Beware False Profits Part 3

With team spirit Ed took over. "Maura, Joe performed last Thursday, but we were told he left before his act was over. That's when he must have called you, but he left his phone behind."

He pulled Joe's phone out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. "People there thought maybe he was sick. We checked with the hotel where he was staying, all the hospitals in the city, and the police. We couldn't turn up anything. He just disappeared."

She took the phone, then she nodded. "Well, okay."

"This must be hard on you," I prompted. "Finding out Joe had a secret, kind of an unusual secret at that. And now, still not knowing where he is?"

"I don't know what I'll do without him."

I had been uneasy. I was hesitant and sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But now, for the first time since she opened the door, I felt a rush of sympathy. Despite my feminist leanings, I felt the same way about Ed. I couldn't imagine what I would do if he disappeared from my life. I put my hand over hers, as Ed had done.

"This must be hard," I said.

"Joseph does so many things for us. I don't know how we're going to manage. He makes sure Tyler's eating right and testing his blood and managing his shots. He pays all the bills and watches our investments and cuts the gra.s.s." She looked up. "And it's May, the gra.s.s will need to be cut regularly, won't it?"

I pulled back my hand.

Ed took over again. "You can pay somebody to do that, Maura."

She couldn't pay somebody to be the love of her life, her partner, her best friend. But those weren't the things that seemed to concern her. I told myself I was being unfair. People react differently to b.u.mps in the road. Maura was trying to be practical. Perhaps she wasn't a woman who showed her feelings. And even though Ed was her minister, we were really little more than strangers. She might be saving face.

I realized how upset she was when she got up and started to clear away our dishes, although we hadn't touched our coffee cake and our cups were half full. "What about Mayday!?"

Ed looked at his watch. "It starts in about two hours, right?"

"People are still expecting Joseph to be there. I've had to field so many phone calls. He should have been there all morning setting up, and everybody wonders where he is."

"What have you been telling them?"

"That he was called out of town on an emergency, and I'm hoping he'll be back in time. Hazel Kefauver is the worst. She keeps calling, like I can magically transport him to the grounds of the food bank if she just calls here often enough."

Hazel Kefauver is the wife of our mayor. She and her husband are akin to Jack Sprat and his nameless wife. Brownie is a little, bow-tied man whose hours in office are spent currying favor with the town's elite. Hazel is beefy and forceful, a descendant of an Emerald Springs founding family and not one bit shy about using her heritage to shake down anybody who gets in her way.

Hazel is also the chairman of the food bank board. I'd heard she was a thorn in Joe's side, and now, apparently a thorn in his wife's.

"I'm not a fan of lying," Ed said, "but for now, you might want to stick to that story. No one will fault you, even if a different story eventually unfolds."

Maura stopped clearing long enough to wring her hands. "They'll ask me what kind of emergency."

"You can say it's personal," I coached.

"No, that won't do. It'll sound like I'm hiding something. It has to be something good." She looked up. "I know, I'll tell them his mother is dying."

Ed took his turn. "Maura, that could come back to haunt you. What if everything gets straightened out with Joe, then Joe's parents show up for Christmas or Tyler's birthday?"

"Oh, they won't. Joseph's an orphan. His parents are dead."

"That's a shame," I said, getting up to help her clear. "But if they lived in this area, won't people know that?"

"They lived in New Jersey. I never knew them. They died before I met Joseph. Car accident I think."

The "I think" part amazed me. Apparently Maura was even more clueless than I'd thought. The slightest things, even something this important, seem to have alluded her.

As if she read my thoughts, she shook her head. "It's not that I don't care, Aggie, it's just that Joseph doesn't like to talk about the past. He's a private person." Her eyes filled. "More private than I knew."

Guilt descended. I'd come into the pristine Cape Cod with an immediate bias against Maura, counted the dust-free surfaces, added up the regiment of sharply creased dish towels, and decided that she was incapable of feeling what any normal woman would. I had leaped to judgment and not given her the benefit of the doubt.

"It might not be good to compound a lie," Ed warned.

"No, I have to say something, so that's what I'll say." She blinked back tears and squared her shoulders. "Joseph will come back, and we can work this out. He won't stay away long. He would never leave Tyler alone this way. He knows I'm not good with the medical stuff. He knows he's needed here."

Guilt was still a thick curtain, and I refused to jump, even silently, on the fact she'd said Joe wouldn't want to leave Tyler alone and hadn't mentioned herself in the equation. Maybe Joe and Maura were having problems, and maybe Joe's little rebellion included performing at the p.u.s.s.ycat Club, but people had worked through worse. Maybe Joe would come back in a day or two. Maybe Maura could learn to sing backup.

