She tries to convince herself of that, but I know she hates the dinosaurs.”
“She did mention she felt as if they were ‘hostile’ to her.”
“She hardly ever goes out in the park. I think she’s afraid a goat is going to sneak up and butt her in the behind. Of course, she does make kind of an obvious target.” Sheila slapped herself on the cheek. “Oh, I shouldn’t say that. It sounds catty, and she’s really a sweet person.”
“I wonder why they stay here, then.”
“Because Brian wants to, of course. Kathy is such a wimp where he’s concerned.”
“Wimp?”
“Oh, you know. Whatever Brian wants, Brian gets. I think she’s a little older, so maybe that has something to do with it. Afraid she’ll lose him to a younger woman if she makes any waves. He doesn’t appreciate her enough, and she’s so good with the kids in her Dolly Dinosaur costume. She tries to look after Duke too. But Brian . . .” She paused and then, as if she found it necessary to find some good point about Brian, added in a virtuous tone, “Of course Brian did build that ramp for Duke’s trailer.”
“But?” I finally said, because there was an obvious but lurking in there.
“I just don’t feel, well, comfortable with how Brian manages the park. I mean, he’s just let everything go.”
“Does Duke know the foliage in the park is so overgrown you can barely see the dinosaurs?” Mac asked.
“Really? I didn’t know that. Of course, I haven’t actually been out in the park for years. I don’t go along with Kathy’s silly idea about dinosaur hostility, but I don’t care for the smell out there.”
“I didn’t smell anything,” Mac said.
“Well, that is skunk cabbage down by the creek, and I can smell it. But I have a more sensitive sense of smell than most people.” She sniffed as if to give a demonstration of that superior talent. BoBandy sniffed back, taking a good whiff of her feet. “But I was mostly thinking about how the parking lot is all run down and poor old Tricky has lost part of a horn.” She gave Mac a sideways glance, and I had the unexpected feeling she wanted to say something else but not in Mac’s presence.
He saw it too. With admirable insight, he jumped up. “If you ladies will excuse me, I think it’s time to take BoBandy out for a walk.” He put on a jacket and briskly snapped a leash on BoBandy’s collar.
Sheila did not instantly provide more derogatory information about Brian after Mac was gone. She talked about her daughter Vivian living down in Las Vegas, Duke’s knee problems, and how the church was having trouble getting accustomed to a pastor’s wife who played drums. I tried to ease her back to the subject of the Morrisons.
“I keep feeling I know Kathy from somewhere, but she doesn’t seem to recognize me. Or doesn’t want to recognize me,” I added with careful casualness. “Duke told us about how he fell in a hole he’d dug out in the park, and they rescued him. Do you know much about them?”
“Not really. I’m not even sure where they came from.” Sheila’s forehead creased in a frown. “Kathy has mentioned that Brian is into investments. He spends a lot of time on his laptop, and he tells her he’s looking at investment properties when he jaunts off to Eureka so often. Poor Kathy. She’s so . . . gullible.”
“Brian said she sometimes has migraines.”
“Yes, terrible migraines. Although it’s a wonder she doesn’t have them full-time, being married to that man. If I were Kathy, I’d pick up that laptop and whack him over the head with it.”
I didn’t ask her to elaborate on that. In fact, I was now inclined to back away from this discussion entirely. The conversation felt as if it might be sliding into busybody gossip. We’d been mistaken about Brian coming up with excuses for us not to talk to Duke, and apparently I was just as mistaken in suspecting he’d invented migraines as a way to keep Kathy from having to talk to me again. He didn’t strike me as particularly likeable, but I didn’t want to jump to some other unfair conclusion about him.
“I had one of Kathy’s very good dinosaur cupcakes earlier,” I said. “I think I’ll ask her for the recipe.”
Now that Sheila was started on this subject, whatever the subject was, she was not going to be distracted. She lowered her voice. “This hasn’t anything to do with Mac’s article for the magazine. It isn’t for print.”
I was curious, of course. Being wary of gossip doesn’t, unfortunately, cancel curiosity. But I managed not to ask questions. “Perhaps Duke will feel well enough in the morning to talk to Mac again.”
“I’ve been thinking I should get Duke a better cell phone,” Sheila said. “That ancient old thing he has now is always dropping calls, and he complains that it doesn’t ring loud enough. He needs something better in case of an emergency.”
I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. With Duke’s age and health problems, I agreed he needed a reliable form of communication. He might fall out there in the trailer, and the gun hanging by the door wouldn’t do him much good in that kind of emergency. But Sheila almost sounded as if she had some darker emergency or danger in mind. Before I could agree on the need for a better phone, however, Sheila jumped to a different subject. Or perhaps it was the subject she had been headed for all along.
