Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  I looked out of the window at the same view I’d seen for the last ten years and counting. I was bored with Modesto, bored with being Noah Bains’s loser daughter, two loser marriages, loser modeling career, and anything else I might try my hand at—but what else could a loser like me do? I was about to turn forty, right foot in a walking cast, cane on the left, a nonexistent love life, living with a monosyllabic father who had enough of his own hangups to put mine to shame.

  To get my attention, Roxanne waved her dishtowel at me. “You missing New York City? I hear the older models are cleaning up these days.”

  “I’m too young for that gig and too old for anything else.”

  “You still got that fancy penthouse from your first divorce, don’t you? If there’s nothing keeping you here, you could find something to do in New York.”

  “Jeez, what do I have to do to get in a whine around here that doesn’t come with a lecture?” I didn’t miss modeling, and I sure didn’t miss New York City. I didn’t know what I wanted, I just knew I didn’t want to be forty, and if I couldn’t get some sympathy from my best friend, then what was the world coming to?

  Her dark hand crept over mine. “Don’t mind me, I’m just premenstrual. Or maybe this summer is simply outlasting my patience. I can’t believe I used to counsel restraint to parents threatening to murder their teenagers. One more month of these two and I’m going to be in the loony bin.”

  “Better than being an over-the-hill model, forty and getting fat.”

  She withdrew her hand and wiped both hands down her own ample hips. “You don’t got a spare ounce on that bony hide and you know it.”

  Uh-oh. Roxanne had a lot of very good qualities, but I could see that my whiny mood was wearing thin on her nerves.

  “I’m sorry, Roxy, you know I don’t mean it. I’m just feeling blue.”

  She bared her teeth at me. “Forty ain’t so bad. Been there and then some. I’m forty-eight and look at me—I’m still hot,” she said, fanning her face with her dishtowel. She was looking a bit pink.

  Her husband, Leon, leaned over the pass-through and laughed. “Yeah, that girl sure is hot. We up all night wid dat.”

  Roxanne threw the dishtowel at Leon, then turned back to me. “You planning on reading that paper or shall I pass it down the counter?”

  Not waiting for an answer, she ducked behind the counter to get a clean dishtowel.

  Something was up, I could smell it, and it wasn’t just the plates piled high with eggs, sausage, and bacon, or the fact that my friend wasn’t so much premenstrual as she was menopausal. Leon was still hanging onto the counter, watching us both.

  “What?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at them.

  Roxanne lifted her big shoulders and shrugged.

  “You’re a lousy liar, Roxy,” I said, sipping my coffee and watching her face. Sure enough, she couldn’t take her eyes off the paper I was holding. I looked down at it—lower right-hand corner, second page. A black-and-white photo someone had purloined from my third grade class album. It was me all right, pigtails and that big space that used to be between my front teeth.

  I groaned. The caption read, “Lordy, Lordy, look who’s forty!”

  The entire café, which until then had been holding its collective breath, erupted into laughter.

  “Whose bright idea was this?” I yelled, holding up the paper and giving it a good shake in hopes the print would slide off the page.

  “This your idea?” I waved the paper under Roxanne’s nose, as if cornering a puppy that had piddled on my morning news. That is, if you could imagine Roxanne as a very large Rottweiler. She laughed, the dimple in her right cheek flashing humorously. My friend was having fun with her gullible buddy again, to everyone’s amusement but mine.

  “Why so touchy? I canceled the party, didn’t I?”

  “And this was way better, how? I don’t see Caleb’s mug anywhere on this page.” I felt a hand clamp onto my shoulder and jerked around, ready for battle.

  “Sure am,” he said, smiling broadly, and reached over my shoulder to flip the page.

  It was Caleb all right. Though Caleb’s blond buzz cut was the same as third grade, it now showed some tanned scalp through the blond. People tended to accept us as kin, Caleb and me, though we are not related by anything other than the tragedy of losing one parent each at age eleven. We’re both tall, with the light eyes and flyaway blond hair of the Nordic tribes. On Caleb, the light blue eyes look like chips off an iceberg, and the flyaway blond hair has been subdued by the tight crew cut. My eyes are sea green and the blond hair used to be infinitely photogenic, or so I was told. It worked out okay, I guess: I got to work under some of the best fashion photographers, while Caleb stayed in Modesto and became sheriff, using his icy stare to scare the bejesus out of questionable suspects.

