Wiped Out (9 page)

June had said that both Rita and Sally were jealous of Mimi, but after listening to Sally, it appeared that Sally was really more jealous of June's friendship with Mimi than anything else. After all, Sally had said she'd wanted to be friends with Mimi, and evidently Mimi had rejected her attempts at friendship. Or was there something else going on, something to do with Gordon? Maybe, as Sally had pointed out, Mimi was jealous of Sally and Gordon's past friendship.

Charlotte shook her head. It was just plain too hot to even think straight, and in spite of the air conditioner running full blast, the van was still stifling.

By the time Charlotte turned onto Milan, she was drenched in sweat. As she approached her driveway, her heart sank when she caught sight of the red Dodge Neon parked in front of her house.

“Nooooo,” she groaned. For a split second, she was tempted to not even stop, tempted to just keep on driving. “Why me?” she complained, as she pulled into the driveway. “And why today of all days?”

C
harlotte loved her sister. She really did. Any other time, she would have been delighted with a visit from Madeline. She grimaced as she applied the brakes. Well, not exactly delighted. Maybe pleased was a more appropriate word, she decided. But not today.

Now be nice, Charlotte.

“Okay, okay,” she grumbled, as she turned into her driveway. To give Madeline credit, she had come a long way over the past few months, and the change in her had been for the better. Though Madeline and her new daughter-in-law, Nadia, had gotten off to a rocky beginning, they'd well made up for it since.

Slowly but surely, mostly due to Nadia's little son, Davy, Charlotte suspected, Madeline had been learning to give instead of take, to be more selfless instead of selfish. Madeline simply adored her new little step-grandson and was eagerly anticipating the little granddaughter due to be born at the end of September.

But despite the change in Madeline, Charlotte still couldn't bring herself to completely trust her sister's turnaround. “Old habits die hard,” she murmured, as she switched off the engine. Once trust had been betrayed, it was almost impossible to give it again, and Madeline had betrayed Charlotte's trust one too many times in the past.

Charlotte climbed out of the van and trudged up the steps to her front door. Though she hated thinking the worst, usually the only time that Maddie came by for a visit was when she wanted something. So what did she want this time? Charlotte wondered.

“Where on earth have you been?” Madeline asked the minute Charlotte stepped inside the front door. Without giving Charlotte time to answer, Madeline plowed right on ahead. “I've been waiting for over an hour,” she complained. “Good thing you keep that extra key under that silly ceramic frog in the flower bed, or else I'd have already had a heat stroke. Why, on the way over here I heard on the radio that the heat index was one hundred one degrees this afternoon.”

Madeline, looking cool and relaxed with a glass of iced tea in her hand, was lounging on the sofa, and Charlotte, still damp and sticky with sweat, found it hard to be sympathetic.

“Nice to see you too, Maddie,” she drawled. “For the record, I've been working.” As she slipped out of her shoes and stepped into her moccasins, out of habit she glanced over to the window. When it registered that Sweety Boy and his cage were missing, she rounded on Madeline. “What have you done with Sweety Boy?”

“Now, Charlotte, don't get upset. He's just fine. Besides, you know that bird doesn't like me. Why, he was squawking and thrashing about in his cage like a wild thing. I tried covering the cage, but he still didn't stop, so I moved him back there in the bedroom.” She motioned toward the bedrooms.

“How long ago was that?”

“About a half an hour or so.”

“And have you checked on him since?”

“No.” Madeline shrugged as if Charlotte's concerns were no big deal. “Seeing me would probably just agitate him all over again. Besides, I figured he'd be okay once he was by himself back there.”

Charlotte held her tongue and silently counted to ten, then did an about-face and marched off toward the bedroom. Even before she opened the door, though, she could hear the little parakeet's pitiful squawks. At least the cage wasn't rattling, which meant he'd stopped his battering-ram mode.

Charlotte entered the bedroom and closed the door behind her. “It's okay, Sweety,” she crooned, as she walked to the cage and knelt down beside it. “There, there, now. Sweety Boy's a pretty boy.” Almost the second that she lifted the corner of the cover, he grew quiet.

On the floor of the cage were several loose feathers, he must have lost from thrashing around. But other than looking a bit ruffled, the little bird didn't appear to be any the worse for wear.

