Cold Tea on a Hot Day (29 page)

“Belinda…you aren’t supposed to go tellin’ ever’ body,” Lyle objected.

“I’m not tellin’ everybody. Just Marilee, and I think she probably should know, bein’a member of the press…and she is my cousin.”

“What computer chip?” Marilee glanced from Belinda to Lyle and back.

“That ex of Fayrene’s stole a computer chip from his company. He invented it, but that doesn’t matter, it was still the company’s chip, and he took it to sell to the Chinese. That’s where he got the fifty thousand. But his company hopes he didn’t have time to get it to the Chinese, and they came today with a court order to search his stuff. The sheriff hasn’t told you any of this?” She leaned forward on the counter.

Marilee shook her head. “Tate is probably doing the story. All I did was speak with Fayrene and do the initial write-up.”

Belinda did not think Marilee was sufficiently impressed with what Belinda was telling her. “They’re takin’ that Mercedes apart. They must figure that chip is hidden in there somewhere, or in that briefcase. A
computer chip isn’t very big. This is computer espionage.”

Marilee, getting the children up from their stools, said she would make certain Tate knew to investigate for a possible story. Lyle asked her not to say where she heard about the matter.

As Marilee went out the door, Belinda looked at the dog walking behind Willie Lee’s feet. It sure seemed that dog had made certain the Tell-In guy had not seen him.

“You are gonna get me into trouble, tellin’ everything all over,” Lyle said in a dispirited voice.

Belinda, ignoring the comment, leaned across the counter and said, “Parker is havin’ an affair with Leanne Overton.”

Lyle blinked. “But didn’t Marilee just say she and Parker were engaged?”

“Yes.”

“I guess Marilee must not know about Leanne, then,” he said.

Belinda sighed. “Well, of course not.” Lyle could be so dense.

After a minute, Lyle said, “How do you know about Parker and Leanne?” as if she couldn’t possibly know anything and had gone and made up the story.

“That Julia Jenkins-Tinsley saw them,” said Belinda in a what-for manner. “And she is tellin’ it all over. She is such a gossip.”

Fred Grace had installed a mechanical pony ride out front of the florist, sandwiched in between racks holding buckets of bouquets beneath his awning. Willie Lee saw
it instantly when Marilee headed to the florist to get flowers for the party.

Marilee thought the ride a fine ploy to draw more mothers and grandmothers to the store.

“You aren’t too big to ride yet, are you, Corrine?”

Corrine smiled shyly in answer. Marilee put a quarter in each child’s hand and allowed them to remain outside and ride the pony while she went inside to get a table arrangement.

Corrine said, “I’ll watch Willie Lee,” as if to earn the quarter.

“I know you will, honey. Thank you.”

Marilee entered the florist and stood for a minute to let her eyes adjust to the much dimmer interior. The first thing she saw clearly was Tate Holloway standing back at the counter. She heard his familiar voice, too.

“Have it delivered this afternoon,” he said to Fred Grace.

Marilee had a little panic about seeing him, one that she did not understand at all. She couldn’t just turn around and go out, though, and she wondered who he was having flowers delivered to.

She went toward the counter, and Fred Grace saw her and greeted her, and then Tate turned her way.

“Hello, Miss Marilee.”

“Hello.”

“I hear you and Parker are finally gonna tie the knot,” Fred Grace said. The adam’s apple in his thin neck bobbed whenever he spoke.

“Yes, we are. Next month sometime.” She really needed to get a date set; she was getting tired of saying
sometime.

Fred Grace, holding up an order paper, said, “I’ll be
right with you, Marilee…let me get Tate’s order in the works,” and disappeared through the rear curtain, leaving Marilee and Tate standing there, alone.

It was perfectly silly for her to feel nervous about being alone with Tate. She launched immediately into telling him about the articles she had left with Charlotte, and the entire time she spoke, she tried to figure a casual way to ask about who was to receive Tate’s flowers.

Willie Lee rode the pony first, and he laughed and laughed. Corrine liked watching him. She felt excited and happy about playing with the electric pony. This was a feeling she did not fully trust. Her past experience had been that she could not trust having fun. Somehow she usually had to pay for it.

As if to prove this point, suddenly here came the school principal, Mrs. Blankenship. “Hello, children.”

Corrine said hello, and Willie Lee did, too.

