Charleston with a Clever Cougar: A Dance with Danger Mystery #6 (2 page)

It wasn’t a quick death or even a kind one.
She was crossing Newbury Street in Boston one icy winter day, on
her way to a banking convention four years ago, when a sedan hit a
slick patch and slid into her. She struck her head on the curb as
she went down and suffered major brain trauma. Allen was at her
side for much of the time she lingered. For a while, it looked like
she might pull through, but in the end, her body just gave up the
fight.

That accident led to Allen’s embarrassing
public downfall, exposing the decades-long romance to the rest of
the world. Allen finally admitted he loved Aunt Pinkie and didn’t
care who knew it. Instead of sneaking around to meet her here and
there, he parked himself at Massachusetts General as he waited for
her to mend. His wife had him ousted from the company just short of
his golden parachute inflating. He crashed and burned,
figuratively, on his sixtieth birthday, when Romy served him with
divorce papers, the board of directors of Klinghoffer Plumbing
booted him out, and his luggage was delivered to Aunt Pinkie’s
hospital room. His lawyers told him they wanted the cash up front
before they would represent him in the divorce because he was such
a bad credit risk. In the end, Romy succeeded in breaking him. As
soon as Aunt Pinkie’s body was in the ground, headstone carved,
Allen crawled back to the family manse on his hands and knees. He
told me, tearfully, that he wasn’t a proud man or a strong one,
that as much as he had loved Pinkie, he needed the security of his
old life. It was true. I could see that. I even understood it. But
I didn’t respect it. That’s because I chose to be with Aunt Pinkie.
I knew how much I mattered to her and how much she loved me.

Both sets of grandparents were willing to
raise me after my mother died, and would have done a fine job, but
I knew Aunt Pinkie needed me. Without me, she would have been stuck
with Allen. Does that sound strange? I think in some ways, I was
Aunt Pinkie’s lifeline as much as she was mine. When I moved into
her tiny little house in Old Saybrook, I filled a void in her life
that cut deep. Aunt Pinkie, as my legal guardian, made sure that I
was well-educated, well-fed, and well-nurtured, and as her adoptive
daughter, I made sure she knew how much it was appreciated.

Over the years, as I grew older, I often
thought about all the years Aunt Pinkie sacrificed for Allen. She
never found another man to marry, nor did she have kids of her own.
She always settled for someone else’s. She spoiled me rotten -- not
with material goods. Heaven knows she never made a lot of money as
the assistant bank manager for Livingston Trust. But those
weekends, while Allen was out sailing and skiing with Romy and the
kids, I was spirited all over the East Coast, feasting on Maine
seafood, hitting the shows in New York and Boston, learning to hike
and bike in Vermont, and even visiting Cape May with Aunt Pinkie.
She knew by then that Allen would never leave his wife. She never
complained, never berated Allen. I sometimes resented the fact that
she went without. Aunt Pinkie was a good person. She deserved
better. She should have had a Roger in her life. Long after my
mother’s funeral, he remained a part of my life, helping to keep me
on an even keel.

“Hey!” A voice broke through my ruminations
of the past. It was the little gnome, standing at the counter,
trying to attract my attention. I shook myself back to reality and
put on a chipper smile.

“How was that second cup? Any better than the
first?”

“Passable. What did you put in the muffins?”
It sounded like an accusation of sorts.

“What do you mean?”

“That spice. Subtle, but nice.”

“Cardamom.”

“Works with the coffee.” He nodded
thoughtfully. “Most people use cinnamon.”

“I like to shake things up once in a while,
perk up your taste buds, get your attention.”

“Well, it worked,” he said. Those eyes met
mine head on and locked in, with an intensity and fierceness that
was disconcerting. I suddenly found myself blushing. “Good
muffin.”

With that, he turned and headed out the
door.

“Thanks!” I called after him.

