by Judith Ivie
Wait, we did, for what seemed like days but in fact was only a couple of hours. Just before dawn Strutter arrived, and the four of us sat in near silence, comforted by each other’s presence as the interminable minutes crept by. Occasionally the house phone rang, and one or another of us would make an effort not to snap at Carla or Isabelle or Myron Lifschitz’s mother, improbably enough, as we informed them there was nothing new to report and thanked them for their concern.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. At six-fifteen, John’s cell phone rang. He punched the talk button and held it to his ear, his face tense.
“Harkness,” he barked. Then, “Yes. Yes. No,” and finally, “We’re on our way. Tell them thanks. I owe them one.” He squeezed Margo’s shoulders, and an infrequent smile transformed his face as he relayed the good news. “It’s okay. The Doylestown police have May, and she’s fine.”
Margo’s eyes were wide as she searched her husband’s face for further confirmation. She needed more details before she could let go of her fear.
John understood. “She’s complaining about the coffee,” he told her gently.
Margo’s smile threatened to split her face in two as Strutter and I let out the breaths we’d been holding. “She’s fine,” Margo reassured us, and we knew it must be true.
Nineteen
May’s story, when she told it to us late Sunday afternoon, was pure Farnsworth—part horrifying and part heroic with a dash of Lucille Ball slapstick. I could tell by the way Margo stuck to May’s side like a burr that she had been half out of her mind with worry.
A cold rain dripped outside the windows. May, Margo, Strutter and I were lounging in May’s living room, which was starting to feel like our second home. “Not having to haul logs in from the garage is a plus at my age, especially under the current circumstances.” She held up a remote control, aimed it at the fireplace and clicked. With a soft whoosh, the gas ignited, and cheerful flames flickered among the artfully stacked ceramic logs.
“Nice,” Strutter approved as she reached for another slice of pizza. She picked it up but returned it almost immediately to the carton on the coffee table. “I just can’t,” she groaned. “I’m stuffed.”
“Don’t fret, sweetie, you did your best,” Margo consoled her. She herself retrieved the abandoned slice and took a hefty bite. I assumed it would join the other three slices she’d already consumed in the hollow leg I’d long suspected her of having, since she never seemed to gain an ounce.
“Okay, May, we’re fed, and we all have fresh glasses of wine. We’ve been patient just as long as we can, so give with the details,” I ordered as sternly as my full stomach and the warmth of the fireplace would allow.
She looked around the room at us before beginning. “I will, but first I want to tell you how much I appreciate each one of you and how glad I am to be able to call you my friends. Thank you for giving a damn about me. It means more than I can say.”
“Back at you,” said Strutter as Margo squeezed May’s arm, and I smiled and nodded.
“Now quit stallin’,” Margo added. You know we’re simply dyin’ to hear all about your bein’ kidnapped by Judy Holloway’s crazed husband.”
May’s mouth dropped open. “Margo Farnsworth Harkness, don’t you ever say that again. That’s not what happened at all, as that gorgeous husband of yours knows, so stop making jokes. That’s how rumors get started, as if I’m not already the subject of enough gossip around this neighborhood. Can you imagine the talk that would be flyin’ around if one of these proper northerners got an idea like that?”
“May!” we chorused, and “Enough!” and “Tell us what happened, for pity’s sake!”
“All right, all right. Don’t get all het up.” May surrendered and finally launched into her delayed narrative.
“It was pretty late Friday evening when Izzy and I got through hashing things out, and I took her back to Vista View. I was more than ready for bed, but when I went to put my cell phone in the charger, I couldn’t find my purse. Figuring I must have left it in the car, I went out to the garage to collect it. Sure enough, there it was on the front seat. I’d left the garage door up, too, which goes to show how tired I was.
“I was draggin’ myself back up the garage stairs and reaching for the automatic door closer when a car pulled into the driveway behind me. I put a hand above my eyes to try to see through the glare of the headlights and put my purse down on the stair landing while I went to see who it was.” She shook her head. “Did I ever mention that a woman should never, ever walk away from her purse? It rarely ends well.”
