“Yeah,” Dr. Dave said with a chuckle. “And he’s really, really bad at it.”
“Then why—?”
“It’s just a family joke. He used to spend so much time with his other grandfather…Oh, well. It’ll all work out.” He pulled an old, yellowed stack of papers from inside the folder, and Joce’s eyes lit up. “You know what this is?”
Like a cobra hypnotized by a flute, she leaned toward the papers, both of her hands out to take them.
Dr. Dave pulled them away and put them back into the folder. “You make my grandson smile again and I’ll give you part two.”
“Have you read them?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“Oh, yeah. I especially liked the part where they slid into a river in an overturned car. Edi has to—Oh well, maybe you’re not interested.”
“I am, but—”
“But what?”
“Ramsey. I told both him and Luke to get away from me.”
“Funny you should mention Ramsey, but some new cases have come up in Massachusetts, and it looks like they’re going to take weeks.”
“Heaven help me!” she said, aghast. “You sent him there, didn’t you? I really am being used as a piece of property. You want me for your grandson, don’t you?”
“I’m too old to think that far ahead. Right now I want to use whatever I can to get
my grandson away from that grasping little gold digger he married. And I want you to add these stories to the book you’re writing on Edi.”
“How do you know—? Never mind.”
“Post office,” he said. “Return addresses, an Internet search, and it was easy to figure out what you were doing.”
“For the life of me I can’t understand why Miss Edi wanted to get away from that town,” she said in sarcasm.
“From what I hear, you’re fitting right in. You like people knowing who you are and you like living in the Big House.”
“What kind of doctor are you? A shrink?”
“GP,” he said as he searched inside the folder.
“Please tell me you don’t have something else for me to read? A new Dead Sea Scroll maybe?”
“Better. Ah, here it is. It’s my daughter’s pot roast recipe.”
“Pot roast?”
“That’s right. Make some, freeze it, and have it ready so when I make Luke so miserable that he goes back to digging holes at your house, you’ll be able to feed him.”
“It’s called double digging and…Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You miss him, don’t you?”
“Actually, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to even—” She cut off when he was smiling at her. “You know something? You’re as annoying as he is.”
“I take that as a great compliment. Remember. Freeze the pot roast and have it ready.”
16
JOCELYN AWOKE LATE the next morning. Between Dr. Dave’s stories and the chocolate cake, she’d been in a stupor for the rest of the day, and had fallen asleep early.