by Leslie Meier
Sergio cocked an eyebrow. “Really, Dr. Reddy, I would hardly call a laxative poison.”
“What if Mr. Candy was allergic to one of the ingredients. Would you be so dismissive then?”
“No, but he wasn’t, and the Ex-Lax was not what killed him,” Sergio patiently argued.
“Well, I, for one, think you are letting him off the hook far too easily,” Dr. Reddy snorted. “He has already told us his motive. Mr. Candy unceremoniously kicked him out of jazz band, and the kid was thirsty for revenge.”
Chet sighed loudly in the corner, dismayed to find all the attention in the room was still on him.
Mona lunged forward, red-faced with fury. “First you accuse my Jodie of corrupting your innocent daughter. Now you’re accusing my son of murder? I’ve had it with you, lady!”
Hayley reached out and grabbed Mona’s sweatshirt, forcefully pulling her back.
Mona whipped around to Hayley. “She’s out of line, Hayley! Chet can be a prankster and pig-headed and lazy like his father, but he’s a good boy, for the most part!” She then pointed a finger at Chet in the corner. “But you’re still grounded!”
“A mother is always blinded by the love for her children,” Dr. Reddy said to no one in particular.
Chet had heard enough. He shot back up to his feet and yelled at Dr. Reddy, eyes blazing, “I didn’t get anywhere near Mr. Candy after I gave him the hot chocolate! I bet you can’t say that, can you?”
It took a moment for Dr. Reddy to realize Chet was addressing her, but when she did, she huffed and threw him a haughty look. “I am quite sure I have no idea what you are talking about!”
“I saw you,” Chet growled, eyes narrowing. “I saw you chasing after Mr. Candy. I was sitting right here. You were right in front of me and didn’t even notice me, and I heard you threaten him!”
“That is a bald-faced lie! The boy is obviously just making things up to take the heat off himself,” Dr. Reddy cried.
“You said you were going to do everything in your power to get him fired, or something like that,” Chet said.
“Is that true, Doctor?” Sergio asked.
“No, I . . .” Dr. Reddy glanced around the room, unnerved by all the faces focused on her. “I mean . . . It was nothing!”
“I think you’d better explain,” Sergio said. “And, please, don’t leave anything out.”
“There is nothing to explain! We simply had a disagreement, that’s all.”
She wanted to leave it there, but she instinctively knew that was going to be impossible. After mulling her options, Dr. Reddy was resigned to the fact that she was not going to be able to remain silent or simply brush it off. “Fine. My oldest daughter, Nina, has been struggling in Mr. Candy’s music appreciation class, so I requested a meeting at the high school to discuss the situation with him. I told him Nina would do some extra-credit work in order to catch up. I thought we had resolved the situation. Nina worked exceedingly hard to bring her grade up, and I thought she had succeeded, but he still gave her a terribly unfair grade.”
“He failed her?” Hayley asked.
“No.” Dr. Reddy was so upset that she was near tears. “He gave her . . .” She choked on her words, almost unable to get them out. “He gave her a B plus.”
Mona busted up laughing. “B plus? You’re talking like that’s the end of the world! I would be the proudest mother in the world if just one of my kids came home with a B plus! Hell, I’d throw a party if they came home with a C minus!”
Dr. Reddy bristled. “She deserved an A.”
“That must have made you very angry,” Sergio suggested.
“Yes, frankly, it did. Nina worked hard to improve her grade. We have very high expectations for her and her future, and a B plus was not going to help get her into Harvard. Mr. Candy’s obstinance was going to potentially cost my daughter her future!”
Hayley was flabbergasted. “Do you honestly believe a B plus in music appreciation is going to hurt Nina’s chances of getting into a good school?”
“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact,” Dr. Reddy snapped. “I don’t want her going to just a good school. I want both my daughters going to the best schools. A world-class college education is the first stepping-stone to a life of success.”
Hayley glanced over at Pia, who was quietly listening to her mother, taking it all in. Hayley felt sorry for the poor girl, who, much like her older sister, had to be under intense pressure to perform perfectly, even in middle school.
