Haunting Olivia Page 17

  In one minute, Johanna had said more to Camilla than she’d said every morning at eight to Olivia.

  “Oooh, I think Larissa would love this!” Camilla said. “Don’t you think, Olivia? You were such good friends with her.”

  Johanna stared at Olivia. Waiting. Hoping.

  Olivia eyed the sweater. She let a few moments pass. “I can’t decide between the purple and the black, though. Larissa loves both colors so much.

  Maybe get both?”

  Johanna’s eyes widened.

  “Ooh, they’re pricey. But worth it!” Camilla said.

  “Okay, I’ll take both.” Camilla made a show of glancing down at Johanna’s shoes. “Oooh! I just love your shoes, Johanna. Are those Choos? Manolos?”

  Johanna beamed. “Payless, actually.”

  “You’re kidding! They’re gorgeous! I wish I could try them on, but we’re probably not the same size.

  I’m a ten. Huge feet.”

  Good job, Camilla! Olivia thought. Johanna was 200

  Janelle Taylor

  about to walk into their trap and admit she was a size eight. Just like the shoe print left outside the basement window of the cottage.

  “Sorry,” Johanna said. “I’m an eight. But I’m sure Payless will have them in your size.”

  Camilla smiled. “I’ll stop in. Thanks so much!”

  Johanna beamed and rushed back around the counter to the cash register. Once the sale was rung up, Olivia said, “See you in the morning, Johanna.”

  Johanna smiled. Not a light-up-her-face smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  Olivia had a feeling Johanna would be a little more talkative tomorrow.

  Chapter 16

  Olivia was right. Not only did Johanna offer her a smile the next morning, but she actually agreed to come in for coffee. Zach waited in the kitchen.

  No matter where she was, Olivia could smell his combination of Ivory soap and delicious maleness; she worried that Johanna could too, would spring up and find Zach listening in.

  The moment Johanna sat on the sofa, she burst into tears.

  “Johanna?” Olivia said gently. She ran to get a box of tissues from the kitchen. Zach squeezed her hand on the way back.

  Johanna accepted a tissue and dabbed under her eyes. Her mascara was running down her cheeks.

  “At first I was doing it for the money,” Johanna said cryptically. “But then I really started to like the old guy.”

  “Doing what for the money?” Olivia asked, her tone as gentle as possible.

  “William liked to pay for sex,” Johanna said. “He wasn’t interested in calling an escort ser vice and 202

  Janelle Taylor

  having a strange woman, however hot, for the night. He liked to pick someone he was attracted to. So one night when I was working at Hotsie’s, a strip club a few towns over, he came in and started paying more attention to me than to the dancers. I was a waitress and also helped out in the girls’

  changing room, mending a costume or finding someone’s mascara, that kind of thing.”

  Olivia’s face must have registered some kind of shock because Johanna stood up. “Look, she said, if you’re gonna sit there all high and mighty and judge me . . .”

  “I’m not judging you, Johanna. I’m more pictur-ing or trying not to picture my father in a strip club.”

  That calmed down Johanna. She sat and took a deep breath. “Is the coffee ready? And if you have some Danish or something . . .”

  Olivia smiled and headed into the kitchen. Zach shot her a thumbs-up. She poured two mugs of coffee, added milk and sugar to a tray and the box of cinnamon rolls she’d bought yesterday.

  “Mmmm, do I smell cinnamon rolls?” Johanna asked, eyeing the tray. “I just love those.”

  Half a cinnamon roll later, Johanna said, “Now where was I?”

  Olivia sipped her coffee. “How you met my father.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, then took another bite of the cinnamon roll. “Your dad kept watching me. I saw how free he was with his money, and I couldn’t believe he was more interested in a forty-three-year-old waitress than a twenty-two-year-old dancer, but HAUNTING OLIV IA

  203

  he was. One night, he waited for me to come out after my shift and he asked me on a date.”

  “Were you interested?” Olivia asked. “I only ask because of the big age difference.”

  “Interested in a handsome, older, wealthy man?”

