“Hold on,” I begged and switched the phone to the other ear, using my free hand to turn on the lamp. Squinting as my eyes adjusted to the glow, I yawned and got my bearings. My mouth tasted fouler than foul, and I itched to brush my teeth. I rubbed a finger across them, which hardly made me feel minty-fresh but would do until I could gather the momentum to cover the ten feet between my bed and the bathroom.
“Andy? Are you there? Are you listening to me?”
My first coherent thought was about the shoes I’d left lying on the patio at Belle Meade, though I wasn’t sure why they’d be the cause of such concern unless someone had tripped over them and broken an ankle.
“Um, you want me to come pick up my slides tomorrow morning?” I offered, hoping that would placate her. “I’m really sorry, AB, but I just completely forgot about them. There was too much going on.”
“No, no, no!” She puffed into the phone. “I don’t care about your shoes, don’t you get it? It’s your mother, Andrea. She’s obsessing over Bebe and Sarah Lee, and you have to make her stop!”
That got my attention. “What are you talking about?”
“Look, you know I love Miss Cissy dearly, but she’s going to ruin everything if she doesn’t cool it. I’d hate to have to get a restraining order or have her arrested for trespassing.”
Arrested? Restraining order?
As Malone liked to say, “Whoa.”
I was fully alert, my pulse jumping like a hyperactive kid on a trampoline.
Uh-oh, I thought, and swallowed hard. Did Annabelle know about the stolen mail? Or had Cissy done something worse that I wasn’t privy to, like when she’d wandered out of my eyesight?
“Er, what are you referring to, exactly?” I proceeded cautiously. “What has Mother done that’s so disastrous? Oh, wait, you mean her telling the cop that she wanted an investigation? Because, I was there, Annabelle, and his eyes were practically rolling out of his head. The guy thought she was an escapee from the booby hatch.”
“Hell’s bells, it’s not what she told the cop! It’s worse than that.”
“Could you be more specific?”
Annabelle cried: “Your mother called Margery Flax before I ever had a chance to phone the poor woman and give her the news myself.”
I cringed as I asked, “Who is Margery Flax?”
“Great balls of fire, Andy! She’s Sarah Lee Sewell’s eighty-year-old sister from South Dakota. Her only surviving kin.”
“Ah.” I wasn’t sure what was so wrong about Cissy getting in touch with this woman, except it meant Mother went home and started dialing rather than taking a nap, as she’d promised. So I decided to tread carefully, wondering aloud, “And that’s a bad thing, because . . . ?”
“Because she convinced Mrs. Flax to call Dr. Finch and request that an autopsy be performed on Sarah Lee!” Annabelle’s voice rose precariously. “Apparently, Cissy told the poor woman that Mrs. Sewell might not have gone to meet her Maker willingly. She practically insinuated that we were involved in a cover-up!”
If I hadn’t thrown up earlier, I might’ve done it then. My stomach twisted in a painful knot. “She didn’t.”
“Oh, yes, she did.”
Good grief.
I groaned and chastised myself for leaving Mother alone for a single minute, what with the state she was in. That had been a miscalculation on my part, and now Annabelle was paying for it.
“So, do you have to have it done now? The autopsy?” I asked, chewing on a cuticle.
“Only if I can’t convince Margery otherwise. And I might have a shot, if you can restrain Miss Cissy.” Annabelle sighed. “Margery’s already contacted the funeral home and asked them to hold on to her sister’s remains and delay cremation until this gets settled. Dr. Finch has signed the death certificate, so this is prolonging the inevitable and making things harder on everyone.”
“I’ll have a talk with her, okay?” It was all I could promise, because I realized my mother’s actions were well beyond my control.
“Please, Andy, make it fast. I’m just afraid that, if Cissy gets herself too riled up over this, she’ll make good on her threats to contact the local media, the regulatory commission, AARP, the Gray Panthers, the Junior League, and anyone else who’ll listen.”
Yowza.
“She said that?”
“That was only a partial list.” Annabelle sounded truly miserable.
