Paper, Scissors, Death (15 page)

“I don’t care. I don’t like the unsavory elements you’ve attracted.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m giving you thirty days. I want you gone. And forget your deposit. That’s mine now.”

Thursday morning I woke up at dawn after a futile attempt to sleep. I’d tossed and turned for hours as the digital numbers slipped into place, one after the other, on the clock. I sat at my kitchen table, stared out the window, and watched the sun rise.

I had no idea where I’d find another security deposit. I’d sold everything we owned but some furniture, my old Beemer, and my diamond engagement ring that I’d asked Sheila to hold in her lockbox for Anya.

Even if I could scrape up the money, I doubted I could find a suitable place on such short notice. A rental property that took pets and had a fenced-in yard was hard to come by.

Despite the burglary, I wanted to live here. I’d put so much of myself into this place. Besides, how would I explain being evicted to Anya? How could I put her through yet another change?

I added upsetting Anya to my personal hit parade of worries. Topping the chart was housing, then came being broken into again, while replacing my computer brought up the rear. At least six people—not counting Mert, Dodie, and Detweiler—knew I had made CDs of the memory cards. How long would it take my home invader to discover he’d left those duplicates behind? I could take the copies to work and leave them there, but short of writing a note and taping it to my scrapbook room window, I had no way of telling the burglar I’d moved his cheese. My best recourse was to let as many people as possible know plenty of copies of the photos existed. Then there’d be no need to target me.

I turned to the matter of George’s killer. Okay, Roxanne was dead, but an unsettling thought niggled at me. Two women left Antonio’s with George the day he died. My husband’s mysterious tablemates went to a lot of trouble to keep their identities secret. Roxanne was gone, but who was the other woman? Why hadn’t she stepped forward? Was there more to their secret? Was she the shooter? What if Roxanne’s scarf had been planted? Did the other lunch companion know who killed George? And how? And why?

Three people left Antonio’s and hopped into a car together. Now two of them (assuming Roxanne was one of the two women) were dead. Detweiler said he didn’t believe in coincidences. What was happening? Why had Roxanne been shot?

A ding-ding-ding went off in my head. Maybe George’s killer also murdered Roxanne. But why? Did Roxanne take a secret with her to the grave?

I choked down two bites of toast before tackling yet another item on my personal worry list. I had to repay Roger for the security lights—and ask him to take them back down.

After dropping Anya at CALA, my body showed up for work, even though my brain was off in the stratosphere, circling Saturn. Once again, I struggled to come up with a design for the newbie crop. The official title for my malaise is scrapper’s block.

“Father’s Day is right around the corner. How about you do a layout remembering George?” Dodie smiled kindly at me. “You could have Anya journal her memories.”

The sincere expression on her face saddened me. If she only knew what a jerk my husband had been, taking our daughter along for trysts with his mistress, and swearing our child to silence. I’d gotten the rage out of my system last night and didn’t want to revisit my fury by scrapbooking my husband.

No scrapbooker in her right mind would destroy a photo. Not only do we believe images spark the tinder that makes our memories blaze brightly, but we also secretly believe a picture holds a portion of the soul. How else can you explain the way the portrait of a loved one moves you? Photos are sacred to scrapbookers. I’ve heard stories of women risking their lives to save family keepsakes from flood, fire, earthquake, and paper-eating silverfish. Whereas in the early days of scrapbooking, crafters used scissors and templates to crop their photos into amusing shapes, now the tendency is to regard the photo with more reverence, only cutting away that which might divert our attention from the subject.

Yes, only a scrapbooker who had lost her grip on sanity would destroy a photo.

Which tells you exactly how crazed I had been the night before. I’d had a day and a half to think about George’s perfidy. I couldn’t believe he’d exposed our child to his affair with Roxanne Baker. The more I tried to rationalize his actions, the madder I got.

What else had George been hiding from me?

I got sick thinking about it.

I probably could have kept my cool, had it not been for the evening news.

Anya and I were sitting in front of our tiny television eating open-face tuna sandwiches broiled with a slice of American cheese on top.

Anya selected one of Paris’s formal gowns from the tiny trunk. “I think this slinky green number sets off Paris’s hair. What do you think, Mom?” A tiny evening purse had been sewn to the dress. Anya strapped silver slippers to the dog’s back paws.

“She’s lovely. Please put her down and wash your hands, sweetie.”

Anya pushed her food around her plate. I encouraged her to eat, but she only swallowed a couple of bites. This was one of her all-time favorite meals. If she wasn’t interested in tuna sandwiches, we were in deep trouble. Anya had never been a picky eater, but she definitely had her favorites.

Paris was watching Anya, too. Most fashion models are underweight, but there was nothing wrong with this fashion victim’s appetite. Paris lurked under the coffee table, the better to gobble any scraps that fell to the floor. And that little hairball did not like to share. When Gracie eyed a crust of bread hungrily, Paris bared her teeth and growled. The big dog scampered to my side for protection, all the while making goo-goo eyes at my meal.

More and more of Anya’s food was being pushed around and landing on the coffee table and floor. None of it traveled to her mouth.

“Aren’t you hungry? What did you have for lunch today?”

She started to respond when a photo of Roxanne flashed on our tiny TV screen.

A solemn reporter explained authorities were pursuing leads in the shooting death of Roxanne Baker. A camera turned to Merrilee who told us Roxanne had been named after her mother, Opal Baker, a St. Louis socialite. The segment ended with a plea from the police for good citizens to come forward with any information about the murder of Opal Roxanne Baker.

I turned away from the set in disgust, but Anya’s eyes never left the screen.

