by Linda Sands
Erica came around the corner, phone jammed to her ear. She still had one of those phones on cords, the kind that attach to the wall. Angel thought it might even have a rotary dial.
When she’d met Erica at a local wine tasting, she thought they had a lot in common. They were both wearing Chanel, and Angel could actually envision herself borrowing Erica’s shoes. They were that nice. The husbands got along—as well as husbands do when forced into social situations they’d never have chosen for themselves. Angel allowed herself a “suburban housewife moment,” one in which she bonded instantly with the new couple, invited them over on Sunday afternoon for brunch and a game of Scrabble. They’d sip cabernet and discuss recent travels abroad, share their love of art while jazz played softly in the background. Angel would be pregnant when her friend was pregnant and they’d be each other’s doula. She’d be happy with her confidant, beautiful woman-friend. Someone who understood her, a woman who could shop in the same departments at Saks and wouldn’t blink when the bill came.
It was weeks before Angel found out Erica had been dressed by her sister-in-law—a woman who worked in a bank and had lots of letters after her name that meant something really important to people who knew about things like that.
The real Erica thought a put-together outfit was two pieces of clothing—regardless of shape, style, or texture—but of the same color, preferably black, or jeans and a rock-and-roll T-shirt.
Angel forgave her this fashion infraction, because Erica was a great listener. She was interesting, and the woman made the best martinis.
Some things were forgivable—never a bad martini.
“Holy crap,” Erica said, hanging up the phone after untwisting herself from the long, mangled cord. “Sears must be outsourcing to Kentucky for their customer service reps. I felt like I was talking to Jeff Foxworthy’s mother.”
Angel laughed as Erica went off on a you-might-be-a-redneck riff, starting with the jab that the broad had probably spent more money on her pickup truck than her education.
“Yeah,” Angel said. “She probably thinks genitalia is an Italian airline.”
Erica laughed, a deep chortle. “Oh, I’ve got to write that one down. Come on in. I’ve got Kahlúa. Oh, yeah. I’ve got coffee too.”
In the kitchen, Erica served coffee in chipped mugs, then slid into the seat across from Angel. Pushing the bottle of Kahlúa in her direction, she said, “Should I ask?”
Angel shrugged.
“I’m going to ask. Why are you here instead of heading to the beach?”
Angel took a sip of laced coffee. “I know. Vacation. Woo-hoo. It’s just that . . .” she sighed. “He’s an asshole.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Erica said, raising her cup. “Oh, wait. We are talking about Jimbo, right?”
Angel nodded.
“Well, honey. Hate to tell you, but that’s nothing new. I’ve been telling you that for months.”
“I know,” Angel said. “But maybe I’m supposed to be with an asshole.”
Erica laughed. “He might be an asshole, but he’s your asshole? Is that what I’m hearing?”
Angel nodded and added more Kahlúa to her coffee cup. “I love him. I’m going to find him and bring him home. Bring him to his senses.”
“First of all, you’re assuming the man has senses. Second, I’d love to help, but the hubs is out of town and I’ve got the kids—all of them. Though they do love a good car ride.”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t impose,” Angel said, getting sweaty palms just thinking about being surrounded by all those sticky hands, all those poopy diapers, all that screaming and whining. “I’ll figure it out.”
A loud thump came from upstairs, followed by the wailing of a child.
“Damn kid fell out of the bed again,” Erica said, reaching for the Kahlúa.
“I’d better go, so you can, you know,” Angel said, watching her friend down the drink then rub her hands over her face.
Driving down Pacific Avenue, past the Mom-and-Pop beach motels—flea joint throwbacks from the sixties—Angel wasn’t at all surprised when she pulled up in front of The Cavalier, as if her car had been on autopilot, bringing her home.
The hotel reeked of old Virginia money tainted with the perfume of nouveau riche. The Cavalier had been around since 1927, earning iconic status with visits from celebrities, politicians, and Presidents in every decade. Angel’s daddy ran the place and her mother had practically done the recent multimillion dollar remodel herself—at least that’s what one would surmise if they spent an hour with the woman.
