Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out

by Karen MacInerney

  Becky was waiting in the parking lot when I pulled into Green Meadows. “What was that all about last night?”

  “Thanks for covering me.”

  “No problem. I still can’t believe you broke into Blake’s office. Did you find out anything?”

  I recounted what I’d found in Blake’s credenza—and what McEwan had done while I was hiding under the desk. When I got to the part about my escape from the lobby, she shook her head.

  “So you ran away from the security guard?”

  “Sort of. Not exactly.”

  “I don’t know how you do it.”

  My voice was sharper than I meant it to be. “Hopefully, your husband will never start skimming money from the family bank account, and you’ll never have to find out.”

  “Sorry, Margie. I didn’t mean…”

  “No, no. It’s okay. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that… I guess I’m not dealing with this very well.”

  We walked toward the office together in silence. As I unlocked the door, Becky said, “Why do you think McEwan took the file? Do you think he was just borrowing it?”

  “Wouldn’t he do that during office hours? I can’t see making a trip to the office at midnight on a Friday just to borrow a file.”

  “Good point. By the way, any word on the car yet?”

  I shook my head. Then I opened the door and flipped on the light. “Well,” I said, waving a hand at the enormous metal file cabinet with a flourish, “there it is.”

  Becky walked over and pulled open a drawer. “Let’s get started. The sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can get started on your new look.”

  “Oh, joy.”

  “Did she give you any idea of what we’re looking for?” I shook my head. She sighed. “Well, at least things are filed. I worked at an office once where they just threw everything into boxes and shoved them in a storage room.”

  “Where do we start?” I asked.

  “Since she didn’t tell you how she figured out the money was missing, I’d say we start with the bank statements.”

  “I wish I’d thought to ask.”

  “Well, maybe when she gets better we’ll go visit her.” She tossed me a bulging file. “You get started on 2001 and 2002. I’ll take 2003 and 2004.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  She brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Anything that doesn’t look like a school expense. Or just anything weird.”

  “Gosh, that narrows it down.” I opened the file with a sigh. “Sure you don’t want me to make a coffee run?”

  “Stop talking and get working.”

  I was halfway through the first pile of statements and starting to get a tension headache from the long rows of numbers when my cell phone rang. Normally I wouldn’t be that excited to talk to my mother, but right now, I was looking for an escape.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, Marigold. I just decided to call and check up on you… your aura’s better today! Are things looking up?”

  I made a mental note that embezzling investigations were aura-enhancing and proceeded to dodge her question. “How are things with you?”

  “Fine, fine… I just called to tell you I popped another little package into the mail… some crystals you can put around the house, to help the chi. Also, I found the most wonderful CD. It’s got Tibetan monks on it. We heard it at the ashram.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled, thinking of my childhood room, where my mother hung crystals alongside the Holly Hobbie pictures “to soothe my spirit.” Even now, the smell of incense, which for most people evoked their teenaged years, sent me zinging back to childhood. It was ironic. For most kids, tie-dyed clothes and weird music alienated and appalled their parents. For me, the best way to irk my mother had been to wear polo shirts and khakis.

  “Anyway, Karma and I are planning to drive down next weekend, to help out with the kids.”

  “Mom…”

  “No, no, dear. I can tell you need the help.”

  “No, really…”

  “I have to run, darling, but I’ll call you in a few days. Toodle-oo!”

  She hung up, and I hit End. Great. As if things weren’t bad enough, I was going to have my mother and my husband in the same house for a weekend. And Karma, the herbalist boyfriend from California. Maybe I should start drinking now.

  Becky eyed me over a stack of statements. “What was that all about?”

  My smile was strained. “My mother just announced that she and Karma are coming to visit next weekend.”

  “Karma? What, or who, is that?”

  “Her new herbalist boyfriend.”

  Becky cringed. “Oof. Train wreck.” Then she brightened. “Maybe you can move in with me.”

