Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out (8 page)

“And there’s another thing.”

“Another thing?” I arranged my face into as pleasant an expression as possible.  “What is it?”

Mrs. Bunn’s beady eyes were like laser beams.  The other day, something occurred that made me wonder… is it possible that there is an alcohol problem in the home?”

“An alcohol problem?” I blinked.  Unless you considered an overdose of amaretto cookies an alcohol problem, the answer would have to be no.  Although a few more tete-a-tetes with Attila might send me running for the peach Schnapps.  “Not at all.  Why?”

Mrs. Bunn looked unconvinced.  Her voice was frosty.  “When Miss Pitken asked Elsie to stop barking atone of her classmates on Monday, your daughter inquired as to whether Miss Pitken had been…
imbibing
.”

Before I could stop myself, I snorted.  “Elsie asked if Miss Pitken was drunk?”

Mrs. Bunn drew herself up.  If she had been taller than five-foot-three, she would have looked down her hooked nose at me.  “I assure you, Mrs. Peterson, that Green Meadows Day School does not consider this behavior a laughing matter.”

“Oh, no,” I said, recovering.  “I don’t either.  I was just surprised.  Blake says that sometimes… I’ll ask him to stop.  I didn’t realize Elsie had picked that up.”

“Well, that may be the case, Mrs. Peterson, but I still feel obligated to recommend you take the child to a professional counselor.”  She handed me a card.

“A professional counselor? Are you sure that’s necessary? Surely all kids go through phases like this…”

“One of her classmates had to visit a doctor after Elsie sank her teeth into his arm earlier this week.  I would have to say that the level of delusion and aggression your daughter is expressing is indicative of some deeper issues.”

I took a deep breath.  “A counselor, though.  Don’t you think it seems a bit much to send a five-year-old to a therapist?”

“Mrs. Peterson, I must inform you that if you do not choose to avail yourself of a psychologist’s services, we will have to ask Elsie to leave the school.”

Leave the school?
Attila was playing hardball today. I tucked my hair behind my ears and straightened my shoulders. “I’m sorry she’s been a problem for you.  If you think she needs to see a counselor, we’ll take her.”

Mrs. Bunn nodded.  “Good.  And if you continue to have trouble with Nick’s toilet training, I highly recommend her for him as well.  As I’m sure you know, late toilet training can sometimes be a red flag.”

Nick, too? “I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me,” I lied.  If I didn’t get out of here soon, she’d be launching into Freudian theories about my son’s reluctance to stop playing with trains long enough to visit the potty.  “I’ll call the counselor this afternoon.”

Mrs. Bunn nodded in approval, the task of ruining my day accomplished.  Another thing to check off her list.  “And before you leave… when will you have that article to accompany the photographs of the picnic?” She inclined her head toward the photo pack on her desk. 

With everything that had happened during the last twenty-four hours, the article on the class picnic was pretty low on the priority list right now, right behind cleaning toilets and organizing my sock drawer.  “I’ll get to it as soon as possible,” I said.

Mrs. Bunn nodded sharply.  Audience dismissed.  I grabbed for the doorknob and bolted into the cool morning air.

Nick was asleep in the back seat when I slid back into the Suburban.  As we left the parking lot, I related my conversation with Attila.

Becky’s eyes grew round as she turned onto the entrance ramp to Mo-Pac.  “She wants you to take Elsie to a therapist?”

“If I don’t, she’s going to expel Elsie.”

“Expel her?” She swerved onto the freeway, narrowly missing a blue Mini.  “That witch! There’s nothing wrong with Elsie! Kids go through phases.  So she thinks she’s Lady.  Just because she doesn’t want to be Cinderella doesn’t mean she needs to have her head examined.”

“Well, unless I want to find another preschool, I have to take her.  Who knows? Maybe it will be good for her.”

“Good for her? She shouldn’t have to go at all! That woman has gone too far.”

I sighed.  “I agree.  But what am I going to do? She’s the director.”

“We should pull our kids from the school.  Send them somewhere else.”

“But where?”  Waiting lists for Austin preschools were longer than
War and Peace
.

 “I guess you’re right.  Still, it’s criminal, what that woman gets away with.”  She cut a station wagon off and pulled into the left lane, reaching over to pat my leg at the same time.  “Don’t worry about Elsie.  She’s just got a lot of spirit.”

