The Witch Hitch, page 13
Mom looked back and forth between us, and I could see a worry bloom in her mind. “And that’s why you’re staying here?”
“It’s just temporary.” My words probably would have gone over better if, at that exact moment, I hadn’t remembered Seton and I saying good night last night, and the pressure of his hands on mine. “Seton doesn’t have a place to stay right now, that’s all.”
Mom’s lips turned down. “I’m sorry to hear that. That’s a sticky wicket to be in.”
A knock sounded at the door. “That’s probably Wes.” The tiny opera diva in my head tottered toward her fainting couch. Speaking of sticky wickets . . .
Mom pulled the spatula from my hand and nudged me out of the kitchen. “Go answer the door. I’ll put on a few more hotcakes. Do you think Wes’ll want some?”
Wes ate a bowl of shredded wheat every morning after he came back from the gym. “I doubt it.”
“I wouldn’t mind another helping, Mrs. Tomlin,” Seton said.
“Please call me Deb.”
On the doorstep, Wes stood alert and businesslike in a blue suit, crisp white shirt, and burgundy tie with matching pocket square. He was polished up like a kid about to receive the Best Attendance prize at school. His face drooped as he gave me a full north-to-south inspection. “You’re not ready.”
“It’s just an apron. Mom dropped by—we’re making pancakes.”
Brightness returned to his eyes. “Did you tell her?”
“About what?”
“The house.”
I hadn’t thought about the house all morning. “No—we’ve had other things to deal with.”
Embezzlers, time travelers . . .
“Well, let’s tell her. Maybe she’ll want to come along.”
He barreled past me, tripped over a box of bubble wrap on the way to the kitchen—and then skidded to a halt when he took in the sight of Django on the table, Mom with her blue hair and her spatula, and Seton standing next to her by the stove.
“Good morning, Wes,” Seton said.
“Good—” Wes shook his head as the lacrosse club logo registered. He turned to me.
I spread my hands. “Seton had nowhere else to go, so he slept here last night.”
“I thought he was staying with your mother.” He spoke as if the other two weren’t even in the room.
“Of course he’s staying with me,” Mom piped up. “Any friend of Bill’s is welcome in my home.”
Wes’s eyes widened. “Who’s Bill?”
“Gil,” I corrected.
A laugh trilled out of Mom. “Gil. Any friend of Gil’s, I meant.”
Django, eyeing me, piped up in his parrot voice, “Go. Go now.”
“Right—we should go.” I looped my arm through Wes’s. As perilous as it was to leave Mom and Seton alone together, it seemed better to get Wes away.
It was harder than I expected to tug Wes to the door, though. His legs were moving, but his eyes were fixed on Django. “Did that bird just say something to you?”
I frowned. The world had gotten so crazy in the past day, the fact that my parrot was giving me orders barely registered now. “Bird belch,” I explained. “He just ate breakfast.”
Django squawked in outrage as I shut the door behind us.
The atmosphere in the Escalade was chilly on the way to the new house. Too late, I remembered that Wes had intended to ask my mom to come along, but I’d rushed us out before there was a chance to tell her about the house. Well, maybe Seton would explain it to her. She might absorb the reality of the Havermans’ extreme largesse more easily if it came from a disinterested party. Plus, she’d seemed to take a shine to Seton.
Fingers crossed that Seton had sense enough not to talk about what had happened to him in too much detail.
At a stoplight, Wes sighed and drummed his palms on the steering wheel.
“Is something the matter?” I asked.
“Yes. The way we rushed out of your place back there, for one thing.”
“I’m sorry. Did you want pancakes? I’d assumed you—”
“No.” He blew out a breath. “You have to admit things looked awfully cozy back there. That guy, Seton, was wearing my clothes.”
“Do you mind?” I asked. “You weren’t wearing them, and mine wouldn’t have fit him.”
“Why can’t he wear his own?”
“Because the clothes he was wearing last night are in the laundry.”
