“Let the children stay and help us. Oh, do say yes, Marilee. We’d love to have them, and then we can take them to get pizza with us, and you can focus directly on your write-up.”
“Well, I don’t know….” The strong reluctance to let the children out her sight swept Marilee; she was getting to an irrational point of reluctance with this.
Her gaze went quickly to locate her little people. Willie Lee was on hands and knees helping Doris Northrupt tamp dirt around a small bush, and Munro lay sprawled a foot away in the shade of the city sign. She looked down at Corrine, who looked up at her.
“Would you like to stay and play here?”
Corrine nodded somewhat hesitantly. A smile was on her heart-shaped face, if not quite on her lips.
Taking herself in hand, Marilee kissed the children, got back behind the wheel of her Cherokee and drove away, although she looked in her rearview mirror several times. She reminded herself that they were all in the same town, that it wasn’t the same as being separated by one hundred miles. And she really was very glad to have a few hours to herself. Even if it was a bit strange to be on her own.
She pulled swiftly into the driveway, went into the house, dropped her leather tote on the couch and carefully put her keys on the desk. Since Corrine wasn’t there to help her find her keys, she had better keep track of them.
Pausing, she listened. There was the ticking of the small clock on her desk, a gurgle from the refrigerator.
She had not heard it this quiet in months. For the past five nights, Aunt Vella’s snoring had filled the air. Heaven knew Marilee didn’t want Aunt Vella to feel as if she were in the way. Aunt Vella had been trying so hard not to be an inconvenience, which was why Marilee felt like a rat wishing she could see an end to the situation of her aunt snoring every night in one of the children’s beds. The snoring did not concern soundly sleeping Willie Lee, but Corrine could not sleep in the same room with Aunt Vella. After two mornings of waking up and finding Corrine on the couch, Marilee had insisted Corrine share her bed; she did not believe the couch was good support for a child’s growing little body. With Corrine came Munro. As much as she had enjoyed the first nights of her niece and the dog sharing her bed, Marilee now found herself needing breathing room.
Aunt Vella meant one more adult sharing a house with only two bedrooms and one bathroom, and one coffeemaker. Marilee simply wasn’t used to it. It gave her a disconcerting glimpse of how set in her ways she had become, and the adjustments that would be required if she married Parker.
She and Parker still had not settled the question of marriage. For the past five days they had hardly seen each other. He had stopped in for supper several times, but had rushed out again on emergency calls. He had not made any further mention of his proposal of marriage. She was not only too hesitant to ask, but too stubborn, too.
Right this minute there was no need to think of that, she told herself, yanking open the refrigerator and staring into it, right at the latest glass pitcher of tea bestowed upon her by Tate Holloway.
The man was true to his word about returning her box of tea all made up, she thought, carrying the pitcher to the counter, where she poured herself a glass of the sweet, invigorating brew. In fact, her editor seemed to have developed the habit of popping in her back door each evening to bring her a pitcher of tea and ask if she needed his help on the new whiz-bang computer, or question her about one or another person he had met in town. Tate definitely had the journalistic quality of being curious about people.
She had not been alone with him, though, to have the opportunity to ask him what he had meant by a woman like her, the phrase still echoing in her mind. Although tempted, she resisted the urge to seek time alone with him. That did not seem like a good idea. Every time she came face-to-face with the man, she imagined what it would be like to kiss him, which was foolishness in the highest extreme.
She took the glass of tea—which had just the right amount of lemon; the man sure knew how to make iced tea—to her desk, where she sat with firmness and turned on the little whiz-bang computer that she had grown to appreciate…mostly. She had forgotten her notes, so she had to get up to get them. She sat back down and adjusted herself on the chair. Sometimes adjusting herself in the chair helped her to think.
With determination, she took up a pencil and made a hasty outline. She didn’t find it an adequate outline; she couldn’t seem to get things lined in her mind. She sipped the tea, thinking it would stimulate thought.
Then she realized she was staring at the photograph of Stuart. She picked it up and looked more closely at the smiling face. She did keep it for Willie Lee…but she supposed she kept it for herself, too.
