Chapter Twenty-Two
“Baked spaghetti.”
In time with that announcement, Clara held out the covered carrier she’d pulled from the back of her van. Zoley, who’d opened the front door of the house, automatically took the carrier from her, while Clara walked in the house, with me at her heels.
The relative restraint of the exterior of the Georgers’ house — at least compared to the Swindells’ — gave way inside to an explosion of gilt. Versailles was contagious.
Or that assessment was skewed by my reaction to Zoley’s outfit.
Her legs were tightly covered in animal print. Cheetah? Tiger? Leopard? My minimal knowledge of animal prints failed me. I thought of them as generally in the brown tones, while this print was black, silver, and white.
She wore a gauzy white top that flowed over a barely modest camisole.
As she tried to retake the lead from the foyer to deeper into the house, she passed me.
I looked directly at her right cheek.
There was makeup there, but then there was makeup everywhere on her face, though not well-blended from her neck to her chest, an area made visible by her top.
Still, I could say the makeup on her cheek was definitely less noticeable than at Thursday’s class.
“What are you—?” she tried to ask Clara, still ahead of her.
Clara’s earnest flow allowed no interruption. “Reheat this in the oven at moderate temperature. No need to use a different dish, this one’s oven safe. You can use the microwave, but the top layer of cheese doesn’t melt as well.”
“You’re those women from the dog place.” Nothing got past her. “I’m Zoley. Like Zoey with—”
“With an L in the middle,” Pammy’s voice broke in. Then she repeated the tagline altogether. “Like Zoey with an L in the middle.”
By now, I’d followed Clara to the back of the house and into a great room with two-story windows and the ceiling to match, which didn’t square with any legitimate Craftsman style I’d heard of. Zoley brought up the rear, carrying the casserole dish.
Pammy sat on a massive upholstered chaise with her outstretched legs crossed at the ankles and a glass of white wine in her hand.
She wore a wing-collared white shirt, neatly tucked into trim black slacks.
With her line usurped, Zoley had gone still.
Pammy smiled sadly at us and said, “Zoley and I have known each other so long I’ve heard that, uh, explanation a lot. Makes it easier for people to get her name. Otherwise people stumble around, can’t figure it out.”
Zoley said sharply, “Like needing to spell Swindell — S-w-i-n-d-e-l-l.”
Didn’t seem like the same thing to me, but she seemed to feel she’d scored points.
I turned back in time to see Pammy controlling what I’d swear was the tail end of a shut-your-mouth glare at Zoley.
Not what I would have expected from Pammy, as well as making as little sense as Zoley’s I-scored attitude.
Clara smoothed over the moment. “We’re so, so sorry for your loss, Pammy. We brought you baked spaghetti — all of you, since you’re here with Zoley and Bryon.”
Pammy blinked at Clara, glanced at me, returned to the food-bringer, then produced a wan smile.
“That’s so kind of you.”
Pammy took a sip of wine, but then stopped midway to returning the glass to the table beside her, staring into the middle distance.
Some women might have been uncomfortable drinking wine in the circumstances, perhaps hurriedly putting down the glass as if to deny it had been in her hand. Pammy barely seemed to know she held the stem.
During this, Zoley detoured to the other side of the room, where it met up with a kitchen. She deposited the carrier on the nearest corner of a massive island of a stone that wouldn’t dare be as recognizable as granite.
“Pammy’s not doing carbs,” she said as she rejoined us.
I bit my tongue to keep from saying something about wine having carbs.
Grudgingly, Zoley added, “Bryon might like your casserole.”
Unabashed, Clara said, “Of course he will. Men love the layers of spaghetti, meat sauce, and cheese. They hardly notice it has cottage cheese. Besides, Pammy—”
She sat on the open area at the end of the chaise and patted Pammy’s legs in those neat black slacks. She also wore dark red leather flats with a pierced pattern, which she didn’t move to give Clara more space.
Possibly not aware of it, going by her glazed look.
“—you need comfort food,” Clara continued. “It’s the best thing for you.”
“It’s very nice of you,” she said without inflection.
“It’s a small thing to do when Zoley’s taken you into her home. With the two of you friends for so long . . . Did I hear you went to college together?”
Pammy remained silent, appearing unfocused.
Clara turned to Zoley.
“Uh-huh. UK.” She looked down as she tweaked the fabric of her shirt.
“Is that where you met?”
“No. Met in the town outside of Paducah where I grew up.”
“Didn’t you grow up there, too?” I asked Pammy.
Zoley answered. “Nah. She didn’t come until high school.”
“The new girl,” Pammy said under her breath.
Zoley didn’t appear to hear her. “We became best of friends, went to UK together. It was through us the guys became friends. We thought it would be great, you know, us two couples living so close. But . . .”
She faltered, pressing her index fingers under her eyes and their fake lashes.
Tears? For Damon? For Pammy? For their relationship . . . but which their? Hers with Damon or hers with Pammy?
Pammy spoke. Still slowly, but with underlying confidence.
“You know how it is. People get busy. Schedules going opposite directions. We’d have dinner now and then, of course, but far more dinners were canceled because of Damon’s schedule than happened.
It got so it was embarrassing. That’s why we were looking for something to do together.
The dog training fit. Something scheduled, so we’d actually go.
In addition, we’d accomplish something by getting the dogs to behave. ”
Apparently, she hadn’t fully absorbed Leo’s lessons about the humans being the ones who truly needed training.
