Mrs. Million (10 page)

“Might I ask what this is in regards to?” André had inquired.

“I’m meeting with several of the department heads today,” Whitly had replied, offering no further information.

André was more peeved than curious. Two-forty was an odd, inconvenient time. What could it be about? At least now, having been granted tenure last fall, he didn’t have to worry about getting fired.

Looking at his watch—it was after 1:00 already—André ignored the complaints coming from his legs and picked up his pace. He planned to make lamb curry for supper, and given the quality of lamb available in Cold Rock, it would have to simmer for a good three hours. He wanted to get the meat in the Dutch oven, then drive—assuming that Jayjay had returned with his car—back to campus for his meeting with Whitly.

His calves were starting to burn; André slowed down. It wasn’t good for him to get angry like this. What was there to be upset about? The meeting with Whitly might be nothing, and Jayjay might have a perfectly good explanation for not returning the car in time. Maybe he had not understood that André needed it to go to work. Or perhaps something had happened, something out of his control.

André forced himself to breathe deeply, to settle down. He didn’t want to scare the boy off. They were so good together, like prosciuttto and melon. He knew that Jayjay was not exactly Mr. Responsible. He was more like Mr. Feckless, not a care in the world. If one wishes to ride the wild ride, André mused, thinking in terms of carnivals, one must be willing to pay the price.

He pushed Jayjay aside and thought about the curry. Did he have any coriander seed? If not, and if Jayjay was home, he could send the boy to the store. And if Jayjay wasn’t home…André chose not to brood upon it. Negative thinking led to negative realities. He visualized his green Ford parked safely in his driveway. Could his thoughts influence the physical world? He believed that they could. A few blocks later he came within sight of his neat little bungalow and his faith in positive thinking was borne out. His car was parked in the driveway much as he had seen it in his mind’s eye. André felt his shoulders drop; the tension draining from his body. He realized how afraid he had been that Jayjay had left him.

Of all the challenges posed by advancing age, applying lipstick had to be among the most vexing. Hilde pushed her face closer to the mirror and made another swipe at her upper lip. There were so many crevasses to fill. Tubes of lipstick just didn’t last like they used to. Fortunately, she rarely left the hotel these days. It was just too much trouble.

Hilde capped the lipstick and drew back from the glass, regarding her reflection. Not bad for seventy-one—or however the hell old she was. The auburn wig helped. She tucked in a stray wisp of white hair. The wig was more than auburn—it had some real color to it, a lot of style. Hilde smiled and winked at herself, opened the window of her room and climbed out, being careful not to snag her Liz Claiborne slacks on the rose bushes.

Phlox said, “Aw, that’s really tough, honey. She don’t recognize you ever?”

“Usually she does. Some days she’s really good.” Barbaraannette took another sip of her third beer. She and Phlox had been talking for nearly an hour and somehow they hadn’t quite got to the Bobby issue head-on. They’d kind of brushed around the edges of it—Barbaraannette knew that Phlox and Bobby had been living together in Tucson, and that they’d arrived in Cold Rock that morning, but she still didn’t know where Bobby was. Somehow, Barbaraannette had found herself telling Phlox about her family. The woman knew how to listen. Barbaraannette liked her brash confidence and her big laugh. Phlox reminded her of the woman her sister Toagie might have become—bigger, bolder, and with a reservoir of joy.

“My mama died young, but she died in gear. I guess maybe it was a blessing. Never had any sisters, just a couple of snaky-mean big brothers use to do awful things to my dolls. So all three of you girls had different daddies?”

“That’s the way Hilde always told us. We’re so different I have to believe it’s true. Toagie’s kind of like you.”

Phlox laughed. “Well I’m different from
you,
that’s for damn sure.”

“Then how come we both ended up with the same man?”

Phlox finished her beer, cracked the tab on another. “You got to be pullin’ my reins, sweetie. Bobby Quinn? Who wouldn’t want Bobby? The man’s gorgeous. Not to mention he’s hung like a racehorse, and don’t you tell me you never noticed.”

Barbaraannette felt her face heat up, then something gave way and she started to laugh, and Phlox was laughing, too, and deep behind her laughter Barbaraannette thought, Is that really why I want Bobby back? Her laughter subsided into hiccups; she wiped her eyes with a napkin and watched Phlox do the same.