Then, right there in front of Corrine’s wide eyes, the principal said, “Here, let me treat you to another ride,” and immediately she put a quarter in the slot for Willie Lee, and then gave Corrine a coin, holding it out until Corrine took it. With a smile and a nod, the principal disappeared inside the florist’s store.

Corrine stared at the glass door and figured that the principal was in a good mood because school was out. Willie Lee was laughing and saying, “Yeee-haaa,” and Corrine found she could begin breathing again.

It came Corrine’s turn, and she rode, feeling a little self-conscious, since she was eleven years old. With her second coin, she said, “Willie Lee, ride with me.” That
way, if any classmates from school should come along and see her, it would look like she was helping Willie Lee.

“O-kay!”

He scrambled up behind her and put his hands around her waist. She quickly put the coin into the slot, and beneath them the metal pony began to gyrate. Wille Lee called out, “Yeee-haaa!”

Corrine had to laugh.

But then there was Munro in the middle of the sidewalk, backing up and wrinkling his nose with a growl.

Corrine blinked, taking in everything that was happening. It was the man who had come into the drugstore earlier—the man Belinda had said was a Tell-In man and had headaches—and a woman was with him. It came suddenly to Corrine that these were the two people who had stared at them on the sidewalk earlier that week, and they were heading for Munro.

The woman was saying, “Here, doggy.”

“That is
my
dog,” Willie Lee said, speaking with alarm.

Corrine felt Willie Lee let go of her waist. She reached back to grab him, to keep him from falling off the pony that was still bouncing.

“He looks like the dog that belonged to a friend of ours,” the woman said.

“He is
my
dog,” Willie stated again.

Corrine wished the pony would stop.

“How long have you had him?” the woman said, even as she moved toward Munro.

Just then the man jumped at Munro, to grab him, but Munro quick as a flash scooted under the front bumper of a parked car.

Willie Lee launched himself off the pony, yelling, “That is
my
dog!”

Corrine scrambled off the bouncing horse, toppling onto the concrete.

The next thing she saw was the man and the woman running into the street, and Willie Lee after them. Somehow she got to her feet and ran after Willie Lee, catching him right in the middle of the street and dragging him back to the sidewalk, her heart pounding clean out of her chest. There had been only one car far down the street, but it could have reached Willie Lee. And she was supposed to look after him.

Willie Lee was crying. Corrine put her arm around him and tried to think of something to say.

But then suddenly Munro appeared from behind the stand of flower buckets.

“Mun-ro!” Willie Lee went to the dog, while Corrine looked over her shoulder to see the two strangers going down the opposite side of the street.

“Shush!” She grabbed Willie Lee, and shoved him and the dog back against the stand of flower buckets, crouching there herself.

“I am go-ing to tell Ma-ma.” Willie Lee made a move toward the florist.

“No,” said Corrine, who believed it better to never tell anything. “If they do own Munro, your mother will make us give him back.”

Willie Lee gazed at her from behind his thick glasses.

Just then Marilee came out of the florist shop, and Mr. Tate was with her. Right behind them came Principal Blankenship. Because the grown-ups were all talking,
no one noticed that Willie Lee was sniffing. Corrine shook her head at him, and he pressed his lips together.

Aunt Marilee bid goodbye to Principal Blankenship, and Mr. Tate walked them along to the Cherokee, which was only a few yards down the sidewalk. Corrine kept an eye out for the two strangers but didn’t see them. It was hard to see over the cars, though.

They got into the Cherokee, and Munro lay down with his head on Willie Lee’s leg. Corrine and Willie Lee remained perfectly quiet while Aunt Marilee talked with Mr. Tate some more through the driver window.

As Aunt Marilee headed the Cherokee home, Corrine caught a glance of the man and woman at their dark car in front of the police station. She squished down in the seat.

“Corrine? Honey, what’s wrong? You feel okay?”

“Yes, ma’am…I’m just a little tired. I think I want a nap. Willie Lee does, too.”

“I will not tell, Cor-rine,” Willie Lee said from over in his bed, where he lay with Munro.

“I won’t, either,” Corrine said. “And we’ll have to watch out for a while, make sure we don’t see those people again.”

After a minute, Willie Lee asked, “Why?”

“Because they may be the real owners of Munro. They will take him.” Corrine was puzzled about this entire thing, but she did not see anything to do but hide. In her experience, grown-ups rarely cared what little kids wanted.

Marilee turned off the whiz-bang computer, where she had written two small pieces for the paper, and rubbed her eyes. She should see about glasses.