Much as I was tempted, I couldn’t lie and tell Annabelle it wouldn’t happen. Cissy had contacts all over the city—hell, all across this great big state, in every industry and business—and she could pretty well make life rough for Annabelle if she wanted to.
“Why?” Annabelle moaned. “Why is she doing this?”
Why did my mother do anything?
It was rather like asking why rain was wet.
I scrambled for advice to give; something reassuring that wasn’t an outright lie. The best I could come up with on such short notice was my old tried-and-true method of “going with the flow.” Sometimes, battling Cissy was akin to flying a kite in a hurricane. Not only would the kite be smashed to smithereens, but you might not come through in one piece, either. So I threw out my pitch: “Maybe you’re going about this the wrong way.”
“And how’s that possible?”
“Well, I’ll tell you how, if you’ve got a couple minutes.”
“I’m listening.”
I slid my feet off the bed, glancing at my alarm clock. It showed a quarter past six. I wondered what other havoc my mother might’ve wreaked in the hours while I’d dozed. If she kept this up, we’d need Dr. Phil on retainer. Mother already had the lawyers at Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt at her beck and call.
“Whatever you do, don’t tell her ‘no,’” I suggested. “It just feeds her fire. You’ll make the whole thing worse.”
“How can it get worse than her dragging the insurance regulators in and crying murder? Then the police will have to get involved . . . oh, Andy, I couldn’t endure another investigation, not after what I went through with my parents.” She paused to catch her breath. “The negative publicity alone would totally screw us, even if Cissy doesn’t get our license revoked somehow.”
Investigation . . . license revoked.
“Play along with her, Annabelle. Say whatever you have to, for now. If you insinuate you’re gonna have her arrested for trespassing or served with a restraining order, you’re just giving her more ammunition. The more you resist, the more she’ll believe she’s right.”
“So you’re saying we should go ahead with an autopsy?” Annabelle’s voice quivered. “But Andy, that alone will raise suspicion after Arnold already signed her death papers. I don’t think it’s possible without getting the medical examiner’s office involved.”
“Perhaps you won’t need to go that far,” I said, hoping I was right. “Could Dr. Finch agree to do some blood tests through a private lab? If he checked for poisons or, I don’t know, an overdose of Metamucil, I’ll bet that would pacify Mother and get her off your back.”
“I don’t know, Andy.” Annabelle didn’t sound convinced. “It seems wrong to do anything even slightly invasive when it’s completely unnecessary. Sarah Lee died of cardiac arrest . . . her old heart just ceased pumping. Why can’t your mother believe that?”
“A blood test seems a small price to pay if it’ll get Cissy off your back. Not to mention Margery Fleck.”
“Flax,” she corrected. “Do you really think that would work? Would it make her stop asking questions about Bebe, too?”
I had no guarantee. But I did know my mother. She was a bulldozer when she put her mind to something.
“Just chill, if you can,” I said. “Humor her for now, and when Sarah Lee’s tests return negative, Mother will have to accept the fact that she’s barking up the wrong tree.”
“You think?”
“She’ll turn her attention back to her charity work and the fall social circuit. She’s got a million parties comin
g up”—God, I hoped Annabelle was buying this—“as a matter of fact, just the other day she told me about a demolition party being thrown by the mayor’s daughter. The woman wants to tear down a perfectly good 1940s ranch house and put up a modern monstrosity that’s all glass.”
“A demolition party?”
I’d gotten up and was pacing the room, doing semicircular laps around my bed. “Mother said the invitation asked guests to wear dungarees and BYOS.”
“Bring your own . . . ?”
“Sledgehammer,” I told her. “But hard hats will be provided, along with the wine and hors d’oeuvres.”
“Cissy in a hard hat and jeans, whacking a sledgehammer?” Annabelle did sound less pissed. “Would you kill for a picture of that, or what?”
“Can you see it on a Christmas card?”
“Hell’s bells, I’d put it on a billboard.”
“We could charge pay-for-view.”
“On the Home and Garden Channel . . .”
“Or Comedy Central.”
Annabelle laughed.
And I breathed a huge sigh of relief, feeling like I’d dodged a bullet, or at least a BB pellet.