She said, “If you like him so much, how come you’re willing to give him up?”

Phlox looked surprised by the question. “Honey, you’ve got to be kidding. For a million dollars I’d give up oxygen.”

Phlox thought, Does she like me? I hope to Christ she likes me. Everything might depend on it. She didn’t know what else she could have done. Bobby running free, hiding out someplace, or caught by those men. Any minute now somebody else might be knocking on the door demanding the million dollars.
Her
million dollars for
her
man.

Was it true that she would give up Bobby for the money? Phlox pushed the thought aside. All she knew to do was to get in tight with the wife, convince her that whatever happened—whether Bobby showed up on his own, or was hogtied and dragged up the walk by the men who’d chased him—it was Phlox Anderson who had brought Bobby back to Cold Rock.
She
was the one who deserved the reward. And she was damn well going to sit here in Barbaraannette’s kitchen until she was sure they had some kind of understanding. Or until hell froze over.

“Jayjay? I’m home!” André closed the front door and listened for a response. He heard water running in the bathroom. Jayjay taking a shower. André smiled. It felt so right, so
domestic.
He set his briefcase down and took off his coat, then cocked his head, listening to another less familiar sound. A thumping noise. It sounded as though it was coming up through the heating vent. Coming from the cellar. The furnace acting up again? André opened the stairwell door.

The thumping became louder. A thrill of fear scampered up his body, and he stood for several seconds, his hand squeezing the doorknob, listening. An animal trapped in the ductwork? If it was an animal, it was a big one.

He shouted, “Hello?”

The thumping became more urgent. Could it be Jayjay? André couldn’t imagine what might have happened to him down there. And if it
was
Jayjay, then who was in the shower? He had a sudden vision of Jayjay trapped in the furnace room, caught beneath a collapsed wall. The image overcame his fear and propelled him down the steps.

The thumping was definitely coming from the furnace room, a room André had entered only two or three times since he had bought the house four years ago. He pushed the door open and felt for the light switch. A single hanging bulb flickered, then glowed.

What he saw did not make sense at first. A man dressed up as a spaceman? For Halloween. Except it wasn’t Halloween and, André quickly realized, the man was not so much dressed up as he was
taped
up with yard after yard of silver duct tape. A few dozen loops of tape wrapped his torso and the back of a chair. His hands were duct-taped together, as were his cowboy-booted feet. There had to be several rolls of tape involved. The man’s mouth and chin were thoroughly duct-taped and, most peculiar of all, his big felt hat was taped to his head. Only the man’s eyes, cheeks, and nose were visible. Nevertheless, he managed to look thoroughly frightened. With his eyes fixed upon André, the man rocked the chair, banging the back of his duct-taped, cowboy-hatted head against a furnace vent. André suddenly recognized the chair as the eighteenth-century Windsor he had been restoring.

“Good lord!” he exclaimed. He had purchased the rather delicate antique last fall for thirteen hundred dollars. André shouted, for lack of any clear or intelligent thought, “What on earth are you doing in my chair?”

From the stairwell behind him he heard Jayjay’s voice answer, “I told him he could stay with us a couple days, Perfesser. That’s okay with you, isn’t it?”

T
HE LAST TIME BARBARAANNETTE
had drunk this much had been in New Orleans more than ten years ago. That, too, had been a very bad time to overindulge. She’d been in a restaurant, she recalled, a seafood place on Lake Pontchartrain. Bunyons? Bronson’s? She couldn’t remember the name, but she did remember that she’d had four or five gin martinis, which was four or five more than she should’ve had, waiting for her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, Dave whatsisfaace—her memory was fuzzy with the drink, both then and now—to show up. She’d come to the restaurant to tell him to kiss off and go paddle his pirogue up some other woman’s bayou—something like that, she had her speech ready—mad as hell at him for several reasons including one named Catfish and another named Joleen, and she’d been a little bit scared of him, too, him being big and also a cop, which was why she’d scheduled the kiss-off for a busy night in a popular restaurant with good lighting in the parking lot.

