Munson’s gaze fell upon me. One eyebrow rose practically to his hairline; the other stayed in place, or mostly stayed in place, considering the twitch.
Through another unfriendly smile, he asked: “Do you want to get her out of here? Or should I call Animal Control for her, too?”
“Well!” Mother huffed.
But I said, “Thank you, Officer, I’ll take charge of her,” and I took Mother by the arm and marched her away.
We retreated down the back steps; but before exiting to the alley, I stopped Mother. “Why did you take such an awful risk with that creature?”
“Officer Munson?”
“No! The dog!” I was shaking my head, my voice trembling. “That vicious thing could have mauled you, just like he did Mrs. Norton!”
“Nonsense, dear,” she said, and waved off my concern. “Your former teacher was right about her pet . . . Brad the pit bull is timid. A coward.”
“Then why did he kill Mrs. Norton? He’s her dog, for God’s sake!”
“Brandy, I’ll thank you not to take the Lord’s name in vain, at a time like this.” Mother’s brow furrowed. “But you heard what I told that awful young man—I don’t think Brad is guilty.”
I was getting a warning tingle at the back of my neck; I didn’t want to admit it yet, but I could see where this was going, at least if Mother had anything to say about it. She was letting her theatrical notions turn a horrible tragedy into another murder mystery.
“Saving that dog from a bullet right now,” I said, “is a reprieve at best . . . you know he’s going to have to be put down.”
Mother sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right. Pity the only witness is a silent one. Poor thing can’t defend itself!”
“Uh . . . I think Brad can defend himself just fine.”
“With those fangs of his, perhaps, if he weren’t so timid. But he can’t point at the real killer, can he?”
“Mother . . .”
“Such a beautiful animal . . .”
Compared to what? A rottweiler?
“Mother,” I said, “listen to me.”
“I can hear you, dear. You needn’t shout.”
“I’m not shouting! Mother, you are not Jessica Fletcher and I am not Nancy Drew. We happened to get involved with something a while back—”
“Those murders, you mean?”
“Yes, yes, those murders. But that’s the kind of thing that happens once in a lifetime. You can’t go around looking at deaths, however tragic and, yes, grotesque, and turn them into a hobby, like your Red-Hatted League reading group.”
She sniffed. “I have no idea whatsoever what you’re talking about.”
A crowd had gathered in the alley, moths drawn to the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles, and I could see the wheels turning in Mother’s head. She loved an audience of any kind, and I warned her, sotto voce, to keep her trap shut. If any reporters were among the gawkers, Mother’s theories could find their way into the Serenity Sentinel.
A second squad car arrived, blocking the alley further, and uniformed officer Brian Lawson got out. To Mother’s dismay, he shooed the bystanders away. This was the closest she’d got to center stage since she quit the playhouse.
“I don’t know what you see in that wet blanket,” Mother muttered to me as Brian approached, nodding to us both, all business.
“Mrs. Borne . . . Brandy . . . I understand, Vivian, that you found Mrs. Norton?” Officer Lawson produced a tiny tape recorder from his pocket.
“Indeed I did!” Mother said a little too happily, as if stumbling on the corpse of a friend was like finding a prize in a Cracker Jack box.
I sighed. “I’ll be over on the freight dock if anyone needs me.”
You’re probably pretty disgusted with Mother by now, and you won’t be surprised to hear that I was, too. In her defense, she’d had numerous shocks this morning and, however ill-advised her intervention between gunslinging Munson and the bloody-fanged pooch, she had indeed shut down a dangerous situation. Still, I made another mental note to call her shrink and make sure her meds were right.
During the interview, Mother was her usual rambling, histrionic self, and more than once Brian had to get her back on point.
When I heard her saying, “. . . and her poor husband got killed after imbibing too much and decided to take a nap on the tracks just as the Rock Island Line passed through,” I called out singsongy from my dock perch, “I’m, uh, pretty sure that’s not pertinent, Mother!”
