Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) (2 page)

He cleared his throat. “I’m looking for a legal assistant at my law firm.”

I reevaluated his cowboy authenticity again and decided he was still the real thing, just urbanized. I opened my mouth to say I wasn’t looking for a job, but what came out was, “What type of law?”

His nice, rumbly voice said, “Criminal defense, mostly.”

I shook my head. “No offense, but yuck. I do employment law.”

The dimple again, but not so much that it pulled the side of his mouth up.

“Based on your taste in jokes, you’d probably enjoy the sexual harassment cases.”

“My clients make your CEO harassment defendants look like they’re still wearing training pants.”

I remembered flipping through the paper that morning, over dry white bread and black coffee, because that’s how we roll at my mother’s house. What I recalled was a big criminal case, and quotes from the attorney. What was the name? Had it been Jack Holden? Yes. Yes it had.

“You’re that attorney who got the super pimp acquitted last week, aren’t you?” I said. “Whose client was the guy who ran the prostitution ring cleverly disguised as hot women delivering pizza in tap pants and bustiers? What do they call guys like him? Marketing geniuses? Or sleazeballs?”

He turned to me and dipped his head, speaking only after an uncomfortably intense and lengthy pause.

“You’re that woman whose husband took all her money and left her for a man who pretends to be a woman, aren’t you? What do they call that, experimentation? Or a fetish for transvestites?” He asked, sipping his Bourbon.

Boom! A sound like a cannon shook me to my pointy toes, followed by a nanosecond of stunned silence. A woman’s scream pierced the air just as a loud, slapping sound reverberated from the surface of the pool. Water splashed up on my dress and I gasped. Jack pushed himself in front of me. There was another moment of profound silence, then noise exploded all around us. I was tucked behind Jack, his arms extended low behind him, on either side of me. I stepped around him to get a view of the pool. A cloud of red was growing in the water around what looked to be a man’s torso.

“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Jack said.

I looked up from the grisly scene. The man had fallen from above the pool. My eyes climbed, searching each floor of balconies, moving like one of my grandmother’s old Selectric typeballs across a blank page. There! I saw her, three floors up, a gun dangling in her two hands, her black hair pulled back, her white apron tied over her burgundy maid’s dress. The shooter.

I leaned in toward Jack and pointed at the woman. “Better hurry, she looks like she needs a lawyer.”

The aroma of fresh-baked cookies and brewing coffee filled the air of the Panhandle Believers Church Sunday school wing the next morning. Watercolor renditions of Jesus with lambs, Jesus handing out loaves, and other well-known biblical scenes (featuring Jesus) adorned the pale blue walls. I walked down the hallway searching for Mother, trying to keep my footsteps quiet. Despite the fact that I was possibly the whitest girl in the Texas Panhandle, I liked to pretend I was an American Indian when I was a child, dressing up like one at Halloween, and hanging on Dad’s every word as he taught me to move like an Indian scout. I tiptoed over linoleum floors like Sacajawea now, through unfamiliar territory.

I heard a female voice coming from the room ahead on my left. “Any prayer requests today?”

The respondent stopped me in my tracks. “You all know my daughter is home. Her husband has strayed, in a . . . most unnatural way. I need prayers for Jesus to heal his heart and convert him back to . . . relationships with women . . . with Emily.”

The silence after her proclamation didn’t last. I heard tsks and hmphs and oh mys.

I ground my teeth, but I didn’t make a sound. Thank God I’d decided not to tell my mother my really big secret yet—that Rich had knocked me up before I’d found out about his other life. Never mind that it was practically the Immaculate Conception. Or maybe even a toilet seat conception. Our sex life had died off long before he’d met his boyfriend, except for an occasional drunken grope in the dark. But pregnant by your gay soon-to-be-ex-husband? Yeah, the Sunday school class would have had a field day with that little nugget of information.

“Thank you, Agatha. Anyone else?”

A different woman spoke. “My niece got married last night. Thank you all for coming.”

A collective coo rippled through the room.

“Some Mexican woman murdered a man in the middle of the wedding. His body fell in the pool. Sue was standing there when it happened, and bloody water splashed on her shoes and dress.”

The women in the room gasped, and the woman lowered her voice.

“She was so traumatized she went home with her mama and didn’t leave for her honeymoon this morning. She thinks it’s a sign that God doesn’t favor her marriage. Please pray for Jesus to heal her heart and return her to her husband. And for that woman who ruined her wedding to be brought to justice.”

Someone near the door spoke softly. “In Mexico.”

And a voice near her said, “Uh huh.”

Several more women asked for prayers for their ill family or relatives in the military, and a few others asked for praise for healing and babies and good fortune. The voice of the woman who had asked for the requests then led them in prayer. I turned to walk away before she got to me, and as I did so, I felt something catch on the floor. I looked down. The loose heel on my favorite brown leather riding boots had caught in a tear in the linoleum. I knew I should have glued it down this morning before I left Mother’s house. It had ripped clean off.

“Great,” I mumbled before I picked it up and stuffed it in my bulging handbag.

