Diary of a Mad Fat Girl (13 page)

“
Am I?!” I exclaim. “Am I?! You bet
your sparkly little purse I am!”

I ask her how it went with Dax and she
talks about him all the way to the gates of The Waverly Estate and
that’s fine with me because I am
more
than in the mood to sit with my mouth shut
and listen to her ramble about her handsome lover.

27

The iron gates of The Waverly Estate look
like they were hand crafted by Michelangelo himself. We sit in the
shade of this gigantic work of art and wait for the gate guard,
sleek and sporty in starched white shorts and a blue polo, to make
his way from the guard house to the car. He asks to see our
identification, scribbles something on his clip board, pushes a
button on a device attached to his belt, and the glorious gates
begin to move.

“
Welcome to Waverly, my pretty
ladies,” he says with a deep southern drawl. “Miss Lane, you can
park right over there in any one of those spots and a gentleman
will pick y’all up and take you around to the pool where Mrs.
Peacock is waitin’ .”

“
Thank you so much, sir,” Lilly says.
“Have a nice day, sir.” She rolls up her window and looks at me in
a panic. “Are we supposed to tip these people?”

“
Oh my word, Lilly, you are such a
dumb ass! We are at a private residence, not the freakin’ Peabody
Hotel!”

“
Well, you’re supposed to tip anyone
who provides you with a service.” For all her many travels, she
obviously only carried her passport. I guess beautiful women don’t
get much experience tipping because they’re always on the arm of a
benevolent man.

“
Well, take him twenty bucks if it’ll
make you feel better.”

“
Twenty dollars,” she yells, “are you
crazy?”

“
No,” I say quietly, “but you sure as
hell are. Now shut up and let’s at least
pretend
like we have sense enough to be
here.”

We get out of the car just in time to see a
shiny blue golf cart pull up to the curb. Instead of straps to
secure clubs, it has a seat on the back emblazoned with a majestic
blue peacock in all its feathered glory. The driver appears to be a
clone of the gate man and I start having visions of Mr. Deeds in
that mansion with that sneaky butler fellow.

“
Ladies,” the gentleman says with a
friendly smile, “it would please me greatly to give y’all a
ride.”

“
We’d love that,” I say and try to
smile big enough for the two of us because Lilly has lapsed into
some kind of idiotic stupor and is looking around at all the trees
and flowers with her mouth half open and I worry for a second that
she might start to slobber.

I elbow her and nod to the cart and she
walks over and gets in, the whole time looking like a stupid ass
robot with long, tan legs and expensive heels. When the
gate-clone-servant man hits the gas, I lean over and whisper, “Hey
globe trotter, what the hell is wrong with you? You’re acting like
you’ve never seen an azalea in bloom.”

“
There’s just something about this
place,” she says dreamily, “I can’t explain it.” She looks at me,
wide-eyed. “Don’t you feel it? It’s like an aura or
something.”

“
Have you been smokin’ weed?” I ask
and I’m dead serious.

“
No,” she looks at me like I’m the
moron. “It’s magical. This place is absolutely magical!”

“
You are a freakin’ fruit loop.” I
whisper, but she isn’t listening.

“
Look, there’s a peacock!” she
squeals. “A real live peacock!”

I roll my eyes and wonder if she’s upped her
daily dose of crazy meds.

After a winding tour through what could
easily pass for a privatized Garden of Eden, we roll to a stop next
to a clover shaped pool fit for a Hawaiian beach resort. Lilly is
still thoroughly intoxicated with the loveliness of The Waverly
Estate and has counted seven real live peacocks roaming the
grounds. I bite my lip and tell myself now is not the time to call
her a dip shit.

Lilly slides off the back seat of the shiny
blue golf cart, walks over and hugs Gloria Peacock like the petite
little lady just saved her from being eaten by piranhas. Gloria
Peacock hugs her back and smiles that thousand watt smile and I
wonder for a brief second if her teeth are real or if they’re
dentures. Very expensive dentures. Like made of ivory or
something.

“
We haven’t officially met,” she says,
offering a hand laden with jewels more valuable than my house. And
probably my life. “Gloria Peacock.”