Chapter Two --

Daisy had become my shadow at work several
months earlier, when her mother contracted the flu during
chemotherapy. Carole’s weakened immune system failed her, and she
hovered between life and death, frightening Daisy. Dylan was packed
off to his grandparents in Westerly, Rhode Island, where he was
able to resume some semblance of life as a child, in between
sporadic visits to his mother. He thought he was on vacation
because Mary and Phil kept him busy with activities and toys.
Daisy, on the other hand, refused to leave Carole’s side. She was
adamant about it. She instinctively knew how sick her mother really
was.

“This rat is not deserting the ship,” she
insisted, despite a plea from her grandparents to move in with
them. “I have to look after her, Cady. I’m all she’s got to keep
her going.”

“That’s not true, Daze,” I reminded her.
“Your mom has good friends and family who love her. We’re all going
to help her get through this. Tonight, you’re coming home with me.
You can sleep in my spare room.”

That was the first time Daisy stayed with me
in my two-bedroom Old Saybrook condo. Over the next six months,
Carole had to be hospitalized a few more times, and each time,
Daisy brought her bags to my place. She often hung out in her own
home by day, retreating to my spare bedroom each night. I kept an
eye out for her, making sure she ate well, talking to her about her
mother’s treatments at the Smilow Cancer Center down at Yale, and
driving her to visit her mother. When Jason Siegelmann invited her
to his junior prom, I took her dress shopping down in New Haven, so
that Carole could be a part of the decision-making process. Daisy
and I bounced from store to store, and I photographed her in all
the dresses. We rushed back to show Carole our finds. The three of
us huddled in the hospital room, pouring over the choices, and we
were delighted when Carole gave the final vote to the royal blue
off-the-shoulder taffeta choice.

I wasn’t a substitute mother for the
teenager, because Carole was the real deal, but I played the role
of adopted aunt. As an only child, I missed out on having siblings,
and as a single, unmarried woman, I never got around to having kids
of my own. We just seemed to fall into the arrangement because it
worked for all of us.

After the last round of chemotherapy, Carole
had begun to rally. She was finally getting back on her feet and
taking an interest in living again. Dylan was home again, happily
ensconced in his second-grader life, playing soccer and building
imaginary space adventures with his Legos. Carole had begun to work
again as a freelance editor for a couple of publishers. But she
still wasn’t quite ready to handle Daisy’s teenage anxieties and
woes, so I figured the best option was to keep her on at Cady’s
Cakes. As much as she fought against the requirements of the job,
she always pulled through for me in the end, probably because she
knew at some point she would need to lean on me when things went
bad for Carole.

I guessed something had changed over the last
week for Daisy and it was only a matter of time before she would
spill the coffee beans. It popped up when we were getting ready to
close at six.

“My father called me last night,” she
announced. “He wants Dylan and me to come live with him in Bowie,
Maryland.”

I took a sharp, involuntary breath. The
bastard. Didn’t he know how desperately Carole needed her kids?
Didn’t he understand they were her reason for living, for existing?
Hadn’t all that already been settled during the custody battle?

“Oh?” I said that one word as calmly and
kindly as I could, trying to hide the fact that I wanted to take a
big chunk out of Doug Walchuk. That son of a bitch had some nerve
pulling a Sir Galahad at this point in time. Where was he for the
first few years of Carole’s cancer treatment? Having an affair. Now
he had his brand-spanking-new trophy wife and the triplets, a new
career as an up-and-coming assistant school superintendent in a
good school district in Maryland, and a fading memory of what he
left behind in Connecticut -- that disastrous public scandal over
his affair with Mimi, the woman on the Board of Education who
backed his “school improvement” plan. According to Doug at the
time, he and Mimi had to get together frequently for “meetings” to
discuss educational issues. Back then, he was just the principal of
Miller Elementary, not some hot shot assistant school
superintendent. Mimi was the ballot-busting, go-getting educational
reformer out to transform Old Saybrook’s school system. Only
trouble was those meetings were held in bed or in the back of
Doug’s Town and Country van, with the seats removed. Was Doug now
so desperate to make his new life look as respectable as possible,
he was willing to destroy Carole and the kids?

“I told him I wanted to stay here.”

“Hmm....” I uttered in my most neutral tone.
I didn’t want to insert my own opinion into the conversation. Let
Daisy tell it her own way. Let the details come out.

