Confession

  Oh, hell, now I have to admit it. That was it, my nickname. They’d taken to calling me Nancy Drew, Girl Detective, ever since I bought the Miata.

  “It’s red, dammit,” I said.

  They were laughing harder by then. A waitress had appeared at my side and was patiently waiting for an opportunity to get a word in edgewise. Mary gently chided me in the funny, stilted phrasing of those long-ago novels: “Now, Nancy, what would your father, Mr. Drew, think of such language?”

  “Where are Ned and Mr. Drew?” inquired Ginger, playing along.

  “I had to leave them at home!” I propped my menu in front of my face to hide my own laughter and to review the luncheon possibilities. “My father, Mr. Drew, has to work, you know!” I looked up at the patient waitress who was smiling down on us. “A BLT on whole wheat toast, please, and iced tea. Thank you.”

  She nodded, wrote that down, grinned at us, and departed.

  “You’re late,” Marsha observed from the other end of the table. “We’ve already ordered and we’ve already made our weekly report on our private lives, and we refuse to repeat a word of it for people who don’t arrive on time. It’s your turn. So vat’s new mit you?”

  “Ned has an illegitimate son,” I said, lowering the menu.

  They laughed uproariously at the very idea of Nancy Drew’s boyfriend being a father.

  “Just the one?” Ginger said kiddingly.

  “And he’s seventeen years old,” I continued, trying to smile at them. “And he dropped in on us without any warning yesterday afternoon to announce his existence. And he’s the product of a one-night stand between, uh, Ned and a girl named Judy Baker that he went to high school with.”

  Mary, Ginger, and Sabrina were still laughing, but Marsha’s brown eyes were losing their twinkle. She, who knew me far better than the others and might have recognized the name Judy Baker, was beginning to look alarmed.

  “And Ned never knew the kid even existed until yesterday,” I continued. “And the kid’s name is David. David Mayer. And he’s the child whose parents were the murder/ suicide here in town last spring. Only the man who died, Ron Mayer, wasn’t David’s real father, Geof was. And now David wants Geof to know that while he really can’t stand the sight of him and he never wants to lay eyes on him again, he would appreciate it if Geof … Ned, I mean … could manage to prove that Ron Mayer didn’t really kill Judy Mayer and then kill himself.”

  There was now a shocked silence in the booth, but it exploded into pandemonium in about three seconds flat.

  “Oh, my God!” Ginger grabbed my left hand and held on to it.

  Sabrina let out a low whistle. “Well, geez. Don’t you have any exciting news? Is this dull stuff the best you can manage?”

  “Oh, my dear.” Mary reached over and patted my hand, which Ginger was still holding. “Oh, my dear!”

  Marsha smiled at me and leaned back against the upholstery. “This is going to be good, isn’t it?” I looked at her in shocked surprise at first, and then I began to laugh kind of helplessly, and she started to laugh, too, while the other three looked at us as if we’d gone nuts. “Yes,” I admitted, “that’s one way of looking at it, Marsh; I guess you could say this is going to be good.”

  “I remember Judy Baker Mayer,” she told me, and suddenly it was only me and my best friend, alone in the booth.

  “Yeah, we all went to the same high school.”

  “No, I mean later, just a few years ago, in fact.”

  “Why? Was she a patient of yours, Marsh?”

  “No, I was a client of hers. Judy had a telephone answering service that she operated from her home, and I hired her to take my calls for a couple of years.”

  The waitress arrived with the other women’s lunches and began passing them out. I talked to Marsha around the waitress’s weaving arms as the others got their orders all straightened out and started to eat. We had an understanding that you ate when your food arrived, good manners notwithstanding, because Sabrina, Mary, and Marsha all had jobs they had to get back to on time.

  “Why no longer than a couple of years?”

  Marsha grabbed the salt and pepper shakers and liberally applied the seasonings to her chefs salad in a vain attempt to bring out some flavor. “Let’s just say that Judy didn’t quite grasp the concept of confidentiality.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Marsha made an apologetic, comical face at me. “It’s confidential” But when nobody else was looking at her she mouthed a word to me. “Later.” I relaxed, knowing she’d tell me when no one else could overhear her.