The valet called Angel by name as he opened her door. The girls at the front desk had a key in her hand before she was halfway across the lobby, and the concierge rode up in the elevator with her, making a list of clothes and toiletries she’d need, noting his boss’s daughter had arrived sans luggage.
Alone in the room, Angel pulled out her phone and made a list of the places she thought her husband might be, and with whom. She called her father and left a message that she needed to see him. Needed his help. His assistant arranged a meeting, then suggested she pass the time with a complimentary massage—she’d send a masseur to the room.
Angel didn’t argue.
When the man arrived and set up his table in the sitting room, she told him she didn’t want to engage in any idle chatter. She’d hold up a hand if the pressure was too much, and that would be it. The man nodded and turned away as Angel disrobed and climbed on the table, slipping under the cool sheet.
Lying there with a stranger’s hands giving her more love than she’d felt at home in over a year, Angel thought about the couple she’d seen from her balcony in a disgustingly sweet moment, a young man and a woman in love—holding hands, swinging their arms, laughing, stopping to kiss—the way it seemed like they’d just rolled out of bed, and were ready to roll back in. Usually, Angel would have written off a scene like that with a snide comment, “Ain’t love grand? Yeah, until she gets fat, and he starts to drink.”
But on this day, she felt something different well up. She felt desire, and regret. She wanted what they had. She wanted love.
“That’s enough,” she told the masseur.
“But I am not done, Miss Angel.”
“That’s all I need from you.”
“Are you certain? I could . . .”
By the way he said it, she knew he could. She hesitated, part of her wanting to say yes, roll over, and open the sheet to him. But she waved him off, waited for him to leave and close the door behind him.
There was no sense putting it off any longer. Angel was going to get her man back.
Chapter 10
TEDESCO THINKS STANDING IN SOMEONE’S KITCHEN IS BETTER THAN WALKING A MILE IN THEIR SHOES
Smith’s apartment was sparsely furnished—not like the guy didn’t care about what he had around him, but like he hadn’t had time to shop.
I stood in the front room, a combination of living, dining, and kitchen areas. It was clean enough and relatively organized, but not overly so—as if he had something to hide. There were a few lame decorating attempts: a landscape painting over the couch; fat, dusty candles that ran the length of the coffee table; and a blank beer distributor’s calendar on the fridge.
The emptiness didn’t bother me. I’d been in houses where there was more floor than furniture. I liked the feel of it, though I wouldn’t call myself modern by any means, it just felt better to me than the cloying, packed rooms I grew up in, where every wall had a mandatory picture or shelf of trinkets and every chair had arm covers and a matching pillow, even if it ended up on the floor more often than behind one’s back.
A few years ago, I had been on an educational ride-along in Buffalo with a cop pal, Drake. We answered a domestic disturbance call, and when he had opened the door there was a distinct echo. The house was at least seven thousand square feet and three levels, (I paced it out while Drake calmed down the angry wife in the voluminous kitchen), but the total amount of furniture would ha
ve fit in my single-car garage.
The man of the house was laying on a stack of mattresses in the great room, yelling, “She ain’t taking the fucking bed! She’s already got the car. She ain’t taking the bed!”
Drake said, “Sir, you have five mattresses there. Why don’t you give her one? You don’t even have to give her the best one. Come on, what do you say?”
By the time I got back from my tour of the terrace level, also empty except for a well-stocked bar and assorted pink-and-blue inflatable furniture in the theater room, Drake had dragged one of the mattresses to the front hall and was using it to keep the battling spouses apart.
Drake talked to the guy like he was two years old. “Nadine is leaving now, and she wants to say she’s sorry. Don’t you, Nadine?”
The woman looked like she was going to shoot fire from her eyeballs, burn a hole right through the mattress and into her loving spouse. But she gritted her teeth and said, “I’m sorry.”
“See?” Drake said motioning to me while pushing Nadine and the mattress out the door. “She’s sorry. Now she’s leaving. You need to get some rest. Don’t make me come back out here, okay?”
