Wendy Delaney - Working Stiffs 01 - Trudy, Madly, Deeply

by Wendy Delaney

  Shannon stopped at a scale. “Let’s get you weighed in.”

  I’d sooner let my mother give me a facial. Every day for a month.

  I slipped off my shoes. “Every little bit helps, right?” If I could have stripped naked and kept a shred of my dignity, I would have.

  “Of course.” Shannon set the bottom scale weight to one hundred fifty, and kept sliding the top weight until the scale leveled off at one sixty-four.

  Holy crap!

  “Okey dokey,” Shannon chirped after a little lip press. Incongruity. Words and action mismatch. Pretty typical in friends’ white lies, customer service representatives working on commission, and weigh-ins by skinny nurses at the doctor’s office.

  Shannon led me to an examination room at the end of a short hallway, and I took a seat on a paper-covered padded table. She took my vitals and a few minutes later, I heard a knock on the door.

  “Hello, Charmaine,” Dr. Straitham said in a businesslike manner with Shannon hot on his heels. No smile, no attempt to put me at ease.

  No big surprise. Given what had happened at Trudy’s funeral it would have been a wasted effort because there was absolutely nothing he could do short of giving me an injection to help me relax. And given why I was here, especially not that.

  He sat on a short black stool with caster wheels and looked up at me after he scanned my chart. “So … you’ve been having some trouble sleeping.”

  I nodded.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Over a week.”

  “Uh huh.” He made a note in the chart, then flashed a penlight in my eyes. He crossed his legs and jotted some more notes. “Getting enough exercise?”

  “Uh … probably not.” Although I was getting a lot more now that I was chasing down anyone who might know where he had been in the early hours of last Monday morning.

  “What about your diet? Sometimes the foods we eat can keep us up at night.”

  “I don’t think food’s the problem.”

  Dr. Straitham’s gaze transferred to my hips, then back to my eyes. “Uh huh. Looks like you’ve gained a few pounds in the last several years.” He flipped a couple of pages in my chart. “Thirty-two since you were in last.”

  That meant I’d gained an average of less than three pounds a year. If I hadn’t just tipped the scales at a hundred and sixty-four pounds, I might have thought that was pretty darn good.

  He pursed his mouth. “What’d you have for breakfast this morning?”

  “Oatmeal.” I neglected to mention the half-cup of creamer I’d dumped in my coffee.

  “Lunch?”

  “A patty melt.”

  “Uh huh.” He set the chart down on the desk and met my gaze. “Charmaine, I know you’re a smart girl. What are you trying to do?”

  Excuse me? “I’m just trying to get a little more sleep.” And find out what the hell you’ve been up to.

  “Hmmmm.” He twisted off the stool, tapped my back, then listened to my heart. “You having headaches?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You have a new job, right?”

  Uh oh. “Yes.”

  “Could be stress-related.”

  “Things have been a little stressful lately,” I said, watching for his reaction.

  He offered up a humorless smile. “Yeah.”

  “A lot is going on. You know, with Trudy Bergeson’s death and all.”

  Eyes downcast, he slowly nodded. “Very sad.”

  And he clearly felt sadness, which proved absolutely nothing. After Chris asked me for a divorce, he had the same exact expression. Didn’t stop the jerk from telling me he wanted out, didn’t make me feel better, and didn’t alter the outcome of the situation one iota.

  “Thanks, Shannon,” he said as she clicked the door shut behind her.

  Uh oh.

  Dr. Straitham sat back down on the stool, leaned back against the wall, and stared at me for several ticks of the wall clock near the door.

  The corners of his eyes tightened, his brows drew together.

  Mistake, my brain screamed at me. I was now alone with a possible killer. If he reached for a syringe, what was I going to do? Fend him off with the paper lining from the examination table?

  “Charmaine, I’m going to write you a prescription for a mild sedative that should help you sleep.”

  Great. I could use a little something right now to get my heart back to a normal rhythm.

