The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives

She felt a strange, aching disappointment that she didn’t understand. As if her heart was breaking as it had all those years ago when she’d decided to dump him.

He’d ruined her life. Because of what had happened with him, she’d given up her art…and everything else she’d longed to have and be. Now she was a nobody, she, who’d been alive with ambition and so damned eager for a ticket on the glittering train car.

She picked up his business card and then set it down again.

“Well, you know where to find me, princess.”

As he walked toward her, invading her personal space as only he could, his eyes burned her neckline. She blushed and became annoyed that he could upset her just by getting too close.

“I just broke up with my girlfriend. Maybe I could take you…and Alexis, too, to Zilker Park or something. Maybe teach her to throw a Frisbee. Maybe ride the little train…You have my card.”

“I don’t think so.”

He brushed past her and stepped outside. She shot the bolt and leaned against the door, rasping in quick breaths as his brisk footsteps receded down the walk. For a long time, she just stood there, feeling as if she were melting on the outside but frozen in the middle.

He’d invited Alexis to the park. Why did that touch her? Had he felt some bond with the child? Did he suspect the truth, maybe, on some subconscious level?

Feeling a strange need to call him back, she rushed to her window and watched his lean form slide into a battered, blue Crown Victoria with a tall antenna on the trunk. Her heart caught. He looked so lonely out there in the dark.

Only after his engine started was she able to break the connection and make herself march to the kitchen. She was lusting for Michael, which meant she probably should indulge herself with some of Yolie’s birthday cake. But when she opened the fridge and saw the huge piece of chocolate cake, the red candle on top of it spelled Forty.

Teeny piece. Trust me.

She pulled the awful candle off and licked the length of it.

Delicious! Sinfully so!

As she threw it in the trash, she imagined herself trying to zip her forty-year-old butt into her new spandex jeans. When she returned to the fridge, she pushed the cake plate behind the milk carton and grabbed an apple. She went to the drawer where she kept her favorite Kasumi paring knife, which Pierce had bought her on a trip they’d made together to Japan.

It wasn’t there.

Frustrated, she dashed about the kitchen, jerking all the drawers open. Finally, she settled on a dull blade from Yolie’s block. Then she sliced the apple into bite-size chunks and poured herself a glass of water.

The knife would probably turn up where she least expected it.

After putting her glass and Yolie’s knife in the dishwasher, she went upstairs, undressed and got into bed with Alexis. She reached toward the lamp chain to switch on the light and then stopped herself. When her thoughts turned to Michael again, she felt weak and empty and strange.

Her heart pounded as she remembered how lonely he’d looked as he’d gotten in his car. He’d hit it off with Alexis. He’d wanted to take them to Zilker Park.

Feeling confused, she reached for Alexis and snuggled closer to her and tried to forget Pierce, Michael and her stressful night.

Forty. Life felt frighteningly too real. She wanted to be a kid again and believe she could have the fairy tale.

One thing was for sure.

She needed to put both her old flames in the past—where they belonged.

Four

When the phone rang at 5:00 a.m., Rosie’s first weary reflex was to reach for Alexis to reassure herself that she was still there. Only after stroking the little girl’s soft, warm shoulders and fingering her copper curls did she lift the receiver and turn on the light.

“Rose Marie!”

At her daughter’s angry shriek, Rosie jerked to a sitting position, both hands shaking. Carmen, who was twenty-one—make that an immature, mixedup and wild twenty-one—called her “Rose Marie” these days—to distance herself, she’d explained, and rather nastily. Carmen, who shared an apartment with two other dancers, never phoned her if she could avoid it. Obviously, this was an emergency.

Holding the phone, Rosie lay back, feeling groggy with exhaustion. How long had she slept? Two hours, maybe? She shut her eyes and tried to concentrate on whatever it was Carmen was saying.

“Hazel called me. She’s out of her mind again. Only worse than usual.”

Carmen had started calling her grandmother by her first name, too, which was really annoying to Hazel, especially since Rosie found herself doing it, as well.

“Why did Mother call you? Did she forget my number or something?”

“She says it was a bad birthday for you and she didn’t want to make it worse, and that besides, she only wants me, that’s she’s scared of you.”

Deep breath. “Scared of me?”

