Happily Ever Madder : Misadventures of a Mad Fat Girl (9781101607107)

by Mcafee, Stephanie

  “Why doesn’t he move away?” I ask.

  “Well, he wanted to. After he went to college, he didn’t want to move home, but he was dating Olivia hot and heavy by the time he graduated, so he came back and he’s still here.” She looks at me. “That’s actually one of the few ways Olivia and I are alike. Neither one of us will ever leave Pelican Cove, because, you know, this is home.”

  “So what does Josh do?” I ask, ignoring all the emotions stirred up by that last comment.

  “He owns a big landscaping business and just tries to get along with his parents as best he can. They make it hard on him, but he sticks to his boundaries. For example, the Kennashaws like to have these big knock-down, drag-out brawls during the holidays and stuff, but Josh won’t have any part of it. And that works out great for Olivia, because they’re always at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They go the ‘Kennashaw Brawl,’ as Olivia calls it, either before or after the actual holiday. Never on it.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Naw, it’s really not,” she says. “Josh makes it all work. When he sees the trouble brewing, he gathers up his brood and makes a hasty exit. All smiles all the time. That’s Josh Kennashaw.”

  I start laughing and ask if Josh has any brothers or sisters. She tells me that he has a brother who plans on taking over the family business.

  “He’ll run Kennashaw Home and Garden straight into the ground,” Jalena says. “He’s dumb as a box of rocks. When Mr. Frank dies, that business is gonna go with him. It’s just barely limpin’ along as it is, but you sure can’t tell that by how Lenore acts.” She shakes her head in disgust. “Ridin’ around in that big fancy Mercedes like she can afford it. I can’t stand that woman.”

  “So can we talk about her for a second?” I ask. “And I assure you that whatever you tell me will not leave this house.”

  Jalena gives in and tells me all kinds of awful stories about how Lenore has ruined birthday parties, baby showers, and Sunday dinners but doesn’t mention anything about Charity Caboose.

  “I think she’s a fraud and I want to expose her,” I say. “Show her socialite friends who she really is.” I look at Jalena. “But I know you can’t be a part of anything like that.”

  “She is a fraud and actually I can,” Jalena says. “It’s just that no one can know.”

  “Too easy,” I say and act like I’m zipping my lips.

  “I already know a way to knock her down a notch or two,” Jalena says in a conspiratorial tone that I like. “Lenore runs Caboose—you know that, right?” I nod to indicate that I do. “Well, that’s just one more reason she makes me sick, because that organization does a lot of good things for underprivileged kids, and it deserves to have better leadership than what it’s got.” I point at her. “No! That ain’t me! That’s not what I’m saying at all. I just like to volunteer and help out and stuff. What I’m saying is that there are a lot of respectable people in that organization, and dang near any of ’em would make a better chairman than her.”

  “So what do you have in mind?” I ask.

  “Well, she’s never going to step down, so what we need to do is take her down.”

  “Can we do that?” I ask, getting excited.

  “I think so,” Jalena says with a devilish grin. “And if you’re serious about this, we need to get a move on, because our annual fund-raiser, the Caboose Charity Ball, is weekend after next, and I can’t think of a better time to jerk her off that high horse.”

  “I am so serious about this,” I tell her as my brain goes into overdrive. “Who can go to that fund-raiser thing?”

  “Anyone who buys a ticket,” Jalena says. “Why? Do you have someone in mind? I mean, besides you?”

  “I have a few people in mind. Some friends of mine from Bugtussle,” I say and tell her all about Gloria Peacock and Birdie Ross. “They’re some feisty little old ladies and they love me like family, so when I tell them what’s going on, I’m almost sure they’ll come down.”

  “They sound really cool, but what would they do?”

  “Just rub Lenore and Sylvie the wrong way like they’ve been doing to me for the past month.” I look at her. “Gloria Peacock has the money and Birdie Ross has the mouth.”