  “I may take you up on it,” I said, returning to the lines of numbers in front of me with what I was sure was an extremely gray aura. “For now, let’s just get this over with.”

  Becky shook her head and went back to poring over the papers. A moment later, she squealed. “I think I’ve got something!”

  I dropped the statement I had been staring at for the last ten minutes and hurried over to her. “What is it?”

  “Starting last July, one or two checks a month aren’t showing up in the monthly statements.”

  “And Attila didn’t notice that?”

  “Not until now, anyway. I guess there’s so much money coming and going, whoever did it figured a couple checks a month would be easy to miss.”

  “How much?”

  “Just a little at a time. Fifty here, a hundred there. Always even numbers, though.” She sifted through the stack of statements, put her finger on an entry, and riffled through a stack of canceled checks. “But the amounts start creeping up. Look—here, in November, there’s one for $250.” She looked up at me. “Who handles the accounting for the office?”

  “I’m guessing it’s Alicia,” I said, “but we’ll have to ask Mrs. Bunn.”

  Becky flipped through a few more statements, comparing entries with the stack of checks. “I’ll bet they have copies of these at the bank. At least they’ll know who the checks are going to.”

  “But it’s Saturday.”

  “We’ll check on Monday. By then, maybe Attila will be doing better, and she can tell us how the accounting is handled.”

  I flipped my file closed. “So we’re done, then.”

  “Nope. We have to go through and find all of the missing checks. And it wouldn’t hurt to go through the accounting books, either.”

  “The accounting books?”

  “It could turn out that the checks are legit. We’ve got to cover all our bases.” She pursed her lips. “Too bad they don’t use Quicken. It would make things a lot easier.”

  I groaned and resumed studying the stack of statements, resolving to turn down any future embezzling cases.

  By the time Becky closed up the accounting book, it was after one. “Done?” I asked.

  “Yup. The checks are the only thing out of place, and just like I thought, they aren’t recorded in the books.” She stood and shoved the big book back onto its shelf. “Let me do one more thing, and then we’re out of here!”

  I replaced the files I had been looking through while she did some figuring on a calculator. “Wow,” she said. “Almost ten thousand dollars are missing.”

  “It thought it was only disappearing in small increments.”

  “That was at first. Whoever it was got brave. Or else something happened that made him—or her—need more.”

  “I guess we’ll find out Monday.” I slammed the drawer shut. “Now let’s get some lunch.”

  “And then,” Becky said triumphantly, “the mall!”

  #

  It was almost five o’clock when we emerged from Barton Creek Mall, burdened with a flotilla of plastic bags containing three dresses, a couple of pants suits, four pairs of shoes and a bottle of temporary hair color.

  “But I like my hair color,” I had complained when Becky plucked a bottle
of “Darkest Ebony” off the shelf of the beauty shop.

  “It’s for the funeral, dummy. So that jerk from ISC doesn’t recognize you. You’re still planning on going, aren’t you?”

  I was torn, actually. “Do you think it’s worth it?”

  “Don’t murderers usually show up at funerals?”

  “They do in the Agatha Christies I read, but I don’t know how that transfers to real life. And I’m not so sure that identifying Maxted’s killer is going to shed any light on what’s going on with my husband. Besides, Blake can’t watch the kids.”

  “Margie, your husband was one of the last people Maxted called before he died. Don’t you think there’s a teensy chance that might be relevant?” She pursed her lips. “And it sounds like that Bunsen guy hasn’t crossed you off his list of suspects yet.”

  “What if Bunsen shows up? Won’t that just make him suspect me more?”

  “You’ve got a reason to be there. You found the guy dead. Besides, you’re going as a brunette, remember? And why can’t Blake watch the kids?”

  “He’s got a client meeting.”

  She rolled her eyes. “On Sunday?”

  “I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll ask Prue if she can babysit.”

  Becky smiled a wicked smile. “Oh, that’s right. You get to sit next to her at the fashion show. I wonder if this time she’ll give you a vibrator.”

