All the Single Ladies: A Novel (9 page)

I got to my house, walked my dog, and drove to the Bottles parking lot on Coleman Boulevard. I pulled in and parked next to Carrie’s Mercedes. Carrie and Suzanne were standing there, waving at me. I got out of my car and clicked the key to lock it.

“The air-­conditioning is running. Jump in! It’s as hot as Hades out here,” Carrie said.

“I don’t know why the late-­afternoon sun is hotter than it is at noon, but it feels like it,” Suzanne said.

“It sure does,” I said, and slipped into the backseat, moving a dozen empty water bottles to the other side with my foot.

“Sorry about all the bottles,” Carrie said. “I keep forgetting to throw them out.”

“No problem,” I told her.

“So, how was your day?” Suzanne asked. “You want a bottle of cold water? We brought you one.”

It wasn’t unusual for Lowcountry residents to drink water or tea all day long in the summer.

“Sure. Thanks!” I took the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a long sip. “My day was fine. Hey! Guess what?”

“What?” Carrie said.

“I’m not sure my nervous system can take any more surprises, so tell me quick,” Suzanne said.

“I saw that guy Paul. He’s the architect on a new building project at Palmetto House.”

“No kidding?” Carrie said. “How funny!”

Suzanne turned to say something to me and I must’ve had a really goofy expression on my face.

“Oh! God!” she said.

“What?” I said, and felt my face flush.

“You’ve got a thing for him!” Suzanne said.

“I do not!” I said adamantly.

I saw Carrie look at me in the rearview mirror and then she grinned so wide I could see her gums.

“Yes, you do,” she said. “I’m an expert in the field, you know.”

“Lord save us,” Suzanne said, and giggled.

“Oh, brother. Listen, you two matchmakers, I don’t have it going on for Paul or anybody else. It’s just me and Pickle in my little world.”

“And us!” Carrie said.

“Yeah,” Suzanne said, adding, “and Wendy. Y’all? What are we going to say to her?”

Carrie made the left on East Bay Street. We were almost there. Somebody had better think of
something
to say.

“You’ve got the landscaping bill with you?” I said.

“Of course, but only a copy of it,” Suzanne said. “And a copy of Kathy’s last bank statement.”

“I think we should just be nice, you know, let her think that we think the bill is a mistake,” Carrie said.

“Yeah, there’s no point in pinning her against the wall and calling her a liar,” I said.

“Unless we have to,” Suzanne added.

We pulled up in front of Wendy’s house and got out.

“Did you call her, Suzanne?”

“No,” Suzanne said.

“What if she’s not home?” I said.

“Then I think we wait,” Suzanne said.

“Or we can sneak in and get the bracelets back,” I said.

“Not me, sugar,” Carrie said. “I look terrible in orange.”

“Would you really be a cat burglar?” Suzanne looked at me as if she were wondering in that moment if I had criminal tendencies.

“No, never. But I just feel like this horrible woman is so far over the line that I could somehow justify it.”

“Nuh-­uh,” Carrie said, and rang the doorbell and banged the door knocker. “Not me. Too chicken.”

The door opened and there stood Wendy, surprised to see us. Carrie turned turtle and quickly stepped behind Suzanne. I moved up, giving Wendy a little dose of stink eye.

“What do y’all want?” Wendy said, and not very politely.

“May we come in for a moment?” Suzanne said as sweetly as a saint.

“Well, all right. But only for a moment. I’m busy.”

“Thank you,” Suzanne said.

We followed Wendy to the living room and stood by two facing slipcovered sofas, waiting for her to sit down. She stood by the fireplace. Over the mantel hung an ancient sword, probably from the Civil War. It seemed she had no intention of offering us a seat or a drink of anything.

“So?” she said, pretty icily. “Would you like to tell me why I have the honor of this unexpected visit?”

Woo-­hoo! She was a serious bitch, I thought. I mean, world class. More stink eye ensued.

“Well, I received this bill from Green Carolina for two thousand dollars,” Suzanne said, holding the envelope in her hand.

“So?” Wendy said.

“Well, it’s for landscaping done here
after
Kathy died,” Suzanne said.

“She said she wanted to help me renovate the gardens as a birthday gift. They started the work when they did because they’re very busy. It seemed like an extravagant gift to me but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings,” Wendy said.

