Ashleigh closed her notebook, looking expectantly at the others. “Well?”
Suzanne Beamon cleared her throat, and all heads turned to stare at her. She’d barely said a word since the group started, hadn’t even looked any of them in the eye yet.
“That’s an interesting metaphor for marriage, the thing about the expiration date,” Suzanne said. “I’m an English teacher,” she added apologetically.
“You’re really watching your husband’s new girlfriend?” Grace asked Ashleigh. “Isn’t that a little creepy?”
“Isn’t it actually stalking?” Camryn put in. “The judge finds out about that, he’s not gonna like it.”
“He won’t find out,” Ashleigh said. “What goes on in group, stays in group, right, Paula? Everything we say here is confidential, that’s what you told us.”
No answer.
Camryn got up and gently swiveled the therapist’s chair around so that it was now facing the group. Paula’s head rested at an awkward angle on her shoulder, her mouth was slack-jawed with a tiny thread of spittle trailing down her chin, but her eyes were closed.
“Passed out cold again!” Camryn stepped back so the others could see for themselves.
* * *
Suzanne knelt on the floor beside Paula Talbott-Sinclair and pressed two fingers lightly to the pulse point on her throat, relieved to find an even, steady beat. Her dark brown eyes were intent behind the tortoiseshell frames of her glasses.
“She’s not dead, thank heavens. So, what do we do now?” she asked, looking to the others for guidance. “Should we call somebody, make sure she gets home okay?”
“Who would we call?” Grace asked, looking around the office. “We don’t even know if she’s married. Or where she lives or anything else.”
Camryn walked to the desk in the corner, sat down, and boldly began searching through the desk drawers, a journalist to the last.
“Here’s her purse,” she said, drawing a small multicolored crocheted handbag from the bottom desk drawer.
Suzanne frowned. “Is that really necessary? It’s such an invasion of privacy.” She shuddered. “I’d hate for a bunch of strangers to go pawing through my purse.”
“We’re not strangers. We’re her ‘friends,’” Camryn said, making air quote marks. She unknotted the drawstring closure and pulled out a small leather billfold. She flipped it open to the driver’s license.
“According to this, she lives over on Anna Maria Island,” Camryn said, lifting one eyebrow. “Obviously, she spends her money on a mortgage, not on the rent on this dump.” She dumped the rest of the pocketbook’s contents on the desktop, taking inventory as she examined each object.
“Lipstick, just some cheap drugstore crap. Hand sanitizer. Car keys.” Camryn held up the key. “Big surprise, granola girl drives that VW Bug out front.” She put the key back in the bag. “Cell phone.”
She tapped the phone’s screen, looking, in vain, for a call history. “Cheap-ass phone, too,” she complained.
“Hello!” she said brightly, holding up a small brown plastic pill bottle. “Here’s something interesting.”
She squinted down at the tiny print on the bottle’s label. “Why do they make the writing so small? Melasophenol?”
Ashleigh snatched the bottle away. “Here, let me. I was married to a doctor.”
Camryn calmly reclaimed the pill bottle. “And I was married to a lawyer, but that doesn’t make me Perry Mason.” She opened the bottle and spilled two different colored capsules into the palm of her hand. “These are all that’s left. Sleeping pills, I bet.”
Ashleigh picked up one of the capsules. “Believe me, honey, they haven’t made a sleeping pill I haven’t sampled. Well, the label says melasophenol, which is a fairly mild tranquilizer, but this blue one here”—she held it up—“isn’t melassophenol, which is actually a pale yellow tablet.” She held up the other pill, which was pale yellow. “She’s mixing tranqs with something else. Which might be the reason she’s so out of it.”
She leaned over and lightly ran a finger down the sleeping therapist’s cheek. “Paula? Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?”
The woman didn’t stir, didn’t flinch.
“Clinically speaking, I’d say she’s out for the night,” Ashleigh concluded. “I say we blow this place. It’s so depressing, I’m tempted to borrow one of these babies. And I would, but I’ve got plenty better stuff at home.”
Grace wanted to leave as badly as anybody else. But. “You really think we should just leave her like this? I mean, what if she has like, respiratory failure or something? Or chokes on her vomit or something? You read about that with celebrities.”
“You want to take her home with you, be my guest,” Ashleigh said, heading for the door. “But I bet she won’t be happy when she wakes up and figures out you people went through her purse and dragged her out of her office, unconscious.”
