Bubbles All The Way (15 page)

He looked confused and hurt. “Is that what’s getting to you? Sabina?”

“Whatever. I don’t know her name or care. That’s your business, Stiletto, not mine.”

His eyes flashed, his hurt quickly turning to fury. “You’re something else—you know that?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”

I reached for the door, but Stiletto grabbed me.

“Any other man would have told you to fuck off long ago. First you dump me for that pathetic excuse of a man on the weak premise that your daughter—who’s smart enough to realize otherwise—needs you to get married. Then, after I haul my ass from London, arguing with myself all across the Atlantic about why I’m being a fool for doing so, you won’t even extend the courtesy of once, just once, trusting me.”

My heart was threatening to leap out of my chest. It wasn’t true. All of what he was saying was a lie. I did trust him. But I couldn’t take the chance that he was right. I needed more proof to show Jane that remarrying her father was not in her best interests.

We glared at each other, one of us wishing the other would break down, would apologize, would forgive.

“I guess that’s it then,” I said. “Might as well take that next plane back to London.”

“I would,” he said, “except that I’ve got other commitments to women who seem to appreciate me.”

I pursed my lips tightly.

“There are other women, you know, Bubbles,” he said in a cruel tone.

“There always were, Stiletto.”

“Yes, there always were. But not when I was with you.” And with that parting shot, he left, mercifully leaving me in peace to cry out my heart—or what was left of it.

T
uesday mornings Jane met with Dr. Caswell—or Dr. Lori, as she insisted on being called—and then Dr. Caswell met with Dan and me for an analysis. This often turned into Dan making some claim that I was forced to refute and me feeling reprehensible.

I had come to dread Tuesday mornings.

As my alarm clock radio blared “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” promptly at six thirty a.m., I lay in bed watching a few snowflakes fall from the overcast sky outside my window, wondering where exactly I might find a reindeer who would be game for a Genevieve/Mama twofer.

I was still in a bad mood due to the fight I’d had with Stiletto the night before. It had consumed me all the way through writing up my “Talk of the Town” piece to my twelve-inch phoner on the Mahoken sewage debate. (It had been tabled, in case anyone’s interested.)

All the while the same words played over and over in my mind:
Soviet reissue. If you knew what it was, you’d cancel the wedding tonight. No authorization.

It just wasn’t like Stiletto to bow to authority. Nothing made sense.

I slipped into a pair of stretch jeans, a “modest” midriff shirt of pure white, did up my hair in a demure twist, popped in some fake pearl earrings to match the one on my belly button and topped it off with scrunch boots in fake white leather. There. If that didn’t look respectable, I didn’t know what did—despite the scuff marks on the boots.

Jane was downstairs waiting for me with her new backpack slung over her shoulder and her new iPod plugged into her ears. Both the backpack and the iPod had been purchased by Dan in recent weeks. He was spoiling her something rotten, and thanks to the iPod, she no longer talked to me during our morning commutes.

Maybe that was his plan all along.

We sat stiffly in the freezing Camaro parked on West Goepp Street, Jane huddled in her wrinkled old peacoat while I ripped apart my starter. The engine was cold and wouldn’t turn over, so I pumped the pedal and let it sit for a bit, keeping watch on Phil Shatsky’s house as I waited.

I saw the license plate first: BRIKHOUS. The car in front of Phil’s house was a black Lincoln Town Car. You didn’t see many Lincoln Town Cars on West Goepp, so it was noticeable, along with the fact that sitting behind the wheel was a woman with huge hair, high and blond like Debbie’s.

She wasn’t moving or putting on makeup or writing out checks or tweezing her brows or balancing her checkbook or cleaning her gun or doing any of the one thousand things women usually do when they’re sitting in their cars.

She was spying. Yes, spying. With a pair of binoculars directed right at Phil Shatsky’s second-floor bedroom window.

Jane removed one of her iPod buds. “You really need to get a new car, Mom. This one’s a pit. It never starts right up.”

“Sometimes that’s a good thing.” I touched the dashboard lovingly, silently thanking my old Camaro for the opportunity to get a glimmer of the woman I assumed was the infamous Marguerite.

