Ms America and the Whoopsie in Winona

by Diana Dempsey

  For a moment I can’t talk. Finally, since I have to say something, I manage to croak out a few words. “I wish the same to you.”

  “Don’t cry, beautiful girl.” A rogue tear has escaped, of course. Very gently Mario brushes it from my cheek. “I want you to be happy. I want you always, always to be happy.”

  He won’t get his wish. I know that already.

  He raises my hand to his lips, kisses it one last time, and then he’s gone.

  The moment is over. All those moments that might have been? They never will. I guess I knew this would happen one day. One day the road would fork. And I’d have no choice. I’d have to pick a path.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It’s pretty much impossible to sleep after that. I don’t know why I bother trying.

  But try I do. I dutifully wash off my makeup—that is, what little makeup I haven’t cried off—and moisturize my face and drink the last of my Nyquil and sit in bed reading the romance novel I’m halfway through.

  Maybe that’s not the right genre for tonight.

  A few hours of tossing later, I abandon the effort. I allow my hollow self to get out of bed and confront the depressing specter of five bleak hours until the break of dawn. After which I get to suffer through a really long day during which I must do my utmost to solve a murder that’s bedeviled me for a week while simultaneously forcing my rebel thoughts away from a tall, dark, and handsome stranger I never had any business fantasizing about and now really must forget.

  I guess I know how I’ll be spending the new year.

  I lumber downstairs in my pajamas without turning on any lights. I’m perfectly comfortable on Damsgard’s first floor in the dark, not to mention that the blackout echoes my mood. I decide that if ever there were a night for eating ice cream straight out of the carton, this is it. Fortunately for this melancholy beauty queen, the refrigerator is stocked with chocolate chip. I curl up on a velvet sofa in the living room, spoon and carton in hand, and try to take joy in the pine scent of the live Christmas tree and the beauty all around me. I can only vaguely see it in the dark but I know it’s there.

  I should appreciate it while I’ve got it, I realize. I’ll be leaving Damsgard soon whether I solve Ingrid’s murder or not. It strikes me that my life is much the same as this gorgeous home cloaked in darkness. There’s an awful lot that’s good that’s packed into it, even if I’m not capable of seeing it right now.

  All I can process at the moment is what I’ve lost. And what is that, really? A fantasy. A fantasy about a man I don’t really know; a fantasy about a life I’m not even sure I want.

  That doesn’t keep me from weeping. After a particularly racking bout, I hear rustling behind me. I spin around to see my mother, wearing her favorite Christmas nightgown, ivory-colored flannel with red trim and an all-over print of Santas and reindeer. Her hair is set in pin curls beneath a net. Most Saturday nights while I was growing up she set it that way so it would look good for Mass on Sunday. She lowers the frying pan in her hand.

  “Soon as I heard the crying, I figured it wasn’t a hoodlum,” she tells me. “Could have been a sad hoodlum, I guess.” She sits down next to me and pats my leg. “Mario?”

  “How did you know?”

  She looks away and sighs. “I couldn’t sleep, neither.”

  “Pop?”

  “That Maggie finally showed up at the hospital. Made a big deal of it, too.” She turns back to me. “What does that floozy think, that the rest of us love the place? But that’s no matter now. Tell me what that Mario did.”

  “He didn’t do anything, Mom.” That almost gets me going again but I manage to stave off another crying jag. “It’s hard to say what happened. I guess what it comes down to is that even though we weren’t a couple, obviously, we sort of broke up.” Saying it out loud, it sounds so juvenile.

  But my mother simply takes it in with a nod. And soon her light blue eyes look as forlorn as I’m sure mine do. “Why tonight?”

  I might as well tell her. I have to soon anyway and we’re already both in lousy moods. Plus I feel bad that I told Mario about this before I told her. I suppose that just goes to show how out of kilter I’ve gotten.

  I take a deep breath. “I told Mario that I’m moving with Jason to Charlotte. He got a job with a pit crew.”

  Her eyes fly open. “Knock me over with a feather! So that husband of yours is finally going to make something of himself?”

