Murder at the Book Group (2 page)

But Carlene interrupted with a nervous laugh. “Oh, let's move on. We can continue the poison talk another time.” Turning to Art, she smiled. “Tell us about your book, Art.”

When Carlene and I started the Murder on Tour book group three years before, we wanted to stray from the practice of the numerous other book groups that met monthly and discussed the same book. Each member of the group read a different mystery based on a geographical setting, and we met every other Monday to “booktalk” our selections—a fancy way of saying we gave oral book reports, reminiscent of grade school. We met our needs to be both armchair detectives and travelers without having to suffer through someone's vacation slides of Disney World. Our current literary tour of murder and mayhem took us through the American South, and tonight's stop was Florida. With its intoxicating blend of steaminess, exoticism, and often strange goings-on, Florida provided a fertile setting for mystery aficionados.

Art returned Carlene's smile, then gave us an account of
The Paperboy,
by Pete Dexter, a disquieting and riveting story of a newspaper family in Northern Florida during the late sixties. I made a note on the back of an envelope to add it to my to-read list. Art usually chose historical mysteries, but he claimed that Florida offered little in that subgenre and that, besides, he'd been wanting to read
The Paperboy
for a while. “Besides,” he added with a shrug of his bony shoulders, “the sixties are historical.”

I watched the interplay between Linda and Carlene. Linda's steady smile telegraphing wry amusement contrasted with Carlene's worrying a beaded necklace like a rosary. What was the history between these two? Anyone who could discompose the normally self-possessed and poker-faced Carlene was a force to be reckoned with. Intrigued, I continued to keep an eye on them.

Despite Carlene's preoccupation, part of her remained engaged in the discussion. The rest of us shared our selections sans drama, tension, and author maligning. We “traveled” the state of Florida, from the panhandle to the Key Largo of Raymond Chandler's classic of the same name. Helen raved about John MacDonald's
The Deep Blue Good-by,
the first in his Travis McGee color-coded series. She assured us that she intended to read every last one of the prolific author's works. I added the title to my envelope list.

Eventually we wound down and addressed the next meeting's theme of Appalachia. Helen reminded us that she had posted a list of Appalachian authors on the group's website. She also agreed to host the group at her apartment.

“And I have a request to make—that you turn off your cell phones during book group. They're very distracting.”

Sarah looked puzzled. “I didn't hear a cell phone tonight.”

“No, not tonight. But often folks are getting calls. Some more than others.” Kat and Annabel were likely the “some” that Helen cited. Both appeared unfazed.

“Not me. My phone sits in the bottom of my purse, turned off. I check for messages once a week.” I laughed, adding, “That is, if I think of it.”

We agreed to put our phones on vibrate mode and Helen expressed her thanks. Then she took advantage of having the floor and launched into a blow-by-blow description of the pro-life conference she'd recently attended. Kat had warned me about it when I'd first arrived.

“Her big thing now is the whole stem cell thing.” Kat had sighed. “The woman just wears me out. And I'm sure Sarah will put in her two cents on the subject.”

Nodding in agreement, I had said, “We'll all be giving Helen a wide berth tonight. Maybe Sarah as well.” Often I enjoyed hearing people's viewpoints, especially if they differed from mine. But I avoided Helen's endless soapbox speeches whenever I could, otherwise I endured them. Sarah was the only one who bothered to challenge Helen. Even though Sarah held conservative views, they sat far to the left of Helen's on the Republican political spectrum.

Helen used her hands to emphasize her points. Her long fingers and a dangling thread from the ruffled sleeve of her periwinkle blouse distracted me from her earnest account. But loose threads and dancing fingers didn't capture my attention for long, so I looked around the room, wondering if Carlene had added anything new to the decor since the last time I was here. Being a minimalist, she had more likely subtracted. Touches of burgundy and forest green accented the soft yellows and peaches of the conversational grouping of sofa, love seat, and oversized chairs. No knickknacks interrupted the smooth table surfaces, but a couple of large modern paintings and a sculpture filled up the wall space.

