Dead Weight (3 page)

Mrs McClure then smiles. ‘Sorry, Megan, the girls are driving me crazy. What can I do for you, honey?’

I’m taller than she is so it’s kinda funny her having to look up while talking
down
to me, if you catch my drift. ‘Hi, Mrs McClure. I’m here about the girls. I know you and my mom are hanging out a lot, and I thought you could use a part-time nanny.’

She looked interested. ‘How much?’ she asked.

Oh, jeez, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Which my counselor at school seems to think is a problem, but I believe in spontaneity. ‘I’m not sure. Whatever you think is fair.’

‘Fair would be having perfect children, but somehow that didn’t work out. Come in, come in. Let’s get a calculator and discuss it.’

‘Do Kerry and Ken have enough money for her to be hospitalized for exhaustion, or will it just be Prozac and Jack Daniels?’ my husband asked me as he stared at the interior of our refrigerator.

‘This isn’t a laughing matter,’ I told him. ‘Close the door.’

‘I’m hungry,’ he said, door still open.

‘You’ve seen what’s in there. Now close the door and make your decision.’

Willis closed the door and turned and looked at me. ‘I’m not Graham!’ he said.

I smiled. ‘Then don’t act like him.’

‘I want food,’ he said, reopening the refrigerator door.

‘As opposed to what?’ I asked. We’d had dinner less than an hour ago, so he couldn’t actually be hungry. My feeling was he was just bored. ‘Talk to me about this mess with Berta Harris instead of eating. You’re getting a gut.’

He shut the door and looked at his stomach. He pulled in his gut and said, ‘I am not.’ He walked stiffly to where I sat in the family room, his gut still being held in.

‘I don’t suppose you can talk and walk
and
hold your gut in all at the same time?’ I asked.

His tummy bulged out. ‘No,’ he said, flopping down on the couch next to me. ‘I want something sweet.’

‘Like what?’ I asked, checking the cable guide on the TV for anything interesting.

‘Lemon meringue pie,’ he said.

I refused to dignify that with a response.

‘Oh, so now you’re all down on anything good because you lost a couple of pounds—’ he started.

‘Thirty-five, thank you! And you don’t need pie.’

‘I do need pie,’ he whined.

‘How about sex instead?’ I offered.

‘We really don’t have any pie?’ he asked.

I hit him on the head with the remote control and he laughingly shoved me down on the couch. ‘You ever had sex with a hungry man?’ he whispered in my ear.

‘No, but I’ve had plenty of sex with an idiot,’ I said.

Much later I brought up the day’s festivities yet again. ‘So Berta belonged to all these twelve-step programs, and I think maybe she lied to at least some if not all of them about her reasons for being there, and somebody called all these programs and gave conflicting accounts of how she – Berta – died. And then Kerry – that was just bizarre.’

‘Kerry’s always been bizarre,’ Willis said, his head in my lap.

‘No, you just don’t like perky.’

His whole body shuddered. ‘There’s that,’ he said.

‘She knows something, Willis! I can feel it.’

My husband sat up and turned to face me. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Do not get mixed up in something. No dead bodies, E.J. I’m serious. Not one more!’

‘What? I’m supposed to ignore all this? Berta may have been murdered—’

‘I know Kerry’s a nutcase, and this Berta woman sounds like she was one too. Stay out of it.’

‘Is that an order?’ I asked, glaring at him.

He sighed and laid his head back in my lap. ‘No, of course not. I’m not allowed to give you orders. It’s a very heartfelt request.’

The doorbell rang. Willis pulled himself off me. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, dejected. I turned on a show I wanted to watch while he was gone.

Even over the noise of the TV I could hear voices at the front door. Willis and another man. I muted the TV and tuned in to their conversation.

‘—and I don’t know what to do with her,’ the one who wasn’t my husband said.

‘Come on in the living room and sit down, Ken,’ Willis said.

Ken, I thought. We knew two Kens, the barber who cut Willis’s hair every other Tuesday, and Kerry Killian’s husband Ken. Was it too much of a coincidence that Ken Killian would show up the same day I had an impromptu meeting with his wife?

‘Ah, where’s . . .’ Ken asked.

‘E.J.? In the family room. She can’t hear us in the living room,’ Willis said.

Like hell, I thought. All I had to do was go into the dining room and stand between the buffet and the corner cabinet and I could hear just fine. Now explaining what I was doing in that position might be a bit of a problem, but one I was willing to face at a later date. I jumped up and got in position.

