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“My dad is seventy-three. He’s thirty, tops,” Zoey said. “I just meant, since we all live here, shouldn’t we be friends?”
There was no good way to respond to that without diminishingZoey’s enthusiasm. Charlotte could only hope that she was going to move into a dorm in the fall. There she could make friends her own age in that cloistered collegiate universe where everything was new and theoretical. Where the real world was years and years away.
Suddenly, there was a crash and they turned to see that Zoey’s witch ball had rolled off the box and shattered on the concrete patio.
“Looks like you have a ghost,” Charlotte joked. “Here, I’ll get it.”
As Charlotte grabbed a broom that was on the patio, she could have sworn she heard Zoey mutter, “Pigeon!”
Chapter Six
Mac Garrett heard voices as he stepped out of his condo, so he closed his patio doors quickly. Lizbeth Lime was always skulking around, looking for something to report. It took him a moment to remember that she was gone.
He turned to see that the voices belonged to two women standing on Lizbeth Lime’s patio. He didn’t recognize the one with dark hair, but the other was his neighbor Charlotte. Her long flyaway hair was down today, and her blue-jean cutoffs afforded him a view of the tan designs fading on her skin. He didn’t know what the designs were. At first he’d assumed they were tattoos, but over the years he realized that they changed week to week, which was a source of endless fascination. Was she drawing on herself? Or was someone else doing it? Why?
Mac had lived at the Dellawisp nearly eight years, longer than anyone other than the Lime sisters, who had given off such an air of permanence that it felt like they’d been here since the beginning of time. He remembered when Charlotte had moved in two years ago,remembered the exact spring day. Several rangy men in sandals had helped her move in some old furniture, and afterward they’d had beers on her patio until Lizbeth had come out and yelled at them. Two years was a long time to put up with that.
Instead of walking to the alley, Mac decided to detour to the mailboxes in the U-bend of the building next to Frasier’s office. He rarely got physical mail, but it was a shameless excuse to get closer. As he pulled his keys from his pocket, he tried to hear their conversation.
His keys suddenly slipped from his hand and fell to the sidewalk with a clatter. He looked over to find the women looking at him. He bent, his knees popping, and picked up the keys and unlocked his box. Surprise, surprise. Nothing was there. He stood there longer than necessary, leaning in so the door to the box hid his face from them. He closed his eyes with embarrassment. He hoped they hadn’t realized he was eavesdropping.
After a few moments, he finally closed the box, revealing the dark-haired girl now beside him. He gave a start.
“Hi,” she said. She was carrying a box of magazines. It appeared to be so heavy she was bowed back from the weight of it. “I’m Zoey.” She awkwardly held out one hand, trying to balance the box with the other.
“Mac,” he said, shaking her hand gently so as not to tip her over. She was younger than he’d assumed from a distance. She was nearly his height, six feet, but as thin as a cat’s whisker.
“Do you work in a restaurant?” she asked, apropos of nothing. He was on his way to run a few errands this morning, so he was in street clothes, not his chef’s whites.
“Popcorn.” When she looked at him blankly, he added, “I work at Popcorn. It’s in the Mallow Island Resort Hotel.”
“Charlotte said your place smells really good sometimes.” She nodded back to where Charlotte was now sweeping something into a dustpan on Lizbeth’s patio.
Mac and Charlotte had never spoken beyond the polite things about the weather that neighbors say in passing. He never thought she’d paid him much mind,but she noticed when he cooked.He realized he was staring at her and looked away. The girl saw, though. He felt his face grow hot, which he knew was apparent despite his thick, vivid-red beard.Nevernotknow what you’re feeling,Camille used to say. It was the curse of his fair, freckled skin.
“What’s happening with Lizbeth’s place now?” he asked by way of distraction. “Are you moving in?”
“No. I just moved into the studio. Frasier gave me a job cleaning Lizbeth’s place out,” she said. “Do you know anything about her sister?”
“Lucy? I hardly ever see her. But I don’t think she and Lizbeth got along. They never spoke, at least not that I saw.”
Zoey shifted the weight of the box and stumbled back.
“Here, I’ll take that,” Mac said, pocketing his keys and lifting the box from her.
“Thanks. It goes in the recycling dumpster,” she said. She followed him out of the garden and into the alley. There, he hoisted the box into the Dellawisp’s blue dumpster, which was nearly full.
“Lizbeth must have had a lot to recycle,” he said, clapping the dust from the box off his hands.
“You don’t know the half of it. I’m getting a workout carrying this stuff out here.”
“Well, don’t blame Frasier. I’m sure he couldn’t put the dumpsters nearer to the building without incurring the wrath of Roscoe Avanger.”
Zoey looked at him curiously. “Why would Roscoe Avanger have a say in it?”
“He was the one who bought these old stables and saved them from being demolished a few decades ago.”
Zoey turned to look at the gray cobblestone building. “It wasRoscoe Avangerwho renovated this place?”