  Johanna asked. “Of course I was.”

  “He asked me over to this house for dinner. I arrived and he had the whole thing set up in the dining room. A four-course meal, complete with waiter. I’ve never been treated like that in my entire life.”

  “So it was a ‘date’ date,” Olivia said. “How did money factor in?”

  “Well, after dinner we . . . ended up in the bedroom. After ward, he gave me five one-hundred-dollar bills. He said he thought it was hot to pay for sex, to role-play that I was a high-priced call girl and he was a strapping young guy. So I thought I was supposed to give him back the money when I left, but he always tucked it in my purse.”

  Olivia’s face must have registered some surprise because Johanna added, “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “It wasn’t like I was really a prostitute, ” Johanna said.

  “How long was your relationship?” Olivia asked.

  “Just a few months,” Johanna said. “But it wasn’t all sex. We talked a lot. About my dreams, his. I told him how it was my dream to own a real cashmere sweater, and the next day, three were delivered to my apartment. When I told him it was my dream to open my own clothing store, he suggested I have a cashmere sweater shop and made all the arrangements. Put everything in my name, too.”

  204

  Janelle Taylor

  “That was very generous of him,” Olivia said.

  “And then he asked you to marry him?”

  Her cheeks pinkened. “Well, he didn’t ‘ask me’

  ask me. I mean, we talked about it. We were more like preengaged. We were going to live in this house together. And then he died. And left the place to you.”

  “So I guess he must have talked about our estrangement. That’s why you were always so hostile to me.”

  She nodded and sipped her tea. “He said you ran around behind his back when you were a teenager and got yourself knocked up by a local boy. He said you were an embarrassment to the Sedgwick name.”

  “Well, that shows how he estranged himself from me,” Olivia said. “But why did you think I was the one who spit it in his face?”

  “He said he was worried sick that one day you would come back and take everything that was coming to you. He said it just like that.”

  “And you took that to mean this house?”

  She nodded. “The house and Zach. Your father dropped dead and there you were, all moved in.

  You even moved in on my cousin’s boyfriend. She was worried about that before you even turned up, of course.”

  Cousin! So Marnie was Johanna’s cousin. Very interesting. “Worried about me before I arrived?”

  Olivia asked, leaning closer. There was something crucial in all this and Olivia didn’t want to miss a word. She adopted a nonchalant look and jumped up to water the plants by the window. Anything to show Johanna there was nothing out of the ordi-nary about what she said.

  HAUNTING OLIV IA

  205

  “Well, when your father’s health started going, and I mean going bad—he’d already had a heart attack—

  he began talking a lot about you. He told me all about how you had a daughter at sixteen by someone who lived in town and that you gave custody of the baby to the guy. I was trying to figure out who, and Marnie, who has a thirteen-year-old daughter, was able to pinpoint Kayla Archer in two seconds. She and Brianna are in some classes together at the middle school. There aren’t too many thirteen-year-old girls without mothers in Blueberry.”

  Olivia wondered
what was going on in Zach’s mind right now as he took all this in. That Marnie knew about Olivia before Olivia had even come to town.

  Had Marnie started dating Zach because she knew William Sedgwick was dying—and that Kayla might come into a huge inheritance soon? The timing added up. They’d started dating in December.

  “Johanna, what you said about my making moves on your cousin’s boyfriend. It wasn’t like that.

  When I came to Blueberry I didn’t even know that my child was alive.”

  At Johanna’s confused expression, Olivia filled her in on the entire story.

  “So it was more like unfinished business between you and Zach,” Johanna said. “I can understand that.”

  Olivia took a deep breath, drained from talking about her father’s manipulations. Drained from the entire day. “I hope we can be friends, Johanna. We see each other at the crack of dawn every morning.

  We might as well be friends, right?”

  “I don’t know about friends,” Johanna said. “I 206

  Janelle Taylor

  mean, Marnie’s my cousin, and you’re like the enemy, you know?”

  “The enemy?” Olivia repeated. “Does she really hate me that much?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Johanna responded. “She does.”