“She started hollering every time I started to call you. I couldn’t call until the doctor came. He’s in with her right now. She keeps saying you killed him.”

“Killed who? Did I miss something?”

“Pierce. She says somebody killed him tonight. You haven’t seen him or been around him lately, have you?”

A chill went through Rosie.

“Hey, Mom, please tell me you didn’t catch him jogging on your way home, and lose it again.”

She’d lost it all right.

So had Pierce. “That isn’t funny,” she whispered, her voice strangled.

Carmen heaved out a long sigh. “That’s like a huge relief. Huge. With Hazel wicking out all the time, the last thing I need is a homicidal maniac for a mother.”

“So, at least you still claim me.”

“As if I have a choice.”

“Excuse me?”

“If anything happened to you, who will take care of Alexis?”

“Where are you?” Rosie demanded.

“The E.R. Brackenridge Hospital. You’ve got to get over here. I can’t take much more.”

“Ditto.” It would be an understatement to say that Carmen’s many talents did not lie in the nursing field. “You’ll have to take care of Alexis then. And that means being patient and nice and—”

“Fine! Just get here. Another hour and I’ll be singing the loony tunes along with Hazel.”

Except for her slack mouth, which she licked constantly, and her wild eyes darting everywhere, Hazel looked good. She’d had a lot of work, as Pierce used to say, and such good work, she looked years younger than she was.

She was clutching a stuffed cat and dressed in skintight black slacks and a black, long-sleeved shirt emblazoned with the message, Keep Austin Weird in red. There were red cats all over it.

Her mother—the Cat Woman.

Hazel’s coppery-gold curls were bright and held back from her face with two red, sparkly, cat-shaped barrettes. She’d obviously had her hair and nails done recently, and her perfectly painted lips were the same bright shade as her nails and the cats on her T-shirt.

Like a lot of women of her generation, Hazel believed it was important to coordinate accessories. Maybe the lipstick and polish and the cats were a little too vivid for a woman her age, but then that was Hazel—a little bit gaudy—and into turning back the clock rather than aging gracefully, whatever the hell that cliché was supposed to mean.

So, why had Hazel snapped this time? Twice before she’d lost it after a bout of flu, coupled with sleepless nights.

“The date on my tombstone has to be March 2, 1945!” Hazel shouted from her gurney to no one in particular as Rosie pushed the door open, tugging a sleepy Alexis inside with her.

“That’s your birthday, Mom. And don’t shout. I’m right here.”

“Finally!” Carmen snapped. Her dark eyes that were too much like a certain cop’s flashed with irritation as she shot to her feet and yanked Alexis toward her.

“Stop it! You’re hurting me!” Alexis fought to pull loose.

“Don’t be such a whiny baby! We’re outta here!”

“Hello to you, too,” Rosie said. “And, hey, be nice to her. She’s a little girl.”

“I’m being way nicer than you and Hazel ever were to me! I’ll park her in front of the TV. Will that make you happy?”

“Ouch!” Rosie said, feeling a guilt pang. She had left Carmen with Hazel when she’d gone to college and when she’d worked. But she’d had to.

“Murder,” Hazel said. “I told you to kill that arrogant bastard. It’s about time you killed Carver!”

Still worrying about how Alexis would fare with Carmen, Rosie sat down by the gurney. “Mom, Pierce is fine, and I’d appreciate it if you don’t talk about him and me here…at the hospital. People might get the wrong idea.”

Hazel stared at the green walls. “When did I die?”

“You’re not dead. You’re going to be fine. You just need to try to calm down and get some rest. That’s why you’re here. When you’re better, you can go home.”

“You’re still in love with that motorcycle guy. He’s Carmen’s real daddy, isn’t he? Your daddy shot his daddy. It was an accident, you know.”

Rosie covered her face. How much did her mother know? She’d never told Hazel very much about Michael.

Families! Did all families share the obnoxious talent hers had of being able to ferret out its members’ best-kept secrets and then broadcast them to the universe?

“Where’s the doctor?” Hazel demanded, frowning in confusion.

“He’s already seen you.”

“When the TV said Pierce was stabbed tonight, I knew right off who killed him. It’s in your blood.”