Gazing at her ex-husband’s image, she wondered where he was now.
He could be dead, for all she knew.
But she did not believe he was dead. She had felt him a lot in her heart these last weeks, for some strange reason. She wondered, in the way a woman does when remembering snapshots from the past, if he had changed radically from the dashing young man he was in the photograph—he had been thirty-eight then. He would be almost fifty-five now.
She firmly set the photograph back in place.
With a frustrated sigh, she ran her hands through her hair. She found it ridiculous that she could not keep her thoughts in place. She had a story to write. She adjusted herself in the chair again, looked over the scribbled outline, then sat staring at the computer screen.
She found it ridiculous that the house seemed too quiet.
With that uncomfortable thought, her mind went zinging back to the children and Aunt Vella. She had the sensation of being bereft, and had the very odd urge to race right down and get the children and her aunt.
Almost before realizing it, she was on her feet, taking up her keys and purse, and heading out to her car.
She did not go to get the children. She could not go get them; they were having a perfectly wonderful time with Aunt Vella and Winston. They would all think she had lost her mind if she went and got them.
And Marilee really wanted this time alone. That she felt a little afraid of being alone was, she concluded, to be expected, since she had not experienced the alone state in quite a while.
While thinking all of this, she homed directly like a carrier pigeon to the drugstore. Realizing this, she thought that she could have walked down and gotten out nervous energy, at the same time having an argument with herself, demanding that she go back home and get to work. She would do that, she decided, after a hot-fudge sundae.
She came to a bumping halt head-in at the curb. She got out, slammed the Cherokee door, walked swiftly into the drugstore and ordered the sundae from her cousin Belinda, who had, since her mother had left both husband and store, been working the day shift and leaving the evenings to two high school teens.
“Just go ahead and get it yourself, okay? I’ve been on my feet all day. I’m beat.” Belinda said this from where she sat on her mother’s tall stool, reading the Sunday edition of the newspaper. “Would you refill my Dr Pepper, while you’re there?”
She pushed forward a glass of ice on the counter. What told Marilee that the person behind the wide-open newspaper was indeed her cousin were the pink fuzzy slippers.
Marilee snatched up the glass, thinking that it was a good thing Aunt Vella wasn’t there. Aunt Vella despised her youngest child and only daughter going around in bedroom slippers.
Marilee herself often had trouble believing Belinda had come out of her aunt. Aunt Vella had once been a raven-haired beauty possessed of ten-carat diamond style, which she had still. Belinda, on the other hand, was a dishwater blonde with a style no higher than five-and-dime glass. That Belinda took after her father was the explanation in Marilee’s mind, most especially as she glanced toward the pharmacy window.
She could hear the murmur of her uncle’s television and imagined him back there slouched in his old chair. The thought annoyed her. She felt her uncle should not go on as if his wife of forty-five y
ears had not up and left. She did not expect Uncle Perry to suddenly turn into a Lothario, but the least he could do was pick up the phone and call Aunt Vella.
“I left your mother a little bit ago out at the west welcome sign. She’s out there with the Rose Club planting roses.” Marilee plopped the refilled soft drink on the counter.
“I know,” Belinda said from behind the paper. “Minnie Oakes stopped in here on her way out there to take cold drinks. She made sure to tell Daddy where Mama was.”
“What did he say?” Marilee got a vintage sundae glass from the shelf.
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear. Jaydee is sure chewing at this detention center like a dog with a bone. I heard the mayor will probably have to have plastic surgery on his nose.”
“They won’t know for sure if it is broken until the swelling goes down.” She fought the cellophane covering of a new box of chocolate brownies; apparently the wrapping was designed to keep the brownies safe for a century.
“Well, the detention center is comin’. Socking the mayor doesn’t seem like a big help.”
“Jaydee didn’t really mean to sock the mayor, and it wasn’t really over the detention center. He was just frustrated in general, like he can get.”
