Mayhem Takes a Dare: The Second Marisa Adair Mystery Adventure (Marisa Adair Mysteries Book 2) (7 page)

BOOK: Mayhem Takes a Dare: The Second Marisa Adair Mystery Adventure (Marisa Adair Mysteries Book 2)
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Like a general taking her place in the war room, Clara eased into her command post, while Mrs. Craft slid onto the couch angled near Clara’s seat. “I realize you’re new, Mrs. Peters,” Clara barked, “but you’d have to be blind not to see how those two look at each other. It’s only in Greek tragedies you see mothers looking at their sons that way, and vice versa.”

Clay smoothly took control. “Moira Peters, this is Althea Flaxton.”

Althea opened her mouth to give Moira the setdown she so obviously deserved.

Sliding his arm around Althea’s waist, Clay squeezed her warningly.

Althea closed her mouth.

“Moira and I go back a long way. Long enough for me to know, Moira, that you are actually older than Althea. Perhaps you should get your eyes tested while you’re in town.”

The perfect features hardened. “Nice to meet you, Ms....Ranier.”

Althea felt a clutch in her stomach.
How does this beautiful stranger know my secret pseudonym? My darling Marisa, more dear to me than a daughter, doesn’t know. Clay doesn’t know, even though I love him.
“My name is Althea Flaxton.”

Moira laughed. “Oh, dear me, I mean Ms. Flaxton. I must be confused. Seretha Ranier is the name of my favorite author. Of course, that’s her pen name. Most people don’t know her real name.”

Forcing herself to relax her facial muscles into innocent lines, Althea smiled. “I am sure it’s an honest mistake.”

Running her fingers gently along Clay’s arm, Moira cocked her head. “Honest and mistake don’t normally go together. Do they, Ms. Flaxton?” Moira shrugged in the face of Althea’s silence. “Anyway, I just moved in. I am looking forward to renewing my...friendship...with Clay.”

As if her fingers were creepy little spiders, Clay brushed them off his arm. He smiled, but his gray eyes were wintry. “Since we stay very busy with various activities, I doubt very much if Althea and I will be available for socializing.”

Moira’s eyes matched Clay’s for arctic chill. “I am sure your little friend will spare me a bit of her time for some one-on-one girl talk. I would love the chance to learn her...secrets.” The husky voice had an edge as hard as steel.

With a gentle shuffling, an elderly lady entered the common area. Her white hair was carefully rolled around plastic pink sponge rollers, and covered by a gauzy pink scarf. Her housedress was a pale floral print, with the roses the exact pink shade of the rollers and scarf.

“Mrs. Kenton, good afternoon.” Althea dampened her anger down to a manageable level.

“Mrs. Flaxton, Mr. Napier, ladies.” Her face set in its characteristic lines of grief, Mrs. Kenton eased her thin frame onto the couch next to Mrs. Craft. Her sadness was as much a part of her as her eye color or build, an acquired characteristic as unchangeable as a genetic physical trait.

Althea smiled, her face settling into a gentle compassion. She knew Mrs. Kenton’s daughter had been brutally murdered twenty years ago. Mayla Kenton had been a carefree twenty-year-old college honor student, carelessly arrogant in her own awareness of her intelligence and beauty. With a glorious future ahead of her as a talented pianist, mortality had not been part of her sense of self.

When a serial arsonist had burned Mrs. Kenton’s home as a part of his or her plan of doom, Mayla had died. The young woman had been asleep in her own room, too ill to accompany her parents on their vacation. The police’s theory was the arsonist had not known Mayla was in the house, since the previous fires had encompassed empty homes.

When the fires stopped after Mayla’s death, the newspapers had speculated the arsonist had been overcome by a sense of guilt. Whether Mayla’s death was intentional or not, the outcome was the same. She was dead.

Her voice unconsciously soft because of her thoughts, Althea remarked, “I see Starla Farrell has put your hair in curlers for you.”

Mrs. Kenton’s thin, blue-veined hand tentatively touched the tightly wound curls. “Starla is a good girl. The center hired her after the unfortunate events at the nursing home several months ago.” She slanted uncertain, watery blue eyes in Althea’s direction. “She takes time out of her day every morning to put my hair in curlers. Then before dinner, she takes them out and carefully fluffs out my hair.”

“Starla is an excellent employee who goes above and beyond the call of duty.”

Mrs. Kenton nodded and continued, “I’ve told her she doesn’t have to do it every day, but the child insists. She says I must look my best for dinner. Otherwise, she claims, it’s a negative reflection on her as a personal care assistant.” Under the flowered housedress, the bony chest hitched. “My daughter Mayla used to babysit Starla when she was a little girl. I think that’s why Starla goes out of her way to be so sweet to me.”

