But then there was Lissy. Lissy was her daughter, a pony-tailed blond pixie whom she loved with a fierce devotion even though the mere fact of her daughter’s existence was enough to explode that daydream like an overfilled balloon. What sugar daddy would want a mistress who came complete with a seven-year-old daughter? And even if he existed, who would watch Lissy while she took off to Vegas to catch him?
Still, Marla liked to imagine her dream might one day come true, so she hungrily read every travel article and ad pertaining to Vegas. And today her obsession had led her to the story about Susan.
Even though it was there in front of her, printed in the newspaper for everyone to see, Marla found it hard to grasp the reality of it: Susan was dead. Marla had been growing increasingly worried about her roommate over the past three days, but she had never expected this. Susan shared the two-bedroom apartment with her and Lissy, and she hadn’t been home since Thursday night. Susan partied hard, and sometimes she’d stay away over the weekend, or even longer, if she met a hunky guy, but she always called to let Marla know. This time Susan hadn’t called.
Marla wet her lips, staring down at the article. She was surprised to find that she couldn’t reread the story because the paper was shaking.
Just like her hands.
Thank God Lissy wouldn’t be home until after five. She had been invited to spend the afternoon swimming with a friend, whose mother had promised to drop her off when they were done. Marla didn’t want Lissy to see her so upset.
Oh, God, how was she going to tell Lissy about Susan? Lissy really liked Aunt Susan, as she called her, though they weren’t related by blood.
Lissy had already experienced so much loss in her life. Now this.
Susan was dead. Even though Marla deliberately put the thought into words and then said them aloud, they didn’t seem real.
How could such a thing have happened?
She had last seen Susan at about six P.M., Thursday, when she had driven her and Claire Anson to the Biloxi Yacht Club and dropped them off. They had dates, they’d said, with some rich guys on a huge yacht—the Sun Cloud, or something. The Sun Ray? She couldn’t quite remember its name, though she had a feeling that it might be important. Sun-something, she was sure. Pretty sure.
Susan had expected to make a lot of money from that date, maybe as much as a thousand dollars. She’d better, Marla had half threatened. Ever irresponsible, Susan was two months behind with her share of the rent, and Marla couldn’t afford to carry her forever.
She had Lissy to think of. The money she earned had to support Lissy, not Susan, dear friend though Susan was.
Marla dropped the paper. It fluttered to the floor and lay there in an untidy heap while she got up from the couch and took the three steps needed to carry her to the kitchen phone.
What was Claire’s number? Marla was so rattled she couldn’t remember. She had to look it up, in Susan’s red suede phone book that was kept in a drawer near the phone. Touching Susan’s phone book made her sick to her stomach, like she was touching her friend’s corpse or something.
Oh, Susan! They’d been roommates for two years, in three different apartments. It was hard to imagine that she would never see her again. She and Lissy and Susan had been—family. There was no other word for it.
Claire’s cheery voice answered on the fourth ring. “I’m either out, showering, or sleeping. Whatever, I can’t talk now. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you. ‘Bye.”
Marla left her name and phone number, and added that it was urgent. Then she hung up.
For a long time she simply stood there staring at the phone.
Susan was dead, all her zest for living reduced to a corpse that had been found floating in the Gulf of Mexico. The paper said the cops suspected foul play. So she’d probably been murdered.
But who would want to kill Susan?
Marla pondered: What should she do?
Should she call the cops and pass on the information she had? No. She couldn’t risk it. She had fled with Lissy years ago, when it started to seem likely that the judge in her divorce case would hand down a custody ruling favoring her right-wing, religious-fanatic husband over the teenage pothead and recreational dope user she had been then. Marla had never learned exactly how the legal issue of Lissy’s custody had turned out, but she had little doubt that her husband (ex- by now, surely) had prevailed. Not that it mattered. Lissy was hers, just as she was Lissy’s. Neither of them was ever going back.
