The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue

by Regina Hale Sutherland

  “So, what will you do next?”

  “We can try to find the weapon, but after all this time, that’s a long shot.” He stopped and looked at me for a moment. “Didn’t you say Mrs. Davenport was teaching you how to garden?”

  “What? Oh, a little, I guess. Just how to pull weeds and things.”

  “Is she a big gardener, Mrs. Davenport?”

  I couldn’t lie to a policeman, even if I wanted to and even if I was out on a totally inappropriate date with him. “I guess you could say that.” He’d probably arrest her if he knew the bridge club referred to her as the Queen of Spades.

  The waiter arrived once more in the nick of time, this time bearing our dinner salads. “So,” I said brightly, picking up my fork, “when did you graduate the police academy?”

  If there was one thing I had learned in over two decades of marriage, it was the value of changing the subject when a man was on track to discovering something you didn’t want him to know.

  An hour later I was in the home stretch, finishing my coffee and creme brulee and thinking I was going to escape from dinner at Green Hills Grille with a man half my age without being noticed. Since Will, like any good police officer, had taken the seat that faced the door, my back had been to the entrance all evening. Perhaps that had contributed to the lack of recognition. The waiter slid the leather portfolio containing the bill onto the table, and Will and I reached for it at the same time.

  “No way,” he said, pulling it smoothly out from under my grasp and to his side of the table. “I asked you out for dinner. I’m paying.”

  I decided discretion was the better part of valor in this instance. “Okay, but I want my objection duly noted.”

  He blanched when he opened the portfolio and saw the total at the bottom of the bill. I bit my lip to hide my smile and turned my head to the side, just in time to see a couple walking right in front of my face as they passed the dais on their way to another part of the restaurant.

  We were too close. There was no way he wasn’t going to see me.

  “Ellie!”

  “Jim.” I pasted a smile on my face and clutched the napkin in my lap for dear life. “Nice to see you.” Although it wasn’t very nice to see the woman who was with him. Heavily streaked blonde hair, too much eyeliner, and a pair of low-rise jeans that had apparently been spray-painted on. I’d never met her, of course, only conjured up her image in my mind based on descriptions I’d been given by Connor and Courtney. Those double-D cups, though, were a dead giveaway.

  Why, why, why had I agreed to this dinner? And why hadn’t I realized that if I went to one of Jim’s favorite restaurants, I was very likely to run into him?

  Jim stared at Will, and then he looked back at me, clearly puzzled.

  “Jim, this is Will McFarland.” I was going to act like a poised, confident adult if it killed me. “Will, this is my ex-husband, Jim Johnston.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir.” Will shook Jim’s proffered hand over the little wall that separated our booth from the walkway through the restaurant. I tried very hard not to look at Tiffany, but I couldn’t stop myself. She was like a cartoon character come to life, every curve and color exaggerated beyond life-sized proportions.

  “Are you a friend of Connor’s?” Jim asked Will, looking as if he was trying to place Will’s face among the slew of hairy-legged adolescent boys who had draped themselves across our furniture over the last few years. If only I could intervene before Will said—

  “No, sir. I’m Ellie’s date.”

  The look of astonishment on Jim’s face was priceless. It made a warm glow not associated with the chardonnay I’d been drinking spread through my midsection. I would have given anything to have a camera. His head whipped back to look at me. “I thought you were dating some Frenchman?”

  “I am.” I looked him straight in the eye and kept my head up. “Will and I are just friends.” Of course, that remark didn’t sit too well with Will. He frowned.

  Jim shook his head, skeptical at my description of my relationship with Will. But this time when he looked at me, there was a glint of respect in his eye that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Which only added to the heat rising up through me.

  I stuck my hand over the booth toward my nemesis. “You must be Tiffany.”

  She looked at my hand like it was covered with rotting flesh. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “I’m Ellie.” I’d envisioned this moment a million times, both the good and the bad versions. Well, she might not be willing to shake my hand, but that was because she knew I had the upper one. Ha!

