Death on the Range: Target Practice Mysteries 1 (11 page)

Everyone, not just me, was staring at them. “What’s wrong with you?”

Minx got up and grabbed a bottle of water. Handing it to Tiger, she said, “Drink,” then she turned to me. “Remember when he said he couldn’t be bothered with drama from the women’s side of the field? Well, the drama crossed the field.”

Tiger downed the entire bottle, then his eyes got huge. He covered his mouth and stumbled from the room. Owley chased him out the door, asking if he was okay.

Minx shook her head and sat down. “He got an email from Honey’s agent after you guys left. Not a very good agent, since he didn’t know Honey was gone. I don’t think Tiger was supposed to be included, but it spelled out that Honey had said she was looking for a guy to replace Tiger if he wasn’t a big enough deal. She was trying to find a
real
athlete to replace him.” She put heavy emphasis on the word real.

Mary cringed. “Ouch.”

The faint sound of vomiting carried into the room from the hallway. Jess got up. “I guess I better check that he managed to hit a trashcan or something.”

The vodka was making my skin tingle. It was already making me feel lighter and clearer. I finished off my glass, and it was not nearly as sharp as my first taste. I grabbed the second glass, which appeared to have lost a few sips to a smiling Mary, who was sitting next to a smirking Minx.

“Minx, do you want to say anything?”

She got up and raised her glass. “To Honey. May she find all the things in the thereafter that she couldn’t find here.” She raised her glass, and those remaining in the room drank with her.

The vodka was making me feel loose and easy. Mary and I sat across from Minx and drank our respective drinks for a few minutes. The room was quiet but not tense. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts.

Minx eventually spoke up. “Mary, I meant to ask earlier. How’s your mom doing these days?”

Before I even thought, my mouth was moving. “Why does everyone keep asking you that?” A thought flittered through my mind that I was slightly beyond tipsy.

“Oh, she had breast cancer, but she’s fine now.” She patted my hand.

Minx gasped at me. “Shut the front door, you didn’t know that her mom had cancer? Aren’t you guys roommates and, like, best buddies?”

I glared at her. She had been taking jabs at me since we met, and anger rose up in my chest like a snake.

Mary waved her hands. “Hey, no, it’s no big deal. I never mentioned it and Di is private so—”

Minx glared right back and cut Mary off. “No, it is a big deal. Princess has been poking around all day into worse things in our lives but is too good to share anything about her life.”

“Don’t call me Princess.”

“If the shoe fits, then you gotta lace it up and wear it, Princess. You think you’re better than the rest of us.” She tore her eyes off me to look at Mary. “Do you know anything about Princess? Does she have siblings? Why did she get divorced? Do you know anything about her?”

Mary stuttered but gave no answer.

Jess had returned with Tiger and cautiously came over. “Is everything okay over here?”

Minx turned around. “You guys are friends from way back. Do you know why Di got divorced and ran away from California? Honey said that’s what happened.”

“That is none of our business Minx. If Di wants to share the story, she will.”

“No, no, she won’t. That’s the problem. She thinks she’s too good to share anything.”

The anger, shame, and vodka fought inside me. More than anything, I wanted to knock that smug look off Minx’s face. “Fine!” My voice echoed in the large room. “If you want the story of why I’m divorced, then you’ll get it.”

Mary and Jess made quieting noises, but I was rolling, and nothing would stop me now. The stress of the past year, the drama of the past day, and my anger at Minx and her big mouth all came to a head at once. Emotions had been bottled up for too long, and they were spilling out everywhere. “It was my thirtieth birthday earlier this year, and my husband, Chris, had rented this party bus and invited a bunch of my friends to go out for drinks for girls’ night, including my best friend, Beth.” I put finger quotes around best.

“We were leaving the restaurant pretty well drunk when Chris calls to ask how things were going. I said we were just about to get to the comedy club and would be home later. After the call, I realized I left something at the house so the party bus stops at my house. Everyone wants to come in and say hi to Chris or use the bathroom, so we all go in through the garage, which opens into kitchen.”

Minx interrupted me. “Are you hoping that we die of boredom before you have to tell us what happened?”

“Shut your face, Minx, I’m gonna tell this story the way I want to. Once we enter the kitchen, I see them.”

Mary leaned forward as I pause for dramatic effect. “Who?”

“A man having sex with a gal leaning over the kitchen table. I just stand there. This couldn’t be my house. Maybe we entered the wrong one. Maybe that is the Carlsons having sex. I look around and momentarily I don’t recognize the room. Then everything snaps into focus. That’s my husband and our interior decorator bent over the table. I don’t recognize our kitchen because it has been so heavily remodeled this year. No wonder we had spent the past two years redoing the entire house.”

Everyone was hanging on my every word. I felt powerful, finally getting it all out. I had carried the shame, and the more I hid it the heavier it got. But now that I was sharing it, it was light as a feather. I felt a freedom that intoxicated me far more than the vodka.

Jess shook her head. “Di, that is so awful.”

I waggled a finger at her. “That’s only half the story. To recap, I’m staring at Chris schtupping the interior decorator. I haven’t moved an inch, but Beth has. My best friend, Beth, had pushed past me and grabbed him by his bits and pieces. She’s hitting him with her purse while he’s making this awful high-pitched screeching noise and trying to get away from her emasculating fist. Then I realized she’s screaming at him.”

I looked around to make sure everyone was watching. “She’s yelling, ‘You said I was the only one’ over and over.”

Minx gasped. “Oh crap, happy birthday, Princess.” She started giggling under her breath.

I couldn’t help myself. I started giggling, too. At some point I had moved far enough away from the moment to see how ridiculous and awful it was. I had held so tight to the pain, never sharing it, that I wasn’t able to see that I had started to heal.