Camryn hurriedly stuffed the pill bottle and the billfold back in the pocketbook. “She’s got a point, you guys,” she said. “Right now, I do not need to piss Paula off and get the judge pissed off at me.” She placed the purse back in the desk drawer and quietly closed it.
“I say we leave her like she is and just go. And I don’t know about you guys, but I could definitely use a drink. Who’s in?”
“A drink sounds fabulous,” Ashleigh said, nodding vigorously. “Grace? Wyatt?” At the last minute, she included the quietest member of the group. “Suzanne?”
“I wouldn’t mind a drink,” Grace admitted. “But let’s at least put her on the sofa in the reception area, make her comfortable. If she stays like this much longer, she’s going to have a hell of a headache when she finally wakes up.”
Without saying a word, Wyatt leaned down, scooped Paula into his arms, and carried her to the outer office. He set her carefully down on the sofa cushions, placing a pillow beneath her head. She snored loudly.
Ashleigh followed him out to the reception area, watching Wyatt with an appreciative eye. “Good work,” she purred. She sat down on the edge of the sofa and unceremoniously lifted one of Paula’s eyelids. The therapist did not stir.
“Out like a trout,” Ashleigh proclaimed. “Wyatt? What about that drink?”
“I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “My day starts pretty early. And I’ve got my son tonight.”
“It’s just barely eight,” Camryn said, coming up behind him. She turned to Grace. “What about you?”
Grace did not intend to spend any more time with these people than necessary. Still, a long night stretched before her. And she was getting sick of her own company.
“Tell you what,” she said, wondering if she’d lost her mind. “We can go to my mom’s bar. The Sandbox? Do you know it? Over in Cortez?”
“Cortez?” Ashleigh wrinkled her pretty little nose. “Isn’t that kind of a dive bar?”
“Exactly,” Grace said.
“Perfect,” Camryn said. “I love a dive bar. Let’s roll.” She turned to Suzanne. “Are you coming?”
“Well…” she said, her brow furrowed. “I told my daughter, Darby, I wouldn’t be late.”
“You won’t be,” Camryn said. “One drink. Think of it as group therapy.”
“I guess one wouldn’t hurt,” Suzanne said finally. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Cortez. Is it very far?”
“Ten minutes,” Camryn said. “I did a story over there a couple months ago. You can follow me. I’m in the white BMW sedan.”
“What do we do about locking up?” Grace asked, glancing around the room.
“Nothing,” Ashleigh declared. “What self-respecting thief would want any of this crap? Look, Paula will probably wake up in a couple hours and either sleep it off here or take herself on home. Either way, it’s her problem, not ours.”
15
It was a slow night at the Sandbox. Rochelle was seated on her stool behind the bar, halfheartedly watching
Dancing with the Stars
, when Grace walked in, followed by three women she’d never seen before.
Grace gestured toward a table in a darkened corner of the bar, and they all slid into the booth and gave her their drink orders.
“Margarita for me,” Ashleigh said. “On the rocks. No salt.”
“Vodka tonic, double lime,” Camryn said. “I don’t suppose you have Grey Goose?”
“Nope,” Grace said calmly.
“Stoli?”
“Nope. We’ve got any kind of vodka you want, as long as you want Smirnoff.” It was one of Butch’s favorite lame jokes, and Grace was surprised to hear herself using it.
“Suzanne?” Grace was also surprised that Suzanne Beamon had actually come along. She was seated at the far edge of the booth, anxiously checking out her surroundings, as though she’d never been in a bar before.
“Oh. Uh, just club soda, if you don’t mind.”
“Club soda?” Ashleigh gave Suzanne a playful tap on the shoulder. “Come on, Suzanne, chill out a little.”
Suzanne’s nose turned pink. “I have to drive home tonight, and I live over in Bradenton. I don’t dare risk giving my ex any more ammunition with which to torture me.”
“Good point,” Grace agreed. “Be right back.”
Rochelle raised an eyebrow as Grace approached where she was seated.
“My divorce recovery group. Paula passed out again, halfway through the session, so we decided to come over here for a drink.”
“Interesting,” Rochelle said, looking over her daughter’s head at the group arrayed around the table. “Didn’t you tell me there’s a guy in your group? Where’s he?”
“At home with his little boy,” Grace said. “Just us girls tonight.”
* * *
The drinks came. Ashleigh took a long sip of her margarita. “So … who’s going to go first?”
“First with what?” Grace asked.