  “I’d also like you to think about your lifestyle.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t sure where he was going with the bit about my lifestyle, but if it meant I’d live to suck down a mocha latte another day, I could think about pretty much anything.

  “You only have this one body,” he said as he pulled a sheet of paper from the desk drawer. “You need to take better care of it.”

  So was that the problem? Trudy and the others weren’t taking care of their bodies? Weren’t following doctor’s orders? Seemed crazy harsh for a doctor to sit in judgment of his patients this way, but everyone had their breaking points.

  “Okay.”

  I looked down at the paper he’d just handed me and tried to keep my hand from shaking long enough to focus on the words, heart-healthy and food groups.

  “I think you’ll find that this plan is easy to follow, and as a bonus you’ll probably start sleeping better.”

  Swell. My prime suspect had just put me on a diet.

  Chapter Twelve

  As soon as she got into the car, Marietta pulled off her broad-rimmed dark glasses and beamed, hitting me with the full force of her chemically whitened teeth. “I have big news!”

  Cursing under my breath, I started the engine. I felt stupid to be leaving Dr. Straitham’s office with nothing more than a prescription for the problem in the bucket seat next to me. Oh, and a diet, so make that stupid and fat and in no mood to hear Marietta’s breaking news.

  “Don’t you wanna know what I found out?” she asked.

  I shifted into reverse and eased out of the parking space. “I’m listening.”

  She flicked her wrist, the three silver bangles adorning it colliding inches away from my ear. “You might want to pull right back in this spot and give me your full attention.”

  What I wanted was to drop Marietta off at my grandmother’s house and hightail it to my favorite espresso stand for a mocha latte. “What’ve you got?”

  “Dr. Straitham is having an affair!”

  I slammed on the brake. “What?”

  Bracing herself against the dashboard, my mother bit back a frown. “Did I not tell you to park it?”

  I’d noticed she’d been toning down her southern-fried accent when she wasn’t around her adoring public. Now there wasn’t a trace. Plus, she sounded like a pissed off mother which wasn’t helping my mood.

  I pulled off on a side street and parked in the shade of a thicket of Douglas firs that bordered a realtor’s office. “Who told you Doc Straitham is having an affair?”

  “His nurse, Shannon.”

  “But she was in the office with me most of the time.”

  “And then she joined in on the conversation when I mentioned how guilty Warren looked at Trudy’s funeral.” Marietta’s lips curled into a wicked smile. “Turns out he has good reason for that guilty look.”

  Assuming that’s all he was guilty of.

  “An affair.” The doctor certainly had a roving eye. I’d observed that myself, as well as Virginia Straitham’s reaction to it. “Did Shannon give you the name of the woman?”

  “No name. But she’s pretty sure that it’s someone at the hospital.”

  That would explain what Cindy said about the doctor’s car in the hospital parking lot at odd hours.

  “Does Virginia know?”

  “Trust me, hon, she knows.” Marietta gazed out the passenger side window. “We always know.”

  Marietta didn’t have the greatest track record picking husbands. Then again, neither did I. Short of holding hands
and turning this into a mother/daughter therapy session, I passed on sharing and made a mental note to pay Cindy another visit.

  “So, this afternoon might not have gone exactly as you’d planned, but did I do good or what?” Marietta asked with a gleam in her green eyes.

  I had to give credit where credit was due. “You done good.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She patted me on the thigh. “We make a good team, you and I.”

  Team? This was a one-time performance of the Digby and Digby show. “I really don’t—”

  “So what’s next? Do we try to find out where Warren’s been dippin’ his wick?”

  There was that we thing again. “Leave any matters having to do with wick dipping to me.”

  “Well, if you insist, but I do believe I might have a little more experience in this area than you.”

  “I have plenty of experience.”

  That earned me another pat. “You are such a bad liar.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  She reached into her purse for a lipstick. “Honey, I’ve been at the lying game a long time. Do it well and it’s called acting.”

