Tangled Thing Called Love (16 page)

“What?” The intensity of his gaze flustered her. Why was he kneeling below her on the steps? This couldn’t be the big question, could it? There wasn’t a ring hidden in that first-aid kit, was there?

Sure there is, Mazie, you romantic cretin. Ben staged this whole thing, trained the turkeys to lurk in the bushes and then attack just so he could propose to you
.

She laughed. The idea was too absurd.

“Would you be willing to play Fawn?” he asked. “I want to do a reenactment of her disappearance out at the swamp for the documentary. You’re about the same build as her—you even look a little similar. You’d be perfect.”

“A reenactment? Like on the History Channel? Like when they reenacted Marie Antoinette’s death?”

“Right. Only you wouldn’t actually get your head chopped off.”

“I guess I could.” Actually, she was thrilled with the notion; she suspected she had a lot of ham actor entwined in her DNA.

“Maybe you could wear a long dress, heels?”

“My old pageant dress is somewhere up in the attic,” Mazie said, beginning to feel quite enthusiastic about the idea. “I’m planning to wear it Saturday, for the pageant parade. But it’s not light pink—it’s hot pink—”

“You mean it was a hot dress or you looked hot in the dress?”

Guys ought to carry around a male/female translation guide, Mazie thought. “It’s a
color
. Really bright pink. Not the same shade as Fawn’s dress.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re just trying to create an impression. So if you’re okay with it, I’d like to do the filming tomorrow night, around sunset. I don’t have the equipment I
need, though—I want to drive up to Madison today, see if I can scrounge some lights and stuff from the ABC affiliate there. Want to come?”

“I’m supposed to do pageant stuff today,” Mazie said, embarrassed to admit it.

“Oh.” Ben didn’t look happy to hear it. He squeezed glop from a tube onto her thigh.

“Ouch! What
is
that stuff?”

“Wound sealant.” He bent and kissed her knee, just above the gooey stuff.

If he added tongue, Mazie thought, she was going to climax right here atop Gran’s old rag rug.

Chapter Eighteen

Ben borrowed Scully’s pickup because he’d need a large vehicle to haul the rented equipment back, leaving Mazie with his car for the day. The boys had missed the school bus, so she drove them to school. Her phone rang as she was pulling out of the school’s drop-off zone.

It was Holly. “Fawn’s diary,” she said. “Do you believe those little bitches?”

“Bloodcurdling. I take it you finished the whole thing?”

“I stayed up until midnight reading it.”

“Do you still think Gil killed her?”

Holly heaved a my-theory-is-shot-to-hell sigh. “I think that if he’d been molesting Fawn, she’d have mentioned it in her diary. Or possibly turned him in. Fawn was too tough to let Gil get away with—hey, don’t feed your cereal to the dog!”

“What?”

“Sorry,” Holly said. “I was yelling at Charlie. Back to business. We have to shop for swimsuits.”

“No-o.”

“We’ve got to do this, Mazie—otherwise the terrorists will have won. The mommy van is in the shop today. Do you have a car—or as Fawn would say, wheeeeeels?”

“How does a Jetta sound?”

“Ecologically responsible. Pick me up in a half hour—it’ll take that long to find a sitter gullible enough to take the kids. But we can’t go anywhere too far away. Shopko okay?”

“Sure. My Bergdorf’s card is maxed out, anyway.”

As Mazie was about to pull out onto the street, she spotted something that made her jam on the brakes. There, parked at the edge of the high school parking lot, was a white van. Its license plate was smeared with mud, but she was almost certain it was the van that had run her off the road two days ago.

Hastily parking a few slots away, she got out and walked over to inspect the
vehicle. It was a panel van with double doors in the back. It looked as though it had been in an off-road mudding event and was in dire need of a wash. Mazie wiped off the rear license plate with a tissue, then used her cell phone camera to snap a photo. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she tried the van’s doors. All locked. She peered inside through a dirt-smeared window. The interior was a giant tossed-junk salad of crumpled beer cans, old socks, fishing gear, molding food, a disassembled shotgun, porn mags, soda bottles, spare tires, a car jack, a stepladder, a chain saw … and that was just the top layer! Was this the van of a person who would run a bicyclist off the road for kicks? Not to stereotype—but hell, yeah.

