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A Death in Dulcinea
by Laramee Douglas

"A fanciful small-town setting,
titillating subplots,
and humorous dialog
make this a winner
for all collections."
Library Journal,

November 1, 2005

Retired school librarian Darby Matheson can't seem to avoid getting tangled in other people's problems. Maybe it's because socialite and volunteer extraordinaire Willemina shanghais her for every charity event in town. Maybe it's because the lure of former fashion model Ariana's ongoing marital melodrama is too strong to resist. Maybe it's because after twenty-seven years of marriage, she's got more to say to others than to her quiet husband; Thurman would rather listen to the hum of his band saw than to her anyway. But most likely, it's because she purposefully tunes out her sixth sense, especially, when it's screaming "bug guts!"

Whatever the reason, outgoing, warmhearted, intuitive Darby gets wrapped up in her first murder investigation in her hometown of Dulcinea, Texas when a woman she is
less than fond of is found strangled to death and Darby's former student is accused. But Darby knows there is no way Isaac Molina committed murder even if he has always been a "hotheaded, trouble-making,
bound-to-drop-out kid."

Meet the Mismatched
Menopausal
Meddling Amigas from
A DEATH IN DULCINEA

A Death in Dulcinea
by Laramee Douglas
ISBN: 0-9713430-2-0
Trade Paperback 233 pages
$14.95 November 2005.

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Chapter 1

We live in The Great State of Texas, where motorcyclists have the God-given right to scrape up the pavement with their unhelmeted heads, where Grandma carries a .357 Magnum in her glove box, and where distance is measured in time.

My best friend Ariana and I had made the 125 miles in less than an hour and a half, and that included a bathroom break. Ariana wants all the horses running when she drives, so her Cadillac Escalade had all 345 lathered by the time we reached Austin. We were on a quest to find a gown for her to wear to a gala benefiting the construction of the new Performing Arts Center being held the following evening.

"Did Willemina find a photographer?" I asked.

Our good friend Willemina Henry is co-chairing the benefit with Ariana. They make a great pair. Ariana is great with details. If she had been at the Alamo, Bowie, Crockett, Seguin, and the rest of the troops would have been decked out in coordinating outfits, armed to the teeth, and possessed contingency plans for anything Santa Anna could have ever thrown at them.

Willemina moves people. She can talk you into sprinkling cactus spines on fried fire ants and convince you it's the most delicious dish you've ever eaten.

She and her husband, Richard, are outstanding patrons of the arts in Dulcinea. Richard is a plastic surgeon whose business is bursting at the seams because he takes in a lot of seams on the obese.

Willemina is a super organizer. Since most of their children have grown up and moved away, Willi has put her talents to use on the boards of the Dulcinea Performing Arts Council, the Dulcinea African American Chamber of Commerce, the Dulcinea Museum Association, the Dulcinea Medical Auxiliary, and numerous other organizations.

Together, we three friends are multilingual. Ariana is fluent in Spanish. Willi is fluent in French. I am fluent in Southern.

"You'll never guess who she got to handle the portraits," Ariana said. "Gary Nathe."

A wave of nausea hit me. "Oh, oh. Bug guts," I said.

Ariana swerved into the nearest parking lot, slammed on the brakes, and threw the gearshift to PARK. Without looking at me, she said, "I hate when you say that!"

"I can't help it."

And I really can't. Bug guts is a feeling I get. This is what it's like. Imagine there's a great, big, ugly bug, like a giant cockroach, scurrying across your kitchen floor. So you reach out with your foot and step on it and hear it crunch and feel it squish nasty bug guts all over your clean floor and the sole of your shoe. You know how your stomach and throat involuntarily constrict at the thought? Well, that's the feeling I get when something bad is going to happen.

As much as she hates to hear it, over the years, Ariana has learned to trust my feelings. She turned to face me. "Is it the benefit? We don't need anything bad happening at the benefit. Tell me it's not the benefit."

"It's the benefit."

She pounded on the steering wheel. "I told you not to tell me!" Her frustration spent, she asked, "What's going to happen?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just got bug guts when you said Gary's name. But I don't think it's about Gary. I think it's about Claire." Gary Nathe is a very talented local photographer. Claire is his wife. She owns an interior decorating business. Gary is Mahatma Gandhi with a camera. Claire is Idi Amin wrapped in wallpaper samples.

