Our Red Hot Romance Is Leaving Me Blue Read online

  Debbie Sue had watched tales of the paranormal on TV. She had even caught a couple of Montel Williams shows when guest Sylvia Browne had given psychic readings to a hushed audience. When it came to the afterlife and those who claimed to communicate with the ones who had passed over, she had to admit she was intrigued and was willing to be open-minded.

  With the last person paid and out the door and less than an hour left to keep the doors open, Jolene Wiley, great-granddaughter of their favorite octogenarian, Maudeen Wiley, bounded in. Jolene had just completed her senior year at Salt Lick High. With her flaming-red hair and bubbly personality, she literally lit up the room.

  “Hey, Mrs. Overstreet. Mrs. Martin.”

  “Hey, yourself,” Edwina said, placing her hand on her hip and giving the girl a playful once-over. “Just look at you. What are you doing with yourself now that school’s out? Chasing boys or being chased by boys?”

  The teenager laughed. “Neither one. I don’t have time.” She began to tick off on her fingers. “Between working the morning shift at Hogg’s, getting ready to go to college in the fall, babysitting Karla Kennedy’s kids in the evening and running errands for Mama and Great Gram, I don’t have time for boys.”

  “Lord-a-mercy,” Edwina said, “what has gone wrong with this country? You’re only young once, honey-child. Believe me, you’ll find in your lifetime there’s more need for work than play. Use that youth before you lose it is what I say.”

  Debbie Sue shook her head and gave Jolene a wink, sensing that Edwina was fired up and on the verge of one of her speeches.

  “The price of gasoline is high, groceries are high, utilities are high and sex drives are low,” Edwina said. “We’re all going to hell in a handbasket.”

  “You sound just like Great Gram,” Jolene said, giggling.

  “Speaking of that dear little lady,” Debbie Sue said, “how’s she doing?”

  “That’s why I’m here. She’s in the car out front.” The teenager motioned to the front parking lot of the salon. “She wanted me to ask if you’d come out and talk to her outside. She wants to ask you something.”

  Alarms went off in Debbie Sue’s head. She loved Maudeen Wiley like the grandmother she had never known. Was she ill? Had time finally taken such a toll on her frail body that she wasn’t able to even leave the car?

  “Is she okay?” Edwina asked.

  “She’s fine. She’s just too embarrassed to come inside is all.”

  Debbie Sue didn’t know which was more disturbing—her first thought that Maudeen was ill or the news that she was embarrassed. As far as Debbie Sue was concerned, either one was reason for worry.

  Leaving Ed to start the end-of-the-day cleanup, Debbie Sue walked out to the parking lot. She could see a diminutive figure outlined against the high-back passenger seat, her head barely visible over the dashboard.

  As Debbie Sue opened the door, the tiny woman turned toward her and gave her the usual big smile. “Why, hello, honey. Thanks for coming out to the car.”

  Maudeen was wearing a pair of huge black sunglasses with lenses so dark her eyes couldn’t be seen, the type an eye doctor had once given Debbie Sue’s mother after her eyes had been dilated for an exam. Debbie Sue was puzzled. Surely this wasn’t cause for embarrassment by a woman who wasn’t bothered by an opinion from one single individual other than herself.

  Taking Maudeen’s birdlike hand in her own, Debbie Sue squatted beside the open door. “What in the world is wrong, Maudeen? Jolene said you didn’t want to come in. Are you all right? You know how much I worry about you.”

  “That’s sweet of you, honey. It really is. But I’m fine, if doing something stupid is being fine.”

  “Stupid? What in the world are you talking about? I’ve never heard anyone call you stupid.”

  “Well, I have been this time, honey.” Maudeen freed her hand from Debbie Sue’s and removed her sunglasses. “Who else but a stupid old woman would do this to herself?”

  At first glance, half an inch above Maudeen’s eyebrows, a couple of fuzzy black caterpillars appeared to be crawling across her wrinkled forehead. Debbie Sue gasped. She reached to touch, but drew her hand back. “What is that?”

  “I got to looking in the mirror, honey,” Maudeen said. “And that right there isn’t a smart thing to do at my age. I noticed my eyebrows were nearly plumb gray. They had practically disappeared. I decided they needed dyeing.”