"Good for you." I handed her a tissue from a handwoven reed basket on the counter. "Take the high road, and let's see where you end up, okay?"

"There's just one thing." She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. "Joseph is supposed to be the fortune-teller again today. It's the biggest moneymaker at Mayday!"

I've only lived in Emerald Springs long enough for one Mayday!, but even so I remember the line outside the fortune-teller's booth last year. I didn't go inside myself. I get all the free advice I need from the family psychic. Junie, my mother, is convinced she can see into the future. I grew up knowing that I would marry a dark-haired man who was either a stockbroker or a banker. Either alternative distressed my mother, who tends to sew extra cash into the binding of quilts. But Junie felt I needed to know my destiny in order to prepare for a more disciplined, ordinary life.

Of course my very real husband, the Reverend Wilc.o.x, has hair somewhere between gold and red, and where to store our extra cash is seldom an issue. Nor did I give birth to the three predicted sons, divorce after four years, or move to a commune to teach j.a.panese. My oldest sister Vel is still waiting for the man with royal blood who will sweep her off to distant lands, and my youngest sister Sid is thrilled with her job as a country club event planner. She harbors no plans to become either a taxidermist or lion tamer.

So I'm not a fan of psychics nor am I a believer. But on this subject, I'm in the Emerald Springs minority. Because without fail, everyone who has mentioned Joe's ability to see into the future has spoken in hushed, reverent tones. Joe has accurately predicted pregnancies for childless couples, new jobs for the chronically unemployed, and college scholarships for B students. He's warned of real health problems and sent believers scurrying to the doctor. He's counseled men to bring flowers to their wives, and women to crank it up in the bedroom. Joe's kind of an old-fashioned guy-or at least I always thought so.

Me, I think Joe's real gift is hope. In almost every case, he's given his enraptured audience a reason to keep plugging. And on the health front, who among us doesn't need a little push to make that appointment for our annual physical?

So I'm a skeptic, but that doesn't mean I can't understand the power of suggestion. And Maura was correct. A lot of people were going to be disappointed that their annual opportunity to have Joe set their lives on a straighter path wasn't going to happen this year. The food bank would surely lose money.

"Is there anybody else who could do it?" Ed asked. "Anybody who's a.s.sisted him in the past and knows the ropes?"

Maura was still dabbing at her eyes. "Joseph always did it alone. He was the only one they wanted to see. He'd always finish up well beyond closing time. If people lined up before eight, then if he had to, he'd stay until ten."

Before he opened his mouth I saw Ed's solution in his eyes. I shook my head. "No. Nope. Nada. No chance. Not happening."

"Aggie, she'd be perfect."

"She," of course, was Junie.

"Aggie's mom likes to dabble in that kind of thing," Ed told Maura. "And she's got the clothes for it."

That part was true. Junie's wardrobe runs from outrageous to borderline illegal. She could a.s.semble an extravagant gypsy costume from clothes she wore to the grocery store.

The thing is, Junie has already stirred some controversy in Emerald Springs. She's been a resident in the parsonage for four months and already she's appeared before our city council three times. Once to ask that they reconsider their planned sale of twelve wooded acres at the edge of town to a developer anxious to build a shopping mall. The next month to bring in a pet.i.tion on the same subject signed by five hundred Emerald Springs residents. The signatures were collected door-to-door, and now Junie knows the life stories of a lot of my neighbors.

Last month she made her third trip to present the council with a quilt designed and made by the many local quilters who flock to our parsonage for quilting lessons. The quilt was a poignant rendition of a forest in ruins. Even Brownie Kefauver swallowed hard over the mama squirrel trying to rescue her babies from a felled tree.

So Junie has fans, and Junie has foes. For her part, she loves everybody. I know she would never predict a bout with cancer just to terrify somebody who opposes her on this issue, but not everybody knows Junie the way I do. Nor do they know that they have nothing to fear from her divinations.

I shook my head again. "Ed, Junie's already made a few enemies. She might make a few more if she's sitting behind a crystal ball."

"Do you have another idea?"

This was a polite way of asking if I had a better one. I didn't. I shrugged.

"Then we'll ask her," he told Maura. "That will be one less thing for you to worry about."

I didn't have time to concoct another protest or a better solution. There was scuffling of feet outside the kitchen doorway, and Tyler scooted in. At twelve Tyler is lanky and unformed, but there's no question he'll be a handsome young man. He has brown hair that's a compromise between his mother's blonde and his father's mahogany, and brown eyes he owes to his dad alone. I think he'll eventually be tall, but that's hard to tell. I know he'll be handsome, because he has the bones for it. And if in the end he looks like either Joe or Maura, he'll be a winner.