  “Says you,” I muttered under my breath, easing away from the curb and turning right at the corner to take Marietta back to Gram’s.

  “So, what do you say we celebrate how things went today with a little piece of pie.” A hopeful smile played at the corners of her cherry red lips. “It does happen to be pie happy hour.”

  I wouldn’t say the news about Dr. Straitham was a cause for celebration. It helped a puzzle piece click into place, but it failed to get me closer to any answers about how Trudy died.

  “You want pie?” Seriously?

  “Lunch with Barry was a bit of a rush so I have to admit I’m a little hungry.”

  The mention of my biology teacher’s name set off my radar. She might be hungry, but I was willing to bet the four dollars in my wallet that I’d been saving for a mocha latte that it wasn’t for pie.

  Since I could keep my four dollars by letting Duke supply my caffeine fix, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and took the right at the corner and the next left onto Main.

  Two minutes later, the silver bell above the cafe door signaled our arrival.

  Duke sat sipping a cup of coffee at the far end of the counter next to Stanley. Pie happy hour was his chew the fat time with the regulars before turning the grill over to the night shift and heading home to spend the rest of his evening parked in front of the tube.

  His brows furrowed the second he met my gaze. “Do you ever actually work at this new job of yours?”

  “I got time off for good behavior,” I said, heading for the coffee carafe while my mother slid onto the bench seat of a booth by the front window.

  He scoffed. “Bullshit.”

  “Such language!” Marietta said, her bangles clattering.

  Duke growled like a junkyard dog warning her to keep her distance. “What’s she doing here? Was the Ritz-Carlton closed?”

  I smiled with enough sugar to induce a diabetic coma. “She wanted pie.”

  He eyeballed her as I topped off his coffee cup. “Bullshit to that, too.”

  Stanley nodded his agreement as he pushed his cup at me. That made it unanimous.

  “How’s Alice doing?” I asked.

  Duke shook his head. “She’s home. Beyond that, she’s not sayin’ much. Keeps telling me she’s fine.”

  No shock there. My great-aunt wasn’t a complainer. But I didn’t need to be able to read her body language to see that she was far from fine.

  I grabbed a couple of white porcelain coffee mugs. “And I call bullshit to that.”

  I approached the table, where Marietta was leaning against the window and looking down the length of the street.

  “Did you see someone?” I asked, following her gaze.

  “No, I—”

  As I filled our coffee mugs, her eyes shifted to a man with a shopping bag walking by the window. A little sigh echoed the fact that this wasn’t the man she was hoping to see.

  “I just thought I recognized someone.” She flashed me a fake smile, utterly lackluster by Marietta standards. “My mistake.”

  The sunshine streaming in through the window illuminated the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Not exactly the soft lighting Marietta Moreau had grown accustomed to in her infomercials, but at fifty-six she was still striking, still an irritatingly fascinating beauty.

  A minute after Kim took our pie order, two apple pie ala modes arrived at our table along with a spicy cologne chaser.

  “Hello, ladies,” Barry Ferris said, his gaze fixed on my mother, whose fork clattered to her plate.

  “Barry, what a nice surprise.” She scooted over on the bench seat to make room for him.

  Surprise my fat ass. Barry Ferris didn’t just happen to show up for pie happy hour freshly shaven, wearing a pressed white shirt and new Levis. Even without the spicy cologne he’d splashed on, this reeked of a set up.

  He glanced across the table at me. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “Of course not.” I had just become the intruder.

  He leaned back and pointed at my plate. “That pie sure looks good.”

  “Would you like some?” Marietta pushed her plate toward him. “Truly, there’s no way I can eat this all by myself.”

  Big fat lie. She could pack it away as easily as I could.

  “Honey,” she said to me, “be a dear and fetch Barry another fork.”

  I stepped away from the table and grabbed a fork from the bin under the counter along with a clean cup. As I stopped at the coffee pot, Duke crooked a finger at me.

