Compass Rose by John Casey Read Free Book Online Page B

making sure that they are fulfilled.”
    “All right.”
    “It will give her the peace of mind that—”
    “I said yes.”
    Jack bobbed his head several times. As much to shake away the unused bits of his speech, Elsie thought, as to reply to her. “All right, then,” Jack said. “So the next thing is for you to get in touch with the lawyer. If you’ll look at the third item on my memo, you’ll see that the lease on the stone cottage comes up for renewal. You might as well let the lawyer handle that. Do you know the tenant? That woman who works for Eddie Wormsley; I’ve seen her play tennis here. If she can afford that, she can pay a fair rent. As it stands now, it barely covers the taxes and insurance. Miss Perry is land-poor, and the cash flow may not cover nursing expenses. I have people on the waiting list for a cottage here at Sawtooth who’d be more than happy—”
    “I thought you had to steer clear?”
    “Oh, Elsie,” Sally said. “Jack is just being helpful.”
    “And all I’m doing is pointing out that using Miss Perry’s rental cottage as a waiting room for his Sawtooth enterprise isn’t exactly steering clear. I’m just trying to help him be Caesar’s wife.”
    Jack glared at her. “I was merely making a point of comparison. Never mind. Sometimes you have the attention span of a kitten. Pouncing at shoelaces. Take the goddamn paper home. When you get stuck, call the lawyer. And don’t be a pain in the ass with him.”
    “Jack,” Sally said. “Sometimes—”
    “Sometimes,” Elsie said, “he’s more bearable when he’s cross.”
    Jack swirled his brandy snifter. “You see,” he said to Sally, “if I let her have the last word, she’s not so unbearable herself.”
    Once when Sally was tipsy she’d told Elsie that Jack liked his spats with Elsie. She’d added, “In fact, afterward he can get quite amorous.”
    That thought, not one to dwell on at the best of times, was enough to start her gathering up Rose’s things and then Rose in her car seat.

chapter eleven
    P hoebe Fitzgerald called to ask if she could come over. “It won’t take a minute. I’m a little bit up in the air about something …”
    May just had time to make biscuits. When Phoebe came in, May put the teakettle on and got out a jar of her rose-hip jelly. May didn’t feel so slow around Phoebe as she had at first. She’d figured out that Phoebe went through a half-dozen little items while she worked her way to the main thing on her mind. May didn’t think Phoebe meant to fool anyone, just that Phoebe wasn’t sure how to get where she was going. According to Eddie she wasn’t that way with clients—she let them say their say while she nodded and smiled and took notes. Eddie was crazy about her handwriting—he’d unfolded a page to show May. Poor Eddie.
    Phoebe asked after the boys, ate a biscuit with a dab of jelly, wondered how rose hips could be so sweet, repeated after May “apple slices and lemon juice,” as if that’s what she’d come to hear. She asked if May knew any of the pink ladies at the hospital; she’d thought of volunteering but she’d heard that a man had come in carrying his cut-off thumb, held it out in the palm of his hand. She said, “I don’t know how I’d be. I’m afraid I might come apart. You know about Miss Perry?”
    May nodded. “Apparently Elsie Buttrick found her. One of the pink ladies … I was at the hospital asking about volunteering, and she started to tell me about it but a nurse cut her off. She—the pink lady—said that a neighbor … Miss Perry only has two neighborsand I’m one of them. Of course, there’s Mr. Salviatti, but he’s farther away and he’s not … I’ve never even met him. Have you?”
    “Not so as he’d remember. He had a boat in the yard when Dick worked there.” May tried to think of something else about Mr. Salviatti, hoping to steer clear of Elsie Buttrick. “It was a funny color, sort of raspberry. Some people made