Читать книгу Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody - Barbara Ross - Страница 9

Chapter Two

Monday, August 6

At a little before ten on Monday, Jane pulled her sturdy, orange Volvo, known as Old Reliable, into the private road that led to Walden Spring. The complex stood high on a hill surrounded by woods and a golf course. Despite her reflexive dislike for these kinds of faux communities, Jane begrudgingly admitted the setting was attractive. She drove up the winding road and parked in one of the spots marked VISITOR. A wide walk led through a two-story archway in the building that bordered the parking lot. She had no idea what to expect.

Jane been a bit flummoxed about how to prepare for the meeting. She’d updated her résumé, such as it was, constructing a sanitized version of her “cases” in elevated corporate-speak. The hairdresser switch became “supplier reorganization,” and the peeing five-year-old became a problem of “inappropriate territoriality and boundary violation.”

It would have helped if she’d known what to do about the “community problems” once she got to Walden Spring. She thought her way through all the vapid morale-building seminars she’d gone through with the phone company. Nothing seemed to apply. She didn’t think she could stage trust falls with a group so prone to osteoporosis.

Although Peavey had appeared to hire her on the spot, she assumed he had other people he needed to account to—a board of directors or some far-off corporate owners—for the kind of expense she’d proposed, if the job lasted more than even a few days.

She’d taken care with dressing and grooming, too. Should she treat the meeting like a job interview, her first in more than thirty-five years, or should she try to “blend in” with the community? And, given the range of dress she’d seen worn by her age cohort in the wild, what did “blend in” mean?

In the end, she’d compromised, donning a khaki skirt and canvas flats, but paired with a crisp, pink blouse she could have comfortably worn to her old job. She put on lipstick and left the annoying new progressive glasses on her bedside table. She put on sunglasses but tucked an old pair of readers into her purse, in case she was called upon to review or sign some kind of contract. Satisfied, but still nervous, she’d headed out the door.

At Walden Spring, she stopped on the other side of the archway to take in the view. Two long, four-story apartment buildings formed an L-shape around a large, rectangular lawn with paths running through it. The green space had a lovely campus-y feel. On the third side of the rectangle, a freestanding building had a sign over its doorway that read, CLUBHOUSE. The fourth side of the lawn was open to the golf course.

Just inside the archway, she found the management office. Jane entered an ample reception room and knocked lightly on the open door to the only office. Paul Peavey stood up from behind his enormous mahogany desk and greeted her warmly.

“Mrs. Darrowfield—”

“Jane.”

“Welcome.” He motioned for her to sit and got down to business. She’d expected he would give her more background about her assignment. Instead, Peavey started right in, as if the deed were done.

“I think Mrs., um, Jane, the best thing to do is to treat you like a prospective buyer. It’s common for people who are considering purchasing at Walden Spring to move into one of our guest units and spend a little time getting a feel for the community and what it has to offer. I’ve asked our realtor to take you on a tour as she would any other prospect. She doesn’t know why you’re here.”

“Move in?” Jane was nonplussed. The idea had never occurred to her. “I’m terribly sorry. I wasn’t planning to move in.”

“But you must. I don’t think you’ll get to the bottom of it if you don’t.”

Avoidance seemed like the best tactic. She’d tell him she wasn’t moving in after she had something to report. “Can you tell me more about your problems? Get to the bottom of what?”

Peavey looked uncomfortable. “I think there’s a natural tendency in humans to gravitate to people who are like us, people who have similar interests and values.”

“That hardly sounds like a problem.”

“It’s not. But when there is hostility between groups of people, it can create a lot of tension and unhappiness.”

“Hostility?”

“Yes. You know, rivalries.” Now he looked not just uncomfortable but unhappy.

“Are you telling me you have gangs at Walden Spring?” For a moment, Jane flashed to a chorus line of elderly Sharks and Jets, snapping arthritic fingers and singing.

“Certainly we do not have a gang problem. I think it’s best for you to see for yourself.” Paul punched the numbers on his phone and then spoke into it. “Can you come over now?” After he hung up, he turned back to Jane. “Regina Campbell is our in-house realtor. She handles all our properties at Walden Spring.”

