Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out (3 page)

I kicked over a dandelion that was almost as tall as I was and opened the van doors for the kids.  The state of the yard was a little surprising, actually.  Faucets might drip for months before Blake got around to fixing them, but he generally worked to keep the outside of the house, a stone cottage built in the late 1920s, looking good.  My husband had inherited his mother’s Martha Stewart-ish obsession.  I, on the other hand, was a little more laissez-faire in the domestic department.  Needless to say, our first years together had been an adjustment.  With time, though, I managed to come to terms with my husband’s quirks, figuring that if color-coded towel organization strategies were all I had to complain about, I was a lucky woman. 

As the kids tumbled from the Caravan and tripped up the front walk to the house, my eyes swept the flowerbeds—my one domestic pet project—with satisfaction.  The Mexican Bush Sage had exploded into bloom at the end of the driveway, and a drift of pink and purple impatiens bloomed beside the wood ferns.  If the grass were shorter, it would even be visible from the street. 

The house itself was one of those properties listed as “having great potential.” In fact, that was how the agent had sold it to us seven years ago.  We’d spent the first six months drawing up plans for major renovations and expansion.  Then I’d gotten pregnant with Elsie and quit my job at the advertising agency to stay home, and the grand plans had been downsized to a fresh paint job on the trim.  A paint job that needed to be done again, I thought as I unlocked the door; the door’s original lime green was threatening to overtake the brick red we had covered it with.  I shook my head. I was sure we’d hear about it from his mother soon.

Still, I thought as I closed the door behind me and dumped my keys next to a stack of unopened mail, it could be worse.  I was happy here.  More importantly, so were the kids.  My own childhood had taken place in a series of rundown apartments, and although having a swimming pool on the grounds had been fun for the first few years, the novelty had worn off.  My mother had done the best she could—after my father left us for another woman just after my third birthday, she supported us by taking a series of jobs as an apartment manager—but I had spent my school years burning with jealousy of my friends’ houses, which all seemed to be in real neighborhoods and featured both a mom
and
a dad.  Cheery maternal comments, such as “You are
so
lucky.  Most kids have their own back
yards
, not a community play area!” just didn’t cut it. 

I looked at our tiny kitchen with its ancient white stove and slightly rust-stained sink with affection.  Rufus, our Siamese pound kitty, rubbed himself against my legs, and I reached down to scratch his ears.  So what if our house would never be picked as the cover feature of
Town and Country
? So what if Nick occasionally wet his pants waiting for Elsie to vacate the house’s one bathroom? At least it was ours.

The answering machine was blinking furiously.  I hit play, and my mother’s voice burbled out of the machine.  “Hi, Marigold, I was just calling to see if you’d tried that St. John’s Wort tea I sent you.”  I rolled my eyes.  Most people had outgrown the hippie movement in the sixties, but my mother had never gotten over it.  Last month it was yoga. Now she was dating an herbalist named Karma, and I had started receiving packets of strange-looking green stuff in the mail.  “Give me a call when you get a chance, and give my sweethearts a hug!”

I hit delete.  I’d call her back after I’d gotten the kids to bed and had a glass of wine.  Maybe two. Then Elsie came up behind me and hugged my leg.  “I’m hungry, Mommy.”

“You guys ready for a snack?” I asked.

“Cupcakes!” Nick declared.

“How about Oreos?” Elsie suggested.

“How about cheese sticks and apple slices?” After my run-in with Attila, I felt the need to be virtuous. 

They groaned, but two minutes later they were at the kitchen table, squabbling over whose apple slices were bigger.

As the kids bickered, I pulled a package of chicken breasts out of the refrigerator and thought about this morning’s job.  All in all, I decided, it had gone okay.  Sure, I’d lost the fry phone, but I had something to show to Peaches.  At least I hoped I did; I wouldn’t get the film back till later that afternoon.  I put aside thoughts of my daughter’s screams when she discovered the fry phone was gone and allowed myself a moment of satisfaction.  It was nice to take on a task other than the laundry and get it done. 

The kids finished their apple slices and wandered into the living room, leaving the table littered with bits of red peel.  Two seconds later the sound of four thousand Legos hitting the hardwood floor echoed through the house.  “You need to clean that up!” I called. 

“We will, Mommy.”

