“He promised just to talk for five minutes,” Julian went on. “He’s looking for kids to help with the trails this summer. One mother told Bob it was unseemly—I’m quoting here—for Bob to be trying to sign up trail-building volunteers at a birthday party. And Bob said, first of all, Drew had invited him. Second, Bob said, he’d had one kid work on the trails for two summers, then Bob wrote him a recommendation, and the kid got into Harvard. And did this parent want her kid to go to an Ivy League school? The mother practically fell over herself ushering Bob out back.”
Marla rolled her eyes at me. “Has he started talking yet? Set the timer. I don’t want muscle-bound Bob and dreary Ophelia talking more than five minutes.”
“She’s not dreary,” I said. “She’s shy.”
“Not to mention totally clueless in the fashion department.”
“Marla, that’s—”
“Did you set the timer?”
I obligingly set the stupid timer and peered out beyond the newly dug horseshoe pitches. I knew Bob Rushwood only by sight. With a black Spandex top and leggings showing off his wide shoulders and brawny legs, he was one of those ageless athletes who looked thirty but could be forty. I frowned. And who would choose to put beautiful dark brown hair into dreads?
Tom appeared from behind me. “What are you looking at? Or are you looking at a person?”
“Do any fortyish white athletes you know wear dreads?” I asked.
Tom peered out the window and saw Bob. “Absolutely.”
“But don’t big, manly athletes avoid hairdressing salons?”
“Miss G., if you make the kind of money professional athletes do, you can pay for a hairdresser to come to your house.”
At Bob’s side, Ophelia Unger was shorter than her fiancé. She wore black-framed glasses, and was thinner than I remembered. Her shaggy dark hair was longer than I recalled, too. Her attractive face was set in a bored expression. Clearly, the trail-digging enterprise didn’t make her want to go to Harvard. Where Bob’s tight outfit stretched across his pecs, abs, and other muscles I didn’t have, Ophelia sported a lime collared shirt, lime Bermuda shorts, and sandals. I wondered about what Neil had said, that Ophelia seemed so unhappy. She certainly looked miserable enough.
On Marla’s grass, the kids and parents listening to Bob lounged in various states of repose. Two boys appeared to be asleep.
I said, “Apparently, the idea of building trails isn’t meeting with enthusiasm.”
“D’you think?” Marla replied from beside me. The timer hadn’t gone off, but never mind. With the parents watching, she pulled out a frying pan and a metal spoon and raced onto her back porch. Julian snorted with laughter as she banged on the pot and shouted to Bob and Ophelia that their time was up.
I glanced around for Tom, who had disappeared. Then I spotted him, setting up Marla’s new volleyball net next to the horseshoe pitches. What a guy.
It was time to start baking the entrées. Tom had preheated Marla’s ovens and left the schedule where I could see it. I put dish after dish onto the racks: Julian’s foil-covered chile relleno tortas, my enchiladas suizas, the Boatfields’ tostadas, arroz con pollo from the Smythes, empanadas from the Mikulskis.
The adults who hadn’t been listening to the presentation on trail digging were milling about Marla’s kitchen, stirring gazpacho, grating cheddar, queso, and Monterey Jack cheeses, spooning soft dollops of sour cream and guacamole into crystal bowls. A few of them wandered into the backyard to help Tom with the net.
With her usual fanfare, Holly arrived. She dinged unnecessarily and repeatedly on Marla’s doorbell. Summoning her audience, I thought, with a smile. It was twenty-five minutes after the party was supposed to have started. I’d never known Holly to be on time for anything.
When I opened the door, instead of seeing her smiling face and hearing her humor-filled voice, I saw only Drew, who had high cheekbones, was six inches taller than his mother, and sported the same shaved head as his teammates.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked.
Drew pointed, and I looked around. Holly, huddled beside Marla’s door, wore a sparkly silver designer pantsuit with complicated folds and creases. The shimmery fabric had been skillfully cut away to show off her tanned, buff shoulders, which she’d draped loosely with more glittery fabric. She’d swept her blond hair back. Holly didn’t look like a parent; she looked like a model who’d been given the wrong outfit for a backyard barbecue. Stringed bags hung from each of her hands. She glanced fearfully down the driveway, where, I now realized, a tall, well-built, balding man was standing. I was willing to bet his male-pattern baldness was owing to age, not choice.
