“Sometimes I think Becky’s downright ashamed of where she came from,” Dixie continued in a hurt tone that she was careful to keep low so that Becky would not overhear.
In her mind, Julie heard Sid calling them trailer trash, and could not find it in her heart to blame her sister, although she would never say as much to their mother. Much as she hated to admit it, trailer trash was putting a positive spin on their childhood. Lots of times, between Dixie’s tumultuous love life and complete lack of marketable skills, they hadn’t even had so much as a trailer to live in. When Dixie was in between husbands and boyfriends, there’d been cheap motel rooms and women’s shelters and even a memorable month spent living in a tent in a campground just like Girl Scouts, as Dixie had bracingly described the demoralizing regimen of public showers and toilets and sleeping on blankets on the ground, while Julie and Becky tried to go to school and pretend their lives were just like everyone else’s. Always, for Julie, there’d been beauty pageants, the winning of which was often accompanied by a little prize money or some gift certificates or something to buoy them along. When she’d turned thirteen and Becky was sixteen, they’d ganged up together to put their dual feet down about their mother’s love life, absolutely refusing to move in with her boyfriend du jour and insisting they get a place of their own. That’s when they’d become trailer trash, which had been a wonderful thing because that rented double-wide was the first permanent home she and Becky had ever known. After that, Dixie had forsworn men, and all three of them had waited tables and cleaned houses and weeded flower beds and baby-sat and did whatever else they could find to do just to afford to eat and pay rent on their treasured new home. Then Julie had won a big one, Miss Teenage South Carolina Peach, when she was fifteen, and modeling gigs had started coming her way, and what with those and some local television commercials and a few more titles that came with scholarships attached, their lives had become almost normal and she’d even been able to go to college. Becky, with whom she had shared her winnings as much as she could, had opted for a job at a rent-a-car place, and Dixie had met and fallen in love with Hiram Clay. Then Becky met Kenny, Dixie married Hiram, and Julie won Miss South Carolina and met Sid, all in the same year.
And so here the three of them were, eight years later, living out their happily-ever-afters. Each of them had gotten what she’d always wanted, and each dream had a flaw. Dixie’s husband had been disabled in a car crash four years after the wedding; Becky’s wholehearted embrace of her role as the Perfect Suburban Mom had a kind of compulsive quality to it that Julie suspected was the result of their tumultuous childhood; and in her own case, the sad truth was that the stable home and loving marriage that she’d craved all her life—were not.
So much for the idea of happily-ever-after. Julie was pretty sure that, in reality, happily-ever-after simply didn’t exist.
“I don’t think it’s so much that Becky’s ashamed,” Julie said. “But that was then and this is now, Mama. I can see why she thinks that putting Kelly in beauty pageants probably isn’t a good idea. For one thing, it might make Erin feel bad.”
Dixie said, “Julie,” as though Julie had deeply wounded her. Then, bristling slightly, she added, “Are you saying that you think Becky felt bad when you were winning all those pageants?”
Julie suppressed a sigh. “I don’t know, Mama. But . . .”
Erin and Kelly came running back into the kitchen with two of their friends at their heels just then, and any thought of continuing the conversation was forgotten. The birthday party was under way.
When it was over, Julie just had time to pick up the cleaning and get home before Sid did. Julie was in the shower when he came upstairs to get his clothes out of his part of the huge his-and-her walk-in closets, dressing areas, and bathrooms that adjoined the master suite on either side, so she missed seeing him. By the time she came downstairs, dressed and ready to go, he was already standing in the living room waiting for her.
He was wearing a classic black tux, which became him. With his dark hair brushed back to hide the bald spot at his crown and his wire-rimmed glasses firmly in place on the bridge of his long, thin nose he looked both elegant and distinguished. Looking at him as she paused in the arched doorway, Julie was reminded of why she had married him in the first place, and her heart ached.
How could he do this to her? To them? The questions quivered on the tip of her tongue. It was all she could do not to ask Sid outright, but she remembered Mac’s warning in time to bite the words back. Sid would only deny everything anyway, so what was the point?
