Magnolia Wednesdays (27 page)

He blinked and finally spoke. “Well, it’s a little strange saying this to Melanie’s sister, but everyone always speculated that there was some kind of . . . triangle going on.”

Vivien’s surprise must have shown on her face because he quickly added, “No, I don’t mean like something kinky sexual or anything. A lot of the guys just thought that J.J. wasn’t the only one interested in Melanie.”

He paused, and Vivien felt a small glimmer of excitement at having corroboration of at least part of her theory.

“Clay and J.J.’s friendship revolved around this ongoing . . . competition. Everything from who bagged the biggest deer to their grades to how many votes they got in an election. I kind of thought maybe they tussled over Melanie and Clay got pissed off that he lost. Or maybe he just got tired of always coming in second.”

Wasn’t this what she’d been thinking all along? That Clay coveted J.J.’s life and was secretly in love with Melanie? If he’d been feeling that way since college, which was some twenty-odd years ago, could the day have come when he just had to do something about it? Had Clay Alexander’s frustration and jealousy somehow led to J.J.’s death?

“That’s interesting,” she said, careful not to look shocked or judgmental, two reactions guaranteed to shut an interview subject down. “But if that’s true and Clay’s jealousy, or whatever we want to call it, led him to break off the friendship and leave the fraternity and all, why would he come to Atlanta to be J.J.’s campaign manager? And why would J.J. want him to?”

“That,” Grady said as he looked pointedly this time at his watch, signaling that the interview was over, “is a very good question.” And one, Vivien discovered as he summarily ended their appointment, Grady Hollis was either unwilling or unable to answer.

On the way back to Atlanta, Vivi picked up a voice mail from Matt Glazer, who apparently didn’t yet realize that he was the last person in the universe she intended to take a call from. “Hi, Vivi.” His tone was friendly, conversational as if he had not exposed her to public humiliation and ridicule in print on Christmas Day. “Just wanted you to know how glad I was to hear it wasn’t Stone who went missing.” There was a pause and then, “You are still seeing Stone, aren’t you? I’m assuming he’s the father of your child?”

There was a small laugh. “I really wish you’d call and verify that. Along with a few other things. You seem to think I’m not a serious journalist,” the message went on.

“But I can sniff out a story as well as the next reporter, and you have become really interesting to me.”

Vivien gritted her teeth through his next exaggerated pause. He ended his message with, “Your parents seem to understand my influence as well as the size and makeup of my readership.” A smile came into his voice. “They’ve invited me to a small, intimate gathering at their home. Maybe we can catch up with each other there. Or you could go ahead and give me a call now.”

Vivien was tempted to call him back and tell him she’d see him in hell before she’d see him at Magnolia Hall, but she managed to restrain herself. She didn’t like the idea of him all pumped up about investigating her, but she disliked the idea of sucking up to him as her parents had even more.

For now she’d just try to stay out of his way. If she was lucky, he’d find someone else to torture. Or some social climbers who would be thrilled to see their names in his column.

27

B
Y THE MIDDLE of January, Vivien could no longer remember when Wednesday night didn’t mean the Magnolia Ballroom and belly dance. Though she didn’t intend to admit it, she actually looked forward to the hour with Naranya and crew. Afterward she and Ruth and Angela might linger with Melanie until it was time to close up the studio; other times they came early and sipped soft drinks in the kitchen while they dished about whatever was on their minds. She and Ruth weren’t exactly BFFs, but they kept the sniping to a minimum.

Of course, there were things she simply couldn’t do, given her rapidly expanding stomach and ever-changing center of gravity, but Dr. Gilbert had approved belly dancing as a low-impact form of exercise that could help make her labor easier. Vivi intended to keep at it even after the chiffon hip scarf could no longer be tied.

Tonight they’d brought Trip with them and handed him over to James Wesley in the parking lot for their “guys’ night out.” Angela’s fiancé was every bit as good-looking as his famous father, and he had a low-key charm that set everyone at ease. The looks he shot Angela were adoring; those she sent in return were tinged with an odd sort of hesitancy that the reporter in Vivi wanted to understand.

“Thanks so much for setting this up,” Melanie said to Angela as James and Trip drove off. “He rushed home from school to do his homework so he’d be free to go. I haven’t seen him this excited about anything for a long time.”

“I’m glad someone who wanted to be there got to go,” Angela said. “I’m sure they’ll all have a blast.”

