The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue (20 page)

“What about the preliminary autopsy? Any indication of what exactly killed him?”

“The M.E. thinks it was a gardening spade.”

I practically choked on the water I was sipping.

“Is he sure?”

“Pretty sure. Said the shape of the weapon was consistent with your average gardening spade.”

I thought of Grace appearing on my doorstep to teach me to garden and placing a spade in my hand. If anyone knew how to use
one of those things, it was her. I fought the urge to gulp down my water. A moment later, the waiter appeared with the glass
of chardonnay I’d ordered, and I fought the urge to gulp it down as well.

“I wouldn’t think you could kill someone with one of those things.”

Will nodded and looked very wise for someone half my age. “If you want to, you can turn anything into a murder weapon.”

“So, what will you do next?”

“We can try to find the weapon, but after all this time, that’s a long shot.” He stopped and looked at me for a moment. “Didn’t
you say Mrs. Davenport was teaching you how to garden?”

“What? Oh, a little, I guess. Just how to pull weeds and things.”

“Is she a big gardener, Mrs. Davenport?”

I couldn’t lie to a policeman, even if I wanted to and even if I was out on a totally inappropriate date with him. “I guess
you could say that.” He’d probably arrest her if he knew the bridge club referred to her as the Queen of Spades.

The waiter arrived once more in the nick of time, this time bearing our dinner salads. “So,” I said brightly, picking up my
fork, “when did you graduate the police academy?”

If there was one thing I had learned in over two decades of marriage, it was the value of changing the subject when a man
was on track to discovering something you didn’t want him to know.

A
n hour later I was in the home stretch, finishing my coffee and creme brulee and thinking I was going to escape from dinner
at Green Hills Grille with a man half
my age without being noticed. Since Will, like any good police officer, had taken the seat that faced the door, my back had
been to the entrance all evening. Perhaps that had contributed to the lack of recognition. The waiter slid the leather portfolio
containing the bill onto the table, and Will and I reached for it at the same time.

“No way,” he said, pulling it smoothly out from under my grasp and to his side of the table. “I asked you out for dinner.
I’m paying.”

I decided discretion was the better part of valor in this instance. “Okay, but I want my objection duly noted.”

He blanched when he opened the portfolio and saw the total at the bottom of the bill. I bit my lip to hide my smile and turned
my head to the side, just in time to see a couple walking right in front of my face as they passed the dais on their way to
another part of the restaurant.

We were too close. There was no way he wasn’t going to see me.

“Ellie!”

“Jim.” I pasted a smile on my face and clutched the napkin in my lap for dear life. “Nice to see you.” Although it wasn’t
very nice to see the woman who was with him. Heavily streaked blonde hair, too much eyeliner, and a pair of low-rise jeans
that had apparently been spray-painted on. I’d never met her, of course, only conjured up her image in my mind based on descriptions
I’d been given by Connor and Courtney. Those double-D cups, though, were a dead giveaway.

Why, why, why had I agreed to this dinner? And why hadn’t I realized that if I went to one of Jim’s favorite restaurants,
I was very likely to run into him?

Jim stared at Will, and then he looked back at me, clearly puzzled.

“Jim, this is Will McFarland.” I was going to act like a poised, confident adult if it killed me. “Will, this is my ex-husband,
Jim Johnston.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir.” Will shook Jim’s proffered hand over the little wall that separated our booth from the walkway
through the restaurant. I tried very hard not to look at Tiffany, but I couldn’t stop myself. She was like a cartoon character
come to life, every curve and color exaggerated beyond life-sized proportions.

“Are you a friend of Connor’s?” Jim asked Will, looking as if he was trying to place Will’s face among the slew of hairy-legged
adolescent boys who had draped themselves across our furniture over the last few years. If only I could intervene before Will
said—

“No, sir. I’m Ellie’s date.”

The look of astonishment on Jim’s face was priceless. It made a warm glow not associated with the chardonnay I’d been drinking
spread through my midsection. I would have given anything to have a camera. His head whipped back to look at me. “I thought
you were dating some Frenchman?”

“I am.” I looked him straight in the eye and kept my head up. “Will and I are just friends.” Of course, that remark didn’t
sit too well with Will. He frowned.

Jim shook his head, skeptical at my description of my relationship with Will. But this time when he looked at me, there was
a glint of respect in his eye that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Which only added to the heat rising up through me.

I stuck my hand over the booth toward my nemesis. “You must be Tiffany.”

She looked at my hand like it was covered with rotting flesh. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’m Ellie.” I’d envisioned this moment a million times, both the good and the bad versions. Well, she might not be willing
to shake my hand, but that was because she knew I had the upper one. Ha!

“I know who you are.” If looks could kill, I would be staked to an anthill, slathered with honey, and about to meet a very
painful demise.

“Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.” The words slipped out of my mouth before I could restrain them, but I was pretty
sure that Tiffany wouldn’t pick up on the insult. A cultured person never congratulated the bride; you always said “best wishes”
to the woman and “congratulations” to the man for finding such a great girl who would agree to marry him. But congratulations
were entirely in order for Tiffany, the husband-stealing tramp.

Not that I was still in any way bitter or jealous.

“Well, enjoy your meal,” I said, hoping to get them moving along and away from Will and me.

“Huh?” Jim had clearly been lost in thought.

“It was nice to see you.”

“Um, yeah. Nice to see you, too. Nice to meet you, Wayne.”

My would-be-date bristled, and I hid my smile by dabbing at my lips with my napkin. “The name is Will,” he said.