  “Mom, that’s not nice.”

  “I’ll be darned.”

  “You know, you really shouldn’t be so amazed. Jason is a fabulous mechanic and he’s extremely athletic and he’s really motivated.”

  “So that’s why he spent all those years working as a grease monkey for that Joe? And never wanted to do anything else? Except maybe watch football on the weekend?”

  “Well, okay, so now he’s got a fire under him. Give him credit for that.”

  “I’ll give him credit if he can keep that job. Then we’ll talk.”

  There’s no winning with my mother where Jason is concerned. “So you’re not upset that we’re moving? Not that I want you to be but I was sure that you would.”

  “How long have you known about this?”

  “A few weeks. Jason just accepted the job today. Well, yesterday.”

  “Rachel knows?”

  “She thinks it’s good.”

  “And your father?”

  “He thinks that where my husband goes, I should go. Automatically.”

  “That’s what he would think.” She sighs again. “That’s what I would think, too, normally.”

  Meaning if her daughter’s husband were any man in the world but Jason Kilborn, who got her pregnant at age 17. We lapse into silence. I offer my mom the ice cream then rise to get a fresh spoon.

  “Yours is good enough for me,” she says.

  “But I’m sick.”

  “You’re not that sick.” She dips the spoon into the carton. “So what does this Charlotte business have to do with Mario?”

  I sit back down. I have to think about that. Then, “I think it just brought home to him that Jason and I are a couple. That where he goes, I go. That whatever Mario and I might have had, we can’t have.”

  Because I’m married. And I’m not locked into some hellacious marriage, either. I’m married to a man I love, who loves me, and we have a daughter we both adore. So I should get a grip on myself and recognize that I have better things to do than indulge in schoolgirl fantasies about Latin hunks who host paranormal reality shows.

  “That’s too bad,” my mother says. “I like that Mario.”

  “I do, too.”

  “That show of his is stupid but at least he’s got a show. Unlike some people.”

  I throw up my hands. “Mom, you can’t get on Jason’s case for not being a Hollywood star! He’s on the cover of a calendar. He might even get a second calendar. Isn’t that good enough for you?”

  She shrugs. “A calendar isn’t the same as a show.”

  She’s infuriating. But I love her. “So tell me what happened with Pop.”

  “Nothing. That Maggie showed up at the hospital as if she was the bravest thing anybody’s ever seen. And like it didn’t matter that she was six, seven hours late. She made a big point of saying that so-called Priscilla called her, too.”

  “Really? Did she say what they talked about?”

  “You think I asked?” My mother shakes her head. “Anyway, your father and I were having a good time until she showed up.”

  “I’m glad about that. But I’m worried you’re getting your hopes up too much where Pop’s concerned.”

  She spoons more ice cream and says nothing.

  “You know,” I go on, “I’d like you to think about moving with us to Charlotte.”

  “That’s not for me,” she says immediately.

  “Why not? I hope not because of Pop.”

  “Never you mind why not,” she says, which is how I know for sure that it is because
of Pop. “Remember, your old mother has a way of getting what she wants. I got you, didn’t I?”

  After I don’t even know how many miscarriages, my adoption came through. “I’m very glad you did.”

  “I’ll say.” She sets down the ice cream so we can have a good hug. On my side at least, more tears are shed. And this time not for love lost but for love I will never lose. “I think you should get on with solving that murder,” my mother says when at last we let each other go. “So we can go home already.”

  “I’m with you. I just don’t know how.” My angst over Jason, Charlotte, Mario, all of it, hasn’t helped my brain cells much. Most people would give them a poor rating in the best of circumstances.

  “Sleep on it,” she tells me, “so you’ll be nice and fresh in the morning.”

  I don’t know about “nice and fresh” but maybe I can manage “slightly rested.” I’m back in my room about to set my cell phone’s alarm when I notice a voicemail I missed. It’s from Detective Dembek and includes two interesting pieces of information.

