Happy never after, p.1
Happy Never After, page 1
HAPPY NEVER AFTER
KATHY HOGAN TROCHECK
For my own girl group, Las Malas Chicas: Linda Maring Case, Debbie DeWitt Cox, Sue Boore Foster, Nancy Bushman Graff, Debra Justus, and Margaret Crist Wood.
Old friends are the best.
Contents
1
IS THIS CALLAHAN GARRITY?” 1
2
WHEN NEVA JEAN CAME bursting through the back door a… 4
3
I WAS SITTING ON THE front porch, stomping red ants… 11
4
EDNA PULLED INTO the driveway just as Vonette and Rita… 21
5
THE WAITER HAD JUST cleared the salad plates and was… 35
6
I HEARD PIANO PLAYING and singing as I walked up… 41
7
THE FIRST MISTAKE I made on Monday was in assuming… 55
8
WHEN I FINALLY DID get someone at Delores’s union on… 65 WE CRUISED THE quiet dark streets looking for a pink… 76
10
THE REAL COPS SWARMED all over the place, measuring, photographing… 83
11
IT TOOK SOME CONVINCING, but I finally persuaded Vonette and… 90
12
STARTLED, I DROPPED my pad to the ground. I stooped… 103
13
MICK COYLE WAS exchanging putting tips with an elderly gentleman… 110
14
WHAT IS IT WITH THIS MAN, I wondered? We were… 121
15
IT WAS MY NIGHT FOR smoky bars. Matt’s band, Bat… 135
16
Y’ALL KNOW WHAT TOMORROW IS?” 142
17
I’D EXPECTED BACKTALK STUDIOS, the biggest independent record label south… 152 I WOKE UP MATT GORDON to get Junebug’s address. 160
19
VONETTE INSISTED I come for dinner before our powwow with… 172
20
THURSDAY MORNING Edna baked one of her special red velvet… 182
21
SISTER WAS QUIETLY transferring all the leftover birthday cake to… 193
22
I’D TRIED CALLING LYMAN Woodall’s office once before leaving home. 202
23
THIS IS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING,” I told DiPima as I… 209
24
VONETTE AND I WAITED together for Rita to get back… 216
25
SURVIVING A BUNGLED burglary and
interrogation had apparently tuckered Edna… 227
26 237
EDNA WAS IN THE KITCHEN working on the payroll when…
27
AFTER I LEFT RIVERBEND, I drove aimlessly around some backroads… 244
28
LET’S GO TO HOOLIGAN’S,” Carrie said. “They have a free… 254
29
AFTER I’D TUCKED Carrie in for the night, I called… 263
30
STAY,” ARLENE SNAPPED. The Doberman sat down on its haunches… 275
31
WHEN I CAME TO, I was lying on my side… 283
32
WHILE WE WAITED for the ambulance, C.W. went into one… 288
Epilogue
IT WAS KENYATTA’S IDEA to have a party at my… 296
Acknowledgments About the Author Praise Other Books by Kathy Hogan Trocheck Cover Copyright About the Publisher
1
I
S THIS CALLAHAN GARRITY?”
I’d probably heard that voice thousands of times over the years. Heard that high, gutsy contralto pining for lost love in the sixties girl group hits that made her a star. And later, after the songs ran out in the early seventies, on those sappy BurgerTown radio jingles. But now, on the phone, she sounded like just another pain in the butt.
Of course, the two-pack-a-day Kools habit had laid the sandpaper to the vocal cords, and the hot-and-cold-running Dewar’s had done the rest. So when she identified herself as Rita Fontaine, the name meant nothing. “Yes,” I said impatiently. “What’s this in reference to?”
What pays the bills around here is House Mouse, the cleaning business my mother and I run. We get a lot of women calling looking for work, but I already had all the mice I could handle. I just assumed Rita Fontaine was looking for a cleaning job.
