“Don’t pay her no attention,” Lillian King, Eula’s nursing supervisor, advised her the week before. “She’s just trying to get you upset. That’s part of the disease, bless her heart. She wants extra attention. She tells all kinds of stories. Last week? Said she’s gonna replace Ethel Merman on Broadway. She was beltin’ out ‘No Business Like Show Business’ in chapel, while everybody else was singing ‘Walk with Me, Jesus.’ And in craft shop? You know what she did? Everybody else made themselves a nice little ashtray. Miss Eula? She took that clay, and she made…” Lillian King turned her head, embarrassed. “I hate to say what she made, Miz McGowan.”
“You can tell me,” Mary Bliss prompted.
Lillian King put her hands up to Mary Bliss’s ear and whispered. “She made a penis.”
“Really?” Mary Bliss was astonished.
“Yeah,” Lillian King said. “And you know what? Her memory ain’t all that bad.”
When she could stall no longer, Mary Bliss went out to load up the car. But a dark sedan was pulling up into the driveway, blocking her in.
It was Matt Hayslip.
He jumped out of the car, leaving the motor running, and jogged over to her.
She rolled the window down. “Hello,” she said. No trace of warmth in her voice, she was sure of it.
“Hey there,” he said. “How are you getting along?” As though she had all the time in the world.
“Actually, I was just leaving,” she said pointedly. “Today’s the day I take lunch to my mother-in-law. At the nursing home. It’s sort of the high point of the week for her. So I hate to keep her waiting.”
“Miss Eula,” he said. “We talked at Parker’s funeral. Hell of an old lady. Great spirit. Say—why don’t you let me drive you over there? I’ll bet she’d love to have another visitor.”
Mary Bliss was speechless.
“Oh no,” she said. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. Meemaw’s health isn’t all that good.” She tapped her forehead. “Her memory. Most of the time, it’s all she can do to remember who I am. Being around strangers gets her confused and upset.”
“Sure,” Hayslip said. “I understand. She probably likes her little routine. In that case, I’ll just stay out in the lobby and wait on you. Afterwards, we could go out for lunch. That’s really why I dropped by. To see if I could take you to lunch.”
“Why?” Mary Bliss asked.
“Just to talk,” Hayslip said. He opened her car door and flashed her a smile. The creases in the corners of his eyes weren’t crow’s-feet, you wouldn’t call them that on a man. They were crinkles. And they looked friendly. But looks, Mary Bliss knew from experience, could be deceiving. And he didn’t look as scary without that beard of his. He had a strong chin. He was used to getting his way, she thought. Well, too damn bad. It was her turn to get her way.
Now he was tugging at her hand. His grip was firm, his voice teasing. “Come on. When was the last time you had lunch out? You can’t just stay holed up in your house forever, you know.”
“I’m not holed up,” she protested. “I go out. I work, I shop. I work in the garden. I see friends.”
“I meant for fun,” Hayslip said. “When was the last time you went out for fun?”
“You sound like Katharine,” Mary Bliss said. But she found herself getting out of her car, letting herself be led over to his, even buckling herself into that soft black leather upholstery. What was she doing?
“Who’s Katharine?” he asked, after he’d stashed her picnic basket in the backseat and was backing down her driveway.
Was she being abducted? But she’d gone willingly. What was wrong with her? Matthew Hayslip was the enemy. A sexy enemy, but the enemy nevertheless. And she was consorting with him. She was losing her grip. Next thing you knew, she’d be belting out show tunes and making obscene crafts from modeling clay.
“Katharine is my best friend,” Mary Bliss said. “She came down to Mexico. You know, after the accident. She’s been pestering me too, trying to get me to go out.”
“Like where?” Hayslip asked. He’d turned the car in the direction of the nursing home without being told which one it was. “Where does she want you to go? The movies, something like that?”
“It’s a dance, actually,” Mary Bliss said. “The dance at the country club. Tomorrow night.”
“Sure,” Hayslip said. “That’s a great idea. I’m going. You should go too. It’s good to get out, see people. Change of scenery.”
