The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club (12 page)

Ding, ding, ding! Round One to Cissy Blevins Kendricks!

“That’s settled then.” She snapped the rubber band in its place, around her pilfered goodies. “Though you seem to have forgotten one thing”—she started, but I cut her off in a flash.

“I’ve forgotten what? That you’ve gone bonkers? The truth is that an elderly woman passed away quietly in her own home, but for some unfathomable reason you want to believe she didn’t die naturally. Instead, you’ve convinced yourself that there’s a homicidal maniac knocking off bridge players at an old folks’ home.”

“Retirement village.”

“Whatever!” The words exploded from my mouth before I could stop them. “So I’m supposed to forget that you basically insulted an old acquaintance of mine because she wouldn’t take your accusations seriously? Is that what you’re saying?”

Round Two. The challenger comes out swinging!

“No,” she said softly. “It’s not.”

“Oh, really?” I was breathing hard after my diatribe, clenching my fists against the leather seat and grinding my teeth—yes, grinding them, dammit—as I waited. “So set me straight then, Mother. What one thing have I forgotten?”

“Other than your manners?” She smoothed her gray skirt and replied quite calmly, “Your
shoes
, Andrea darling. You forgot your shoes . . .”

“My shoes?” I’d left them in the courtyard when Annabelle had taken off running after the sirens. I could never have chased her in slides.

“. . . and your feet are simply filthy, so keep them squarely on the mat, if you would, please.”

Ouch, that had to hurt! The Debutante Dropout takes a right jab to the kisser, and the fight goes to Her Highness of Highland Park in a unanimous decision!

I caught Fredrik’s smile in the rearview mirror.

Somehow, I refrained from banging my head against the window or throwing myself out of the Bentley into a busy lane of traffic.

F
redrik dropped me off at the church overflow lot, where my Jeep baked in the sun, its dusty windows and bird-poop-ravaged body looking nearly as hot and miserable as I felt. Some helpful soul had even scrawled
WASH ME
in the film on the rear window. I didn’t bother to smudge it off.

Sweat turned my skin slick as I sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes after, the side windows open wide and the warm AC blowing while I dialed Sandy Beck on my cell phone.

Mother had promised that, once snug at home, she’d get a bite to eat and have a brandy or a Valium—but not both at once—then she’d trot herself upstairs for a nap. Only I wasn’t convinced she’d made those assurances because she’d
meant
them, or if she were just trying to pacify me.

I also needed to fill Sandy in on the day’s events—what had really transpired, not Mother’s sure-to-be glossed-over version. Someone had to keep tabs on Cissy, and Sandy was my best bet, since she’d basically been doing that for longer than I’d been alive.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Andy,” she said, right off the bat, when I described the memorial service and how despondent Mother was at losing Bebe Kent. “But I’m not one for funerals, and Cissy so appreciated that you were going with her. I figured it would be good for both of you.”

Good for us? I wondered. Sort of like brussels sprouts and penicillin?

I next laid out what had happened at Belle Meade, most notably Mother’s discovering the recently deceased Sarah Lee Sewell, pilfering Mrs. Sewell’s mailbox, and declaring her intention to play Hercule Poirot, intent on unmasking a killer. When I was done, there was such a delayed silence on the other end that I thought I’d lost the connection.

“You still there?” I asked.

“My word.” Sandy’s astonishment spoke volumes. “Cissy honestly believes her friends were murdered?”

“Unfortunately, she’s convinced herself of it. She figures the acts were committed by someone crazed enough to dress Bebe in her nightgown and tuck her into bed last Wednesday, then hop over to Sarah Lee’s on Friday evening and wipe off her lipstick before doing her in.”

“Should I call Dr. Cooper?”

Great minds surely do think alike.

I told her not to rule out dragging Mother to her physician for a little tête-à-tête, but advised her to wait until morning. I had a strong inkling Cissy’s grief had more to do with a need to fix blame, rather than anything physical. My hope was that, after a good night’s rest, she’d again see reality through her rose-colored couture sunglasses and would likely even be embarrassed by what she’d done and said.

Sandy soothed my fears as only she could, giving assurances that she’d take care of things as she always did. I had utter faith she would. She’d handled plenty of boo-boos and tears in my growing-up years, and she’d never let me down. Nor had she ever let down Mother.