I hoped she was right. 

Becky glanced in the rearview mirror.  “Nick’s still asleep.  Forget about that Bunn woman.  I want to hear more about last night.”

My worry about Elsie faded into the background as I filled Becky in on what had happened at the Rainbow Room.  When I related my trip up and down the runway, Becky laughed so hard I had to reach out and grab the steering wheel to keep the Suburban from veering into the median.

“You took third place in a drag queen contest?” she wheezed.

“Yes.  But don’t you tell a
soul
about it.  Bunn already thinks we’re a family of raging alcoholics.  I don’t need her thinking we’re sexual deviants, too.” 

She wiped her eyes.  “I was wrong about you selling Mary Kay.  This is
much
more exciting.”

“What gets me is, where are all these transvestites coming from? I mean, I’ve gone for years without running into one, and now I’ve met at least a dozen in one day.”

“Well you
were
at a gay bar.  On drag queen night…”  She started giggling again.

I gave her a light whack on the arm.  “But what about the one at the Como Motel?”

Becky rolled her eyes.  “Margie, come on.  This is Austin.  Ever seen the personal ads in the back of the
Chronicle
? And a transvestite ran for mayor a few years ago, remember?”

“I guess that’s what happens when you start having kids,” I said.  “Your exposure gets limited to old Disney movies and other people with kids.”

“I’ll bet you meet
lots
of interesting people in your new career,” Becky said with a wicked smile.  “I can’t wait to hear about your
next
case…”

 “I’ll only tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else,” I said sternly.  “I’m in enough trouble with Attila as it is.”

“My lips are sealed.  But I can’t believe the zipper popped… can I tell Roger about it? Pleeaasse?”

“No.  He’ll tell Blake, and I don’t think our marriage would ever recover.”

She sighed.  “You’re probably right.  So tell me how you ended up finding the dead woman.  Or man.  Whatever.”

I described what I’d found in the bathroom, then related what had happened when I tried to dial 9-1-1.  “I still can’t believe a dead transvestite’s phone auto-dialed my house. What do you think I should do about it?”

“Did you ask Blake if he knew her?”

“I just can’t imagine him being buddy-buddy with a drag queen named Selena.  He’s so worried about appearances; he doesn’t even like it when Nick tries on Elsie’s dress-up clothes.”

Becky grinned.  “Good thing I changed Nick out of that pink skirt then.”

 “I forgot to take him out of Elsie’s skirt?”

“You had a lot on your mind yesterday.”  Becky swerved into the right lane.  “You know, maybe Blake didn’t know her as a transvestite.  Could she have been a client of his somehow?”

“I don’t know.  I peeked into his wallet and found one of his business cards.  It looked like he had a pretty good day job.”

Becky turned to stare at me.  “You peeked into his wallet? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Watch out!”

Becky’s head swiveled toward the windshield again.  Her foot slammed down on the brake just in time to avoid crunching the back end of a VW Beetle. 

I relaxed my grip on the door handle.  “I didn’t leave any fingerprints.  It turns out Selena Sass was actually a company VP named Evan Maxted during office hours.”

“Talk about a double life.  Executive by day, enchantress by night….”  She swerved off the freeway.  “Do you think maybe he was one of Blake’s clients?”

I sighed.  “I don’t know.  This is all so
weird
.” 

“So what did Blake have to say about it?”

“He doesn’t know anything about last night.  He was asleep when I got home.  He hasn’t been himself lately. He’s distracted all the time, irritable.  And this morning, he was pissed about the minivan.”

“That man needs to go to sensitivity training.”

Normally I wouldn’t agree with her. Blake might be anal, but he was also thoughtful.  The way he’d been acting lately, though, I had to admit she had a point.  I sighed.  “Right after I find a school that teaches men to recognize dirty socks.”

#

Ten minutes later, I trundled through the impound center in the wake of a man with so much snuff jammed under his lip that it looked like he had a tumor.  As we moved through a sea of cars, he shot a brown stream of tobacco onto the cracked pavement.  I was concentrating on staying out of range when he came to a stop.

“Here she is.”

I looked up at the crumpled hulk of metal that was my minivan and swallowed.  “Are you sure this is it?”

 He glanced down at the form in his hand.  “That’s what the papers say.”  He walked around the Caravan, running his hand across the buckled metal.  “What did you do to it?