Should she call Susan’s family? She didn’t know any of them, and from what Susan had said, she didn’t particularly want to. She doubted that they even cared that Susan was dead. Certainly Susan had severed all ties with them. Her father, Charlie Kay Martin, was famous, on TV every week with The Family Prayer Hour. He was a fist-shaking, fire-breathing, hell-prophesying preacher who reminded Marla of Lissy’s dad. Certainly the way Susan had turned out was an object lesson in what happened to girls who were raised in harshly punitive, religious fundamentalist homes.
She couldn’t go to Susan’s family.
Who, then?
Marla reached for the phone, meaning to call the Beautiful Model Agency for which she, Susan, and Claire worked part-time. Not exactly as models, though that was what they called themselves. Well, they did model sometimes.
The thought of what they occasionally modeled almost made Marla smile despite the circumstances.
Billie, who set up their dates for them, would know what to do. Maybe she had even set up the date for Susan and Claire on that boat Thursday. Marla wouldn’t have been included, because she didn’t do overnights. Lissy kept her home.
Just as her hand curled around the phone, there was a knock at the door. It was a small apartment—a living-room-dining-room combination, galley kitchen, and two bedrooms, one of which she and Lissy shared. The only door was in the dining-room section. Standing in the kitchen as she was, Marla was maybe five feet away from it.
The knock was soft, polite, not at all alarming. Not one of her friends, who would have banged or done shave-and-a-haircut, six bits, or something equally silly; not the landlady, whose knock was brisk and no-nonsense. Not Lissy, who would have called out to let her mother know it was her.
Who, then, could be knocking on the door in the middle of a Monday afternoon? A salesman maybe? For vacuum cleaners or something?
Marla knew she was spooked by what she had learned about Susan, but still she was surprised by the hesitation with which she approached her own front door. It was as if a little voice inside her head was whispering, “Careful, honey.”
Susan’s voice?
Marla moved quietly, her bare feet soundless on the stained beige carpeting. Another knock came just as she reached the door. She jumped nearly a foot in the air. She had to draw a deep, steadying breath before she was calm enough to press her eye to the peephole.
There was a man outside, a man in a gray Nike T-shirt and an Ole Miss baseball cap. His face was round, pudgy, pale. His hair on either side of the baseball cap was short and dark. The best word Marla could come up with to describe him was nondescript. He was glancing impatiently up and down the hall.
As Marla watched, he pulled Susan’s key ring from his pocket and slid a key into the lock.
Chapter
7
4:00 P.M.
JACKSON
DESPITE A CERTAIN self-consciousness about her appearance, Ronnie eventually came downstairs. The sound of Quinlan’s voice as he talked to his mother guided her to the kitchen. She hesitated outside the entrance for a moment, feeling awkward about intruding. But she would feel equally awkward hanging out in the hallway, or the living room, or upstairs. Sooner or later she knew she would have to join them, or else one or both of them would come looking for her. Might as well assume an air of confidence and sail right in.
She would not feel so ill at ease if she’d had access to a lipstick or a powder compact, or even a curling iron. Having left her purse behind, she had no cosmetics with he
r. Consequently, there was nothing on her face except for what remained of her faithful mascara and a touch of the hand lotion she’d found on a shelf in the bathroom. Without mousse, gel, hairspray, or curling iron, she had been able to do nothing with her still-damp hair besides blow it dry and tuck it behind her ears.
But there was no help for it, she told herself, and walked into the kitchen.
Quinlan and his mother were seated at a round oak table at the far end of the kitchen, where a large, multi-paned window overlooked the backyard. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was old-fashioned, Squares of white and gold linoleum, worn in places, covered the floor. The cabinets were painted a mustard color, presumably to match the harvest-gold appliances. The counters were white laminate and held such items as a wooden, bread box and spice racks. Yellow gingham cafe curtains hung from simple brass rods at the windows. Near the stainless steel sink, an automatic coffeemaker dripped, filling the air with the bracing scent of fresh coffee. A red-striped dish towel hung from the handle on the front of the stove. That clue, plus the unidentifiable but savory aroma that mingled with the smell of coffee, led Ronnie to conclude that supper was in the oven.
It was an unexpectedly homey scene, Ronnie thought.