The front door of the assisted living center opened, and a small group of children and adults rushed inside.

Clara’s round, wrinkled face lit up under her mass of short, suspiciously brown curls. “Ada and Judith! Come here, my dears! And you brought the girls!”

The taller woman bent over to hug the old woman. “Mother, how are you?”

Clara snorted. “My best friend, Arthur, is always with me!”

The younger of the two little girls rushed forward. “Oh, Grandmother, who is Arthur? Do you have a boyfriend?”

Moira laughed shortly. “Clara! Don’t tell me you’re using that old saw, Arthur Ritis?”

Clara frowned, but before she could answer, the smaller woman threw her arms around Clara’s neck. “Mom! I missed you!”

“Judith, my dear, look at you! Nothing but skin and bones! How much do you weigh?”

Althea saw Judith wink at Ada. “One hundred and ten, Mom, and it’s a good weight for five feet, two inches!”

“Humph,” grumped Clara. “You’re ninety pounds, soaking wet!”

The older of the two girls slowly approached the woman in the chair. “Grandmother, can we get the card table and play some cards? How about poker?”

Moira’s laughter trilled again. “Earlier today, Clara was playing cards with some of the others. I saw her quite blatantly cheating.” Twitching her red hair back in a way that made Althea want to rip the scarlet strands out of her head, Moira sauntered over to Clara. Before the older woman could react, Moira quickly slid her hand into Clara’s voluminous, polyester sleeve. She pulled out a playing card, and held it up triumphantly. “You see? Your grandmother is a cheat.”

“My grandmother is not a cheat!” the older child punctuated her statement with a stamped little foot.

The younger child began to cry, great hiccupping sobs and large tears running down her cheeks.

With a small, satisfied smile on her beautiful face, Moira stalked out of the room.

Clara held out her arms to her little granddaughters, and gathered them close to her.

Seeing the look on Clara’s face as the old woman watched Moira leave the room, Althea shivered.

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

“There’s a good reason why there’s a dick in addicted.” Slightly reminiscent of a chipmunk with her bulgy cheeks and bucked teeth, Cindy was defiant. Her frizzy blonde topknot bobbed with her emotion. In her crumpled sweatshirt and pants, she looked like an agitated toddler.

Marisa, who prided herself on her open and nonjudgmental attitude as a member of the addiction group, felt her eyebrows rise under her wispy brown bangs.

“I am having a very hard time staying faithful to my husband,” Cindy went on. Normally a gentle doe brown, her eyes were flashing with aggression. “I love the thrill and excitement of an illicit affair. I enjoy the flirting, the planning, the foreplay of sexually-charged words and actions. I can’t wait to get the elicit emails and the late night phone calls.” Her eyes filled with tears. “The only thing that has stopped me so far is I do love my husband. And he stood by me when my friends and family did not.” The tears spilled over her round cheeks. Swiping her shaking, stubby-fingered hand over her sweating face, Cindy took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out.

Allowing Cindy’s words to flow over her, Marisa let her eyes drift around the eclectic group of men and women. Arranged in a circle of hard folding chairs in the church basement, the faces and bodies were as varied as a crowd on the street. Minus any overt commonality of age or gender or race or socioeconomic class, the group’s common purpose would not be obvious to an outsider.

None of the men and women, their clothing running the spectrum from ragged khaki shorts to expensive suits, appeared to be out of control, depraved monsters.

Including herself. In the window, Marisa could see the reflections of the backs of the people directly across from her in the circle. Beyond them, she could see her own pale reflection. Her dark hair was pulled back from the oval lines of her face. In the short-sleeved pastel summery top and jeans, her body was at ease in the hard metal folding chair.

In her mind, another image superimposed over the conservative Marisa reflection. Willowy body in a short skirt, the hemline just south of indecent exposure, low-cut, skin tight top, black boots with four-inch heels laced up to the knee, her hair teased to within an inch of its life. The image was herself, when she was the out-of-control addict.

“Six years ago, when I was twenty-five years old, I had an affair with a fourteen-year-old boy. Whether it was a wish to get caught or pure stupidity, I posted the details in my blog.” Cindy snorted. “I might have gotten away with it, if not for my ex-husband. We had recently divorced, and I didn’t know he was reading my blog.

“Amazingly, the man who could not keep from overdrawing a checking account or remember to take out the garbage cracked my little code and figured out what I was doing. Guess he did not have shit for brains after all. He alerted the police. It wasn’t difficult for the police to trace the boy. The next thing I knew, I was arrested. The police thundered into the law office where I worked as a paralegal. They slapped handcuffs on me, and they hauled me off in a police car.

