by Cindy Brown
The buzz of conversation in the dim room died as soon as I entered. Just as I figured it would. The bushy-mustachioed bartender cleared his throat. “What can we do for you, Sister?”
The nun costume seemed like the perfect disguise. Not only would people be more truthful when speaking with a nun (I hoped), but the veil, wimple, and thick glasses disguised me enough that no one would recognize me if they saw me later at Gold Bug. Couldn’t have anyone telling folks I’d been asking around about Mongo.
I smoothed down my skirt. I’d used the nun ruse once before and had made the mistake of wearing a full habit (most nuns don’t do that anymore), so I was proud of my choice of the serviceable but dull skirt and blouse. But you know what they say about pride.
“Yes,” I said to the barman. “I’d like to—oh dear!” I found myself upside down, tangled with a vinyl-topped stool on the sticky bar floor. Too bad I hadn’t considered the dangers of Coke bottle glasses.
A guy in a ball cap helped me up. I hoped no one had seen my red lace panties. Didn’t seem very nun-like. I steadied myself against a long raised shuffleboard table in the center of the room. “Thank you so much,” I said. “It’s the dim light, you know. It always takes my eyes a while to adjust. It’s the same when I step into our chapel.”
“No windows in your chapel?” said another shuffleboard player, whose shirt sported two red vertical lines on either side of his barrel chest. “Not even stained glass?”
Why, oh why, couldn’t I leave well enough alone? “Our chapel is…underground. Like a grotto. So much cooler, you know.” Were they buying it? I wished I could see their faces. I pulled myself up to my full five-foot-four height and tried to look serious. “I’m a friend of Michael Carver. I was hoping to speak to his widow.”
“You mean Mongo?” said the guy with the shirt and red lines, which I now suspected were suspenders. “He wasn’t married.”
“And the Carvers aren’t Catholic,” said the fuzzy outline of another man. He made a thock noise that was either setting down his beer or some sort of shuffleboard move.
“Oh dear,” I said. “It seems Michael may have not been truthful with me. Or with you.”
“What do you mean?” said the guy in the ball cap.
“He told me he was married to Billie, who I believe works here?” I knew she did, and I knew she wasn’t working that day (I had Uncle Bob call earlier).
“They were as good as married.” The bartender wiped a rag or a sponge or his sleeve across the bar top. “Been together for dog’s years. Right nice of you to come see her.” Ah ha. Answer number one: Mongo and Billie were well known as a couple. “But she’s not here today. I mean, he just died yesterday.”
“Oh, of course, how stupid of me. A few of us came into town to get some groceries, and I just thought…please convey my condolences to her.” I waited, hoping someone would remembered that I’d said…
“You said he lied to us too?” said a voice from the vicinity of the shuffleboard table.
Bingo. “Mongo never told any of you about his spiritual conversion?”
“Never knew Mongo to be religious,” said a low smoky voice I hadn’t heard before.
“He recently had a spiritual experience,” I said, “that led him to our community. He’d been on several retreats with us.”
“Where’s that?” asked the shuffleboard voice. “Your community?”
“Near Tonopah.” At least that’s what my Google search said. I hoped that no one had been there. Or that the convent really did have an underground chapel.
“So that’s where he went all those times he took off,” said the bartender. Answer number two: No one really knew where Mongo went when he disappeared.
“On an underground chapel retreat?” said Suspenders.
“We used to go underground and pray when we were kids,” said Smoky. “Don’t you remember?”
“No,” Suspender said.
“Called ’em bomb shelter drills.”
I let the guys have their laugh, then said, “I believe Mongo had an…argument, or a misunderstanding, with a friend that preceded some sort of epiphany and led him to seek a more spiritual path.”
Silence.
Wickenburg being a small town, I figured that people would know each other’s business. And that Mongo had argued with someone sometime. Was I wrong?
“You know,” Suspenders said slowly. “He was worried about backing out of that business deal.”
“Business deal?” I said.
