Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (18 page)

Knowing that her next client would be there any minute, she reached into the middle drawer of her desk and pulled out a compact
.
She looked in the mirror, checked her makeup and then closed the compact and put it back in the drawer
.
She
was fifty-three years old, five foot ten and thought of herself as attractive rather than pretty
.
Her beauty didn’t come
naturally,
as it did to some women
.
It was the result of impeccable grooming and a highly developed sense of style
.

She had short blonde hair
that
she paid to have professionally
cut
and highlighted regularly, as much to cover the gray now as to add interest to the dishwater blonde hair she’d been born with
.
She had her nails done every week and her eyebrows waxed
at least
once a month
.
She was careful to maintain her weight by watching her diet and with visits to the health club three times a week
.
It took a lot of work to make up for what nature hadn’t given her.

Still
, with all that maintenance, which she had to admit, had paid off in how she looked and felt, after thirty years of what she thought was a happy marriage, her husband had left her for a younger woman
.
She tried hard to fight the bitterness and resentment she felt
.
But it was easy to give advice to clients and much more difficult to take your own advice
.
She
worked very hard to control her emotions because she didn’t want those negative thoughts to show up as nasty lines and wrinkles on her face
.
So far, although her features were unremarkable, thanks to
her strict beauty regimen and
the wonders of modern cosmetics, she’d managed to conceal most of
what the years had done
.

At exactly two-thirty,
her
secretary, Marcia, opened the door and escorted Ann Kern, a new client, into the office
.
Susan pushed her desk chair back and stood up, feeling too tall and awkward as she looked down at the
petite,
young woman standing before her
.
The woman was about five foot three or four and naturally pretty
.
She wore little or no makeup and yet her face had a healthy, rosy glow
.
She had soft, warm brown eyes, a creamy complexion and near perfect features
.

Susan could hardly believe her eyes
.
The resemblance of this woman to her husband’s “girlfriend” was unnerving
.
At that moment, all her years of professional training slipped away. Struggling to regain her composure, she
walked across the room and sat down in one of the two
upholstered
armchairs
that
faced each other. She
motioned for Ann
to
follow her
.

“Please have a seat,” she said, indicating the other chair.
“So, Ann, what brings you here today
?”
she
asked, managing a feeble smile.

Ann looked down at her hands
that
were folded in her lap
.
“
Lately, I’ve been feeling, well, overwhelmed.
There’s so much, so many things on my mind.
I
…
well, it’s my marriage
mostly
, I guess
.
Things are really a mess
.
I’m not happy
.
I haven’t been happy for a long time and I
…
I don’t know what to do to make things better.”

“You’ll have to be more specific, Ann
.
Exactly why are you unhappy?”

Ann cleared her throat
.
“David, my husband,
well, he’s
changed
.
When we were first married
and for
the first
few years
, everything was so good between us
and I really do love him
but, well, I guess it happened gradually
.
I didn’t realize
.
I don’t know
.
He
…
drinks a lot and I feel like I’m living with a stranger most of the time
.
He has
a terrible temper and sometimes he throws things and breaks things and, well, we don’t … have
sex anymore,
”
she said, looking down at the floor, “
well, hardly ever anyway.”

“What I’m hearing you say, Ann, is that David’s changed
through the years
and you haven’t
.
Change is inevitable in a relationship
.
It’s healthy.”

“But, Dr. Thatcher, this can’t be healthy
.
I feel like I’m living in a world of mixed messages,” Ann said
.
“Sometimes I know David loves me
. He’s kind and sweet like he
always
used to be
and
then
, other times, the way his face and eyes change, it’s almost as if he hates me
.
It’s like he has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other
. I never know which one
.
…
”
A tear slid down Ann’s cheek.

“Can I ask you what you do for a living?” Susan asked,
completely
disregarding Ann’s statement and her obvious emotional distress.

Ann fidgeted in her chair
.
“
I haven’t worked in years but, b
efore we had the kids, I was a secretary/receptionist in an insurance office
.
Actually, that’s where I met David
.
But I, well, I’ve been a homemaker ever since
.
Tomorrow I do start a new part-time job though
.
I’ll be the secretary at our church.”

