Secrets of a Shoe Addict (39 page)

“Yes,” Deb said to Poppy, but it was the man on the phone who answered.

“You got it,” he said.

She hung up, shaking her head. Whatever.

The phone rang again, almost immediately. Probably Ed from the relay center again.

“Hello?”

“I was afraid you weren’t working and they were going to send me back to the relay for another girl.”

Deb frowned. “What?”

“I’ve been waiting all day to talk to you.”

“Okay . . .” She’d never been good at imitating voices, so Deb figured her best bet was to say as little as possible.

“Unzip me.”

“What?”

“Unzip me. You know, with your teeth. I want you to suck my cock before it bursts.”

Deb gasped so loudly that two women turned to look at her.

She clipped the phone shut, her face burning.

That had to be a wrong number. Deb had met Charlie Dreyer. There was no way a good, dignified man like that would stoop to talking to his wife like that.

She kept the phone in her hand and walked to the waiting area for the dressing rooms to sit down. This was seriously disturbing.

She wished Tiffany had gotten the call instead of her.

The phone rang again. Deb looked and, again, the caller ID said
UNKNOWN
. Was it possible that the call really
was
intended for Tiffany?

“Hello?”

“Crystal—”

“No—”

“—I’ve been thinking about you all day. Gimme some sweetness.”

“Who is this?”

There was a hesitation. “Is this Crystal?”

“No.”

“Which one are you?”

“Deb.” As soon as she’d said it, she regretted it. She never should have given her real name out. Now Tiffany would find out she’d answered her phone! Oh well, she could get away with that by telling the truth, that she thought the phone was hers after the confusion when Tiffany rammed her cart into Deb’s. It certainly wasn’t Deb’s fault!

She wouldn’t mention the fact that she’d answered the phone even after she knew it wasn’t hers, however.

“Deb,” he said. “I haven’t seen you on the site. What do you look like?”

“What site are you looking at?” she asked.

“The Happy Housewives site,” he said. “Listen, I don’t want to pay two ninety-nine a minute for this shit. Are you going to get me off or not?”

“Um, that would be
not
,” Deb said crisply.

He hung up.

Okay, that was two sexually explicit calls in ten minutes. One could have been a crank call or a wrong number or some other coincidence, but two?

She had to get to this Happy Housewives Web site.

“Poppy, we have to go.”

“But I haven’t finished trying everything on!”

“I don’t care, put it in the cart. If things don’t fit, we’ll return them later.”

Deb drove home as fast as the speed limit would allow, ignoring
the ringing phone, even though she was
dying
to know who was calling now.

Once home, she went into Mick’s den to use his computer. She didn’t want to use the one in the kitchen, in case Poppy came in and saw something sexually explicit.

The desktop came up, and she clicked on Internet Explorer. But before she was finished typing
happyhousewives.com
, Internet Explorer automatically finished it for her.

And took her to a site for phone sex, promised by women who could cook, clean, and caress at your leisure. There were thumbnail photos of Crystal, Mimi, Brandee, Sophia, Lulu, and a host of other cosmetically enhanced bimbos. None of them were Tiffany.

That was strange.

Then again, if Tiffany was involved in phone sex for money, she probably wouldn’t be stupid enough to use her real name or put her real picture on the Web site.

Deb scrolled around, looking for any information that could lead her to Tiffany’s connection. All she could find was a counter at the bottom of the home page that listed how many hits there had been since a date that was about a week after they’d returned from Las Vegas.

Which was about the time Tiffany and Loreen had seemed to get so secretive and weird.

This was so exciting!

And Deb knew
exactly
how to use this to her advantage.

She wasted no time. She looked up Tiffany’s home phone number and called it, waiting with bated breath for her to answer.

“Hello?”

“Tiffany, it’s Deb Leventer.”

“Hi, Deb. Look, I’m in the middle of something, so I can’t really talk right now—”

“Oh, I think you want to hear what I have to say.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The jig is up, Tiffany. I know what you’ve been doing. And unless you and your entire board resign from the PTA right away, I’m going to tell the rest of the world.”

There was a short, tense silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tiffany said in a voice that betrayed she knew
exactly
what Deb was talking about.

But that was okay. Deb didn’t mind elaborating. “I’m talking about the fact that you are a phone sex operator. A
whore
if you want to get right down to it. And I do
not
think that’s the kind of person we need as a PTA president.”

Tiffany let out a long breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Funny thing happened today. I accidentally picked up your phone at the grocery store because it looks like mine.”

She could hear Tiffany scrambling, probably rummaging through her purse, on the other end of the line. “You took my phone?”

“Mmm-hmmm.” Deb was enjoying this. “And Ed from the relay center called. You know Ed, don’t you?”

The answering silence told her that yes, Tiffany certainly did know Ed.

