Fatal solutions, p.3
Fatal Solutions, page 3
“I don’t know,” Dan said. “It’s such a beautiful piece it would be a shame not to have it on display in the living room.”
“It makes me a little sad to see it here instead of at Mom and Dad’s place, but I suppose I’ll get used to it. I’ll decide later.”
“Oh, speaking of real estate, Mom,” Quinn said. “I found what looks like a property deed in your name in those papers in Grandpa’s desk. I didn’t know he gave you any property.”
Ignoring Quinn, Georgeanne passed the baking dish to Dan. “Want some more?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He served himself another piece of dinner cake.
“Where is your property exactly, anyway, Mom? I can’t picture it, but it looks like it’s out east of town somewhere.”
“It’s nothing, Quinn. There’s no property out east somewhere.”
Quinn laughed. “There’s plenty of property out east.”
Georgeanne rolled her eyes. “There’s no property out east somewhere in my name.”
“There’s a paper in Grandpa’s desk that begs to disagree with you.”
“It’s nothing. And don’t be bothering your grandfather about it. His memory isn’t what it used to be. He doesn’t need you muddling things up in his brain.” She served herself another piece of Funfetti Casserole and then pointed her fork at Quinn. “Have you refilled your meds yet?”
“I was going to but…I couldn’t find the time.” That excuse sounded as weak to Quinn as it obviously did to Georgeanne.
“Now that Jake has hired more help at the diner, you should have more time, not less. You should thank him.”
“I’ll add it to my list,” Quinn said, stabbing the last bite on her plate. She saw Georgeanne and Dan exchange a parental look not meant for her to see. Quinn joked that OCD stood for Occasionally Complicated Daughter, and she knew her parents wouldn’t disagree.
“But about that property. Is that my inheritance? Did you want it to be a secret, so we don’t have a King Lear situation? Do you want me to go all Cordelia on you and publicly declare my love before I can get my share of the kingdom?”
Dan laughed, but Georgeanne snapped at her. “That’s not funny. And I told you to drop it. It’s nothing.” She shoved away from the table and started cleaning the kitchen.
Quinn recoiled as if she’d been slapped. Georgeanne rarely snapped at anyone, especially Quinn, not in all of her thirty-one years. She looked at Dan, searching for an answer to her mother’s outburst but finding none. Dan looked just as surprised as she felt.
There was no way that property deed was nothing. Quinn didn’t believe Georgeanne for a minute.
Chapter 3
The next morning before Quinn headed for work at the Chestnut Diner, she detoured into the living room to check the location of the property in Georgeanne’s name, but the deed wasn’t on the stack of papers where she’d left it on the desk yesterday. She checked the drawers and all the cubbyholes. While she was there, she rubbed a finger on the embossed cover of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and fought the urge to return it and the other books to their rightful home on the shelf.
Quinn wandered into the kitchen, trying to assess her mother’s mood. Was last night an anomaly, or was it ongoing?
“I made you toast,” Georgeanne said, handing her a plate.
“Thanks, Mom.” Whew. Anomaly. Thank goodness. She still didn’t want to come right out and ask about the deed, though. She tried a roundabout. “Hey, did you get a chance to look through the piles of papers on Grandpa’s desk yet?”
“No, I haven’t touched any of it.” Georgeanne hurried out of the kitchen without finishing making Dan’s oatmeal, abandoning her practically full coffee cup on the counter.
Quinn nibbled her toast, waiting for Georgeanne to come back. She stirred her dad’s oatmeal, then turned off the burner under it before leaving for work.
As she walked to the diner, one thought kept looping through her brain, a syllable for every step. “What’s out there that Mom doesn’t want me to know?”
* * * *
When Quinn reached the diner, Jethro the bloodhound was sprawled in front of the door as usual, while Virginia Woof sat demurely out of the way. Jethro was the unofficial, self-proclaimed mascot of the Chestnut Diner, belonging to everyone and no one. Virginia Woof was his new best friend, a Pomeranian-husky mix who looked exactly like a fox, an occasional visitor to the diner. The two of them met when Quinn took care of Gin for her owner, Hugh Pugh.
