Ms. Simon Says

by Mary McBride

  “That’s nice.” She took a tiny sip of the dark, rich brew. “Good wines will help distract from Shelby’s inedible meals. She told me about her pork chops.”

  Harry rolled his eyes, which were beginning to look a little glassy with fever. “I’m worried about her,” he said.

  “Oh, Harry. Women don’t have to be good cooks these days. That’s why God invented freezers and microwaves.”

  “It’s not the cooking. Do you know that your daughter hasn’t offered me so much as a crumb of advice the past couple of days.” He sniffed. “Hand me one of those tissues, Beauty, will you?”

  Linda plucked one from the box on the coffee table and handed it to him. “So I guess she didn’t tell you not to sit out in a rowboat in the freezing rain for six hours without proper clothes.”

  “Nope. Can you believe it? Our little Ms. Simon is slipping.”

  “She’s distracted.”

  He reached for her hand. “I’m distracted, Beauty.” “You’re also contagious, Harry, so don’t get any ideas about exchanging fluids of any sort. Anyway, I’m exhausted.” She sighed and put her feet up on the coffee table, then leaned back while balancing her diminutive cup and saucer on her leg. “I hardly had time to stop and breathe on this trip. It was just grueling.”

  He moved closer in order to rub her neck and shoulders. He could always zero in on just the right spot, and when he did, Linda couldn’t stifle a moan.

  “Oh. Now down just an inch. Mm. Oh, yes. Right there.”

  “Maybe I should go with you on your next trip,” he said quietly.

  Linda turned her head toward him. He’d already said that Shelby hadn’t been hounding him about anything, so she had to assume there’d been no mention of his working for her. If Shelby hadn’t nagged him, then maybe he’d had a change of heart about working for Linda Purl Designs all on his own? She was almost afraid to ask in case she jinxed it. After thirty-five years she knew Harry wouldn’t be pushed. The man would cut off his nose to spite his face with very little provocation. But she couldn’t not ask about this. “Does that mean...?”

  “No,” he said, continuing to knead her shoulders. “It doesn’t. Slow down, sweetheart. It just means I’m volunteering my services as a baggage handler and part-time masseur for a while. Don’t jump to any conclusions or read too much into it, okay?”

  “Okay.” She searched his expression. “But you haven’t ruled it out, have you? Actually working for the company.”

  “I haven’t ruled it out,” he said. “See those books up on the bar?”

  She looked at the big stack of thick volumes at which he was pointing.

  “That’s contract law, Linda. About thirty pounds of contract law, give or take a few pounds. And I want to tell you that after three decades in criminal law, it’s about as exciting as reading the goddamned phone book.”

  “Well, Harry, there are other ways to get excited, you know. I’d be more than happy to show you once you’re over your cold.” She shimmied her shoulders beneath his hand just a bit. “Oh. There. That’s perfect. Now just a half inch to the left. Mm.”

  When Shelby awoke the next morning, the first thing she noticed was that it had stopped raining. The second thing she noticed was that her bedmate was gazing at her with a warm smile on his face.

  “Happy Halloween,” he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead.

  “Omigod.”

  “What?” Mick jerked up on his elbow, looking over his shoulder as if he expected to see someone standing there with a knife.

  “It’s Halloween,” Shelby said.

  “So?”

  “Masque! I haven’t even thought about a costume.” He swore softly and lay back down beside her. “The last time I went trick or treating I was eight years old and a gang of skinheads beat the shit out of me and stole my candy.”

  “Poor baby.” Shelby smoothed his rumpled hair back from his forehead, then kissed his eyes, his nose, and each corner of his mouth. “This will be better. I promise. Masque isn’t trick or treating. It’s just a big party where everybody dresses up and has a good time.”

  “Right.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “So then there’s no bobbing for apples, or trying to eat marshmallows on a frigging string, I guess?”

  “Well . . .” She laughed. “It is Halloween.”

  After breakfast, she left him cleaning up the dishes while she trotted up to the third floor where her mother sat staring at her computer screen.

  “Mom, where’s that big trunk we used to keep our costumes in? Beth didn’t get rid of it, did she?”

