Ladies' Night

by Andrews, Mary Kay

  “Not really.”

  He sighed. “Instead of divorce recovery, they should have dating-reentry therapy. For dweebs like me who never figured this stuff out.”

  She had to laugh then. “Dating reentry. Not a bad idea. Maybe you should suggest that to Paula. If we ever see her again.”

  “The point is, I think maybe I had a breakthrough when I was at Stackpole’s office with Callie today.”

  “Oh?”

  “She hates me. My wife, soon to be ex, hates me. I don’t exactly know why, but she does. And to tell you the truth, I’m not so crazy about her, either. Maybe your mom is right. Maybe Bo is better off if we just split up and get on with our lives.”

  “And if Callie gets her way and moves to Birmingham and takes Bo with her?”

  “Right now, Stackpole seems like he’s switched sides. But whatever he decides to do, I’m gonna fight that as hard as I can, to keep them from taking him away,” he said, his jaw tightening. “Not just because I’d miss my son, but because I know those two aren’t fit to raise him. He’s an afterthought to them. A bargaining chip.”

  Grace did what she’d been wanting to do all evening. She reached out and brushed his face with the palm of her hand. He caught her hand in his and kissed the back of it.

  “For a guy, you’re not so bad,” she said.

  He pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her waist. “And for a man-hating ball buster, you’re not so bad yourself.”

  She leaned in and closed her eyes.

  The screened door from the kitchen flew open, and Rochelle stuck her head out. Her voice echoed in the still evening air. “Grace? Your goddamn dog was upstairs whining to get out.”

  Sweetie scampered out into the crushed-shell lot, looked up at Grace and Wyatt for only a moment, then discreetly trotted around the palm tree to complete her toilette in private.

  31

  Grace scooped the little brown dog up into her arms. Sweetie squirmed in ecstasy, covering her chin and neck with kibble-flavored kisses. “Poor little girl,” Grace said. She looked at Wyatt over the dog’s ears. “Sweetie hates being locked up. I think she has the doggie version of post-traumatic stress disorder. So that’s that. I’ve got to figure out something else.”

  “She really won’t let you keep a dog? Not even after you explain the circumstances?”

  “She’s not a dog person. And anyway, it’s against all kinds of health codes,” Grace said. “Guess I’d better start looking for an apartment.”

  “Can you afford that?”

  “Not really.”

  He hesitated. “Look, I was going to suggest this anyway. Why don’t you let me keep Sweetie at my place?”

  “Oh no,” Grace interrupted. “I found her and adopted her. She’s my responsibility.”

  “Just hear me out. You could keep Sweetie with you during the day while you’re working at the house on Mandevilla, and she could stay with me over at Jungle Jerry’s, nights, and any other time you need her to. She’d love it there. The whole place is fenced in, so there’s no way she could run off and get hurt. She can sleep in the house with us at night. I’ll fix her a bed right beside Bo’s. He’ll be crazy for her. He’s been bugging me to get him a dog, and I was going to, but then Callie started busting my chops about that, claiming I’d just be doing it to get back at her.”

  “I don’t understand how your having a dog affects her,” Grace said.

  “Luke’s allergic. Or so he claims. Funny, though. He has this huge Siamese cat, and that doesn’t seem to bother his allergies. The cat hates Bo, scratches him every time it gets a chance.”

  “I don’t know…” Grace hugged Sweetie to her chest. “It’s crazy, but I’m already so attached to her. She sleeps on the pillow next to me. And she’s such good company.”

  “It’d just be ’til you get your own place,” Wyatt promised. “Think of it as temporary joint custody. But I swear, I won’t pull any of Callie’s custody crap.”

  Grace scratched Sweetie’s chin. “No alienation of affection? No bribing her with special dog treats?”

  He held up his hand in the Boy Scout pledge. “I’ll never drop her off late for visitation or forget to bring her leash.”

  “Well…” Grace sighed. “I guess that will work. If you’re really sure she won’t be an imposition.”

  “She won’t be. I can take her home right now, if you want.”

  “I’ll just run upstairs and get her stuff,” Grace said. Wyatt held out his arms, and she reluctantly handed Sweetie over.

  Five minutes later she was back, having hauled an overflowing black trash bag down the outside stairway from her room.