Charlotte stuck her finger in between the wires, and he immediately sidled over along the perch for her to rub the back of his head. “Yeah, there, there, that's my good little bird.”

Once she was finally reassured that he was okay, she stood up. With one last look at the little parakeet and a sigh, she turned and trudged back to the living room.

“Was there something you wanted in particular, Maddie?” she asked, as she entered the room. “Or did you just drop by to terrorize my bird?”

“Well, gee, thanks a lot, Charlotte. And aren't we in a good mood.”

Charlotte shook her head. “Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. It's just that I'm hot and I'm tired. It's been a long day—a long week, for that matter.” Charlotte frowned as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “Speaking of a long day, why aren't you at work?” She narrowed her eyes. “Please tell me that you didn't get fired.”

Madeline rolled her eyes. “No, Charlotte. I didn't get fired. For your information, I took half a day off. I figured I deserved it after all of the overtime I've been putting in lately. Now, if you're through interrogating me, why don't you just sit down, put your feet up, and relax, and I'll get you a glass of tea.”

“Sounds heavenly,” Charlotte told her, but even as she said the words, she couldn't help being suspicious of Madeline's motives. As Madeline rose, Charlotte collapsed onto the sofa.

“By the way,” Madeline said, pausing near the door leading to the kitchen, “where is Louis off to these days?” She motioned toward a stack of mail on the small table near the front door. “That's quite a pile of mail over there that he's accumulated.”

Louis Thibodeaux was a retired New Orleans police detective who rented the other half of Charlotte's double. Before he'd retired from the NOPD, he'd approached Charlotte about renting from her. He'd said he needed a place to stay, just until he finished building his retirement home on the North Shore. At the time, she'd had her doubts about the arrangement working.

Another of her clients had been murdered, and she and Louis had clashed big time during the investigation. Since Louis was her niece's partner at the time, she'd given in and rented to him. But once he'd finished building his house, he'd changed his mind about moving and decided to stay in New Orleans instead. When he'd asked if he could keep renting from her for a while longer until he found a house to buy in the city, she'd had even more doubts. By that time, though, her doubts were mostly due to her own growing personal feelings for him.

To her surprise, the arrangement had worked out, especially since he had been working for J.T.M. Security and had to travel a lot. And, unlike a former tenant she'd had, Louis was reliable and prompt with his rental payments each month.

“Louis is in New York, Miss Nosy Rosie,” Charlotte told her sister. “And I honestly don't know when he's coming home. And why are you going through my mail anyway?”

Madeline shrugged. “I got bored waiting for you,” she said. “But too bad about him being gone so much. With all of the crime in the city, it has to be a comfort to know that an ex-cop is your neighbor.” She waggled her eyebrows. “And such a cute one at that, especially if you're the type who likes older men,” she added with a giggle. “Of course you're older too, aren't you?”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Thanks a lot. Just what I needed, to be reminded of how old I am. That's okay, though. Your time's coming, missy. Just remember, you're only a few years behind me. Now—where's that tea you said you were getting for me?”

Madeline laughed. “Okay, okay, but you're not getting any younger,” she teased, “and eligible men your age don't grow on trees. At least not the good ones,” she added.

“Enough already! The tea, Maddie!”

“Okay, okay, I'm going.”

“And next time, don't be going through my stuff.”

With a saucy grin, Madeline turned and disappeared through the doorway.

Charlotte groaned from exhaustion, propped her feet up on the coffee table, then leaned her head back against the sofa. It was bad enough that she had to endure teasing from Judith about Louis, but now Madeline was doing it too. “Like mother, like daughter,” she muttered. And once they got started with their teasing, they didn't seem to know when to quit. Time for a change of subject, she decided.

“So what's up, Maddie?” Charlotte called out, settling farther down into the sofa.

“Be there in a minute,” Madeline answered. When she returned with the promised glass of tea, she handed it to Charlotte, then plopped down beside her. After a moment, she finally said, “It's Nadia. I'm worried about her.”

“How come?” Charlotte took a long drink of the tea.

“For one thing she's still working. As you well know,” Madeline added pointedly.

