Matchpoint (14 page)

“Did you get chocolate chip?” Bridget asked.

We got through half our lattes and about three scones each before we relaxed. Bridget was getting back to her normal self, talking about the assault on women’s rights in this country and saying that if it weren’t for religion, she would still have her hair.

“Speaking of religion, Belinda is on her way over,” she said. “She tried to reach you on your cell, and when she couldn’t, she called me.”

My stomach lurched. “She wants me to match her. I have no idea who to match her with,” I said, my voice hitching up an octave. “What do you mean, speaking of religion? Is Belinda religious?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bridget said. “Belinda has gone through at least a half dozen religions. She’s a seeker. I told her that religion was the scourge of civilization, but she didn’t believe me.”

I wondered why Belinda didn’t mention religion to me when she spoke of her dream man. More often than not, religion was a deal breaker.

“What religion is she now?” I asked.

“I lost count at Methodist. No, that’s not right. I think she’s full-on Southern Baptist now.”

I thought of escaping before Belinda arrived. I didn’t have anybody in mind for her, not a Southern Baptist or Methodist or even an Episcopalian. The pressure was intense.

“I wish she had warned me she would be here,” I said. “Why didn’t she call me at Grandma’s?”

“She wouldn’t say, but I get the impression she’s scared of Zelda.”

The door buzzed, and I jumped. My flop sweat was out in force again, but it turned out it wasn’t Belinda.

“Lord have mercy, I am so glad to be somewhere safe!” Lucy floated up the stairs in a lavender-colored Donna Karan dress and heels.

“Take me into your bosoms, my darling friends. I have gone to hell and back,” she said, plopping down on one of the kitchen chairs. She picked up a scone. “Yes, I would love a cup of coffee, Bridget darlin’.”

Bridget jumped up and started making a pot.

“I don’t know how you do it, investigating murders like you do,” Lucy said to me.

“It was just that one time,” I insisted.

Lucy stared at me like I had three heads. “What are you talking about? You’re not investigating this case? But you saw the dead dentist yourself. Honey, you are involved, do you hear me? You need to hop to it and start investigating. I can’t do it alone, you know.”

“What have you been doing?” Bridget asked. “Have you figured out who the killer is?”

“Well, I can’t swear in a court of law, but I would say I have narrowed the field,” Lucy said, out of breath. She punctuated her words with her scone, swinging it around like a conductor’s baton.

“Did you find his face?” I asked.

“His what?” Lucy asked.

“Never mind.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing,” Lucy said. “I’ve been tracking down the crazy women in Police Chief Spencer Bolton’s life, that’s what I’ve been doing. It’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

Bridget handed Lucy a cup of coffee. “What did you find out?”

Lucy leaned forward. “Well, I found out that Spencer has a magic penis.”

I choked. “A magic penis?” I asked.

“Yes, one poke with his magic penis, and women go completely crazy,” she said, like having a poke from a magic penis was a bad thing.

“Why is it magic? Does it do tricks or something?” Bridget asked seriously.

“I couldn’t get specifics,” Lucy said. “But it changes women into blathering idiots and psychotic loony bins. Rosalie’s bin is the looniest of them all. With my informant’s help, I found Rosalie by the police station clutching her set of knives to her chest.”

“Yikes,” I said.

“Men are pigs,” said Bridget.

Lucy took a sip of coffee. “Rosalie isn’t too much better, darlin’. She came after me with one of the knives, and all I was doing was telling her that Spencer wasn’t worth her sorrow.”

“I need a drink,” I said.

Lucy raised an eyebrow. “I keep a flask in my purse, but I partook after the Rosalie incident and now it’s empty. I ran all the way here in my three-inch mules. I needed a couple hairs of the dog.”

Bridget shrugged. “Don’t look at me. My house is dry, but I heard there will be a margarita bar at the parade this morning.”

“Margarita bar at nine in the morning? This town is getting better all the time,” Lucy said. “Just give me a moment to freshen up.”

She sauntered off to Bridget’s guest bathroom. “What parade?” I asked Bridget.

“The Christmas pageant.”

“But it’s September.”

“The Christians are trying to one-up the pagans. Everyone is going. Normally I picket with my sandwich board, but I think I’ll hold off until the December Christmas pageant and just be a spectator for the September one. I could go for a margarita.”

