Matchpoint (28 page)

“Please sit. I hope you’re hungry.”

Tiffany put out quite a spread. There was quiche, salad, assorted breads and cheeses, and a chocolate cake.

“I almost didn’t get back in time to meet you,” Tiffany said, smiling. “I was helping the committee against the alien lovers.”

“Tiffany, tell Gladie what the dentist did to your Sam,” Rosalie said.

Sam, it turned out, was Tiffany’s son. Five years ago,
when Sam was thirteen, Dr. Dulur bruised his arm when he wouldn’t sit still in the chair. It wasn’t much to go on, not much in the way of proving Dr. Dulur was a sadistic dentist. And besides, I couldn’t believe Tiffany Theroux would avenge her son’s abuse with murder. She might needlepoint an angry letter, but I bet that’s as far as she would go.

Nathan jumped up from the couch. He held a plate of chocolate cake with one hand and with the other he pointed at the front window. “Look at that, she found us,” he said.

Storming up the walk was Trouble Weiss. Calamity was a few steps behind her, more or less drowning in a sea of neon pink tulle.

“Shit,” I said. “Here comes Trouble.”

TROUBLE KNOCKED on the window and wagged her finger at me. “I see you in there, Gladys Burger!” she yelled through the glass. “How dare you make me chase after you the day before my daughter’s wedding!”

She had a point. I’m sure she had more important things to do the day before Calamity tied the knot.

Tiffany let Trouble in, and Trouble ordered me to strip down right there so I could be fitted. I protested.

“Trouble,” I pleaded, gesturing toward Nathan.

“Don’t tell me you’re shy,” Trouble said. “Your boobs are hanging out for everyone to see. You have precious few secrets this morning.”

But I didn’t have to worry about my honor: Calamity held up the fabric, which effectively blocked Nathan from seeing anything crucial. She pulled it up over my head, and I tugged my arms through.

The dress was much too tight on top and ridiculously big on the bottom. There was poof and ruffles and swirling cascades of tulle.

“I don’t think I’m wearing it right,” I said.

I pulled at it and twisted it to try and make it fall correctly. The room had grown quiet. Bridget and Lucy had their mouths open.

“What?” I asked. “Does it look okay?”

“It’s a dream!” Trouble gushed. “Absolutely gorgeous!”

“Bridget?” I asked. “What do you think?” She didn’t answer. Her eyes were enormous, even bigger than her giant hoot-owl glasses.

“Where’s a mirror?” I asked.

Bridget and Lucy jumped up. “No!” they shouted.

“Don’t look in a mirror,” Bridget commanded. “It looks fine.”

A door opened and closed somewhere in the condo, and heavy feet marched down the hallway toward us.

“Criminy!” A tall, dark-haired man stood in the living room, seemingly transfixed. He was about forty years old and was wearing dirty jeans and a T-shirt that said
A FLOWER IS FOREVER
. He looked a lot like Tiffany but with a George Clooney edge to him. My skin prickled, and I began to hyperventilate a tiny bit.

“Isn’t she breathtaking?” Trouble said to the man. “Just like Scarlett O’Hara.”

“She takes my breath away, all right,” he said. “Like napalm.”

“You don’t have a mirror, Tiffany?” I asked.

“Whatever you do, Tiffany,” Bridget said, “don’t let her go near a mirror.”

“It just needs to be taken in here and there,” Trouble said. She pulled a sewing kit out of her purse and started pinning the bodice.

“I don’t think it can be taken in up there,” I said. My breath was being cut off by the boning in the bodice, making me pant like a Pekingese. My boobs were inching their way out, trying to escape the confines of the dress. It was only a matter of time before we had full nipple exposure.

“This is my brother, George,” Tiffany said.

“Oh, that’s just too perfect,” I said. “You married, George?”

“Recently divorced,” he said.

“Gladie is a matchmaker,” Lucy explained before he could get the wrong idea and run screaming from the scary, overly forward, neon lady.

“Anybody would be better than his ex-wife,” Tiffany said.

“She wasn’t very supportive of my vocation,” George explained.

“George is a flower grower,” Tiffany said. “Exotic, rare flowers.”

Jackpot.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
I felt a rush of happiness. The kind of satisfaction that comes only when the pieces fit together perfectly. Maybe there was some hope for me as a matchmaker. Maybe Grandma was right about me.

Suddenly, nothing else mattered. The dress, the murder, a crazy killer on the loose, Holden. All took a backseat to the knowledge that I would match Belinda Womble.

Trouble pinned and sewed me into the dress. The tulle swirled and billowed, eliminating my view of my body’s lower half. Ribbons weaved their way around the polyester fabric of my sleeves and dangled down past my fingertips. I didn’t think Heidi Klum would approve.

Calamity passed the pins to her mother. At first I thought she had stuck herself when a tear rolled down her cheek, but then she did the unexpected. “Love is the exquisite bloom that gives beauty to life,” she said.

It was the first time I had heard her speak. Her voice was soft, rich, and melodic, nothing like her mother’s.

“I love Dan so much,” she continued. “He’s my flower, and I’m his. I’m his neon pink flower, and you’re my neon pink fairy godmother, Gladie. The tulle was my idea. I think it makes you look dreamy, just like a Disney movie.”

“More like
Gone with the Wind
on crack,” Rosalie said. But we ignored her. The air was thick with a pleasant romantic air, and no one wanted to spoil it.

That’s when I started to cry.

Bridget knocked Trouble aside, taking me into a bear hug, flinching slightly, probably because of a pin or two. “What misogynistic jerk is making you cry?” she asked.

“He’s not misogynistic,” I said.

