Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (4 page)

He wished he could turn back the clock and be with Angie there, under the shade of the old tree
.
Or,
better yet,
he thought, if she could be with me now
.
We would travel to so many places
.
We’d see the world
.
He longed to travel and spent hours watching the Travel Channel on cable TV
.
There were so many beautiful, exotic places in the world for normal people to go
.
But he wasn’t normal
.
His eyes were so sensitive to light and he had to keep himself covered with sunscreen whenever he ventured outdoors
.
T
hen there was
his m
other and his responsibility to her
.
Travel was out of the question and Angie had been out of his life for many, many years.

He heard
the front door of the house
slam and
went
back over to the window
.
Looking
out, he saw that the sky had clouded up, making it easier on his eyes.
Ann
Kern
was
scurrying
down the
walkway, heading toward the sidewalk
.
Everyone called her
“
Ann
”
and, in public, he did too
.
He’d slipped once
and referred to her as “Annie.”
He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
H
e could still see the
disapproving
expression on
his mother’s
face
and hear her voice
. “Lawrence, you need to remember that Ann is a married woman.”

But, privately, in his head, he
always
thought of her as Annie
.
Annie, like Angie
.
She didn’t look at all like Angie but
he
knew better than
anyone that looks didn’t measure a person’s worth. Annie had Angie’s soul. She was so nice and
always so kind to him
.
Just like Angie.

He
watched Ann until she was out of sight
.
Then he
went
over to the sofa,
lay
down
and
once again, closed his eyes
.
This time instead of Angie, he saw Annie
.
In his daydream, they were
strolling
along the beach at night, holding hands
.
The full moon and the sounds of the ocean’s waves lapping at the shore were so vivid to him
.
He felt as if he were really
there
with her.

In his mind, they stopped to sit on a bench not far from the water’s edge
.
He put his arm
around her shoulders and she leaned toward him, running her fingers through his hair
.
He looked into her warm brown eyes and saw the love he knew she felt for him
.
He kissed her lips
tenderly
at first and then,
gradually, more passionately.

He
felt his erection and unzipped his pants
.
As he stroked himself, he was engrossed in his fantasy
.
Ann’s hand softly held him and, as they slid off
of
the bench to the sand below, she guided him into her
.
As he climaxed, she whispered, “I love you, Lawrence
.”

“I love you too,” he murmured.

Afterward, they
lay
in each other arms, breathing in the cool salt air
.
“I wish we could stay like this forever,” she said, “just you and me, away from the world
.”

As he dozed off,
he
whispered, “
Yes, Annie, just you and me away from the world
.”

Chapter
6

ANN HAD MIXED FEELINGS
as she walked home after her meeting with Davey’s teacher. On one hand, she was relieved. Ms. Williams’ suspicions confirmed what she had suspected for a long time: that Davey had Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. If the tests that the teacher recommended proved that Davey did have ADHD, she was open minded enough to accept that and confident they’d find a way to help her young son. She knew that everything would be fine. The problem wasn’t with Davey. The problem was breaking the news to David. When would be the best time to tell him? More importantly, how would he react?

She’d only been inside the school for about an hour but the temperature had dropped considerably in that time. As she looked up at the overcast sky, she realized that it threatened rain. She started walking as fast as she could. In the yards of several of the houses she passed, there were signs, urging people to vote for various candidates on Election Day. That’s another thing I need to decide, she realized, still unsure of whether she would vote for Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election.

She remembered that her grandmother, a staunch Democrat, had always said that the Democratic party supported the common man while Republicans represented the interests of the wealthy. Ann had seen the various commercials on TV for both candidates. The ones who sponsored Obama said that it was time for a change and she thought that was probably true. But, if he won, would the changes he proposed and enacted be good for the country? That she didn’t know.

As she hurried past the cemetery, which was adjacent to the church, she remembered that she had to call Father Andrew about the job when she got home. She practically ran the rest of the way.
Normally, she would stop to admire the Berkley’s Halloween display in their front yard whenever she passed by it but, today, she was
so eager to get home that she
barely glanced at
it.

John Berkley both frightened and delighted the neighborhood kids every
October
when he decorated his yard with fantastic horror scenes. He had life-size mannequins dressed as demons, ghosts and vampires. Bats hung on wires rigged with a pulley system, which made it appear as if they were actually flying. There was even a motorized witch’s cauldron complete with the sound of a witch cackling. There were cobwebs, tombstones and blood and gore everywhere.

A few drops of rain started to fall as she opened the kitchen door and went in. Good thing the kids keep umbrellas in their lockers at school, she thought. She hung her jacket on a peg hook by the door and went straight to the phone. Father Andrew answered on the
first
ring.