  “I knew her, too.” We all shifted our attention from Marsha the psychiatrist to Sabrina the social worker. I saw that she’d ordered a taco salad. I could have told her it would taste like crumbled cheeseburger, but there wasn’t any reason to spoil it for her ahead of time. Maybe suspecting as much, Sabrina poured red sauce over it. I could have told her that would only make it taste like crumbled cheeseburger drowned in catsup. She explained, “During her second marriage, I mean. They hit some rough spots and she came to us for assistance. When I heard her husband killed her, I assumed it was the second one, he was just the type! Then I realized she had remarried the first one. The woman had a hell of a talent for picking the wrong men.” Sabrina, suddenly aware of what that implied, glanced at me and grinned slyly. “Oops.”

  “Those salads taste like crumbled cheeseburger in catsup,” I said in revenge and made a face at her. “What second marriage? To whom?”

  “I don’t remember the schmuck’s name.” Sabrina took a bite and grimaced at the taste of it. “Damn. You’re right.”

  “Why was he a schmuck?” Marsha asked.

  Sabrina laughed the bitter laugh of a woman who also had little talent for picking men. “Why are they all schmucks?”

  “I knew him,” Ginger interrupted, and now we turned toward her. Her sweet round face turned a little pink at the sudden attention.

  “The schmuck?” Marsha asked.

  “No, Ron Mayer, I knew him.” Ginger picked at her pasta salad with her fork, turning over the spiral noodles as if she were looking for worms underneath them. “His family’s company did the remodeling job on my house, remember?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yeah, you do. Mayer Construction.”

  “I didn’t pay any attention to who was doing the job.”

  “That’s because you’ve never done a major remodeling, or you would have paid attention, because I was always raving about how good they were.” She popped some pasta into her mouth and didn’t seem offended by its obvious blandness. “Ron was in charge of the company overall, he’s the one who started it, but the grandfather did the supervising on the job, the grandmother kept the books—I didn’t see much of her—the other four brothers did the actual labor, along with the daughters-in-law and a couple of grandkids, the older boys. They were kind of strange people, I thought, real religious—”

  Mary said mildly, “That doesn’t make them bad people.”

  Sabrina retorted, “Doesn’t make them good people either.”

  Mary smiled. “You’ve got me there, Slick.”

  Ginger continued, “I mean I felt like I couldn’t even cuss when they were around—”

  “Damn!” said Sabrina. “Even Mary lets us cuss!”

  “I can’t even stop my own husband,” Mary protested. “How could I ever stop you?”

  “—and they’re expensive as hell, but they were absolutely reliable and they did great work, and he was nice.”

  “I hate nice,” Sabrina said.

  “Yes, that’s your problem,” Marsha told her.

  “You’re telling me?” Sabrina asked her.

  “You don’t accept the fact that you’re a nice person, Sabrina,” Marsha continued, “so you project your own better qualities onto men who aren’t really that nice, and then you blame them when they disappoint you by not being who they never were to begin with.”

  “What bullshi
t,” Sabrina said, looking annoyed.

  “Yeah, but it’s free bullshit.” Marsha smiled at her. “I charge other people seventy-five dollars an hour for the same load of crap.”

  “Ladies!” pleaded the mayor as she glanced around the dining room.

  “Strange?” I said to Ginger. “How were they strange?”

  “I knew both of them,” Mary Eberhardt interjected hurriedly as if she wanted to change our language more than our subject.

  As my glance shifted from Ginger to Mary, I thought of how I’d heard some men complain that when women got together in groups we all talked at the same time. Of course we did, it was like jazz, everybody jumped in on pitch, in rhythm, and everybody had a good time. Sitting there with them, comfortably watching and listening to them, I postulated a theory for my own entertainment: If men tended to take center stage or to monologue, and God knows they did, then maybe we tended to wander on and off stage and to “dialogue.” I would have tried that theory out on my friends, but it would have jerked the conversation “out of tune” at that moment.

  “Oh, well, hell,” Sabrina said dismissively, jokingly. “You know everybody, Madam, and if you don’t know them, Hardy does.”

