Murder at the Book Group

by Maggie King

  “Hazel, I’m sorry I created such a fuss over that silly book. I get so irritated when people go on and on about hating a book.” Her voice, now reverted back to its usual near whisper, was so soft that I risked violating the standard conversational distance between us by moving closer. It was either that or take a shot at lip reading.

  “Don’t worry about it.” By now I was more interested in broaching the subject of Linda. “So—are you excited about your friend Linda showing up?”

  Carlene gave a brief laugh and said, “Well, no. To be honest, I don’t even remember the woman. It’s embarrassing since she seems to remember me so well.”

  “Oh. So she wasn’t a friend in L.A.?”

  “Oh, no. She says I worked with her husband. Maybe I met her at a work party. I simply don’t remember.” She spread her hands as if asking how she could possibly remember everyone she met.

  “Looks like hers would be hard to forget.”

  “I guess.” She waved a dismissive hand, setting off those dissonant bracelets. “I just finished an Agatha Christie. I keep reading them over and over.” Pulling a book out of her bookcase she offered it to me. “This one’s a Miss Marple. The Mirror Crack’d. Want to borrow it?”

  Okay, Linda was off limits. I wondered why. “Oh, no thanks. I have a copy.” Carlene reshelved the paperback.

  “Hazel, the real reason I wanted to talk to you, aside from getting away from Helen, was to share my big news. I booked a trip to Costa Rica for December. Georgia and I are going to stay with a friend of hers.”

  “Oh, Carlene, that’s great. You’ll love it. So will Georgia.” Georgia Dmytryk was Carlene’s lifelong friend and the executive director of the Richmond Women’s Resource Center.

  “I know you went there a while back. Maybe you can give us suggestions. Do you have time for coffee this week? Our treat. Maybe early one morning before Georgia goes to the center?” I wasn’t hot on early-morning activities, but I was hot on free coffee, so I agreed to meet Carlene and Georgia at Panera at Stony Point on Wednesday morning.

  Then my eye was drawn to a couple of photographs on the shelf over her laptop. How had I missed them in this monkish room? I pointed to one and said, “I don’t think I’ve seen these before.” Neither picture included Evan, but I didn’t comment on my observation.

  A smiling foursome posed next to a Christmas tree. Kat dominated the group with her abundance of everything: hair, makeup, cleavage, jewelry. Her twenty-something daughter, Stephie, took her mother’s flamboyant fashion statements several steps further with her riotous assortment of piercings and tattoos. Dean Berenger, Kat’s father and Carlene’s stepfather, wore a crewneck sweater and sported a buzz cut.

  Carlene’s elegant style was apparent even with her tacky Christmas sweater and jeans. Her eyes stared impassively into, maybe through, the camera. I never tire of her mesmerizing eyes, which happen to be the same color and shade as mine, “money green.” My thoughts digressed along a path from green eyes to husbands, recalling one of my exes declaring an exact match when he held a dollar bill up to my eyes. While he was puzzled that they weren’t hazel, suiting my name, they failed to mesmerize him.

  Besides our eyes, Carlene and I shared a number of physical attributes. We both stood at five feet four inches without shoes. We’d remained slim, but the pounds were creeping up in that insidious way that pounds crept. Our hair color belonged to the red family, hers a vibrant auburn and mine an autumn chestnut. No doubt her salon tab far exceeded mine.

  “That was taken last Christmas,” Carlene explained, but didn’t elaborate.

  “And what about this one?” I pointed to an eight-by-eleven image in a brushed metal frame. “This has to be your mother.” Despite the beehive and thick black eyeliner, the woman could only be Carlene’s mother, so striking was the resemblance.

  “It is.”

  “Father?” I asked, pointing at the handsome, smiling man holding a pipe, who didn’t look remotely like Dean Berenger. Carlene nodded.

  A perhaps ten-year-old Carlene towered over an unhappy-looking boy. “I guess that’s your brother.”

  “Yes, that’s Hal. I hate to cut this short, Hazel, but I’ve got to get the food ready. They’ll be winding down their stories soon and will want to eat.” True to my prediction, a loud and intense childbirth discussion was in full swing downstairs.

