Eye Spy (Liza Radley Housewife Detective Chronicles)

by Jenna Mattison

  “Hi, Liza, it’s John Gainey from Savannah High…I don’t know if you remember me but I ran into your mother at the Piggly Wiggly and…well, she passed on your number and informed me that you were newly divorced or divorcing. Ummm, hope it’s not in poor taste, but I would like to escort you to dinner sometime.”

  Josie’s head bobs up, suddenly awake and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Who’s the guy with the plantation gentleman’s accent?”

  I shrug nonchalantly and hang up the phone. “Only the most gorgeous guy from my high school. He had hair the color of wheat and the whitest smile you’ve ever seen. He was like a walking Colgate ad. Anyway, I can’t believe what a gossip Mamma is; she can’t keep a secret to save her own life…or anyone else’s.”

  “Well, did you tell her it was a secret?”

  “No, but I didn’t think I had to. I mean, I haven’t even filed for a divorce yet.”

  Josie nods her head up and down and asks, “So you gonna go out with him?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think about that right now.” I have to head to another boring morning stakeout in “Mr. Bentley’s” office parking lot. Yawn.

  Josie has her Bluetooth headset on and is already on a phone conference to Tokyo as she waves to me as she heads out the door. She does marketing for Internet companies and spends a lot of time on the phone and makes a lot of money doing it.

  I head for the shower and contemplate calling John Gainey back. What a hoot! I had the biggest crush on him in school (along with every other female in Savannah Township proper). He was the quintessential pretty boy/homecoming king/football star; a Robert Redford type with all American good looks. He used to wink at people, which I know sounds cheesy, but on him it was really sexy. Well, as sexy as one can be at seventeen.

  As I shampoo my hair with the last drops of the cucumber melon stuff I love, I toy with the idea of going out to dinner with him, but the logistics of it just don’t make sense. Me in Andover, him in Savannah. Talk about geographically undesirable. Plus I’d only be doing it out of curiosity to see if he’d lost all his golden locks or acquired a potbelly. I’m really not interested in a relationship right now. If ever. I wash the shampoo from my eyes and glance at the shower clock radio thingie Bernie’s old assistant bought him.

  Oops…running late. Crap.

  56

  Jack is waiting impatiently on the front stoop of the shop as I pull up to the curb and miss a parking meter by a fraction of an inch. He shakes his head in mock disgust and swiftly slides into the passenger seat.

  “I can’t believe you even passed drivers-ed.”

  I shoot him a look. “With flying colors actually.”

  “You let the teacher peek at those gams no doubt.”

  “Pervert.”

  I pull away before he has a chance to buckle up and head off to the manicured haven of Mr. Bentley’s neighborhood.

  We park across the street from the office building under an auburn-leafed tree and settle in for what promises to be a long humdrum day of “spying.” Trying to divert boredom as long as possible, I play a little game in my head of naming all the species of trees lining the street and surrounding the office buildings. Seems like cork oaks and maples were really popular in this area. The developer also seems to have an affinity for boxwood hedges, since there are endless rows tucked beneath planter boxes and clipped closely. Mr. B’s office landscape in particular is chock-full of them and boasts some well-groomed specimens that line the sidewalk towards the glass-encased doorway. I quickly grow disinterested in the mind-numbing activity and return to studying Jack’s profile as he does the crossword in the Globe. He looks like some sort of Greek god, the straight Roman nose, the chiseled jaw. He’s got a generous helping of five o’clock shadow today, which I’ve always found wildly attractive. He’s halfway through the crossword and is sucking on the end of his pen (which for some bizarre reason is incredibly erotic and makes me tingly all over).

  “Isn’t your Ma coming to town soon?” he blurts out of the blue, breaking the spell.

  “Uhhh, yeah. Today. I pick her up from Logan at three,” I reply.

  “Logan after two-thirty is gridlock.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m really looking forward to it,” I say, the words dripping with sarcasm, as I give him an insincere smile and bat my eyes coquettishly.

  “You sure are one handsome dame, Liza Radley.”

  The statement catches me off guard and I think I may have blushed. “Handsome? Gee thanks,” I say indifferently, hiding behind my glib façade.