“Hey, Jethro.” Quinn stooped to give him a friendly thump on his side, then greeted Virginia Woof. “Hello, Gin. How are you this fine morning?” Gin lifted her chin and sat in a regal pose awaiting Quinn’s expected boop on her snout.
That little ritual out of the way, Quinn pulled open the diner door. She was surprised to see the Retireds already at their regular table. With the addition of Hugh Pugh to their ranks, Quinn was still getting used to their new seating arrangement at the long table in back. It used to be more like The Last Supper with Wilbur, Herman, and Bob with their backs to the wall, and Silas and Larry at either end. But now, Bob was in Larry’s place at the end, and Larry and Hugh—as the junior members of this senior group—sat with their backs to the diner, clearly the less-desirable locale. Much harder to see and be seen. Larry and Hugh were the most amenable to this hierarchy, luckily. Both had recently lost their spouses and were less interested in the comings and goings at the Chestnut Diner. They simply craved easy companionship and a reason to get out of bed every morning.
“Geez, guys,” Quinn said with a good-natured smirk. “Don’t you have houses of your own?”
“Of course we have houses of our own.” Herman, literal loveable Herman, stared at her with his trademark quizzical gaze. He always looked like he was learning everything for the first time, and making no sense of it. Like Jethro attempting the study of electronics. A Martian confronted with an abacus. A mailbox researching opera.
“Ah, Herman. Don’t ever change,” Quinn said.
The Retireds all had mugs of coffee in front of them even though the diner hadn’t officially opened for the day. Unless the door was locked, however, hours of operation meant nothing to them. They’d often sit at their table from breakfast through and long past lunchtime, pontificating, arguing, eating, greeting all the other diners, and being greeted in return. In the course of a week, almost the entire town of Chestnut Station had made an appearance of some kind at the Chestnut Diner. What else was there to do?
Larry jumped up to give Quinn a quick hug. Larry had lost his wife several months earlier, but grief still oozed off of him. He needed company and human touch the way an astronaut needed air. He broke Quinn’s heart on a regular basis, and she hugged him long and hard without really meaning to.
“Honestly. Get a room,” Silas said with fake indignation.
Quinn pulled away from Larry. “Jealous?”
“You know it, sister!” Silas laughed and winked at her.
Wilbur waggled his mug at her.
“Can’t I even put my purse down?” Quinn scolded, then noticed the coffeepot right in front of him. She offered a melodramatic sigh, then topped off his coffee. While she was bent down, Wilbur gave her a peck on the cheek.
“Thanks, darlin’,” he said in his cement-mixer voice. “Wanted to make sure you felt needed.”
“That’s so kind and passive-aggressive of you, Wilbur.” Quinn topped off everyone’s coffee.
Before heading to the back, she set the pot in front of Hugh. She rested a hand on his shoulder. “How are you doing, Hugh?”
“I’m doing okay, Quinn, thank you for asking. Taking it one day at a time. Gin helps, but I know she misses Creighton too.”
Quinn resisted the urge to say gin might help them all, and was a tad surprised that jokester Silas hadn’t already jumped in with a liquor joke of his own. Instead, Quinn said, “Gin’s such a doll. I love how she and Jethro have bonded.”
“Yeah, he comes over and spends the night sometimes.” At Quinn’s raised eyebrows, he quickly added, “Oh, I checked. He’s been neutered.”
“Haven’t we all,” Silas said.
“On that disturbing note, I suppose I should get to work.”
As Quinn headed to the back, Bob smoothed back his never-mussed movie-star hair and called, “Hey, can you make sure Jake is making an egg white omelet for me? I think he slips in whole eggs just to see if I notice.”