  “The way things are going in my marriage, that might be my only option soon.”

  “Well, at least she won’t be able to complain about your wardrobe.” She handed me her cell phone. “Call your husband and tell him you’re coming straight to my house. I’ll do your hair and makeup.”

  I remembered what she’d done to me before my first trip to the Rainbow Room, and hesitated. “Nothing too major, okay?”

  She laughed. “No, I’m not going to do you up like a femme fatale this time. I only did that because you were supposed to look easy.” Well, that was a relief. “This time, think Laura Bush.”

  “Couldn’t we go for Hillary, instead?”

  “Trust me,” she said. “When I’m done with you, you’ll look great. Besides, you owe me a Mary Kay order.”

  #

  Once again, I didn’t recognize the reflection in the mirror when Becky finished poking and prodding me. Instead of a slightly chunky, shorts-clad mom with lank hair, a svelte woman in a tan pants suit and a shiny French twist stared back at me. It wasn’t quite Hillary Clinton, but I’d take it.

  I struck a pose in the mirror, then glanced back at Becky. “How did you do it? I never look like this.”

  “It was all there,” she said. “You just need to bring it out.”

  “I would love to look like this every day. I just don’t want to have to get up at five to make it happen.”

  “It’s not that bad. Getting a good haircut will help; it won’t take as long to fix up. I’ll teach you how to do the rest of it.”

  I turned and glanced at the unfamiliar woman in the mirror again. “You’re a miracle worker.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, putting the finishing touches on her own makeup. “Now, let’s get going. It starts in a half hour.”

  #

  Twenty minutes later, I took a last glance at myself in the flip-down mirror of Becky’s Suburban before facing Austin’s female upper crust.

  “Stop worrying,” Becky said. “You look great.” She looked pretty good too, in a pale blue dress that plunged a little in the front, but not too much, and ended just above her shapely knees. Her hair and makeup, as always, were impeccable. As, for a change, were mine. Before we left Becky’s, I’d placed a huge Mary Kay order with enthusiasm. I might have to put the kids’ next tuition payments on my Visa, but it would be worth it.

  As we rode up in the elevator, I leaned over to Becky. “You know, if Miss Topaz ever quits Miss Veronica’s, you should apply for the job.”

  She laughed. “Thanks, I think. On the other hand, I guess catering to transvestites would expand my potential clientele.”

  “And then there are the metrosexuals…”

  Before she could respond, the elevator door opened, and we plunged into the thickly carpeted front lobby of the Metropolitan Club. Although I had felt impeccably dressed as we rode the elevator up, my suit felt almost casual among the throng of peacock-colored dresses. A startling amount of bony décolletage was visible as we wove through the crowd toward the registration table. We passed the sign advertising the show —Couture with a Conscience —and I murmured to Becky, “Bitsy’s going to need to sell a lot of clothes to cover the tab for this place.

  “Not really,” she whispered back. “Have you seen the price tags on the dresses?”

  “How much are we talking?”

  “I was in her shop a month ago. She’s asking up to two K for a cocktail dress.”

  “Christ. People pay that much?”

  “For a Bitsy McEwan creation, they do.”

  “Are the designs that good?”

  Becky shrugged. “I didn’t buy anything. But in Austin right now, she’s very hot. The whole ‘Couture with a Conscience’ thing is going over big.”

  “If you ask me,” I hissed as we approached the registration table, “two hundred smacks a ticket is unconscionable.”

  “Not if it all goes to help the starving children.”

  We registered, hung laminated name tags around our necks, and merged with the heavily perfumed crowd. The main room was paneled in dark wood, and the emerald carpet was so plush that my heels sank into it as Becky and I entered. A runway dominated the space, and the perimeter was lined with candlelit tables. In the center of each table was a ring of candles and an extravagant floral centerpiece that probably cost as much as my weekly grocery bill. Next to the glittering dresses dotted around the room, the suit that had seemed so classy a few minutes ago felt more like a burlap sack.