“It was business, but he also said something about not wanting to crap in his own nest. That sounds like it mighta been a friend.”
“I thought that ‘crap in your nest’ saying was about someone you were dating,” said Ball Cap. “Like Billie.”
“He did seem kinda upset about it. Unusual for Mongo,” said the bartender.
Ah. Answer number three: Mongo was worried about a business deal with someone he knew.
“Hey,” said the fuzzy outline by the shuffleboard table, “You don’t think what happened out at Gold Bug had anything to do with—”
He was cut short by a slice of sunlight that swept that across the room from the open-and-shut door. “Hey, fellas,” said the newcomer, who either wore a cowboy hat or had a very strangely shaped head. “What’s the news—oh.” His eyes must have adjusted enough to see me. “Hiya, Sister.”
“She’s here about what happened at Gold Bug,” said Ball Cap.
“Terrible thing,” the newcomer said. “Though anyone coulda seen it comin’.”
“Really?” I said, at the same time as the bartender said, “Now, Earl…”
“Everyone knows he’s got a hell of a temper. Just simmering beneath the surface, like a pot about to boil over.”
“Earl,” the bartender said again, “Just ’cause you had a beef with him…”
Ah. Could this Earl be the suspect I was looking for?
“And his temper got way better,” said Ball Cap. “He changed. We all could see that.”
“Part of his spiritual conversion, perhaps?” I said.
The cowboy snorted. “Yeah, he’d have you believe he went all Buddhist and shit.”
Uh-oh. Maybe I made the wrong costume choice. “Michael never said anything about Buddhism.”
“Michael? Oh, Mongo. Sorry, Sister.” The man tipped his hat in apology. “I thought we were talkin’ about Josh Tate.”
Chapter 8
“Buddhist or not, perhaps I should ask this Mr. Tate if he’d like to attend one of our retreats.” I wanted to ask him a lot more than that. “Thank you very much, gentlemen. And please convey my condolences to Mrs. Carver—Billie.” I headed toward the door.
“Will do,” said the bartender.
“Before you go, though, I got one question for you, Sister,” said Suspenders.
“Yes?” I hoped it wasn’t something about nun-ness. I hadn’t had time to Google that.
“Do all nuns wear sexy underpants?”
I beat feet out of the bar while the guys were still yukking it up, hoping they would think I was just a naughty nun and not a spy.
By the time I reached Sunnydale, city lights were flickering against a deep purple sky. I dropped off the nun costume at Arnie and Marge’s house, but I didn’t stay. I needed to get home to work on the songs and scenes for my callback the next day.
I drove out the side entrance to Sunnydale and turned onto a road that skirted a patch of desert, undeveloped because it was a floodplain. Not as unusual as you’d think for southern Arizona, where most rivers were dry until the rains came. The open landscape let the night sky take stage, showing off a bounty of stars even through the glow of city lights. Since I was stargazing, I nearly missed the movement in front of my headlights.
“Shit!” I stomped on the brakes so fast I banged my split lip against the steering w
heel. By the time I reoriented myself, the last of the Chihuahuas was slipping into the desert. “Lassie!” I yelled out the window. “Lassie!”
I jumped out of the truck and ran to the side of the road. “Lassie!” I could have sworn I heard a little pug snort, but I couldn’t see the dogs in the dark. I turned back to my truck and there they were.
Two coyotes, noses to the ground, silently following the trail of the Chihuahuas.
“Shoo!” I ran at the coyotes, waving my arms and looking as scary as I could. They turned their heads just a fraction, looking at me as if I were an interesting piece of garbage blowing in the wind, then loped into the desert after the dogs.
“Lassie!” I ran after them, the gravelly dirt crunching beneath my feet. Sensing a chase, the coyotes ran faster, but I could still see them—and caught a glimpse of movement ahead of them too. The Chihuahuas. I upped my speed, keeping everyone firmly in sight, which is why I didn’t see the cactus until it was right in front of me. “Eeeyahhh!” I twisted away so I wouldn’t fall face first into the fiendish barbed thing. My maneuver worked. I sat in it instead.
