Chapter 1. Cherry pie

Lily half-heartedly flipped through the clothes hanging in her closet. Blue, blue, blue—yellow. White. Pink. Pink. Pink. Black. Lots of black. There wasn’t a green top in the whole closet, and she knew it, but she kept looking anyway. After being caught the year before without something green to wear to her company’s St. Patrick’s Day party, she’d promised herself she would shop ahead before March rolled around again but here she was, the night before the party, and she had nothing to wear.

Was there a law against department stores putting a green sequined top on sale? Of course, the full-price racks had plenty of green tops, but what woman would pay forty or fifty bucks for a green sequined top if she didn’t live in Dublin? Or unless she was trying to catch a hunky, Irish geek who owned half of Microsoft. Lily had a nagging feeling if any rich, single Irish hunks were hanging out at that playpen for techie-geniuses, they’d already been spoken for by women who had a lot more going for them than she did. She was okay with that. She could happily settle for just hunky. Right now, the hunkier the better.

She gave up on finding a solution to her clothing crisis in her closet. She’d have to run through the mall on her way home from work and pick up a green scarf or a pair of green rhinestone earrings. Her frugal vein that ran from her brain straight through to her pocketbook would never stand for spending a bundle on something she wouldn’t wear again until next year. Another thing that bothered Lily about the shiny tops: they weren’t washable; it would cost her about eight dollars in dry cleaning every time she wore it. She’d rather spend her money on a new twelve-megapixel camera she had her eye on. Not only was it a better camera than the one she had now, but it had a viewfinder in addition to an LCD monitor, and took longer videos.

She needed the viewfinder for her outside shots; monitors didn’t work for her on sunny days. She didn’t know why; no one else she knew had any trouble.

She’d found the perfect camera at a photography store near her work for three hundred dollars. A professional photographer would never drool over it, but it had every feature she needed, plus it had the added bonus of being as small as the camera she had now and it would still fit into her purse. Lily resisted the obvious option: buy a bigger purse. All of the trendy new purses were huge, and very expensive.

Because she really wanted the camera, even a green sequin top on sale probably wouldn’t have tempted her. Besides, if this year had anything in common with the last, spending a lot of money and effort on this party would be foolish. She knew from the last St. Patrick’s Day company party, the men would be the same ones she saw at work during the day, only drunk. And still married. Most likely, she’d end up spending the night talking to the other single women on her floor, eating stale cookies with foul-tasting green sprinkles, and drinking green beer out of a paper cup.

No wonder she’d didn’t like St. Patty’s Day. Wardrobe stress, green beer, and no eligible men, even if they were leprechauns. There wasn’t much to love. The year before last, during her senior year of college, the little tavern off campus at least served hotdogs with their green beer. Was she moving up in the world or down? Sometimes, she wondered.

Actually, Lily’s frustrated mood had nothing to do with sequined tops or green beer or even leprechauns. Her real problem was loneliness. In her thirties, she wanted to move on with her life. At every company function, she looked at the executives from out of town, hoping in vain to see someone who looked promising. Luckily, she liked her job and it took her mind off of the other areas of her life that weren’t as fulfilling. Still, if she planned to have a family—and she did—she needed to get started. She’d already looked in the usual places—like the local grocery stores, community events, churches, and social clubs—without any luck. Since she didn’t hit the bars like some of the other single women, there wasn’t anyplace else to look except the Internet. She had no interest in picking out the father of her future children on a dating website. Lots of women had been successful and found wonderful men using a web-dating service, but Lily made her living with computers; she knew how easily junk could be made to look like a hunk on a computer screen.

After work that night, Lily strolled past the photography shop to look at the camera she wanted in the store’s window. The particular model she wanted wasn’t in short supply so she wasn’t checking to make sure they still had one; she just liked to look at it. Then she grabbed a slice of pizza at the Italian kiosk and headed for the jewelry section at her favorite department store. On her way to the sale table she spotted a pair of green rhinestone earrings edged in clear crystals displayed on a shiny glass counter. She yelped out loud when she turned them over and saw the price tag. “Forty-three dollars? For rhinestones?”

“Oh, they’re not rhinestones; they’re real Austrian crystals,” said a helpful clerk.