“Well, I think that’s certainly a step in the right direction, Ann. I see cases like this all the
time
.
Try, for a moment, to put yourself in David’s shoes
.
He meets an attractive young woman, falls in love with her and marries her
.
They have children
and a good life together
but, as the years go by, while he’s out in the world, meeting interesting people, exchanging ideas
with them
, learning new things, she stays home, watching cartoons on TV with her kids and reading children’s storybooks
.
He changes and grows while she stays the same
.
Do you see the problem, Ann?”

“
I guess, but David’s changed for the worse
.
His drinking
… .
”

“Is
almost certainly
a way,” the therapist interrupted, “of escaping
.
You need to take away his
need to escape
.
Why don’t we focus on how you can do that?”

Ann sat up straight in her chair and looked directly at Susan
.
“I love my husband, Dr. Thatcher
.
I’ll do whatever it takes,” she said, “to fix my marriage.”

Chapter 1
9

AS ANN HURRIED HOME
from her visit with
Dr.
Thatcher, she thought about the suggestions the counselor had given her
.
“Go home, clean the house, fix a nice dinner and, this evening while your husband is at work, take a long, hot bath
.
Then, rub lotion all over your body and put on the sexiest nightgown you own
.
Be seductive and daring
.
Try something different
.
Be his lover, not his wife
.”

Something about the counselor’s advice bothered her
.
It didn’t seem fair that both her mother-in-law and the therapist had put the responsibility for the success or failure of her marriage on her
.
Why was it all up to her? What about David’s responsibility? Wasn’t marriage supposed to be a
fifty-fifty
proposition?
But
she
dismissed her feelings
.
Taking advice from Louise, who was, after all, David’s mother, was one thing but
Dr.
Thatcher was a trained professional
.
She must know what she’s doing
,
she
thought
.
I went
to her because
I
desperately
needed
help;
I
would be a fool not to take it.

When
she
went
into
the
kitchen, she saw the kids’ backpacks lying on the table
.
Danielle had left her a note, “Mom, we’re upstairs
.
Come get us when you get home.”

She
smiled
.
Danielle had read her note and done what she’d instructed
her to do: take Davey upstairs and stay there until she got home
. I can always count on
Olivia to
be there when I need her
,
she
thought
.
She’s like a surrogate grandmother to the kids
.
She hung up her coat
in the living room closet
,
went
out
into the hallway and headed upstairs.

When she reached the top of the stairs,
she
saw that, once again, the door to the Berger’s apartment was open
.
She stood in the doorway, looking in
.
Danielle and Davey were sitting on the floor in front of Olivia’s wheelchair,
gazing
up at her and listening intently to what she was saying
.

“When I was a little girl,” Olivia said, “we used to have peddlers who would come down our street driving horse
drawn buggies and
… .
”

“What’s a peddler?” Davey asked.

“A peddler is like a salesman
.
He would peddle, or sell, things
.
He drove a horse and buggy because most people didn’t have cars back then.”

“What kinds of things did peddlers sell?” Danielle asked.

“Why, all kinds of things
.
We had
the
milkman who brought milk to our door every day and w
e had
the iceman
who delivered
big blocks of
ice to us
from the icehouse. We
didn’t have
a
refrigerator
yet
s
o w
e had an icebox
to keep our food cold and fresh
.”

“Wow” Davey exclaimed
.
“
There was
a house made out of ice!”

Olivia laughed
.
“No,
H
oney
.
The
icehouse was made out of stone
.
They
called it an icehouse because that’s where
they
stored the ice to put in
people’s
icebox
es
.”

“So your icebox was made out of ice, right?” Davey asked.

Olivia reached down and gently patted the top of his head. “No, it was kind of like the coolers we have today.
You put ice in them and then whatever food or drinks you put in them stays cold.
Does that make sense?”

“I guess so,” he said
, still looking confused
.
“But … .”

“What else did the peddlers sell?” Danielle asked
,
shaking her head and
rolling her eyes,
as if to say she’d had enough of that subject.

Olivia smiled.
“
Well,
there was a man who sold fruits and vegetables out of his truck and a man who knocked on doors, asking if he could repair any of our umbrellas. But,
m
y favorite was the junk man
.
When I close my eyes, I can still hear the clop
clop of the horse’s hooves, pulling the wagon, and the junk man yelling,
‘
Any old rags
?
Old iron?
’
”