  The rebuff didn’t surprise me as Carlene didn’t allow many personal questions. In no time the inevitable “it’s none of your business” messages would start, nonverbal but clear all the same. As a result, I knew little about her. That didn’t stop me from wondering if Hal served as the family’s black sheep, making him off-limits for discussion.

  “Okay, I’ll give you a hand,” I offered with reluctance. I wanted to stay in the den and look at photos and ask nosy questions. But even if Carlene was willing to satisfy my curiosity, there were only the two photos anyway.

  Carlene stopped at the door and turned to me. “Hazel,” she started, looking uncertain. “I have a, um, hypothetical question for you.”

  “Yes?”

  She continued to look indecisive before finally taking the proverbial nosedive. “Have you ever made a huge mistake?”

  “Mistake?” I laughed. “Of course.” My mistakes were too numerous for a quick mental scan. There were the failed marriages, Evan being the first of them. And more than one wrong turn on the career path. But huge? “What do you mean by huge?”

  “The kind that comes back later to haunt you.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I LOOKED AT CARLENE, trying to get a bead on her meaning. Did her question have to do with Evan, with their separation? But the haunting bit threw me—haunting implied a past mistake. That thought took me to the not-remembered Linda. Carlene’s eagerness to leave the subject of Linda shed doubts on her claims of not remembering her. Who could forget hair like that? Of course, the hair may have been different at the time—for all I knew, Linda had been a nondescript type until a midlife crisis led to her falling in with a creative hairdresser.

  Perhaps Carlene was about to confess to a crime. Or she’d been an accomplice, a mobster’s moll. “Carlene, does this have anything to do with Linda?”

  The rebuff didn’t surprise me. “Linda again? I said I didn’t remember her.” Then, smiling, she offered, “Sorry, I guess I’m being . . . fanciful.” Fanciful. A writer’s word. Anyone else would say “silly.” “You see, it’s for this book I started . . .” Carlene went on to describe the book, how the main character meets up with her past—a past she had hoped was, well, in the past. Carlene had talked about her upcoming book at the signing so I guessed that this was her third book. “I’m just collecting experiences, that’s all.” And with that, she left the den and proceeded down the short flight of steps to the kitchen, apparently forgetting her question about my own mistakes. I thought about Carlene’s conveniently falling back on her writing to explain her provocative question. I held to my suspicion that Linda had triggered this haunting business.

  Carlene’s kitchen, with its barn-red walls, white cabinets, black-and-white-checkered floor, and black appliances was a study in elegance and simplicity, simplicity being the operative word. My own kitchen abounded with plants, refrigerator magnets attaching shopping lists and emergency numbers, cat dishes, cats themselves, and often pleasant cooking aromas. Carlene’s kitchen gave off a model house feeling. A round wooden table held a tray of refreshment paraphernalia and a Tupperware container of what looked like brownies. The notion that less is more can be inaccurate, and sometimes less is just less.

  Curious about what was going on in Carlene and Evan’s private world I asked, “Carlene, how’s Evan these days?” The fact that it was their private world didn’t temper my nosiness. I waited to see if she’d mention the separation.

  Not a chance. She only stiffened and said “fine” in a tone that brooked no further questions. I felt a twinge of guilt for asking. Terse or not, the woman could well be suffering—her behavior thro
ughout the evening indicated that. Now, using more concentration than necessary, she filled a kettle with water, set it on the stovetop, and turned on the electric burner. No doubt she was preparing one of those odious teas she favored—tonics, she called them—claiming they promoted longevity and well-being. I’m all for longevity, well-being, and the whole shebang, but if it took downing one of her lethal concoctions to have it, I’d seriously reconsider. She took a white mug with a gold “C” identifying it as hers off the tray on the table and set it on the counter. Then she removed the cellophane wrap from a box covered with Chinese characters.

  “Is that a new tea?” I asked. Not that I cared, but I thought it was a question she’d answer.

  And she did. “Yes, I’ve never tried it, but someone suggested it.” She opened a drawer, produced a scoop, and measured loose tea into a strainer. Then she opened the refrigerator, grabbed a plate of apple slices and what looked to be goat cheese, used her hip to push the door shut, and headed for the dining room. “Do you mind pouring the decaf? The carafe’s right there.” Using her chin, she pointed toward the table before disappearing through the doorway.