  One is that she wants to go ahead with my “smoke out Lillian” plan. I find that gratifying. The other is that Peter Svendsen professed astonishment when the detective told him that his mother spent the last week in Winona, incognito. He produced a fresh email from his mother in which she asked if she might visit after Barbara delivered the baby. Apparently the tone was of a woman pleading to see her grandchild despite years of estrangement from her son.

  Detective Dembek had the same reaction I do: maybe the estrangement continued and maybe it didn’t. If those two were in league to murder Ingrid, they could well want to maintain the fiction that they’d had nothing to do with each other for years.

  This time when I crawl into bed, I’m able to sleep. I can’t clear Mario completely from my mind but at least he’s pushed to the back. Front and center in flashing red neon is a major distraction: How to Lure Lillian.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It turns out I don’t need my alarm to wake up. Maybe some people can sleep through heartache, but this beauty queen isn’t one of them.

  I shower, put on my caramel-colored corduroy bootcut jeans and black stretch cotton short-sleeve tee with mock turtleneck, and march downstairs to make coffee and an egg-white and tomato omelet. It’s past seven thirty before the sun deigns to rise and by then the whole household is awake.

  I make omelets for everybody. I’m in a mode that’ll work for me today, I think: I’ll be busy at all times. I won’t let myself think about anything except solving Ingrid’s murder. And whether I solve it or not, I’ll fly home tomorrow.

  That brings me to the lie I tell Maggie, Shanelle, Trixie, and my mom. “I heard from Peter Svendsen last night,” I say after everybody’s slurped their coffee and scarfed their eggs and should be able to take the “news.” “He wants all of us out of Damsgard first thing this morning.”

  This declaration is greeted with howls of protest and a few quizzical looks, notably from my mother and Shanelle.

  “Mom,” I go on, “you and I will have to move into a hotel for our last few nights.”

  Trixie is philosophical. “Me, too, I guess. Well, we have been here a week, which is a lot longer than I thought we’d be staying. But boy, I hate to leave this beautiful house. And all of you, too!”

  We spend a few minutes hugging each other, nothing new for us. I hug Maggie, too, because I don’t want her to feel left out.

  “That Peter Svendsen just can’t wait to get his greedy hands on this place,” she says, an accusation that could easily have been lobbed in her direction a few days back.

  I grunt in false agreement. “So Maggie,” I go on, “I guess you’ll have to call Priscilla and let her know that you won’t be able to get together after all because we’ve all got to clear out of Damsgard.”

  “But her name’s not—” Trixie starts to say, until I quiet her with a warning touch.

  Maggie doesn’t know that so-called Priscilla is actually Lillian Borger Svendsen, the first Mrs. Erik Svendsen. Maggie didn’t get back to Damsgard from the hospital until we were all in bed and so she missed our discussion of that eye-opening discovery.

  “You’re right,” she sighs, “I will have to call and tell her. Because if your father weren’t in the hospital I might have time to see her, but as it is I’ve got to get over there right away.” Then, with a prideful note in her voice: “She called me yesterday, by the way. I was waiting at Anita’s office for Anita to get out of court and Priscilla wanted to tell me again how much she hoped we could get together.”

  I’m curious what Anita the lawyer told Maggie but I don’t want to distract her with questions on that touchy subject. “Well,” I force myself to say, “what a shame you won’t be able to see her.” I, on the other hand, expect to get an eyeful of Lillian. Detective Dembek agreed to let me hide out in Damsgard in the likelihood that she does indeed try to break in to steal the Erskine. I have a few things to say to her, not to mention a few things to ask.

  Maggie rises to clear her dishes from the table. “Your father was so smart to book our flights for tonight. I guess I’ll have to pack for both of us and go to the hospital with the suitcases in the car. And stop off at the funeral home on the way to drop off the check. I better get a move on.” She bustles out of the kitchen.

  It’s only after I hear Maggie’s door close upstairs that I lower my voice and confess the truth. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized I just don’t trust Maggie to keep to herself that this is a ploy to entrap Lillian.”

  “She might be better at entrapment than you give her credit for,” my mother points out.

  “I’m not even going to let Pop know the real story until later,” I go on.

  “So we don’t really have to leave Damsgard today?” Trixie murmurs.