"What about Claire?" Ariana asked flatly.

"I don't know. I don't get visions. I just get feelings."

"I hate that," she said. "Your ESP could be a little more specific."

"I don't have ESP," I said. "I just have sensitive senses."

"Whatever. I wish your senses could tell me what is going to happen. How bad is it going to be? When is it going to happen? Then I could be ready for it."

The trouble with demonstrating a talent other people haven't developed is that others look at you like you're weird and run for the hills, or they want you to give them a detailed read-out of the future, which I cannot do. Reactions like the

one Ariana was exhibiting is why I keep this aspect of my personality quiet. Only Ariana, my husband, and my two children are aware of this trait. Thurman prefers to ignore it. Ariana wants me to turn it on and off like a spigot.

"Sorry," I said.

The hurt must have been evident because Ariana apologized. "I shouldn't have overreacted. It's just that we've worked so hard for all these months to have a successful benefit. We don't need Claire Nathe ruining it."

She sighed, then shifted into gear and carefully pulled back onto the street. We drove in silence for a few miles before she said, "Truthfully, I've been a bit apprehensive since Willi informed me Gary would be taking the pictures. He does a beautiful job, but I can't stand la bruja since I had that run-in with her last year."

"At the Lung Association benefit?"

"Yes. She made such a scene about not being recognized in the programs for the time she put in decorating the powder room."

"Claire's not really a witch," I said. "But she was a bit demanding."

"Demanding? I'd say! Claire Nasty wanted to be paid for her time and talent, what little she has, and that was after she had come to me and volunteered to help out," Ariana said. "She insisted on being listed as a major contributor even though she contributed no money and the committee reimbursed her for the supplies she'd used. Willemina made it very clear to her that if the rest of us were recognized for our time, we'd all be listed as Premier Contributors." Ariana took her hands off the wheel long enough to make little quote signs with her fingers. "Her name was already on the program under Volunteers. It really ticked me off when I had to get the commercial printer to run a program insert at the last minute to thank Claire's Concepts."

"You didn't have much choice. She threatened to strip the place bare if you didn't," I reminded her. "I don't understand why Willi would want to deal with her again."

"She said Gary handled the photographs at the Diabetes Fun Run and everything went off without a hitch. Of course, Claire was out of town for that event. Willi said if anything comes up con la bruja, she'll handle it." Ariana grew thoughtful. "To be on the safe side, maybe we should line up a last minute replacement. Wait a minute," she said suddenly. "Maybe it's not really bug guts. Maybe you were on my wavelength and picked up on how I was feeling."

"Maybe," I said, trying to sound positive for her sake. "Or maybe my mind jumped from Gary to Claire and to how she acted at the Lung Association benefit. It could be just a bad memory."

"That's it," Ariana said hopefully.

But no matter how hard I wished, the feeling had nothing to do with past events. Of that I was certain. It definitely had to do with Claire Nathe. It had to do with the Performing Arts Center fund raiser. And it had to do with something very unpleasant lurking on the horizon.

Chapter 2

"What do you think about this one?" Ariana asked, removing an evening dress from the rack and holding it at arm's length. Tiny crystal beads shimmered on lavender jacquard.

"Gorgeous," I said.

"Hmmm." She turned the hanger to look at one side then the other. "I have one similar to it at home." She stuck it back on the rack.

Of course she did. Ariana is a former fashion model, which is why at the age of forty-nine she's still a size six, and why there were three Saks Fifth Avenue saleswomen hovering close by. I was certain, at any minute, they would surround Ariana and start begging for autographs.

When we first arrived in the after-five department, they glanced my way, determined I was not worth waiting on, and fell all over Ariana, which was very perceptive on their part. I guess the Dollar General bags I carried gave me away.

I am not a former fashion model. I am Darby Matheson, a former school librarian, and the last time I wore a size six, I also wore pigtails and played jacks on the sidewalk. I tried to get down to a size ten once, but the diet caused my fingernails to break, and my hair looked like a hairball coughed up by one of my cats; so for health reasons, I keep my weight hovering around one-sixty. On my five-foot frame that makes me just a tad on the non-svelte side.

