“Thanks. Heaps.” I set my jaw and did my best not to cry.
“I would have told you if I’d been sure they was really still a couple. You know I would.” The sorrow in her tone was genuine, but my pain was real, too. My face must have been a sight because Mert wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly.
“She was there,” I spoke to her shoulder. “Her name’s Brenda. She was on his arm. It was awful.”
“That no-good skunk, next time I see him, I’m a gonna—”
“You are going to do nothing.” I pushed away from Mert. “He’s a law enforcement official. You don’t need that kind of hassle that would follow a tangle with Detweiler. Especially now that your brother is trying to get his life in order. Not to mention all after the interest the cops are taking in you for Yvonne Gaynor’s murder. I’ll get past this. You know I will.”
“Just so you know, he ain’t off my sic ’em list. He better beware.” She added softly, “But I gotta say, I saw how he looked at you, and it was the kind of expression a person gets when he sees his whole life in front of him and cain’t hardly stand for it to get started. This don’t make no sense. There’s gotta be more to this here story.”
“Maybe so, but I can’t be bothered to find out. He’s married. End of discussion.”
“Oh, sure. He’s married, and you was married. Folks can still be hitched and not be joined in spirit. Maybe there’s extenuating circumstances. You never know.”
“I can’t go there.” I shook my head. “Correction: I refuse to go there. Now let me tell you something else that I’ve decided: I need to find a new place to rent. My neighborhood isn’t safe enough.”
“Yes, you do. You absolutely do need to move. There ain’t no question about that.”
My best bud is the most imminently practical person I’d ever met. Her favorite saying is, “It is what it is,” but with her southern Missouri accent, it sounded more like, “Hit is what hit is.” She lives by the philosophy that lying to yourself won’t change anything, but it will always make you more vulnerable, more susceptible to getting hurt.
Mert continued, “I got news, too. I heard through the grapevine that they took in one of the catering staff for questioning about Yvonne. Remember how Bama insisted on using The Catering Company? I told her she should call the Delgatto family, because they’re the best? But she wouldn’t listen. Well, turns out there is this woman at The Catering Company who used to cook special events for the Gaynors. Like dinner parties and all? But Yvonne fired her. Didn’t pay her neither. Wound up sticking her with a big bill for her supplies. I guess the cops done took this gal to the station for questioning.”
“Wow.” I crossed my arms over my chest and thought this through. “That means the cops might have figured out who doctored the icing on the scone and traced it back to the caterer.”
“Yup.” Mert picked up a carrot stick and chewed on it. “One more thing. Get this. Bama? Her sister works for The Catering Company. I’m wondering if she got herself a kickback for bringing in the Time in a Bottle business.”
“You are kidding me!”
“No, ma’am.” Mert fished around in a red cooler. She pulled out two Budweisers, one for her and one for me. “I kid you not. You see what that means? It means that catering gal ain’t the only one who had a way to monkey with the food. Bama had a way to mess with them scones, too.”
I popped the top on my beer. “I wonder if Detweiler knows how Bama is connected to the caterer.”
“Probably. If I know it, it ain’t no big secret.” Mert turned thoughtful. “Did you tell the squirt about him? Anya’s awful fond of Detweiler. She’ll need to know why you gotta put distance between yourself and him.”
I repeated my conversation with my child. However, I stopped short of telling Mert about Anya’s enthusiastic rendition of how Mert schooled Roger’s bully.
She took a long draw on her beer and said, “There’s one thing everybody knows about me. I don’t take kindly to people messing with the folks I love. Won’t stand for it. Never would. There ain’t that many people in the world that I really care about, and you and Anya are part of my tribe. I’m glad you found out about Detweiler before she got herself more attached to him.”
“Me too,” I said, but I wondered if it had been too late. For Anya and for me. I guess I don’t have a poker face, because Mert figured out what I was thinking.
“You gonna be okay without this Detweiler in your life? You was awful lonely after George died.”
I told her about Ben Novak. “I have high hopes,” I added. “At the very least, Sheila made plans for our families to get together for dinner.”