  “Come on, Lalla. Take it like a man. It’s only a birthday.” Caleb grinned, the corners around his blue eyes crinkling.

  “Easy for you to say. Forty is prime for you guys.” He was all buffed from daily workouts, while I had the excuse of a cast on my leg to keep me out of the gym.

  I gave them all my best phony, perfect-for-the-camera smile and hoped they’d go back to their own business of comparing crop prices. “Don’t you have bad guys to pick on, Sheriff Stone?”

  “Sure I do,” he said, reaching over me to collect a breakfast sandwich from Roxanne. “Good guys gotta eat too, you know.”

  “No offense to Roxy’s cooking, but since when did scrambled eggs between two slices of bread take precedence over sausage and eggs at home?” Roxanne, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, was giving me sour looks. “What? Did I offend Leon’s cooking?”

  Roxy gave me another dirty look, smiled kindly at Caleb, and then turned away to rinse dishes. The quiet coming out of Roxanne might as well have been the roar of a diesel in a tunnel.

  I stuck my head in the paper and thought about it. Caleb had a wife to cook his meals, though now that I thought of it, between his daily breakfasts at Roxanne’s and weekly dinners at our house, maybe things weren’t so good at home. I gave myself the excuse that I’d been preoccupied lately, rebuilding the broken Ag-Cat, doctor’s visits, and I was behind with billing and such, but still…

  Roxanne hadn’t mentioned anything, but then, why would she start now? She wasn’t one to gossip, and she wasn’t likely to talk about Caleb unless I asked the right question.

  “Roxy, is everything all right between Caleb and Marcy?”

  “Not my place to speak about that, but feel free to ask Caleb, if you’re so interested.”

  What she meant was, interested all of a sudden. Okay, I would get to Caleb when I could. And since there was nothing I could do about it now, unless I wanted to pick a fight with Roxanne, I changed the subject, reading aloud while Roxanne dumped coffee grounds. “It says here the Stanislaus County Fair is coming up at the end of the month. ‘Exhibit and rodeo entries will be accepted in one week for the—’ Think they’d allow an Ag-Cat to run barrel races? Maybe not. Okay, how about floral arrangements—nah, brown thumb. Oh, here’s one: ‘Ribbons will be given in the jam and jelly category.’ I’ll bet I could resurrect one of my mother’s recipes. Maybe experiment on my own. How about rhubarb jam?”

  “Jam?” Coffee pot in midair, her heavy bosom rumbled with laughter at the thought of her friend mixing it up in a competition for which she had no experience, no talent, and certainly no previous inclination. “Oh, girl, that I will have to see.”

  “You mock me now, but it could happen. Maybe the judges are bored with the same old apricot and pineapple jam. Maybe I’ll experiment with a recipe and come up with something that will win. Maybe I’ll come back here with a blue ribbon.” This was just what I needed. Something to do, rev up the old competitive juices, and take my mind off the inevitable birthday.

  Boyd Lincoln, from his usual place two seats down, stopped slurping his coffee and hooted. “Yeah, right. My cow got one of them at the fair. Been meaning to bring it in
and show it around. I guess if a cow can get a blue ribbon, so can you, Lalla.”

  Snickers broke out amongst the regulars. The row of plaid shirts quivered in a wave of amusement, though this time they had the sense to keep their heads down. I made a one-armed swipe at Boyd, but missed. Boyd Lincoln had been causing me grief since kindergarten.

  The laughter only yanked up my competitive spirit that much more. “Come on, who wants to go up against me in the jam-making contest?”

  I felt pretty safe in this mostly male crowd, and then I noticed Patience McBride at the end of the counter, her recently permed bottle-blond locks bouncing with amusement.

  “You want to do this, Patience?” I asked sweetly.

  She primped at the curls and adjusted her heavy glasses up a notch. “Who, me? Oh, I don’t know, I have my piano lessons and all.” Patience was in her late sixties, widowed, her only son dead of a drug overdose, or so the story went at Roxanne’s. And, except for her piano teaching and the sophomoric entertainment at Roxanne’s Café, she was alone.

