The Trouble with Tulip (32 page)

Danny walked down the long hall surrounded on all sides by teenagers. This Moore City high school was a lot bigger and newer and fancier than Mulberry Glen's modest little one where he had gone yesterday. Today he was on an errand for himself, not Jo, procuring the job of photographer at their upcoming Homecoming dance.

He had already presented his bid to the student council, been offered the job, and signed the papers on the spot. That's what he liked about students; they didn't waste a lot of time. Now he just had to find his way back through this maze of hallways and he would be on the road to home. As he went, he read some of the posters they had hanging on the walls:
If you can dream it, you can become it
, one said.
Imagine the possibilities and claim your future
, declared another.

Yeah, right.

Danny wondered if anyone ever thought about those posters and what they were teaching the children. Lofty hopes and ideas were good, he supposed, but what happened when the dream didn't match the reality? “If you can dream it, you can become it?” Says who? He had dreamed it for years and years—not to mention worked his tail off—and he still hadn't become much of anything. His whole family was a study in unrealized dreams, for that matter, from his mother with her failed family band to his sister who wanted to be a professional stage magician and instead spent her time doing kid's birthday parties for chump change.

Danny was starting to think he never would be a successful photographer, one who did more than hold up rubber duckies and take snapshots of babies. Even this dance he had gone to so much trouble to secure would be a miserable night of cocky guys, self-conscious girls, raging hormones, and teenage angst. Danny could think of a few better ways to spend an evening.

Feeling fully miserable by the time he left the building, he didn't even want to answer his cell phone when it rang. It was Jo, probably calling to see when he'd be back so they could go visit the two ladies.

Somehow, he just didn't feel up to it right now.

“Hello?” he said, trying not to sound preoccupied and distant.

“Are you still in Moore City?” Jo asked breathlessly.

“Yeah.”

“Super. There's an errand I need you to run.”

Sure enough, Simon made it back to the house before Wiggles had even stirred. He quietly put the keys in the tray, took care of the money and the note, and then changed from his suit into more comfortable clothes.

He needed to talk to Edna.

Trying not to make much noise, he threw together a quick breakfast sandwich in the kitchen, and then he went out back to see if the paint job had dried on the stolen bicycle. It had. It looked a little lumpy, but it would do.

He climbed on and took off, finding the road to the gas station pay phone much quicker via bicycle than when he had gone on foot.

Once there, he parked the bike, climbed off, and made the call. He was running out of change, so this time he decided that he would give it three rings and if she hadn't answered by then, hang up. There was no need to leave another message.

He dialed the number, feeling his heart soar in his chest. This was going to work out fine, he just knew it. Edna would come to Florida and the two of them would make a new life for themselves.

“Hello?”

Simon hesitated, knowing the voice was not Edna's. It sounded like the same person who had answered the phone the other day. This time, he spoke in his normal voice rather than trying to disguise it.

“Is Edna there?” he asked.

“I'm sorry, no,” the woman said, sounding strange. Who was she?

“Can you tell me when you expect her back? I left a message on her machine.”

“Um,” the woman said, and suddenly Simon wondered if this was his niece, Sally, in town for a visit with her mother. He couldn't imagine who else it could be. “Do you have some business with Edna?”

“Yes,” he said, “business,” and then suddenly his heart was in his throat. Was something wrong? Had Edna become sick or hurt—or arrested? “Is there something wrong?”

The voice at the other end hemmed and hawed for a moment and then spoke.

“I'm sorry, but Edna Pratt passed away. She had an accident.”

“An accident?” Simon demanded. “When?”

“Sometime last Friday night. They…um…found her dead Saturday morning. She had fallen and hit her head. I'm working for her daughter this week, trying to put her affairs in order. Is there a message you'd like me to pass along to her?”

The pounding in Simon's head was so loud he couldn't even hear what she might have said next. In shock, he hung up the receiver, one thought crowding out all of the others:

Edna was dead.

His sister was dead.

Blindly, he got on the bike and started pedaling, pedaling as fast and as hard as he could. He didn't even know where he was going, but after a while he found himself at the beach, where the sidewalk ended in sand.

Dropping the bicycle there, he stumbled out toward the water, finally collapsing into a sobbing heap near the tide line.

Edna was dead, and he knew what happened.

She hadn't had an accident. She'd had
too much
, just like their mother. Life was too much.