  “All of that? You haven’t even had her a week and she already has more stuff than I do.” Wyatt took the bag and set it on the front seat of the truck.

  Grace edged around him and began showing him Sweetie’s belongings. “Her bed is in the bottom here. But, like I said, she likes to sleep with me.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  She frowned. “Is that a line? Somehow it doesn’t sound right, coming from you.”

  “I got lines,” Wyatt said. “I’ve got moves, too. I’m a little rusty from lack of practice, that’s all.”

  She lifted two stainless steel bowls from the bag and set them on the seat. “Here’s her water bowl, and here’s her food bowl. I put the dog food in here, too. I give her a cup in the morning and a cup in late afternoon.”

  “Got it.”

  Grace handed him a pink leopard-print leash with lime-green banding. “Here’s her leash. I let her out first thing in the morning. But she won’t go right away. You have to walk her around a little bit, let her sniff things out before she picks her spot.”

  He handed the leash right back to Grace. “You keep this one. I’ll get her one that’s a little less, uh, girly.”

  “Nothing too butch,” she warned him. “And no camo. Sweetie has standards.” She went on unloading the bag.

  “Here’s her Greenies. I give her one last thing at night.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Greenies?”

  “They’re supposed to promote healthy teeth and gums. And help with the whole doggie-breath thing.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She raised one eyebrow, which shut him up, then continued with her inventory. “Brush.”

  “Brush,” he repeated.

  “Pillowcase.”

  He held up the pink and white striped case with a questioning look.

  “It’s the one I usually sleep on,” Grace admitted. “I read that dogs can get separation anxiety. This one smells like me. So she won’t feel like she’s in a strange place. Just put it in her bed, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She went back to unloading the bag. “Flea and tick medicine. She gets it once a month.”

  “Once a month.”

  “Heartworm meds. Again, once a month. I put it in the middle of a little peanut butter sandwich, so she won’t figure out it’s good for her.”

  “Peanut butter,” he repeated dutifully, putting the meds back into the trash bag. “Is that it?”

  “One last thing,” she promised. “Chew toy.” She reached in the bag and pulled out a nude Ken doll.

  Wyatt held the doll up to the light and examined the teeth marks ringing Ken’s overly tanned buttocks.

  “Is this supposed to be symbolic?”

  “Not at all,” Grace said. “The first night I brought her home, Sweetie was rooting around in the closet in my bedroom and she found it in a box of my old toys and dolls. She loves Ken. It’s the cutest thing, the way she carries him around in her mouth.”

  “You couldn’t let her chew up a Barbie doll?” He handed the doll back to her.

  “She likes Ken,” Grace said, with a shrug.

  He handed the doll back to her. “If it’s just the same to you, I’ll get her a ball or a squeaky cat or something else to chew on while she’s at my place.”

  Grace looked down at the Ken doll. “I’
ll take this over to Mandevilla and keep it there for her.”

  “Good.” Wyatt propped the little dog on his forearm. “Say good night, Sweetie.”

  Grace caressed the dog’s ears and gave her one more head scratch, then looked up at Wyatt.

  “Call me if you need me. Really. Like, if she won’t sleep or she starts that scratching-at-the-door-and-whining thing, I could come over and calm her down.”

  Wyatt cupped Grace’s chin in his hand. “She’ll be fine. Stop worrying. I’ll bring her over to you at Mandevilla first thing in the morning.” He set the dog down gently on the passenger seat and closed the door.

  “I’m there by eight,” Grace said, following him around to the driver’s side. “You won’t forget to give her the pillowcase, right?”

  He got into the truck and leaned out the open window. “Stop being such a helicopter parent.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but she didn’t have a chance, because suddenly he was kissing her. Both his hands were tangled in her hair, and he pulled her right up against the door and teased her lips open with his tongue. The kiss lasted another minute or so, and left Grace breathless and dazed. And hot. When a car pulled alongside the truck, she reluctantly pulled away.

  “See?” Wyatt said, grinning as he put the truck into reverse. “Moves.”

  32

  The little cottage—okay, he could call it a cottage, but it was really a glorified double-wide—was ablaze with lights when he pulled the truck under the carport. Wyatt tucked Sweetie under one arm and carried her and her luggage inside.

