Mary Bliss rubbed her own eyes wearily, then stood up. She dusted off the seat of her linen pants and squinted in the bright light.
“Come on,” she said, offering her friend a hand.
“Where to?” Katharine asked, struggling to get up without spilling any wine.
“Upstairs,” Mary Bliss said. “I need you to help me pick out an outfit.”
“For what?”
“Parker’s funeral,” Mary Bliss said.
“Goody!” Katharine squealed. “Cozumel, here we come. I can already taste the margaritas.”
25
Friday morning, a week later, Mary Bliss was zipping her suitcase shut when the doorbell rang. She froze, startled. Her shoulders sagged. This was it. Everything was off. And after all their careful planning. She’d gotten time off from work, left emergency numbers at the nursing home, even arranged to have Randy Bowden water her garden while she was gone. Katharine’s flight had left hours earlier. Erin was at work, not due home at all, since she’d arranged to spend the weekend at Jessica’s while her parents frolicked in the surf in Cozumel.
“What now?” she said aloud. She yanked the suitcase off the bed and trundled it down the stairs behind her. She had exactly an hour and a half before her flight to Miami left Hartsfield. No telling what midday Friday traffic would be like.
Mary Bliss ran to the first-floor landing and looked out the window. She could just glimpse the back end of a car she didn’t recognize parked in her driveway. Was it another bill collector? They’d started getting bolder, leaving messages on the answering machine, sending registered letters. But this was the first one who’d come knocking at her door.
And she had neither the time nor the nerve right now to deal with one more pressing problem. Peeking around the sidelight by the front door, she caught a glimpse of her visitor. He wore a khaki-colored ball cap that left his face in shadows. He was dressed in jeans and a golf shirt, and he kept glancing around. He pressed the doorbell again and she jumped, stifling a near scream.
Definitely a bill collector, she decided. She picked the suitcase up and tiptoed to the kitchen and out the door to the garage. After she loaded the suitcase in the trunk, she checked her purse to make sure she had everything, the travel itinerary, the packet of money Katharine had loaned her, her passport, and an economy-sized bottle of Lomotil.
Mentally she reviewed the plan she and Katharine had gone over so painstakingly. It had seemed like such a fantasy, planning it out with a bottle of wine. But it was real. She was doing this. There was no other way out. She was going to Mexico married and coming back a widow.
She checked her watch. Ten minutes had passed. The doorbell had stopped ringing five minutes ago. She heard an engine start and felt her body go limp with relief.
He was gone. Now it was time for her to leave. She pressed the button on the automatic garage door opener and carefully backed her car out of the driveway.
She was at the bottom of the driveway, glancing over her shoulder to make sure there was no oncoming traffic, when she heard a pounding on her window. She looked up, startled. The man in the ball cap stood right beside her car.
“Mrs. McGowan? Mary Bliss? I thought nobody was home.”
She squinted in the bright light. His face was somehow familiar. Silver hair, tanned face, but something was missing. She put the car in park and rolled down the window.
“I’m sorry…I’m in a hurry. I’m late for an appointment.”
“You don’t remember me, do you? Matt Hayslip? Parker’s tennis partner?”
“Oh,” Mary Bliss said. The cop. Retired, but still. She felt her face flush and her pulse quicken. What did he want? Why was he snooping around her house?
“Guess you didn’t recognize me without the beard,” he said, chuckling. “I had a girlfriend one time, accused me of hiding behind it. I generally shave it off in the summertime.”
“Yes,” Mary Bliss said faintly. “I guess it was the beard that threw me.”
“Say. I still haven’t been able to get hold of Parker,” Hayslip said in a friendly way. He had his hand on the window frame, his face right at eye level with hers. “I’ve left messages on your home phone. Didn’t you get them?”
The skin on the back of her neck was prickling, and not just from the June heat. She had gotten in the habit of fast-forwarding over all the messages on the machine, listening only for Erin’s or Parker’s voice.
