M.J. Rodgers - Heart Vs. Humbug

* * *

OCTAVIA’S GENUINE appreciation flowed through her voice. “Mab, this new community center of yours is outstanding. Its long rectangular shape, myriad skylights, ribbons of leaded glass windows and spotless white tile floor make it marvelously open and spacious. And the soft upholstered furniture you’ve selected adds just the right amount of warmth.”

Mab beamed. “I admit I had my doubts at first about the simplicity of the center’s design, but the natural light and clean lines are effective and efficient. We can cordon off any area with partitions, or open up the whole floor space for a large event, like our annual Christmas party coming up in a couple of weeks. How much better it will be now that we don’t have to crowd everyone into that old barn. Constance’s design was right, as always.”

“Constance Kope designed this center?” Octavia asked. “That little lady who was on your ‘Senior-Sex-Talk’ program yesterday?”

“Yes, Constance and her husband owned an architectural design firm before he became ill, and they both retired a few years back. She has an infallible eye for what works.”

“When I think that your Silver Power League single-handedly created this building and all its beauty, I am in awe, Mab.”

Mab smiled proudly. “Wait until you see the greenhouse. Douglas Twitch engineered its habitat to maintain temperature, moisture and lighting control.”

“Douglas is an environmental engineer?” Octavia asked.

“A very fine one, who was put out to pasture only because the big firm he worked at for forty years checked the calendar instead of his contributions.”

“I thought you and Douglas didn’t get along.”

“His mental limitations are irksome. But the greenhouse he designed is an engineering marvel.”

Octavia chuckled at her grandmother’s unmitigated contradiction on the intellectual credentials of Douglas Twitch.

“Lead the way to this greenhouse, Mab.”

“No, first I want you to see what we are doing to raise money for our rent. It’s just a stopgap measure, of course. I’m counting on you to put all your legal training to work to come up with something more permanent. But for now, well, our members are busy working on them over in this room.”

Octavia gave her watch a quick glance. “Them?” she repeated.

Mab smiled. “Come see for yourself.”

Octavia followed her grandmother to the other side of a partition and saw that an assembly line of sorts had been set up. Seniors sat on both sides of a long set of tables drawn close to the windows to receive an optimum of natural light.

Each member of the assembly line had a task. The first attached legs to a stuffed doll’s torso. The second affixed arms that crossed over the doll’s chest. The third screwed on a head. The fourth, hair. And so on down the line until the finished doll emerged at the end, holding in its fist a white piece of paper filled with scribbles.

Octavia picked up one of the completed dolls, examined its thin, ashen-colored hair, tiny dark eyes, sour puss, baggy olive pants and green-and-black-checkered suspenders, and chuckled.

“This doll looks exactly like Scroogen.”

“Squeeze it,” Mab urged.

Octavia did. “Read it and weep, I’m raising your rent.”

Octavia laughed. “It sounds exactly like him, too.”

“John Winslow did the voice. He’s very good at mimicking.”

“When do they go on sale?”

“Today. I’m advertising them on the radio this afternoon. We’re calling it the Scroogen Doll.”

Octavia shook her head as she set the sour-pussed, eight-inch specimen back on the table. “No, could be a legal problem there. Better call it the Scrooge Doll.”

“But we want people to associate it with Scroogen,” Mab protested.

“You think someone could mistake it for anyone else?”

“I guess not. The design is ours, a couple of our members got the materials wholesale, and the rest of our members are doing all the assembly. Our profit is nearly eighty-five percent on each doll. If we can just sell enough of them, we can stave off the Scrooge’s kicking us out for another two months.”

“You’re a marvel, Mab.”

“But as I said, Octavia, it’s only a stopgap measure. We need to find a substantial and consistent money-maker to meet the Scrooge’s ridiculous rent. Although, I must tell you, it galls me to think the money we’re working so hard to raise is all going to line that man’s pockets.”

“Yes, it galls me, too,” Octavia agreed.

“Have you thought of a way to stop him?”

“Let’s just say I’m working on it.”

“What is it, Octavia?”

“What’s what, Mab?”

“Ever since you arrived at my house this morning with your bags and a promise to stay awhile, you’ve been deliberately deflecting my every question about what you did yesterday, and you’ve been purposely vague about how you plan to attack this problem.”

“Have I?”

“Octavia, you’re only vague when you’re involved in something you don’t want me to know about. What is it? And why do you keep looking at your watch?”

Octavia refocused her eyes back on Mab’s face as she wrapped an arm around her grandmother’s shoulders.

“It’s just after nine. Let’s go see that engineering marvel of a greenhouse now.”

“You’re not going to tell me what you’re up to, are you.”

“You are a wise and perceptive lady.”

“And you are an exasperating one.”

Octavia chuckled.

“Oh, come on,” Mab said, her tone resigned. “The greenhouse is this way.”

They stepped out of the brightness of the center into a heavy, overcast day and made their way up a rise and along a graveled path to the large and lovely white-and-glass English-style conservatory that spread elegantly over an entire acre.

“Oh, that is marvelous,” Octavia said in appreciation at the classical, elegant lines of the structure. “When you said greenhouse, I was thinking utilitarian. But using the classic design of an English conservatory makes it absolutely charming.”

“Yes,” Mab agreed mechanically. Her head was turned and she obviously wasn’t listening to her granddaughter.

“What’s going on over there?” Mab asked finally, pointing to the adjacent property where a bulldozer lay idle as several workers stood looking down into a muddy pit.

Octavia leisurely turned in the direction of Mab’s pointing finger. Then her eyes swung immediately to the brand-new bronze Bentley with the license plate reading LAW MAN pulling up to the side of the curb. She smiled as she watched Brett Merlin get out of the driver’s side and Dole Scroogen exit the passenger door.

“The workers seem to have found something,” Mab said, her eyes still fixed on the construction crew.

“Have they? Well, why don’t we go see what it is?” Octavia suggested as she gently steered Mab into the direction of the workers and the pit.

* * *

BRETT SAW OCTAVIA the instant he swung out of the driver’s seat of his Bentley. She wore a turquoise suit with gold trim today, as classy and colorful as the lady herself. Her long flowing hair as before was unfettered, her heels as usual were high. Yet despite those high heels, she somehow seemed to glide across the soft earth toward the construction site.

Brett and Dole reached the construction workers as Octavia and her grandmother strolled up over the slight rise.

“Good morning,” Octavia said with a vivid graciousness that sprayed out like luminous paint over the canvas of the dull day. She was as stunning and self-composed as she had been in his hotel room the night before. Brett found himself instantly on guard. He returned her gracious greeting with a simple nod of the head.