After taking down Sharon Ann and her cronies and retaining my Room Dad responsibilities, I thought I’d be flying high. But now, after the day Victor and I had and after another visit from the red pickup, I was more on edge. I wasn’t celebrating my victory. I was waiting for the next battle.
Which, you know, was really dumb, because I was a stay-at-home dad in a town called Rose Petal, and it wasn’t like I was some sort of superhero out looking for trouble.
But whatever.
Julianne, as usual, was out the door early, probably attempting to make up for being out of the office the afternoon before. After I showered, dressed, and ate, I drove to my parents to pick up Carly.
She was sitting between my parents on their front porch swing, her hair in pigtails, her backpack strapped over her shoulders, and her Dora lunch box perched in her lap. Julianne and I enjoyed the freedom we had in being able to drop her at my parents for afternoons or overnights, but every time I saw her after she’d been gone for a night, I realized how much I missed having her chasing around my heels in the house.
She jumped off the swing and hopped down the stairs, my mother warning her not to get dirty. I swung her up and kissed her cheek. “Hello, dude.”
“I’m not a dude,” she said, pulling back and looking at me like I was crazy.
“That’s right. You’re a dinosaur.”
“I’m a girl, Daddy.”
I kissed her again. “If you say so.”
My mother stood and came down the stairs. My father remained in his lounging position on the swing.
“She behave herself ?” I asked.
“Of course,” my mother said. “She was perfect.”
I knew she wasn’t, but she could’ve set fire to the house and then stabbed a random farm animal and my mother would’ve told me she behaved herself.
“Beat down all those women last night, huh?” my father called from the porch.
I raised a hand. “Victory.”
“Never thought you had it in you.”
“Then you thought wrong.”
“I meant I didn’t think you had being a Room Daddy in you,” he said with a sly grin.
An attempt to flip him the bird was squashed as my mother smacked my wrist before I could get the finger extended, so we said our good-byes and headed off to school.
Sally Meadows met me at the door to her classroom with a big smile. “Nice to see you this morning.”
“I would’ve been here, regardless.”
She bent down and gave Carly a hug. “Good morning, Miss Carly.”
Carly, as usual, said a quick good morning and scampered into the room to begin her day.
Sally stood. “And as much as I’d like to let you enjoy your victory, I think I’m going to have to ruin it.”
“Why’s that?”
She glanced at her classroom before looking back to me. “I need you to run an errand for me. In your Room Dad capacity.”
“Of course. That’s what I’m here for.”
“The T-shirts are done,” she explained. “For Play Day.”
Play Day was the next to last day of the school year, where the kids participated in a kind of preschool Olympics. Each classroom competed as their own country, and though I had yet to witness it, it sounded hilarious and I looked forward to seeing Carly and her classmates compete as Team Turkey.
“Okay, cool,” I said.
“So I’d like for you to pick them up if you could,” she said. “I need to make sure they fit, make sure they look all right and all that.”
“Sure. I can go get them. Where are they at?”
The smile on her face wilted. “Sharon Ann’s.”
Why not just kick me in the shins?
“You’re kidding me,” I said.
She shook her head. “She had a printing connection, remember? So she got the shirts done. And Mitch was the one who came to school this morning, and he didn’t bring them.”
That made sense. Sharon Ann probably had no intention of showing her face after going down in public flames.
“But I really would like to have those shirts, Deuce,” Sally said, wincing as if asking me was painful for her.
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll go get them.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really? You don’t mind?”
“It’s my job. It’ll be fine. We’re all adults,” I told her, not for a moment believing that Sharon Ann would act like an adult.
52
Rose Petal actually sits on a strip of diagonal land between two large lakes. Lake Taitano to the south and Lake Gentry to the north. The McCutcheons lived out on the southern shore of Lake Gentry, one of the most prime pieces of real estate in not just Rose Petal, but in all of North Texas. The homes were behind gates, walking trails wound beneath huge Spanish oaks, and people drove by, wishing they were going home rather than just wondering what was behind those gates.
The gentleman at the guardhouse made a quick call after I told him who I was there to see. After hanging up the phone, he gave me a polite wave and the massive iron gates swung open, an invitation to enter.
I’d been to Mitch and Sharon Ann’s several times. They played host to numerous charity events in Rose Petal, and Julianne and I had been invited to them. Before I’d impeded on her territory at the preschool, she publicly pretended to like us and therefore included us on her party invitation list. That had, of course, all changed, and after the previous evening, I was certain it had changed again for the worst.
Their home was a sprawling two-story mini-mansion, complete with faux pillars in front of the entryway and a semicircular cobblestone drive. The perfectly mown lawn ran down to the edge of the lake that kissed the back of their home. Selling cars was a good way to make a lot of money, apparently.
I parked the minivan in the drive and walked up to the huge oak double doors, sticking my finger on the doorbell. Chimes echoed behind the doors, and a shadow grew larger behind the smoked glass slats in the middle of the doors.
