The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club (13 page)

“So you’re saying we should go ahead with an autopsy?” Annabelle’s voice quivered. “But Andy, that alone will raise suspicion after Arnold already signed her death papers. I don’t think it’s possible without getting the medical examiner’s office involved.”

“Perhaps you won’t need to go that far,” I said, hoping I was right. “Could Dr. Finch agree to do some blood tests through a private lab? If he checked for poisons or, I don’t know, an overdose of Metamucil, I’ll bet that would pacify Mother and get her off your back.”

“I don’t know, Andy.” Annabelle didn’t sound convinced. “It seems wrong to do anything even slightly invasive when it’s completely unnecessary. Sarah Lee died of cardiac arrest . . . her old heart just ceased pumping. Why can’t your mother believe that?”

“A blood test seems a small price to pay if it’ll get Cissy off your back. Not to mention Margery Fleck.”

“Flax,” she corrected. “Do you really think that would work? Would it make her stop asking questions about Bebe, too?”

I had no guarantee. But I did know my mother. She was a bulldozer when she put her mind to something.

“Just chill, if you can,” I said. “Humor her for now, and when Sarah Lee’s tests return negative, Mother will have to accept the fact that she’s barking up the wrong tree.”

“You think?”

“She’ll turn her attention back to her charity work and the fall social circuit. She’s got a million parties coming up”—God, I hoped Annabelle was buying this—“as a matter of fact, just the other day she told me about a demolition party being thrown by the mayor’s daughter. The woman wants to tear down a perfectly good 1940s ranch house and put up a modern monstrosity that’s all glass.”

“A demolition party?”

I’d gotten up and was pacing the room, doing semicircular laps around my bed. “Mother said the invitation asked guests to wear dungarees and BYOS.”

“Bring your own . . . ?”

“Sledgehammer,” I told her. “But hard hats will be provided, along with the wine and hors d’oeuvres.”

“Cissy in a hard hat and jeans, whacking a sledgehammer?” Annabelle did sound less pissed. “Would you kill for a picture of that, or what?”

“Can you see it on a Christmas card?”

“Hell’s bells, I’d put it on a billboard.”

“We could charge pay-for-view.”

“On the Home and Garden Channel . . .”

“Or Comedy Central.”

Annabelle laughed.

And I breathed a huge sigh of relief, feeling like I’d dodged a bullet, or at least a BB pellet.

“Okay, Sparky, I’ll take your advice this time,” she said, not laughing anymore. “But I’m not leaving anything to chance. Be here at nine o’clock sharp for my meeting with Cissy. I might need a hand.”

“Tomorrow? But that’s Sunday.” Even God had set it aside as a day of rest, and I considered it one of His better ideas.

“Most of the residents will have headed off to church in the shuttles, so it’ll be quiet around here, less chance for anyone to overhear your mother’s accusations, or my screams of frustration. And don’t even think of bailing on me, Andrea Blevins Kendricks,” she groused. “This is way too important.”

Were all proper Southern belles trained to use a person’s full name when they were ticked?

“Aw, Annabelle, give me a break”—I was really hoping to sleep in after having had to dress up that morning to accompany Cissy to Bebe’s service, and, besides, I had some Web site redesigns I wanted to noodle with—“Can’t you face Cissy alone? You’re a big girl.”

“Not that big.”

“C’mon. Do I have to?” I whined, because I felt like it.

The dial tone hummed in my ear.

I guess I’d take that as a “yes.”

“Apparently, Cissy told the poor woman that Mrs. Sewell might not have gone to meet her Maker willingly. She practically insinuated that we were involved in a cover-up!”

Oy vey.

This had to stop.

I hit the reset button, as my first instinct was to call Mother ASAP. Posed to punch the speed-dial to her private line, I changed my mind.

Why confront her over the phone, when she could very well hang up on me (as Annabelle had)? Why not drive on down to Beverly and address her in person, where the very least she could do was kick me out of the house?

Even better, I’d pack an overnight bag, stop at Bubba’s on the way, pick myself up the fried chicken I’d missed for lunch, and eat it at Cissy’s on her custom-upholstered sofa with my feet propped up on her antique coffee table (so long as she couldn’t see me do it) while I watched some cable (which I was too cheap to pay for myself).