  “I know who you are.” If looks could kill, I would be staked to an anthill, slathered with honey, and about to meet a very painful demise.

  “Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.” The words slipped out of my mouth before I could restrain them, but I was pretty sure that Tiffany wouldn’t pick up on the insult. A cultured person never congratulated the bride; you always said “best wishes” to the woman and “congratulations” to the man for finding such a great girl who would agree to marry him. But congratulations were entirely in order for Tiffany, the husband-stealing tramp.

  Not that I was still in any way bitter or jealous.

  “Well, enjoy your meal,” I said, hoping to get them moving along and away from Will and me.

  “Huh?” Jim had clearly been lost in thought.

  “It was nice to see you.”

  “Um, yeah. Nice to see you, too. Nice to meet you, Wayne.”

  My would-be-date bristled, and I hid my smile by dabbing at my lips with my napkin. “The name is Will,” he said.

  “Oh, of course.”

  “Come on, Jim, I’m hungry,” Tiffany whined while she tugged at his shirt sleeve.

  He looked at me for a long moment and then turned, reluctantly, and followed her across the restaurant. I had the satisfaction of watching her throw a little hissy fit in his ear as they wound their way through the other tables.

  “That was weird,” Will said. “What are the odds of running into him here?”

  I sighed. “Never forget,” I advised Will, “that Nashville isn’t a big city. It’s just a small town with suburbs.”

  As it turned out, though, I couldn’t escape my encounter with Jim and Tiffany entirely unscathed. While Will waited, I slipped to the women’s restroom. Over the last few years, my bladder had decided to shrink by a third of its capacity.

  I opened the door and walked into the restroom, innocent as a lamb, and made use of the facilities. It wasn’t until I was exiting the stall that disaster struck.

  The door opened, and in walked Tiffany.

  I smiled, nodded, and turned toward the sink to wash my hands. Even though I would have given a year of Jim’s alimony checks to be magically transported out of that restroom, I could never walk out without having washed my hands. I wasn’t a nurse, and the daughter of a nurse, for nothing.

  “I want to talk to you,” Tiffany announced. Her words stopped me in my tracks.

  “I really don’t think we have anything to talk about.” I figured she wanted to berate me for not letting her wear my mother’s wedding dress or some other piece of nonsense. She was younger than Will, although she had more of that beaten-down-by-life look around the eyes. Were those the beginnings of crow’s feet that I saw? She also reeked of cigarette smoke, a fact which surprised me given that Jim was such a health nut and a thoracic surgeon to boot. He’d removed his fair share of cancerous tumors from people’s lungs.

  “Leave Jim alone,” Tiffany snapped. She was clutching the shoulder strap of her sequined purse with a death grip. “I’m warning you.”

  My eyes must have bugged out of my head. “You’re what?” When I was in junior high, all of the catfights and fistfights between girls had occurred in the rest-room, away from the prying eyes of the teachers and administration. Tiffany had clearly cornered me here to have it out where Jim couldn’t see.

  “Stay away from Jim.”

  “T
hat shouldn’t be a problem, since I’m not married to him anymore.”

  “And quit calling him.”

  “I haven’t been calling him.”

  That one threw her for a moment. She pursed her lips, and I could practically hear the wheels turning in her head as she tried to process that information. I felt a sharp little pain in the vicinity of my heart, and I was surprised to realize what it was. Pity. Pure, unadulterated pity.

  “He keeps telling me stuff you’ve said.”

  “If you don’t want him talking to me, then tell him to quit calling. Heavens knows I’ve tried.”

  Her over-plucked eyebrows, or what was left of them, arched in surprise. And then I saw tears start to well up in her eyes. Again, I felt that sharp little pang. I didn’t want to feel it, but I did.