Tyler's had his share of problems at our middle school. Ed's told me some of them; Deena, our twelve-year-old, has told me others. Most revolve around a couple of insulin reactions in full view of his cla.s.smates. Once in the middle of a test a teacher refused to heed Tyler's plea to let him eat the snack he always carried for an emergency. Tyler's blood sugar dropped so precipitously that he ended up slugging her, and the medics had to be called. A second incident occurred at a soccer game, and now Tyler, an affable, intelligent kid, was regarded by some of his former friends as a social liability. He wasn't the only diabetic child in the school system, and both students and teachers had gotten some much needed training after the incident in the cla.s.sroom. But kids are kids, and in middle school, different is different.

Now I wondered how Joe's disappearance was going to affect this boy's life. And his blood sugar.

"How are you doing?" Ed asked Tyler.

Tyler has a great, no-braces smile. It blinked on and quickly off again as he greeted us both.

"Is Dad on his way home yet?" he asked Maura when he'd finished the formalities.

"Not yet," she said.

Tyler looked as if he hadn't bathed since Joe left home. His hair was oily and uncombed. His clothes were wrinkled, as if he'd been sleeping in them all weekend. If Maura thought Tyler was unaffected by Joe's absence, she was wrong. And the fact that she hadn't noticed said a lot about her own state of mind.

"How come?" he asked pointedly.

She looked to us for support. Ed didn't say a word. How much Tyler was told was up to his mother.

"Your dad's taking a few days away from everything and everybody," she said at last. "He works too hard, and he just, well, kind of crashed. You know?"

Tyler didn't respond.

"He's got a hard job," Maura said. "He needed some time to think it over and figure out what to do."

"Then why didn't he tell me he wasn't coming home?"

"It was a last-minute thing. You can understand that." She made it sound like he ought to, and Tyler gave something of a nod.

"Can I talk to him?" he asked. "Can I call him?"

"No, he really wants to be alone to think. We should respect that."

"But it's Mayday! today."

"I know, and the timing is really bad. We can't tell people the reason he's not home. So we're going to make up a story. You'll have to play along. Then when Dad comes back, he won't be in trouble."

Tyler looked as if he knew he was being sold a bill of goods. I figured when we left, the questions would fly fast and furiously.

Ed seemed to be thinking the same thing. He held out his hand to Maura, then to Tyler. We said our good-byes, then we took the winding brick sidewalk back to our car and climbed in gratefully.

Ed was the first to speak. "She'll need help."

I hated to think about it.

"Joe's the grown-up in that family," Ed said. "Maybe he just likes it that way, or maybe Maura simply abdicated responsibility early in their relationship. I do know Joe's been the one who's managed Tyler's diabetes. Tyler's old enough to know how to handle diet and everything else, but he'll still need somebody keeping tabs on him."

"That will have to be Maura."

"No question. But Maura may need a friend, Aggie, to help her through this. I can check on her periodically, and catch up with Tyler whenever I see him, but she's going to need more." He stuck the key in the ignition, then he looked at me. "Does she have any friends like that?"

I wanted to believe that she did. Surely there were other women just like Maura who met regularly in their sunny, well-scrubbed kitchens and traded recipes and household hints. The Village might be full of them.

Ed started the engine. "The thing is, she's not going to be comfortable telling anybody else what's really going on."

"You aren't asking me to befriend her, are you?"

"No." He pulled out to the street and started toward home. We had gone straight from the Columbus airport to see Maura. I was looking forward to a shower and lunch, not to mention a hug from my girls.

"Maura and I have nothing in common," I said. "I'm not sure what we would say to each other."

"She could teach you how to fold contour sheets."

I punched his arm. "Did you get the feeling she's more worried about what people will think than she is about Joe? I mean, he could be lying somewhere so sick he can't even get to a phone. Or worse."

"It's hard to tell what other people are feeling. But I'm sure she's experiencing everything the rest of us would. And we don't know anything about the state of their marriage. They looked wonderful from the outside, but so does a house of cards."

"Joe was lying to her. No matter how we put it."

"That's going to be hard to deal with."

"Tyler worries me most of all." I thought about that, and it was my undoing. Wherever my friend Joe was, he would be worrying about his son. If I couldn't find Joe, at least I could make sure Tyler stayed safe until Joe returned. If he returned.

I looked straight ahead. "I guess I could check on her. Make sure she's handling this all right."

"You'd be a good role model, Ag. Maybe you're staying home with the girls, but you're still an independent woman. Could be Maura will pick up some confidence."

"And Joe will come home, see the new improved model, throw away his three-inch heels, and live happily ever after."

"I wish the world worked like that."

Didn't we all.

4.