I was starting to sense a motif.
She concluded by brandishing a large “Sky High” poster for the capital campaign, looking as if she were showing off Door Number One on The Price is Right. “Welcome to Holy Oaks,” she told us. “I’m looking forward to seeing your children’s shining faces tomorrow morning. And, of course, I hope you’ll all pitch in and help Holy Oaks grow deep roots and reach Sky High!”
There was polite applause, and everybody stood up. The young woman from the front office came and opened the double doors to the lobby.
And that’s when I heard Peaches, her Texas twang carrying across the empty space like she was talking into a bullhorn.
“I told you, I don’t like to use hookers for jobs like this!” she bellowed into the phone. “Their hourly rate is way too high.” She was sitting on the bench in the front lobby, her smartphone plugged into an outlet, her orange hair plastered to her head, and her white-streaked orange dress hiked up high on her plump thighs. She looked a little like a Creamsicle.
My eyes flicked to Mitzi. Her jaw had dropped, which, frankly, was more movement than I thought her Botoxed face could handle, and she looked pale beneath her suntan.
“Peaches,” I hissed.
My boss looked up, and I noticed her black eye had started to turn purple. “Oh. Hey, Margie.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Hookers?” I asked as I tore out of the Holy Oaks parking lot, the information packet wedged between the seat and the console. “You couldn’t take that call outside?”
“The timing wasn’t great, I’ll admit. My phone battery started to die just as we got to the important part, so I had to come inside and plug it in.” She shot me a sheepish look. “Sorry about that.”
“Maybe you should order the small margarita next time,” I suggested.
Peaches gave a little belch. “Probably because I didn’t eat. Tequila always goes to my head if I don’t eat.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now. I’m sure everything will be okay,” I said, hoping it was. Elsie hadn’t started her first day of school yet, and I’d already managed to scandalize half the parent population.
“Mitzi was there,” I said. “So was her husband.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a pretty ritzy school, and Austin’s a small town. Did he mention Banana Twirl?”
“We didn’t really get a chance to chat,” I said. I’d fled the scene with Peaches in tow, figuring it wasn’t the best time to try to explain. I was just hoping it would all blow over. “They both recognized me, though.”
Peaches sighed. “We’re probably safe. Hubby probably isn’t going to want to tell Mitzi we met over a can of Reddi-wip.”
“It’s going to make it hard to follow him, though,” I pointed out as I pulled onto MoPac from Bee Caves Road.
“That’s what disguises are for, Margie.”
“No dye this time,” I said. “It took me months to get that black stuff out of my hair.”
“No problem,” she said. “I’ve got a blonde wig that I think will do just fine.”
I groaned for about the fifth time that day, wondering—again—why I hadn’t gone into makeup sales like my best friend Becky.
I rolled up in front of my mother-in-law’s house about twenty minutes late, which was par for the course. It had taken me longer to get Peaches back to the office than I’d hoped; Austin traffic was growing worse every month.
“Margie, darling,” my mother-in-law said when she opened the door. As usual, she was dressed impeccably, in Talbots slacks and a pale floral-silk blouse that had somehow survived four hours with my children. Her smile faded at the sight of my stained T-shirt and shorts; I hadn’t had a chance to change yet. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “Thanks for covering for me; the orientation went fine.”
“You didn’t attend the orientation wearing that, did you?”
I sighed. “I didn’t have time to change.” If Prue found out about my brief foray into the pool at the Sweet Shop—or, worse, Peaches’s phone conversation in the Holy Oaks lobby—she might have a coronary, so I decided to change the subject. Odds were good she’d hear about it soon enough from her Junior League friends, anyway. “How are the kids?” I asked.
“Oh, doing just fine, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well,” she said, biting her lower lip. “I tried Elsie with a new fork today—I bought one that was silver, with her initials engraved on it—but she still insists on eating directly off the plate.”
“Did she at least eat at the table?”
“Umm . . . no.”