Owley called out from where she was sitting next to Tiger, her arm intertwined with his. “Then what happened?”

“I left out one of the best parts of the story. Beth was drunker than a skunk, and she was hitting him so hard that eventually she lost her balance. The only thing she had a grip on was his gentleman’s sausage. When she fell, I guess she yanked or smashed or twisted. I’m not totally clear on the details, but I guess he sprained it.”

Mary gasped loudly and covered her mouth with her hands. “Men can sprain their winkies?”

I nodded. “Apparently. It was all a blur after that. The paramedics showed up and took him away. They were very professional and didn’t laugh in his face while loading him onto a stretcher. Someone shuffled out the interior decorator. A couple of them grabbed a sobbing Beth before I could kill her. It was an even bigger betrayal than Chris.”

Owley smiled and nodded her head in agreement, yelling out, “Dang skippy.”

I took a moment to sit down across from Minx and next to Mary. Jess pulled out the remaining chair. Bruce turned back to his beer while Owley and Tiger leaned close and chatted.

Minx, Mary, and Jess looked at me, so I decided to finish out the story.

“Then Patsy, who got divorced the year before, sat me down and gave me the number to her lawyer and helped me figure out what to do next.” I had shared so much that the rest just came rushing out. “That was what really killed me. When Patsy had gotten a divorce, I had told Chris that I pitied her. We had all seen it coming, and ‘How could Patsy be so blind?’”

I took a napkin from the dispenser and patted my eyes. “I was so sure that I was smarter than her. Then one day, bam, my husband was banging half the neighborhood, and I had no idea.”

Minx gave me a gentle smile. “I think that happens to a lot of people, Princess. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid.”

Maybe it was the cathartic release of getting everything off my chest, but I was no longer angry at her. “Now you like me, eh?”

Minx reached across the table and gave my hand a quick squeeze. “Actually, I just might.”

Warmth settled around me as I sipped on my orange juice and vodka. The adrenaline of my fight with Minx left me feeling a bit shaky and tired but also free and clean. I let my mind wander over the details of the day when something clicked. I turned to Mary.

“The female archer who missed the Summer Games trials because her mother was sick in the hospital…”

Mary nodded her head. “Yeah, that was me.”

I tried to be sensitive to the fact that she might not want to tell the story. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Sure. I think everyone else knows. My senior year in high school, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I decided to skip college for a while to help her, plus I could train full-time. That’s when I started doing the occasional archery article for extra money. You can compete in the youth division until the end of the year you turn twenty, so I did that. Her treatment was going great, and I never really thought she could die. The week of the trials, she was not feeling well, and I knew something was wrong, but I wanted to go ’cause it was the Summer Games. I was ranked second. The first day of the event, I got a phone call right in the middle of shooting. I answered, and Dad said she was in the hospital and they didn’t think she was going to make it.”

Her voice was clear, but tears made little rivers down her face. She wiped them off her chin, where they had collected.

“I don’t remember much after that. Jess was there. She got my flight changed, packed me up, and took me to the airport. I sobbed the whole way home. I almost missed my connecting flight because the layover was short and I was way in back. I started calling out, ‘Please let me out, my mom is dying, please let me get off, I’m gonna miss my flight.’ People stepped back into the seats to let me out.”

We had grabbed napkins to dab at our faces while she finished.

“I got to the hospital, and nothing else mattered but being there for my mom. I was so ashamed that I thought archery was more important. I held her hand all night, and in the morning she was actually a bit stronger. The nurses and doctors were amazing. Mom was there for a month, and I was there every day. You know, I haven’t touched my bow since that day.”

Minx gasped. “You haven’t?”

Mary shook her head and stared at the table. “Nope. It’s in my room, but I haven’t unpacked it since the trials. Sometimes I open the bowcase to look at it, but it messes with my head. First I was super guilty ’cause I knew Mom was sick but I thought the trials were more important, which is so stupid. Nothing is more important than family. Then it got to a point where I’m not even sure I can shoot anymore. Maybe I’ve lost whatever I had.”

Jess shook her head. “That’s not how it works. Shooting archery isn’t some magical spark that you can lose. Whenever you are ready, we can get you back to the level you were at. But no rush.”

If she wasn’t shooting, then…? “How did you end up here?”

“Mom eventually got better, and now she’s in remission. It was the right time for me to go to college, but I felt out of synch with everyone else. Remember when I said that Elizabeth is a hero of mine?”

I nodded my head.

“I used to have a Westmound Sponsorship. It is like the best one in the industry. When I left the trials, she called me right away. She said I did the right thing leaving, and they would be praying. After that, she checked on me every month or so. She never pressured me to get back to competing but did say that whenever I was ready, she would like to help. I heard about the center here and that Jess and Robbie were slated to work here. I called Elizabeth and asked about living here. It just seemed right. Archery has been my second family my entire life, and it would be like being with family while I attended the state college.”

I pursed my lips. “You could have told me all this, you know.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “When you came and didn’t want to talk about anything personal, I thought that was awesome. I didn’t have to talk either. I could just pretend nothing had happened.”

Minx snorted. “Birds of an emotionally unhealthy feather flock together, eh?”

I giggled. “Mary, I think we both need therapy. I’ll go if you go.” I threw my arms around her and stole a quick hug. “If you are this hot-shot archer, then why don’t you go by a pro name like everyone else?”

“I kinda do. Mary is my real name but they call me Bloody Mary ’cause I can really destroy a bracket. Even if I qualify low, it is almost guaranteed that I will knock out the higher-ranked archers. Something about the head-to-head competition really ups my game.”

“Wow, intimidating.”

Mary, Minx, Jess, and I sniffled and laughed, when a voice broke through. “Why is Moo wearing a Batman shirt?”