Just as Sarah started with, “Helen, don't you realize the potential benefits of stem cell research . . .” I felt a tap on my shoulder. Carlene whispered, “Hazel, I need to ask you something. Let's go to my den.” Then, flashing a smile at the others, she said, “Please excuse us—business,” and we moved off, leaving the others to suffer through the debate.

Carlene detoured into the kitchen to switch on the coffeemaker before we walked up a short flight of steps to her den. “I figured we could forgo the conference recap,” she grinned. “It could go on forever. And they'll probably get into the childbirth tales.”

I rolled my eyes and smiled. Childbirth stories were a frequent staple of this group. They usually started with someone announcing the birth of a grandchild and included complete details of the pregnancy, labor, and birth. Conception as well, if they were privy to those details. Being childless, Carlene and I had missed out on a lifetime ticket to female bonding. In my fifty-something years I'd acquired husbands and cats, but children, not a one.

Carlene said, “We don't have to worry about Art. He can busy himself with everyone's books.”

Carlene's minimalist leanings extended to her den. A Persian rug in a black and teal pattern covered the gleaming hardwood floor. Only a lamp, laptop, printer, and cordless phone disturbed the polished wood surface of the desk. Not a plant in sight, no pictures on the walls. An ergonomically correct chair and a bookcase provided the only other furniture. I wondered about the correlation between uncluttered surroundings and an uncluttered mind. Would it enhance my own writing to establish order out of the chaos in my den? Would I try it? Probably not.

“Hazel, I'm sorry I created such a fuss over that silly book. I get so irritated when people go on and on about hating a book.” Her voice, now reverted back to its usual near whisper, was so soft that I risked violating the standard conversational distance between us by moving closer. It was either that or take a shot at lip reading.

“Don't worry about it.” By now I was more interested in broaching the subject of Linda. “So—are you excited about your friend Linda showing up?”

Carlene gave a brief laugh and said, “Well, no. To be honest, I don't even remember the woman. It's embarrassing since she seems to remember me so well.”

“Oh. So she wasn't a friend in L.A.?”

“Oh, no. She says I worked with her husband. Maybe I met her at a work party. I simply don't remember.” She spread her hands as if asking how she could possibly remember everyone she met.

“Looks like hers would be hard to forget.”

“I guess.” She waved a dismissive hand, setting off those dissonant bracelets. “I just finished an Agatha Christie. I keep reading them over and over.” Pulling a book out of her bookcase she offered it to me. “This one's a Miss Marple.
The Mirror Crack'd
. Want to borrow it?”

Okay, Linda was off limits. I wondered why. “Oh, no thanks. I have a copy.” Carlene reshelved the paperback.

“Hazel, the real reason I wanted to talk to you, aside from getting away from Helen, was to share my big news. I booked a trip to Costa Rica for December. Georgia and I are going to stay with a friend of hers.”

“Oh, Carlene, that's great. You'll love it. So will Georgia.” Georgia Dmytryk was Carlene's lifelong friend and the executive director of the Richmond Women's Resource Center.

“I know you went there a while back. Maybe you can give us suggestions. Do you have time for coffee this week? Our treat. Maybe early one morning before Georgia goes to the center?” I wasn't hot on early-morning activities, but I
was
hot on free coffee, so I agreed to meet Carlene and Georgia at Panera at Stony Point on Wednesday morning.

Then my eye was drawn to a couple of photographs on the shelf over her laptop. How had I missed them in this monkish room? I pointed to one and said, “I don't think I've seen these before.” Neither picture included Evan, but I didn't comment on my observation.

A smiling foursome posed next to a Christmas tree. Kat dominated the group with her abundance of everything: hair, makeup, cleavage, jewelry. Her twenty-something daughter, Stephie, took her mother's flamboyant fashion statements several steps further with her riotous assortment of piercings and tattoos. Dean Berenger, Kat's father and Carlene's stepfather, wore a crewneck sweater and sported a buzz cut.

Carlene's elegant style was apparent even with her tacky Christmas sweater and jeans. Her eyes stared impassively into, maybe through, the camera. I never tire of her mesmerizing eyes, which happen to be the same color and shade as mine, “money green.” My thoughts digressed along a path from green eyes to husbands, recalling one of my exes declaring an exact match when he held a dollar bill up to my eyes. While he was puzzled that they weren't hazel, suiting my name, they failed to mesmerize him.

