Big Foot Stole My Wife Page 10

  “Oh, Eloise,” Milt said in such a tortured voice that she could easily imagine his face screwing up like a dried apricot. “We’ve been over this time and again. As long as Justin denies the accounts exist and we can’t prove that they do, our hands are tied. His attorney dropped off another proposal for the property settlement. It’s closer to what we asked for initially, although hardly a capitulation. Why don’t you schedule an appointment with my secretary for this afternoon and we’ll review it?”

  “I suppose so,” she said without enthusiasm.

  “There’s something else I have to tell you. The judge signed a restraining order this morning. If you continue to harass Justin at his house or place of business, you’ll be subject to contempt charges. I promise you that the amenities at the jail are not up to your standards.”

  Eloise sniffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never harassed Justin at any place or time since he moved out three months ago. Why, even when he was staying at the tramp’s apartment, I never so much as made a crank call.”

  Despite her frigid tone, she was smiling at what she imagined Milt’s expression to be as he floundered for a tactful response. Men, she thought, were like agitated guppies when it came to civilized discourse. “Don’t you believe me?” she added.

  “You had all of the girl’s mail forwarded to Azerbaijan.”

  “Don’t be absurd. I have no idea how to spell it.”

  Milt cleared his throat. “You sprayed Super Glue in the locks of his car doors. You put him down as a new subscriber to one hundred and fifty-three periodicals. In his name you pledged ten thousand dollars to a televangelist whose organization is infamous for its tenacity, and the next week used his calling card number to spend seventy-six hours talking to a psychic friend.”

  “Nonsense,” Eloise said firmly.

  “Justin and his attorney were the only two people in the courtroom not sniggering, but the judge signed the order and you have to comply with it. Please, Eloise, no more jokes.”

  “I am the maligned party, and I deeply resent these accusations, Milton. I do hope it won’t be necessary to have a word with your father.”

  “Only if you have a Ouija board, Eloise. He died twenty years ago.” Milt made a small noise that to others might have been interpreted as frustration. Since Eloise would not condone such a reaction, she could only assume he was experiencing allergy problems. It seemed likely, since most of his conversations these days were interspersed with snuffles and grunts. They were actually rather dear, as if Milt were a beloved asthmatic hound that had won the honored position on the hearth.

  Eloise did approve of loyalty. “Yes, dear. No, dear. I’ll make the appointment and I won’t continue doing these things I never did to begin with. We will bargain in good faith and settle this once and for all. You’ll receive your very hefty fee, Justin will honeymoon with the tramp, and I will live out my days in a trailer park. Will you and Maggie miss me at the country club?”

  “That’s the other thing,” Milt said, now sounding as if he wished he were in the outlying suburbs of Baku, which everyone knows is the capital of Azerbaijan. “Justin and Kelli were there last night. Maggie was not the only woman who had her claws out as if she were a peregrine falcon. The consensus was that he should have waited until the divorce was final, but there he was … with her. Trust me, Eloise, not one person in the room knew what to do except mumble and nod.”

  “We do what we must,” murmured Eloise, wondering how next to sabotage Justin’s mail now that the magazines and other periodicals had been halted. Of course, one hundred fifty-three did not begin to cover the available subscriptions when one chanced upon coupons that requested only a circle and an address. Perhaps it would be better to concentrate on other venues. After all, she’d never seriously considered the possibility of having his car reported as stolen or calling in a tip to the television show America’s Most Wanted.

  Shivers of gleeful expectancy ran down her spine as she replaced the receiver, but they subsided as she realized he still had not returned. She went to the window and pulled back the drapes. The front lawn was populated only by a robin on the impeccable grass and a mockingbird at the feeder.

  He was usually home by dawn, demanding to be let in despite his ill-defined transgressions. More often than not, Eloise was obliged to daub his wounds with peroxide and judiciously apply Band-Aids to whatever bits of anatomy were oozing blood. All this solicitude was accepted without emotion, without gratitude, as if he felt it was nothing more than his just desserts for bothering to return home at all.

