Daniel looked hurt. He took his arm away.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted.
“It’s all right,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess you’ve made it pretty clear tonight that you’re not attracted to me.” He sat up and looked around for his jacket.
“This stuff with Tal still shakes you up, doesn’t it? I saw your face tonight when that woman talked about Caroline shacking up with Tal. You looked like you’d been slapped. I guess you’re not really over him.”
He leaned over and patted Jethro on the head. “I’ll go,” he said, standing up. “Maybe you’ll give me a call sometime. We could just be friends, I guess.”
“No.” I wanted to shout, but it came out as a whisper. “No. I don’t want you to leave.”
Daniel eased back onto the sofa.
“Could you be patient with me?” I asked. “It’s been a long time since I was with another man. I don’t really know how to act. But I am over Tal. Really and truly I am.”
He put his arm around my shoulders again and pulled me closer.
“How about if I took things really slow? Would that make you feel safer?”
I took a deep breath and nodded.
“No sudden moves,” Daniel said. He nuzzled his chin in the top of my hair. “Is this all right?”
“OK,” I said. He smelled wonderful. Like fresh-mown grass, and aftershave. And chocolate.
“Now I thought I’d kiss your neck.” A series of featherlight kisses landed at the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes and felt his warm sweet breath on my skin. I was a little dizzy from all the wine. Or maybe the newness of it all.
“Do we need these earrings?” he asked, nibbling on my earlobe.
“Not necessarily.” I took them off and put them on the coffee table.
He pulled me back to him.
“Now for the good stuff,” he said, working his way from my shoulders down to my breasts, then up again toward my lips.
“Feel free to kiss back at any time,” he said. “It’s customary, you know.”
Daniel Stipanek had learned quite a lot of good stuff since our last encounter. I couldn’t decide if he’d picked up his moves in the Marines or chef’s school, but I didn’t care. He was wonderful.
He pushed me gently back on the sofa. His hands found the small of my back and kneaded it while he pushed me closer. He kissed my shoulder and then a lonely spot in the hollow of my throat, and then he was working on the knotted belt of my kimono, with agonizing slowness.
I heard Jethro growling deep in his throat.
“Go away, Ro-Ro,” I gasped, in between kisses.
Now Jethro was barking. And someone was knocking at the front door.
“Weezie?”
It was Tal. I jumped up from the sofa, smoothing the kimono back in place.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” Daniel said, getting up, tucking in his shirt.
I nodded.
“Tell him to drop dead,” Daniel suggested.
I just shook my head, tears in my eyes.
“Weezie? Baby, I need to talk to you.”
I froze.
“Never mind,” Daniel said, grabbing his jacket. “I’m outta here.”
He pulled the front door open and stalked past my ex-husband, who was slumped in the doorway with a bottle of wine and two glasses in his hands.
Chapter 30
Daniel screeched off in the truck, laying rubber, not an easy thing to accomplish in a brick-paved lane.
“Who was that?” Tal asked. “Was that a guy?”
Tal looked like he’d been rode hard and put away wet. His hair was mussed. Talmadge Evans never has mussed hair. He wakes up in the morning and looks like he just came from the barber. His eyes were bloodshot. He wore a white button-down dress shirt that looked like he’d slept in it, baggy Bermuda shorts, and his shiny black penny loafers.
I ignored his question about Daniel. “What do you want?”
Tal ran a finger around the neck of my kimono. “Pretty,” he said, almost absentmindedly. “Are you sleeping with that guy? Who is he?”
“None of your business.” I went to close the door, but he put his hand on the door to stop me.
“Please, Weezie,” he said. His breath smelled like Scotch. “I need to talk to you.”
“Call me when you’re sober,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”
“You hate me, don’t you?” He swayed a little as he said it.
“I have a right to hate you, don’t I?”
“I’ve been a jerk. I want to apologize. Can’t I come in?”
Jethro’s breath was hot on my ankles. He poked his head between my legs and growled menacingly.