I leaned against a rack of navy silk slacks. "I don't know why you had to wait this late to find something to wear. It's really not like you."

She sent me a patronizing look across the top of the rack. "Shopping at the last minute was not plan A."

"You could have worn something already in your closet."

"Now that's really not like me." She turned and walked to a rack of black dresses.

"You probably have twenty little black dresses now. You don't need twenty-one."

"They're all different."

I rolled my eyes heavenward. "Puleeease."

We had other stops to make, and if we were going to get out of the store by midnight, I was going to have to take charge. I searched the display along the back wall. "There it is," I said, pointing to a forest green, floor-length gown. "That is your color." I made a bee-line for the dress, but one of the salesladies beat me to it. Her name tag read: Gladys Knight. The other clerks must have been the Pips.

I wanted to wrench the dress away from Gladys and check the price. She seemed to be reading my mind, because I received one of those if-you-have-to-ask-you-can't- afford-it looks. I retorted with a neither-can-you smile.

Gladys turned with adulation to Ariana. "Your friend is so right, Ariana." She gasped, looking surprised and embarrassed at her own brashness. Trying to recover from the faux pas, she asked, "May I call you Ariana?"

Ariana smiled as she joined us. "Of course."

Most people didn't have a clue to her last name since she had modeled under the single moniker "Ariana". She didn't have to look at the price tag, but did, decided the gown was worth it, and disappeared into the dressing room with the saleswoman close at her heels.

I waited until the Pips had gotten busy elsewhere then peeked at the tag on the same dress in a size two. $3,500.00! Crime-o-nee! I could make the dress for a fraction of that. A very small fraction. Which is exactly what I do when I need a formal on those oh-so-many occasionslike, every five or ten years.

Since Willi and Ariana had saddled me with the title "Decorations Coordinator"a highfalutin term for their lackeyI, too, was attending the benefit, so my recently homemade dress awaited its debut into society from a peg on my closet door.

Ariana needs formals much more often than I and can afford themnowunlike when she was in college. That's where we met. I'd just moved into my dorm room and was still arranging things when my new roommate appeared in the open doorway. She was one of the tallest girls I'd ever seen. I was sure she was six feet or would have been if she'd stood up straight. But when she first came to College Station as a freshman, she was burdened with shyness and carried herself like a whipped pup, probably because of all the teasing she got from being the tallest girl in school and one of the few Mexican American kids growing up in the mostly white town of Cut and Shoot, Texas.

Ariana had no idea she was beautiful. Smartyes. It was an academic scholarship that got her to A&M. Beautiful no. So, I took it upon myself to make her my project and help her gain a little self-esteem.

I spent my first two years in school pouring over Vogue, Cosmo, and Mademoiselle, clipping and pasting articles to Ariana's wall. She spent those years trying to shove calculus down my throat. When the makeup counters at Dillards had free makeup sessions, I'd haul Ariana to the mall and get our faces done. She would drag me kicking and screaming to math tutoring. I talked her into modeling at the mall's fall and spring fashion shows. She talked me into taking chemistry. I did my job too well. Not with chemistry, with Ariana.

At the end of our sophomore year, while waiting tables at The Dixie Chicken, Ariana was discovered by a modeling agent who was in town to see her nephew graduate. The agent's offer was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we both knew it. It took very little encouragement from me for Ariana to pack everything up and head to New York.

And as soon as I was out from under the scrutiny of my academic mentor, I dropped all math classes and changed my degree plan from Engineering (what was I thinking?) to Elementary Ed.

Ariana, emerging from the dressing room and strutting toward me as if on the catwalk, asked, "What do you think?" The gown was sleeveless with a V-neck that plunged to a still-respectable but intriguing depth. The silk fabric draped softly around her torso and swayed gently at her toes. She stopped, twirled so her back was to me, then glanced over her shoulder. Soft waves of black hair fell down the middle of her back, luxurious against the dark green cloth.

"You better give yourself an extra thirty minutes to get dressed," I said.

She looked back at me, her brows furrowed. "Why?"

"Because after seeing you in that dress, Dawson is going to need to detour through the bedroom."

"As if he needs an excuse."

