Previously Loved Treasures (Serendipity #2)(35)

~

When Max and his entourage reached the office of Jack Muller, a receptionist informed them that he was in district court and wasn’t expected back until late afternoon.

Visibly agitated by such news Max asked, “What time?”

She shrugged. “Could be three, could be four, could be later.”

Max suggested they sit and wait, but Laricka and Doctor Payne responded with a resounding “no.”

“I’ve got better things to do,” Payne said.

“And my grandsons are coming to visit,” Laricka added.

Max then suggested they take the thirty-seven-mile drive to the courthouse and was again voted down.

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Payne said, and although Max objected to the wait he was left with no alternative.

By the time Max returned home, Wilbur and the others had finished searching the house but found nothing.

~

Lunch was a somber affair with most everyone thinking on what they might have missed. Most everyone, but not Caroline. Her thoughts were focused on the work at hand. For lunch she’d made a tuna salad but neglected to drain the oil from the can, then mixed in way too much mayonnaise and chopped the onions into a size more suitable for apple chunks. Again a basket of Wonder Bread was placed on the table.

“Not bad,” Louie said and scooped a large pile onto his plate.

The others picked at the edges of the bowl and then settled for bits of bread and butter. Max used the disastrous salad to repeat the fact that Caroline was poorly qualified to be manager of the house.

“What we need is a professional cook,” he said. “Someone who knows how to prepare meals properly.”

Once Max said that, the other residents began loading scoops of the salad onto their plates.

“Actually it looks pretty tasty,” Laricka lied.

Before everyone left the table, the bowl was empty.

~

That afternoon Wilbur collected the rent checks; all except Max’s. When he’d broached the subject, Max snarled, “Pay rent for living in a house that I own? No way!”

“You don’t actually own the house,” Wilbur replied. He was going to mention that the likelihood of Max ever owning it was non-existent, but given the ugliness in Max’s attitude Wilbur said only there were expenses to be paid and everyone had to help.

That only served to make Max angrier. “Poor management! If she knew how to run a boarding house, she’d have managed without harassing me for a measly week’s rent.”

“It’s two weeks,” Wilbur replied, but Max ignored the comment and continued on his tirade. After going back and forth for several minutes, Wilbur turned with an air of disgust and walked away.

That afternoon he gave Caroline an envelope containing the rent checks and twenty-five dollars in cash. “The cash is Max’s rent for one week,” he explained. “He’ll catch up with the rest next week.”

Caroline had a look of surprise. “Max paid cash?”

Wilbur nodded, then quickly changed the subject.

All too often he’d seen Ida sitting at the table totaling up columns of figures and trying to make ends meet. It was always a stretch. Caroline was less capable of managing than Ida; still, if she knew Wilbur had put the money in for Max, she would have refused it. Charity, she would have said, and handed the money back.

As it was, Caroline pocketed the envelope with no further questions.

Fifteen minutes later she loaded Clarence into the car and pulled out of the driveway.

Standing at the window and watching, Max grumbled. “Bunch of jerks, giving a girl like that their money. That’s the last we’re gonna see of her.” Laricka, who’d been the only person within earshot, gave him an angry glare then turned and left the room.

~

Caroline drove directly to the bank and opened a checking account in her name. She deposited all five checks plus one hundred-and-twelve dollars of the money she’d brought from Pennsylvania. She held back the twenty-five dollars in cash for necessities.

From the bank she continued to Food Lion. Instead of picking the snacks she usually bought, she filled an entire shopping cart with items Ida was likely to select: chopped meat, pork chops, fresh ears of corn, ripe tomatoes, and a ten-pound bag of potatoes. She also added several packages of ready-to-bake biscuits. Caroline knew her grandmother would never have bought those, but until she learned to make a decent biscuit these would have to do. When she got to the checkout line there was not one bag of pretzels. No chips. No TV dinners.

That evening when Caroline served dinner, the pork chops had places where the breading had come loose and dropped off and three pieces of corn had bits of silk still caught between the kernels, but there was a basket of biscuits on the table.

Everyone but Max smiled. Although there was a round of compliments stating that Caroline’s cooking had dramatically improved, Max said nothing.

~

Three days passed before Jack Muller finally made time to speak to Max, and when he did it was a five-minute meeting in the reception room of his office.

“I haven’t heard from Ida since Big Jim’s passing,” Muller said. “I believe she’s taken her business elsewhere.”

“Was there an earlier will, one written back a year, maybe two?” Max asked.

Muller shook his head. “The last one I did was five or six years before Jim passed.”