“Well, yeah, but…”
“And I’ll pay you $5,000. That has to be more than you make cleaning houses.”
I suddenly remember that I’m still wearing the maid’s uniform. “I’m not really a maid…we were just investigat…”
“Investigating?” She asks, cocking a well-groomed eyebrow.
“Yeah. I guess it could be called investigating, in the broad sense of the word,” I say, gesturing wildly with my arms.
“Oh, please, please, please. You just have to help me. I’m going out of my mind and I can’t do it myself because I have the twins to look after.”
As I look at her pixie nose, raw from being repeatedly blown, I realize that I have to help this woman. “Okay, we’ll do it.”
She impulsively throws her arms around me. “Oh, thank you. You’re an angel.”
I give her a big smile. “No matter what happens, you’re going to be okay. I promise.”
She wipes her face with a fresh tissue and smiles back at me. “What made you decide to help me?“
“The back to back ‘pleases,’ of course. I’m Liza Radley, by the way.”
“I’m Greta Furlong, and thank you so very much.” She gives me a polite handshake and a warm smile just as Jack walks in with the grilled cheese sandwiches.
“I didn’t know we were having company. I only made two.”
I give Jack a grin that would rival the cat that ate the parakeet. “Well then, I guess you’ll have to share yours with Greta. Our new client.”
Jack eyeballs me, perplexed. “Our new what?”
“She wants us to play Columbo and figure out if her husband’s cheating on her.”
Jack frowns and studies Greta. She gives him the puppy dog eyes, which I’m hoping he won’t be able to resist. He smiles stiffly and turns his attention back towards me.
“Liza, can I see you in the back for a second?” He grabs my arm and guides me toward the storage room. “Excuse us a moment, doll.” Jack throws this last bit over his shoulder to a nervous Greta who’s biting the tips off of her French manicured nails.
I’ve got to think or something…fast…
44
Jack slams the door of the storage room. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he whispers.
“I’m helping a damsel in distress. Isn’t that your forte?”
“Liza, you are not a real detective.”
“Duh, but you are. You said yourself you have your license. Come on, Parella, we can do this.” I give him a playful jab on the chin.
“Absolutely not, Liza. I have a business to run and...”
I stand with my arms akimbo, showing no weakness. “How many customers have you had this week? Or better yet, this month? Huh?”
He looks down at his feet and kicks the imaginary dirt on the plank wood floors. “Paying ones? Three. But it’ll pick up. It’s just slow right now...”
“She’s willing to pay $5,000 smackaroos.”
His head jerks up in surprise. “Really?”
“Really.”
He pauses for a beat, walks around the room in a full circle, then puts his index finger in the air and declares. “Okay, just this one time…but just for the record, I’m totally against it.”
We return to Greta, who’s on the edge of her seat, figuratively and literally. I give her a big smile and the double thumbs up.
“We’re going to take your case, Greta.”
Her whole body shows her relief.
“Great,” she says as she quickly grabs her checkbook. “Whom shall I make the check out to?”
Parella and I both look to each other. I give him a shrug.
“Make it out to Jackamo Parella Incorporated,” he says.
Greta hands me the check for half up front and her contact information paper clipped to the address of her husband’s office, along with a picture of the cheating-bastard-scum. We promise to call her with updates and she’s quickly out the door.
I shoot Jack a flirty look, “Sooo, Jackamo. Looks like we’re officially partners.”
He replies through gritted teeth. “There’s nothing ‘official’ about it. You don’t even know what you’re doing.”
“Give a break. It’s not rocket science. I’ll watch a couple of reruns of Magnum P.I. or something. I bet we catch the cheating scum in a couple of days. Tops.”
Parella cocks a brow, “Oh, he’s a cheatin’ scum already?”
“Yeah. I mean, aren’t they all?” I give him a challenging look.
“Wow, on the chance of soundin’ like a broken record here, what happened to that hopeless romantic that walked through my door less than a week ago?”
