Chapter 10
Ace knew he was hiding in his office and home.
He wasn’t sure that he wanted a mate. However the way things were going, it looked promising that he’d find one soon.
Since he lived and worked from the same building, he was doing a good job of keeping himself hidden away from potential mates.
Smiling to himself, he wondered if she’d just pop up at his door some day and tell him he was being a fool.
Picking up the phone when it rang, he closed his eyes when he realized it was Mrs. Murphy again.
“Hello, Margaret. How are you?” She told him that she was just fine and dandy, but needed to talk to him about the upcoming summer. “It’s still several months away yet, and we’ve not even gotten ready for the winter holidays. What could have you wondering about the summer so early?”
“That pool is terribly big. That means that kids will be screaming their heads off and I’ll be able to hear them.
” Her home was a good ten miles from the pool, and he told her that.
“I can still hear them. They get to screaming out their fun, and it drives Poky crazy, too. I can’t have my favorite person in the world having nightmares because you decided to upgrade the pool without telling me.
You know that I wouldn’t have approved.”
“The council did, and it was voted on about six months ago now. I believe you might have been to the meeting and did voice your concerns.” She’d told them that she’d not be on the committees anymore if they outvoted her.
“I thought you told us then that you weren’t going to have anything to do with it if we decided to put in a larger pool. ”
“I’m not having anything to do with it. I’m telling you right now that I want you to go back to the original size.
It was bad enough that those kids were yelling and screaming back then.
But now there’ll be more of them, and they’ll drive me over the edge.
My concerns should count for something, shouldn’t it? ”
“It does. But you were outvoted. It was fair too. You were the only one who didn’t want to enlarge the pool area and we took that very seriously.” She huffed at him.
This was a weekly call for him. Sometimes he’d be able to tell her that she’d been outvoted again and again, and she’d hang up on him.
Today, she was in a talkative mood and was giving him all kinds of reasons that the pool shouldn’t have been enlarged.
She even went on to say that the lifeguards were too young to be saving people’s lives and that they had to go.
“Mrs. Murphy, I hear what you’re telling me, but the point is that the pool has been enlarged and will be filled by the last part of April so that it will be ready for the Memorial Day festivals that are coming up.
” She said that was another thing that she wanted to talk to him about, the parade.
“The parade has been going on since well before I moved here. To me, it’s a done deal. ”
“I don’t like all that noise.” She wasn’t anywhere near where the parade was going to be, so he didn’t understand that either.
“All those kids again. Do you know how much better this town would be without kids running around all the time? I can tell you that with one word. It would be fantastic. I don’t like them running around and getting into trouble all the time, either.
When you give them too much, they’ll always want more. ”
“Mrs. Murphy, we need children so that our lines will go on.” She said that she wished that she were the last of her line. “I’m sure you don’t mean that. What would you do with your grandchildren if they suddenly decided not to come and see you anymore? That would be just terrible.”
“They don’t now and I like that just fine.
” He had a feeling that this was where all this was coming from.
That her grandkids didn’t come to visit anymore.
“What do you think is going to happen when they want to join in all that noise around the pool? You’re going to make me out to be the bad guy when I tell them they can’t make any noise at the pool. ”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” She said that he should be telling her that the pool will be closed up forever.
“I’m not going to tell you that. You know as well as I do, there isn’t much for kids to do here in the summer months, and this will be the perfect place for them to have some fun.
There will be lifeguards there, too, that will be old enough and qualified enough to make sure they’re playing well together and that no one gets hurt. ”
“You just wait and see. Someone is going to go down there and poison that pool so that nobody can use it.” He asked her if she was threatening the pool. “You’ll never know it was me if you don’t see me.”
“Since you just admitted that it was going to be you, I’m going to have you arrested if anyone gets sick for any reason at the pool.
” She blustered on about how the kids were the ruination of the world and that she couldn’t stand them.
“Then I don’t know what to tell you. You can’t hear them from your home, and the pool will be watched all the time, so that you can’t get to it.
I’m going to install cameras too, so that if anything happens, then I’ll have proof that it was you.
I can’t believe that we’re having this conversation.
I’m calling your daughter right now and telling her what you said to me. ”
“You will not. I’ll tell her that it was all lies to make it so that my vote doesn’t count. She’ll believe me, too.” He asked if she was the one with the grandkids. “She has three of the mongrels. Worse kids you’d ever want to meet.”
“Why? Because you deem them so? I bet they’re great kids and are only having fun. My god woman, do you hear what you’re saying about your own flesh and blood?” She said she’d been saying that for the last five years. “I’m betting that’s how old the oldest is, too.”
“No, he’s seven. But he’d been so little that he didn’t know how to whoop things up alone. Now that he has two more siblings, he’s the worst of the bunch of them. Even my son had three kids. His aren’t any better.”
“I bet that Christmas at your house is a lot of fun.” She told him that if they behaved, it was quite nice. “I just bet that it is. Do they stay long? I’m betting the moment that the meal is over, they’re out the door.”
“We don’t have a meal. They come here, we visit, and they leave.
Just the way I want it. If they bring me a gift, then that’s all right too, but I don’t cater to their needs by giving them anything.
I hand them a five-dollar bill, and that’s the end of it.
I don’t want any kind of paper messing with my house.
I have it just the way I want it.” He could imagine that kind of party, too.
No one would say a word for fear of bringing down the wrath of Grandma.
“They know better than to bring them around when I have to put up with them, too. I won’t have it. ”
He’d gotten so sidetracked that he didn’t remember why she’d called.
Looking down at his notes, he realized that they’d gotten off topic about the pool, and he wasn’t going to remind her of what they’d been talking about.
He didn’t have a grandma and surely didn’t want one like Mrs. Murphy.
She was a bitch. And a terrible person as far as he was concerned.
Telling her that he had to go, he had another call, she told him to watch his back.
She was nearly seventy years old and he’d bet anything that anyone around her watched their backs.
He wondered what it was like to have her as a neighbor.
He’d bet that she was out measuring their lawns for the right height.
Even though they didn’t have that kind of rule around town, she’d be the one enforcing it if there had been one.
Picking up the phone, he decided to call Peggy Murphy.
Peggy was Mrs. Murphy’s granddaughter, and she’d bet that she’d heard it all. All he was going to do was tell her what her grandmother had said and get her opinion of what was going on. As soon as she answered the phone, he knew that something had gone wrong. He asked her if she was all right.
“Yes, I’ve been dealing with my grandma today.
She’s got a burr up her butt about the pool again.
I’m sorry if she’s called you complaining.
I’m actually looking forward to the pool being opened this year.
” He’d always liked talking to Peggy but had never met her.
Now, if she were his mate, that would be just grand.
She was about the nicest person he’d ever talked to.
“She wants me to take her to the grocery store, but I don’t have the car today.
My brother borrowed it. She won’t allow him to go for her because it’s a woman’s job.
I don’t know why he can’t pick up her peanut butter and jelly that she wants. ”
He told her everything that was going on with her grandmother. She was taken aback by what she said and told him that she’d have a talk with her. Not that it would do any good, but she’d talk to her all the same.
“I’d put up the cameras if I were you. There is no telling what she’d do if she got the chance.
She’d have to walk there because no one will allow her to ride with them but me, and I’m getting to the point where I can’t stand to be around her either.
The things that come out of her mouth make me sick.
” He didn’t expect her to say anything like that and was surprised.
“She’s going to find herself in a nursing home if she doesn’t start acting like a human being instead of the monster that she is. ”