There was a kick in the engine, which suddenly sputtered and turned over. The woman in the car parked in front of Phil Shatsky’s whipped her head around. I tried to look busy by pretending to curse my car, but she was spooked. Before I got my left front tire off the curb, she was at the end of the block, headed for the spur route. So much for stealth surveillance.

My Camaro
bump, bump, bumped
off the curb, where I had left it the night before, since my driveway had been taken over by Genevieve’s Rambler. I cruised slowly past the Shatsky house, searching for signs of life.

“What’s going on with him, anyway?” Jane asked. “Arriving in a Santa suit like that and looking like hell. What’s up with his wife and all those women outside with casseroles? Looked like a funeral.”

“It was nothing. Just a personal problem.”

“And there was a big hole cut into the front page of the
News-Times
this morning and Grandma claims our television’s on the fritz, but I think Genevieve rigged it so I couldn’t watch the news last night. I’m beginning to wonder if something happened to Mrs. Shatsky. You’d tell me if she got killed or committed suicide or something, wouldn’t you?”

Cripes. She was putting me on the spot. “Well . . .”

“Because I’m worried. Last night when you were at that fund-raiser, after Genevieve and Grandma had gone to bed, I heard this sound outside my window. I looked out and there was this man walking around the house. I swear he was trying the doorknobs, looking for a way to get in.”

Instead of saying,
That’s silly, honey. The Hamels would have heard him, too
or
That’s silly, honey. Why would someone want to break into our house?
I hysterically shouted, “Man! What man?”

Jane’s eyes narrowed as if she’d had something confirmed. “I thought so. I thought something was up. I hate it when you withhold pertinent information.” Then she plugged her iPod buds into her ears, closed her eyes and bobbed her head to the Arctic Monkeys.

Our discussion was over. Jane had shut herself off from me—again.

Dr. Caswell’s office was, coincidentally, in the same building as Dan’s small “law firm.” In fact, he often used the good doctor as an expert witness whenever he sued McDonald’s or a candy bar company on behalf of clients who claimed post-traumatic stress after finding bits of human fingers in their food, which according to Dan happened more frequently than one would think. (Though, personally, my guess is that was wishful thinking on Dan’s part.)

Dr. Caswell’s very nice, but she must not do a very good job on the witness stand because Dan had yet to win one of those cases.

While Jane was spilling her secret fears to Dr. Caswell, I drank a cup of tepid coffee in the waiting room and outlined how I was going to tackle the Debbie Shatsky murder while flying under Dix Notch’s radar.

Here was the thing: whoever switched the glues at the House of Beauty would have had to have some familiarity with Debbie and Sandy’s routine when it came to hair extensions. They would have had to know that Debbie was going to be in the salon at two on Monday, that she was going to bring her own glue, and that there was a way to switch the substances.

I wrote a note to remind myself to ask Sandy to list anyone who might have been in the salon that day and who was such a frequent customer that she could have known Debbie’s routine. Then I would cross-reference those names with a list of suspects.

Suspects. Hmm. I sipped more coffee, which tasted vaguely of boiled cardboard, and mindlessly studied Dr. Caswell’s painting of a waterfall.

The first suspect was Ern Bender. He had the least to lose and the most to gain from murdering his ex-wife. His hatred toward her was palpable and, one had to ask, possibly justified.

Then there was the strange stalker across the street in the Mercedes, who might or might not have shot off the top of the Christmas tree and who might or might not be a member of the violent wing of the anti-Christmas lobby. I wrote this down in my notebook and drew a line to Ern.
Related?
I scribbled in the margins.

There was Marguerite, of course, the woman after Phil’s heart and other private parts. There were the other housewives who lusted after Phil. And then there was Zora, the angry nurse in Debbie’s allergist’s office, though why she was angry I wasn’t certain.

Too bad I’d blown it with Tess. She could have been a great source. Now she was my enemy, thanks to Wendy, and Stiletto’s date, again thanks to Wendy.

Thanks, Wendy.

I tried to imagine what would have made one of Debbie’s “lust boat” cruises so horrific. I mean, aside from suffering botulism or seasickness, a cruise sounded awfully nice right about now, what with all the stress in my life. Though I wouldn’t want to go with Dan.

