“Alfred Peterson, where on earth are your pants?” a voice said behind me. It was Charlotte coming from the small kitchen at the end of the main hallway, where she’d gone to put the kettle on for tea. The room rental came with access to the communal kitchen.
“In the gentleman’s lavatory,” Mr. P. said with a slight superior edge to his voice.
“Apparently you left your common sense in there, as well,” Charlotte retorted. She frowned at him, hands on her hips. Even in flats she was an inch taller than I was, and she had the posture and steely glare of a high school principal, which is what she’d been. “What on earth are you doing in the middle of Sarah’s class as naked as the day you were born?”
“This is Eric’s art class, ‘Sketching the Human Form.’” The old man held his head high, chin stuck out. “Sammy couldn’t make it so I’m the model. I may not be a spring chicken but I’ve still got it.”
Charlotte’s mouth twitched and I realized she was trying not to laugh. “Be that as it may,” she said. “There’s no reason to be putting it all on display for the rest of us. And didn’t Sam tell you? Eric’s class is in the small room next door today, and they’re drawing hands.”
“Hands?”
“Hands.”
“But the class is called ‘Sketching the Human Form,’” Mr. P. said stubbornly.
It seemed pretty clear to me that getting him back into his clothes wasn’t going to be easy.
“And hands are part of the human form.” Charlotte made a move-along gesture with hers. “So that’s all we need to see. Go put your pants on before the class gets here and the mystery’s gone.”
Mr. Peterson seemed deflated. He handed me the beach ball, while Charlotte headed back to the kitchen down the hall. “Hands? Really?” he asked me.
I had no idea but I nodded, anyway.
The old man slowly straightened up, and I realized that the washrooms were off the outside hallway, too. I thrust the beach ball back into his grasp. “Why don’t you take this with you?” I said. It at least made the front view G-rated as he headed for the door. I couldn’t exactly say the same for what was bringing up the rear.
Avery and her grandmother, Liz French, came in just as Mr. P. got to the door. He nodded as they passed. The two women crossed the floor to join me, Liz’s high heels echoing on the wooden floor. As usual Liz was elegantly dressed, in a lavender tunic over navy pants. Her soft blond hair curled around her face.
“Hello, Sarah,” she said. She handed me a cardboard box and leaned in to kiss my cheek. “I baked.”
That really meant she’d been to Lily’s Bakery.
Liz had a gleam in her blue eyes and I knew she’d have some comment about Mr. Peterson’s attire—or lack of. “Was Alfred naked, or did his suit just really need ironing?”
Beside her Avery made a face. “Geez, Nonna,” she said. “That joke’s older than I am.” She turned to me. “Why was Mr. P. . . .” She paused and gestured with one hand.
“Naked as a jaybird?” Liz interjected. “Hanging the moon?”
“Sam got held up with a busload of tourists at the pub,” I said. “Apparently he was supposed to be the model for an art class. Mr. Peterson decided he’d help out by taking Sam’s place. He just got the room and the dress code wrong.”
Avery rolled her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “You guys do get that right now Mr. P. is walking all the way down the hall to the men’s bathroom, past that whole big wall of windows?” She paused, probably for effect. “You know, windows that overlook the parking lot?”
Liz gave me a sweet—and fake—smile. “Given all the cars in the lot, half the town’s probably seen Alfred’s as—”
“Assets,” I said, raising my voice to drown her out. I held out my keys to Avery. “Would you start unloading the truck, please?”
“No problem,” she said. “It’s probably not a good idea for me to stay here. I’m young and impressionable.” She headed for the door.
Liz shook her head. “She’s impressionable, and this is my original hair color.”
“It’s not even close.”
Liz and I turned.
Rose was standing in the doorway. “Do you want to know what your original hair color was?” she asked.
Liz made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “No, I do not. Like my real age, some things should not be discussed in public.”
Rose came across the floor to us. She was barely five feet tall, with cropped white hair and warm gray eyes. She was dwarfed by the neon orange tote bag over her shoulder. Rose’s bags reminded me of Mary Poppins’s carpetbag. I never knew what she was going to pull out of one of them.
“Hello, sweetie bug,” she said with a smile, reaching up to pat my cheek. “Welcome to Shady Pines.”
“Shady Pines?” I asked.
“Don’t encourage her,” Charlotte said. She’d come from the kitchen again, carrying a tray loaded with teacups, napkins and a small glass bowl filled with sugar cubes.
I hurried over to take it from her, setting Liz’s cookies on a stack of napkins, and immediately realized I had nowhere to put the whole thing down.
“She’s not encouraging me,” Rose said. “She just asked a question.” She looked at me. “I call this place Shady Pines because it’s just like living in an old folks’ home. All anyone wants to talk about is how many pills they’re taking and when they last had a bowel movement.”
Liz smirked at me. “You were warned,” she said. She turned to Rose. “Will you please come and live with Avery and me so we don’t have to listen to you talk about other people’s ailments and bodily functions?”
Rose crossed her hands primly in front of her. “Have you actually forgotten Vermont?” She looked over at me. “Liz and I shared a room when we went on a bus tour to Vermont. I seriously considered smothering her with a pillow while she slept.”
“I’m not suggesting we share a room,” Liz said, making a sweeping gesture with her hands. “I have that big house. We could probably go for a day or two and not even see each other.”
“No.” Rose shook her head vigorously. “The key to us having been friends for the past fifty years is never spending that much time together. I’m not about to ruin a beautiful friendship now.” She gestured at the long, multipaned windows on the side wall of the room. “We should open a couple of these. It’s going to get stuffy in here.”
“Is Alfred putting his clothes on?” Charlotte asked me in a low voice.
“I sincerely hope so,” I whispered. I set the tray on the floor and headed for the supply closet at the far end of the room.
By the time I had the cups set out on a table under the tall windows, the other women in the class were coming in. Avery had spread the drop cloths on the floor and was carrying in the various little wooden tables I’d collected for the class to work on. She’d set a cardboard box over by the wall. I was trying to remember what was inside when one of the top flaps, which hadn’t been folded flat, seemed to . . . move.
“Avery,” I said, making a get-over-here gesture with one finger, my eyes fixed on the carton.
She came to stand in front of me. “What?”
I pointed at the box. “Tell me you didn’t,” I said.
She shrugged. “Okay, I didn’t.”
The chance that I would have believed her was pretty much zero, anyway, but Elvis chose that moment to poke his head up out of the box and look around.
“Okay, so maybe I did,” she said. “But, c’mon, he gets lonely hanging out in the store all day.”
The cat jumped out of the box, shook himself and came to sit in front of me, all green-eyed innocence. “Don’t think I don’t know your part in all this,” I said, glaring at him and folding my arms across my chest. In the few months I’d had the cat I’d learned he wasn’t above doing his Sad Kitty routine to get what he wanted. It had even worked on me a couple of times—okay, maybe six or seven times—before I got wise. “Avery, Elvis is a cat. His life is eat, sleep in the sunshine and get scratched behind his ears.”