‘I don’t know, Willis. She’s jumpy as a cat. She’s looking out the window constantly, and when I ask her what’s going on she just gives me this really phony smile and says, “Oh, nothing!” I figured with what you’ve had to put up with E.J. and all her dead bodies, you’d know what I should do.’

I almost humphed out loud, but decided to keep my opinions to myself – at least for the time being.

‘I’m not sure they’re the same thing,’ Willis, my hero, said. ‘With E.J. it’s just willfulness. Doing whatever she wants to do despite the family’s needs.’

OK, nookie on the couch was definitely a thing of the past.

‘But when she gets in that state, when she’s tearing around trying to find out what’s going on, what can you do to stop her?’ he asked.

‘It’s like disciplining a child,’ my soon-to-be former husband said. ‘One time one thing might work, the next time you have to try something else. But the main thing is, try to keep communications open. Try getting her into a dialog and see if you can find out what’s going on—’

OK, Dr Phil. Show’s over. I left my hidy-hole and headed to our bedroom, where the door would be locked to intruders.

‘Why’s Dad on the couch?’ a voice said, waking me up from a wonderful dream in which George Clooney was nibbling on my neck.

‘Huh?’ I opened one eye to see my son standing there with a screwdriver in his hand – the kid knows no boundaries.

‘You overslept. I need breakfast. The girls are in the bathroom fighting over crap and I’m hungry.’

I closed my eye. ‘Then fix yourself something. And something for the girls, too, ’k?’

‘Calendar says you’ve got that thing at the school for teacher appreciation today at nine,’ Graham said. ‘And since you have to get up anyway, why don’t you make French toast?’

Although it was July, Graham was still in school. Summer school. He and three of his best friends were caught doing something stupid at the school two days before graduation and none of them were allowed to graduate. Now all four were in summer school taking a course called ‘Establishing Boundaries for a Worry-Free Environment.’ In other words, throw cherry bombs in the girls’ toilets again and you still won’t graduate. Today was a thank-you ceremony for the teacher who gave up her summer to babysit. Thursday night was a small graduation ceremony for the four boys – paid for by – you guessed it – the parents.

I opened both my eyes and looked at the clock. Twenty to eight. The class started at 8:05 a.m. I threw my legs off the bed and let that motion lead me to an upright position. From there I wandered into the kitchen. I pulled out three boxes of cereal, both the whole and one percent milks, the pitcher of O.J. and one of grape juice, a container of already cleaned and cut strawberries, and a banana, and threw them all on the counter just as the girls came downstairs.

‘Dry cereal again?’ Megan whined.

I was tempted to pour the milk (either whole or one percent, I had no preference) straight into the boxes of cereal, but knew that would mean me going to the store to replace them.

‘Either eat dry cereal or learn to cook,’ I said and wandered back into the bedroom. Willis was already in the suite, in the bathroom, door open, doing his morning toilet.

‘You shouldn’t have locked the bedroom door,’ he said through a mouthful of toothpaste.

‘You shouldn’t have said those things about me to Ken!’ I said, looking in the dresser for clean underwear.

‘They’re true,’ he said nonchalantly, then spat.

‘They are not!’ I protested. ‘And if you think you can manipulate me like you told Ken, you are terribly mistaken!’ I yelled. I’d been up half the night crying over the betrayal.

He rinsed his mouth and turned to me, his chest hairs all sexy-looking. ‘I don’t think I can manipulate you, but I think Ken can manipulate Kerry in her present condition. I was just giving him advice.’

‘Oh,’ I said and smiled at him. Then I frowned. ‘You jerk! You’re trying to manipulate me right now!’

‘Ah, honey,’ he said, coming close and cupping the back of my neck with his big sexy hand.

I jerked back. ‘You’re doing it again! Get away from me!’

‘Now, baby doll—’ he said and laughed.

I ran into the closet and closed the door until I heard his truck leave.

I decided this was yet another opportunity to dress up in my new skinny clothes. I was going to take every opportunity to show off my new body before it returned to the body from hell. I wore a red-print dress, the hem of which came to the middle of my knees, and whose square-cut bodice showed just a mere hint of cleavage.

There were five women in the teachers’ lounge, two members of the three-member committee for teacher presents, the same committee that ruled during the school year, and the mothers of the other miscreants. I sat with the other mothers.

