Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out (2 page)

“Do what?”

“You know.  The wrap-and-slap thing.”

“Wrap-and-slap? It has a name?”

“Yeah, there are a few of them who have a thing for gettin’ trussed up like a Butterball turkey.  And then they like the paddle.”

“There’s a paddle?”

I scooted over and crouched down again.  Mr. Pence was now bent across the bed, with the blonde standing over him.  She had traded in her dress for a half-roll of Saran Wrap, and was giving it her all with a short wooden paddle.  Poor Mrs. Pence. 

The blonde delivered a particularly energetic whack, and Pence turned his mottled face toward the window.  I fumbled in my purse for the camera, but by the time I got it into position, he had turned away.

Mr. Legs spoke from somewhere behind me.  “You gettin’ a divorce?”

“What?  Oh, right.  A divorce.  I just need a good shot for the attorneys.”

“You the kind of woman who don’t take no shit.  I like that.” 

A few whacks later, Mr. Pence turned toward the window again.  I aimed the Nikon and pushed the button, flooding the motel room with light.  Two heads shot up.

I had forgotten to turn off the flash.

“Crap!” I jammed the camera into my purse and dashed down the sidewalk, the worn treads of my sneakers sliding on the wet concrete.  As I turned the corner of the building, the door squeaked open behind me. 

I pressed myself to the damp cinderblock wall for a moment and peeked around the corner.  Mr. Legs was nowhere to be seen, but Pence stood where I had a moment before, wrapped in a grungy white bath towel that frankly wasn’t up to the task.  He looked around for a moment, a deep crease in his thick brow, and stooped down to pick up something red from the walkway.  He turned it over in his hands and disappeared into the room.

I leaned against the wall and cursed.  I had dropped Elsie’s fry phone, and there was no way to get it back.   

I waited a few minutes, then slunk across the parking lot to the minivan, closing up the Hello Kitty! Umbrella and slamming the door behind me.  Then I pressed my forehead to the steering wheel and swore.  Why the fry phone? How was I going to explain it to Elsie?

Other kids had blankets, favorite dolls, stuffed kangaroos.  Not mine.  Since the age of one, my daughter had gone to sleep every night cuddling up to a McDonald’s fry phone. 

The fry phone was a plastic toy phone that looked like a packet of French fries.  It had been available in February of 2000 for about three hours.  If I’d known its future position as the sun around which all other things in our household revolved, I would have bought out all the Happy Meals in town, creating a cache of duplicate fry phones behind the piles of unused yarn in the back of my closet.  But by the time she got attached to it, it was too late.  Fry phones had long been replaced by collectible Pokemon figures and peekaboo Barbie dolls. 

And now it was gone, snatched by an obese plastic-clad adulterer who sold plumbing fixtures for a living. 

I looked back at Pence’s motel room longingly.  Then I bit my lip and turned the key in the ignition, wishing—just for a moment—that I’d never even heard of Peachtree Investigations.

It seemed like more than two weeks ago that I’d dropped the kids off at school, squeezed myself into a suit, and headed south on Congress Avenue, looking for an address I’d scrawled on a piece of paper.  Until six weeks ago, I hadn’t planned on working at all, but the tuition bill that turned up in our mailbox after Nick joined Elsie in preschool was big enough to cause heart palpitations.

Because Texas doesn’t have public preschools, Blake and I had enrolled both kids in Green Meadows Day School.  It had a good reputation. And a price tag that made University of Texas tuition look like a bargain-basement closeout.  Blake suggested we take out a home equity loan and pay it back when he got his promotion, but I pooh-poohed the idea.  “I’ve got some time off during the week now,” I said breezily.  “I’ll just get a job. ” I figured I’d pick up some part-time work at the advertising agency I’d left when Elsie was born.

Easy, right?

Wrong.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that once you step off the career track, it’s not that easy to hop back on.  After six years out of the business, and with a schedule that limited my round-the-clock handholding capacity, my childless former boss shook her head at me.  “I’m afraid we don’t have a part-time position. And you’ve been out of the industry so long…”

So I started looking at the want ads, and quickly learned that if you’re an exotic dancer or a dishwasher, the world of part-time work is your oyster.  Otherwise, you’re out of luck. 