  Puddy, Eloise thought with a flicker of irritation, could be a very naughty cat at times. But he was all she had left to keep her company. She and Justin had not been able to have children. They’d looked into adoption, but she’d always suspected he was much too self-centered to truly want a potential disruption in his life. They’d turned their energies elsewhere, he to his automobile dealership (Lincoln-Mercury) and golf game (single-digit handicap), and she to her clubs (garden and book) and charitable endeavors (historical society, hospital auxiliary, symphony guild).

  And Puddy, of course. He’d arrived one rainy night, a sodden little creature, emaciated, wide-eyed with panic but desperate for food and warmth. The following morning Justin had suggested she take the kitten to the animal shelter, but Eloise was already enchanted with her foundling.

  It had been seven years since Puddy had arrived—and nearly twelve hours since he’d swaggered out into the backyard and disappeared. He was wearing his collar with an engraved tag bearing her telephone number, so it did not seem likely he was lapping milk in someone else’s kitchen, or even yowling in a cage at the animal shelter.

  To distract herself, Eloise called Milt’s secretary and arranged an appointment later in the day, then looked up the number of the local newspaper and asked to be connected to the classified advertising department.

  “Here’s what I want in the ad,” she said to the young woman who answered. “Must sacrifice entire collection of Elvis memorabilia, including complete record set, home movies filmed inside Graceland, and an authenticated love letter, handwritten and signed, to Priscilla from Germany. Can be viewed anytime day or night. All offers will be considered, no matter how low.” She gave Justin’s address, then asked the woman to read it back to make sure she’d phrased it properly.

  “Don’t you want to give a name and a telephone number?” the woman said. “Most people do.”

  Eloise coughed delicately. “Our phone has been disconnected due to a financial crisis. I’m calling from a neighbor’s house. Please send the bill to the address I gave you.”

  After she replaced the receiver, she went outside and circled the house in hopes Puddy was sleeping off his night’s depravities under a hydrangea. The garden was especially magnificent this year, the envy of the entire garden club membership. A local television station had used footage of it during a tribute to springtime.

  The idea of being forced to move into an apartment was more painful than Justin’s announcement that he was leaving her for an uneducated, ill-bred secretary at his dealership. She’d been shocked, of course, and hurt. Her women friends had rallied around her at first, including her in luncheons and theater parties, but their collective concern was waning. Eloise knew that Justin and his tramp were being entertained on some of the same patios she had once frequented.

  When she went back into the kitchen, she noticed that the red light on the coffeepot was no longer lit. The control panel of the microwave no longer showed the time. The light on the ceiling failed to blink on, as did lights in the hall and living room.

  Eloise called the electric company and reported that her power was out. A weary-sounding woman asked for her address, then came back onto the line and said, “Yeah, it was cut off this morning as per customer’s request. We’re going to need a forwarding address for the final bill, ma’am.”

  “I did not make any request.”

  “I got your account
on the screen, and it says you did last week, says you’re moving as of today. Like I said, we’re going to need your new address.”

  It took Eloise more than an hour to convince the various strata of the electric company that she had no intention of moving—or of living by candlelight. Once she’d been given a promise that her power would be restored before evening, she poured herself a second glass of gin and sat down to make posters telling of Puddy’s disappearance and offering an unspecified reward.

  She left the house in time to tape the posters onto telephone poles around the neighborhood, then drove to Milt’s office.

  Thirty minutes later she threw down the proposal. “Absolutely not!” she said, her face flushed and her jaw quivering with outrage. “I don’t care about his mother’s silver service and his precious antique golf clubs, but I refuse to allow the house to be sold. I’ve spent countless hours in the garden over the years.

  “Furthermore, I cannot believe Justin earns less than fifty thousand dollars a year, Milt, and can get away with offering me alimony of one thousand dollars a month. He used to complain that he sold so many cars he could barely keep a minimal inventory. He won a company-sponsored vacation every single year, and he has enough gold plaques to pave the Yellow Brick Road.”