“I had a little run-in with a truck.” 

“Looks like you smacked the hell out of it.”

“I didn’t realize it was this bad.  How much do you think it would take to fix it?”

He sucked air through his teeth, somehow managing not to choke on a chunk of Skoal.  “All I can say is, I sure hope you got it paid off.”  He handed me the keys.  “Good luck.”

“Thanks.”  As he ambled back toward the office, I slid into the driver’s seat and shoved the key into the ignition, praying that at least the engine was functional.  I breathed a thank you to the man upstairs when it roared to life on the first try.

When I rolled through the chain-link gate into the front parking lot, Becky’s eyes widened.  She rolled down her window.  “Oh my God.  Blake is going to
die
.”

“Yeah.  Tell me about it.  Is Nick still sleeping?”

She glanced behind her.  “Yeah, he is.”  Then her eyes focused on the Caravan.  “What are you going to do?”

I leaned back and closed my eyes.  “When I think of something, I’ll let you know.” 

SEVEN

I stepped out of the elevator onto the twentieth floor of the Bartleby Bank Building at 10:30, suddenly conscious of my loose denim shorts and bleach-spotted polo shirt.  Perhaps I should have changed into something that looked less like something on the Goodwill bargain table.  I had been short on time, though; Becky had offered to keep Nick for a few hours while I figured out what to do next, and I didn’t want to waste it trying on khakis that I’d outgrown. 

After stopping in a Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte with extra whipped cream and a big slice of lemon pound cake, I had decided to deal with Blake first.  Now, as I pushed through the glass doors into the plush lobby of Jones McEwan, I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea.

Blake’s office was decorated in late Twentieth Century Donald Trump, or, as Becky put it, No Dime Left Unspent.  The marble entry gave way to velvet carpet, and the massive mahogany front desk looked like something Louis XVI would have had commissioned.  As always, the lobby smelled of furniture polish and money, overlaid with a hint of expensive cologne.  Unlike the fug I usually inhabited, which was flavored with eau de children. 

Minnie, the receptionist, looked dwarfed behind her desk, which was quite a feat.  Despite a number of forays into the Atkins diet, she was still a woman of substance.  She adjusted her glasses and smiled at me.  “Hi there, Margie.  Looking for Blake?”

I smiled at her.  I had always liked Minnie; she was kind and down-to-earth, and instead of wearing Donna Karan, she dressed her pillowy body in the kind of dresses you expect to see on first-grade teachers.  Today’s denim ensemble, complete with red gingham patches, seemed out of place behind the chunk of highly polished mahogany.

“Great dress,” I said.

“Thanks.  I found it at Dress Barn the other day; I got it for half off.”

I fingered my ragged shirt.  “I may need to head down there myself.”

Her blue eyes twinkled.  “Oh, don’t you worry about that. You look fine.  You’re a mom. You’re not supposed to look fancy.”

I laughed.  “Tell my husband that.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Oh, don’t be silly.  Want me to buzz him for you?”

“Yeah.  I need to talk to him for a few minutes.  I know he had client meetings this morning, but I was hoping I could catch him.”

“I think he’s back there.  Let me just check.”  She picked up the phone and pressed a few buttons.  “Margie’s here.  Can I send her back?” She listened for a moment, and hung up.  “He says he’s got about fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks, Minnie.”  As I started down the hall to his office, she called after me.

“Can you remind him to sign off on the Christmas party list for me?”

“Christmas party? Already?”

“I know.  We sent it out in August, would you believe?”

“It gets earlier every year,” I said.  “I’ll tell him.”

As I walked down the hall, I almost ran into Herb McEwan, one of the firm’s senior partner.  As usually, he was head-to-toe Brooks Brothers.  I crossed my arms reflexively over my spotty shirt. 

“Margie!” His eyes flicked up and down me.  “Doing a little housework today? You really should visit Bitsy’s store sometime.  She’s branching out into casual wear, did you know?”

“I’m glad to hear it’s going well,” I said.  As if I could afford any of the clothes Bitsy sold in her little boutique.  All profits to charity, of course. Unlike us, the McEwans didn’t need the extra money.  “Maybe I’ll stop in sometime!” I lied.

“Good, good.  I’ll tell her to look for you!” He disappeared down the hallway, leaving a whiff of expensive cologne in his wake, and I made a beeline for my husband’s office.