Mother threw me an irritated look. “Brandy, the officer asked me what I knew about the woman, so I’m telling him!”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean everything from her first tooth to her last meal.”
“Dear, I know what I’m doing!”
I knew what she was doing, too. I was afraid my efforts to keep her on the straight and mentally-balanced narrow were severely challenged by the loss in her life of her theatrical pastime. The other day ex-pal Bernice had seemed willing to bury the hatchet, and not the kind that that cigar store Indian might wield.
Finally I just had to tune her out, and wound up watching a gray sedan try to navigate the congested alley. Then the driver gave up, parked cockeyed, and got out; short, bald, and bespectacled, the man carried a medical bag as he puffed toward us.
Mother spoke first. “Hello, Hector!” she called out pleasantly.
Hector seemed startled to see her. But then, most everyone seemed startled when they caught sight of Mother....
The man’s gaze went from Mother to Officer Lawson, who said simply, “First floor.”
Hector nodded and entered the building.
Mother called over to me (still keeping my distance on the dock), “That’s the coroner, dear.” Then in a stage whisper: “He’s lost a little weight since the divorce.”
“I’ll file that with the rest of the evidence,” I assured her.
After only a few minutes, the coroner returned, said something to Brian that I couldn’t hear, then hoofed it back to his car.
Once again the back door of the building swung open, Officer Munson coming through first, holding it wide for the paramedics who carried Mrs. Norton in a body bag on a stretcher.
As the medics loaded their human cargo into the emergency vehicle, a respectful silence fell over the alley, only to be broken by the finality of the slamming of the vehicle’s double rear doors.
Then the Animal Control van arrived.
I hopped off the dock and joined Mother and Brian.
“Regular Grand Central Station,” Mother muttered.
“Terminal,” I corrected.
“It was Grand Central Station when I was a girl.”
“It’s always been Grand Central Terminal, Mother.”
“Dear, a terminal is for airplanes.”
“A terminal,” I said, “refers to anything that ends at a certain destination . . . be it trains, buses, boats, or planes.”
“Or life,” Mother sighed.
I searched her face and found, in her eyes, a strain of worry that explained her careening over-the-top behavior. For all her inappropriate remarks, she really was upset about Mrs. Norton’s death. The two women had only been friendly acquaintances—I’d overstated it, calling my former teacher a “friend” of either Mother or myself—and finding that ravaged body had taken a toll on Vivian Borne.
The animal control man went in . . . and the animal control man came out, with a sad-looking, docile Brad on a leash, head down, as if he was being sent to his pen for making a mess on a carpet (which I guess he had done, in away). Finally Brad was shut into the back of the van.
Then, after all the hoopla, everyone was gone, except for Mother, me, and Brian. Even the die-hard gawkers had lost interest and faded away.
Mother turned to Brian. “You’ve been very efficient, very thorough, Officer.”
“Uh . . . thanks.”
“Is there anything else we can tell you before we go?”
“No, I have enough,” Brian
said (or was that, “I’ve had enough”?).
Half bowing, Mother offered magnanimously, “Well, you know where to find us, should anything further occur to you. Brandy, are you coming, dear?”
“Give me a minute, Mother.”
“I’ll just wait in the car, dear.”
“Yes. Do that.”
We waited for her to stride out of sight; then Brian asked, “Will you be all right?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I may sleep with the lights on, tonight, after a nightmare like that. . . .”
He nodded, his brown eyes sympathetic. “I’ve seen my share of animal-attack aftermaths, and you never get used to it.”
I shook my head, shuddered. “Horrible to think a trusted pet could turn on you like that.”
Brian said, “I remember a drug bust where there were three pit bulls on the premises. Two, I used mace on, but the third took four bullets before it stopped charging.”
I shuddered again. “What will happen to the pit bull?”
“He’ll go to the animal shelter . . . for now.”
“And then?”
He shrugged.
I nodded.
However docile he had been after Mother scolded him, Brad Pit Bull remained a potentially deadly animal.
Brian touched my arm. “Listen, Brandy—if you like, I could, you know, come by later? See if you and your mother’re okay?”
