Ms. Simon Says (17 page)

Rosie fairly glowed with contentment as she went back to drawing mugs of cold lager.

“Out of town?” Mick asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about that. About making sure Shelby’s covered while I’m gone.”

“No problem,” Mick said. “Looks like I’ll be hanging around here for a while. Probably through next weekend, anyway.”

“Great.” He blew across the surface of the steaming brew. “Shelby will probably drag you to the Masque, you poor bastard.”

“The what?”

“Masque.” He spelled it. “It’s the town’s big annual blowout. Fourth of July, Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve, and Halloween all rolled into one. Especially Halloween. Everybody wears a costume. There’s even a queen.”

Mick tried not to appear too jaded or indifferent. “Cute,” he said, feeling his lip curl slightly in spite of his good intentions

Sam laughed. “Hey. It’s something you have to grow up with, I guess.”

“You grew up here?”

“Yep. How about you? Where are you from? Chicago?”

“Yep,” Mick said without embellishment, then asked, “So, where are you off to?” Not that it was any of his business. Not that he even cared, really. He was just making Friday night bodega conversation, something that wasn’t exactly his long suit. In all honesty, he figured he didn’t have much in common with the rent-a-cop who hailed from Shelbyville, but his question was at least a rung or two above “How ’bout those Cubs?”

“Washington,” Sam said. “I’m going to have some tests done at Walter Reed.” His gaze strayed to his bum leg by way of explanation.

“That’s the army hospital.”

“Right. That’s what I did before.” He smiled kind of mournfully. “Before this.”

Now Mick was genuinely curious. This put the gimp in a whole new light. “Infantry? Artillery?” he asked him.

“Special ops.”

Ah. Well, that explained the earlier aura of command in the woods and probably also the facility with which Sam had wielded his cane to capture the fleeing perp. So, he wasn’t just your average rent-a-cop. That was good. Mick had a healthy respect for military training, and he admired the ingrained discipline of his fellow cops who’d come out of the army or the Marine Corps. There were times he thought maybe he could use some of that himself. At any rate, he felt a lot better about leaving Shelby up here in the backwoods, if and when he decided to go back home.

He lifted his beer mug in a toast to his companion. “Good luck at Walter Reed,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Then he was about to ask, “So, what happened to your leg?” when another highly perfumed member of the Sam Mendenhall Fan Club wedged herself between them, precluding further conversation.

Shelby refilled her wineglass with the last of the Merlot, and leaned back against the brass headboard. The house was as quiet as a mausoleum, which both pleased her and unsettled her. This way she’d be able to hear any intruder larger than a field mouse, but then she’d have to deal with it, and at the moment her self-defense skills were... well... wobbly at best, or nonexistent according to
some
people she’d rather not think about right now.

Gazing around her, she was glad that Beth had kept all the monster pieces of marble-topped walnut furniture that had always decorated this room. Thank heavens her mother had forbidden Shelby from turning it into a typical teenager’s den with a white-laminated dresser and bookcases, black lights, BeeGees’ posters, and a waterbed when she was in high school. This was so much nicer, not to mention a whole lot neater than when she was in summer residence here. Jeez. Just the sand on the floor back then could’ve contributed to a new shoreline for a man-made lake.

When people wrote to Ms. Simon complaining about their children’s messy rooms, Shelby always responded with her laissez-faire advice. Let them have their space, she’d answer. Pick your battles carefully, moms and dads. A messy bedroom isn’t a battlefield, after all. It’s a son’s or daughter’s sanctuary.

Ask Alice disagreed. Bless his tidy, tyrannical, Neo Nazi little heart. Only last week he/she had written: “Organization is the true key to success, and it’s never too early to learn.” This bit of wisdom came in response to the mother of a four-year-old with a neatness disability.

Phooey. Shelby took another sip from her glass. Now that she was on the sidelines, more and more people would be turning to Alice for advice. It was a measure of Shelby’s devotion to her column and her confidence in her own advice that the mere thought of awful Alvin Wexler becoming the country’s foremost adviser nearly made her sick to her stomach.

“I gotta get back to work.”