“The thing is, I’m almost certain Brian has a girlfriend. Well, nothing almost about it. Brian has a girlfriend. She’s a real estate agent in Eureka, Renée Echol. Divorced. Attractive, but pants so tight they look painted on. Necklines so low it’s a wonder she doesn’t trip over them in those stiletto heels she wears.”
I managed not to make a giveaway glance at the heels on Sheila’s own boots.
“I’ve been undecided about whether or not to tell Kathy about her. I think she has a right to know, but I don’t want to be a tattletale . . .” Her shoulders lifted in a gesture of vexed dilemma.
“Kathy said Brian was interested in possible real estate investments in the area.”
“Yeah, right.” Sheila’s tone made a snide comment on that possibility. “I saw Brian and Renée having lunch together in a back booth at the Red Dragon and they didn’t look as if they were discussing real estate. Not unless she had a property map printed on her neck.”
I had to admit that neck exploration didn’t sound like a standard way to discuss a real estate investment, but I’m reluctant to think the worst of people. Especially since I’d already been wrong about Brian a couple of times.
“After lunch I followed them, discreetly, of course, back to her house on the south side of town. Brian was in there over an hour. I don’t think they were discussing real estate.”
When I didn’t make a comment, Sheila threw her hands in the air, apparently exasperated with my denseness. “Ivy, the man is a sleaze. He’s cheating on his wife, and who knows what kind of con game he’s playing with Duke? I think he wants the dinosaur park, though I don’t know why. And Renée Echol is a sleaze too. They were together in The Fisherman’s Retreat one evening. That’s a bar in Arcata, not some therapy organization where fishermen gather to discuss the psychological problems of men at sea,” she added with sarcastic emphasis.
I have to admit I immediately wondered what Sheila was also doing at a bar in Arcata, but maybe they had exceptionally good french fries or fried fish, so all I said was, “You didn’t want Mac to know about this?”
She gave an exaggerated shrug. “You know how men tend to stick together. I figured he’d say it was none of my business. Although I had a run-in with Renée myself a while back.”
“About her relationship with Brian?”
“No, it was before I knew about that. Actually, at one time, Renée and I were fairly good friends. We met at a health club where we both worked out. Sometimes we went out for lunch after a workout session, or maybe a drink in the evening. But then another friend wanted to sell her house in Eureka, and I recommended Renée as a real estate agent. The house didn’t sell, and when a very lowball offer from some out-of-town buyer came in, Renée advised her to take it.”
I raised my eyebrows, waiting for the connection.
“Lexie took the offer and moved down to Modesto. Purely by accident, I found out Renée wound up owning the house. She’d just used someone as a front to get the place for herself at a bargain price. She’s using it as a rental now.”
“That sounds rather unethical. Maybe even illegal.”
“Right. And I was appalled that she’d done something like that to my friend. I called Lexie and told her she should sue the socks off Renée. She said she wasn’t up to getting involved in some big lawsuit and wouldn’t do it. But I was so upset with Renée that I stormed into her real estate office and gave her a piece of my mind.”
I made some noncommittal murmur.
“A few other people happened to be there, and Renée started screaming about suing me for defamation of character or libel or mental anguish, some ridiculous thing like that.” Sheila shook her head. “I told her to go ahead, sue me. And then I said, who knows what all might come out if all this got into a courtroom?”
“You mean about her relationship with Brian?”
“No. I didn’t know about her and Brian yet. It was just a shot in the dark. I figured someone who’s unethical on one business deal is probably unethical on others. And then she threatened me.”
“Threatened you?”
“On weekends I open up my garage and sell a few antiques and whatnots. You know, just a yard sale kind of thing. Renée started yelling about how it was a lot more than a yard sale, that it was an actual business, and I wasn’t complying with zoning and business permit regulations.”
“A threat, then, that she might turn you in.”
“I’m sure what I do is perfectly legal, but she could still make trouble for me.”
Sheila’s mention of the threat from Renée reminded me of Brian’s grumpy push to get us out of the dinosaur park parking lot. “Brian says we have to be out of the parking lot by tomorrow. County regulations about RV parking.”
Sheila made an unladylike p-f-f-s-t sound. “You could park here for a month and nobody’d say anything. In fact, you can come park at my place for a month. Or more. Some friends from Texas did it for six weeks last summer. I have five acres, so there’s plenty of room.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that. But some friends are arriving in their motorhome tomorrow.”
