Save The Date Part 21

"I'll go." Bert jumped up from his seat at the worktable. He pointed at the finished flower arrangements in the cooler. "It's my fault Lillian's p.i.s.sed at you."

"I'll do the drops at Candler and Memorial. There's a funeral arrangement to go to Gamble Funeral Home too. Then we've got a delivery on the south side. I'll head out to Isle of Hope after that, and personally deliver Lillian's treasure right to her door."

"No, that's okay. Just take care of the other deliveries. I'll use my own car and take the silver back. Ultimately, it's my responsibility."

"Please?" He gave her his winningest smile. "I want to. You were right. I should have at least brought that bin into the shop and let you decide what to do with it. It was pure laziness on my part."

"Well ... if you really want to..."

The phone rang and they both reached for it. And stopped, when they saw Lillian Fanning's name on the caller ID screen again.

"Now what?" Cara murmured.

"Hi Lillian. We were just heading your way."

"Change of plans," Lillian said, skipping a greeting. "I'm meeting a friend for drinks at the club. But I'll leave a key to the back door. It'll be under the lid of the gas grill on the patio. Just put the silver in the kitchen and leave the key where you found it afterward."

"We can do that," Cara said, grateful that neither of them would have to experience their client's wrath face-to-face.

She quickly put together a small nosegay of pink roses to fit inside one of Lillian's silver bud vases. Then she helped load the flower arrangements into the built-in racks in the van while Bert put the bin of silver in the front seat.

"There's a key under the gas grill lid on the patio around the back of the Fannings' house," she told her a.s.sistant. "Put the little nosegay in the middle of the kitchen table, will you? Leave the rest of the silver in the bin, on the kitchen counter. And for G.o.d's sake, be sure you've locked up tight when you leave."

He nodded and hopped into the driver's seat. Then he stuck his head out the open window. "Okay if I keep the van and use it tonight, Mom?" He c.o.c.ked his head to the side. "I promise to put gas in it. Pretty please?"

Cara laughed despite herself. She could never stay mad at Bert for long, and he d.a.m.ned well knew it. And it wasn't an unusual request. His own car was an unreliable seventeen-year-old Honda, which was why he mostly relied on his bike for transportation around town.

"Okay, but make sure all your homework's done first! And no riding around town picking up strange girls."

"No problemo," Bert said. He backed up the van and drove slowly down the lane.

28.

Shaz was sprawled on the floor in front the air-conditioning vent in the living room. When Jack came out of the bedroom Sunday morning, dressed in running clothes and holding her leash, she regarded him with total disinterest.

"Up, Shaz," he said. She yawned and stayed put.

"Come on Shaz. Be a good girl. Let's go for a run before it gets too hot."

He clipped the leash to her collar and tugged gently. "It'll be fun," he lied.

It was nearly nine o'clock and the temperatures were already in the high eighties. But he'd worked long hours all week, returning home just at dark most nights, too worn out to do much more than take the puppy for a quick stroll around the block. A run, he decided, would be good for both of them.

Most days, he took Shaz with him over to South Carolina and Cabin Creek, where he and Ryan had started work on the old barn. After only a week, they'd already worked out a routine. He and Ryan would leave Savannah while it was still dark, and by dawn the two men would be up on the roof, ripping off the old tin, exposing multiple layers of brittle tar, and then finally the wooden subroof.

Shaz was happy to start the mornings romping around the pasture, sniffing the horses, but otherwise keeping a cautious distance. The rest of those hot days, she found a place in the cool dim of one of the old horse stalls, leaving only occasionally to drink from her bowl of water, or to investigate strange new smells and sights outside.

During the worst heat of the day, Jack and Ryan loaded up the truck with the Strayhorn family's decades of junk and hauled it off to the nearby dump. It was hot, exhausting work, but they had a deadline, so they kept up the pace, only taking a day off on Sunday-and then only at Torie's insistence.

Jack tugged again at Shaz's leash now, and she reluctantly stood up and allowed herself to be led outside.

They took their usual route, loping easily north down Habersham. The street was Sunday-morning quiet. They pa.s.sed Broughton, Savannah's version of Main Street, and ran through Warren Square, where a homeless man napped on a bench, and on to Bay Street.

An early-morning breakfast crowd milled outside around the door at B. Matthew's, and Shaz stopped abruptly, sniffing the aroma of bacon when the restaurant door was opened.

"Later," Jack said, tugging again. They continued west on Bay Street, where tourists stood in groups on street corners, consulting their maps, or aiming cameras at the photo-ready moss-draped oaks on the far side of the street.

After only a mile, Shaz was panting, and Jack's shirt was drenched with sweat. He slowed to a walk, crossed Bay at Bull, and escorted Shaz to the shade under an oak, where he bought a bottle of water from a street vendor, uncapped it, and let Shaz refresh herself, laughing as she eagerly lapped the glugging water. He poured the last few drops of the water into his palms and splashed it onto his face, and they set off again.

