by Joni Rodgers
“Charma was there,” said Shep, finally putting it together. “That’s where you were roommates.”
Smartie smiled and sighed a deeply relieved sigh.
“Charma. A gift from God. Five years older than me and a whole world worldlier. She’d gotten in trouble by this man with whom she was passionately in love, but he was stung in a dog fighting bust and deported back to the Dominican Republic, all of which I found wildly engrossing. Listening to her talk about her escapades—it was like oxygen. She was so bright and fun and full of ideas. She’d say, ‘Nueva Vida, that’s español for ‘new life,’ chicky. We’re gonna take off out of here, change our names and be brand new people, and anybody who don’t like us can fall in a hole.’ I wanted to be Sharon Gless from Cagney and Lacey. Of course, Charma couldn’t see herself as anything less than Madonna.”
Tracing her finger through the condensation, Smartie drew small circles on her water glass.
“Charma’s baby was in the room with us for a few days before he was adopted. Charma nursed him and rocked him. She was utterly heartbroken to let him go. She wrote him a letter. Made the sisters promise to send it with him to his new family. I knew that’s how girls are supposed to be. But when I thought about that thing that was about to crawl out of me, I told Charma if I ever had to look at it, I’d kill myself.”
She balled her fists beside the glass. The memory etched tight strands down the sides of her neck.
“It’s the words, Shep. With. And. We. In. I’m trapped in those words with that monster. He kept saying you’re my girl now. Kept saying I might as well stop fighting because you ain’t never gonna get away from me, little girl, and he was telling the truth.”
“No, Smartie. He won’t get to you again.”
She looked up, her eyes dry and hopeless. “He’s getting to me now.”
Grimly, Shep considered the literal and legal truth of that. Bean had located Smartie handily enough. If he really was the computer whiz he’d cracked himself up to be, he could have found his biological father as well. Despite everything, Shep still had a gut feeling that Bean was a basically decent guy, but there was no telling what version of events Bean might have heard and believed, what recompense he might feel entitled to.
Another nightmare scenario arose from the likelihood that Bean’s biological father had probably never been informed of his parental rights, much less afforded the opportunity to legally waive them. If, Christ forbid, that asshole ever got out of the joint, he could get ten kinds of stranglehold on her.
Suri can handle that, Shep thought purely out of habit, but then he realized with sickening clarity that perhaps Suri already had. It was possible that she’d already banked Bean as a commodity far more useful than Shep could have imagined.
“How did he find me?” Smartie asked.
“Charma’s letter,” said Shep. “They sent it with Bean by mistake, and his parents showed it to him when he turned eighteen. When he got in touch with Charma, she was happy. She was eager to meet him.”
“But the moment she saw him, she must have known exactly what happened,” Smartie shuddered. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it myself. It’s like that man took my skin and stretched it over his own bones. Like he dug my eyes out and stuck them in his own skull.”
“Charma tried to tell him that the girl who’d given birth to him died when he was born, but he got around that story pretty quickly and put the rest together.”
“How?”
“He’s not an aspiring writer, Smartie. He’s a hacker. He’s actually kind of amazing. Graduated high school at fifteen. Got his PhD last year.”
“Stop talking about him like he’s human.”
“He’s just a kid, Smartie. He says he just wanted to know you, tried various ways to approach you. The fan fiction thing—you were supposed to figure it out from clues in the story. When you didn’t read it, he got frustrated. After he got arrested, Charma tried to help him. She knew how you felt about it, so she tried to buy him off, and things got out of hand.”
“He killed her to get back at me.” Smartie’s throat felt cold and hollow. “He killed Twinkie. He hijacked my computer. He has my gun.”
“No, I told you, he has an airtight alibi for the night of the murder, and you can’t just jump to those other conclusions. There’s no evidence to support that.”
“What happened to ‘batshit crazy dude, crumpled paper, matches’? You think this changes any of that?” Smartie’s blue eyes blazed in the spidery lamplight. “People harbor these sentimental ideas about reunions and hugs and unbreakable bonds, but this is not a long lost child, Shep. This is a strange man who cyber-stalked me, vandalized my car and extorted money from my friend, threatening to string me up in the tabloids. You don’t call that evidence?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Shep said evenly. “We’ll hook up a restraining order. I will inform Bean in no uncertain terms that he’s not to come near you or contact you again.”