Her gaze fell on Stuart’s photograph. Should she put it away? Willie had long ago quit asking about his father. She had explained that Stuart traveled away, finally ending that he was gone from their lives. Willie Lee was such an accepting person. She wished she could be so, she thought, finally tucking the picture into the top drawer of her desk.

Rising, she turned out the lamps and walked softly to peer at the children on her way to bed. The light from the hall lamp fell softly into the room. Her gaze fell on Willie Lee, asleep all spread out, and then onto Corrine, who was facedown into her pillow, with Munro pressed to her side.

Corrine was crying softly.

“Oh, honey, what is it?” Marilee pulled her niece up into her arms.

“I…I had…a bad dream.”

“Oh, it was only a dream. You are okay.” After another minute, “Come on and sleep with me.” She took Corrine’s hand. Munro hopped from the bed and up beside sleeping Willie Lee.

Marilee snuggled Corrine into bed, got into her own gown and slipped in beside her niece, whose hands were formed into balls.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Marilee,” Corrine whispered.

“Whatever for, honey?”

“Because I know you like to have the bed to yourself.”

“Oh, sweetheart…yes, I do,” she said, knowing honesty was in order. “But I also like to have you come in here sometimes, and Willie Lee, too. I like to hold you both close. You are a comfort to me, too.”

Gradually she felt her niece relax, and gradually Marilee relaxed, too.

Some time before dawn, Marilee awoke to find Corrine on one side of her, Willie Lee on the other, and Munro at her feet. It occurred to her that it was quite possible that Parker would object to such crowded sleeping arrangements.

In that moment, however, thus surrounded by her children, with Corrine’s hand knotted in Marilee’s hair and Willie Lee breathing upon her chest, Marilee was supremely contented and fell immediately back into a deep, lovely sleep.

Nick of Time

M
arilee got up early, squeezing carefully out from between the children and the dog, succeeding in not awakening them. She went to the kitchen, made coffee as strong as Corrine’s, and set about throwing her mind into the accomplishment of Parker’s birthday party.

Sometime between the first and second cups of strong coffee, she began to go at it in an all-consuming manner that fully occupied her mind and kept her from perturbing thoughts about her pending marriage. She would deal with those concerns later, after she had finished with Parker’s party.

She had the children’s breakfast made when they came into the kitchen; Corrine was quite surprised, of course.

Leaving them eating and dawdling, she dashed around, gathering everything to take to Parker’s house. She got herself into a chambray shorts sunsuit she had been saving for the occasion and that showed her bare shoul
ders to good advantange, applied her face in the thorough manner of the unmadeup look, and carefully pinned up her hair to appear careless.

While tying on canvas wedge sandals, she caught a glimpse of herself in the long mirror. She stood and observed her appearance and decided that she had made her decision about marrying Parker in the nick of time, while she still had something to offer and a man would even consider her. Her breath seemed to grow shallow with these thoughts, and she strode out the door and onward into the day.

At ten-thirty, they were each carrying boxes and bags out to the Cherokee; Marilee was somewhat surprised at the amount of the supplies, now that she tried to fit them all into the rear of her vehicle. As she was going about this, Tate came driving past, the top down on his car, his pale hair catching the sunlight. He stopped in the street and wished them a good day.

Marilee called back, “Good day to you, too,” and the next instant, she turned, slammed the rear door closed, headed for the driver’s seat and told the children to get in. Slipping behind the wheel, she wrenched the rearview mirror around, as if to look at herself, but really to watch Tate drive on.

She breathed a sigh of relief as his car disappeared, and then felt perversely annoyed.

Jerking the shift lever into reverse, she backed out into the street and then took off with the windows open. Willie Lee and Munro stuck their heads out their window, their faces to the wind for the drive to Parker’s house. Willie Lee began singing “Happy Birthday,” and Corrine and
Marilee joined in. They were singing “Happy Birthday” when they rolled down Parker’s long driveway.

She was a bit startled to note the neglected landscape. The house could be deserted, in fact, with no other attention than mowed grass. She thought it odd that she had never noticed the lack of care before. Surely it had not been that way when she had last visited, which had been all the way last fall.

Parker came out the front door, and they all tumbled out of the car, yelling, “Happy Birthday!”

His smile was like that of a delighted boy. It made Marilee’s heart ache and fill at the same time. “Here…you can take this helium bottle and this box,” she said, pressing him into service to help empty the Cherokee of all the party paraphernalia.