  Jack returns his attention to the crossword and leaves my belly aflutter.

  Damn this insufferably sexy man.

  Lunchtime rolls around and we have accomplished nothing except discovering that I royally suck as a crossword partner.

  “Okay, so this stakeout thing is going a bit too slow for my taste,” Jack says with a yawn.

  “No kidding. Sheesh. I’m aging over here.”

  “So how about on Monday night, when you’re done gallivanting with your mom, we do a little B&E into the blue blood’s office?”

  “I like the way you’re thinking, Jackie boy,” I say with a conspiratorial wink. “And I won’t just be gallivanting, I’ll be apartment hunting too. I rented the house to a dashing professor.”

  “Dashing, huh?”

  “What, you think you’re the only one that can talk like you’re in a Bogart movie?”

  “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn about how ‘dashing’ some cat is.”

  “Jealousy rears its ugly head.”

  “Actually, I think, that you think, that I’ve got a pretty cute head,” he exclaims with a cocky grin. “In fact, I saw you brazenly ogling it earlier, Tootsie Pop. No need to be shy, you can just come right out and tell me that you find me down right irresistible.” He whispers the last bit close to my ear, which makes every little hair on my body stand at attention.

  “Oh, hush,” I respond dismissively, an apathetic fraud with a Southern accent that reappears at the most inopportune times. I drop him down the block from Eye Spy and zoom away and onto the turnpike to pick up the Madame of Walnut Hill.

  57

  Airport traffic isn’t too bad, but I’m queasy from the poor lunch decision of the sloppy burger that’s sitting in my stomach like a boulder. Though part of the quease factor could be because I’m seeing Mamma for the first time in almost a year. It’s been since last Christmas, and she’ll most likely make a comment about my thighs looking heavy or some other observation that will immediately make me feel like the “ugly duckling” I was at eleven years old. Also, I’m betting by now the entire town has intimate details of my break up, and that she’s probably milking it for all the sympathy she can get. She’ll probably guilt me about how embarrassing it all is for her.

  Sheesh.

  But even with all the negatives I do love seeing Mamma. If only for her sweet scent and the way she scrunches her nose when she smiles. She smells like a cross between baby formula and gardenias. Even in the dead of Savannah summer, when most people are just barely able to keep from looking like sweat-soaked pigs dipped in bacon grease, Mamma always looks fresh as a daisy and perfectly coiffed. Fresh and coiffed is apparently not a trait that’s always handed down from one generation to the next. Though my sister Becky seems to have been blessed with it.

  Becky is living in London now, married to a bona fide earl or duke or something. She and I talk once a year at Christmas when she does the obligatory weekend at the plantation with her two kids, Biddy and Bart. The “Earl” never comes to Walnut Hill. I think it has something to do with being allergic to fresh air or something. Maybe he just has an allergy to non-nobility. Either way, it’s not exactly the big, happy, close-knit family Mamma was hoping for. The kids are probably eight by now. They’re ginger-haired fraternal twins that talk like characters in a Merchant Ivory movie. Being within earshot of them makes me feel instantly stupid and plebian.

  Last year they weren’t all
owed to go swimming in the creek that weaves through the east end of my parents’ property, and all we heard all weekend was, “But Mummy, it’s not fair!” in those proper little accents.

  Oops, almost missed my turn.

  I park and check my purse for cash to pay the obscenely overpriced short-term lot.

  Damn. I only have a crumpled dollar and a bunch of change stuck to some linty hair. Okay, so I’m still not going win any prizes in the “most organized purse” contest. So what?

  Breezing past the automatic sliding doors to the Arrivals monitors, I find that Mamma’s flight’s delayed a few minutes and that I have just enough time to hunt down a custard-filled. I figure I’ll need the sugar to dull the pain of Mamma’s disappointment in her eldest daughter, the spinster-to-be.

  Gift shops line the corridors so I decide to buy Jack an impromptu present since he’s been so good to me.

  Kind of. Between being infuriating that is.