I grimaced. For the past six months, my formerly cooperative daughter had refused to eat unless we put her plate on the floor. She had her own water bowl now, too, on which she’d painted her Pekingese name in sparkly pink nail polish. I was concerned about my daughter’s canine phase, and more than a little worried about her fitting in with the other first graders at Holy Oaks. I’d been in favor of the local public school, but both Blake and Prudence had been adamant about the advantages of private education, and when Prue had offered to pay, I’d given in. “Is she still insisting you call her Fifi?” I asked my mother-in-law.
Prudence nodded. “I’m sure she’ll grow out of it,” she said. “Blake thought he was a hamster for almost six months. He was always stuffing his cheeks with Cheerios—until he choked and we had to call 911.” She smiled brightly. “Maybe she’ll choke on something, and that will bring her to her senses!”
I was rescued from having to respond to that comment by Nick, who plowed into my leg. “Mommy!” My leg felt slimy where his cheek had touched it; he’d smeared something that looked like chocolate pudding on my thigh. He wrinkled his nose and stepped back. “You smell funny.”
“I spilled something on my shorts,” I told him, bending down and kissing his head, savoring his baby-shampoo-little-boy smell. “Did you have a good time with Grandma?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was fun watching her make Elsie eat. She had this funny look on her face the whole time, like she was trying to go number two in the bathroom.”
Prue turned a delicate shade of pink. “Speaking of your sister,” she said to Nick, “Where is she?”
“She’s in the backyard, barking at the fence,” Nick said. “I’ll go get her.”
“Thanks,” I told him, and he barreled down the hallway toward the back of the house.
“I’m worried about Elsie,” my mother-in-law said as soon as he was out of earshot.
“Me too,” I confessed. The curious little girl who used to build fairy houses and give me big, gap-toothed smiles seemed to have disappeared, and I didn’t know what to do to bring her back.
“I’m wondering if the cause is some factor I don’t know about,” she said, looking at me intently with her ice-blue eyes. “How are things between you and Blake?”
“Fine,” I lied. “But what would our marriage have to do with Elsie drinking from a water bowl?”
“Stress can cause a lot of issues. I’ve noticed, the last few times we’ve gotten together, that there seems to be some distance between you and my son.” She held up her hands. “I know, I know. I don’t mean to interfere, but sometimes these things are easier to see from the outside,” she said with a sympathetic smile that made me want to tell her exactly what was going on in my marriage. “Do you think that perhaps your job is creating a rift?”
My job causing a rift? I opened my mouth, not knowing what to say. Fortunately, she continued, relieving me of the burden of responding.
“Marriage troubles can be hard on children. Are you sure you’re giving your husband the support he needs?”
I closed my mouth before I said something I would regret, clenching my jaw as I nodded. “I appreciate your concern,” I told her, “but I don’t think Elsie’s desire to be treated like a dog has anything to do with our marriage.” I took a deep breath and plastered on a smile. “Now, I hate to run, but I need to g
et home and get dinner started. Thank you so much for your help.”
“Anytime,” she said. “Isn’t your mother coming into town this week?”
Oh, God. With all the excitement, I’d almost forgotten. “She’s supposed to get here tomorrow,” I said. Which meant that I’d have to tidy up and do laundry when I got home. And worse, that I’d be facing a litany of questions about my relationship with Blake.
Although Blake and I had been apart since I discovered his affair with a (now) dead transvestite, my husband hadn’t wanted to tell anyone what was going on—or not going on—between us. It wasn’t really a shock. On the sin spectrum, he’d been raised to believe being gay fell somewhere between kidnapping nuns and selling your children on the Internet. Not surprisingly, after a childhood of football, soccer, and other appropriately “manly” activities, Blake refused to accept that he was attracted to men and kept telling me he was “working on it.” Which I was still struggling to understand. I mean, how do you “work on” not being attracted to men? Was he planning on shocking himself with an electric cattle prod every time he thought of Ricky Martin?
And, of more immediate concern, how were we going to keep our current quasi-marital status quiet while my mother was living with us for a week?
