Ladies' Night, Andrews, Kay [best time to read books .txt] 📗

house, my bed, my living room. In motels, and in the apartment she shared with my daughter. Did I mention this girl is our daughter’s roommate?”

“Ooh,” Ashleigh said, wide-eyed. “That is cold.”

“Stone cold,” Camryn agreed, her smile evil. “But I dealt with the bitch.”

“What? More talk of revenge?” Paula’s eyes flew open and she seemed to rally for a moment. “None of that,” she warned. “No revenge talk. That’s regressive behavior.”

Ashleigh rolled her eyes.

“Whoosh next?” Paula asked, blinking rapidly. “Audrey?”

“It’s Ashleigh. And yes, I can share.”

Paula tilted her swivel chair backward, then around, so that her back was facing the group.

What the hell? Grace looked wordlessly at Camryn, then at Wyatt, who shrugged.

Ashleigh opened her notebook with a flourish and began reading, her voice breathy, dramatic.

“I look good. I mean, why should I let the fact that Boyce mistakenly believes he is in love with somebody else give me an excuse to let myself go? Working for a plastic surgeon, I see all kinds of women. I see middle-aged women who are trying too hard, desperately trying to stay young, and I see young girls who think a smaller nose or higher cheekbones or a tighter ass will change their lives, make them something they’re not. But I’m not like that. Boyce fell in love with me—the real me. I am the same person he fell in love with, just a few years older. That whore he’s with now? I know where she lives. I watch her come home—sometimes he’s with her. I want to call her up, laugh in her face, tell her, ‘just you wait. You think he’s in love? Think he’ll stay with you? Hah! What you don’t know is this: you’re just like a carton of yogurt at Publix. You’ve got an expiration date, only you can’t see it, cuz it’s stamped on your ass. You won’t even know it, until one morning Boyce Hartounian locks you out of your condo and stops payment on your new Benz.’”

Ashleigh closed her notebook, looking expectantly at the others. “Well?”

Suzanne Beamon cleared her throat, and all heads turned to stare at her. She’d barely said a word since the group started, hadn’t even looked any of them in the eye yet.

“That’s an interesting metaphor for marriage, the thing about the expiration date,” Suzanne said. “I’m an English teacher,” she added apologetically.

“You’re really watching your husband’s new girlfriend?” Grace asked Ashleigh. “Isn’t that a little creepy?”

“Isn’t it actually stalking?” Camryn put in. “The judge finds out about that, he’s not gonna like it.”

“He won’t find out,” Ashleigh said. “What goes on in group, stays in group, right, Paula? Everything we say here is confidential, that’s what you told us.”

No answer.

Camryn got up and gently swiveled the therapist’s chair around so that it was now facing the group. Paula’s head rested at an awkward angle on her shoulder, her mouth was slack-jawed with a tiny thread of spittle trailing down her chin, but her eyes were closed.

“Passed out cold again!” Camryn stepped back so the others could see for themselves.

*   *   *

Suzanne knelt on the floor beside Paula Talbott-Sinclair and pressed two fingers lightly to the pulse point on her throat, relieved to find an even, steady beat. Her dark brown eyes were intent behind the tortoiseshell frames of her glasses.

“She’s not dead, thank heavens. So, what do we do now?” she asked, looking to the others for guidance. “Should we call somebody, make sure she gets home okay?”

“Who would we call?” Grace asked, looking around the office. “We don’t even know if she’s married. Or where she lives or anything else.”

Camryn walked to the desk in the corner, sat down, and boldly began searching through the desk drawers, a journalist to the last.

“Here’s her purse,” she said, drawing a small multicolored crocheted handbag from the bottom desk drawer.

Suzanne frowned. “Is that really necessary? It’s such an invasion of privacy.” She shuddered. “I’d hate for a bunch of strangers to go pawing through my purse.”

“We’re not strangers. We’re her ‘friends,’” Camryn said, making air quote marks. She unknotted the drawstring closure and pulled out a small leather billfold. She flipped it open to the driver’s license.

“According to this, she lives over on Anna Maria Island,” Camryn said, lifting one eyebrow. “Obviously, she spends her money on a mortgage, not on the rent on this dump.” She dumped the rest of the pocketbook’s contents on the desktop, taking inventory as she examined each object.

“Lipstick, just some cheap drugstore crap. Hand sanitizer. Car keys.” Camryn held up the key. “Big surprise, granola girl drives that VW Bug out front.” She put the key back in the bag. “Cell phone.”

She tapped the phone’s screen, looking, in vain, for a call history. “Cheap-ass phone, too,” she complained.

“Hello!” she said brightly, holding up a small brown plastic pill bottle. “Here’s something interesting.”

She squinted down at the tiny print on the bottle’s label. “Why do they make the writing so small? Melasophenol?”

Ashleigh snatched the bottle away. “Here, let me. I was married to a doctor.”

Camryn calmly reclaimed the pill bottle. “And I was married to a lawyer, but that doesn’t make me Perry Mason.” She opened the bottle and spilled two different colored capsules into the palm of her hand. “These are all that’s left. Sleeping pills, I bet.”

Ashleigh picked up one of the capsules. “Believe me, honey, they haven’t made a sleeping pill I haven’t sampled. Well, the label says melasophenol, which is a fairly mild tranquilizer, but this blue one here”—she held it up—“isn’t melassophenol, which is actually a pale yellow tablet.” She held up the other pill, which was pale yellow. “She’s mixing tranqs with something else. Which might be the reason she’s so out of it.”

She leaned over and lightly ran a finger down the sleeping therapist’s cheek. “Paula? Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?”

The woman didn’t stir, didn’t flinch.

“Clinically speaking, I’d say she’s out for the night,” Ashleigh concluded. “I say we blow this place. It’s so depressing, I’m tempted to borrow one of these babies. And