“Will do.” Quinn doubted that Jake would ever purposely screw up an order for one of the Retireds. Even when he made everything precisely to their specifications, they always found reasons to complain. Multiple reasons. But that never stopped Jake from taking the offending item back to the kitchen, dousing it in green chili or chocolate sauce, depending on the perceived transgression, and then carrying it right back out and serving it to them again, usually to wild acclaim and heartfelt thanks for his stellar customer service. It was a trick Quinn used all the time now too.
On her way through the dining room, Quinn stopped to nudge one of the “hitchhiker paintings” back into alignment. They were not paintings of hitchhikers, but rather painted by a hitchhiker who’d traveled through town recently on her way to art school. She repaid Jake’s kindness with art, practically life-sized renderings of scenes from the diner. There was an excellent one of Quinn carrying some trays of food, and another where she was looking pensive, leaning on the door between the kitchen and the dining room wearing her favorite apron that said, There are two kinds of people I hate: 1. People who make lists … 2. People who can’t count … 3. Hypocrites.
She almost didn’t notice the artwork anymore, except when it was askew or when Loma teased her about it. There was also a very attractive painting of Jake cooking at the stove, with a nice view of his broad back and tight butt. Loma was convinced it would bring a lot of oglers into the diner and convinced Jake to give it a prominent spot. Even though Loma was Jake’s ex-wife, she could still appreciate his many charms.
Quinn’s favorite painting, however, was the one where Jake and Rico were sitting at the big corner booth eating slabs of pie. The artist captured the twinkle in Jake’s eye and Rico’s unfortunate curls. It was natural and homey and probably accounted for the diner’s increased pie sales.
Quinn called a greeting to Jake in the kitchen as she went to clock in and grab her apron. She walked into the kitchen, dropping the neck strap over her head and tying the straps around her waist.
“The Retireds are here early,” she said.
“Yeah. They can’t get enough of me, I guess.”
“I’m sure that’s it.” Quinn repinned her name tag in the center of the bib front of her apron instead of on the left side. “Oh, speaking of always being here…my mom said I should thank you for hiring that part-timer because those twelve-hour shifts were killing me.”
“Don’t get too attached to her.” Jake flattened some hash browns on the grill, where they sizzled. “I don’t think she’s long for this place.”
“I haven’t even met her yet! What did she do?”
“Failed the diner lingo test.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. You should grade that thing on a curve.” The door chime tinkled, and Quinn moved toward the dining room, shaking her head at Jake’s inscrutable test. She’d been told it had driven several of his employees away, but she herself had aced it. A list of arcane phrases to memorize for no reason was well within her wheelhouse.
Quinn gave an inward, completely silent groan when she saw the new customer was the town’s chief of police, Myron Chestnut. She thought her groan had been completely silent, that was, until he glanced at her and scowled. Yep, he still hated her for reasons unknown. She’d asked everyone, even Rico-who-couldn’t-tell-a-lie, but nobody knew.
He clapped his bony hands on the backs of Silas and Hugh, then reached across and shook hands with the rest of the Retireds. He chatted with them until taking his favorite table in the center of the diner. Most police officers liked a seat in a corner with visual access to an entire room, but not Chief Chestnut. He wanted to be in the thick of things, always campaigning, it seemed, for the mayor’s job when he retired from the police force.
Quinn poured his coffee while he removed the Chestnut Chronicle crossword from his shirt pocket, where he had folded it precisely, creases razor-sharp.
The only thing that redeemed Chief Chestnut in Quinn’s eyes was his love of the crossword puzzle. He was an avid crossword puzzler too, like she was, but Quinn was convinced he’d drop them like a smoking hot potato, never to pick one up again, if he knew she was the one who created them. That was how much he hated her.
When she returned to take his order, she noticed once again that he was the rare bird who completed the Downs before the Acrosses. So contrary. So avant-garde. So weird.
* * * *
After the lunch rush died down, around two thirty, Loma strode into the diner, all curves and attitude. She and Jake embraced, performed their customary fake argument about Loma not being careful about her diabetes—“I need my sustenance, you know that!”—and Jake not dating enough—“How will I ever get a date when you’re always mauling me in public?”