“I hear that,” Strutter agreed. “I left mine in a cab once on the way to the airport …”
“Emma was always leaving hers in a friend’s car,” I chimed in, “and one time I walked away from mine in the lobby of a New York hotel. I had my coat over my arm and didn’t notice …”
“When John and I drove over here and found the garage door open and your purse lyin’ there …” Margo started.
“Ladies!” May clapped her hands to reclaim our attention. “If you want me to get through this sometime this evening, could you keep your pretty mouths shut for the duration?”
We exchanged sheepish glances and subsided. May smiled fondly at us and continued.
“I walked out to see who it was in my driveway at nearly midnight, but I couldn’t make out the driver. I was tired, and even in the daylight, I have trouble telling one car from another. They’re either big or little, dark colored or light, that’s about it. Make and model? Forget about it.”
“I’m the same way,” I volunteered but was silenced when Strutter pinched my arm. “Ouch! Sorry.”
May looked amused. “So I’m standing there in my dainty little bedroom slippers with the kitten heels, no sweater or coat, trying to make sense of this car in my driveway, when the door opens. The overhead light came on long enough for me to see a very large, very drunk man lunge out of the driver’s seat, so naturally, I jumped backward.”
“Well, naturally,” Strutter couldn’t help commenting. I took the opportunity to return her pinch. She slapped my hand and frowned.
“That’s when I missed my footing and twisted my ankle before landin’ on my shapely derriere on the front sidewalk. Fortunately, as things turned out, it was my left ankle.”
We all gazed at the joint in question, which was propped on an ottoman and encased in ice packs. May’s beautifully pedicured toes were an alarming shade of blue-black, which the emergency room doctor had assured May would soon fade.
“Did the brute even help you up?” Margo questioned.
May made a face. “It was all he could do to stand up himself, let alone give me a hand. The smell of whiskey coming off him was overwhelming. So he stood there, hangin’ on to the door of his little car, weaving around and slurring something unintelligible about his wife and how I’d corrupted the woman he loved and turned her into a Jezebel, while I hauled myself off the bricks by holding onto the lamppost. It must have been pretty funny to watch.” She actually chuckled as she refreshed herself with a sip of wine.
“Except nobody else was there to see you,” I said, warning Strutter off with a look.
“Except for that,” May agreed. “By then I’d figured out that the whiskey-soaked bear was probably the husband of Judy Holloway, since there seemed to be a bunch of messages from Judy on my phone that I had yet to listen to, and for some reason he’d driven all the way from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to confront me in person. Lord knows how long he’d been soused, but I can tell you it was a miracle he made it here without killing himself or someone else. The bottle of Scotch on the floor of his car was almost empty.” She wrinkled her nose. “I just hate the smell of Scotch whiskey.”
“Auntie May, how did you wind up in the car with him? Why didn’t you just run into the house—or hobble, I guess it would have been,” Margo amended.
“Because I’m too stupid to live,” May said with resignation. “You know those
cheesy horror movies where the sleeping woman is awakened by the sound of an intruder, and instead of locking herself in the bathroom and calling 911 on her cell phone, she goes downstairs in her nightie to see who it is? That would be me.”
“So what did you do?” Strutter prompted.
“By then Bob was draped on me like two hundred and fifty pounds of misery, beggin’ me to release his wife from her publication contract because he had to stop her sinful ways and save their marriage, make her see reason. Believe me, I would have been only too willing to turn him over to Judy, but unfortunately, she was back in Pennsylvania, probably worried to death about him. My one thought was to get to my phone and call her, but that wasn’t looking possible, what with my bum ankle and a drunk hanging around my neck.”
“Why didn’t you open your mouth and scream for help?” Margo demanded.