“Bring them along.” She jumped up abruptly, again managing the spike heels nicely. “I’m half inclined to go over there and tell Kathy about Renée right now,” she declared.
“Duke said the Morrisons think he should sell the park to them—”
“Right. At some bargain-basement price, of course.”
“And then he should marry you.”
“Oh.” Sheila was obviously a bit taken aback at how she’d been bad-mouthing the Morrisons only to have me tell her they were promoting exactly what she wanted.
“You don’t know anything more about Brian and Kathy?” Quickly, before she thought I wanted more details about Brian’s possible involvement with a girlfriend, I added, “I mean, how they happened to be going through here or what Brian did before coming here?”
“Not really. He might have had a business of some kind.” Sheila made a vague gesture, well below her usual dramatic level of expression, and sat down again. More of a plop this time, as if my information about the Morrisons had deflated her.
“He must be successful,” I suggested. “If his ride is any indication.” I don’t feel quite comfortable with that expression, ride, but grandniece Sandy tells me it’s the word that’s used now.
“The Porsche?” Sheila said. “Yes, I guess so. Although Kathy has gone into Eureka with me a few times, and she’s always very careful about the price of anything she buys. But maybe Brian limits her to some skimpy household budget. That would be just like him, spend big bucks on that Porsche for himself but make her search for the cheapest paper towels in the store.”
“Maybe she’s just the thrifty type.” I’m careful about money and probably would look for the best buy on paper towels even if we owned a Porsche. Which I can’t imagine us ever owning. But that’s fine. We have enough. The Lord may not provide all the luxuries magazine and TV ads tell us we should want, but he supplies our needs. “I keep feeling I’ve met Kathy somewhere before. But I can’t remember where, and she says no.” Except for a meeting that never happened at some RV park in Arkansas.
Sheila unexpectedly went philosophical. “Well, who knows? Maybe they have some big secret in their past. Maybe they’re in that witness protection program or something.”
Maybe. Or maybe time travelers headed for the dinosaur era but missing their mark and winding up in a deteriorating dinosaur park in the twenty-first century instead.
“Thanks for the lasagna,” I said when she stood up again.
“That’s a real invitation to come park your motorhome at my place. It’s not far, just before you get to the church on the other side of the highway.” She noticed the laptop still sitting on the dinette table and added, “You can use my Wi-Fi there too.” She scribbled an address on a piece of paper from a scratch pad in her purse. “Your friends too.”
“I’ll see what Mac says.”
*
Mac, obviously just waiting for Sheila to leave, came inside only a minute after she headed back over to Duke’s trailer. I relayed what she had said about not knowing much more about Kathy and Brian than we did. After hesitating, I also passed along the gossipy information about Brian and a girlfriend. Sheila had said it wasn’t for print, but she hadn’t put any don’t-tell-anybody restrictions on it.
“Are you thinking we should do something about it?” Mac asked.
“Not necessarily. But we could check it out, I suppose.”
Yes, we could do that, I agreed with myself. We could go into town and inquire about available real estate from Renée Echol. We might also ask about food at the Red Dragon and find out if she had an office in her home. We could see how she reacted to information that we were staying at the dinosaur park.
Then I stiffened my shoulders. No. I may have snooped into a murder or two, but I was not snooping into gossip no matter how tempting it was.
We ate the salad I’d started, plus Sheila’s soup and lasagna, which was very tasty. Afterward, with the moon shining, Mac suggested we drive down to the cove again.
I started to ask why, but then I gave myself a mental whack. Walking hand in hand beside a moonlit sea. A sweet, newlywed kind of thing to do, right? And romantic of Mac to suggest it.
So we drove over to the cove and parked under the same wind-twisted tree. Even though the evening was chilly, we took off our shoes, held hands, and walked along the curve of the cove, the opposite direction from the way we’d gone before. Stars sprinkled the sky, and the moon cast a magic glow over sand and waves and turned a twisted piece of driftwood into a silvered work of art.
Gazing up at a starlit sky always brings out my thoughts about God along with awe at the immensity of his creation. Is there anyone else out there, Lord? Someone on a planet maybe like ours? The Bible makes no mention of anyone, but the Lord hasn’t necessarily told us everything, has he? He leaves things for us to discover. Quantum physics and the string theory, creatures under the sea and why a hard-boiled egg sometimes just won’t peel. A psalm came to mind.
What are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them? Them meaning us, of course. Me. This peek into the universe of stars in a night sky always does this to me. Why should the Lord care about me in the immensity of all this? But he does. Thank you, Lord! Then Mac interrupted my thoughts.
“I’ve been thinking about having this tattoo on my arm removed.”