“Hey, Jethro, buddy,” Tal said, stooping down to pat Jethro’s head.
Jethro growled and snapped at Tal, who jerked his hand back just in time to avoid getting his fingertips shortened.
“He hates me too,” Tal said sadly.
“Come on in.” I sighed, opening the door.
He walked unsteadily into the living room and collapsed onto the sofa. The wine from the bottle sloshed on the floor, and the glasses he’d been holding rolled onto the carpet.
“Shit,” he mumbled.
“I’ve got them,” I said, rescuing them moments before he crunched them into sand with his penny loafers.
“Want some wine?” he asked, gesturing toward the bottle.
“No thanks. I’ve had plenty already. Looks like you have too.”
“I’ve been drinking alone,” he said. “You had company.”
He picked up a fork and helped himself to a bite of Daniel’s chocolate seduction, but the fork missed and he smeared chocolate and whipped cream all over his face.
It didn’t seem to faze him. He wolfed down all the cake on both plates. “This is good,” he said. “Did you make this, Weezie?”
“No.”
“I miss your cooking,” Tal said, apparently not hearing me. “Caroline can’t cook for shit. Did you know that?”
Of course I’d seen all the take-out cartons and frozen-food wrappers in the trash. “That’s what I understand,” I said.
“You know what’s Caroline’s favorite thing to make for dinner?”
“Get to the point,” I said, picking up the dishes to stack them in the kitchen sink.
“Reservations,” he called, laughing at his own incredibly lame joke.
“You know what we eat over there most nights?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Takeout. I call Mrs. Wilkes’s Boarding House at lunchtime and go get us two take-out dinners and we warm ’em up in the microwave. Or Lean Cuisine. Lean Fuck-king Cuisine.” He laid his head back among the sofa cushions and shut his eyes.
This was really getting tedious.
Moments later, he was snoring, with his mouth open. I wished for a camera. Anal-retentive Talmadge Evans III passed out on his ex-wife’s sofa, with a two-day’s growth of beard and a chocolate whipped-cream mustache.
I shook his shoulder. “Tal. Wake up.”
His eyes fluttered open.
“Weezie.” He grabbed my hand and kissed the palm. He turned it over and kissed the back of it. He got chocolate all over me.
“Go home, Tal,” I said. “You’re drunk. If you want to talk, call me tomorrow. I’ll be home after noon.”
“No,” he said quickly. “Don’t kick me out. I’m not that drunk. I just need to talk to you. About things. All right? Just a couple things.”
“Like what?” I pulled a wooden chair up and sat opposite him. I studied his face. He’d always had a thin face, but now he looked positively gaunt. For the first time I noticed that his pale blond hair had started thinning on top, and he was going gray around the temples.
He clasped my hands between his again and closed his eyes.
“Tal,” I said sharply. “What did you want to tell me?”
“Huh?”
“This is hopeless.” I pushed away from him so he’d let my hands loose.
“Carolin
e is dead,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Mother thinks you killed her. She thinks you’re a dangerous criminal.”
“Your mother never liked me. But I didn’t kill Caroline, Tal. I swear to God, on my grandmother’s grave, I didn’t kill her.”
His blue eyes searched my face.
“I know,” he said. A tear trickled down his cheek.
“I didn’t like her,” I said, “but I’m sorry she’s dead. I’m sorry you’ve been so hurt.” I gulped. “I know you miss her terribly. I wanted to come over and tell you how sorry I am, but I felt awkward. I’m not very proud of how I’ve behaved since the divorce. But that’s over. I don’t want to fight anymore.”
He sniffed, then wiped his face with the tail of his shirt and blew his nose while he was at it.
I nearly gagged. Just how much Scotch had he had?
“Listen,” I said. “How about I make you some coffee?”
“Sure,” he said, his face lighting up. “Coffee. Like you used to make. Do you still keep the beans in the refrigerator?”
“Yeah.”
