Sprayed Stiff (8 page)

“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands, ready to give in.

“Besides which, the cops suspect Alexandra. It’s on the radio.”

“What?” I shouted, slamming the Miata door. Gingham curtains ruffled upstairs at the house catty-corner to mine across McCullough Avenue. Uh-oh. I’d woken Mama Tru, the quintessential nosy neighbor, who just so happened to be Trudy’s mother-in-law. She was probably wiggling into one of her infamous rainbow caftans right now as she hurried down the stairs. I lowered my voice as I marched to my kitchen door. “Lexa didn’t do it. And if they think she did, then I’m toast because it looks like I helped her cover it up.”

Trude pulled her eyebrows together in concern. She really couldn’t argue that point, which scared me, since she seemed bent on arguing me out of the situation at any cost. I guess I did look guilty from that perspective, even to someone biased in my favor. “Maybe the news guys got it wrong,” she offered weakly.

“No, they didn’t. Lexa is Scythe’s suspect numero uno.”

“But he’ll do anything to keep you out of it.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because you turn him on.”

“Torturing me turns him on. Tonight is a case in point.” I paused. “Zena Zolliope is the one who’s turning him on from the waist down and off from the neck up; otherwise he’d never put up with such a lame haircut.”

Trudy didn’t want to agree with me, but had to, with a noncommittal shrug. Then she grinned. “I wish I could be there on their next date, after he’s heard she’s threatened to mutilate him.”

The scenario played in both our heads and giggles turned into gales of laughter as Trudy let us into the kitchen with her keys, since mine were in my purse in my truck parked behind the Barristers’ servants’ entrance. Trudy put her keys on the table. I waved at the girls, who were begging with whines and yips to come in. I was starving as usual, so I made a beeline to my refrigerator. I swallowed a shriek when I opened it and glimpsed the back wall of the Frigidaire. I thought for a moment someone had robbed me of half its contents. It was traditionally full to bursting. One never knew when one might need something, and I despised being halfway through a recipe only to have to go to the store for a missing ingredient.

“You were cleaning it out, remember?” Trudy dead-panned, reading my panicked expression.

“Oh, right.” Actually, the Brie in the trash can should have been reminder enough; it was stinking to high heaven. I tied up the bag and hauled it out to the big can in the alley, three hopeful dogs at my heels. I let myself out the gate and lifted off the trash can lid.

That’s when a figure lunged out of the early dawn shadows, blocking any hope of a swift retreat. I screamed, swung the metal lid reflexively, and then dropped it, sending my Labs baying until no one was left sleeping on Magnolia that morning.

I
T TOOK ME HALFWAY
into my fifth sopapilla before my heart rate returned to normal. Mama Tru had offered to make my favorite food in the world to make up for scaring me half to death in the alley. I had agreed to eat them to make up for the bump I’d put on her head by beaning her with the trash can lid. The fried sweet tortillas dripping with honey were more than worth my fright. Once I’d rationalized that all that blood pumping surely increased my metabolism enough to burn off an extra sopapilla, I reached for a sixth.

“Wilma was such a
jefe fuerte.
I could see how she might make someone mad,” Mama said, pausing to lick honey off her fingertips. “She took no bull, demanded more than people’s best, and expected miracles.”

“All for a good cause,” I offered diplomatically.

“I think that was her cover. You can abuse if you do it for the right reasons, no?”

“The means justify the ends,” Trudy added, nibbling on her second sopapilla.

“Sí.
It was her argument often, as well as that of those who supported her,” Mama added.

“Who were those who supported her?” I asked, listening carefully now. Esmeralda Tru was nothing if not the best gossip west of the Brazos River. If anyone in San Antonio even thought something, Mama Tru had heard it.

Mama stood to refill her coffee cup with some freshly ground Kona roast as she answered. “Foundation chairs, nonprofit managers, boards of directors—anyone who benefited from her hardhanded tactics and was above being recruited into the trenches. Now, those girls, they despised her.”

“Maybe they were just jealous of her power, her money.”

Mama emitted a “humph.” Trudy sipped her coffee. “Maybe.”

“Who are they, the ones who hated her?”

Trudy looked into the depths of her cup. “Library volunteers, hospital candy stripers, animal shelter dog walkers…”

“Junior Leaguers,” Mama added into Trudy’s silence. Trude flashed her a warning look. What the hell was that all about?

“I knew Wilma was a bigwig in the Junior League, but I thought it was just another in a long list of projects.”

“Oh, no. It was her pet project,” Mama Tru clarified, sliding Trudy a look as she did so.

Trudy was definitely squirming. I raised my eyebrows, and she reluctantly elaborated on Mama’s statement. “Wilma Barrister held the record for being an active member of the Junior League of San Antonio for the most number of years.”

I narrowed my eyes but continued the line of questioning. “I don’t get it. I know women a lot older than Wilma was who surely joined long before she did and are still in the Junior League.”