  I leaned over the counter and around the amused spectators to encourage her. “Oh, come on, it’ll be fun. You’ve got a whole week before the fair. It’ll give you something to work on besides those smart-ass kids.” And reason to think about something besides my fortieth birthday, which was going to happen in another couple of weeks whether I liked it or not.

  Certain that I had the grand prize sewn up with my mother’s recipes and some noodling I intended to do on my own, I was not a bit concerned when she fluttered her piano-playing fingertips in the air and giggled, “Oh well, if you insist.”

  Patience’s enthusiasm made Roxanne smile, and because it pleased Roxanne, I was pleased. Teaching me a bit about tolerance, Roxanne had broken me of more than one bad habit. Not the least of which was mashing my wad of Nicotine chewing gum into the butter dishes she kept on the tables. At least I’d quit smoking. She was still hard at work on the rest of my bad habits.

  “There, it’s settled. I’ll see you ingrates in a week with my blue ribbon.” Since my boredom had taken a small dent, I got up to leave.

  Roxanne just rolled her dark eyes, picked up another dish to be deposited onto the growing pile from the noisy breakfast crowd and went back to wiping the worn countertop with a clean, damp rag.

  When I got up to leave, she waved her dishrag in benediction. “I’m sendin’ up a prayer for you, sweet pea, ‘cause nothing else is going to help you win that contest.”

  That was it, of course. No amount of blessing, short of a personal appearance by the Pope, was going to suddenly allow me to become a chef. And jam? What was I thinking? Lately, it was one bad idea after another with me, and this jam contest was just one more in a long list.

  I was standing outside the front door under the bright, hot sunlight when a surge of strange karma ran under my skin like so much dark ink. It tightened in a band around my chest and I felt disaster looming somewhere just around the corner.

  THREE

  The week went as it always did during the summer months; busy work, long hours, cranky pilots, frustrated ground crew, and annoyed farmers. Still, I managed to whip up a jam recipe for the county fair. I got to drive the blue ribbon home too. Only problem was it got out of the car with Patience McBride and into the repertoire for the jokesters at Roxanne’s.

  On the desk inside my office at the ranch were flowers in a vase, with a florist’s card sticking out of the ribbon. The card said Happy Birthday and was signed Robert.

  A few minutes later our pilots, Brad, Robert (aka Mad Dog), and Fitz, our resident Englishman, sauntered in. Brad made a beeline for the showers, Mad Dog on his heels. Only Fitz lingered to sniff and admire the bouquet.

  “How lovely. Who died?”

  I tapped the walking cast with my cane. “Well, barring the one foot I seem to have in the grave, I believe they’re an unhappy reminder that I’m about to have another birthday soon.”

  He lifted a rose out of the bouquet, sniffed and intoned, “‘The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.’ Samuel Clemens.” He handed me the rose. “Happy Birthday and many more.”

  “No wonder you and Noah get along so well. If he isn’t quoting Euripides, it’s Mark Twain.”

  “Ah, yes. How is Noah? Are you two almost finished with that engine you broke?”

  “I broke? Okay, yeah, you got me. We still have some strut work to do, but she’ll be ready soon, and Noah’s ticker is due for a checkup. I’ll tell him you asked.”

  He gave me an appraising look. “Then I suppose you’ll be back to flying soon?”

  I gave the flowers a sniff and avoided his very direct gaze. “Soon as this cast comes off.”

  Fitz grunted amiably and sauntered for the showers. Fitz didn’t mind the extra work or money it paid, and the longer I stayed in this cast, the better his paycheck. Mad Dog came back in, rubbing his crispy ginger curls with a towel, the motion hiking his shirt up to show a very white jelly roll. The rest of him was reddened and freckled skin cracked from sun and wind. I’m sure he thought of himself as ruggedly handsome, but all I saw was an overblown ego. I ducked my head back to writing work orders and ignored him.

  Seeing I wasn’t going to look up, he buttoned and tucked in the shirt.

  I said, “It was very sweet of you, the flowers I mean. My leg’s busted, Mad Dog, not my brain, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “Nothing meant by it either. Just thought someone ought to give you flowers for your birthday.”

  There it was. His blatant and not very subtle dig at a woman’s right to choose to remain single and the very reason why I could never admire, much less love, this man. That my own father had immediately recognized Mad Dog for what he was said volumes about my ability to size up a man in twenty seconds or less.

