“What do you mean?” Jane asked.
Mrs. Higgins frowned. “You asked for strange and that’s what I’m telling you. He was practically giggling half the time I saw him. I thought maybe he’d been smoking some of that reefer the kids are into.”
Jane just shook her head. There was no way Jesse would ever smoke marijuana. He was as straight-arrow as they came. But giggling? Jesse? That was weird, all right.
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Higgins,” I said briskly. “Do you want me to help you outside so you can watch the police activity?”
“No, you girls go along. I’ve got to make up my face and curl my hair before I go out and see those policemen.” She wiggled her eyebrows provocatively.
Jane and I jumped up from the couch and left her sitting alone, smiling to herself.
Chapter Three
“Wow,” Jane said as we crossed the street. “She’s a piece of work.”
“I know,” I muttered.
“Assuming she was telling the truth, it does sound strange to hear that Jesse was giggling so much.”
“Would dating a hottie cause him to giggle like that?”
Jane actually giggled. “Probably. But I still don’t believe it.”
“So you never heard him giggling? Never saw him in a jolly mood?”
“Not really. I mean, he laughed and stuff, but jolly? He was mostly a curmudgeon. And crafty. Smart and snarky sometimes. But not jolly. What do you think?”
“I agree. I can think of a lot of ways to describe Jesse, but jolly isn’t one of them.”
She chuckled. “Definitely not.”
“So, when did you last talk to him?” I asked, and wondered if she noticed that I sounded like a cop.
She gave it some thought. “It was Thursday. Four days ago.” She smiled softly at the memory. “He was thinking about going on another scuba diving trip with his buddies.”
“Since the last one was so lucrative?” I asked, tongue in cheek.
“Oh, wasn’t it?” She laughed. “He loved telling that story, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning despite the tears that sprang to my eyes. That was happening a lot today.
Two years ago on Jesse’s seventy-fifth birthday, he and his old navy buddies, Bob and Ned, had celebrated the occasion by going scuba diving off the coast of Lighthouse Cove. They had gone down to explore the Glorious Maiden, an infamous clipper sailing ship that had been lost in rough waters off the coast almost one hundred and seventy-five years ago.
For months after that scuba trip, Jesse had bragged that while he was down there, he’d discovered an old necklace burrowed down behind a wallboard. When Jane finally called his bluff and demanded to see the necklace, he grinned and admitted that he’d been pulling her leg the whole time. He never brought up the subject again.
“I’ll miss his tall tales.” She sniffled and gulped back tears.
“Me, too.” So many memories. But they were good ones. I had a feeling they would help us both get through the next few days.
Jesse was always telling stories to anyone who would listen. He’d go on and on, describing in dramatic detail some exciting adventure he’d experienced or some intriguing person he’d met. Many of his exploits had happened while he was in the navy, assigned to exotic ports on the other side of the world.
He liked to tell us about the time he found a big, fluffy chicken on a dirt road and he picked it up to deliver it to its owner. The local chieftain thought Jesse was stealing his prize chicken and had his warriors chase him all the way back to the ship. He had to run for his life and barely made it. It sounded as though he almost got killed from the spears thrown by the warriors running after him. But then he described the delicious chicken stew he whipped up for the crew that night and Jane and I groaned out loud.
He told that story every time he made his famous chicken stew.
I sometimes thought he made up stories just to entertain Jane, who had lost her parents at an early age. For a while, the court wasn’t sure who would get custody of her. Her grandmother lived in town, too, but Jesse knew the high-strung woman wouldn’t be able to handle the sad little girl and make her laugh again. So he made the decision and stepped forward to take Jane into his home.
That bittersweet thought reminded me that I’d lost my own mother when I was eight and Jesse had been there for me, too. The week after Mom died, Jesse planted two rosebushes along our fence, a red one for me and a white one for my sister, Chloe.
“Whenever you look at the roses,” he told us, “you’ll remember that your mama is always with you.”