“
Graciela Jones,” I say, shaking her
hand and trying not to stare at her rings, “but everyone calls me
Ace.”

“
And why is that?” she asks quickly
and I’m caught off guard by her question so I stand there like a
deaf mute waiting on a phone call.

“
Because she’s always been so great at
sports,” Lilly gushes, “ever since she was a little girl, she could
play any sport she wanted and never even needed to be coached.
She’s a natural athlete. Very talented.”

My face is burning from embarrassment and it
only gets worse when Lilly goes from gushing about what a prodigy I
was fifteen years ago straight into gushing about how The Waverly
Estate is more magical than Disneyland. We are standing directly in
the hot summer sun and I think I might pass out from the painful
combination of heat and humiliation.

Gloria Peacock is kind enough to notice that
I’m having a near death experience so when Lilly stops to catch her
breath, she invites us both to sit down. She waves her bejeweled
hand toward a shaded little hut adorned with four oscillating
fans.

Thank you, Jesus.

A female version of the
gate-keeping-golf-cart-driving-servant-clone glides into the hut
and places a glass pitcher of sweet tea in the center table. She
disappears, but returns in a flash with a bowl of lemon wedges and
some tiny silver tongs. Another servant clone appears and presents
large, clear glasses filled with square chunks of ice and some kind
of weird plates that look like they’re made out of bamboo. Yet
another servant presents us with a platter loaded with tea cakes,
candied pecans, cheese straws, chocolate dipped strawberries, and
four more sets of those adorable little tongs.

I look at Gloria Peacock and smile.

I am starting to see the magic.

And I want a pair of those little tongs.

“
Help yourself,” she says, smiling
that big smile of hers and I realize that I don’t give a rat’s ass
if she’s smiling at me with real teeth or elephant tusk dentures, I
load my plate up like the black sheep cousin at a white trash
family reunion. Lilly, however, gracefully places just enough food
on her plate to feed a small bird. A very small bird.

When we finish the sweet tea, snacks, and
polite chit chat, Gloria Peacock stands up and says, “Okay, girls,
it’s time to get down to business. Follow me, please.”

We follow her around the pool and through a
set of French doors flanked on both sides by about fifty more
French doors. Or windows. I can’t tell. We step into a sun room
that looks like a Pottery Barn ad and from there into a marble
floored hallway topped with domed ceilings painted up like a
cathedral. We follow her around a table topped with a flower
arrangement the size of Rhode Island, down another glitzy hallway,
and into a room that looks like a scene from Mission
Impossible.

28

“
Welcome to my media room,” Gloria
Peacock says proudly, “make yourself comfortable.” She motions
toward a gigantic sectional facing an electronic arrangement as
impressive as it is intimidating. The brown leather sofa is soft
and smooth and I feel like I’m floating on a cowhide cloud. Lilly
perches on the edge of a cushion and has this look on her face like
she’s not sure where she is or how she got here.

Meanwhile, Gloria Peacock is standing in the
center of the room facing her electronic empire and appears to be
conducting an invisible orchestra. She’s waving and pointing and
I’m starting to wonder is she might be a little off her rockers
when all of a sudden the wall comes to life and I’m looking at a
picture of me and Lilly talking to Deputy Dax Dorsett outside the
gym the night we broke into Catherine Hilliard’s office.

“
Where did that come from?” I ask,
stunned and secretly embarrassed for thinking she might be senile.
Lilly’s mouth is hanging open again and I’m not sure if she’s
shocked to see our sweaty faces splayed across Gloria Peacock’s
larger-than-life magic computer monitor or if she’s lusting after
Deputy Dax, whose biceps look damn sexy up on that big
screen.

“
Omega Security Systems,” Gloria
Peacock says, “my first husband’s brain child and my oldest son’s
life work.”

She smiles and Lilly and I stare at the
screen like a pair of teenage boys seeing boobs for the first
time.