“You’re not going to wear that, are you?” Sid asked, snapping the cell phone on which he’d been talking closed and looking her over with a critical eye. Feeling immediately defensive, Julie glanced down at herself. Her cocktail dress was fuchsia silk, short and sleeveless, with a flirty ruffle around the hem. Until that moment, she’d thought that it looked great. That she looked great.
“What’s wrong with it?” Her throat felt tight.
“It makes you look hippy. Every bit of the weight you’ve gained lately seems to have gone right to your butt, have you noticed? Well, too late now. We’ll be late if you go change.” His gaze ran over her again, mildly disdainful as only Sid could be, and then he took her arm and practically propelled her out the door in front of him. Moments later Julie was buckled into the front seat of the Mercedes, where she rode in tight-lipped silence to the country club. Once there, she plastered a big smile on her face and settled in for an evening spent hiding her mega-butt and pretending her marriage was wonderful while guilty visions of Hershey squares and DoveBars molding themselves to her rear danced through her head.
“Here’s the big guy.” Wreathed in smiles, Sid stood up as his father, John Sidney Carlson III, known as John, threaded his way through the crowded room toward them. He was heavier than Sid, obviously decades older, and bald except for a white fringe above his ears, but there could be no doubt that the two were father and son. They exchanged a back-clapping embrace as Julie greeted his girlfriend du jour with a smile and an air kiss. Pamela Tipton was a couple of years younger than she was—John was seventy-one—and lovely. She had a short, silvery-blond pixie cut, enormous blue eyes, and a size-two body. Complete with a very small, very toned tush.
“And how’s my favorite daughter-in-law?” John asked, turning to her. Smiling gamely at this old joke—she was his only daughter-in-law—Julie lifted her cheek for his kiss and then sat down again to feign interest in the ensuing conversation. Sipping at a glass of iced tea, she barely picked at a salad and concentrated on looking happy when she was feeling anything but.
If she had only herself to consider, she thought as she exchanged friendly chitchat with Mary Bishop, the lieutenant governor’s wife—the couple shared their table along with Sid’s partner Raymond Campbell and his wife Lisa and Circuit Court Judge Jimmy Morris and his wife Tricia—maybe getting Sid out of her life might not be such a bad thing.
In fact, she was beginning to cotton to the idea of telling Sid to take a hike. A permanent hike. As in, take this marriage and shove it.
On the way home, Julie was surprised at how much she longed to fling both her suspicions and her private investigator in Sid’s face. With the supreme density that she had come to expect from him, he seemed to have no idea that she was angry. Reminding herself that discretion was the better part of valor, she bit her tongue as he made a few general comments about the evening. Fortunately, his cell phone rang before she succumbed to the temptation to do more than nod in reply. He started talking to someone about some problem that had to do with the supply of bricks. Julie stopped listening, entertaining herself by looking out the window instead.
It was a beautiful starlit night like the one before, but its beauty merely served to underline her own unhappiness. After a few minutes in which her mind wandered hither and yon, she found herself thinking about Mac, and as soon as she did, some of her inner turmoil eased. She’d had fun with him under the unlikeliest
of circumstances, he was the hottest-looking guy she’d met in forever, his dog was an absolute darling, and—he was gay. Oh, well. In this case, three out of four was probably a good thing.
As the Mercedes drove up their street she oh-so-casually glanced around but saw no sign of Mac or his Blazer. Of course, he could be anywhere—or nowhere. As dark as it was under the overhanging oaks that lined the street, it was almost impossible to be sure that he was—or wasn’t—there.
Once inside the house, Sid—naturally—headed for the den while she went directly upstairs and stripped off the fuchsia dress. She knew herself well enough to know that she would never wear it again.
She was as afraid of looking hippy as a little child might be of a monster hiding under the bed.
Which Sid knew, of course. He’d said that to make her feel bad. He was good at that, making little needling remarks that stung forever. She knew she should ignore them, but she couldn’t.