“Hello, too stupid to live, remember?” May said once again. “It simply never occurred to me to start making a fuss after everything that had happened last week. I was desperate to keep the drama to a minimum. It was clear this fool meant me no harm. He only wanted to stop his wife from bein’ a porn author, which is how some folks still think of erotica. He was in no condition to understand my tellin’ him that what she chose to write was entirely her decision, and he surely was in no condition to drive himself anywhere, so I decided to drive him myself.”
“To Pennsylvania?” I yelped, and May laughed.
“That wasn’t my original intention. I thought maybe a nice motel somewhere on the Berlin Turnpike. They probably wouldn’t rent a room to a drunken lout, but I figured I could use a credit card to do it, drop him off in a room and call a cab to get myself home after I spoke with Judy. So I managed to wrangle Bob into the back of the car—thank goodness his Toyota was a four-door—and then climbed into the driver’s seat. The keys were in the ignition, so off we went.”
“In the middle of the night,” I commented unnecessarily.
“In bedroom slippers and no coat,” said Strutter, ever the mom.
“Without your purse and, therefore, no money, credit card or cell phone with which to carry out your plan,” Margo muttered, scowling.
“And no driver’s license, don’t forget, which meant I had no identification on me. Yes, in all the confusion, I forgot about my purse. If I’d been pulled over by a cop, he would have thought I was some gaga old lady driving around with a drunk in my back seat.”
We stared at her silently.
“Okay, so at that moment I was a gaga old lady with a drunk in my back seat, but my plan would have worked fine if only I’d remembered to grab my purse off the landing in the garage.” She looked around brightly. “Don’t you think?”
This time Margo was the first to speak. “I think gettin’ pulled over by a cop would have been the best thing that could have happened. It might have been a little embarrassin’ for a few minutes, but things would have been sorted out pretty quick, and you wouldn’t have wound up on the highway at three in the mornin’ on your way to Pennsylvania.”
Strutter flinched and covered her eyes with one hand.
“Yes, how did that happen? I thought you were headed for a local motel,” I said.
May sighed. “This is where it gets interesting.”
Strutter uncovered her eyes. “This is where it gets interesting?”
“I got to the Berlin Turnpike okay and was heading south, looking for a motel with a vacancy sign. I saw a couple, but every time I slowed down and turned into a parking lot, Bob would wake up and start thrashin’ around, making a big old fuss, so I’d have to step on the gas and move on.”
“Sounds like driving around with a cranky baby,” Strutter mused, apparently deciding to listen to the rest of May’s story without further censure. “You think you’ve finally gotten him to sleep, and the minute you stop, he wakes up and starts crying again.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly,” May beamed, grateful that at least one of her listeners understood her dilemma, “but my baby weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and wasn’t strapped in.”
“So you just kept going south?” I prompted.
“South and west, actually,” May confirmed. “By the time I got to New York, I was on autopilot. Trying to find a place to stop seemed like too much trouble at that point, so I kept on driving. It was really sort of peaceful at that time of night, or should I say morning? Anyway, then I was in New Jersey, and I figured, what the heck? I’ll just keep going to Doylestown. It’s right over the border from New Jersey. Judy showed me on a map once.”
We looked at each other, exasperated but intrigued, too, and more than a little awed by this senior citizen’s gumption.
“Did you even look at the gas gauge?” Strutter demanded.
“And didn’t you need to pee?” Margo added, voicing the thought we all shared.
“Yes, and desperately,” May answered their questions in order, “but rest stops were out of the question with Bob the Bear as a passenger. I couldn’t very well leave him unattended while I visited a ladies room, assuming I could even find one. By the way, those Toyotas are amazingly fuel efficient. I made it all the way to Doylestown on about half a tank of gas. It was my own tank that ultimately was my downfall, or my salvation, depending on how you look at it.”
“Couldn’t hold it any longer, huh?” Strutter sympathized.