Yeah, right.  “Cleaning up” consisted of each child contributing one Lego to the box, then dropping to the floor in exhaustion.  The other 3,998 were mine to deal with.

I chose to ignore the sounds of chaos for now and focus on the yogurt marinade I was mixing up for the chicken breasts.  Blake’s doctor had recently announced that my husband’s cholesterol was dangerously high, and I’d started cooking low-fat dinners and dragging him out of the house for walks.  I didn’t like the idea of losing him to an early cardiac arrest, but with the hours he’d been putting in lately and the attendant stress, it wouldn’t be a shock if he keeled over into his cornflakes one morning.  Besides, it was good for me too. I made sure the kids ate a relatively balanced diet, but either the clothing manufacturers were making things smaller or my chocolate habit was edging me into muu-muu territory.

As I stirred lemon juice into the yogurt, I thought about Mrs. Pence.  Did she cook low-fat meals for her husband? From what I’d seen this morning, I was guessing not.  How would she feel when she saw the photo of her shrink-wrapped husband? She must have known something was up—otherwise she wouldn’t have hired a private investigator—but seeing the proof would still be a shock.  Particularly a photo like the one in my camera. 

I covered the chicken with Saran Wrap and winced at the spices dotting the pale slabs of flesh.  They looked kind of like Pence’s buttocks. Just a whole lot smaller.  Would it be appropriate to send Mrs. Pence a sympathy card, I wondered? Probably not.  Odds were good that Hallmark didn’t have a
Sorry your husband was sharing his Saran Wrap fetish with a hooker card
anyway.

I had just slid the chicken into the refrigerator when the phone rang.  I rinsed my hands and picked it up before it went to the answering machine.

“Hello?”

“Margie?”

I recognized my husband’s voice.  “Blake! How are you? You’re not going to believe what happened this morning…”

“I’m sorry, Honey, I don’t have time to talk.  I just wanted to tell you that I’ve got a meeting with a client tonight, so I won’t be home for dinner.”

So much for the chicken.  “Again? You’ve been working way too hard lately.”

“I know, I know.  It’s just this case I’m putting together.”

I sighed.  Maybe we’d do hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, and save the chicken for tomorrow.  “Well, we’ll miss you.  Want me to save you some dinner?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.  I’ll pick something up.  Gotta run… give the kids a kiss.”

And then he was gone. 

I hung up the phone and scowled, wishing I could expense all of the uneaten dinners I’d prepared lately to Jones McEwan, the law firm that was holding my husband in indentured servitude.  “It’s just till I make partner,” he always said.  “Then I can relax a little, and we can work on the house a bit.”  Yeah, right.  It had been four years now, and despite the fact that he worked sixty-hour weeks on a regular basis, he was still an associate. 

I had just pulled a package of hot dogs out of the freezer when Elsie appeared in the doorway, blue eyes wide.  “Can I have my fry phone?”

I swallowed.  How was I going to tell her an obese plastic-clad adulterer had swiped her love object? I adopted a casual tone.  “You know, honey, I don’t know where it is right now.  I’m sure it will turn up, though.”  I guided her through the Lego-strewn living room to the TV.  “Why don’t I put
Lady and the Tramp
on?”

Tears welled in her eyes.  “But I want my fry phone!”

“Honey, I don’t know where it is right now.”

“You mean it’s gone? Forever?”

“No, sweetie, not forever.  I’m sure it’ll turn up.”  I stroked her curls and sat through fifteen minutes of
Lady
and her perfect household until the snuffling had receded to an occasional sniff.  Then retreated to computer desk, where I pulled up eBay and typed in Fry phone.  Nothing.  Ditto for
McDonald’s fry phone
,
French fry phone
,
Happy Meal phone
, and
Freedom fry phone
.  Damn.

Why had I taken this job?

I shut off the computer and picked up the phone.   Peaches answered on the third ring.

“It’s Margie,” I said.  “I got a photo of Pence.”

“You’re shitting me.”  I could hear the surprise in her pack-a-day voice.  “When can you bring it in?”

“I’ll e-mail it to you,” I said.  I paused to clear my throat.  “I accidentally left something outside the motel room, though, and I was wondering if you could ask Mrs. Pence to see if she can find it for me.  Her husband picked it up.”

