Sweet Mary

by Liz Balmaseda

  “Hi there, I’m Angela. I’m a Realtor,” I said, handing her one of the cards and trying to give her the impression I did not recognize her. “I’ve got some clients in the area who are interested—”

  The door slammed shut in my face. A few seconds later, it reopened, no longer tethered by the chain. Framed in the doorway stood Bad Mary, wearing a bizarre little apron that appeared to have been crafted while its maker was drunk. It bore the likeness of a bird—some kind of bird—and it seemed abruptly cut off by a slanted, ball-fringe hem. She dragged on a cigarette.

  “Hey. It’s you,” I said, seemingly taken aback. “What a huge coincidence.”

  “You’re a Realtor?” she said, flicking her cigarette ashes on the threshold, then sweeping them outside with her terry cloth slipper.

  “Yeah. I work a lot in this neighborhood, too,” I said, eyes bright.

  “But my house isn’t for sale,” she said, resting a hand on her hip.

  “I know. But I’ve got buyers champing at the bit for this particular model,” I said, following my script perfectly so far. “So I decided to stop by on the off chance the owner might consider an above-appraisal bid.”

  “Can I ask what are they bidding?” she said, taking another drag.

  “Two million seven. For a smaller house,” I said, quoting a figure I decided might grab her attention.

  “What would this house go for?” she said, indeed piqued by the number.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’d have to see it.”

  Without another thought, she flung open the door to Sofia Villanueva’s residence.

  “Come on in,” she said. She sounded notably underwhelmed. “What a strange surprise, no?”

  “Very,” I said with a chirp in my voice. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name at the spa today.”

  “Sofia,” she said abruptly, as if she had rehearsed it and feared forgetting it.

  As the guitar music ebbed and flowed, she led me through the marbled foyer beneath a series of elliptical archways that connected the living room, a wood-paneled family room, and a small office. To say the decor in these rooms was bland would be an understatement. It was worse than your average suburban bland—it was a vile imitation of it. Lots of earth-toned sofa pillows and pea-colored throws. Leather-bound tomes—surely unread—were stacked on the occasional tables next to bouquets of silk flowers in that clear resin base otherwise known as “faux water.”

  There were no personal photographs or family mementos. But there was a medium-sized room that served as her crafting quarters. There, spread across two adjoining banquet-hall-type tables, were the contents of all those boxes I had seen in the warehouse. I was sure of it. There were bundles of synthetic flowers, boxes of glitter, bins filled with stringing beads, macramé projects in progress, and baskets brimming with ribbons of morose shades.

  The room was a craft addict’s dream, but there was one glaring omission: the scrapbooking supplies.

  Even a noncrafting woman like me knows every craft addict spirals into a scrapbook-making binge every once in a while. Why would Bad Mary be any different? That’s a rhetorical question, I guess. After all, what on earth would “Sofia Villanueva of The Retreat at Malabar” put in a scrapbook about her life? Her “Wanted by the DEA” mug shots? Some spent casings from her Colt .45? A couple of surplus zip bags of cocaine? Would she decorate the pages with craft store stickers or cartoon speech bubbles containing quippy expressions, like “LOL, Suckers,” or “The Godfather’s Little Angel,” or “Caution…Drug Queen On Board”?

  So, yes, it was a rhetorical question. But I had to go there anyway, if only to get her to talk about herself.

  “Do you scrapbook?” I asked her.

  “No,” she quickly said. She inspected an unfinished macramé hammock, an ambitious project that might take the average hobbyist a good two weeks to complete, and set it aside for later. “I don’t have the patience.”

  “I can relate to that,” I said. “Are the bathrooms this way?”

  “I’ll show you,” she said, directing me down the hall into the rest of the house.

  Moments later, I was standing in her lemon yellow guest bathroom, surveying the grape-toned sink accessories. I ran my hand along the stiff lace border of her eggplant-colored guest towels, and I concluded they were too prickly to be functional. Besides, they were ugly as hell.

  “These are lovely,” I said, quietly noticing the slipshod finish on the towels. “Did you make them?”

  “I did,” she said, momentarily beaming.