Trudy looked deeply into her now-empty coffee cup again. As she watched her, Mama Tru’s face screwed up in apology. What was she sorry for? I let the silence drag on until Trudy finally felt compelled to fill it. “They would be sustainers. All members of the Junior League have to go through a probationary year where they learn the ropes and make sure they are committed; then the ten years following that they are required to do active community service. After that period, they can go ‘sustainer,’ which means they pay dues, donate items or cash to the rummage sale, and buy tickets to other fund-raisers, but they don’t have to donate their time anymore. Wilma, she never went that route; she maintained her active status from the age of twenty-one until the day she died. Other sustainers donate time, but of their free will. Wilma still held to the active requirements. We never could believe it.”

“Who is ‘we’?” I jumped on the slip. Mama cringed.

Trudy blushed and stammered. I’d never seen that happen to my smooth-tongued friend, not ever. “Well, uh…”

“Oh,
Dios mío,
Trudy.” Mama put her cup down too hard on the table. “She’s onto you now. Might as well tell her.”

I stared at my best friend, stunned. I couldn’t believe it. “You were in the Junior League,” I intoned.

She stared back, acutely embarrassed and vaguely guilty.

“Is
in the Junior League,” Mama corrected.

I’ve caught a boyfriend or two cheating on me, but this felt worse. Much worse. This was my girlfriend, my best friend, a woman I thought I knew. To find out she was a member of a group I thought was nothing but a bunch of shallow social climbers masquerading as do-gooders seemed the ultimate betrayal. Knowing her upbringing as one of three daughters of an old-money San Antonio family, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Her mother, Daffy Richardson, a nipped, tucked, and teased fiftysomething airhead if there ever was one, could be a poster child for the image I had of the typical Junior Leaguer. But I’d thought Trudy’s surprise marriage at eighteen to Mario Trujillo, an ordinary son of Mexican immigrants, marked a certain rebellious streak in Trudy that would defeat any further attempts at trying to get her to rise another rung. Guess I was wrong. I felt sick.

“How could you have been my friend for five years and not told me?”

“I really didn’t think about hiding it from you until Buffy Peters and Candy Streskoff started coming to you. You went on and on about how disgusted you were when they told you they had to join the Junior League to find the right middle-aged mom to impress so she’d take them home to meet her son. It made the whole thing sound like a twist on the archaic arranged marriage. Then when Zoe Severson told you she joined so her kids could get into a better private school, I knew there was no use trying to explain to you that some of us do it just to help the underprivileged in the community.”

“There are lots of opportunities to do that without the Junior League.”

“Ever heard of strength in numbers? It does make a difference.”

“Not when Buffy and Candy and Zoe are in the numbers.”

“Sometimes going to help the underprivileged helps change the perspective of the privileged doing the helping.”

“I bet that’s a line they make you rehearse until they release you from Junior League probation.”

“I wish I could think of a way to prove it to you.” Trudy’s green eyes flashed. She was angry, an emotion rare to her. The second time this morning I’d made her mad enough to spit. I was going for a record.

I’d been thinking about the resentment against Wilma in the ranks of the hypocritical socialites. What a great source of information about Wilma the Hun and her enemies! Maybe I could use Trudy’s crusade mentality to my advantage in ferreting out the real killer. “Okay. Take me to a Junior League function. Let me mingle and be enlightened.”

Mama Tru nearly choked on her last sip of coffee, spewing it across the table. I ducked, and it sprayed the window. Guess my capitulation surprised her.

But my best pal was no pushover. “I’m onto you, Reyn. You just want to go nose around in Wilma’s affairs. Maybe you’ll learn we’re not all social-climbing creeps in the Junior League. Here’s the deal. Today is the deadline for nominating new members. I’ll nominate you and get Charlotte Holmes to sign on for the second sponsor, and my mom can be your sustainer sponsor. We can go to the new-member mixer tonight.”

Whoa. The vision of me dressed to the nines with Trudy’s mom, Daffy, at my elbow was more than I could take. What a nightmare. “Hold on a minute, Trudy. How about you just have a little party with a bunch of your Junior Leaguer friends, and I can get the skinny there?”

“It wouldn’t help you investigate Wilma’s murder,” Trudy said lightly. “I’m a little fish in that big pond. Wilma and I didn’t move in the same circles in the JLSA.”

Sneaky little rat. I had no way of disproving that. “But I don’t want to be a member.”

“It’s not like you’re signing up for the Marines. You can decide you don’t want to join anytime in the process, and they won’t rip off your right arm.”

“Unless it’s wearing a David Yerman bracelet they covet,” Mama Tru chimed in, answering her daughter-in-law’s glare with an unapologetic grin and chuckle. “It was just a joke, my dear.”