“
My Will, General William Peacock,
spent 22 years in the Army before he retired and went to work for
the F.B.I.” She pauses and seems to be lost in thought, but only
for second. “Surveillance was his specialty and this,” she waves a
hand around the room, “is today’s version of the work he began back
in the 50’s.”

“
They had video surveillance in the
50’s?” I ask, trying to shake off the stupor and, at the very
least, appear to have a grain of sense.

“
Indeed they did and my William
designed the specs that became the foundation of COINTELPRO,” she
looks at me and my expression must convey my ignorance because she
continues, “COINTELPRO is a surveillance system that the government
put into action in 1956, but had to quit using in ‘71 because a
bunch of idiots broke into a field office in Pennsylvania and,” she
shakes her head and sighs, “what followed was nothing short of
mayhem. Blown completely out of proportion.”

“
Coin…tell…pro?” I ask and now I’m
wondering if Gloria Peacock might be a Russian spy or something.
“What is that?”

“COINTELPRO is an acronym for Counter
Intelligence Program.” She points at the screen and another image
pops up and I’m looking at myself standing outside the emergency
entrance to the hospital wearing only one flip flop. Sheriff
Jackson has his back to the camera and is looking at the concrete,
as are Lilly and Ethan, and Deputy Dorsett is in the process of
getting out of his patrol car.

“Oh my God,” Lilly whispers. “What was that
movie? With Will Smith and Gene Hackman-”

“So how do you-” I trail off as she brings
up a shot of me and Logan Hatter in the parking lot of Ethan
Allen’s and my mouth is wide open and Logan has his arm around me
and his eyes are closed. “That is amazing detail!” I exclaim. “This
is unbelievable,” I pause, shaking my head, “but how?”

“Enemy of the State,” Lilly whispers and I
look at her and she has this weird look on her face and I start
thinking that maybe she and Deputy Dax have been getting freak
nasty on top of his patrol car and that’ll be the next picture we
see up on the big screen.

“
Mrs. Peacock,” I muster up all my
courage, “is this legal?”

“
Perhaps not,” she says like it’s no
big deal. “My son had the cameras installed at various locations
around town as a gift to the city to help cut down on crime. He’s
given that gift to several little towns in the tri-state area, but
ours is the only one to which I pay attention.”

“
So who all has access to this
information?” Lilly asks, with obvious apprehension.

“
Me,” she says smartly, “and each
town’s local authorities and the Feds, but they have to be granted
permission and issued login information before they can use it.
They can’t just hack into the system any time they’d
like.”

“
Do the police know you have access to
the system?” I ask, using my best
of
course I don’t think you’re a criminal
voice.

“
Why should they?” she asks, smiling.
“Does it hurt to have an old lady like me surfing the databases
from time to time? I think not,” she says decisively, “especially
since all of their equipment was a gift from the Peacock
family.”

“
So you just sit in here and play
God?” I ask and immediately wish I wouldn’t have because I’m heavy
on the
I was wrong and you
are
a criminal
voice.

“
God,” Gloria Peacock says coolly, “is
not a woman and I have too much reverence for Him to assert myself
in that way.”

“
So what do you call what you do
here?” I ask and Lilly scowls at me, but keeps her mouth
shut.

“
I call it my goodwill ambassadorship
to people less fortunate than I,” she says and levels a look at me
that makes me look at the floor.

“
Well, I guess that would cover
everybody in the southeastern United States,” I mumble, “at
least.”

“
Mrs. Peacock,” Lilly begins with an
apologetic tone, “please let me apolo-”

Gloria Peacock cuts her off mid-word.
“Lilly, it’s perfectly alright,” she says quietly, “I appreciate an
honest skeptic. Now, Ace,” she turns her eagle eyes and ivory smile
back to me, “let me answer your question about what I do here.”

She brings up a photo of Richard Stacks and
a red-headed woman fondling each other next to a dumpster. “Like
most people, I know what goes on in and around this little town and
when I hear something skewed, I do my research then make a
legitimate effort to help the people who deserve it. Some are aware
of my intervention, others aren’t. In all honesty, most people have
no I idea I play any role in the resolution of their issues. A
certain degree of secrecy makes it easy to continue getting things
done.”