“Hi, Emily,” said a male voice, grating and familiar.

I looked up into the face of my high school American history teacher. It was a good thing I’d recognized the voice, because I wouldn’t have recognized him by sight. The formerly fastidious and slim man had tripled in size, and his hair had all fallen out on top, leaving a ring of muskrat brown on the sides and back.

“Hello, Mr. Walsh. You look well!” I ignored the fact that he had stopped walking, as if wanting to chat with me. “So sorry,” I said. “I have to run.”

I walked off, my gait uneven in my heel-less boot. I had to get out of here. This time I didn’t employ stealth. I’d promised Mother when I dropped her off earlier that I’d join her for church after I finished my errands—I’d wanted to, even. The faith of my youth had deserted me in my twenties, and I yearned to return to it now that I was in crisis, to take sanctuary in it. To be the twelve-year-old who was baptized during vacation Bible school. The girl who felt real joy in her heart. But Mother had made me seem salacious to her friends here, and it didn’t sit well with me. Their whole interaction didn’t, really.

“Emily!”

I wasn’t surprised to hear my mother’s voice behind me. I waited for her to catch up. She had a bright smile on her face, but there was worry in her eyes.

“Yes?”

“Aren’t you still joining me for church?”

I looked at the ceiling then back at her. “I don’t think so.”

“But I told all my friends—”

“Yes, I heard.”

She lowered her voice and fussed with the lapel of her sunflower-yellow suit dress. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t really know.”

“What’s wrong?” She grasped my wrist. “Emily, don’t be ashamed because of what Rich has done. God loves you.”

I pulled my wrist away. “Ashamed? Why would I be ashamed?”

Rich had cheated on me and humiliated me, but, when I got really quiet inside, I ached for the Rich I used to know. I hated that he felt he had to live a lie. Not bad enough that I forgave him for ruining my life, but still, it was sad that he’d spent years pretending. I didn’t cause Rich to be Rich, and I sure didn’t feel he could take a pill or go through “therapy” and be cured of being himself.

A sharp noise came from my throat. “It isn’t God I have the problem with.”

I pushed open the front door of the church and burst into the blinding sunlight. I turned back to look at the building. Brown brick. White trim and cross. Sprawling two-stories surrounded by black asphalt parking lots. It was a normal-enough-looking church. So what was wrong with it? As much as I needed solace right now, why couldn’t I find it here? Was it the church, or was it me? The words of the women in the Sunday school room rang through my head again. If those were the people in a normal church, then maybe the congregation I was looking for wasn’t normal at all. I headed for the car.

Five minutes later, I slipped into a booth at Whataburger with a copy of the Sunday paper and a small coffee. I took out my phone and pulled up my bank app to look at my account balances. I had seven hundred thirteen dollars in my checking account, down from the one thousand I’d had the last time I checked. Spit, I’d forgotten about using my debit card for my plane ticket here. This was all I had left from my last paycheck, and Rich had drained our joint accounts dry. I’d used up my paid time off with my law firm, and I wasn’t sure how much more unpaid time they’d grant me. It was time to either find a job here or go back to Dallas—immediately.

I put my phone down and turned to the paper. A picture of the body in the pool last night filled the top half of the front page. Yellow crime scene tape circled the pool area. I flipped pages, barely reading the words. Sports section. No rodeo articles, but a picture of a small contingent of Kona Ironman Triathlon contestants from the area headed to Hawaii. I shook my head. Exercise for me was riding a horse, thank you very much. I’d leave the swimming, pedaling, and running to the masochists. I took a slug of lukewarm coffee. I took a bigger sip, then a gulp. I flipped more pages, reached the Classified Ads. One more sip of coffee in my cup. I raised it as I turned to the Jobs section, saw the ad for Litigation Paralegal Wanted, and stopped with my coffee cup halfway to my mouth.

***

Polk Street in downtown Amarillo on a Wednesday morning made a Sunday evening in the ’burbs of Dallas look gridlocked. Score one for West Texas. I’d spent many a Saturday night cruising Polk when I was in high school, and it didn’t look markedly different than it had twelve plus years ago—except for the late model cars, and the Courtyard by Marriott in the old Fisk Building. Even the iconic art deco Paramount Theater façade and signage had been restored to its original glory. It was amazing how time seemed to stand still here. I turned down Fourth, parked, and walked the half-block back toward Polk.

I was heading to the Williams & Associates law firm, having responded to their ad for a litigation legal assistant in the paper and landing an interview. A few days ago, I would have sworn I’d be back in my Uptown condo in Dallas by now, handing divorce papers to Rich in person along with a piece of my mind. Something inside me, though, just couldn’t return to the scene of his crime, and of my pain. Plus, my holdout in the condo would be short-lived. Rich and I hadn’t saved much for rainy days. He had a premarital trust fund to turn to, thanks to his wealthy family, but I had no claim to it. I didn’t have the money to pay for the place, not on my salary alone. Might as well let Rich move in Stormy—that was her name—or have the hassle of selling the place fall on his shoulders. So, here I was, interviewing for a job all the way up in Amarillo, while some anonymous process server was delivering my divorce petition in Dallas.

