Just Add Water (1) (14 page)

24

Allison Cuthbert, all five feet one of
her, dangled dainty feet in the tub while her almond-shaped eyes scanned
steaming copies of documents. A product of Houston’s fifth ward and the
daughter of a black, second generation welfare mom, Ms. Cuthbert came up hard,
as we say back home. A prosecutor with political ambitions, she possesses the
body of a gymnast, the beauty of a model, the professional scrappiness of an
alley cat, and a politician’s savvy. My kind of lawyer.

Zeroing in on the Baxter Brothers missive
hinting I was not what they’d call a “team player,” she asked what that was all
about.

 
I
sighed and told her. “It’s about change orders, Allison. Used to be, when the
engineering and construction industry was in its heyday, contracts were let on
a cost-plus basis. In other words, whatever it cost to complete, plus a set percentage
over that. The Alaska Pipeline killed cost-plus forever. Murdered the goose
and
the egg. After the pipeline thing,
the industry had to start bidding hard money. Actually estimating what a job
was going to cost and, in theory, sticking to it. What a concept.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Allison said.
“Like getting an estimate for car repairs.”

“Right. If a mechanic finds an additional
problem with your car, he calls you for authorization to do the extra work. In
our business we have something similar. It’s called a change order. I call it a
ticket to ride. I’ve been on projects where the change orders numbered in the
thousands. The client expects change orders, budgets for them, and usually
approves reasonable charges without much comment. It was those old dreaded
change orders, however, that got me in trouble with the Baxter boys.”

“Hetta, I’ve never heard the whole
story,” Jan said. “I don’t understand. How could
you
get in trouble? The change orders all originated in Baxter’s
home office in San Francisco, right?”

“Right. But over in Tokyo I discovered
some of the specification changes precipitating massive change orders were
unnecessary, and I naively tipped off Nippon Oil, the client’s client. Needless
to say, I was about as popular as dandruff back home. If it hadn’t been for the
Trob, they’d’a boiled me in oil. He stepped in, pulled off some miracle, and I
didn’t even get fired. Put on the back burner, for sure, but not fired.”

Allison took a sip of wine. “The Trob?
What, or who, in the hell is that?”

I told her about Fidel Wontrobski, then
spent a better part of an hour telling Trob tales.

“Sounds like a great guy,” Allison said.
“Refreshing, to say the least.”

“Oh, he’s different all right. And like I
said, he really saved my ass after the Tokyo debacle.”

Allison slid back into the tub. “Boy,
those two years in Tokyo weren’t exactly a pinnacle of happiness for you, were
they? Not only the work thing, but Hudson, the jilter. No wonder you were so
stressed out when you got back.”

I almost told Allison and Jan about
Hudson’s fingerprints the OPD had ID’d, but decided against it. No use getting
Jan all het up. She hets good. I glugged wine, and then quipped, “Oh, it wasn’t
so bad,” I flashed my finger, “I ended up with a ruby.”

My friends laughed, for they both knew
I’d bought the ruby for myself. One of Hudson’s twenty-four karat lies was he
was going to buy me a two carat ruby engagement ring. He’d hinted he had
friends in low places who could get rare, perfect Burmese stones with murky
provenances. After Hudson took a powder, I was feeling sorry for myself one day
and, on a whim, bought my own ruby ring.

“Back to our present problem, Hetta,”
Allison said, “I wonder how that Dale guy in Seattle got a copy of this letter
from the Baxter files? Not that it matters, I guess.” She took a sip of wine,
smiled sweetly, and added, “Oh, what the hell. Let’s sue the bastards.”

“I don’t really want to, but I
do
want my good name restored,” I said
in all sincerity, which prompted raucous hoots. “My
professional
good name,” I corrected.

“Of course you do,” Allison said,
all lawyerly and properly indignant on my part. “And I was joking, sort of.
Litigation will take time, be messy and probably do you more harm than good.
But,” she added, and in the dim light I swear I detected a ghostly fin sprout
between her shoulders, “perhaps if I were—on my letterhead, of course—to
request a copy of the alleged,” she shook the papers, “documents, it might get
someone’s attention. They don’t have to know that I’m not in private practice.”

