Crazy for You (6 page)

—Maguire’s Maxims

Mitch walked me out to my car. He was a nice guy—a former linebacker whose fearsome appearance hid a heart of purest marshmallow. He’d actually blushed when Rhonda mentioned the body cavity search, and to my relief, hadn’t taken it seriously.

After Mitch left, I just sat there in Pig, humiliated, wallowing in self-pity. I was jobless and broke, I was never going to get the pay I was owed, I’d be doing the Alpo diet—and I’d be eating it in the dark, because I wouldn’t be able to pay my utility bills. Not only that, but Ben Labeck had never tried to get in touch with me after the party. So much for wanting to talk, the rotten louse! Ben Labeck sucked. My car sucked. My entire life sucked!

The car’s heater didn’t work and my breath was fogging up the windows. I was freezing in my sweatshirt because my coat was still at Rhonda’s house. I’d have to buy a new coat. Even the Army Surplus Store was out of my price range now; I’d have to shop at Goodwill, where you could buy a used coat for ten dollars, if you didn’t mind shades like turnip yellow and you weren’t allergic to the smell of Lysol.

There are times in your life when you need to take matters into your own hands, and I decided this was one of them. Swinging the car around, I drove the few blocks over to Rhonda’s neighborhood and cruised slowly past her house, the criminal segment of my brain noting that Rhonda’s garage door still wasn’t closed all the way. Time to commence Operation Pea Coat Rescue, a caper that would require all the Breaking and Entering 101 skills I’d acquired in the hoosegow.

Since I didn’t want Rhonda’s neighbors seeing me pull in to her driveway, I drove around the block to Pettigrew Avenue, which ran behind Rhonda’s street. I parked in front of a modest ranch house with a For Sale sign hanging out front. A wide swath of
lawn stretched between the ranch house and the Cromwell house, with no fence between. I’d just nip across the lot and slip into Rhonda’s house through her garage, I decided; in and out in ninety seconds. Unless, of course, her security system was locked and loaded, in which case it was Abort Mission and back to the Lysol coats.

The For Sale house needed a face-lift. Its paint was chipped, its shutters were missing panels, and its driveway was cracked; they’d have to sell this one as a fixer-upper. Letting myself out of the car, I waded through drifts of unraked leaves, skulked around the side of the house, and beelined toward the Cromwell property.

“What do you think you’re doing?” someone called from behind me.

I whipped around so fast I nearly fractured my neck. A woman was standing in the shadows, aiming something large and bazooka-shaped at me.

She squinted at me. “You’re the girl from the party.”

I recognized her, too—this was the woman who’d tried to burn down Rhonda’s house Saturday night. She was holding a leaf blower and she had me dead to rights.

“Sorry,” I said, slowly backtracking. “I was just taking a shortcut.”

“Did you know your cheek is bleeding?”

“What?” My hand flew to my face.

“I could get you something for that,” she said, moving toward me.

“No—that’s okay.” I took another backward step.

The woman lowered the leaf blower. “Oh, relax, for crap’s sake. I’m not going to attack you. I don’t always go around setting stuff on fire.”

“Sure,” I said, keeping a wary eye on the leaf blower, in case it turned out to be a flamethrower.

“Did I throw charcoal starter at you and threaten to barbecue you Saturday night?”

“Sort of.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. People are always setting me on fire.”

“I was shit-faced. I know it’s not a good excuse, but it’s all I got.” She flung down the leaf blower and stuck out her hand. “I’m Fran Schnabble, in case you didn’t read my name in the newspaper.”

“Mazie Maguire.” I took her hand and shook it. “You’ve probably read my name in the papers, too.”

“Oh, you’re that lady who—”

“Murdered my husband,” I said, helpfully. “Except I didn’t do it.”

“Well, I guess I’m notorious now, too. The police tracked me down Saturday night. Tossed my drunken ass in a squad car, hauled me to the Brookwood PD, and booked me. It was the most humiliating thing I ever experienced. At least my kids were at my ex’s so they didn’t have to witness their mommy being dragged off to the pokey.”

Sober, Fran was cute. Probably in her early forties, with chipmunk cheeks, wavy sand-colored hair, and protuberant brown eyes that made her look perpetually alarmed. She wore a quilted green jacket with frayed cuffs, a moth-eaten plaid scarf, and small rectangular glasses smeared with fingerprints. “I sat in a dirty, stinking cell for five hours,” she said. “You have no idea how awful jail is.”