I managed a smile. “I’d like that. Hey, it’ll give you a chance to meet my son, Jake. . . . He’s staying for the week.”
Brian didn’t exactly look like he’d been smacked in the face with a dead mackerel, but he did register some surprise.
Which surprised me.
Even though we hadn’t gone beyond the flirtation stage, I had taken the initiative to find out that his busted marriage had produced two girls who lived with their mother in Wisconsin. He was a cop, a detective of sorts—hadn’t he bothered to look into my past?
“I would like to meet Jake,” he said, and smiled, redeeming himself a little; and then he walked me to my car.
As I drove down the now-deserted alley, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Brian putting yellow tape across the back door of the building.
Crime scene, it said. Was it one? Wasn’t this just an accident?
I said to Mother, “You were a little hard on him, weren’t you?”
“Who, dear?”
“You know very well who . . . Brian.”
“Yes, dear, I guess in a way I was.”
“What’s the idea, putting him through the wringer like that?”
She shrugged grandly, the excitement of the morning having restored her diva status. “Brandy, any man who’s interested in this family—and by ‘this family’ I mean you, dear—ought to know exactly what he’s getting himself in for.”
I steered the car toward home. “Don’t you ever get tired of being right, Mother?”
“Does any mother?”
By noon Mother and I had arrived back home, where we found Jake curled up on the living room couch (Sushi, too), dressed in his usual attire of T-shirt and cargo jeans. He was using his BlackBerry, probably text-messaging his father about how off-the-hook Mother and I were.
Mother suddenly made herself scarce, leaving it to me to tell Jake about Mrs. Norton’s demise.
I didn’t know where to begin, always inclined to shield my son from such unpleasantness.
I said, “Some sad news at the mall.”
The tone of my voice, as much as my words, told Jake to put down the BlackBerry, his blue eyes asking me what this was about.
“You know that lady you met yesterday? Mrs. Norton? The one who runs the antiques mall?”
He nodded.
“Well . . . your grandmother and I found her in the store this morning, on the floor. I’m afraid she was dead.”
Jake’s eyes grew large. “What, was she shot or something?” he asked, alarm in his voice.
I frowned. “Why would you think that?”
“I . . . I don’t know. It just kinda popped into my head.”
A result of playing violent video games?
I said, “No. She wasn’t shot . . . I’m afraid her dog attacked her.”
“You mean Brad Pit Bull?”
I nodded.
“Oh.” His eyes left mine to stare out the front window. “That’s too bad.”
How could I help him process this? For a kid his age, the day after he encountered that pit bull and the nice woman who ran the mall, to suddenly hear one had killed the other?
“I . . . I just hope you won’t be too upset about it.”
“Okay.”
“And if you ever want to talk about it . . .” I patted his knee. “. . . I’ll do my best to answer your questions.”
“I do have one question, Mom.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“What’s for lunch?”
A Trash ’n’ Treasures Tip
Broken porcelain, pottery, and crystal can be repaired. Check with a reputable mender to determine the cost versus the depreciation of the item once fixed. Don’t try to do it yourself with epoxy glue like Mother.
Chapter Seven
Assault and Pepper Shakers
The next morning I was to meet my BFF, Tina (short for Christina) at Gloria Jean’s Java Hut coffee shop at the Indian Mounds Mall. We’d set the shopping get-together up a week before, and despite a certain lingering discomfort over finding Mrs. Norton mauled like that—melancholy tinged with unease—I didn’t cancel. Me shopping wouldn’t do Mrs. Norton any harm, and it might help get me out of this funk.
As usual, I was in a quandary over what to wear. Tina and I don’t try to outdo each other with our fashion finesse or anything, but we did strive to look our best out of a mutual respect for each other (and also to pay homage to the Shopping Mall Goddess for good luck and low prices).
Finally I put on a BCBG tan jacket with epaulets and military buttons, Rock & Republic jeans (rolled up), and a pair of distressed brown Frye boots. To counter the armed forces look, I picked out a girly pink Betsey Johnson rhinestone-encrusted hobo bag and matching hip-slung belt.