I looked back to see the man sitting on his tower of mattresses, tears in his eyes. “Oh, she’s sorry, all right. She’s a sorry piece of shit who’ll rip your heart out and stomp on it! She’ll sell everything you own and blame you when your company shuts down and moves its plant to Costa Rica—like that was my fucking fault! I got nothing left, Nadine!”
I shut the door, but could still hear him howling, “I got nothing. Nothing!”
I didn’t know for certain that there was a Nadine in Smith’s past, but he didn’t have much life baggage from the looks of things. He either traveled light by choice or circumstance.
I pulled open a few drawers in the kitchen: ordinary silverware, a black bar corkscrew, a paper sleeve of chopsticks from the Chinese takeout place on the corner. It could have been my own kitchen. I was beginning to think of James John Smith as a friend, an old college roommate who’d let me crash at his place, then up and died, kind of like in The Big Chill, except I wasn’t here to mourn his passing or bone up for the eulogy.
Most folks say what they will about a man while he’s alive, but few people have the balls to speak ill of the dead. Except my ex-girlfriend, Kitty. I remembered our second date, when she’d stood in St. Mary Magdalene, Church of Lost Dogs and Loose Change, and told the entire congregation that she was sure her father was burning in hell. That he was a no-good, gambling, child-abusing alcoholic, who didn’t deserve a funeral or a grave and certainly not this fancy coffin, and maybe she ought to save her dear mama a few dollars and get started on the cremation part right now.
The priest paled as Kitty reached for the sacrificial candle.
I had been reminded of the time I’d marched with protesters at the Right to Light Streetlamps Rally and a guy with an overgrown ‘fro in front of me lit his hair on fire by mistake. One glance at Daddy’s crappy toupee held in place by so much hair spray, I knew I had to do something. I snatched the wine carafe from the stuttering altar boy, made a trade with Kitty, then led her back to the priest’s chambers, where she decided after drinking the blessed wine that getting laid would make her feel better than burning Daddy. Who was I to refuse?
Pushing the images of naked Kitty on the priest’s cot and burning corpses out of my mind, I headed for the bedroom.
It was a good-size room with plain walls. It felt like a room I’d sleep in, done in browns and tans, with a wood floor. I knew there hadn’t been a woman doing the decorating, as the bed was draped in a simple tweed comforter and held only two pillows.
I stood at the curtainless window and appreciated the view. A small green space over the neighbor’s fence was about as rural as it got downtown, not counting the occasional rooftop garden or grass-topped building—some idiotic attempt to overthrow global warming or provide bird food—I wasn’t sure which.
I scanned the room, zeroing in on the dresser. A small wooden box next to the lamp held a serpentine silver chain, a well-worn raffia-and-shell bracelet, and thirty-nine cents. Beside this, I saw a mark in the dust that looked like the shape of a cell phone. The bottom drawers held the usual assortment of jeans, T-shirts, and sweatpants—all from local department stores, all size large.
I saved the best for last—top left, underwear. I tugged the drawer out of the dresser and set it on the bed.
He was a boxer man, our Mr. Smith. I could appreciate that. Giving the boys a bit of room was always a good thing. A beer-cap keychain with three keys was in the front right corner, as were three condoms with an expiration date six months away, and a gold wedding band. I replaced the ring under the stack of boxers, but put the keys and condoms in my pocket. You never know.
Smith had a few pairs of dress socks with the tags still on them stuffed in the back and one pair of tube socks—they looked too bulky. I shook them open. A cassette tape fell out, the small ones that go in hand held recorders.
It wasn’t labeled, but I could see where a sticker had been. I put the drawer back, then went out to the living room to look for the stereo when my cell phone rang.
It was Tommy. “Tedesco, you almost done there?”
“I could be,” I said glancing at the cassette in my hand. “Why, what’s up?’
“I want to run some things by you. And also, I have some questions about Buffy and her kid. I saw some of her work.”
“Whose work?”
