"We are not engaged," I said.
"It's not official," Mom said.
I glared at her, but Jeb had already gone back to reading his paper.
"See you later, Jeb," Mom said as she headed down the Main Street. Wenling and I followed her. She was walking pretty fast.
"What's the rush?" I asked her.
"We need to catch the next bus back to the parking lot," Mom said.
"Where are we going?" Wenling asked.
"To talk to Al," Mom said.
The bus was already at the stop. Mom waved for it to wait as the three of us dashed down Main Street. When we stepped onto the bus, we found we were the only ones on it.
"I waited for you," the driver said. "I only had one girl eating Chinese food on the last ride, and now you three for the last two hours."
"Maybe the smell—"
Mom interrupted Wenling. "We're not in the tank now."
"Oh, okay," Wenling said and took her seat.
I glanced at the driver to see if he caught the start of Wenling's insult, but he seemed to not notice. "Thanks for waiting," I said and then joined Mom and Wenling in the front seat.
We were in the catering van within a few minutes. Wenling was so eager to get the gossip from Al that she didn't even bother fighting Mom for the window seat. Typically, the two of them would argue over who would have to sit on the "hump."
Mom directed me to Al's house. Typically when somebody bought a house in our town, everyone would visit them like an old-school welcome wagon. In that way, we all knew where everyone lived, and it was one of those touches that made our community more close-knit than others.
My mind drifted, and I thought about the possibility of DC buying a house here in Fletcher Canyon. Would the welcome wagon come visit him? And why did he want a four-bedroom?
Technically, I'm still young enough to have children, but a part of me had never even thought about it while I was married to Robert. I realized about two years into our relationship that he'd be a horrible father, so I hadn't even allowed myself to think about having children.
"What are you smiling about?" Mom asked.
"I like the weather in the fall," I heard myself say. The truth was I had just in that second thought about how much I liked when summer turned to fall. And I'd been reminded why: I loved going back to school, and I'd imagined myself shopping for school supplies.
Did that mean I wanted kids or that I still loved school supplies?
"Park on the street," Mom said, pointing to his house.
"Good idea," I said. His house was at the top of a hill which I assumed made for a pleasant view, but also gave him the Mount Everest of driveways.
The three of us took the stairs up to Al's front door.
For such a steep incline on the drive, the stairs were well designed. They were well spaced with a firm railing that allowed us to go gently up the hill without feeling like we would fall. The only catch was that there were a lot of steps.
"I'm going to commit murder if it turns out he's not home," Wenling said. "I'm chafing."
"We should have stopped to change out of our swimming suits," Mom said.
Wenling stopped, her eyes wide. "I'd forgotten we were wearing them." She turned to me. "Why didn't you remind us?"
"I forgot," I said.
"You're looking right at us," she said.
"You two were looking at each other, too."
"We were distracted by the case," Wenling said, resuming her climb behind Mom.
"I was distracted, too," I said, which was true. Except I suspected I'd been distracted by a certain police detective's real estate choices.
"We finally reached Al's front porch. Mom beelined it to the door and rang the bell.
Wenling made herself at home on the bench by Al's front window. "It was like a journey getting up here,"
"I feel like we're supposed to throw a ring in a volcano," I said, going to meet Mom at the door.
Wenling laughed and then said, "What ring?"
"Like in the book the Lord of the Rings," I explained.
"Is that the one that Jennifer read where all the boys fought with each other on the island? Was there a mountain on the island?"
"No, that's Lord of the Flies," I said.
"I don't know either one," Mom said, ringing the bell again.
We waited some more. I began to think that maybe Al wasn't home, but then Wenling said, "I hear shuffling inside."
"We can hear you in there!" Mom called out as she knocked on the front door instead of ringing the bell.
Wenling got up, went behind the bench, and stuck her head between the open window and the screen. "I can see you there," she said with her hands cupped around her eyes as she stared through the screen. "You're hiding behind the couch! I see your foot."