Marilee felt similarly frustrated in that instant by the cellophane covering on the brownie box. She had the enormous urge to throw the package on the floor and stomp on it. And suddenly she realized that she was irrationally angry. It seemed like she had been falling into irrational anger for weeks.
“Then what was it about? I heard it was the detention center. Paper says detention center.”
With deliberate calmness, Marilee got the scissors from beside the cash register. “Jaydee was pretty worked up about the detention center, but he was aiming to sock Juice Tinsley, because he made a smart remark about Jaydee’s wife possibly ending up in the juvenile detention center, so it would be easy for Jaydee to visit her. Walter got socked when he stepped in to keep the peace.” With careful control, she cut the cellophane at the end of the brownie box.
“Jaydee’s wife?” Belinda peeked around the paper. “Did he marry that twenty-one-year-old girl he’s been goin’ around with?”
“Uh-huh. A week ago Sunday.”
“Welll…he’s at that age for men.”
Marilee frowned at the comment, which she found highly sexist. She also found Belinda highly lacking in her attitude about the situation with her parents. She was tired of being the one to shoulder all the care about all of this.
“This is pretty much of a surprise about that dead guy being Fayrene’s first ex-husband, isn’t it?” Belinda again peeked around the paper. “How many husbands has she had?”
“Three, I think.” Marilee plopped a brownie in the dish and licked her fingers.
“Well, it sure is a good thing Fayrene read that back issue of the paper, isn’t it? If she had just thrown it out, no one might ever have known about that guy bein’ her ex-husband.”
Marilee leaned back against the chrome cabinets. “Belinda, we need to get your father to call your mother. The longer they stay split like this, the harder it will be for them to make up.”
“I don’t know what we can do about it.”
“What if your mother does not go home, Belinda? What if this turns out to be a permanent split?”
Belinda peered around the paper. “Well, I told Daddy that I’m gonna hire somebody to come in here to work this counter during the day. Just because he had Mama doin’ it for thirty-five years, doesn’t mean I’m gonna. I’ll work four nights a week, like I have, and that’s all.” She disappeared back behind the paper.
Marilee stared at the wall of newspaper, and then her gaze went to the pharmacy window. She thought of her aunt’s face whenever speaking to or about Winston Valentine. She looked down at the box of brownies, took a second one and plopped it into the dish.
Belinda said, “I knew all this about Fayrene’s ex-husband. Lyle was over there at the station Friday afternoon when Fayrene came in, waving the picture of the car in the paper. He went with the sheriff to take her up to identify the body. He said when she saw the man, she went nuts, just flipped right out. I guess she had really been countin’ on seein’ this guy, and not dead.”
Dropping an enormous scoop of vanilla ice cream atop the brownies, Marilee thought that people counted on so much in this life, such as finding a mate and staying in love. Being able to find happiness. Being able to at least know what life was about. High expectations that appeared to be a mistake.
“It sure is funny about this guy using an alias. John V. Smith…Wonder what that V was for.”
“It was a made-up name,” Marilee pointed out with an energetic tone she felt necessary to combat Belinda’s one-way train of thought, as she scooped warm fudge over the ice cream.
“Well, that was the whole trouble with why they couldn’t identify him. They were runnin’ searches on a John V. Smith, not a Dan Kaplan,” Belinda said, as if the fact needed stating. “Lyle said the sheriff mentioned right off that it was strange this guy just had a driver’s license and no credit cards or anything. What did Fayrene say about her husband using a fake ID?” She peeked out with a raised eyebrow. “Lyle never saw her after she flipped out.”
“I only talked to her a minute. She wasn’t in any shape for me to ask questions.” Marilee said, taking up the can of whipped cream, shaking it. “I got what’s in the article from the sheriff.”
She aimed whipped cream at her sundae and thought that it would be a waste of effort to talk to Belinda about her mother’s probable infatuation with Winston; Belinda would not be able to bring her head out of the newspaper.
Fluffy cream spurted out, and then only a dribbling stream. “Are you all out of whipped cream?”
“I don’t know.”