“He said that he’s going to ask for custody
of Dylan.” There it was.

Bite your tongue. He’s still her
father
, I reminded myself. I clenched my jaw, fighting the urge
to speak my mind.

After the scandal broke, Mimi had moved to
Maryland, gotten a job as town solicitor near Bowie, and started
lobbying to get Doug the assistant superintendent job. After the
divorce, he joined his co-conspirator and they married in less than
six months. They reinvented themselves as a Maryland wannabe power
couple. She was now also a corporate attorney for Lockright,
padlock specialists. She made a big point of letting everyone know
she was now a busy mother of three, having “given birth” to the
triplets through a surrogate. Doug and Mimi spent a small fortune
to create the replacement family. Why was he now trying to change
Dylan’s custody? Winner take all?

Doug must have been keeping tabs on Carole’s
cancer treatment, and smelled opportunity after she spent three
weeks in the hospital with a serious infection a few months back.
If there was one thing that stuck in Doug’s craw, it was that
Carole still looked like the wronged wife. That’s because she
was.

Are you thinking that after all my years with
Aunt Pinkie I should have sympathy for Mimi? Let me tell you the
difference between the woman who became my adoptive mother and the
woman who married Doug. Aunt Pinkie was a good soul, a woman who
always put others first, even when she probably should have kept
something for herself. She was kind, gentle, and generous in her
affection and her protection. Mimi, on the other hand, is a
vulture, pure and simple. Not only did she insist that Doug leave
Carole in the middle of her first chemotherapy round, she told him
that it was better to get out before things got worse.

Why am I talking about Carole and Doug’s
marriage? Maybe it’s my own status as the proverbial spinster.
Never married. I admit that. I came close a few times, but in the
end, I never saw the kind of commitment I know I need from a man.
But it was more than that. Carole had no warning that Doug and Mimi
were having an affair, other than the fact that her husband was
staying out later and longer. When a politically rabid neighbor
spotted Doug going at it hot and heavy with the head of the Board
of Education on Barn Island, he snapped a photo, which was then
circulated to Mimi’s opponent. It became a very ugly situation,
especially after Carole’s cancer treatment, also leaked to the
opponent, became public knowledge. Instead of honoring his marriage
vows and supporting his wife during her illness, Doug took the low
road, attached his wagon to Mimi’s political star, and give up his
family to start anew. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t often hope
that Mimi would find karma biting a big chunk out of her selfish
ass.

“Cady, what am I going to do? It’s not like
when Dylan went to live with Grandma and Grandpa.”

“No, it’s not,” I agreed.

The shop door was locked for the day, the
“open” sign flipped. We were almost ready to go. That’s when Daisy
often found the courage to share her worries.

“Should I tell Mom?”

I thought for a moment, not wanting Daisy to
see how much I wanted to throttle her father. The truth was
divorced couples had custody battles all the time, even without
cancer.

“This is a tough one. What does your gut tell
you to do?” That was the thing about Aunt Pinkie. She always
challenged me to think for myself, to examine every detail and make
a rational decision when I was faced with a quandary.

“I think my mom needs to know.”

“Good plan. You know, Daze, it may just be
that your dad wants to adjust the custody agreement, maybe have
more opportunities for visitation with you and Dylan. He is still
your father.” It killed me to remind her of that, but looking into
the crystal ball of Carole’s future, things looked murky. We had no
way of knowing whether Carole would manage the cancer for a decade
or succumb within a year. If she did die, those kids were going to
need their father, abysmal as he was.

“He sounded like he missed us,” she decided.
“He asked me if I wanted him to drive me to colleges and help me
apply.”

“Well, you certainly could use the help with
that, couldn’t you?” At least the bastard wasn’t completely
useless. He could pick up that tab, or at least help Daisy find
scholarship money.

“Yeah,” she replied. “When I go off to
college, what’s going to happen to Dylan? Mom isn’t really able to
take care of him herself, especially when she has chemo.”

“Hopefully, she won’t continue to need
chemo,” I told her. “She may go into remission, in which case your
mom could live for years with the cancer. Dylan would have a very
normal childhood.”