The door on the right opened, and Sharon Ann was standing there wearing khaki capris, a sleeveless white blouse, and a painful, fake smile. “Hello, Deuce.”
“Hello, Sharon Ann.”
“Won’t you come in?”
It was a testament to her Southern upbringing that she was inviting me inside her home. Even as angry as I assumed she was with me, her manners and hospitality did not take a backseat.
I walked into the entryway of marble floors and raised ceilings. The pleasant aroma of citrus wafted through the air. Not a single square inch of the home was anything but gleaming.
Sharon Ann worked her cleaning ladies hard.
“Sally called and said you’d be stopping by for the shirts,” she said, shutting the door behind me. “I’ve got them out here in the kitchen.”
I followed her into the expansive kitchen that looked out over both a huge oval pool and the lake. Maybe Mitch was able to tolerate her because the views were so magnificent.
She pointed at two square cardboard cartons on the island in the middle of the kitchen. “There they are.”
I pulled back the flap on one of the boxes. Light blue T-shirts, a silhouette of the country of Turkey in the middle, with a small turkey in the middle of the silhouette. “These look great.”
Sharon Ann nodded, her lips pressed tightly together, her eyes bouncing from the box to me to the box and back to me. She tapped her long red nails against the slate on top of the island.
“I’m not going to apologize,” she said finally.
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“I was doing what I thought was right. What I still think is right.”
I folded the flap back on the box, closing it up. “Sharon Ann, if I ever thought for a second that anything I was doing in any way put any child in danger, I’d stay at least a hundred miles away from the school. But I like participating in my daughter’s class, and not you or anyone else is going to prevent me from doing that. You don’t have to like it, b
ut you better understand it.”
We were locked in a stare down when her phone rang. She grabbed the cordless and answered it.
“Hello? Oh, hi, Deb.” She smiled at me, as if Deborah calling her proved something. “What? You’re what? What are you talking about?” She blinked several times, then covered the mouthpiece. “Excuse me, Deuce.” She walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway, her voice lowered as she spoke into the phone.
I had to hand it to her. She had the polite thing on autopilot.
I checked the contents of each box, matching up the numbers of shirts and their sizes with the packing list in each box. If the shirts were any indicator, Turkey would be a heavy favorite in the preschool Olympics.
Sharon Ann returned to the kitchen, the phone in her hand and an irritated expression on her face. She set the phone on the island, next to the boxes. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Everything okay?” I asked.
She started to say something, caught herself, and straightened her posture. “Thank you for coming by, Deuce.”
A polite way of telling me to get lost.
“Not a problem,” I said, grabbing the boxes and sliding them off the island.
The corner of the second box, though, caught the phone and knocked it to the floor, sending it clattering across the brushed concrete.
Sharon Ann folded her arms across her chest and pursed her lips.
“Sorry about that,” I said, setting the boxes down, angry with myself for feeling like an idiot.
I bent down and picked the phone up from under the cabinet. I took a quick look at it to make sure I hadn’t busted it.
The last number from the last call, the one Sharon had walked out of the room to take, was on the readout, the name registered to the number across the top of the digits. I stared at it for a long moment, then rose and handed the phone over to Sharon Ann.
“I’ll let you know if it’s broken,” she said, barely looking at the phone as she set it back in the cradle. She stared at me for a moment, taking a deep breath, not bothering to hide the fact that she wasn’t happy I was still there. “Did you want something else, Deuce?”
My eyes were glued to the phone. She followed my gaze. “Are you worried about the phone? I’m sure it’s fine. We drop it all the time.”
I didn’t say anything.
Sharon Ann rolled her eyes, stomped to the island, picked up the boxes, and held them out to me. I took them, started to say something, then stopped.
She put her hand on the small of my back and guided me back toward the entryway, opening the massive front door.
I stepped through the door and turned around, clutching the boxes. “That was Deborah on the phone?”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, placing a hand on her hip, “but, yes, it was Deborah. Good-bye, Deuce.” She shut the door a little harder than necessary, the slam echoing across the cul-de-sac.
I walked slowly toward the minivan, the boxes balanced carefully in my arms, my mind spinning.
I hadn’t meant to knock the phone to the floor, but that small accident now had me more confused than ever.
Sharon Ann said it was Deborah on the line, and I had no reason to doubt her. I’d heard the beginning of the conversation. She probably called Sharon Ann half a dozen times a day. Her calling was nothing out of the ordinary.
But where she was calling from ... well, that was the confusing part.
I opened the minivan and set the boxes of T-shirts on the floor, then closed the door and turned around to take another look at the McCutcheon home.
The readout indicated that Deborah was calling from Land O’ Rugs.
53
I’d left my cell phone in the drink holder of the minivan, and it was beeping when I jumped into the driver’s seat. I punched in the message code and listened to Victor telling me to call him back right away.
I did as directed.
“Doolittle,” he answered.
“That’s how you answer your phone?” I asked, starting the van and heading away from the McCutcheon home. “Doolittle? It’s kind of rude.”
“It’s my last name, and it’s not rude,” he said, irritated. “Get over it. Where are you?”