“So, Holden is making you cry?” Lucy asked.

“He’s—he’s—he’s leaving town,” I said. I gulped air between my sobs, and a nipple popped out of my dress.

“I’m going to call a cab,” Nathan announced, and went out to make the call.

“I’ll make you some tea,” Tiffany said with a smile. “You’ll be right as rain.”

I couldn’t give specifics about Holden’s departure. No, I didn’t know where he was going; I thought he was going away on business; no, I didn’t know when he would be back or if he would be back; no, he didn’t say he might not be back.

It was a pretty pathetic reason to cry. I couldn’t tell them that Holden was going to risk his life to get his old life back, his life where he wasn’t Holden and he wasn’t living next to me or in the same town. So I looked like I was one notch above Rosalie. Whining about the loss of a man but without the knives.

“It will be fine,” Tiffany said, handing me a cup of tea. “He’ll be back soon enough, and you know what they say: distance makes the heart grow fonder. He will be over the moon to see you again.”

I gulped down the tea. She was right. It did make me feel better.

Nathan’s cab arrived, and he said goodbye. “Don’t forget, Gladie. Eight o’clock tonight. It won’t hurt a bit.”

“Hey, Nathan,” Rosalie said as he walked out the front door. “That dentist of yours was no good. He hurt my boy, and he hurt others.”

Outside it had grown dark, even though it was a little before noon. “The weather’s changing,” Trouble noted. “Not a big deal. Rain is good luck on a wedding day, Calamity. Onward. We have to finish the chocolate sculpture.”

They gathered the sewing supplies and leftover material. After reminding me to be at their house at ten sharp the next morning, they scooted off in their Smart car.

“You’re popular lately,” Bridget said.

“We have to get going, darlin’,” Lucy said. “We have to get my Mercedes out of the lake.”

“Okay, but this time, you’re leaving it to the professionals. You almost killed yourself with that crane from the do-it-yourself store,” Bridget said.

“You don’t have to tell me twice. It dumped me so far in the lake, I almost made it out to sea. And I don’t have another outfit in my pocketbook. You coming, Gladie?”

I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I wanted to go to bed and hopefully sleep through my
dental appointment. But I wanted to strike while the iron was hot. I was within spitting distance of matching Belinda. I was sure of it.

“George, would you give me a lift?” I asked him. “There’s a lovely woman I think you should meet. At the very least, you should see her flower collection.”
Her poisonous flower collection. And she’ll be available just as soon as the police are through interrogating her about a grisly murder
.

“I guess that won’t hurt,” he said.

We thanked Tiffany for the brunch and her hospitality and then every cellphone ringtone in the room went off. My phone was still dead.

“Change of plan,” Lucy told Rosalie. “Emergency town meeting. They’re coming up with a plan against the end-of-worlders.”

“Where are my clothes?” I asked. And then it hit me. Hit me like a bargain vacation to Mexico in the middle of the summer. My stomach rolled and pitched and made a sound similar to the one Dulcinea made as she flew over town in fear for her life. I had a nasty suspicion. “Tiffany, what kind of tea did you give me?”

“Chinese diet tea. Very good for the body. All-natural. I got it from Bird Gonzalez, my hairdresser. Do you know her?”

I lifted up armloads of tulle and ran for the bathroom. Chinese diet tea seemed to work for everyone in Cannes except for me. In my stomach, it acted like a thermonuclear device, leaving destruction in its wake.

I left the bathroom after about thirty minutes. My dress was slightly looser, and I stuck my boob back into the bodice.

The condo was empty except for George, who I found in the kitchen, washing the dishes. He was careful not to look me in the eye. Lesser people would have been embarrassed,
but considering I was wearing a neon pink monstrosity, everything was relative.

“Did you find my clothes, by any chance?” I asked George.

“Tiff thought the chocolate lady took them by accident.”

I sighed. “Fine, we’ll make a quick trip to meet Belinda, and then I’ll change at home.”

“You’re going out like that?”

“Why? Does it bother you?”

It did. And if I was honest with myself, it bothered me, too. The tulle was itchy, and I could hardly breathe through the bodice, even after the Chinese diet tea. It was also ugly, probably the ugliest dress I had ever seen.

George offered me some of his sister’s clothes, but it turned out Trouble had sewn me into the dress, and even with George’s help, I couldn’t get out of it without ripping the seams.

“My grandmother will get someone to help,” I said.

So it was back to Plan A. George helped me into his truck, piling the tulle onto my lap. There was so much material, I couldn’t see past it out of the windows. But I could tell the weather was changing. It had grown dark, and a wind was picking up.

“I’d sure like to go to that meeting. It’s supposed to be a humdinger. Things are sure heating up,” George said.

“Well, it will be on for a while, I’m sure. Maybe you’ll bring Belinda with you.” The thought pleased me. It would be a great relief to have Belinda fixed up. A good match and healthy teeth would go a long way to getting my life on track.

“Does Belinda work at the police station?” George asked as we parked in front.

“Something like that.”

I literally swept into the station, my crinkly dress skirting the floor with a loud crackling sound. I drew a
lot of attention, like a sideshow freak or a bad car accident on the side of the road.

My first client, desk sergeant Fred Lytton, greeted me when I entered with George. “Hey there, Underwear Girl,” he said. “Gee, you sure do look pretty.”

“Thanks, Fred. This is a maid-of-honor dress for Calamity Weiss’s wedding tomorrow,” I said. It was important to me to distance myself from the dress as much as possible.

“It’s good you’re getting a lot of wear out of it,” Fred noted. “It would be a shame to wear it just for one day.”