“You left something outside of the room?”

“Yeah.”  I lowered my voice.  “A McDonald’s fry phone.”

“Jesus H. Christ.  A McDonald’s fry phone? Like one of those Happy Meal toys? You want me to tell Mrs. Pence that her husband is cheating on her, and then ask her if she can find a McDonald’s fry phone my investigator accidentally left behind?”

“I know, I know… It was an accident.  But it’s my daughter’s favorite toy.”

“A fry phone.  Whatever happened to teddy bears? Jesus.  How the hell did you lose…no.  I won’t ask.  I don’t want to know.”  I could hear the intake of breath as she took a drag from a cigarette.  “You need to write a report.  Should be a breeze for you, what with all your big reporting jobs for the nursery school newsletter.”

I opened my mouth to issue a snappy retort.  Unfortunately, all that came out was, “How soon do you need it?”

“Can you get it done today?”

Today? I listened for sounds of trouble from the living room.  Except for the soothing voice of Lady’s mistress, the house was peaceful.  “I think so.”

“Good,” she said, “And since you pulled off the first one, I got another job for you.”

“Wait a minute.  I’ve got the kids this afternoon…”

  “It’s a rush, so we’re going to have to be proactive on it.  You know what a honey pot is?”

“A honey pot?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it some kind of special equipment?”

She snorted.  “Special equipment? No, sweetheart. 
You’re
the honey pot.”

“
I’m
the honey pot?”  That didn’t sound good.  “How do I do that?”

She sucked on the cigarette again before answering.  “A trip to Dillard’s foundations department would be a start.  Maybe even Frederick’s of Hollywood.”

“You mean…”

“Infidelity case.  I need someone to be the bait.  Once you’ve got him hooked, we call in the photographer, and he gets a shot we can show wifey.  I usually use a professional, but Rosita is out of circulation for a few months, and Angie’s busy.  But if you don’t think you can hack it…” She trailed off.

 “You mean you want me to go to a bar and hit on someone?”

“Yup.”

“But I’m married.”

“I didn’t say you had to sleep with him.  Just make him want to sleep with you. ”

I digested this for a moment.  Make someone want to sleep with me? Lately, the only people interested in sharing my bed were two small children with less-than-discriminating taste. 

“That’s all well and good,” I said, “but what am I going to do with my kids?”

“Look,” Peaches said.  “If you don’t think you can do it, I’ll just find someone else.”

“No, no.  Why don’t I do it tomorrow? Blake can cover for me.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the bar circuit, though.  I don’t know if I have anything to wear.”

“Control-top hose, for starters.  You got any push-up bras?”

I groaned.  “How soon does this need to happen?”

“Like I said, it’s a rush job.  Lady’s anxious.  She said he usually goes out on Tuesday nights, so I figure if you follow him from work, you can get it taken care of tonight.”

“Tonight? But my husband’s not home till late.”

She sighed. “I guess I might be able to get Angie…”

I thought about the kids in the other room.  My friend Becky had already offered to have them over some night this week, and it would probably take their minds off the fact that their Daddy wasn’t home. Assuming the offer still stood, what did I have to lose? “All right. I’ll do it.”

“Good.  He works at the Bank One building, downtown.” I jotted down the details and hung up the phone, wondering how I was going to transform my pudgy thirty-five-year-old self into a vixen by six this evening, and whether Becky would be able to watch the kids.  And most of all, I wondered where on God’s green earth I was going to find another fry phone.

THREE

An hour later, I was sitting on Becky Hale’s bed, watching her rummage through her closet.  Becky and I had been best friends and roommates at the University of Texas , but after graduation, she and I had drifted into different careers and separate lives.  Then, a few years ago, we ran into each other at a coffee shop on a rainy weekday morning, both of us lugging baby carriers and trying to keep our hyperactive toddlers from upending a coffee cup display.  We exchanged one tired look and our friendship had rekindled.

When I called to tell Becky about my new assignment—and to ask her to watch my kids—she’d squealed.

“How exciting! Can I do you up?”

“Do me up?”

“I’ve wanted to get my hands on you for the longest time,” she said.  “You used to look so nice in college, before the kids… With those green eyes, you could look like a million dollars.”  She paused.  “Not that you don’t already look great, of course.”