Marriage and Mayhem (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 7)

by Jeanne Glidewell

  I had just decided to give up when Lily pulled into a pothole-filled parking lot in a seedy section of Kansas City, Kansas. Fortunately, I’d had enough gas in Ladybug to cover the forty-mile drive. We watched as she climbed from the driver’s seat of the SUV, grabbed a piece of paper off the floorboard of the back seat, studied it carefully, and returned it to its original location. Lily then walked stealthily toward the rundown building, glancing in all directions with each stride. It was clear she didn’t want to be seen going into the shabby structure.

  “What is this place?” Sheila asked. “And what do you think brings her here?”

  “I have no idea, but I recognize this building.” I thought about it for a few seconds before continuing. “You know what? I’m almost positive this is the abortion clinic I saw on TV the other day. The news report was about a protest scheduled here next weekend. A lot of ‘right-to-lifers’ have been trying to get this clinic shut down for years. According to the reporter, the police department is preparing for a riot-like atmosphere because a local ‘woman’s right to choose’ organization plans to attend the event.”

  “Oh, my,” Sheila said. “I’m certain both sides are passionate about their causes and bound to clash.”

  “You’re right. The protest could easily turn violent.”

  “I wonder why Lily would come here. Do you think she might be spearheading one side or the other?” Sheila asked.

  “Possibly. Or maybe she’s just gathering information and plans to be either a protester or an anti-protester. Either way, it appears as if tailing her here was a ginormous waste of time as far as finding out anything regarding the boutonnieres.”

  “Which reminds me, shouldn’t we text the guys to let them know where we are?”

  “Hell, no!” I’m sure my expression was that of someone who’d just been asked if she’d like to test-drive a winged body suit by strapping one on and bailing off the new One World Trade Center building. “Are you nuts, girl? The less our husbands know about where our snooping mission took us, the better off we’ll be. Have you never heard the phrase, ‘what they don’t know won’t hurt us’?”

  “No, not phrased like that, anyway. But you’re probably right. I’m just not sure lying to them is a great idea, either.”

  “Who said anything about lying? We just won’t say anything.”

  “Isn’t that lying by omission?” Sheila asked.

  “I like to think of it as a matter of sparing them a lot of unnecessary details and unnecessary worrying.”

  “And thus sparing us a lot of unnecessary, long-winded lecturing?”

  “Good. I’m glad you see my point and agree that telling them where we went today is―”

  “Unnecessary,” we said in unison.

  I glanced over at her dubious expression. “Trust me! This is not my first sleuthing rodeo by a long shot.”

  “All right. I’m in. Although, I am reminded of the old adage you often quote about God protecting children and fools.” Sheila sighed dramatically before tacking on, “And we aren’t exactly kids, you know.”

  “Nor are we fools.” I didn’t particularly like Sheila inferring I was a fool, or that she became one by association. I preferred to think of us as gutsy with a touch of spunkiness, rather than foolish. But I kept that thought to myself. It really wasn’t a distinction I could argue.

  “I assume you have a plan?” Sheila asked.

  “Yes, my friend, I do. Did you happen to notice that after Lily placed that piece of paper back into her car, she never touched her key fob and her car never honked?”

  “Well, not really. But so what?”

  “Wendy drives the exact same model as Lily. When she locks it from either inside the car or with her key fob, it honks. Lily’s car didn’t honk, which means it’s unlocked. Maybe if we hurry over there while she’s inside, we can see what’s on that piece of paper.”

  “What if she walks outside while we’re doing that?”

  “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I’m good at improvising in sticky situations. Come on. Let’s go. We may not have much time.”

  Clearly unconvinced, Sheila released another long sigh. “Oh. All right.”

  We hurried over to Lily’s car and I quickly opened the back door. A shrill siren scared the crap out of both Sheila and me. Not expecting a car alarm to be triggered, we were both startled. As if I’d opened a cage and unexpectedly encountered a pissed-off rattlesnake, I instinctively recoiled, stepping back and tripping over Sheila, who was standing directly behind me. We both toppled to the pavement.

  “Son-of-a b―” Sheila shouted.