Edna had killed herself.

Simon closed his eyes and pictured Edna as he had seen her Friday night, the night everything went wrong.

“I'm going to the police, Simon,” she had said. “I just want to give you fair warning.”

They had fought about it, long and hard.

But she was adamant. She'd already spent the afternoon cleaning house, literally and figuratively, putting her things in order before she went to the cops and revealed all. When Simon finally understood that all the arguing and pleading and begging in the world couldn't change her mind, he asked simply that she wait as long as possible before she called them.

“Noon tomorrow,” she had said. “That should give you enough time to get away. I can't wait any longer than that.”

“But, Edna, don't you love me?” he had demanded, tears in his eyes. It wasn't just that all of their hard work would be for naught, or that he had to kiss almost half a million dollars goodbye. It was that his sister, his own blood, was turning on him.

“Yes, I love you,” she had said, tears in her eyes as well. “But this is something I just have to do. I can't live a lie anymore.”

In the end, Simon realized now, she couldn't do it after all. Rather than turn herself in, rather than rat out her big brother, Edna had taken the easy route and killed herself.

Just like their mother.

Simon sobbed, big gut-wrenching tears he had never cried in his life. He would miss Edna more than he'd ever missed his father or mother. Most of all, he would miss knowing she was
there
, that somewhere in this empty world where everyone was only out for themselves and what they could get, he would miss knowing he had someone who loved him.

“Why, Edna?” he cried, his voice lost in the swell of the waves. “Why?”

He curled into a ball and cried, crying for every hurt he'd ever felt in his sixty-two years of life. Finally, when he had cried himself out, when he couldn't cry anymore, he simply lay there on the sand, watching the sea gulls, understanding now why the money had remained in the bank, untouched. It was his now, free and clear.

He'd give it all away tomorrow if only that could bring her back.

Jo felt like an idiot. The call with the jeweler was still so fresh on her mind that when the next call came, she just figured it was another business matter. It wasn't until the man reacted with such shock to the news of Edna's death that Jo realized it might be Simon, the man everyone was looking for.

The phone had gone dead, so she hung it up and pressed star sixty-nine. Unfortunately, it said that the call could not be identified because it was from out of the area. Frustrated, Jo hung up the phone and ran to the kitchen, replaying the messages on the machine. He said he had left a message, and sure enough, it was there.

This is a church call
, the same voice said.
It's a brush, right? We'll talk
.

Such a strange message. Jo remembered the conversation she and Danny had had with the innkeeper of the Palace and all of the crazy con game terms that guy had used. She wondered if he could decipher this message for her now.

Jo wanted to pay the man a little visit. Before letting Chewie into her spotless car, however, he needed a bath. She brought him into the bathroom and washed him in Edna's tub with some of Edna's leftover shampoo, something that would have worked fine had the dog not chosen every minute or so to brace himself and shake furiously. By the time she was finished, there were water droplets on every single surface of the bathroom and her clothes were soaked.

After giving the dog a thorough towel drying and then a quick few minutes with a blow-dryer, Jo took a few minutes to wipe everything down. She would have to stop at her house for a change of clothes, but then it was on to the Palace for some help.

“Come on, Chewie,” she said, grabbing her keys and the answering machine. “We're going for a ride.”

Danny had a bit of trouble finding the jewelry store. The place was tucked away on a side street, a little hole-in-the-wall he drove past twice before spotting.

Once he found it, he still had to park, which took another ten minutes. Finally, he got to the store, went inside, and asked for the order for Edna Pratt.

“That'll be two hundred and fifty dollars,” the man said, reaching under the counter for a manila envelope and then handing it over.

Danny swallowed hard and dug out a credit card, hoping very much that someone would pay him back for this from Edna's estate. This was two hundred and fifty dollars he could not afford to lose.

“Plus tax,” the guy added. “Comes to two hundred sixty-seven dollars and fifty cents.”

While he rang it up, Danny dumped out the envelope onto the counter, curious about what he was buying. Two women's pins slid out—though one was a stained and faded metal while the other was a shiny gold. Both pins were identical in size and shape, an image of a just-blossoming rose.

“I don't know why this guy pressured us to hurry and then didn't even pick it up on time,” the man said, waiting for the credit card slip to spew from the machine. “It's been ready since Monday.”