A fringe of sandy hair around the man’s collar made me look twice. Was this the guy I’d almost hit that morning? If so, he was no longer wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Oh, how I wished I’d gotten a good look at him . . . before I hit the boulder.
“Let me in quickly,” Holly said to me.
“Mom,” said Drew, “who is that guy?”
“Nobody,” she said. It was clearly a lie. “Goldy, don’t look. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
I couldn’t help myself; I craned forward to get a better view of the stranger. But in the gathering gloom, I could only make out an unmoving male. Apart from the bit of sandy hair, all I could tell was that he was perhaps in his early fifties. He had a pale, moon-shaped face. He may have been tall and brawny, but his ill-fitting, long-sleeved shirt and rumpled pants did him no favors. His expression was gloomy, as if someone in his family had just died.
“Holly,” I began, “what the—”
Holly slipped through the door. Drew quickly followed. I continued to stare at the odd-looking man until I heard Holly’s bags hit the floor. One of her powerful hands pulled me back inside. She firmly shut the door.
“He’s a son of a bitch,” she hissed, her blue eyes ferocious.
“Is he a dangerous son of a bitch?”
Holly looked unsure, and I recalled the moon-faced man’s unhappy expression, his body slouched in apparent defeat. Was this the guy who’d wanted to know where the party was, who’d wanted to know if Holly would be here? Had he been lurking on Arnold Palmer Avenue that morning? And could he really have been one of Holly’s former boyfriends? He hadn’t been particularly good-looking. Like Ophelia, he lacked fashion sense. Even George Ingleby was handsome, in a broad-faced, bearded, Russian-army-officer sort of way, and always dressed in khaki slacks and a tailored shirt. The guy in Marla’s driveway looked like an advertisement for Goodwill.
Yet there was something about Goodwill Man that had appeared familiar, apart from the fact that I thought I might have almost mowed him down that morning. What was it? I grasped for the memory, but it was just out of reach. Had I catered an event where he’d been a guest? If that was the case, the party lay in the distant past.
Holly said, “You should tell Tom to get out his service revolver. Just in case.”
“Holly,” I demanded, “who was that guy?” Even florists, I thought, send sterner-looking individuals.
“See if he’s gone,” she commanded.
I scanned the driveway. The man had turned his back on Marla’s house and was slowly, carefully, making his way toward the street.
“Crisis over,” I said, my tone reassuring. “Come see Marla’s kitchen.” I hugged Holly, but she remained stiff. I added, “Really, Holly, that guy looked as if he’d rather be anywhere than standing out in the driveway.”
“You have to trust me. He’s crazy.”
“I don’t know about crazy. He certainly didn’t look happy.” I tried to make my voice comforting. I picked up her bags as she scooted into Marla’s living room and peered back down the driveway.
“Dammit!” she exclaimed. “He stopped walking. What a nightmare.”
Pink with embarrassment, Drew hovered in the foyer. “Where is everybody?” he asked, his voice fretful.
I said, “Out back. Tom’s there, too, Holly, so if you’d be mor
e comfortable being near my big, strong, police-officer husband, you could follow your son.”
“No, no, that’s all right. Sorry,” Holly said, as she lifted the glittering wrap off her shoulders, shook it out, then rearranged it over her shoulders, like wings. She smiled at us, and for a moment it was the old Holly, mischievous and jokey. “Did you hear about the guy selling chickens? He ended up with egg on his face.” Drew rubbed his scalp, gave a sideways grin that revealed a dimple in one cheek, and opened his eyes wide. Watch my mom being her usual self! He shifted from foot to foot, impatient to be away. “All right, Drew,” said Holly, “go ahead.”
“Are you going to tell me who that man was?” I asked.
“I really don’t want to talk about him,” said Holly.