“I knew Kathy from the time I was just a little girl,” Suzanne said. “She was my babysitter. In all the years I knew her I never saw her do anything so over the top as this. I mean, this is obviously a mistake.”

Suzanne was giving her the opportunity to save face but Wendy didn’t seem to care about that. Her eyes darted all around the room and then settled evenly on Suzanne’s face.

“What do you mean?” she said. “It’s no mistake. She always paid the landscaping bills.”

Suzanne’s face turned red. She was getting angry.

“No, she didn’t. I have all of her bank statements to prove it.”

“Well? Maybe she paid them in cash. How should I know?”

“But a two-­thousand-­dollar bill? Are you serious?” Suzanne said. “She didn’t have that kind of money to spend.”

“She didn’t? I thought she came from money,” Wendy said.

“I don’t know what made you think that she did. She died with less than five hundred dollars to her name. My grandmother and I paid all the funeral expenses.”

“Good grief!” Wendy said.

“So, Kathy’s estate cannot pay this bill.”

Wendy gasped. “Well, then, I’ll just have to call a lawyer. Won’t I?”

“Are you threatening me with a lawsuit?” Suzanne said. Her voice was escalating and I could see we were heading for trouble.

“I never threaten,” Wendy said evenly.

“Fine,” Suzanne said, and dropped the copy of the bill on the coffee table.

Now this glass coffee table in between the sofas was covered in a collection of magnifying glasses and letter openers. They were beautiful pieces and one exquisite pair in particular caught my eye. I picked it up to look at it.

“Put that down!” Wendy said, nearly shrieking at me. “That belonged to my mother!”

“Sorry!” I said, and carefully replaced it on the table.

Carrie caught my eye. We knew something wasn’t right. She started coughing and coughing. And then, as her coughing fit progressed, she became dramatic, waving her arms and pointing to her throat.

“Are you okay?” Suzanne asked.

Carrie shook her head back and forth. She was not okay.

“Now what?” Wendy said. “You want water? Good grief! Lord! Deliver me from these women!”

As soon as Wendy huffed out of the room to get a glass of water for Carrie, I whipped out my cell phone and started taking pictures of the letter openers and magnifying glasses, vases, figurines, and paintings. Suzanne, sensing I was onto something, did the same. She took pictures of mirrors, the rugs, the end tables—­as many as she could in the narrow time frame we had. Carrie kept coughing. Hearing Wendy’s footsteps cross the ancient heart-­pine floors, we stopped clicking away and put our phones out of sight. Suspecting nothing, she came back to the living room and handed Carrie a glass. Carrie curbed her drama and took a few sips.

Carrie finally managed to speak. Her voice was raspy. “Thank you. Do you have cats?”

“Only Sylvester, my sixteen-­year-­old Persian. Why? You allergic?”

“Obviously,” I muttered.

“Deathly. I’ll just wait outside,” Carrie said, wheezing a little.

“It’s probably time for all of us to go,” Suzanne said. She pointed to the paper on the coffee table and then looked Wendy straight in the eye. “Pay the bill, Wendy.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” Wendy said.

Then I couldn’t stand it another minute, so I jumped in.

“First, it was the bracelets. Now this. What else is going on here? Pay the bill and let’s have no more nonsense from you.”

“Get out of my house or I’ll call the police,” Wendy said.

I walked to the door and followed Suzanne and Carrie outside. Wendy slammed the door so hard it could’ve fallen from its hinges and it wouldn’t have surprised me one little bit.

“She’s a terrible person,” Carrie said.

“She’s a thief,” Suzanne said.

“Something tells me that this isn’t our last dealing with her,” I said.

“Oh, please!” Suzanne said. “Make her go away!”

“By the way, I adore cats,” Carrie said in a perfectly normal voice, and laughed. “The furrier, the better.”

My jaw dropped and Suzanne said, “Please, the only things Carrie’s allergic to are stepchildren.”

Chapter 7

Still Searching

After our confrontation at Wendy’s we were all pretty breathless. All the way back to Mount Pleasant we called her every name in the book. The plan was to go to Suzanne’s house after I picked up my car. We weren’t quite ready to call it a day and we decided some adult hydration was definitely in order to soothe our rankled nerves. And we shared a crushing need for a postmortem rehash. There was a lot to discuss.