“That’s all fine and dandy, but I couldn’t help but notice that my baby brother was pretty taken with you. You might have lost out on that there detective, but I got a feeling your lonely days is long gone.”
57
There was way too much to eat at Mert’s party. I thought I’d burst after eating the grilled burger Johnny put on my plate, the potato salad mixed with cucumbers, the gazpacho, the seven-layer Mexican dip, and the innumerable desserts including a huge Texas sheet cake, homemade fudge, and hand-cranked peach ice cream.
Of course, the frosty cold beers encouraged everyone to be extra-friendly. I mingled with Mert’s neighbors, listening and occasionally joining in on their conversations. Even though the Barbara Walters book had enhanced my courage socially, I am still an introvert at heart.
Anya enjoyed Roger’s attention. The two kids played skee ball, taking turns winning and losing. I was pleased when Johnny asked me to dance, but I’m not into line-dancing. I like doing my own thing.
“I’ve had enough of this geezer music!” Roger shouted after the third Johnny Cash album in a row.
“Quit complaining and do something about it,” Mert told him.
Roger ran inside and came out carrying a stack of CDs. The first strains of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” made me sway to the rhythm. I absolutely love that song for all sorts of reasons.
“Come on and dance.” Mert grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into the center of her back yard.
“No.” I headed for the people clustered at the outskirts of Mert’s yard. I’d had three beers, but I was sober enough to know I definitely should not start dancing in public.
Growing up, I had taken ballet, tap, and jazz classes. I loved all of them, but the sensual nature of jazz really appealed to me. In fact, you could say I found it far too appealing. For the vast majority of my life, I’m prim and proper to the point of being stuffy and aloof. But there’s a tiny, little part of me that likes to cut loose. When I hear the right music, I lose all my inhibitions. I’m a maniac on the dance floor. In high school, I caused a fight to break out at a sock hop. In college, after a night of carefree dancing, I woke up the next morning pregnant. All that flashed before me, as Mert taunted me. “Don’t be such a party pooper, Kiki! Dance with my brother. Come on! Johnny grab her. Don’t let her run off.”
Following her directions, he took me by the hand and pulled me into the designated dance space. Instantly, we were swallowed up by other dancers.
“I shouldn’t!” I yelled over the music.
“Cut loose, girl!” Johnny shouted back.
One minute I was standing there stiff as a piece of cardboard. The next I was as limber and loose as a writhing python. Then I closed my eyes and gave up every pretense of restraint.
What can I say? That hypnotic beat took over as if I’d been possessed by the spirit of Josephine Baker. I swayed, I moved, I bumped and I grinded. I twirled and I whirled. I opened my eyes briefly and shut them again. Totally unaware of my surroundings, I let the music guide me. I was somewhere else, a place of total freedom — and then I fell backward over a flowerpot, coming down hard on my butt.
The music stopped.
I blinked up into a dozen shocked faces, including a stunned looking Johnny. He offered me a hand and pulled me to my feet.
“You okay?”
&
nbsp; “Yup.” Once I was upright, I brushed the dirt off my shorts. On my backside, I peeled off a dead petunia that I’d smashed flat when I hit the ground.
Somebody cued up another Johnny Cash song.
Anya stomped over, hands on hips, and a scowl on her face. “I can’t believe you. You are so…totally inappropriate for a woman your age!”
“You are too tough on your mom.” Roger gave Anya a playful poke in the bicep.
His mother pushed him out of the way. “You all right? That was amazing. You jest cut loose and ran wild there, girlfriend. I ain’t never seen nobody gyrate quite like that.”
The expression on Johnny’s face told the whole story. His mouth was contorted with an effort not to laugh. The corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement. “That was a performance that’ll live on in infamy.”
“Thanks heaps,” I said and winced. Between the champagne yesterday and the beer today, added to the hard plunk down on my backside, my head was pounding. “Anybody got a couple of Advil?”