“The good imported beans, from Kenya?”
“Still Kenyan,” I said. He was really weirding me out now.
“And do you grind them on that little electric grinder of yours? The cute little red one?”
“You got the red grinder in the divorce settlement,” I reminded him, unable to resist just a teensy little stab.
“I could go get it. You can have it back. Caroline makes instant coffee.”
“I bought a new grinder,” I said. “Wait right here. I’ll go put a pot on.”
But he followed me into the kitchen and propped himself up at the counter, watching while I measured the whole beans into the electric grinder and ran it for a minute. He sniffed deeply. “I love that smell of fresh-ground coffee. That’s another thing I miss about you, Weezie.”
Whatever. I got the coffee perking and took two jadeite mugs out of the cupboard, and then got the jug of cream from the fridge.
“I remember those,” he said, picking up one of the mugs. “They keep the coffee nice and hot. The perfect thickness. That’s what I love about you, Weezie. You care about the aesthetics. About how the coffee smells, and how the cups feel with your hands wrapped around them. I’ll bet that’s real cream in the pitcher too. And that’s another thing. You pour the cream out of the carton, into that very same pitcher.”
It was just an ordinary little pressed-glass cream pitcher. “I always use cream,” I said evenly. “It tastes better when you pour it out of a pitcher.”
“Caroline buys that powdered nonfat nondairy stuff,” Tal said. “She says it’s not worth the expense, buying cream for just the two of us.”
It was creepy, the way he kept referring to Caroline in the present tense. Like she was still alive. I wondered if he was in some kind of stage of denial.
When the coffee was done I poured out two mugs. I automatically put two teaspoons of sugar into his mug, along with a generous splash of cream.
He smiled. “Thanks. You remembered.”
“Some stuff you don’t forget.”
“I blew it,” Tal said suddenly. He set his mug down on the counter. “Christ. This last year. It’s like a nightmare. The way I treated you. The things I put you through. I should have been the one who was shot, instead of her.”
What did he want me to do—agree? Was he looking for absolution?
“You were the best thing that ever happened in my life,” Tal said. “Remember how we met in that club? You flirted outrageously with me.”
“My girlfriend dared me to,” I said, “and you didn’t seem to mind.”
“You were so different from all the other girls I’d ever known. An original. So young and adorable…”
“And naive,” I finished. “I was so impressed that a big society wheel like Talmadge Evans III would be interested in little old Weezie Foley.”
He drank his coffee and fiddled with the spoons on the counter, lining them up, then stacking them, then rearranging.
“She didn’t love me, you know,” he said, playing with the spoons.
I raised an eyebrow.
“It’s true. These last couple months, she was different. Bitchy. Impossible to please. You want to know a secret?”
“No. Drink your coffee.”
“I think she had a lover. Yep. The other woman had another man. Pretty damn cute, don’t you think?”
I wondered just how much he’d heard on the Savannah grapevine.
“She lied about where she was going. Had all these phony appointments with clients. I checked up on her once. She wasn’t where she said she’d be. At first I was pretty pissed off. Then, hell, I didn’t care. It was too late. I’d fucked things up big-time. There’s another secret too. Want to hear?”
“It’s too late for secrets,” I said. “My head hurts.”
“Just one more.” He picked up a spoon, turned it, and looked at his reflection in the mirrored bowl. “The night she was killed? She got a phone call. I heard her pick up the phone. And then she left. I followed her.”
“Is this true?” I asked. “Where was she going?”
“I dunno. I followed her down Victory Drive, then she ran through a yellow light. I got caught on the red light. A cop was on my tail. I didn’t dare run it too.”
“Which light at Victory?”
“Right there at the Bee Road,” Tal said. “Not that it matters. She was probably going to meet him.”
“Him. Who was it, do you know?”
He smiled and wagged a finger at me. “Uh, uh, uh. You said you didn’t want to hear any more secrets.”
“That one I’m interested in.”