“Girlfriend, by the time I crossed the Doylestown city line, I was positively gargling,” May giggled. “As soon as I got off the highway and onto a secondary road, I pulled over next to the first clump of trees I saw and hobbled behind one as fast as I could to relieve myself, Bob or no Bob. By the time I got back, a police cruiser was pulled up behind the Toyota, and Officer Jerry Katz of the Doylestown P.D. was shining a flashlight into the back seat and trying to get Bob to explain what he was doing there. Of course, poor Bob didn’t have any idea in the world where he was, let alone how he’d gotten there. Then I limped out from behind the trees, and …” She paused and took another gulp of wine.
“And what?” I couldn’t wait to hear the end of the story.
May looked abashed. “It was the funniest thing. I’d been absolutely fine right up until I saw that strapping young man lookin’ at me like I was a lunatic, which I guess I must have been at that point. I hadn’t even worried about my ankle, because I didn’t need my left leg to drive Bob’s automatic. But when I crawled out of the car, I was so stiff and tired, and my ankle hurt so badly, I just wanted to bawl. So that’s what I did. I threw myself on nice young Officer Katz and blubbered.”
I laughed out loud, remembering a similar incident or two in my own recent past. “Been there, done that. How did Katz react? Did he slap you in handcuffs and toss you in the cruiser?”
May patted Margo’s arm. “I always suspected you’d made a smart move by marrying an officer of the law, honey, but now I’m sure of it. That young officer couldn’t have been nicer if I’d been his own grandmother. He called back-up to collect Bob and the Toyota, which is when he connected us with the APB and learned that about half the police in the Northeast were looking for us. Then he phoned Judy to tell her where to find her errant hubby, and he personally drove me to the Doylestown Hospital emergency room to get my ankle taken care of. He also found me a cup of really bad coffee, but I wasn’t all that persnickety by then.”
“That’s not what we heard,” Margo muttered, but she was grinning.
“By the time John and Margo arrived to collect me, I was practically comatose,” May finished up. “I fell asleep as soon as I crawled into their car and slept all the way home.”
We were quiet for a moment, torn between horror at the danger into which May had put herself and admiration for her spirit. May broke the silence.
“Carla Peterson called a little while ago, and I told her most of the story. It was only fair, considering the police were grilling her and her kids before dawn yesterday. When I got through, she got pretty quiet, like all of you just did. Then she kind of laughed and said sh
e thought I was going to be a much more interesting neighbor than Wilma Abernathy was. I took it as a compliment at the time, but now I’m not so sure. What do you think?”
“I think Carla Peterson just said a mouthful,” was Strutter’s dry comment.
“So what’s the scoop on you and Isabelle Marchand?” I demanded. “You were together all day Friday and a good part of the evening. Anything you’d care to share with us about that?”
May leaned her head against the back of the sofa and spoke with her eyes closed. “As a matter of fact, there is,” she said. “We’ve decided to become partners in Romantic Nights.”
Our collective gasp only made her smile.
“This past submissions period while moving into a new house, and then the business with the teenage pranksters, has worn me out. For the first time in ages I’m actually looking forward to writin’ another cozy little Ariadne Merriwether mystery, but in order to have the time to do that I really need some help with the business. It all sort of came together on Friday when Izzy and I stopped screeching and settled down and leveled with each other. Izzy may not be a tip-top writer at the moment, but who knows? One day she may be. In the meantime I’m up to my eyeballs in aspiring writers who could benefit from competent editorial help, and Izzy will make a wonderful editor. She’s hated every job she’s ever had, but a recent inheritance will allow her to choose work that she enjoys, even if it doesn’t pay much. Plus, with all of her computer skills and business experience, she’s better equipped than I am to handle production and distribution, not to mention all of the financial paperwork. She’ll also be a lot better at writin’ all those rejection letters, havin’ been on the receiving end of one written by an insensitive fool.” She made a face. “Izzy made it quite clear to me that I have a few things to learn about constructive criticism.”
The three of us gaped at each other. Whatever we had expected to hear, this wasn’t it. Strutter was the first to recover her powers of speech.
“What about those awful reviews she posted about your books?” she demanded. First things first.