  “I’m not trying to come between you and Jim,” I assured her, although even as I said the words, I wondered why on earth I was being nice to this woman. She had known Jim was married the first time she brought him a plate of buffalo wings. He hadn’t even been smart enough to take off his wedding ring.

  “Then why does he want to postpone the wedding?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” She wiped away a tear that slid down her layers of mascara and onto her cheek in a dark blob. “He says we ought to push back the wedding.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Then why doesn’t he want to get married?” she wailed.

  I looked at her then, really looked at her, and what I saw beneath the layers of makeup and behind the surgically enhanced anatomy was a confused, scared young woman. How sad, at not even twenty-five, to think you needed silicone, collagen, and bleached blond hair to attract a decent guy. Although, come to think of it, those three things seemed more likely to draw the attention of the exact opposite of a good man.

  “I have no idea why he’s gotten cold feet. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “He won’t talk to me.” She started to blubber, and I reached over to give the paper towel machine a few cranks. I yanked off a hunk of brown paper and handed it to her.

  “Here.”

  She blew her nose into it with a less than ladylike honk. “Thanks.”

  I was silent, then, while she finished with her nose and wiped the tears from her eyes. Finally, she threw the wadded paper towel in the trash and looked at me again.

  “Why are you being so nice to me? I’m being a bitch to you.”

  I wasn’t sure I could explain it myself. For all those months, I’d built her up in my mind as this kind of Über-woman, a sexual goddess with whom my aging face and body could never compete. But the truth, I realized, standing in the middle of the ladies’ restroom at Green Hills Grille, was that Tiffany was just a young, uneducated girl with bad taste in makeup and plastic surgeons.

  I couldn’t believe it, but I actually felt sorry for her.

  “It takes two to tango,” I said, surprising myself. “Jim ruined our marriage, not you.” Only even as I said that, I was forced to admit to myself that while Jim’s defection to Tiffany had been the death blow, our marriage had been in decline for some time.

  “I came in here to fight,” she said.

  “I know.”

  She looked as sad as I felt. “Any advice on how to handle him?”

  I guess she was young enough—and naive enough—to think that I might actually answer that question. But I wasn’t so mature as to take the high road and hand her all the secret stuff I knew about Jim on a silver platter.

  “Feed him lots of garlic,” I said. “He really likes it.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. Key to his heart.”

  Well, not really. Actually, garlic gave him tremendous gas.

  “I’d better go.” I grabbed my purse from the bathroom counter where I’d left it when I washed my hands. “Good night.” And I fled the bathroom feeling, for good and for ill, every one of my fifty years.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Finessing a Queen

  Thankfully, the next night was Saturday and the weekly bridge game. We were meeting at my house, and I spent the day cleaning and baking, in hopes that such mundane activities would take my mind off the disturbing events of the previous evening.

  “Tonight,” Linda said after we’d filled our plates and sat down at my dining room table, “we’re going to focus on how to finesse.” Linda sat across from me, Grace on my left and Jane on my right.

  I knew what the word meant, but I wasn’t sure what it had to do with bridge. “What’s a finesse?”

  “It’s a way of slipping a lower honor card past a higher one to take the trick.” Linda laid some cards out on the scarred surface of the table. “For example, let’s say that you have the ace and three of clubs in your hand, and the dummy—me—has the queen and several low clubs in hers.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t see where this was going. Jane watched Linda’s lesson with interest, but Grace seemed distracted and unusually quiet. Before I could ask her if anything was wrong, though, Linda plowed ahead with my lesson.

  “You want to try and take a trick with the queen from the dummy for an extra winner, but you don’t know which of your opponents has the king, right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “If Grace, the person to your left, has the king, then you can make the queen a winner by finessing.”

  “What if Jane has the king?” I said, nodding to her on my right.

  “If the last person to play has the king, then your finesse won’t work. But you have a fifty-fifty chance of taking the trick, and sometimes in bridge those are pretty good odds.”