Rosie sighed, struggling for professional patience. “Mom, Pierce is fine. I saw him earlier.”

“You’re twelve years old, Rosie. Mother committed suicide.” Hazel’s eyes rounded in fright and then in guilt. She gulped in a big breath and clamped both hands over her mouth. “Oops, I’m not supposed to tell that. She died in her sleep.”

“Mom, please. Just don’t talk anymore right now.”

“You’re still in love with that motorcycle guy. Is that why you stabbed Pierce?”

Rosie rubbed her brows with a sigh. “Mom, please…”

“Your father said murder’s as easy as dog shit, and he would know, now wouldn’t he? I’m who I am—I’m really me!”

Rosie popped her knuckles and stared up at the ceiling. She felt so helpless she wanted to scream. Get me out of here!

“It’s me who’s dead over there,” Hazel said, staring wildly past Rosie and pointing out the door at a figure on a gurney. Her brow knitted into rigid lines, which meant she was late for her botox shot. Then Hazel slid off the bed and began to pace in small, tight circles. “I have to get over there—so I’ll see you again.”

Thankfully, the nurse came in, and Hazel went still. “We have a bed for her upstairs,” the woman said in a kind, low tone. “Are you the sister?”

Grrr. “Daughter.”

Hazel dashed behind Rosie and squatted down, using Rosie as a shield between her and the nurse. “Is she going to close the casket? Tell her not to close the casket!”

“You’re not dead yet, Mom. You’re just here for a little rest.”

“Are you nuts? This place is a madhouse.”

Five minutes later Rosie was sitting across from the admissions clerk, a middle-aged woman with a pinched mouth and piercing eyes, who kept handing her endless stacks of papers to sign so her mother could be admitted.

“That lady over there is pointing at you,” the woman said, just as Hazel began to shriek again. “Is that your sister?”

“My mom,” she said through gritted teeth.

Her mother’s screams grew more frantic as an orderly wheeled her toward the bank of elevators at the end of the hall.

“I was a virgin and didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Hazel yelled. “Daddy had never had sex before, either. I was a nymphomaniac and screwed everything that came down the walk.”

When Hazel suddenly spotted Rosie, her voice grew louder. “Rosie—do you know what’s wrong with you? You’ve been frigid ever since you screwed that motorcycle guy! You need to learn about oral sex!”

“Mom!”

“My cats! Charlie and his friends! I’ve got to get home!”

“I’ll feed Charlie, Mother.”

Hazel struggled to get out of the wheelchair, but the orderly gripped her arm. At the use of force, Hazel’s voice grew more hysterical.

“My daughter killed Dr. Carver! She stabbed him! Because I told her to. And because she’s still in love with that motorcycle guy.”

Shuddering Rosie covered her eyes with her hands. When she looked up and peered through her fingers, the admissions clerk’s huge, magnified gaze was devouring her with what seemed to be excessive lurid interest.

Story of her life—being publicly humiliated by her family. Reason number one Pierce had dumped her for Anita and her girls, which he’d once described as aristocratic little ladies.

“I’m sorry,” Rosie whispered. “There’s not a word of truth in anything she’s said. She’s totally out of her mind.”

“Not about Dr. Carver, she’s not,” the clerk stated in a conspiratorial whisper.

“What?”

The woman’s thin brows lifted as she continued to study Rosie as if she were a microbe under a microscope. “I heard about his murder when I took my break. He’s dead. It’s a real shame, too. He had a lot of talent. We have lots of his patients here. He used to bring us candy all the time. Chocolate truffles. The best. Godiva.”

Rosie blew out some air and then fought for her next breath. The blood drained from her face. She almost felt as if she might faint. Pierce…dead?

He’d been horribly alive last night. He’d been his impossible, arrogant self. He couldn’t be dead!

He’d better not be, girlfriend. What if you were the last person to see him alive?

“You…you can’t be serious…about Dr. Carver…”

“He was stabbed in the face. Him, handsome as he was even at fifty. Multiple stab wounds. They say that except for the eyes, you wouldn’t know him. His head was practically severed from his body.”

Unconscious of the movement, Rose Marie sank her own head lower into her shoulders as if to protect it from being lopped off. “Oh, no. No. No.”