Inside, they fell into a jagged line with Sally, Lourdes, and the Shipley sisters, who were still trading stories about the holidays. Three newbies, here for a free trial class, spread out behind them. Naranya’s golden skin was still burnished from her cruise, and her dark hair cascaded down her back. Smiling, she started the music and waited for them to tie on their hip scarves.

“All right, everyone,” she said when their eyes were on her. “We begin with the stretching. You old-timers you know what to do. I weel move to the back so the new ones can see me.”

They completed the stretches in near silence and then began the series of isolation exercises. Groans and giggles arose from behind them, and Vivi remembered just how foreign these moves had once seemed.

“You must be so relieved Stone’s all right,” Angela said to Vivien as Naranya moved back up front and began to move her hips. “I don’t know how you live with that constant worry.”

Melanie and Ruth pulled closer so they could hear; the days of concentrated silence during class had ended long ago.

“I kind of feel like Ira and I are caught in a war zone,” Ruth said, her arms out, her hips thrusting in a carefully controlled motion. “Nobody’s shooting, but nobody’s laid down their weapon, either.”

Melanie moved her hips in a smooth figure eight that none of the rest of them came close to matching. Her upper body remained perfectly still. “I was sort of hoping our talk on New Year’s might have gotten through to him.”

Beside Vivien, Angela made her hip thrusts smaller, then sped them up until she was doing a respectable shimmy. She, too, kept her head and upper body admirably still. All of Vivien’s parts tended to want to move in unison.

“Hey, that looks good,” Ruth said, stepping her own movements up trying to match Angela’s pace. “Ira did say he’d come to the lesson and practice party this Saturday night, so I guess that’s something.”

“Of course, that’s something,” Melanie said, kicking her trim hips up into a shimmy. Vivi attempted a much gentler version, careful not to disturb the baby.

“James and I are in, too,” Angela said, still shimmying. “That means Vivi has to come.” She looked over her shoulder and down at her behind. “Oh, my God, my buttocks are shaking!”

“They’re supposed to shake,” Ruth said. “That’s the whole point.”

“Not when you’ve exercised your guts out to get rid of anything that resembles Jell-O!” Angela sneaked another look. “Can you see it jiggling?”

Vivien, who was closest, aimed her gaze at Angela’s rear end. “Well, it’s kind of hard to tell through all that black fabric you’re wearing. Seriously, Angela, what are you trying to hide in there?”

“Vivi,” Melanie gave her a warning look.

“If there’ll be any single men, we’ll come,” Di said as both she and Dee began to shimmy. The sight of the six of them vibrating with such determination made Vivi smile.

Naranya scurried back to the front and clapped her hands in delight. “Good! Good!” she shouted. “You see that,” she gestured to the new students. “Soon you will shimmy, too!”

“I may need you Saturday night, Vivi,” Melanie said as the music slowed and the shimmying came to a halt. “I always try to keep the number of females to males as even as possible.”

“Mel, I’ve done way better at belly dancing than either of us ever expected,” Vivi began. “But it’s different with a partner. I think we should leave well enough alone.”

Naranya raised her arms above her head and brought her fingertips together to form a triangle. “Now we use our neck to touch our left ear to the inside of our left elbow—don’t bend your head to your shoulder!” She demonstrated the highly controlled neck movement and waited for them to follow. “Only the neck moves.”

“Oh, God, I never can keep my head from going along,” Vivien groaned. “If body parts weren’t meant to move together, they wouldn’t be so . . . attached.”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Ruth said. Her neck was thick but clearly more under her control than Vivi’s. “I knew you’d try to weasel out.”

“There’ll be no wiggling out,” Melanie said from beneath her steepled arms. She looked so long and elegant next to Vivi’s round and lumbering reflection that Vivi had to turn away.

Angela, who pretty much never looked in the mirror as far as Vivi could tell, was quick to back up Melanie. “That’s right,” she said, touching her right ear to the inside of her right elbow. “We’ll expect you here on Saturday night. No excuses.”

“Us, too!” chimed Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Di as Naranya changed the head move to a forward-and-back motion that made Vivi feel, and look, like a pregnant bobblehead doll.

THE NEXT MORNING after successfully ejecting Shelby from bed, sliding eggs and toast in front of a zombielike Trip, and waving all three of them off to school, Vivi finally got another shot at J.J.’s office.