“I’m more worried about you,” I replied softly. I didn’t mention losing her house or transferring Drew, but I wanted to give her an opening. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She smiled again, but her tone was guarded. She came close to my left ear and whispered, “I need to talk to you. In private.”
4
Holly and I walked quickly into Marla’s kitchen. She greeted friends. Then she stepped out to the screened porch, where she scanned the group out back. I wondered if she was looking for the man from the driveway.
I slid up beside her. “Let’s have some wine,” I whispered. “Then we can talk.”
“Okay.” Her velvety-blue eyes darted right and left. She said under her breath, “I’m in a relationship mess.”
“With that guy out front?”
“Not him, not . . .” She seemed about to add, anymore, but changed her mind. “That guy’s just a nutty manipulator who’s trying to get money out of me.”
“A nutty manipulator?” I repeated, trying to think of a place in Marla’s new house where we could have a confidential conversation. At the same time, I wondered if I could hand over the timing of the oven to someone reliable. Ever eager to glean gossip, Marla spotted us and hurried out to the porch.
To Holly she said, “Does this have to do with George?”
“God, no,” said Holly.
“Bull,” said Marla.
“I wish George were dead,” Holly said.
“I can’t wait to hear this,” Marla murmured.
Ignoring curious glances from the folks in the backyard, Holly put her strong hands around Marla’s and my upper arms and pulled us close.
“Why do you wish George were dead?” Marla asked, sotto voce.
“Did you hear the one about the farmer who slapped a mosquito off his donkey?” Holly replied. “The bug was a pain in the ass.”
I thought, Not again.
“Don’t say another word,” Marla warned, as she turned back to the kitchen. “I’ve got a good Cabernet in the kitchen. And no more jokes. I want the whole story.”
While Marla poured us glasses of wine, I wondered where, in fact, George Ingleby was. Had Holly seen him, hence the whisper? All the guests seemed to have arrived, and yet I had seen neither George nor Lena.
As Holly checked out the people standing around the pool as well as splashing in it, I reflected that I did not like or dislike Dr. George Ingleby. Years ago, he’d been a legend in his own mind, never less than an hour late for any appointment, intent on impatiently interrupting patients as they related their tales of woe. He’d marched importantly down every hospital corridor he’d ever found himself in. But after he’d stumbled badly in the relationship with Holly, it was my guess that he’d gone into therapy. George seemed to be living proof of another of Holly’s favorite riddles, an oldie but goody: How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb has to be willing to change.
George had actually started showing himself to be a good dad to Drew. He may not have taken his son to church, but he came to every fencing meet this spring. He even attended some of the practices. He must have reworked his schedule so he could be present at CBHS parent-teacher conferences, with Holly sitting stiffly on Drew’s other side. At these events, George did not smile at me, or even acknowledge that he knew who I was. But so what? Okay, he hadn’t been a good husband to Holly. But I didn’t think that any of us, especially Drew, would be better off if George were no longer alive. This I kept to myself.
“Actually, you know what, Holly?” Marla said, after she returned and we toasted with our plastic cups. “Ex-husbands don’t provide any more fireworks once they’re dead. Sort of deprives us of fun.”
“Deprives us of fun?” I asked, disbelieving. Father Pete was out back with the other parents; Holly had invited him. But if our good priest heard us rejoicing over the death of a former parishioner, no matter how dissolute that churchgoer had been, he would not be happy.
Marla shrugged. “Not having an ex to complain about is sort of a loss.”
“Like you know what I’m talking about,” Holly said drily.
“Not at the moment,” Marla replied smoothly. “But I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”
Holly did a careful survey of Marla’s backyard. Her eyes seemed to catch on someone, or something, because her face turned tense. “Oh, God,” she said. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“He who?” I asked. But Holly became suddenly quiet.
I followed her gaze. There was a group of about twenty adults beside the kids. Among them stood Dr. Warren Broome, his head above the rest. Patsie Boatfield had her arm protectively twined through his.
“Wait,” I said. “I knew Patsie Boatfield was bringing her new husband. Did she marry Warren Broome?”
“You really don’t keep up, do you?” said Marla.