Both Quinlan and his mother looked up as she entered. Quinlan had exchanged his stained suit for a navy polo shirt and jeans, and his hair was slightly damp, leading Ronnie to assume that, like herself, he’d had a shower.
“Feeling better?” Mrs. McGuire asked. Quinlan merely grinned, slowly, adding about two dozen creases to his cheeks and the lines around his eyes as he looked her over. In blue-and-yellow plaid slacks and a yellow T-shirt with matching plaid trim, both at least a size fourteen where she wore a size six, Ronnie felt like a clown. If the pants had not had a drawstring waist, she wouldn’t have been able to keep them up.
“Nice outfit,” he said, meeting her gaze at last.
“Thanks,” she replied with a saccharine smile. His knit shirt revealed broad shoulders and surprisingly muscular arms, and his jeans fit him. Obviously the clothes were his own, kept at his mother’s house. Lucky him.
“Don’t tease,” Sally McGuire told her son, shaking her head at him reprovingly and standing up. To Ronnie she said, “Would you like a piece of cake? And a glass of milk? Or a cup of coffee?”
“I’d love some cake. With milk, please. They just seem to go together, don’t they?” Ronnie gave Quinlan one more quelling look as she sat down.
“They do,” Mrs. McGuire agreed over her shoulder, lifting a glass cover from a cake stand on the counter and cutting into a scrumptious-looking red layer cake lavished with creamy white icing.
“Thanks for loaning me some clothes,” Ronnie said as Mrs. McGuire slid a huge wedge onto a plate and placed it before her.
“Oh, you’re welcome. I just wish I had something more your size.” Pouring milk into a glass, Mrs. McGuire chuckled suddenly. “In more ways than one. Too bad we can’t have our cake and be slim, too, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Ronnie agreed as the glass of milk joined the cake in front of her. Sliding her fork through soft cake and buttery icing, Ronnie inhaled the heady scent. Her mouth suddenly watered. She didn’t often permit herself sweets, but today she just couldn’t summon the willpower to resist the treat. “It looks wonderful. I don’t eat a lot of desserts.”
“I can tell,” Quinlan said. There was something in his expression that told Ronnie he admired her figure. Well, there was nothing surprising in that, she thought. Keeping an admirable figure was the reason she watched what she ate, swam whenever she could, and worked out with Nautilus equipment three times a week.
The cake melted on her tongue in a burst of creamy sweetness. Ronnie’s eyes almost closed at the gustatory pleasure of it.
“This is scrumptious,” she said, and took another bite.
“Mom’s Red Velvet cake is famous. Everybody who’s ever eaten any remembers it.” Quinlan was halfway through his own piece of cake. His hunk had easily been twice as big as hers, and he seemed to be putting it away with no trouble at all.
If this was the way he ate ordinarily, she was surprised he managed to stay so lean.
She put another small bite of cake into her mouth, savoring it. It was so good, such an unexpected treat for her chicken, fish, and salad-accustomed palate, that she wanted to make it last as long as she could. Only the knowledge that Quinlan was watching her with amusement kept her eating steadily.
“This is really delicious,” she said with careful understatement to Mrs. McGuire, and took a sip of milk. Whole milk, of course, where she never drank anything but skim.
If she ate like this often, she soon would weigh two hundred pounds, she thought.
“It was my grandmother’s recipe. I can still taste her cream cheese frosting. It was out of this world.” Mrs. McGuire settled into her place at the table with her own cake and milk.
“It couldn’t have been better than this,” Ronnie said, taking another bite.
“Oh, before I forget, here are your pearls.” Quinlan pulled a paper-towel-wrapped bundle from his jeans pocket and pushed it across the table.
“Thanks.” Ronnie said. Unwrapping the paper towel, she slipped the necklace into her own pocket and put the earrings back on her ears. With her fingers once again steady, it was the work of only a moment.
“They’re lovely.” Mrs. McGuire admired the jewelry with her eyes. Quinlan’s gaze followed the same path as his mother’s, but he didn’t say anything.
“Thank you.”
Mrs. McGuire smiled at her. “Are you from Mississippi originally?” she asked, cutting into her own slice of cake.