Oh, great. Ms. Simon was talking to herself now after a mere two days in exile. In another few days, she’d probably be writing Ask Alice herself, begging for advice. After that, who knew? She might strip off all her clothes and walk straight out into the lake until the cold water closed over her head.

On the upside, she supposed, was that after twelve years of doing her column, any tendency she might’ve had to take her career for granted was gone. She would be returning with renewed appreciation for every letter she read and every piece of advice she offered.

Feeling a bit less glum, Shelby swallowed the last of the wine, set the glass on the antique marble-topped nightstand, and reached to turn off the lamp just as a car door slammed in the driveway at the bottom of the hill.

That would be Sam dropping off Callahan. A quick glance at the clock told her that Michael Rainbow Callahan was twenty minutes shy of turning into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight. Then she wondered what the two of them had talked about over their beers.

Well, two guesses what Sam had said about Shelby, the Evil Buttinski, and how she’d altered the course of his life with her “good” advice to Beth. She was surprised he’d been civil to her this afternoon, considering the grudge he bore her for something that really wasn’t her fault. After all, Sam was the one who’d immediately gotten married to that bimbo in Georgia and had put an end to any future plans with Beth.

Of course, he was single now, wasn’t he? And so was Beth. There was still time to fix things, to repair the damage she had done. If she could only get the two of them together and...

Oh, wait—wait a minute—hold the phone—why hadn’t she thought of this before? Next Saturday would be Halloween, which meant that Masque was coming up. Masque, with the entire town in attendance and in disguise. Even a flock of summer people made it a habit to come back at Halloween for the festivities. It was the only time her parents had ever brought their daughters back here after the summer was over. To participate in Masque, the celebration founded by Orvis Shelby, Jr., half a million years ago.

Legend had it—or rumor, in this case—that old Orvis, Jr., was a cross dresser who spent thousands and thousands of dollars on the annual affair in Shelbyville just so he could indulge his little lace-trimmed, high-heeled hobby in public once a year. Shelby suspected there was some truth to the rumors, especially since her mother’s memories of the man always seemed deliberately vague and misleading. She hoped it was true, really. Didn’t everyone want a horse thief up in the branches of their family tree? And if they couldn’t have a horse thief, a cross dresser would certainly do.

She and Beth had attended Masque one year as the Olsen twins of television fame. One year they’d gone as Sonny and Cher, with the loser of a coin toss—poor Beth, naturally—having to be Sonny in a ratty faux fur vest while Shelby, aka Cher, got to wear a pink wig, false eyelashes, hip huggers, and platform shoes studded with rhinestones. That was the same year, as Shelby recalled, that her parents had dressed as Ashley Wilkes and Scarlett O’Hara. Talk about your mismatches of all time.

Okay. That settled it. Her mind was made up. She owed Beth and Sam a second chance, and Masque was the perfect way to get them back together. Tomorrow she’d call her sister, remind her about all the fun they’d had at the annual event, and offer to pay her airfare from San Francisco so they could celebrate again and play dress up together for what might be the last time in their lives.

It occurred to her then that the costume party might also be the perfect opportunity to reunite her parents. Maybe if they attended the party as Rhett and Scarlett this time, the sparks would carry over into their actual lives. It was certainly worth a try.

So, in a single evening, nearly in the blink of an eye, Ms. Simon had solved the problems of two pairs of problem lovers. And once again, here she was alone, having paired up everyone in the world but herself. A typical end of a good day’s work. It should’ve made her happier somehow...

She heard a creak at the bottom of the staircase, which meant that Callahan had come silently through the front door left unlocked for him and was on his way up to bed.

Or not.

She assumed it was Callahan, but what if it wasn’t? People who’ve been threatened with death by letter bomb probably shouldn’t make assumptions of any kind. Should they? What if it was someone else? What if...?

With her heart thumping hard, this time out of fear rather than physical attraction, Shelby reached for the nearest weapon, the empty wine bottle on the nightstand. She slipped out of bed, then tiptoed to the closed bedroom door and listened almost fiercely to the squeaks of the treads and the creaks of the banister. Oh, God. It sounded way too spooky to be Callahan.