  “Sweetheart,” Debbie Sue said gently, “me or Ed would have been happy to do that for you. Why didn’t you come see us?”

  “It was one of those Saturday night spur-of-the-moment things, honey. My life’s pretty much been ruled by Saturday night spur-of-the-moment things, if you get my drift.”

  Debbie Sue got it. She nodded. The only person who had always enjoyed her sex life more than Edwina Perkins-Martin had to be Maudeen Wiley. “You tried to dye them yourself?”

  “Well, that was the plan, honey, but I never got that far.”

  “But—”

  “I was using a pen to practice the shape I was going to make ’em. That’s why they’re perched above my own eyebrows. But when I started practicing, I didn’t know I was using a laundry marker.”

  “Uh-oh. That’s permanent,” Debbie Sue said.

  “When I realized what I’d done, I tried to wipe it off.”

  “And that’s how you got the fuzzy look?” Debbie Sue looked at the ground, biting her lip and not wanting to make Maudeen feel worse by laughing.

  “Oh, go ahead and laugh,” Maudeen said. She began to chuckle and was soon into a breath-grabbing laugh. Debbie Sue joined her.

  Wiping a tear from her eye, Maudeen said, “At my age, honey, you never know if you’re going to wake up in the morning. And here I’ve made such a mess of myself I might have to meet my maker with a just-been-goosed-from-behind look on my face.”

  Debbie Sue went from squatting to sitting on the ground, legs extended, laughing harder. Finally, she wiped her eyes with her shirtsleeve. “Speaking of meeting your maker, Maudeen, do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Heavens, yes. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’re surprised by very little. Why, honey, I could tell you stories that would rearrange your DNA.”

  Debbie Sue stretched her hand out to her friend. “Come on inside and tell me more. We have some lotion that helps take hair dye stains off our hands. It doesn’t work one hundred percent, but we can try it on your, uh, eyebrows.”

  “That’s okay. It doesn’t have to be a hundred percent. If you just get a little of this black off, I can spackle my face up good enough with some pancake makeup. And while we’re at it, maybe you could go ahead and dye my real eyebrows. Give me a professional job.”

  Debbie Sue smiled and took Maudeen’s hand again. “We can do that.” She assisted Maudeen from the car and walked her into the salon.

  “Jolene,” Maudeen called out from the shop’s front doorway. “Honey, you can run on and do what you need to get done. Debbie Sue and Edwina are going to work their magic on me.” The octogenarian glanced up at Debbie Sue and patted her arm. “Aren’t you, girls?”

  Edwina walked over to them. “You bet we are,” she shouted.

  Debbie Sue cringed. Edwina always yelled when speaking to Maudeen, but as far as Debbie Sue knew, nothing was wrong with Maudeen’s hearing.

  “Why you got them big-ass black sunglasses on, hon?” Edwina yelled as she walked the elderly woman across the room and seated her in Debbie Sue’s hydraulic chair. “You look like you’re wearing manhole covers.”

  Maudeen eased the sunglasses from her face and looked up at Edwina.

  Edwina slapped her own cheek with her fingers. “Great day in the morning!”

  “Where’s that lotion that takes hair dye off our hands?” Debbie Sue said. “It might work on her face.”

  “In the storeroom. I think that stuff would remove a tattoo if we let it set long enough.” Edwina leaned down closer to Maudeen’s ear. “I said it’s in the storeroom,
” she shouted.

  Debbie Sue rolled her eyes. “Ed, would you please get it for us?”

  Edwina disappeared behind the floral curtain that covered the storage-room doorway. Maudeen looked at Debbie Sue in the mirror. “Why does Edwina insist on yelling at me? Does she have a hearing problem?”

  Debbie Sue chuckled. “What she has is a comprehension problem. She can’t comprehend that aging and being hard of hearing don’t necessarily go hand in hand.”

  “Why did you ask me about ghosts?” Maudeen said, smoothing the nylon cape that Debbie Sue had placed around her small neck. “Have you got a stubborn dearly departed who’s refusing to move on?”

  “Not me. It’s a client. So you believe there really are ghosts?”