  “Got it,” Jalena says. “All right, so let me tell you what I’ve got on my mind, and then we can come up with a way to use it.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I’m so excited to be up to no good with Jalena.

  “The people who fund Charity Caboose are seated at the annual fund-raising gala according their contribution category, which doesn’t make the most sense when you think about how secretive they are about who gives what. I mean, they don’t want anyone to know exactly how much a person or an organization gives, but it’s okay to publicize about how much. Whatever. Anyway, they do it by stars. Like, the five-star people donate the really big money: over ten thousand a year. Four-stars give five to ten thousand, three-stars give one to five, and two-stars give less than a thousand.”

  “Wow! Those are some high-dollar categories!”

  “Well, there are some high-dollar people around here, if you haven’t noticed,” she says. “Like Avery’s dad, Dr. Cambre. He’s a five-star and so are most of his friends.”

  “Wow.”

  “Tia is a four-star.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Tia makes a lot of money,” Jalena says.

  “Well, she works hard enough, so I’m glad to hear it,” I say. “So is there a one-star?” I ask, thinking that would be the category I’d fit into with all the money I haven’t been making at my fancy new art gallery.

  “One-stars just donate their time,” she says. “Like me, because I don’t have a lot of money.”

  “That’s so sweet,” I tell her and decide that I’m going to start donating some of my time and maybe some of Mason’s money to Caboose Charity. Right after we get rid of Lenore Kennashaw.

  “Yeah, well, like I said, it’s a great cause,” she says, waving off my praise. “Anyway, since Lenore got herself elected chairwoman a few years back, she’s been seating herself at the five-star tables, and I know for a fact that she only gives five hundred dollars a year, which is the minimum required to be eligible for election to the board.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “Tia didn’t tell you about me sneaking into the office and having a look at the financial records?”

  “No.”

  “She said she did,” Jalena says, giving me a funny look.

  “Okay, yeah, she did,” I say. “She told me about that the first time we had lunch, which was the day after my grand opening, when I had the displeasure of meeting Lenore for the first time.” My cheeks are burning from embarrassment. “I just didn’t want to rat her out.”

  “She told me she felt like she could trust you,” Jalena says, smiling. “I guess she was right.”

  “I’m a vault,” I say, thinking Tia can trust me all day long with a secret but better not give me thirty seconds unattended with her boyfriend or whatever he is.

  Jalena says, “I can get in there and get those copies she told you about. Caboose has to keep meticulous records, but they don’t have any kind of security system because no money is ever left in the office and all you have to do is slip a credit card in the crack of the door and it’s open.” I raise my eyebrows and look at her. “Don’t even ask, okay? Let’s just say I was on a date with a guy and was feeling a little adventurous and there’s a nice view from the roof.” Her phone beeps and she looks down. “Speaking of, it looks like I might get to see Luke tonight.”

  “Who is Luke again?” I ask because I can’t keep her men straight.

  “He’s the one I went out with last Friday night.”

  “Gotcha,” I say. “You get on about your business, and we’ll finish planning this tomorrow night.”

  “Girl, Luke can wait a minute,” she says, moving her thumbs across her phone at the speed of light. “Don’t need him thinking I
’m too excited about seeing him, even though I really am.” She giggles and then looks up at me. “Plus we’ve got to get this plan together ASAP!”

  “Hold on,” I say. I jump up and go to the study, where I dig a notebook out of the desk cabinet. I grab a pencil, a pen, and a highlighter and go back to the living room.

  “You are too prepared,” Jalena says as I flip open the notebook.

  “Teacher habits,” I tell her. “They stay with you. Now, tell me all about this fund-raising event.”

  “Let’s see, it’s a black-tie affair with a catered buffet table and a full bar that serves drinks weak as well water. I told you about the stars and how that determines who sits where, and that’s a big-time status thing because the charity ball is pretty much the social event of the year—here in the Cove, anyway—and then there’s an auction of things people donated—”

  “Uh, I’d like to say that I’ll have three paintings in that auction.”