“I’m Vonette Hunsecker’s cousin,” she said, as though that made everything okay. She obviously didn’t know that Vonette was not on my hit parade. Vonette is the ex-wife of an old friend and the wife-in-law of the old friend’s second wife, Linda Nickells, who is a good pal of mine. 2 / KATHY HOGAN TROCHECK
“Vonette said you could help,” Rita said. Her voice said she doubted it. “You’re the private detective, right?”
“That’s right,” I said warily. “Just exactly what kind of help do you need?”
She let out a long wheezy sigh. “You never heard of me, of Rita Fontaine, have you?”
“Afraid not,” I said. “Should I have?”
“That depends. Ever hear of the VelvetTeens?”
Who hadn’t? I’d been a little kid the year when the VelvetTeens hit it big with “Happy Never After,” but I can still remember watching their first early appearances on Platter Party, a locally produced teen dance show that ran on WSBTV, and then later, of course, on The Ed Sullivan Show, and American Bandstand. Since they were from Atlanta, like me, the VelvetTeens were hotter than the Chiffons, the Shirelles, or any of those other mix-’n’-match Motown inventions as far as I was concerned.
Now it came back to me. She was the lead singer. Of course, that voice. Then I had a brief vision: long skinny legs, mile-high beehive, odd almond-shaped eyes fringed by inch-long fake eyelashes.
I said it before I could stop myself. “I thought you were dead.”
“Me too,” she said.
What do you say to something like that? “I didn’t know Vonette had a famous cousin,” was all I could think of.
“Vonette was famous too,” she said. “You didn’t know she was a VelvetTeen?”
All I knew about Vonette was that she was hell on wheels if you crossed her. Before she and C.W. split up, she’d cut out the crotch of every pair of pants the man owned. If Rita Fontaine was Vonette’s cousin, famous or not, she probably meant trouble.
“Uh, no,” I said. “Listen, what kind of help is it that you need? See, I don’t know if Vonette mentioned it, but my real job is running a cleaning business. I just do the private investigation thing once in a while. And right now, I’ve got…”
“Forget it,” she said. “I’ll find someone else.” And she hung up.
2
W
HEN NEVA JEAN CAME bursting through the back door a few seconds later, bawling her eyes out, I did what Rita Fontaine had suggested. I forgot about her.
“Hey Callahan,” Neva Jean sobbed. Her face was red, and twin tracks of melted mascara ran down her cheeks. She staggered over to one of the oak kitchen chairs and heaved herself down with another loud sob.
I looked at the kitchen clock. The kitchen is as close as we come to an office for the House Mouse. It was only four o’clock.
“Aren’t you through for the day a little early?” I asked. Mondays are usually booked solid for all our girls, and Neva Jean was no exception.
“Oh,” she said, sniffing. “That Mrs. Clifford is so sweet. She saw how torn up I was about Kevin, and she told me to go on home. I’ll dust the Levolors next week.”
“Kevin,” I said quickly, my pulse quickening. “What’s wrong with Kevin?” My older brother and I are not exactly close. He lives right here in Atlanta, but we see each other only on the major family occasions that demand it.
“Oh my Lord,” Neva Jean said, her upper lip trembling like a bad Elvis impersonator. “You didn’t hear? Kevin got run over by a drunk driver today. He’s in an irreversible coma. The doctors say he’ll never walk or talk or nothing. When I heard I nearly died.”
I felt a chill run down my spine. I reached for the phone. “What hospital? And where’s Edna? Does she know?”
I was dialing my sister Maureen’s number at work. She works in Grady Memorial Hospital’s emergency room. She’d know what my brother’s chances were.
Neva Jean was flat-out blubbering now. “I ain’t seen Edna since this morning,” she cried. “After all Kevin’s been through, this had to happen. First that sorry Roberta trying to convince him the baby was his when she knew all along it was really Sean’s, and then being kidnapped by those awful Estonian extremists, and now this.”
I put the phone back on the hook. “What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded. “Who the hell is Roberta? What Estonian extremists? Which Kevin are you talking about?”
