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

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 hoping 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?”