  I browse a small store and decide to skip the stuffed bear with the T-shirt that says “Logan.” I consider a Red Sox hat but I opt against that, too, since I don’t really know if he’s a sporty sort of guy. And if he is, he probably has dozens of them already. In fact, it gets me thinking that I hardly know anything about this person whose couch I’ve been sleeping on and who I’m spending virtually every day in the company of. I mean, he could be a stalker…or even a serial killer or something…or Calligraphy Boy…!

  Nah, my imagination is just running away with me again. Plus he was with me the day the store got shot at. Duh, Liza, you’ve watched way too many reruns of Murder She Wrote.

  I notice a snow globe out of the corner of my eye with a miniature Fenway Park inside. It plays “Strangers in the Night,” which seems so bizarrely inappropriate and completely unconnected to baseball that I fall instantly in love with it. It’s the perfect gift. And if they had a second one, I’d buy one for myself. I take my prize to the cashier; a teenager who’s obviously losing his battle with acne. Poor kid has huge, painful looking red welts all over his face.

  “I’d like this gift wrapped please, if that’s possible.”

  He opens his mouth to reply, revealing two shiny rows of metal braces. Life is really cruel for some people.

  “I don’t have any wrapping paper but I can give you a nice bag with a handle and some tissue?” His use of s’s has the unfortunate side effect of producing a lisp and spraying saliva with a remarkable scope. Poor kid.

  “That works.” I nod.

  I browse the book section as he painstakingly “wraps” my odd little globe in thin gold tissue paper. My eyes rest on a hardcover book entitled Family Crests of Scotland.

  Whoa. What are the chances that Mr. Calligraphy’s crest is in this very book? Probably slim to none, but then again, what are the odds of me stumbling on a book of crests in an airport gift shop?

  I grab the book and approach the counter where Braces Boy has just finished wrapping the globe, which now looks like a crumpled up ball of trash. I force an ecstatic smile, “It’s perfect!”

  He smiles shyly and puts the globe inside a red gift bag. “Really?”

  I give him a wink. “Thanks, handsome.”

  This sends him reeling into a fit of snorting laughter.

  Life really is horribly cruel.

  58

  Damn it, no time for the D.D. buffer. By the time I leave the gift shop, Mamma’s flight has already arrived and I’m running late. Too bad since that sugary goodness always seems to dull the pain.

  I almost run head-on into a group of grungy-looking backpackers speaking in Dutch or something before recognizing that I’m going against the designated flow of traffic. I switch sides and walk what seems like at least two miles to the farthest end of the terminal until I finally arrive at gate 24B. Just in time to watch Mamma glide down the escalator in all of her pink-haired, bouffanted glory. Mamma’s hair has been a pale shade of blondish pink since I can remember. I don’t think anyone’s ever had the heart to tell her it doesn’t look natural, but she somehow manages to pull it off flawlessly.

  She looks beautiful, as usual, and smartly put together. She’s in a velour pantsuit clutching an oversized pink handbag that undoubtedly has enough toiletries and cosmetics to give the entire troop of Rockettes a makeover. As she approaches me with her lavender rolling bag in tow, I brace myself for a sour look of disappointment. But instead she is smiling a lovely, twinkling smile, and I have to wonder for a moment if there’s somebody behind me that she knows. But before I can turn around to check, Mamma has embraced me in her lithe arms and whispered gently in my ear, “There’s my beautiful girl.”

  My heart melts as I smell her scent and feel a sudden rush of emotion, like I could cry a river. I gulp away the lump in my throat that feels about the size of the frogs we used to catch in the creek every spring, and manage a: “Hi, Mamma.”

  She smiles again, crinkling her little nose and takes my hand, leading the way. “Let’s get rollin’ darlin’. I’m only here for the weekend and we’ve got a lot of pampering and girl talk to catch up on.”

  Girl talk? With me? Who is this alien in the lavender jumpsuit that has possessed my mother?

  “You look great, Mamma.”

  “Oh, thanks, sugar. At my age a gal can only fight the good fight and hope to look passable,” she exclaims, fluffing her hair.

  We reach the car and I barely manage to cram her bag into my tiny trunk. She surprisingly doesn’t say a word about my silly car and how I should get something more lady-like and adult-like, or any of the other comments that are signature Mamma.