“And he didn’t have anything else? What kind of guy travels with just the clothes on his back? Is your cousin some kind of hobo?”
“His stuff . . . got lost in transit.”
More steering wheel drumming. Then, “Your mother said he’s a friend of your guitar teacher, not a cousin.”
“He knows Gil, and he’s a very distant relation. I never dreamed he’d turn up without a place to stay.”
“That’s another thing. What kind of person shows up weeks early for a wedding?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, which was almost reassuring to me. Lies had started tripping off my tongue a little too easily for my taste.
“Light’s green,” I said.
He pressed the accelerator. A half a block passed before he said, “I hope you’ll show more enthusiasm about the house this morning than you did last night. My parents were a little hurt, Bailey.”
“I’m sorry—I was just so surprised.” Why was I apologizing? “A house is a big deal, Wes, and you obviously knew. Why didn’t you warn me?”
“They asked me not to.”
“But this is going to be our house—and yet you just decided to let your mother pick some old place because it once belonged to a woman who kept her out of the sorority she wanted to pledge?”
“Okay, first thing: it’s not just some old place. You heard what they said. It’s a landmark.”
“And it’s also a mess, if the pictures are anything to go by.”
“Mother’s already busy fixing it up.”
“Don’t you see how presumptuous that is?”
“No, because, unlike you, I’m focused on how extraordinarily generous it is. Do you think houses grow on trees?”
“Of course not. And it is astonishingly generous. It was just so . . . unexpected.”
“You acted as if you didn’t even care. Like it was a duplicate toaster or something.”
“Come on. I wasn’t that bad.”
He side-glanced a stern look at me. “Mad was more enthusiastic than you were.”
Oh, God. Madeleine. I hadn’t even thought about her this morning. I turned in my seat. “What happened to her? Is she okay?”
“Yes, fine.”
“How long were you two at the ER last night?”
“Not long at all. We’d barely checked in before she started to de-green.”
I gulped back an inappropriate laugh. “That’s good. Did she see the doctor?”
“No, once she faded a little, she insisted on leaving. I think she was embarrassed. You know how it is—you finally get to a doctor and your symptoms suddenly disappear.”
I leaned back against the leather seat, relieved. I doubt the doctors would have been able to detect a witch hex, but it was just as well that the process of elimination hadn’t begun.
“You were nice to take her to the ER,” I said.
“It was actually good to touch base with her. She told me why she’d left Europe early.”
I couldn’t wait to hear this. “Paris in the spring just can’t hold a candle to Rochester?” I guessed.
He smiled. “She broke up with some guy over there. Phillipe somebody-or-other. He sounded really awful. Good riddance, I think.”
And best of all, she was back just in time to participate in our wedding.
“She told you all this while you were at the hospital?”
He flipped on his blinker. Did I sense a slight hesitation? “Mad wanted to see the new house, so we drove by.”
“A midnight tour?”
“We just parked in the driveway.”
Amazing. Madeleine had parlayed a hex into a whole evening with her ex. Esme’s green spell had backfired in a big way.
I had to admire Madeleine’s crust, though. “She didn’t ask you to show her around?”
He shook his head. “That’s why she wanted to look at the place last night. She told me she’d been dying to ask if she could come tour the house this morning with us, but she didn’t want to step on your toes. Said this should be your moment.”
This time my laughter would not be stopped. “Wow—so thoughtful.”
He turned a wry smile toward me. “She’s a pain in the neck, but she can be surprising sometimes, too. It’s why she’s stayed a family friend all these years.”
I made a game show buzzer sound. “Wrong. She’s stayed a family friend all these years because of you.”
“She’s Olivia’s friend.”
“Because you’re Olivia’s brother. I wouldn’t take anything she says at face value. I doubt there’s even a Phillipe.”
He seemed astonished that I could be so cynical. “Why would she lie?”
“For the same reason I suspect she’ll be unable to stay away this morning.”