Her knees were turning to tapioca. Okay. Calm down. Let’s be smart here, she told herself. What would you rather do in a situation like this—clunk someone over the head with a wine bottle, or just lock the damned bedroom door and be safe behind it?

Duh.

The only problem now was that this ancient and oh-so-familiar door locked not with a regular turn of a bolt but rather with a big, curlicued metal key, which was not currently inserted in the keyhole. Not on her side of the door, anyway. Shelby bent to peek through the ornate brass doorplate, possibly to glimpse whoever was coming up the stairs, but naturally her view through the keyhole was blocked by the big, curlicued, goddamn metal key that was stuck in the lock from the outside. Shit. She had to retrieve that key.

Twisting the knob and opening the door just wide enough to slide her hand through the opening, she felt for the key, hoping to whip that sucker out in the blink of an eye and then to close and lock the door from the inside.

Only...

The key, when her shaking fingertips made contact, wouldn’t budge. She edged her arm farther out through the crack in the door, trying to get a bit more leverage on the damned thing, but when she stretched her fingers toward the key again, it was gone. God. She almost slammed the heavy door closed while her arm was still in it.

“Is this what you’re looking for?” Callahan’s voice rumbled on the opposite side of the door at the same instant that she felt the cool touch of metal against her palm. Shelby didn’t know whether to sag to the floor with relief or to whip open the door and smack him. Clutching the key, she opened the door a few more inches to find herself staring straight into the soft plaid collar of his shirt. Her eyes jerked up and met the Grinch-like expression on his face.

“That was really a bone-headed move,” he said.

Like she really needed him to tell her that, especially when the insult wafted through the space between the door and the frame on the wings of the Anheuser-Busch eagle. Angry now rather than frightened, she pushed the door with her shoulder and heard it thud against him. With any luck, she’d bruised something important.

“What were you going to do, Shelby?” he asked. “Stab me to death with the key?”

“No.” She pulled the wine bottle from where she’d wedged it under her arm and brandished it. “I was going to brain my attacker with this. Of course, if I’d known it was you, Callahan, I wouldn’t have bothered since you don’t have one.”

“Cute.”

He jerked the door all the way open and blew across the threshold like some sudden storm, forcing Shelby to step back out of his way, and continued until he reached the windows on the far side of the room, where he began yanking on one of the long brocade panels that was swagged back against the window frame.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked. “Stop that.”

Callahan turned toward her, a wad of brocade fabric in his fist and fire in his hazel eyes. “I’m trying to discourage any more Peeping Toms is what I’m doing. There was a kid out there tonight who could barely wait for the Shelby Show to start.”

“Oh, jeez.” She felt her expression sort of flattening, almost sliding off her face, as she tried to recall where she’d changed out of her sweater and jeans and underthings into her long sleep tee earlier this evening.

God help her. Had she done anything stupid with her bra, like waving it over her head before she’d tossed it onto the dresser? Or had she performed a quick little Bob Fosse hip twitch in the buff? Or—oh, shit!—had she inspected various and sundry parts of her anatomy for sudden moles or discolorations or errant veins or patches of dry skin. Judas Priest. She was used to living on the twelfth frigging floor, after all. Now she wished she were twelve stories underground.

“Yeah. Oh, jeez,” he said, mimicking her tone.

As he spoke, Shelby couldn’t help but notice that Callahan seemed to be having a hard time maintaining eye contact with her. His gaze kept dropping to her bare feet, then wallowing at the hem of her pale blue cotton shirt, then sort of creeping back up with a pronounced lull at her chest. Talk about your Peeping Toms!

“Just pull down the shade, you jerk,” she snarled at him.

“Excuse me?”

“Quit yanking on the curtains, Callahan. They aren’t even supposed to close. Just pull down the stupid shades.”

Now it was his turn to mutter a foolish “Oh.” Ha! But then he reverted to full macho mode by nearly ripping the shades off their rollers when he whipped them down one after another on each of the tall windows.

Shelby, still miffed, would’ve crossed her arms over her chest with a proper amount of righteous indignation, but she had some concerns about that pose as it related to the length of her garment, so she placed her hands on her hips instead.