“Now, Maddie—”

“Don't ‘now, Maddie' me. All of that stooping and scrubbing and stuff can't be that good for her or for the baby. She's got dark circles around her eyes, Charlotte, and she can't even sit still a minute without nodding off to sleep. Why on earth she insisted on continuing to work is beyond me. It surely can't be the money. My son's an attorney, for crying out loud. He makes plenty to support them.”

Charlotte sighed. “It's not the money, Maddie. It's just that Nadia is still a bit insecure plus she has a lot of pride. The last thing she wants is for anyone to think that she married Daniel for his money.”

“Why, who on earth would believe such a thing, and even if they did, who cares? It's nobody's business and—” Madeline suddenly stopped in midsentence. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “It's because of me, isn't it? Because of all those awful things I said when Daniel first told us they had run off and gotten married.”

“That's part of it,” Charlotte acknowledged. “But, like I said, Nadia has her pride.”

Madeline waved a dismissing hand. “Pride, smide—that's just plain silly. And dangerous,” she added. “Besides, what's that old saying? Something about pride coming before a fall?”

“So what's your point, Maddie?”

“The point is that the girl needs to stop working. I want you to fire her.”

Charlotte heaved a sigh. “Now you know good and well that I can't do that.” She shook her head emphatically. “I won't do it.”

“You could too do it, if you wanted to. You're just being stubborn.”

“No, I'm not ‘just being stubborn,' not this time,” Charlotte snapped. “Read my lips, Maddie. Nadia is a grown woman, perfectly capable of running her own life without any interference from me. Or you,” she stressed.

“Okay, okay. No need to get your panties all in a wad. And don't look at me like that.”

“That's a disgusting phrase.”

“Yeah, well, sorry, but Charlotte, if you won't fire her, at least talk to her. Please? She'll listen to you.”

As if I don't have enough to do already, Charlotte thought to herself. “I do plan to talk to her,” she finally conceded grudgingly. “But not to insist that she stop working,” she quickly added. “Only to let her know that when she's ready to stop, I have someone who's agreed to take her place.”

“Well, why the devil didn't you say so in the first place?”

“Because, it's none of your business, Maddie. Get it? None-of-your-business.”

 

On Friday morning Charlotte awakened to thunder and the sound of pounding rain. “Not again,” she groaned, as she rolled out of bed.

The moment that her feet hit the floor, a sudden thought struck her. She'd missed the weather forecast last night and she hadn't bothered to stop at the store on her way home to stock up on hurricane supplies.

Madeline had hung around until dinnertime, and since neither one of them had felt like cooking, Charlotte had suggested that they order pizza. It had been nearly seven when Madeline had finally gone home. By then, Charlotte had been simply too tired to worry about the weather or anything else.

In the kitchen, Charlotte turned on the coffeepot; then, after a brief detour to uncover Sweety Boy's cage, she headed for the shower. By the time she'd showered and dressed, the coffee had brewed. With hopes of catching the weather forecast before it was time to go to work, she decided to drink her first cup in front of the television.

According to the weather forecasters, the tropical storm was finally on the move again, heading east-northeast. The storm was showing definite signs of strengthening, and the experts were predicting that it would obtain a category three hurricane status before it made landfall. The projected path put it coming ashore around Mobile, Alabama, sometime early Saturday morning, but since New Orleans would be on the west side of the huge system until it moved farther east, the city would receive a soaking just the same from the outer bands of rain.

With a sigh of relief laced with a dash of sympathy for the people living in Mobile, Charlotte switched off the TV and took her empty coffee cup to the kitchen. If the forecasters were right and the storm did hit Mobile, New Orleans would once again dodge the bullet.

For as long as Charlotte could remember, there had been dire predictions that a direct hit by a hurricane could wipe out New Orleans. The city was below sea level and located in a giant bowl that was surrounded by Lake Pontchartrain, the Mississippi River, and farther to the southeast, the Gulf of Mexico. The only real protection that the city had against flooding was its huge pumping system. In a normal downpour, the pumps worked just fine, but everyone knew that there was no way the pumps would be able to keep up with the amount of water that a direct hit from a major hurricane could produce.

But this wasn't a major hurricane—not yet. All the same, Charlotte decided that she still needed to stock up on supplies, just in case. Maybe she'd have time to pick up a few things after work, if there was anything left in the stores by then.

 

Though the streets weren't flooded yet, they were already beginning to hold water, and the drive to the Adams's house was slow and tedious.