  “No, sweetie. I think it’s in the closet in the sunroom. Shelby, I don’t think your father and I will be going to Masque tonight. He’s running a fever this morning, and he feels like hell.”

  Shelby couldn’t hide her disappointment. “This will be the first one you’ve missed in years,” she said. “I could come home early and stay with Dad, if you want to go.”

  Her mother shook her head. “No. You three go and have a wonderful time.” She looked at her watch. “Beth should be here in a few hours.”

  “I wonder when Sam is getting back,” Shelby said, trying to sound offhand and not too obvious.

  “He’s not.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sam’s not coming back for another month or two. I thought I told you. He called your father Tuesday and said he’d decided to go ahead with surgery on his leg, and then, assuming all goes well, he’ll have to stay a month, maybe two, for rehab.”

  “No, you didn’t tell me, Mother.” Shelby felt her best laid plan suddenly unraveling like an inferior Linda Purl sweater. “Did you tell Beth, by any chance?”

  “Of course not.” Her mother let out one of her well-practiced, beleaguered sighs. “Your sister isn’t coming back to see Sam, Shelby. For heaven’s sake. That’s water under an ancient bridge. I wish you wouldn’t interfere.”

  “Well, I guess there’s no chance of that now,” she said. “Is there?” She turned on her heel, attempting to walk out of the ballroom with a certain amount of dignity when what she felt like doing was stomping like a nine-year-old who’d just been told that Halloween had been canceled.

  “I’m not going to wear this,” Mick said when Shelby tossed something from the trunk in his direction. “What the hell is it, anyway?”

  They were in the sunroom, where he had lugged the huge old trunk from a closet and Shelby had promptly dived into it headfirst.

  “It’s a vest,” she said, her tone implying an unspoken you idiot.

  He glared at the thing. “What’s it made of? Squirrel? Rat?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Callahan. It’s rabbit. Just try it on, will you? It probably won’t even fit.”

  Lord willing, he thought as he shrugged it on, feeling the lining strain across his shoulders. “Too tight,” he said.

  “Well, damn. I was really hoping we could go tonight as Sonny and Cher.”

  “Which did you have in mind for me?” he asked. “Very funny.” She threw something else at him. “Here. Try this.”

  It was a black pirate’s hat, complete with a red plume and a black eye patch attached to the brim with a safety pin. “I’m not wearing this,” he said.

  Clearly frustrated now, Shelby turned toward him and yelled, “Well, you have to wear something. It’s a rule.”

  She might’ve looked forbidding if it hadn’t been for the pink feather boa around her neck. Mick reached out, grasped both ends of it, and pulled her against him. “If I wear the pirate deal,” he whispered, “do I get to rip your bodice later?”

  “Argh,” she said, but the grumble quickly gave way to a laugh, and a moment later the laugh gave way to his kiss.

  “Oops.” Someone cleared her throat not too far away. “Mom said you guys were fooling around in the sun-room, but I didn’t know she meant fooling around.”

  Mick lifted his head. The woman standing in the doorway looked like a blonde version of Shelby. She was nearly a clone, from the shap
e of her face to the slant of her shoulders and the length of her legs, and the way she stood with one foot turned slightly to the side. If her eyes were a whiskey brown, the woman easily could’ve been Shelby in a blond wig. But Mick couldn’t see her eyes because she was wearing dark sunglasses.

  “Beth!” Shelby extracted herself from his arms and rushed to greet her sister. “You’re early, aren’t you? I didn’t expect you till later this afternoon.”

  “So I see.” The blonde grinned toward Mick. “I took an earlier flight. This must be your bodyguard.” She extended her hand that he immediately noticed was shaped just like her sister’s. “I’m Shelby’s little sister, Beth.”

  “Mick Callahan,” he said. “I can see the resemblance between the two of you.”

  “You think so?” Shelby asked. “Wait’ll you see this.” She snatched the glasses from her sister’s face, and then let out a little gasp at the shiner she’d uncovered. “Oh, Bethie. Sweetie, what happened?”

  “Oh, this?” Beth lifted her hand to touch the bruise. “It’s nothing, Shel. I walked into a door the other day. What a klutz.”

