California Schemin' (8 page)

Fogel met me outside the hospital, and I
shook hands with and thanked my guardian angels. A tall black
officer whose name tag read J. Russell said cheerfully, “Our
pleasure, ma’am. More fun than I’ve had in a while.”

Beau was propped up in bed watching a ball
game when I walked in. A bandage was stuck to his head over his
right ear, and a blue cast encased his leg from his foot to just
above his knee. The cast was covered with graffiti, mostly girls’
names as far as I could see. He turned as I stepped up to the bed
and scowled at me.

“I told Tom not to let you come. Why won’t
you ever do as you’re told?”

“Oh, you know me. I’m a tease. I figure by
the time anyone knows I’m here we’ll be gone again. I’m more
worried about you getting dizzy and sliding off a roof. I know you,
and given a day by yourself, you’ll be figuring out how to work
with a cast on. I’m taking you home as soon as they let you out of
here.”

I sat on the edge of his bed, careful not to
bump his leg.

Beau smiled and shook his head. He reached
over and took my hand.

“Damned if I’m not glad to see you, even if
you shouldn’t be here. Gonna kiss me and make it all better?”

I stopped holding my breath and kissed
him.

Getting him out of the hospital wasn’t as
easy as I expected. The doctor talked vaguely of dizziness and
memory loss. The nurse just shrugged her shoulders. Finally,
Sheriff Fogel showed up, and the obstacles started to disappear.
While Beau was signing papers and assuring the doctors he’d check
in with his own medical team at home, Sheriff Fogel took me
aside.

“Did Beau tell you the whole story about his
accident? If you can call it an accident.”

The worry was plain in Fogel’s face, and my
stomach clenched.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“The day before his accident he was visited
by a couple of goons. They asked about you, and when Beau claimed
ignorance, they threatened his life. The next day his second story
staging collapsed. I asked the doctor not to release him until they
were absolutely sure he wasn’t going home alone. Luckily the
administration here owes me a favor or two.”

“Then it’s not safe for Beau here either.
We’re on a flight out of here tonight. I’ve got to get to the house
and clear out his stuff.” I turned away, but Sheriff Fogel’s hand
on my shoulder stopped me.

“I took care of that the day he fell. Didn’t
need his house getting tossed again, so I had a deputy clear out
the house, and we’re watching it pretty closely. I’m worried these
bastards will try and burn it down. I don’t like the way they warn
their victims.”

“Was all the damage from the fall, or did
they hurt Beau when they came to talk?”

“As far as I know they were civil enough on
the first visit. Threats only.”

“I’m getting us out of here, and he’s not
coming back until Lily’s murder is solved, even if I have to break
the other leg.”

“Good girl.” Fogel laughed.

Getting a man with a broken leg on the plane
proved to be a challenge. I pushed the airport wheelchair down the
jet way and parked it outside the door. Beau pushed himself up to
stand on his good leg. He swayed a little, and I hurried to steady
him. We managed to get through the door, but faced with the rows of
first class seats we had to get past, I glanced at the flight
attendant, nonplussed.

Beau took matters into his own hands. Sliding
his arm from around my shoulder he used the backs of the seats like
crutches and swung himself into economy seating where the attendant
settled him into the first row of seats. I followed and plopped
down in the middle seat next to him, hoping that the plane would be
under-booked so no one would sit next to me.

Beau was laughing at me as I scowled at the
passengers coming through the door from first class, trying to keep
our spare seat open. He leaned over and put his mouth to my
ear.

“It won’t kill me if someone sits there you
know. You could stop glaring at those poor people.”

But I had stopped glaring anyway. A woman I
recognized was standing at the head of the aisle scanning the
plane. A plumpish redhead with Sara Palin glasses and a lost look
on her face. The trouble was I couldn’t remember where I knew her
from. I scanned her face but couldn’t figure out the connection. An
elderly woman pushed past her and sat down in the seat next to me,
and the redhead moved off down the aisle, leaving me with the
uneasy impression that I had met her before.