Ronnie shook her head. “Massachusetts. I grew up in Boston.”
“Is your family still there?”
“My father and one of my sisters are. My other sister lives in Delaware with her family. My mother is in California now with her new husband. So we’re kind of scattered.”
“You’re one of three sisters? So am I. The oldest, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m the youngest.” Ronnie put the last bite of cake into her mouth with regret. It would be months before she would allow herself something so fattening again.
“How old are you?” Quinlan asked suddenly. His brows met over his nose in a slight frown as he looked at her.
“Twenty-nine,” Ronnie answered as Mrs. McGuire tch-ed at her son in disapproval.
“You look younger,” Quinlan said as his mother good-humoredly took him to task for asking a lady her age.
“You must be—thirty-seven,” Ronnie guessed, refusing to be put on the defensive because of her youth. She knew what he—and his mother—were probably thinking: that Lewis, at sixty, was more than twice her age. She reminded herself that Quinlan, at least, worked for her. She did not have to explain herself to him.
“Good guess. You ought to try working one of those age-and-weight booths at the fair.” His frown relaxed, and she no longer felt as if she were being judged. “How’d you know?”
“Easy,” she said. “Marsden’s thirty-seven. If you were college roommates, it stands to reason you’d be about the same age.”
“Oh, dear, don’t you like Marsden?” Mrs. McGuire shook her head, alerted by something in Ronnie’s tone. “I always thought he was such a polite boy.”
“He used to call my mother ma’am whenever they met,” Quinlan explained. “And tell her how nice she looked.”
“Marsden didn’t approve of his father marrying me,” Ronnie said to Mrs. McGuire. “I don’t think I’ve seen his polite side yet.”
“What about Joanie? And Laura?” Quinlan asked. He had finished his cake and was sipping a cup of coffee.
“I’m afraid they’re in Marsden’s camp.” For the first year or so of the marriage, Lewis’s two daughters had in fact been as close to rude as they dared to be in their father’s presence. Apparently having resigned themselves to it somewhat by this time, they were simply cool whenever they had to be in the com
pany of their younger stepmother. Not that they were in Ronnie’s company very often. Though both lived near Sedgely, the only time Ronnie saw them and their families were occasions such as Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. And Lewis’s birthday, of course, which was coming up next month and for which they had a huge party every year.
“I always thought Joanie in particular was such a nice girl,” Mrs. McGuire said. “There was a time …”
She broke off, looking self-consciously at her son.
“Go on, Mom, spill all the family beans,” Quinlan said dryly. To Ronnie he added, “I used to date Joanie. Mom hoped we’d make a match of it.”
“Really?” Ronnie smiled at him with exaggerated sweetness. The more she learned about his connections with Lewis’s children, the less inclined she felt to rely on her earlier feeling that she could trust him. “Too bad you didn’t. Then you’d be my … stepson-in-law.”
“Sounds incestuous, doesn’t it?” Quinlan chuckled, dispelling the tension. “All that’s water under the bridge. I married somebody else, Joanie married somebody else, and I haven’t thought about her in seventeen years. Does she have any children?”
“Two,” Ronnie said. “A boy and a girl.”
“I know Marsden has a couple. What about Laura?” Mrs. McGuire asked.
“One. A girl, Jilly. She’s six.”
“That makes you a step-grandmother,” Quinlan said, as if he had just discovered the fact and found it in equal parts appalling and amusing. “Do the kids call you Grandma?”
“They call me Ronnie, when they speak to me at all,” Ronnie said coolly. “Believe me, we aren’t the Brady Bunch.”
There was a silence as everyone digested this.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to do family pictures.” Quinlan was frowning, his thoughts having clearly turned to business while mulling over Ronnie’s words. “You know, doting Grandma and Grandpa surrounded by the kids. When Grandma is younger than the children, the imagery just doesn’t work.” His gaze fastened on Ronnie. “What we need to do is make you look more mature. Less glamorous. Grandma to His Honor’s Grandpa is too much to hope for, but you should at least be able to look like somebody’s mom.”
The Senator's Wife Page 5