“Okay, Sparky, I’ll take your advice this time,” she said, not laughing anymore. “But I’m not leaving anything to chance. Be here at nine o’clock sharp for my meeting with Cissy. I might need a hand.”
“Tomorrow? But that’s Sunday.” Even God had set it aside as a day of rest, and I considered it one of His better ideas.
“Most of the residents will have headed off to church in the shuttles, so it’ll be quiet around here, less chance for anyone to overhear your mother’s accusations, or my screams of frustration. And don’t even think of bailing on me, Andrea Blevins Kendricks,” she groused. “This is way too important.”
Were all proper Southern belles trained to use a person’s full name when they were ticked?
“Aw, Annabelle, give me a break”—I was really hoping to sleep in after having had to dress up that morning to accompany Cissy to Bebe’s service, and, besides, I had some Web site redesigns I wanted to noodle with—“Can’t you face Cissy alone? You’re a big girl.”
“Not that big.”
“C’mon. Do I have to?” I whined, because I felt like it.
The dial tone hummed in my ear.
I guess I’d take that as a “yes.”
“Apparently, Cissy told the poor woman that Mrs. Sewell might not have gone to meet her Maker willingly. She practically insinuated that we were involved in a cover-up!”
Oy vey.
This had to stop.
I hit the reset button, as my first instinct was to call Mother ASAP. Posed to punch the speed-dial to her private line, I changed my mind.
Why confront her over the phone, when she could very well hang up on me (as Annabelle had)? Why not drive on down to Beverly and address her in person, where the very least she could do was kick me out of the house?
Even better, I’d pack an overnight bag, stop at Bubba’s on the way, pick myself up the fried chicken I’d missed for lunch, and eat it at Cissy’s on her custom-upholstered sofa with my feet propped up on her antique coffee table (so long as she couldn’t see me do it) while I watched some cable (which I was too cheap to pay for myself).
Sounded like a finger lickin’ good plan. After dinner, I’d settle into my old room and spend the night, have a little mother-daughter slumber party, so I could make sure she didn’t do anything else rash before our meeting with Annabelle in the morning.
Having a goal in hand always made me feel better. I’d never been good at treading water.
Water.
As in “soap and”—my synapses crackled, playing their own form of Match Game—which reminded me that my feet were still filthy.
I hung up the phone and shuffled into the bathroom.
Perched on the edge of the bathtub, I turned on the faucet and washed those suckers, scrubbing my skin until all ten little piggies glowed a rosy pink. Never mind the slightly chipped nail polish.
Clean enough to prop on any piece of furniture.
I brushed my teeth and combed my hair for good measure. Slipped on a pair of blue jeans and a Harvard University T-shirt that Brian had given me after shrinking it in the wash.
Which jogged my mind again.
Malone.
Aw, geez. I’d almost forgotten about him with all the madness going on. No doubt, he’d tried to phone while I was gone, as he’d promised to check in from Galveston—and he’d always kept his word. So far.
My CallerID still blinked red, and I hit the button to scroll down the list of three numbers. There was Belle Meade from Annabelle’s minutes-ago frantic call. In the second spot was Janet Graham’s cell phone, and, last but hardly least, were the familiar digits for Malone.
As independent as I thought I was, my heart did a tiny flutter, and I realized that I missed him. He could always make me feel like things weren’t as bad as I made them out to be. And he knew my mother, so he understood why I tended to work myself into a tizzy whenever she was involved.
I didn’t bother to listen to the message he’d left, just went ahead and dialed up his number, way too eager to hear his voice.
One ringie-dingie, two ringie-dingies.
As I waited for him to pick up, I stuck my feet into a pair of flip-flops.
Three rings.
I dug out an oversized tote bag from the closet and tossed it on my bed.
Four rings.
Malone, where are you? I thought, and prepared for his brief spiel and the beep before I’d have to leave a voice mail message, which is when I heard a rustling sound and a somewhat startled, “Hello?”
“Oh, boy, are you missing some fun.”
“Andy?” He said my name in a near-shout, and I picked up on the noises behind him, other voices and elevator music.
