Poppy Harmon Investigates

by Lee Hollis

  “And you had no idea what he was up to?” Violet asked, placing a comforting hand on Poppy’s arm.

  “That’s the most humiliating part! No. I had no clue what was going on. Chester isn’t what you would call a masterful con man. It was pretty much what you see is what you get. I always knew what he was thinking. There weren’t a lot of layers, if you know what I mean. Which means I just wasn’t paying attention. I was caught up in my own activities, blissfully ignorant of the fact that my husband was leading a secret life behind my back.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Violet asked.

  “Well, I’m meeting with a Realtor tomorrow to put the house on the market. It’s going to be a short sale because I can no longer make the payments, which means it will probably sell quickly, and then I have to find another place to live.”

  “You will stay with me until you find a place,” Iris said, deciding the matter without even waiting for Poppy to accept her kind offer.

  “You can stay with me, too,” Violet offered, feeling left out.

  “Don’t be silly, Violet,” Iris said. “My house has more room, and the patio has a far superior view.”

  Iris was never mean-spirited.

  Just brutally honest.

  “Thank you, both of you,” Poppy said. “I couldn’t ask for better friends.”

  “I know,” Iris said, nodding.

  “And then, I suppose, I’m going to have to find a job.”

  Poppy caught Iris and Violet exchanging concerned looks.

  “What was that?” Poppy asked.

  “What?” Iris and Violet said in unison.

  “That! That worried look between you two.”

  “It was nothing!” Violet lied in a valiant effort to protect Poppy’s feelings.

  Iris, however, was not one to protect feelings.

  The hard, bitter truth was always best.

  And she had no problem dishing it out.

  “What skills do you have? You haven’t worked in over twenty years,” Iris said gruffly.

  Iris was right.

  Poppy’s last serious job was as a Hollywood actress.

  But once ABC canceled her only steady gig after three seasons, she struggled to find acting roles. All the sexpot roles that seemed to have rained down upon her in her twenties had long dried up, and she never managed to get cast in a part that required any serious acting chops. When she was just shy of forty and her youthful looks began to fade, despite some nips and tucks and scary injections, no one was willing to give her a chance anymore.

  When she left Hollywood on her fortieth birthday, she never looked back. And never worried about working ever again, especially since her third husband at the time, Ira Greenstein, was a successful entertainment attorney.

  “Maybe I could get back into acting. I always said, when I was more mature, there would be so many roles I could finally play.”

  “I just heard they are holding auditions for Steel Magnolias at the Palm Springs Playhouse,” Violet said excitedly.

  “How much are they paying?”

  “They didn’t say anything about money.”

  “Which means there is none!” Iris said, waving off Violet’s useless suggestion. “She’s not going to pay her rent by playing a part that Shirley MacLaine performed better in the movie!”

  “Maybe I could go back to Hollywood . . . ,” Poppy said, trying to convince herself this was a plausible course of action.

  “Forget it,” Iris said. “All those mature roles you are finally ready to play are going to go to Meryl Streep, believe me.”

  “I think we should try to stay positive, Iris,” Violet scolded.

  “I know! I am positive Poppy going back to acting is not the answer,” Iris said. “We need a good idea!”

  That one stung Poppy.

  But she certainly couldn’t argue with it.

  “What am I going to do? I’ve never balanced a checkbook, let alone stuck to a budget, in my life!” Poppy moaned.

  “We are here to help you,” Violet said. “And so is Heather.”

  Poppy gasped.

  Her daughter, Heather.

  She was still in the dark about the whole situation.

  “Tell me you told Heather what is going on,” Iris said.

  “No. I drove right over here from the lawyer’s office. I didn’t want to call her in the car and fall apart on the phone. Not until I can come up with a plan.”

  “You have to tell her. If you don’t, she is going to find out from someone else, and that will not be good,” Iris warned.