  “So, my car, the figurines, the noose, the size-eight footprint found outside my basement window the night someone slashed my bed—was that all you guys?”

  Johanna stood up, suddenly nervous. She made a show of looking at her watch. “I really have to go.

  I have to be somewhere.”

  As Johanna practically ran to the door, Olivia said,

  “Johanna, if it was the two of you, will it stop now?”

  Johanna glanced at Olivia. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She bit her lower lip. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I probably won’t be able to chat or anything, though, because I’m opening up the shop earlier from now on.”

  With a last nervous smile, Johanna fled down the stairs, walk-running down the road on her high heels until she disappeared from view.

  “All that because your friend bought a couple of sweaters?” Zach said when Olivia closed the front door.

  “It’s almost as though Johanna was looking for an excuse to talk. She’s so high-strung and nervous. I get the feeling that Marnie is pulling the strings, and Johanna’s freaking out. One more sweater and she might break down and confess.”

  “I wouldn’t trust her, though,” Zach said. “It’s hard to tell what’s real and what she’s deluded herself into thinking is real.”

  “Well, a little kindness seems the way to get HAUNTING OLIV IA

  207

  through to her,” Olivia said, “so perhaps the incidents will stop now. She might see me as more allied with my father now, whereas before I was the enemy.”

  “Yeah, but as she said, you’re even more of the enemy because of me.”

  Olivia let out a breath and flopped down on the sofa in the living room.

  “So Marnie came on to me because she thought I might get very rich soon?” Zach said, shaking his head as he sat down next to Olivia. “That makes me so sick.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, she fell in love.”

  “That’s not a consolation. She came on to me because she thought my daughter—and therefore I—

  was going to inherit a fortune. That’s revolting.”

  “Zach, did you ever see William when he was in town? Did he ever meet Kayla?”

  He shook his head. “Well, he saw her at least one time that I know of. From a distance. I didn’t speak to him. He looked from me to Kayla and then turned away.”

  “Why do you think he sent the birthday and Christmas cards?” Olivia asked. “I keep thinking about that; it would mean he cared about Kayla’s feelings. He wanted her to know her mother was thinking of her at least on those two big days.”

  “Olivia, we’d go out of our minds trying to figure out the inner workings of your father.”

  “Ever since my friend Camilla left, I’ve been thinking of something she said yesterday.”

  “What’s that?” Zach asked, glancing at her.

  “Well, Camilla thinks my father gave you Kayla because of my stamp of approval. He didn’t want his sixteen-year-old daughter to raise a baby, but he 208

  Janelle Taylor

  didn’t want the baby to be raised by strangers, all ties to me gone forever. So he gave the baby to you, knowing she’d be fine in your care.”

  “But your father thought I was pond scum.”

  “Clearly not. Or he wouldn’t have given you Kayla.”

  Zach seemed to be taking that in. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But I also don’t give a rat’s butt what your father thought of me.”

  She smiled. “I know. And I’m glad. I just thought it was interesting. It hurts less not to hate him, Zach. And these little tidbits keep adding up to me being unable to hate him. I don’t like him, but I don’t hate him the way I did that first day I arrived in Blueberry.”

  He took her hand and held it. “Good. Hatred doesn’t do anyone any good.”

  “Do you think Johanna will tell Marnie about our little chitchat?” Olivia asked as Zach caressed the tender skin of her inner arm.

  “I don’t think so. I have a feeling Johanna wants to be written up in Glitz magazine too much for that.

  I think Johanna thinks she’s found a more important, useful ally than Marnie. Cousin or no cousin.”

  “We have another pageant meeting tonight,”

  Olivia said. “I have a feeling it’s going to take hours to make a single decision.”

  “I’ll be waiting outside in the truck just to make sure the hours aren’t because you’ve been locked in a basement.”

  “Don’t even joke,” Olivia said. But she knew he wasn’t joking.

  Chapter 17

  “No, I think Cecily should go first. She’s the pret-tiest,” Cecily’s mother announced.

  “Hello! ” Kayla yelled. “It’s an inner-beauty pageant.