A few moments later, Regina strode through the door. She was broad-shouldered and tall, towering in her high heels. In her late twenties, professionally dressed, she had a pretty face framed by brown hair curling to below her shoulders.

“After you take Mrs. Darrowfield around to see the properties,” Paul told Regina, “could you give her a tour of the clubhouse and perhaps leave her there for lunch?”

“Lunch on her own? In the dining room? We don’t usually—” Regina seemed more than reluctant.

“Yes, please, Regina. I’m sure Jane will be fine.”

For the next hour, Jane and Regina toured the model apartments of Walden Spring. Patiently, Jane let Regina show off the granite countertops, the Jacuzzis in the master baths, and the large balconies overlooking the quad and the golf course beyond.

The two-bedroom models, the Emerson and the Alcott, appeared to be mirror images of one another. The smaller units were called the Hawthorne and the Thoreau. When Jane told Regina she expected the Thoreau to be a single room with no heat, the realtor stared at her blankly. Surely it couldn’t have been the first time she’d heard that joke. The Thoreau was the smallest of the units, just one bedroom, but turned out to be very nice. Open plan, spacious kitchen with plenty of storage, light and airy throughout.

The apartment buildings had multiple entranceways, which meant only eight units shared each small foyer and elevator bank. As they walked from one unit to another, Regina and Jane used a wide path that ran around the perimeter of the quad. People seemed to have golf carts to haul their groceries from the parking lot to the entrances to their buildings and generally to get around the complex.

“What’s that?” Jane pointed to a medium-sized building, more institutional looking than the rest of the complex. It sat a ways down a narrow paved roadway between the golf course and the woods.

“The long-term care facility,” Regina said quickly, as though she preferred to talk about anything else. “And of course, we do all the maintenance for your unit,” Regina prattled on, keeping to her script. “No more cleaning gutters or shoveling snow.”

The more Regina talked, the more appealing Jane found the whole idea of living in a place like Walden Spring. Like most houses in Cambridge, hers had no garage, and for close to forty winters she’d scraped ice off a succession of cars and dug them out of snowdrifts.

Why am I so determined to keep my house, Jane wondered. It was too big, now, certainly. Perhaps it had always been too big, even when three of them lived there. After her husband left, all she could think was, I must keep the house, I must keep the house, I must keep the house. Of course, she wanted Jonathan to stay in the same school, keeping his life as stable as she could while his parents’ problems swirled around him like flakes in a shaken snow globe. And Jane’s friends, her bridge group, lived nearby. What would have become of her in those first terrifying months without their support, their humor, their love? And during all the years that followed.

They had almost reached the clubhouse, Regina chattering the whole time about the “amenables.” The clubhouse was built on a slope, so they entered on the second floor. A balcony overlooked the tables of the empty dining hall. From below came the tinkle of glasses and cutlery and the aroma of lunch being prepared. A two-story wall of windows faced the golf course. There were no white tablecloths, no formal place settings on the tables. Perhaps that was reserved for dinner, or a mere fantasy for the Walden Spring website.

Three doorways, widely spaced, ran along the back wall of the balcony. Regina guided Jane to the first one. Inside, music boomed from an iPod dock. A group of fit-looking women and men who had left fifty-five years well behind were doing the Funky Chicken. There were some scary spandex costumes along with some nearly see-through yoga pants in that room. The woman who was leading didn’t look any younger than the group at large.

“Very impressive,” Jane commented. Cambridge was a walking city, and she relied on that, plus her garden work, for exercise.

In the next room, classical music played softly and a dozen or so people wearing smocks stood at easels painting a fruit bowl that stood on a center table. It seemed like a happy, focused group. A familiar-looking woman with a head full of lavender ringlets and bright blue eyes smiled from behind the easel nearest the door. Jane smiled back tentatively. The face seemed familiar, but Jane couldn’t place her.

The third room had two billiards tables and a poker table in its center, and flat-screen TVs hooked to video consoles were along one wall. A group of men, most wearing black leather jackets, were hanging out. Two played pool while six others played cards. In the corner, a man dressed entirely in black—jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket—hung his head out the window.