  “But she is so high strung and emotional, and she was so close to Chester and always held him in such high regard. How can I tell her he squandered away all our savings, including her rather sizable inheritance, before he kicked the bucket?”

  A waiter appeared at the table with a piece of paper.

  His face was tight, and his movements were stiff.

  It was obvious he was pained to have to do this.

  But he took a deep breath and powered through, handing Poppy the paper. “Your bill, ma’am.”

  Poppy stared at the paper for a long moment and then calmly looked up at the nervous young waiter.

  “It says I owe four thousand five hundred and thirty-nine dollars. Now, I know you raised your prices, but three cocktails and a plate of stuffed mushrooms shouldn’t cost this much.”

  “I know, ma’am,” the waiter said, clearing his throat. “But your late husband, and I am so sorry for your loss, he paid for a lot of meals he had with his golf buddies over the past year or so and ran a tab, which he, unfortunately, never had the chance to pay, and now the owner is insisting you pay it off, or forfeit club membership.”

  “I can’t pay it,” Poppy said, slumping in her chair.

  Then she quietly picked her purse up off the floor next to her chair, stood up, and forced a smile. “I always thought golf was boring, anyhow. There. Now I can say it.”

  “Where are you going?” Violet asked.

  “To tell Heather,” Poppy said, glancing around the room, noticing several tables of club members either staring directly at her or averting their gaze to avoid eye contact. “Iris is right. If I don’t get to her first, there are about a dozen little birdies right here in this clubhouse who will happily do it for me.”

  Chapter 4

  Poppy went over in her mind the conversation she was about to have as she sat at a corner table at Las Casuelas, a popular Mexican eatery in the heart of Palm Springs. She had promised herself not to indulge in the basket of salty, greasy taco chips that would greet her at the table when she arrived and was seated, but the stress of breaking her troubling news to her daughter that she was broke quickly dissolved any remaining vestiges of self-control. There was only a handful of crumbled chips left in the basket after only five minutes at the table, and the waiter had to scurry off for another serving of salsa so she could finish them off after he delivered her Cadillac margarita on the rocks, the first of several she would be downing during the course of the meal, for sure.

  She had practiced silently to herself just how she was going to tell Heather, and she had imagined her daughter’s response, starting with the inevitable shock, which would soon give way to a self-pitying “Why is this happening to me?” crying jag, and would finally wrap up with unadulterated sheer panic once it sank in that her inheritance was entirely gone.

  Poppy would try her best to remain a calming influence, but the fact that at the moment she was screaming and hysterical on the inside didn’t bode well for her playing the role of supportive and reassuring mother.

  A three-man mariachi band snapped her out of her thoughts as they weaved through the tables, singing “El Rey.” The lead singer was lean and handsome, with a pencil-thin mustache, and was enjoying the attention from the room as he crooned, aiming his velvety chords toward the female patrons, including Poppy. He broke into a wide smile as he passed by, serenading her, and for a brief moment, Poppy thought he might have recog
nized her from her TV work, but then the reality of his age—late twenties, at most—settled in, and she figured he was just doing his job charming all the eye-batting, enamored older ladies in the house.

  She was halfway through her first margarita and keeping an eye out for the waiter to be prepared to fetch another when she spotted Heather by the hostess stand. Poppy had to wave a few times before Heather noticed her, but when she did, her daughter beamed, bright and happy, not a care in the world. Poppy dreaded the idea of the cold, hard slap in the face she was about to deliver.

  Heather bounded over to the table and plopped down in a chair after a quick air kiss with her mother. She was wearing a flattering pink print sundress, her hair had recently been curled and styled, and there was a generous amount of makeup covering every blemish. Poppy had never seen Heather go to such efforts to look pretty for a night out with Mom. But she didn’t question it.

  In hindsight, she probably should have.

  “Sorry I’m late. There was a lot of traffic on the one-eleven,” Heather said, scooping up a chip and dipping it in the fresh bowl of salsa the waiter had just dropped off.

