Chapter Six --
Jenny glanced at me and then at Kenny. She had a tiny smile on her face, a knowing smile. “Sure. Come on, guys.”
We watched her walk away, the terriers trotting beside her. With time, she might let go of some of that pain. It wouldn’t happen overnight. Considering her background, it was possible that she could, with the right support, get herself through college and have a productive life, providing we could keep her safe. A lot depended on whether or not the New Jersey State Police could figure out who Hinson was, who his accomplices were, and what happened to the rest of those missing uncut diamonds.
“I think Stepfather Stevie’s been a naughty boy,” Captain Peacock announced.
“You do?”
“I do.” Kenny slid his hands around my waist and gave me a proper kiss before he continued. “He married a woman suffering from mental confusion as the result of her cancer treatment. He got her to turn over ownership of her house, which should have gone to her daughter.”
“That’s terrible. You’re not going to let the bastard get away with that, are you?” He kissed me again sweetly.
“Heavens, no.”
“Promise,” I insisted firmly. My dander was up, my feathers clearly ruffled by the thought that Steve had taken advantage of a teenage girl.
“Promise,” he told me, hand up in the air. A moment later, he tried to kiss me, but I was too riled up.
“What are you going to do about it?” I demanded, pulling away.
“Do about it? I’m going to track the creep down and see that Jenny gets what she is owed.”
“Jenny needs a lawyer, someone to protect her legal interests.”
“Yes, she does. We’ll talk to Bur. He’ll know someone.”
“Good.
“Good is right.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When are you going to start?” I wanted to know.
“I already have, Scar. I put my peeps on it before we left New Jersey.”
“Excellent,” I grinned, rewarding him with an enthusiastic kiss. When we finally came up for air, I pointed out the obvious. “You’re the best.”
“I am. Let’s head back to the house before we get carried away and find ourselves in trouble.”
“How’s that, Captain Peacock?”
“Sometimes you’re too great a temptation, Miz Scarlet. I find you hard to resist.” He tweaked my cheek with thumb and forefinger.
“In that case, I guess it’s a good thing you’ll be sleeping in the library.”
Bur was pulling out of the driveway when we returned, on his way to Tony’s House of Pizza. I found the teenager in the living room with Mr. Hornblower and the Googins girls.
“Shall we set the table, Jenny?”
“Sure.” She followed me into the dining room, marveling at the massive table and its many chairs. At the moment, Mr. Hornblower and Mrs. Blevins were our only guests, so we set the table for eight. Tomorrow afternoon, the Reinharts would need a ride from Bradley International. I’d move Jenny into Lacey’s room, so they could sleep in the Red Oak room.
“And this is the butler’s pantry,” I informed her, as we walked through to the kitchen. “We keep this area for coffee in the morning, snacks for guests, and even wine storage. Just so you know, Jen, I’ll kick your fanny out of this inn if I catch you doing anything illegal. Got it?”
“Got it. How come you never had any kids, Miz Scarlet?”
“Oh,” I shrugged off the question. “Sometimes life gets complicated. Motherhood just wasn’t in the cards for me.”
“Too bad. You would have been a good one,” she decided. “A little bossy, but good.”
Even as my eyes flashed, I realized she was teasing. That big grin on her face said it all.
“So, it’s like that, eh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Best subject in school,” I demanded.
“Science, followed by English and math.”
“Worst subject.”
“Driver’s ed.”
“Driver’s ed?” I was shocked. She seemed like a fairly competent girl. How did she miss that? I asked.
“My mother couldn’t take me on the road much, so I didn’t get to practice. I never did get my license.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
I made a mental note to check with an old colleague of mine, Bob Horshak, at the local high school. He was an industrial arts teacher and taught driver’s ed on the side. If Jenny was going to stay with us, she’d need her license, especially if we got her signed up to start nursing school in the fall. Maybe he could tutor her so she could pass the Connecticut MVD test by the end of August. I’d take her out for practice driving after Bob gave me the thumbs-up.