She looked at me and flushed. “Well, yeah, I guess you
do
know. My mother had to come down to the station and bail me out. My face was all over TV and the newspapers. They were calling me the deranged arsonist. All I did was start a bonfire without a permit, for cripe’s sake! But now they’re charging me with criminal damage to property, arson, malicious mischief, and every other damn thing they can think of.”

Fran gestured around the lawn. “I’ll probably have to move away and change my name. Only I’ll never find a buyer for the house, because it’s falling apart. I’m trying to whip the lawn into shape, but this stinking leaf blower is good for shit. Plus it’s supposed to snow, and I have to get the patio furniture covered.”

“Want some help?” It was an impulsive offer, because I was aware of the shrinking window of opportunity for getting into Rhonda’s house, but I found myself fascinated by Fran’s soap-opera life. By comparison, my own problems were shoestring potatoes.

“Help, as in psychiatric help?” Fran gave a brittle laugh “Hell, yes. But since I can’t afford it, I’ll settle for someone willing to wipe off bird shit.”

Fran handed me a wet rag and I began swiping gunk off the patio furniture. There was a glass-topped table with a faded sunbrella, four wrought-iron chairs, and a chaise lounge, everything old and beat up. Fran disappeared into the garage for a minute and
came out lugging a roll of vinyl tarp cloth.

“Jerry—my husband—always took care of the lawn stuff, but I kicked his sorry butt out when I found out he was doing the horizontal mambo with the slut next door. Know what really fries my gourd? As soon as Rhonda had my dumb schlub of a hubby in her power, she tossed him to the curb. Said he was too old for her. Rhonda likes ’em when they’re barely old enough to shave.”

Fran ripped off a long sheet of vinyl tarp. “So now we’re going through a divorce that’s going to leave both of us penniless, I’m losing my house, I’m fighting for custody of my kids—and it’s all because of that evil, bloodsucking witch over there.”

Don’t delay; burn a witch today: directives from the Fran Schnabble book of justice.

Standing across from each other, we flapped the tarp over the chaise lounge as though making a bed. The chaise was plastic rattan over a steel framework, the cushions a faded floral. I held the edges in place while Fran wound stretchy cord around the legs.

“You know the only thing that helps, Mazie?”

“Your kids?”

“Nah. Booze. Thank God for Svedka.”

“Vodka?”

“Damn right. Only nine bucks a bottle at Costco. So Svedka and me get a little too friendly Saturday night. The kids are over at Jerry’s, I’m stuck alone in this dump while Rhonda’s throwing a party, and I start thinking how much fun it would be to—”

“Mo-om!”

A boy of about eight appeared at Rhonda’s back door. “Caleb’s hitting me with the potato masher!”

Muttering a swear word, Fran dropped the tarp and hurried into her house.

I seized the opportunity to make my escape, scuttling across the lawn toward the Cromwell house, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw that it was still dark and the driveway was empty. Hoisting the garage door up just far enough to wriggle through the opening at the bottom, I crawled inside, groping my way in the dark past snowblowers, riding mowers, motorcycles, and other pricey toys. No wonder Rhonda couldn’t fit her car in here!

One stubbed toe later, I found the door that led into the house. Holding my breath, I turned the knob. The door opened; no alarm sounded. I let out my breath and moved cautiously into the kitchen, not wanting to turn on the lights. I waited until my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, then crept into the living room, the front hallway, and the foyer. I opened the coat closet.

Rhonda’s perfume whooshed out at me in a choking cloud, evoking her presence so powerfully I expected it to bark out “Maguire, in my office!” Hastily, I shuffled through Rhonda’s jam-packed coats, guessing what they were by their texture. Camel’s hair, Persian lamb, mink, something that felt like bat skin … where was
my
coat? Finally, I found it, incubating a clutch of boots on the closet floor. Brushing off the dust bunnies, I pulled it on, reveling in its wooly warmth. My hard-earned waiter money was still in the pocket, nearly a hundred dollars. No Alpo for me tonight—I could splurge on peanut butter!

I was just backing out of the closet, planning to let myself out through the side door rather than wade through the garage junk again, when I heard a sound that froze my blood. A key was turning in the front door!