I looked at Beau and noticed he was watching
the other passengers as well. Tension was etched around his mouth.
He’s watching for the people who threatened him
. I still
hadn’t told him that I knew his fall hadn’t been accidental. He
would just be angry with Fogel for telling me. Beau relaxed when
the last piece of carry-on baggage bounced against the aisle seat,
and the flight attendant locked the hatch shut.

“I take it you didn’t recognize any of the
passengers as your assailants.”

Beau jerked his head up, a furrow forming
between his brows.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Fogel told me your accident probably
wasn’t.”

“Damn him! Blasted busybody Sheriff. I was
going to deal with those guys once and for all. Instead you show
up, knowing far too much, and escort me home like I’m an invalid or
a child.” He sat with his arms crossed, the frown deepening.

“We were worried about you. Anyway, Tom’s
kids miss you, and there’s stuff at your Vermont house that needs
to be taken care of. And Beans. Don’t forget Beans. He’s having an
identity crisis.”

A smile crept on his face at the mention of
Beans, and the muscles in his jaw relaxed.

“Yeah, okay. I can see how you’d think Beans
would be missing me. I’ll stay until I can walk again. How’s
that?”

“It’s a deal.”

Beau shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His
cast and the limited space between our seats and the bulkhead
weren’t really compatible. I’d tried to shift so that he could
angle his leg into my foot space, but the elderly woman who’d
dropped into the seat beside me kept giving me dirty looks.

“Do you want to switch?” I asked him. “You
could sit kind of sideways and rest your foot in the corner?”

“Would you kindly keep your voice down,” the
old woman snapped at me. “I’m trying to get my rest. I really don’t
understand people who expect everything to go their own way.” She
shut her eyes again, and I had to restrain myself. I wanted nothing
more than to smack her, the old witch.

The flight attendant must have read my
thoughts because she appeared in the aisle and leaned down to
whisper in the woman’s ear.

“There’s an open row down a few seats,” she
said. “I can move you, and you’ll be able to rest quietly by
yourself.”

I thought that was stretching it. There were
people talking up and down the plane, and it wasn’t exactly
quiet.

“I don’t want to sit at the back of the
plane.” Her eyes narrowed at the attendant. “Why don’t you make
these two sit back there? I’m sure he can move as well as I can.”
She pointed a bony old finger at Beau.

“Mr. Maverick is injured and needs to sit
where he is.”

“I don’t want to move.” The old biddy was
sulking now.

“I heard you complain about the noise up
here. It really would be quieter a few rows back.”

I caught the attendant’s glance, and she
rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll try to be
more quiet.”

“Should have made her move,” Beau whispered.
“We’ve got to put up with her for another four and a half hours.”
He closed his eyes and turned his face away from me.

“You could still change seats with me,” I
said.

“I’m not sitting next to that bitch.”

His voice was quiet, but I was sure she could
hear him. I didn’t dare turn to look at her. She might take my head
off. Sure enough, she snorted through her nose, but she didn’t say
anything. Didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping, was my guess.

The mousy, red-haired woman I’d noticed
earlier slid into the bathroom at the front of the plane. My mind
automatically started flipping through the places I might have seen
her in the past, but no bells went off. It bothered me that I
couldn’t place her.

I told myself not to be an idiot and closed
my eyes, but the ball of unease sat in my stomach all the same.

The next morning Beau was settled in at home,
and I was back at Meg's. Tom was pulling a double shift, and Meg
figured we could have the entire ceiling down and the mess cleared
up before he got home. Being Meg’s best friend had perks; it wasn’t
every day I got invited to a demolition party. A bunch of tools
were piled on the porch outside the back door.

“What’s the sledge hammer for?” I asked as I
walked in. She had cleared the kitchen of furniture. “Be kind of
hard to whack the ceiling with that thing don’t you think?”

“I just grabbed anything I thought we might
need,” she said. “Better too many tools than too few.”

Pulling the Homasote down was the easy part.
After getting mouse poop and other disgusting detritus dumped on my
head a couple of times I learned not to pull the edge in front of
me and we had the whole thing down in less than thirty minutes. The
kitchen looked like a war zone with pieces of ceiling scattered
among piles of dirt and unidentifiable bits and pieces, all of it
disgusting.