He knew what buttons to push, and he pushed them with cruel glee.
Kicking off her shoes, Julie peeled off her panty hose, then headed into the bathroom in her bra and panties to turn on the taps. She would take a long, hot bath, put on the ugliest, most unsexy nightwear she could find, and go to sleep. No more humiliating trips to the den to see when—if—he was coming to bed. No more worrying about what there was about her person that turned him off. No more wondering if he was cheating.
Finding out what Sid was up to was Mac’s problem now. The knowledge was a tremendous relief.
Still, while the water ran she could not help going into Sid’s bathroom and just peeking in his medicine cabinet. There, on the third shelf, was the bottle of vitamins. Pouring the contents into her palm, she took a quick inventory: mixed in with the businesslike yellow-and-white capsules were six—count ’em, six—blue diamond-shaped pills.
Sid must be staying home tonight.
Lip curling at the thought, Julie returned to her bathroom, turned off the taps, and walked thoughtfully back into the bedroom. Flipping off the light so that the room was plunged into darkness, she crossed to the window and edged the heavy silk drape aside so that she could look out. Moonlight filtered across the lawn, overlaying the silvery velvet of the grass with black chiffon shadows from the trees that shifted and swayed as if to music she couldn’t hear. Beyond the low brick wall that fronted the lawn, the street was a solid impenetrable black. Was Mac’s Blazer parked down there somewhere? Maybe. He’d said he would be waiting. But she had no way of knowing for sure.
How long she stood there, lost in thought, she couldn’t have said. What brought her out of her reverie was, from downstairs, the faint but unmistakable sound of the door between the kitchen and the garage opening and then closing again.
Sid had either left something in the car or, Viagra notwithstanding, he was going out.
Julie’s whole body stiffened at the thought. All of a sudden she knew, knew, that she wasn’t going to be able to bear just waiting around for Mac’s report.
She certainly wasn’t going to be able to calmly have her bath and go to sleep.
She wanted to see what Sid was up to with her own eyes. She needed to see what Sid was up to with her own eyes.
That would be closure. And for her to finally, once and for all, end her marriage in her own mind and heart, closure was what she needed.
She heard a low, vibrating hum. She knew that sound, too: the garage door was going up.
Galvanized, Julie ran for her closet, yanked on the first dress that came to hand—a red mini styled like a polo shirt—grabbed a reasonable pair of shoes—slides with tiny shaped heels—and, shoes in hand, sprinted barefoot for the stairs.
If Mac was out there, she was going with him. If he wasn’t, she would follow Sid herself.
Flying through the hall, she yanked open the front door, leaped down the white stone steps, and sped across the soft, cushiony grass toward the small iron gate at the far corner of the yard.
Bright beacons lit the driveway, stretching toward the street like reaching arms. Sid’s car rolled in near silence out of the garage, heading down the driveway. Would he see her? Julie’s heart began to slam against her breastbone as she glanced over her shoulder at the moving car. No. She was far enough away that she was pretty sure he couldn’t. But she was going to be too late. . . .
The Mercedes turned left at the street exactly as it had the night before. Julie was forced to hold up just as she reached the gate, ducking behind the brick wall, drawing in great gulps of air as she listened to chorusing katydids and caroling crickets and waited for the big car to pass. She heard the purr of the expensive engine, the swish of tires on pavement, and then Sid was gone.
Bursting through the gate, she bolted onto the still-warm pavement just as the Mercedes reached the corner. Its taillights glowed bright red as it paused at the stop sign.
Oh, God, where was Mac?
She looked wildly around. There, in front of the Cranes’, a vehicle was parked. In the dark it was impossible to be certain, but it might be the Blazer.
Or it might not.
Taking a deep breath, she sprinted toward it just as its headlights came on, pinning her in their glare.
11
MAC COULDN’T BELIEVE HIS EYES when Julie darted into his headlight beams like a startled deer. Before he could do more than slam on his brakes—running over a client was not something that was generally conducive to repeat business—she was yanking open the passenger door and flinging herself into the seat beside him.