  “I know that as well as you,” Milt said patiently, “but we’re stuck with the figure. The accountant discovered that the vast majority of Justin’s living expenses are listed as corporate expenditures. Club memberships and expensive restaurants to entertain clients. Travel to explore the feasibility of satellite dealerships. The corporation is currently paying for his house, telephones, car and health insurance—”

  “Oh, stop.” Eloise took a tissue from her purse and began to shred it as if it were made of Justin’s flesh. When the last fragment fluttered to the floor, she picked up the proposal between her fingertips and dropped it in the trash basket beside the desk. “I refuse to sign any property settlement that deprives me of my home and fails to provide for me in the fashion to which I am accustomed. I may not be able to prevent the divorce from taking place, but I intend to delay it as long as possible. File something to that effect.”

  “Eloise,” Milt whimpered, but it was too late. She sailed out of the office, then drove home as quickly as she dared, hoping beyond hope to find Puddy complaining in the kitchen about his litter box (which, for the record, was pristine, but Puddy could be unreasonable).

  She was unable to do more than play with a bowl of soup that evening, torn as she was between Puddy’s disappearance and Justin’s transparent attempt at chicanery. Did thirty years of marriage mean nothing more in the eyes of the court than a cold-blooded division of whatever property Justin opted to put on the chopping block? What about her career, cut short during college? The children she’d been denied? The so-called golden years?

  If only Puddy would come home, she thought as she unsuccessfully battled back tears, if only a warm, purring body were curled in her lap, offering unconditional love in exchange for the meager emotions she herself had to offer after a lifetime with Justin.

  Puddy was nowhere to be found in the morning. Eloise called the animal shelter, but as she’d anticipated, no twenty-pound male cats had been nabbed on the street. Puddy would have required a battalion to take him captive. Then where was he?

  For the second morning in a row, Eloise scorned tea for gin. And why not? Her lawyer disliked her, her soon-to-be ex-husband was making a pathetic attempt to coerce her into a menial existence of poverty and servitude, her friends had deserted her, and her only source of uncritical devotion had chosen to abandon her.

  She passed the morning clad in plastic gloves, writing graphic death threats to various political figures, signing them with an arrogantly scrawled X, and using Justin’s return address on the envelopes. She was in the middle of clipping letters from magazines that would eventually create a message that a bomb would be found in one of the local elementary schools if Kelli Kennison was not rehired as a substitute when the doorbell rang.

  No one was visible when she opened the door. On the welcome mat was an envelope with no address. Doubting that Justin had discovered the technology for so thin a bomb, Eloise opened the envelope and read: “I have the cat. You know what you need to do.”

  Her initial reaction was instinctive but futile. Justin’s driveway and, indeed, the entire street for several blocks in both directions, was jammed with pickup trucks, station wagons, and peculiar-looking people on foot, clad in sequined jackets. Many held garish guitars and were grouping to sing, as if this were a street festival.

  Eloise watched them for a long while, marveling at their hair, then drove to Milt’s office, barged through the reception room, and found him in conversation with a white-haired man who may or may not have been a senior partner. Eloise did not care. She slammed down the cryptic note and said, “Call the district attorney! This is nothing more than blackmail!”

  The white-haired man who may or may not have been a senior partner grabbed his briefcase and scurried out of the room. Milton Carruthers, who’d just seen his best shot at a promotion evaporate, picked up the paper and read it with only a faint wuffle.

  “Eloise,” he said, “this isn’t blackmail. It could be a message from your paperboy.”

