The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco (2 page)

The old gentleman at the next table was staring at me, looking a lot livelier than he had earlier. He gave me a once-over and I wrinkled my brow. What was the old guy—? I followed his gaze and
saw that the fountain water had rendered the white linen of my skirt totally see-through. I could distinctly make out the lacy pattern of my undies. Really? This morning wasn’t miserable enough already? I flushed and fought the urge to run for the door, knowing Madison had noticed, too. I grabbed Misty’s box, held it low enough to provide some coverage, and walked with as much dignity as I could muster to the van.

Leaning my forehead against the steering wheel, my arms hanging limp, I looked sideways at the kitten in her box on the passenger seat. “This day has got to get better, right?”

“Mew,” Misty agreed.

“Y
ou’ve adopted a kitten?” my best friend Brooke Widefield asked, arriving early for the Readaholics meeting. She followed me into my small galley kitchen, where margarita fixings waited.

“Not exactly,” I said, salting the margarita glasses’ rims. Our book club discussions tended to be livelier when we imbibed a bit. It was amazing how insightful we got after a margarita or three.

“Looks like a kitten to me.” Brooke bent to pat Misty, who was twining between her ankles. “She’s adorable.”

Yeah, so adorable I hadn’t been able to leave her at the animal shelter where Brooke volunteered. I couldn’t keep her, though—my schedule was too erratic, unfair to pets. I was hoping our friend Lola Paget, who owned a plant nursery, might need another cat. I remembered her mentioning that one of her cats had gone to the Great Catnip Patch in the sky a few weeks back. I explained all this to Brooke as I mixed the tequila, triple sec, and sweet and sour in the blender, added ice, and pulsed it.

I poured us each a glassful. “Unless you want her?” I watched Brooke cradle Misty against her cheek. They looked like a magazine ad—Brooke with her Miss Colorado beauty queen complexion, curtain of mink brown hair, and green eyes, and the kitten a powder puff of gray fluff since I’d bathed and combed her when we got home.

“Troy would have a hissy,” she said, reluctantly putting the kitten down. “You know how he is. It’d be great if you could place her rather than turning her over to the Haven. We’ve already got more cats than we’ll be able to adopt out.”

We drifted into the sunroom, furnished with wicker chairs upholstered in bright floral cotton. Celadon-colored ceramic tile covered the floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out to the front, side, and backyards. It was my favorite room in the small house, which was 99.9 percent the bank’s and .1 percent mine. Moving in two months earlier had made me feel very adult. There’s nothing like a mortgage to separate the kids from the grown-ups. This was the first time I’d hosted a Readaholics meeting in my new house. When I formed the group four years ago, we’d originally met in the library but had switched to meeting in one another’s homes when it became clear that six of us were going to be the group’s mainstays (and library patrons complained about our “too lively” discussions). Misty followed us and pounced on the trailing branch of a spider plant with clearly vicious tendencies. She subdued it with much scratching and hissing and then settled on one of the low windowsills to keep an eye on the front yard.

I set out a plate of petits fours left over from a
luncheon I’d organized for the Episcopal Women’s Thrift House the day before, and a bag of tortilla chips with salsa. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out. Gulping down a third of my margarita, I told Brooke about my appointment that morning. She laughed when I mentioned my transparent skirt.

“That wasn’t the worst part, though,” I said, steeling myself. “Madison—the woman I met with, my client—is marrying Doug. Doug Elvaston,” I clarified when Brooke didn’t gasp or faint or say, “Oh, my heavens!”

“You knew it would happen one day,” she mumbled into her margarita glass.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You knew!” I breathed.

She looked up and shook her head vigorously, hair swishing her shoulders. “Not to say
knew
. Elspeth Elvaston might have mentioned to my mom that Doug was seeing someone. In New York.”

“You knew and you didn’t tell me, didn’t warn me. You know how I feel about him.” This was traitorage on a monumental scale, even worse than when she’d chosen to go to CSU after I was accepted at CU.

Setting her glass down with a click, she said, “C’mon, A-Faye. You guys called it quits two years ago. Time to move on. He obviously has.”

Youch.
“Calling it quits is our favorite activity. We broke up before senior year of high school and got back together for prom, and then after our sophomore year at CU because I was doing the
semester abroad in Italy that fall and didn’t want to be tied down, and then three times our senior year.” I ticked them off on my fingers: “When Doug thought he was getting that internship in Los Angeles, and then when Giancarlo from Italy came to visit me over spring break, and then—”

“I was there for all the drama the first time,” Brooke said. “I don’t need to relive it.” Before I could reply, the doorbell rang and I rose to let in Ivy Donner. Wearing a shirtwaist dress in a graphic brown-and-cream print, she’d obviously come straight from her job as assistant to Heaven’s chief financial officer. Her brown hair was gelled into a spiky pixie that gave her a gamine look and accented her doelike brown eyes. She’d graduated with Brooke and me, gone to the local community college and then immediately into city government. She liked fast reads with lots of action.