“Call if she needs me, okay? Whatever the hour,” I said, hearing her assent before I disconnected.

Then I started the Jeep and drove back to North Dallas, shoeless as the day I was born. The first thing I did when I walked through my door was to pull the black dress over my head and toss it to the floor.

Wearing only my bra and panties, I staggered to my unmade bed and climbed in, not bothering to check my voice mail despite a blinking light on my CallerID, indicating I had messages. I did detour briefly to the bathroom to take care of urgent business. But I left my feet unwashed, partly in protest because Mother had made such a big stinking deal about them; but mostly because I had zero energy left to suds up a washcloth.

Though pangs of hunger shot through my belly, I felt too wiped out to eat. Besides, Malone wasn’t around to crack open a can of chicken noodle or whip up a grilled cheese, something he was good at doing when I needed a little TLC.

Emotional exhaustion overwhelmed me. Everything had been too much, and I was spent like a beggar’s last nickel. Cissy wasn’t the only one who needed a siesta.

The arms of my alarm clock pointed at just past three, when I rolled over onto Malone’s side of the bed and lay my head upon his pillow. I closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of him and thinking I’d drift off just long enough to wipe the earlier part of the day from my memory. Kind of like hypnosis. When I awakened, it would be like nothing had happened, and I could move on with my life. No worries about Mother, Belle Meade, or murder.

Though I tried to relax, pieces of the day flickered through my tired head: Bebe Kent’s face grinning at me from the blow-ups in the yellow dining hall, my ears filling with the howl of the police siren, seeing Sarah Lee Sewell’s lifeless legs on the floral chintz, Mother insisting that her pals had been exterminated before their expiration dates, and Annabelle’s tale of the fire that killed her parents.

Why wasn’t there a remote to switch my brain off?

Groaning, I drew a pillow atop my head and pressed down with my forearm, as if that would squash the images (as well as my hair). I concentrated on the thud of my heartbeat, like the constant, gentle pats of a palm against a drum skin.

Slowly, I began to drift in and out of a fog, shallow and dreamless.

I didn’t rouse again until the sun had withdrawn its yellow fingers from between the slats of the shutters and the purple glow of twilight had replaced the bright of day, casting shadows across my room.

The phone trilled, high-pitched and angry, refusing to be ignored.

I reached over to the bedside table and grabbed hold of the handset, saying “Hello?” as I drew myself up against the headboard, more groggy than awake.

“Andrea, I’m so glad I found you! You have to fix this mess!” Annabelle squawked in my ear at such a rapid-fire clip that I couldn’t keep up with her. All my muddled mind could catch were sporadic phrases, like, “I can’t believe it,” “gone too far,” “this is beyond crazy,” and “meeting here tomorrow.”

“Hold on,” I begged and switched the phone to the other ear, using my free hand to turn on the lamp. Squinting as my eyes adjusted to the glow, I yawned and got my bearings. My mouth tasted fouler than foul, and I itched to brush my teeth. I rubbed a finger across them, which hardly made me feel minty-fresh but would do until I could gather the momentum to cover the ten feet between my bed and the bathroom.

“Andy? Are you there? Are you listening to me?”

My first coherent thought was about the shoes I’d left lying on the patio at Belle Meade, though I wasn’t sure why they’d be the cause of such concern unless someone had tripped over them and broken an ankle.

“Um, you want me to come pick up my slides tomorrow morning?” I offered, hoping that would placate her. “I’m really sorry, AB, but I just completely forgot about them. There was too much going on.”

“No, no, no!” She puffed into the phone. “I don’t care about your shoes, don’t you get it? It’s your mother, Andrea. She’s obsessing over Bebe and Sarah Lee, and you have to make her stop!”

That got my attention. “What are you talking about?”

“Look, you know I love Miss Cissy dearly, but she’s going to ruin everything if she doesn’t cool it. I’d hate to have to get a restraining order or have her arrested for trespassing.”

Arrested? Restraining order?

As Malone liked to say, “Whoa.”

I was fully alert, my pulse jumping like a hyperactive kid on a trampoline.

Uh-oh, I thought, and swallowed hard. Did Annabelle know about the stolen mail? Or had Cissy done something worse that I wasn’t privy to, like when she’d wandered out of my eyesight?

