Cold Tea on a Hot Day (28 page)

The Engagement

“W
ell, congratulations.” It was Charlene, telephoning just before nine. “Parker was just here to worm Leanne’s horses, and he told us about giving you a ring. So it is finally going to happen—you and Parker are going to get married.”

“Yes.”

She really could not postpone another day telling people of the news. The first one she needed to tell was her mother, and she had better catch her before she got off to Las Vegas. Right there, with her hand still on the receiver after hanging up from Charlene, Marilee dialed her mother’s number.

“Hello, dear. I’m packing…. I had to go out and get new luggage last night. Our other set was just so old, it looked tawdry. I didn’t think it would look good for Carl’s store for us to be lugging that stuff around. I still need to get Carl’s shirts from the cleaners…. He’s back at the
store, and I’ll pick him up on the way to the airport. I’d just as soon he stayed at the store and out of the way. He just hates to travel…. He gets all wrought up, and there won’t be any food on the short flight down to Dallas. It’s that awful prop plane. I sure hope it isn’t rainin’ down in Dallas, when we have to change planes. I have the hotel number around here somewhere…we’re stayin’ at the Grand. Oh, you won’t need us anyway. It’s just the weekend.” Her mother finally paused.

“Mother, Parker and I are engaged.”

There was no answer. The line was silent.

“
Here
it is! Whew, what a relief. It is such a nice packet from the travel agency. The itinerary isn’t quite as detailed as usual. Dotty didn’t do it, she’s havin’ her gallbladder out, and this young girl did it. She doesn’t half know what she is doin’. Here’s the confirmation number for the hotel. We sure need to have that. Last time the hotel was way overbooked and they wanted to put us across town, but I had my confirmation number, and I just refused. That’s what you have to do, just refuse. I have the girl’s name from the travel agency, too, just in case. Now, I have to get off here, honey. I have to get this packin’ done. Carl doesn’t like me to keep him waiting.”

Marilee said quickly, “I wanted to tell you Parker and I are engaged.”

“You are? You and Parker?” She sounded as if it came as a complete surprise.

“Yes. He gave me an engagement ring. We haven’t set the date, but we plan sometime next month, as soon as Parker can get a fill-in vet, and I can schedule Pastor Smith.”

“Well, I’m glad you have come to your senses on this thing. You are darn lucky to get Parker. Have you called Anita to tell her?”

“No…not yet.”

“Well…oh, there’s another call…it may be Carl. You can tell me all about your plans when I get home. Goodbye, dear.”

Marilee hung up and breathed deeply. She thought Parker might be a little lucky to have her, too. Except that she felt so short of temper these days. She hoped she was not turning into a shrew.

She sat there for a full two minutes with her hand on the telephone, considering telephoning her sister. Anita would be at work, but maybe she had an answering machine hooked up now. Marilee thought she would just leave a message. That seemed the easiest.

In the end she decided to telephone her sister on Sunday and tell her everything. She was just too busy with doing Parker’s birthday and telling everyone in town about the engagement.

Charlotte’s reaction to Marilee’s news was curious. Granted, Charlotte was not an effusive woman at the best of times, but Marilee found her manner, when told of Marilee’s engagement, quite lacking.

Everyone at the newspaper was happy for her, of course. She made her announcement, and they all, except Charlotte, gathered round and repeatedly oohed and aahed at her ring. June began to cry, and Reggie went into that really annoying bit of making an announcement into a pen and then singing “There Is Love.” She tugged Leo
to his feet and danced him around. They really were a handsome couple. Tammy poured canned cola into paper cups and proposed a toast. Imperia thought to go call Zona to come out to see Marilee’s ring and join them in celebration. The small accountant came forward and said, “I hope you two will be very happy, Marilee,” in her amazingly sweet voice, lifted a paper cup of soft drink in good wishes, and then turned around and slipped right back to her office.

Marilee kept glancing at Tate’s open office door. He was not at his desk, and she concluded he was not in at all. Disappointment swept over her, which was totally silly, of course. It was so much easier for her without him present.