Man and dog ran up Whitaker Street, past the chic boutiques and home-furnishing stores, until they got to Forsyth Park. It was shadier here, and the sidewalks were already crowded with other runners, walkers, and skateboarders. After two laps around the park, he stopped and bought another bottle of water to share with Shaz.

He set off north again on Whitaker, telling himself it would be natural for their route home to pa.s.s by the red-brick building on West Jones Street. And if Cara and her dog happened to be out for a Sunday walk, well, that would be just fine.

As it happened, Cara and Poppy weren't out for a walk. But they were sitting on the stoop in front of Bloom. Or rather, Cara was sitting on the stoop. Poppy was sitting at the base of a crepe myrtle tree located in a planting bed of ivy in the middle of the sidewalk. The goldendoodle was staring intently up at the tree branches, where a large gray squirrel chattered indignantly.

Cara had her hair tied up in a sloppy topknot, and she was wearing the least amount of clothing she could get away with in public, a short periwinkle-blue cotton sundress, and matching cheap blue flip-flops.

The shop door was propped open with a box window fan, which she'd turned on in an effort to cool herself. Pages of the Sunday New York Times fluttered in the listless warm breeze from the fan, held down with a tall plastic tumbler of iced tea.

She spotted the familiar figure of Jack Finnerty and his dog as soon as they turned onto her block, and she felt a little shiver of excitement, followed quickly by the dismaying fact of her appearance.

Unable to sleep in the suffocating heat of the apartment, she'd been up since six. She'd fed Poppy, forced herself to eat a container of Greek yogurt and some strawberries for breakfast, and walked over to the coffee shop and newsstand on Liberty Street, where she picked up the iced tea and the Sunday paper.

She'd tried reading out in the back garden, but swarms of gnats and mosquitoes forced her inside. The courtyard was cooler, but at least out here on the stoop she could use the window fan to keep the biting bugs at bay.

Despite the fan, her face was sheened with perspiration, and her arms were slicked with a combination of sweat and insect repellent. Her hair was a hot, damp mess, and of course, she wore no makeup.

"Hey!" Jack called. Poppy turned to see where the voice was coming from, and bounded over to greet her old friend and his dog.

"Poppy!" Cara called anxiously. But the dog was content to give Jack's outstretched hand a lick of acknowledgment, falling quickly in step with the pair as they approached the stoop.

It was too late to run inside and try to clean up. Instead, she smiled up at him. "Good run?"

"Hot. Shaz wasn't really too much into it, so we just kind of took it easy this morning."

Cara leaned down and patted Shaz's head. "Let me get you guys something cold to drink," she offered.

"That'd be great," Jack said. She moved aside the box fan to allow her guests to enter the shop.

"Sorry about the heat," she said, turning from the refrigerator in the shop's kitchenette. She held out a bottle of cold water, and went to the sink to run water into a bowl for Shaz.

"Trying to save money on the electric bill?" Jack asked. He'd been in the shop for less than five minutes, and sweat was already dripping from his face. He held the bottle of water to the back of his neck, wiped his brow with a paper towel Cara handed him.

She made a face. "The air conditioner's not working. Again."

"Geez," he said. "How long has it been like this?"

Cara set the bowl on the floor, and Shaz and Poppy both crowded around it, lapping water as fast as they could.

"More than a week," she said. "It's been h.e.l.l."

"What does your landlord say?" he asked. "Didn't they send somebody over to fix it?"

"My landlady pa.s.sed away week before last. I'd been calling even before that, and I've been trying to reach her daughter, but so far, no call back. This is typical of them. Worst. Landlords. Ever."

"That's bulls.h.i.t," Jack said angrily. "You can't live like this, with no air."

"Tell me about it. I've got two or three box fans, like the one I've got in the doorway, but all they really do is move the hot air around. Pretty miserable."

"Where's your thermostat?" Jack asked. "I'm no HVAC guy, but I can at least take a look."

She pointed down the hall, toward the staircase. "On the wall, there."

Cara followed Jack down the hall. He stood in front of the small metal box mounted on the plaster wall. He punched the Cool b.u.t.ton, but did not hear the unit switch on.

"Okay," he shrugged. "Fuse box? It's an old house, I'm guessing maybe the electrical hasn't been updated in a while?"

"Probably not in at least thirty years," Cara agreed. "Sometimes if I'm using my hair dryer or iron, it shorts out a circuit. The fuse box is back there, near the back door to the courtyard."

He flipped open the fuse box and studied the row of breakers and fuses. "Doesn't look like any of the breakers have been flipped. Do you change the filters pretty often?" he asked.

She nodded. "Every month."

"Is the unit outside?" Jack asked, his hand on the doork.n.o.b.

"In the courtyard."

"Got a screwdriver?"

