Paper, Scissors, Death

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  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.”

  She corrected me. “Bill specifically said the conference was in Palm Desert. He came back with a glorious tan. It rained every day of the cruise.”

  “Ugh.”

  Back to reality, grounded by the gravitational pull of motherhood, we talked over her options. An album can be simple and effective with a coordinated selection of papers and embellishments.

  Tisha combed the display rack and selected a handful of dark- colored sheets of cardstock.

  “You could use these,” I said, being careful not to discourage her. “But when I think Disney or a cruise, I visualize bright and happy colors. When you go darker, the mood shifts.”

  Tisha blinked at me. Her eyes narrowed, and she hesitated. Finally she said, “Despite our husbands’ partnership, we don’t know each other very well. But you’re reading me like I was a neon sign. Keep a secret? I haven’t been happy for a long time. Bill and I are in counseling. I’m thinking of asking him to move out.”

  I must have looked chagrined.

  She lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “It’s okay. I’ve just had it with his bad-boy behavior. And I
haven’t felt like myself lately. I’ve been tired and my stomach’s upset.”

  “I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.” I motioned to a chair by a work table. “How about you go sit down? While you sip tea, I’ll organize the embellishments for your albums. You can talk if you want—or not—whatever suits you.”

  Plied with peppermint tea, Tisha relaxed. Soon she chattered a mile a minute. She was pretty sure that Bill had used his “business” trips as opportunities to “misbehave.”

  This was not a good idea. Tisha’s family had loaned Bill the capital to buy half of Dimont Development—and he’d hit them up for more money to finance Babler Estates.

  “My daddy is not going to stand for Bill two-timing me,” said Tisha. “Weird, isn’t it? No wonder George and Bill had such a good partnership. They both were a couple of cheats.”

  My face flamed red as I realized everyone in the world must have known about my husband’s affair with Roxanne. Everyone but me. What is it they say about the wife being the last to know?

  Whatever.

  Now George was dead, and Wild Bill was about to get tamed.

  My woolgathering made me miss a portion of what Tisha was saying.

  “And he never even paid Daddy back.” She launched into a full-blown rant. “That means half of Dimont is really mine, not Bill’s. I could walk in tomorrow and close the doors. In fact, the only reason I haven’t is because of you.”

  “Me?”

  “If I closed the place, it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  “Fair to me?”

  “Yes. There’s that buy-sell agreement. Bill is supposed to pay you for George’s half of Dimont.”

  I could have been hit in the head with a telephone pole; I was that stunned.

  I didn’t know what to say. But I had to say something. Back to the parenting book. I paraphrased Tisha’s words: “Bill has to buy half the business from me.” I stumbled over them. Did that mean what I thought it did?

  Money?

  Bill owed me money?

  I was flat broke. I was being evicted. But Bill owed me for half of Dimont Development? Wow! What a shocker. I struggled to stay calm.

  Tisha didn’t notice. She just kept talking. “First the business has to be audited. That’ll determine its worth. The audit will be done at the end of the current fiscal year, which is this coming August.”

  I focused on the scrapbook paper I was cutting. I didn’t dare look up. “August.”

  Tisha chattered along. “That cash infusion last fall significantly improved the balance sheet.”

  “Significantly improved.” As was my mood. I wasn’t penniless!

  “Remind me exactly how much cash that was.” I kept my voice light.

  But I nearly chopped off my finger when Tisha answered, “Four million.”

  Four million dollars?

  “Daddy and Sheila both put in two million. George was really smart. He changed his life insurance. Made his mother beneficiary. If he hadn’t, you’d owe her two million bucks.”

  I shuddered. Sorry, George, I said to his ghost. Here I was angry with you for making Sheila your beneficiary, and you were thinking of me the whole time. I couldn’t imagine owing my mother-in-law two million dollars.

  I needed to know more. “Remind me how the buy-sell works.”

  “As I understand it, one partner takes out a life insurance policy on the other. When George died, his insurance policy supplied Bill with the money to buy George’s half of the business. The paperwork on Babler Estates will be wrapped up sometime in the next two weeks. Then the business will be worth more than ever. Bill and I probably owe you a lot more than George was insured for.”

  “Right.” Trying not to sound totally stupid, I said, “Babler Estates. That’s the new group of houses being built … uh …”

  “Out by Babler State Park,” said Tisha. “Daddy figures it’s at least a forty-million-dollar deal. At bare minimum. To be fair, you should get credit for part of that windfall because George helped put the deal together. I didn’t mean to be avoiding you after the funeral, but until this is done, I’m in an awkward position because my husband owes you for your half of the business. And Daddy still needs to be repaid.”

  “Oh, no problem.” What else could I say? I was sort of shell-shocked. Rats. What else didn’t I know? How could I have been so stupid? Where had I been all these years? Standing in front of the refrigerator and stuffing my face?

