To Trust a Stranger (14 page)

Of course it hadn't. He wasn't interested in her that way. Good thing, too.

Grimly reminding herself of all the reasons why that was a good ling, Julie took a deep and, she hoped, unnoticed breath.

“Do you need anything else from me? I have to be getting back.” her voice sounded perfectly normal, she was pleased to discover.

“Numbers where you can be reached, including cell phone. As much as you know about your husband's daily schedule and usual associates. The kind of car he drives, including license-plate number. Anything else I can get later.” He glanced up, met her gaze, and smiled. Those beautiful blue eyes, she was both chagrined and relieved to discover, showed no awareness of her as a woman. “And one dollar.” “One dollar?” Julie asked, surprised. Then, realizing that she had left her purse in the car, she shook her head. “I don't have any money on me.”

Mac sighed, pulled out his wallet, extracted a dollar bill, and handed it to her. “Now give it back to me.”

“What?” Julie was smiling at the sheer silliness of it as she obeyed. “Why?”

“Retainer. Congratulations, ma' am: You've just officially hired yourself a private investigator.”

And that was all Julie told herself sternly as they retraced their steps to the Blazer, and tried to feel happy about it. “From here on out you want to be careful. When you're with your husband, behave as normally as possible. Whatever you do, don't get in a fight with him and tell him you're having him investigated. You could wind up getting hurt,” he warned some ten minutes later, as, with the information Julie had scribbled in a notepad for him tucked safely away in the glove compartment, he stopped in the Kroger parking lot.

“I told you, Sid isn't violent.” Julie opened the door and got out. The bright heat of the parking lot was almost disorienting after the air-conditioned protection of the Blazer. Josephine, dislodged from her comfortable perch on Julie's lap, stood on the seat wagging her tail in doggy good-bye. Mac gave Julie a skeptical look. “Emotions tend to run high in this kind of case. People do all sorts of unlikely things. So you mind what I say.” His tone was cautionary.

Julie smiled. “I will.”

Promising that was easy. Whether Sid was apt to turn violent or not, she wasn't about to tell him what she had done. He would be livid if he found out. She started to shut the door, then hesitated, glancing in at him again. “When will you start?”

“Right now. There's some preliminary work I can do, and tonight I'll be parked out in front of your house, waiting for the midnight ride of Paul Revere Carlson.”

“Funny.” It was lame, but it made her smile again, and smiling, as she had discovered earlier, boosted her spirits.

Actually, he boosted her spirits. He and Josephine.

“Mac. Thanks.”

Their gazes met, and the skin around his eyes crinkled as he returned her smile with, she thought, a touch of ruefulness.

“You're welcome. Julie.”

10

“AUNT JULIE! AUNT JULIE!”

Erin and Kelly both came tearing into the hall as Julie stepped through the door of her sister's house. Although it was nowhere near as big and fine as Julie's, it was a comfortable, two-story brick house in a nice neighbourhood. Becky and Kenny had moved in when the former construction worker had been offered a job by Sid shortly before Erin was born, and they seemed prepared to spend the rest of their lives there.

If Kenny didn't lose his job as collateral damage in her possible divorce, that is.

“Erin. Kelly.” Echoing the girls' boisterous greeting, Julie set her packages down on the blue slate floor and opened her arms to them. They reached her at the same time, and she was giving them both a big hug when her sister walked into the hall, looking harried.

“Hey, Jules. You're just in the nick of time. In five minutes we'll be knee-deep in preschoolers and Mama's decided that this is the moment to start drawing smiley faces on four dozen balloons.” Becky rolled her eyes. “What I need is someone to finish filling the party bags. That means you.”

“Hey, Beck.” Julie grinned at her sister over the girls' heads. Becky was three years her senior, and was in appearance pretty much a younger version of their mother, minus about thirty pounds and the red hair, of course. She had mink brown hair cut sensibly short, and a round, cheerful face. Her body was sturdy rather than slender, and she looked very much the suburban mom in belted khaki shorts and a white camp shirt.

“Julie, is that you?” Dixie yelled from the kitchen. “Get in here. I need help.”