“Mike! Mike!” Regina’s tone was sharp. “See that sign? NO SMOKING. How many times do we have to tell you? And Leon in here with his oxygen. You could get us all killed!”

Mike threw his butt out the window and turned to look at the interlopers. His gray hair was greased back. “Sorry, ma’am,” he mumbled. Someone at the poker table laughed.

“Let’s go see the dining room.” Regina led Jane down a flight of stairs and unlocked the door to the dining hall with a keycard. “Lunch is cafeteria-style, dinner is table service. Stay if you like.” Her look conveyed this wasn’t a good idea and she wouldn’t have left Jane there if Paul hadn’t insisted. Regina handed over a brochure and a business card.

“Who comes to the dining room?” Jane asked. “Every unit you showed me had a huge kitchen.”

Regina laughed. “People think they’ll use those kitchens, but they never do. The single people like to have company for meals, and the married women. . . they’re just so thrilled not to have to come up with something for dinner for the millionth night of their lives. Everybody basically eats all their meals here at the clubhouse.”

On some silent cue, a sound like a stampede of sensible shoes filled the hallway behind the door.

“Gotta run!” Regina sprinted out the door that led to the golf course at the same moment a man dressed in white unlocked the main door and the hordes descended.

* * *

The dining hall was in chaos. All Walden Spring arrived at once, some aided by canes and some by walkers or wheelchairs. The first group through the main door was a gaggle of deeply tanned, hard-haired women. It looked as if they had looted a Lilly Pulitzer resort wear store and then dressed in everything they’d stolen. The similarity of cut and color in their clothes gave the effect of a uniform.

At the same moment, three golf carts pulled up to the outside door. The men in the carts jumped out and entered the cafeteria, mixing with the Lilly Pulitzer group, plaid pants clashing with the signature bright pinks and greens of the Pulitzer dresses. Somehow, they all ended up at the front of the line, and the other residents queued behind them. The artists whom Jane had seen earlier came in chattering with the dancers in their neon spandex. The leather jacket crew followed on their heels.

Jane stood for a few moments taking it all in, then dumped the brochure Regina had given her in the trash and got into the endless line.

By the time she had lunch on her tray, everyone was seated. Jane stood in the center of the room, considering what to do. She could sit at a table by herself, but that wouldn’t help her find whatever it was Paul Peavey wanted her to discover. She was looking around when someone called “Yoo-hoo!” over the din. The lavender-ringleted woman from the art room. “Jane! Come sit with us,” she called.

Evangeline Murray, that’s who the striking woman was. She and Irma Brittleson were great friends, and Jane had met Evangeline a few times in casual gatherings at Irma’s house. She must have been the person Irma was visiting when she’d recommended Jane to Paul Peavey.

Jane made her way to the pushed-together tables in the corner of the cafeteria, where the be-smocked artists and the spandex-covered dancers were eating and laughing.

“Are you considering Walden Spring?” Evangeline asked after Jane sat and introductions had been made.

“I’m thinking about it,” Jane answered. “Do you like it here?”

“Love it. Best thing I ever did.”

“Was it hard giving up your home?” Jane’s question was genuine.

“Horrible,” Evangeline answered. “I sorted and cried, cried and sorted. I cried an ocean of tears and threw out a boatload of stuff. Worst pain I ever went through. But now it’s gone, and I’ve never felt lighter. I have as much room as I need. I have great company, and I’m busy every day. I don’t have to mow grass or shovel snow or clean gutters. And I don’t have to worry about dropping dead somewhere and leaving my poor heirs to make head or tail of all that stuff.”

“It’s the home equivalent of wearing clean underwear in case you wind up in the ER,” Jane said. “Your underdrawers and your desk drawers are clean in case of the unexpected.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself. You’ll love it here, too. I can tell.”

“Just remember to keep your head down and stay out of the crossfire,” interjected a tall, skinny man wearing a black beret, black pants, a black polo shirt, and a black blazer. He sat next to Evangeline.

“Keep my head down? What crossfire?”

“Ignore Maurice. He always looks at the dark side,” Evangeline responded.

