Pink Balloons and Other Deadly Things (Mystery Series - Book One)

by Nancy Tesler

  “Well, he succeeded. I’m scared out of my gourd.”

  Solicitously she placed a cup of chamomile tea in front of me. “Drink. It'll soothe your nerves.”

  The first time Meg had served me chamomile tea she had just moved to town and was preparing for the grand opening of her shop. It was only a few weeks after Rich's precipitous departure.

  As I'd stood by our bed, stunned, watching him pack, Rich had announced he was going to move in with Erica for a while. “For a while,” as though he planned to give me another chance if she didn’t live up to expectations. He still loved me, he’d added kindly, but it was a “different” kind of love than he felt for Erica. He might even come back, but right now he needed time off. Time off? From what? Me? Marriage? Car pools?

  Just like that. Eighteen years. A marriage. Over. Not even a formal ritual, like walking around me seven times or tossing me back over the threshold.

  Weeks later I was still beating myself up, trying to figure out where I’d failed him. Whatever the reason, it no longer mattered. He was gone. Out of my life, and I couldn’t accept the awful reality of it. I knew I was making myself sick. I was down to ninety-nine pounds, my hair was falling out and I'd begun having heart palpitations. I was living proof of the message I used to give my clients at the biofeedback center—-your body believes everything you tell it. I was telling my body that my life wasn't worth living.

  That was my frame of mind when I happened to drive by Meg’s window display. I was passing through Piermont on my way to Nyack to check out office space when I began to feel dizzy and pulled over by Meg’s Place. There was a hole in my stomach the size of Alaska, and I decided to force myself to eat. I wandered into the shop.

  Meg was up on a ladder hanging a sepia blowup of an elegant sloop that looked like something out of another more romantic century. Her long red-gold hair was caught up in a ponytail, and the extra large “Save our Rainforests” T-shirt worn over baggy blue jeans couldn’t hide the fact that her figure was spectacular. When she pivoted on the ladder to say “Sorry, I'm not open yet,” I wasn't prepared for the face that peered down at me.

  Meg has the square chin of a photogenic model and skin so luminous it glows, but her most striking feature is her eyes. They’re large and almond shaped, almost Asian, but of a deep aqua-blue. I don’t believe I'd ever seen anyone off screen so stunning. I’ve been told I’m not bad looking myself—-at least, I wasn’t before I’d elected to go with the concentration camp look--but next to Meg I felt like the ugly duckling's twin sister. Not exactly what I needed on that particular day.

  I mumbled an apology, started backing out, and tripped over a wire. My head met the corner of a cabinet. The searing pain opened the floodgates. The next thing I knew, Meg was leaning over me, handing me a mug and murmuring, “Here, drink this. It’ll soothe your nerves.”

  We've been fast friends ever since.

  “You're always in your office until five on Saturdays,” Meg said. “I can testify to that.”

  I picked up the delicate porcelain mug and burned my throat downing the boiling liquid, on the off chance she might be right about the tranquilizing effects of herbal teas. “Not yesterday. My patient canceled. I was finished by three.”

  “Where’d you go after that?” She handed me one of her butter-drenched blueberry muffins. “Someone must've seen you.”

  I pushed the muffin away, nauseated. “I went for a drive.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “Home,” I mumbled, avoiding her eyes.

  “Home. Well, that’s not...you don't mean, home—-Rich's house?”

  Miserably, I nodded. “I don’t know why I went there. I just freaked out after Allie told me about the wedding. Erica was by the pool jabbering to Rich on the phone about her damned five-thousand-dollar gown, and she sure as hell was alive! I just watched her for a while, and then I---”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “Sue Tomkins was out walking her dog. She gave that detective a blow-by-blow of how I was sneaking around and acting weird, and then my car died on the next block and they’ve impounded it, and I think they're looking for the murder weapon.” I stopped for lack of oxygen.

  “Well, they're not going to find it, so you've got nothing to worry about. This detective—-what's his name?”