“Thank you.”
Smartie moved her hands back to the whisky glass and drank the second shot down in one deep, cleansing burn that ignited a flash fire in her sinuses and made her wheeze.
“Are you okay?” asked Shep, sliding the water glass toward her.
She nodded and tried to speak past the molten lava in her throat.
“Gotta get home,” she coughed. “Walk Boodle.”
“Maybe the two of you should come home with me tonight.”
“No. I want to walk my dog and sleep in my house. I want to be…” She finished with both hands flat, palms facing, a gesture that vaguely meant now or this or here, because she didn’t know what else to be. “I need to keep working on this manuscript, Shep. That’s what I do. I work. I set words in a row. To the right or left of that is… suicide.”
She closed her eyes, and one hot tear to roll down unchecked next to her nose. Smartie was grateful when she tasted the salt on her upper lip; it troubled her when Herrick accused her of being pathologically detached because she knew it was true. She was an observer. A storyteller who saw people as characters and life as a series of plot twists. She was glad that Shep didn’t try to touch her right now, but she needed him here, across the table. He seemed to know that.
Shep studied his coffee cup, thinking about that piece of shit probably coming up for parole right about now. Thinking someone had better make sure he didn’t get it. Hopefully, he was incarcerated here in Texas, where justice was stone blind and bitch hard and knew how to put down a rabid dog.
“Did the assault happen here in Houston?” Shep asked.
It was his first question since they sat down, Smartie noted, and she was awed by that. As much as he may have wanted to extract the story from her long before this, he hadn’t wanted the telling of it to cost her more than it was worth in scars seen or unseen. Starting the day they met, Smartie had observed this seemingly endless supply of patience beneath the procedural action items that drove Shep through his caseload like a deep river beneath a fleet of little motorboats. Being around him was calming but carried her forward at the same time. Smartie appreciated this about Shep. It made her want to offer him something in return.
“La Grange,” she said in answer to his question, and as a small gift, she spoke the name that hadn’t been spoken since the day Smartie Breedlove was born in the backseat of Charma’s car: “The girl’s name was Sarah Jim Smallwood.”
Shep placed his hand on the table, leaving an inch or so between her wrist and his index finger. They sat there looking at the high glossed wood grain. Postage stamps and old war bonds had been lacquered in a staggered pattern around the perimeter of the tabletop, and Smartie studied the finely etched faces and officious buildings and bald eagles, allowing a tiny story about each one to trickle into her mind, taking up space, turning the page.
Shep watched the change swim through her blue eyes, as if she was listening to distant music on an old radio.
“Shep,” she said, “this means Charma wasn’t havi
ng an affair. Belinda had every reason to kill her.”
\ ///
23
“You’re awfully quiet tonight.” Temple linked her arm through Smartie’s as Smartie unsleeved the Fig Newtons. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” said Smartie. “I feel like this manuscript is finally coming together.”
“How are things with Mr. Hartigate?”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Temple. He’s interested in someone else.”
“Oh, dear. He told you this?”
“He didn’t have to,” Smartie said impatiently. “It’s fine, all right?”
“Fine.” Temple held up her hands. “Don’t snap my head off.”
“Smartie, you’re not upset about that Publishers Weekly review, are you?” said Yuki.
“PW review? What PW review?”
Yuki and Phyllis exchanged troubled glances.
“Yams. No wonder Fritz didn’t send it to me,” said Smartie. “Someone Google it up while I put the tea kettle on.”
“Sugar, don’t,” said Temple, but Smartie opened her lap top on the island in front of Yuki, who called up the review and read it in a nasal, academic mock.
“It says, ‘Breedlove is at the height of her storytelling powers in Dead Sexy, bringing the Smack Wilder mystery series to an even dozen.’”
“So at least you get that nice little pull quote out of it.” Temple smiled sympathetically, knowing how it felt to be pan-fried by PW.