  “Was there an accident?” Poppy asked.

  “No. Just your typical Palm Springs traffic jam, which we both know is a bunch of old people driving too slow.”

  Poppy smiled. “You look lovely tonight, dear.”

  “Thank you,” Heather said. “I wanted to look nice for this special occasion.”

  Poppy suddenly panicked.

  Did she forget Heather’s birthday?

  No.

  Heather was born on December 22.

  That was still months away.

  “Special occasion?” Poppy asked, giving up trying to figure it out.

  “Yes,” Heather said slyly, glancing around the restaurant, as if looking for someone. “I’ve invited someone to join us for dinner.”

  Oh no.

  The last thing Poppy wanted was a third party at the table. She had steeled herself to do this, and she could not put it off any longer.

  “Heather, I thought it was just going to be the two of us. I have something I need to talk about, and it’s very important—”

  “There he is!” Heather giggled, waving her arms frantically at a young man who had just breezed into the restaurant and was glad-handing the hostess and apparently talking her ear off.

  He was average height but movie-star handsome, with dark, close-cropped hair, a goatee that was bordering on ironic, and an air of self-assurance, which the hostess, at least, found intoxicating.

  She pointed at their table, and with a big grin plastered on his face, the young man practically jogged over, arms outstretched, as Heather jumped to her feet and fell into his embrace. They hugged for what seemed like a whole minute, before pulling just far enough away from each other to gaze into the other’s eyes, then concluded their touching reunion with a long, sloppy wet kiss.

  Oh, God, Poppy thought. Heather has a new boyfriend.

  The handsome young man quickly turned his attention to Poppy and, with a hand over his heart, said dramatically, “You must be Poppy. I’ve heard so much about you. . . . All bad!”

  “Excuse me?” Poppy asked.

  He broke out into a fit of giggles. “Kidding, kidding.”

  “You’ll get used to his weird sense of humor,” Heather felt the need to mention as she slapped him playfully on the arm and told him to sit down.

  He reached over, grabbed Poppy’s hand, and after a short struggle, with Poppy fruitlessly trying to withdraw it, he managed to pucker up his lips and smack the back of her hand with a loud kiss. When he finally let go, Poppy yanked her hand back, grabbed the stem of her margarita glass, and took a generous gulp.

  “Mom, this is Matt Cameron. We met at yoga class,” Heather said.

  “I was in a downward dog position, spotted her through my legs stretching that glorious body of hers, and presto, I was immediately hooked,” he said, winking at Heather.

  “Matt’s an actor,” Heather said proudly.

  The information was coming fast and furious.

  Poppy didn’t know where to start.

  Having been married to two actors in her lifetime, not to mention the dozens that she had dated back in the day, Poppy was reasonably sure the last kind of man she would ever want her daughter mixed up with would be an actor.

  Poppy’s hopes of having that serious discussion with her daughter about their uncertain future was going to have to be postponed. Especially since from the moment the topic of his chosen profession was introduced, Matt Cameron never stopped talking about himself.

  How he wowed his hometown in upstate New York with his indelible performance in Evita, playing the rabble-rouser anarchist Che to packed houses at his local community theater, before taking the train to New York and the Great White Way, never looking back. He never mentioned any Broadway shows he had ever appeared in, only a “gritty, bare-bones” production of a decades-old play called Fortune and Men’s Eyes, in which he played a persecuted juvenile delinquent under the thumb of a sexually aggressive fellow inmate. Poppy knew how to translate his words. Gritty and bare-bones meant that the play was put on in a Lower East Side garage, that it had very few props, that nobody got paid, and that they were lucky if half of the twenty hard-back chairs lined up in front of the stage were filled every night.

  If Poppy was good at one thing, it was interpreting “actor-speak.”

  By the time they ordered their food, Matt had covered his starving actor years in New York, his therapeutic road trip out west to find himself, and his first role as Surfer #3 in an episode of NCIS: Los Angeles, which secured him his SAG card.