“You’re wrong. Mad was very definite about not wanting to crowd in on your moment. I mean, that was the whole point of my driving her over there last night.”
Right. The moonlight had nothing to do with it. “She’ll show up.”
He shook his head.
I threw down the gauntlet. “I’ll bet you a double cone at the Latest Scoop that she shows up.”
Wes wasn’t big on sweets, with the exception of ice cream. The Latest Scoop was his favorite place.
“I’ll take that bet,” he said.
“Good, I want pistachio and Mexican vanilla.”
He glanced over at me, puzzled.
“I’m putting in my order now,” I explained. “For when I win.”
Chapter 14
The pictures really hadn’t prepared me for the house. It looked like a mini castle in the photos, but the photos hadn’t shown how it stood set apart from its neighbors on a double lot. The yard was spectacular, with overgrown shrubs flanking a circular brick driveway. The stone was much darker in person, almost a charcoal gray.
“Like Manderley after the fire,” I said.
“Mother has so many ideas, and she’s already got workmen here. Just wait.”
It was true. Several paneled vans stood in the driveway, next to a trio of SUVs. The crowd surprised me. How many people were here?
Joan flung open the front door, welcoming us in a powder-blue suit with a flowing, floral silk scarf. “Welcome home, you two lovebirds,” she called out with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
In the next moment the catalyst for Joan’s gusto became clear: the cameras were rolling. A guy with bloodshot eyes wearing army surplus camo gear followed her out the door, a handheld camera mounted on his shoulder. He swung his lens my way as I was closing the car door. My smile froze. What was this?
Katrina popped out the door behind him. “Just act natural.” She hopped on her toes to direct us. “Natural and ecstatic!”
Katrina was a petite person, but not in a delicate violet way. In school she’d been a gymnast, and she still had the pistol quality of someone capable of running at a vault full tilt. A manic pixie forged in iron.
“Wes, move in closer,” she directed, pressing her hands together in front of her and then squaring them up like a camera viewfinder, à la Steven Spielberg. When Wes walked toward his mother, she added, “Closer to Bailey, I mean. Jerry here is helping me put a love story video together to show at the reception. This scene will be the two of you discovering your future home!” She lowered her voice and said to Jerry, “Don’t close in on Bailey’s right cheek. Blemish minefield there.”
“M’kay,” he said.
Having a guy dressed for a war zone following us with a camera made it even more awkward to exchange the usual air-kiss greeting with Joan.
Through the front door we walked into a fantastic black-and-white-tiled foyer with a chandelier the size of a refrigerator suspended from an elaborate medallion in the ceiling. The lights weren’t on, but the morning sun shining through the windows around the front door hit the chandelier’s hundreds of teardrop crystals, creating prisms of light everywhere. It was dazzling. On either side of the foyer were double doors of leaded glass—one led to a large room with dark paneling, an intricately patterned parquet floor, and a stone fireplace that seemed too large even for that spacious room. That must be the mantel from the fifteenth-century castle.
Boxes were stacked everywhere, and folding tables, and cellophane-wrapped gift baskets. Were the old owners still moving out?
“That’s the living room,” Joan said.
Actually, she was practically yelling, because the doorway opposite the living room had been sealed off with heavy plastic and tape. Looking like a white blur through the plastic, a guy in overalls running an industrial-sized machine was creating a deafening noise.
“The workmen are polishing the floors in the ballroom.”
“Ballroom?” I asked, narrowing my eyes on the plastic.
Joan put her hand on my arm. “That’s where I attended my first big dance when I was a teenager. Tricia didn’t even invite me until the last minute, when she realized Doug Haverman wanted to escort me.” She drifted off on a cloud of memory, and for a moment I had the sensation of playing a supporting role in someone else’s dream. Then she snapped to. “They swear to me the painting will be done by tonight, which means everything will be ready, set, go for Saturday.”
“Great,” Wes said.
I’d missed something. “Ready, set, go for what?”