She wiped her tears on the hem of her pink House Mouse smock. “You know. Dr. Kevin Saint Germaine. He’s the black-haired fella with the eye patch. His first wife, Monique, now she was a real cute girl. But she got amnesia and forgot she was married and run off to a convent. Shaved off all those beautiful blond curls…”
“Wait,” I bellowed. Neva Jean looked hurt.
It had finally dawned on me. “Is the Kevin you’re talking about a character on one of those cheesy soap operas of yours? Is that what you’re in hysterics about? A soap opera character? Jesus Christ! I thought you meant our Kevin. That Kevin Garrity was hit by a car and in an irreversible coma somewhere…”
“What?”
We both whipped around to see Edna, my mother, ashenfaced, holding an armful of grocery sacks, and standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Kevin’s bee
She let the grocery bags slide out of her arms and onto the floor. A bag of Granny Smith apples burst open and the fruit went rolling all over the floor.
“No,” I said quickly. “No, Ma. Not our Kevin. Not Kevin Garrity. It’s some soap opera guy on TV.”
“What?” she repeated, bending over to pick up the bags. She seemed even more alarmed now. “Not Kevin from The Young and the Breathless. Have they told Roberta yet?”
She took the sacks and set them on the red Formica countertop.
I kicked at an apple that had rolled under my foot. It had been a long, strange day. I wasn’t in any mood for a Soap Opera Digest update.
But Edna was. She’s my mother and my roommate and my business partner in the House Mouse, but we couldn’t be less alike. I like cop shows. She likes the soaps. I like the flea market. She likes Home Depot. I like Jack Daniel’s. She likes white zinfandel.
Right now she and Neva Jean were yakking a mile a minute about Monique and Sean and the rest of the Breathless cast of dozens.
Edna had brought in the mail along with the groceries, so I started leafing through the stack. There were a couple of handwritten envelopes that looked like checks. Good. A Rich’s department store bill. A fat envelope full of grocery coupons, and a wedding shower invitation.
I held it up and showed it to Edna. The shower was for my cousin RaeAnne. “Didn’t we just go to a baby shower for her last year?”
“That was Roxanne,” Edna said, opening a cupboard to start stowing the groceries away.
“I can never keep those twins straight,” I said, looking at the invitation. “Do we have to go to this thing? I could spend the rest of my life without tasting another cup of that Hi-C and lime sherbet punch Aunt Olive always makes.”
She pursed her lips and considered. “Well now, I believe this is wedding number four for RaeAnne. We’ve given her a blender, an electric blanket, and a SaladShooter in the past. I’m about out of ideas.”
“Who’s she marrying?”
“You remember Alton? The guy with the droopy earlobes?”
“Her first husband? The one who took out a bank loan to try and corner the market on Billy Beer? Even RaeAnne can’t be that dumb.”
“She is though,” Edna said. “According to Aunt Olive, she ran into him at an Amway meeting, and they fell in love all over again. She went home and packed her Barbie doll collection and left a note for poor old Wayne telling him it was over.”
I was just about to get the rest of the gory details when the phone rang.
“Hey,” it was Mac.
“Hey yourself. What’s up? Are you home from work this early?”
“I’ve been home all day,” he said. “Took a personal leave day.”
Andrew McAuliffe may be a bureaucrat (he works for the Atlanta Regional Commission as a compliance officer), but he’s not exactly your typical government freeloader. He never takes sick days and the only personal leave days he’s taken in the four years we’ve been together have been to help me out of a jam.
“What’s up?” I repeated.
“I’ve been on the phone with Birmingham all day,” he said glumly.
“Is Stephanie okay?”
Mac’s nineteen-year-old daughter and evil ex-wife Barbara have lived in Birmingham ever since their divorce years ago. He always refers to the ex as Birmingham, claiming he still can’t utter Barbara’s name without flashing back to the bad old days.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Stephanie’s great. Except that she came home from school last night and announced to her mother that since she was flunking all her classes anyway she had decided not to bother with finals.”
