Moving Can Be Murder (31 page)

I pressed “Send” and decided not to sit at
the computer and wait for his response. After all, a watched
computer never boils. Or maybe that was a pot.

Anyway, there was always another box to
unpack, and I still had to go over the notes I took at Sally’s
Place and put them in some semblance of order for my story on
domestic violence.

Bing!

I smiled. I knew my son would respond right
away to his dear mother.

Wait a minute. What was this? I couldn’t
believe my eyes. It was the same automatic ‘out-of-office’
response. The little twit. What was going on with him?

I was determined to track my son down and
get a real response out of him. Plus, I needed him to research Jack
Cartwright. Hmm. I needed another plan.

I’d heard Jenny say that it’s possible to
write to someone via Facebook, and I knew Mike had a Facebook
account. Of course, I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t have a clue about
how all this social networking stuff worked, but I figured trying
it was worth a shot.

Twenty frustrating minutes later – I’d
always heard setting up these accounts was easy but it sure was a
big learning curve for me – I finally succeeded.

Apparently the next step after setting up an
account was to find friends. I didn’t want to find friends. I
wanted to find my son.

I typed in his name, and was rewarded with
the prompt that not only could I request we be “friends,” but I
could send him a message along with the “friend request.”

Yippee. I’d track my son down yet.

I composed a similar message to my previous
one and sent it off. I hoped Mike was as addicted to Facebook as
I’d heard other twenty-somethings were.

Then I forced myself to log off and
transpose my chicken-scratch notes from Sister Rose and Marcia
Fischer onto the computer. Reading Marcia’s story again made me
want to cry. I couldn’t believe what she had been through as a
teenager. Talking to Sister Rose had opened my eyes to the
magnitude of domestic violence, but Marcia put a real face onto
it.

Maybe my article would help save another
young woman from going through what Marcia had. I made up my mind
that I was going to finish the story and get it published, no
matter what. Maybe My Beloved could help.

I sighed. In what exact order was I
proposing to save the world? Clear Mary Alice? Eradicate domestic
violence in Fairport? Find a new place to live? Track down my
wandering son?

I saved the beginning of my article and
logged onto the Internet again. Time to see if Mike had responded
to my Facebook message. And, to my great relief, he had.

Sort of.

He’d confirmed me as a “friend.” That was
good. And there was also a personal message.

“
Dear friends and family, especially my
mother. I know you’re wondering what’s up with me. Sorry to say, I
CAN’T TELL YOU. But I can tell you I am well – wonderful even. The
best I’ve ever been. And I’ll be back in touch and explain
everything soon. For the indefinite future, I must maintain ‘radio
silence.’ Thanks for your understanding.”

Understanding is not my strong suit.

What the heck was Mike up to?

I picked up the apartment phone to call Jim.
I needed a man’s perspective on this. I heard beeping, indicating a
call had come in when I was on Internet dinosaur dial-up. I heard
Nancy’s voice, screeching in a tone that always meant trouble.

“Carol, I don’t know where you are. But when
you get my message, get over to your house right away. Jim is here
ordering everyone around and driving the contractors crazy. You
gotta get him out of here pronto, or there won’t be any show
house.” Then she slammed the phone down.

Good grief.

I curbed the impulse to curse out loud. I
don’t like to use bad language in front of Lucy and Ethel.

Instead, I forced myself to take deep
calming breaths. One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths. By the
time I got up to ten, I had a plan. And, if I do say so myself, it
was one of my best.

This morning Jim had added something to my
Honey-Don’t List – Thou shalt not interfere with the police
investigation into Jack Cartwright’s death. Now it was my turn to
add to his: Thou shalt not interfere in the design of the show
house.

I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote
Jim’s new Honey-Don’t mantra on a sheet of paper again and again.
Then I cut the paper into individual strips and stuffed them into
the Honey-Don’t Jar, grabbed my car keys, and told the girls to be
good.

After all, turn-about was fair play, wasn’t
it?

Heh, heh heh.

Chapter 31

Smile often. It confuses people.

I didn’t panic when I rolled to a stop in
front of our house and found no cars or workmen’s trucks there.
Maybe they were all taking a late lunch, I told myself. Or having a
design planning meeting at Superior Interiors.

“Hello? Hello?,” I called, walking around
the side of my house. “Anybody here?”

Then I spied My Beloved sitting on the back
porch steps. Alone. Looking like he’d lost his last friend. Or,
possibly, mine.

Put on a happy face, I told myself. He
didn’t need to know that Nancy called me in a panic and ordered me
to get him out of there.

“Hi, honey,” I said, sitting down beside him
and putting the Honey-Don’t Jar in plain sight. “Where is
everybody? What are you doing outside all by yourself?”

“That…that decorator person, Marcia
what’s-her-name, had the nerve to tell me to leave my own house.
She practically threw me out. All I was doing was making a few
simple suggestions about the way they were doing the show house. It
is our house, after all. I have a right to an opinion, especially
since we want to put it back on the market once the show house is
over. I couldn’t believe it.