“Emily Phelps? Is that you?”

The heavy drawl stopped me as much as hearing my name did. I turned around. Melinda Stafford. My high school arch nemesis. She had teeth so white I wished I hadn’t left my sunglasses in the car. Her helmet of chestnut hair gleamed above and around her face. As big as her hair was, her body was as tiny, compacted and sculpted like a yoga master. But instead of yoga pants, she had on a tailored brown jacket and a short, black pencil skirt with chunky leather pumps.

I feigned enthusiasm and choked some perky into my voice. People had plenty of reasons to talk about me without adding snob to the list.

“Hello, Melinda. How are you?”

She dug in the pricey red, orange, and pink Fossil purse hanging from her shoulder. No Target clothes or accessories for her—but then she always had been as shallow as a Texas river in August.

She said, “Fabulous. Just on my way in to work. I’m an ADA here. You know, Assistant District Attorney. Always lots to do.”

Of course I knew what an ADA was—I didn’t live in a shoebox. However, I hadn’t heard she was one.

She pulled her hand out of her bag, producing a business card, which she extended toward me, then held onto it when I reached out and grasped it. She lowered her voice just enough to let me know we were girlfriends discussing something scandalous.

“My mom said she saw you at church yesterday. She’s in your mother’s Sunday school class, so I’ve heard all about what you’ve been up to, and I just can’t wait to catch up over coffee. Call me.” She released the card.

When Hell freezes over
, I thought. I screwed my face up into its brightest smile. “Well, I won’t keep you then,” I said. “So nice to see you.”

Off she went in one direction, and off I went in the other, seething. I should have been used to these excruciating reunions by now, but I wasn’t. I needed to rise above them. That, or scat back to Dallas. Neither option set my wick afire, to be honest, but I’d just do the job interview, and later I could reevaluate my life for the millionth time.

It was only half a block to the Maxor Building, site of the Williams & Associates offices. The ten-story tan structure looked so native that it made me imagine it was once a Panhandle sandstorm that had blown itself out and stayed put. We had a lot of windstorms, but most of them blew through. The conditions in these parts were so rugged that many folks gave up and moved on like the storms. Only the toughest stuck around. The ones that left complained that all the cattle feedlots stunk—but that was just the smell of money, my dad had always said—and that the barren terrain was ugly. But not me. It was just different, in a vast way that was big on cloudless sky and Technicolor sunsets. It shouted of freedom and wide-open spaces. You could loosen your belt here, lean your head back, and draw a full breath. You could see a storm coming from a hundred miles away, and you could gallop a horse at full speed forever without stopping or turning unless you darn well wanted to. Those were the kinds of things you didn’t realize you missed when beauty closed in on you. Or on me, rather. When it closed in on me, in Dallas. I’d only left this place all those years ago because it was time for me to go, not because I hated it.

I pushed the Maxor’s glass doors open and walked to the elevators. I got off on the sixth floor and set my chin as I scanned the hallway for the Williams & Associates offices. I found them, just to my right. My appointment was at nine a.m., and it was five minutes till.

This was it. My first job interview in eight years. “You’ve got this,” I whispered to myself. I ticked off my qualifications in my head. I’d worked as a legal assistant at a top-notch Dallas firm. The Texas Board of Legal Specialization had board-certified me as a paralegal in civil trial law. I had a magna cum laude degree in political science from Texas Tech that would have led to a law degree if I hadn’t decided it was more important to marry my beautiful Colombian boyfriend. Ah, regrets. Well, despite my questionable personal choice, I was more than qualified for the job.

A text buzzed on my phone. I fumbled for it and read the message. It was from my friend Katie’s brother, Collin:
Nick home safe. Katie asked me to let you know.

I texted back quickly:
Thank God! Great news! How are you?

I wanted to call Katie to tell her, too, but I held back. I didn’t know where the heck Nick had been. And, if he’d done something bad, I didn’t know what to say. I was partly responsible for getting the two of them together, and I didn’t believe he had it in him to hurt her. But that’s what I’d thought about Rich and me. I’d email her later, after I’d had more time to think about it.

Honestly, though, just seeing Collin’s name pop up on my phone gave me a little buzz of excitement. Collin was a state cop in New Mexico, and he’d always had a crush on me, according to Katie. He was about as different from Rich as a man could be, which really appealed to me right now. I could do with someone who would make me feel good. Who was I kidding, though? Collin had
always
appealed to me. I just didn’t meet him until after I married Rich. I waited a second to see if he’d text again, but then looked at my watch. Four minutes till nine. Time to get a move on.

I entered the offices and sat on a nubby tweed couch in a lobby that was empty except for a desk with nothing on it but a newspaper and a small handbell in the center. The newspaper sat face-up and fully assembled, like no one had read it. Of course, the top story was still the assisted topple of New Mexican Spike Howard into a hotel swimming pool, midwedding revelry, courtesy of the sexy señorita with the smoking gun.