She was just warming up. “I’ll also
let them know I’m holding that insulting recompense check they want you to
endorse and cash. That way they’ll know they ain’t playing with kids, here.
Their legal counsel will call and I’ll suggest a
very
discreet investigation of the entire affair before they make
any decisions that might prompt legal action. Trust me, they’ll be pissin’
their pants to return those calls of yours. Which, of course, you will refuse
to take until I say so. Tell them to talk to their lawyer.”

“You, my friend, are a genius.”

“No, but I am a respectable lawyer
and … ”

She was cut off as both Jan and I
shrieked, “Oxymoron.”

25

While the slow wheels of injustice rolled along with
Allison at the helm, I suddenly had a great deal of time on my hands.

I busied myself by submitting proposals for new projects.
Allison let me take an occasional call from Seattle, answer a few questions,
and fax requested documents. Mostly, however, I waited. I hate waiting.

Normally, time on my hands precipitates a windfall profit
for sleazy bars, ice cream parlors, Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door, and RJ, but in
my newly impoverished mode, RJ was the sole benefactor. And the timing was
ironically good, for my best buddy was failing. Fast.

As he deteriorated, our daily routine revolved around
twenty-four hour drug doses of painkillers, mood elevators, and tranquilizers.
And then there were
RJ’s
pills.

The only thing RJ would eat was Ben and Jerry’s and
Craigosaurus’s mint biscuits. He even turned up his nose at prime rib. I buried
megavitamins in his ice cream and hoped he wouldn’t spit them out. He could
flat ferret out a vitamin pill.

For a dog who required constant attention, RJ had drawn a
bum paw. He had a nurse who abhorred sickness.

The stairs became too tricky for him, so after he took a
couple of heart wrenching tumbles, I carried him both ways. And it was getting
easier to lift him, for as he dwindled on an ice cream diet, I ballooned.

With a little help, he could still go outside to do his
business, but it was becoming a trial for both of us. More often than not, RJ
would lift his back leg and fall over on his nose. Had it not been so tragic,
it would have been comical.

Unless Jan could fill in for me, I rarely left the house,
afraid to leave RJ alone unless he was in a drugged slumber. Even then, in case
he got up and lost his bearings, I locked him in the kitchen—oh, the
guilt!—where I’d moved his daybed into a sunny corner.

When I was home, RJ wanted to be where I was. All the
time. If I left the living room to get a drink of water, he tried to follow and
would end up hurting his leg. So I carried him, from room to room, all day
long. I got to the point where I waited until the last possible minute, or
until his drugs kicked in, to go to the bathroom. We were both exhausted, both
hurting.

But I was the human. I knew what was going on. RJ would
sometimes gaze at me in pain and question, his big brown eyes asking, “Why do I
hurt? Why can’t you make it stop?”

And I could.

But the decision was beyond me.

Dr. Craig, bless his heart, made it for me.

* * *

I carefully carried RJ down the
stairs that last morning, placed him gently on his warmed electric blanket on
the couch and covered him with a throw. His tail thumped weakly as I kissed him
on the nose. The knockout pill I’d given him earlier had kicked in and he soon
drifted into a drugged doggy dream world where, judging from his movements and
noises, he was still a pup chasing an elusive postal employee. I made a note to
get some of those pills for myself.

Jan brought in coffee and we sat
quietly, each lost in our own grief, until Dr. Craig let himself in the front
door.

“Is he asleep?” Craig asked.

I started to say yes, but the sound
of Craig’s voice roused RJ enough for a tail thump. Craig sat down on the couch
with RJ between us, gave him an ear scratch, and my dog went back to sleep.

“Rough night?” Craig asked.

“No, he slept real good for a
change.”

“I meant you, Hetta.”

I nodded numbly. “Pretty bad.”

Jan burst into tears and headed out
the back door.

“Are you ready, Hetta?” Craig
asked. At the sound of his voice, RJ stirred again and licked his vet’s hand.
Tears sprang into Craig’s eyes. “Do you want to leave?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He quickly tied off RJ’s
back leg with a length of surgical tubing, slipped a preloaded syringe from his
pocket, removed the casing, and inserted the needle into a large vein in RJ’s
leg.

RJ sighed, and it was over for him.
His humans, however, were left with a big empty space he had filled in our
lives.

“Hetta, go home,” Jan demanded.
“But first take a shower, wash your hair, and put on something besides that
crappy old kimono. You look like hell.”

I poured myself another glass of
wine.

“I mean it, Hetta Coffey. You can’t
stay here anymore. I’m evicting you. You’ve got to clean up your raggedy assed
act and put it on the road. What have you been doing all day, watching TV?”