She lingered over her tea for another fifteen minutes in case Melanie or the kids had forgotten something, then carried her tea into J.J.’s study and sat down at her brother-in-law’s desk. Ignoring the buck’s reproachful glance, she opened the bottom drawers and pulled out the stack of Day-timers as well as the phone and credit card bills.

Pawing through the Day-timers until she located the last one, Vivi shivered slightly when she flipped to the back and saw the last entry, dated mid-October, which read
Hunting trip with Clay
. The book was blank after that and this struck her as odd, not because nothing had happened afterward, but because nothing had been scheduled to happen. Thinking maybe he’d bought a BlackBerry, or some other sort of PDA to bring him into the twenty-first century, Vivi made a mental note to look for it then began to read through J.J.’s last nine months.

Her brother-in-law’s days had been filled to bursting with meetings and events. The weekends were no exception, though she noticed that at least twice a month there’d been blocks set aside that either read
family time
or had a more specific notation regarding a sporting event of Trip’s or some performance or event labeled
Shelby
. There were also notations that reflected trips out of town, and she duly noted how often Clay Alexander went along on out-of-town speaking engagements and constituent forums. The months the legislature was in session were blocked out with thick black lines and social/business events notated in the evenings. Jordan Jackson Jr. had maintained a pretty hectic pace even for a young politician on the rise. She wondered that Melanie had never complained about his unavailability or about the frantic schedule her husband had kept. And then she realized that if Melanie had, it would have been just one more thing that had gone in one of Vivien’s ears and out the other, yet another insignificant detail of her sister’s life.

Hunched over the daily record keeper, she went back to January and worked her way through the months. In early April the capital letter C began to appear each Tuesday with the entire evening blocked out. In May, the C began to appear one weekend a month. Vivien might have written it off as a simple notation of some function that included Clay Alexander except that the campaign manager appeared even more regularly as Clay. If Alexander were the C in question, J.J. would have had no reason to try to hide it. But if it were another woman. . . . Vivi tried the idea on for size, but the only C she’d met that she knew J.J. had had contact with was Catherine Dennison. Could she and J.J. have been involved? And if they had been, could the knowledge that J.J. was cheating have made Clay want to somehow avenge Melanie’s honor? Or convince him that J.J. wasn’t worthy?

“Oh, good grief!”

Even in her own mind, Vivi could hear what a stretch that was. The fact that she wanted to cast Clay Alexander as the bad guy didn’t make him one. The fact that he might have had a thing for Melanie for some twenty years and now seemed intent on filling her dead husband’s shoes might be kind of icky, but it wasn’t against the law.

There was no evidence to support the idea that J.J. had died by anyone’s hand but his own. Which meant there was no crime.

This was not a mystery novel, this was real life.

Despite these admonitions, the feeling in her very large gut refused to go away. Clay Alexander knew things that he wasn’t saying. And she, for one, wanted to know what those things were.

AS SOON AS they arrived at the Magnolia Ballroom, Vivi knew her reservations about ballroom dancing were well founded. On Wednesdays their belly-dance class was a tiny island of activity surrounded by an ocean of dance floor. Tonight the ballroom crackled with conversation and laughter; light from the chandeliers shone through the snowflakes that still dangled from the ceiling and sparkled off of silks and satins. At the mixing board the DJ, who would run the practice party once the lessons concluded, sorted through CDs and nodded his head to a pulsing Latin beat.

The beginners stepped out onto the floor for the included lesson while the rest of the crowd socialized around the edge of the dance floor. As Melanie led their group into position, Vivien promised God that she would become a better person if he kept her humiliation to a minimum and her clumsiness off the Internet. Angela and James stood as close to each other as possible; Ruth and Ira did not. Clay Alexander and a recently divorced attorney named Todd were paired with the Shipley sisters. Bradley Horton, a retired army colonel in his late sixties, was Vivi’s partner having, presumably, drawn the shortest straw.

Vivi stepped up to Melanie’s side and made one last attempt to bail out. “I know Clay just came to even things out. If he sits, I can, too.” She swallowed. “Then I could put out the food. Or, um, I could clean the ladies’ room.”

“I’m not going to ask Clay to sit when he was nice enough to come,” Melanie said. “Di and Delores are practically salivating over him. Plus, look over there.” She nodded toward another class; without exception all of the women were casting sidelong glances their way. “Todd and Clay are attractive, male, and unattached. For that matter, so is the colonel. Once the word gets out, women will be beating a path to the studio door. I should pay both of them for being here.”