  I struggled to my feet, grabbed Sheila’s arm and helped her up. “We’ve got to hide. Lily, and probably a few other curious individuals, will be out here in no time.”

  Sheila pointed to a side door of the clinic. “That’s the closest place to hide. Hopefully, it’s unlocked.”

  I was skeptical. Abortion clinics had a tendency to invoke strong reactions among people on both sides of the fence. Keeping a side entrance into the clinic unlocked was a recipe for disaster. But, we didn’t have a better option at the moment. Before I dashed behind Sheila to the door, I looked down at the sheet of paper on the floorboard. “Doctor Angel DoGood” had been written across the top, with “August 27th at 10:00” and other information printed in smaller type below.

  By taking those few seconds to gaze at the piece of paper, I didn’t make it to the door before it closed behind Sheila. I chalked up her speed to the fact she’d been a track star in high school and still made a habit of running at least three miles every day. If anyone sees me running, I hope they call the police. I’m obviously being chased by something, or someone who’s up to no good. Which explains why me catching up to Sheila would’ve been like a newborn zebra trying to chase down a cheetah!

  As I reached the side door, Lily stepped from around the building having exited the front entrance. She glared at me with daggers in her eyes. I froze in my tracks. I then said the first thing that came to mind. “I think a buzzard landed on the roof of your car and set off the alarm.”

  “Yeah, of course it did.” Lily continued to glare without blinking. Uncomfortable, I opened the side door and stepped inside. I expected to see Sheila waiting for me in a long corridor. What I didn’t expect to see was a man in a white robe standing beside her with a clipboard in one hand and metal forceps in the other. Stitched across the breast pocket was Dr. Angel DoGood, a name that sounded highly facetious to me.

  The doctor looked me up and down several times. I was curious as to why he was studying me with such a cynical expression, until he said, “Your friend says you’re here to inquire about getting an abortion.”

  “I am?” I looked at Sheila, who shrugged, and then back at the doctor. “Um, yeah. That’s right. I am. That’s exactly why we’re here. But, um, well, I can see you’re in the middle of something, so we’ll be on our way and I’ll stop back by when you’re not as busy.”

  “You’re kind of old to―”

  “Excuse me?” I replied curtly. I may look more like a patient needing a hip replacement than an abortion, but I didn’t like being referred to as old, nonetheless.

  “I’m sorry.” His face flushed in embarrassment. “I meant to say you seem a little mature to be―”

  “It is not unheard of for a fifty-one-year-old to get pregnant.” I hoped my slightly protruding belly looked more like a baby bump than the quarter-pounder and fries I’d eaten for lunch when Sheila and I stopped at a fast food joint on our way to the floral shop.

  “Well, no. But―”

  “You know what?” I said, interrupting him. I gave him the most indignant look I could come up with. I don’t know what made me say what I said next, other than pure orneriness. “Your attitude has made me have a change of heart, Doctor DoGood. I’ve decided to not terminate my pregnancy, after all. It might be nice to hear the pitter-patter of toddlers’ feet again.”

  “Toddlers?” he asked in amazement.
“As in twins?”

  I bit my tongue so as not to laugh out loud.

  “Triplets,” Sheila said before I could respond. Her next few remarks were spoken with a heavy dose of venomous aversion. “My friend is having two girls and a boy. As you should know, that happens fairly regularly with those IVF treatments.”

  “You mean you tried to get pregnant?” The doctor looked at me now with a stunned expression, as if he’d been zapped with a tazer.

  “Hell, yeah, she did!” Sheila replied. “It’s early on in her pregnancy, of course. I’m curious, sir. Is Dr. Angel DoGood your real name? After all, I can understand why you’d use a fake one. But DoGood? Seriously?”

  Rendered speechless, the doctor stood as motionless as a pillar of salt. Aware Lily had returned to the parking lot to shut off her car alarm, I thought fishing for information might prove useful. So before he could tell us to not let the door hit us in the keister on our way out, I said, “By the way, someone’s car alarm is going off in your parking lot.”