“Isn’t it a little weird to have a Christmas pageant in September?” I asked.

“Well, it’s a cover.”

“A cover?”

“For the showdown. Christians versus pagans. Townsfolk against end-of-worlder alien worshippers. I wonder if they’ll have tortilla chips.”

Chips and margaritas sounded good, but nothing could drag me out to the showdown Christmas pageant. I had to get far away before Belinda arrived, looking for her George Clooney. My hospital idea was a good one. Maybe I could find Belinda a male nurse before lunch.

I downed the last of my second latte and hugged Bridget goodbye just as her doorbell rang, effectively thwarting my escape.

“Caught like a rat on a ship,” I muttered.

Belinda walked up the stairs. She had dressed up in a black velour tracksuit with a purple violet bedazzled on the front of her hoodie. “Thank you so much for meeting with me, Gladie,” she said, even though I didn’t know she was coming until a few minutes before.

“I’ve been working on your match,” I lied.

“And the other thing?” she asked.

The other thing was Dr. Dulur’s murder and the police’s conviction that Belinda was guilty. I hadn’t done a thing about the other thing. Nothing. Instead of fixing up Belinda and proving her innocence, I had gone to second base with Holden and binged on Doritos with Spencer.

“Uh,” I said.

Lucy returned from the bathroom, her makeup fresh,
her hair tamed, and her dress flouncing like it had been steam cleaned.

“Belinda Womble! So pleased to see you, darlin’,” she said. “Just visiting? I suppose the dental office is closed after you know what happened. Did Gladie tell you about my morning?”

We sat back at the table as Lucy regaled us in detail about Spencer’s besotted older lady Facebook friends. Six different levels of crazy. All certifiable.

“They all yelled at me like I was the one with the magic penis,” she said. “The nerve of those women.”

“Magic penis?” Belinda asked. She was sweating hope out of her pores.

“Men are pigs,” Bridget said. “Did they admit to hacking him up in the groves?”

“Bridget honey,” Lucy said, “these women are off their rockers. I didn’t want to incite them by accusing them of hacking up the police chief. Just mentioning Spencer’s name set their eyes rolling around their sockets like they had mad cow disease.”

“I think they hacked him up,” said Bridget, holding her finger up in the air as if she was testing which way the wind was blowing. “I heard a fresh mound of dirt appeared from one day to the next deep in the pears. It has to be a Spencer mound. Don’t you see? There’s a Spencer mound beneath the pear trees.”

“A Spencer mound,” Belinda echoed in a whisper.

I looked down at my cuticles. I was sure they could tell by my face that the only Spencer mound there was was lounging in my bed watching daytime TV. I hated lying to my best friends.

Lucy shook her head. “I don’t think they hacked him up,” she said. “They’re looking for him. They want him back.”

Belinda gasped. “They want the magic penis,” she said.

“They want the magic penis and the whole package. They’re looking for him,” Lucy said.

“So Spencer is single?” Belinda asked in my direction.

BELINDA AND I joined Lucy and Bridget to watch the parade. I had told Belinda that a potential match was going to be there. It wasn’t a total lie. The whole town was going to be there, and someone there had to be a potential match for Belinda, right?

We parked two blocks away from Main Street and followed the crowd to the parade. The September Christmas pageant drew as many people as the December Christmas pageant, but the atmosphere was different. There was a palpable anxiety in the air.

Dread.

The Christmas pageant walked westward toward the yurt camp, which was full of cultists who were waiting for the aliens to come out of the Sacred Mountain to take them away to another planet. The townspeople wanted to show them what’s what, that this was a Christmas town, not an alien town.

When Bridget and Lucy wandered off to find the margarita bar, Belinda grabbed my arm and pulled me close. “The police were at my apartment this morning, Gladie. They wanted to know about the books. There’s almost two hundred thousand dollars missing.”

I whistled in appreciation. “And they think you took it?” I asked.

“Gladie, I wrote some checks for bills, but I didn’t handle the books. At least not that often.”

I sighed. It wasn’t much of a defense. “So, who stole the money? You worked there. Who do you think is responsible?”

“I don’t know. I thought about it all night. The only signers were me, Dr. Dulur, and the accountant.”

“Who’s the accountant?”

