The noise of the Dumpster delivery attracted Mr. and Mrs. Loper from next door.
“How long will that thing be there?” George wanted to know. From his tone and expression it was clear that he did not think the big, ugly metal trash box enhanced his neighborhood.
“They’ll pick it up Monday,” I said, tossing in a pair of very dusty old sleeping bags. “And replace it with an empty. I hope to be finished with all of this by the middle of next week.”
George followed me into the garage, talking to my back as we walked. “I’ve been keeping my eye out for Nordquist this A.M. He always seems to pop up first thing in the morning, so I began to think he might be sleeping in your backyard. Last night I was out there when you drove up, hoping to catch him before he tucked himself in for the night.”
“What were you planning to do with the baseball bat?” I asked.
“Just a little inducement to stay away, if you know what I mean,” he said. “A twelve-bore would put a stop to him.”
“You don’t own a twelve-bore,” his wife, Karen, admonished; she had followed us in. “Or any other firearm, for that matter. I won’t allow those things in my house.” She winked at me as she tipped her head toward her husband. “Who knows what a hothead might do if there were a lethal weapon handy at the wrong moment?”
George paid no attention to her. He went over to “help” Lyle with Dad’s tools.
“So good to see you, Maggie,” Karen Loper said. She had aged a great deal since I saw her last. Living with George Loper would age anyone in a hurry, but it wasn’t only wrinkles and gray hair that had changed her. She held her left hand protectively and her left foot lagged a bit when she walked; a stroke?
“Sorry I haven’t dropped by sooner to say hello,” she said, standing to the side while I unloaded the family’s collection of outdated textbooks from shelves. Boxes and dusty boxes of them. “But you’ve had so much to do and I didn’t want to get in your way. I was talking to Sunny last night-”
“And how is Sunny?” I asked. Her daughter had once been one of my best friends.
“Oh, she’s fine. I worried when her youngest went off to college last fall. That empty nest nearly killed me, you know. But not Sunny. Since she made partner at the law firm she’s been too busy to notice how empty her house is.”
“Good for her,” I said. “Say hello for me.”
“I shall,” she said. “Was that Evie Miller I saw over here the other day?”
“It was. She’s working with University Housing.”
“Too bad about her and Tom.”
“Maggie?” Jean-Paul stood in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling cupboards that lined the back wall and clearly wanted some guidance about what to do with its contents. I was happy he interrupted before Karen got further into her tale of someone else’s woe. While Gracie Nussbaum passed along information, Karen was a notorious and sometimes malicious gossip. I very much did not want to hear about Evie and Tom, whoever he was.
“Excuse me,” I said to her.
“Of course.” She patted my shoulder. “I’ll get out of your way.”
She wandered out to talk to another neighbor on the driveway, and I went to see what Jean-Paul had found.
Inside the cupboard, among other things, there were two large plastic laundry baskets filled with little developer’s boxes full of old family slides and movies. I groaned.
“I will leave them to you,” Jean-Paul said, smiling as he moved on to old paint cans, paintbrushes, and household chemicals that needed to go to the toxic waste dump.
I pulled the laundry baskets down, knelt on the floor beside them and started looking at the notations on the film boxes. There were photos and movies of family trips and school plays, Christmas pageants and birthdays, and roses-many roses-and they needed to be at least looked through. But later. The baskets would have to come home with me to be sorted on some lonely rainy night.
As I shifted the baskets to the corner of the garage designated for things I was keeping, I noticed a handwritten notation on the end of a slide box: GARDEN-CHRYSLERS, and a date. Dad was proud of his Chrysler Imperial roses, to be sure, but what interested me was the film developer’s date stamp. I began pawing through the basket, looking for more boxes dated around the time that Mrs. Bartolini died.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” George Loper shouted, waving what looked like a small jeweler’s box perilously close to Lyle’s face. Lyle stood looking back at him in stunned silence.
I jumped to my feet and saw that Jean-Paul was already rushing toward the tool bench where George was fulminating at poor Lyle.
“Dammit,” George spat. “A young man gives his life in service to his country, and this is how you people honor him?”
“George!” Karen snapped, coming back into the garage. As she tried to make haste to intercept her husband, her limp became more pronounced.
I put myself between George and Lyle, who stood mute, ashen. “What’s the problem here?”
“This.” He opened the little box and pushed it close to my face. I took it from him so I could see what had upset him so.
My brother Mark’s Purple Heart. It was given to my parents, along with some other medals and a tightly folded flag, during Mark’s funeral.
“Where did you find this?” I asked George.
“In a drawer with a bunch of-” He sputtered, trying to get the next word out. “Crap.”
“I can’t imagine why you were going through my father’s drawers,” I said quietly, closing the box. “Or why you are so concerned about what he kept in them.”
He had more to say, but I didn’t want to hear it. Looking into his eyes, watching his red and angry face, wondering if he would explode like a character in a cartoon, I said, “We can manage from here, Mr. Loper. Thanks for dropping by.”
Karen was at his elbow. “Honestly, George.”
He spun on his heel and stormed out.
“He’s a veteran,” Karen said, attempting to apologize for him, or to explain something about him, but gave it up with a shake of her head and walked out behind him. The other neighbors in the drive, perhaps sharing chagrin for being snoopy, drifted away.
“Sorry, Lyle,” I said. I heard my voice break. I knew he was upset, even though he said he wasn’t. But he went inside to check on Roy’s progress just the same. Jean-Paul took me in his arms and I buried my face against his shoulder, taking a minute to catch my breath. Like my mom, I wear grief for my big brother close to the surface, and George had no business scratching at it.
“Some work crew.” I knew the voice; my Uncle Max had arrived. “Everyone standing around snogging when there’s work to be done.”
I looked up over Jean-Paul’s shoulder. Uncle Max stood there with his arms akimbo and a grin on his face, a welcome sight. I asked, “Where did you come from?”
“I’m told I was born in Duluth,” he said, ever the smart-ass. “But I was too young to remember. So, what was all that fuss and feathers I walked in on?”
“Snoopy neighbor. Not to worry.”
“Says you.” He tapped Jean-Paul’s shoulder as if he were cutting in on a dance floor. “You have a monopoly on the lady’s hugs now, Bernard?”
“A lovely thought,” Jean-Paul said, releasing me.
Uncle Max enveloped me in a bear hug and smooched my cheek. Holding me at arm’s length, he said, “I got an interesting call early this morning. Very, very early.”
“Did you?” I said, pulling free.
“From Paris. Canal Plus wanted to talk deal. Something about backing your Normandy film project.” He gave Jean-Paul a pointed glance. “Anyone here know anything about that?”
I turned to Jean-Paul. “Does anyone?”
He responded with a shrug and a moue with a guilty grin behind it. “Perhaps someone spoke with an acquaintance.”
“I thought so,” Max said, mimicking Jean-Paul’s shrug. “They made a decent offer. Problem is, there’s this network that thinks the project is already theirs.”