I was about to resign myself to a life of Tupperware parties—unless there was a market for chunky women over thirty, the dancing was out, and as far as I was concerned, I did enough dishwashing at home—when I spotted an ad that looked a little different: 
Exciting part-time work, flexible hours. Apply in person.
  It looked better than busing tables for the Taco Shack, so I did.

The address was in a seedy part of town, wedged between Ecstasy Lingerie Modeling and Austin Propane Service.  I parked the van in the empty lot and inched my way up to the grungy storefront in my too-tight blue pumps, feeling like a Chinese girl after her first trip to the foot binder.  The peeling paint on the smudgy glass door read
Peachtree Investigations
.  Below it, a brown-edged peach decal that resembled someone’s rear end more than a piece of fruit stuck to the cloudy glass. 

I considered turning around and getting back into the minivan.  Then the list of Help Wanted ads I had seen played through my head.  Professional dancer, dishwasher, dog trainer… At least this job promised to be exciting.  Supposedly.

I pushed the door open and stepped into a dingy room reeking of cigarette smoke and mold.  As the door clanked shut behind me, a woman with a helmet of orange hair and a large, curvy body stubbed her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray.  She narrowed her brown eyes at me over her desk.  “I’m Peaches Barlowe.  What can I do for you? Husband trouble?”

 “No,” I said, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the smell.  The place screamed for Lysol.  “I’m here to apply for the job.”

She cast an eye over my navy blue suit, which was secretly safety-pinned in the back, and snorted.  “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No.”  I swallowed and straightened my spine, glancing at the yellowed stacks of paper strewn around the office.  A few dead doodlebugs littered the dirty gray carpet.  Whatever Peaches was, she wasn’t a tidy housekeeper.  If she was hiring for a filing position, the pay had better be impressive.  “What exactly is the job?” 

“Sweetheart, this isn’t the type of work you’re looking for.”  She leaned forward over the scarred desk, giving me a view of her breasts, which nestled together like cantaloupes in her stretchy red top.  Peaches looked to be on the far side of forty, but she hadn’t stopped shopping in the Juniors department.

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m looking for an investigator.  This isn’t an office gig.”

An investigator? It was better than a maid, but I’d never pictured myself as an investigator.  I couldn’t even find my car keys, much less track things down for other people.  I was about to say
No thank you
when something stopped me.  What the heck? At least it didn’t require washing dishes.  I could at least try it out.  “Sounds interesting,” I said, pulling my resume from the leather portfolio I had dug out of the back of my closet and putting on my best professional look.  “I don’t have any direct experience, but I’m a fast learner.”

She ran an eye over the cream-colored paper and raised a penciled eyebrow.  “Marigold Peterson.  You’re named after a flower?”

At least I wasn’t named after a fruit.  “My friends call me Margie.”

She cocked a penciled eyebrow in disbelief.  “Contributor to the Green Meadows Day School Newsletter?”

“It could be considered investigative reporting.”

“Yeah, right.  Big, in-depth articles on potty-training.”  She scanned it again.  “Account Executive for BDS&M?”  She pushed my resume toward me.  “Honey, the kind of research we do isn’t like writing a fancy-schmancy press release, or tracking down the best chocolate cake recipe.  We do some pretty ugly work here.  I need someone with grit.”

Ugly work? I’d seen diapers that would make a biker gang blanch.  Grit? I’d survived staying home with my children for five years, hadn’t I?

The look of disdain on Peaches’ face sparked something in me.  What was with people these days? They thought that just because a woman had kids and stayed home, the only excitement in her life should come from attending driveway-stenciling classes at the local library.  Even Blake had changed since I had Elsie.  We used to have conversations about politics, ethics, the state of the world.  Now we talked about the state of his sock drawer. 

I took a deep breath.  Just because I’d spent the last five years of my life dealing with diapers and dirty dishes didn’t mean my brain had turned into Gerber’s Fruit’n’Oatmeal.  

The safety pin on the back of my skirt strained as I leaned forward.  “I know I can do it,” I said. “Please let me give it a shot.”

Peaches leaned back and adjusted her cleavage.  “Honey, why do you want to? This is nasty stuff.  These people aren’t exactly nursery school teachers, you know.  Some of them are downright dangerous.”  The look of disdain faded, replaced by something like pity.  “You look like a nice lady, you’re not hurting for money.  Why don’t you stick to something safe, like the PTA?”