“Crime of passion,” the admissions clerk continued. “A woman did it, if you ask me.”

“Why do you say that?”

Lowering her voice even further, she said, “Dr. Carver had a real reputation with the young nurses around here. I’d see him come in here, smiling at the prettiest women. He thought he was God’s gift.”

Oh, my God…What if I really was the last person to see him alive…I mean, besides the real murderer? My bra and panties!

What if the police found them?

Why did I have to tell everyone last year every vengeful fantasy I had about him, including joking about wanting his head on a platter?

“Be careful what you wish for,” her daddy used to say before the tragedy, back when she’d been a kid and they’d still been pals. “Because it’ll come back and bite you in the butt. Every time, sugarbun.”

What was she going to do?

Five

“There’s damn sure no page-turner as good as reading about the vicious murder of your ex, is there?” Yolie said, fluffing her spiky blond hair.

Yolie’s big white house was located in a posh, central Austin neighborhood. Todd, her seventeen-year-old son by Pierce, occupied the pool house when he was in town, which wasn’t often, since he went to boarding school. Darius, her twenty-five-year-old stepson, Pierce’s son from Vanessa, his first wife, who’d killed herself, stayed in the pool house as well on the rare occasions when he was in Austin. A college dropout, he did a lot of drifting.

The sun beat down on the pool as Rosie swam frantic laps. Yolie avidly read the newspaper in a chaise longue next to the pool house, which the maid was readying because both boys had called and said they would be arriving soon due to their father’s demise.

Yolie looked up from the paper. “Hey, can you believe this? It says right here that Michael Nash is the detective in charge of the case. Wasn’t he the guy you used to date, the hottie who gave you that ticket last year?”

Yolie tossed a section of the newspaper onto the ground and grabbed another.

At the mention of Michael, Rosie felt sick and faint as she emerged dripping from the pool. She toweled off before sinking back onto her own chaise longue. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

“You damn sure got your wish. You should be a happy camper.”

“What?”

“Pierce getting himself murdered and all. It’s what you wanted.”

“No. How can you say that?”

“You do remember telling everybody you wanted his head on a platter?”

“I was joking.”

“Frankly, I loved the image.”

“Yolie! Listen to me! I went over there last night. To Pierce’s! And then Michael Nash…who must have already known about Pierce by then…answered the call about Alexis.”

Slowly, Yolie set the paper down and stared at her.

“Pierce called me. Not Jennifer. I…I let Harry think it was Jennifer.”

“You went over there? Were you out of your mind?”

“He owed me money.”

“That is so lame. That’s not why you went over there, and you know it.”

“He was alive and furious at me, but he was searching the house for an intruder when I left him.”

“What time did Nash show up over here?”

Rosie froze. “I…I think he already knew. I think that’s why he came. He kept asking me if I’d seen Pierce…And I lied.”

“You should talk to a criminal attorney first thing,” Yolie said in that maddeningly decisive way of hers—like there was no other opinion in the universe.

Despite the intense heat, Rosie shivered. “A criminal attorney?” She moaned. “But I didn’t do anything!”

“But the police—that Michael guy—obviously thinks otherwise. You were there last night. Lucky thing Joe Benson’s right next door.”

Joe Benson was both a criminal attorney and the stepfather of Jennifer.

Rosie flung the last of the articles about Pierce she’d devoured earlier onto the litter of newspapers that lay between her chaise longue and Yolie’s. At least there’d been no mention of a bra or panties being found at the scene.

Guilt struck her. She should be with her mother, not lying out by the pool under the leafy shade of the towering pecan trees, consumed with fear for herself.

How could all this be happening at once? Pierce calling her? Going over there and stupidly quarreling with him when she should have just walked out? His getting himself stabbed? Michael being involved? Not to mention Hazel’s having another breakdown?

Oh, God! This meant Michael would be back in her life big time. What if he found out about Carmen, too?

Rosie’s nerves began to jump. Her inner thermostat went haywire. Suddenly she felt as if she was freezing.

“So, tell me, why do I need to see Joe?”

“For advice, sweetie. Just for advice.”

“Which will cost a bundle.”

“You’d rather have free room and board in prison?”

Rosie’s chest went tight. “I really should go check on Hazel.”