The coyotes yipped like they were laughing and ran out of sight.
I picked myself up gingerly. The cactus I’d landed on was a cholla, which propagates itself by breaking off in pieces, falling to the ground, and re-rooting in its new spot. Everyone called this kind “jumping cholla” because the pieces seemed to leap onto you and thrust their sharp spines into your skin. Of course this cactus didn’t need to jump at me. I just sat in it.
The cactus spines were wicked enough to penetrate my jeans, so the ones that poked through my t-shirt pierced even deeper, lodging themselves into my back like so many acupuncture needles. I picked a piece of cholla off the bottom of my jeans. It stuck to my fingers. And I mean stuck, a tiny barb working its way into the flesh of my thumb like it had been inserted with a hypodermic needle. I got the dang thing off me and dropped it on the ground, where it would spawn more devil plants. Oh well, I had bigger things to worry about. Like how to drive home when my entire backside was covered in cactus.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed. “Marge? I’m so glad you’re still awake. Could you please meet me outside Sunnydale’s east entrance?…Great. Oh, and bring a flashlight. And some pliers.”
Chapter 9
“You’ve been watchin’ too much TV,” Uncle Bob said as I walked gingerly into the office the next morning. “Most of us real PIs don’t get beat up on a regular basis.”
“Guess I’m just lucky.” I sat down carefully in my chair, still feeling every puncture wound from the cactus spines.
“How’d you incur the damages?”
“I was attacked by a jumping cholla. Had bits of it all over my backside.”
“Don’t lean back,” he said, as I, yep, leaned back. I bolted upright. He jumped out of his chair (he was surprisingly light on his feet for a heavy guy) and walked over to my “desk,” a wooden TV tray in front of the window, nearly blinding me with a hot pink Hawaiian shirt with dancing flamingos. “Let me see.” I obliged him by pulling up the back of my t-shirt. I decided not to tell him about the ones stuck to my behind. We were close, but not that close.
Uncle Bob tutted as he examined my back. “Might be too late, but…you got your duck tape with you?”
“Sure.” I always carried a roll. Duck tape was so named because it kept WWII soldiers’ ammo dry (like water off a duck’s back), but I’d found it handy for everything from repairing my car to making temporary handcuffs. I dug it out of my bag and handed it to my Uncle Bob, who tore off a piece with a rrrriiip. I loved that sound. It was the sound of things being fixed.
“The problem with cholla—and prickly pear—is that they have what they call glochid spines.” My uncle knew everything, maybe because he was a trivia buff. Or maybe because he was brilliant, in his low-key kind of way. “These type of cactus spines come in multiples, usually hundreds of spines in each entry point. How’d you do this?”
I gave him the short version of the Lassie/Chihuahua/coyote story.
“You say Marge used pliers?”
“Needle-nose ones.” I felt the cool stickiness of duck tape on my back. “By flashlight.”
“Nice try, but…it looks like a bunch of the spines have worked their way into your back.”
The piece of tape sucked at my back as he pulled it off. Uncle Bob looked at his handiwork. “Yeah. We can get a few more off this way.”
“Duck tape is magic. Probably could have used it to butterfly my split lip.”
Uncle Bob leaned around to look at my face. “That’s looking better.”
“Good. I’ve got that callback tonight. Hoping to go for the ‘just been kissed’ look as opposed to the ‘just been smacked in the face’ one.”
Uncle Bob worked on my back, and I told him about my trip to The Thirsty Vulture.
“A nun?” he said. “Bold choice, but I guess it worked.” He patted my back. “Think that’s all I can do for your back.”
I pulled down my t-shirt. “Before you get back to work, could you sit in on a short call to Arnie?”
Uncle Bob squinted at the clock on the office wall. “If we can do it right now.” He came over to stand near me. I put the office landline on speakerphone and rang Arnie. “Ivy and Bob here,” I said. “Checking in about that undercover idea you had.”