“I’m sorry,” Mary Bliss repeated. “Parker’s still out of town. I told him you called, but he’s been so busy.”
“Going on a trip?” he asked, gesturing toward the seat beside her.
She glanced over. Damn. She’d left the plane ticket and the hotel brochure in plain sight on the seat. Her heart was beating so rapidly that she was certain he could see it, pumping her chest up and down.
“Yes,” she said brightly, covering the hotel brochure with her free hand. “That’s why I’m in a hurry. My plane leaves in an hour, and you know how traffic can get.”
“Cozumel, huh?” he said. “It’s great down there. Should be beautiful this time of year.”
She repressed a scream.
“Should be,” she agreed, glancing at her watch. “Guess I better head out now.”
“Parker meeting you down there?” he asked.
She simply stared at him.
Now it was his turn to blush. “That sounds pretty damned nosy, doesn’t it? The reason I ask is, there’s another tournament coming up, and the competition looks pretty decent. I think the two of us could win this one. But the entry deadline is today.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “He is meeting me in Cozumel. It’s our first weekend together in ages. I’ll give him the message, but I can’t make any promises.”
“Just the two of you, huh? A romantic weekend for two? That’s nice. Maybe you could call him on his cell phone,” Hayslip suggested. “I know he’d hate to miss an opportunity like this.”
“I would,” Mary Bliss said, “but it would be a waste of time. As far as I know, he’s in the air right now. Maybe you should consider finding another doubles partner. It being so late and all.”
Hayslip shrugged. “We make a great team, you know. He’s got that killer backhand, and I play a pretty decent net game. The two of us could clean up in this tourney.”
Mary Bliss could feel the minutes ticking away. “Well…I’ll just leave that up to you boys. I’ll ask him to call you, all right?”
Then she made a bold move. She rolled up the electric window and gave him a bye-bye wave.
“Wait,” he said, pounding the window again.
She rolled it down an inch. “I’m sorry, but this is the last flight out today. I really have to go.”
He reached in his breast pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to her. Her blood froze when she saw the gold embossed shield on the card.
“Just have him call me,” Hayslip urged. He stood up and pounded the roof of her car. “You two have a great time down there in Cozumel now, you hear? Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
By the time she parked her car at the airport, ran through the terminal, and made it onto her Delta flight, Mary Bliss was limp with exhaustion and anxiety.
She tried to read the in-flight magazine but couldn’t concentrate. Tried to nap, but every time she closed her eyes she had a vision of Matt Hayslip, standing in front of her, the tanned face frowning, and instead of a business card it was a pair of handcuffs that he was holding out to her. How had she thought him attractive the last time? The man was a menace, even though without the beard he looked ten years younger.
When the flight attendant came by with the drink cart, she decided to treat herself to something more substantial than a Diet Coke. The wine was vinegary and tepid, but it smoothed down the frayed edges of her nerves.
In Miami she had to run the length of the airport to get to the AeroMexico gate. The flight was packed and she was wedged into a window seat next to a flesh
y Hispanic woman who fell asleep as soon as she sat down, her head lolled over onto Mary Bliss’s shoulder.
When the drink cart rolled around this time, Mary Bliss held up two fingers. Who knew when or if the flight attendant would come this way again?
She pulled down the seat-back tray and left one minibottle there, while she poured the other into the plastic cup she’d been given.
Great, she thought. I’m a criminal and a lush. My daughter has only one parent, and she’s impaired. And the police are already after me.
She fell asleep to that happy thought, lulled there by her third glass of wine and the companionable snoring of her seatmate.
The landing jolted her awake. She sat up and winced at the sharp pain when she tried to straighten her neck. The Hispanic woman was awake too now, yawning widely. Mary Bliss looked down at herself and cringed when she saw the drool stains on her new cotton blouse.
They were seated near the rear of the plane, and it seemed to take forever before she could finally stand up and stretch a little.
God, she was tired and hot. She had a cramp in her neck and her head was starting to throb from all that cheap wine.