When they were finished, Loma kissed him square on the mouth, then turned to Quinn and shouted, “Let’s go! I got on my walking shoes, and I’ve been looking forward to this secret field trip all day!” She held up one foot to show Quinn a bedazzled slip-on sneaker.
“Secret field trip? Where are you two going?” Jake asked. “And won’t those shoes be visible from space?”
“It’s not really a secret, but I didn’t tell Loma the specifics because she wouldn’t know where I was talking about anyway and she’d start asking a zillion loud questions.” Quinn looked pointedly at Loma.
“Me? Loud? And ask a zillion questions? When do I do that? Why would you say such a thing? And where are we going, anyway? Are you just tryin’ to make me curious?”
Quinn and Jake began laughing.
“Who made you like that?” Loma narrowed her eyes at Quinn and crossed her arms, hefting her bosom high—her power move.
“Get outta here, both of you.” Jake snapped a towel four feet away, but Loma jumped like it had landed.
“Is that how you treat your customers?” she said.
“When was the last time you paid for anything here?”
Loma linked an arm through Quinn’s and said, “Let’s get gone before he starts adding up my tab.”
* * * *
On the drive, Quinn told Loma about the Quit Claim Deed and her mother snapping at her about it.
“Georgeanne? I can’t picture her snapping back at a snapping turtle who’s chomping on her toe!”
“I know, right? But she did. It even surprised my dad. And then, get this…when I went to look at the deed again to GPS the roads that bordered her property, it had disappeared.”
“What’s the big deal with the property? Why does it freak her out so much?”
“I don’t know if it freaks her out exactly, but she sure wishes that deed had never made an appearance, which I don’t understand. What’s so hush-hush about her dad giving her a piece of property anyway?”
“You’d think she’d appreciate it.” Loma glanced around the empty fields surrounding them. I’d love a little plot of land out here.” Loma struggled against her seat belt to angle her ample torso toward Quinn. “Maybe it was supposed to be a surprise for you. If your parents never built a house or developed the land, maybe they wanted you to.”
“Maybe. That’s what I said too.” Quinn thought that was a real possibility. Maybe she’d ruined their plan by finding the deed. After all, she was fairly certain she’d ruined everything else with her OCD. Her parents worried about her constantly now. Maybe this was just one more thing. “But I would have thought my dad would have theoretically been in on this plan, but he looked as surprised as I did.” She slowed down the car. “I think there’s a pull-off coming up soon. I think we’re close.”
“Close to what?” Loma looked out at the emptiness.
“Close to my mom’s property. I remembered it was between County Roads 34 and 68 on County Road DD—”
“Double D?” Loma hefted her bosom again.
“When we were in high school, we thought it was hilarious to call it Boob Boulevard.”
“Memorable at least.”
“Ah, here it is.” Quinn veered across the yellow line and off the road at a large turnout on the opposite shoulder.
“This is it? Where are we?”
“This is the edge of Camp Chestnut.”
Loma craned her neck trying to see whatever it was she was supposed to be seeing. “Where Boy Scouts make lanyards? Fat camp? Outward Bound Adventure fifteen miles from town so it’s not too scary?”
“None of the above.” Quinn got out of the car. “Camp Chestnut was a Japanese internment camp during World War II.”
“Oh my.” The smile slid off Loma’s face as she stepped out and met Quinn at the front of the car.
Pointing a finger, Quinn said, “That’s the only original building left. An old guard tower they restored. The rest of the buildings were torn down in the fifties.”
Loma shaded her eyes and looked at the top of the guard tower where Quinn had pointed. “Did you guys come out here on school field trips?”
Quinn shook her head. “There was barely a passing mention of it. I remember asking Mom and Dad about the guard tower whenever we’d drive out here, but they just said it was a guard tower. I assumed there was an old jail out here. I made up this whole story in my head about it, like a territorial prison from the eighteen hundreds.”
“Did your parents not know, or did they just not want to say?”