“Yeah,” said Arnie. “We’re all set. There’s a small theater in Gold Bug Gulch, the Arnold Opera House. I’ll hire you to act in our melodrama. I already told Nathan and asked Billie and Chance to be in the show too. Chance is really happy, since the police called off all gunfights until the investigation is finished.”
“That means he’s not carrying a gun, right?”
“Yeah. We’ll use a prop gun for the melodrama.”
I’d make sure of that. “When can I start?”
“Rehearsals begin tomorrow. We’ll open on Saturday.”
“Saturday?” I squeaked. “As in this Saturday?”
“It’s just a one-act. You can do it. You’re a pro, after all.”
Right. I was. “Okay. Sure. But…” I couldn’t put my finger on what wasn’t right.
“How’s she going to investigate the rest of the town offstage?” said Uncle Bob. “You’ve got a bunch of people and buildings out there, don’t you?”
Yep, that was it.
“Oh…” I could almost hear Arnie’s gears turning. “Yeah…what if…what if we…trained Ivy to be a history guide too?” He picked up speed. “We could offer walking history tours. She’d have to know everything and everyone. I’ll see what I can do.”
Uncle Bob looked at me and I nodded. “That’d work. And Arnie,” I said gently, “are you sure Nathan is…Are you sure he’s your son?”
“Well, the story he told me makes sense. I was going with his mom, Gabby DiRienzi, for about a year back in the day. She was a dancer, a chorus girl, from Philly but trying to make it in New York theater.”
“She never told you that you were a father?” I asked.
“We had kind of a messy breakup. She was foolin’ around with a guy named Tony. Maybe that’s why she never contacted me.”
Or maybe it’s because Tony was the father, I thought.
“Have you done a paternity test?” asked Uncle Bob.
“Nah. I mean, Ivy, he looks like me, right?”
“Kind of.”
“And besides, he’s got entrepreneurship running through his veins. Just like me.”
Flimsy evidence, but I could tell he wanted to believe it, so I let it be. For right then, anyway.
“Okay. Olive, you got any other questions?”
“How long do you think this will take?” I knew it was a stupid question as soon as it left my lips. Of course you never could tell with an investigation. It took as long as it took. But Arnie mentioning the
ater had got me thinking about my acting career and…“I might have an acting job starting in a month.” Once you started a stupid question, I believed you needed to go through with it. Commitment made it sound less stupid. I thought.
I didn’t look at Uncle Bob as I waited for Arnie’s answer. I was pretty sure my uncle would not look pleased.
“Let’s start with a month and see what we get,” Arnie said.
I hung up soon afterward and immediately said, “So we do a paternity test, right?” Not only did it seem like a smart idea, I didn’t want Uncle Bob haranguing me about my dumb actor question.
“Didn’t sound like Arnie was up for it.” Uncle Bob walked back over to his desk. “But we can do one without his knowledge, as long as we don’t want to use it in court.”
“Okay. What do I need to do?”
“Get DNA samples from both him and Nathan. Gum works pretty well.”
“Arnie’s not a gum chewer. Don’t know about Nathan.”
“We can also send in dried blood, nail clippings, Kleenexes they’ve blown their noses on, and Q-tips with ear wax on them.”
“Eww.”
“No one ever said bein’ a PI was pretty.”
Chapter 10
“Wow.” Matt tried to look serious, but a smile tugged at the sides of his mouth. “Do I even want to know?”
Dang. I’d hoped to finish my little operation before Matt arrived at my apartment for dinner. Instead I sat on a kitchen chair, naked from the waist down. Oh yeah, and I was sitting on several strips of duck tape.
“If that’s a fly trap, I really don’t want to know.”
I swiped at him, but missed since my butt was sort of stuck to the chair. “I’m trying to get leftover cholla needles out of my ass.” I arranged my tunic top so I was mostly decent from the front. “Just give me a few more minutes.”
“Nah.” Matt knelt down next to me. “This is the best problem I’ve had to solve all day. Stand up.”