Page 123 of The Homewreckers
“Hattie Mae!” Leetha caught up with her as she was walking out the kitchen door.
Hattie swung around to face the showrunner. “What now?”
“Whoa,” Leetha said, taking a step backward. “Who peed in your Cheerios?”
“Nobody. I’m just… having a morning,” Hattie said. “What’s our shooting schedule like today?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. We need to get your crew busy on the rear of the house, get all that siding finished, because we want to start shooting back there. And hey, what’s happening with that nasty old septic tank pit? That thing gives me the willies every time I walk past it.”
Hattie didn’t bother to hide her exasperation. “You want me to pull the painters off the front of the house? I thought you said that was a priority.”
“I did, but we’ve had a change of plans. The marketing people got a company that makes decking from recycled plastics to donate all the materials to redo that old dock but we need to start shooting the rebuild ASAP, because they want to use footage of the finished product in their upcoming commercials. Cool, huh?”
“For real? I didn’t even have the dock repairs scheduled because I knew it wouldn’t fit in our budget. That’s awesome.”
“But we need the back of the house to look great, because it’ll be included in the shoot.”
“Better talk to Cass about it,” Hattie said.
Leetha raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you Cass’s boss?”
“Talk to Cass, tell her you discussed it with me. You can also ask her to check with the cops to see if we can get the old septic tank pit filled. I don’t like looking at it any more than you do.”
“Cool.”
“What’s my revised call time for today?” Hattie asked.
“Not until late afternoon,” Leetha said. “We’ll shoot Trae in the upstairs bathroom and bedroom in a little while; they’re too small for two people anyway.”
“Good. I’m going to run into town, but I’ll be back after lunch.”
Zenobia Pelletier sat at her desk in the small Kavanaugh & Son office.
“Hey, Zen,” Hattie said, approaching the office manager’s huge metal tanker desk. “Tug said there’s somebody here to see me?”
“Mhmm,” Zenobia said, not pausing or looking up. “She’s back there in his office. Looks like she’s been sucking on a lemon.”
“Great. Just what I need today. More confrontation.”
Tug’s office was little more than a glorified closet overflowing with detritus Zenobia wanted out of her eyesight.
The woman sitting in the chair opposite Tug’s desk had her back to Hattie, but something in her erect posture and the way she held her head rang a faint bell of recognition.
“Hi,” Hattie said. The woman turned slowly. She had shoulder-length blond hair, a long, narrow, heart-shaped face with a pointed chin, and, as Zenobia had warned, a sour expression.
“Elise? This is a surprise.”
Elise Hoffman’s lips turned up slightly. Hattie hadn’t seen Davis’s wife in several years. She was thinner than she remembered, and much blonder. Maybe she’d had some work done around the eyes?
“Hi, Hattie,” Elise said. “Listen, I just dropped by to have a little heart-to-heart with you.”
“About what?”
“Davis.”
“What about him? Is everything okay?”
“No, everything is not okay,” Elise said. “My brilliant ex-husband somehow found a way to run his family’s jewelry store into the ground. Turns out he sold our building to an ‘investor’ who since sold the whole block to a developer from Atlanta, who in turn has now tripled the rent on Heritage Jewelers. Davis is behind on child support and behind on alimony and God knows how much money he owes people that I don’t know about.”
