Wreath of Deception (7 page)

Jo took in the spacious area, which faced the golf course beyond. “This will be perfect,” she said, delighted. She could hardly believe her luck, having half expected to be squashed into a dark corner near the gift shop.

“We like to include the ladies’ groups from our local churches and such too. They raise a few dollars selling their homemade cakes and doilies, and it draws more people to the show. Your task, besides setting up and selling things from your store, of course, would be to coordinate those groups, as well as bring in a few other types of professional craftsmen. You know, maybe decoy carvers, or potters, things like that. It means a lot of time on the phone and can sometimes seem like herding cats. Think you can do it?”

“No problem. Just give me your list of names, and I’ll get right to work on it. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Mr. Gordon.”

“Call me Bob. And it’s my pleasure. I’ve had to oversee this in the past, and it’s just not my kind of thing. The board, however, feels it’s good community relations for the club, and the members enjoy it.”

“It’ll be great exposure for my new shop too. Plus, in a setting like this, all the items can’t help but look amazing. Your grounds and facilities are beautiful.”

Gordon’s smile broadened. “We try our best. Look around some more, Mrs. McAllister, if you like. Get familiar with the layout. I’d take you myself, except I have prospective members coming. I’ll have someone get you a copy of our file—names, phone numbers, lists of things we did in the past. If you have any questions after you look it over, just give me a buzz.”

With that, Bob Gordon trotted off, surprisingly light on his feet for his size and clearly delighted to have delegated away a necessary but somewhat burdensome task.

Jo turned to Charlie, who had shadowed her mutely the entire time. “Guess we didn’t need to bring all this stuff after all, huh? Let’s drop it back in the car and take up Mr. Gordon’s carte blanche.” At Charlie’s puzzled look she rephrased. “Let’s look around.”

From the car they headed toward the tennis area, with Jo remembering what Javonne Barnett had said about Kyle working at the tennis desk. She led Charlie along the winding walkway past the tennis courts and found the door to the tennis shop. On entering, they encountered several women of various ages in tennis togs milling about, apparently gathering for scheduled matches. The young woman behind the desk, wearing a green polo with the country club’s logo, was showing a new racquet to one, and a college-aged boy knelt on the floor farther back, unpacking cans of balls.

The players heads swiveled toward Jo and Charlie, but not recognizing prospective opponents, quickly turned back to chatting with each other. Jo sensed Charlie’s reluctance to wind through this unfamiliar, overwhelmingly feminine scene, and encouraged him with a smile. “We can hang around the apparel shop over there,” she said, “until things clear out a bit.”

They lingered over tables stocked with visors, sweat-bands, and tennis socks, Jo fingering idly through racks of tennis shirts, shorts, and warm-ups, Charlie shifting from foot to foot, until finally the lively group drifted out to the courts and the prospective racquet customer left. Jo headed over to the desk as the young woman there was rehanging the demo racquet. She turned and flashed Jo a smile.

“Hi. Can I help you? Need to reserve a court?”

“No, we’re kind of just looking around.”

“New members?”

“Actually, I’ll be handling the fall craft show here this year for Bob Gordon. I’m Jo McAllister. I own Jo’s Craft Corner.”

Jo paused, watching as the young woman, whose name tag identified her as “Tracy,” connected the dots. Her pale complexion flushed. “Jo’s Craft Corner. That’s where Kyle . . . ?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it was.”

“God, that must have been awful.”

Jo nodded. “It was.”

Jo gave the girl a moment. As Tracy’s cheeks faded back to her normal shade, Jo noticed the fellow working on the tennis balls looking over at them.

“Were you a friend of Kyle’s?” Jo asked the girl.

“Um, yeah, I mean, he worked here and all. We weren’t always here at the same time, though. But I knew him. Not real well, though.”

“I met him for the first time on that day,” Jo said. “He didn’t seem very happy to be working a clown gig.”

Tracy smiled. “No, I wouldn’t think so. Kyle, I think, was planning to be the next Johnny Depp or Leonardo Di-Caprio, or something. He was always talking about his latest role at the playhouse and how it was going to be a springboard to a career in New York or Hollywood.”

“So working here was pretty much a stopgap for Kyle?”

