loved him finding out when it’s too late that they could have been there to see him to a better end?”
“There’s some kind of echo at this park,” the player facing Tracy told the other men. “Maybe we got a mockingbird up in one of those trees. Or a wild parrot. I hear there’s a colony of them down the coast a few miles.”
Tracy’s smile died. She stepped up to the table, pushing the hoverer with her shoulder until she was right between the seated men. “Now you listen! I think you could help if you wanted, and you’re just yanking my chain. That old man died, and it’s my job to pack up his stuff and send it on to his family. And I plan to do that. I’m not leaving until I get what I came for. What’s wrong with you? He was a friend of yours!”
“Apparently not yours, though.” The man with the glasses stood. He was an inch or two taller than she was, but he looked like a good puff of wind would send him sailing out over the gulf. “Herb wouldn’t have tolerated you for one minute. Go away and leave us alone.”
Tracy wasn’t sure how she upended the card table. One moment she was stepping closer so she could see eye-to-eye with the old man. The next she was stumbling right into the table. She grabbed the edge to keep herself from falling over it, and as she did, the table flipped in her direction. The chess board, the entire tableau of royalty and pawns, slid off and into the grass at her feet. Behind her, she could hear Wanda screeching “Lordy, Lordy!”
Tracy’s arms were like the blades of a windmill as she tried to keep from following the table. She hit the man on her right in the face and socked the one on her left under the chin as she struggled to keep her balance. But she was still standing as the table finished pitching forward and landed on its side.
Tracy jumped backward. “You pushed me!” She grabbed the hoverer by his sleazy rayon sleeve. “You did that, not me.”
He shook her off with surprising strength. “No such thing, girlie. You nearly pushed me over getting to the table. I was just trying to find my balance.”
Tracy felt a hand grip her shoulder and fingernails, long talonlike nails, digging into her flesh. “Git now,” Wanda said. “Right now. Outta here.”
Tracy hated to take advice from Wanda, but this time she was on the mark. Wanda tugged, and she followed. In a moment the old men were behind her, and in a few more, Wanda had pulled her halfway back to the car at a near run.
“I did not…pull that table…over on purpose!” Tracy said.
“And did you behave like a horse’s ass on purpose?” Wanda demanded. “Did you talk to those men like they were little kids instead of men who supported their families, and raised their children, and did jobs that contributed to society before they got so old and retired?”
Tracy noted the way she had said “contributed.” Con-tree-beauted. It made her feel better somehow, although the rest of the speech rankled.
“I was nice to them!”
“Like hell you were.” Wanda had released Tracy’s shoulder now and was sprinting as fast as she could in sandals with four-inch heels, confident, Tracy supposed, that she was going to follow. “There wasn’t nothing charming about what you did back there, let me tell you. Just because you’re all young and perky doesn’t mean you get to treat your elders any way other than with respect. And it served you right they wouldn’t talk to you. I wouldn’t have, that’s for sure. The way you treat people is a downright sin.”
“Me? Who was it that broke in to Herb’s cottage last night, then wouldn’t help with his mattress?”
“Why do you think I came today? I felt bad about that, but now I wish I hadn’t.”
“I just want to find Herb’s family!”
“Well, those men don’t have to help you unless they want to. Got it? You’re not some fairy princess, and they aren’t your serfs. You’re in the same boat the rest of us are, milady. Noblesse does not oblige here. Until you stop acting like royalty, nobody’s going to help you do a darned thing.”
Tracy wasn’t sure which to be most surprised about. That Wanda knew what noblesse oblige meant, or that she herself had a most uncomfortable feeling that there might be a smidgen