“Chamonix’s. It’s . . . let’s say . . . unusual.”
“What does that mean?’
“It means I’m wondering about mental illness in that family, but hey, let’s talk about it when you get here. I’m at My Place.”
“Your place, or My Place?”
“Don’t go getting all Abbott and Costello on me, Tedesco. I’m at Francie’s.”
Chapter 11
WHERE, OH WHERE COULD YOU BE?
Angel had sat beside her husband on the couch for years watching old detective movies, those black-and-whites that Jimbo loved. She knew how they did things back then, how they would follow the bad guy’s sedan down empty streets, how they eavesdropped on conversations in hotel lobbies while hiding behind newspapers. But none of that was going to work for her. She couldn’t follow a car she couldn’t find, and she didn’t remember the last time she’d seen or read a real newspaper. She was going to need to take this to the next level.
Angel knew her father was her only chance. If Daddy couldn't fix this, then Marshall Todd could. Daddy always said that a wise person surrounds himself with even wiser people, people who know things normal folks don’t and who know how to keep a secret. Marshall Todd was one of those people. Angel had heard unbelievable stories about the man’s life before he came to work for her father, and after meeting him, she was pretty sure they were all true.
He ushered her into the office and motioned to a chair in front of her daddy’s imported rainforest-wood desk.
Her father almost looked up from the stack of papers when he said, “Speak to me.”
Angel knew the drill. You had twenty seconds to make your point, or at the very least to intrigue your listener to get the chance to further make your point. Twenty-one seconds, the deal was dead. And sometimes, so were you.
She said, “It’s—”
“Smith. We know.” He touched his ear where the Bluetooth headset was permanently attached, then pointed to Marshall and swirled a finger in the air.
Marshall crossed the room and pressed a series of buttons on the wall panel. “White noise engaged, sir.”
Angel was a little impressed. It was hard not to be. She liked all that spy crap, thought it was sexy, and here she was, about to step into it full-on to find her husband.
“One question,” her father said, scrolling his eyes down one of the computer monitors on his desk.
“Yes?”
“Do you really want him back?”
Angel waited until her father looke
d up. “Yes. But on my terms this time.”
Her father raised a brow, then shot a look toward Marshall. “You were right. Plan B it is.”
He turned back to Angel, offering his version of a smile, more smirk than grin. “Marshall’s already working on it from the list you gave him. A few details we were able to . . . ascertain. Give him another hour and he’ll be ready to leave.”
“No, Daddy. I want to do this myself. I just need a few things.”
As Angel drove away from Virginia Beach, she clicked on the navigation system, noting the red dots on the screen. Her plan was to take them in order, with the first stop being an ex-girlfriend’s apartment. A girlfriend Jimbo tried to hide from Daddy for years, but in the way Jimbo did everything half-assed, with his own needs put first; the trail from Internet conversations to phone texts and calls to lingerie store receipts had been pathetically obvious. Angel knew the girl was nothing special, not bright enough to cause any problems, and from her medical charts—Thanks, Marshall—an unwanted pregnancy wouldn’t be an issue.
If anyone had asked why she never did anything before, Angel would have said that she figured her husband would lose interest soon enough and move onto the next conquest. She would have said that she didn’t really mind, she knew there were worse vices a man could have. And that was true. What she did mind was feeling like she was being taken advantage of, feeling like she was getting duped.
Angel didn’t like being on the short end of anything, especially if it appeared that another woman was pulling the strings.
She touched the navigation screen, selected Fastest Route, and said, “Bring it on, bitch,” as she accelerated down the highway.
Chapter 12
BUFFY-NOW-BARBARA WONDERS IF GOD’S IN THE RETAILS
Barbara took the long way to the mall, avoiding downtown and Flannigan’s. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to go there again. Earlier she’d decided that since she didn’t have any plans and her husband wasn’t answering his phone, so there was only one thing to do. Shop. When she was younger and struggling paycheck to paycheck, the mall only reminded her of all the things she wanted but couldn’t have. Now that she was older and had a little money, shopping was her social outlet.