This was how she’d felt then—giddy, bulletproof, and invisible. Like watching it happen on TV, putting off the future one martini at a time, having a good time despite what was to come. And what
was
to come? In Louisiana, when she’d finally gotten around to telling the guy it was over, there had been a scene in the restaurant which had become a scene in the well-lit parking lot, and then Dave punching her windshield so hard he broke it. Drunk as she’d been, she’d almost driven straight into the lake on the way back to her apartment.

Maybe the martinis had made it easier to deal with Dave, like the beers were making it easier now for her to sit chatting with this Phlox woman, touching on Bobby now and then but mostly just gabbing like old friends. But now, as then, the time came to talk turkey, drunk or not, and Barbaraannette said, her voice unnaturally loud after four beers, interrupting a story Phlox was telling about how hot the summers got in Tucson, “Let’s cut the cake here. Where’s Bobby?”

Phlox met her eyes, tapping a blue nail on the top of her beer can. She said, “Honey, I drove that man two thousand miles to bring him here to you. In good faith I brought him, and I want you to remember that.”

“I understand,” said Barbaraannette. She was getting an inkling.

“See, I think maybe what might happen is you might get some other party knocking on your door, and I want you to understand the situation. What happened was Bobby and me we were down the road gassing up the truck and I was inside trying to get hold of you on the phone—”

“I’ve been letting it ring,” said Barbaraannette.

“No shit, honey. So anyways, I look out the window and—” Phlox was interrupted by ringing. Both women looked at the phone. “You gonna get that?” Phlox asked.

Barbaraannette shook her head.

“Could be Bobby,” said Phlox. Before Barbaraannette could reply, she crossed the kitchen and picked up. “Bobby?” Her brow crinkled, lips pouted. She extended the phone to Barbaraannette. “It’s for you.”

Barbaraannette stood up, slightly miffed, said, “Well, I
live
here, don’t I?” She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Barbaraannette?” It was Mary Beth. “Who was that?”

“A friend of mine.” Barbaraannette spoke carefully, not wanting her sister to detect the alcohol in her voice.

“Who?”

“Her name is Phlox.”

“Fox?
What kind of name is that?”

“Phlox.”

“Flocks?
Well, never mind. Mother has disappeared again.”

Barbaraannette felt her innards begin to roll. She grabbed the edge of the table and sat down.

Mary Beth said, “They think she’s stolen another car.”

“Oh.” This had happened before. “What’s she driving this time?”

“She’s got Dr. Cohen’s sports car. He’s the one who called me. He was quite perturbed. We’ve got to get out and look for her.”

“Oh.” Barbaraannette was not prepared for this. She’d had too many beers to be driving all over the county searching out Hilde’s old haunts. There were a hundred places she could be, and that was just counting the places she might go to intentionally. Barbaraannette said, again, “Oh.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Did you call Toagie?”

“I’m calling her right now. You get out and start on the old neighborhood and the park. I’ll send Toagie out to Klaussen Lake, see if she’s gone to the farm.” The farm, two hundred acres of rock-ridden land capped by a dilapidated stone farmhouse, had been purchased by Hilde’s second husband. Barbaraannette had not been there for several years, but it was quite possible that Hilde had made it her destination. Revisiting her past had become a theme with Hilde.

“Good. Where will you be?” Barbaraannette asked.

“I’ll cover downtown. The car she took is black. It’s a—just a moment—it’s a Porsche Carrera, whatever that is.”

“It looks like a squashed-down Volkswagen.”

“Oh. Well, Dr. Cohen thought it quite important. He kept repeating the kind of car it was. Porsche Carrera. But I don’t think there are too many black sports cars in Cold Rock. If you find her, call me on Jim’s cell phone. You have the number?”

“BUY PORK.”

“Good. Call me every half hour to check in. Let’s find her before she drives it up a tree.”

Barbaraannette hung up the phone. She wished she could throw up, undrink all those beers.

Phlox said, “Buy pork?”

“That’s Jim Hultman’s number. Mary Beth’s husband. He owns a feedlot.”

“Who’s…oh, never mind. I can see you got troubles, honey.”

Barbaraannette said, “My mother’s a car thief, and I’m a drunk.”

Phlox shrugged. “You could do worse, honey.”

“And I’ve got to go driving around now so my mother doesn’t climb a tree.”

“Now you’re not making sense, girl. You don’t want to be out driving drunk, and that’s for damn sure.”