Double Shot (4 page)

“I’m Sandee Blue. That’s Sandee with two es.”
Arch had done his best not to gawk. I’d shuddered and, for once, been tongue-tied.
Confused, Sandee had asked, “Are you here with money?”
Without missing a beat, Marla had said, “No, but we’d be blue too, if we didn’t have any.” Sandee had retreated, looking even more perplexed. Then we’d heard the Jerk yelling at her from inside the house, and finally he’d appeared and wordlessly taken Arch. What was that French saying — plus ça change? Well, anyway, stuff doesn’t change and neither do jerks.
According to Marla, Sandee worked in the country-club golf shop, and that was where John Richard had decided he had to have her. Also according to Marla, once John Richard met Sandee, he’d dumped his willowy, wealthy, gorgeous, brunette girlfriend, Courtney MacEwan. Courtney was a highly competitive tennis-playing socialite. She was known for throwing her racket and her fluorescent pink tennis balls at opponents who beat her — and hitting them. This was not the kind of woman I’d want to have as an enemy, but John Richard was an expert in — Marla’s term— the Art of Bedding Dangerously.
Now, watching John Richard lean over and whisper in Sandee’s ear, my gaze traveled over to lovely, brown-haired Courtney MacEwan, standing on the far side of the French doors. unlike Ginger Vikarios’s orange gown, Courtney’s dress was black, but it was so low cut and tight — showing muscles I wasn’t even sure I had — that it made Ginger’s pouffery look tame. I racked my gray cells to figure out why Courtney was here, and then remembered that her former husband — he had died of a heart attack when Courtney had surprised him in bed with a flight attendant — had been a top executive at
Southwest
Hospital
.
Courtney had been John Richard’s squeeze in — what, April, the beginning of May? Then the Jerk had moved on to the greener Sandee pasture, and they’d split. Now Courtney stared in his direction. The bitterness of her expression shrieked, If I can’t have this man, no one will! I wondered if her copious Louis Vuitton bag held a couple of tennis balls.
The crowd scooped up the last of their cake and ice cream, glanced at their watches, and rustled in their seats. Oblivious, Ted Vikarios rumbled on about the good deeds Albert Kerr had done. Albert had sold his possessions and taken Holly to England, where he’d gone to seminary. He’d accepted a call to a small Christian mission in Qatar — he really hadn’t liked the old English weather — and served there for twelve years. He’d fought valiantly against the disease that had finally claimed him, etc., etc.
Again waves of fatigue and pain washed over me. The places where my attacker had hit were killing me. When I’d signaled to Julian and Liz to stop clearing. I’d had no idea Ted Vikarios would talk until mold drew on cheese. On and on he went, about how the Lord had done this in Albert’s life and the Lord had done that. The agnostics among the country-club set were stirring in their seats. To them, a conversion experience was changing dollars into euros.
When a couple of people scraped back their chairs and got up to leave, Dr. V. cleared his throat into the mike. It came out like a thunderclap, and a spontaneous titter swept through the Roundhouse dining room. More people began to stand up and move about. I glanced at Holly Kerr. She kept her chin up and her back straight as she spoke to well-wishers.
If I could just finished the cleaning without losing my temper with the Jerk and accusing him of beating me up, I could count this event as a salvaged success. I scanned the crowd again. Ted Vikarios was still talking. I had to clear away the dirty dishes, whether it made noise or not.
Holly Kerr caught my eye, nodded, and smiled. Then she handed an envelope to a young man and indicated that he was to give it to me. my eyes snagged on Courtney MacEwan, whose rage-filled stare at John Richard — who was again cozying up to Sandee — had not quit. Courtney folded her arms, which made a whole bunch more muscles pop out. Now John Richard and Sandee-with-two-es were exchanging a not-so-surreptitious kiss. I turned quickly, picked up a tray of dirty glasses beside one of the tables, and only vaguely registered footsteps clicking up to my side.
“Ever noticed,” Courtney MacEwan hissed in my ear, “how people can’t wait to have sex after funerals?”
I lost my grip on the tray. Unbalanced, one of the glasses popped upward and spiraled toward the floor. An alert guest, a bodybuilder-type guy with thick, dry blond-brown hair that resembled a lion’s mane, dove for it with an outfielder’s extended reach. Grinning hugely, he held it high. The guest at the table applauded.
“Courtney,” I said through clenched teeth — and a false smile — “get into the kitchen if you want to talk about sex.”
