Bowled Over Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Yeah, that’s me.”
    “You’re a friend of Kathy Cooper’s.”
    Her smile was reborn and lit up her blue eyes. She swiped sandy bangs out of her eyes and said, “Yeah, sure. You a friend of Kathy’s?”
    “I was, once upon a time. Something happened, though, and there was some kind of misunderstanding, and she…we don’t speak now. Maybe she’s said something about it to you. I’m Jaymie Leighton.”
    The woman’s expression was blank. “Nope, sorry. She’s never mentioned your name.”
    “Not once?”
    “Not once.” The woman paused for a moment and looked into the middle distance, her eyes unfocused. Then she looked back into Jaymie’s eyes. “Hey, did you and she have some kind of run-in yesterday?”
    “Um, yes. Yes we did.”
    Dani sighed and shook her head, then bent down and hefted a heavy bag of feed onto her shoulder, standing with the assurance of a weightlifter. “Look, I’d just let Kathy cool down. You must have really ticked her off,” she said, her head tilted sideways to accommodate the heavy bag of feed on her shoulder. “She came out yesterday to the farm, going on and on about how she was going to get back at all her ‘enemies.’ I told her to cool her jets, but she just said I didn’t understand, that some things were unforgivable, and that she’d make sure somebody suffered.”
    “Who?” Jaymie asked, following as Dani headed to the front of the store. “Make sure
who
suffered?”
    Dani passed the clerk, told him what she was taking and said she’d settle up next week, then sailed out the door with Jaymie and Hoppy trotting after her. She tossed the feed into the back of the pickup, then jumped into the cab of the truck and revved the motor, backing out of the parking lot while she said, out the open window, “I don’t know who. Her
enemies
, plural, she said, whoever they are. Let it blow over. I’m sure it will be fine. Kathy’s really a good egg. Gotta go; I’m on a tight schedule today. Bye!” She tore out of the parking lot in another hail of gravel and tooted her horn, before blasting off toward the highway out of town.
    *   *   *
    C OMFORT FOR J AYMIE’S perturbed spirits was as close as her stack of vintage cookbooks, her fenced backyard anda cup of tea. It was after lunch. She had already taken care of the next day’s rental baskets and organized the food pickup for them, so now she had some free time for herself. Denver lay in the shade provided by her Adirondack chair, while Hoppy sniffed the fence line. Her next-door neighbors, Mimi and Grant Watson, were back in town, and their purebred toy poodle, Dipsy, was the bane of Hoppy’s existence, but he just couldn’t leave her alone. She snapped at him, growled, barked through the fence, and then ignored him when they were in company together. Hoppy was neutered, but Jaymie wondered if his obsession was a kind of hopeless crush on Dipsy.
    The Watsons lived in their Queensville home in summer but wintered in Boca Raton, near Alan and Joy, Jaymie and Becca’s parents, so they had brought with them a few things for Jaymie and Becca, including a vintage book on Floridian cookery that had a recipe for Key lime pie she just had to try. Her mom
had
been listening to her during their phone calls this past winter after all, Jaymie realized.
    Becca and her best friend, Dee, pulled in beside Jaymie’s ancient van in the lane behind the house. The Leighton home was one of the old ones in the center of the village, with no laneway in front but a carriage lane and stable behind. The stable was now a garage, of course, weighed down with trumpet vines, orange flowers draped elegantly, disguising the elderly structure. When Becca was staying, she used it for her much nicer and newer car, while Jaymie’s rust bucket van baked or shivered in the elements.
    “Hey, you two,” Jaymie called out, smiling as she noticed how Dee had quite a few boxes of junk to transfer to her car, which sat in the guest parking in