“Look, Doctor, I understand you’re a passionate advocate for your daughters. I have read all about you hang-glider parents,” Sergio said.
There was another momentary pause before Randy tugged on Sergio’s Mummy costume. “Helicopter.”
Sergio turned to him, confused, then glanced toward the ceiling. “What? I don’t hear anything.” He turned to the others. “Do any of you hear a helicopter?”
“No, Sergio. Helicopter parents. That’s what they call hard-driving, overprotective parents.”
“What did I say?”
“Hang glider.”
“My mistake. I grew up hang gliding in Brazil. You get my meaning! Parents who hover around trying to control everything!”
“I am not ashamed of taking a keen interest in the lives of my children,” Dr. Reddy said defensively.
“Nor should you be,” Sergio said. “I am just curious to know why you did not share this dispute you had with Mr. Candy earlier.”
“Why should I? I told you, it meant nothing,” Dr. Reddy said, suddenly getting flustered. “Okay, yes, I was mad, but not enough to bash him in the back of the head with a sledgehammer! I didn’t say anything, because I knew if I did, I would immediately be a suspect, and I didn’t want to have to deal with all that nonsense!”
“Too late!” Liddy interjected.
Dr. Reddy gave her a withering look.
“Now you know how it feels!” Chet blurted out with a self-satisfied smirk, not bothering to look up from his phone.
As Dr. Reddy’s meltdown continued to worsen, the front door to the restaurant blew open, and King Kong suddenly came crashing inside, shocking everyone. He roared and pounded his chest as if he was about to grab Fay Wray and climb to the top of the Empire State Building and swat at airplanes.
Dr. Reddy screamed as Jodie and Pia both stared, wide-eyed and entranced. Even Chet glanced up from his phone to take in the sight of a gorilla suddenly in the restaurant, but then casually went back to texting.
The gorilla reached up and removed his head, revealing Bruce, whose face was sweaty and his hair matted. “Man, it’s really hot inside this ape mask!”
Liddy turned and whispered into Hayley’s ear. “Is it wrong for me to be oddly attracted to Bruce in that gorilla suit?”
“I really don’t want to have that discussion with you, Liddy,” Hayley said before emphasizing, “ever.”
Bruce set the gorilla head down on a table. “Sorry I’m so late for the party. I’ve been at the hospital, waiting for Clara Beaumont to regain consciousness.”
“Is she going to be all right?” Hayley asked.
Bruce nodded. “Doctor said she’s in stable condition and should make a full recovery. They were worried she broke a hip from that nasty spill down the stairs, but thankfully that didn’t happen. She does have a fractured elbow and a couple of nasty bruises. She finally woke up about ten minutes ago.”
“Was she able to identify who broke into her house?” Sergio asked.
Bruce nodded again. “Lenny Bash.”
Hayley gasped. “I know Lenny! He used to work here as a busboy. He started when the previous owner, Chef Romeo, ran the place and stayed on a while after I took over before he quit.”
“Why did he quit?” Liddy asked.
“I’m not really sure. He never told me why; he just said he wanted to move on,” Hayley explained.
“Sounds like he wanted to move on to a life of crime!” Mona added.
“Mona’s right,” Bruce said. “Le
nny has had quite a few run-ins with the cops lately, built up quite a record. He’s been shoplifting and writing bad checks all over town.”
“So do you think Lenny has been the one breaking into all the houses lately?” Liddy asked.
“It’s starting to appear that way,” Bruce said. “Like I said, he’s been a regular in the Island Times ‘Police Beat’ section for some time now for his petty crimes. But he may have stepped up his game to burglary—and now, unfortunately, assault.”
“And he is still on the loose,” Dr. Reddy shuddered.
Bruce turned to Sergio. “Donnie has put out an APB. I saw him at the hospital, and he wanted me to assure you that he is on top of this and has everything under control. They’re going to find Lenny, so he wanted me to make sure you stay right here and enjoy yourself.”
Bruce finally noticed all the glum faces in the room.
“Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a party! You’re all acting as if somebody just died!”