Mom joined Wenling at the window. "Al, we're not going to leave," she said.
"Go away!" he yelled back.
"It took too much work to climb your stairs," Wenling said.
Mom stepped away from the window and walked back to the front door. I thought she was going to ring the doorbell again, but instead she turned the doorknob.
"You better not be naked, because we're coming in," Mom said, and then opened the door.
"How did you know it was going to be unlocked?" I asked Mom under my breath.
"Nobody locks their doors in Fletcher Canyon," she said.
"We do," I said, "and Wenling does, too."
"We're smarter," Wenling said as we all let ourselves in to Al's house.
Al stood up from behind his couch and stared at us with an incredulous look on his face. "I could shoot you guys for home invasion," he said.
"Then you'd be on the hook for four murders," Wenling said.
"I'm not a murderer," Al said.
"We've come to help you," Mom said.
"By barging in unannounced? This is the height of incivility!" Al said.
Mom laughed. "You're so dramatic!"
Wenling was offended. "You're taller with incivility!"
"What?" Al asked, confused.
"We're guests in your home, and you haven't even offered us anything," Wenling said.
"Oh. Would you guys like something to drink?" he asked.
"What do you have?" Wenling asked, smiling.
Al led the way to the dining room just off the kitchen area. "Coffee? Soda? Water?"
"Coffee," Wenling said.
"Do you have diet soda?" I asked. He nodded yes.
"I'll have coffee, too," Mom said.
"Oh," he said. "Feel free to take off your shoes if you'll feel more comfortable," Al said. "I learned in some cultures they don't wear shoes in the house."
"Only at my house," Wenling said. "At other people's houses, if they don't care if my dirty outdoor shoes come inside, I don't care."
"Interesting," Al said, using his eager-to-learn-about-cultural-differences face. He turned to Mom.
"My kids are American," Mom said. "I had to give up on that."
Al nodded.
I felt a bit embarrassed by Mom's answer, and kind of grossed out about wearing street shoes inside now that I thought about it. Dogs pee all over the streets. Why wouldn't I want to leave my shoes at the door?
"I was going to have a ham sandwich," Al said. "Do you guys want one?"
I worried we were imposing, but then I saw him reach into his refrigerator and pull out a twelve-inch tall package of ham.
"I order extra at the diner and bring some home," he said.
"The stuff that's close to spoiling," Wenling said.
"It's not bad," Al explained. "You have to be careful at the restaurant. Health inspectors. Regulations."
"I know," Wenling said. "They're so crazy here in the States with expiration dates."
Mom agreed. I remained on the fence but still wanted the sandwich.
"Rancho chili mayo?" he asked, pulling out another giant container.
"I'll take extra," I said. I figured if the ham tasted a little o
ff the spicy mayo would hide any weirdness.
But I wondered if the mayo was close to expiring as well. I tried to recall how long condiments stayed good for.
Images of refrigerators past flashed in my mind. Bachelor friends' old soy sauces. Ketchup in our Hollywood apartment. That mustard on the door-side rack of DC's fridge. It even had that mini mustard volcano solidified around the tip. That couldn't be a good sign.
"I like lettuce and tomato on mine," he said, pulling two large bags out of the fridge—one looked like a giant Ziploc and the other like an oversized salad bag.
"You buy your produce pre-sliced?" Wenling asked. "Have your staff buy fresh and then slice it. Better quality and cheaper."
"I've only got two workers in my kitchen, and one is me," he said. "I can't afford the labor costs."
"You should have had kids. You can make them work for free," Wenling said, and then mumbled, "but then they take over your business when they grow up."
Mom and Al didn't notice Wenling's last comment, but I had.
Mom stepped into Al's kitchen and began making coffee, and Wenling decided to grab some plates from a cupboard.
"The soda's in the fridge," Al said once he realized his kitchen was being taken over.
I got myself my drink and the three of us were lunching in the dining room in no time.