The one woman conspicuously absent from the committee was Kerry Killian.

‘Where’s Kerry?’ I asked of the room in general, before I even noticed the swollen eyes and the Kleenex in the hands of the committee members.

‘You haven’t heard, E.J.?’ asked Arlene Clutcher, the woman who always knew everything before anyone else. There was speculation she was sleeping with the chief of the small Black Cat Ridge police department.

‘Kerry was killed last night,’ Arlene said, and had the grace to look upset. ‘She was murdered.’

TWO

‘B
ut I didn’t find the body!’ I yelled at my husband.

‘Yeah, but I bet you want to worm your way into the investigation, don’t you?’ Willis yelled at me.

‘Of course not!’ I yelled back. ‘I can’t help it if Luna asks for my help!’

‘But she hasn’t!’

‘There are things – like the whole Berta Harris business – she needs to know about!’

‘Stay out of it!’ he yelled.

‘Stop yelling at me!’ I yelled.

Our faces were mere inches from each other’s and spittle was dampening them. And then the doorbell rang.

‘I’ll get it,’ Willis growled at me. I was right behind him when he opened the door. I think I was the only one pleased to see our next-door neighbor Elena Luna, newly appointed lieutenant with the Codderville Police Department, standing there.

‘Hey, Willis,’ she said, then leaning around him, ‘hey, E.J.’

Willis said nothing. I said, ‘Elena, please come in.’

Willis turned and growled at me then stomped off to the garage to do something manly to take his mind off whatever had him so pissed off.

‘Can I get you a Coke?’ I asked her. ‘Or a beer?’

‘I’m on a diet. Some ice water, please?’

We went into the kitchen where I got a glass down from the cabinet, filled it with ice, then water, and handed it to her. We wandered to the kitchen table and sat down.

‘Did I inspire you?’ I asked, indicating my svelte new body.

She inspected me for a moment then said, ‘Well, the girls still look good.’

Thrusting out my chest, I said, ‘They always do.’ Then, ‘So, what’s up?’

‘George Perkins’ – that’s the Black Cat Ridge police chief – ‘asked me to step in on the Kerry Killian case. I know you knew her. What can you tell me?’

I sighed. Thank God she asked and I didn’t have to go next door and convince her to listen to me. This wasn’t my fault, I can tell Willis. She
asked
, for God’s sake! So then I told her all about Berta Harris and the weirdness that had gone on.

‘So you think Berta Harris was murdered?’ she said.

‘It’s beginning to look that way. Something fishy is going on! And I really believe the two murders are connected,’ I said. Sometimes Luna needs a little help getting started in the right direction.

‘Did Killian really tell you to beware?’ Luna asked me out of nowhere.

‘Well, those weren’t her exact words,’ I said. ‘It was more like, “be careful,” and maybe “stay out of it.”’

Luna hooted with laughter. ‘That last part I can believe.’

‘Can you do an autopsy on cremains?’ I asked.

The look she gave me made me wish I hadn’t actually asked the question aloud. ‘I didn’t think so,’ I said, answering it for myself.

She picked up her cell phone. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ll call the M.E.’s office, see who wrote the death certificate and if there was an autopsy done before she was cremated.’

‘I think the Berta was short for Roberta, but maybe check both ways?’

Luna raised an eyebrow. ‘Gee, I never would have thought of that,’ she said in a monotone. Getting ahold of someone on the other end, she said, ‘Check death certificates issued in the county for the last three weeks under the name of Berta or Roberta Harris, or any Harris for that matter, and call me back. Asap. Need a cause of death.’

Looking at me, she said, ‘I take it Willis is pissed off because you’re involved in another murder case.’

‘I’m not involved!’ I protested.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m going to take you at your word. I’m going now and I don’t expect to hear from you at all. Got it?’

‘Just some quick questions—’

‘Nope,’ she said, standing up. ‘You’re not involved, remember.’

‘Just questions any friend would ask—’

Luna sighed and turned toward me, one hand on her hip. ‘What?’

‘When was Kerry killed? Where was she killed? How was she killed? Any clues at the scene—’

‘Stop!’ she said forcefully, her hand up like she was a Supreme doing ‘Stop in the Name of Love.’ ‘Sometime between six p.m. and ten p.m. When her husband started looking for her. At her office. A gunshot between the eyes.’