  “And I could be Lisa Marie Presley Jackson,” she retorted as she poked him in the chest. “I can tolerate only so much, Milt. I stayed calm when Justin dumped me for an ignorant, flat-bellied little tramp. I said nothing when you and Maggie invited them into your home last—”

  “Oh, Eloise,” Milt said, clutching her hand, “I’d hoped you would understand that was business. Our firm has always had a policy of—”

  “Can it. Justin can hawk my soul, trash my remaining years, hold me up to ridicule in the community, even drive me into poverty and obscurity—but he will not steal Puddy! Do you understand, Milt? He will not take away the only thing I have left on this miserable planet! He will not!” She lunged at him, her hands curled and her expression distorted with anguish. “I must have Puddy!”

  Milt’s secretary opened the door, then hastily closed it as Eloise sank back into the sofa that was conveniently situated to prevent clients overwhelmed with legal realities from flinging themselves out the window. A three-story dive was rarely fatal, but the firm of Guzman, Kirkpatrick, and Kirkpatrick preferred swoons to accusations of negligence.

  “Do something,” Eloise said in a somewhat calmer voice, although her demeanor remained suspect.

  “What can I do? We can’t be sure this is from Justin. It sounds as though it is, that he has the cat and is willing to use it as a bargaining ploy—but we can’t prove it.” Milt pushed a button on his intercom. “Marsha, please bring a cup of tea for Mrs. Bainbury.”

  Eloise sat up and found her purse. “I have no need of tea, Milton. I had hoped that you could do something, but I see that you can’t. I shall go home now and wait for a further message.”

  She sailed out of his office, not so much calm as determined to do what was necessary to liberate Puddy from the evil clutches of a man she’d once respected and now loathed as if he were an emissary from hell. He and his tramp, she thought, as she drove home without regard for her personal safety or that of small children chasing balls into the street. Up until now, the pranks had been somewhat … well, if not harmless … well, not exactly heinous. She’d done nothing that wasn’t deserved. After all, it had been her life that was snatched from under her feet like a frayed area rug, sending her head over heels, depriving her of the essence of her existence.

  Eloise was exhausted the next morning, having been unable to sleep for even the briefest amount of time. The house was too quiet without Puddy’s repertoire of yowls and rumbles of contentment. No accusatory eyes watched her as she came into the kitchen, filled the kettle, then set it down and continued toward the liquor cabinet. She knew she must look hideous, like a disheveled old crone out of a Brothers Grimm story.

  Which meant Justin was winning, she r
ealized with a scowl. He was bulldozing her to the abyss of madness, where she would sign whatever he wanted and then slink away, grateful for the few crumbs he’d given her. She couldn’t even be sure she’d get Puddy back if she complied with his demands. He had been ruthless in his business affairs, and he’d never once had a kind word for Puddy. Her poor Puddy’s body might be in a garbage bag at the curb in front of Justin’s house, soon to be interred in the city dump.

  Eloise banged down the glass. “I will not allow him to win,” she said, spitting out each word with such anger that a haze of venom seemed to fill the room. She called her beauty shop, demanded an immediate appointment, and then carefully dressed, combed her hair, and applied lipstick and a faint dusting of blusher to disguise her pallor.

  As she drove toward the center of town, she became increasingly bewildered by the expressions of pedestrians, as well as those in other vehicles. Women stared at her in horror, while men mouthed vulgarities and made unseemly gestures. A teenaged girl clapped her hand to mouth and sank to her knees on the sidewalk. A small child pointed at Eloise’s car and screamed.

  Eloise knew she’d been exaggerating when she described herself as a disheveled old crone, but she was beginning to wonder if she looked much worse than the image she’d seen in her mirror. Was there some sort of invisible stigma attached to a middle-aged woman who’d been discarded by her husband? Before leaving her house, she’d checked the car for any sort of vandalism, from a swastika spray-painted on the passenger side to obscene bumper stickers. Experience had taught her caution in such matters.

  She could think of nothing to do but continue on her way, despite the revulsion she was leaving in her wake. She’d just turned the corner when she saw blue lights flashing in the rearview mirror and heard the momentary burp of a siren. She pulled over obediently and forced herself to assume a demeanor of expectancy and the slightest trace of self-righteousness as she watched the police officer emerge from his car.