She could do a stakeout, wait around until the van’s driver came out. She could ask Johnny Hoolihan to trace the plate. But why waste time going through official channels when she could stage the Mazie Maguire Malarkey and Moonshine Show?

Hurrying into the building, she found the office she wanted, told the summer school secretary about the van in the lot with its lights on, and supplied the plate number. A sweet, fluttery, white-haired woman who looked as though she’d been dragged out of retirement for the summer, the secretary made an announcement over the school’s public-address system.

“Thank you for being such a caring person,” the secretary told Mazie, beaming.

“No problem,” Mazie muttered, trying to stifle her guilt pangs.

Returning to the parking lot, she concealed herself behind the bulky pickup truck parked next to the white van. A minute or so passed, and then she heard rapid footsteps. They stopped in front of the van.

“What the fuck?” came a male voice.

Cautiously Mazie peered around the corner of the pickup. A man wearing a hard hat and a green fluorescent vest stood in front of the van, eyeballing the headlights and appearing puzzled. She raised the cell phone, held it in a trembling hand, and prepared to snap. But the man abruptly moved, strode to the driver’s door, unlocked it, and retrieved a pack of cigarettes from the front seat. He shook one out, lit it, and stuck it in his mouth. She’d waited too long; the guy was much too close now. If she pressed the “take” button, he might hear the click.

He was a tall, wiry man in his midthirties, with scorpion tattoos on his arms and a
tan that was startlingly dark against his sandy, shoulder-length hair. Narrowing his eyes against the smoke, he brought the cigarette to his lips, revealing a hand speckled with pinprick scabs, as though he’d scratched mosquito bites until they’d gotten infected. They weren’t bites, though, Mazie thought; she’d seen enough scabbed women in prison to recognize meth sores.

Was this the guy who’d run her off the road? Maybe the same person who’d decided it would be hilarious to drop a bucket of tar on her head? His deep tan suggested someone who spent hours up on a roof all day. He didn’t seem in any hurry to get back to his job, and Mazie had time to note every detail of his appearance, from his no-color eyes to his belt buckle. Still, a vivid word description wasn’t going to do much good—she needed a photo. And she needed a sneaky, silent spy-type camera to take it with, because her cell phone made a click that was audible half a block away.

What she should have done, Mazie realized, was to pretend to be having car trouble, then call the guy over, start flirting, and ask to take his picture. But even as the thought formed, she discarded it. She was not capable of flirting with this man. Even standing there, cheeks hollowing as he inhaled smoke, he exuded an almost palpable air of menace. Quite simply, he scared her. He would hear the camera click, he’d see her; he’d pounce on her, and then he would—

A school bus rumbled along the street in front of the school and turned into the lot, its engine growling, brakes squeaking, kids hanging out the windows, yelling and laughing.

Now or never.

Click.

The bus provided just enough noise to cover the sound. Unaware that his image had been captured, the hard hat guy tossed the cigarette down, ground it out with the toe of his work boot, and slouched off.

Mazie waited until she saw him disappear around the side of the building before straightening up and emerging from cover, realizing that she was shaking and drenched in sweat. Even though she’d been in the middle of a public parking lot, out in broad daylight, she felt that she’d somehow been in danger.

She drove over to the Greenberg house, waiting impatiently as Holly gave her babysitter last-minute instructions. Finally Holly climbed into the car. Before she could
even snap on her seat belt, Mazie brandished her cell phone to show Holly the photo. “Do you recognize this guy?” she asked.

“I can’t see him,” Holly said, squinting.

“What do you mean you can’t see him? He’s right in front of you, five inches tall!”

“This picture is blurry—you’re a lousy photographer.”

“It is not blurry! Your
eyes
are blurry. Put on your glasses.”

Holly was too vain to wear her glasses in publc and stashed them, as though they were something illicit or embarrassing—like Preparation H or Beano or tickets to a boy band concert—at the very bottom of her purse. While she rooted around for the glasses, Mazie described what had just happened: how she’d recognized the white van in the parking lot, checked the license plate and pulled off the old left-your-lights-on scam.

“Shame on you, tricking poor old Mrs. McDougal,” said Holly, finally excavating the eyeglasses and perching them on her nose, which instantly made her look like Anne Hathaway.

