"DINKS," MICHELLE REMARKED on Saturday as we drove into the section of Norfolk called Ghent. Late morning traffic had been casual, but steady. An occasional snowflake danced around the windshield; but we were toasty inside the Jeep, protected from the weather and the harsh realities of the housing projects we had just passed.
"Excuse me?"
"DINKs live here," she said. "Double income, no kids."
"Does Teal work?" I wondered.
"Now that you mention it–no."
Ghent seemed to be an enviable enclave of curved streets and individualized homes. Small yards supported sycamores, hollies, dogwoods and lots of some towering tree with eucalyptus type leaves but no eucalyptus stink. Within walking distance were both the Hague River and the Chrysler Museum, a dignified stone-block edifice with the obligatory statue out front, except this man on horseback was reaching down to help somebody off the ground. The Todd's tan brick home had off-white cubes running up the corners like stitching with matching arches around the porch.
"Break a leg," Michelle told me as we waited at the door.
“Ah, the guest of honor.” Teal greeted Michelle with a hug and smiled a warm welcome to me. Behind her a formal entrance hall with a center table displaying fresh flowers from somewhere tropical. The fragrance of baking chicken and cheese alerted my stomach to the midday hour.
After Teal closeted our coats, she fussed Michelle into a sunken living room with lots of cushy seating upholstered in thick brocades. The colors–dark tan, sea green and burgundy–perfectly complimented the patterned rug, which showed nicely through a glass-topped coffee table. A gas fire flickered behind a transparent screen. I had visions of snuggling up with my husband in such a room after the kids were sound asleep.
I placed my awkwardly wrapped bouncer seat beneath a lacquered sideboard that already held a few other gifts, probably sent by women who couldn't attend in person. Nice for the Turners, not so much for my investigation.
"You want me to put out the decorations?" I asked Teal, privately hoping she would say no. She and her house were so perfectly put together I feared I would accidentally break something, or worse—make it look ugly.
"Go right ahead," she replied with a wave of her elegant hand.
“All righty, then.”
While Michelle and our hostess settled down to chat about the guest list, I set about defiling her glass coffee table with a fourteen-inch stork. Then I proceeded to insult the gleaming mahogany dining table with pink and blue accordion streamers hung from a crystal chandelier. The chairs, all twelve of them, had been removed for today's casual buffet.
The door chimes rang, and Teal hurried to answer it.
Barbara Laneer bearing dessert. "Hello, hello," she hooted and kept right on going. Teal followed, leaving Michelle and me alone.
"No houseplants?" I teased, gesturing to encompass the artful decor. Michelle giggled, but I realized my hands were clammy and shaking with stage-fright, the pressure of sorting through so many suspicions.
The arrivals had begun, singles, pairs, even a carpool of four. I planned to listen to as many conversations as possible, but I expected to focus on the most likely sources of helpful information.
For instance Wanda Cross, whose husband, Walker, was being finessed out of a significant bonus by Bobby Frye. Either one of them might have blamed the benching on an incomplete pass thrown by Tim Duffy.
Lyn Smith, wife of the third-string quarterback whose fading prospects had brightened considerably since Duffy's death.
Amanda Shifflett, because Bo Shifflett was a wide receiver and I didn't like his looks.
One other potentially hot resource would be missing–Pamela something, the former girlfriend of Roger Prindel. Ex-girlfriends are usually pretty eager to share anything nasty they know about their former lovers, and I was especially curious about Roger. As Offensive Coordinator, he was directly responsible for the quarterbacks' activities on the field.
Of course, Elise Duffy would be in Florida by now; but since the police had permitted her to go, she probably did have an alibi.
By twelve-thirty the living room was filled with women. Each had been supplied with coffee or tea. Some had helped themselves to the chicken/broccoli casserole and tossed salad. Croissants crumbled on their laps and on the carpet.
I discreetly eavesdropped on some of the women chatting as they waited for the initial rush on the food table to clear. One of them was Amanda Shifflett, a plump steel magnolia with eyes like melting ice.
