Lilac Avenue (15 page)

“You don’t think his latest troubles will land him in jail?”

“Of course not,” Meredith said. “He knows too much about the senator and the congressman. They know if he goes down he’ll take everyone with him.”

“What about his brother, Trick?”

“Richard’s a dimwit,” Meredith said. “He does whatever Knox tells him to do.”

“And the mayor?”

“If he’s smart, he’ll keep his mouth shut and see how it all plays out,” Meredith said. “Or he could decide to take the fall for everyone if the price is right.”

“Has anyone from the FBI been to see you?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I may not be what they would consider a reliable witness.”

“How are you doing?” Scott said. “I
mean other than this afternoon.”

“I’m heavily medicated,” Meredith said. “I feel numb most of the time, but that’s not so bad. There’s not a lot I want to remember. No
ne of my friends have stood by me; my son is probably going to prison; I’m out of money and options.”

“Where will you go?”

“Anne Marie has offered me a position at her little ashram out in California,” Meredith said. “Imagine that. From Georgetown to Crazytown to Gurutown. I will singlehandedly provide months of party conversation to the hostesses of D.C.”

“I’m surprised Anne Marie
is being so generous,” he said, “considering she was his first wife.”

“We have a lot in common,” Meredith said. “More than you know.”

“Will you promise me to leave Knox alone?” he asked her. “I don’t want to have to arrest you, but I will.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Meredith said. “I have no doubt Knox is eventually going to get what’s coming to him, but it won’t be me who does it. He has much more powerful enemies now, the kind who won’t leave any evidence.”

Chapter Five -
Wednesday

Later that morning Claire caught a glimpse of a woman with a poorly cut, graying brown bob passing her window at a fast clip. She did a double take.

“I know that hair,” she said.

She rushed to open the door and poke her head out, just in time to see Meredith Stanhope Huckle Rodefeffer open the door to the antique shop and tea room that had been closed since she was carted off to a private mental health facility.

“I’ll be damned,” Claire said, and went back inside to call Hannah.

Hannah was there in ten minutes.

“She’s in there but the sign still says ‘closed’,” Hannah said. “She’s sitting behind the counter, talking on the phone.”

“I wonder when she got out.”

“I’ll consult my scanner granny network and get back to you,” Hannah said, and rushed back out the door.

Claire had no sooner sat back down to finish her tabloid article when Knox Rodefeffer’s first wife, Anne Marie, walked in.

In contrast to the dowdy Meredith, Anne Marie wore designer clothing and sported a waterfall of perfectly highlighted long blond hair.
Her bright turquoise contacts were pretty. Unfortunately, she had also succumbed to the tendency of her California contemporaries by inflating her lips, stuffing her cheeks, and freezing her forehead. She looked like a frozen chipmunk with a fat lip.

“Claire, darling,” she said. “What in the world are you doing in this place? When I heard you were here I couldn’t believe it. What happened with Sloan?”

Claire reflected that a famous psychic should probably not admit to being surprised by anything, but she didn’t say it.

“Anne Marie,” she said instead. “You look amazing.”

“Thank you, darling,” Anne Marie said.

She took Claire’s outstretched ha
nd and held it up to her jacked-up cheek. “You are one of my favorite people. So special. Such a bright heart light. People are drawn to that, you know. You’re like a magnet of loving energy.”

Claire had lived in Hollywood long enough not to be surprised by the New Age talk, especially coming from a self-proclaimed psychic. It was normal out there.

“What are you doing here?” Claire asked her.

“Gwyneth Eldridge invited me,” Anne Marie said. “We’re offering a Group Self-Awareness Intensive at the Eldridge Inn this weekend.”

“I’m surprised to hear Gwyneth is doing that,” Claire said. “Being a psychologist, I mean. She seems so uptight.”

“She was when she first arrived at my place,” Anne Marie laughed. “She was looking for her sister Caroline, whom she thought I was holding
prisoner at my ranch. Can you imagine? Anyone who knows me knows I don’t keep anyone from following their bliss. The people who choose to live and work at the ranch want to be there. There’s a waiting list of people wanting to work for me; I don’t have to coerce anyone. Caroline’s in Hawaii, anyway. She took all the courses we had to offer and then went off to do her own thing. I invited Gwyneth to stay for some spa treatments and a seminar. By the time she left we were dear friends and potential business partners.”

“Business? With Gwyneth?”