“Uh-oh.”
“She and Barbara had a knock-down drag-out of course.”
“The kid was really flunking everything?”
“Chemistry, English lit, and sociology. Oh yeah, and badminton.”
“Can you flunk badminton?”
“My daughter is a model of consistency,” Mac said. “She could, and she did.”
“She went all the way through the quarter and decided to quit just before finals?”
“Fourteen hundred dollars down the toilet,” he said quietly.
“What did you say to her?”
“I yelled. She cried.”
“So what now? Does she have any plans?”
He laughed. “She did have. I think the plan was to go running to Atlanta, complain to Daddy, have Daddy take sides against Mama, spend the summer with Dad, work on a tan, party hearty.”
“I like it,” I said. “Can I play too?”
“I’ve already nixed plan A,” Mac said. “You know I’ve only got the one bedroom and bathroom out here. Do you have any idea how long it takes a nineteen-year-old to do her hair and makeup these days?”
“I have some idea, yes,” I said. “So what’s plan B?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “We didn’t get anything worked out on the phone. The upshot of all of this is that it looks like I’m going to run over there and try to get the two of them speaking to one another again. Stephanie was hysterical when I told her she couldn’t come live with me. And Barb was pissed off too. She thinks Steph should spend the summer away; give each other some space before they kill each other.”
I could hear it coming. “When are you going?”
“I’ve got Rufus packed in the car already. I’ll leave as soon as I get off the phone,” he said.
“Goddamn,” I said. “Do you know what I had to go through to get these Jimmy Buffett tickets? Bucky had two extra tickets, and to get him to sell me two we’re going to have to clean not only his place but the new girlfriend’s playpen too. Can’t you go tomorrow or Sunday?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Hell, I wanted to go as bad as you did. But it can’t be helped. Stephanie was threatening all kinds of wild stuff on the phone today. I’ve gotta go calm her down. Can you switch the tickets for tomorrow night?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Just tell the little brat to get her butt back in school. Can’t you do that on the phone?”
“I would if I could,” he said. “You think I want to go? I’d rather have a root canal than get in between those two. Look, I gotta go before traffic gets too bad. I’ll call you when I get back, okay?”
“Fine,” I said rather nastily and slammed the phone down. I eyed the picnic basket on the kitchen counter. I’d splurged and gotten a couple of catered dinners to take to the Buffett concert at Chastain Park. Cold lobster salad, crusty French bread, some pâté, and key lime tarts. The chardonnay was chilling in the frig. Now I’d have to call Bucky and ask about a ticket switch, which I knew was hopeless. Jimmy Buffett plays two concerts in Atlanta every spring. They sell out immediately. I’d probably end up eating the lobster salad by myself in front of the television tonight. A fine way to spend a glorious spring Friday night.
Edna and Neva Jean looked at me expectantly. They’d been eavesdropping, of course.
“Well?” Edna said expectantly.
“There’s bad news and good news,” I said. “Mac’s daughter Stephanie flunked out of college, and he has to go over to Birmingham tonight and referee a fight between her and her bitchy mother. So much for the concert.”
I took the shower invitation and ripped it to little bits, and let them drift into the trash. “The good news is that the Waring blender we gave RaeAnne the first time she married has a five-year warranty. And it’s only been four years by my count.”
3
I
WAS SITTING ON THE front porch, stomping red ants with the toe of my sneaker, when the shiny late-model Cadillac pulled up to the curb. I was supposed to be cutting the grass, but it was hot for May, and I was still in a lousy mood over my broken date with Mac. He usually cuts the grass for us; the man actually enjoys doing yard work, but I hadn’t heard from him that morning, so I assumed he was still in Birmingham.
The Caddie was white, not brand new, but it was somebody’s cherished baby, with gleaming chrome and those gold-plated wire wheel covers. Two black women sat in the front seat, deep in discussion, even after the driver had cut the engine. While I waited to see who our company was, I rid the world of at least another dozen red ants. I hate those suckers.
