Betty was tossing ingredients to Uncle Artie like they were footballs—onions, “San Marzano” tomatoes (apparently better than regular tomatoes), pancetta. Tessa and I got out of the way pretty fast. Betty let us try a couple different olives. I like green—Tessa had black. Ugh. One of them was so salty I thought my mouth would fall off.
We got Cokes and sat at one of the tiny tables near the window and Betty gave us a couple of Italian wedding cookieswrapped in wax paper. Powdered sugar everywhere. Pretty sure I have some in my hair. Still worth it.
The radio was just far enough off the station that Michael Bolton sounded worse than usual. There was a really adorable little kid playing with the pay phone pretending to call Batman on it. Honestly, so precious.
We saw a couple of kids we know from the beach walk by, including Dustin Mathers who Tessa said was cute but made her mad. I know why—he never notices her and just treats her like every other girl. Anyway, that got us talking about Peter…who does the same thing to me.
It’s nothing—going nowhere, never will, he’s so much older than I am. He’s seventeen! So I just admire from afar. But when he does talk to me, he doesn’t make me too nervous anymore. He’s nice (like, waaaay nicer than Eli) and very easy on the eyes, ha ha.
Anyway, Dad finally came out from the back with Frank, and Artie asked them why they looked like…something about a cat eating a canary. Gross. Anyway, it was fun but we went back to the beach which was way better than shopping in town.
Oh, Mom’s calling. Time for bologna and spaghetti or whatever.
Love,
Viv
P.S. MUST ADD! It’s called “Bolognese” and it was the absolute most delicious food I ever ate in my whole life with all this meat and red sauce and these long flat noodles that were a thousand times better than spaghetti, called tagliatelle. Aunt Jo Ellen gave me the recipe since I loved it so much. (She said someday I’ll cook!) It’s on the back of this page so I never lose it!
P.S#2. Mom is so different here! Why is that? When she cooks at home, it’s a little scary. She has so many rules and things have to be done a certain way and it just isn’t fun. But with Aunt Jo Ellen, all she does is laugh when they cook and do “back up support” which apparently means pouring wine. I wish she were more like she is here when we are at home. It’s like having a different mom.
Maggie somehow managed not to gasp at what she just been told, but kept one hand clenched tightly around her phone while the other rested on her lap.
Disappeared?
She couldn’t have heard that right.
“Justin, I’m sorry,” she said to the attorney on the other end of the line. “Did you say…the case files disappeared?”
“I’m as baffled as you are, Mrs. Lawson.” The man gave an awkward laugh, and she could picture him clearly. In his late forties, buttoned up, and quite capable. She’d been thrilled to learn he’d taken over his father’s cases when old John Waverly passed away a few years back.
But she wasn’t thrilled right now. Not with this news.
Over the years, she’d had no reason to discuss Roger’s crimes with Justin—his father had handled the criminal case. In fact, John Waverly deserved the credit for negotiating a plea bargain deal that allowed Roger to serve seven years instead of twenty-five.
And it was John who’d created a trust that protected this property from government seizure, placing it in Maggie’s name. She’d never quite understood how he’d done that, but Roger hadtold her plainly and clearly: “Do not sell that property. Just let John Waverly rent it for you, save the money, and tell no one you own it until I’m out of jail.”
Of course, he never got out of jail…only into an early grave. She’d been terrified to do anything at all with it lest some despicable human from the government announce they wanted the property.
But that never happened.
Then, one day two years ago, John’s son, Justin, had contacted her out of the blue, telling her that he’d been reviewing some of his father’s files and looked at the trust.
Thanks to a new law he’d learned of, she not only could sell the house, but any profit made from the sale of this house had to go to her children because their father had died while incarcerated. She’d never heard of anything like it, but for this wonderful gift, she had placed young Justin Waverly in the highest possible esteem.
But that esteem just plummeted to rock bottom.
The files weregone? She was certain somewhere in the mountains of paperwork, they’d discover why Artie had turned Roger in to the police.
“Have you searched all possible storage places, file basements…wherever you keep old documents?” she demanded.
“High and low, and I did so personally,” he said. “Honestly, this makes no sense at all, Mrs. Lawson. Even though we are under no legal obligation to hold case files that long, it was my father’s express orders that we never destroy files. But these…have disappeared.”
“Could someone have taken them?” she asked as a whole new wave of worry took hold.
“Highly unlikely,” he said. “Files that old are in a massive underground storage facility that only staff of this firm canaccess. The only other possibility is that my father had them sent to you.”
“He most certainly did not,” Maggie snapped. “I would have remembered.”