“Torrin McNally. He used to be in the FBI.”

“So?” I said. “He still could have been stealing.”

“That’s what I said!” Belinda yelled out.

“Just because he was in law enforcement doesn’t mean he can’t be a criminal,” I said.

“Exactly! But, they’re accusing me. I’ve never even had a parking ticket, Gladie.”

“Unreal.”

“They won’t leave me alone. It’s blah, blah, blah, what did you do with the money … blah, blah, blah, how much did that sweater cost … blah, blah, blah, McNally died six months ago.”

“Hold on. What was the third blah, blah, blah?”

“The accountant died in March. Oh, Gladie.” Belinda put her face in her hands and wept. I rubbed her back and told her everything would be all right.

I felt useless. With the accountant dead, Belinda was the only suspect in Bliss Dental’s embezzlement—and Dr. Dulur’s murder. Belinda could have been the large figure Nathan described as the killer. But I couldn’t imagine Belinda as a murderer. She was looking for love, and she liked flowers. I couldn’t picture her cutting off Dr. Dulur’s face.

“Belinda, Holly told me something ridiculous about Dr. Dulur. She said he wasn’t nice. Like maybe he deserved to die. Is that true?”

Belinda sniffed and took out a portable Kleenex packet. “I never believed those rumors about child abuse. I think those kids had bruises before they came into the office.”

“Child abuse? Where did you hear those rumors?”

“Rosalie Rodriguez. For years, she’s been talking about Dr. Dulur breaking her son’s arm. She tells that story to anybody who’ll listen.”

The pageant started with the sound of trumpets. The crowd lined Main Street, and we pushed forward to get
a good vantage point. They had gone all out with costumes. Mary Ferguson played Mary and held a Cabbage Patch doll Jesus in her arms. Mayor Robinson was Joseph, and he waved to his constituents, seemingly having the time of his life, all the while pulling a donkey by a rope tether.

In unison, as if watching a tennis game, the crowd turned their attention to the other end of the street. The residents of the yurt camp stood there, their arms crossed, as if they were waiting for the Christmas pageant players to arrive. Within moments, they were joined by other cult members. At first they seemed dumbstruck, their mouths hanging open in surprise, but quickly they grew agitated.

The pageant actors broke out in song and the crowd turned their heads back toward them. The singers were in the moment, euphoric in their conviction, sure that they would shoo off the cult with their Christmas spirit.

But the moment was short-lived. The end-of-worlders began to bellow about
the Arrival
, making the pageant parade stumble and stop singing. Then the cultists unrolled a long banner that said
YOU WILL ALL DIE WHEN THE ARRIVAL COMES
.

The air grew even thicker with tension, and time stood still. The expectation was that something would happen, but we were unsure just how horrible that something would be.

Despite the end-of-worlders’ banner, the pageant resumed, but quietly now, as they made their way more slowly down Main Street. Belinda’s tears dried up, and she wiped the mascara from under her eyes.

“So, where’s the guy you had in mind for me?” she asked me.

“Excuse me?”

“Is he in the pageant, or is he one of the spectators?”

“He’s …,” I started, waving my hand around as if he
was close by. Belinda looked at me expectantly. My flop sweat returned. “I’ll get him,” I said.

I stepped off the curb onto the street, and I walked blindly, the sweat rolling off my forehead into my eyes. What was I doing? Was I going to pick a man at random and force him back to Belinda? What kind of matchmaker was I? Had I gone off my rocker like most of the town?

I scanned the crowd, looking for someone. Anyone. I wandered aimlessly. The pageant players were almost to me, the mayor heading the troupe, pulling the donkey, waving like he was campaigning, and probably he was.

And then it hit me, and I knew just what to do. It wasn’t totally ethical, according to Grandma, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I could always match Belinda up with someone better afterward. Besides, Mayor Robinson smelled good, and he looked great on paper.

I marched up to him, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. “Yoo-hoo, Mr. Mayor,” I called. “It’s me, Gladie Burger.”

The mayor waved at the crowd. “Lovely to see you,” he told me. “I’m playing Joseph at present, though. Can’t stop now.”

“Maybe we could take a short break,” Mary said, eyeing the cultists at the end of the street.

“I have a manicure at ten,” the mayor explained.

“I have someone for you to meet,” I told him, walking backward.