Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out Read online

  MOTHER’S DAY OUT

  by

  Karen MacInerney

  Dedicated to Bethann and Beau Eccles.

  Digitally published by Karen MacInerney, 2012

  Copyright © Karen MacInerney, 2012

  Cover art by Kimberly Killion, HotDamnDesigns.com

  EBook design by A Thirsty Mind

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ONE

  After seven years of chiseling away at the petrified contents of Tupperware containers, wiping a variety of organic substances off of two small children, and cleaning up after an incontinent Siamese cat, I thought I could stomach anything.

  I was wrong.

  It was eleven-thirty on a rainy Tuesday morning in Austin, Texas, and I had been tailing Irwin Pence, purveyor of toilets and bathtubs to the not-so-rich-and-famous, every morning for a week now. Much of that time involved sitting in a parking lot and waiting, punctuated from time to time by me narrowing my eyes into the rearview mirror and mouthing “Margie Peterson, Private Investigator.” I was trying for a look that was firm and knowledgeable, yet slightly intimidating. So far, all I’d come up with was a puckery expression that made me look like I’d been sucking on limes.

  As I sat outside ABC Plumbing and Fixtures, trying to improve on the sucking-limes look, I had the satisfying yet slightly unsettling thought that I was the only mom on the Green Meadows Day School PTA who spent her mornings on stakeouts. Until recently, the main excitement in my life was trying to get my three-year-old and my five-year-old from swim lessons to soccer without sideswiping another minivan. Now, though, while the other moms jogged loops around the lake, had their eyebrows waxed or went grocery shopping, I was a covert operative, stalking an overweight plumbing salesman like a lioness hunting a zebra.

  This was my first case with Peachtree Investigations, the P.I. firm that had reluctantly hired me last week. For the first few days, the thrill of me—me!—shadowing a potential wrongdoer had made the time fly. But after five mornings of sitting outside ABC Plumbing and Fixtures in my Dodge Caravan, puckering into the mirror, knitting a rainbow scarf for my niece and trying not to think about my bladder (which is hard when you’re sitting outside a toilet store), I had to admit I was starting to have the first inklings of doubt. I mean, it sounds glamorous, but the truth is, sitting around in a dumpy parking lot waiting for a fat guy to sneak out and hook up with someone wasn’t exactly a thrill. To be honest, I was starting to wonder if it was worth the trouble my husband was giving me for taking a part-time job as a P.I.

  And then I hit pay dirt.

  This afternoon, instead of turning east for lunch at Taco Bell (the supersize combo with three extra burritos, double cheese and sour cream), Pence broke with tradition and turned south. I made a quick U-Turn and gripped the steering wheel hard. Ten minutes later, his blue Ford pickup slowed next to a gaggle of scantily clad women huddled under umbrellas. As I peered through the squeaking windshield wipers, three of them approached the car. A moment later, one of them clambered up into the passenger seat.

  I clenched the steering wheel and gave myself a reassuring lime-sucking look as we traveled down Oltorf. I was ready for this, right? If five years of living with small kids hadn’t prepared me for excitement, adventure, and frequent brushes with the unexpected (think toilet bowls, Matchbox cars, and Niagara Falls), what would?

  Now the pickup and I were in the parking lot of the Como Motel. The rain drummed on the cracked pavement as Pence did a fast waddle to the office. He returned to the truck for a moment to retrieve a grocery bag, then dashed through the rain and wedged himself through the door of Room 126, followed by an improbably blonde woman in a minimalist leather dress.

  I reached for the door handle, but hesitated. I knew I needed to follow them, and had spent the week preparing for just this eventuality. But now that it came down to it, it felt a bit awkward. I mean, I spent half my life telling my kids to respect others’ privacy and be honest, yet here I was, following someone incognito and preparing to take a picture of him engaged in an intimate act.