“I’m glad we parked at Bottles,” I said. “What’s it gonna be, ladies? White or red? My treat.”

“Anything, as long as it’s alcoholic,” Suzanne said.

“I have to be downtown by six. No vino for me,” Carrie said. “Well, maybe a thimble.”

“Okay!” I said, and got out of the car. “See you soon.”

They pulled away and I walked across the steaming parking lot to the store’s entrance. It was divided into two parts—­one side sold liquor and the other sold wine. I’d had a twenty-­dollar bill in my wallet that morning when I checked. I hoped it was still there. Money, in my life, had a way of disappearing into thin air. Inside, I walked to the wine side of the store and rested my shoulder bag on a counter to check for cash. When there are more receipts than money in your wallet it’s time to clean out your whole purse. Obviously I wasn’t going to start doing it then and there, but given the hoorah I’d just been through, it wouldn’t have really surprised me if I had. My behavior that day was unusual, to say the least. Normally, I didn’t talk too much or take sides in arguments. But that day I went from batting my eyes at Paul while giving him a verbal résumé, to giving the hairy eyeball to Wendy, letting her know we knew she had stolen the bracelets. What was next?

I walked the aisles of wine from all over the world thinking about Wendy and about Carrie’s coughing fit and the pictures we took. How in the world were we going to prove anything? All of us knew Wendy was guilty, but without Kathy to confirm our suspicions, what could we do? Tell Green Carolina to come take back their boxwoods and azaleas? Maybe they would. Maybe I should suggest that to Suzanne.

I chose a Malbec from South America and a pinot grigio from Italy and took them to the checkout counter.

“That’ll be eighteen dollars and thirty-­two cents,” the checkout man said.

“Here you go,” I said, remembering the days when checkout personnel would ask to see some ID to prove I was old enough to buy booze. Now they wanted to give me the senior discount at the Bi-­Lo. Maybe I needed a better moisturizer and a neck cream.

My car was a veritable oven, but I expected it to be one. I just blasted the air conditioner and backed out of my spot. I hurried home to get Pickle and she was thrilled to see me.

“Come on, sweet baby! We’re going to the beach! You can watch
Lassie
with Miss Trudie! Yes, you can! Oh, you’re such a sweet girl! Let’s go!”

I’m telling you that my dog knew exactly what I was saying. I’d bet the ranch on it—­not The Ponderosa, but my rental. It’s a ranch style? I know, dumb joke.

We rolled into Suzanne’s yard twenty minutes later. Suzanne, Carrie, and Miss Trudie were on the porch. Suzanne stood up to hold the screen door wide for me.

“I can open the wine,” she said. “Should I?”

“God, yes!” Carrie said. She was dressed for the evening.

“Wow!” I said. “You look great!”

“Thanks!” she said.

“The white’s cold,” I told her. “But it would probably stand up to ice very well.” Meaning, it was pretty cheap, so the colder it was, the better.

“Oh!” Miss Trudie said. “My little friend is back!”

Well, Pickle had to circle the porch and get her doggie love from each of the women and then she settled at Miss Trudie’s feet. Suzanne put the wine bottles on the table.

She said, “I’ll go get some glasses and a corkscrew.”

“And ice,” I said.

“And some olives!” Miss Trudie added.

“I’ve got y’all covered!” Suzanne disappeared inside the house.

“Sit! Sit!” Miss Trudie said. “I’ve been hearing all about this terrible woman. I want to hear what you think. Is she really a thief?”

“I think so,” I said. “It surely seems like it.”

“Well, this is very interesting. Not much happens in my life these days. So this is very exciting. How do you girls plan to resolve it?”

I said, “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Kathy’s not here to set the record straight. But I keep thinking we’re going to find evidence at some point. Suzanne, as you know, inherited everything Kathy left behind. Somewhere in that pile of boxes is more information.”

Carrie said, “I agree. At some point, we’re going to have to get focused on that. We’ve all been so busy!”

It was true. We
had
been busy, but to be honest, I felt like we had to take our cue from Suzanne. If Suzanne wanted to spend an evening unpacking Kathy’s things and going through them, I’d be glad to help. She knew that, I think.