  “Brodsky. Sergeant Brodsky.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Tall, thin, didn’t crack a smile.”

  “I mean was he obnoxious? Did you get the feeling he was trying to trap you?”

  “I’m not sure. He was...polite, you know, but cold. It was obvious he suspects me.”

  “They want you to think that so if you're protecting anyone, you'll fold. It’s a tactic they use.”

  “What do you know about police tactics? You probably never even had a parking ticket.”

  She started clearing the counter. “I read it somewhere.”

  “Who would I be protecting? Certainly not Rich.”

  Meg almost dropped the plate she was holding. “Oh, my God! Rich!”

  “What?”

  “You don’t suppose he told them?”

  “Told them what? What're you talking about?”

  Meg was usually so unshakable; her obvious alarm undid all the calming effects of the tea.

  “What you said the day he left.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Don't you remember?”

  “I don’t remember anything I did that day.”

  “About Erica,” she whispered. “The scene that night.”

  It started coming back. Had I told Meg that story? I couldn't remember. “How’d you know about that?”

  “I guess you must’ve told me,” she said.

  “I don't think so.”

  “Maybe it was Rich, then.”

  I wouldn’t have thought Rich would have that kind of discussion with a friend of mine but he’d obviously wanted to embarrass me. “What did he say I said?”

  She didn’t look at me as she began brushing muffin crumbs off the counter. Her voice was so low, I could hardly catch the words, but they transported me back to my old bedroom.

  Tears were streaming down my face. Carrying his suitcase, Rich was moving determinedly toward the door.

  “Rich,” I begged, my pride in pieces around my feet. “I love you. We'll work this out. Whatever’s wrong, we'll fix it. If you’ll just tell me what---”

  But I was talking to a robot, a puppet. Someone else was pulling the strings. It was as though a magnet were drawing him out of that room, away from me, from the children, from our past and from our future. And inside me a terrible rage started welling up because I knew exactly on which body part the other end of that magnet was located. I heard the garage door go up. I ran to the window and threw it open.

  “Give your whore a message from me, you bastard!” I screamed. “Tell her I'll see her dead and buried and roasting in hell before I see her married to my husband!”

  I came back to the present and looked at Meg. She was right, of course. If Rich remembered and told that to the police, my goose was well and truly burned to a crisp!

  I DIDN’T GO BACK to the office. I borrowed Meg’s car, drove home, lay down on my bed, and listened to a relaxation tape. I stayed there until I heard the front door slam.

  Allie and Matt had gone to a friend's house after I had Meg call and tell them I'd be late. I remembered I’d promised a barbecue, but I dreaded going downstairs to tell them what had happened. I didn't have to. They came flying up the stairs and burst into my room. They'd seen it on a newsbreak while they were watching Avatar.

  “Did you know, Mom?” Allie regarded me anxiously.

  “Yes, honey, I talked to the police.”

  “Where’s Dad? Was he home?” Matt asked. “Is he okay?”

  “He wasn’t home when it happened. He got home later.”

  “Then he found her—-like that!” Allie's face went two shades wh
iter and I pulled her to me.

  “Was it a burglar?” Matt asked, jumping up and down. “What’d the police say?”

  “The police aren’t even sure it wasn’t an accident,” I said, determined to lessen the impact. “She may have tripped and hit her head when she fell.” I avoided mentioning the necklace, which would have unleashed a stream of questions I didn’t want to answer.

  “Daddy must be--” Allie started, then stopped, not sure of my reaction.

  Horty, our elephant-dog, hungry for his dinner, was nuzzling my legs, and I used him as an excuse to change the subject.

  “Horty's hungry,” I said, thrusting my feet into my slippers. “You feed him, Matt. Allie’ll feed the cats while I get dinner going. Listen, the police are very efficient.” Recalling Brodsky, I was pretty certain of that anyway. “They’ve got everything under control. I'm sure it won’t take them long to catch whoever did this.”

  “What if they don’t?” Allie wanted to know. “What if it's a serial killer or somebody like that?”