  I gripped the handle again. Why did it matter if he knew I was following him? After all, Mr. Pence was married. And it was his wife who had hired me—well, Peachtree Investigations, anyway—to find out if he was cheating on her. And he’d just gone into a motel room with a hooker, hadn’t he? So, if anyone was playing fast and loose with the morals here, it was him. Right?

  Besides, I was due at my kids’ school in twenty-five minutes.

  I had half-opened the door when I realized I wasn’t the only one in the parking lot. A few doors down from Room 126, a scraggly young man and a green-haired woman were loading their worldly possessions into a hatchback. I pulled the door shut and growled.

  Not good.

  While the young couple rearranged the items for the fifteenth time and struggled to slam the trunk lid, my stomach gurgled. I foraged through the debris on the floor between the front seats until I came up with half a granola bar, munching on it while the couple retrieved a CD that had rolled halfway across the parking lot. The bar wasn’t Nature Valley’s finest—it was a bit soggy—but I eat when I’m stressed, and it was better than rooting around for stray Cheerios.

  Finally, the little car pulled out onto the highway. I popped the last stale fragment of granola into my mouth, grabbed my daughter’s umbrella, and scurried across the parking lot. If it were my husband, I reasoned as my tennis shoe sank into a murky puddle, I’d want to know, wouldn’t I?

  A moment later I crouched down outside the window of Room 126, huddling under my Hello Kitty! umbrella and glancing around to make sure I was alone. Then I pulled out my ancient Nikon camera, peered through the gap in the yellowed vinyl curtains, and just about shot the granola bar back up.

  There, in the middle of the bed, stood Irwin Pence, all three hundred and fifty pounds of him.

  The surprising thing was not that he was naked.

  It was that he was wearing nothing but Saran Wrap.

  I swallowed back a lump of granola. Irwin Pence’s back was to the window. His plastic-encased buttocks looked like two misshapen balls of dough that had been left to rise for far too long, except for the coarse black hairs peppering the dimpled surface. I stared, mesmerized, but all I could think was, Poor Mrs. Pence.

  I swallowed again. Chances were that a wide-angle shot of Mr. Pence’s buttocks would be enough for Mrs. Pence to make an identification—how many three-hundred-and-fifty-pound men with a penchant for saran wrap could there possibly be in Austin?—but it would be better to hold out for a shot of his face. And, if I could get it, at least a fragment of the woman who had popped through the motel room door behind him. I assumed she was in there somewhere. I just couldn’t see past those massive wads of dough, wrapped up like something in the “we-make-it-you-bake-it” case at Central Market.

  My stomach churned, but I jammed the camera up to the glass anyway. As I waited for the mountain of flesh to turn toward me, the thought crossed my mind that throwing Tupperware parties might not be such a bad idea after all.

  Behind me, an eighteen-wheeler roared past on IH-35. I bounced up and down a few times to keep the circulation going in my calves, focusing my attention on Mr. Pence’s vast white body and hop
ing he would shift around enough to give me a clear shot. I tried a little visualization thing I’d read about, sending him an invisible laser beam with the message Turn around, but so far it wasn’t working.

  A moist breeze from the vicinity of the dumpster brought a mixed bouquet of circus, barnyard and sewer, which doesn’t go well with stale granola. I took a break from thinking about Mr. Pence, focusing instead on keeping the contents of my stomach in place, and glanced down at my watch. It was time to get the show on the road. I was due at my kids’ school in twenty minutes, and I was already in the doghouse with the director, Attila the Bunn, for ‘sauntering in’ forty-five minutes late that morning. I sighed. It was just my luck that the day Pence chose to indulge his Saran Wrap fetish would be the one day my kids had early dismissal.

  Unfortunately, the mountain of flesh on the saggy king-size bed with its circa-1970 bedspread of burnt orange and avocado green remained buttocks-out. I wrinkled my nose as I considered the variety of activities that bedspread had witnessed. And number of times it had probably seen the inside of a washing machine.