Tracy’s coworker behind the counter snorted loudly. “You could say that,” he said, picking up the now-empty packing box and sauntering over as he compacted it. “That is, if you could call it working at all.”

“Ryan! Kyle’s dead!”

“Yeah, and it’s too bad and all. But it doesn’t make him any less of a jerk when he was alive.”

Tracy winced at the harshness of Ryan’s words, but Jo noticed she didn’t correct him.

“You didn’t care for Kyle, I take it.”

“Who would? He was a pain in the butt most of the time, always talking like he was some big-deal actor getting ready for his next role, putting up with all us little people. He only actually worked when Mr. Gordon happened to be around.”

“That’s not true,” Tracy protested. “I know for a fact he stayed late sometimes when he didn’t have to, if the mixed doubles teams finished late.”

“Yeah, and you know why?” Ryan planted one elbow on the counter and leaned toward Jo. “He was spying on them.”

“Spying?”

“He called it ‘doing character studies,’ which was a load of crap. He was sneaking around, eavesdropping on everyone’s conversations.”

“For future roles?”

Ryan laughed. “Yeah, right. Plus he dramatized everything, turning the stuff he picked up into some kind of soap opera plot, like he was directing a movie or something, and everyone around him were actors in some screen-play.”

“Yeah, actually, that’s right,” Tracy joined in. “Kyle tried to convince me once that a couple of the mixed doubles people were having an affair. I couldn’t see it. These were two really nice people who just happened to need partners to play in the league. They liked
tennis
, not each other. I mean, not in that way. It seemed pretty over the top.”

Ryan grinned, nodding. “He once told me Mr. Gordon must be embezzling funds from the club, and you know why?”

Jo shook her head.

“Because he showed up one day driving a new Lexus. Like Gordon couldn’t afford it? He makes, well, I don’t know what he makes. But it must be enough to afford a Lexus. Kyle said he was keeping an eye on him.”

“Did any of these people realize he was, ah, studying them?”

“Probably not,” Ryan said. “He could be pretty smooth about it. But who knows?”

Indeed, Jo thought.

The phone rang. As Tracy reached for it, a player rushed in from the courts holding up a racquet with a broken string. Jo could see their discussion about Kyle was at an end, and she drew Charlie away from the desk and out the door.

They walked a few feet down the path before Jo turned to the teen. “What did you think?”

“About this guy Kyle?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sounds like Ryan didn’t like him much.”

“I got that too. Did Ryan sound believable to you, or did he seem to be putting it on a little thick about what Kyle was doing around here?”

“I don’t know.” Charlie looked down at his shoes for a few moments. “That girl Tracy is pretty hot.” Charlie flashed an embarrassed grin. “Maybe Ryan was trying to impress her. Or maybe Kyle was always hitting on her and it ticked Ryan off.”

“Ah, I hadn’t thought of that. Some good points, Charlie.”

Charlie threw Jo a hint of a smile, then gazed back at his shoes, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “But I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe Kyle really was a jerk.”

Jo could confirm that part, at least from the way Kyle had behaved at her grand opening. But were his actions here at his job as over the top as Ryan claimed? And if so, who else might have noticed?

They reached the car, and Jo searched through her pockets for her keys. As she unlocked the passenger door, she noticed Charlie looking off toward a small group of grounds workers walking toward the golf course with a cart of tools, a couple of them probably high schoolers.

“Anybody you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Like to go over and talk to them?” she asked, feeling on a roll from the tennis shop and eager to keep it going.

Charlie shrugged. “Uh-uh,” and climbed into the car.

Jo looked back at the group longingly. She weighed her chances of success at strolling over, commenting on the weather, and casually turning the topic to Kyle Sandborn. The scale tipped heavily toward “not good.” She sighed and slid behind the wheel, deciding what she learned from Tracy and Ryan would have to do for now.

Chapter 7

Jo settled in the cubicle she called an office the next morning, eager to start working on the craft show while Carrie handled the customers. Bob Gordon had sent over a thick packet containing information on the club’s past craft shows. She started by calling Phyllis Lenske, head of the Ladies’ Sodality at St. Adelbert’s, who had hosted a high-grossing table last year.