  I think I fell into my second marriage as a way of dodging yet another unwanted proposal from Mad Dog. I limped home from New York and a philandering Puerto Rican baseball player right into the hands of yet another bad boy, Ricky Halverson, heir to a string of car dealerships. Ricky sealed the deal with a five-carat ring and a string of affairs that he managed to keep under wraps for a whole six months, until I found out in a very unexpected way.

  ~*~

  Two years ago, I was stranded in the hot afternoon shade of Ricky’s car lot, and my childhood friend Caleb, who was then Deputy Sheriff Stone, turned in and offered to give me a ride home. I was embarrassed and annoyed to be caught waiting for my no-show husband, but Caleb serenely refused to acknowledge that there might be a problem. In a serendipitous moment, he said, “Let’s go out to the ranch and see your dad. If we’re lucky, Juanita’s serving taco pie tonight.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  We were about to take the highway exit for my home when his radio squawked. “Deputy Stone? You there?” It was Dispatch asking him to check on a car parked along the levee next to a farmer’s orchard on Sylvan.

  “Okay. Probably a couple of kids, but if you don’t mind, it’s on the way,” he said to me.

  With night fast blotting out what was left of a long hot summer’s day, we bounced along the bumpy levee to where Ricky’s classic El Dorado was tucked like a dark shadow between almond trees.

  “What the hell?”

  “It might not be Ricky,” he said, eyeing me for seismic reaction, remembering another Lalla, the one who used to have a backbone. “And if it is, we don’t know why he’s out here.”

  “I’m not that dumb,” I growled, and lifting Caleb’s flashlight out of its holder on the dash, I exploded out of the cruiser.

  Shining the flashlight into the car, I saw Ricky come off his secretary’s heaving breast like a cork from a bottle. I waggled the light around and onto Charlene’s exposed, young, perky twenty-three-year-old breasts and was disgusted when she didn’t have the decency to cover up.

  Unable to see beyond the blaze of light, she probably thought I was just another admiring male deputy.

  I said, “Nice tits, Charlene.
”

  Ricky’s mouth silently formed the words “Oh shit!” His Adam’s apple started to slide. “Lalla?” he yodeled. “Honey? What’re you doing here?”

  I didn’t bother to answer that one. “This is it, Ricky,” I said. “One sweet-young-thing too many.” Then I pulled my head back from the funky smells that were making me dizzy.

  His head followed me out. “Now, Lalla,” he called, “don’t let’s do anything foolish. We can talk about this like adults… Lalla?”

  Ricky simply didn’t understand. I’d reached my limit and somebody was going to pay.

  Caleb put a hand on my arm. “Let’s go, Lalla.”

  Ricky, thinking Caleb still in uniform would block my murderous intentions, struck with all the force of a cornered hound. “Well, if it ain’t the freak show,” he sneered. “It’s the Bains twins, honey. Lalla and Caleb separated at birth. One’s a girl and one’s a boy, you just don’t know which one’s which.” Then Ricky made a second mistake. “You been porkin’ my wife, Sheriff? That why you’re so anxious to snitch on me?”

  I restrained Caleb’s instinctive grab for his nightstick. “Let me,” I said, taking the nightstick out of his hand. I didn’t have a sheriff’s oath of honor to keep me from damaging Ricky or his cowardly ego.

  “Lalla, don’t,” Caleb warned, as I took careful aim.

  Charlene’s high-pitched squealing was beginning to annoy me. I yelled, “If you don’t want to get hurt, stay in the car!”

  I drew back and struck hard. The first glass headlight shattered. I crushed the second thick dual glass headlight and almost, but not quite, missed the fender. I went at the windshield like a tornado, taking a breath long enough to admire my handiwork and stopping only after the nightstick had chewed up every piece of glass on the car.

  “That’s enough,” Caleb said, his hand on my wrist. “I’m serious now, that’s enough.”

  I was breathing hard and wishing for a lot more reckless justice toward this soon-to-be ex-husband. “Okay, okay, I’m done,” I said, relinquishing my weapon with regret. I wiped my forehead of the dust. “I’ll just say good-bye and then we’ll leave.”