  As I crouched, camera at the ready, my nose started to run. I set the camera down for a moment and dug in my backpack for a tissue. Two fuzzy pacifiers, a half-eaten lollipop, a McDonald’s fry phone and an overdue Bob the Builder DVD later, I located a frayed tissue decorated with purse lint. I stuffed the debris back into my bag and was about to blow my nose when a wave of White Linen perfume washed over me.

  “What you doin’?”

  I jumped, then craned my neck upward. A tall man in a short skirt stood over me.

  My eyes roved over him as my brain churned through possible explanations for crouching outside a motel room window with a pink ruffled umbrella and a camera. Except for the dusky shadow of a beard, his face could have come out of a fashion magazine—blue-gray eyes fringed with silky lashes, high cheekbones, and plump raspberry lips the exact shade of his umbrella. His legs were encased in black silk stockings. His face might not be smooth as a baby’s bottom, but he could give masters classes on leg-shaving technique.

  I heaved myself to my feet and shoved the camera into my bag, stammering, “I was just looking for my room key.” What I was going to do when I couldn’t find it, I didn’t know.

  “The door’s over there.”

  “Door? Oh, right.” I shuffled over a few steps and started digging in my purse again.

  “That your husband in there?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your husband.”

  I squared my shoulders and set my jaw in what I hoped was a look of matronly indignation. “What makes you think it’s my husband in there?”

  “Either that or you a peepin’ Tom.”

  Since all the digging in the world wasn’t going to produce a key to room 126, I was more than happy to go along with Mr. Legs’ explanation. I attempted a dramatic sniffle, but it came out as a wet snort. “You caught me,” I said. “That’s him. I was just looking for a tissue.” I sniffled again and tried to coax a tear by thinking of something awful. Tragic car accident? Starving children in Africa? A week with my in-laws in a remote cabin in the Adirondacks? I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping for a drop of moisture.

  “Cheatin’?”

  I nodded and stepped back as he squatted and peered through the crack in the curtains. His brief rubber skirt rose perilously high. I averted my eyes.

  “Whoa. You need to get your man on a diet. I sure hope he doesn’t like to be on top.”

  “On top?”

  “You know. In bed.”

  “Oh. Oh, no, he doesn’t,” I stammered as I stole a glance at my watch. Here I was, within five minutes of being late to pick up my two children, expounding on the sexual habits of a man I’d never met to an oversized transvestite.

  “What you want to do is get him on that Atkins diet. A friend of mine, Tallulah, she dropped about sixty pounds on that high-protein thing. Got to eat pork rinds and everything.” He peered in again for a moment. “Of course, your man’s got more to go, but still.” He stared through the window again. “He do that at home?”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. The wrap-and-slap thing.”

  “Wrap-and-slap? It has a name?”

  “Yeah, there are a few of them who have a thing for gettin’ trussed up like a Butterball turkey. And then they like the paddle.”

  “There’s a paddle?”

  I scooted over and crouched down again. Mr. Pence was now bent across the bed, with the blonde standing over him. She had traded in her dress for a half-roll of Saran Wrap, and was giving it her all with a short wooden paddle. Poor Mrs. Pence.

  The blonde delivered a particularly energetic whack, and Pence turned his mottled face toward the window. I fumbled in my purse for the camera, but by the time I got it into position, he had turned away.

  Mr. Legs spoke from somewhere behind me. “You gettin’ a divorce?”

  “What? Oh, right. A divorce. I just need a good shot for the attorneys.”

  “You the kind of woman who don’t take no shit. I like that.”

  A few whacks later, Mr. Pence turned toward the window again. I aimed the Nikon and pushed the button, flooding the motel room with light. Two heads shot up.

  I had forgotten to turn off the flash.

  “Crap!” I jammed the camera into my purse and dashed down the sidewalk, the worn treads of my sneakers sliding on the wet concrete. As I turned the corner of the building, the door squeaked open behind me.