“Another show? Oh, how nice,” Phyllis responded. But Jo’s hand, which had moved to pencil the group in, halted as Phyllis quickly qualified her interest, saying, “Let me check with Mary Louise, first. She’s having knee replacement surgery, but I really can’t remember if it’s this month or next. And we would definitely need Susan Crosby to pitch in, but I’ll have to find out when she and her husband are taking that cruise to the Bahamas,” as well as several other problems that stood in the way of a definite answer.

Jo got an enthusiastic response when she called the office of the Abbotsville United Methodist Church, but then she was given the numbers of several more women to call who “may or may not be available for the project. And thank you
so
much for thinking of us.”

Even the professional craftsmen she contacted left her hanging, some describing their schedules as in flux and saying they would therefore need to hold off on a definite answer for a bit, “but really, what a nice opportunity it sounds like.” Others responded only with messages on their answering machines that promised to get back to the caller “very soon.” It quickly became clear why Bob Gordon had been so happy to give her the job.

“Arrgh!” Jo cried after hanging up from possibly her twentieth unproductive call. “Herding cats is right. Gordon must be dancing in his office right now.”

“I thought the phrase was ‘herding chickens.’” Carrie looked over from the stamping section where she stood, filling out an order sheet.

“No, it has to be cats. A chicken might at least gift you with an egg for your efforts. Cats give you nothing, and the harder you try, the more they secretly laugh at you. These people are cats, and they’re all rubbing their paws beside their phones right now, saying, ‘Hee, hee, she thinks she’s actually going to get cooperation from us, snicker, snicker.’”

“Spoken as one who never owned a cat, of course.”

“There’s a good reason for that.” Jo got up from her chair and stretched her tired back. “And as soon as I think of it, I’ll let you know. What’s on our agenda for tonight?”

“The scrapbooking workshop. But you’re on your own for that. I’m going to ‘Parents’ Night’ at the school.”

“Oh, yeah. Guess I better bone up on scrapbooking some more. They never taught it at art school, you know, mostly because it didn’t exist at the time.”

“We all kept scrapbooks as kids. Mine were always a mess, though, just pages with everything I wanted to save thrown in—awards certificates, school pictures, dried corsages. This is a lot different, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely. This is a real art form, Carrie. Each page is decorated according to the theme of the entry, snapshots are trimmed to set off the subject, and everything is arranged on layers of beautiful papers. It can be quite elaborate. And the range of tools available,” Jo moved over to the scrapbooking section, pointing out the stock, “embossers, calligraphy pens, paper punchers, special paper trimmers—”

“Sounds like a great hobby to encourage,” Carrie said with a grin. “The more enthusiastic the scrapbooker, the better your business.”

“Right! Tonight’s workshop, though, is for beginners, of which I still consider myself one.”

“Oh, I know your wheels will start turning as they always do, as soon as you see those blank pages before you. Who’s signed up for it?”

Jo found the sign-up sheet and laughed. “Ina Mae, for one. She seems determined to learn everything our little Craft Corner can offer.”

“It’s the elementary school teacher in her. All those years of decorating bulletin boards. They can’t stop.”

“And Deirdre Patterson’s coming too. She signed up at the end of the wreath workshop.”

“Even after the glued fingers? You must have really stirred up the hobbyist in her. I never thought she’d be inclined toward arts and crafts, what with the damage that can do to one’s manicure.”

“I don’t know. She’s clearly never done much of it before. Maybe it’s the novelty, or she might just like the camaraderie. Could she be feeling lonely?”

“I wouldn’t think so. As Mrs. Alden Patterson, I’m sure her social calendar is well booked.”

“Well, whatever it is, I’m glad to have her. Maybe she’ll pull in a few of her many friends and acquaintances if she keeps it all up.”

 

That evening, after Carrie took off for a quick dinner with her family before Parents’ Night, Jo watched her scrapbooking students file in. Ina Mae was first, right on time, with white-haired Loralee Phillips trailing behind, carrying the large tote Jo had noticed the other night. Nearly half the size of the petite woman, it seemed to be her way of staying prepared for any and all things. The other night when Javonne mentioned having rushed over from the dental office for the wreath-making workshop without supper, Loralee had reached into her tote, pulled out a box of trail mix and a perfectly ripe banana, and passed it over without a word.