“Sitting in that jail cell was the most miserable time of my life. I lost everything. I was evicted from my apartment. My belongings were put out in the garbage. I was so proud when I bought a new car after my divorce. With no one to make the payments, it was towed away by a repo man. My friends and family turned their backs on me. Even my attorney wouldn’t look me in the eye. My life had turned into a mournful country music song.

“When I looked out in the courtroom during my trial, I saw the mother of the boy, her face and her body rigid with hate and loathing. I saw my ex-husband, his face gleeful. I saw the old people and the unemployed, passing the time of day listening to other people’s tribulations.

“And do you know who else was out there? Timothy, the man I started dating after I had broken it off with the boy. He stayed through the trial, listening to the damning evidence of my affair with the boy, through my jail time, and my being put on the sex offender list. He loved me as no one had ever loved me, and he married me.

“And even now, even when we have people who show up at our house, wanting to know why I’m on the sex offender registry, he stays with me. Even when parents find out I’m on the list, and yank their children away from our children, Timothy stays.”

Cindy raised her arms to the ceiling, whether in supplication or to defend herself, Marisa wasn’t sure. “After everything he and I have been through, and I
still
want to cheat on him? What the
hell
is wrong with me? It should never cross my mind…yet it’s all I can think about!”

Next to her, Marisa felt Heidi shift in her seat.

Marisa turned her head, and saw the tears in Heidi’s blue eyes.

Heidi shook her blonde hair out of her normally sunny face, and managed a weak smile for Marisa.

Marisa reached out and took the other woman’s hand. She noticed Heidi’s fingernails were bitten and her cuticles were raw. As Marisa held Heidi’s hand, she felt it trembling.

Marisa leaned over and gave Heidi a one-armed hug. As she did, she caught the peculiar, distinctive smell of alcohol. She shifted slightly closer to Heidi, and sniffed experimentally.

Damn. Heidi was drinking again.

Heidi was a cute, bouncy little blonde who’d gone through rehab with Marisa. With her hair the color of wheat in the sun-flooded fields, vivid blue eyes, and round, smiling face, Heidi reminded Marisa of a perky cheerleader. As she worked her way through the rehab program, her body had filled out from its anorexic slimness, and her behind had gently grown to a cute little bubble butt.

Heidi always helped everyone around her, and put the needs of her family and friends ahead of her own. She ran countless errands for her self-centered sisters, helped her passive-aggressive mother care for her bedridden stepfather, and made endless sacrifices for her two selfish, grasping teenage daughters.

At what cost, though, had she taken care of everyone except herself, Marisa silently asked herself. Heidi had lost her job. Her husband, with no previous experience with addictions, thought that her stint in chemical dependency rehab should have “cured” Heidi. Tired of her lies and broken promises and continued drinking, he had kicked her out of the house and divorced her. Heidi was living with her mother, who gleefully embraced the chance to run her daughter’s life and use her as unpaid labor to care for her bedridden husband.

Marisa wondered if the unmanageable strain of taking care of everyone around her contributed to Heidi’s inability to control her drinking.

It wasn’t an excuse. But it was a reason.

Heidi leaned close to Marisa’s ear and whispered, “Come home with me after the meeting.”

Marisa shook her head. “Heidi, you smell like a distillery,” she whispered. “I think I’m getting a contact buzz sitting next to you.”

Heidi’s eyes filled with tears and she rested her head wearily on Marisa’s shoulder. “It’s just too much to keep going without something to dull the pain,” she whispered. “And you’re in pain, too, Marisa, I can see it! Why should we suffer? It’s so easy to get relief! Come home with me.”

Marisa squeezed the shaking hand. “I know your weaknesses, Heidi, after our weeks together in rehab. You always want to take care of everyone around you. Even in the program, you tried to be the hostess in the group meetings, ensuring everyone had coffee.”

Heidi raised her head in surprise. “So, I like for everyone to be happy. So what?”

Marisa shook her head and put her mouth near Heidi’s ear. “As they have for years, your family takes advantage of you. Or rather, you allow them take advantage of you. Say no to their whining, unending, unreasonable requests! Take charge of your own life, Heidi, and you won’t need the liquor! Just try it!”

Tears fell down her face as Heidi shook her head and pulled her hand away. She leaped to her feet, knocked over her chair, and dashed out of the room.

Marisa half rose from her seat, then sat down. She wanted to help Heidi. On the other hand, being around Heidi could jeopardize her own sobriety. She decided to call Heidi later. Perhaps she could offer support over the phone, without taking the chance of messing up her own hard work in staying sober.

Marisa felt the vague, niggling sensation of someone watching her. Looking up and across the circle, she caught the dark molasses eyes of William.