“Naw. Too many dog food
commercials. What Madison Avenue genius thought up using dogs to sell cars, I
ask you? Or toilet paper? Do you have
any
idea how many ads have dogs in them these days?”

“No. I don’t. I do not sit around
counting canine commercials. I have a life. You need to get one, too. And
frankly my dear, your roots are showing.”

“I have no roots,” I whined. “No
dog, no job, no money, and my house is being sold out from under me in three
weeks. I’ll be homeless. Living out of a shopping cart. And double frankly, my
dear, I don’t give a damn. I don’t want to see my house ever again. It’s too
empty and lonely.”

Jan planted her hands on her hips
and glared at me with disgust. “Well, you have to,” she spat. “I’ve endured
almost a month of your . . . despair. I miss RJ, too. I grieve for him. But
he’s dead and you’re not. Although right now I’m tempted to kill you myself.
I’ve had all I can stands, I can’t stands no more. One of us has to move, and
it’s you.”

“Gee, what did I do? Why are you so
mad at me?”

“Don’t play dumb
and pitiful with me, Hetta Coffey. Today was a nightmare, a nightmare I tell
you.”

I gave her a two thumbs down. Not
since the ‘40’s British flicks has anyone successfully employed a line like, “A
nightmare, a nightmare I tell you.”

Unfazed by my unsolicited critique,
she continued to rail. “I couldn’t get a damned thing done at the office today.
Would you like to venture a guess as to why?”

I shook my head and took a gulp of
wine.

“Because, Sorrypants, I was
fielding
your
crap. I understand why
you had
your
phone calls forwarded from your house to my apartment, but
why, in God’s name, did you then call forward everything to
my
office today? All I’ve done all day
is take messages for you, and I couldn’t even call you because I got myself!”

“Ain’t modern technology a
wonderful thing? I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” I whimpered.

“Dammit, you are going to.”

Jan reached into her briefcase and
waved a handful of pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT SCREWING AROUND sheets. “The
neighbors called. You didn’t pay your gardener, he quit, and the yard looks
like hell.” She threw the message in my lap.

Crushing it into a ball, I launched
it across the room, through a basketball hoop hanging on the bathroom door.
Nothing but air. “Let the new owners worry about it.”

“I think
not
. Your real estate agent called. If you don’t get over there and
make the place presentable, the new owners are going to send in some
professionals and charge it to your escrow account.”

“Let them eat
weeds.”

“Your mother
called. She wants you to come home.”

“I don’t have
the energy.”

“We’ll go
together.”

“I’m busy.”

“She said she’d
fry okra.”

“When do we
leave?”

Jan smiled. “That’s
more like it. Now, for cryin’ out loud, take a shower and pull yourself
together.” She snatched the wine bottle from me and threw a clean towel in my
face. I reluctantly climbed out of bed and started for the bathroom. Then I
remembered something.

“Oh, Jan, you
got flowers today. They’re in the kitchen.”

“Who’re they
from?”

“I didn’t look
at the card.”

“Boy, now you’re
really scaring me.
You
, Miss Nosy
Britches, didn’t look at the card?”

I shrugged. I have to admit, I’m
slipping. I’ve been known to steam open “Occupant” mail. And the demise of the
telephone party line? I considered that a great tragedy.
 

Jan tromped to the kitchen to check
out her flowers. I heard tissue paper rattling, then water running. When I
stepped out of the bathroom all scrubbed up, she handed me a vase of daisies
and roses. “Actually, these are for you.”

“Really? Flowers for me? Maybe
someone thinks I died.”

Jan handed me the card. I was
nonplussed, for the flowers were from Bob “Jenks” Jenkins. “Did you put him up
to sending me flowers? Posies for the pitiful, something like that?”

“No, I did not.”

“Fancy that,” was all I could say.
Maybe, just maybe, that Bob person wasn’t so bad after all. Gosh, since he sent
me flowers, maybe I’d even call him Jenks. I’d call tomorrow, thank him.
Suddenly I felt better. I was clean, I had the possibility of a new friend
and
a trip to Texas. My horizon
lightened, slightly lifting a month of heavy sorrow from my heart.

I put down the flowers, picked up
Jan’s hair dryer and tried to fluff up an overdue clip. Examining my roots, I
saw that Jan was right and that my spirits weren’t all that needed lightening.
A call to René le Exorbitant was definitely in order. Then I’d go back to the
house and get things in order there. As I dialed my overpriced hair guru, I
caught Jan smiling.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Bullcrap. What’s so humorous?”