“The Eldridge Inn is not doing well,” Anne Marie said. “While I’m here we’re going to discuss making it an East Coast outpost for my ministry. I’m thinking of calling it Heart Light East; that has a great sound, doesn’t it?’

“Wow,” Claire said. “I can’t quite picture Gwyneth being involved in it, but it sounds great.”

“That’s part of the reason why I came to see you,” Anne Marie said.

She unwound the silk wrap that was hanging loosely around her shoulders and handed it to Claire, who put it on the front counter. Anne Marie then went to the mirror and inspected her face, something that rem
inded Claire of her ex-boss. Sloan couldn’t be near a mirror without being drawn to it, so it could reassure her she was still the fairest of them all.

“I need someone to run the spa part of the business and you, my dear, are the perfect person,” she said. “That was the real reason you came back here, although you didn’t know it at the time. Everything happens with perfect timing for the highest good of all concerned.”

“I came back to help my mother take care of my dad,” Claire said. “He’s had some strokes …”

Anne Marie whirled away from the mirror and grasped both Claire’s hands in her own. Although she’d experienced this before with Anne Marie, Claire was still startled.

“Relax,” Anne Marie said. “Let me into your mind, your heart, and your soul, and I will tell you what I see.”

Claire felt the deep heat flow from Anne Marie’s iron grasp, and she had to fight the urge to pull away.

“Relax, Claire,” Anne Marie said. “You’re safe with me. Only a good influence can come through; we are surrounded by the white light of a loving universe.”

Claire’s
was hypnotized by the intensity of Anne Marie’s turquoise eyes. A chill ran up her spine. She felt a little dizzy.

“There’s a man,” Anne Marie said. “He hurt you, but he’s sorry; he wants to be with you. Someone stands between you, but her hold over him is loosening. You doubt your love; you doubt his sincerity. All you have to do is open your heart to him and he will fly to your side. Am I right?”

Claire grimaced.

“Well …” she said. “Kind of.”

“Of course I’m right. I see it all. I can employ him as well; there will be room for everyone at Heart Light East.”

“But he’s an actor,” Claire said.

“We’re all actors,” Anne Marie said. “He’ll be perfect. I can train him to lead intensives. We’ll all get rich, I promise you. Money flows to me like a river of prosperity toward the sea of eternity.”

“I don’t know,” Claire said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Don’t let your reactive mind hold you back from your perfect destiny,” Anne Marie said. “The key to achieving enlightenment is to empty your mind, and then use the divine magic of the universe to manifest your destiny.”

“I will think about it,” Claire said. “I promise.”

Anne Marie dropped Claire’s hands and sighed a deep, dramatic sigh.

“Your reactive mind is not your friend, Claire,” she said. “I am your friend. Don’t forget that. I see your special gifts and I won’t let you squander them on this.”

She gestured to the salon as if it were a pig sty.

“It’s inevitable, you’ll see,” Anne Marie said. “Meditate on it tonight, and by tomorrow the universe will have given you a sign. I’m staying at the Inn. Call me on my cell.”

She gave Claire a business card that featured a rainbow hologram shaped like a heart.

“So good to see you, sweetie,” she said, and retrieved her wrap from the front desk.

Anne Marie swirled the silk around her shoulders in a very theatrical way and took one last look at herself in the wall of mirrors behind Claire’s workstations.

“What do you think, Claire?
” she asked. “Time for some fillers?

“No,” Claire said. “You look amazing. You don’t need another thing.”

Anne Marie held Claire’s face with her hands on each cheek.

“I
love you, you know,” Anne Marie said. “We were both devotees to a powerful guru in our last life. He couldn’t decide between us so he kept us both as concubines. Secretly, of course. That’s how those randy devils do it.”

“Good to see you,” Claire said.

“Don’t make me wait too long,” Anne Marie said. “The universe has opened a door, but it won’t stay open forever.”

“I’ll think about it,” Claire said.

Anne Marie sailed out of the salon just as Hannah returned. Hannah took one look at Anne Marie, backed up, and stuck both of her hands down in her back pockets

“Hey, Anne Marie,” Hannah said. “How’s tricks?”

Anne Marie pretended she didn’t hear or see Hannah as she strode off down the sidewalk, the ends of her silk wrap flying in her wake.

“I guess you know Anne Marie,” Claire said.