“You got a cat,” she announced, gaze going directly to Misty, who had followed me to the door. Before I could explain, she asked, “Mind if I make some tea?”

Ivy was an inveterate tea drinker with a different herbal blend for every occasion—sleeplessness, anxiety, a cold. All her brews smelled like algae on Lost Alice Lake on a hot August afternoon. “Water’s already boiling.” I led her into the kitchen. “Help yourself.”

“Love the tile backsplash,” she said, pouring boiling water into the mug I’d set out. Mug in hand, she hugged me. “Sorry. It’s been a lousy day. A lousy stinking couple of weeks, as a matter of
fact. I took a personal day today—couldn’t stand the thought of the office. Had some legal business to attend to.”

“I know the feeling.” I hugged her back, thinking she felt stiff and tense. I got an acrid whiff of cigarettes and wondered if she’d started smoking again. I hoped not. She’d worked hard to quit two years earlier.

She broke away and followed me into the sunroom, greeting Brooke with an air kiss. “This book is pure genius,” Ivy said, waving her copy of
The Maltese Falcon
. “Hammett has it exactly right about men. They’re scum, all of them. Even our so-called hero, Sam Spade, is having an affair with his partner’s wife and ditches Brigid at the end.”

“She was a murderer,” Brooke pointed out.

Ivy flipped a dismissive hand. “He had no loyalty. He was all about saving his own skin. Coward.” She sank into a chair, took another sip of tea, and glowered.

“Do you think he was getting back together with Iva at the end?” Brooke asked as the doorbell rang again.

I let in Lola Paget, a compact woman with espresso-colored skin, a short Afro, and wire-rimmed glasses. She’d been a year ahead of Brooke and me at school and gone off to Texas A&M for a chemistry degree before coming back to Heaven to rescue the family farm by turning it into a plant nursery specializing in flowers and flowering shrubs. I was pretty sure she supported her grandmother and her teenage sister, who lived with her. Her parents had died in a drunk driver–caused accident when
she was fourteen. She tended to prefer more literary mysteries.

“You got yourself a cat,” she said in her slow, deliberate way. “Here, puss-puss.”

Misty trotted right over and sniffed at Lola’s work boots delicately. “Mew.”

“She can be yours,” I said, lifting the kitten and placing her in Lola’s work-roughened hands. I explained how I’d gotten her and why I thought Lola might want her.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Lola said. “It’s true Tigger-cat passed on last month. She was a fine mouser. Do you think you could catch mice, puss?” She put her nose down close to Misty’s.

“Mew,” Misty affirmed.

“You’d better come home with me, then, and have a go at it. Thank you.” Lola smiled at me. She had a naturally somber aspect, didn’t smile much, but when she did, it lit up the room.

I let go a big breath, not realizing how worried I’d been about the kitten’s fate if Lola didn’t want her. “You’re very welcome,” I said. “Soda’s in the fridge.”

Lola set down Misty, who trailed her into the kitchen to get a soda.

“Hey, Lo,” Brooke called. “What’d you think of the book?”

Lola joined us in the sunroom, pulled a coaster from a stack to put her Coke can on, settled herself, and looked around before replying. “This is a lovely room, Amy-Faye. The plants look happy here.”

That was a huge compliment, coming from Lola,
who had helped me pick out the plants at Bloomin’ Wonderful. I beamed.

“There were lots of villains,” Lola observed, turning to Brooke. “Too many for me to keep track of. There were Gutman and Joel Cairo and that Thursby fellow and that boy with the guns— Did he have a name?”

“Wilmer Cook,” Ivy supplied.

“And Brigid, of course. Spade was no great shakes, either. I can’t say I took to anyone in the whole book . . . What’s the point of a mystery with no good guys?”

“Amen, sister,” Ivy put in, nodding as if Lola had vindicated her.

“Your door’s unlocked—anyone could walk in,” came Maud Bell’s voice from the foyer.

“In here,” we chorused.