“Miss Trudie? Did Suzanne and Carrie show you the pictures?”

“No, what pictures?” she said.

Carrie said, “We took pictures of some of the objects in Wendy’s living room. When Lisa picked up a letter opener that was on her coffee table, Wendy nearly died! She actually yelled at Lisa!”

“What an odious woman!” Miss Trudie exclaimed. “She raised her voice to you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “I picked up the letter opener because it didn’t really fit the style of the others. And because it was filigreed gold encrusted with a large stone on the end of its handle. There was a magnifying glass that matched it.”

“Oh! I’d love to see that!” Miss Trudie said.

Carrie and I pulled out our cell phones and fiddled with them until we could find a picture of the whole collection on the coffee table.

“See this?” I said, handing my phone to Miss Trudie. “That’s the one we’re talking about.”

“Oh my!” she said. “I see what you mean! There is a very big difference between this one and that one. This one looks like it belonged to some bigwig, like royalty or maybe Donald Trump. That one looks like it came from a yard sale.”

“And some of the others are nice, but not even in the same ballpark as this one, right?” I said.

“Lisa? Do you think Wendy stole this from Kathy too?” Carrie said.

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t trust her as far as I can spit,” I said, and then thought better of my choice of words. “Miss Trudie? I don’t spit.”

“Of course you don’t, sweetheart! It’s unsanitary and you’re a nurse!”

“Plus it’s gross,” Carrie put in.

“Exactly,” I said.

Suzanne returned with the glasses and began pouring wine.

“Just a drop for me. I have to leave in a few minutes,” Carrie said. “Well, not a drop exactly.”

“Ahem!” Miss Trudie said.

Suzanne looked at her. “Oh! I’ve done it again! I’m so sorry!”

“Go!” I said. “I can pour!”

Suzanne scurried back into the house for Miss Trudie’s olives. I suspected that the tumbler next to her seat was filled with gin. It was clear liquid for sure and I doubted that it was water. Suzanne quickly returned with a small dish of big pimento-­stuffed Spanish olives.

“Thank you, dear.”

“Here you go,” I said, and handed a half pour to Carrie.

Then I poured a glass for Suzanne and for myself.

“Cheers!” I said.

They responded in kind and Suzanne said, “I’ve got to get to the bottom of this business with Wendy and Kathy’s things. It’s just not right. I know it in my bones.”

“Well, I love y’all but I’ve got to go see a man about a future!” Carrie said. She drained her glass and stood. “Keep a light on for me. I should be home by nine at the latest.”

We gave her a little wave and she left, wisely navigating the front steps with some caution considering the height of her heels.

“Have fun!” Suzanne called.

“Happy hunting!” I said.

Carrie got in her car and closed the door.

“She looks amazing,” I said. “And you have to admire her tenacity.”

“That’s for sure. Watch her find some fabulous guy,” Suzanne said.

“I hope she does,” I said, and looked out across the water. “This sure is a mighty pretty place.”

The sun was slipping away and the colors of the sky were just as insane as they were most nights. There was a large cloud over the water. It wasn’t exactly cumulus. It was more like hundreds of huge cotton balls pushed together to make up a kind of openwork crocheted afghan. Streams of gold light slipped through the openings. The horizon itself was the reddest. As your eyes moved away from the sun, the whole vista seemed to be painted in diminishing shades of purple, rose quartz, and gold. It was stunning and mesmerizing at the same time. It wouldn’t be dark until almost nine o’clock and the scene before us would continue to change until then.

“So, what do you think, Lisa?” Suzanne said. “Should we try going through some of Kathy’s scrapbooks or a box of letters?”

“Why not?” I said. “George Clooney’s married, so I’ve got time on my hands.”

Well, what do you know, I thought. Progress. It takes a little time for minds to meet.

“We’ve got a bowl of peel-­and-­eat shrimp in the fridge,” Miss Trudie informed us. “When you girls get hungry.”

“Sounds like a perfect dinner!” I said. “Thanks!”

“I’ll go get a box,” Suzanne said. “The light is fading but we can still see well enough to look at photographs, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” I said.

Over the next hour, Miss Trudie went inside and Suzanne and I went through two photograph albums, sadly to no avail. There was nothing in Kathy’s pictures that was currently in Wendy’s side of the house. At least if there was, we didn’t recognize anything.