“Can you fill the two pitchers with water, please?” I showed her the ice machine and the wet sink in the butler’s pantry. “And then fill the goblets.”
We all hung out in the living room after dinner, chatting. Mrs. Blevins turned out to be a very funny woman, and she shared stories of her years as a botany professor in the Midwest. Mr. Hornblower was a retired businessman, who had a penchant for gardening, so they discussed the pros and cons of genetic plant engineering. Lacey and Laurel got in on the action when they introduced the subject of the Four Acorns Inn bird garden and asked Hilda to take a look at it and suggest things we could do to improve it.
By nine, my mother was ready to retire, so I accompanied her to her bedroom. She maneuvered her wheelchair into her bathroom. A moment later, I heard the whirring of her battery-operated toothbrush.
Ten minutes passed before she emerged, in floral nightgown, and I helped her into her bed before stowing her wheelchair in the corner.
“Scarlet, there’s something not right about that girl’s story,” my mother confided. I glanced down, unsure of what she meant. “She’s clearly had a loving family.”
“Why do you say that, Mama?” Curious, I handed Laurel the ball and let her run with it.
“When you observe her with other people in conversation, she’s very interested, almost hungry for it. She’s comfortable around adults, like she’s spent a lot of time with them. She doesn’t have that normal teenage desire to get away from the old fogies.”
Time to share a little of Jenny’s story with her. When I got to the part about Stepfather Steve, Laurel grimaced.
“How tragic.” Two words. They summed up the last couple years of Jenny’s life so succinctly. “What are you going to do about it?”
I was reminded of my mother’s earlier comments about the Wilson side of the family being responsible for my feistiness. The truth is the Googins girls never can keep out of other people’s business, even when they know better. Lacey and Laurel always find a way to insert themselves into situations whenever they feel fixing is needed, whether it is welcomed or not.
“Just between us, Kenny is looking into it. He is convinced that Jenny has family and he wants to know why they weren’t at the memorial service.”
“Not at the service? Terrible. Did they know her mother had died?”
“Good question, Mama. Maybe Steve was too busy stealing the family fortune to notify them.”
“She’s a smart girl. She should be in school, Scarlet.” My mother looked up at me expectantly, as I arranged her bedcovers.
“We’re working on that. And I’ve got to see about getting her a driving instructor.”
“Dear lord, don’t tell Lacey that. She’ll insist on taking the girl out on the road and we don’t want the girl to pick up all those bad driving habits!”
My mother has several grandchildren, of whom she is very proud. Lacey, on the other hand, never quite got the requisite number she planned for, and she was likely to adopt Jenny, whether the teenager wanted to be or not. Even as I acknowledged my mother had a point, I smiled. Lacey might just be the ticket for a lonely orphan in need of instant family. Then again, my mother seemed to have already laid claim to the girl as her
protector. When it rains, it pours.
As soon as I bid my mother sweet dreams and shut her door, I made my way down the hall to the Red Oak room. Jenny was sitting in the chair, staring down at her Smartphone.
“Busy?” I asked.
“No,” she frowned. “I can’t figure out what to do with my stupid phone. My charger is in my backpack.”
“Where is your backpack?” I wondered.
“I stashed it at that house where Richie took me.”
“Cops probably have it,” I replied. “What kind of charger do you need? Maybe we have one that will work.”
I took her down to the library, where we kept an ancient Mac and a drawer full of abandoned electronic adapters of every make, model, and size. Kenny was sitting on the sofa, waiting for my return, and slightly surprised I brought company with me.
“Jenny needs to charge her phone. She left her backpack in Bay Head. Any chance the cops found her stuff?”
“I’ll call Sarge tomorrow and ask. If it’s there, I’ll pick it up and bring it here on the weekend.”
“Does that mean you’ll be staying with us again, Captain Peacock?” I deposited the box of plugs and adapters on the coffee table before him.
“It just might. Let me see the phone, Jenny. What have you got there?”
“White or red?” I asked, on my way to the butler’s pantry.
“Red,” Kenny replied, busy digging through the pile.
