circumstances at a time of year that’s often difficult in the best of situations.”
“Well,” Dawn said, drawing the word out. I could hear the reluctance. “Certainly you can speak with me and certainly you can find out all you want about how we operate. As far as talking to the girls themselves, though, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“What if one or two are willing to speak with me?”
“We’ll see. Come out and let me meet you. I need to assess whether I can trust you.”
We made an appointment for the next morning, and I hung up uncertain whether this drum was going to rum-pa-pum-pum.
Suddenly Jolene stood at the side of my desk. I looked at my watch. Exactly 5:00 p.m.
“Ready?” she asked. She smiled sweetly if somewhat vaguely at me, the very picture of a lovely, somewhat ditzy woman without a care in the world. In other words, she had returned to the woman I worked with each day. Gone was the mad gardener who let me fall while she saved her plant or the shrew who so masterfully dissected Airy at lunch.
Airy. What was it short for? Arianna? Ariadne? Arabelle? Certainly not Aristotle.
“What’s Airy’s real name?” I asked as I tucked all the clippings into the His House file and slipped it back into its place in the H drawer. “And how does she spell it?”
“Airy?” She sounded as if she’d never heard of anyone by that name.
“You know,” I prompted, “the woman we met in the ladies’ room.” Though come to think of it, I hadn’t met her. No one had been in an introducing mood.
“Oh.” Jolene nodded in “sudden” remembrance. “Valeria.”
“Valeria?”
Jolene nodded. “Valeria Lucas Bennett. Sounds high society, doesn’t it?” And she laughed sarcastically.
I shrugged my red coat on, and we left The News by the back door. Jolene talked as we crossed the parking lot behind the building.
“She was Val until I started calling her Valentine’s Day when we were in first grade. Valentine’s Day, go away. Don’t come near for another year.” Jolene sang the rhyme. “She decided she didn’t like Val anymore. I suggested Larry from Valeria. She said that was a boy’s name. Then I told her she should be A-i-r-y, like a breeze floating wherever she wanted to go. Airy, Airy, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With weeds and seeds scratching your knees and ugly prickers all in a row.”
I shuddered for poor Airy as I unlocked my car doors. We climbed in and I cranked the heater as high as it would go.
Jo loosened her scarf. “Airy and I sat next to each other all through school. Lucas and Luray—that’s our maiden names. By the way,” she said as I turned toward her parents’ home, “I need to stop off at my house for a minute.”
“Oh.” I thought of her very upscale condominium in the new development on the old Greeley farm south of town, fifteen minutes from here. How like her to neglect to mention this little detour until now.
“I don’t mean the condo,” she said, reading my mind, a trick of hers I found very disconcerting. “I mean my house. I need to see Arnie, and he’s there.”
“You have a house and a condo?”
She looked at me as if to say, “Doesn’t everyone?”
“How long will this take?” I knew I was committed no matter how long it took. After all, she was already sitting in my car.
“Not long. No more than fifteen minutes.”
“To get there or to talk with Arnie?”
“Yes.”
Sighing softly, I told myself that I wasn’t being taken advantage of, that I liked going miles out of my way. After all, I had nothing better to do, unless you counted eating dinner, petting Whiskers or relaxing a minute before running out again to take a picture of the committee for the Amhearst Annual Christmas Food Project, or AAC-FOP as Mac called it.
Fifteen minutes later we pulled up before a gorgeous, gigantic mansion—I couldn’t think of any other word for the glorious vision in front of me. “This is your house?”
“Yeah, it’s mine.” She climbed out of the car.
“Wow!” I wondered about Jolene with her cloying lily of the valley perfume and big hair. Thoughtfully I glanced at her coat. Maybe that wasn’t faux fur after all.
The house drew me. Light streamed in wide ivory ribbons from Palladian windows and picture windows, bow windows and plain old regular windows, casting a golden glow on perfect shrubbery and a winding brick driveway and front walk. Through one large window a Christmas tree trimmed in little white lights twinkled from its place next to a sofa bigger than my entire apartment. A chandelier that looked like it would fit in well at the White House shone through the great window over the double front door.
“Look at all those lights,” Jolene said in disgust.
“They’re wonderful,” I said, mesmerized.
She gave her unladylike snort. “Arnie loves lights. When he was a kid, they didn’t have any money. I mean none. His mother would only let them have one light on at a time, and that was a sixty watt. Now he puts on every light in the house, all a hundred watt. You need sunglasses at midnight! ‘I can afford it,’ he yells. ‘Don’t you turn a single switch off!’”
I grabbed my camera from the backseat. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about using a flash.
“Has the paper ever done a feature on this place?” I asked. I could see it as the first in a series of Great Homes of Chester County, some new like this, some historic, some remodeled places like the barn over on Route 322. I’d have to talk to Edie Whatley, the home page editor. This was more her territory than mine, but I’d love to do such a series.
I stopped halfway up the walk and stared at the magnificence of it all. “Why live at your condo when you have this?”
“Because Arnie goes with this.”
I’d never met Arnie, but how bad could the man be if he could provide all this electricity? “Why did you two break up, Jolene?”
“Irreconcilable differences.”
“Yeah? What about?” I leaned to the left, peered into the dining room and admired the crystal chandelier over the mile-long cherry table. I stared at the silver tea service sitting on the sideboard. Like Jolene ever served tea.
Suddenly I could hear my mom, loud and clear.
Merrileigh Kramer! What are you doing, asking such personal questions about the demise of Jolene’s marriage? How rude can you get? Apologize right this instant!
It’s the opulence, Mom. It threw me.
It’s greed, Merry. And poor manners-which you never learned from me.
I placed a hand on Jo’s arm. “I’m