  So looks don’t matter.”

  “Then you go first,” another girl snapped.

  Kayla’s face fell for a moment, but then she recovered. “Jerk-face.”

  The six contestants and their mothers stood on the stage in the auditorium, bickering back and forth, as they’d been doing for the past fifteen minutes. All that was required of them this evening was to agree on the order in which the girls would present themselves to the panel of judges and the audience in two weeks.

  Olivia waited for Colleen, the assistant coordinator, to intervene, but the shy woman bit her lip and then buried her nose in the pageant manual. She was clearly intimidated by the mothers and the girls.

  Olivia might not be the sole coordinator, but she was taking charge now.

  “Rule number one of Blueberry’s Inner-Beauty 210

  Janelle Taylor

  Pageant is that contestants must demonstrate inner beauty all the time, not just during the actual pageant. So let’s all put that into practice, okay?”

  “I agree with Olivia,” trilled Cecily Carle’s mother.

  There were eye rolls from everyone else.

  “Well, I think either Eva or I should go first,”

  Emily said. “Because we’re twins.”

  “So you should both go last,” Kayla said. “You already call too much attention to yourselves.”

  As the arguing reached headache-inducing levels, Olivia called out, “The pageant guidebook suggests we go in alphabetical order. That way, the judges know the order is random.”

  “And your daughter’s name just happens to start with A,” Marnie said coldly.

  “But Emily’s last name is Abernathy, so she’s first!” said Emily’s mother. “Then Eva.”

  “Colleen,” Olivia said to the assistant coordinator,

  “why don’t you take over now that we’ve got that settled.”

  The woman practically jumped. “Okay, so the order
is Emily Abernathy, Eva Abnernathy, Kayla Archer, Cecily Carle, Deenie McCord, and Brianna Sweetser.

  “Best for last, baby,” Olivia heard Marnie say to her daughter.

  “Attention, please,” Colleen called out in such a low voice that no one heard her. “Attention!” she suddenly bellowed.

  All heads swung to her.

  “We will have one placement rehearsal one day prior to the pageant next Saturday,” Colleen said, reading from the clipboard in her hands. “Each HAUNTING OLIV IA

  211

  contestant must by pageant day be formally sponsored by a town establishment. I’ll hand out forms that must be signed by the proprietor at the end of the meeting.”

  “Can it be any type of business?” Brianna asked.

  “Any type as long it’s located within Blueberry,”

  Colleen said. “And no, you can’t be sponsored by your kid sister’s lemonade stand or something like that.”

  “I don’t have a kid sister,” Brianna snapped.

  “I’m speaking to the group, ” Colleen responded.

  She seemed to be relishing this new position of power. “If I may continue. At the pageant, each contestant will read an essay of between seven hundred fifty and one thousand words on what inner beauty means to her. Each contestant will give an oral presentation on the most influential person in her life. Finally, each contestant will answer three questions chosen at random by the judges. After a short break, the judges will then review their scores and announce a runner-up and the winner of the pageant.”

  “Who are the judges?” Cecily Carle’s mother asked.

  Colleen flipped a page on her clipboard. “The esteemed judges are Donald Hicks, town manager of Blueberry; Laura Maywood, Blueberry Memorial Library’s reference librarian; and Valerie Erp, president of The Blueberry Historical Society.”

  “Are we done?” Marnie asked, glancing at her watch. “I have an important engagement. And Brianna would like to work on her oral presentation.”

  “She’ll need all the practice she can get,” Eva or Emily whispered.

  212

  Janelle Taylor

  “Shut up, you stupid cows,” Brianna snapped.

  “Inner beauty!” Colleen singsonged. “At all times, please!”

  Well, at least Colleen had found her voice.

  As Zach watched Olivia and Kayla walk out of the town hall, laughing, chatting, smiling, he was so overcome with emotion that he had to take a deep breath. This was exactly what he’d always dreamed of for Kayla. A mother—if not her biological one, then a woman who could fulfill that role for his daughter. And here was the best of both worlds.