  Normally, I didn’t bother with such niceties as carafes and served guests from the coffeepot itself, but that was me. As I poured, I thought back to when Evan was my husband. Very much in love, or perhaps lust, we couldn’t wait until graduation from Rochester Institute of Technology and married while still in college. Then the “open marriage” craze of the early seventies appealed to him, but not to me. Since I had, even in that permissive era, eschewed premarital sex and pushed for marriage, I failed to understand why he thought I would embrace such a radical concept as open marriage. While I shed my prudish ways during our marriage, my commitment to monogamy, in or out of marriage, lasts to this day. After two years of grappling with the open marriage issue, in addition to others, I hightailed it to a divorce lawyer.

  Once safely unmarried, I acted on a spirit of adventure and moved to Los Angeles, where I remarried not once but three times. Evan remained on the East Coast, taking a vow to abstain from marriage, open or not. We remained friends, keeping in touch over the years and miles. In between my own marriages, I entertained fantasies of remarrying him and living happily ever after, managing to forget why I’d divorced him in the first place. But his enduring commitment to the single life kept me from acting on my fantasies.

  In 1999 I found myself a widow. Dispirited, I considered my options, one of which was another uprooting. My cousin Lucy Hooper, a recent widow as well, offered temporary living quarters in her home in Richmond. The fact that Evan had retired from his management job in Rochester after winning the New York lottery and taken a position as an adjunct business professor in Richmond provided added incentive to reverse the cross-country move I’d made a quarter of a century before. Perhaps we were meant to be together after all, his chronic marriage phobia be damned.

  Evan responded to the news of my impending move with enthusiasm, saying it would be great to see each other often. I kept mum on my special plans for the two of us. One month after that conversation, on a bright and sunny day in April 2000, I landed in Richmond with my calico cat, Shammy, in tow. But my hopes were dashed. In the space of that one month, Evan had managed not only to meet but to marry one Carlene Lundy, the woman who now gave him short shrift.

  Despite my disappointment, I chose to remain friends with Evan. Who knew how long this marriage would last anyway? And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that in order to remain friends with Evan I had to be friends with his wife. And so I did, as much as anyone could be friends with the unforthcoming Carlene. As for Evan, except for the annual turkey dinners he and Carlene hosted in early December to usher in the holiday season before the rush of other parties, I rarely saw him. And yes, five years later I still lived with Lucy or, as I preferred to put it, we lived together. It put a whole different spin on temporary.

  I watched as Carlene arranged plates and dishes on the dining table and, after casting a critical eye on the result, rearranged them. I shook my head and laughed to myself over such fussing. The simplicity of the rest of the house didn’t reign in Carlene’s small dining room. A carved pumpkin holding a riotous assortment of fall flowers and greens served as a table centerpiece. With the early October weather being so warm, the fall decor seemed out of place. I piled the brownies on a plate and put them and the carafe amid a display of smaller pumpkins, orange candles, baby squash, gourds, acorns, and scattered leaves. It looked like Martha Stewart had run amok.

  What was going on with Carlene and Evan? Were they permanently separated or, in Evan’s parlance, on a “break”? Would the turkey dinner go on as usual in December? Maybe some of the issues that had plagued my marriage to Evan were raising havoc with the Carlene/Evan union some thirty years later. I remembered my chance encounter with Evan at Target the week before. I took him up on his offer of coffee at the Starbucks concession, where he told me about the separation, but not his second offer—dinner at Lemaire restaurant. Hard as it was to turn down dinner at Richmond’s most elegant restaurant, I didn’t date married men. And separated was, in my view, still married. Taking a so-called break even more so. So I’d collected my purchases and stood to leave, saying, “No, Evan. Thank you, but no. Not while you’re married to Carlene.” And I’d walked away. In truth, my fantasies of a reunion with a single Evan had dimmed to the point of extinction, so I couldn’t claim to be resisting temptation. Still, I regretted not sticking around to hear what had brought on this trouble in paradise—assuming that Evan would share such details.