Marilee walked to the refrigerator in the storeroom and returned shaking a fresh can of whipped cream, the ball inside clinking like a piston.
Belinda was saying, “Lyle says fake drivers’ licenses are real easy to get. You can get ’em at a lot of flea markets, if you know who to see. I don’t know why any of us bother to go get a real driver’s license, if that is the case.”
Why, indeed? The whipped cream shot out of the can with a velocity that caused her to jump.
“Well, Fayrene will be sittin’ pretty,” Belinda said, “if she gets the fifty thousand.”
“What fifty thousand?” Marilee paused in the act of opening the jar of cherries.
Belinda peeked around the paper. “The fifty-thousand dollars that was in the guy’s trunk. You didn’t know about it? I thought maybe you knew but the sheriff didn’t want you to put it in the article. Lyle says he wants it kept quiet right now.”
“No.” And if the sheriff wanted it quiet, he shouldn’t have told Lyle.
“Oh, well, I guess Neville is still lookin’ into it. I don’t think they’ve even told Fayrene. Lyle just told me this mornin’. Lyle thinks Fayrene could end up gettin’it, since her ex doesn’t have any relatives. But that’s only if it isn’t stolen. This Dan Kaplan could have just robbed a bank or something.”
Belinda disappeared behind the newspaper again.
Marilee stood there with the jar of cherries, wondering if she ought to go down there and get the scoop from Neville.
But she really didn’t want to. Lord knew she had a story she was supposed to be writing right that minute, and here she was making a gigantic sundae. She wanted to sit down with the sundae and eat every scrap of it. Besides, there was little need for a write-up in the newspaper; with Lyle knowing about the money, likely half the town would know by the end of the day.
She twisted the top off the jar of cherries and fished out a stem with her fingers, while Belinda commented on the sinkhole.
“Wonder where all that dirt went?” she said. “Maybe it fills up the hole where they have pumped out oil somewhere else. Holes do have to be filled.”
Marilee plopped the cherry in her mouth, twirling the stem a
nd tying it in a knot with her tongue. Stuart had taught her that trick. It took concentration and settled her mind.
Fourteen
Chocolate Sundaes
The bell over the door rang out. It was Charlene MacCoy. She came over to the soda fountain and ordered two barbecue sandwiches and three fountain Coca-Colas to go.
“The sandwiches are for me and Oralee,” she said. “Dixie doesn’t touch barbecue. I wish I wouldn’t,” she added with a sigh.
“Marilee will make the sandwiches for you.” Belinda sat where she was. “You’re already workin’ around, Marilee.”
Marilee reached for the container of buns. While she began making the sandwiches, Imperia Brown came in to discuss another month of weekly Blaine’s Drugstore ads in the newspaper with Belinda, since Vella, who usually handled the store’s advertising, wasn’t available.
Belinda refused to do anything about the advertising. “I’m not takin’ on that job. You’ll have to talk to Daddy.”
Imperia, who never minced words, said, “Girl, talkin’ to Perry is like talkin’ to a stump.” Then, “Marilee, that barbecue smells good. Would you make me one?” Imperia was a big-boned woman who deemed worrying about eating schedules and calories and cholesterol harmful to health.
Marilee got out another bun.
Imperia, who sported fire-engine-red fingernails, admired Charlene’s manicure, and Charlene said that it was the work of the new nail technician who had just begun that week.
“I’m getting too old to be doin’ nails,” Charlene sighed. “It is a young woman’s job.”
“Oh, listen to you, girl,” Imperia said, waving her away. “Age is a matter of mind.”
“Age is a matter of eyes, too, and mine are starin’ down the barrel of the far side of forty-five. You can do all sorts of things to look thirty-five forever, but there is just no way to make your eyes see like they did at thirty-five.”
Imperia, who was in her midthirties, cast Charlene a startled look.
“I don’t imagine you need to work, anyway, bein’ married to Mason MacCoy now,” Belinda said, not at all concealing envy.
Cold Tea on a Hot Day Page 17