  “Yeah, I know. I had a few minutes’ worth of paperwork to do before I saw my next patient, and overheard my receptionist at the check-in desk make an announcement about it to the patients in the waiting room. The owner immediately went out to her vehicle to turn it off.” His tone was terse, and before he turned and walked off, he dismissed us by pointing to the door we’d just entered a couple of minutes earlier.

  “Bingo!” I said after the doctor had disappeared around a corner of the hallway. I grabbed Sheila’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Twenty-Nine

  “What did you mean by ‘bingo’?” Sheila asked as we walked to my car.

  “The doctor inferred Lily is a patient, not someone who’s planning to be involved in the scheduled protest. She’s apparently here to get an abortion.”

  “Not necessarily, Lexie. I’m not convinced he inferred anything at all. But, even if that’s true, what does that tell us?”

  “Just that it might have something to do with why she was so on edge when we walked into her shop earlier. I know I’d have been as tight as a size six girdle if I’d been preparing to head over here for an abortion. The only thing that puzzles me is that she and I discussed having children on the day we ordered the floral arrangements. I recall her saying that she and her husband, Joseph, had been married for three years and were trying to have a baby. Which begs the question, why schedule an abortion if you’re trying to get pregnant?”

  “Maybe the baby’s not his,” Sheila suggested. “Or Lily knows there’s a possibility she’d gotten knocked up by someone other than her husband.”

  “Oh, goodness. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “In fact, Joseph might not even know she’s pregnant. What if Lily’s husband is Caucasian, but the baby daddy’s not? Joseph would soon figure it out if the baby turned out to be of mixed-race. If the baby daddy is black, Asian, or even Hispanic, and the baby’s features mimic the biological father’s, it probably wouldn’t sit well with Joseph. That’d be an obvious indication to him he wasn’t the baby’s real daddy.”

  “I guess that’s possible, despite how unlikely it seems,” I said. “I need to check in with the new librarian and see if Deb’s getting along okay on her own now.”

  “Huh?” Sheila asked. My sudden change of subject had left her with mental whiplash. “What’s that got to do with Lily and her possible pregnancy?”

  “If Lily planned to get an abortion, her pregnancy is probably not public knowledge. Obviously. But if anyone knows the scoop about Lily’s situation, it’d be Deb Custovio.”

  “I agree with your first remark,” Sheila began, “but I seriously doubt the new librarian has heard about it through the grapevine. If there’s anything to this improbable theory, her pregnancy would most likely be a secret Lily kept close to the vest, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. I imagine you’re right, but it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.”

  We got into the car, clicked on our seatbelts, and I turned the ignition in Ladybug. She sputtered to life, coughed several times, shook violently a few moments, and then died. I tried again and heard nothing but a cranking sound. The third attempt yielded the same results.

  “Stop, or you’ll flood the engine. Open the hood,” Sheila instructed, as she took a small bag of tools out of her purse and stepped out of the car. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d also extracted a spare carburetor and water pump in the event she’d need to replace one or the other. She tinkered around under Ladybug’s hood for a few minutes, before hollering, “Try it again!”

  This time the Volkswagen roared to life like a brand new car. There seemed to be very little my best friend couldn’t do, and I was often amazed by her abilities. Sheila was great to have around during crisis situations and I considered this incident to be in that category. I wouldn’t have wanted to explain to Stone and Randy why we needed assistance in an abortion clinic’s parking lot that was miles away from Rockdale. As I put the car in gear, my phone beeped.

  “Where are you girls?” I read the text I’d received from Stone out loud. “Randy and I are getting hungry.”

  “Uh-oh,” Sheila murmured.

  “Relax. I’ve got this one.” I’ll admit my smugness was completely unwarranted, but it was seldom I was the one most apt to be able to pull our hides out of the fire. My skill sets were so vastly opposed to Sheila’s.

  I steered the car to the shoulder and sent Stone a return text. We stopped to see a doctor. No worries though. Sheila feels fine now. Be home soon. We’re having pizza for supper.

  I handed the phone to Sheila so she could read my text. Sheila gasped and the color drained from her face. “But. But. But…”

  “Have you always had a speech impediment and I’m just now noticing it?”

  Sheila saw no humor in my question. “I thought you said we weren’t going to lie?”