“Go, go, go,” she said urgently, slamming her door. “You’ll lose him.”
Sid’s Mercedes was, indeed, disappearing around the corner.
“Damn it . . .” Mac began, then gave it up as he realized he had a choice: he could sit there and reason with Julie or lose the man he wanted in the worst way to follow.
With one narrow-eyed look at her, he took his foot off the brake and headed out in pursuit. She fastened her seat belt and settled in.
“This was not part of the plan,” he said as he reached the intersection.
“Screw the plan.” Julie sounded breathless. “He’s my husband, I’m paying to have him followed, and that means that I get to go along if I want to.”
The Mercedes was perhaps three blocks away, easing through Summerville’s side streets toward the expressway. Mac kept it in sight, but was careful to stay far enough back to not attract Sid’s attention.
“Oh yeah? Just what surveillance handbook did you read?”
“He didn’t notice me the last time. And I was in my Jaguar.”
“You got lucky.” His mouth was grim. She was wearing some kind of perfume—every time he breathed he got a whiff of it, soft and tantalizing. Her hair, black as the night, hung in loose waves around her face. Her eyes were huge with excitement, glinting at him in the faint light from the dash. Her lips—those lush, beautiful lips that he had been fool enough to touch earlier in the day; the warm, soft lips that had kissed his cheek—were parted as she breathed. The dress she was almost wearing stopped at approximately mid-thigh, and clung to every delectable curve on the way down. And he was willing to bet every dollar he possessed that her long tanned legs were bare again.
This he did not need. It was distracting, to say the least. She was distracting.
“I’ll stay out of your way, I promise. You won’t even know I’m here.”
Mac almost laughed at the impossibility of that. Up ahead, Sid hit Summerville’s main drag and turned, as expected, for the expressway. Mac followed, keeping well back.
“This is stupid.” He turned up the long ramp onto the expressway in Sid’s wake, and glanced at her. “This is not happening again. I follow your husband. You stay home. I bring you a full report and pictures, if warranted. You pay me. Got it?”
“If I’m paying, I get to do it any way I want.”
“Not if you’re paying me.”
“If you don’t like it, you can quit. Just turn around, take me back home, and
quit. I can always follow Sid myself.”
She had him there. No way in hell was he going to quit. He’d wanted to get the goods on Sid too badly for too long—and now there was Julie’s well-being to consider, too.
Although thinking about Julie as anything other than Sid’s wife was a truly dumb idea.
“You pull this again, and I will quit,” he said, although he knew that by his not immediately turning around the threat lost most of its teeth.
A small smile curved her mouth as she realized she’d won.
“I won’t be any trouble, you’ll see,” she said.
Mac had to fight not to roll his eyes.
“Where’s Josephine?” She glanced into the backseat.
“The only creature that could possibly be more in the way than you on a job like this is Josephine. I left her at home.” In the bathroom, actually. This time he’d taken care to tie the (new) shower curtain out of reach. With the rug stuffed into the cabinet under the sink along with the toilet paper, and all toiletries plus his razor stashed in the medicine cabinet, there was no possible damage she could do. He didn’t think.
Julie leaned forward suddenly. “He’s changing lanes. He must be getting ready to get off. There—see?”
They had reached Charleston, and the Mercedes was, indeed, pulling into the far right lane. Traffic was fairly heavy—it was a Saturday night in July, after all, and tourists were as ubiquitous as fire ants—so Mac didn’t much worry about being spotted. Yet. It was when he had to get out of the Blazer and follow Sid with Sid’s extremely noticeable wife in tow that the situation was going to deteriorate into farce.
“I see,” he said, and pulled into that lane too. It was only as they passed into an area of figure-eight ramps lit up bright as day by the huge overhead lights that he noticed the color of her dress. “Did you have to wear red? Why not just stick a flashing light on your head and be done with it?”
She glanced down at herself. “It wasn’t intentional. I just grabbed the first thing I could reach and pulled it on.”
To Trust a Stranger Page 12