  “Yeah,” said Matt, “what if he hated his mother and goes around killing women? And girls,” he added, leering at his sister.

  “It isn’t,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do. Now let’s go barbecue some chicken!” And I marched downstairs to the kitchen, followed, like the Pied Piper, by Allie, Matt, Horty, Luciano, Placido, and the smallest of our Siamese trio, José.

  DINNER WAS UNUSUALLY quiet. We didn’t barbecue out.

  I broiled the chicken and made frozen peas and instant mashed potatoes.

  I caught Allie watching me make little molehills out of the mountain of potatoes on my plate.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Shouldn’t we call dad?” she whispered.

  “Oh, sure,” I wanted to snap. “We wouldn’t want him to be lonely.”

  But of course I didn’t. Instead I replied, “Better to call him tomorrow, sweetheart. The police are probably still there.”

  Matt’s face went uncharacteristically serious. “Was Erica all mushed up when they found her, Mom?”

  Allie pushed her chair back and ran from the table. I wanted to do the same, but I kept my voice steady.

  “I don’t think so, Mattie. The water cushioned her fall.” I didn't think it was necessary to tell him what drowning victims looked like.

  “Who do the cops think did it?”

  “Your mother”, I would’ve said if I were a purist about the truth.

  A lump of mashed potatoes or pure terror choked off my reply. Thank God, the phone rang. Allie grabbed it in the living room.

  “Mom,” she called. “It’s Mr. Carboni.”

  I raced to the living room, determined to keep the conversation short. Calculated at a quarter of his hourly fee, no call from A. Carboni, Esq., ever cost less than seventy-five dollars. “Arthur?”

  “Carrie, you okay?”

  I cleared my throat. “I’m having kind of a crisis.”

  “I know. I heard.” He proceeded to tell me he’d seen it on ABC and had called to warn me.

  “You may start getting calls from the press.”

  “Oh, God, I never thought about that.”

  “Just say you don't know any more than they do and you have no comment.”

  I wanted to tell him about Brodsky and ask his advice, but I didn't want Matt and Allie to hear. “I may need to meet with you.”

  “I’m going to be away for a couple of weeks. I assume this’ll put the divorce action on hold for a while.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Remember. Don’t talk to the media. It could hurt your case.”

  “That’s what I want to see you about.”

  “I’ll call you when I get back. If you need anything before then, give Rolly a buzz.”

  His associate. Roland Archer Tobias. Maybe I’m overly sensitive, but would you trust a lawyer whose initials spell RAT?

  “Yeah, okay, I will,” I fibbed. “Have a nice trip.”

  It was undoubtedly going to be a very nice trip. I should know. I’d paid for it.

  I’d barely hung up when the phone rang again. I grabbed it.

  It was Meg. “Carrie, I’ve gotta split just for a day. I know it’s a god-awful time to leave you. I'm really sorry. You going to be all right?”

  My heart sank. If ever I needed my support system, I needed it now. Besides which there’s a part of Meg that’s amazingly street-smart, and I value her advice. I wanted to plead with her to wait a few days, but I knew I couldn’t.

  “Sure. Don't worry.”

  I knew better than to ask where she was going. Every week Meg disappears for a day or two. She has an arrangement with Franny, the antique dealer from down the street. Franny’s a kind of antique herself who dresses in early 1900s-type clothes that she buys at flea markets and re-styles. She only opens her own shop on weekends when the tourists are plentiful and is always happy to pick up a little extra cash baby-sitting Meg's Place.

  At first I thought Meg’s weekly jaunts had something to do with her passion for photography, because she always took her camera. But I never saw any pictures, and she was invariably depressed when she returned. So naturally I concluded a man was involved.

  “I’ll try to get back by tomorrow night. And I’ll be taking the bus, so you can use my car while the Gestapo has yours.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Don’t let that cop character bully you, hear?”

  “I’ll try not to. Have a good trip, Meg.”