“She woke up and smelled the writing on the wall.”
Parella gives me a quizzical look.
“Oh, whatever. You know what I mean. Now where’s my grilled cheese already?”
45
We’ve spent most of the afternoon sorting through the files and decided to start the stakeout portion of our new case tomorrow. Two hours in, and halfway through the pile, we are no closer to identifying Calligraphy Boy.
“You going to eat that?” I ask, as I eye his last bite of crumb cake.
He gives me a smirk. “Such the sweet tooth.”
I shrug. “Guilty as charged. So is that a yes or a no?”
He seductively lifts the bite of crumb cake to my lips and then jerks it away, popping it into his mouth with a squeal of delight.
“So petty.”
“So easy.” He stands, heading towards the door.
“Where are you going? We’ve got like thirty more files over here.”
“To get you another piece of cake, of course.”
I watch him saunter out the door and have to keep reminding myself that he’s a man. And that all men are bad, bad, evil badness.
I lie on my back and do the air bicycle. I might as well make some effort to burn off that second piece of cake I’m about to down. As I make circles in the air with my outstretched legs, I realize that tomorrow will be my first official day as an unofficial, private investigator. Or actually, I think I like “private eye” better. It sounds more clandestine. This is gonna be so fun. I haven’t felt this excited for the next day since Mamma was taking my sister Becky and me to the Bozo circus. I don’t know why I had this unhealthy fascination with that clown. I would watch, captivated, every Saturday morning, as he jumped around for thirty minutes talking as if he had a head cold.
My legs are tired so I decide to take a break from my rigorous workout, and just lie spread-eagle for a spell.
“Inviting,” Parella says as he enters, eyeing me in the compromising position.
“Don’t you wish,” I retort.
Jack lies down next to me, uncomfortably close, and whispers in my ear, “Listen here, Miss Hoity-Toity. If I wanted you, I would have you.”
I let out a forced snort. “Ha. You are sooo barking up the wrong fire hydrant, mister. I mean you’re not even my type!”
He blows ever so softly into my ear, sending a fierce chill through every square inch of my body. I shut my eyes involuntarily and I think I may have stopped breathing. The next thing I know, Jack is on top of me about to kiss me.
“Jack, what are you doing?” I ask almost inaudibly.
“I’ve been wanting to do this ever since you walked into my joint.”
He brushes his lips against my cheek and then kisses each one of my eyelids ever so gently. I feel my body responding and my nipples get really hard. Like porn star hard. Speaking of hard, I’m assuming it’s not laundry day and that’s not a roll of quarters in Jack’s pocket.
“Stop. This is not supposed to happen…we can’t…”
I let out a low moan as he licks my ear and open my eyes briefly, catching a glimpse of him as he stares at my lips longingly. Oh, my God, just kiss me already!! This is torture!
Jack seems to hear my thoughts as he looks deep into my eyes and says, “Do you want me to, Liza?” I nod. “Are you sure?” I n
od again.
“Yes, I’m sure! Okay!”
A seductive smile crosses Jack’s lips as he sits up, swiftly clapping his hands together. “Told ya.”
It takes me a second, but I realize that I’ve just been had…figuratively that is. I let out a long, humiliating sigh and sit up, propping myself on my elbows. “You’re a jackass.”
“And you’re really sexy when you moan like that.”
“Yeah, well etch it in your memory, mister, ’cause you’re never going to hear it again.”
He snickers. “Okay, let’s get back to these files,” he says and turns to a fresh sheet in the notebook as I grab the next stack.
“The name Von Straten sound familiar?”
“Nope.”
I toss the file aside and grab the next. “Strindberg?”
“Nope.”
I toss another in the ever-growing pile of “No”s. “Vanderhonderstienfield?”
Jack looks up from the notebook and cocks his head to one side. “Seriously?”
“No, not seriously.” I open the file and a family photo flutters onto the floor. Parella grabs the picture and studies it with a crease between his brows.
“That’s Jacqueline Jones. She practically bought out the store last summer.”