“Forget Hazel. She’s got round-the-clock doctors and nurses.”

“They are not her daughter. She wants me. Only me.”

“You were the last person to see your murdered exboyfriend alive!”

“Except for whoever really killed him.”

“What exactly happened at Pierce’s?”

Rosie hissed in a deep breath. “Okay, like I told you, he called about eleven.”

“And you just had to run over there.”

“When I saw his name in the Caller ID window of my cell, I popped the rubber band on my wrist three times. I swear I tried not to answer. But Ticia Morgan had already told me Anita had left Pierce, and maybe I wanted to gloat a little.”

Yolie nodded almost wearily. “Ticia? John’s child bride?”

John Morgan was Pierce’s new plastic surgery partner.

“Yes. So, Ticia called yesterday to tell me that Anita had phoned her. Apparently, Anita was telling anybody who would listen that Pierce was an obsessive-compulsive, alcoholic monster.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Anita kept screaming that he’d threatened to send her daughters back to Guatemala because they wouldn’t follow all his nit-picky rules.”

“What did they do—wear their shoes in the house?”

“Yes, and they wanted credit cards, cell phones, driver’s ed lessons, television sets, and cars, too.”

“Hello? Why did he think they married him? Still, you should never have talked to Ticia. Or Pierce.”

“I know.”

“So, what did he want?”

“He wished me a happy birthday. He said he couldn’t stop thinking about me. He said Anita was a mistake and that he wanted me back.”

“He wanted you back? After you sent him that painting where you made his Mr. Willie look like a shriveled peanut, and his entire staff laughed when he opened it? He wanted you back? And you bought it?”

“Well, not at first, but he was totally sober.”

“You could tell that over the phone?”

“He said he wanted a new warehouse key. And I said he’d have to pay the rent. He said he would pay it.”

“This from the man who won’t pay for his wife’s kids? And you went over there?”

Rosie nodded miserably.

“And?”

“We drank some champagne.”

“Not good. How much?”

“He kept my flute full while he gave me a tour of the house, so I didn’t really count.”

“Did he touch you? Did anybody take anything off?”

Rosie flushed as she remembered their first kiss on the stairway beneath the chandelier. They’d still been dressed then. Even though their mouths and bodies had fit just like always, something had felt wrong to her. She’d kissed him harder, searching for what she’d once thought she’d had with him, but the soul-deep wrongness had persisted.

So why had she ended up naked in his upstairs guest bedroom? If it hadn’t been for her hearing that noise in the master bedroom and getting spooked, no telling what might have happened.

“Pierce refused to pay the rent, so I left.”

“That’s it? You were there an hour. No funny stuff?”

Rosie remembered quarreling with Pierce when she’d heard that sound in the next bedroom. She’d accused him of inviting her over to make Anita jealous. He’d sworn they were alone. Then she’d heard another sound and had grabbed her clothes and had made him go check the rest of the house. Rosie had left too fast to locate her underwear.

Rosie rubbed the back of her neck where the muscles had begun to tighten. Then she drew a deep breath.

“Okay. I get it. There was some funny stuff.”

“I didn’t go to bed with him!”

“Since he’s dead, I think you’d better get your story straight before you say something really stupid to Nash. Make an appointment with Joe. Besides being my next-door neighbor, he’s an old, old friend of mine.”

Translation: a favorite lover.

“You remember, he came to the Christmas block party.”

And got soused on the bourbon-laced eggnog and left a bruise the size of an apple on my left butt cheek when he pinched me.

“Just don’t talk to the police without him being there. He knows his stuff.”

“The police?” Rosie squeaked. “You really think they’ll…that Michael will think…that I…”

“I think it’s wise to consider worst-case scenario.”

Rosie swallowed. No sooner had Yolie said that than the image of her own slender neck on a chopping block sprang up in her mind.

“A high-profile murder like this? The cops have got to pin this on somebody, sweetie-pie. Who better than the girl who tried to mow him down with her Beamer? Don’t you think it’s odd that he died on the night you say he wanted you back?”

“Okay, he got me naked.” A shiver of remorse traced through Rose Marie. “I got cold feet, though. We had a fight. When I left, I…I couldn’t find my bra and panties.”