Mert got me fixed up with the headache pills and a bottle of water. “Could I take six of these leftover muffins home with me?” I asked. I didn’t tell her I planned to drop them off at the Gaynor home in Illinois on Monday.
“Help yourself. In fact, pack up as much chow as you want. The party’s breaking up. There ain’t no good reason to let stuff go to waste.”
Johnny volunteered to drive me home in my car. Roger was to follow in Mert’s truck with Anya and Gracie as his passengers. Both men had strict instructions to check my house before we entered.
“Yes, sir,” said Johnny, as he backed the BMW down Mert’s driveway. “That was some performance. Next time you need to check that the control tower at Lambert Field’s got you cleared for flying.”
“Lambert Field?” Then I remembered Lambert Field was the original name what’s now called the St. Louis Airport. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I was soooo tired.
After walking through the house, Johnny waved an all clear. Anya scooted inside with the dog.
Johnny held the front door open for me, but as I walked through, he grabbed me by the back of my belt and stopped my progress.
“You,” he pressed his lips against my ear, “are one darling little girl. Next time you decide to cut loose, why don’t you call me? Dancing by yourself might be hazardous to your health.”
58
The next morning, Anya acted like she’d forgotten about my antics at Mert’s party. In fact, she was in a relatively cheerful mood when I dropped her off at the Science Center.
That put me in a good mood, too, but that feeling of happiness quickly evaporated when a car with tinted windows followed, right on my bumper. A couple of blocks later, it remained glued to my rear end.
St. Louis drivers might be the worst in the country. In fact, cops in other towns joke about “St. Louis stops,” where drivers give the stop signs a cursory slow-down rather than coming to a complete halt. Being tailgated in this city was nothing new. Dropping into defensive driver mode, I signaled far in advance and added a few extra lane changes on our way down 40. The dark SUV stayed with me. At the exit, it nearly tapped my bumper—and that scared me.
I opened my cell phone.
But who would I call?
Not Detweiler. And I didn’t have the phone number for Robbie Holmes. I could dial 911, but how long would it take for someone to come to my assistance?
Traffic congested near the Galleria but eased the next three blocks. Using the timing of stoplights to my advantage, I put three cars between myself and the SUV. Feeling safer, I zipped into the parking lot of Time in a Bottle. The SUV drove on by.
I sat there and shivered. Gracie nuzzled me. I rubbed her under her chin. “Okay, this creepy stuff could be connected with George’s murder, but why would it be happening to me now? This has to stop.”
Gracie turned soulful brown eyes on me.
“Right,” I said. “When you consider all the bad press we’ve gotten since Yvonne died, the answer is obvious. “Okay. Today I am going to do something about this. See if I don’t.”
59
Two Diet Dr Peppers later, I got my groove back. When Dodie came in, she wanted to know how the Opera Theatre event had gone. But I didn’t get the chance to revisit my weekend, because the phone rang. The call came from a photographer who’d received my package of information in the mail. He wanted to see more of my work. I had just hung up when another photographer called. This one asked me to make three albums for his business. Because I was on a roll, I phoned three nursing home administrators. After explaining how albums might help caregivers cope with patients suffering from dementia, I convinced two of them to let me do a special scrapbooking program at their facilities.
“Any news about Horace? Anything more from the CAMP group?” I asked Dodie when she passed by my worktable.
“Not a peep. Don’t forget, we have our regular Monday night crops starting again tonight, and you’re on your own for the Labor Day crop this coming Wednesday. I won’t be here and Bama won’t either. She is coming in today at noon.”
I had remembered that tonight was the resumption of our Monday night crops. Anya was spending the night with her grandmother. But I’d forgotten about Wednesday being our Labor Day crop. As for working it alone, well, I was beginning to wonder whether Bama was a full-time employee or not.
“Good to hear that Bama will be working, because if you recall, today’s the day I planned to drive over to Illinois and drop off muffins for the Gaynor family.”