  “Honey, when you’ve lived as long as I have, you get to a place where you’ve done things you swore you wouldn’t, and you believe in things you didn’t think existed. It’s one of the perks of old age.”

  “I guess,” Debbie Sue replied.

  “Have you called in a professional? You know, someone to speak to the spirits for you? You need to get a professional, honey. Don’t try to do it on your own. Spirits make sport of watching mortals make fools of themselves. Guess they’ve got little else to do.”

  Edwina returned from the storeroom and handed a bottle of white lotion to Debbie Sue. “We called a woman in El Paso. Her name’s Isabella—”

  “Not Izzy Paredes,” Maudeen said with a start.

  Debbie Sue and Edwina looked at each other, mouths agape.

  “You know Isabella Paredes?” Debbie Sue asked.

  “I lived in El Paso for four years. During the big war, my first husband, Homer, was in the army. He was stationed at Fort Bliss. Everybody knew Izzy Paredes. Back in those days, she was a celebrity.”

  “People called her Izzy?” Edwina asked.

  “Just her good friends,” Maudeen replied.

  “You were good friends with Isabella Paredes?” Debbie Sue asked, incredulous.

  “I’d like to think so. At any rate, she was sure a good friend to me. She helped me tell Homer good-bye.”

  Debbie Sue felt a sting behind her eyes. She glanced over at Edwina, whose chin had a quiver to it. “You mean Homer went into the light?” Debbie Sue asked softly.

  “As fast as he could, honey,” Maudeen said.

  “What did Isabella Paredes do to help?” Edwina asked.

  “She loaned me her pickup.”

  “What?” Debbie Sue and Edwina chorused.

  “To move after Homer met a stripper from Vegas and went AWOL. She loaned me her pickup. Even helped me carry the heavy stuff.”

  Debbie Sue stomped her foot. “Dammit, Maudeen, I thought you meant he died.”

  “Oh, he did, eventually. But not before he spent thirty years with the meanest woman that ever drew a breath. That’s the sort of thing that kind of compensates an old woman for outliving everybody. You get to see them that screwed you over get their just rewards.”

  A faraway look came into Maudeen’s eyes and she chuckled. “The day I found out what Homer done, me and Izzy sat at her kitchen table and killed a bottle of tequila. She held my hand while I cried. Yes, honey, that crazy Izzy was a good friend to me. I can’t wait to see her.

  nine

  Justin arrived at home after four in the afternoon. He was beat. He had spent the entire morning working with the horses, followed by a trip into town to run errands and buy groceries.

  Even before he put his grocery sacks on the kitchen counter, he checked the refrigerator door for a new message. Before leaving for town, he had rearranged the letters on the refrigerator door back to alphabetical order. Nothing had changed. This left him with mixed emotions. On the one hand he was relieved; on the other he was disappointed because he was now starting to believe Rachel was truly communicating with him.

  He played his voice-mail messages and listened to one from Debbie Sue, informing him that the psychic from El Paso would be arriving in Odessa this afternoon and would be at his place tomorrow. “Maybe your questions will be answered then,” Debbie Sue had said.

  Justin hadn’t expected all of this to happen so soon. He had thought the Domestic Equalizers would put listening devices and cameras in the house before they relied on the supernatural and caused him to risk $3,000.

  He intended to be in his home every minute the psychic was present. With his work schedule, that would be impossible unless he put in a request for vacation time. Because of his regular schedule, a week of vacation worked out to be two full weeks off. How long could the woman be in town—a few hours? Two weeks was more time than necessary, but he needed the break. He would make use of the extra days. Those thoughts prompted him to call to his captain to ask for some vacation time.

  “If it was anyone but you, Sadler, I’d say not just no, but hell no,” Captain Baugus groused.

  “Thanks, Cap, I really appreciate it,” Justin told him. “I know how you hate last-minute requests. If it wasn’t important, I wouldn’t ask.”

  “You’ve been working doubles and filling in every vacant slot for more than a year. It’s time you took some days off. Hope you’re going somewhere to raise hell. Run down to Mexico. Lie on the beach and get yourself laid.”

  Justin had more important things to think about than deepening his tan or ending his long stint of celibacy.