“Nothing. I’m
glad to see you
doing
something.”

“Yeah, well
don’t count your chickens before they pack. I ain’t gone yet.”

Jan picked up a
suitcase and began throwing my stuff in it. “Oh, yes you are.”

Ain’t friends
fab?

* * *

I turned the front door key, took a
really deep breath and stepped into the foyer’s dead air. Although sun bled
through the living room mini blinds, gloom pervaded the atmosphere. The only
thing missing were black dust covers, bunting, and perhaps a dirge. No,
something more was missing. I didn’t hear the high whine of my alarm’s warning
signal.

Throwing open the closet door, I
found the alarm turned off. Had I been so upset after RJ died that I had
forgotten to set it when Jan and I left for her apartment? Or had the real
estate people been here and neglected to reset the alarm? My heart skipped a
beat. Had the house been sitting here for weeks, unprotected?

I checked out the living room,
barely able to look at the sofa where RJ died. Fighting back tears, I walked
from room to room. Everything was as I’d left it, only dustier. My wilting
plants seem to glare at me.

Upstairs was fusty, so I opened all
the windows and doors and went out on the hot tub deck for some fresh air. I
half expected RJ to come bounding from behind the orange tree, up the stairs
and into my arms.

I inspected the hot tub water, saw
the filtration system had worked perfectly, then turned the controls to HEAT so
Jan and I could have a soak after dinner. But before she arrived, I had stuff
to do, so I channeled my energy away from grief, into action.

Mama says I have what she calls
“bounce-ability,” and I put it in full gear. In no time I had arranged for
storage space for those items I didn’t want to sell or give away when I
returned from Texas, touched base with my lawyer, Allison, on the Seattle
thing, bribed my gardener to return, had the alarm people change my code, and
called my real estate agent to share it with her. All this activity enlivened
me. Except for the odd sad moment when I ran across a squeaky toy or a can of
dog food, I was getting back to being Hetta.

I’d worked myself into a fairly
good mood by the time I got to the item on my TO DO, AND I MEAN IT list
reminding me to call Jenks Jenkins and thank him for the flowers. After four
rings I heard, “Hunhnm.”

“Uh, Jenks?”

“Yes.”

“This is Hetta Coffey. I called to
thank you for the flowers. They were beautiful and really helped to cheer me
up.”

“Oh, yeah. Good.” Silence.

“Did I wake you?” It was one o’clock in
the afternoon.

“Kind of. I was in the middle of a
nooner.”

What?
“Oh, well, then,” I stammered, “sorry to disturb you. Bye.”

“No problem. Bye.”

I hung up and stared at the phone.
A
nooner
? What kind of kook tells a
woman he’s in bed with another? Miffed, I stomped upstairs, determined to throw
off my chagrin with some power packing. But my anger died in a hurry, replaced
by a tingle on the back of my neck. When I opened my closet door to get a
suitcase, I saw my clothes, all of them, on the floor.

Backing away in surprise, I fell
against the bed, and like I had when I was a little girl, jerked my feet up so
the boogieman couldn’t grab them from underneath. While trying to catch my
breath I reached for the phone and called Jan.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“My clothes. They’re all on the
floor.”

“What do you want
me
to do? Come over and pick ‘em up?”

“No, Jan. I wanted to know if you
knocked them down.”

“Hetta, I told you to lay off the
wine. Now cut the crap and get packed so we can leave for Texas tomorrow.”

 
“You don’t understand. All of the clothes in my closet are on the
floor. Like someone threw them there.”

“Oh, shit. Anything else?”

“Not that . . . my jewelry box!
It’s not on the
tansu
chest. And the
house alarm, it was off.”

“Hetta, call the cops. I’ll be
there right after work. Before, if you need me. Call them right now and get out
of the house until they arrive.”

I called 911, but didn’t leave. All
I could think about was my grandmother’s cameo, the one piece of jewelry I
treasured. I went back to the closet, rummaged through the pile of clothes with
shaking hands and found my silk Victorian blouse. The cameo was pinned to the
high collar. Cradling the brooch, I fought the urge to run and stiff-kneed it
down the stairs. All nerves aflutter, I flung open the front door and melted
onto the porch steps to await the OPD.