“We’re holding the Garden Club’s silent auction here,” Joan explained. “All the boxes you see stacked around are donations. We were supposed to be having it at May Keller’s, but she called me late last night and said they had a sewer main leak in front of her house and the place is all torn up. So I told her just to bring it all over here and we’d work it out. We’ll restrict visitors to the first floor and the yard, which shouldn’t be a problem if Carlo and his men stick to the schedule Shirley and I have mapped out for them. Shirley’s in the kitchen.”
A wide staircase swept up to the second floor, and to its side was a corridor that Joan led us down. Jerry and Katrina brought up the rear.
I don’t know what I was expecting from Shirley—I guess another Joan. Instead, a stout woman in a pantsuit and cat-eye glasses attached to a silver chain waited for us. “And here’s the lucky couple!” she said when we were introduced. “You must be over the moon.”
I agreed that I was over the moon. But mostly I was staring at the kitchen, which was also piled high with boxes. “Isn’t all this stuff in here a bit of a fire hazard?”
Shirley dismissed my fear with a wave of her hand. “Don’t fuss over details like that. You’ve got big decisions to make, starting with this kitchen. Or I should say, this den—because that’s what it should be. You see, when the house was built, the kitchen was downstairs, in the basement. Some lunatic back in the twentieth century thought it would be a good idea to move it up here.”
“Some lunatic in Tricia’s family,” Joan couldn’t help interjecting.
“Of course, this room could be a bedroom, as well.” Shirley jabbed an index finger toward the floor. “You’d just have to move the kitchen back downstairs—where it originally was and still should be—knock out this closet they’ve been using as a pantry and expand the half bath to a full bath. Simple.”
Simple? That sounded like a year’s remodeling job.
“Aren’t there eight bedrooms already?” I asked.
“Never hurts to have another bedroom on the first floor,” Shirley said. “You’ll thank yourself when you’re eighty and your knees are shot.”
“We should go outside and see how the tables can be set up for the auction,” Joan said.
“And get some nature shots of the happy couple,” Katrina added.
The backyard was breathtaking. A lawn sloped gently down from the house. The property’s perimeter was lined with old maples, rhododendrons heavy with buds, and azaleas, some of which were already in bloom. An outbuilding in the same stone as the house stood to one side. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing. It looked like a mausoleum.
“That’s the old pool house,” Joan explained. “It was a mess even back when Tricia had parties there. It might make a good guesthouse someday, though.”
Donated statuary, lawn furniture, and decorative garden items had already been delivered and were scattered around the lawn, awaiting Saturday.
“We can set up chairs and tables over here,” Joan said, pacing off the area. “Even if it’s still a little chilly—I’ve hired some of those heat lamps.” She frowned at an ancient swing set in one corner of the yard. “We’ll need to get rid of that eyesore.”
“A swing!” Katrina clapped her hands together, back in Katrina B. DeMille mode. “That’s perfect for the movie. Bailey, get in the swing. Wes, you push her.”
Wes headed toward it but I dug in my heels. For one thing, the swing set was made for little kids. It was also completely rusty. “I’m not touching that thing without a tetanus shot.”
Katrina made a frowny face. Even Wes seemed to be impatient with me. Was I being a pill? Madeleine would have leapt into that swing, tetanus or no tetanus.
I needed to be a better sport. I started to cross toward them.
“Look at this, Bailey.” Joan waylaid me and gestured to three birdbaths that had been donated for the auction. “The one in the center. Isn’t it magnificent?”
It was magnificently ugly, I’d give it that. What was supposed to be a bald eagle carved into concrete formed the base. The bird had a coronet or a halo or something over its head, and that’s what the bowl of the birdbath rested on. Was this some kind of bad taste test?
I smiled, hoping that my suppressed You-have-got-to-be-kidding thoughts didn’t show in my eyes. “It’s . . . unique. But is it appropriate for a birdbath?”
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s a statue of a bird.”
“But don’t eagles kill other birds? Little birds might freak out at having their bath be on top of their scariest predator.”