“And when I refused to leave, she had two of
the workmen shove me out the kitchen door. And then she locked it.
I tried to get back in, but my key wouldn’t work. She must have
changed the lock. What a witch.”

“Jim,” I said, “for heaven’s sake, calm
down. And don’t talk about Marcia that way. You don’t know her at
all. She’s just doing her job. And, we’ve been over this before.
For the next few months, this isn’t our house. I repeat, this isn’t
our house.”

I shook the Honey-Don’t Jar in his face.
“Remember how, this morning, you added something new to my
Honey-Don’t list? Well, now it’s my turn. Pick one. Any one.”

Jim reached in and pulled out a slip of
paper. Read it carefully. Shook his head. Pulled out another one.
Then another. Then another.

“OK, Carol, I get it. You’re right. But I
was just trying to be helpful. You see that, don’t you?’

“If you want to be helpful, Jim, I have a
few things that you can do for me. Like go over the domestic
violence article I’ve been working on. I interviewed Sister Rose
and a domestic violence survivor, and I’ve done a quick first draft
from my notes, but I really need more help fleshing out the story
and editing it. And then, I have to get it into print. I’ll even
forfeit my computer time for the rest of the day if you’d take a
look at it. You’ve had so much more experience with this than I
have.”

After a certain age, sex may not do the
trick. But give a man a good meal, or an important (as in “Honey,
you’re the only one who help me”) job to do, and he’ll be putty in
your hands. All smart wives know that secret.

Jim leaned over and gave me a peck on the
cheek.

“I know what you’re doing, Carol,” he said.
“You figure that if you divert me with your article, I’ll stay away
from our house.”

He waved the slips of paper in my face. “But
don’t forget your part of the bargain. No interfering with the
police.”

“I already agreed to that, dear,” I said.
And gave him a sweet smile.

“I’m going back to the apartment to read
your article,” Jim said.

Before he left, turned and peered in our
kitchen window. Then he fired his parting salvo.

“You better be sure Marcia doesn’t paint the
kitchen puke green.”

Over all, I was pleased at how I’d handled
that situation. Of course, it was the most trivial of all the
crises I was currently dealing with.

Which brought me squarely back to Mary Alice
and The Big Problem. Imitating My Beloved’s recent movements, I
stood on tippy toes and peered in my kitchen window. Nope, there
was no way Mary Alice could have seen Jack Cartwright lying on the
floor from this vantage point. And I was sure she would come to my
kitchen door. It was the way all of us, family and friends, came
and went. The antique front door, which looked great from the
street, was hard to open and a devil to close, so we never used
it.

I heard a chirping sound, and for a split
second I looked up at the sky to see if a bird was flying
overhead.

But it wasn’t a bird, it was my cell phone,
which I was actually able to locate in my purse before the caller
clicked off or went into voice mail. (Some of you may not know what
a feat finding my cell phone was for me. If you’re one of them,
don’t worry. I’ll tell you another time.)

“Carol, for God’s sake, pick up this phone,”
said Mary Alice. “If I have to leave you a message too, I swear
I’ll really lose it.”

“I’m here!” I screamed back, parking myself
on the back porch steps. “Don’t hang up!”

“Thank God I got you,” Mary Alice said.
“I’ve been calling all over. Where’s Claire? Where’s Nancy? I need
all of you. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life as I was last
night at your house.”

She started to cry. “And I’m so scared. The
police think I’ve been hiding the fact that I knew Jack
Cartwright.”

She stopped talking for a minute and I
distinctly heard her inhale something.

“Mary Alice, are you smoking again?” I
yelled. “For heaven’s sake, it took you years to quit. Please don’t
start that filthy habit again.”

She coughed into the phone. “I just had one.
And it tastes terrible. I found an old pack of cigarettes in my
dresser.”

She coughed again. “Larry said last night
that any evidence against me is circumstantial. That’s why the
police questioned me and then let me come home. But I feel like a
criminal. The way I was escorted out of your house in front of all
those people.

“Oh God, I’m so scared. I don’t think I’ve
ever been so scared before. You’ve got to help me. I didn’t do
anything to hurt Jack. Really, I didn’t. You believe me, don’t
you?”

“Well, of course I believe you, sweetie,” I
said. “As a matter of fact, Nancy and Claire and Deanna and Maria
and I all had a meeting this morning at the Trattoria. We have a
brilliant plan that’s sure to get you out of this mess.” OK, I know
that was stretching the truth, but I was trying to cheer Mary Alice
up, so I can be excused for that white lie, right?

“Everyone has a job to do, and we’ll keep at
it until the real perp is caught.”

Mary Alice laughed. “I can’t believe you
used the word ‘perp’, Carol. You’ve been reading too many mysteries
again.

“I should have known I could count on all of
you to come through for me. What can I do?”

“Keep your chin up and think positive
thoughts,” I said. “I’ll be back in touch with you soon with news.
We’ll get through this together.”

And you might start a novena or two, just to
be on the safe side.

I didn’t really say that. Of course.