  “Home sweet trailer,” he said, setting her down on the vinyl floor. She took a few tentative steps and sniffed one of Bo’s discarded flip-flops before picking it up in her mouth and turning to him, as if asking permission.

  “Knock yourself out,” Wyatt said generously. “It’s way better than a Ken doll, right?”

  He could hear the television in the back room. “Dad? He called loudly. All his conversations with Nelson had to be at top volume these days. He walked toward the tiny den and poked his head around the doorway. The recliner was facing the television, but there was no tell-tale tuft of white hair poking above the headrest. “Dad?”

  The chair was empty, the television turned to a Law and Order rerun. A plate with the remains of a chicken potpie sat on the folding TV tray beside the recliner. Wyatt felt his pulse blip. He passed the open bathroom door, knocked softly on Nelson’s closed bedroom door. “Hey old man,” he called. “You sleeping?” When there was no answer, he opened the door to find the room empty and the bed still made, the worn quilt folded neatly at its foot. The room smelled like his father, like Old Spice and Bengay. But where the hell had the old man gotten to?

  He opened the back door and peered out into the darkness. “Dad?” Nothing. He gave a soft whistle and Sweetie dropped her flip-flop and trotted over, her nails clicking on the harvest-gold vinyl flooring. “Come on girl, let’s take a walk and find Granddad.” Now he wished he’d taken that ridiculous pink leash.

  “Stay here,” he told the dog. He went out to the carport and rummaged around until he found a length of clothesline. Back in the house, he found a flashlight and fashioned a makeshift leash from the rope.

  His heart was pounding as he stepped out of the cottage. It was nearly ten. His father was usually fast asleep by now, either in his recliner or his room. Nelson’s car, a gas-guzzling Olds, was parked in the carport, its hood covered in a fine haze of cobwebs and pine needles. He seldom drove it anymore, claiming his night vision was fading, but Wyatt suspected his father probably realized his driving days were mostly over. Now he noticed that the golf cart was missing. He cursed softly.

  Sweetie sat on her haunches and looked up at him expectantly. What was it Timmy used to tell Lassie in those old Nick at Night reruns? “What’s that girl? Granddad fell down the old well?” Only Sweetie was definitely not a collie, and as far as he knew, there were no abandoned wells at Jungle Jerry’s Olde Florida Family Fun Park.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said in a surprisingly calm voice. Sweetie inched forward, testing the air with her nose, and then set off at a trot. For lack of a better idea, Wyatt let her take the lead, playing the flashlight over the curtains of green. It was a typical summer night in Florida, the air nearly dripping with humidity. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed his already-inflamed face, and the smell of night-blooming jasmine blanketed the thick spongy air. Sweetie trotted on, heading past the huge old banyan tree with its sinister-looking tracery of roots draping from the elephant-gray lower limbs, and around the reflecting pool with its island rookery for herons and egrets nesting in the moss-draped cypress trees. The moon was nearly full and its reflection was a butter-yellow orb in the black water of the pool. Every hundred yards or so, the little brown dog stopped, sniffed, and then readjusted her course.

  Sweetie, Wyatt thought, had a lot more hunting dog in her gene pool than he would have guessed.

  They were just rounding the Nursery Rhyme Garden, with its two-story concrete Mother Hubbard shoe when a pair of sharp cracks pierced the still night air. Wyatt knew that sound. It was Nelson’s double-gauge shotgun.

  Sweetie pricked up her ears and took off at a surprisingly fast full run, with Wyatt following close behind, the flashlight’s beam bouncing off the landscape. She was barking now, excited and on full alert. She made a sharp right turn at the stand of crimson-flowering royal poinciana trees, and Wyatt realized she was headed for the area they’d always called Birdland, because it was where all the tropical bird cages and the parrot-show amphitheater were located.

  The little dog barked as she ran, and Wyatt’s mind conjured up every conceivable tragedy as he sprinted through the thick tropical foliage. Maybe his father had gotten confused and wandered off into the darkness, on the golf cart, armed with his favorite old shotgun. Maybe he’d imagined an intruder and gone to investigate. None of the story lines flashing through his imagination had a happy ending.

  Finally, Sweetie skidded to a stop. She sat on her haunches, her ears folded back, a deep, guttural growl rising in her throat, aimed at some unseen enemy lurking in the darkness.