The unit, a rust-speckled gray cube, sat on a wooden platform in a corner of the courtyard garden. Jack unscrewed the back panel of the unit and peered at the exposed machinery.

"What are you looking for?" Cara asked, looking over his shoulder.

"Just anything that looks obviously wrong. I was hoping maybe it was something simple, like a slipped or broken blower belt. Or maybe that the condenser was iced over, but that doesn't seem to be the case."

He fetched the garden hose from a large terra-cotta pot where it was coiled nearby. Turning on the spigot, he sprayed it over the box, in a deliberate back and forth pattern.

"What's that for?" Cara asked, swatting at a mosquito on her neck.

"Rinsing off the coils," he explained. "They can get blocked with all the pollen and dust and leaves and crud, and then you don't get cooling."

She nodded, acting as though she understood.

"I turned the controls off before we came out. Would you go inside and flip it on and see if we get lucky and it starts up?"

Cara crossed her fingers, flipped the thermostat on, and prayed for the dull thump that signaled the unit coming to life. Nothing. She ran her hand in front of the air register. More nothing.

"Sorry," Jack said, meeting her at the back door. "I looked at the manufacturer's plate on the back of it-it was installed in '82. The average life span of a central-air unit is supposed to be ten or fifteen years. I think that thing is DOA."

"c.r.a.p." She leaned her forehead against the wall beside the thermostat. "I don't think I can go on like this."

"You shouldn't have to. Tomorrow, first thing, send the landlord a registered letter, telling her you plan to have the unit repaired or replaced, and that you'll deduct whatever costs you incur from your rent."

"And what do I do in the meantime?" she asked. "I looked at the weather report this morning. This heat wave isn't going to let up. We don't even have any rain in the forecast. And anyway, I don't have the money to buy a central-air-conditioning unit like that. It's probably at least three or four thousand dollars."

"Can you open some windows? At least get some air circulating? These old houses were built to catch cross currents."

"I've tried, believe me. They're all painted shut. I hacked at the window in my bedroom with a screwdriver and even a steak knife, but I couldn't get it to budge. Every window in this house is like that."

He glanced toward the stairs. "Want me to give it a try?"

"Be my guest."

The staircase opened into a hallway that was the twin to the one on the first floor. The second floor, as she'd warned, was stifling. What had probably originally been a bedroom was now a combination living/dining room, visible through an arched entryway that Jack estimated had been installed sometime around the turn of the 1900s.

A large bay window looked out on the courtyard garden, and there were double banks of windows on the side walls, overlooking the sliver of side garden that separated this building from the ones next door.

A faded Oriental rug in muted blues, greens, and roses covered the wood floors, and a pair of overstuffed white slipcovered sofas faced each other, separated by an old painted trunk that was used as a coffee table. Bookcases flanked the windows. In the dining area, a round oak table was surrounded by a set of four mismatched high-backed chairs painted a soft fern green. A matte-green vase in the center of the table held a bouquet of wilted daisies. A small side table held another box fan, humming ineffectively in the corner.

He'd seen some of the finest, most elegant parlors in the historic district, s.p.a.ces filled with valuable antiques, priceless art, silver, first-edition books, and designer trappings. But none of them looked as welcoming as Cara Kryzik's living room.

This room looked to Jack like a room where you could sit and sip a gla.s.s of wine, read a book, or just be. There were paintings scattered about, on the walls and propped on the bookshelves, watercolors and oils, all of them either landscapes or still lifes with flowers. He was no art expert, but he thought these were probably the works of gifted amateurs-flea-market finds, most likely. There was also a laughably small flat-screen television nearly hidden on the bookshelves among the books.

He thought of the living room in his own cottage on Macon Street, cluttered with bins of his clothing, books, and detritus. At least when Zoey lived with him, the place was clean. There was a ratty leather sofa, now covered in dog hair, a lumpy brown leather recliner where he fell asleep more nights than he'd like to admit, this facing his prized sixty-four-inch high-definition surround-sound television propped on a pair of sawhorses. No pictures hung on his walls, no rugs softened his floors. It occurred to him that although he owned his own house, he had never taken the time to make it a home.

"Where's the kitchen?" he asked, turning toward her. Cara stepped into the hallway and pushed aside a flowered green and white curtain that concealed what he'd a.s.sumed was probably a closet or bathroom.

At one time, it had probably been another small bedroom. But now the s.p.a.ce was fitted with a set of 1950s-era flesh-pink metal kitchen cabinets, a small two-burner stove, with a cherry-red teakettle on the back burner, a stained porcelain sink barely big enough to hold a medium-sized saucepan, and the skinniest refrigerator he'd ever seen. There was a single window over the sink, and it held a jelly jar with a cl.u.s.ter of faded pink flowers. A flowered mug in the sink held a teaspoon.

"You cook in here?" he asked.

"All the time," Cara said with a laugh. "It's tiny, but it does the job."

They continued down the hallway, and Cara pointed through the open door. "My boudoir."