  “Oh, so you won’t have to buy a ticket then, because they gave you one when you made the donation, right?” She looks at me. “Wrong?”

  “Wrong,” I tell her. “They didn’t give me a ticket.”

  “What about when they picked the stuff up?”

  “Kevin Jacobs picked it up,” I say and blush despite my best effort not to. Jalena notices but doesn’t say a word. “That was the first time I met him,” I say, looking at the floor.

  She looks at me for what seems like ten hours.

  “What?” I say, finally.

  “Nothing,” she says, smiling.

  “Moving on,” I say. “Was I supposed to get a ticket?”

  She’s still looking at me funny. “I’ll make sure you get your ticket and one for Mason, too,” she says, finally. “We have a meeting scheduled for Monday night, so I’ll pick those up then.” She starts talking about the fund-raiser again, and my ears perk up when she mentions a program brochure. I ask her to elaborate on the program, and she says that the first half is all pictures and articles about what Caboose has accomplished since the previous charity ball. “There are a few pages of advertisements, and then, in the very back, all of the benefactors are listed according to their ‘star’ ranking.” She looks at me. “Again, that’s a major status thing because only the biggest of the big shots can afford that five-star ranking. At first Frank and Lenore just sat with the big shots, which was plenty pathetic enough, but last year when Kennashaw Home and Garden was actually listed in the program as a five-star patron, that’s when I decided to do some investigating.”

  “With your man friend?”

  “No, I did that by myself after I found out how easy it was to get in.” She looks at me. “What I would love to do is get Lenore in the right category.”

  “Have the programs already been printed?”

  “I’m sure,” she says. “Why?”

  “Do you know if the programs are in the same building with the records?”

  “I’m sure they are.” She narrows her eyes. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Maybe we should add a little announcement to the program,” I say. “Something small, stuck in the middle, that would fall out when someone flipped through it. Like those magazine subscription cards.”

  “Saying what?”

  “You said Kennashaw Home and Garden gets the five-star treatment, but it’s only a two-star contributor, right?” She nods. “Well, then, I think we should add a correction. Along with the amount that they actually donate.”

  “It would take forever to do that,” Jalena protests. “There’ll be like five hundred programs and then the first person who saw one would take it straight to Lenore and then nobody would get another program until they checked each and every individual program.”

  “How about this? When you go to that meeting next week, check and see if the programs are still in the building. If they are, let’s make fifty postcard-sized leaflets proclaiming the truth about Lenore Kennashaw, and while you’re in the office making copies of the evidence you already found proving her puny donations, I’ll pick a random box and get to work stuffing programs. The ones containing our little cards might be the first ones handed out at the charity ball or they might be the last, but either way, everyone doesn’t need to see the actual announcement.” I give Jalena a knowing look.

  “We just need a few people to see it,” she says, understanding.

  “Then it’ll spread like a wildfire. It’s like a warped use of supply and demand. Maybe a few of the people who find our little addendum will realize they’ve got something scandalous and then hang on to it so they can show it off.”

  “I kind of hate to do this at the fund-raiser because, you know, it’s raising money for the kids,” Jalena says.

  “Will any of the kids be there that night?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, I don’t see a problem, because what we’re doing really is in the best interest of the organization, right? And the money will still be raked in, right?”

  “Well, yeah,” she says slowly.

  “Girl, we’re just gonna put some extra ‘fun’ in the annual fund-raiser.”

  “You know what would be even better?” Jalena says. “If we could get her name card moved to a different table.” She starts giggling. “Then she would be over there looking for her seat with the big shots and wouldn’t be able to find it.” She gets up and mimics what Lenore would look like as she tried to find her seat. I laugh until my side hurts, and Buster Loo runs circles around Jalena’s feet, barking and wagging his tail. “If we could get those place cards swapped around, that would be great, because the committee that sets up the seating chart strictly forbids seat swapping.” She looks at me. “But that’s going to be hard to do because they guard that place like a tomb after they set everything up.”