Charlotte had quickly returned to her desk and focused on her computer screen. Marilee was a little taken aback by this distant behavior. Of everyone at the paper, Charlotte was her closest friend. She and Charlotte had worked there the longest, watching many others come and go. Both she and Charlotte knew the workings of the paper and could do everyone else’s job, too, and they had done it all on numerous occasions. This expertise gave them a certain camaraderie born of facing crises together. So many times getting the
Voice
out had hung by a thread that Marilee and Charlotte had knitted up together.

It struck Marilee that perhaps the woman was jealous. Marilee’s heart swelled with feeling. Charlotte was thirty-six and had never been married; she read scads of romance novels, saw every romance movie, and had displayed quiet crushes on a number of men passing through her life, Leo, Sr. being only the latest, yet as far as Marilee
knew, Charlotte had not even had a date in ages. There were few single men in town who met with her approval, not to mention her height, which tended to scare men away.

Marilee sauntered over to Charlotte’s desk and said in a low voice, “We’re just going to have a tiny ceremony, no fancy dressing and not a lot of guests, just Mama and the children, but I was hoping you would stand up with me…be my matron of honor.”

Charlotte regarded her solemnly from behind her thick glasses. “Okay. What day? Don’t forget the grand opening of Green Acres on the first weekend of the month. We’ll have to cover that, and I have a dental appointment the next Friday—on the ninth.”

Marilee absorbed this rather halfhearted reply. “We haven’t set a day yet,” she said. “I’ll work around those dates.”

Across the street at the soda fountain of Blaine’s Drugstore, Deputy Lyle Midgett enjoyed a Coca-Cola and barbecue sandwich made by Nadine, the new girl Belinda had hired, and told Belinda all about the goings-on down at the police station, where the people from Tell-In had returned with a third person, a thin, silent man who was some sort of search expert. Armed with a court order that gave them access to the dead man’s effects, although not possession, they began an immediate and thorough search of Kaplan’s luggage, briefcase and car. Lori was given custody of the fifty thousand dollars, stuck in a paper sack that she put under her desk at her feet.

“Judge Watkins signed the court order. They can’t take
nothin’, but they can search it right here, and they sure are doin’ it,” Lyle told Belinda, his voice muffled by a full bite of barbecue sandwich. “This is good.” He smiled at Nadine, and Belinda did not like that much. She shifted herself to be right in front of him.

“Have they said how big the chip is?” Belinda already knew all about Kaplan being the inventor of the chip and having stolen it, as she had gotten the full account out of Lyle days ago. “Do they need a magnifyin’ glass to see it?”

“Shush,” Lyle whispered. Glancing around furtively, he lowered his voice. “I heard them say it is about the size of a dime, I think. Or maybe it was a nickel. Somethin’ like that. I said he could have mailed it to the Russians, since it wasn’t no bigger than that. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have done that.”

“Russians? What would they want with it?” Lyle did not keep up with commerce, whereas Belinda read a lot of magazines. She read
Today’s Money
just about every month. “Maybe you mean the Microsoft people.”

Lyle shook his head and said it was some foreign country, only he couldn’t remember which one. China, he finally decided, after thinking hard on the matter.

“I don’t think anyone ever sends stuff like that through the mail,” Belinda offered. “But I don’t know why not. Maybe they do, and they just don’t make movies about it, because that would be boring. I wonder where the dog fits into this.”

“I haven’t heard anything about any dog.” Lyle shook his head.

“I told you about the dog,” she reminded him, and he
said he knew that. “You said there was a dog dish in Kaplan’s car.”

“Maybe it was a dog dish, but there wasn’t any dog food or anything. Might have just been some old dish.” And Lyle had not been about to ask the sheriff about the dog, either, because questions might reveal to the sheriff that he told Belinda a lot of stuff he wasn’t supposed to be telling her. He didn’t know why he told her. Somehow he just found himself doing it. She was the first woman to ever really listen to him, for one thing.