  Seriously, this is a bona fide case of invasion of the body snatchers.

  “The hotel is on 10 Avery Street, you know where that is?”

  “Hotel? What hotel? I thought you would stay at the house.”

  Mamma unveils a sly smirk as she opens her eyes wide and exclaims with relish, “Darlin, we are both spending the weekend in a suite at the Ritz Carlton with all the trimmings. I’ve made us a spa appointment for five-thirty, so we better hustle.”

  She gives me a wink as she plops herself into the front seat, whipping on a huge pair of black sunglasses that make her look like Liz Taylor’s stunt double.

  I have no idea who this woman is, but I’m really beginning to like her.

  59

  Nothing I love better than changing in a room full of women. It makes me feel like I’m back in high school all over again. The glory days when everyone slyly checked out each other’s newly acquired bosoms. I was a late bloomer—to put it mildly—and didn’t have to actually wear a bra for “support,” but wore one anyway just to fit in. I’ve at least graduated from the AA to a small B but I’m certainly no Dolly Pardon.

  We haven’t seen our hotel room yet because we pulled into the valet just in time for our appointments. Mamma’s scheduled us for citrus salt scrubs and side-by-side massages at the decadent Ritz spa. I have no idea what all this is costing her, but I’m sure it would cover my mortgage payment this month (which is luckily being paid by the handsome professor).

  “Liza, help me undo my bra sugar.” Mamma, on the other hand, got dealt aces in the cleavage department. Guess that’s a trait that’s not passed down either. So I’m pretty much just an uncoiffed, flat-chested, jobless loser whose husband left her for a teenybopper. I’m sure I’ve made Mamma real proud.

  We slip into our thick, cotton robes and plastic slippers then retire to the “quiet room” where a glass table is adorned with a pitcher of cucumber slices floating in water. I’ve always envied women who could come up with nice little Martha Stewart-esque touches like that on their own without the help of Better Homes and Gardens. The sofas are plush terrycloth in a coral color and are accented by sapphire blue raw silk pillows. There is a huge brass swan shaped urn oozing with day lilies. The rich fabrics, the clean scent, and the natural light filtering in from the large arched windows hung with sheer curtains, all lend themselves to an air of casual money. A hefty looking woman wadd
les into the sitting area and claims me. She informs me that her name is Olga and that she will be “takink care of me todays.” Her accent sounds Eastern Block; Russian, me thinks. I’ve never been salt scrubbed before and I’m hoping that it’s not too painful. I’m really glad that I forgot to shave my legs this morning, because salt and shaving nicks don’t really seem like a winning combination.

  The robust woman leads me into a room that is dimly lit and smells faintly of lavender. There are showerheads lining the ceiling on a movable arm and the walls look like they’re made of silicone. She motions for me to lie on a towel that’s covering a white rubber bed the shape of a surfboard as she switches on the sounds of fake rain that pipe through the speakers hanging from the back wall.

  “Please make yourself comfortables and I will be backed.”

  I disrobe, lie flat on my back, and wait for Olga to return for my buff and polish. She enters quietly, covers up my naughty bits with a towel, and proceeds to use her meaty paws to rub me with a combination of salt crystals mixed with oil. Though this may not seem at first glance like it would be enjoyable, it’s positively orgasmic.

  My mind starts wandering to some nice places. I imagine the fire escape in my new apartment lined with planter boxes, brimming with daisies and white tulips (I must be fantasizing since in reality I’ve got a black thumb). The visions take an abrupt shift to Jack land, and I find myself visualizing some mildly pornographic scenes with Mr. Parella as the star. This is taboo. I should immediately stop and say some Hail Marys or something. I decide instead to embrace my inner heathen and give in to the dirty thoughts.

  As Olga scrubs my belly and applies some pressure, I let out a small toot, which immediately pulls me out of Fantasy Land and into Embarrassment Village.

  She gives a small chuckle and dismisses my faux pas. “Almost everybody do this. Not worry.”

  The rest of the treatment passes without any more fantasies, and more importantly, without any more releasing of noxious gases on my part. I wrap myself in a warm robe and join Mamma in the cucumber water area.