“Why did you stop seeing him?” Laurie asked.
“Oh, honey, he drank beer, and I can’t stand beer. A man who drinks whiskey, or wine, that’s perfectly okay, I’m not square. But I cannot kiss a beer-drinker.”
“Gran, you own a baseball team. You spend half your summers at the park.”
“And I do not kiss the beer-drinkers there, either.”
“Nor should you,” Laurie said. “Can I ask you one other thing, though? It’s about Dot, about the house.” Ginger nodded, and Laurie gave the shortest summary she could muster of what had happened: found a duck, lost a duck, not sure how to get the duck back, still not sure what the duck even is. “Does any of this sound at all familiar to you?”
Ginger shook her head. “Darling, I’m sorry, it really doesn’t. But I’ll tell you what it does make me think of. I did know a lady from my church group who said when she downsized, she used a guy just like this, and he stole from her. We all figured she was probably mistaken, you know, everybody loses some things when they move, and half my friends are just sure they used to have all kinds of valuables they can’t find. But now I have to wonder if she used the same man you’ve been working with at Dot’s.” Ginger wrote the woman’s name on a sheet of paper and handed it to Laurie. “Betty Donnelly, that’s a nice lady. Said a clock she had just vanished. It was very special, in the shape of a tiger. Worth a lot of money. I wonder if it was the same fellow.”
Laurie tucked the paper into her pocket. “It’s a good question.”
* * *
—
When she got home from brunch, Laurie had an email from Erin, whose wedding fortunes were continuing to spiral downward. The latest disaster involved her dress: Her cat had gotten into her closet while she was working and had destroyed the bottom of her dress. “LAURIE THIS IS A CURSE, MY WEDDING IS CURSED, I HATE THIS, I DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS,” Erin had tapped out, then she had followed this with ten skull emojis, three knives, and a little black cat.
“Wait,” Laurie wrote back. “Your dress was an eighteen, right?”
Chapter Thirteen
You absolute weasel, Laurie thought as she opened the door the next day to Matt, standing on her doorstep in an Indigo Girls concert shirt. “Hi there,” she nearly chirped. “It’s so good to see you again. Thanks for coming.”
He smiled. So many teeth. “Oh, I was glad to hear from you. I wondered if there were more treasures over here, and I knew if there were, you’d spot them.”
He had a messenger bag over his shoulder, and as he moseyed into the living room and sat on the sofa, Laurie eyeballed it, figuring that was where the iPad was. Somewhere in there, probably kicking around next to a book that was vaguely Machiavellian—like maybe Machiavelli—and a leather wallet and a ChapStick and something he stole. Somewhere in there was the first answer she needed. “Can I get you something to drink? I’m working on a nonalcoholic cocktail, want to try it? It’s cranberry and lime. I’m calling it the Lilith Fair.” Too much?
“Sounds great.” He grinned.
Of course it wasn’t too much. She could probably have told him she was calling it the ERA Yes, and the only thing he would have thought was that he had her number even more perfectly than he realized. She went into the kitchen and took down two tall glasses. She mixed some seltzer with cranberry juice, lime juice, and a sprig of mint. Would it be good? It didn’t really matter. She didn’t spit in his drink; that was her gesture of goodwill toward her fellow man. “Here you go; tell me what you think,” she said as she sat on the green chair across from him.
He took a sip. “Delicious, you’re talented.” He grinned again. “So what can I do for you?” he asked, because yes, he wanted to know immediately where the treasures were, if there were treasures.
This was the moment in which she had to try to be as adept at lying as he was, and she wasn’t sure at all she was up to the challenge. But there was nothing to do but start. “Well,” she said, “I found this letter.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“And I’m not sure whether I can believe it is what it says it is. But I figured you were the right person to talk to first.”
“I’m honored,” he said. Oh, she hated him. But she had chosen the right way to get him over to the house. All she had to do was dangle something else he could steal from her, and he was over here with his stupid face and his stupid bag and his stupid shirt and his stupid iPad, and it made her feel so stupid. She took a breath anyway.