BIENVENIDOS A COZUMEL! The sign in the baggage claim area was printed in flowing pink script. She collected her single suitcase and looked around the terminal. Katharine said the package deal included a free shuttle bus from the airport to her hotel, but she hadn’t mentioned where to find the shuttle bus.
Mary Bliss’s high school Spanish was limited to phrases like “¿Donde esta la biblioteca?” and “Pasame el pan, por favor.”
She couldn’t remember the word for shuttle bus. So she wandered around the terminal until she finally ventured outside. The heat hit her like a shovel upside the head.
Atlanta had been hot, but Cozumel was scorching. She looked up and down the road in front of the terminal, at the row of motley taxis, vans, and buses. Finally, a battered seventies-era VW bus chugged up to the curb. La Casa Blanca, the name of her hotel, was painted on the door.
The driver, a wizened Mexican woman in her seventies, with a long silver braid that hung down her back, got out, looked at Mary Bliss and her suitcase. “¿Señora McGowan?” The ash from the cigarette in the corner of her mouth dropped on top of Mary Bliss’s new canvas espadrilles.
Mary Bliss stepped backward, startled.
“¿Señora McGowan?” the woman repeated.
“Sí,” Mary Bliss said finally.
The woman gestured toward the van, then threw her cigarette to the pavement, stubbing it out with a battered red Converse sneaker.
“Andale,” she said.
26
Cigarette smoke filled the bus. Mary Bliss managed to crank her window halfway down, and she poked her head out the side of the bus in search of fresh air.
The asphalt road was lined with palm trees, and the skies overhead were azure blue. If she craned her neck, there were places where she could see traces of glistening green water beyond the lush green tree line. She thought of the travel brochure. Cozumel—Paradise on Earth. This would be a nice place to vacation, she thought. Maybe sometime in another life.
The VW bus chugged on along the road, passing people on rickety bicycles, more cabs, buses, and even motor scooters. Her driver was busy singing along to the radio, spewing smoke and snapping her fingers to the music.
In fifteen minutes, they turned into a drive lined with a low white wall. Brilliant purple bougainvillea spilled over the walls and more palm trees swayed above. So far, so good, Mary Bliss thought.
The driver was chattering away in Spanish now. Mary Bliss caught words like bonita and ristorante, but the rest was just noise.
The bus stopped abruptly in front of a long, low, white stucco building. It had a red clay tile roof and a red tile patio entrance filled with pots overflowing with a riot of red, yellow, and purple flowers. There was a tile mosaic rug in front of the courtyard entrance that picked out La Casa Blanca in blue and green tiles.
“Okay?” The old woman turned and looked over her shoulder at Mary Bliss. Bits of cigarette ash showered down on her wrinkled blue work shirt. “Señora McGowan? Okay?”
“Sí,” Mary Bliss said, scrambling to get out, once it was clear her driver’s duties didn’t include unloading or carrying baggage.
She wheeled the suitcase along behind her into the expansive wood-beamed lobby area. Tables were dotted around the tile floor, and people sat at them, sipping cold drinks and eating something that smelled wonderful.
Mary Bliss’s stomach twinged. She hadn’t eaten all day.
“¡Bienvenidos!” said the young woman behind the reception desk. “Welcome to La Casa Blanca. My name is Sofia. Can I help you?”
“Yes, Sofia,” Mary Bliss said, relieved to hear English. “I have a reservation. McGowan?”
Sofia tapped the keys of a computer in front of her and smiled. “Yes. Your husband checked in around noon.”
“Oh.” This was news. She tried not to look flustered. “Oh, good. His flight was on time, then.”
“Yes,” Sofia beamed. She reached in a drawer and brought out a large brass key and tucked it into a cardboard envelope, which she pushed across the counter to Mary Bliss.
“Your room is four twenty-seven. And here is a coupon for a complimentary drink in our patio bar, and a ticket for our fiesta breakfast in the morning.”