I glance at the name on the file and shake my head. “Actually her name is Britt Coggswell.”
We both gasp, incredulous.
“Duh, secret identities!” I shout. “These blondies are smarter than they look. You better check out all the pictures.”
We rifle through the thirty some odd portraits of Nordic-looking families, stacked in order of height in front of a raging hearth or a professionally decorated Christmas tree, and find quite a few blond, pixie-nosed, female faces that have graced the threshold of Eye Spy.
“I can’t believe it. Twelve of them were customers.”
“Guess we know where our arsonist has brunch. Oh, poop! Is it really four already? I wanted to beat traffic back to Andover,” I say.
Jack looks as if the wind just went out of his sails. “Oh, right, you’re doing that ladies night thing tonight, too bad. We were kinda on a roll here. You’re stayin’ stay at your place tonight, right?”
“Yeah. I’ve got to face it eventually. And I’m sure Bernie’s out by now. Hey, maybe he’s staying at his girlfriend’s house,” I blurt, letting out a halfhearted snort. “So I’ll just see you tomorrow around ten-ish and we’ll start our first ‘assignment,’ okay?”
Parella stacks up the files on the battered steamer trunk in front of the sofa and gives me a concerned look. “Alrighty partner,” he says with an unusual lack of jest.
I grab a few of my shopping bags, making sure to include the one with the red Jimmy Choos and dart off. Ready for my night of debauchery…
46
I think I may have aged a few years sitting in bumper-to-bumper, or at least gotten a couple crows’ feet. I really hate that drive home from the city. I mean, now that I’m a working girl I’ve got to think about these things. I drop my bags on the kitchen floor, and as I toss my keys on the counter they almost seem to echo. In the two whole days since our last conversation, Bernie has managed to get all of his mother’s “priceless” antiques out of the house. I head upstairs to the bedroom and find his empty closet wide open. Something about the visual gives it finality.
Moving from room to room, in the big, half-barren house that was bought with someone else’s money, I have an epiphany. There are times in a woman’s life when she’s just got to give herself a long, hard look in mirror and say, “Oh, dear God, I’ve become my mother.” This is one of those times.
When I was a little girl growing up in Savannah, I would look at my mother in her—I kid you not—red gingham-checked apron pulling a fresh batch of butterscotch cookies out of the sparkling clean Merritt O’Keefe oven and think, “No way, not me. I won’t be caught dead as a housewife. I’m going to be an archeologist…and a part time truck driver.”
Okay, so I was just starting first grade and my idea of good job opportunities existed in a world where playing in the dirt was allowed and applauded. And getting the Sam Hell out of Savannah Township proper was my biggest dream. I didn’t know much, but one thing I absolutely knew at the ripe old age of six was that I was not going to end up a housewife. So here we are: flash forward a quarter of a century or so later. I live in a grey house with heather grey plantation shutters full of knick-knacks bought with someone else’s money.
It’s the usual story I guess; we met my sophomore year at BU at a kegger for his fraternity. I took one look at those unreasonably long eyelashes and that crooked grin and I was toast.
Our first date was spent swinging at the park. We just sat on the rusty-chained swings for hours and hours, telling each other all of our hopes and fears. And somewhere between that first meeting over plastic cups of lukewarm beer and our fifth date, we decided to get an off campus apartment together. He was a junior, so it was allowed. I was in love. Certifiably. Blissfully. Whatever you want to call it. It was a done deal. We settled on a one bedroom on the south side and that first year was magic. We didn’t have any money, so we’d go to church rummage sales and buy somebody’s grandma’s nightstand and redo it in a funky, cool color. Nothing matched, but we didn’t care. We’d just spend hours sitting on the floor, spoon-feeding each other ice cream, and gazing into one another’s eyes.
We got married in the fall of his senior year. A quick dockside reception at the crab shack sort of shindig. Nothing fancy. Bernie always said we’d do it right for our ten year. Yeah, right. So much for that pipe dream.