“Oh, of course.”

“Come on, Jim, I’m hungry,” Tiffany whined while she tugged at his shirt sleeve.

He looked at me for a long moment and then turned, reluctantly, and followed her across the restaurant. I had the satisfaction
of watching her throw a little hissy fit in his ear as they wound their way through the other tables.

“That was weird,” Will said. “What are the odds of running into him here?”

I sighed. “Never forget,” I advised Will, “that Nashville isn’t a big city. It’s just a small town with suburbs.”

A
s it turned out, though, I couldn’t escape my encounter with Jim and Tiffany entirely unscathed. While Will waited, I slipped
to the women’s restroom. Over the last few years, my bladder had decided to shrink by a third of its capacity.

I opened the door and walked into the restroom, innocent as a lamb, and made use of the facilities. It wasn’t until I was
exiting the stall that disaster struck.

The door opened, and in walked Tiffany.

I smiled, nodded, and turned toward the sink to wash my hands. Even though I would have given a year of Jim’s alimony checks
to be magically transported out of that restroom, I could never walk out without having washed my hands. I wasn’t a nurse,
and the daughter of a nurse, for nothing.

“I want to talk to you,” Tiffany announced. Her words stopped me in my tracks.

“I really don’t think we have anything to talk about.” I figured she wanted to berate me for not letting her wear
my mother’s wedding dress or some other piece of nonsense. She was younger than Will, although she had more of that beaten-down-by-life
look around the eyes. Were those the beginnings of crow’s feet that I saw? She also reeked of cigarette smoke, a fact which
surprised me given that Jim was such a health nut and a thoracic surgeon to boot. He’d removed his fair share of cancerous
tumors from people’s lungs.

“Leave Jim alone,” Tiffany snapped. She was clutching the shoulder strap of her sequined purse with a death grip. “I’m warning
you.”

My eyes must have bugged out of my head. “You’re what?” When I was in junior high, all of the catfights and fistfights between
girls had occurred in the rest-room, away from the prying eyes of the teachers and administration. Tiffany had clearly cornered
me here to have it out where Jim couldn’t see.

“Stay away from Jim.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, since I’m not married to him anymore.”

“And quit calling him.”

“I haven’t been calling him.”

That one threw her for a moment. She pursed her lips, and I could practically hear the wheels turning in her head as she tried
to process that information. I felt a sharp little pain in the vicinity of my heart, and I was surprised to realize what it
was. Pity. Pure, unadulterated pity.

“He keeps telling me stuff you’ve said.”

“If you don’t want him talking to me, then tell him to quit calling. Heavens knows I’ve tried.”

Her over-plucked eyebrows, or what was left of them,
arched in surprise. And then I saw tears start to well up in her eyes. Again, I felt that sharp little pang. I didn’t want
to feel it, but I did.

“I’m not trying to come between you and Jim,” I assured her, although even as I said the words, I wondered why on earth I
was being nice to this woman. She had known Jim was married the first time she brought him a plate of buffalo wings. He hadn’t
even been smart enough to take off his wedding ring.

“Then why does he want to postpone the wedding?”

“What?”

“You heard me.” She wiped away a tear that slid down her layers of mascara and onto her cheek in a dark blob. “He says we
ought to push back the wedding.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Then why doesn’t he want to get married?” she wailed.

I looked at her then, really looked at her, and what I saw beneath the layers of makeup and behind the surgically enhanced
anatomy was a confused, scared young woman. How sad, at not even twenty-five, to think you needed silicone, collagen, and
bleached blond hair to attract a decent guy. Although, come to think of it, those three things seemed more likely to draw
the attention of the exact opposite of a good man.

“I have no idea why he’s gotten cold feet. Why don’t you ask him?”

“He won’t talk to me.” She started to blubber, and I reached over to give the paper towel machine a few cranks. I yanked off
a hunk of brown paper and handed it to her.

“Here.”

She blew her nose into it with a less than ladylike honk. “Thanks.”

I was silent, then, while she finished with her nose and wiped the tears from her eyes. Finally, she threw the wadded paper
towel in the trash and looked at me again.

“Why are you being so nice to me? I’m being a bitch to you.”

I wasn’t sure I could explain it myself. For all those months, I’d built her up in my mind as this kind of Über-woman, a sexual
goddess with whom my aging face and body could never compete. But the truth, I realized, standing in the middle of the ladies’
restroom at Green Hills Grille, was that Tiffany was just a young, uneducated girl with bad taste in makeup and plastic surgeons.

I couldn’t believe it, but I actually felt sorry for her.

“It takes two to tango,” I said, surprising myself. “Jim ruined our marriage, not you.” Only even as I said that, I was forced
to admit to myself that while Jim’s defection to Tiffany had been the death blow, our marriage had been in decline for some
time.

“I came in here to fight,” she said.

“I know.”

She looked as sad as I felt. “Any advice on how to handle him?”

I guess she was young enough—and naive enough—to think that I might actually answer that question. But I wasn’t so mature
as to take the high road and hand her all the secret stuff I knew about Jim on a silver platter.

“Feed him lots of garlic,” I said. “He really likes it.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “Really?”

“Absolutely. Key to his heart.”

Well, not really. Actually, garlic gave him tremendous gas.

“I’d better go.” I grabbed my purse from the bathroom counter where I’d left it when I washed my hands. “Good night.” And
I fled the bathroom feeling, for good and for ill, every one of my fifty years.

CH
A
PTER FIFTEEN