  Feeling frightened and alone, I hung up. I thought about calling my dad in Massachusetts. We’re unusually close. My mother died when I was three and I have no siblings, so the bond between my father and me is a strong one. But he remarried a few years ago and is presently recuperating from a bypass, so I deep-sixed the idea. It would hardly facilitate his recovery to hear that his daughter is a murder suspect.

  As I stacked the dishes in the sink, I couldn’t stop the wheels turning. If Meg had a lover—-a married man, perhaps--knowing my feelings on the subject, I’d be the last person she'd tell. On the other hand, seeing your lover for only a day or so a week seems an awfully unsatisfactory arrangement. Still, in the years I’ve been practicing, I’ve come across all kinds of oddball setups. Some high-powered career women deliberately choose married men because it meshes with their lifestyles. Problems with this type only arise if either party suddenly decides they want the whole package-—e.g., Erica. The other type are usually women with no self-esteem who are willing to take whatever crumbs their lovers toss their way. Meg doesn’t fit either category.

  Past conversations with Meg played through my mind. She’d been careful, I realized, never to let anything slip. I had no clue as to where and how she was spending those days and nights.

  I was reminded of what she’d said in her shop this afternoon. When had Rich told her about the night he’d left?

  Meg knows Rich, of course. She’s been at the house several times when he’s come to pick up the kids. Maybe the subject had come up when they were making small talk waiting for me to get the children ready, but that didn’t seem a likely topic for casual chit-chat.

  I dropped the chicken bones into the garbage and started the dishwasher. Then, steeling myself for what was sure to be a difficult conversation, I dialed Rich’s number. Aside from wanting to assure Allie and Matt that he was okay, I planned to pump him about who besides me might have wanted Erica Vogel off the face of the earth, and finally, I needed to have the nagging voice inside my head silenced. As absolutely disloyal as it made me feel, I wanted to know when he’d had that conversation with Meg.

  I let the phone ring several times before I hung up deciding to catch him at the office in the morning.

  The strain of the day was finally sending a painful message to my body. Bone tired, I staggered up the stairs to my room.

  Allie's door opened as I got to the top of the landing. “Mom?”

  I paused in the doorway. “W
hat, honey?”

  “Do you think...don’t get mad, but d’you think now that—-now that Erica is—-that maybe—-Daddy might come back home?”

  The hopeful look on her face turned my insides to mush. I wasn’t past longing for a miracle myself.

  “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

  “But he was just-—like, you know, infatuated with her. He still loves you. I know he does.”

  “Allie, a lot has--”

  She wouldn’t let me finish. “You weren't having fights or anything like Lori’s parents. You were happy. Don’t you remember?”

  I did. My children had not been raised in a loveless home, at least not in their formative years, but it made it doubly hard to explain what had gone wrong.

  I said what the books tell you to say. “Daddy still loves you and Matt, sweetheart. Very much. That’ll never change.”

  “But if he could change about you...”

  “It’s different between a man and a woman.”

  “Well, if that's the way men are, I never want to get married.”

  I put my arms around my daughter. “Lots of marriages are really good, Allie. And when it works it’s wonderful because loving somebody, really loving somebody and having them love you back, well, it’s just the greatest. And you’re going to have that in your life. I know you will, because you deserve it.”

  “So do you.”

  “I had it for a while, sweetheart, and maybe I will again.” I came up with more psychobabble. “Dad just...some men go through a kind of change of life. Like women, only it isn't so much physical. And they get afraid because they’re not young anymore. So they do silly things to try and hang on to their youth.”

  “But you and Daddy aren’t old.”

  “Right now I feel ninety.”

  She grinned. “You only look seventy.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “When I finish my homework, can I come sleep with you?”

  “Sure.” I kissed her shiny black hair, the only part of her like her father. “Make it fast, though. I’ll probably be out cold by the time you're done. I'm dead on my feet.”

  Instantly I regretted the choice of words, but Allie didn’t seem to notice. I wondered, as I shed my clothes, if I believed any of that psychobabble I’d just spouted. But Allie was only twelve. Let her have her dreams.