  He was a caffeine addict after my own heart, so I brought the carafe with me.

  Duke’s face screwed up like he’d been force fed Sylvia’s tuna casserole. “Why the hell is Barry Ferris sniffin’ around her porch?”

  “If you have to ask, you need glasses more than I do,” Stanley quipped, shoving his black horn rims up the bridge of his bulbous nose.

  I topped off Duke’s cup. “What he said.”

  Duke directed a steely-eyed glare at my mother. “I don’t like it. Barry Ferris is a nice guy. She needs to go home and leave well enough alone.”

  “Amen to that,” I muttered, heading back to the table.

  I handed Barry the fork, poured him a cup of coffee, and reached for my plate while racking my brain for a believable lie because there was no way I was going to sit across from my mother and watch her make goo-goo eyes at my old teacher.

  Fortunately, what I came up with wasn’t much of a stretch. “Duke’s a little down. I’m going to keep him company at the counter.”

  The corners of my mother’s lips telegraphed her approval. And I knew it wasn’t because I was being such a wonderfully kind-hearted great-niece.

  “Okay, honey,” she said. “We understand.” She turned to Mr. Ferris, who was staring into her eyes like he was the luckiest man in the world.

  The poor sap.

  I didn’t know what she thought she was doing with a high school biology teacher and considering the subject he taught, I didn’t want to know. And I didn’t want to think about him getting lucky with my mother! I wanted to slap some sense into the man.

  He didn’t know her. He might have seen some glimpses of the small town Mary Jo that made Marietta Moreau seem like a real woman. But the fairytale ride in this coach was going to come to a screeching halt when it turned back into a pumpkin. It was just a matter of time—an internal clock ticking inside my mother. Something kept her on the move, navigating the waters like a shark, always hunting, always on the lookout for the next big thing to keep her face in front of the camera. Lately, that meant making personal appearances in metropolitan areas—part of her contractual obligation as the cosmetic line’s spokesperson.

  Port Merritt was no metropolitan area, and I was quite sure that her clock was going to strike midnight really soon. It always did.

  After all the parent/te
acher conferences she’d cancelled, all the empty promises I’d heard about how she’d make it up to me next year, I only hoped that Barry Ferris was smart enough to realize that pumpkin time was around the corner.

  I carried my plate over to the counter and sat next to Stanley as the bell over the door announced the arrival of another happy hour customer.

  Duke nodded toward Marietta’s table. “What? Was three a crowd?”

  “I have a more important question,” Steve asked, tucking his legs under the counter and taking my fork from my hand. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  “Sheesh, you’re so suspicious. You’d make a good cop.”

  The lines at the corners of his eyes creased as he worked on a mouthful of pie. “So, what are you doing here?”

  “I had an … appointment this afternoon.”

  “What with—a piece of pie?”

  That got a snicker out of Stanley. Although I didn’t appreciate it nearly as much as he did.

  “Very funny. I had to take Marietta to the doctor and after—”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Uh … her local fan club was having a meeting.” Almost the truth.

  Steve pushed the pie plate away. “Now you’re getting your mother involved in this? What the hell are you doing?”

  “If it makes you feel any better, she didn’t see the doctor. I did.”

  “Dammit, Char! Leave the man alone.”

  “I’ll have you know that I found out something big while we were there,” I whispered, leaning close. “Something huge.”

  Steve’s dark eyes hardened. “You are way out of line.”

  “But this is really big news!”

  Shaking his head, he twisted out of his seat and stalked toward the door.

  “Wait a minute!” The silver bell jingled behind me as I ran after him. “Don’t you want to hear what I found out?”

  He turned around and took an open stance like he was ready to throw me against the side of the building and slap a pair of handcuffs on me if I made one wrong move.

  I had no doubt that he thought I’d already made it, but he might feel differently once he stopped acting like a ticked off cop and actually heard what I had to say.