"Whatever was Patrick thinking when he bungled that snap last Sunday?" she asked a taller blonde who had been identified as Angela Dionne. The question had been launched with a chortle, but it drove home with a barb. "Did you two have big plans for the evening?"
Angela Dionne blushed right up to the dark-roots of her bleached white haystack of hair. Everything about her shouted “former bimbo,” the fun-loving, wild sort that a college jock of the same order would cultivate and perhaps even marry. In the company of more refined women Angela's clothing missed miserably, and her worried expression said that she knew it.
The barb referred to the Dionne's three children, born in the most recent successive years. Unprepared and impractical as she once may have been, Angela had the double whammy of coping with kids and her husband's instant fame. She did not need to be teased by a callous cream puff from Louisiana.
"Be nice now," Barbara Laneer scolded. "Bo's dropped a pass or two in his time."
"Not when they were well thrown," Amanda declared, her chest heaving with indignation.
"How is Calvin's hamstring, dear?" Barbara changed the subject, inadvertently addressing another guest with a mouthful of food. While the woman mumbled something unintelligible, Teal followed suit by asking Michelle about Doug's wellbeing—Doug, who’d had the wind knocked out of him twice during the previous game, which gave Tim Duffy his two opportunities to play.
"He's fine," Michelle assured the room.
Lyn Smith seemed to pay extra attention to that answer. A white woman married to a black man, she defied definition. At times throughout the afternoon I would peg her as calculating, distrustful, and horrifically insecure, yet any of those observations could have been wrong. She held herself too closely, watched the others with too much hunger and resentment.
"Delicious," she said of Teal's food, not meaning it. "Isn't that cute," of a bib embroidered with unimaginative balloons.
When most everyone was quietly eating, I was able to ask the room in general, "How do you deal with the injuries?"
The whole room seemed to groan. "They're constant."
"They're a nightmare."
"They're a constant nightmare."
"You can't think about it," Teal insisted. "You have to believe that if your husband's in good enough shape, he won't get hurt."
"Unless it's a fluke."
"And flukes happen all the time."
"Injuries are inevitable, and some of them have lifelong consequences."
Wanda Cross shook her dark head, and black braids slapped like whips against her elevated chin. "They're the cost of doing business," she maintained. "No pain–no gain." It was clear that she referred to the benefits of playing professional football, rather than the discomfort of training for it.
"I still hate it," Angela Dionne confessed. "But Patrick just laughs at me."
"Some men do love the risk," Barbara Laneer remarked. "It can be enormously stimulating. Why else would anybody work on Wall Street?"
Nobody said, "for the money." Nobody had to.
While we ate, the conversation centered around babies and giving birth. Mercifully, the remarks were far less disturbing and graphic than what I’d heard at my own shower before Chelsea was born. My young and foolish friends had tried to top each other with one horrible story after another. I would have gladly forgotten the whole idea of motherhood if I’d still had a choice.
Today, however, sensitivity prevailed. The stories were warm or comical, the underlying message always upbeat. Everyone seemed to be aware that Michelle already harbored her own disappointments, and like good sisters the women instinctively rallied around her. Judging by some of the conversations, I suspected that my cousin would be leaving here, not just with a layette but also some brand-new friends.
To me those same guests mainly represented a superb brain-picking opportunity, if only I could steer the conversation in the right direction.
Unfortunately, the childbirth topic segued into even more typical girl-talk, i.e. complaining about men.
"He doesn't close doors," said one of her mate.
"Or drawers," lamented another.
"And don't give him the TV remote unless you want your head to spin."
"Those awful whiskers in the sink."
"At least your husband doesn't shave his head."
"Lucky we're so perfect." Giggles all around.
"Michael refuses to take his socks off right-side out," said a woman with a button nose. "I even sat him down one day and taught him how. You know, pinch between the toes and pull. He doesn't care. I could have been talking to a brick wall." I had seen her husband play football; she was talking to a brick wall.