  But our chat was disrupted by the slam of the front door, then a rumble of footsteps through the house. Bad Mary must have been expecting company, because she didn’t seem too alarmed at the ruckus.

  “Flaco!” she called out. “Don’t touch anything in the kitchen!”

  “What?” a man’s voice hollered back from the other side of the house. “What did you say?”

  “Moron,” she mumbled to herself.

  “You have company,” I said.

  “No. He’s not staying,” she said, straightening the towels on the rack. “Why don’t you take a look at the Roman tub and the sauna over here? I’ll be right back.”

  But as soon as Bad Mary found El Flaco in the kitchen, all hell broke loose. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it sounded like they were wrangling pretty good. And, more importantly for my purposes, it sounded like the brawl could go on for quite some time, carving out a precious window of opportunity for me. I snuck out of the bathroom and into the master bedroom. It was decorated in that severe Old World style, featuring a massive four-poster bed, ornate furnishings with carved scroll motifs, brocade bedding, and pillows in saturated tones. A deep green velvet-lined, Chippendale-style chair anchored one corner, adorned with an embroidered pillow of some sort. I searched the dresser and nightstands as quickly and efficiently as I could, digging through drawers filled with brand-new socks and lingerie, T-shirts in every neutral, and workout clothes that seemed to be untouched. In fact, many of the clothes still had price tags attached to them. In the walk-in closet I found a similar pattern, unworn blouses and pantsuits hung in no particular order. There were Jackie O sunglasses and Sophia Loren hats, silk scarves like the ones worn by Princess Caroline of Monaco, and smart, strapless dresses like those modeled by Isabel Preysler, Julio Iglesias’s ex-wife, on the pages of ¡Hola! magazine.

  I found no drugs, no weapons, no trashy dresses, no vestige of a life lived as a drug queen. It was as if Maria Portilla, La Reina, had never existed. Instead, there was evidence of a woman, ambiguous about her brand, noncommittal in her style, a woman who purchased flowing $2,000 evening gowns but never wore them. Instead, she favored mom jeans, inexpensive coordinates, and sensible shoes. So I found nothing in the closet to link her to any drug ring.

  What I found atop that green velvet chair, that’s another story. Intrigued by its bizarre embroidery, I picked up the pillow and studied its design pattern. It was a black feline creature of some kind with unnatural, saucer-like eyes. I turned the pillow around, tracing its uneven, shabbily finished edges. And that’s when I noticed it had two zippers. What kind of pillow had two zippers? I squeezed the quilt batting near the zipper lines and heard a strange rustle inside. It wasn’t the sound of foam or cotton or any other filler. It was a mix of plastic and paper. I unzipped the first opening and slid my hand into the pillow. But all I could feel was loose fiber filling. So I unzipped the second opening and reached inside once again. This time, I felt not fiber but plastic. I grabbed hold of the plastic and pulled out a zip bag containing a bundle of letters. I opened the bag for a closer look: All of the letters were addressed in neat block handwriting to a “Señor Juan, 64 Calle Luna, Cali, Colombia.” Wedged between the letters were three passports. I opened only the first one, a Colombian passport, and found a photo of Bad Mary looking the same way she had in the police video. The page adjacent to the photo listed her first and last name, and there they were, the ringing words
that placed this woman in a class apart from everybody else in Stepford, those words that validated all the reasons for my subterfuge: PORTILLA, MARIA.

  I reached for my phone and made the call I thought I wouldn’t have to make.

  “You need to be here in one hour,” I said when the answering machine picked up.

  I grabbed the passports and the letters and slipped them into my purse. I zipped up the pillow, returned it to its chair, and ducked out of the bedroom to the hallway. There were two more rooms down the hall, but I didn’t search them. I had what I needed. Besides, I could hear the fight between Bad Mary and El Flaco was still raging in the kitchen. I wandered within earshot of them. Their theatrical back-and-forth in Spanish sounded like an ill-scripted scene from my mother’s telenovela.

  Had it been a telenovela, these would be the subtitles:

  BAD MARY: Do you know what the word “betrayal” means? Because that is exactly what you’ve done to me.