She took a deep breath. “Father, it’s Ann Kern. I don’t know if you remember me but my mother-in-law, Louise, mentioned that you’re looking for a part-time secretary. I’d like to apply for the job.”

“Of course I remember you, Ann,” he said. “From Sunday mass. Louise is right; I am definitely looking for a secretary. I’m delighted that you’re interested. Why don’t you come in tomorrow morning at, say, eleven and we’ll talk about it.”

She smiled as she hung up the phone. This is a good thing, she told herself. If I get this job, maybe David will feel less pressure and things will be good between us again. And, it might be nice to go back to work. It would feel good to bring home my own paycheck again.

She went into the living room. As she sat down at her sewing machine, she heard the familiar sounds of the electric lift in the hallway. Olivia must be coming down to get her mail, she thought. She finished pinning together the pieces of the kids’ Halloween costumes. She held them up, one at a time, and examined her work. Satisfied with the results, she turned her sewing machine on and, as she guided the material for Danielle’s costume under the needle, running her fingers across the smooth, satiny fabric
, she thought about
the state
her
marriage
was in
.

As the machine hummed, she
tried to figure out
what she could do to make things right
again
. I’ll just have to try harder, she resolved. I want things back the way they were and I won’t give up until they are. She gathered up the folds of black material and held the costume up. She couldn’t help but smile. Danielle would make an adorable fancy witch with her sequined dress and cape and tall witch’s hat with black fur trim. I can’t wait to see her in this, she thought, as she finished hemming the cape.

Time always passed quickly for her when she was involved in a project. Before she knew it, she heard the kitchen door close and realized that the kids were home from school. She looked up to see Davey standing next to her, a confused expression on his face.

“Mommy, what’s a ‘toe head’?” he asked her.

“Where’d you hear that?” she asked.

“Bobby Barker called me that today,” he said. “Mommy, I don’t have toes on my head.”

She suppressed a giggle. “Honey, a towhead is a person with very light blonde hair.
That’s all it means. Your father was a towhead when he was a little boy.”

“Really?” he asked, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Really.” She held up her son’s costume. “Davey, I need you to try this on so we can see if it fits.”

She got up and followed Davey into the kitchen. He sat down on a chair and she guided his feet into the costumes’ pant legs and helped him pull it up. He started to squirm as she tried to tie up the back.

“Hold still, Davey! It’s only pinned together,” she said, with an expression on her face
that told him she meant business. The second she was finished tying it, Davey started running
around the kitchen chanting, “Spiderman! Spiderman! Does whatever a spider can.”

Danielle, who was sitting at the other end of the kitchen table, looked up from the book
she was reading and giggled. “Mom, he really does look like Spiderman.”

“Well, he sure has enough energy to be a Superhero,” Ann replied, wondering for the hundredth time that day how David would take the news about Davey.

“When can I try on my costume?” Danielle asked.

“How about right after dinner? Which reminds me, I’d better get it started. Your father
will be home any minute.”

Chapter
7

“WHAT A GLOOMY DAY THIS HAS TURNED INTO
,” David said aloud, flipping on the windshield wipers and turning on the headlights
.
The sky was gray and a light drizzle had begun to fall
.
The weather’s crappy and I feel crappy
.
I guess I am one of those people, he thought, recalling the television special he’d recently
seen
about Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD
.
The weather is definitely affecting my mood and not in a good way
.
Although it was only three o’clock in the afternoon, he decided to call it a day
.
Oh, what the hell, he thought. I’ve got an appointment tonight
.
That’s good enough; it’ll have to be
.

People don’t realize that selling
insurance
is hard, he thought, especially
in this economy.
It
takes
a lot out of you
.
They called them “cold calls” in the business because the potential clients hadn’t called you for an appointment, you had called them; you were going in “cold
.”
Yeah, right,
he
thought
.
It’s really because nine out of ten times you get the cold shoulder
.
He almost laughed; it was almost funny.

He looked down the list of potential clients
that
his manager had handed him that morning
.
It infuriated him that, after fifteen years in the business, he was being forced to use a computer
generated printout
.
Ms. Boss Lady was treating him like a rookie, like a new hire
.
The nerve of that bitch telling him his sales weren’t
“
up to expected standards” lately
and p
utting him on a sixty
day action plan
!

Just the other day, she’d
lectured
him
as if he were a child
, “If one out of ten calls results in a sale, then twenty calls equals two sales, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”
Thinking about it made him want to have a drink but he decided against it
.
There would be p
lenty of time for that later
.
He was perfectly capable of getting sales without her stupid list
.
It didn’t change the odds of making a sale one bit
.
However,
she’d given him no choice
.
To keep his job, he had to do what she said
.
She even had the office secretary scheduling some of his appointments and she was making follow up calls to make sure he’d actually gone to see the people
.