Sounded like a finger lickin’ good plan. After dinner, I’d settle into my old room and spend the night, have a little mother-daughter slumber party, so I could make sure she didn’t do anything else rash before our meeting with Annabelle in the morning.

Having a goal in hand always made me feel better. I’d never been good at treading water.

Water.

As in “soap and”—my synapses crackled, playing their own form of Match Game—which reminded me that my feet were still filthy.

I hung up the phone and shuffled into the bathroom.

Perched on the edge of the bathtub, I turned on the faucet and washed those suckers, scrubbing my skin until all ten little piggies glowed a rosy pink. Never mind the slightly chipped nail polish.

Clean enough to prop on any piece of furniture.

I brushed my teeth and combed my hair for good measure. Slipped on a pair of blue jeans and a Harvard University T-shirt that Brian had given me after shrinking it in the wash.

Which jogged my mind again.

Malone.

Aw, geez. I’d almost forgotten about him with all the madness going on. No doubt, he’d tried to phone while I was gone, as he’d promised to check in from Galveston—and he’d always kept his word. So far.

My CallerID still blinked red, and I hit the button to scroll down the list of three numbers. There was Belle Meade from Annabelle’s minutes-ago frantic call. In the second spot was Janet Graham’s cell phone, and, last but hardly least, were the familiar digits for Malone.

As independent as I thought I was, my heart did a tiny flutter, and I realized that I missed him. He could always make me feel like things weren’t as bad as I made them out to be. And he knew my mother, so he understood why I tended to work myself into a tizzy whenever she was involved.

I didn’t bother to listen to the message he’d left, just went ahead and dialed up his number, way too eager to hear his voice.

One ringie-dingie, two ringie-dingies.

As I waited for him to pick up, I stuck my feet into a pair of flip-flops.

Three rings.

I dug out an oversized tote bag from the closet and tossed it on my bed.

Four rings.

Malone, where are you?
I thought, and prepared for his brief spiel and the beep before I’d have to leave a voice mail message, which is when I heard a rustling sound and a somewhat startled, “Hello?”

“Oh, boy, are you missing some fun.”

“Andy?” He said my name in a near-shout, and I picked up on the noises behind him, other voices and elevator music.

A restaurant? I guessed. I hoped. Better than someone else’s hotel room.

“Did I call at a bad time?”

“We’re doing a quick dinner before it’s back to work. We’ve got a boatload of transcripts to go through one more time before some more depos tomorrow. You didn’t get my message?”

Well, I had gotten it—or I assumed I had, per my blinking CallerID light—but I hadn’t listened to it. Only I didn’t tell him that.

“So it is a bad time?” I asked again, wondering who else made up the “we,” as in “we’re doing dinner.”

Not that I was going to pry, since I was the one who’d instituted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule. I just hoped it wasn’t that blonde from his office. Allie Price, I recalled, none too fondly, though I hadn’t even met her. Merely knew she was an old girlfriend, which meant she had the same ignition quotient as dynamite.

Kaboom.

“You still there, Andy? I can barely hear”—this time, static broke him up—“can I . . . call you later?”

“Later? Yeah, I guess so.” I didn’t mean to pout, but I’d wanted to talk to him in the worst way. I wanted to get his advice and have him assure me that everything was going to be fine, that my mother hadn’t truly flipped her lid and her two friends hadn’t been shoved forcibly past the Pearly Gates. “Ring my cell when you can,” I told him. “I’ll be at Cissy’s.”

“We must have a worse connection than I thought,” he said overloudly, the cacophony buzzing behind him. “ ’Cuz I thought you said you’d be at Cissy’s.”

“Right, I will.”

The line crackled. “Damn, my battery’s dying,” I heard him announce, followed by a “hey, you there?” Before he faded into the ether.

Roger, over and out.

I said “goodbye” to dead air and disconnected, dissatisfied in the same way that eating Chinese food left me hungry again fifteen minutes after I finished. How I wished I were the one he was dining with instead of a colleague of his. Preferably, a fat, old, ugly male attorney and not that chit he used to shag.

Why hadn’t I gone with him?

Brilliant move, Kendricks.

I kicked myself, figuring I could’ve avoided this drama with Cissy altogether, though I might’ve returned to find her in handcuffs. Would that have been worth a sunset walk with Brian on the Galveston beach?