She repressed a slight, involuntary shudder. She’d been in the small group setting with William on previous occasions. Now, however, she went out of her way to never be in a small group with him ever again. The small setting, outside the larger meeting, was meant to offer a therapeutic environment of open, caring support.

Marisa felt able to offer compassion to everyone she’d ever met in the group...except William.

In the small group several months before, William had shared his conviction years ago for molesting his little step-daughter. Although he had stated that he wanted to overcome his addiction and never commit his crimes again, he had admitted he still felt attracted to children.

Marisa couldn’t bear to speak to him or be near him.

Fred, his wide blue eyes puzzled in his perpetually worried face, raised a hand. “Hi, I’m Fred, and I’m an addict. What the heck is a blog? Sounds like some kind of a marshy swampland, but that doesn’t make any sense.” He tugged on the edge of his shirt, which had been in the midst of creeping up his protruding belly.

Cindy answered, “It’s a web log.”

Fred ran a wrinkled hand over his sparse hair. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepening, Fred looked more confused. “A spider in a pile of wood?”

In spite of her evident distress, Cindy smiled. “No, it’s an online diary. Web as in world wide web. Log as in captain’s log. A web log is a blog.”

Fred’s eyes rolled in his face. “Don’t you know the cardinal rule, young lady? Never ever put anything in writing!” he admonished.

Noticing lots of heads bobbing agreement all around the circle, Marisa decided the group was getting off track. “Regardless of should have or should not have, Cindy did. Now, I think she needs to think about what she wants in the future. I believe there are friends and family of us addicts who let us get away with too much! They stay with us when we cheat. They may say they stay because of religion. Or because of the children. Or whatever. If we had a therapist in here with us, he’d probably say that family members who stay with us in spite of our inappropriate behavior are ‘enabling’.”

Fred shuddered. “I hate the word enabling! You might as well say ‘doormat’ as say ‘enabler’! I think we need the people who love us to draw the lines in the sand...to say, they are not going to put up with us cheating or drinking or overspending...whatever our addiction may be.”

Janine raised her hand, causing the loose flesh hanging on her arm like a bat wing to sway. Several months ago, she had announced she was having stomach banding surgery. Now, after her rapid weight loss, she was smaller, but her skin was not catching up to her new body size. “Hi, I’m Janine, I’m an addict. I betrayed my husband, but not with a man. Or a woman,” she added, mindful of the alternative sexualities in the room. “I am fifty-seven years old. My baby is a year old.”

At the shocked gasps, she smiled slightly. “I’m sure those sounds are not because you think I look so much younger than my age.” The mouth, baby doll small in the center of the flabby cheeks, twisted. “My husband and I tried to have a baby for ten years. Two years ago, he said we were too old. Too old! After everything we’d been through…the painful procedures, the constant appointments...” She pushed some strands of lank hair out of her face. “I went on with the in-vitro fertilization without him! After he said he wanted to stop, after I had agreed we would stop, I went on without him! The clinic had his sperm stored. I didn’t need him to keep going with me! So, I got pregnant. That was the betrayal.”

Fred shifted in his chair.

Interpreting his fidget as censure, Janine laughed bitterly. “He wasn’t too happy about that, to say the least. I thought he’d be fine once the baby got here. We’d have what we’d wanted for the last ten years!” Her face crumpled. All trace of Janine’s laughter was wiped away. “She cried and fussed all of the time! I continued to work full-time as a nurse. My husband was angry with me all of the time. He never had one kind word for me! I was sick and tired of my life. I just didn’t want to feel anything. So I started stealing drugs at work. Instead of injecting painkillers into my patients, I injected them into myself!”

A single tear worked its way down the creased line of Janine’s face. “I got away with it for months. You’d think the hospital’s anti-drug-theft controls would have caught me! But no! Do you know what it was that finally busted my ass?”

Janine’s shoulders shook, with laughter or tears, or perhaps both. “One of the other nurses saw flecks of blood on my sleeve. That’s it. Flecks of blood on my sleeve. I told her a patient got his blood on me. She was stubborn. She was disbelieving. She flatly refused to buy my story of the patient accidentally smearing blood on me. Maybe she suspected from my behavior, I don’t know. I was marched into the nursing director’s office. The next thing I knew, I was fired and I lost my nursing license. I was at home, with a husband who despised me and a baby who wouldn’t stop crying. I didn’t have any painkillers to help me, so I ate to kill my pain. I ate and I ate and I
ate
!”

BOOK: Mayhem Takes a Dare: The Second Marisa Adair Mystery Adventure (Marisa Adair Mysteries Book 2)
3.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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