  “We have to make a show of leaving,” Shanelle says. “Roll our suitcases out to the car and everything.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “After she hears from Maggie, Lillian might well watch the house to see when we’ve all cleared out.”

  “But you’re going to come back later,” my mother says to me, “right? Because you haven’t figured out who killed that Ingrid yet.”

  “Whatever happens today, I’m flying home tomorrow.” I feel everyone’s eyes on me as I carry my dishes to the sink. “It’s time. I tried. Maybe something will click for me today but I’m not holding my breath.” I turn around to face a trio of disappointed faces. “It just hasn’t come together this time. I guess I can’t expect a one hundred percent success rate.”

  Part of me wonders if I’ve been ineffective at solving this murder because I know that once the case is closed, I’ll have to fly back to Ohio to face the challenging reality of my life. I don’t really think that’s the case but I might be fooling myself.

  Trixie grabs me in another hug. “You really, really tried, Happy, and that’s all any of us can do. Remember”—and she backs away to raise an index finger in the air—“it’s always better to reach for success and fall short than not to try at all.”

  That’s beauty-queen wisdom if ever I heard it.

  “So when is Mario leaving?” Shanelle wants to know.

  I hang my head. Somehow I can’t make myself answer that question.

  Shanelle edges closer. Now she and Trixie are both standing right in front of me. I know my mother is still at the table in the nook, watching. “Happy?” Shanelle rubs my arm. “What aren’t you telling us?”

  There goes my vow that I would cry no more tears for Mario Suave. I recover quickly, though, and manage to get through an explanation. It doesn’t help put a stop to the waterworks that Trixie’s hazel eyes grow misty, and Shanelle’s dark brown eyes, too.

  Trixie sniffles a few times then squares her shoulders. “ ‘I shall be telling this with a sigh,’ ” she orates. “ ‘Somewhere ages and ages hence.’ ”

  Shanelle takes it up. “ ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by.’ ”r />
  “ ‘And that,’ ” I finish, “ ‘has made all the difference.’ ”

  We have a moment of respectful silence for Robert Frost, American poet extraordinaire, and his 1920 wonder, The Road Not Taken.

  “Did we all do poetry for our talent at some point?” Shanelle wants to know.

  “I usually did tap,” Trixie says, “but once after I twisted my ankle I did poetry.”

  “Happy never did poetry for her talent,” my mother says, joining us and handing me a tissue. “But she had to learn that poem in school.”

  I blow my nose and square my own shoulders. “You know what, ladies? We can’t talk about Mario now. And we shouldn’t, anyway. Let’s do what we have to do to make it look like we’re clearing out of Damsgard. Mom, give me your ticket information so I can call the airline and book the two of us on the same flight home.”

  “I best call the airline, too,” Shanelle says.

  “Me, three.” Then Trixie’s expression grows worried. “I know I shouldn’t ask this but do you think Mario might not want to invest in my bridal salon now? I mean, I wouldn’t blame him—”

  “If you come up with a good business plan, he will absolutely want to invest,” I tell Trixie, and I mean it. “He’s not the kind of guy who would back out of a promise.”

  “I agree,” Shanelle says. “So here’s what we do today, girl,” she tells Trixie. “We take ourselves to the public library and sit down our behinds and write up that business plan of yours.”

  Trixie’s face lights up. “Oh, that’s a good idea. We talked about it when we were driving around yesterday but didn’t actually write anything down.”

  “Then we all meet back here in the late afternoon,” I say, “and enjoy our last night at Damsgard.” I take my mother by the arm and lead her to her bedroom. “And here’s what you and I will do this morning, Mom.”

  We spend the next two hours flawlessly executing our plan. After confirming that Maggie did indeed speak to the woman she knows as Priscilla—which is essential to our scheme—I usher her out to her car. Ten minutes later, Shanelle and Trixie drive away as well, in the direction of the highway that would carry them to Minneapolis if that were where they were going. Then my mother and I showily load our suitcases into the rental car and even go so far as to pose for one last selfie in front of Damsgard. I drive us several blocks away to a quiet side street and park.