Hmm. That was a tough one.

Dialing in my voice-mail codes, I nodded through Malone’s message about being tied up all evening with paperwork, deleting it when I was through. The only thing that bothered me was something he
hadn’t
said.

Three little words.

No, not “I love you.”

Way too predictable.

Besides, at three months together, that would’ve sent me running in the opposite direction, and Brian knew it.

What I’d wanted to hear was a simple, “I miss you.”

Only he hadn’t let that slip.

Which clinched it, I decided. The day had officially sucked.

I tossed the last of my toiletries into the tote bag, doing a final once-over to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. Which is when my gaze fell on the book Malone had bought me, the one that was supposed to teach me how to lower my stress quotient (as if that could ever happen). I’d already given up trying to laugh my way to low blood pressure, but figured I’d skim through another chapter before I tossed the thing into the trash bin.

So I shoved
Stress and the Single Girl
into my satchel, turned off the lights in the condo, and locked up tight. Not even my next-door-neighbor Charlie was out walking his beagle—nor did I spy Penny George behind her curtains, doing her best covert operative impression—when I crossed to the parking lot and took off in my Jeep for Cissy’s neck of the woods.

“Neck of the woods” wasn’t a bad way to describe it, when, in fact, I felt a little like I was heading for the crazy witch’s house in
Hansel and Gretel
, with the leaking coolant from my Wrangler (I had a wee crack in my radiator) serving as the breadcrumbs, should I end up in the oven and need rescuing by the Texas Rangers. Only Mother never used the oven—I wasn’t sure she even knew where the kitchen was—so nix that Grimm comparison.

Maybe I was more like Little Red Riding Hood driving straight toward the big, bad wolf, elegantly dressed in Chanel, of course.

Grandma, what furry skin you have. Did you miss your appointment at electrolysis? And those claws! Tsk, tsk. Couldn’t Elizabeth Arden squeeze you in?

An honest-to-gosh smile threatened to crack on my lips, until I nipped that sucker in the bud.

Well, at least I still had my sense of humor.

It was either that or matricide, and I wasn’t all that keen on going to prison.

B
y the time I got to Mother’s house on Beverly Drive in Highland Park, night had soundly fallen. The streetlamps cast a hazy glow as I slowed and turned into the circular drive. Windows gleamed through the dim and warmed the shadowed façade of the familiar two-story stucco as I approached, glancing up through the windshield to see light behind the sheers in Cissy’s sitting room.

Good. She was awake.

After I’d filled my belly with the take-out from Bubba’s, still warmly tucked in Styrofoam, I meant to have a heart-to-heart with Mother. She definitely had some ‘splainin’ to do, though I didn’t want to come down too hard on her. As upset as I was with her, I knew how much she hurt. In the words of my Paw Paw, “a powerful lot.”

I parked smack in front of my old homestead, grabbed my keys, bag, and take-out, and hopped down from the Jeep. The night had cooled the air considerably, and I detected a faint whiff of fall on the breeze, though I knew it would still be months in coming, despite what the calendar said.

A trickle of anxiety ran through me, but I swallowed it down and marched toward the front door and the two whitewashed terracotta lions that guarded it.

I juggled my armload, freeing a hand to push the bell, though, like magic, the door pulled inward.

Sandy Beck didn’t look at all surprised to see me, and she hustled me in. “I had a feeling you’d show up,” she said, “after I caught your mother on the phone when she should have been resting. Did she call you? I assume she did, as upset as she sounded. The part I overhead, anyway, which wasn’t much.”

“No, she didn’t call, so it wasn’t me who upset her this time.” I set my bag down on the steps, keeping hold of the foam container, as she shepherded me into the kitchen. “But she probably didn’t have a chance to dial me up. She was too busy making trouble for Annabelle, who did happen to phone and nearly chewed my ear off. To make a long story short, Mother and I have an appointment at Belle Meade in the morning at nine, so I figured I’d spend the night.”

“You’re that worried about Cissy, are you?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, and she patted my hand. “I really am.”

In a way that I hadn’t been since my father died.

It had me rattled then, and it rattled me now.

I tried not to dwell on my own shaky emotions and busied myself, getting my supper ready and wishing I’d brought something for Sandy, although she indicated she’d already eaten and had taken something up to Mother as well.