“I don’t think so,” Mary Bliss said, shaking her head. “You don’t know Fair Oaks. People talk.”
“I live here, but I guess I don’t know it as well as you,” Hayslip said. “But people talk anyway. A country club dance, that seems pretty harmless to me. What’s the worst people could say?”
“You don’t want to know,” Mary Bliss said. “Parker’s only been dead a month. It’s too soon. Anyway, I just don’t feel like going. So I’m staying home. Katharine can just go by herself.”
“That’s Katharine Weidman?” Hayslip asked.
“You know her?” Mary Bliss asked.
“I know Charlie,” he said. “Met him in the grill the other day, waiting on his foursome. Seems like a good guy.”
“He mentioned meeting you,” Mary Bliss said carefully. “He said you offered to help in getting the insurance company to pay my claim.”
“Like you said, Fair Oaks is a small town. Somebody mentioned you were having kind of a financial struggle. I just thought, Parker would hate that, you and your daughter having to go without.”
Parker had planned just that, for over a year, Mary Bliss thought, glancing discreetly over at him. He hadn’t given a damn about her and Erin. About how they would get along without any money. Now this stranger was taking it upon himself to help her out. What was he up to?
“We’re not really in dire straits,” Mary Bliss said. “Not yet, anyway. I’ve taken on a job this summer, and when school starts up I’ll have my teacher’s salary again.”
“What’s a teacher make in this state, anyway?” Hayslip asked. “Thirty, forty thousand? A garbageman makes more than that.”
“Thirty-nine, five, with a graduate degree, which I have,” Mary Bliss said. God! She’d just told this man how much money she made. The next thing you knew, she’d be telling him her bra size. What was it about him?
“Charlie mentioned that Parker refinanced the house. Some kind of squirrelly deal, and the whole note comes due next month,” Hayslip said. “Forgive me for prying, Mary Bliss, but that seems like pretty dire straits to me. You’d lose the house, wouldn’t you, if the whole note came due all at once?”
“It wasn’t exactly a squirrelly deal,” Mary Bliss said primly. “Is that what Charlie told you? I wish he hadn’t been discussing my private affairs in the bar up at the club.”
“Don’t get mad at Charlie now,” Hayslip said. He was pulling into the entrance to the nursing home. “He wasn’t the one who told me you were in trouble. Anyway, he knows I do some investigative work, on a consulting basis. We were just chatting, confidentially. Nobody else was around, and I never said a word to anybody else. It wasn’t like we were gossiping about you.”
He flashed her an apologetic smile. She felt a slight vibration, a hum, and a wave of heat in her pelvic area. Danger! the hum said. Testosterone overload.
“I have Erin to think about,” Mary Bliss said, ignoring her hormonal thermostat. “How would you like it if everybody in town was talking about your parents like that? The other night, a little child told me his mother told him Erin’s daddy took all our money and now we don’t have a pot to piss in. Erin was sitting right there! We laughed it off, but how do you think she felt?”
Hayslip frowned. He pulled into a parking space near the door to the nursing home and put the car in park.
“You’re a hard person to help, you know that?” he said after he’d turned off the ignition. “What do I have to do to convince you I just want to assist you in getting your claim paid?”<
br />
“Tell the truth.” There. She’d said it. “Why should you worry about us? You don’t even know me. You’ve never even met my daughter. What’s in it for you?”
“It’s a puzzle,” Hayslip said. He got out, went around the car, and opened her door. “Why did Parker liquidate all your assets? What was he thinking about? And where did all that money go? You two were married, they were joint assets, right? So it’s not just his money, it’s yours. From what Charlie told me, there’s about a million bucks missing. Where did it go? That’s a puzzle that interests me. And I’ll admit, you interest me too.”
That smile again. He was doing it on purpose. It was really quite unfair. Hummm, said her pelvis. Warning! Warning! She felt her face flush.
“Me?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Is that a problem?”
“I’m not all that interesting,” she said, reaching into the car for her picnic basket. “Middle-aged schoolteacher. Soccer mom.”