Island Food & Cocktails by Hayley Powell
I recently ran into a classmate from my childhood, Sabrina Merryweather, at the town’s Fourth of July parade. Sabrina now lives in Arizona, but was back on the island for a two-week vacation to visit with her family. What strikes me about Sabrina now is how much she has changed in the ensuing years since high school—or, more specifically, how much her memory has changed. You see, Sabrina is always excited to see me and catch up whenever she wings her way back to Maine, and she stubbornly maintains that we were “the bestest of best friends” when we were teenagers.
This could not be further from the truth.
There is a lot of revisionist history going on in Sabrina’s brain. Case in point: the week of Halloween when we were juniors at Mount Desert Island High School. I remember it as if it was yesterday.
My two BFFs, Liddy and Mona, and myself had just sat down at a table in the school cafeteria to eat lunch. Everyone had been buzzing all day about a big, blow-out Halloween party that was supposedly happening that weekend. I found myself getting excited until I heard who was hosting the event—Sabrina Merryweather! Her parents were going to be out of town that weekend. My heart sank because I knew there was no way I would be receiving an invitation. Sabrina had made no secret about her intense dislike for me, for reasons I was never clear about. Mona thought she was jealous of me and was always trying to compete with me, but I had no ill will toward her at all. I just thought she didn’t like my personality. But whatever.
Sabrina waltzed into the cafeteria carrying a stack of envelopes, followed by her faithful posse of three girls, who tried to dress exactly the same as their beloved queen bee.
We watched Sabrina glide around the cafeteria, magnanimously bestowing her envelopes upon the lucky chosen few, deliberately sidestepping our table to make a point, although it was pretty obvious to everyone she was snubbing us.
When her stack dwindled down to just three envelopes, she circled back toward us, and for a moment, I thought we were dead wrong and were about to receive invites to the party. But then, true to form, Sabrina stopped right in front of us, handed me all three envelopes, and said with a cruel smile slapped on her face, “Could you hand those to Robert, Mike, and Tom behind you. I can’t reach them.”
I could feel my face reddening, but I was not about to give her the satisfaction of showing any emotion whatsoever. I simply shrugged and said, “Sure.”
As I handed the envelopes to Robert, Sabrina cooed, “I really hope you can come, Robert!”
We all knew Sabrina had a wild crush on Robert Shields. She had been chasing him around the whole semester, shamelessly plotting ways to get him to ask her out, but so far failing in her single-minded mission. I would not have been surprised if the whole Halloween party idea had been hatched just as a ploy to get him over to her house, albeit along with about thirty other kids from our class.
Having been shut out of Sabrina’s soirée, I suggested to Liddy and Mona that they come over to my house for a sleepover that weekend; we’d watch a bunch of scary movies on DVD and stuff ourselves with a ton of Halloween candy that my mother had bought. Liddy and Mona both thought that was a fabulous idea, but then Mike and Tom stood up behind us and came over and asked Liddy and Mona to be their dates for Sabrina’s party. I knew they would decline out of solidarity, so I found myself jumping into the conversation and accepting on their behalf because I knew they would have more fun at a party than watching my little brother, Randy, run crying from the room because he was so scared of Candyman on TV.
That’s when Robert, out of the blue, asked, “What about you, Hayley. Would you like to go together?”
You could have heard a pin drop.
Liddy had to reach over and gently close my mouth by raising my chin up with her hand. When I could not find my voice to answer Robert’s question, Mona finally groaned, “Yes, Robert; yes, she would!”
“Great,” he said with a laconic, sexy smile. “See you Saturday.”
I could hardly breathe, and I felt faint, but I managed to get through the rest of the lunch period without making an utter fool of myself.
Needless to say, I was overjoyed with excitement. But, to be honest, I was also a little nervous about how Sabrina might react when I showed up unexpectedly at her party, on the arm of the boy she currently was intensely obsessed with.
On the invitation, Sabrina requested that everyone come as their favorite movie dance couple because she detested the typical scary Halloween costumes with all the blood and gore, claiming she got nauseous at the sight of blood. Looking back on that now, I find it rather odd, since she ultimately became a prominent medical examiner and dissected people for a living.
