The Mystery Megapack

Cheryl, from church. She sang in the choir with Stephen. At the Ferguson wedding they’d sung a duet, “One Hand, One Heart,” and there hadn’t been a dry eye in the house.
    Why had Stephen set a waypoint for Cheryl? I felt dizzy, wondering if all the hours they’d spent practicing “One Hand, One Heart” had escalated into Two Hands, Big Breasts.
    Deeply suspicious, I selected the waypoint Stephen had set up for Gold’s Gym and pushed Go To. MM directed me out of the cul-de-sac, back onto the freeway and through the center of town. Gold’s Gym had long disappeared from my rear-view mirror when MM instructed me to turn into Foxcroft Acres, a new development on the south side of town.
    Arriving at destination on right.
    I eased my foot onto the brake and stared at the name on the mailbox: J. Barton. I recognized that name, too. The “J” stood for Julie and she was Stephen’s personal trainer.
    So, Julie had set up private practice in her home? Helping my husband with his pushups, perhaps? If Stephen hadn’t been in Las Vegas, I would have beaned him with one of his own five-pound, handheld dumbbells.
    I slammed the accelerator to the floor, and peeled out of there. Mama’s trash bags and bug spray would just have to wait.
    The waypoints labeled “T&E” and “Russell” turned out to be just that, the Art Deco building housing the city’s most prominent accounting firm and the office of Russell Herman, Stephen’s attorney, respectively. But when I followed MM’s directions for B&B Yachts, she took me miles out of town, down Route 214 and onto a narrow country road that ended in a long wooden pier.
    Arriving at destination.
    The BMW’s tires crunched on the gravel as I eased onto the shoulder and cut the engine. Just ahead, at the water’s edge, stood a cluster of summer cottages that had been converted into year-around homes. A child of perhaps three or four rode a tricycle around and around on the blacktopped driveway of a white clapboard rancher adjacent to the pier. I scrunched down in the driver’s seat and watched the kid pop wheelies, my head swimming. What the hell was going on?
    Almost immediately, the garage door yawned open and a woman appeared, her hair a nimbus of gold against the dark interior behind her. I scrunched down even further. When I dared to peek again, she had hustled the kid into a car seat and was backing her PT Cruiser out of the garage and down the drive.
    B&B Yachts? Hah! I knew what was going on. Stephen was leading a double life. He probably had mistresses, maybe even wives and children, scattered all across the city. The county. The state of Maryland. Maybe even the world!
    After all I’d done for the SOB! I watched the dust kicked up by his girlfriend’s tires swirl down the road behind me and remembered a moment just before our wedding, at the rehearsal dinner. I had been leaning over the sink in the ladies room, touching up my lip liner, when Mama took me aside and in one of those priceless mother-daughter moments, came the closest she ever came to discussing sex with me. “Remember, Marjorie Ann. Give a man steak at home, and he won’t go out for hamburger.” Well, I’d been giving Stephen filet mignon twice a week since our honeymoon, so what the hell was he going out for? Tenderloin?
    When the dust had settled, I climbed out of the car, hoping that a walk in the spring sunshine might clear the sick visions out of my head. I strolled to the end of the road and stepped onto the pier. To my left, three sailboats bobbed quietly, water chuckling softly along their sleek fiberglass hulls. To my right, a half dozen kayaks were lined up on a narrow strip of sand, each stern bearing a TWHA stencil to show that they belonged to the Truxton Woods Homeowners’ Association. If I took one out for a paddle, probably nobody would notice or care.
    I reached the end of the pier and sat down on the rough boards, dangling my feet over the water. A soft breeze lifted my hair and cooled the hot tears that streamed down my cheeks. I turned my face toward the afternoon sun. As far as I was concerned, Stephen could take a long walk off a short pier.
    I sat up straight. Where had that come from? Perhaps the snowy egret elegantly fishing in the shallows had whispered the suggestion into my ear. A long walk off a short pier. I scrambled to my feet, brushed off the seat of my slacks and hurried back to the car to fetch MM.
    With the MapMaster tucked under one arm, I returned to