Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out - Plot & Excerpts
It was one of those fifteen-story loft buildings that attempt to be both modern and ‘vintage’ simultaneously. This particular building attempted to meld the old and the new by stacking fourteen stories of mirrored glass atop a squat, brownstone base festooned with arches and curlicues. According to the big promotional sign out front, the units featured “the chic downtown lifestyle and unparalleled views of the Capitol.” The starting price was in the mid-five hundreds. My heart hammered in my chest as I parked my smushed minivan across the street from Maxted’s building. I was still numb from the encounter with Blake that morning, but the shock was wearing off. Replacing it was my fear of getting caught in a dead person’s apartment under false pretenses. If I even made it that far. I’d been racking my brains for twenty minutes, and I still couldn’t come up with a convincing story to tell the neighbors. I stared at the building for a moment. Then I pulled out my cell phone, grabbed the phone book I kept under the front seat, and dialed Randall’s Bakery. I had to order the cake for my mother-in-law’s birthday anyway, so at least it was a valid excuse.As I waited for someone to pick up, I wondered yet again how to go about gaining the confidence of Evan Maxted’s neighbors. Since it was safe to assume that his relatives had been notified of his death, I wasn’t comfortable introducing myself as a member of the family. And wouldn’t a friend call, rather than showing up unannounced on a Wednesday morning, when Maxted would probably be at work?I was entertaining a scenario involving a confession of secret love children from a prior marriage when someone with an extremely heavy accent picked up the phone. As I described the cake I wanted for my mother-in-law’s birthday, I found myself wishing once again that I had taken Spanish instead of six years of French.Fifteen minutes later, I hung up, reasonably confident that the woman on the other end of the line understood that the cake was for a birthday, not for a retirement party or a first Communion.
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