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“What if she took something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Sleeping pills. Painkillers. And look how sunburned she is. She must have been out there all afternoon.”
M.J. woke up when we turned a cold shower on her. “Stop. Stop!” She covered her face with her hands and curled on her side in the group-size shower stall.
“Mary Jo Hollander, what did you take today?” Bitsey exclaimed in her sternest I-am-the-mother-around-here voice.
“Tequila. Leave me alone.”
“What else?” I turned the cold up to full blast.
“Nothing!” She squealed in protest. “Nothing else.”
“No pills?” Bitsey demanded, her blond hair beginning to droop in the spray from the five-point water delivery system. “Mary Jo! No pills?”
“Nooo!”
Bitsey and I shared a look. As one we decided to believe her. So I turned off the water, Bitsey found some towels, and together we got M.J. dry and changed and into bed. This was beginning to be a bad habit. After that, completely done in, we threw ourselves onto the twin couches in the living room.
Bitsey kicked off her shoes. “She shouldn’t be living alone.”
“We both live alone.”
“I don’t live alone.”
I massaged my left ankle, which still hurt from my adventures with the iron fence. “Your kids are gone. Jack’s never around. Face it, Bitsey, you’re just as alone as me and M.J.” I knew I was being mean for no reason, but I was in a pissy mood.
“On the rag are you?” Bitsey was a sweetheart, but she wasn’t totally defenseless.
She was no match for me, though. “At least I’m not too old to still have a period.”
She glared at me. Bitsey was very sensitive about the impending death of her forties. She’d gone through the same tortures when she was thirty-nine and her first daughter went off to college. Forty was old! Four years later her middle girl went off without too much trauma. But the baby had left last August, she’d turned forty-eight the next month, and according to her gynecologist, she was officially in menopause. She hadn’t yet recovered from any of it.
I knew she’d be okay once she actually turned fifty. But we had another year and a half till then. Despite my nasty mood, I probably shouldn’t have made that last crack.
“At least I won’t die alone,” she finally said, but without any real venom in her voice.
I hugged a silk-tasseled pillow to my chest. “Sorry.”
She nodded. “Me, too.”
We sat in silence, surrounded by the self-conscious splendor of M.J.’s home. Pure California posh. By day it was bright and elegant: white everything—floors, walls, carpets, furniture; art in every shade of red; and the bright green of potted palms and ferns. By night the lighting turned everything amber, dark emerald and the color of blood. Dramatic.
You’d think as M.J.’s best friend I would have been consulted on the decor. But Frank Hollander used a big interior design firm from L.A. for everything: home, restaurants and his latest venture, a boutique hotel in San Diego. Despite my professional jealousy I could appreciate the house’s artistic merit. But it didn’t suit M.J. She’s a big softy at heart, so that slick, polished look didn’t come naturally to her. She had to work at it.
“I’ll stay with her tonight.”
“Good idea,” Bitsey said. She sighed. “She needs to get out of here.”
“You mean a vacation?”
She shrugged. “Something like that.”
“The trouble is, if she leaves—even for a week—Wendy and Frank Jr. would be in here with the locks changed. Possession is nine-tenths of the law and all that.”
Prophetic words. Hours later, after we forced two cups of strong coffee into her, M.J. spilled all. “He left me with nothing. Well, practically nothing,” she wailed, sitting cross-legged on the bed.
It was a garbled tale, interrupted by a bout of vomiting and lots of tears. By the time we had the gist of it, M.J.’s head was beginning to clear. “All those years,” she muttered. “Seventeen years of marriage and he betrays me, not only with that…that freak of nature woman-wannabe, but he lied about taking care of me. The kids inherited the corporation, and everything belongs to it—the restaurants, the hotel, even my house. And my car, too!”
“Wreck it,” Bitsey muttered.
I swiveled my head to stare at her. “Wreck it? You mean the car?” M.J.’s Jaguar sedan is the most gorgeous hunk of metal and leather you’ve ever seen.
Scowling, yet also looking like she wanted to cry, Bitsey nodded. “Wreck the car, wreck the house, wreck his reputation.”