  Little did I know that in a very short time their paradise would become a lot more troublesome.

  THE GROUP DRIFTED into the small dining room, a spirited discussion about Sudoku puzzles in progress. They loaded miniature plates with brownies and apple slices, some taking care to avoid the goat cheese. Annabel looked alarmed at Linda’s blow-by-blow description of her recent colonoscopy. I realized with something akin to despair that I’d reached the age where medical procedures and conditions were discussed in full and complete detail at every opportunity. Sighing, I fixed myself a cup of decaf but found the pitcher bone dry. I carried the creamer and my cup to the kitchen where Carlene poured water from the kettle into her mug.

  “Carlene, do you have milk or half-and-half?”

  She looked blank, then said, “Yes. In the fridge. Didn’t I put it out?”

  Sarah appeared in the other kitchen doorway. “Carlene, there’re no towels in the upstairs bathroom.” Then she grinned. “Jeans work just as well.” She rubbed her hands over her thighs in demonstration.

  “Oh, dear,” Carlene heaved a sigh. “Sorry about that.” She left her mug on the counter and went upstairs, presumably to locate towels.

  We looked after Carlene’s retreating form. Sarah lowered her voice and asked, “Did you find out what was with her earlier?”

  I hesitated and wagged my hand back and forth. I could only assess the “huge mistake” discussion as well as the Linda one as vague and unsatisfying. And even if I had something concrete to report, I didn’t feel comfortable talking about Carlene in her own house. “Not really” was the best I could come up with to explain my conversation with Carlene.

  “Let’s go down to the family room and I’ll show you a few exercises you can do at home,” I heard Kat suggest to Art. She walked, swaggered actually, through the kitchen to the family room beyond. A belly diamond winked at us over her jeans with thigh cutouts. Art, looking like a lovesick puppy, trailed behind her. Sarah and I turned to each other and laughed.

  Sarah said, “The guy’s so skinny—I can’t see him lifting even ten-pound weights.” Art was on the lean side. His lankiness combined with his height and concave chest reminded me of a folding lawn chair.

  Sarah asked, “What about Linda? What’s the story with her?”

  I kept my voice low and my eyes on the kitchen doorway. It shouldn’t take Carlene long to find a towel. “Carlene says she doesn’t
remember Linda, so she had nothing to say about her.” Not verbally, anyway. A phone sounded in the dining room and a second later, Annabel appeared in the kitchen, clutching a tiny phone to her ear. She smiled at us and walked down the steps to the family room.

  I poked around in the refrigerator and finally located a small carton of 1 percent milk. I surreptitiously sniffed it before dumping some into my cup and the rest into the creamer. Sarah and I walked into the dining room and I resolved to do no more work. I saw Linda regaling Helen with an anecdote involving her dermatologist. A couple of minutes later Carlene, mug in hand, came into the dining room.

  Sarah pushed up her oversized glasses and began. “Anyway, Hazel, I need your opinion about this nonprofit.” Sarah volunteered for a couple of local organizations. As I clocked in many volunteer hours myself, I was frequently consulted for my opinion about various groups. We chatted for a couple of minutes until I picked up the words “stem cell,” “misguided liberals,” and “Bush” behind me. Uh-oh, Helen on her soapbox. I turned to find her preaching to Annabel and Carlene.

  “Oh, no, she’s at it again,” Sarah muttered. “She already worked that subject half to death tonight.”

  Deciding to rescue them from Helen’s clutches, I held up a finger to Sarah in a wait-a-minute gesture. But Art beat me to it. Standing in the kitchen doorway with Kat, the body-building demo apparently over, he exhorted the “author contingent” to give progress reports on our work. I noticed Annabel’s grateful smile along with a flash of annoyance on Helen’s face. But, presumably remembering her manners, she smiled as she turned to Annabel and said, “You start, Annabel.”

  “Oh, I’m on a brief hiatus from writing. But Sunset Over Monticello is due out in February.” Annabel set her police procedural series featuring Gloria Shifflett, a hard-bitten and hard-living homicide detective, in Charlottesville. I gave an update on my baby boomer sex romp. I didn’t look at Helen, who no doubt was fighting an urge to make faces at my subject matter.