Courtney fluttered sparkly eyelids and mauve-toned fingernails and slithered ahead of me. It was a good thing, too, because the crowd parted like the Red Sea for that low-cut dress.
“And dearest, loveliest Holly,” Ted droned on.
“Was that a trick play with the glass?” an older woman asked me. Her broad face lit up with an admiring smile. “If you toss two glasses into the air, Dannyboy here will be able to catch both of those, too.” The table giggled and leaned forward. I noticed several bottles of wine between the plates, not served by yours truly. In fact, I was willing to bet that the folks at this table had never worked at
Southwest
Hospital
. There were two guys (including Dannyboy, he of the lion mane) who looked like thugs, and three women, two pretty younger ones and the one who’d first spoken to me. Her thick makeup and dyed black hair screamed Aging Hooker. Still, she looked familiar. But I was distracted from trying to place her by Dannyboy, whose drunk, raised voice announced; “If you toss three glasses in the air, I can juggle those, too!”
“And dearest, loveliest Holly,” Ted Vikarios shouted into the microphone, “was a nurturing presence all along.” Registering the disturbance — Dannyboy, the joker who wouldn’t let me pass — Ted glared in our direction. “She even nursed Albert, whom we are remembering today, whom we are trying to remember today” — more glaring — “beginning when he was sick and missed school as a teenager . . .”
“So did John Richard cheat on you, too?” Courtney stage-whispered over her shoulder. “And what did you do to his girlfriends?” I kept a white-knuckled grip on the tray and refused to answer.
“Hey, caterer,” Dannyboy was saying as he tugged on my apron. Behind him, his table laughed wildly. “C’mon, let’s have some fun. With the glasses, I mean.”
I tore myself away and limped painfully toward the kitchen. When I finally made it, I placed the tray next to the sink, then walked over and carefully closed the door to the dining room. I took a deep breath before facing Courtney, who had almost screwed up this already-almost-screwed-up event.
“Doggone it, Courtney, what is the matter with you? I’ve been divorced from John Richard for over a decade! Of course he cheated on me. I didn’t do anything to any girlfriends of his except feel sorry for her, whoever she was. And as to the sex-after-funerals question, how should I know? When I’m catering a funeral lunch, what I do afterward is dishes.”
She looked over at me, then pressed her lips together. But it was no-go. Tears slid down her cheeks. In an effort to look stronger than she apparently was feeling, she rolled her shoulders and flexed those arm muscles.
“Goddamn him,” she said. “He owes me.” She slapped tears away. I plucked a clean tissue from my apron pocket and handed it to her. “I just hate him so much now.” She honked into the tissue. “We were going to get married. We’d been together for less than a month, and he sent back my stuff from his house in boxes from the golf shop, for crying out loud. Why the golf shop?”
She started to cry. I rinsed dishes, wondering how long this would last. The golf shop, she kept repeating. Why the golf shop?
“Maybe Sandee gave him the boxes,” I offered. “I mean, she’s some kind of golf expert, isn’t she?”
To my great surprise, Courtney burst out laughing. “Oh, yeah, Sandee’s a golf expert, all right! Puts the ball right in the hole!”
Her facial muscles jumped and twitched. Oh boy, she had it bad. This was unfortunate. John Richard never went back to a woman he’d abandoned.
“What is going on in here?” Marla demanded as she banged through the kitchen door. She was holding an envelope, which she handed to me. “This is from Holly Kerr. Some guy was waiting to give it to you, but was afraid to come into the kitchen because the door was closed. Ooh, yummy, leftover cake.” She daintily helped herself to a corner of chocolate, then noticed Courtney MacEwan. “for crying out loud, Courtney, what are you so bent out of shape about? I mean, besides being dumped for a twenty-one-year-old?”
Courtney glared at Marla, who shook her head at Courtney’s décolleté dress.
“Very sexy, C. You ought to be able to pick up somebody new, right here at this funeral.”
Courtney lifted her chin and appraised Marla’s black linen dress. “You look pretty inviting yourself, Marla. Did you have a hot date before the funeral?”
“Oh, darling, did I!” Marla replied, rolling her eyes.
“But what are you doing here?” I asked Marla, once I’d stashed Holly’s payment, which I intended to refund to her since we’d never had the poached salmon.
Marla turned her attention to me. “You are so ungrateful.