  EL FLACO: I betrayed you? How could I? You invented the meaning of betrayal.

  BAD MARY: You crafty, wicked scoundrel. Thanks to you, I have to live each day in fear—fear of losing everything I have worked for.

  EL FLACO: You worked for? Aren’t you forgetting someone? Didn’t he work, too? What do you care—you stole everything he had. And then you stabbed him in the heart on your way out the door.

  BAD MARY: I stole nothing from him. I took only what was rightfully mine.

  EL FLACO: Yours, was it? Well, I’ve got news for you. It won’t be yours much longer. I know where you’re hiding it.

  BAD MARY : You have no idea.

  EL FLACO : And so will he.

  BAD MARY : You wouldn’t dare tell him!

  EL FLACO : I already placed a call to him. The message is on its way to him as we speak. I suggest you pay him back what you stole. If you don’t, I can no longer protect you.

  BAD MARY : Go to hell, you swine!

  As a standoff swelled between them, the kitchen went silent, except for the highly appropriate sounds of canned flamenco. Clearly, El Flaco’s words had rattled Bad Mary. Who knew how she would react to his threats. She could fight them or she could flee. I knew I had to make a move before I lost my fugitive.

  I wandered into the kitchen, airhead-like, as if nothing had happened.

  “I have to say, Sofia, your house is just beautiful,” I said in a sunny tone.

  “Who’s this?” El Flaco asked under his breath.

  Bad Mary was visibly shaken, her eyes smeared with black mascara and tears.

  “Angela, meet Francisco, my business partner,” she said, extending an arm in my direction. “Angela is a Realtor.”

  El Flaco offered me a cold, feeble handshake.

  “Francisco was just leaving,” she said, glaring at him. “Unfortunately, he has other commitments this evening.”

  El Flaco nodded a half-assed good-bye and left, slamming the front door on his way out. When he was gone, Bad Mary turned to me with a steely look.

  “Where were you all that time?” she said.

  “When?” I said, keeping my cool.

  “When I was in the kitchen with Francisco—where were you?” she said, knotting her brow.

  “In the bathroom,” I said.

  She shot me a cynical look.

  “I had to go,” I said. “Sorry.”

  Bad Mary seemed satisfied enough with my explanation, but I could tell she was still angry over her fight with El Flaco. She seemed preoccupied and not overly bothered by the fact that I was still standing in her kitchen. Certainly, I was not going to remind her that we hadn’t finished our tour of the house. I just watched her as she, without preamble or explanation, started dinner. She took a butcher’s knife from a rack and, knife in hand, she assembled some ingredients: a yellow onion and a potato from the fridge, and a can of tomato puree from the pantry. She took the onion and, without peeling it, chopped it on the counter, then scooped it into a dish. She did peel the potato, however, carving it up with her butcher’s knife until only a shadow of it remained. Done with that, she put down the knife and opened up a bottle of red Spanish wine, pouring herself a full goblet.

  “So what’s your best guess on the house?” she said without looking at me.

  “I’d say close to two point nine,” I said, trying to stay focused on my original script.

  She went to the fridge and pulled out a whole red snapper. I noticed her hands were trembling as she laid the fish across a chopping block.

  “That much? Maybe I’ll sell it after all,” she said, taking a swig of the wine.

  She grabbed the knife again, raised it, and brought it down with a WHACK on the chopping block, sending the fish’s head tumbling off the counter. It landed on the kitchen floor with a wet thud. Bad Mary picked it up and tossed it into an empty stockpot on the stove. She didn’t wash it first, or dust it off, or even check it for dirt. She just dumped it into the stockpot. Some gourmet, this one. She took the fish and scraped off its scales with a vengeance, an exercise that alternated with hard swigs of wine and cigarette puffs. I couldn’t stop watching the train wreck that was Bad Mary’s cooking demo, as I was both disgusted and morbidly engrossed.

  “He’s not well, you know,” she said, the cigarette dangling on her frosted lip.

  “Who?” I said, playing dumb.

  “Francisco,” she said with another WHACK of the knife as she pierced a jagged spout on the can of tomato sauce. “Want some rioja?”