“Wow!” Parker said when he saw his cake.

Marilee, very pleased, shifted the cake out of its box and onto the middle of the breakfast bar. She stuck in the candles, while Parker snitched a fingerful of icing and the children laughed as Marilee shoved him away.

Marilee saw immediately that she had not anticipated correctly the work necessary to have the house in order for a party. She was a little shocked at Parker’s house, again pointing up the fact that she had not been there in some time.

While Parker was generally clean, he exhibited no thought to the finer points of home decoration. The house looked as if it was a stopping off place and nothing more, and his every-other-week housekeeper was obviously less than dedicated. This was the week that the housekeeper did not come.

The job of readying the house for the party was an endeavor that properly required days, but Marilee dove right in to accomplish the task in two hours. Like a veteran general, she gave everyone their assignments, setting Parker to work filling balloons with helium and Willie Lee to helping him. She gave Corrine the duty of arranging the patio furniture, table and dishes, and directing the males on how to hang the ribbons and balloons.

Tying an apron over her sunsuit, an addition that made her feel like a pinup girl, and armed with a basket for collecting strewn items, a bag for trash, several sizes of dusters and the vacuum cleaner, Marilee swept through the house in the manner of a guerrilla single-handedly reclaiming lost territory.

She first attacked the kitchen, the room that would receive the most use during the party, and had it in acceptable order, if still lacking in identity, in forty-five minutes, with numerous detours to answer questions from the crew on the patio. In a similar manner of pointed concentration, she proceeded on into the dining room, through the living room, and into the rear of the house and the two bathrooms and master bedroom. Pacing herself, she broke into only a light sweat; she had turned the air-conditioning thermostat down to an extravagant level.

All the while she cleaned, Marilee made mental notes of necessary decorating changes for when she and the children moved in. The carpet throughout would have to be changed from a deep blue that didn’t go with anything. The bathrooms required new wallpaper and total decoration; the walls were currently some off-orange, and there
was not one stick of pleasantry in them. She had never noticed that Parker had no taste in home decor colors. Marilee pictured towels of complementary colors, rather than selected at random, as Parker’s appeared to be. She wanted linens in colors to match the towels, too, and she preferred the muted, earthy colors of sea green, lilac and blue that she employed in her own home. This would mean brand-new sheets for Parker’s king-size bed, so enormous in comparison to her own standard double. Spreading up the covers, she wondered how Parker slept on such sheets—bright yellow and orange and green stripes. Surely such colors would tend to keep one awake.

Pausing, she stared at the bed, and then she sat down on it, testing the mattress by bouncing lightly. She quite liked it, although she would prefer to move it to the opposite wall, where there would be more room and the bathroom door would not keep hitting the left nightstand.

Parker liked mints and threw the wrappers on the nightstand, along with various brochures about animal medications, pairs of socks, a spare key, his pocket knife and loose coins. Marilee opened the drawer to brush the stray items inside, all except the socks. She snatched them up to toss into the basket of dirty clothes.

Something dropped to the floor.

An earring.

Picking it up from the carpet, she looked at it closely—a dangling earring of silver and turquoise and black onyx. And there, on the night stand, lay a matching earring, underneath where the socks had been.

Placing them in her palm, she gazed at them, then looked at the pillow right beside the nightstand, and then
back again to the earrings, while all manner of thoughts twirled in her head, all of them on the same theme: what woman had been in this room?

“Marilee?” Parker poked his head in the doorway.

She jumped. “Yes?”

“Are you ‘bout ready? Rick and Vickie just got here…. Rick’s firin’ up the grill.” Parker looked happy and expectant, and very handsome.

“I’m coming.”

She slipped the earrings into the pocket of her sunsuit, picked up her cleaning supplies and hurried to the kitchen. Parker was there getting cold drinks. She told him she wanted a Coca-Cola, and while he got it for her, she put her wrists beneath the faucet of cold water.

Of course, there could be any number of reasons why the earrings that were not hers were on Parker’s nightstand.

He could have found them somewhere. This was the most reasonable explanation. Maybe the owner of one of his patients had left them at the clinic. This line of thought presented the image of some lunatic woman who took off expensive handmade earrings, maybe bored while awaiting her appointment, and just threw them on the floor or over the counter. Maybe she was hysterical because her pet died, so she ripped them out of her ears and tossed them down, and Parker had not yet discovered to which owner of which deceased pet the earrings belonged. He’d had a few deaths recently.