M.J. sat up against the leather upholstered headboard of her Ponderosa-size bed. Vindictiveness in Bitsey was enough to sober anyone. “Wreck my car?”
“Wreck the house?” I said. “What do you mean?”
Bitsey got up, turned her back on us and stared out at the pool and the cunningly lit courtyard that surrounded it. “He deserves to be punished.”
“He’s dead,” I pointed out. “That’s pretty significant punishment, don’t you think?”
She shook her head. “It’s not like we have to lie about him. The truth will do just fine.” She turned around. “Maybe a little public humiliation will teach those horrible kids of his to mend their ways while they still can.”
Personally I didn’t think Frank Jr., Celeste and Roger would learn anything from a stunt like she was proposing except to hate their father’s second wife even more than they already did. But what the hay. “I’m in. Heck, I’ll spread the word to everyone I know about Frank and how he really died. I’ll even write a damned press release and send it to every media outlet in Southern California—if that’s what M.J. wants. But Bits, the Jag? I don’t think I have it in me to wreck the Jag.”
I was trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn’t working, at least not with Bitsey. She planted her fists on her hips. “I say burn down the house and drive the car into the pool. What have we got to lose?”
I swallowed hard. I had never seen Bitsey so furious. It wasn’t like the stomping around, cursing fury I was prone to. I might fly off the handle, but Bitsey was too much the genteel Southern lady for that. Instead she was cold and bitter, very scary for such a truly nice person. Struck dumb by her outrageous suggestion, M.J. and I could only follow her as she headed for the kitchen.
“We can plant evidence to implicate Frank Jr. as the arsonist,” she went on. She was serious.
“And you know how to do this?” I asked. “Don’t you watch CSI? You can’t hide something like that.”
“We wouldn’t be hiding it. That’s the beauty of it all. We’d just make Frank Jr. look guilty. Or better yet, Wendy. They deserve it. And after all, they’ll be the ones to collect the insurance. I’m sure she can think of a hundred ways to spend that much money.”
She turned on the steam attachment of M.J.’s elaborate espresso machine. M.J. and I shared a look. Bitsey might be an avenging arsonist, but she made a damned good espresso.
It was after midnight. I had no business drinking coffee, even decaf with lots of milk. But we were avoiding liquor for M.J.’s sake, so coffee it was. We sat in the breakfast nook of M.J.’s kitchen, one of the only cozy rooms in her house. M.J. was wrapped in a pink French terry robe, looking small and childlike with her face washed clean of makeup and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Even miserable and hung over, the girl managed to still look good.
“Okay,” Bitsey said, setting two mugs of perfectly foamed café au lait before us. “Cinnamon or chocolate shavings?”
I’ve often thought Bitsey should open a coffeehouse. A chain of them. Bitsey’s Kitchen Table.
“Okay,” she repeated, once we were all settled. “Maybe burning Frank’s house down isn’t the best idea. But we should at least strip the place and sell off whatever we can. I can’t believe Frank left you penniless. Seventeen years of marriage and he does that to you? God, men are horrible.”
M.J. stared down at her coffee. “I signed a prenup, you know. But I thought, since we stayed married more than the ten years specified, that I would at least get something. Only it turns out he doesn’t own anything in his own name. It’s set up so that it all belongs to the company.”
“Everything?” I asked. “What about your jewelry? Or the art?” I gestured to a Steve Rucker painting above the sideboard.
“The jewelry’s mine,” M.J. allowed. “I’ll throw it into the ocean before I let Wendy get her greedy mitts on it.”
“Amen,” said Bitsey. She dumped two spoons of sugar into her cup. I reached for a packet of the blue stuff.
“Who bought the art?” I asked.
M.J.’s face screwed up in a frown. “I bought most of it.”
“How?”
“Credit card, of course.”
“Whose credit card?” Bitsey asked.
M.J. straightened in her chair. “It’s in my name. But Frank always paid the bills.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “The art you bought is legally yours, not some corporation’s.”
“Or at least half yours,” Bitsey said. With eyes narrowed, she looked from M.J. to me and back. “Let’s take it. But first let’s eat.”