“‘Unfortunately, that height is barely above an overpass on Highway 45 out of Houston’,” Yuki read on. “‘While Dead Sexy will undoubtedly delight those devoted Smack-heads who eagerly gobble down anything to which Breedlove applies her midgeted writing talents, more discerning readers will scratch their heads, guffaw at major visible panty lines in the plot, and wander off to the refrigerator in search of something more substantive. Like Cheese Whiz.’”
After a moment of silence, Smartie said, “Midgeted?”
“Screw him,” said Yuki. “Frustrated cleverati writing reviews for forty bucks a pop.”
“Squabs,” said Smartie, “what a fabulous word. Midgeted. Fraught with connotation.”
“This is a job for Ellipses Woman,” said Temple, looking over Yuki’s shoulder. “All right. Here’s the pull quote: ‘Breedlove is at the height of her storytelling powers…Dead Sexy will undoubtedly delight.’”
“No, here it is,” said Yuki. “‘Breedlove… brings… major… plot.’”
“‘Unfortunately… more discerning readers scratch… panty lines,’” Phyllis added.
“Mmmidjjjjhhettted.” Smartie rolled the word through her mouth like a malted milk ball, dissecting it in syllables. “Mid. Jit. Tid. Delectable! That makes the whole thing worthwhile.”
Cletis Scoggins appraised me with a lecherous up and down slide of the eye. He was rich enough to get away with it despite his midgeted
“All right, y’all gals,” said Phyllis. “Enough with the reviewer who obviously suffers from erectile dysfunction. New topic: Bermuda wax. Who’s with me?”
“With you as in ‘let’s all agree we’ll never get Bermuda waxed’?” said Yuki.
“With me as in ‘tomorrow afternoon at Chez Diva.’”
This was met with silence and averted eyes all around.
“Phyllis, dear, what on earth would tempt you to do such a thing?” Temple inquired.
“Research. For my novel,” she said, but withering under Temple’s discerning eye, she added, “My novel which is being copy edited by a woman I really like. And things seem to be progressing. And she confided in me that she prefers nectarine to peach.”
Yuki and Smartie shrieked and giggled like eighth graders.
“Oh, Philly honey, I’m so happy for you.” Temple squeezed her warmly. “Love is good, darlin’. That’s just wonderful.”
“You’ll go with me then?”
“Oh, hell no.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Yuki. “I have a less than midgeted interest in Bermuda waxing.”
“Oh. There it is.” Smartie lightly clapped her hands. “Yummy.”
“Well, this is nice.” Phyllis folded her arms and looked around the island counter. “Temple, did I not tromp through the fire ant hills with you to rub grave stones when you were researching that 1890s flu epidemic? And who spent all night at the IHOP eavesdropping on waitress patter with you, Yuki? And Smartie, not in a million years would I have been in the position to get felt up in that biker bar had you not needed to smell the pool tables.”
The other Quilters exchanged guilty glances.
“Now, I’m going to powder my nose,” Phyllis said primly, “and when I return, one or more of you will volunteer to go with me to Chez Diva tomorrow afternoon at two.”
As she disappeared down the hall, Yuki whispered, “Temple. Phyllis is a lesbian?”
“Well, if she’s not,” said Temple, “it’ll come as a terrible shock to her copy editor.”
“Chez Diva,” said Smartie. “Where have I heard that?”
“Oh, everyone who’s anyone goes there,” said Temple. “I go several times a year. Pre-BookExpo mani-pedi-facial. Pre-book tour massage. Post-barbecue colonic. You can’t spit a cherry pit without hitting some high-Houston la-dee-da. Oil women, oil wives. It’s all very ‘Don’t you know who I think I am?’ and a hotbed of society gossip.”
“Belinda Bovet,” Smartie remembered. “She got in a girl fight with old what’s-her-bucket, the congresswoman.”
“Oh, yes,” said Temple. “That was all the talk for a while. I’ve seen Belinda there many times. And her mother, Catchy Crowley-Bovet-Figg.”
“Clearly, this is Temple’s venue,” said Yuki. “I say Temple gets waxed.”
