Chapter 44
That next day was Sunday. I had the next day off and was determined to make the most of it, especially with Lawton still out of town. When he returned Monday, I wanted to be all caught up on chores and ready to make up for lost time.
I spent most of that Sunday catching up on things I should've been doing all along – doing loads of laundry, creating a new flyer for Grandma's non-existent job, and spending some quality time with Chucky.
But no matter what my hands were doing, my brain seemed to be doing something else entirely. I still hadn't heard back from the Parkers, and I was trying not to panic.
As the hours dragged on with no answer and no return phone call, I couldn't help but consider the worst-case scenarios.
This was a slow-motion train wreck waiting to happen. Mrs. Parker had written me checks, and I'd written my own checks against those checks. It had never occurred to me that her checks wouldn’t be good. The first few had cleared just fine.
Eventually my own checks would bounce, but not right away, only because my account had overdraft protection. Still, it wouldn't be cheap. It was tied to a scarily small line of credit with a scarily big interest rate. If I needed to tap into that line, I'd have virtually no way to pay it back – unless, of course, I wanted to take Shaggy up on his sex tape offer.
And no way was that going to happen.
Still, I couldn't get it out of my head, and not only because of the ick factor. Lawton had seen Shaggy that night in the parking lot. He'd even yelled at Shaggy to stay away from me.
Assuming Shaggy's implication was true, shouldn't Lawton have warned me that Shaggy was the guy behind that original sex tape? When Lawton returned tomorrow, I'd definitely be asking about it.
Late that afternoon, I returned from walking Chucky to find a white van in the driveway and a strange man on the porch. The man wore some kind of brown uniform and carried a clipboard gripped loosely in his right hand.
When I approached the front entrance, with Chucky on his leash, the man turned to face me. He was a lean man about thirty years old and a serious demeanor. "Mrs. Parker?" he said.
I hesitated. "No. But I can give her a message if you'd like."
"I'm from the cable company," he said. "I'm here to disconnect the service."
"Excuse me?"
He cleared his throat. "For non-payment. Final notice should've come last week."
"We didn't receive any notice," I said.
He consulted his clipboard. "It must've went to your post office box. Third notice."
I didn't have access to the Parkers' post office box. In truth, I didn't realize they had one. But as someone who used a post office box myself, I didn't see anything all that unusual about it.
Of course, it did seem unusual that they wouldn't be asking me to retrieve their mail.
About the cable, I really didn't care. I didn't have time to watch anything, anyway. But the Parkers might care if they returned to find it out of service.
"This seems awful odd for a Sunday," I said.
"You're telling me," he said, not looking too happy about it.
"Can't it wait a few days?" I said. "See if I can't clear it up?"
"Sorry," he said. "I'm just the messenger. Of course, if you wanna give me a check, I'll take it back to the office, cancel the cancellation."
The dog food was one thing. The cable, now that was something else. No way was I paying for that. So a half hour later, I was officially without cable TV.
I wouldn't have cared, except for what it said about the Parkers. Were they having money trouble? Or was it just some weird fluke with their bank account?
Sitting in their house – some might call it a mansion – I couldn't help but notice all the luxury surrounding me. I'd been living in their home so many weeks now that I barely noticed. But when I looked at it with fresh eyes, it was pretty obvious that some serious money had gone into whatever look they were going for.
Even all those exotic plants of Mr. Parker's, they couldn't have been cheap. Their plant food wasn't, that's for sure. It arrived once a week by mail from some horticulture shop in San Francisco. In my old neighborhood, I knew kids who weren't treated half as well.
What if the Parkers were deadbeats? Would I be out all that money? To them, it might be a pittance, but to me, it was a fortune.
And then something worse hit me. What if they were dead, period? They were in a foreign country. Would I even hear about it if they were?"
As the day progressed to evening, I was having a hard time thinking about anything else.
When my cell phone rang just before midnight, I dove straight for it and answered without looking at the display. "Hello?"
"Hey," Lawton said.
"Oh," I said. "It's you."
There was a long pause. Then, he said, "Is this a bad time?"
"No. Not at all. Just waiting for a phone call."
Longer pause. "You need to go?"
"Nah, I have call-waiting."
"So…" Lawton's tone was carefully casual. "Who'd be calling you so late?"
"No one. It's just a business thing."
"You mean from the restaurant?"
"No. Something else."
"Anything you wanna talk about?"
Actually, it was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I'd been obsessing about it all day, and I was desperate to think about anything but that. Besides, Lawton didn't need to hear about my problems.
"Nah, it's nothing," I said, trying to push the worry out of my voice. "Are you still coming home tomorrow?"
"Yup. Tomorrow morning. You still have the day off?"
"Oh yeah."
We made plans to meet around noon. At my suggestion, we agreed that I'd swing by his house with Chucky, and then go for a walk. "For old time's sake," I said, thinking of how we'd first gotten to know each other in the first place.
"Don't forget new time's sake," he said. "And Chloe?"
"Yeah?"
"I've gotta tell you, I'm missing you like crazy. The other night–"
My phone beeped.
I pulled it from my ear and looked at the display. Mrs. Parker. Finally.
Lawton was still talking, but I didn't catch a single word of it. Desperate to get the incoming call, I cut him off. "I'm really sorry, Lawton, I've gotta go. See ya tomorrow, alright?"
Without waiting for a response, I disconnected him to switch over to the new call.
My voice was breathless as I said, "Hello? Mrs. Parker?"
And to my infinite relief, I heard her voice loud and clear. "Hey Chloe, I just got your messages."