She took over the kitchen and made us mushroom omelets and fresh-squeezed orange juice. “I can’t believe you don’t have any grits,” she said as we sat down at the chrome-and-glass breakfast table.
“Even I keep instant grits in my pantry,” I threw in. Though I prefer the real thing, microwave grits are better than no grits.
“Frank likes oatmeal. Liked,” M.J. corrected herself. “Liked.”
“Another poor choice,” I said. “Any man who doesn’t like grits should be viewed with suspicion.”
“Did Bill like grits?” M.J. asked.
“Kiss off,” I threw right back at her. Bill was my second husband, now my second ex-husband.
“Jack loves grits,” Bitsey said. “You remember what grits stands for, don’t you?” she added. “Girls raised in the South. Grits.”
That was us all right. Girls raised in the sweet, green humidity of the deep South, and decades later trying our best to get by in the desert that was Southern California—even if that meant burglarizing our best friend’s house.
We worked through the night, stacking paintings, prints, statues and all the silver and china in the garage. By nine in the morning we had a moving van and a storage facility lined up. By noon everything was gone, and by one we were all zonked out at Bitsey’s house. Her husband, Jack, woke us when he came home around six.
“What’s going on around here?” he said from the door to the master bedroom. His voice carried down the hall to where M.J. and I shared the guest room. “What are you doing asleep, Bits? Why are M.J. and Cat here?” He must have seen the Jag. “And where’s my dinner?”
I sat up; M.J. looked at me. We both strained to hear more.
“Honey, I’m home,” I muttered. As I said, I don’t like Jack. I used to. I mean, on the surface he’s a pretty nice guy. Most guys are. But Bitsey was my friend, and more often than not, Jack made her unhappy. That’s all I needed to know.
Apparently he closed the door behind him, because although I could tell they were talking, I couldn’t make out what they said.
“I think it’s time for us to go.”
“Maybe so,” M.J. agreed.
“What’s wrong with the world?” I asked as we slid into yesterday’s clothes. “Bitsey’s husband is a jerk. Your husband was a jerk. Certainly my two ex-husbands are jerks.”
M.J. paused in the process of brushing her hair. “Are you still sleeping with Bill?”
In a weak moment, fueled by margaritas, I’d once revealed that my second ex and I occasionally get together. I didn’t say we slept together, but M.J. and Bitsey had drawn their own conclusions. Accurate conclusions, I might add. I searched for my sandals. “Every now and again.”
“Recently?”
I looked up at her. “Why do you want to know?”
It was her turn to look away. “Because he called me a few days ago.”
“He called you? Bill called you? But why?”
She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
“You’re kidding. He hit on you, the bereaved widow? My best friend? And he’s trying to get you in the sack?”
“I hung up on him.” M.J. stared earnestly at me. “As soon as I realized what he was leading up to, I hung up. And you’re right. He is a jerk.”
I managed a smile, but my heart was racing. Not from jealousy, though, and certainly not from anger at M.J. Bill was a jerk; I’d always known that. We’d divorced once I realized that he’d never been faithful, not even for one month during the four years we were together. But this was even worse. M.J. was my friend. How could he set his sights on her?
And why did the fact that he was attracted to her leave me so panicked? Any man still breathing is attracted to M.J.
But that sort of logic didn’t matter to me.
M.J. put a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Cat. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Fine. And there’s no reason for you to apologize. It’s not your fault he’s a lowlife asshole.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. I thought I was beyond being hurt by the scumsucker, but my hands were shaking. “I wish I was a lesbian. Women are so far superior to men.”
“Yes,” M.J. agreed. “We are.” She gave me a hug, which I really needed. “But despite Frank and Bill, I have to believe there are still some good guys out there.”
I let out a rude snort. “Yeah, maybe. But they’re all prepubescent. The trouble with men is that they all suffer from testosterone poisoning. It shrinks their brains and swells their balls and they’re never the same again.”
M.J. laughed, but I was serious. “Come on, Cat,” she said. “Surely you’ve known one or two good guys.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Well, I have.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“My old high school boyfriend, for one.”