“Why?”
“Because she might have been meeting the person who killed her, you idiot. And right now, the police think that’s me.”
“I don’t know who it was.”
“But you have an idea.”
“No. You know, I don’t even know why Caroline went after me in the first place like that. Or why I fell so hard for her. She was prettier than you, sure, and younger. But she wasn’t very nice.”
“Gee. Thanks for the compliment.”
“I think maybe she just enjoyed the challenge. Seeing if she could wreck our marriage.”
“It worked,” I said.
“After the first time, I felt awful. I told her the next day that I was sorry I’d done it. It was a mistake. Because I loved my wife.”
I felt my face flush. I didn’t want to hear any of this. True confessions at this point. Why? I was tired of poking and prodding at old hurts.
“Shut up now, Tal,” I said dully. “Drink your coffee and go home.”
He reached for my hand. “What’s done is done,” I said. “We can’t go back.” I took my hand away.
“Why not? I told you, it was all a mistake.”
“Because I don’t want to,” I said. “I’ve got a new life. It’s not much, but it’s mine.”
“I still love you,” he said quietly. “That’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” I said.
“We could try again,” he said. “I’m crazy about you, Weezie. That’s the stupid thing. We never fought. We got along great. I must be insane. I must have been going through some midlife crisis when I cheated on you. The first time—that woman in Atlanta? Afterward, I wanted to die, I was so ashamed. And I swore I wouldn’t slip again. And for two years I didn’t. I was the most faithful husband in the world. Until Caroline.”
“That first time? A woman in Atlanta? Three years ago?” I heard a buzzing in my ears, and the blood rushed to my face and it felt like my head would explode. “You fucked around on me three years ago?” I screamed. “Caroline wasn’t the first? You shit! You fucking, lying, slime-sucking dog turd, son of a bitch prick shit bastard, dickhead.”
I picked up my jadeite coffee mug, the one that fit so neatly in the pal
m of my hand, the one with the fresh-ground coffee and the aesthetically pleasing fresh cream, and I threw it in his smug son-of-a-bitching face.
“Jethro,” I called, “get him!”
Chapter 31
Saturday. Six A.M. I struggled out of bed and into my work clothes: baggy shorts, baggy shirt, sneakers. Swallowed four aspirin and washed them down with a Coke. My head was pounding from all the gin, wine, champagne, and self-pity I’d swallowed the night before.
It was just barely dawn, but a jaybird was already putting up a fuss at the bird feeder I’d set out on my side of the courtyard. As I was getting in the truck I flipped my own version of a bird in the general direction of the townhouse. “Die yuppie scum,” I muttered.
I’d circled only five ads in the Pennysaver. It was August and Africa-hot in Savannah. Nobody wanted to fool around with a yard sale unless it was absolutely necessary. The first three sales were in and around Ardsley Park, downtown, and the historic district. My first stop of the day, at a cottage on St. Julian Street, yielded a couple good finds: a heart-pine kitchen table for sixty dollars, and a box of old brass wall sconces for five dollars. I saw two or three dealers I knew there, including Early Bird, who dropped what she was holding and scuttled away when I walked into the parlor where the cash-out had been set up. Everybody agreed it was too hot to work and prices were insane. Then we all paid up and headed out for the next sale.
I rode past the sale on Victory Drive that was supposed to open at seven o’clock, but the people were just starting to set up tables in their carport.
“Amateurs,” I sneered, driving past to the next sale, on Forty-fourth, where half a dozen people milled around several tables heaped with stuff. I leaned out the window to take a look. Lots of racks of clothes, laundry baskets full of pots and pans, Tupperware, bad lamps. I drove on.
I almost didn’t stop at the last sale I’d circled, a plain-Jane 1940s concrete block cottage on the 500 block of East Fifty-eighth street. The tables set up in the yard had piles of kids’ toys, paperback books, and of course, the obligatory piece of exercise equipment—this time a NordicTrack exerciser.
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