  Heather was besotted, laughing too hard at his jokes, melting whenever his eyes rested on her, constantly glancing at Poppy to see if she was as charmed by this delectable vision as she was.

  Poppy, ever the actress herself, managed to deliver a believable, understated performance as a woman marginally interested in what this self-absorbed idiot had to say. For the sake of her daughter’s feelings, she was not going to put a damper on this impromptu “Mom, meet the man of my dreams” dinner.

  “The second Heather told me you were once an actress, I looked you up on IMDb. You had quite a career way back when,” Matt said.

  Way back when?

  His stock was plunging further and faster.

  “I think I remember my parents watching that detective show you were in when I was little. My mom had a huge crush on the star.”

  “Rod Harper.”

  “Yeah. Whatever happened to him? He still alive?”

  “I believe so, yes. He’s only sixty-five.”

  Matt chuckled. “That’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “Only sixty-five . . .”

  He didn’t linger on the moment, completely unaware he had just insulted her. Instead, he bravely plowed ahead, oblivious to how close he was to having a margarita thrown in his face.

  “And I actually remember seeing you in that Disney movie about the talking car, Speedy Goes to Le Mans, and you played the pretty French girl in the pit crew, Genevieve. . . .”

  “Yes. You have a good memory,” Poppy sighed.

  “Well, not really. I watched it on Netflix the other night, after Heather and I planned this dinner. I wanted to study up on you.”

  Poppy looked at her daughter again with pleading eyes that could not be sending a more clear and unequivocal message: You can’t be serious!

  When Matt began to roll out the idea for his one-man show, Poppy begged the waiter to hurry back with another round of drinks. At least she was feeling a comfortable buzz to help dull the pain of dining with this moron, who was sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Thank heavens for the Uber app, which she could use to get home safely.

  She started to mentally go through her to-do list for tomorrow as he prattled on and on until the bill mercifully arrived. She waited a few minutes for Matt to at least pick up the check, in order to impress his pos
sible future mother-in-law, but no such moment came. She had finally picked it up to check the damage and to suggest they split the tab when she heard Matt say, with all sincerity, “Thank you, Poppy. That’s very generous of you.”

  She bit her lip hard and told herself he was a struggling actor, probably a few months behind on his rent.

  She handed her American Express card to the waiter and silently prayed there was enough credit left on there to pay for the meal.

  Was Heather really falling for this sketchy character?

  She liked to think her daughter had better taste.

  Then again, when Poppy was thirty, she was not exactly making exemplary choices when it came to men.

  In fact, upon reflection, she realized she had dated a few Matt Camerons herself.

  Actually, when she really thought about it, given her current situation, marrying Chester was probably also a disastrous choice.

  Maybe she had cursed her own daughter by passing along some kind of “terrible taste in men” gene.

  Thankfully, the waiter returned with two slips of paper and a pen, which meant the card had mercifully gone through. As Poppy calculated the tip and signed the receipt, Matt leapt from his chair and raced over to the mariachi band, nearly knocked the young lead singer into a potted plant as he wrestled some maracas out of the surprised man’s hands, and began belting out “Volver, Volver.” The good news was Matt had a nice singing voice. The bad news was Matt was singing. In front of the entire restaurant, much to the consternation of the mariachi singer with the pencil-thin mustache, who was glaring at him after having been so rudely shoved out of the spotlight.

  Matt was in his element.

  When he finished, the entire restaurant burst into applause, and feigning modesty, Matt bashfully waved them off as he marched back over to the table, reached down, and planted another big wet kiss on his new gal’s mouth. He was about to do the same to Poppy, but she quickly stood up and brushed past him for the door, passing the mariachi singer, who could tell she liked Matt even less than he did.

  They shared a look, both silently agreeing that the mad attention whore was utterly distasteful and downright irritating.