They’re glass, Lily thought. Crystals are just glass. And they’re not even set in vermeil, but some kind of mystery pot metal.

The clerk, sensing that one of her last chances to sell the earrings was slipping away, said, “Wouldn’t they be great to wear tomorrow night?”

What? Almost fifty dollars to go to the company lunchroom and watch everyone drink too much green beer and fall all over themselves? She didn’t think so. But then, she slipped off the back of one of the earrings and tried it on. Oh, she thought when she looked into the mirror. They are gorgeous. The bottom half of the earring, set with a big, tear-shaped stone that caught the light with every movement, lit up her face with tiny flashes of green light whenever her head moved. The top was pavéed in matching stones carefully designed not to upstage the bottom half. Should she reconsider? Maybe a pair of expensive earrings would change her luck. If there was a real Irish hunk at the party, surely these would flush him out. She looked at the price tag again. Mentally, she calculated the real cost, forty-three dollars, and used “lust” math to justify them: if she also wore them to the company Christmas party, the lust cost would be cut in half: twenty-one fifty. If she wore them for two years, the LC would be: ten seventy-five. Maybe she could even wear them on April fifteenth, tax day. After all, money was green. Then, there was Earth Day, another green holiday. What are the colors of Kwanzaa? she wondered.

Anxious to begin bringing down the lust cost of her new jewelry as soon as possible, Lily left the store wearing the earrings. On the way home, she decided to put a little jar on her dressing table. Whenever she wore the earrings, she’d drop a bean in. When the jar began to fill up, it would soften the sting of the purchase, she reasoned. Then, when she had a jarful, she’d make soup. More savings! When she got home, she put a bean in a jar right away because she wore the earrings home.

The next morning, she put the earrings on before she left to catch the bus to work. Dutifully, she dropped a bean into the jar. Two beans. Although her co-workers complimented her on the earrings all day, by the time the party started that night, she’d almost forgotten she had them on. When a man she’d never seen before kept looking at her from across the room it puzzled her. He was a real hunk, and Lily held her breath when he started threading his way through the crowd toward her. His eyes never left her face.

“Do you know your earrings are throwing green sparks on your cheeks?” he asked. “I’ve been watching you and I’m fascinated. You look beautiful.”

Lily held out her hand and said hello. His name was Mike Miller. He was Irish and single; his hair and eyes were brown. He didn’t own half of Microsoft but he wasn’t a leprechaun either, so he had that going for him.

“Let’s dance, so I can nibble on your jewelry,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. When he held out his arms, she wondered if she had any bean recipes that needed just two beans. From her viewpoint, her new earrings had already paid for themselves in full.

“You’re probably thinking I’m a lech,” he said as he twirled her around. “I may be, but I’m also Kare’s brother.”

“Kare?” Lily’s mind raced. She couldn’t recall a Kare that worked for the company. She looked around desperately and tried to make a connection.

Mike noticed her distress. “Sorry. I call her Kare. Her real name is Karen. She works in human resources. She says she knows you.”

“Karen! Of course. I’m sorry, I’ve never heard her called Kare before.”

“It goes back to our childhood. She cared about this. Cared about that. Most of the time we had a house full of strays she cared about. Mom thought she’d be a veterinarian when she grew up.”

“What happened?”

“She branched out to caring about people. She’s on several charity boards and helps with the food bank.”

“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten to know her better.”

“She’s a good kid.”

As he twirled her some more, his cell phone rang, and he excused himself to take the call. When he came back, he was grinning from ear to ear. “One of my workers has had a baby. I’ve promised to go up soon to see her.”

“Go where? Does she live in Seattle?”

“No, I have a jewelry company,” he said as he led her back onto the dance floor.

“In fact, the earrings you’re wearing are one of my designs.”

“Really? These are from your company? Mike, they’re beautiful. I love them.”

“They look good on you. It’s a thrill to see a stranger wearing them. That’s never happened before. I’ve often wondered who buys my pieces.”

“Where is your jewelry made? Here in Seattle?”

“No, most of my assemblers are in my hometown, Miller, on Fish Trap River. A lot of the men lost their jobs when the timber industry went belly up so a lot of folks are unemployed. The work the women get from me helps out a little. I’m running a true cottage industry. I design the pieces, purchase the supplies here in Seattle, then have them assembled in Miller.”