"This sandwich is good," Wenling said. It was unusual for Wenling to compliment Al's food.
"Thanks," Al said.
"Did you kill Wayne Boggs?" she asked.
"No."
"Okay," she said, and then took a sip of her coffee. "But did you really kill him? Because we have a plan if you killed him, and a plan if you didn't."
"What's the plan if I killed him?" Al asked.
"So you're the killer?" Wenling asked, excited.
"No," Mom said. "He's just curious."
Wenling's cell phone rang. I knew it was her cell phone because her ringtone was the Rockford Files theme song.
"You have my phone, remember?" she said.
I'd forgotten I had all of our phones. I dug into my pockets, put all the phones onto the table, and Wenling grabbed hers. It was a relief to empty my pockets. I hadn't realized how those three phones had been jabbing into my leg.
"Who was it?" Mom asked as Wenling stepped away from the table.
"Jennifer," I said. I'd seen the caller ID.
"Did you see the paper?" Al said. "They called me the Mayor of Murder Town."
"It beats being called a Killer Bee," I said, remembering my own experience with unflattering newspaper stories.
"They mentioned that in the article," he said.
"Figures," I said.
"Where were you when Christy found Wayne Boggs in your office?" Mom asked.
"I don't know," Al said. "I don't even know what time he was found. Can you remember?"
"Yes," Mom said. "She has a great memory for bad things. Good things she forgets."
Al paused for a moment. "That's sounds kind of sad."
"It's fine," Mom assured him.
But I felt like Al had a point. My brain locking in on anything I found traumatizing with such minute detail was kind of a bummer even if it did come in handy when we solved cases. Oh well. What time did I find the body? I closed my eyes and pictured that morning.
"When are we going to be back at the Lucky Dragon?" Wenling interrupted.
"She's doing the weird memory thing to figure out what time the body was found," Mom said.
"Oh," Wenling said. "It was around 8:25 in the morning. I checked my watch when we started setting up the booth to see how much time we had before the dunk tank opened."
Al and Mom turned to me to see if that was true.
I closed my eyes, and my mind conjured up an image of my cell phone when I called 911. It had been 8:31, followed by a flash of the old-school wall clock above Al's desk. It read 8:29.
"She's right," I said.
Wenling continued. "Jerri and the other ladies from the San Fernando Mystery Readers heard about the murder. They're at the restaurant."
"Tell them to have lunch, and we'll be back soon," Mom said.
"Did you hear that?" Wenling asked. I can only assume Jennifer hadn't because Wenling said something in Mandarin and wrapped up her call.
Wenling sat down as if there'd been no interruption.
"So where were you around 8:25 in the morning?" Mom asked.
"I believe I was riding the trolley bus back from the parking lot. Somebody said there was glass broken in one of the spots, and I went over there to sweep it up," he said. "Turns out it was hard plastic and not glass, but I still swept it up."
"You still could've killed him before that," Wenling said.
"But I'd been in the kitchen earlier that morning, and I got the broom from inside my office before I went to sweep the parking lot. There was no dead body in there," he said.
"Interesting," Mom said. "So how do you think the body got in there?"
"The same way she got in there," Al said, pointing to me. "I don't keep the diner locked when it's open. He could've walked in with someone who killed him and left him there."
"But when I went into the diner," I said, "I saw Sheila waiting on tables. She would've seen two people come in."
"Unless maybe they sneaked in with a delivery or something," Wenling said.
"No deliveries. The street was closed," Al said. "But they could've come through the back. I open it every morning to have my one cigarette and leave it open if anyone needs to get to the dumpster out back. I don't lock it until we leave at night."
"That's the door that's off the alley right next to the parking for the diner, right?" Mom asked.
Al nodded.
"Your parking lot had some fair booths in it, didn't it?" she asked.
"They had the hoop toss back there, and the pretzel stand. The dunk tank and your booths were just on the edge of our lot. Closer to the street."