I found an open bottle of Shiraz and poured a couple glasses. On my way back to the library, I found myself thinking about Jenny’s plight. Her mother had died two months ago. Her stepfather made his move after the memorial service. Where had Jenny been in the meantime? How had she survived? I posed the question when I joined the pair a moment later.
“I camped out. I had three hundred dollars in my bank account, so I rented a space for my tent at the campground where my mom and I used to stay up north. But then my money got low. Things were okay for a while. Mr. and Mrs. Mann let me do some odd jobs, to help pay for my tent site. But then one night this guy tried to get fresh. Mr. Mann chased him off, but he said he was worried the guy would cause trouble. Mrs. Mann said I should go stay with family, and when I said I didn’t have any, she suggested friends. That’s when I decided to go see Paula in Pennsylvania.”
“That makes sense.”
“Here you go,” said Captain Peacock, handing her an adapter. “That seems to be working.”
“Oh, goody. Now I can call Jessica.”
“Who’s Jessica?”
“My friend from high school. She’s working at a camp up in Vermont for the summer. I haven’t talked to her in ages!” There was that teenage enthusiasm for the telephone. Alas, it was short-lived. “I have no service!”
“Oh, let me hook you up to our micro cell.” Seven minutes later, the gizmo designed to boost our cell phone signals was operational, but the phone still wouldn’t let Jenny make a call.
“Shall I?” Kenny’s masculine hand reached out and took it. He quickly dialed a number, waited, and then I saw him frown as he listened. “Stepdaddy has apparently cut off your service, Jen.”
“But I’ve had this phone number for three years!”
“Not to worry. We’ll get you hooked up again in no time. We’ll reactivate it tomorrow,” said I, with great confidence. Little did I know it was easier said than done.
“You can do that?”
“We can put it on my service,” I told Kenny. “Was the phone working earlier today?”
“Yeah. I called Zak.” What do you know...the teenager kept in touch with her pals. That was surely a good sign. And yet, none of her friends took her in after the incident with her stepfather? Why not? I had to ask. “Zak’s in Colorado for the summer, at his uncle’s ranch.”
“None of your other friends could put you up after your stepfather got nasty?”
“Mirabelle’s mother kicked me out after two weeks. She said I bummed her out just moping around all the time. And when I stayed with Lally Wheaton, her father got a little weird because he has a new wife. She’s like thirty and kind of bitchy. She didn’t even want Lally around. By then, it was warmer out and I really missed my mom, so I decided to go camping.”
“That’s too bad.”
“While my mom was sick, I didn’t really have all that much time to spend with my friends. I was always taking care of her.”
Of course she was. Poor kid. Small wonder there wasn’t anyone around to look out for the teenager. Everyone probably just assumed she was taken care of by Stevie, the jerk.
“Well, if anyone wants to know why we’re switching your number to my account, it’s because you’re working for me and you need your phone here in Connecticut. We’ll all go early.”
“We have to,” Kenny agreed. “I have to be on the road back to New Jersey first thing. Now, time to hit the hay and get some sleep.”
Captain Peacock was up at the crack of dawn. I made him pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Jenny came down just as he took his first bite, so I made another batch for her. She was eager to get her phone service back. Right after I got Laurel set for her morning with her physical therapist, we all piled into Kenny’s car and headed to the Verizon store in the plaza.
I carefully explained that I wanted to switch Jenny’s phone to my service plan, but the twelve-year-old in charge wasn’t buying it.
“Sorry. No can do,” Trong replied.
“No can do because....”
“The number’s in use elsewhere.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning someone just bought a new phone with this number and got a brand-new two-year contract.”
“Who in God’s name would do a thing like that?” Exasperated, I felt like slugging that stepfather of hers. Talk about mean-spirited.
“What am I going to do?” She was teary-eyed at the thought of losing touch with all her friends.
“We’ll just have to get you a new phone and a new number.”
“But I need this number...and this phone! How else will my friends know it’s me calling? And how can get in touch with them if I don’t have my address book?”