Robert and I decided to go to the party as Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey (Johnny and Baby from Dirty Dancing).
Of course, when we arrived at Sabrina’s house a few days later, I should have known that about seventy-five percent of the partygoers would be dressed as Johnny and Baby, especially since the movie was still so popular, years after its release. Yes, there were a smattering of Dannys and Sandys from Grease, a Fred and Ginger from Top Hat (movie geeks who knew about those really old flicks on TCM), and a couple of white leisure suits paying tribute to John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever, but mostly there were just a whole lot of Johnnys and Babys pretty much everywhere you looked.
I spotted Sabrina as leather-clad bad girl Sandy from Grease and was relieved she hadn’t noticed me yet, but then Robert suddenly grabbed me by the hand and dragged me toward her. “Let’s say hi to Sabrina!”
Well, when our hostess turned around to see us approaching—hand in hand, mind you—let’s just say, if looks could kill, I would have been dead on the floor.
It only got worse from there.
Robert appeared oblivious to the simmering tension as Sabrina tried keeping a fake innocuous smile planted on her face, although she was slicing and dicing me with insanely furious eyes.
I had to get away. “You two chat. I’m going to go to the ladies’ room. Which way is it?”
Sabrina pointed down the hall and growled, “That way.”
I was off.
There was a line of girls waiting, but a girl from my English class who had come up behind me said there was another bathroom farther down, off the laundry room, so I walked to that one with no line and went inside. I was just finishing up, washing my hands, when someone jiggled the doorknob.
“Be right out!” I said.
“No, you won’t,” someone answered.
I heard a click. I tried turning the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Someone had locked the door from the outside. I kept jiggling the handle to no avail.
I suddenly heard Sabrina’s enraged voice.
“This is for stealing my boyfriend, and having the gall to show up at my house and throw it in my face!”
And then there was silence.
She was gone.
And I was stuck in the bathroom off the laundry room that very few people k
new about. I was trapped! My only hope was that Robert would eventually miss me and try to find me.
After about a half hour of pounding and yelling, I realized no one could hear me over all the music and noise. It was a tiny bathroom, and the heat was pumping through the vent. I was starting to sweat, and so I unbuttoned my blouse a couple of buttons, trying to stay cool. I could see in the mirror that my hair was a fright because I kept running my hands through it nervously, trying to come up with some kind of plan to escape.
Finally, like a miracle, I heard a click, and the door flew open. I was hoping it was Robert coming to my rescue, but actually it turned out to be Zach Rivers, one of the hulking high school football players, staring down at me. I tried to explain what had happened, but he didn’t seem all that interested, so I gave up and just followed him back down the hall toward the living room.
The party was in full swing as we walked in, and then, quite unexpectedly, Zach put his arm around me and pulled me close to him.
Well, that almost brought the whole room to a sudden standstill.
Hayley and Zach?
I noticed Robert had a disappointed look on his face.
Right next to him Sabrina was beaming, triumphant.
And that’s when I knew I had been set up.
I learned later that, after Sabrina locked me in the bathroom, she enlisted Zach’s help to execute her evil plan. She found Robert, who had been looking all over for me, and out of the kindness of her cold heart, she told him that she had seen Zach and me leaving together, but that she had no idea where we had gone, heavily suggesting we had snuck away to go somewhere and fool around!
She went on to add that she had heard this was not the first time I had done something as horrendous as ditching one boy for another, but not to worry because she was there to help him through his heartbreak, and thank God he found out in time what kind of person I really was!
My tousled hair, open blouse, and sweaty face only bolstered her ridiculous fake story. But, sadly, Robert bought it. And he didn’t speak to me again. In fact, he and Sabrina started dating the following Monday.
Small consolation: Two months later, a hot Swedish foreign exchange student, Helga, arrived at school, and a smitten Robert dumped Sabrina to be with her, and he didn’t bother to tell Sabrina. So I believe, in the end, there is such a thing as karma!