  Silvery moonlight revealed Nelson Keeler, sitting on one of the splintery green-painted benches ringing the amphitheater, his shotgun resting across his pajama-clad knees. In the round, chicken-wire-ringed aviary nearby, Cookie, the African gray parrot, hopped agitatedly from foot to foot. “Shots and beer, shots and beer,” the bird muttered.

  “Hey, son!” Nelson exclaimed, spying him. Sweetie stayed where she was, on full alert, growling menacingly.

  “Dad?” Wyatt sank down onto the bench beside his father. “What’s going on?” He was out of breath, bewildered. “What are you doing out here?”

  Nelson pointed into a clump of ferns and bromeliads ringing the aviaries. “I got the sumbitch. One clean shot. The second for insurance.”

  Wyatt’s heart sank. For months now, the park had been the target of petty criminals. Twice, they’d managed to break into the gift shop, stealing less than fifty dollars’ worth of cash, some cases of coke, and some stale candy bars. Another time, they’d gone farther into the park and attempted to cut through the wire to steal the parrots, apparently thwarted by the hue and cry raised by Cookie and the others. Although Wyatt viewed the crimes as a nuisance, Nelson had been enraged at the idea of anybody breaching the admittedly lapse security at Jungle Jerry’s.

  A dozen years earlier, they’d had the park wired for an alarm system and installed motion-detector cameras. Now, though, the technology was outdated and the cameras were inoperable. And they didn’t have the money to install a new security system.

  For a week or so, after the last break-in, Nelson had taken to patrolling the grounds on the golf cart Wyatt used for landscaping, finally growing bored after encountering nothing more than a few errant fruit rats on his nocturnal rounds.

  Had his father shot and killed some young punk? Wyatt took a deep breath. “Who’d you get, Dad? Where is h
e?”

  “Over there,” Nelson gestured. “He slunk off into the ferns. See the blood? He’s dead, though. I guarantee you. I nailed the sumbitch.”

  Wyatt’s stomach turned as he observed the fine spatter of bloodstains on the crushed-shell walkway. He stood, and Sweetie took that as a signal to advance. She crept forward, her round belly scraping the sand, her nose sweeping back and forth. Five yards from the clump of ferns, she sat straight up on her haunches and growled again.

  He held his breath as he played his flashlight over the greenery. Sweetie stayed close to his side on high alert. Finally, he saw where the trail of crimson ended. At first he thought it was a clump of Spanish moss. But as he grew closer, he spied a muzzle in a ghostly shade of gray, and then what looked like the emaciated body of a dog. He turned and glanced back at his father, who’d risen on shaking legs to follow them to the spot.

  “What the hell is that?” Even as he said it, he realized what the form was.

  “Coyote,” Nelson said grimly. He turned and pointed to an aviary at the edge of the amphitheater. The wire door was ajar and the tree-limb perch was vacant. Brilliant red and yellow scarlet macaw feathers littered the cage floor. “Sumbitch got Heckel and Jekyll. I’m sorry, son.”

  The two macaws were the park’s most senior residents, having been bought by Wyatt’s grandfather in the late sixties. At one time they’d been a featured attraction in the parrot show, but now the colorful birds were officially retired from active duty. Wyatt patted his father’s shoulder. “Not your fault, Dad. I’d heard about coyote sightings in and around town, but for some reason it never occurred to me they might turn up here.”

  “The hell it wasn’t my fault,” Nelson said gruffly. “I’m the one who fed all the birds today. I guess I must have left the macaws’ cage unlatched. They were so old and lazy, it probably never occurred to them to try to fly away. The damned coyote had already finished ’em both off by the time I heard Cookie screaming and got over here on the cart.”

  Wyatt went to Cookie’s cage, unlocked it, and reached in. He extended his hand and the bird gingerly walked up his arm to his shoulder. “Hey, Cookie,” he said. “You’re one hell of an alarm system.” The gray parrot cocked its head and seemed to wink at him. “Gimme a beer,” she said. He fished in his pocket and brought out a bird treat instead. “Performance bonus,” Wyatt said. When the parrot finished chewing, Wyatt placed her back in the aviary and locked and double-checked it. Then, he walked around and checked the other cages. Marilyn and Lana, the cockatoos, were huddled together in the far corner of their cage, and Elvis, the huge blue and gold macaw, improbably, seemed to be sleeping.