The bell over the door rang, and Marilee and her children came in. Marilee called over for the children to be given whatever they wanted. “I’ll be there in a minute. I’d like a chocolate shake.”

Belinda, watching Marilee disappear behind one of the shelves of the pharmacy, wondered how Marilee could keep drinking chocolate shakes like she did and not ever get any fatter. Probably it was that Marilee was too nervous most of the time. Marilee was always doing or planning something. Belinda had observed that having kids tended to do this to a woman, which was why she had no desire for any. People were all the time asking her when she and Lyle were going to get married and have children. She replied that she knew when she was well off and could read an entire magazine when she wanted.

Her gaze flowed over the two small figures approaching the counter and lit upon the dog walking at Willie Lee’s heels. A multicolored dog, with spots.

The children came and sat on stools to Lyle’s right. Lyle, upon seeing the dog said, “I’m not sure dogs are
supposed to be in an eating establishment. I think there’s an ordinance.”

Belinda, who came around the counter to get a better look at the dog, told Lyle, “Don’t look, then.”

Corrine twisted her stool back and forth and stared up at the lighted menu, obviously trying to make up her mind. Willie Lee wanted an ice-cream cone, one scoop of vanilla on a sugar cone. Belinda had found that Willie Lee generally knew exactly what he wanted.

“Mun-ro wants a dish of water, please,” said Willie Lee, who always knew what his dog wanted, too.

Marilee came over with a gift box set of men’s aftershave and cologne. It was the expensive brand Belinda’s mother ordered from Germany, and she had managed to get a good business going with it among a number of the women seeking to spruce up their husbands. Belinda preferred regular stuff on Lyle; she saw no need to waste money.

Lyle told Marilee that he thought there might be a fine for bringing a dog into an eating establishment.

Marilee replied that they would leave, just as soon as they got done with their refreshments. “I’d like to buy a gallon of the vanilla ice cream, too, Belinda—for Parker’s birthday tomorrow.”

“You can get it out of the freezer before you leave,” Belinda said and added, “It’s gone up to seven and a quarter.” If the ice cream was so special that Marilee wanted to buy it, she might as well pay well for it.

While Belinda rang up Marilee’s charges, Marilee introduced herself to Nadine, who said, “Hiya’” and instantly turned around to wipe up all around. Nadine was
proving a hard worker, who did not care to talk and cared even less to eat. Belinda was pleased.

As Marilee wrote out her check, Belinda saw the ring on her finger. “Is that an engagement ring?”

“Yes. Parker and I got engaged.”

“Huh. Nice ring. When’s the wedding?”

“We haven’t set the date yet. Next month, though.”

Belinda’s attention was distracted from any comment on the matter, however, when the bell over the door chimed and in came the tall blond man—one of the Tell-In people. He stood there with the door open a moment, the air conditioner dripping behind him, all straight in clothes crisp and shiny, as he removed his sunglasses and seemed to scan the store. Then he came forward to the soda counter.

“I’ll take a packet of the Motrin,” he said, speaking to Belinda and motioning with his hand. “And a Coke, to go.”

“You should try the headache powders,” Lyle offered.

The man’s head spun as if on a pivot, and his eyes observed Lyle, who added that headache powders went to work a lot faster. Lyle could be overly friendly, and Belinda could understand the man’s frown, while Lyle just kept on. “It’s ‘cause they don’t have to dissolve like a pill.”

The man, not replying to Lyle’s recommendation, paid Belinda with exact change. She put the money in the cash drawer and closed it with a snap. As she turned back to the counter, movement caught her eye, and she saw Nadine bending down…she was petting the dog that had slipped behind the counter.

The man walked out of the store, with his Motrin and Coca-Cola, without a word of polite goodbye.

Nadine said, “I would guess that guy is not from around here.”

“He’s one of those Tell-In people, and he has headaches,” Belinda said, informing Marilee that she knew things. “The sun probably gets to him. They’re down there searchin’ that Dave Kaplan’s car out back of the police station, lookin’ for a computer chip.”