Maud strode in, crackling with energy, as always. Around sixty, she was six feet tall with a sinewy build—a lanky greyhound of a woman with a sharp nose, shrewd blue eyes, and a surprisingly ribald sense of humor. Her weathered skin testified to her summer and fall occupation as a hunting and fishing guide. In the winter, she did computer repair and Web site design, making use of the computer science degree she’d earned four decades ago at Berkeley, where she’d really majored in activism, she liked to say. When she turned fifty, she gave up “marching to the beat of corrupt corporate honchos’ bongos,” as she called it, to get back to nature in Heaven. Her hair was an au naturel mix of silver, white, and iron, and she wore her usual camouflage pants with a dozen pockets, henley
shirt, and hiking boots. She smelled faintly of pot, which was not unusual, even before Colorado legalized it. Her favorite reads were spy thrillers and the like, which made total sense since she spent more time posting on her conspiracy theory blog, and trying to bring conspiracies to light, than she did at her paying jobs.

“Froufrou.” She gave the margaritas a disparaging glance, disappeared into the kitchen, and returned with a beer. “Damn clever fellow, that Hammett,” she commented, sitting. “Nice place, Amy-Faye. Feels like you. Conspiracies within conspiracies, everyone on the take or ready to betray someone else—it read like the front page of the
Washington Post
or the
New York Times
.” She took a long swallow of beer. “Where’s Kerry?”

A knock at the door answered that question. I went to open it, Misty at my heels. Kerry Sanderson, a Realtor and Heaven’s part-time mayor, marched in. She was familiar with the house already because she’d found it for me. She’d spent months helping me locate just the right property and walking me through the legal and financial wickets of first-time homeownership, and I would always be grateful. She immediately noticed Misty.

“Cute kitten,” she said, “but do you really think you have time to take care of a pet? What with your schedule being so erratic, and you having to take on even more events now that you’ve got this mortgage—”

I smiled. Vintage Kerry. At forty-eight, she had a teenage son, a grown daughter, and a grandbaby, all of whom lived with her. She’d been the
first to join the Readaholics when I came up with the idea of a book club, back when I still lived in my tiny apartment and we held meetings in the library. She came across as brusque and efficient and managing, but her comments on the books we read, and the way she helped people in the community without making a fuss about it, told me she was really caring . . . and efficient and managing. Not bad qualities for a mayor. She was leagues better at the job than the lazy, pocket-lining, nepotistic crook who’d held the job before her.

“Misty’s for Lola,” I said, pouring her the last of the margaritas and steering her toward the sunroom.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Brooke said.

“I saw you met with the CEO of Naturocorp today.” Maud pounced on Kerry. “I’ll bet my new Sage fly rod they’re trying to get your buy-in on fracking in the area. That’s the way these natural gas companies work . . . get a town’s leaders in their corner and then screw the small landowners. Did you see that Matt Damon movie? Lola, you’d better watch out.”

Kerry was used to ignoring Maud’s attacks. She gave a noncommittal smile, sat beside Ivy on the love seat, and said, “Hammett’s prose and the way he used dialogue reminded me a lot of Hemingway—almost no interior thoughts or details about what a character was thinking or feeling. Did you all notice that?”

The conversation was even more heated than usual because we all had such strong feelings about the book, the characters, and the prose style.
Ivy continued to talk about how untrustworthy all the men were in a way that made me wonder if she was talking only about fictional characters. Brooke and I exchanged a glance after one angry comment and Brooke shrugged. Maud continued to enthuse about the book’s intricate plotting, and Kerry and I had a sidebar about whether Hammett deliberately chose not to share his characters’ thoughts for some narrative purpose, or whether that was just his journalism background showing through. Brooke was quieter than usual and I hoped she’d linger after the others left so we could talk. We broke up at nine o’clock as usual, with Kerry yawning and claiming an early meeting and Lola saying she wanted to get Misty home in time to adjust to her new digs before bedtime.

Kissing the top of the kitten’s head, I felt a pang as she left with Lola. Maybe someday I’d have a regular schedule that would allow me to get a pet. It would be fun, comforting, to have a fuzzy critter around, happy to see me when I came home, pleased to cuddle with me when I watched TV or read a book on one of my rare free evenings. Maud left next, saying we should get together to watch the movie version of
The Maltese Falcon
.

“I saw it back in the day, but it would be fun to see it again. I never did see what set women swooning over Bogie, though. Altogether too craggy and hound eyed for my taste. No sense of humor. I always appreciated Michael Caine—a lot going on underneath the surface with him, I always thought. Or, these days, that Chris Hemsworth, who plays
Thor. Big, strong, swings a mean hammer. I’ll see if it’s on Netflix, or rent it if it’s not,” she promised.