  Sabrina was referring to Mary’s husband, the Reverend Dr. Hardy Eberhardt, preacher at the First Church of the Risen Christ, the major black congregation in town.

  Mary’s mouth lifted in a smile, but I could see the compassion in her eyes for the Mayer tragedy. “Only through church events. But I can’t say I really knew them.”

  I whined, “Am I the only one who didn’t know them?”

  “God, Jenny,” Sabrina said, “you’re so competitive!”

  I laughed, waiting for her to expand the joke.

  Sure enough, Sabrina looked to her left at Marsha and then she nodded at me. “Can you believe it? We bring our tales of boyfriends and husbands and bosses and employees and politics and children and money and religion to lunch. But Ms. Cain, here, she’s got to up the ante. Murder. Suicide. Bastard sons. Damn.” Sabrina leaned back in the booth and crossed her slender arms over her stomach. “Who do you think you are, Cain—Toni Morrison? You just have to top us, don’t you?”

  I feigned astonishment. “I’m competitive? Who’s jealous?”

  “Jenny?” The mayor looked thoughtful. “This news of yours, is it going to hurt my réélection chances to say I know you from now on?”

  We all burst out laughing at that. That was one of the reasons we loved Mary, just when you thought she was all goody-two-shoes, she’d spring some bit of cynicism on us. I smiled at her as the waitress set my bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich down in front of me. I saw they’d put it on white bread instead of whole wheat but decided not to make a fuss about it. “Hasn’t it always, Mary?”

  She reached over Ginger to squeeze my hand again. “Sweetheart, tell us all about it. Is it really true? How do you feel about it? Are you upset? How is Geof taking it? What’s the boy like? How’s he doing now, with his parents gone? Why does he think they didn’t die as everybody thinks they did? What’s going to happen?”

  “From the beginning,” Marsha commanded.

  “Well, yesterday afternoon …”

  When I finished talking, they’d finished eating.

  Mary said, “Is there anything we can do to help?” She was asking on behalf of all of them, that was obvious from the nodding of heads around the table.

  “I don’t know.” I threw it back at them. “Is there?”

  “I’ll check with some of her other answering service clients,” Marsha said.

  “I’ll review my files on them,” Sabrina offered.

  “I’ll talk to Hardy about it,” Mary said.

  That left us all looking at Ginger, though I don’t suppose that any of us meant to put her on the spot like that She shrugged, looking helpless and a little pink again. “I’ll … think about it”

  “You’re wonderful,” I said gratefully to all of them.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Sabrina reached toward the middle of the table for her check, which the waitress had long since delivered. “Listen, I’m sorry, but I got to get back to work. No way I can tell my welfare moms that I’m late because I was havin’ lunch with my rich white friends.”

  Mary nudged her. “Who you callin’ rich?”

  “But we haven’t talked business yet,” I protested.

  “Honey …” Sabrina waved her check at me as she pushed Marsha out of the booth so she could leave. “I only have one lunch hour a day and it ain’t long enough for both your soap operas and your business! But I’ll be thinking about you … and Geof.” That was accompanied by a sardonic snort as she stood on the other side of the table, and Marsha resumed her own seat. “Men!”

  Mary defended him: “He was still practically a boy, Sabrina.”

  “Father of the man,” Sabrina retorted.

  “Father of the boy,” I muttered. “And he wasn’t any boy himself; he was plenty old enough to know better. Hey,” I spoke up quickly, forestalling their critique of my husband’s history, “while you’re thinking about him, think about the fact that he’s turning forty soon. Got any ideas about what I should do?”

  “Shoot him?” suggested Marsha.

  “Castrate him?” suggested Sabrina.

  “Divorce him?” suggested Ginger.

  “You guys!” I protested, laughing. “I thought you liked him!”