  Mick couldn’t help but notice that it matched the bruise on her wrist, and he’d seen and heard enough battered women to know that Shelby’s sister was one of them, and that the door she’d walked into had a fist.

  Shelby hugged her sister then, and seemed to accept her story. But if Mick knew Shelby even half as well as he thought he did, his little meddler would be sniffing out the truth sooner than later.

  Shelby managed to keep her mouth shut—just barely—while she and Beth, sporting her dark glasses once again, paid a quick visit to the infirmary in the carriage house, but once they were back in the big house, Shelby hooked her arm through her sister’s and briskly ushered her up all twenty-nine presidential steps, including the landing, and slammed the door once they were inside her room.

  “Okay,” Shelby said. “Take those shades off, look me straight in the eye, and tell me again how you walked into a fucking door.”

  Of course, Beth couldn’t do it. Her one blue eye and the other black-and-blue eye flooded with tears the second she took off the glasses.

  “He hit you?” Shelby asked. “Danny hit you?”

  “He was drunk,” Beth said, as if offering an excuse. “I don’t care if he was high on heroin, angel dust, airplane glue, and Dom Perignon, all at the same time,” Shelby yelled. “Men don’t hit women. Period. End of story.”

  “Well...”

  “Well?” Shelby dropped on her knees in front of her sister, who had sagged upon the bed. She took Beth’s hands in hers. “Bethie. Sweetheart. You don’t have to take abuse like that. My God.”

  Beth pulled her hands away and sat up straighter, so straight that Shelby thought someone had suddenly shoved a steel rod up her spine. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. Will you just leave it alone?”

  She drew in a breath. “Beth, I don’t think I’m genetically capable of leaving it alone. You’re my little sister, and somebody—that creep!—hurt you.”

  “He’s not a creep, Shelby. He’s not. Danny’s a really good person. He...He just...”

  “He slugged you, for crissake!”

  “He was upset. Insecure. Jealous, if you want to know the whole truth. Somehow he got it into his head that I was coming back here to hook up with Sam.”

  “How would he even know that? How would he know what happened with you and Sam a million years ago?”

  Beth looked at her as if Shelby had the I.Q. of wallpaper. “Danny lived here with me for almost a year while we were working on the house. Don’t you think every time he went into Shelbyville or Mecklin for paint or spackle or turpentine that somebody somewhere had a little something snide to say about the little Simon girl and good old Sam Mendenhall?” She ripped her fingers through her long blond hair. “Jesus, Shelby. Use your head.”

  Shelby sat back on her heels. “Well, but... But that was a million years ago.”

  “Not to Danny,” Beth said.

  “Obviously not.” Shelby snorted.

  “Listen, big sister. I know you mean well, but I don’t want to wallow in all of this now. Maybe Danny was right. Maybe I did want to see how I’d feel if I saw Sam again. But he’s not here, so it doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s just have a good time this weekend, okay? Let’s just drop this, okay? For now, anyway.”

  Shelby thought about that. It wasn’t in her nature to just drop stuff, particularly when a black eye was involved. But she’d already ruined one of Beth’s relationships, and she wasn’t eager to repeat that performance. Besides, other than flying out to California and socking Beth’s significant other in his eye, there wasn’t much she could do about Danny at the moment. Beth deserved a wonderful weekend away from the creep. At least Shelby could offer her that.

  “Okay,” she said, forcing a smile. “Consider it dropped. Temporarily. And now, kiddo, on to the important stuff. What are we going to wear tonight for Masque?”

  Beth laughed at that, and Shelby decided she’d done the right thing. For now.

  At six that evening, Linda stood in the front hall, inspecting and photographing her costumed crew.

  Beth had turned herself into a ravishing Lady Pirate, no doubt because the costume allowed her to wear the black eye patch to cover her own black eye. Linda had already decided that she’d stay with Beth and Danny, rather than in a hotel, next month when she attended a meeting scheduled in San Francisco, and if she witnessed anything the slightest bit abusive, she was going to bring her daughter home if she had to handcuff her to a plane seat. Good Lord. Linda wondered if she was getting as bad as Shelby.