“Hi, Mama,” Julie hollered back. Then, to Becky, “My car got stolen last night,” as Kelly, the birthday girl, began jumping up and down with excitement, loudly begging to know if the gaily wrapped packages on the floor were for her.

“I know that, “Becky said, turning a well-practiced deaf ear to her daughter. “What I want to know is, how mad was Sid?”

“Mad.” Julie switched her gaze to her not-to-be-denied niece. “One for you, and one for Erin.”

She handed a package to each girl. Kelly immediately began tearing at the wrapping paper on hers, eager to get at the gift.

“But it's not my birthday,” Erin objected, hesitating even as she accepted hers. Erin looked much like Becky, although she had her father's gray eyes. She was a sweet, earnest child and Julie loved her dearly.

“It’s my birthday, Aunt Julie,” Kelly lisped importantly, looking up from her struggle to tug the ribbon off. Kelly's build was far more delicate than her sister's, and her hair was darker, mahogany rather than mink, and wildly curly.

She was a pretty, lively child, and Julie loved her dearly, too. “I'm five now.”

“Wow, five. That's a big girl.” Julie smiled at Kelly, and then at Erin. “I thought you needed a present to help celebrate your sister turning five.”

“Was he mad at you?” There was concern in Becky's voice. Julie wondered, as she had once or twice before, if perhaps Becky suspected that all was not shining in Camelot, but she shook her head and said, “He was just mad,” as Erin, reassured, started unwrapping her gift, carefully separating the edges of the paper instead of ripping it off with abandon as Kelly was doing. Telling Becky the truth was even less an option than confiding in her mother. Becky would worry, and if she was worried, Kenny would know and badger her until he found out why, and then Kenny would run immediately to Sid. Kenny was fine as a brother-in-law, he loved her sister and the kids, but he knew which side his bread was buttered on. And in this case, Sid was the man with the butter.

“Barbie!” Kelly shrieked gleefully, having finally succeeded in getting the wrappings off, and headed at a dead run for the kitchen, brandishing her gift. “Nana, look, Aunt Julie got me Barbie!”

“I got Barbie too!” Erin yelled after her sister, having unwrapped enough of the present to identify the contents, and took off in hot pursuit.

“What do you say?” Becky called after her daughters as she and Julie trailed them into the kitchen, which was a big square space decorated in cheery yellow. A taped-up HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner formed a swag over the top of the window that looked out into the neat backyard.

Dozens of brightly colored balloons with a rainbow of ribbons attached bobbed against the ceiling. Dixie, holding a balloon with two circle eyes but no mouth drawn on it in one hand and a permanent marker in the other, bent over her granddaughters, admiring their gifts.

“Thank you, Aunt Julie,” the girls chorused as their mother prompted them again. Then, still clutching the dolls, they tore off in the direction of their bedrooms.

“Here, Jules, finish filling these. They each get a Fruit Roll-Up, a package of SweeTarts, three stickers, a barrette, and a pencil.” Looking harassed again, Becky pushed Julie toward the kitchen table, which was cluttered with Powerpuff Girl-decorated party bags, about two-thirds of which were filled, and a jumble of the aforementioned goodies. Julie went to work as Becky turned to the birthday cake on the counter and started sticking small blue candles into the white icing.

“Kelly and Erin remind me so much of you two at their age,” Dixie said with a hint of nostalgia as she drew a smiling mouth to complete the balloon, then reached for another one. “If Becky weren't so silly about entering the girls in pageants, I bet Kelly could win as many titles as you did, Julie.”

“No,” Becky responded sharply. Dixie pursed her lips at her older daughter, but before she could argue the doorbell pealed. With a quelling look at her mother, Becky went to answer it to the accompaniment of wild whoops from her daughters, who skidded past in an effort to beat her to the door.

“Can you believe she's that way? You winning all those pageants was the best thing that ever happened to us, her included.” Dixie's gaze shifted to Julie in a transparent appeal for support. From as far back as Julie could remember, Dixie had entered her in every beauty contest that came along, worrying over her hair and makeup and strategizing over how to come up with eye-catching costumes on their dollar-store budget, which had actually been a good thing, because Julie had learned how to design and make the most beautiful clothes out of nothing, which in turn had led to Carolina Belle. Julie's looks would be their ticket, Dixie had prophesied time and time again, and so it had proved.