Do you ever bemoan the fact that you never have any extra cash for a shopping spree? Here are some ways to save a little money:
(1) Ditch the bimonthly trip to the nail salon for fakes. You’re not even fooling the men these days . . . who only wonder what else might be fake. Keep your nails filed short (they’re in these days) and slap on a little clear polish. (Savings: seventy dollars a month, plus gas and a sitter.) P.S. Do you really enjoy breathing in chemicals in a place where nobody gossips? (In English, anyway. )
(2) Stop the monthly visits to the hair salon and go only four times a year. Get a really good short cut, and let it grow out; you’ll have several different looks over time. And if you’ve been having a salon color your locks, learn the suicide approach: Dye by your own hand.... The salons use the same stuff found at drugstores, but charge three times the rate. (Test a strand first, though. I once ended up with green hair—great for St. Paddy’s Day bashes, a downer otherwise.) Savings: approximately forty-six dollars a month.
(3) Stay away from the cosmetics counters. Don’t you have enough, already? Use it up! Or throw it out! And this goes for all those hotel amenities of shampoo and conditioner you’ve been hoarding in the bathroom closet, unless you’re actually prepared to use the darn things. (Savings: twenty to thirty dollars a month.)
(4) This is a touchy one, because I know you’re as serious as I am about losing ten pounds and getting back into all those expensive party clothes languishing in the back of your closet.... But let’s face it, unless you’re scheduled for a root canal, it ain’t gonna happen. Why not take those lovely things (before they’re completely out of style) to a resale shop and get some extra cash? (Savings: estimated forty-seven dollars.) P.P.S. Do you know what the worst thing is about a root canal? The bill!
(5) Are you still buying fashion magazines off the stand? F
ool! You can save up to 75 percent with subscriptions to your faves. (Savings: twelve dollars a month.) Okay, that’s stretching it . . . but you get the point.
Now you’ve got two hundred dollars for shopping, and can come along with Teen and me!
Indian Mounds—so named because of an adjacent Indian burial ground—was situated on gently rolling hills just across the Treacherous Bypass (this much commerce had bought the intersection a traffic light). That the Mounds was an outdoor mall, which is unusual considering our cold winters, didn’t seem to deter shoppers. I, myself, love going in and out of the stores in all types of weather, preferring it to stuffy enclosed shopping centers where you get hot and crabby in your coat and draw in the same kind of recycled air that makes so many old people get sick after taking a cruise.
Laid out asymmetrically with winding walkways, the Mounds had lots of benches on which to rest those poor tired little doggies, flower gardens to stop and enjoy color and fragrances, and spurting fountains to gape at in childish wonder. Seated on some of the surrounding benches were hyperrealistic, fully painted statues of humans, so hyper and so realistic that newcomers would sometimes stop to ask them the time.
Which was 9:00 AM when yours truly, the early bird, pulled into the vast, nearly empty parking lot, taking a prize worm of a spot right up front . . . although, even if it had been midday, at the mall’s busiest, I still would have snagged a close space.
Allow me to explain.
Mother, during one of her “spells” some years ago, bestowed upon me a spiritual Indian guide that she dubbed Red Feather, since Mother was under the impression that red was my favorite color (it’s not; yellow is). Mother’s guide is Pink Feather, even though she doesn’t own anything pink.
The purpose of these Native American spirits, according to Mother, is to help guide our lives, since “sometimes the Big Guy Upstairs can’t be bothered with trivial matters like finding a good parking space” (her words, not mine—I’m just reporting here).
Pink Feather, when called upon by Mother, does all kinds of good things for her; I’ve actually witnessed some of these . . . like the time we went into the mall bookstore and Mother asked for the newly released Miss Marple DVD box set and the sales clerk said they were sold out and Mother called on Pink Feather to get her one, only to have the clerk say, “Wait a moment! That’s funny . . . there is one here. . . .”
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