“I’ll cook,” Mary Bliss said firmly. “You can clean up. How does that sound?”
“Like the best offer I’ve had all year. Do I need to run out to the store? There’s not much in the house, to tell you the truth. Unless you like stale English muffins and good red wine.”
“I’ll bring everything,” Mary Bliss said. “Just tell me how to get there.”
He gave her directions she didn’t really need. “I’ll call up to the security gate and leave your name,” he said. “They’ll let you right in.”
“See you at eight,” Mary Bliss cooed. Or she meant for it to sound like a coo.
She took a big wicker basket and went out to the garden. Her tomato plants were nearly bent double with the weight of all the ripe fruit. She picked half a dozen of the biggest, ripest tomatoes, then added some small bell peppers and a fistful of basil leaves.
Back in the kitchen, Mary Bliss peeled the tomatoes and chopped them roughly into a colander set over a plate. She sprinkled kosher salt over the tomatoes and added half a dozen grinds of black pepper, then chopped the basil and added it to the tomatoes, along with some finely chopped garlic. This was her favorite summertime pasta sauce, a quick, uncooked tomato sauce that depended upon dead ripe tomatoes and the freshest basil, which meant she usually only made it from July through September.
She had a box of good imported fettucine in the pantry, and plenty of salad makings in the refrigerator. There wouldn’t be time to make a dessert, but she could stop at La Piccolina on the way to the Oaks and pick up a loaf of fresh peasant bread, and perhaps some biscotti or, if she were in luck, some cannoli.
Just before eight, she changed into what she thought of as her Mata Hari outfit: slim black capri pants and a stretchy black wraparound top that left her shoulders mostly bare. She was searching for the right bottle of perfume on her dressing table when she found a tiny white cardboard box she hadn’t remembered seeing before. She lifted off the top. Inside, nestled on a bed of white cotton, was a pair of silver hoop earrings. A tiny silver heart with a jagged rip through the middle dangled from each hoop. A scrap of paper fluttered from the box when she lifted the earrings out of the cotton.
She picked it up. “Remember Cozumel!” was written in familiar handwriting. Katharine’s.
“As if I could forget,” she muttered, fitting the earring post to her earlobe.
She was halfway down the stairs when she remembered. The chicken salad! She had a hundred pounds of poached, shredded chicken that needed to be mixed with the salad dressing in time to chill overnight. Gerran Thomas would be here at nine tomorrow morning to pick it all up.
“God,” she groaned. The chicken would just have to wait. Right now she had a more important mission.
She called Katharine’s before she left the house.
Katharine picked it up on the first ring.
“Hey, Mary Bliss,” she said softly. “I was hoping you’d call before it got too late.”
“You knew it was me?” Mary Bliss asked.
“I’ve got caller ID,” Katharine said quickly. “If that BW calls here, I wanna know it before Charlie beats me to it.”
“Modern technology,” Mary Bliss said. “I wish I’d had some of that before Parker took off. Listen, I can’t talk right now. I’m going over to Matt Hayslip’s house.”
“A date?” Katharine squealed. “That’s wonderful, M. B. But aren’t you scared?”
“It’s not a date. At least, not as far as I’m concerned,” Mary Bliss said. “I’m going over there to find out what he knows about Parker, and why. And also, to cook dinner.”
“So it is a date,” Katharine insisted.
“It’s a mission,” Mary Bliss corrected her. “But when I get done over there, I need to stop by your house and add the dressing to all that chicken salad in your fridge. So leave the back door unlocked, will you? I won’t disturb you, I’ll just slip in and out, and you won’t even know I’ve been there.”
“Don’t you dare,” Katharine said. “I want a blow-by-blow description of your date. All the gory details.”
“It’s not a date,” Mary Bliss repeated. “But leave the light on, okay?”
When she got to the faux-Tudor security hut at the Oaks, she leaned out the window to speak to the guard, who was ensconced in air-conditioned comfort.
He slid a window open.