"I could smell those pretzels while we were in the dunk tank," Wenling said. "I should've gotten one when I had the chance."
"Shoot. We should've talked to the workers before we left even if they were busy packing up," Mom said. She paused to think. She turned to Wenling. "You said the mystery readers were at the restaurant, right?"
Mom motioned for her phone. I handed it to her.
"I have ten notifications. Why didn't you tell me?" Mom asked me.
"I didn't hear the bell," I said.
"I had it on vibrate. You didn't feel it?"
I did feel it. "I thought my leg was cramping when we were climbing the stairs."
Mom typed a message. "We've got to get back to Main Street to see if we can catch those vendors and find out if one of them saw something that morning." We all got up. Al followed us to the door.
"That's if they'll tell you," he said.
"You think they're hiding something?" Mom asked.
"Wayne was ripping them off on their commissions. Maybe one of them decided to off him, and there was that wife of his with the bad temper and the weird partner. Wayne Boggs wasn't well liked." Al quieted as he thought about that last line. "I guess I'm not well liked either."
Mom, Wenling, and I traded looks.
"The town was just talking about how even if you killed that guy, we'd still keep you on as mayor," Wenling said.
"Really?" Al asked.
"Yup," Mom confirmed. "They were talking about how maybe we'd go to visit you in jail for the meetings." Okay, she bent the truth a little.
Al smiled, his eyes teary. "You guys have to clear me so I can make it up to everyone. Me and my temper. I'll take more diversity classes and go back to that anger management lady."
"What anger management lady?" Wenling asked.
"Forget about that," Al said. "Just know I'll be a better man."
It seemed as if the death of Wayne Boggs had a sort of "Ghost of Christmas Future" effect on Al. As he said goodbye and thanked us, I imagined Sheila was going to get a raise soon.
When we got to the bottom of the steps, Mom's phone buzzed. She held up her finger as she looked at her phone.
"They're rushing over to the diner parking lot to see if someone is still there," Mom said. "I told them to stall."
We rushed to the van, and I did my version of stepping on it—I went almost seven miles over the speed limit.
Pretzels and Proposals
I drove back to the adjunct lot on Gently, but Mom stopped me.
"We don't have time. Go straight to Main Street," she said.
I hesitated. "It's closed."
"It might be open since the fair is over," Mom said.
I still wasn't sure.
"I think I remember Jennifer telling me that it was open," Wenling said.
I sped toward Main Street, and when I got there the right side of the street was blocked off by the town's only striped barricade and several orange cones. The street was closed. I should've known Wenling was exaggerating.
"Ram it!" Wenling said.
"What?" I asked.
"Ram through the barricade," she said. "This is an emergency.
"Just go around," Mom said, pointing to the open left lane. "They have it open on the other side to move out the carnival stuff. We'll park behind the Lucky Dragon. No one will care."
"We don't have time to park," Wenling said.
I maneuvered around the cones and onto Main Street. It was only a block before we reached the Lucky Dragon. No one stopped us. I don't know what I thought would happen, but I was surprised at the lack of consequences.
"Stop here," Mom said when I got to where I needed to turn to get to the parking behind the restaurant. "We'll get out here, so if the pretzel or ring toss people try to leave we can stop them. You park the van and meet us.
Mom and Wenling hopped out and ran down Main Street in their matching swimsuits. I headed down the alley, parked, and walked down Main Street. I could see Mom and Wenling were almost at the diner.
I hurried but didn't run. I noticed a lot of the smaller booths had already been cleared.
There was a huge truck at the foot of the mountain for the Ferris wheel. I hoped they wouldn't knock out another power line on the way out. Whatever they were doing to disassemble that Ferris wheel was darn noisy.
When I got to the end of Main Street, I found the Fletcher Diner was still taped off, but its lot was still open just like it had been earlier. Sure enough, the pretzel guy was still there, and surrounded by half a dozen ladies.
Marshmallows and Murder Page 6