I stood rooted to the spot. Should I dive back into the closet? No—Rhonda would see me when she hung her coat. No place to hide—the foyer was a wide-open space with views of the whole first floor. A woman who hated my guts was about to walk in, discover that I’d broken into her house, and take enormous pleasure in turning me over to the police.

I was going to go back to jail.

Chapter Eight

Whoever said spiders are more afraid of you than you are of them is crazy. Why should a creature with eight hairy legs, four pairs of eyes, a sack of venom, and fangs be afraid of you?

—Maguire’s Maxims

I hurled myself into the living room and dived beneath a library table a split second before Rhonda strode into the room. She was laughing, a coquettish gurgle that set my teeth on edge. “It’ll just take me a minute to change, and then we can go,” she said to the person with her. She snapped on the lights.

“Don’t bother changing, you’re fine,” rumbled a male voice.

Ben Labeck’s voice!

I crammed myself farther beneath the table, a beautiful, old mahogany piece, its legs carved with twining fruits and vines, but I was hardly in the mood to appreciate its artistic merits. As a hiding place, the table stank. If anyone sat down on the sofa opposite the table, I was going to be the elephant in the room.

“I want to look really nice for you, hot stuff. Come on up to my room. We can talk while I change, okay? I’ll even let you zip me.”

Come in to my parlor, said the spider to the fly…

As if on cue, a spider the size of a baseball descended from the top of the table and dangled on a thread in front of my eyes. Emitting a piercing mental scream, I squeezed myself as far against the wall as a human backbone could scrunch.

Labeck cleared his throat. “We should get going.”

“Aww, is him all embarrassed?” Rhonda used a pouty little-girl voice that made me want to ralph up my lunch.

I could see the bottom halves of their bodies. Labeck was wearing jeans and his
ugly lace-up leather shoes that repelled snow, rain, and mud, and in a pinch could deliver a swift, disabling kick. Rhonda was facing him, still wearing her suede Band-Aid of a skirt and the dominatrix boots.

“I just love your nose, Ben,” Rhonda cooed. “It’s all bashed in like the ones in those Greek statues.”

“It got in the way of a hockey puck.”

“Ooh, hockey! I love athletes. They have such stamina. Come on, sit down, don’t be in such a hurry.”

She practically wrestled him onto the sofa. I was in trouble here. All Rhonda had to do was look up and she’d spot me. Fortunately, she was too wrapped up in Labeck at the moment to notice anything. She was all over him, like dog slobber. She stuck her tongue in his ear.
Oh, retch!

Finally they broke apart. “Why don’t we have drinks?” Rhonda asked. “What would you like?”

There was a panicky tone in Labeck’s voice. “The idea was we go out. I’m taking you to dinner, remember?”

The spider lunged at me. Stifling a gasp of horror, I shrank away from it. No, wait—it wasn’t actually attacking me; it was swinging itself onto one of the table legs. Then it pendulummed to the other leg. It was building a web! I was going to be trapped here, inside the lair of Shelob!

Rhonda spoke in a husky, midnight-at-the-cocktail-lounge voice. “I want you to know that I am not a lady, Ben. I don’t expect to be wooed. I know what I want and I go after it, no holds barred. Nothing is off limits,
nothing
.”

Don’t be subtle, Rhonda! Why don’t you just snap his jockstrap!

If I hadn’t been so terrified that I was about to be cocooned into spider food, I would have laughed. Poor Labeck. Two powerful forces were fighting each other here: his hormones were flashing on free, no-strings sex, while his brain was telling him that there was no free, no-strings anything with women.

Men are always complaining that women are too picky. That’s because women have standards. In the back of our minds, we’re always evaluating a man’s potential as a mate. Could he support a family? Could he support me through twenty-four hours of
excruciating back labor? Would I want to have a kid who inherited those jug ears of his?

With guys, though, the standards are more like: Is she breathing? And even a no on that is not necessarily a deal breaker.

By craning my neck, taking care to stay out of spider-lunging range, I could see what was happening on the couch. Rhonda took Ben’s face in her hands and kissed him. The kiss went on for a long, long time. He put his hands on her waist. She put her hands everywhere. I squeezed my eyes shut. I took deep breaths. I put my head between my knees. I locked my hands together and knotted my ankles together, because if I didn’t, I was going to spring up out of my hiding place, spider or no spider, and haul Rhonda off him the way you tweezed ticks off a dog.