Patsie was a member of St. Luke’s. “They didn’t get married at the church,” I said, as if this excused my ignorance.
“I’m pretty sure Father Pete refused to do the service,” Marla countered.
I groaned. Poor Patsie. Or at least, that was the way I saw it. Warren Broome. Oh, God.
He was a Denver psychiatrist who’d become infamous a couple of years before. The reason: he’d slept with at least one of his female patients. That patient had reported him, and claimed there were other victims. She’d gone to the papers, even asked for help from the public in identifying these other women. But no one else had come forward. Broome had been suspended for six months, as I recalled . . . and then he’d gone off my radar, which was not nearly as keen as Marla’s.
At the moment, Broome was staring at Holly. He was quite tall, and, in addition to his sexual misadventures, was a reputed ace on the tennis court. He had the kind of straight, ash-blond hair most women would kill for. Beside him, Patsie chatted amiably to the gaggle of guests. Warren, his thin-lipped mouth open, seemed to be ignoring her. If anything, as he stared up at Holly, he resembled a drooling kid who was pressing his face against the candy-store window.
“Focus, Holly,” Marla ordered. “You’re in a relationship mess, you’re dealing with a manipulator, and you wish ill to your ex. And besides all that, you’re going to explain to us, your friends, what your financial situation is. Goldy wants to know why you’re in a rental, and we both need to find out the reason you transferred Drew from EPP to CBHS. I have money and Goldy is good with advice. So spill it.”
Just at that moment, though, we were distracted by Tom announcing loudly that the volleyball net was ready for use. The kids burst upward like exploding confetti. They called to each other, tossed around the volleyball, and picked teams. A few of the kids—including Arch, I noted—moved to sign Bob’s clipboard. Bob appeared crestfallen that he’d recruited so few volunteers. Ophelia had retreated to the shade of one of Marla’s trees, where she sat on the ground, reading a book. Reading? It didn’t seem like the most logical activity for a young woman to do at a birthday party, especially with her handsome fiancé just a few feet away. A squiggle of worry wormed its way into my brain: How would she act on Monday night? Sullen? Shy? Or studious?
“Oh, God, he’s inside!” Holly said as her gaze traveled back to
Marla’s kitchen. The man from the driveway was hovering over the stove. With his sandy-haired fringe, he resembled a monk attending to a pan on one of the burners. “You have to get Tom to get rid that guy,” she begged. “He’s nuts, I’m telling you.”
Marla’s forehead knotted in puzzlement. “What’s he doing?”
“Goldy!” Holly said sharply. Below in the yard, a bunch of kids looked up to see what was going on. “Do something. Get Tom.”
“I’m here,” said Tom. His voice was low but authoritative. When had he arrived at my side? I shivered. Had he been on his way up here, and heard Holly when she’d yelled about the balding man being inside? He said, “What’s the problem?”
“There’s an uninvited man by the stove—” I began.
“Oh, no!” Holly cried, pointing into the kitchen. “Now George and Lena are here, too.” She gripped Tom’s forearm. “You have to get rid of that balding guy in the kitchen. The one who looks out of place? He’s wearing a shirt with long sleeves. And I don’t know how in the hell my ex-husband, and his bitch wife, Lena, came to be here.”
“Didn’t you invite them?” I asked, bewildered. “It’s Drew’s birthday! He’s your son’s father, Holly.”
Holly turned her face away, as if she couldn’t hear me.
Marla said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Holly,” echoing my tone. “Goldy’s right. You should have invited George.”
Holly wailed, “Everything’s falling apart.”
“One thing at a time,” said Tom. “Ladies, please dial it down several notches.” He hustled into the kitchen, took the balding man by one elbow and George Ingleby by the other. Despite being well built, the balding man appeared to melt. But Dr. George Ingleby, his coarse black hair standing on end, put up a fuss. And once again, George reminded me of those old photos of Stalin: unyielding stance, upraised chin, proud demeanor. He even had a thick mustache. George strained against Tom’s superior strength and raised his voice. Unfortunately, there were no closed windows between the kitchen and the porch.
The Whole Enchilada Page 4