“Margie?” Prue was peering at me with a worried frown.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking of all the things I have to do before my mother arrives.”
“If you’d like, I could send Graciela over to help out,” she offered. Graciela was Prudence’s housekeeper. She did an amazing job, as evidenced by the spotless, museum-quality interior of my in-laws’ home, but my own house was in such bad shape right now it would be hard for Graciela to find a surface to clean. Plus, I wasn’t sure we could afford it.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll be able to manage. Besides,” I said as Nick ran down the hall with Elsie galloping after him on all fours, “the kids can help. Right?”
Elsie tipped up her heart-shaped face and said, “Woof!”
CHAPTER FIVE
It took a few minutes of cajoling to get Elsie to wear her seatbelt, and as we drove through my in-laws’ tony neighborhood, I was glad the van didn’t have operable back windows. I had no desire to roll past Prudence’s neighbors with my daughter’s head hanging out the window, tongue flapping in the breeze.
“I visited your new school today, Elsie,” I said brightly. “Are you excited about starting first grade at Holy Oaks?”
There was an ominous growl from the backseat. I had to admit, I kind of agreed with her. If Blake’s parents hadn’t offered to pay her tuition, we’d probably be at the public school down the street. I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t be happier there.
“Why does Elsie have to go to a new school?” Nick asked. “Doesn’t she like Green Meadows?”
“She liked Green Meadows,” I said, stretching the truth a bit—she and the headmistress had not seen eye to eye on a few things, such as wearing a dog collar and biting fellow classmates—“but she’s in first grade now, sweetheart. Green Meadows only goes up to kindergarten.”
The growling got louder.
“Mommy, Elsie’s baring her teeth at me.”
“Elsie,” I said sternly. “If you bite your brother, there will be no brownie in your food bowl tonight.”
“No brownie?” She sounded like I was threatening to take her to the veterinarian for shots. On the plus side, I told myself, at least she was using words. A moment later, she made a sound like a car whose muffler had fallen off.
“I’ll tell you what. If you can go without biting or growling the rest of the afternoon, then after supper, you can have a brownie . . . and ice cream.”
The growling stopped, and when I glanced into the rearview mirror, my daughter had stopped baring her teeth. “Thank you,” I said.
“What about me?” Nick said.
“You too,” I said. There goes the Mother of the Year Award, I thought. Not only had I spent the afternoon at a strip club, I’d had the kids for five minutes and already I was bribing them with food. I would read each of them three stories tonight, I told myself. And make them a healthy dinner with vegetables; all the parenting books said you should keep offering them to your kids, even if they didn’t eat them.
“But that’s not fair,” Elsie protested. “Nick doesn’t have to do anything.”
“He has to not bite or growl at you, too. That’s the way it works. No biting and growling, lots of brownies and ice cream. Okay?”
“Okay,” they both agreed, and I turned right, wondering where I was going to come up with brownies.
Blake’s car, a BMW that always looked like it had just been detailed (usually because it had), was already in the driveway when I pulled in and put the van into park. While his car looked great, our house wasn’t nearly as spiffy. I tried to ignore the too-long grass neither of us ever got around to cutting, not to mention the large hole in the siding that appeared to have little tooth marks around the edges, but that I kept telling myself was wood rot.
Since I’d started my job at Peachtree Investigations, I’d been too busy working and keeping laundry and dinners on track to worry about the house’s exterior, and the neglect had started to show. The front yard was looking more like a pasture than a lawn, with knee-high grass and rose bushes that were encroaching on the sidewalk. In fact, I thought as I walked up to the front door, I should probably get the shears out; it looked like the bushes might swallow a passing pedestrian sometime soon unless I took measures to get them back under control. No notice from the homeowners’ association had turned up in my mailbox yet, but I suspected it was coming.
Rufus, our incontinent Siamese cat, yowled at me from behind a dead fern in the front hall as I herded the kids in through the front door. His food bowl must be empty—again.