Deb gave a carefree laugh. “Well, the next thing I know, all sorts of calls were coming through.
Unsavory
calls.”

“You were answering my phone?”

Deb sighed. “I couldn’t resist. I know it was wrong, but not nearly as wrong as what you’ve been doing. Wouldn’t you agree? Tiffany?”

“What do you want, Deb?”

“Funny you should ask. I want you and all your friends off of the PTA board. And you have until tomorrow at noon to resign formally or I’m going public.”

Deb was so pleased with herself. She kept replaying the conversation in her head over and over, imagining the look of horror that must have crossed Tiffany’s face when she realized she’d failed to put this one over on Deb.

It was delicious.

When Tiffany’s phone rang again, she had the feeling things were about to get even
more
delicious.

She looked at it. What to do? She could put Tiffany out of business. But then there would be no evidence to take to the school board. Surely the county didn’t want a phone sex operator in charge of the PTA!

So it was best for Deb not to answer it.

But the curiosity proved too much.

“Hello?”

“It’s Mick. I’ve got to be fast because I’m in the men’s room at the car dealership. Blow me quick, lots of teeth.”

“Mick?”

Stunned silence. Then, “Deb?”

“Yes, Deb.” She glanced at the phone. Was it
hers
and not Tiffany’s? “What the heck are you talking about?”

“I—I must have dialed the wrong number.”

“And who exactly were you trying to call?”

“Suzannah.” Suzannah was Mick’s secretary. “She’s handling a time-sensitive deal for me.”

“And you were calling her from the men’s room?”

“Yeah, look, uh, I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.” He hung up before she could object.

What the heck was going on? She looked at the phone. It wasn’t hers. There was no crack, and . . . and no way around it. The phone was Tiffany’s.

Mick
had just called
Tiffany’s
sex phone.

Mick probably thought the phone lines had crossed and dialed from his phone book—their cell phones did that with some frequency—but Deb knew the sad truth. He’d been calling Tiffany for sexual gratification.

It just didn’t seem possible.

Maybe it was a mistake. Or a onetime thing.

She went into the history cache of Mick’s computer to see how often he’d been to the Happy Housewives Web site.

Apparently he’d been there a lot. A
lot
. Suddenly Deb felt unclean sitting at his desk. He’d ruined everything for her, all in the quest of his own stupid, hedonistic pleasure. Deb was devastated. This should have been one of the best moments of her life, finally getting the goods on her worst enemy.

Tiffany Dreyer was a phone sex operator.

But Mick was one of her clients.

Chapter
      
25
  

W
hat’s the emergency?” Loreen asked, coming into Tiffany’s house without bothering to knock first. “Are the kids all right?”

“They’re upstairs watching a movie, armed with popcorn, Ho Hos, and everything else I could think of to keep them from wanting to come down,” Tiffany said. “I don’t want them to hear a word of what’s going on.”

“Well, what
is
going on?”

Sandra was there, looking anxious from her vantage point on the sofa. “I don’t know,” she said when Loreen looked at her. “She won’t tell me.”

Tiffany was pale. “I don’t mean to be mysterious.” She used a corkscrew on a large bottle of Mondavi wine and carried it and four glasses over to the coffee table. “We just have a huge problem and I’d rather tell you all at once.”

There was a knock at the door, and Tiffany looked up from pouring the wine and called for Abbey to come in.

Once they were all seated, practically holding hands as they looked nervously at Tiffany, she told them the bad news.

“Deb Leventer knows.”

There was a thick silence before Loreen asked, “What, exactly, does she know?”

“She knows enough.” Tiffany swallowed hard. “She has my phone. She talked to Ed.”

“Oh, no.” Sandra shook her head.

“Yes.” Tiffany shook a shaky breath. “And she called this afternoon and demanded that we all resign from the PTA by tomorrow at noon or she’s pretty much going to call a press conference.”

Abbey gasped. “She can’t.”

“But you know she will,” Loreen said sharply. This was sickening. “Unless we can somehow stop her.”

“Short of hitting her with a bus, I don’t think that’s possible,” Abbey said, her usually gentle voice tinged with anger. “Though I’m not advocating hitting her with a bus, no matter how tempting that might be at the moment.”

“It’s all my fault.” Tiffany put her hands over her face. “I was so stupid, walking around the grocery store, talking about it right out loud even though the place is just full of people from the neighborhood and school.” She sniffed and looked up, red-eyed. “Never mind Deb, you guys must want to kill
me.
”

“Hang on, she figured the whole thing out from the conversation you and I had?” Loreen asked dubiously. Maybe there was hope.

It was short-lived. Tiffany shook her head. “No, but we dropped our stuff, and everything in my purse went flying, and she picked
up my phone and took it with her. Then I guess she started getting calls.”

“How is that even possible?” Sandra asked. “You were logged in while you were in the grocery store talking to Loreen?”