  Avoiding giving his captain the answer Justin knew he wanted, he said, “My plans right now don’t include any of those things, but if something happens I think you’d want to hear about, I won’t hesitate to call you.”

  Justin dragged a frosty glass from the freezer, grabbed a beer and carried them outside to the front porch. A strong breeze from the north gave a welcome reprieve from the heat. Easing himself into one of the two matching rocking chairs, he poured his beer and tried to relax.

  So she’s really coming, he thought. He still found the whole thing a little hard to grasp. He was certain he wouldn’t be condoning this, or even allowing it, if Debbie Sue and Edwina hadn’t promoted it.

  Well, this psychic woman would have to prove to him that she possessed extrasensory perception or whatever. With the unlimited capabilities of the Internet to uncover his life from beginning to the present—his date of birth, his parent’s names, when he married, what he did for a living—a computer in the hands of any charlatan could pull up that data. He wouldn’t settle for just any old facts, either. Nor was he worried about how she might convince him she was legit. That was her problem, not his. She would have to knock him off his feet before he would fork over the money he had agreed to pay.

  Beyond that, what should he say when meeting a person who could look at you and possibly tell you your future and your past? What if she looked at him with a perplexing expression on her face? Would it mean she was just tired? Or would it mean she had a headache or was suffering from constipation, for chrissake? How would he keep from overreacting to her human actions?

  Turnup had been sleeping peacefully at the side of Justin’s rocking chair, but suddenly he raised his head and stared at the front screen door. Whining pitifully, he tilted his head to the left, then right, clearly listening to something Justin couldn’t hear. Apprehension began to sneak through Justin. He followed the dog’s gaze but saw nothing through the screen door’s haze except the living area of his home. “What’s the matter, boy?” He reached to touch Turnup’s head but the dog rose, his tail tucked between his legs.

  Before Justin could react, Turnup’s behavior changed as quickly as before. The dog began to prance around, never taking his eyes off the front door.

  “What the hell…” Justin muttered.

  Suddenly Turnup bolted from the front porch, ran into the yard and picked up something in the grass. With the object secured in his mouth, he returned. Ignoring Justin, Turnup placed the object in front of the door and rose on his hind legs, begging. Begging who? No one was present but Justin.

  Justin looked at what the dog had brought and his blood chilled. It
was a ragged tennis ball. The same tennis ball Rachel had thrown a thousand times and laughed with delight when Turnup raced for it and brought it back to her. Justin hadn’t even known where it was.

  Rachel would sit on the porch in one of the rocking chairs and call out to him, “Baby, look at how smart Turnup is. He brings the ball right back to me every time.”

  Justin stared at the empty doorway for uncountable seconds. Finally he swallowed hard and softly said, “Rach? Honey, is that you? Are you here?”

  No reply. No sound. Even the wind seemed to have stopped. Justin looked at Turnup, who had given up on his pleading and now lay quietly again. Reaction burned in Justin’s chest. Adrenaline rush was something he recognized. But this time it wasn’t the life-saving response his body called for in his job. It was more primitive than that. It was anger.

  He sprang to his feet, the force of his sudden movement knocking the rocking chair backward. Turnup jumped, ran from the porch and sat in the grass, watching his master warily.

  Justin opened the screen door and slammed it with all his might. “Why are you doing this to me?” he bellowed to the air. “If you’ve got something to tell me, just say it! I’m not taking any more of this shit!”

  Overcome with emotion Justin dropped to the porch, hard. He buried his head in his hands. His stiff upper lip quivered and he wept, releasing a deep reservoir of sorrow and anger into his hands. The tears that he had held back for so long flowed. No one placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, no familiar voice soothed. No one and nothing made a sound. Beyond his angst, his only awareness was the faint scent of roses.

  Nearly to Odessa, Sophia sat back and watched the arid West Texas landscape speed past her window. Domestic Equalizers, she thought, curious about the origin of the name and the two women who had claimed it. She had spoken by phone only to Debbie Sue, but she knew the other partner from a voice in the background. Sophia hoped to be around them long enough to get the full story of their business. She knew a little of their reputation and couldn’t wait to meet them.