Chapter 7 #3
Jenna looked toward the clock wall where there were seven.
Every time she came across an odd or unique or particularly weird wall clock, Rosa added it to her collection—finances permitting.
But she’d padded or otherwise silenced all their chimes.
People liked to read in the cozy nooks sometimes, so other than their ticking, the clocks were quiet. She loved the ticking.
Jenna hugged Rosa’s neck. “I do have some stories to follow up on. I’m taking the car, okay? Call if you need anything.” She headed out the back door. The bell jingled, and Rosa sighed in relief.
She waited until their shared and overworked station wagon pulled away, then closed and locked the cash register and hung the CLOSED sign in the window.
Her pain was deep and pervasive. There was no single spot she could point to and say it hurt.
It lurked as if inside her bones, pulsing to life every little while and sending agony out in waves.
By the time she got to the top of the stairs, Rosa was grimacing. She heeled off her shoes, dropped her bag and keys, and shrugged out of her jacket on the way to the bathroom. Fast as she could, with hands that shook, she tipped up the ceramic fish that held her pain meds and opened the bottle.
The doc had suggested a patch. Slow release, she said. Might last longer, she said. But Rosa didn’t want a patch. How was she going to hide patches? The wrappers, the little peel-off parts? It was a small apartment. Jenna would see that stuff.
Pills were better.
The ones for the clinical trial weren’t due again until bedtime. Normal bedtime. She was going to bed now, but it was early afternoon.
The pain pill wasn’t due yet either, but she took it anyway, using her hands to cup water to her lips to help her swallow.
Then she dragged herself to her bed, shedding clothes on the way.
She kept her underpants on, grabbed a big T-shirt off the dresser, and pulled that on too. Then she crawled into her bed.
She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.
Rosa didn’t wake up until seven p.m. When she did, she smelled pizza and heard Jenna’s lightning-fast keyboard clicks. She rolled out of bed, yawning, and blinking, and checking the time. An hour until dark. She was either going to have to take her bedtime meds early or take them with her.
If they were the real thing and not the placebo, she really wanted to take them precisely on time. So she’d take them with her.
She pulled on black leggings with heavy socks over them scrunched down like had been cool during the aerobic-induced, leotard-and-leg-warmer craze of the early 1980s. “Thank you, Jane Fonda,” she whispered, “for so many things.”
On top, sports-bra, a T-shirt that read “he’s an idiot” with no iconography whatsoever, and a heavy sweatshirt over it, black of course. Her darkest shoes were purple Brooks running shoes, so that’s what she wore. She got her burner phone out and texted her friends.
Rosa: Where are we meeting?
Diane: Town parking lot in an hour.
Rosa loved that answer because she could walk there, and it would be quieter than starting up the Volvo. Besides, the poor old car had been going all day. It probably needed some rest.
Jenna was already in her bedroom. She’d left the pizza box on the kitchen table.
Rosa grabbed a slice on her way by and tiptoed out and down the steps, thinking she and her kid were like ships passing at sea.
Normally, they spent a lot more time together than they had lately.
She supposed things would get back to normal once she and her friends finished covering up Bonnie’s murder.
She took an extra pain pill with her, along with her nighttime trial meds, just in case.
It was only a couple of blocks down to the big, odd-shaped parking lot that lay behind numerous storefronts, branching out as if trying to reach them all. It was like the one behind her own store, but way bigger.
Rosa watched her surroundings and found a place in the shadows to wait. No point standing under the light. It was only a little after seven, probably too early for riffraff. Still, you couldn’t be too careful.
In five minutes, Diane pulled in, then drove slowly through the parking lot, looking for her. Rosa headed her way as soon as the vehicle stopped, deliberately making her steps brisker, her posture straighter, and her attitude healthier. She got into the front passenger side.
“Shotgun!” she said. “That’ll teach ’em to be late.”
Diane smiled at her but worry clouded her eyes. “I pray this will be over with tonight. We’ll find what we need, or what this guy wants, and end this.”
“Yeah, it does seem to keep coming back, doesn’t it?”
“I’d really like to know who this man is and what he thinks Bonnie took.”
“There’s Chrissy’s Beamer,” Rosa said with a nod at the white car pulling into the lot. Christine parked right under a light. She and Bonnie got out and Christine locked her car. Then they came over and got into the back seat of Diane’s ride.
“Hey, everyone,” Bonnie said. “I’m so sorry about all this. Again.”