Besides our eyes, Carlene and I shared a number of physical attributes. We both stood at five feet four inches without shoes. We'd remained slim, but the pounds were creeping up in that insidious way that pounds crept. Our hair color belonged to the red family, hers a vibrant auburn and mine an autumn chestnut. No doubt her salon tab far exceeded mine.

“That was taken last Christmas,” Carlene explained, but didn't elaborate.

“And what about this one?” I pointed to an eight-by-eleven image in a brushed metal frame. “This has to be your mother.” Despite the beehive and thick black eyeliner, the woman could only be Carlene's mother, so striking was the resemblance.

“It is.”

“Father?” I asked, pointing at the handsome, smiling man holding a pipe, who didn't look remotely like Dean Berenger. Carlene nodded.

A perhaps ten-year-old Carlene towered over an unhappy-looking boy. “I guess that's your brother.”

“Yes, that's Hal. I hate to cut this short, Hazel, but I've got to get the food ready. They'll be winding down their stories soon and will want to eat.” True to my prediction, a loud and intense childbirth discussion was in full swing downstairs.

The rebuff didn't surprise me as Carlene didn't allow many personal questions. In no time the inevitable “it's none of your business” messages would start, nonverbal but clear all the same. As a result, I knew little about her. That didn't stop me from wondering if Hal served as the family's black sheep, making him off-limits for discussion.

“Okay, I'll give you a hand,” I offered with reluctance. I wanted to stay in the den and look at photos and ask nosy questions. But even if Carlene was willing to satisfy my curiosity, there were only the two photos anyway.

Carlene stopped at the door and turned to me. “Hazel,” she started, looking uncertain. “I have a, um, hypothetical question for you.”

“Yes?”

She continued to look indecisive before finally taking the proverbial nosedive. “Have you ever made a huge mistake?”

“Mistake?” I laughed. “Of
course
.” My mistakes were too numerous for a quick mental scan. There were the failed marriages, Evan being the first of them. And more than one wrong turn on the career path. But huge? “What do you mean by huge?”

“The kind that comes back later to haunt you.”

I LOOKED AT CARLENE,
trying to get a bead on her meaning. Did her question have to do with Evan, with their separation? But the haunting bit threw me—haunting implied a past mistake. That thought took me to the not-remembered Linda. Carlene's eagerness to leave the subject of Linda shed doubts on her claims of not remembering her. Who could forget hair like that? Of course, the hair may have been different at the time—for all I knew, Linda had been a nondescript type until a midlife crisis led to her falling in with a creative hairdresser.

Perhaps Carlene was about to confess to a crime. Or she'd been an accomplice, a mobster's moll. “Carlene, does this have anything to do with Linda?”

The rebuff didn't surprise me. “Linda again? I
said
I didn't remember her.” Then, smiling, she offered, “Sorry, I guess I'm being . . . fanciful.” Fanciful. A writer's word. Anyone else would say “silly.” “You see, it's for this book I started . . .” Carlene went on to describe the book, how the main character meets up with her past—a past she had hoped was, well, in the past. Carlene had talked about her upcoming book at the signing so I guessed that this was her third book. “I'm just collecting experiences, that's all.” And with that, she left the den and proceeded down the short flight of steps to the kitchen, apparently forgetting her question about my own mistakes. I thought about Carlene's conveniently falling back on her writing to explain her provocative question. I held to my suspicion that Linda had triggered this haunting business.

Carlene's kitchen, with its barn-red walls, white cabinets, black-and-white-checkered floor, and black appliances was a study in elegance and simplicity, simplicity being the operative word. My own kitchen abounded with plants, refrigerator magnets attaching shopping lists and emergency numbers, cat dishes, cats themselves, and often pleasant cooking aromas. Carlene's kitchen gave off a model house feeling. A round wooden table held a tray of refreshment paraphernalia and a Tupperware container of what looked like brownies. The notion that less is more can be inaccurate, and sometimes less is just less.