  “Even at night?” I ask.

  “The gala is held in the conference center at the Downtown Inn, and I’m pretty sure they keep it locked up day and night even when nothing is going on.”

  “We’ll think about that, and I’m sure we can figure something out.”

  “Oh, I just thought of one more thing,” Jalena says. “They have valet parking for this event even though the parking lot is just across the street, so wouldn’t it be hilarious if when she left, we could have some kind of crappy car waiting on her instead of her Mercedes?”

  “That would be so freakin’ hilarious!” I think about the station wagon. “And I might actually have a way to arrange that.” I tell her all about Erlene Pettigo rolling into the back of my car at Bueno Burrito, then how I met her at the Peanut Festival and she said her husband might let me drive the station wagon while he fixed my car.

  “Oh, that would be too much,” Jalena says, laughing, then starts shaking her head. “But there ain’t no way all of this is gonna work, because it would be too perfect.”

  “We have to try,” I tell her. “We can try it all and hope some of it works, and if it all falls flat, then we’ll just have to come up with a new plan.”

  “I like the way you think,” Jalena says, laughing. “Check into that paddy wagon.”

  “Okay, but if I do get it, how are we going to get it to the curb instead of the Mercedes?”

  “A fifty-dollar bill and some cleavage will go a long way with a valet,” she says with a smile. Her phone beeps again, and after she looks at it, she tells me that Luke can hardly wait any longer.

  “You take off,” I tell her. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “Girls Night In!” she says, walking toward the door. “Hey, don’t say anything about this in front of Olivia,” she tells me. “We need to get Tia in on it if we can, but not Olivia, because when her husband asks her if she knows anything about how it all happened, I don’t want her to have to lie.”

  “Let’s just hope something will happen that she won’t have to lie about,” I say, getting up.

  “Right. But who knows, Ace, we might get lucky!” she says on her way to the door. Buster Loo follows her, wa
tches her leave, and then starts his most pitiful whimpering.

  “C’mon, little man,” I tell him, walking into the kitchen, because that gets him every time. “I bet I can find you an olive.”

  29

  I call Tia on the way to work on Thursday, and we discuss drinks and snacks for Girls Night In. I suggest more appetizers and she suggests BYOB, and I tell her that’s a great idea because her World Famous Magic Punch nearly killed me last week. She gets a kick out of that and then thanks me for volunteering the gallery as the permanent Girls Night In venue.

  “Yeah,” I say, wondering if I’ll ever remember saying that. “Well, it’s the perfect place.”

  “It is,” she says. “Hey, you want to have lunch today?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Blue Oyster at noon?”

  “I’ll see you then.” I hang up feeling apprehensive because my feelings about Kevin have yet to subside, despite my best efforts not to think about him. I really like Tia and want us to be good friends, so maybe the more I hang around her, the less I’ll be crushing on Kevin, because being a shitball friend is not really my thing.

  I get to the gallery at fifteen minutes past ten and don’t even care that I’m late. Buster Loo hops out of the car and runs into the bushes like a rabbit on crack, and it takes me fifteen minutes to get him out of there. I hook his leash to his collar right about the time two squirrels launch themselves out of the shrubbery and scamper across the parking lot. He takes off and almost chokes himself trying to give chase. When we finally get to the door, Buster Loo notices a lizard on the sidewalk and pounces on it. A brutal battle ensues in which the lizard loses its tail, but I manage to get Buster Loo pulled inside before he eats the poor thing whole.

  Once in the gallery, he starts wagging his tail and looking at me like he’s been a really, really good dog. I unhook him and he prances around, reinvestigating the place, and I’m happy with my decision to make every day a bring-a-chiweenie-to-work day.