Bits of cobweb and dirt hung from the slats
that had been hidden by the board. Like many old homes, this one
had once sported a plaster ceiling.

“You could re-plaster this and have an
authentic ceiling,” I said.

“I don’t want an authentic ceiling. We’re
going to pull all this down, and I’m going to have exposed beams.
I’ll put sheet rock up between the beams to keep dirt from falling
on the table while we eat.”

“You’re going to put up sheet rock?” My
eyebrows threatened to skyrocket off my head. Not that I doubted
Meg’s ability to do anything she put her mind to, but she also
owned the
Royalton Star,
a weekly newspaper that required
most of her time to produce.

“I figured you could help with the sheet
rock, and maybe you wouldn’t mind pitching in and helping Deirdre
with ads so we don’t get behind. You’ve got like five articles all
ready to go.”

It was true. I had gotten ahead of myself. I
didn’t have any responsibilities in California and lots of time to
mull things over in my head. The result had been a number of
editorials that had the advantage of not being time sensitive. Meg
was right. I did have time to help her.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get started pulling
the slats down.”

The slats were only marginally harder to get
down than the Homasote. If I reached up, grabbed one and put a
little weight on it, invariably the wood would come away into my
hand. The only trouble was that the nails stayed behind. So Meg
pulled down the slats, and I went along behind with the stepladder
and a hammer and pulled the nails out. We were about an hour into
that process when Meg’s oldest, Jeremy, appeared in the doorway
with a couple of his friends.

“Hey, Mom, we’re kind of hungry.”

“Sorry, Jer. The kitchen’s out of order at
the moment, but if you and your friends want to pitch in and haul
this stuff out to dad’s trash pile, it would speed up the process,
and you could get something to eat.”

I thought Meg was asking a bit much, but the
boys must not have had anything more pressing to do, because they
pitched in, piling slats onto the larger chunks of ceiling and
dragging them out to the barn.

“I didn’t think they’d do it,” I said after
the three had disappeared around the barn.

“Oh, they’ll do anything for food,” Meg said.
“Anyway, they wouldn’t be hanging around here if they had anything
better to do.”

After a makeshift lunch, Meg and I jumped
into Tom’s truck and headed to the local building supply company
for sheet rock, screws and caulk.

“Um, Meg?” I ventured on our way home. “Do
you know how to put this stuff up?”

“I saw them do it on
This Old House
,
and I asked Scott about it when he was working on our barn. It’s
supposed to be really easy. You cut the wallboard, screw it up and
then caulk around the edges. When you paint it the caulk blends in,
and you can’t tell it’s not all one piece. Simple.”

Famous last words
, I thought to
myself. I was having doubts about our ability to accomplish this
within the required time frame, to say nothing of making it look
okay. Yikes.

At 11:30 that night when Tom walked in, I was
flat on my back six feet in the air on a plank of wood balanced
between two folding ladders. I was holding a piece of sheet rock in
place with my knees while I secured it in place with sheet rock
screws. I placed the drill on the plank above my head and gingerly
sat up. I didn’t want to bash my head on a beam like the first time
I tried sitting up.

“Uh, where’s my wife?” he asked.

“She went uptown to buy some sandwiches. She
fed the kids earlier, but we skipped dinner. She’ll be back in a
minute.”

Tom stood looking at the ceiling. I couldn’t
read the look on his face. Either he was amazed, astounded or
really pissed off and didn’t want it to show. We’d gotten about
half the sheet rock up. None of it was caulked yet, but on the
whole I thought it was looking pretty good. The higher ceiling gave
the room an airier look, and somehow it seemed brighter, at least
to me.

“How’d you get wrangled into this job?
Shouldn’t you be getting sandwiches and Meg putting up the sheet
rock?”

“It turns out Meg’s not all that coordinated.
She needed me to hold up the sheet rock while she screwed it in,
but I can do it by myself. Why stop the whole production when we
really only need one of us to get sandwiches?”