“Sometimes I think Becky's downright ashamed of where she came from,” Dixie continued in a hurt tone that she was careful to keep low so that Becky would not overhear.

In her mind, Julie heard Sid calling them trailer trash, and could not find it in her heart to blame her sister, although she would never say as much to their mother. Much as she hated to admit it, trailer trash was putting a positive spin on their childhood. Lots of times, between Dixie's tumultuous love life and complete lack of marketable skills, they hadn't even had so much as a trailer to live in. When Dixie was in between husbands and boyfriends, there'd been cheap motel rooms and women's shelters and even a memorable month spent living in a tent in a campground just like Girl Scouts, as Dixie had bracingly described the demoralizing regimen of public showers and toilets and sleeping on blankets on the ground, while Julie and Becky tried to go to school and pretend their lives were just like everyone else's. Always, for Julie, there'd been beauty pageants, the winning of which was often accompanied by a little prize money or some gift certificates or something to buoy them along. When she'd turned thirteen and Becky was sixteen, they'd ganged up together to put their dual feet down about their mother's love life, absolutely refusing to move in with her boyfriend
du
jour and insisting they get a place of their own. That's when they'd become trailer trash, which had been a wonderful thing because that. rented double-wide was the first permanent home she and Becky had ever known. After that, Dixie had forsworn men, and all three of them had waited tables and cleaned houses and weeded flower beds and baby-sat and did whatever else they could find to do just to afford to eat and pay rent on their treasured new home. Then Julie had won a big one, Miss Teenage South Carolina Peach, when she was fifteen, and modelling gigs had started coming her way, and what with those and some local television commercials and a few more titles that came with scholarships attached, their lives had become almost normal and she'd even been able to go to college. Becky, with whom she had shared her winnings as much as she could, had opted for a job at a rent-a-car place, and Dixie had met and fallen in love with Hiram Clay. Then Becky met Kenny, Dixie married Hiram, and Julie won Miss South Carolina and met Sid, all in the same year.

And so here the three of them were, eight years later, living out their happily-ever-afters. Each of them had gotten what she'd always wanted, and each dream had a flaw. Dixie's husband had been disabled in a car crash four years after the wedding; Becky's wholehearted embrace of her role as the Perfect Suburban Mom had a kind of compulsive quality to it that Julie suspected was the result of their tumultuous childhood; and in her own case, the sad truth was that the stable home and loving marriage that she'd craved all her life-were not.

So much for the idea of happily-ever-after. Julie was pretty sure that, in reality, happily-ever-after simply didn't exist.

“I don't think it's so much that Becky's ashamed,” Julie said. “But that was then and this is now, Mama. I can see why she thinks that putting Kelly in beauty pageants probably isn't a good idea. For one thing, it might make Erin feel bad.”

Dixie
said, “Julie,” as though Julie had deeply wounded her. Then, bristling slightly, she added, “Are you saying that you think Becky felt bad when you were winning all those pageants?”

Julie suppressed a sigh. “I don't know, Mama. But ... “

Erin and Kelly came running back into the kitchen with two of their friends at their heels just then, and any thought of continuing the conversation was forgotten. The birthday party was under way.

When it was over, Julie just had time to pick up the cleaning and get home before Sid did. Julie was in the shower when he came upstairs to get his clothes out of his part of the huge his-and-her walk-in closets, dressing areas, and bathrooms that adjoined the master suite on either side, so she missed seeing him. By the time she came downstairs, dressed and ready to go, he was already standing in the living room waiting for her.

He was wearing a classic black tux, which became him. With his dark hair brushed back to hide the bald spot at his crown and his wire rimmed glasses firmly in place on the bridge of his long, thin nose he looked both elegant and distinguished. Looking at him as she paused in the arched doorway, Julie was reminded of why she had married him in the first place, and her heart ached.