“Mary Bliss McGowan. To see Matt Hayslip.”
He checked a clipboard, nodded, and opened the elaborate wrought-iron gates.
Mary Bliss drove slowly down White Oak Boulevard, which was the main drag for the Oaks. Although the subdivision had been completed nearly three years ago, she’d never been inside.
Nice, she thought. The homes were large, all pseudo Tudor or pseudo Craftsman, of earth-colored stucco, river rock, and dark beams, and they were large, much larger than Mary Bliss’s house.
She found Live Oak Drive with no problem, and 325, Matt’s address, which was the third street on the right. This one was pseudo Craftsman, a deep caramel color, with dark-green trim and a two-car garage where a real Craftsman house would have had a porte cochere.
Mary Bliss gathered her groceries and her courage and rang the doorbell. Matt opened the door even before her hand had moved from the ringer.
His hair was damp, and he had a towel draped over the shoulders of his plain white T-shirt. His wash-worn blue jeans were fastened, but his hands were fumbling with the belt.
“You caught me,” he said, grinning and taking the grocery sack from her. “After you called, I was about to jump in the shower, but then I had a business call and couldn’t get the guy off the phone.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling shy and nervous. He wasn’t even fully dressed. She found herself staring at the unfastened belt, at the way his shoulder muscles strained against the white cotton T-shirt, at his tanned, bare feet.
“I haven’t even had a chance to shave,” he said, ushering her into the foyer, where moving boxes were stacked chest-high.
“Oh, don’t go to any bother on my account,” she said lightly, inhaling the scent of Irish Spring soap. The faint stubble on his chin shone pale gray against his tan.
His eyes crinkled. “I intend to go to a lot of bother on your account. And it’s entirely my pleasure.”
She felt herself blush. This was going too fast. She gestured to the boxes.
“Going somewhere?”
“Nope. Just never quite got the time to unpack when I moved in,” he said. “Let’s go in the kitchen. At least most of the stuff there is unpacked.”
She glanced through open doorways at a living room and a dining room as she followed Hayslip to the back of the house. The living room had a black leather sofa and a big-screen television, the dining room had more packing crates.
The kitchen, as promised, seemed to be where Matt had set up housekeeping—or at least his version of it.
The builders had put in every high-end convenience: cherry cabinets, black granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, including a commercial range, and a high-beamed ceiling. There was an eating area too—furnished with a battered card table and two metal folding chairs.
But Matt had set the table with care: straw placemats, thick white china, and cut-glass wine goblets.
“Very nice,” Mary Bliss said, glancing around.
“You mean, for a bachelor,” he said, as he set the grocery bag down on the countertop.
“Well…,” she said, letting it trail off. “It’s quite a kitchen. Do you cook?”
“I’m hell with the microwave, and I do wonders with a George Foreman grill,” he said, starting to unload the bag.
“So,” she said, leaning against one of the counters. “Have you always been a bachelor?”
“I was married for nine years,” he said. “But it didn’t take. We split up a few years ago. It was friendly enough. She went her way, I went mine. No regrets.”
“A friendly divorce?” she said, raising a questioning eyebrow. “
I never heard of such a thing.”
He shrugged. “She had a good job, her own friends, her own interests. We got married when we were both in our mid-thirties. Never wanted kids. I guess that makes it easier, not having kids.”
“Kids and money. That’s what my friends fight over when it’s time for a divorce,” Mary Bliss observed. “Doesn’t look like you came out of the divorce in bad shape, finance-wise.”
“I did all right,” he said. “What’s for supper?”
“Pasta,” she said. “And I hope you’re hungry.”
“Always,” he said.
She set him to work making the salad while she boiled water for the pasta. He poured the wine. She took a sip and pronounced it drinkable.
They fell into an easy rhythm, chatting while she explained the premise of an uncooked pasta sauce, and he explained his theory of choosing wine.