Trudy looked thoughtful for a moment. “Of course, Reyn, a withdrawal is not without its drawbacks. It would make it more difficult for you, if you ever did decide to join the Junior League again.”

She read my look and shrugged. “Okay, so that’s not an issue. Let’s get busy, then.”

We all have moments we aren’t proud of. For some reason, I think I have more of those moments than other people my age. Maybe there is a big universal embarrassment bank in the Grand Scheme of Things and once our account gets full, we don’t have any more of these moments. That way I could be a really cool old lady who did nothing but the perfect thing, admired by all. Maybe, but I doubted it.

As I looked in the mirror in bathroom number four-hundred-fifty-two of the Hanson luxury compound, I hoped I would never have to live this down. Trudy’s legs were too long, her boobs too big, and her hips too small for me to borrow any of her clothes. Daffy, unfortunately, was more my size, although everything was still too big across the chest. Her closet was full of only this season’s hottest fashions and nothing else. None of it was practical in any way and most of it was horrid. She made a big deal about her generosity in allowing me to wear her latest purchase from London—a suit in a color that had no name and was impossible to describe. Think cat barf after a garbage-can raid behind the nearest Thai restaurant, and you might be close. It was a lumpy, tweedy thing the texture of barf, too. It was trimmed in real raccoon fur and the fur went around the bodice, so I looked like the raccoon was hugging me. Did I mention the fur was tinted aqua and fuchsia so you could still see the ghost raccoon stripes? Daffy’s Manolo Blahnik fuchsia leather pumps with clear Plexiglas three-inch heels had clear windows at the tips that showed my white squished-together unpainted toenails. The final insult was that my Meg Ryan messy cut had to be “toned down.” Trudy said I would stick out like a sore thumb, so she suggested a flipped-out bob that half the zip code was wearing now. Trudy stuck a jeweled barrette in above my left ear.

As I futilely patted down the fur that tickled my chin and prayed no PETA member would be attending the mixer, I realized that I not only clashed with myself, I clashed with the peacock-feather–looking wallpaper. With a sigh, I turned on the peacock-tail–shaped spigot at the sink and picked up the peacock-molded soap to wash my hands. I dried my hands on (you guessed it) a peacock-embroidered towel and steeled myself for going out in public. I’d escaped to the bathroom as soon as we walked in the door. Now I couldn’t put it off any longer.

“Reyn!” Trudy hissed through the door. “Get out here right now.”

“I’m primping.”

“Save it for someone who’ll buy it. You’ve never primped in your life.”

True. I hated when she was right. I emerged. “How did you find me?”

“I’ve checked at least a dozen bathrooms. I figured you’d gone into hiding.”

“Hiding? Why is she hiding? Isn’t this fun? I’m having so much fun. And I know you are, too.” Charlotte Holmes stopped to take a breath, which was always the best time to stop her incessant flow of chatter.

“Yes, Charlotte,” I interjected quickly. “I’m having more fun than I can stand.”

“Let’s get you back to the action, then.” Trudy led the way back down the hall.

“It’s going to be so cool to have you in the League, Reyn,” Charlotte began before we could take two steps toward the cavernous sunroom that opened into the gardens where most of the platters of hors d’oeuvres and fruit lay. “We’ll do our community service together.”

As we wound our way through the assembled group, it seemed half the women were already drunk, while the other half were either pregnant or nursing and held tight to virgin mint juleps. I was so overwhelmed that I was ready for an IV line of Chardonnay. I stopped myself from reaching for one of the glasses being circulated by the tuxedo-clad caterers because I wanted to stay sharp while I got the dirt on Wilma.

Charlotte hadn’t stopped talking, but that was her way. In the two years since she’d started coming to me to get her brunet curls trimmed, I’d mastered the art of listening to her on two planes. I could take in only certain words, enough to provide a believable answer, which freed me up to think of other things. Charlotte had a heart of gold and an unenviable life as the daughter of filthy rich, emotionally absent parents. I’d heard all about the nannies who’d raised her and even met the one the Holmeses kept on the payroll even though Charlotte was well into her twenties. She arrived to her appointments at Transformations in a chauffered white Mercedes. When I’d asked what the special occasion was, Charlotte looked at me like I’d spoken Chinese. Finally, she explained she had a driver because her parents considered it “too dangerous” out on the road for her ever to be behind the wheel. She was book-smart, having graduated from the top private school in San Antonio two years early as a CPA, but had been taught absolutely no common sense, which, personally, I considered more dangerous than driving.

“So, do you want to, Reyn?” Charlotte popped an orange-glazed cookie in her mouth. She was a hundred pounds overweight because when she didn’t have anyone around to talk to, she ate. “Huh? What do you think about that?” She snatched a petit four off a passing tray and swallowed it without visibly chewing. “I think that would be the perfect place for you to meet new people.”

“I’m sorry, Charlotte, what did you say?”