“Picking up T-shirts. You?”
“Doing work you’re gonna be happy to pay me for,” he said. “When can you meet me?”
I had three hours until I needed to be back at the school. “Now’s good.”
“You know Louise’s over in Lewisville?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“See you there.”
I set the phone back in the drink holder as I passed the gatehouse and wondered why I was going to meet Victor Anthony Doolittle at Louise’s.
Twenty minutes later I was pulling into the parking lot at Louise’s Maternity Closet, DFW’s largest maternity wear provider. Mannequins in the window were dressed in brightly colored dresses, showcasing their baby bellies in various states of pregnancy. Another mannequin sat in a chair, hooked up to a neon orange breast pump. Julianne and I had, in fact, purchased her breast pump at Louise’s.
Pale yellow, not neon orange.
I pushed open the door to the store and saw Victor sitting in a chair near the counter, paging through a copy of Pregnancy for Dummies.
He looked up. “Hey.”
A woman behind the counter smiled at me.
“Hey,” I said. I pointed to the book. “Gonna invite me to the shower?”
He closed the book and set it on his lap. He pointed up at the woman behind the counter. “This is my sister. Louise.”
Aha.
“Pleasure to meet you,” she said.
“Same here.”
Victor saw the expression on my face. “Just in case you’re wondering, she’s not a small person.”
My cheeks warmed. “Thanks.”
He pointed a stubby finger at one of the changing rooms. “And my girlfriend is in there. She’s in her second trimester.”
Victor Anthony Doolittle was spawning? That wouldn’t be good for anyone.
He pushed himself off the floor. “Louise, you mind if he and I talk in the back?”
She busied herself with a thick ledger on the counter. “Don’t steal anything.”
He gestured for me to follow him, then stopped in front of the door of the dressing room that housed his girlfriend. “Jillian, I’ll be back in a minute.”
Whoever was behind the door murmured an assent.
I followed him through a narrow hallway and into a room that was no more than twelve by twelve. Boxes and wardrobe racks on wheels filled most of the space.
Victor motioned for me to close the door behind me, which I did.
“I don’t like to do business in front of my girl,” he said, shrugging. “Gets her all jumpy.”
“Sure. Have, uh, you guys been together long?”
“Little over a year,” he said.
“Know what the baby is?”
“Boy.” He grinned. “Victor Junior.”
God help us all.
“Did a little more digging on Zeke Stenner,” Victor said, getting down to business. “The kid that owns the truck.”
“I saw the truck again last night.”
“Oh yeah?”
I recounted our chase from the parking lot to the horse pasture.
He processed all that, rubbing his chin. “It wasn’t Stenner.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was watching him drinking with a couple of buddies at a bar near the university,” he explained. “At that exact time.”
That didn’t really surprise me. I was certain after pulling up on Stenner in the Tough Tykes parking lot that he wasn’t after me for any reason.
“But I think his roommate might be the one using the truck,” Victor said.
“His roommate?”
He nodded. “They live in an apartment complex about a mile from the school. I asked around a bit. Neighbors say his roommate borrows the truck a
ll the time.” His features screwed up, and he shook his head. “Which is so odd, because his roommate is loaded. Or at least the guy’s father is. Local businessman who owns a couple of stores. Can’t imagine why the kid would need to borrow anything, much less a truck.”
“You find out his name?”
There was a knock on the door behind me.
Victor nodded, and his gaze moved past me. “Hey, baby.”
I turned around. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting.
Okay, that’s not even close to being true. I was expecting a pregnant midget.
What I got was a supermodel.
Six feet at least, long golden hair, and longer legs. Perfect porcelain skin with aquamarine eyes. A small belly bump beneath the middle of a flowery sundress. Like she’d just walked off a magazine cover into Louise’s back room.
“Victor, I’m ready,” she said, smiling at him first, then me.
He wiggled a finger between us. “Jillian, Deuce. Deuce, Jillian.”
We exchanged waves.
“Be done in one sec, baby,” he said.
She gave a curt nod, then backed gracefully out of the room.
So completely not a pregnant midget.
Victor must’ve noticed whatever bewildered expression had settled on my face. “What?”
“Nothing. She’s, uh ... uh ...”
“A goddamn knockout,” he said. “You’re not the only one who did well in the woman department.”
I didn’t know there was such a thing as the woman department, but I knew there was a compliment in there somewhere.
“And if you’ve got the bright idea to mention to Jillian about me flirting with your wife, forget about it,” he said, waving his hand in the air. “She knows I’m an incorrigible flirt, all right? She also knows I’d never step out on her.” He winked at me. “No matter how much your wife begged.”
“Begged,” I said. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s how it’d go down.”
He made a face. “You’d be surprised. Women find my height to be an aphrodisiac.”
Which I found gave me a gag reflex.
“Anyway, yeah, I got the roommate’s name,” Victor said, moving on. “And where he works.”
As he fished a scrap of paper out of his pocket, I pondered the ways he and Jillian might’ve met.
Stay At Home Dead Page 17