Lindsay let Garth and Susanna huff and thunder their way outside for their second morning excursion then opened the chest freezer to add the breakfast leftovers.
An ungodly scream from the yard made her bash her head inside the freezer.
And screeching. “Oooooo wheee!!! Ooo wheeeeee!!!”
Lindsay ran, tangling in her swooping skirt and baker’s apron strings as she tripped around the corner to face the spy.
The dogs hadn’t even barked but the elderly lady outside the front gate was waving long arms, obviously waiting to give her an earful.
“That’s it! Thought I saw bears over here yesterday!! But they’re dogs!! Huge dogs!!”
Lindsay faced the extreme woman, tall, thin, barely bent except so she could see where her feet were headed in their canvas summer shoes. She wore skinny Levis with a sweatshirt tucked in, and wide man’s belt holding the jeans on her hipbones. Her grassroots hair did a wild reversal. Pale yellow roots and a gray moppet top. Worse for Lindsay, whose funny bone was tickled by the scolding, the woman’s hair sprang out in all directions as she regarded the dogs’ benevolent faces with no-nonsense hostility.
“What did you doooo?!?!” she hollered at Lindsay in a courageously frail voice. Her eyes agitated, vibrating blue stars like she expected an answer. “Did you actually search the world over for the greatest dogs you could find!?!! To bring them here?!! And tribulate me?!”
“I’m so so sorry they startled you.”
Lindsay herded the dogs back from the fence where they huddled only ten yards from where the woman was clearing leaves from her still barren flower garden. Lindsay could understand why the woman was frightened. Garth’s head came right over the fence so he could pant at her, he was that tall. “They’re harmless, really,” she said when they were in less startling proximity.
“I have a cat!” the woman exclaimed, body stiffening, narrowing her eyes at the dogs. “If those dogs eat my cat Iwill eat those dogs!”
Lindsay was sure she would. “And it would serve them right too,” she told her new neighbor. “Eating a poor cat.”
“They’d better not!” the woman scolded. She turned and crossed the few steps into her own yard.
“They won’t.” Lindsay called to her back. “I assure you, they love cats.” But she only had hope since they loved her pet skunks, very cat-like in size.
“I didn’t get to ninety-two knowing nothin’. And my name is Maimee by the way,” the woman hurled viciously over her shoulder as she headed toward her skinny yellow cottage. “M-a-i-m-e-e. Storganaff. S-t-o-r-g-a-n-a-f-f. Two e’s. Two f’s.”
Lindsay shook back incredulous tears and gurgled down a rude, imminent expulsion of laughter. “My great-aunt’s name was Mamie,” she called, loud enough to be heard by ninety-two-year-old ears. “Mamie, with an i-e.”
The woman surprised her by wheeling back to the fence. She banged the hood of the topaz Buick classic parked south of Lindsay’s car. A scrawly gray cat jumped to the sky and bounded off. “What was your great-aunt’s last name,” Maimee demanded.
“Well, goodness, it was actually Vye, her maiden name. And she married a man named Sprague Ross. Mamie Ross.”
“I’ve known a lot of Mamies in my time. But I don’t know her.” Maimee looked her square in the eye. “She dead now?”
“Yes, and so is my grandmother. Her sister.” And all the other sisters and daughters and aunts, Lindsay thought, realizing she was forty-four. Death was bound to happen to some people, but apparently not to this woman anytime soon.
“You have a lot more paternal women relation. More than the maternal ones who are gone,” she said, which was so certainly the truth that Lindsay just blinked at her. “Now, I have to go in for my heart pill. After that spell,” Maimee scolded, “I can’t wait any longer.” She turned back to her cottage, weaving through springtime skeletons of shrubbery. “When Stella and Sybil hear about this! Oh my god. They will want dogs just like those for their neighbors too,” she grumbled. “Lucky me, come home to this. Should have stayed in my stifling trailer in Florida.”
She stopped and headed back a few feet, shaking a knobby finger at Lindsay. “But I had to tell you about the business on the corner right away. Just don’t stare at me like I’m crazy. I assure you that your dismay is much less than mine. Remember the business, that one on Kanney and the highway. I’m here early in order to tell you it’s closed down.”
“Yes, yes, I noticed.” But she was more concerned over Maimee’s heart. And Lindsay wanted to dissuade their new neighbor from hating her dogs. “You can tell your friends,” she called hopefully, “that the male weighs all of one hundred and forty pounds, the female almost as much. Quite a shock you had then, wasn’t it?”
Maimee spun around, amazement cragging her waxy, tan face. She cracked into malicious laughter. “Oh hell! All that much! I will have fun with that!” And she was off. Lindsay’s entire system was reeling from the exchange. Unbelievable. Maimee was like Haidee when her daughter went through rehab the third time.
Goodness, she could only imagine summer with the cantankerous spy next door.
The cell phone rang from the pocket of her baker’s apron. She plopped down on the side of the deck, wanting to plant some of the tall blue campanula and white foxglove into the fresh spring earth like she had at home. She would bring back the still dormant transplants today after Sam came home from work.
Garth leaned against her side, breathing heavy. Newfs preferred lounging on ice and snowpiles in February over breezy March mornings. She wondered what they thought of Maimee the Spy. Probably amused.
“You’d better leave her cat alone,” she told him, and Garth lapped at his nose, realizing her tone meant business. He rolled his small brown eyes up at her innocently, then to her pocket where the phone buzzed a sixth time, and she finally answered.
“Mrs. Davinson. This is Mr. Jack Marshall. I’m from Plymouth, Indiana.”
“Good morning, Mr. Marshall,” she replied to the earnestly polite voice.
“I understand that you are interested in purchasing my property.”
Lindsay looked back at the cottage. She and Sam already made a down payment to the owners from Culver. The land contract was signed. “I don’t understand?”
“My property and buildings on Highway 23 and Kanney Street.”
“Yes, I know the place. The antique mall complex.”
“Well, it’s not an antique mall any longer. But you can make it whatever you like when you buy the place.”
“But I- where did you get the idea that I wanted to buy the property from you?”
“You won’t be able to buy it from anyone else but me.”
“I realize that, Mr. Marshall.” She stopped talking, forcing him to explain or just hang up. Disengage. She had learned to easily enough in Haidee’s rehab program.
“I just received a call from someone,” he said, “I don’t care to say who, but they heard at Koontz Lake Realty that you were asking around about the price.”
“I assure you, I wasn’t the person asking, Mr. Marshall. But, I will admit I am interested in information now.” She wasn’t about to admit that calling him was the very next thing on her to-do list.
“You would not want to wait to contact me if you knew how many people have telephoned me to rent or buy the place.”
“My husband and I have a philosophy that if something is meant for us, it will be there no matter what.” Not that she believed that, but Sam did. “But please, tell me whatever I would want to know,” she said, a smile in her voice, just so he might lighten up.
The buildings could be contracted by lease-purchase option, giving the buyer three years to rent, and later take a loan for a balloon payment. The total square footage in all the buildings was approximately thirty-eight hundred square feet. The problem. Mr. Marshall wanted two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. Not an option, she decided. Lindsay was not an agent nor an appraiser, but she knew better. Who was encouraging him to sell for such a price in Koontz Lake?
But then again. She wavered back to the manic side which controlled her lately, deciding she needed to do this.
“When would you like to meet me?” he asked. “You will see how well the inside will work for any business you could think to begin.”
She would walk over. “Mr. Marshall, could you be there in half an hour?” And when he said he would be there even sooner, she hurried the Newfs inside.
