Her blue eyes opened, looking haunted. “Empty. In my bottom dresser drawer.”
Struck again by the dramatic difference in mother and son’s eye color, Temple wondered what Matt’s father would look like as she met his shocked gaze. She knew what he was thinking: Had his mom become a secret drinker?
Mira continued speaking, but her eyes didn’t focus on them, only elsewhere in the room as if her own inner turmoil were lurking somewhere in the domestic landscape and she hoped to keep it at bay.
“Matt, I don’t want your lovely fiancée dragged headfirst into family business, but I don’t think I can stand the pretense anymore.”
“You’ve been under a lot of strain lately.” Matt was trying to remain neutral and supportive.
She laughed bitterly. “That’s nothing new for me, Matt. My whole life’s been ‘a lot of strain.’”
“True.” He took her hands. “And I haven’t been here for you lately, but that can change right now. I can be here to see you through.”
“You can’t help.”
“Sure I can. It’s my job.”
“Not this.” She put white, cold fingers to her visibly flushed cheeks and shut her eyes.
Matt exchanged another glance with Temple. “Is it the … wretched coincidence?” he asked his mother.
“Of my possibly having your father for a brother-in-law? Your uncle-in-law? Things that cuckoo have happened in the Bible. No, that was just icing on the arsenic cake,” his mother said.
“What is it that you think I can’t help you with?” Matt tightened his grip. “I know you want to download the problem to someone who can help. That’s great. You’ve started to…”
“Confess?” She laughed again. “No. I know you’re not taking confessions anymore.”
“Then why bring up something you won’t let me help with?” Matt checked his costly watch from the producers. “Krys will be back and our privacy will be nil.”
She took a deep breath and fixed her gaze for the first time. On Temple. “Actually, from what you’ve said, I’m thinking she can help.”
“Temple?” Matt sounded unflatteringly astounded, realized that, and started to backpedal. “Temple would be happy to help but you don’t even know her yet.”
“You said she was so smart and clever, had even beaten the police to the solution of crime only recently.”
Temple beamed as Midnight Louie came to sit at her feet and soak up the praise. “So you need a gumshoe?” she asked.
Gumshoes were the silent gum rubber-soled “tennis” shoes of their day. All eyes fixed on Temple’s highly elevating but decidedly impractical and clattering gladiator sandals.
Apparently embarrassed, Louie hiked a rear leg over one shoulder like a shotgun and began grooming the hairs between his back legs. Talk about being embarrassing, Temple thought, in the bare-butt sense of the word.
Mira was too upset to take in the byplay. “I just don’t want you fretting, Matt.” She withdrew her hands and fisted them at her sides on the sofa. “I’ve been getting these messages.”
“Messages?” Temple and Matt had questioned the word at the same time. It was so … old-fashioned. Did she mean e-mails? Phone calls?
“Notes.” The word spat out of Mira’s mouth like a dead fly found in her coffee, along with a shudder of sheer revulsion.
“In the mail?” Matt asked.
“No. In person. Wherever I happen to be.”
Temple sat forward, her sudden move almost overturning the delicately balanced cat at her ankles. “Notes. Not mash notes?”
Mira shrugged. “They could be taken for that, showing up under my reservation book at the restaurant, under my napkin during dinners out. In my umbrella when it rains. In my purse.”
“Good God!” Matt’s expletive didn’t merit notice from his mother, much less a reproof. “You’re being stalked. Why haven’t you informed the police? Why are you making such a secret of it? Is it because of your new … romance? Is some disgruntled ex-girlfriend shadowing you? Is that really why you ended the relationship?”
“Yes, Matt. Stalked. No, I don’t think it has to do with Philip.” She put her hand to Matt’s face. “Oh, dear one. I really didn’t want to trouble you with it, not after the childhood I gave you.”
“The childhood you gave me was fine,” Matt said firmly, taking her hands again.
She avoided his gaze and looked at Temple. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your trip to Chicago.”
“Ruin it? No way. Your son proved himself an ace skip tracer in Vegas and my nose may be as short as I am, but it’s long on sniffing out liars, cheaters, and crooks. You have to in the PR game.”
“Speaking of liars, cheaters, and crooks, Mom,” Matt said. “What about the empty bottle in the bottom of your drawer? You’re not a newly converted dipsomaniac?”
“Just the occasional drink before or after dinner. Truly, Matt.”
Temple glanced at him, seeing the tension softening in his face and shoulders.
“That’s a relief,” Matt said, adopting radio shrink mode and a low, nonjudgmental tone. “Then what just happened here?”
The answer arrived in a rush of confessional frankness, just like on the air. “I poured the wine down the sink and hid the bottle so Krys would leave.”
Matt registered her answer and then grinned. “Pretty sly move for a parochial school girl.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I just couldn’t go through another Charade Sunday at Uncle Stach’s house. They already think I’m half-crazy for calling off the engagement with Philip. They don’t know who his brother is and I’m not going to tell him.” She paused. “Are you seeing … him? This trip?”
“Yes, Mom. Temple’s coming too.”
Mira winced. “That’s fine. You should have a relationship with your father. My … going forward with my unfortunate … encounter with his brother would have been so awkward anyway.”
“Doesn’t mean we let somebody scare you out of it.” Matt was firm. “What does this anonymous coward seem to want, anyway?”
Mira bit her lip, hard. “That’s why I tried not to mention this. He wants something he thinks Cliff Effinger left behind.”
“My lousy stepfather?” Matt asked. “Where are these notes?”
“In…” Mira looked apologetic. “In my dresser drawer.”
“With the emptied bottle.” Matt shook his head. “Temple’s scarf drawer is another forbidden zone of explosive secrets. Let’s see these threats.”
When they stood in front of the drawer, it looked so innocuous. Just a small bottom drawer.
“What a wonderful dresser,” Temple couldn’t help but exclaim. “It’s a reproduction of those 1930s-style ones.” She ran her hands over the round frame holding the mirror.
“I got it years ago,” Mira said, “at a St. Vincent de Paul’s shop. It was cheap.”
“I’ve always thought,” Temple said, “of these big round mirrors as the moon, setting behind the two pillars of drawers on either side.”
“Goodness.” Mira examined the piece with new eyes. “You’re right, but it’ll always be the harbor of old poison to me now.”
Matt had squatted to pull out the narrow bottom drawer. A battered manila folder was curved to fit into the space. He pulled it out. A sheaf of stiff, folded white typing paper lay inside. The front one opened like a book, showing signs of yellow glue around newspaper headline-size letters.
“We probably shouldn’t handle them,” Temple cautioned, leaning over to look. “The fewer fingerprints for the police, the better.”
“No police.” Mira hung over Matt and the drawer too, wringing her hands.
“YOU GOT CLIFFIE’S CRAP WE WANT IT LADY,” Matt read the crazy-quilt printed letters. “It’s simple,” he added. “If you have anything of Effinger’s, give it to them. Only we need to think up a way so you don’t come in contact with these freakos.”
“That’s just it,” she answered. “I haven’t known what to do, or how. It’s like that man is haunting me. I just can’t get him out of my life, even after death—”