“First Daddy and now Mrs. Baker. They’re together in heaven. Like they were here.” She tossed her napkin onto the floor and stood up. “I should have never told him I didn’t want her around!” With that, she grabbed Paris, ran to her room, and locked the door.

I let her have a private cry before I tapped on the door. She didn’t respond. A dime rotated the keyhole of the lock and allowed me into her room. Anya had fallen asleep with her arms wrapped around a big stuffed Elmo that George had won for her at Dave & Buster’s. Paris, still costumed in her long green dress, sat on the pillow next to Anya’s head.

We were reduced to this: being watched over by a four-legged pygmy in an evening gown.

That’s when I cracked.

___

I took an 8½-by-11-inch studio portrait of George out into the back yard. Armed with a butcher knife, I stabbed my husband—or his effigy—over and over, slicing his face to slivers of paper. I cursed him and cursed him and thought up new ways to condemn him to immortal misery. Like a fiend in a horror movie, I ripped my blade into his smiling visage. With each blow, I asked George, “How could you do this? How could you? To our daughter? To our child?” And finally, “To me?”

I don’t know how long I was out there. I howled in pain; under a full moon, I might add. I quit when my arm was too tired to lift.

Wasn’t there a limit to what one woman could bear? I could cast aside my disappointments, my hurts, and my embarrassment, but the tears of my daughter watered and nourished a gut-eating misery inside me. Exhausted by my outburst, I covered my face with my hands and cried until my stomach heaved. Paris watched me with a curious air of concern, moonlight glinting off her tiny purse. Gracie whined and tried to push her wet muzzle under my armpit, as she angled to distract me.

Or maybe she was trying to warn me.

I paused for a second and sniffed the air.

Uh-oh.

I was sitting in a pile of dog poop. In my frenzy I had smeared it all over my clothes. The mosquitoes were having a field day, dive-bombing me and shouting, “Buffet! All you can eat!” There I sat, sobbing, swearing, and stinking up my back yard. Scratch that. Mr. Wilson’s backyard.

After all, I was being evicted.

Gracie bumped me again, bringing me back to the thin line, the hair-width border of reason. I picked myself up and walked back into the house to shower and go to bed. When I checked, Anya was still sleeping.

“What about it, Paris? Wanna sleep in the altogether?” I removed the dog’s finery. Paris
au naturel
curled up on the foot of Anya’s bed. I closed the door quietly, after saying a prayer for my daughter’s protection. Gracie accompanied me to my bedroom. She made a loud Omph—like “glad that’s over”—and settled onto the rug as I crawled under a thin cotton blanket.

When Dodie suggested I immortalize my husband on a scrapbook page, a review of my crazed nocturnal behavior passed through my mind. Given my meltdown of the previous evening, scrapbooking George for Father’s Day was not a good idea. Instead, I created a page to honor his father, Harry. I titled it “Teacher, Father, Friend,” and used manly shades of slate blue, almond, burnt orange, and black to support my theme. From what I’d seen of him, Harry had been a
mensch
, Yiddish for a person of strength and honor, and I regretted I hadn’t known him better before he died.

After finishing the page for newbies, I copied the Essentials of Scrapbooking handout I’d written for beginners. As the last sheet shot out of the printer, Tisha Ballard tapped me on the shoulder.

“Did you hear about Roxanne?”

Frankly, I was tired of that greeting. I needed a sign for my forehead: “Ding-dong, the witch is dead. Get over it.” But that might be going overboard, even for a sophomore at Tough Tamales U. I gritted my teeth and smiled (or tried to). “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” A mental chorus of “liar, liar, pants on fire” threatened to blow my cover, but I hit the mute button and kept myself in check.

Tisha surprised me. “Actually, she deserved it.”

My jaw dropped.

Tisha continued, “Yes, it’s a shame, dying young and all, but Roxanne was horrible, wasn’t she? Look at the scene she made at Merrilee’s.” Tisha fingered a diamond pendant hanging from a gold chain around her neck. “Her behavior was uncalled for. Unbelievably tacky. So she was from a wealthy Old St. Louis family. Big deal. You can’t breed for class, can you?”

Hello, my new best friend. Finally another person saw Foxie Roxie as she truly was: low-rent, low-morals, low-life.

“Roxanne got what was coming to her.” Tisha was on a roll.

Her plain-speaking encouraged me. “I wonder if she was involved in my husband’s death.”

Tisha nodded. “I wouldn’t have put anything past her. When Roxanne didn’t get what she wanted, she was vicious. Just vicious! And what she wanted was George. The fact he was married to you only made her want him more. It drove her nuts that she couldn’t have him.”

“I didn’t know you felt this way.” I was confused and it showed. “You were at Merrilee’s shower.”

“Only because Elizabeth Witherow and I work together on a charity board. Frankly, I don’t have much use for Merrilee either. She and Roxanne are—were—both spoiled brats.” Tisha brushed her hands together as if knocking off dirt. “But I’m not here to speak ill of the quick or the dead. Bill gave me a gift certificate for a private lesson.”

She opened a set of envelopes. “While my dear husband attended a financing seminar over Christmas vacation, the kids and I went to Disney World. Any suggestions how to put these in an album? I’ve done a little scrapbooking, but not much.”

I smiled. Dodie stocked tons of cool Disney embellishments and paper. This was going to be fun.

“I also have these.” Tisha plopped down a large manila envelope. Four envelopes of photos were inside. “While Bill was at the housing trends conference at Palm Desert, I took the kids on a cruise.”

“Palm Desert? I thought the conference was in Reno this year. See, I made a golf album so George could keep track of the courses he played. He was looking forward to Lake Ridge in Reno. It’s a Robert Trent Jones course. Whatever that means.”