“Thank you, but I'm not really into aromatherapy, or Reiki, or Rolfing, or feng shui, or…” I stopped reading from her card because, with a tinkling of her bells, she spun away and was gone.
I glanced at her card. Moonbeam Nakamura, it said, holistic healer of mind, body, and spirit. It struck me as very odd that I'd met two people named Nakamura in one day. Nakamura was as common as Smith or Jones in Japan, but certainly it was rare in south-central Pennsylvania. Determined to find out what the connection was between Moonbeam and Professor Nakamura at the college, I dropped her card into my purse.
The air was cool and the sky was darkening when I pulled into the circular driveway in front of Ethelind's dilapidated Moon Lake mansion. The gloomy thought hit me that it was probably too early for her to have gone to bed. My only hope was to sneak up the back stairs with Fred and Noel before she heard me. When I moved in a few weeks ago, I'd thought she was leaving right away, but she stayed on-and on-and on.
Hoping to get in without attracting her attention, I tried to close the car door quietly, but the front door to the house popped open and Ethelind's shrill voice pierced the evening air. “Tori? Is that you? Are you okay? It's so late!”
“Everything's fine, Ethelind,” I replied.
“I've got the Parcheesi board set up for a game,” she called.
I marched toward the house feeling like a “dead man walking.”
CHAPTER 5
THE FIRST RAYS OF EARLY MORNING SUN STREAMED through the louvered window of my bedroom, waking me.
As quietly as I could, I went downstairs and entered the kitchen. Noel, my dainty little gray and white tabby, lay sprawled on the oaken kitchen table between the salt and pepper shakers.
“Hi, sweetie.” She rewarded me with a gentle purr for stroking her back. “Where's Fred?” I whispered. I was speaking softly because the last thing I needed was Ethelind demanding to know where I was going. It was as if I were a teenager again, having to explain my every move.
“Well! Good morning, young lady.” Ethelind's voice boomed in my ears. She stood in the doorway that led into the front of the house with one of her disgusting brown cigarettes stuck to her lower lip and Fred goofily draped over her left shoulder. “I've been up for hours,” she announced. Fred turned around and blinked twice as if he also wanted to chastise me for sleeping late.
I removed Fred from her shoulder. “He's got chronic bronchitis,” I told her. “He shouldn't be exposed to cigarette smoke.” Fred added emphasis to my statement by sneezing twice. It helped make the point.
“I've heard of people being allergic to cats, but I've never heard of a cat being allergic to people.”
“Not people, just cigarettes.”
She tossed her cigarette into the sink and ran water on it. “Good thing I'm due to leave in a couple of days.”
I'd heard that before!
I busied myself with filling the cats’ dishes with Tasty Tabby Treats. Both cats came running over, thanked me by gently winding around my legs a couple of times, then began to gobble their food as if they hadn't seen anything to eat in a week.
“Got to get to work,” I muttered, trying to sound cheerful.
“Will you be here for dinner tonight?” Ethelind asked. “I fix a damn good toad-in-the-hole.”
Toad-in-the-hole was the British equivalent of Greta's scalloped weiners. I didn't care for either. “I think I have to work late. Sorry.”
Disappointment showed in her face, and I felt bad. Well, a little bad. I vowed to spend a whole evening with her before she left-if she ever did leave.
I had dressed this morning in what I hoped was appropriate fall office attire: brown slacks, a lightweight pumpkin-colored sweater, and gold corduroy blazer. With the addition of my gold hoop earrings and a couple of chains, I thought I looked quite stylish. Even Cas-sie couldn't find anything wrong with this outfit.
The cats were in the sink playing catch with the cigarette butt Ethelind had tossed into it and didn't even glance up as I left. I'll be home early, I promised them silently as I made my escape from the smoke-filled kitchen.
When I walked into the office, Cassie looked up from a stack of papers, rubbed her forehead as though suffering severe pain, and groaned.
“What's wrong?” I asked. I hung my blazer on the back of my chair and sat down.
“This.” With each hand she waved a piece of paper at me. “Subscription cancellations. Dozens of them.”
“But why?”
The phone rang, and Cassie snatched it up. “Are you sure you want to do this, Mrs. Layman? Please don't forget we put your grandson's picture on the front page last year… yes, I know the article was about the symphony, but he was first violin… I promise you it will never… yes, I know Miss Mullins would never have… I'm sorry you feel this way…”
She hung up and glared at me. “It's been like that all morning. The Chronicle is doomed. You might have told me that the reenactment was going to be an execution, Tori.”
It had crossed my mind when I attended the first planning session, but somehow I thought she wouldn't have approved, so I had kept quiet. “Are you telling me the Chronicle is going down like Titanic, just because we cosponsored Saturday's event? I can't believe that.”
She waved another paper at me. “Here's the proof. They might have put up with something like this if P. J. had been in charge, but you… let's face it, Tori, you don't have the best reputation in town.”
I was shocked. “What do you mean? Surely, they've forgiven me for burning down the Historical Society. Everybody knows that was an accident.”
“They might say they've forgiven you, but then you ruined the Apple Butter Festival, and they haven't had time to forget that. And of course there's the matter of the clinic closing, too.”
Tears brimmed in my eyes, and I had to blink to keep them from falling out. “That's really unfair,” I mumbled into a Kleenex. “I was only helping out. And I'll kill you if you say something smarmy like, ‘who said life is fair?’ ”
To hide my distress, I pulled the cardboard box I'd brought from home out from under my desk and looked through it.
“What are you doing?” Cassie asked.
“This office is really drab. It'll look better once I hang up a few personal items.” I took a faded old photograph down from the wall above my desk. “Just look at this ugly frame. It's all chipped.”
“It's a photograph of the paper's founder,” Cassie said.
“We'll put it back up before P. J. returns.” I climbed up on the desktop and hung a framed poster on the hook. It was from the Philomathean Society's show of W. W. Denslow's children's illustrations, a real favorite of mine.
“Where did that come from?” Cassie asked.
“I had my neighbor send my stuff. Figured if I'm going to be in Lickin Creek for six months, it would be nice to have my own things here.”
After a few adjustments, I was happy with the way the picture looked. The bright green color added a cheerful note to an otherwise drab room. Before I could climb down, the door burst open and President Godlove from the college entered. Even in his sharp gray suit, cream colored shirt, and subtly striped silk tie, he reminded me of a military officer as he stood stiffly in the doorway gazing with disapproval at me.
“I've been trying to get you on the telephone for ten minutes,” he said. He stared at my desktop. “No wonder. The phone's unplugged.”
“I must have caught my foot in the cord when I climbed up here,” I admitted.
He looked up at me and shook his head.