“Spooky dame,” Hannah said, taking her hands out of her pockets. “You never know when she’s going to fall into a trance and tell you stuff you don’t want to hear. She creeps me out.”

“Did you get any good gossip?”

“Only that both of Knox’s ex-wives are back in town,” Hannah said. “I was just coming to tell you about it.”

Hannah came in and closed the door behind her. She rooted around in Claire’s handbag, came up with another energy bar, considered it, and then put it back in the handbag.

“Do you have any more of those cookies?” she asked.

“You ate them all,” Claire said.

“Bummer,” Hannah said. “You wanna go in on a pizza with me?”

“No thanks,” Claire said.

“Too bad,” Hannah said. “I already ordered us one. It should be here soon.”

“What did the scanner grannies say?”

“According to my main granny, Garnet Bloomenthal, Meredith got here yesterday; she’s staying at the Eldridge Inn. I guess she went up to Knox’s house and threw an absolute fit when he wouldn’t let her in.”

“She and Anne Marie are both staying at the Eldridge Inn? That should be interesting.”

“I may have to go up there to look for snakes again,” Hannah said. “I’m dying to see those two together. Who would you pick in a fight? Anne Marie’s younger and in better shape, but Meredith has the crazy going for her. You never know with the loony ones.”

“I wonder what her plan
is.”

“Which one?”

“Meredith,” Claire said, and then told Hannah about Anne Marie’s new project with Gwyneth.

“Gwyneth is all about the juice fasting and
colonics,” Hannah said. “That’s probably what appealed to her.”

“How do you know that?”

“My scanner grannies hear all and know all,” Hannah said. “Gwyneth was a popular eating disorder counselor when she lived in New York. She was good at it because she has all the eating disorders. It would be like me coaching an eating competition. Insider knowledge.”

Hannah’s pizza arrived. As soon as the delivery boy left
, Hannah sat down in one of the dryer chairs with the pizza box on her lap.

“Last chance,” she said. “It smells pretty good.”

When she opened the box, the smell made Claire feel nauseated. She opened the front door to let some fresh air in.

“Interesting how both ex-wives show up in town right when Mamie dies,” Claire said.

“You think one of them offed her?” Hannah asked.

“If it turns out she was poisoned,” Claire said, “I think they’d both make interesting suspects. Remember, when they arrested her for trying to kill Knox, Meredith confessed to poisoning her late husband and her father.”

“I always wondered how she got away with that.”

Claire rubbed her fingers together in the universal symbol for lots of money.

“Expensive attorneys,” Claire said. “They got a judge to rule that nothing she said during the car ride to the clink was admissible.”

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!
” Hannah said. “She probably killed Mamie.”

“See if you can find
out exactly when she arrived,” Claire said. “If she was here before Mamie died, she may be our prime suspect.”

“As soon as I finish this,” Hannah said, picking up another heavy slice of pizza and folding it over before shoving half of it in her mouth. “I’ll get right on it.”

“You know,” Claire said. “Binge-eating is considered an eating disorder.”

“I can’t help it, I’m just hungry
,” Hannah said. “Doc says unless it interferes with my health, my work, or my marriage, I shouldn’t worry. My blood tests always come back awesome, I never miss a day of work, and my marriage is as good as it can be considering I’m married to an Appalachian ninja, so ...”

“Your brothers all ate like that,” Claire said, “and they never gained an ounce. I wish I could do that.”

“Come to think of it I never see you eat anything,” Hannah said. “Maybe you have an eating disorder.”

“Oh, I do,” Claire said. “I ruined my metabolism with crash diets, and now my body latches onto any carbs I eat
like a hoarder at the town dump.”

Maggie came through the door and frowned at Hannah.

“Why are you eating before the lunch?” she asked.

“What lunch?” Hannah responded.

“The IWS luncheon,” Maggie said. “We promised Kay we would go to support her.”

“I forgot all about that,” Hannah said. “Dang. I should have paced myself.”

“She didn’t tell me about it,” Claire said.

“Probably because she knew you’d have to work,” Maggie said.

“I have some time now,” Claire said, looking at her schedule. “What’s Kay going to do?”

“She and Marigold have been invited to present their platforms to the
IWS ladies,” Maggie said. “Their support is very important in this election.”

The IWS was the Interdenominational Women’s Society, a group of women representing all the local places of worship, who met every Tuesday night at the Owl’s Branch Missionary Baptist Church. There they worked on craft projects and planned charitable fundraising events.