“Yuki, I cannot show up home with no peach in my produce aisle. Think of Morty’s blood pressure.”
“I’ll go,” said Smartie. “Temple, how can I make sure I get the same person who does Belinda Bovet? I want to pump her for information.”
“Leave it to me,” Temple said with a sly wink. “But don’t expect to get much out of her. Those girls know which side of the bread the butter’s on.”
Smartie considered that. “Hmm. They would, wouldn’t they?”
So I made sure my side of the bread had honey butter and brown sugar.
“How’d you get her to squeal?” asked Nash.
“I was the one squealing,” I said, crossing my legs. “All she did was talk.”
“Were you able to get anything out of her?” asked Shep.
“Long story short,” Smartie told him, ducking into the ladies room with her cell phone, “Belinda’s out in the Zen garden right now in a full-body detoxifying herbal wrap. She’s had a colonic and three martinis since lunch. If that ain’t a recipe for catharsis—”
“Okay, stay calm. Keep her tipsy, but don’t let her get too drunk. Just sit back, nod, interject your funny little interjections. Open the door and wait for it, understand?”
“Nodding. Waiting,” Smartie affirmed. “Totally calm.”
“Don’t let it become an interrogation. Think cellophane. Airtight, but invisible.”
“Cellophane. Oh, that’s so great. I love that. I am using that.”
“Listen to me, Smartie. Don’t dive straight for the Charma material. Gently lead her onto common ground. She’s going through a messy divorce. You’re getting divorced, too. Who’s your attorney? Hey, what d’ya know? You have the same lawyer. Open that door. Let her feel a kinship, establish a comfort level, an atmosphere of trust.”
“Open the door. Feel the kinship. Got it.”
“Don’t get nervous and jackhammer her with questions.”
“Well, don’t jack hammer me with instructions. That’s what’s making me nervous.”
“All right. Relax. You can do this,” Shep assured her. “You know when a story has holes in it. Carefully encourage her to fill in the blanks.”
Smartie headed for the Zen garden armed with Shep’s sage advice and a
sweet little digital recording device that looked for all the world like some grandma’s cameo pendant. Next time she’d tell him to provide her with something a bit more fashion forward, but right now she had cellophane to stretch.
Jillian Pitts had become one with everything about tee martoonis ago. The empty chaise next to her cried out: Insert Best Friend Here.
Three vodka stingers and a box of Kleenex later, I had the whole twisted tale on tape.
\ ///
24
Wearing a red wrap dress and heels with big hair and makeup, Libby Hartigate looked like she’d been hosed down with Dallas. She was outside pushing Charlie in his little chair swing when Shep rolled up in the Range Rover. Shep tried to remember the last time he’d seen her wearing anything other than nursing scrubs or jeans. A while, for sure. He sailed her a healthy wolf whistle, and Charlie hooted like a loon, trying to imitate him.
“Hey, bro,” Libby called as he came across the yard. “Charlie, say hi to Uncle Shep.”
“I un go shit,” said Charlie, and his mommy applauded wildly.
“It always sounds like he wants to go shit,” said Shep.
“Un go shit,” Charlie corroborated.
“I can’t believe I actually get to have a life tonight.” Libby giddily hugged her arms around her red dress self, and sure enough, her eyes were full of life and something else that hadn’t been there in a long time. “I really like this guy, Shep. Plus I get to eat at a restaurant where the food doesn’t come in a bag. What are you two having for supper?”
“Driving through McDonalds on our way to the park. Me and Bluto like food in a bag, don’t we, buddy?” He lifted Charlie out of the swing, and they went together to the driveway. “I need to do one quick thing for work first.”
“What?” Libby frowned. “What thing? Not a surveillance thing.”
“Yeah, it’s a stakeout, Libby. At a crack house. It’s about time he learned.”
“What thing?” Libby repeated.
“I told Suri I’d courier some important documents downtown, that’s all,” said Shep, installing Charlie in his toddler seat. “Then I’m gonna teach my wingman here how to cruise single mommies at the playground. Guaranteed easy, right, Shotgun?”