“There’s this great store, Lee’s Candler Park Market,” he said. “I got to know the owner years ago when I was a cop. I worked an armed robbery there. The place looks like a glorified convenience store, but you can’t let that fool you. The owner really knows good wine. I just go in there, tell him the occasion and what I want to spend, and he picks it out. He’s never let me down yet.”
“What did you want to spend tonight?” Mary Bliss heard herself asking him. How awful! A lady did not ask prices.
“Mmm. Forty bucks,” Matt said. “Nice, but not pretentious.” He grinned again. “Like me.”
“And what did you tell him the occasion was?” she asked. Again, horrifying, ending a sentence with a predicate?
Matt poured more wine into her glass, which was still a quarter full. “I just said I was having dinner with a beautiful woman. And that I thought the evening had the potential for some interesting developments.”
She sipped the wine slowly. It was, as promised, very, very nice. But really, he was standing entirely too close. And he was still only half dressed. And barefoot. She found herself wanting to comb his still-damp hair.
Suddenly, a loud hissing filled the room. She whirled around. The pasta was boiling over, sending cascades of water sheeting over the sides of the pot and all over the top of the restaurant range.
“It’s ruined,” Mary Bliss said, poking at the limp fettucine with a wooden spoon.
“Why?” Matt wanted to know. “It looks all right to me. It’s not burned. It looks like all the spaghetti my mom ever made.”
“This is not your mama’s spaghetti,” she informed him. “It’s imported fettucine. It’s supposed to be al dente.” She held up one of the noodles, which broke in half. “This is way overcooked. And I used the whole box.” She sighed. “I don’t suppose you have any fettucine, do you?”
He opened a cupboard door and waved at the contents. “You got your peanut butter, your canned sardines, your canned tomato soup, your canned ravioli, your canned tuna, your minute rice, and your Kraft original mac ’n cheese. The Kraft dinner was buy one, get one free.
“And that’s it,” he said. “I went to the store right after I moved in, and this is pretty much what I’ve got.”
“No pasta?” she asked, moving cans and boxes around.
“Nope.”
She picked up the boxes of Kraft dinner and ripped off the tops.
“You like Kraft dinner too?” he asked. “My kind of girl!”
“Not that powdered orange cheese stuff,” she said, tossing the sauce packages in the trash. “I’m just gonna cook the noodles. It’s the best I can do.”
This time, she had Matt set the timer on his digital watch. They ate their salads while the pasta cooked, and when exactly eight minutes was up, she drained the noodles and plated them up, adding a large dollop of the tomato sauce and a few grates from the hunk of Parmesan cheese she’d brought along.
“Let’s eat,” Matt said. He poured more wine, then waited for her to sip again.
“At least the wine’s good,” she said.
He tasted a forkful of the pasta. “This is even better,” he said, smacking his lips in exaggeration. “Even if you did forget to cook the sauce.”
She made a wry face and tasted. “You’re right,” she said, nodding in agreement. “Kraft dinner’s not all that bad, if you leave out the Kraft part.”
“And what’s this green stuff?” he asked, poking at a bit of herb clinging to his fork. “I like it. Sort of fresh-tasting.”
“Basil,” she said. “I grow it in my garden. I grew the tomatoes too.” She liked watching him eat. He was clearly a man of big appetites. Not so scary really, if you could just overlook the fact that he was some kind of cop with enough evidence to possibly put her in jail for the rest of her natural life.
“Where’d you learn to cook like this?” he asked, really shoveling into the noodles and sauce now.
“Here and there,” she said, deliberately noncommittal. “My mom was a good ol’ southern cook, and I’ve just picked up a lot of recipes and things over the years. What about you?” she asked. “You mentioned being a cop. I guess that was pretty exciting work.”
“Some days exciting, some days boring,” Matt said. “Can I have some more of that grated cheese stuff?”
She got up and shaved more Parmesan onto his plate.
“So, were you with the Atlanta Police Department?” she asked.
“In the beginning,” he said. “I went in right after I got out of the Marines.”
“But you said you retired from the GBI,” she said.