  “I’ll get it,” I said, helping myself to a glass of the wine.

  She put down the knife for a minute—it was smeared with blood and fish scales. But it wasn’t as offensive as the detail I noticed next. It was the smallest detail in her “country style” kitchen: a little plaque bearing a familiar saying.

  HELP KEEP THE KITCHEN CLEAN—EAT OUT, it said.

  FOURTEEN

  I CAN’T BEGIN to describe the nauseating feeling that burned from the pit of my stomach to the base of my throat. Of all the offensive things I had seen in that house—faux water included—this was by far the most offensive. Up until that moment, I had recognized nothing of myself in the woman who had taken my life from me. We had zero in common, not a hobby, not an article of clothing, not a single style of shoe. But the plaque…the plaque was sacred. The plaque was mine. That plaque meant dinners shared around my kitchen counter, Max’s tales from school, my mother’s crispy double-fried plantains, pizza on Heat game night, mango sours on girls’ nights. The plaque was sacred. The plaque was mine. Enough was enough.

  I reached for the butcher knife—it glinted red in my hand. Startled, Bad Mary put down her wineglass.

  “What are you doing?” she said nervously, backing into the counter.

  “Let me help you,” I said, taking over.

  I charged in front of her and grabbed the fish by the tail, and I started to clean it the proper way, scraping its sides from tail to head, then turning it over and doing it again, then rinsing it off in the sink with bold, demonstrative moves.

  “You don’t have to cook for me,” Bad Mary said, indignant.

  “But I want to,” I said, searching through the cupboards for spices and condiments.

  “I know what I’m doing,” she said in a convinced tone one might use if one’s name was, say, Wolfgang Puck or Eric Ripert. “I’m writing a cookbook, you know.”

  “Which makes you an expert?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, cocking her head at my question, “I believe it does.”

  “Okay,” I said, plucking a blood-spattered recipe card from the counter, “let’s see… Snapper Valencia. Your recipe, right?”

  “Of course it’s my recipe,” she said.

  “Really,” I said. “So where are the capers?”

  “I don’t have any capers.”

  “Where’s the garlic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And the dry sherry—I don’t see it anywhere,” I said. “All I see is fish.”

  Bad Mary glar
ed at me. “Snapper Valen-thia is my specialty dish,” she said, feeling a need to add, “And, for your information, that’s how they pronounce it in Spain.”

  “Your specialty dish.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So why does this card say ‘ Jenny’s Snapper Valencia’?” I said.

  “I have no idea.”

  “How is it yours?” I said, flicking the end of the card with my fingernail.

  “Because it’s in my recipe file, you idiot. What’s your point?” she said.

  “My point is you can’t steal other people’s recipes and call them yours,” I said. “You can’t steal other people’s things and call them yours.”

  I grabbed the butcher knife and slashed the plaque off the wall. The plaque nearly sliced Bad Mary’s ear as it flew across the room. She shuddered.

  “You can’t steal other people’s kitchen slogans,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “You,” I said, my accusations thundering against the flamenco sound track. “You can’t steal other people’s lives and call them yours.”

  “I don’t know who you are, but you need to get out of my house,” she said, slowly backing away from me. The fact that she was afraid of me gave me an unhealthy boost of confidence.

  “I don’t know who I am, either,” I said, leaning toward her, knife at my side. “But I know who I used to be before you ruined my life.”

  “I’m calling the police right now,” she said.

  “Go ahead, do it,” I said, “I dare you.”

  In a bold, sudden move I didn’t expect, Bad Mary thrust an arm upward and knocked the knife out of my hands. She dove to the floor to grab the knife, but I kicked it out of her way. She grabbed my leg and brought me tumbling to the floor, yanking my hair and twisting it in her fists. I jabbed her thigh with my knee and managed to scramble away from her—for a minute, that is. She yanked me down once again and clobbered me with her shoe. But in one jolting move, I poked her hard in the breast and dove for my purse. I grabbed the Glock at the same time as she grabbed the knife from the floor. Her hands were trembling as if she had never brandished a knife before, something I found hard to believe. Then again, I was aiming the gun at her, right between her eyes.