“But what about you-know-who?” I whispered as Courtney cracked open the kitchen door to check on the whereabouts of John Richard. I didn’t know if she was listening to Marla and me or not, but you couldn’t be too careful with Courtney. I was pretty sure she still blamed me for being hostile to her relationship with John Richard. I had been nothing of the kind, of course; this had been John Richard’s excuse to Courtney for why they had to break up. (“ ‘Goldy is such a jealous ex-wife,’ “ Marla said the Jerk had claimed to Courtney. “ ‘If she finds out you’re staying here at the house, she’ll go back to family court and try to have my visitations with Arch reduced!’ “)
“At this very moment,” Marla said as she picked up a corner of cake and checked her new diamond Rolex, “my lawyer is in the office of your favorite district food inspector, claiming he’s going to sue him and his entire staff on behalf of his client who has food poisoning.”
“You’re so bad —“ I began.
Courtney let out a gargled noise and reeled back. None other then the Jerk himself popped his head into the kitchen. He looked all around, then grinned widely.
“Oops!” he said with mock surprise. “Three old girlfriends. What’re you doing, plotting? Goldy, I need to see you. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He stepped all the way into the kitchen, put his hands on his hips, and announced in a low, threatening voice, “I. Need. You. Now.”
Before I could say “Tough tacks,” Courtney shrieked, “You bastard! I ought to — “ She strode toward him. John Richard rolled his shoulders and got ready to fight. With sudden deftness, Marla picked up a crystal platter of leftover cake, stepped in front of Courtney, and used the platter as a shield. Most of the chocolate landed on the ample tops of Courtney’s breasts.
“You bitch!” Courtney cried as my platter fell to the floor and broke into smithereens.
John Richard pointed at me and said, “Parking lot.” Then he slithered away.
Courtney refocused her energy on the Jerk. She stalked out of the kitchen, chocolate coating and all.
Julian, dark-haired and efficient, pushed into the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes. He glanced at the floor with its shards of crystal. “What happened here?”
“I’ll explain later. Listen, I don’t want to face the Jerk alone. The cop’s left. Would the two of you come with me?” I begged Julian and Marla in a low voice.
“Of course,” the two of them said in unison. Liz came into the kitchen and announced that Arch had left with his friend and his friend’s mom, and that I had said it was all right. I nodded, although with all the events of the morning, I had o idea what I had promised Arch. Liz said she would press on with the cleanup. Marla and Julian nipped along ahead of me, out the trashed back door and down the gravel path. Halfway down, we came to an abrupt halt.
Ted Vikarios, evidently having finished his eulogy for Albert, had planted himself in the Jerk’s path and was shaking his finger in my ex-husband’s face. John Richard, unusually for him, was speaking in a low, reconciling tone. Ted turned red, bared his teeth, and kept ranting. I could only make out a couple of his phrases: asking an important question and should be ashamed of yourself.
“We ought to go back,” I murmured to Marla and Julian.
“Forget it,” Marla replied. She put her hand on my arm and edged closer to the two men. “We’re just out of earshot maybe super-Christian Ted is upset by the Jerk serving time as a convicted felon.”
John Richard, retreating to his usual gracelessness, told Ted to go home and stop acting like an old man. Leaving Ted dumbfounded, John Richard trotted out to the parking lot. After a few moments, he revved his new Audit TT, circled the lot in a spray of gravel, and pulled up near the path. In the front seat, Sandee was checking her lipstick in the visor mirror. Julian, Marla, and I gave a fuming Dr. V. a wide berth and stopped short a safe three yards from the roaring Audi.
“I need you to bring Arch over in three hours,” John Richard yelled at me. “I got my tee time changed.”
Even if John Richard had shoved me and whacked my neck and screwed up the lunch food, I did not also need him to holler orders in front of the Roundhouse windows. Julian and Marla edged closer to the Audi. They crossed their arms and stood their ground in front of me.
“John Richard, did you have anything to do with a break-in here at the Roundhouse?” Marla called merrily. “Spoiled food? Mice?” Her voice turned sharp. “Did you beat Goldy up, you son of a bitch?”
“Goldy!” John Richard ignored Marla and raised his voice a notch. “Four o’clock! Got it?”
my ears burned. I tried not to think about how everyone in the dining room, everyone within a half-mile radius, could hear John Richard yelling at me. Could someone be so brazen as to assault his ex-wife in the morning and then demand she bring over their son in the afternoon?”
“I’m busy,” I called. “So is Arch — “
Moving quickly, John Richard jumped out of his car, slammed the door, and strode around Marla and Julian to tower over me. “Let’s get this straight,” he announced. “I don’t care about you! I don’t care about how supposedly busy you are! I don’t care about your little schedule! I don’t care, do you understand?”