Available! her pelvis screamed. This had to stop. She was going to have to look into some kind of hormone reversal therapy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way in the middle of the day.
“Don’t forget the criminal part,” he said.
“Criminal?” She nearly dropped Eula’s lunch.
“Sure. I caught you watering your lawn illegally. Remember? The first time we met? You were out in your backyard, in that nightgown of yours.”
“I was sopping wet, barefoot, my hair hadn’t even been combed.”
“You were the sexiest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Hayslip said with a wink. He took the basket from her and led the way into the nursing home lobby. “Now that’s what I call interesting.”
Sexy. Dear Lord. Had Parker ever called her sexy? Had her pelvis ever hummed at the sound of his voice? She thought not. She slowed down just long enough to put on a little lipstick. For Meemaw, she told herself.
Eula had parked her wheelchair in the lobby, as close to the front door as she could get.
“Who’s this?” she demanded, cradling the picnic basket in her lap, nodding her head toward Hayslip.
“Hello again,” Matt said, bending down and taking Eula’s hand in his. “I’m Matt. Remember? We met at your son’s memorial service.”
Eula regarded him carefully, looking him up and down. “The new boyfriend,” she said. “You got some nerve sniffing around my daughter-in-law when her first husband ain’t even really dead.”
“Meemaw!” Mary Bliss exclaimed. Something inside her shriveled up. Probably just her libido.
Hayslip’s eyes crinkled deeply. “I’m actually a family friend,” he said. “Used to play tennis with Parker.”
“And now you’re playing footsie with his wife,” Eula sniped.
Mary Bliss grabbed the handles of Eula’s wheelchair and started down the hall with it. “He is not my boyfriend,” she exclaimed, loud enough for everyone, especially the nurses at the reception desk, and especially Hayslip, to hear.
“Not yet,” he said. But Mary Bliss was long gone.
43
Mary Bliss looked up when the waitress approached. “White wine,” she said quickly. Hayslip laughed and ordered a beer.
“You probably think I’m an alcoholic,” she said, putting the menu aside. “Maybe I am. All I know is, after an hour with Meemaw, I need a drink.”
“Has she always been like that?” Hayslip asked. He took a roll from the bread basket and offered it to her. She waved it away.
“Like what? Foulmouthed? Mean? Or just senile?”
“The nice word for it is feisty,” Hayslip said.
“I’m afraid I’m not in a very nice mood,” Mary Bliss said. “It’s awful, I know, but I’ve gotten so I just dread spending time with her.”
“Then why go?”
“She’s my mother-in-law,” Mary Bliss said. “Erin’s grandmother. With Parker gone, we’re her only family. Fair Oaks is a very nice nursing home—it should be, for the amount of money we pay them, but you know how nursing homes are. If a patient doesn’t have family looking out for them, they let things slide. The sheets don’t get changed, they don’t get bathed properly, and they don’t eat right. Those nurses know I’ll be there every Wednesday, and I drop in other times too, so usually, Eula is very well cared for.”
“She’s pretty nasty to you,” Hayslip said. “Is that part of her senility, or whatever they call it?”
The waitress was back with her chardonnay. Mary Bliss took her glass and took a sip.
“I was never what you would call Meemaw’s first choice to become Mrs. Parker McGowan,” Mary Bliss said. “In her eyes, marrying me was definitely a step down for her only son.”
Hayslip poured his beer into a glass. “What was her objection?”
“The usual,” Mary Bliss said. “We were too young. I was from a broken home. And from Alabama! God, that was really unforgivable.”
“Does she really believe Parker’s alive?” Hayslip asked.
Mary Bliss set her wine glass carefully down on the table. “That’s what she says. She insists he’s alive, on an island somewhere. Cavorting with native women.”
“Sort of like Gauguin?”
“I doubt my mother-in-law knows who Gauguin is,” Mary Bliss said. “The doctors say it’s part of her dementia. She also insists she’s going to appear in a revival of Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway. And in the meantime, she can really be very unpleasant.”