"Hey!" Michelle said, waving her hand. "I could be having a boy, you know."
"Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails."
"Are you sure about the snakes?"
"Oh yeah, girl. Remember my first husband?"
"What's a husband supposed to do?" I asked Wanda Cross to prolong the topic. The perceived roles of men and women have always fascinated me, especially because I don't entirely believe in them.
"Provide for me and our future kids," was the surprise reply.
The other women made protesting noises.
"Well, I'm only being honest. A man's got to take care of his woman if he wants her to take care of him."
"Amanda doesn't seem to agree," I pushed.
"I believe a man should be God-fearing and honest," the plump blonde drawled in southern oratory style. "Like my Bo. He has always put his faith in the Lord."
"That's okay, baby," Wanda agreed. "But you can't tell me you're sorry when he brings home the bacon."
"Don't you put words in my mouth." Clearly, she wanted to add something like you little money-grubber. "My Bo is as perfect as I want him to be, and I won't have you smearing his name–or mine–with your blasphemy."
"Hooee," Wanda laughed. "Got a little fire and brimstone going here to-day."
Teal rose to begin collecting dishes.
While the static from the outburst cleared, I mouthed "Pamela whatsername" to Michelle, who nodded that she got the message.
"Say, does anybody here remember Pamela Cork, the woman who used to date Roger Prindel? I'd like to get in touch with her; but after she and Roger split up, I lost touch."
"Oh yeah, Pamela," everybody agreed. "Nice girl. Big help with our fundraiser."
"I heard she got married," Teal remarked. She had been wearing an intense expression all day that I identified as suspicion fueled by concern over the future of the Tomcats' franchise–her personal reason for volunteering her house for the party.
"To a horse trainer, I think," Amanda offered.
"What's her new name?"
"What is her name?"
The next few seconds felt like five minutes.
"She's Pamela Wilkinson now, and she lives on Princess Anne Road in Pungo. If you want her number, I've got it in my purse." Lyn Smith was the surprise provider of this information, and Michelle thanked her with enthusiasm.
Teal and Barbara had begun to gather the gifts and set them in front of Michelle's chair.
"Too bad Elise Duffy couldn't be here," Debbie Quinlan, the kicker's wife, thought aloud. This was the closest reference to the murder so far, and it stifled the room like a lid over a steaming pot.
"At least the Lord gave Tim a good final day," Amanda remarked.
"Whatever do you mean?" Barbara Laneer asked. Like her I, too, wondered what could possibly be good about the day Tim died.
"He threw for a touchdown," Michelle said from a perspective I hadn’t considered.
The rest of us glanced back at Amanda. Her husband, Bo, had caught the pass that iced the game and also covered the point spread.
"Do the players actually think about the point spread?" I inquired.
"They're aware of it," Teal admitted.
"How could they not be?" Wanda remarked. "The press is really into that stuff."
Teal became thoughtful. "Morani gets annoyed when the media underestimates the Tomcats' chances," she said, "but I think he realizes it’s just part of the talk."
Barbara spoke with the authority of a head coach's wife. "It makes a certain amount of sense to care about what the public cares about, but I don't think either Jack or Roger can afford to worry about something like that during the heat of a game." I remembered that Roger was the offensive coordinator. "Surely they wouldn't take an unnecessary risk based on that sort of speculation."
Debbie Quinlan, the kicker's wife, stirred from a reverie. "Roger certainly wasn't thinking about the spread last week," she remarked. "You know at the end, when Tim went in for Doug? Charlie heard Roger send in a running play."
"You sure?" I blurted.
"Oh, yeah. Charlie was furious because he wanted to kick another field goal, and a call like that wasn’t likely to give him the chance." She wagged her head. "Tim must have changed the play in the huddle, because, you know, he threw for that touchdown."
The women generously shrugged off the coach's miscalculation and moved on to other topics.
Me? I had prickles on my arms and down the back of my neck.