I sigh. Why does everyone keep saying that?
Two weeks later, I am at my absolute wits end with ‘faking it.’ Turner is all over me and I am tired of pushing him away and finding excuses. I decide to take a day to myself. I part with my frowning fiancée at the front door, giving him a hasty kiss on the lips. He’s calls after me, asking when I am going to be home, but I ignore him and keep walking. When the elevator doors close, I slide to the floor and place my head between my legs. I feel like I can breathe again. Shopping sounds nice or maybe some time at the spa, I know a girl who can get me in at the last minute. But then my thoughts titter and drift to the man that I am still in love with, and I know that a day anywhere, is a day away from him. So, I settle for the next best thing, something that I haven’t done in a very long time. I pull my cell phone from my too expensive purse and hit number ‘one’ on my speed dial.
“Cammie, it’s me,” I whisper into the phone, although I am obviously alone and no one can hear me. I feel guilty for what I am about to say. “Do you remember the old days in the Detective Gadget mobile?” There is a long pause in which I check the screen to make sure we are still connected.
“You’re out of your mind,” she says finally. Then after a long pause, “Who are we spying on?”
“Who do you think?” I ask, toying with the strappy thing on my purse.
Another pause.
“NO! Absolutely…NO! I can’t even believe…where the hell are you?”
“Come on Cam, if I had another friend to ask, I would…”
“You certainly would not ask anyone else to do something so psychotic. And, if you did, I would be highly offended.”
“I’m on my way to your house,” I say throwing my car in reverse and curtailing out of my spot—diva style.
“Fine. I’ll be ready and waiting. Make sure you pick up the coffee”.
Thirty minutes later, I arrive at Cammie’s neat, cul-de-sac house and park my car haphazardly in her driveway. She has flower boxes on the windows and garden gnomes in the peonies, a lovely cottage for such a witch to live. She opens the door before I can ring the bell and pulls me inside by the waistband of my pants.
“What car are we taking?” she says all businesslike.
“I thought you didn’t want to.”
She snatched the coffee from my hand and looks at me over the rim.
“Of course I want to, but I would look like a bad person if I didn’t object at all.”
I shrug. I stopped trying to soothe my conscience years ago, but to each his own.
“Your car. He’s never seen it, so we have less chance of being spotted.”
She nods while grabbing a duffel bag off the couch.
“Do you know where this joker lives?”
“I totally know,” I mock her tone and follow her into the garage. “I am his lawyer—duh!”
“Yea? So, what position do they—” At this point Cammie says something really crude. I flinch. I have grown to dislike the ‘f’ word. Pretty and delicate Cammie started swearing after Steven, who cheated on her twice and stole seventeen hundred dollars from her dresser drawer. Ever since that fateful afternoon when she found Steven copulating with his secretary, she developed an obsession with saying the ‘f’word, and calling girls ‘trashy bitches’.
“Probably the same position Steven and Tina were in when you found them doing the nasty,” I say.
“Touché,” she replies. “So are we spying on the trashy bitch, too, or just Mr. Wonderful?”
“Caleb,” I say decidedly. “I want to spy on Caleb.” Cammie nods her head and puts her black SUV onto the highway.
“Call his office.”
“Why?” I ask rummaging around in the duffel to check the supplies.
“So we know where he is and what he’s doing today, genius.”
“I can’t,” I say my finger poised above the buttons. Cammie snatches the phone from my hand and dials herself.
“Weakling,” she mutters and then, “Hello, hi, I’m with Sunrise Dental and I’m trying to locate Mr. Caleb Drake. He missed his appointment this morning and…oh yes? Really? Well that’s perfectly understandable then…all right…I’ll call back to reschedule, thank you.” She hangs up the phone and smiles triumphantly.
“They’re out of town!”
“Okay,” I say shaking my head in confusion. “Why are you so happy?’
“Because now we can break into their house!” she states, making a truly demonic face at me.
“You are crazy,” I say turning away from her and staring out the window. “Why is it that I need to vomit all of a sudden?”
“You’re going to love it, trust me. I broke into Steven’s place after he screwed that trashy bitch and found all kinds of interesting stuff—he had this thing for Asian…men.”
“You broke into your ex’s apartment?” My head was swimming now. “How do I not know about these shenanigans and when did you turn into me?”
“You’ve been busy. Lucy and Ethel didn’t break in to spy—Ethel broke in to find her grandmother’s earrings which she had left there.”
“Okay, first of all, stop referring to yourself in first person, Ethel and second of all, I am not breaking into their house!”
“Since when did you become the moral police?” she took a violent sip of her coffee.
“I am a lawyer.”
She frowned.
“And an adult.”
She snorted.
“And I have already caused a lifetime’s worth of trouble for that man.”
That last statement seems to enrage her because she starts sputtering. She comes back at me in full Texan drawl.
“And he for you!” she points a finger at me and then slaps the steering wheel. “He keeps coming back! Damn it Olivia, he keeps finding you and you have the right to know why. He’s messed up your life at least four times now. I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE DON’T USE THEIR TURN SIGNALS!” She bares her middle finger at a Mercedes as we speed past. “Besides, let’s not forget that Leah did a little of her own breaking and entering back in the day, when she went all Fatal Attraction on your apartment.”
That was oh-so-true.
“I know their house alarm code,” I say weakly.
“How?” her eyes are wide with admiration.
“Something set it off once while Caleb, Leah, and I were in a briefing and the alarm company called his cell to verify the code before they would deactivate it.”
“Now all we need is a key,” she smiles at me and turns off the Parkland exit.
“They keep a spare in a birdfeeder in the backyard.”
“How do you know that?”
“I heard him telling the maid on the phone when she locked herself out.”
She swears at me, uses the “f” word and calls me creepy.
“Yes, and you’re a trashy bitch.”
We are standing in the foyer of Leah and Caleb’s mammoth house. I, guiltily, while biting my nails, and Cammie without concern is strolling around touching their things. I watch her and wonder who would win if she and Leah were to get into a fight.
“Look at this?” she says, lifting a filigree egg from an ornate gold table. “This is worth at least a hundred Cartier purses.”
“Put it down,” I hiss at her, spitting a piece of acrylic from the corner of my mouth. Their house was a museum and Leah was its main attraction. Everywhere I looked there were paintings and photographs of the red-headed beast, some of them gracious enough to include Caleb. I shimmied out from under her gaze and went to stand under an alcove.
“We’ve already broken in, we might as well make the best of it,” she chirps at me.
I follow her to the kitchen, where we look inside their fridge. It is stocked with everything from Bulga caviar, to Jell-O chocolate pudding. Cammie extracts a grape from a bunch and pops it into her mouth.