“Yeah. I did.” He took another piece of bread and wiped the rim of his plate clean with it.
“What did you do with the GBI?” Mary Bliss asked.
“Fieldwork.”
“Cotton fields or cornfields?” she asked.
He looked up, quizzical.
“That was supposed to be a joke,” she said. “What exactly is fieldwork?”
“You know, I was out in the field. I was down on the coast for a few years, working on a drug task force. Then I got transferred back to Atlanta. Working cases. Detective stuff, mostly. Public corruption, some white-collar stuff. The last five years, after my promotion, I did mostly administrative work. Trust me, you wouldn’t be interested.”
She propped her chin on her clenched fist. “Try me. I’m interested in lots of stuff.”
“Well, I wrote a grant proposal to get federal funding for enhanced spectrometer microscopes for the state crime lab. That took about a year. And then I disseminated guidelines for uniform firearm purchases for the entire agency. Eighteen months. Oh yeah. During that same time, I went back to school. Took me five years, but I got my master’s in criminal justice.”
“Fascinating,” Mary Bliss said. “Why’d you really get divorced?”
He sighed. “My wife didn’t like being married to a cop.”
“Why’d she marry one?”
“I think she thought it was just a phase I was going through. Like when I let my sideburns grow out. After I started work on my master’s, she thought I’d quit the agency and get a ‘real’ job.”
“She didn’t consider being a GBI agent a real job?”
“Not her kind of real job. See, she was a mortgage broker. She hung out all day with people who wore suits and played racquetball and drank Scotch. I worked with people who wore shoulder holsters and drank beer and went bowling.”
“You don’t like Scotch?” Mary Bliss asked.
“Generally speaking, I don’t even like people who like Scotch,” Matt said.
“Parker drank Scotch,” Mary Bliss said. It just sort of slipped out.
“See what I mean?” he said.
“Where is she now?”
“Who?”
“Your ex-wife. You said you were friends. Is she still in Atlanta?”
“I said the divorce was friendly. She’s still around, I guess, but I’ve lost track. Why are you asking all these questions about my ex-wife?” He leaned across the table and looked directly into her eyes.
She looked down at her plate. �
�You’ve been asking a lot of questions about my late husband, I just thought it was polite to ask about your wife.”
“Ex. So you’re just being polite. That’s all?”
She stood up abruptly and took her plate and scraped it into the sink, then did the same thing with his plate. She started running water into the sink.
He reached around her and turned off the faucet. “Come on. I’ll get these later. Let’s go sit in the living room.”
She followed him down the hall to the living room, dreading it all the way, walking as slowly as she could. Twice he turned around to see what was taking her so long. “You feeling all right?” he asked.
“A little tired,” Mary Bliss said. “Maybe I should make an early night of it.”
His face fell. “You’re not leaving already? You just got here.”
“I guess I could stay a little while.”
She got uneasy again when she got a closer look at the living room. That leather sofa she’d glimpsed was really only a loveseat. And there was no place else to sit in the room.
Matt gestured toward the sofa. “Be right back,” he said. “I forgot our wine.”
She winced. She’d already had two glasses, and she was beginning to feel the way she always felt when she drank red wine. Sort of melty around the edges.
Mary Bliss avoided the sofa. Instead she walked around the room, looking at the only other furnishings besides the entertainment center and the coffee table: stacks of record albums leaning against the walls. There were hundreds of them. She rifled through the stacks. The Doors. Jefferson Airplane. The Kinks. The Allman Brothers. Blind Faith. Cream. Jethro Tull. She was in a living rock-and-roll museum.
She was reading the liner notes on the Allman Brothers’ Eat a Peach album when he walked back in with a newly opened bottle of wine.
“One more glass, then I really need to go home,” she said, reluctantly accepting the glass he offered her.
“You like redneck rock?” he asked, taking the album from her and slipping the record out.
“I guess,” she said. “I wasn’t much of a record buyer, but I used to listen to the radio.”
Little Bitty Lies Page 28