  “Did we see a doctor today?” I asked.

  “Well, yes, if you count Dr. DoGood.”

  “Do you feel perfectly healthy at the moment?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Then we didn’t lie.” I raised my right hand for a high-five, which Sheila ignored.

  Instead of a high-five, she gave me a look that could most certainly burn a hole through an anvil. “We?”

  “Yes. We.”

  “What am I going to say when Randy asks what was wrong with me?” Sheila’s voice sounded wheezy, as if she had an issue with breathing all of a sudden.

  “Tell him that out of nowhere you suddenly had trouble catching your breath, but it turned out to be just a symptom due to stress. That wouldn’t be dishonest in the least. I mean, look at you. You’re gasping for breath as I speak. You are seriously acting as if you swallowed an entire Brussels sprout down the wrong pipe. And if Randy asks where we went to see a doctor, tell him we stopped at a clinic. There are a couple of Urgent Care clinics in town, and I’m sure he’ll assume we stopped at one of them. Again, you won’t be lying. We did stop at a clinic.”

  Sheila’s eyes widened, her mouth hung open, and she shook her head. She remained silent, as if she still couldn’t catch her breath.

  “Want me to slap you on the back, buddy?” After Sheila shook her head, I continued. “Then how do you feel about the Heimlich maneuver? If I can figure out how to perform it correctly, it’d probably dislodge that Brussels sprout that seems to be wedged in your windpipe.”

  I laughed, hoping a little humor would lighten the mood. Sheila didn’t even crack a smile. I’m sure she was wondering what she’d ever seen in me that prompted her to befriend me. But then, she’d probably asked herself that on numerous occasions during the course of our friendship.

  I glanced over at her again as she took a long, deep breath. After I watched her let it out slowly, I asked, “Hey, now that you’re breathing properly again, why don’t you make yourself useful while I drive home? Call Anthony’s Pizzeria and order a large meat-lover’s
pizza. On second thought, order two. I am eating for four, you know. When you told the doctor I was having triplets, I was hoping my ‘McBump’ from our large lunch would fool him into believing you.”

  This time, against her will I’m sure, Sheila did laugh. She then picked up her phone to Google the pizzeria’s phone number. “You’re lucky I love you so much, Lexie. You do realize you are a terrible influence on me, don’t you? Always have been, and probably will be until I take my last breath.”

  “I know, my friend,” I replied in agreement. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. But do me a favor. Don’t take your last breath until after you’ve written down the recipe for your famous punch. It will have to serve as your legacy, you know.”

  We both dissolved into laughter, then spent the rest of the ride home discussing Bubba’s mysterious illness. We decided we might have better luck talking to Lily’s assistant, Raven. She’d fainted, as well, and no doubt had more interest in what had caused both her and Bubba to fall victim to an unknown cause than her boss had. Hopefully, Raven would be more willing to discuss the possibility of contaminated flowers in Bubba’s boutonniere. With any luck at all, we might even be able to find out what she knew, or didn’t know, about the likelihood of Lily being pregnant.

  When we pulled into the driveway, Stone and Randy were standing in the yard discussing which brand of zero-turn riding mowers they thought was the best. I could sense Stone was about to question us about our conversation with Lily. But after noticing the two square boxes Sheila was carrying, his train of thought was suddenly focused on pizza. Randy really must have been hungry too, as Stone had mentioned in his text, because instead of asking Sheila how she felt, his first question was, “Did you ask for extra cheese?”

  “Yes, dear.” Sheila looked at me and winked, as we followed the men through the front door of the inn.

  Thirty

  “How are we going to get in touch with Raven?” Sheila asked after leftover pizza had been served for lunch the following day and the kitchen spruced up. The previous evening, Randy had accepted Sheila’s explanation of why we’d stopped at “a clinic” without any further questioning. His lackluster response was probably due to the fact that we were all in a state of despair over Bubba’s mysterious medical condition. The outcome remained in limbo and often caused us to lose sight of things going on around us. Then again, it could have been because Randy was experiencing severe heartburn from eating too much of the acid-rich pizza with extra cheese. I noticed he only ate one small piece for lunch before accompanying Stone to the hospital.