This lady clearly hadn’t met the parents at Green Meadows Day School.  Give me a gang of delinquents over a group of frustrated MBA mothers with their hearts set on Harvard for their offspring any day.

Margie Peterson, Private Investigator
.

It had a ring to it. 

I pushed the resume back toward Peaches and looked her in the eye.  “Give me one case.  If I get it right, you pay me.  If I don’t, my time is free.”

She held my stare for a minute, then sighed and reached behind her for a battered manila folder.  She shoved it across the desk.  “All right.  Since no one else has turned up, I’ll give you one chance.  Infidelity case.  Plumbing salesman.  If you don’t get the proof, you don’t get the money.  And I still think you’re in over your head.”  My fingers tingled with anticipation as I grabbed the folder.  Peaches pulled a packet of Ultra Slims from her top drawer.  “Christ,” she said.  “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

I straightened my shoulders.  “What do I need to do?”

She flicked her lighter, and an orange flame leapt up.  “Follow him and get a picture of him doing something he shouldn’t be doing.”

“Is there any training?”

“Can you drive?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a camera?”

“Yes.”

She took a deep drag from her Ultra Slim and whirled around in her chair.  “Consider yourself trained.”

TWO

That had been just over a week ago.  Today, as I rolled into Green Meadows Day School twenty minutes late, I was feeling a little less excited about the whole P.I. thing.  Sure, I’d gotten the shot. At least I thought I had. But now I was short one fry phone and had probably made myself a prime target for Attila the Bunn. 

My suspicions were confirmed the moment I opened the office door and met the disapproving gaze of the headmistress.  Except for the absence of green skin, she was a dead ringer for the Wicked Witch of the West in her later, plumper years.

The kids rushed toward me, and I knelt to hug them, burying my nose in Nick’s hair and breathing in his puppy-dog-apple-juice-Watermelon-Blast-Shampoo smell.  Elsie was wearing the yellow skirt and purple sparkly top she had chosen that morning, but Nick’s fire truck shorts had been replaced by a pink skirt decorated with overblown cabbage roses.  I gave the kids a squeeze and stood up, my hand resting on Elsie’s black curly head.  Mrs. Bunn tapped a pointy-shoed toe and narrowed her eyes at me.

“You’re late.”

I put on my best concerned-parent look.  “I’m so sorry.  It won’t happen again.”

She handed me the missive of the day—there were always missives of the day at Green Meadows Day School—with all the pomp and circumstance of the Pope delivering the latest Bull.  Then her steely eyes focused on Nick, whose chubby toddler body was wrapped around my leg.  “Nick had another accident.  There were no spare clothes in his cubby, so we had to put him in Elsie’s.”  That explained the skirt.

“Well, I’ve always tried to have a gender-neutral household.”

She harrumphed, sending a jiggle through her jowls.  “I’d like to have a meeting with you, Mrs. Peterson, to discuss some issues regarding parental involvement at the school and proper nutrition for the children.  There’s also a behavior issue I’d like to address…”  She cocked a bushy eyebrow at Elsie.

I’d been through the nutrition lecture before, and was more than familiar with the litany of my sins.  Using Jif peanut butter instead of the natural and unsweetened variety, white bread instead of whole wheat…

But a behavior issue? I looked down at Elsie’s black curls and decided it was probably something minor.  After all, Mrs. Bunn considered failing to put a napkin on your lap at snack time to be a major lapse of decorum. 

“We need to talk, Mrs. Peterson.”

My mind cast about for a redeeming topic, something that would reinforce my commitment to Green Meadows Day School and get me out of the office.  Should I offer to trim the hedges? Scrub the floors with a toothbrush later in the week? Then I remembered the newsletter.  “I’d love to talk about it—I’ll call you, maybe we can set something up for next Monday—but I’m on my way to upload the pictures from the class picnic.  I need to have them ready for the school newsletter tomorrow.”

Her gaze slackened a bit, and I took the opportunity to whisk the kids through the door.  “Thanks so much, Mrs. Bunn.  See you tomorrow!”

#

I pulled into our cracked driveway ten minutes later and made a mental note to ask Blake to cut the grass.  Our neighbor’s lawns looked like golf course greens; ours resembled something you’d see on a National Geographic special on the Wilds of the Serengeti.