Looking back now, I guess the warning signs were always there. A random late night phone call here. An “I’m studying late at the library” there. Pretty blonde girls avoiding me in the school hallway with sideways glances, which turned into pretty blonde nurses avoiding me at Bernie’s office. I dropped out my junior year to waitress and put Bernie through medical school to build “our” future. And since I was a little unsure of what I wanted to do for the rest of my life (part-time truck driver no longer having the same luster), it seemed like the logical choice.
So Bernie went to podiatry school during the day while I worked at Vito’s diner at night, delivering tuna casseroles to little blue haired ladies and burly dockworker types. This comprised the next four years of our lives.
After he graduated, it took a few years to get his practice off the ground, but then the money started coming in and I stopped working.
We were planning on having a baby once his career got stable, so we started “trying.” We tried for two years until I went and spread ’em in stirrups for a five-foot tall fertility specialist that looked like Harry Potter, and was told I was utterly and hopelessly infertile. Barren, he called it. I can’t help but wonder if that’s what spurred the cheating. The distance between us seemed to escalate a few months after the stirrup indecent. We’d been married for six years and the “I’m working lates” became much more frequent. (what, like there’s an emergency bunion?) As did the late night “wrong numbers.” So the way I see it, Bernie’s been having affairs for at least six or seven years, give or take.
I may seem detached and laissez-faire, but it’s just one of those things. Like if you’ve subconsciously known something for so long and been afraid of it subcontiously for so long, you almost just want it to be over. It reminds me of when my high school friend Sara Klein had a nose job. They put this long cotton packing all the way up her nose—two yards of it or something ridiculous like that—up each nostril. She had to keep it in for a week and every day she would stand in front of the mirror, tilt her chin, and stare at the two crusty, bloody, protruding pieces of cotton and shudder. They taunted her. But turns out, the thought of the doctor pulling them out ended up being worse than pain of when it actually happened. She said that it hurt a little at first but then it almost felt good. Like a relief to have faced the demon, you know?
I guess my demon has come and smacked me up
side the head. All I can do now is deal with it.
47
Instead of getting ready to see the girls I go for a swim in the forty-five-degree night air; for some bizarre reason it seems important. Cleansing, somehow. I put on Kate Bush’s Sensual World album through the outdoor speakers, put on my swimsuit, and give myself a once over in the mirror before heading out. I think I can actually see the outline of four doughnuts on my ass. Attractive. Guess I’m long overdue for a little exercise. The water is brisk. I do one full lap before I start panting. I’m really out of shape. I take a couple of deep breaths, dip under for another lap, and that’s when it hits me. Like a wave, no pun intended. I’m rushed with a whirlwind of emotions that make me shake and weep uncontrollably under water. I come up for air and cry some more as I dry off and let out a couple of guttural yells.
What’s with me and the crying and swimming thing lately? Sheesh.
I guess this was bound to happen. My whole world has been turned upside down, shaken from side to side and put in a blender, and now I’ve got to make some big decisions. It’s kind of like I’m being reborn and my life is just about to begin again. And that’s some scary crap.
The song “This Woman’s Work” pipes out of the all-weather speakers. It inspires all sorts of emotions, but mostly it makes me feel a strong sadness and a desperate need for change. I decide at that very moment to put the house up for rent and get myself an apartment in the city. I’ll get a job. Maybe work nights. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll manage. This life I had is officially burnt up and I’m like a phoenix. Time to rise from the ashes…
48
After I blow-dry my hair, pull on a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt and a cropped, worsted wool navy blazer, I slip on the Jimmy Choos. I don’t have a purse that matches so I just stick a tube of red lipstick in my back pocket along with a couple of twenties.
I hear Evvy honk outside and wobble out on my new four-inchers. I’m gonna have some wicked blisters tomorrow. Good thing I’m two Cosmos away from feeling no pain.
Eye Spy (Liza Radley Housewife Detective Chronicles) Page 10
