|
This is an excerpt from the first in Louise Gaylord's
Allie Armington mystery series, Anacacho:
CHAPTER 1 - Section 3
The morning dawns gray and humid.
By the time I arrive at the fashionable uptown restaurant my hair
has seized-up into “brand-new-perm” mode.
That and the fact that I’m ten minutes early and I know Reena
will be her usual twenty minutes late puts me in a sour mood.
The maître d’ gushes when
I mention Carpenter. A regular for years, he says. So lovely.
Damn. If Reena’s been a regular at Rudi’s
for years. Why did it take her so long to track me down?
He leads me through the dimly lit room to a table in
the far corner. Refusing the offer of a glass of champagne, I spend
the next few minutes composing myself and dealing with that cold
stone at the bottom of my stomach that is fast becoming a boulder.
Reena has arrived. A buzz rolls through
the crowd. She unloads five Neiman Marcus shopping bags on the
hapless maítre
d’, then threads her way through the gawkers toward me.
She is still devastatingly beautiful,
a startling clone of Farrah Fawcett who paraded across the UT campus
some twenty years
before we did. No wonder the Tri Delts were thrilled to pledge Reena.
All the Greeks were after her. It didn’t matter she hailed from
a hole in the middle of the road, they knew she would be the talk
of the campus and she was. Susie and I were simply drawn along in
her wake.
Not that there weren’t plenty
of benefits. Reena played a role in every prank the guys thought
up, so Susie and I
not only visited every fraternity house on campus, but went on more
beer busts than I care to count.
She gives me an air-kiss, settles
in the offered chair, then leans across the table to cover my hand.
She rasps, “I’ve
missed you, Allie. Please say you’ve missed me. Just a little?”
I only hesitate a nanosecond. “I haven’t
had much time to miss anybody.”
It’s almost the truth. My dogged
pursuit of the law and my burgeoning career saved my sanity. After
I lost Paul,
I buried myself in a three-year grind at University of Houston Law
including summer internships and Law Review. Now, the job with the
DA and my blooming relationship with Duncan have almost filled the
gaping hole my first love left.
I see Reena’s smile brighten to a full ten on
the sparkle-meter. It’s her Farrah Fawcett number, aptly dubbed
by my sister Angela who noticed the resemblance the first time she
came to visit. Susie added validity when she caught Reena looking
at one of the movie star’s pictures in a magazine, then practicing
in the mirror. I grin to myself remembering how Susie and I shortened “Farrah
Fawcett” to “Double F” so Reena wouldn’t catch
on.
Suddenly anxious to put a quick end
to this meaningless charade I say, “Maybe we should order.”
When the waiter arrives, Reena orders
vodka-on-the-rocks and, seemingly oblivious to his presence, bends
forward as her face
collapses. “Oh, Allie, seeing you is the best thing that’s
happened to me in years.” She pauses to let a single crocodile
tear roll slowly down her cheek, dabs it away with her napkin, then
blurts, “Lately, my life has been one living disaster.”
Above us the waiter clears his throat. “And what
about you, ma’am?”
I flash him a knowing grin. “My
life is fine, thank you.”
Reena glares at my small joke and
I order a white wine. When he walks away, I say, “What do
you mean disaster? You have a huge mansion with staff and a Citation
jet to boot.”
Those limpid pools dry to dark holes
and she hisses, “Don’t
believe everything Susie Baxter tells you.”
I start to add that Darden is now
Susie’s last
name, but think better of it.
We trade trivia until the drinks arrive.
|