“How nice,” Mary Bliss said. Her stomach twinged again. She really must eat. And soon.
The soles of her espadrilles were quiet as she walked down the red tile corridor to her room. She paused in front of the door to 427. What had Katharine been up to? Had she really posed as Parker McGowan?
The phone was ringing as she unlocked the door. She fumbled for the light switch, dropped her suitcase, and lunged across the king-sized bed to grab the phone.
“¡Bienvenidos, Mary Bliss! ¡Besame mucho!” Katharine was cackling like a madwoman. “Do you love it? Do you absolutely love it?”
“Where are you?” Mary Bliss demanded, slipping off her shoes.
“I’m on the house phone right now. You walked right by me not two minutes ago,” Katharine said. “The gorgeous blonde in the big black straw hat? Sitting at the table with the biggest pitcher of margaritas in Mexico?”
“You’re in disguise?”
“Damned straight. Wait ’til you see what I bought for you. And guess what? I found an old Diner’s Club card Charlie forgot about. We’re in the money, honey.”
“You’ll get us both arrested.”
“Relax. I’ve just been using it for cash advances. No paper trail.”
“God,” Mary Bliss said, leaning back on the pillows of the bed and looking around. The room was simply furnished, tile floor, flowered spread and drapes, a large comfortable armchair, and a desk. It looked and smelled reasonably clean, and the air conditioner was humming along, sending waves of chilled air into the room. “What have I gotten into?”
“Stop it right now,” Katharine said. “Come on out to the lobby now so we can discuss the plan. We’ve got a lot of work to do, in only a little bit of time. I’ve ordered us some chimichangas or some such thing, and if you don’t hurry out here, I’m gonna get likkered up on these margaritas and start taking advantage of all the horny men who have been walking by giving me the eye.”
“Food?” Mary Bliss said hopefully. “I’m starved.”
“Well, get your ass out here. And change that blouse. It looks like somebody slept in it.”
27
Katharine’s description of herself had, of course, been accurate. Her brief, gauzy yellow skirt was slit to reveal her long, tanned legs, and the matching yellow halter top left little to the imagination. Most of the platinum-blonde wig was hidden under the broad-brimmed black straw hat.
“This is your idea of incognito?” Mary Bliss asked, sitting opposite her at the table.
“I’m wearing dark glasses,” Katharine said.
“And very little else,” Mary Bliss pointed out.
Katharine poured her a margarita and shoved a basket of tortilla chips in Mary Bliss’s direction. “Do you want to lecture me, or shall we discuss the plan?”
Mary Bliss removed the bottle of Lomotil from her purse and took a hefty swig. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and eyed the margarita. “Is it safe to drink that? The water and all? You know how my stomach gets.”
“They have their own filtration system here at the hotel. Listen. We’ve got to get going here. You’re supposed to pick up your dive boat at ten A.M.”
Mary Bliss nibbled at a tortilla chip. “The desk clerk tells me my husband checked in early this afternoon. You know anything about that?”
“He works at one of the bars in town,” Katharine said. “Pablo and Paul’s. He’s American. Sort of an aging beach bum hippy type. Very cute. I gave him five bucks and a pair of sunglasses. He checked in as Parker. We met at the beach bar after I checked in. We’re supposed to meet again for a drink later this evening.”
“Will he be Parker tomorrow too?” Mary Bliss whispered.
“Of course,” Katharine said. “I told him we’re playing a trick on my husband. Poor thing. He’s adorable but totally clueless. I think it really is true about drugs frying your brain.”
Mary Bliss took a wary sip of margarita. “Can he drive the boat?”
“Absolutely. He grew up in Florida. Although, you’ll have to drive it after you drop him off down the beach. That’s not a problem, right?”
“I guess not. I’ve driven your boat up at the lake tons of times.”
“Right,” Katharine said. “You’re a great little pilot.”
“What about the death certificate? That’s the part that’s really got me worried.”
Little Bitty Lies Page 14