“I do not!” Maurice was indignant. “I’m just saying.” He was craggy-faced, with large features—large, brown, expressive eyes; prominent nose; large mouth.

“Who are they?” Jane nodded at the couple holding court at the center of the Lilly Pulitzer/plaid pants table. He was a bantam rooster of a man with a thick crop of dark hair. Jane had noticed him in the cafeteria line. He was short but moved like a much larger man with his chest puffed out and a bit of a swagger. The luxuriant hair must have been an asset when he was young, and now worked even more magic, surrounded as he was by the follicly challenged. She was petite and very tan. Her face was wrinkle-free and frozen, as if she were already embalmed. Her hair didn’t move when her head did. In fact, it didn’t move at all.

Evangeline rolled her eyes. “Bill Finnerty and Doris Milner. Doris is a widow. Bill’s wife’s over in the long-term care facility.”

“Alzheimer’s,” the pretty dancer sitting across from Jane whispered.

“I hear she’s fakin’ it just to get a break from being married to that jerk,” Maurice added.

“Maurice!” Evangeline colored. “What an awful thing to say.”

“How sad for Mr. Finnerty,” Jane said.

“Sad for us,” Maurice corrected. “He takes his aggression out on innocent golfers and anyone else who disturbs his sensibilities.”

Jane looked around the dining hall and suddenly was overwhelmed by a feeling of déjà vu. The golf jocks sitting with the expensively dressed popular girls. The leather-jacketed bad boys with the greased-back hair. The tables full of couples. The lonely people sitting by themselves, staring at their trays. The dancers and the artists in the corner, Jane sitting among them. She had thought her corporate experience was what she brought to this assignment. But now it was obvious. Walden Spring was high school.

“Who disturbs Bill’s sensibilities?” Jane asked.

“Like Mike Witkowski over there.” Maurice gestured to the man in black who’d been smoking in the billiard room. He held court at the leather jacket table and didn’t seem to have a care in the world. “Bill hates Mike. And vice versa. So Bill rules the golf course and Mike runs the game room. Nobody can use either area unless they’re in the right crowd.”

“That’s why I took up dancercise,” one of the men at the table said. “I haven’t been able to get a tee time all summer.”

“None of us go in the game room. There are some great exercise games on those video players in there, and I’d love to use them, but that’s Mike’s territory,” the pretty woman who’d led the dance class added.

“And Doris thinks someone died and made her Queen of Walden Spring,” Evangeline huffed.

“They’re all making our lives miserable,” Maurice said.

At that moment, Mike Witkowski stood and bussed his tray, walking close, very close, behind where Bill and Doris were seated. Mike’s tray tilted, ever so slightly, a devilish glint in his eye. A glass tipped to its side and rolled, sprinkling liquid on Bill’s beautiful head of hair.

Bill jumped up and grabbed Mike by the T-shirt. Mike’s tray clattered to the floor. The next minute Bill and Mike were rolling on the ground. The other plaid-pants guys rushed toward them, while the leather-jackets stood on the perimeter, lobbing dessert items into the melee.

“FOOD fight!” someone yelled.

“Oh, Lord.” Maurice sighed. “Here we go again.”

Outside, another golf cart pulled up, and four burley men in groundskeepers’ uniforms jumped out and ran toward the fight. Everyone else headed for the exits as fast as they could go, which in some cases wasn’t very.

Evangeline grabbed Jane by the arm and pulled her toward the main stairwell. The press of the crowd going up the stairs took Jane’s breath away. She had a vision of a slow-motion soccer riot. When they got to the top of the stairs, Jane didn’t stop. The high school feeling had unsettled her. She bid Evangeline and Maurice a hasty farewell and hustled out of the clubhouse. Paul Peavey hurried past, headed for the melee. Jane put her thumb to her mouth, pinky to her ear, and mouthed, “I’ll call you.” She continued straight to Old Reliable, started the engine, and peeled out of the Walden Spring parking lot.

She was almost to the end of the long, winding drive, safe in the real world, when earsplitting noise surrounded her. Mike Witkowski and his gang pulled their motorcycles up on either side of her car and then roared past. There were eight of them. Nine if you counted Leon with his oxygen tank, riding in Mike’s sidecar.