Before I could stop myself, my mind had wandered to the Caribbean, where Stiletto and I were enjoying an imaginary cruise. Blue skies, tropical breezes. We didn’t stay on the boat long. Not us. No way. Stiletto wasn’t one to sit around eating six courses a day and playing shuffleboard. He’d spotted a deserted island and we dived overboard.

White sand under our toes. A warm wind blowing the palm trees lining our secluded beach. No one but us.

As the sun set, golden and rose, on the horizon, we’d strip off our clothes and dive into that pretty blue turquoise sea I’ve only seen in brochures. I licked my lips, tasting the salt of the water that would be in droplets on the sinews of Stiletto’s sensuous neck, the same neck I would be kissing as he took me in his arms, slippery and strong and so very, very . . .

“Wet!”

Dan’s voice jolted me out of my daydream.

“Wet?” I repeated, blinking.

“Not wet. What?”

“Oh.”

It seemed that I was not on a deserted Caribbean island with Stiletto about to make love in turquoise water after all. I was sitting in my family therapist’s waiting room in a concrete office park in a steel town in December accompanied only by my dorky, snide, pompous, uncouth husband-to-be. How depressing.

Dan’s paunch spread over his belt and he reeked of virulently spicy cologne. The oil on his hair was so thick, it had dripped and discolored his collar. At least when he had been married to Wendy, she’d weaned him off his Clubman’s Hair Tonic addiction. Now he was back to his old habits—too much Leather cologne and grease.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I was . . . thinking.”

“About what?”

This was how it was going to be when I was married to him, say? I would have to explain every twenty seconds what my every thought was.

“About the . . . the wedding.”

Dan relaxed, his bloated face turning the same color as his shirt. Baby pink. “Well, that’s a nice change of pace. I was curious if you were ever going to get involved in planning this wedding, or if I would have to do everything. You know, we still have to apply for our marriage license.”

I thought about what Stiletto had said last night, his implication that Dan was eager to marry me for reasons that had nothing to do with his concern that Jane be part of a nuclear family. But what other reasons could Dan have? I didn’t have money or social status like Wendy. All I had was a job at the local newspaper. And Dan hated the
News-Times.
Aside from my house on West Goepp, a four-thousand-dollar Visa bill and three hundred dollars in my checking account, I had nothing.

Really, all I possessed that Dan would want was Jane. And it wasn’t as if I’d been keeping her from him. Dan had been a lousy husband, but he was an okay father. Jane never suffered in that regard.

“Well? What about it?” Dan was saying. “How about I pick you up after work and we’ll do the deed.”

Groan.
Not today. “How about tomorrow? I’ve got so much work—”

“Can’t wait until tomorrow. We’ll miss the deadline. Let’s do it tonight and get it over with. There’s a county clerk who owes me a favor after I got her boyfriend out of a hot car snafu. She’ll stay open late for me if I ask. Afterward, I’ll take you out to dinner. My treat.”

Chuck E. Cheese.

There was the sound of a door slamming, Dr. Caswell’s secret door on the other side of her office so her patients could leave without presenting themselves to the waiting room. In two seconds, on cue, Dr. Caswell opened the other door to us.

“I can see you now.”

Dr. Caswell was a petite, mousy thing of a woman. She was a runner and her arms and legs were tight ropes of muscles. A pair of severe dark glasses sat perched on her nose and her face was devoid of makeup. I had to fight the fierce temptation to rip off the glasses, volumize her hair and give her a full makeover. I’d never met a pair of peepers so desperate for liner and mascara.

“After you,” Dan said with uncharacteristic graciousness, sweeping an arm to the door.

“Thank you.”

Dr. Caswell approved of our civility. She went to her desk, which, as always, was devoid of any personal effects that might distract her clients’ attention.

“I’m glad you’re both here today,” she said, though I couldn’t remember a time when Dan and I hadn’t both been there. “We have some very serious issues to discuss.”

Dang. Just once I’d have appreciated Dr. Caswell cheerfully announcing that she could see the light at the end of the tunnel, that Jane was obviously on the mend.