“This is useless,” Suzanne said. “And I feel sort of like an intruder.”

“It’s a little weird, I’ll give you that,” I said.

“Let’s get a plate of shrimp.”

“When in doubt, eat,” I said.

We carried the albums and the wine into the brightly lit kitchen and I sat down at the table, continuing to flip through the pages. Suzanne was rumbling around in the refrigerator, pulling out lemons and cocktail sauce and, of course, a large mixing bowl filled with shrimp.

“Where are the shrimp from?” I asked.

“Simmons Seafood. They’re local. In fact, they swore to me that these babies were swimming yesterday.”

“They look gorgeous!” I said.

“Well, I’m no gourmet chef but I do know how to cook shrimp. Miss Trudie taught me.”

“Can I help you do anything?” I asked.

“No, thanks. This is more like an all-­you-­can-­eat-­of-­a-­single-­item snack than a serious dinner. Piece of cake.”

She put plates on the table, poured the cocktail sauce in a small bowl, then added a plate of lemon wedges.

“Voilà!” she said. “Let’s eat.”

“Voilà!” I said, and giggled.

We clinked glasses and got down to the business of peeling the little devils. The scrapbook was open and there were two pages of photographs that appeared to be from around 1970. An older woman, maybe Kathy’s mother or an aunt, was smiling in front of a Christmas tree. There were lots of pictures like that. I recognized Kathy as a little girl and as a teenager. But neither Suzanne nor I detected anything worthy of note. When we got to the pictures of a cemetery headstone I had to stop. I closed the album.

“Okay! That’s enough!” I said.

“What was it?” Suzanne said.

“A headstone.”

“Oh Lord.”

“That’s too morbid for me,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Suzanne wiped her hands on her napkin. “Here, pass it to me. I’ll put it back in the spare bedroom and we can look through them another time. I completely agree. Too bizarre.” She got up and took the book across the hall, returning in seconds.

“It is one hundred percent peculiar to take pictures of somebody’s grave unless it’s the Taj Mahal or the Great Pyramids,” I said. “And by the way, the shrimp are fabulous, Suzanne. So sweet and tender.”

“It’s my one culinary claim to fame. Usually ­people rubberize them. They boil ’em to death. The secret is to drop them in boiling water for just a minute and then pull the water off the heat. Wait a minute or two and try one. If it’s how you like them? Drain them in a colander and cover them with a pile of ice to stop the cooking. That’s it.”

“What’s the seasoning?”

“An Old Bay boiling bag, a lemon cut in two, and a heaping tablespoon of salt. That’s it. Not too complicated.”

“Gosh, I think even I can handle that.”

“Darlin’? Don’t you know you can’t call yourself a Lowcountry girl if you can’t fix shrimp!”

“Do I have to cook grits too?”

“Nah. But it helps. I’m always counting carbs unless we’re going out for pancakes, but when Carrie brought donuts all bets were off.”

“Me too.”

Basically that meant we tried to watch what we ate but not to the point of fanaticism. It was a statement expressing exhaustion with the world’s expectation of perfection in women. You can’t go gray, gain weight, get wrinkles, sag anywhere, or age in general. If you do you will be overlooked by the opposite sex, seated in the back of restaurants, ignored in clothing stores, especially at makeup counters, and deferred to on a regular basis. If you, at my age, found yourself in one of many chain stores like Victoria’s Secret or J.Crew, the salesperson automatically assumed you were shopping for someone else. So, you know what? Every now and then, girls like Carrie, Suzanne, and me ate the damn donuts and pancakes too. Go ahead. Live a little. Besides, I’ve done enough juice cleanses for all of us.

Later, when Pickle and I were home watching television, my cell phone rang. I hoped it was Marianne. It was my mother, who rarely called me on weeknights.

“Is everything okay?” I said, waiting for terrible news. “Is Dad all right?”

“Oh, yes! Don’t worry! He’s fine. I’m fine, but I’ve had a phone call from the Smiths.”

The Smiths were my mother’s friends who owned the house I was renting.

“Oh no! Are they coming back?”

“No, but their fifty-­five-­year-­old daughter just lost her job. She’s divorced and her husband isn’t exactly consistent with his alimony payments and she needs a place to live that’s free.”