Marilee realized her imagination was running wild. There were, in fact, a lot of indecipherable thoughts
running around in her head, which she kept shoving aside and which kept popping back at her, so much so that she found herself going to the kitchen to get a basting brush for Rick and ended up staring into the refrigerator, picking a grape tomato out of the big bowl of salad and eating it. What she really wanted was a piece of chocolate. The birthday cake caught her eye, and she had to resist the urge to cut herself a piece; it was rich chocolate underneath the vanilla icing.

Why did she not simply ask Parker where the earrings came from?

That was out, with Parker standing at the grill with Rick and the doorbell giving out a chime.

Ted and Wendy Oakes came without their three children. “I need a break,” Wendy said, putting her hand on her round belly. “I’m trying to get all the rest I can before this one gets here. Here’s Parker’s present. It’s a…oh, my gosh, is that an engagement ring on your finger?”

Marilee told her it was and ushered her out to the patio, where the big bowl of chips and guacamole caught the very pregnant woman’s attention.

Ray Horn, who was recently divorced, brought his new girlfriend, Heather. Everyone was polite and didn’t stare at her. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed knockout, and looked at least fifteen years younger than Ray. She had brought her son, Bobby, a very pretty, shy dark-haired boy who was determined to remain on her lap. The two really were a lovely sight.

The Macombs, Jerry and Mary Lynn and their daughter
Sarah, drove up in their minivan, followed immediately by Charlene, Mason, Jojo and Leanne Overton in a brand-new Suburban. The people came pouring out of the vehicles, laughing and talking and bearing gifts and covered dishes. Charlene had cut her hair again; she looked stunning, walking beside Mason. The two’s happiness was breathtaking. Mary Lynn, always in a hurry, was urging Jerry, who probably couldn’t hurry from a fire, to get up to the house.

Marilee led the way to the patio, directed where to set dishes and offered cold drinks.

Charlene grabbed Marilee’s hand and took a look at the engagement ring. “My heaven, that is a gorgeous ring. Congratulations, Parker!” she called across the patio to Parker, who apparently had taken up residence next to the grill with Rick. Parker, giving a shy grin, raised his beer in acknowledgment.

The women oohed and aahed appropriately at the engagement ring, each taking hold of Marilee’s hand. She glanced over to observe Parker.

“Oh, you two haven’t met,” Charlene was saying. “This is my cousin, Leanne…Leanne, this is Marilee, Parker’s fiancée and the official hostess of the annual Parker Day barbecue.”

Leanne was pretty. “Hello.” She stuck out her hand.

“Hello.”

Marilee shook the woman’s hand. Good blond frosting job, polished silver earrings, the makeup of a fashion model and bright smile…and a necklace crafted of fine silver and turquoise and black onyx.

“It’s nice to meet you.” Her gaze stuck on the necklace.

“You, too. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Oh?” The earrings burned a hole in her pocket. She refrained from whipping them out and asking the woman to lean over so she could compare.

Charlene, dipping a large corn chip into a red mixture, said, “Leanne brought her simply-to-die-for salsa. You have to try this, Marilee.”

Marilee complied. “Oh, yes, it is good, really good.”

“I want some,” said Wendy, who came armed with a chip in each hand. “Vitamins A and C and almost no fat. I need to eat a lot of it.”

“Go for it,” Marilee said, then turned away. “I’ll get more ice.”

She took up the ice bucket that was still half-filled and retreated to the kitchen, where she stood for a moment gazing at nothing. Then she went to the window that looked out at the patio of people—Heather was whispering something in her son’s ear. The two girls, Jojo and Sarah had commandeered the glider and were swinging. Corrine sat alone, watching them. Was Willie Lee still okay? Yes, there he was beneath the rose of Sharon, digging for worms.

There was Leanne, her profile turned toward Marilee. Marilee realized the younger woman had her blond hair pinned up in almost the same way Marilee did. Parker was over in the male knot beside the grill, as if this were their domain. She watched him tilt his head in the manner he used when listening, this time to Ted, who seemed to be telling a joke.

Marilee fished the earrings out of her pocket and gazed at them.

Returning them to her pocket, she then filled the ice bucket and returned to the patio to smile and serve as the gracious hostess.

Things might not be as she thought. She should not jump to conclusions.

The moment came, totally unplanned.

Marilee was loading the dishwasher with the first load, Parker was filling the ice bucket from the freezer, and Leanne appeared, bearing an armload of dirty dishes.