“Yeah, I know—I’m going to hell for my sins, but it worked. The guy came rushing out to check his headlights. I had my camera ready and—”

“Holy shit!” Holly jabbed a finger at the photo. “Do you know who that is? I mean who I think it is—of course I can’t be one hundred percent sure because this really
is
a shoddy photo, and you should have used the refocus—”

“For God’s sake, Holly!”

“Derek Ralston.”

“Who?”

“
Derek Ralston
. Remember—Fawn mentioned him in her diary?
Derek, Dukie, Duke the Puke?
”

“Are you sure?”

Holly frowned. “Pretty sure. I think I’ve seen him around town occasionally. He did odd jobs for a while—one of my aunts hired him to paint her house. Then she noticed things were going missing and fired him.” Holly used her thumbs to enlarge the photo until only the face showed. It was a three quarters view, and the larger it became, the scarier the guy looked. “Yeah—that’s Derek Ralston. I kind of remember those ugly tattoos. Brrr—he gives me the creeps.”

“Me, too.” Mazie started the car and backed out of Holly’s driveway.

“He must be working on the roofing project at the school,” Holly said excitedly. “You know what this means, Mazie—I bet he was the one who dropped that bucket yesterday. I mean it fits, doesn’t it? First he practically kills you out on the highway—”

“But why would he do that? The guy doesn’t even know me. And I don’t know Derek Ralston from Adam. Anyway, we don’t know for sure that was his van. Maybe he just offered to run out and turn off the lights for his buddy.”

“We need to tell Johnny about this.” Holly punched a number into Mazie’s phone. “He can trace the plates. I mean the police do that all the time, right?”

“I guess.” As far as Mazie was concerned, law officials had way too much power to snoop on people.

Holly talked for a while, then hung up, looking disappointed. “Johnny’s not in. He decided to take an actual day of his vacation. His secretary said she’d have him call us when he gets back.”

“The nerve of him, actually using his vacation days.”

Holly used the sun visor mirror to apply lip gloss. “Know what I think? This all has something to do with Fawn.”

“Have you been huffing your hair spray? Because that’s crazy.”

“Oh, crazy am I? Then how do you explain the fact that the minute your gorgeous gentleman caller starts snooping into Fawn’s disappearance, tar buckets are suddenly falling from the sky? What if—” She clutched Mazie’s arm. “What if Derek Ralston murdered Fawn?”

Mazie frowned, not wanting to admit how much she was buying into Holly’s theory, but feeling obliged to poke holes in it. “The police must have questioned Ralston. If there was any evidence he was behind Fawn’s disappearance, they would have arrested him.”

Holly’s eyes sparkled. “Hey, maybe we could—”

“No!” Mazie slammed on the brakes at the single stoplight on Main Street with a lot more force than strictly necessary. “No more snooping around. I’ve hung up my gumshoes. Anyway, I’m still traumatized from yesterday, seeing Gil Fanchon’s bare backside.”

Holly sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Damn! I never have any fun. But speaking of
backsides—”

“Right. Swimwear.”

Quail Hollow’s shopping options were limited. The nearest place that even had a Macy’s was across the Mississippi in Dubuque, a good hour’s drive away, and Holly’s babysitting meter was ticking away. So it was the strip mall on the highway or nothing. It wasn’t exactly the Mall of America, but it at least had a Shopko that sold clothes. Inside the store, they made their way to the swimwear department.

“You know the best way to shop for bikinis?” Holly asked.

“There’s a best way?”

“In a dark room, at midnight, with all the mirrors draped.”

“What, no blindfold?”

“I read about this one study that showed that bikini shopping made women anxious and depressed.”

“Yeah—sponsored by Dr. Sherlock of the No Shit University.”

Holly inspected a floral two-piece suit with a skirted bottom. “What do you think of this?”

“It would make a great tablecloth for a luau.” Mazie held up a red bikini with rows of glittery fringe against her chest. “How about this?”

Holly shook her head. “You’d be a shoo-in for the Miss Slut-a-Rama Pageant.”

Mazie offered Holly a lime green bikini with a ruffled bottom. “This color would look fantastic on you.”

“You’re joking. My butt would look so big I’d need beepers if I backed up.” She waggled a bright orange bikini at Mazie, raising her eyebrows. “Whaddaya think?”

“Jailhouse orange. In case someone forgets my prison record.”