Oh, oh. Trouble in paradise.

~~~

Our next stop was for shoes. There is only one store in Ariana's mind when it comes to shoes, so we left a deliciously cool mall, trekked across a steaming hot parking lot, climbed in a sauna-like vehicle, and zipped down Loop 360. The air conditioning had nearly cooled the SUV to tolerable when we arrived at The Village at Westlake, a high-class strip mall catering to the financially gifted.

I opened the door letting in a blast of mid-August heat. "Sonovagun!" I exclaimed, slamming the door. "You'd think by

six o'clock it would cool off a little. I'll just wait here with the motor running and the AC on."

"Oh, quit griping and move your butt," Ariana said, opening the back door and removing her new plastic-wrapped gown from the utility hook.

I grabbed my purse and grudgingly followed her across the egg-frying hot blacktop toward a store with large brass letters reading ARIANA V. above the door. The retail shoe store is one of three that Ariana owns. The others are located in facilities catering to the affluent of Dallas and Houston. In between modeling and carrying on lousy relationships with lousier men, Ariana had earned an MBA and used it. The "V" in Ariana V. stands for Villarrealher maiden name.

"I have a copy of The Joy of Sex," I said. "You want to borrow it?"

"Where do you come up with this stuff?" she asked, her voice rising an octave.

"Ariana. Don't be a prude. You and Dawson have been married five years. You have to have sex."

"I know. Too often," she grumbled.

I like Dawson Wu. Dawson is the musical director of the Dulcinea Symphony. He is second-generation Chinese American, twelve years Ariana's junior, a good eight inches shorter, and the exact opposite in temperament. He is passionate, like one would expect from a gifted composer-conductor and quick to anger but quick to forgiveunlike Ariana who is good at holding a grudge. It was Dawson's playful, passionate side that attracted her in the first place, but it looked like something had cooled the passion.

"Are you mad at him?" I asked.

"No. I'm not mad at him."

"Then why don't you want sex?"

"Shhhh," she hissed, glaring at me as she opened the carved wooden door.

"Ariana!" Joan, a petite woman in her sixties, lit up when she saw her boss. "What a nice surprise."

"Hi, Joan," Ariana said, transforming the icy glare she'd given me to a warm smile for her store manager. "How are you?"

After they exchanged hugs, Joan turned to welcome me with a handshake and smile, then turned back to Ariana. "What brings you to town?"

"Shopping. I need to find a pair of sandals to go with this dress." She held up the gown. "Do we need to discuss business first?"

"Did you get the reports I faxed this morning?"

"We left early. They're probably waiting in the fax tray at home," she said. "Is there a problem?"

"Not at all. I think you'll be pleased with the financial report."

Ariana had been unlucky in love, until Dawson, but overwhelmingly fortunate in business. I, on the other hand, had been blessed with a wonderful husband and, until recently, a less-than-lucrative income. I don't believe Ariana would have ever changed places with me, and the reverse applies. We are each content in our own lives. At least, Ariana had been content.

While the two shoe specialists scoured the racks for a match to the dress, I searched the ceiling for an air conditioning vent. Locating one, I stationed myself beneath it then looked around admiring the store. Ariana V. is very moderndesigned in light wood, glass, mirrors, and lots of empty space, which my friend pays an arm and a leg for, but since her patrons will pay two arms, two legs, a kidney and a month's wages for the shoes she carries, the overhead is justified.

The incredibly expensive Cole Haan alligator mules Ariana decided on would never have received the American Podiatric Medical Association's seal of approval, but to Ariana, style is more important than comfort, so she was quite pleased when we set off for home.

Home is Dulcinea, a small city of about 70,000 people, surrounded by farms, ranches, and petrochemical plants. I live in Dulcinea because it's where my husband grew up. Ariana lives there because I introduced her to her present husband, Dawsonthe one that isn't getting any sex.

"I think you need to see your GYN," I said, watching long shadows fly past the window.

"Why? I had an exam last month."

"Did you talk to her about your problem?"

"I don't have a problem. Dawson's got the problemtoo much testosterone."

"Maybe you don't have enough," I said. You know women our age...."

"I don't have a problem," she said, glaring again. "Let's talk about something else."

This was the same woman who spent a week in Hawaii on her honeymoon and never saw the ocean. She had a problem.

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