“Blake?” I called as Nick toddled through the front door, throwing off his shoes. One of them almost landed on Rufus. I tried to catch him and return him to the laundry room, but he streaked away before I could grab him, leaving me wondering where he’d deposit his next offering. Last week it had been my closet. I was hoping this time it wouldn’t be my pillow. Elsie turned on the TV to PBS and curled up on the cushion she referred to as her dog bed while Nick started building cars out of Duplo.
“I’m in the kitchen,” my husband sang out. I took a deep breath; there was a wonderful smell of garlic and rosemary in the air.
“You’re . . . cooking?” I asked as I walked into the kitchen, stunned at the sight of my husband in an apron. He was as handsome as always, with dark hair and chiseled cheekbones, but he no longer made my heart do anything but contract a little bit.
“Why not? It’s our anniversary, after all,” he said, handing me a glass of chilled white wine.
“Oh. Right.” I pasted on a smile, realizing with a rush of embarrassment that I’d forgotten the date. I was surprised Prudence hadn’t reminded me. “Thank you,” I said, and took a big sip of wine—after the day I’d had, I needed it—and peered into the pan on the stove, where two pork tenderloins were sizzling.
“What happened to your clothes?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I spilled something on them; let me go change.” I escaped the kitchen to what used to be our bedroom and changed into a fresh pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Not the most romantic getup for an anniversary dinner, but romantic wasn’t what I was going for. I took a look at myself in the mirror; I’d gained a couple of pounds over the summer, and I needed a haircut. Maybe when my mother was here I could slip away for a few hours. I tossed my dirty clothes onto the growing pile of laundry, arranged my face into what I hoped was a pleasant expression, and headed back to the kitchen. “What’s cooking?” I asked.
“Italian marinated pork tenderloin,” Blake said. “I picked it up at Central Market.” He gave me one of those breathtaking grins of his, all straight teeth and sparkling eyes. “I figured you could use a break in the kitchen.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking another sip of wi
ne and hoping this didn’t mean he wanted to try to get romantic.
“Becky called, by the way. I told her you’d give her a ring back.”
Becky? I felt a surge of hope. Were things looking up? If so, that was the only relationship that had any glint of hope.
I studied Blake as he poked at the pork tenderloin with a fork. Although our first year of marriage had been wonderful, filled with spontaneous trips to the beach, candlelight dinners, and passionate nights, things had cooled quickly and never warmed back up. My funny, dashing husband had morphed into someone who was snippy, intolerant, and very worried about what the neighbors thought of us—particularly of me.
I’d written it off as the stress of having children, whose natural tendency toward entropy was obviously a challenge to someone who kept his socks folded and ordered not only by color, but by shade. About six months ago, though, the underlying reason for Blake’s frustration had surfaced when I found a photo of him with a beautiful transvestite in his lap.
Blake had relocated to a hotel room for a week, begging me not to tell anyone what I’d found. He’d then pleaded with me to let him move back in, telling me it was just a phase, and that he had put it all behind him. (I resisted the urge to ask exactly what he’d put behind him.)
I’d reluctantly agreed, provided he stayed in his office while we worked things out. After all, I reasoned, I had grown up believing that marriage was a commitment you made for life, and it would be better for the kids to have both parents living in the same house. And I was worried about my sweet daughter, who had been withdrawing from both of us more and more lately, lost in her dog persona. She needed all the support she could get right now; I was on the verge of sending her to the Canine Center for Training and Behavior. Or a psychologist.
At least Blake had been less snippy the last few months, which was nice, and even folded laundry once in a while, a welcome change. Things hadn’t exactly been lovey-dovey, though. At first, I found myself questioning every moment of our years together. I had truly believed Blake was in love with me when he slipped that silver wedding band on my finger. How could I have been so wrong? And what else in my life had I misjudged? I thought about today’s episode in the pool at the Sweet Shop, then told myself that all private investigators occasionally wound up in compromising situations. Besides, if I hadn’t been looking for a job with some excitement, I would have taken Becky up on her offer to sell Mary Kay.
Mother Knows Best (A Margie Peterson Mystery) Page 3