“Er, what are you referring to, exactly?” I proceeded cautiously. “What has Mother done that’s so disastrous? Oh, wait, you mean her telling the cop that she wanted an investigation? Because, I was there, Annabelle, and his eyes were practically rolling out of his head. The guy thought she was an escapee from the booby hatch.”

“Hell’s bells, it’s not what she told the cop! It’s worse than that.”

“Could you be more specific?”

Annabelle cried: “Your mother called Margery Flax before I ever had a chance to phone the poor woman and give her the news myself.”

I cringed as I asked, “Who is Margery Flax?”

“Great balls of fire, Andy! She’s Sarah Lee Sewell’s eighty-year-old sister from South Dakota. Her only surviving kin.”

“Ah.” I wasn’t sure what was so wrong about Cissy getting in touch with this woman, except it meant Mother went home and started dialing rather than taking a nap, as she’d promised. So I decided to tread carefully, wondering aloud, “And that’s a bad thing, because . . . ?”

“Because she convinced Mrs. Flax to call Dr. Finch and request that an autopsy be performed on Sarah Lee!” Annabelle’s voice rose precariously. “Apparently, Cissy told the poor woman that Mrs. Sewell might not have gone to meet her Maker willingly. She practically insinuated that we were involved in a cover-up!”

If I hadn’t thrown up earlier, I might’ve done it then. My stomach twisted in a painful knot. “She didn’t.”

“Oh, yes, she did.”

Good grief.

I groaned and chastised myself for leaving Mother alone for a single minute, what with the state she was in. That had been a miscalculation on my part, and now Annabelle was paying for it.

“So, do you have to have it done now? The autopsy?” I asked, chewing on a cuticle.

“Only if I can’t convince Margery otherwise. And I might have a shot, if you can restrain Miss Cissy.” Annabelle sighed. “Margery’s already contacted the funeral home and asked them to hold on to her sister’s remains and delay cremation until this gets settled. Dr. Finch has signed the death certificate, so this is prolonging the inevitable and making things harder on everyone.”

“I’ll have a talk with her, okay?” It was all I could promise, because I realized my mother’s actions were well beyond my control.

“Please, Andy, make it fast. I’m just afraid that, if Cissy gets herself too riled up over this, she’ll make good on her threats to contact the local media, the regulatory commission, AARP, the Gray Panthers, the Junior League, and anyone else who’ll listen.”

Yowza.

“She said that?”

“That was only a partial list.” Annabelle sounded truly miserable.

Much as I was tempted, I couldn’t lie and tell Annabelle it wouldn’t happen. Cissy had contacts all over the city—hell, all across this great big state, in every industry and business—and she could pretty well make life rough for Annabelle if she wanted to.

“Why?” Annabelle moaned. “Why is she doing this?”

Why did my mother do anything?

It was rather like asking why rain was wet.

I scrambled for advice to give; something reassuring that wasn’t an outright lie. The best I could come up with on such short notice was my old tried-and-true method of “going with the flow.” Sometimes, battling Cissy was akin to flying a kite in a hurricane. Not only would the kite be smashed to smithereens, but you might not come through in one piece, either. So I threw out my pitch: “Maybe you’re going about this the wrong way.”

“And how’s that possible?”

“Well, I’ll tell you how, if you’ve got a couple minutes.”

“I’m listening.”

I slid my feet off the bed, glancing at my alarm clock. It showed a quarter past six. I wondered what other havoc my mother might’ve wreaked in the hours while I’d dozed. If she kept this up, we’d need Dr. Phil on retainer. Mother already had the lawyers at Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt at her beck and call.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell her ‘no,’” I suggested. “It just feeds her fire. You’ll make the whole thing worse.”

“How can it get worse than her dragging the insurance regulators in and crying murder? Then the police will have to get involved . . . oh, Andy, I couldn’t endure another investigation, not after what I went through with my parents.” She paused to catch her breath. “The negative publicity alone would totally screw us, even if Cissy doesn’t get our license revoked somehow.”

Investigation . . . license revoked.

“Play along with her, Annabelle. Say whatever you have to, for now. If you insinuate you’re gonna have her arrested for trespassing or served with a restraining order, you’re just giving her more ammunition. The more you resist, the more she’ll believe she’s right.”