Zoley picked up, “And since Bryon paid for us, there was no way on earth he’d let us skip.”
She glanced toward Pammy, then added, “Especially not when the two of them — Damon and Bryon — started trying to outdo each other.”
“So childish,” Pammy murmured.
“They did seem . . . competitive,” Clara said innocently.
“You could say that. Idiots,” Zoley pronounced. “We talked about that, Pammy and me. But there was no talking to them. Can’t begin to count the number of times I told Bryon that it didn’t matter to me that Damon made so much more money than he does.”
Pammy smiled slightly, conveying it didn’t bother her any that her husband made considerably more money than Zoley’s.
“He must have been so driven.” Clara infused subtle admiration into her voice. “I was always hearing this and that around the county about Damon’s projects. Did he have a big one going on now?”
“Lately, he was mostly working on a few things away from here,” Pammy said. “Damon used to say the world was full of sleeping capital waiting for someone with vision to wake it up.”
Clara made a sound that could be interpreted as more admiration. I suspected it was the result of her not being able to force out words meant to convey that reaction.
“Visionaries always have detractors.” I stepped closer to the chaise. Much of the great room was bright from the double-story windows, with a shaft of light cutting across her legs. Its brightness made the shadowing of her face seem deeper. “Were there any detractors Damon encountered around here?”
Pammy’s head tipped.
“There was someone. I don’t know who. I gathered he’d been . . . unpleasant. Accosted Damon, struck him. Though Damon was not injured.” She lifted one shoulder. “I couldn’t tell the deputies any more than that.”
“I suppose they asked you if he had any other conflicts, any enemies,” I said with would-be sympathy.
“Couldn’t help them at all with that. Damon had so many business interests and he didn’t involve me in them.” She made that definitive, though her voice remained slow and sad.
“Did you know he was going out Thursday night . . .”
Her headshake ended my question. “I had no idea. I always go upstairs earlier than Damon does.” She blinked. “Than he did.”
Zoley pressed her hand to the other woman’s arm. Pammy nodded in acknowledgment of the gesture.
“Oh,” Clara said with absolute innocence. “You’re a morning person, then. So, that’s when you realized he hadn’t come in Thursday night?”
Pammy shook her head with slow sorrow. “I unwind at night and need my alone time, to prepare for the next day. It’s how I get so much done, even though I’m not an early riser.”
That cut down her time with Damon from both ends of the day.
She continued, “I was not aware Damon wasn’t home until the sheriff’s department and someone from the coroner’s office were at my front door. I was so sure they were wrong— I ran upstairs to find him.”
She pulled in a breath and Zoley repeated her patting solace.
“Of course, he wasn’t there. And now,” Pammy said, “I need to make arrangements. I hardly know where to start.”
Clara offered, “I can give you names of the best funeral homes—”
“Oh, I can’t think about that yet.”
Zoley asked, “Who were those people who said they’d call you—? You know, when you’d have to . . . decide.”
“The coroner’s office.”
Pammy’s voice was so subdued not even Clara immediately tried swimming against the tide of the widow-in-mourning mood.
A pause spread.
“What about you and Bryon?” I asked Zoley.
“I called to tell Zoley,” Pammy said.
My wondering had been about their movements overnight Thursday to Friday. But I followed up on this thread. “And she told Bryon?”
“He’d already left for work,” Zoley said.
Clara went for blunt. “You were together all night?”
“We have separate bedrooms.” Zoley said it the way someone might say they had indoor plumbing.
No alibi. For either of them.
Another pause.
“Damon was a man of action,” Zoley said abruptly, having wandered toward the kitchen island. “He truly was, while others think they are. Like Bryon.”
Another pause.
Zoley shifted her weight and the sunlight seemed to make the animal-print leggings shimmer before she added, “Bryon’s been so . . . volatile lately.”
“He’s protective of you, Zoley,” Pammy said.
“Not protective. Possessive,” Zoley responded immediately. “He was possessive. He’s become volatile about it lately. Always thinking every man is after me and he couldn’t compete.”
“You know, Zoley,” I said, my voice dropping. “I was worried about you at the last training session. You looked . . . tired.”
I let my voice rise on the last word, making it a question. An inviting question, I hoped.
The silence that followed was heavy.
Possibly with my disappointment that she didn’t take me up on my invitation.
Pammy offered another wan smile. “I told her she looked positively haggard that night. And now, I must look far worse.”
“Oh, you both look better now,” Clara said innocently.
Pammy gave her a quizzical look, before saying with emphasis, “I wish I felt better. I’m afraid I’m truly exhausted. It was kind of you to bring the casserole, but I need to rest.”
Clara didn’t try to dodge that new-widow mood.
She patted Pammy’s leg briefly as she stood, while we both produced leave-taking and condolence phrases.
With Zoley accompanying us to the front door. Clara added more detailed instructions about serving the casserole.
“Thanks for coming by,” Zoley said shortly, holding the door open.
Clara had run out of casserole-cooking tips, but she wasn’t done. As we crossed the threshold, I thought she studied Zoley’s cheek.
“It’s so good that Pammy has you to rely on, to give her a safe place to recover. To begin to recover, with the shock wearing off and the grief taking hold—”
“Sure. That’s what friends do. Bye, now.”
Before the door finished swinging closed, Zoley pivoted on one of those impressive heels and strode away.