“I thought you said your name was Miller.”

“It is. My mom’s family started the town years ago,” Mike answered casually.

Not sure if he was kidding her or not, she just nodded. “How many people do you employ?”

“About fifty or sixty. It’s hard to say because most of the pieces are assembled at someone’s kitchen table, and any woman in the family who has a few minutes picks up a pair of tweezers and sets some stones. If a piece is taking too long to complete, I suspect some of the men are put to work too.”

“Is it difficult work?”

“Compared to harvesting trees, no. And, so far, no one has lost an arm or leg. The timber business is dangerous. Since the forest jobs are gone, a lot of the men are cross-training into computer jobs. Harvesting trees used to be the main occupation for men up in the Miller area. Except for a few men who were in service or retail businesses, other work just didn’t exist.”

“That doesn’t sound very promising. Trees to computers? How’s that working out?”

“Really well. They’re even making more money than they ever did cutting trees. And it’s steadier. Computers never shut down because of fire danger.”

“That’s wonderful. I never would have thought something like that would work.”

At the end of the evening, Lily was enchanted. Mike also impressed her when he left her to dance with his sister. Hardly a wallflower, he had to wade through men three deep to lead her onto the dance floor. Lily was struck by the obvious warmth the two had for each other, and they danced beautifully together. She had to resist taking her camera out of her purse and snapping a picture of the two. The main thing that stopped her was she didn’t ever turn off the flash on her camera, and she wasn’t entirely sure how to do it. It would be embarrassing to get caught taking a picture of people she hardly knew. She looked around the room and didn’t see a camera anywhere; no one would be posting photos on the company website after the party.

She didn’t feel like visiting with the other women, so she nibbled on her green cookie and watched her new friend dance with his sister. There was something about the two. Something wholesome. Maybe it was that they were from a small town. They didn’t have that slick city look other Seattleites had. Lily almost felt as if she’d known both of them for a long time. Before their second dance ended, someone cut in, and Kare left Mike’s arms to dance with a co-worker. Again, Mike crossed the middle of the room to lead Lily back onto the dance floor.

“You two are wonderful together,” Lily said.

“Thanks, we’ve been dancing together since we were kids. Mom insisted we learn before we got to be teenagers.”

“What a smart mom!”

“I guess she went through a lot of angst because she didn’t know how to dance when she started dating.”

The rest of the evening flew by. Toward the end, Lily, Kare, and Mike made a pass by the dessert table, but not much remained. Even at the beginning of the party, Lily didn’t remember seeing more than packaged cookies on a paper platter, but Kare swore she saw a cake on the table at the beginning of the evening. The other two thought she must be right when Mike looked under the table and saw a plastic fork with cake crumbs on it.

“I came down before the music started,” Lily said, “and I never saw anything except cookies.”

“I saw it, but thought I’d get some later, after I’d danced a little,” Kare said. “Big mistake! I guess a lot of people skipped dinner and were hungry.”

“Pie! I need pie!” Mike begged. Lily and Kare piled into his compact car and headed for a coffee shop. The waitresses in the quaint ‘40s-era restaurant obviously knew Mike. Before Kare and Lily got a menu, a waitress served him a slice of lemon meringue pie.

“You’ve done this before,” Lily deadpanned.

Kare pointed a finger at her brother and laughed, “Busted!”

Kare wanted apple, and Lily ordered a slice of cherry pie. A grin played at the corner of Mike’s mouth, but Lily didn’t know why. What was he thinking? She looked at Kare, but she had her nose in a menu and didn’t notice.

Afterward, Mike delivered them to their doorsteps. They dropped Lily off first; one thing for sure, she couldn’t call him a lech. When they pulled up to her building, Mike and Kare screamed with surprise and amusement, “You live at the Zoo!” Mike laughed as he recognized the building. Recently, there had been an article in the paper about the many and varied exotic creatures that resided with their owners in the refurbished Spanish-style building. The article and photos took up a whole page in the Home and Yard section of the Sunday paper.