  I pressed myself to the damp cinderblock wall for a moment and peeked around the corner. Mr. Legs was nowhere to be seen, but Pence stood where I had a moment before, wrapped in a grungy white bath towel that frankly wasn’t up to the task. He looked around for a moment, a deep crease in his thick brow, and stooped down to pick up something red from the walkway. He turned it over in his hands and disappeared into the room.

  I leaned against the wall and cursed. I had dropped Elsie’s fry phone, and there was no way to get it back.

  I waited a few minutes, then slunk across the parking lot to the minivan, closing up the Hello Kitty! Umbrella and slamming the door behind me. Then I pressed my forehead to the steering wheel and swore. Why the fry phone? How was I going to explain it to Elsie?

  Other kids had blankets, favorite dolls, stuffed kangaroos. Not mine. Since the age of one, my daughter had gone to sleep every night cuddling up to a McDonald’s fry phone.

  The fry phone was a plastic toy phone that looked like a packet of French fries. It had been available in February of 2000 for about three hours. If I’d known its future position as the sun around which all other things in our household revolved, I would have bought out all the Happy Meals in town, creating a cache of duplicate fry phones behind the piles of unused yarn in the back of my closet. But by the time she got attached to it, it was too late. Fry phones had long been replaced by collectible Pokemon figures and peekaboo Barbie dolls.

  And now it was gone, snatched by an obese plastic-clad adulterer who sold plumbing fixtures for a living.

  I looked back at Pence’s motel room longingly. Then I bit my lip and turned the key in the ignition, wishing—just for a moment—that I’d never even heard of Peachtree Investigations.

  It seemed like more than two weeks ago that I’d dropped the kids off at school, squeezed myself into a suit, and headed south on Congress Avenue, looking for an address I’d scrawled on a piece of paper. Until six weeks ago, I hadn’t planned on working at all, but the tuition bill that turned up in our mailbox after Nick joined Elsie in preschool was big enough to cause heart palpitations.

  Because Texas doesn’t have public preschools, Blake and I had enrolled both kids in Green Meadows Day School. It had a good reputation. And a price tag that made University of Texas tuition look like a bargain-basement closeout. Blake suggested we take out a home equity loan and pay it back when he got his promotion, but I pooh-poohed the idea. “I’ve got some time off during the week now,” I said breezily. “I’ll ju
st get a job. ” I figured I’d pick up some part-time work at the advertising agency I’d left when Elsie was born.

  Easy, right?

  Wrong. It didn’t take me long to figure out that once you step off the career track, it’s not that easy to hop back on. After six years out of the business, and with a schedule that limited my round-the-clock handholding capacity, my childless former boss shook her head at me. “I’m afraid we don’t have a part-time position. And you’ve been out of the industry so long…”

  So I started looking at the want ads, and quickly learned that if you’re an exotic dancer or a dishwasher, the world of part-time work is your oyster. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.

  I was about to resign myself to a life of Tupperware parties—unless there was a market for chunky women over thirty, the dancing was out, and as far as I was concerned, I did enough dishwashing at home—when I spotted an ad that looked a little different: Exciting part-time work, flexible hours. Apply in person. It looked better than busing tables for the Taco Shack, so I did.

  The address was in a seedy part of town, wedged between Ecstasy Lingerie Modeling and Austin Propane Service. I parked the van in the empty lot and inched my way up to the grungy storefront in my too-tight blue pumps, feeling like a Chinese girl after her first trip to the foot binder. The peeling paint on the smudgy glass door read Peachtree Investigations. Below it, a brown-edged peach decal that resembled someone’s rear end more than a piece of fruit stuck to the cloudy glass.

  I considered turning around and getting back into the minivan. Then the list of Help Wanted ads I had seen played through my head. Professional dancer, dishwasher, dog trainer… At least this job promised to be exciting. Supposedly.

  I pushed the door open and stepped into a dingy room reeking of cigarette smoke and mold. As the door clanked shut behind me, a woman with a helmet of orange hair and a large, curvy body stubbed her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. She narrowed her brown eyes at me over her desk. “I’m Peaches Barlowe. What can I do for you? Husband trouble?”