  Shelby had come up with a slightly moth-eaten bowler hat and cane, and penciled on a thick black mustache, combining those with an oversized navy blue suit that...

  “My, God!” Linda exclaimed, on closer inspection of the petite Charlie Chaplin. “Is that an Armani?”

  “On loan from Mick,” Shelby said, twirling her cane. Linda looked at the young man she was already considering a prospective son-in-law. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, Lieutenant Callahan?”

  He grinned. “Well, it’s Halloween, ma’am.”

  He was wearing not Armani, but the clothes he’d been wearing when Linda had first met him, the night he and Shelby had arrived last week. Ripped jeans. A faded flannel shirt. The down vest with the god-awful duct tape. “And what are you disguised as?” she asked him.

  “An undercover cop.”

  “Gee, who’d ever guess?” Beth said.

  Shelby twitched her mustache. “Well, we better hit the road. Are you sure you don’t want me to come back, Mom, so you can go? You could just put this on.” She gestured to the blue suit.

  “No. I’m going to share some chicken soup with your father, and then go to bed early. Just tell everybody I said hello. And don’t drink too much orange punch, children.”

  “Orange punch?” Mick made a face.

  “They have it every year,” Linda told him. “No other beverages allowed. I hate to admit it, but I think it’s actually an old family recipe of the Shelbys.” She grimaced. “Maybe this year they’ll float some orange sherbet in it. That always seems to help cut the taste of the rum a bit.”

  “Rum!” Beth, the Lady Pirate, smiled and hooked her arm through Charlie Chaplin’s. “Let’s be off, matey.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Shelbyville was as crowded as Rush Street in downtown Chicago on a Friday night. There were so many cars that Mick had to park the Mustang in a field just east of town, where some enterprising kid was collecting a buck a car and two bucks for RVs. After the heavy rain the day before, Mick only hoped the little entrepreneur would be around later to help get vehicles out of the mud.

  It was a clear, crisp night. Perfect for Halloween. On their walk to the VFW Hall, he counted five witches, four ghosts, a Spiderman, a Batman and Robin duo, and one six-foot six-inch Abe Lincoln. In addition to the costumes, he also counted at least a
score of out-of-state plates on cars parked along Main Street, mostly from Illinois and Indiana. When he commented on that, Shelby didn’t seem at all surprised. She said that a lot of summer people made it a point to come back for this Halloween deal every year. But that didn’t keep Mick from brooding about all those out-of-state tags. The beauty of staying up here with Shelby in the boonies had been not having a bunch of strangers around that he had to worry about.

  Still, he tried to keep those worries to himself because his little Charlie Chaplin was so happy tonight. His suit looked a hell of a lot better on her than it would have on some bum in the city. Her sister, Beth, seemed happy, too. As for him, he’d be glad when this Masque deal was over and they were headed back to the relative safety and quiet of Heart Lake.

  They walked through the door of the VFW Hall, where Mick had never seen so much orange and black in one place in his life.

  “Isn’t this great?” Shelby exclaimed.

  “Great,” he muttered.

  There must’ve been a thousand pumpkins scattered around, grinning or leering or looking just plain goofy. Instead of chairs, people sat on hay bales. The dance floor was covered with straw, and the band was comprised of three skeletons and a creepy dead guy on drums. There was orange and black crepe paper strung everywhere, and he kept having to swat the stuff out of his face as he followed along behind Shelby and Beth.

  Silly as this whole thing seemed to him, he had to admit that he envied their sincere enjoyment of tradition. He bet Christmas at the Simon house was something special, full of antique ornaments and decorations that had been in the family forever, and recipes for stuffing and mince meat pie that had been served since the 1880s. For a kid who had never even known his own grandparents, that had a lot of appeal.

  Mostly it was Shelby herself who appealed to him. It was nice, standing back, watching her swing her Charlie Chaplin cane and wiggle her penciled-on mustache, seeing her greet other costumed guests with so much warmth and enthusiasm. She hugged the Statue of Liberty with so much gusto that she knocked the aluminum foil crown right off the woman’s head.