Dodie frowned. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
“No, but I’m sure that if this doesn’t get resolved soon, we’re all going to go crazy,” and I told her about the SUV that had bumped the back of my car. I also told her about the incident with the fake Gracie. “In fact, I’m surprised the cops haven’t already contacted you. They plan to. They told me as much.”
Dodie sank down onto a stool. She closed her eyes. “This cannot keep happening. Not to me, not to you, not to us. Sooner or later someone is bound to get badly hurt.”
“Is that a yes?”
Her eyes snapped open. “Yes, but use your head. Be sure to get back here before six when the crop starts.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
60
I went to work prepping for our Monday night crop. That included double-checking all the supply racks and straightening the shelves. Next I turned my attention to creating a sample layout with a paper that wasn’t selling. When a paper didn’t move, a sample layout could give its sales a boost, and this particular paper needed all the help it could get. Finding a way to use it on a page was challenging, even for me.
I’d finally come up with a layout I liked when Bama came in. She walked past me without a word and sat down at the store computer.
That ticked me off. Big time. If I stuck around, I’d say something I’d regret. Instead, I craned my neck around the open door to Dodie’s office and said, “I’m off.” With the bag of muffins in hand, I climbed into my car nervously, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror in case that predatory SUV showed up again. However, I didn’t see any sign of that driver or anyone else who seemed to care where I was going.
The Gaynors lived across the Mississippi River in Illinois. Across the river sounds like someplace far away, but actually you could drive from downtown St. Louis over the bridge into Illinois faster than you could get to the western suburbs. The address I’d scrawled on a piece of paper turned out to be a brick three-story home with extensive landscaping and a paved walkway to the front door. Unfortunately, the place was empty. I rang the doorbell repeatedly, but nobody answered.
I’d driven all the way over here for nothing. Goodness knew when I’d get another chance to poke around. Surely not for another ten days or so. By then, would Time in a Bottle still be in business?
I made an executive decision: I was not going back to the store without information.
Clutching the bag of muffins and a generi
c sympathy note from my stash of pre-made cards, I recited “eenie, meenie, minee, moe” while pointing at one house after another on each side of the Gaynor home. “Moe” turned out to be an obviously well-tended property. Instead of red brick, the facade was white-washed bricks, and this gave the place a more sophisticated look. Alternating pink and white begonias lined the sidewalk. A purple clematis grew on strings tethered to the post mailbox. Everything about the place shouted classy perfection. And bingo! A Neighborhood Watch decal was stuck in the lower right corner of the front window.
To my mind, Neighborhood Watch was a more acceptable way of saying, “Resident busybody lives here.”
Fortified with my perilous logic, I rang the doorbell.
I expected an elderly woman with bad eyesight. A house-frau in curlers and sweatpants. A matron with French-fried hair.
Instead, Jackie Kennedy opened the door. The woman inspecting me, while I inspected her, was fortyish, trim, and wearing a brunette bob that grazed her chin. Diamond earrings dotted her ears. Her lime green A-line shift was of a slubbed silk. Everything about her whispered of style and good breeding.
If I were a Volkswagen bus, she was a stretch limousine.
Fortunately, I’d practiced my spiel on the drive over. “I’m terribly sorry. I must have the wrong house. I was hoping to share my condolences with the Gaynors.”
“Jackie” studied me thoughtfully. In a matter of seconds, she had me pegged.
“No one’s home,” she said in a cultured voice. “I assume you were planning to leave those?” She pointed to the muffins and the card.
“Yes, I wanted to drop these off. My friends and I are scrapbookers and we’re so sorry about —”
“About that spiteful she-wolf keeling over? Give me a break. Who would be sorry about that?”
That knocked me for a loop. I couldn’t decide how to respond. On one hand, I wanted to say, “No kidding? Wasn’t she a piece of work? Let’s talk.” On the other, I had a deep fear that I was being snookered. Was it possible that this woman was putting me on?
Kiki Lowenstein Books 1-3 & Cara Mia Delgatto Books 1-3: The Perfect Series for Crafters, Pet Lovers, and Readers Who Like Upbeat Books! Page 40