“You know. The dish. What really happened with all of y’all’s marriages. How everybody ended up in ‘divorce recovery’ with all of us outlaws.”
“It’s not that interesting,” Suzanne said, her voice low. “We were betrayed. End of story.”
“Oh, I disagree,” Camryn said quickly. “Grace, for example, has a fascinating story.”
“You should know,” Grace put in. “Anyway, everybody already knows what I did and how I ended up as one of Paula’s people. Everybody in Florida knows, thanks to you, ‘girlfriend.’”
“Not me,” Suzanne said. When the others voiced their disbelief, she added. “I don’t watch much television. Anyway … I guess I’ve been caught up in my own drama.”
“Come on, tell it,” Ashleigh urged Grace. “We want to hear your side of the story.”
* * *
Grace gave a condensed version of the swimming pool story. “Afterwards, when I was driving over here, thinking about it, I couldn’t believe that was me. Grace Stanton? Well, Davenport, now. I didn’t plan to do it. I’m not a person who acts out like that. But I guess you never know what you’re capable of until you’re put in a situation like that.”
Camryn snorted. “It was just a car. And you know he had insurance on the damned thing. As for planning something? Oh, hell yeah, I’m big on planning. Especially when it comes to that kind of thing. You know that quote, ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’? I am all about that.”
Suzanne leaned across the table. The small candle lit her face, giving it a greenish glow. “Did you catch your husband and that girl?”
Camryn’s expression changed, hardened. “No. And that’s what makes this whole thing so nasty. Our daughter, Jana, caught her daddy, in bed, with her best friend and roommate.”
“Oh no.” Suzanne looked sickened.
The other women at the table were silent.
“Awful,” Suzanne mumbled.
Grace blotted the tabletop with a paper napkin. “Did you confront him?”
“Oh yes.”
“Did he admit it?”
Camryn shrugged. “What was he gonna do, call his baby girl a liar? And then I found that little DVD of his.”
She turned to Grace, rattling the ice cubes in her now-drained glass. “You think I could get another one of these?”
Grace turned toward the bar, caught her mother’s eye and held up Camryn’s glass. Rochelle nodded and a moment later arrived at the table. She didn’t seem in a hurry to leave, either. So Grace introduced her to the other women, Rochelle went to refill everybody’s glass, and before Grace knew it, Rochelle had pulled a chair up to the edge of the booth.
“You mentioned a DVD?” Ashleigh asked, after the introductions had been completed.
“Uh-huh. The fool hid it inside the family Bible. I guess he thought Jesus loves a liar and was counting on forgiveness. But not from me.” Camryn shook her head. “Not after what I saw.”
“Porn?” Suzanne’s nose wrinkled in distaste.
“You could say that,” Camryn said. “Dexter had been a busy little boy, filming his very own self. Getting ready for his ‘dates.’ And yeah, he lied about that, too, Treena wasn’t his only ‘Forever Your Girl.’ Uh-huh, yes. That was the theme song for his date nights. Paula Abdul’s ‘Forever Your Girl’ was his turn-on tune. But what really turned him on was the sight of himself in the mirror, prancing around in his red satin thong.”
“Eeewww,” Grace said. She shuddered. “Just … eewwww.”
“I used to really like that song,” Ashleigh said sadly.
“You’ll have a whole new appreciation for it if you see that video,” Camryn said tartly. “You got a smartphone?” She held out her hand. “Give it here and I’ll show you how to find it on YouTube.”
“No thanks.”
“So…” Rochelle interrupted. “How did the video get on YouTube?”
“I put it there,” Camryn said. “Oh, yes I did. Dexter Nobles, in the flesh—a whole lotta flesh! Getting dressed in his lil panties, getting ready for business meetings, lunches. County Commission meetings. Oh, he loved the feel of that satin under his suit when he was doing county business.”
“You really did that?” Ashleigh asked, glancing down at her phone.
“Sure did. And it’s gotten over twelve thousand hits,” Camryn said.
“And that’s what got Judge Stackpole on your case,” Grace said. “Right?”
“His lawyer got the video taken down, but as soon as he did, other people put it right back up there. It’s gone viral.”
“Does your daughter know you put it on YouTube?” Suzanne asked.
Camryn sighed. “I didn’t tell her. But she found out. She’s furious. Not speaking to me.” She looked around the group. “Does that seem fair to you? Dexter’s the one who cheated, the dirty pervert. But she’s mad at
me
—for outing him.”
“Kids don’t want to know bad stuff about their parents,” Rochelle said.