“And yet you still keep visiting her, cooking for her, seeing after her.”
Their food arrived. The waitress set a chef’s salad down in front of Mary Bliss and a hot roast beef sandwich in front of Matt Hayslip. He attacked his food immediately. Mary Bliss watched, her appetite suddenly vanished.
“I feel guilty,” she said quietly. “She’s old, and she’s unhappy. She hasn’t made any new friends at the nursing home, and her old friends have either died or stopped visiting her. I guess I go because I’m afraid someday I’ll be like her. Old and alone.”
“You’d never be like her,” Hayslip said. “Look at all those people who came to Parker’s memorial service. They didn’t come for Parker, not really. They came for you.”
She speared a piece of lettuce with her fork and nibbled at it.
“You’re a good person, Mary Bliss,” Hayslip said. “People want to help you. They want to be around you. Is that so hard for you to believe?”
“You don’t know me very well,” Mary Bliss said, uncomfortable under his steady gaze. She thought of excusing herself to go to the ladies’ room, but then what? Where could she hide from this man who would not look away from her?
“I know you better than you think,” Matt said. “I’m a cop, remember?”
“I thought you were retired,” Mary Bliss said, alarmed again.
“You leave the job, but it doesn’t leave you,” Hayslip said. “I guess that’s why I’m so intrigued with your financial problems. Admit it, aren’t you the least bit curious about where all that money went?”
Her temper flared. “Curious? I don’t have time to be curious. I’ve got a daughter to raise, and a house to run, and no money to do it with. My problems may be some kind of elaborate jigsaw puzzle to you, but it’s no game to me, Matt. Parker’s gone. That much I know. The money’s gone too. I don’t need somebody solving unsolvable puzzles for me. I need for the insurance people to pay my claim, and let me get on with my life.”
She set her fork down on the table and it clanged against the glass top.
He looked up, obviously surprised by her outburst.
“Hey,” he said, “it’s not a game. I didn’t mean it like that. I was just thinking, maybe I could look into things for you. I read the police report from the Mexican authorities. I even checked the weather and the tide charts for that day. And I was wondering about that boat the hotel rented you. How seaworthy was it? It was a relatively calm day that day, according to the reports I read. Seems to me, a wave shouldn’t have smashed it up that
way. Maybe the hotel is at fault, maybe they’re legally liable for Parker’s death and your head injury.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Mary Bliss said, her face stony. “It happened. He’s dead. The money’s gone. And I don’t have the time or the resources to hire lawyers and investigators to run around to Mexico and chase after a lost cause.”
Matt reached across the table to grasp her hand, but it was too late. She was standing up, reaching for the pocketbook hanging on the back of her chair.
“I’m sorry,” Mary Bliss said. “I’m not hungry. I guess you’d better take me home.”
44
Katharine appeared to be dressed in a pale-green bedsheet. Crib sheet, more like it, Mary Bliss thought, appraising the scant amount of material draped revealingly around her best friend. She was also wearing a star-shaped halo-type headband, glittery green eyeshadow, and four-inch spike-heeled green evening sandals, and she carried a green torch.
“I thought this was a Fourth of July party,” Mary Bliss said, “not Halloween.”
“I’m Lady Liberty,” Katharine said, twirling around so that Mary Bliss could get the whole effect.
“You look more like Lady Marmalade,” Mary Bliss said. Still, she got out her Polaroid camera and took a snapshot of Katharine standing in front of the flag by her front door.
“Come on and go with me to the dance,” Katharine said, her voice wheedling. “It’ll be so much fun. Wait ’til you see Charlie. I got him the most adorable Uncle Sam outfit.”
“If it’s anything like your version of Lady Liberty, I’m just as happy to stay home,” Mary Bliss said. “I love Charlie to death, but I don’t want to see your ex in stars-and-stripes boxers.”
“They’re not really boxers,” Katharine explained. “You know Charlie. Such an old stick-in-the-mud. I’d say they’re more like gym shorts. But with sequins. I got you something too. It’s out in the car.”
Little Bitty Lies Page 22