  I made a beeline for the nearest waiter and reached for a champagne glass, hoping a glass or two would help me feel less like a goose at a convention of swans. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I murmured to Becky. “My life’s a total wreck, and here I am shelling out two hundred bucks to go to a Junior League fashion show.”

  “But Bitsy McEwan’s here,” Becky said, nodding toward a tall, blonde woman in the center of the room.

  “So?”

  “So, it was her husband who was sneaking into Blake’s office. Maybe she knows something about ISC.”

  I studied Bitsy, who was holding a glass of champagne in her slender hand and gesturing to one of the waitstaff. “Somehow I don’t see that coming up in casual conversation.”

  “You never know,” said Becky, draining her champagne and scanning the room. “Oh, look. There’s your mother-in-law.” I followed her gaze to Prue, who was holding court with a gaggle of satin-clad women a few tables over. “Oooh. Are those shrimp toasts over there? I’m getting one. Do you think they’ll have crab cakes?”

  “How do you stay so skinny?” I asked.

  “Good genes,” she said, grabbing my arm and looking completely at home. I envied her. “Let’s go forage for hors d’oeuvres. And where’s that guy with the champagne?”

  We stationed ourselves near the kitchen, where we could snag things off the trays as they came through. Although Becky looked right at home, selecting tidbits off the trays that whisked by and washing them down with generous sips of champagne, I felt like an alien in the fashionable crowd that ebbed and flowed around us. I had always wondered who bought the tiny, sparkly dresses displayed in the front windows of the Arboretum stores. Likewise the gigantic diamonds, some of which looked to be in the five- to ten-pound range. Now I knew. “I bet they take their engagement rings off before they get on the scales,” I said to Becky through a mouthful of shrimp.

  “Can you imagine wearing a rock like that?” she asked, nodding toward a particularly massive specimen perched on the scrawny, taloned hand of a redhead.

  “I bet it comes in handy as a weapon.” />
  “Yeah. You could knock a guy out with that.”

  I reached for another glass of champagne with a conspicuously unmanicured hand, and was onto the third flute of bubbly and my fourth shrimp toast when Becky and I drifted into Bitsy McEwan’s orbit. “Now’s your chance,” Becky whispered, and nudged me toward her.

  “What do I say?”

  “You’ll think of something.”

  I gulped down the rest of my champagne.

  Bitsy McEwan was perfectly dressed in a silver and lavender cocktail gown that made her china-white skin glow. Her pale blue eyes settled on me as I approached, Becky a couple of steps behind me.

  “Margie! How lovely that you could come.” Her eyes registered Becky. “And who is this?”

  “Bitsy, this is Becky. She’s a good friend of mine. Becky, this is Bitsy McEwan.”

  She extended a pale hand. “Becky! So pleased to meet you.” She narrowed her eyes. “I believe I’ve seen you in the shop before, haven’t I?”

  Becky smiled. “I’ve been in from time to time.”

  “Well, lovely to see you. And is that Donna Karan you’re wearing? Stunning, simply stunning on you. If you’re interested, I’m always looking for models. Not for this year, of course, but maybe next.” Bitsy turned to the woman next to her. “This is Maria, my store manager. Much more than that, really. She handles all the operations for me.”

  Maria held out a slender hand. “Nice to meet you.” Her skin was cool and dry to the touch, and she didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Her ruby-red dress clung to her curves, and I felt a twinge of envy at her shiny black hair and smooth, dusky skin. If one of Bitsy’s gowns could make me look half as good as Maria, I’d buy it in a second.

  “We’re really looking forward to seeing this year’s collection,” Becky said.

  Bitsy glanced at me. “I’m surprised, actually. I never thought Margie cared much for clothes.” I felt a flush suffuse my neck, moving up toward my cheeks. She smiled. “But you look stunning tonight, dear. I’m surprised you could make it, with Blake working so many hours. Did you get a babysitter?”