  I decided to change the subject before Tisha brought up the money George had “borrowed.” Obviously it was small potatoes in comparison to the tens of millions involved in the housing project. Maybe Bill didn’t mention George’s indiscretion to his wife for the same reasons he told me he wanted to keep it quiet. If Tisha’s daddy knew there’d been an “accounting” problem, he might want his two million dollars back right away.

  My head was spinning like the cups in the Mad Tea Party ride at Disney World. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, in part because the rich have access to good information. For example, if I’d been the daughter of a rich man, I might have known business partnerships include buy-sell arrangements. But my daddy had been a drunk, and the only buy-sells I knew of were rounds of beer at the bar.

  I had one more question for my new best friend. “Tisha, have you ever heard of a company called ‘orb’? Or maybe it’s O.R.B.?”

  She shook her head. “No, do you know what kind of business it is?” Seeing my negative reply, she continued, “Sorry. I can’t help you.”

  For the duration of Tisha’s visit, we talked about our children.

  “We really should get the girls together,” suggested Tisha. “I’d like Britney to have a friend who’s grounded. In touch with reality. I love CALA, but sheesh, too much wealth and privilege at an early age can’t be good for these kids.”

  As we worked on Tisha’s pages, I puzzled over how to proceed. If she was correct—and I had every reason to think she was—I didn’t want the business evaluated right away. But I did need to ask Bill for a copy of the partnership agreement.

  I wondered what other secrets that document might reveal.

  I rang up Tisha’s purchases. I showed her the page kit for the beginner’s crop, and she signed up to come back the next night. She also asked me to set aside a complete set of the newbie page kits. I told her I’d have them ready for her at the crop. As she walked out the door, I congratulated myself on having made extra of the Father’s Day layouts. Then a nasty, small voice reminded me that while I was very good at making a buck twenty for Dodie, I hadn’t been smart enough to make sure I was repaid for my husband’s portion of a multi-million-dollar company.

  Bill wasn’t in when I phoned. I left a message with the receptionist. I no sooner hung up than Merrilee walked in. This time it really was the bride-to-be, and not her doppelgänger, Linda.

  “I can’t believe Roxanne is dead. It’s too, too horrible. She was always so vibrant and alive, and I can’t … I can’t …” and Merrilee started to cry. Only her snuffling and hiccuping weren’t as dainty as crying. It was more on the side of blubbering, actually. I grabbed a tissue box from under the counter and offered her a Diet Coke from the back.

  The trip to the refrigerator supplied time to gather my wits so I wouldn’t start screaming. Despite my good news, I was still sick of that murderous home-wrecker. Here I’d thought I’d never have to hear Roxanne’s name again. Instead, she was invading every second of my life. If it wasn’t my mother-in-law mourning her or my kid crying about her at home, it was customers at my workplace going on about her. I wanted to run and hide, but the best I could do was dole out Diet Cokes as though they were mood-altering drugs.

  Get a grip, I told myself. And find out whatever you can to prove Roxanne murdered your husband.

  I popped the top so Merrilee wouldn’t ruin her nails. She slurped the cola and started in on a trip down Memory Lane, starring dearly departed Roxanne. For what seemed like an eternity, I nodded my head and made interested noises
. Finally, I interrupted to suggest Merrilee make a memorial album for her friend.

  “Could you help me? I mean, I know the two of you had your differences.”

  Right. Like she was mean and rude and slept with other people’s husbands and I didn’t? Yes, we certainly had our differences.

  I tried to think of a suitable platitude. Finally I blurted, “We’re all God’s children.” I stopped myself from adding, “As was Satan.”

  Instead I said, “Of course, I’ll help you with a memorial album.” All the while thinking, I should charge her extra for my pain and suffering.

  Merrilee blew her nose. For a dainty nose, it made a big blasting honk worthy of a Canada goose. She sniveled. “I don’t care what Roxanne told us. You’re not such a bad person after all.”

  “Gee, thanks.” A pain shot through my head as I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “Um, what did she tell you about me? Or George?”

  “She loved him so much. He was everything to her.”

  “I heard it was over between them.”

  “She was so upset about him wanting to end their relationship. They were childhood sweethearts, and he wanted to break it off. Isn’t that sad?”

  Uh, not really. I nearly pierced my own tongue biting down. I needed a muzzle to keep from screaming. Was this woman really this dumb?

  “Poor darling Roxie had so much heartache in her life. So many disappointments. She wasn’t crowned Queen of Love and Beauty like her mother was. Her grades weren’t good enough for an Ivy League college. And she lost all those millions in the dot.com crash.”

  “Poor baby.” I quickly mumbled, “Bless her heart,” which every Southerner knows is a code for, “What a moron!” Then I asked, “What did she live on?”

  “Oh, like I told you. We all loaned her money, a lot of money. She told me she’d made a big investment, and I’d get it all back.” This was punctuated by another loud honk. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again. And I didn’t get a promissory note so I can’t write it off. That really stinks. I took a real hit on this. My accountant is sooooo upset.”