  “We do like him.” Sabrina made an impatient face at her watch as she looked at it. “But our first loyalty is to our pal Jenny, not to him. Frankly, my dear, drop-in children were not part of the bargain when you married the man, least not as I’ve heard you say. Especially complicated children, kids with murdered mothers and suicidal fathers. And don’t think I’m making light of this, because I’m not. I’m sure that poor child needs help, but I don’t know that you should necessarily have to be the one to give it. Or maybe you have to grin and bear it, like a good little wife, but we don’t. We’re pissed on your behalf. Except Mary, Mary never gets pissed—”

  “Who says I’m grinning and bearing it?”

  “I get riled up,” Mary said with dignity.

  Sabrina said, “Yeah, me too. I think this could screw up your life, Jenny.”

  My blood ran a bit cold at that bald statement of my exact fears.

  “Well, but Sabrina,” Ginger suddenly said, “he didn’t mean to.”

  “What?” Sabrina stepped backward and splayed her right hand to her chest in mock surprise. “Somebody only recently invent condoms? They didn’t have them back in the dark ages when Geof went to college?”

  “Did you use them?” I challenged her.

  “Never got the chance,” she shot back. “I was too tall and too mouthy. Nobody wanted me.”

  That silenced the rest of us for a second. The thought of nobody desiring Sabrina Johnson was unthinkable. Then we adjusted to the probable truth of her assertion. The conversation carried on.

  “I have to leave!” Sabrina finally made good on her word, but she couldn’t resist calling over her shoulder, “Don’t you dare say anything interesting while I’m gone!”

  And then she was gone.

  “Quick,” I said. “Business.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Mary said, “that we ought to leave it to your old foundation to handle all the traditional charities in town. Let’s not compete with them at all, Jenny; let’s fund the sorts of things they can’t fund.”

  “Or won’t,” I said, remembering the fights I’d had with my hidebound board of old men trustees at the Port Frederick Civic Foundation.

  “The other day, I was standing in the grocery store,” Ginger said, “staring at Paul Newman’s Spaghetti Sauce, and I thought, Why do we have to depend on trust funds and traditional investments as our source of income for this thing? Why can’t we also earn some of the money with some kind of business, like his spaghetti sauce?”

  “Ginger!” I nearly hugged her; this was the kind of free-wheeling, inventive thinking
I dreamed of, and I didn’t want to discourage any of it—no matter how unlikely—yet. “Yes, maybe we could … can … clams.” I laughed out loud, thinking of the clam-canning business my family ran for three generations and how it had been destroyed by certain people in Port Frederick, and what sweet revenge it might be to reopen a small version of the old Cain canning company, only this time, all the money might go to charity …

  I stopped that fantasy before it ran away with me.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Marsha said, “of how difficult it used to be for women’s shelters to get money, even from foundations. Remember the bad old days, when nobody funded women’s issues? Well, what I’m wondering is … what is the ‘women’s shelter’ of today? Let’s find out which issues are getting rejected by all of the conventional funding sources, and let’s be the first ones to help them out.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes!”

  Our meeting ended in a flurry of check paying and goodbye hugging and cheek pecking. At the cashier’s counter, I ran into Roy Leland, one of my old bosses at my old job, a long-time trustee of the Port Frederick Civic Foundation. So much for anonymity; it appeared that other locals also sought it now and then at the Holiday Inn.

  “You girls having lunch?” Roy asked me cordially.

  Will you old boys never learn? I thought crabbily. Did I accomplish nothing, exert no lasting influence, in all those years of working for you? With one thoughtless word, Roy had renewed my great pleasure in unemployment.

  “Sure are, Roy.”

  I beamed a sincere smile at him and hurried after my Mends. I didn’t want Roy getting any more curious than that; the old boys weren’t going to like this new foundation idea of mine. I had already anticipated their reactions: “The money pool’s not big enough in this town for two foundations, Jennifer.” “You’ll take money away from our worthy causes, undermine our years of good work, Jennifer.” “Nobody wants to fund the kind of things you do, Jennifer.” “You’ll split this town apart, Jennifer.” In other words, their probable attitude could be summed up by the sheriffs code of the Old West: “This town ain’t big enough fer both of us,” I knew from long, painful experience that the old guys knew only competition. They would never really believe that I didn’t intend to compete with them or fight with them, so I wasn’t going to waste my energy trying to disarm them, especially not so early in the game.