The fact that they recognized the building didn’t surprise her. The story, with photos of the tenants and their pets, had gone national. Lily hadn’t been interviewed or photographed because she didn’t have a pet. “I’d invite you two in, but we’ve had a big snake missing for the last few days, and it’s bound to be real hungry by now,” Lily laughed.

Mike bent his head down to see the sign taped to the door. In big, black letters it pleaded, “Please Don’t Let The Snake Out.” Mike leaned over, opened the car door, and feigned fear, “This is as far as I go, sweetheart,” he said with his best Humphrey Bogart accent.

“Have a good weekend,” Kare called after her.

“You too,” Lily answered. It can’t be as good as tonight.

Lily quickly ducked into the apartment building and shut the door securely just before a big iguana rounded the corner.  The floor shook as the lizard raced to check out who was coming in the door. She looked over her shoulder to see if Mike and Kare saw it, but her new friends had already gone.

“Good evening, Boots,” Lily said as she plucked a big hibiscus blossom off the top of the houseplant by the door and tossed it to him. As the lizard ripped the blossom apart and devoured it, she danced up the stairs to her apartment on the third floor. There was a plastic bag on her doorknob that most likely held a goodie from one of her neighbors. They knew she seldom bothered to cook and often shared their baked desserts with her. Curiosity got the best of her and she opened the plastic container on her way to put it in the refrigerator. It was cherry pie. How funny.

She felt a little blue that Mike hadn’t asked for her phone number, but he knew where to find her. Before she opened her apartment door, she quickly glanced around the hall to be sure the snake wasn’t lurking nearby. She’d had a wonderful evening and didn’t want it to end with an apartment full of tenants trying to corner a four-foot snake in her bedroom in the wee hours of the morning.

She was headed to bed when the phone rang. Phone calls late at night always worried her. She told herself that, since she had no family, it must be about the missing snake; maybe they’d found it. She laughed when she picked up the phone and heard a voice at the other end, obviously Kare’s, say, “Remember to lock your doors!” She could hear Mike’s laughter in the background and thought she heard him say, “I told you!” Lily realized he didn’t need to ask for her phone number. Kare, the head of the human resource department, had the number of every company employee on the contact list of her cell phone. Would he ask for her number? Oh, she hoped so.

Right after that, her phone rang again. “Lily, do you have Raisins over there? I’m ready to go to bed, and I can’t find her,” Barbara said.

“No, I haven’t seen her. I’ll check around before I turn out the lights.”

“Thanks.”

Raisins, one of the pets in the building, was a big gray rabbit that visited Lily frequently.

At her dressing table, getting ready to take off her earrings, she saw something dart under her bed. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said to the rabbit that peeked out at her from under the bed skirt. “It’s time for you to go home.” It must have gotten in when she had her French doors open that morning. A lot of the tenants on the third floor left their balcony doors open whenever their apartments got too hot. The heat from the units below often warmed the upper apartments enough to make the renters on the top floor not only open their doors, but turn off their furnaces. A quick trip to the kitchen produced a carrot she used to lure the floppy-eared creature within reach. “No bunny raisins under my bed,” she softly lectured the rabbit as she held it in her arms and scratched behind its ears. She took the pet outside on her balcony and gently placed it on the tiles between her balcony and the one next door. She tossed the carrot halfway across the almost flat tile roof to get Raisins started in the right direction and called, “Barbara, I found him.” The roof was almost flat between the two balconies, and the rabbit could easily travel between the two apartments. Lily watched as the pet picked up the carrot and hopped toward home.

Lily would worry about the rabbit until Velma found her snake and took it back to her apartment. The reptile had to be starved. As far as anyone knew, Boogie hadn’t eaten for days. Did he know about Raisins? Could he smell her? She stood watch until she saw the next door neighbor’s pet hop through the apartment’s French doors. She gave a quick wave to Barbara, when she stuck her head out the door to say thank you. Raisins came to Lily’s often; its owner never worried about her when she slipped through the balcony railings on the patio and scampered over to visit Lily. Until now. With a big, hungry snake on the loose, Raisins had a natural enemy she’d never encountered before. Lily and her neighbor vowed to keep a closer eye on the fluffy creature they were both so fond of. If they didn’t watch out, they’d have to change her name from Raisins to Easy Pickin’s.