A restaurant? I guessed. I hoped. Better than someone else’s hotel room.
“Did I call at a bad time?”
“We’re doing a quick dinner before it’s back to work. We’ve got a boatload of transcripts to go through one more time before some more depos tomorrow. You didn’t get my message?”
Well, I had gotten it—or I assumed I had, per my blinking CallerID light—but I hadn’t listened to it. Only I didn’t tell him that.
“So it is a bad time?” I asked again, wondering who else made up the “we,” as in “we’re doing dinner.”
Not that I was going to pry, since I was the one who’d instituted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule. I just hoped it wasn’t that blonde from his office. Allie Price, I recalled, none too fondly, though I hadn’t even met her. Merely knew she was an old girlfriend, which meant she had the same ignition quotient as dynamite.
Kaboom.
“You still there, Andy? I can barely hear”—this time, static broke him up—“can I . . . call you later?”
“Later? Yeah, I guess so.” I didn’t mean to pout, but I’d wanted to talk to him in the worst way. I wanted to get his advice and have him assure me that everything was going to be fine, that my mother hadn’t truly flipped her lid and her two friends hadn’t been shoved forcibly past the Pearly Gates. “Ring my cell when you can,” I told him. “I’ll be at Cissy’s.”
“We must have a worse connection than I thought,” he said overloudly, the cacophony buzzing behind him. “ ’Cuz I thought you said you’d be at Cissy’s.”
“Right, I will.”
The line crackled. “Damn, my battery’s dying,” I heard him announce, followed by a “hey, you there?” Before he faded into the ether.
Roger, over and out.
I said “goodbye” to dead air and disconnected, dissatisfied in the same way that eating Chinese food left me hungry again fifteen minutes after I finished. How I wished I were the one he was dining with instead of a colleague of his. Preferably, a fat, old, ugly male attorney and not that chit he used to shag.
Why hadn’t I gone with him?
Brilliant m
ove, Kendricks.
I kicked myself, figuring I could’ve avoided this drama with Cissy altogether, though I might’ve returned to find her in handcuffs. Would that have been worth a sunset walk with Brian on the Galveston beach?
Hmm. That was a tough one.
Dialing in my voice-mail codes, I nodded through Malone’s message about being tied up all evening with paperwork, deleting it when I was through. The only thing that bothered me was something he hadn’t said.
Three little words.
No, not “I love you.”
Way too predictable.
Besides, at three months together, that would’ve sent me running in the opposite direction, and Brian knew it.
What I’d wanted to hear was a simple, “I miss you.”
Only he hadn’t let that slip.
Which clinched it, I decided. The day had officially sucked.
I tossed the last of my toiletries into the tote bag, doing a final once-over to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. Which is when my gaze fell on the book Malone had bought me, the one that was supposed to teach me how to lower my stress quotient (as if that could ever happen). I’d already given up trying to laugh my way to low blood pressure, but figured I’d skim through another chapter before I tossed the thing into the trash bin.
So I shoved Stress and the Single Girl into my satchel, turned off the lights in the condo, and locked up tight. Not even my next-door-neighbor Charlie was out walking his beagle—nor did I spy Penny George behind her curtains, doing her best covert operative impression—when I crossed to the parking lot and took off in my Jeep for Cissy’s neck of the woods.
“Neck of the woods” wasn’t a bad way to describe it, when, in fact, I felt a little like I was heading for the crazy witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel, with the leaking coolant from my Wrangler (I had a wee crack in my radiator) serving as the breadcrumbs, should I end up in the oven and need rescuing by the Texas Rangers. Only Mother never used the oven—I wasn’t sure she even knew where the kitchen was—so nix that Grimm comparison.
Maybe I was more like Little Red Riding Hood driving straight toward the big, bad wolf, elegantly dressed in Chanel, of course.
Grandma, what furry skin you have. Did you miss your appointment at electrolysis? And those claws! Tsk, tsk. Couldn’t Elizabeth Arden squeeze you in?
The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club: A Debutante Dropout Mystery Page 10