“Stop apologizing.” Rosa reached over the seat to clasp Bonnie’s hand, palm to palm, up high. “We’re each other’s ride-or-die, the four of us. You know that, right?”
Bonnie nodded fast. “I do.”
“Has he contacted you again?”
“We don’t know it’s a he,” Diane offered.
“It’s always a he,” Rosa said. Her legs were aching down deep in the bones. And it had been such a short walk! She checked her watch. It was way too soon for meds. Although the oncologist had told her to speak up if she needed a higher dosage. So there must be a little wiggle room, right?
“I haven’t heard another word,” Bonnie said. “I thought I should block him, but then how would I know what’s going on?”
“No, you can’t block him,” Rosa said. “Not yet.”
“Take a left up here, will you, Diane?” Christine asked, leaning over the back seat.
Diane nodded and took the turn. “That takes us out by your house.”
“Yeah,” Christine admitted. “We can cut over from there. I just want to see if Jeff’s car is there. Because we already passed his office, and it wasn’t there. He um…forgot his phone. Again.”
“You’re not worried, are you, Chrissy?” Diane glanced up into the rearview mirror to meet her eyes. Rosa turned around in her seat to study Christine’s face, and Bonnie was looking at her worriedly, from right beside her.
“Well, at first I thought the way he kept forgetting his phone must mean he wasn’t hiding anything. I know his code. He hasn’t changed it, and there was nothing suspicious on the phone when I went through it.”
“You went through it?” Diane asked.
“Of course I went through it.” She shrugged. “Then today, just on a whim, I opened his nightstand, and there was his watch. He left that home, too. Which means, I can’t track him.”
“Track him?” Bonnie asked.
“Yeah, you know, with the phone. You just tap ‘Find My’ and anyone who’s shared their location with you pops up on a map.
” She turned her phone around to show Bonnie the app.
“We’ve always had it enabled for each other, in case of emergency,” she said.
“It would look suspicious as hell if he suddenly stopped sharing his location with me. So instead he just leaves the devices home.”
Diane shook her head slowly but kept her eyes on the road. “I don’t know. I think that’s a leap, Christine. And look, his car is at the house after all.”
They drove slowly past Christine and Jeff’s oversized, renovated farmhouse. Jeff’s bright yellow car was in its spot in the driveway.
“And he probably deserves it, having cheated once,” Diane said. “But that was six years ago, and he’s been devoted ever since. Is that all you have, forgetting the phone and watch?”
“He’s working late all the time,” she said. “He showers at the house before he joins me out at the lake house. Usually by now we’re closing up Brighton House for the summer, but this year he says it’s closer to the office and more convenient. He even said he might not close it at all.
Brighton House was what Chrissy and Jeff called their main home, by virtue of it being on Brighton Hill.
Rosa thought naming the place was pretentious AF, but she loved her friend and would never say so.
Each of them had their flaws. She had a pretty big one, keeping her imminent demise a secret from the best friends she’d ever had. And from her daughter.
“That’s still not very much evidence,” Bonnie said.
“I know, I know.” Christine grimaced, thinning her lips and shaking her head. “I just have this feeling.”
“Shit,” Rosa said, because she felt her friend’s pain.
Christine pretended not to give a damn, but they all knew how much she loved her husband.
And what was not to love? He was to-die-for handsome, had the charisma of a leading man, the charm of a prince, and the wealth of both.
But the ego blow of being cheated on had a big target in Christine, who’d been gorgeous her entire life and treated aging like her archenemy.
She would take it hard if Jeff strayed again.
Silently, Rosa congratulated herself on never tying her heart, her happiness, or her daughter to a man. But that had a downside too. A pretty big one.
Regrets, she had a bunch.
They parked at the Starlight Diner, out near the dead man’s house, where they were in danger of becoming regulars.
“We should go inside,” Diane said. “Order something, so we don’t seem suspicious.”
“We’re in our sixties, Diane,” Rosa reminded her.
“We’re the least suspicious individuals of our species.
Come on.” She got out, hating that her legs didn’t feel up to the walk, and as soon as she was outside the vehicle, she dug into her pocket for that pain pill she’d brought and swallowed it dry.
“What was that?” Bonnie asked. She’d just got out from the other side. “Are you okay, Rosa?”
“Of course I’m okay. It’s a Tylenol.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was tiny.”
“Naproxen.”
“Naproxen is blue,” Bonnie said. “It was tiny and white.”