  I looked at the cards in front of me. “So, how do I play it? Do I just go ahead and lead my ace?”

  “No. You lead weakness to strength.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jane plucked a three of clubs and laid it in the middle of the table. “Lead with your low club. If Grace has the king and plays it, you play a low card and then your queen can take the trick the next time clubs are played.”

  “And if Grace doesn’t play the king?”

  “Then you play the queen from the dummy. If Grace was holding it back, you take the trick. If Jane, on your right, has the king, then you lose.”

  “Shouldn’t you try for something that you know is going to work?”

  “Finessing is about taking extra winners, not for tricks you need to make your contract.”

  “Just remember, lead from weakness to strength,” Linda reminded me as she began to deal the cards for real. “And remember, too, that it’s okay to take risks. Sometimes they pay off. You just have to know when they’re worth it.”

  “How do you know that?” I’d never been very good at trying to slip something past anyone, queen or otherwise. And I rarely ever anticipated someone making an effort to slip something past me, although I had caught Connor red-handed that time he’d tried to sneak a six-pack of beer out of the refrigerator.

  Jane nodded her agreement. “Calculated risks can pay off. You just have to know the odds and plan accordingly.”

  “Like with you and Roz,” Linda said.

  At the mention of that name, I started to feel queasy. I’d spent even more time in the past week in my futile effort to find shuttle buses and valet parking for the ball. Roz had taken to leaving daily messages on my answering machine and blitzing me with e-mails. I’d just been screening her calls and ignoring the e-mails, but I expected her to show up on my doorstep in the near future.

  “Why do I need to finesse Roz?” I had enough drama in my life. The last thing I needed was to add to it.

  Linda gave me a piercing look. “Ellie, you know she set you up for a fall. And you know she’s going to keep doing it as long as you move in the same social circles.”

  “Well, after next week, the only social circle I’ll be moving in is when I join the mall walkers at Green Hills.” I couldn’t seem to make myself admit my failure to Roz. I was like a p
erson tramping down the railroad tracks, knowing a train was barreling toward me but somehow determined not to be the first to flinch.

  “It would be better to confront her sooner than later,” Jane advised.

  Grace had been uncharacteristically silent all evening. I looked over at her. “What do you think, Grace? Should I have it out with Roz?”

  I hadn’t expected the solemn, almost grieving expression that covered her face. “Sometimes the truth has to come out,” she said, her shoulders rounded as if she bore a great burden. Since her usual posture was bolt upright, I knew something was wrong.

  “Grace? Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine, Ellie. Just feeling my age tonight.” Her thin smile didn’t reassure me any more than her feeble answer did. “I’m sure you should do as Linda says.”

  “I’d rather not confront Roz.” Despite their well-meant advice, these women had no idea of the history between Roz and me. Years of enmity, and my theft of Jim’s affections, couldn’t be solved so easily.

  “We’re not saying confront her, Ellie.” Linda waved a hand at the cards on the table. “We’re saying finesse her. Slip one past her. So that the next time she tries to set you up, she’ll think twice.”

  “It sounds pretty complicated.”

  “It’s time for a power play.” Linda leaned forward. “I’ve been in Nashville society for a long time, and one thing I know is that women like Roz will always be a part of the equation. But, if you can learn to manage them, your life suddenly gets a whole lot easier.”

  The mere idea that I could ever “manage” Roz Crowley was ludicrous. No one in her life had ever been able to put a leash on her.

  “I’m not the woman for that job,” I protested.

  “On the contrary, you’re exactly the woman for the job,” Linda said.

  Because of Linda pushing so hard for me to finesse Roz, I was grumpy the rest of the evening and couldn’t even enjoy it when I pulled off several successful finesses of the bridge variety. Didn’t the other three understand that I was no match for my oldest enemy? Sure I’d won the battle over Jim, but she would fight to her last breath before she let me win the battle for the upper hand in Nashville society.