by Amy Vansant
“Charlotte, the young one?”
Al looked at him. “Yeah, Charlotte Morgan.”
“You and Charlotte were going to do X together? Is she the friend who gave them to you?”
“What? No! I emptied my pockets on her counter when I got all scared—”
Al stopped and looked at Seamus.
“Anyway,” he said. “She has nothing to do with it. I’m just too embarrassed to ask her if I left them there.”
“Well, stay away from those people,” said Jackie. “That stuff could be dangerous and I’m sure Tina doesn’t want you rubbing all over her. She comes here to dance. Go dance with your wife.”
“Yeah yeah,” said Al, turning.
“Drive safe,” called Seamus.
Al turned and looked at him, his eyebrows tilted with concern. Seamus waved and Al offered a curt nod before heading back to his wife.
Seamus chuckled. “This place is crazy. How did you come up with the idea?”
Jackie sighed.
“My husband was a slum lord. We made a lot of money on the suffering of others. When he died…I wanted to give back. I spent most of our money fixing up the places he’d let run down for years, building neighborhood parks, doing what I could. When I started to run out of money, I spent the last of it on this building and started the club. Everyone who works here grew up in my husband’s substandard housing. I give them jobs and help any way I can.”
Seamus looked over at Joe. Though not as large as the doorman, he had tattoo sleeves on both arms and looked as though he had been around the block, as did the DJ.
“Wow. That’s really something, Jackie. You must be so proud.”
She shrugged.
Seamus looked at his feet. “You’ve been so honest with me…I feel like I should be honest with you.”
“I would hope so!”
He took a deep breath. “I wasn’t a cop in Miami.”
“You weren’t? What were you?”
Seamus smiled. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Jackie put her hand against his cheek, drawing him in for a kiss.
“I’m harder to kill than you think,” she whispered.
“I bet,” he said. “That’s okay. I like a challenge.”
He grabbed her hand and led her to the dance floor.
Chapter Sixteen
“I hope you don’t mind,” said Mariska as she and Charlotte walked to her car. “I told Dottie I would give her a ride to her daughter’s on the way.”
It wasn’t unusual for Pineapple Portians to request rides from Mariska on nail day. Her trips to the salon were predictable and a staple of her relationship with Charlotte. Mariska had her nails intricately painted once a month, and in the time it took to finish, Charlotte had her eyebrows waxed and her own nails done in a more simple fashion, usually just a buff.
“No problem,” said Charlotte. “I’d rather take Dottie than have her try and drive herself. Then we’d all be in trouble.”
Dottie was eighty-five. She’d had her license taken away years ago, but that didn’t stop her from making an occasional trip to the store. The last time she’d returned dragging a political poster under her car, the potential senator’s frozen grin slowly wearing away beneath her undercarriage.
Mariska opened her sunroof and they rolled the few blocks to Dottie’s house, careful to avoid the Sandhill cranes congregating in the road. Dottie’s neighbor fed the redheaded cranes, defying the neighborhood ordinance against it. He threw them bread and hot dogs under the cover of predawn darkness, but the birds stared at his house until nearly noon, defeating the whole purpose of his skullduggery. When he left town to visit his children, the angry Sandhills pecked away half his siding and all the screening of his neighbor’s porch, searching for their regular meal. His illegal bird soup kitchen had to be the worst kept secret in town.
The door to Dottie’s home flew open before Mariska had a chance to put her car in park. The short, white-haired woman puttered out, encaged by a walker with tennis balls plugged to both front feet. She turned slower than a clock’s second hand, grabbed the handle of her front door and slammed it shut as if it had just insulted her. The shockwave unhinged the plastic numeral two in her mounted home address and it swiveled upside down, rocking back and forth like a pendulum.
After her ferocious burst of energy, Dottie locked the door and shuffled to Mariska’s car with all the speed of a buffering video. Charlotte hopped out and offered help, but the woman waved her away with an angry grunt. Dottie collapsed into the front seat of Mariska’s VW Jetta and then slammed its door into her walker, repeatedly, until it gave up and toppled out of the way.
Mariska covered her ears as Dottie yanked the passenger door shut with a thunderous clap. Charlotte, who knew better than to sit in the car when Dottie closed her door, collapsed the walker and put it in Mariska’s trunk.
Dottie had the legs of an eighty-five year old woman and the arms of a steelworker with a secret passion for mixed martial arts. She sat her purse on her lap. Without a word or nod to Mariska, she looked forward and twiddled her thumbs, ready to go.
Charlotte slid into the backseat.
“It’s on Citrus, right Dottie?” asked Mariska as she pulled away from the curb.
“What’s that?”
“Your daughter; she lives on Citrus, right?”
“No! She lives on Citrus!”
“Right, okay, dear.”
They pulled onto the highway and Dottie’s head began to bob as if she was listening to heavy metal music. Charlotte shimmied to sit behind Mariska to gain a better view of Dottie’s face, curious as to what expression might accompany her rhythmic head-banging. The new angle revealed that Dottie wasn’t bobbing her head; her wig was flipping back and forth on her scalp. The breeze caused by the open sunroof made it look as though her white curls cordially tipped hello to every passerby, except that Dottie had never been that friendly in her life.
Charlotte covered her mouth, trying not to laugh. She caught Mariska’s eye in her rearview mirror and pointed to her own head and then Dottie. Mariska glanced over and saw the wig flapping in the breeze.
“Oh!”
Mariska tried to stifle a laugh, but only delayed it long enough to build pressure for a lip explosion.
“Dottie your wig…”
Dottie didn’t register the comment and Mariska starting laughing too hard to try again. A strong gust flipped the wig back until it stood straight above Dottie’s head like an open teapot, supported by the headrest that towered over the tiny woman. Her own wispy white hair danced in the breeze like cilia beneath her raised cap of curls. She didn’t notice. As the curls flung back, Charlotte squealed with giggles and clamped a second hand over her mouth. A tear of laughter rolled down Mariska’s cheek.
Dottie’s daughter lived nearby, and Mariska pulled in front of her home a minute later. As Mariska braked, Dottie’s hair flopped back onto her head, settling in place as if it had never moved. She shot a look at Charlotte and touched her hand to her head.
“Did you touch my head?” she barked.
“No! Absolutely not!”
Charlotte hopped out of the car, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. She retrieved the walker and set it up, nearly losing a hip to the car door as Dottie flung it open and stepped out onto the curb. She tried to help Dottie to her walker, but the woman ripped her arm from her grasp.
“I can walk,” she said.
“Sorry.”
Charlotte weaved around Dottie and sat back in the passenger seat. She refused to look at Mariska until they were moving. Ten feet down the road, the two women looked at each other and cackled once more.
“Oh, by the way,” said Charlotte as they laughed together. “I decided I hate loofah mitts.”
Mariska’s laughing slowed.
“Hate them?”
“Hate them.”
“Okay.”
“And those rainbow-colored crinoline balls.”
�
��But they’re so pretty!”
“Horrible. Impossible to use. They look like My Pretty Pony poops.”
Mariska huffed.
“Fine,” she said after a moment. “But your baths must be awfully boring.”
Only one other woman sat in Another Nail salon. The owners were Vietnamese and most people assumed they’d misunderstood the English idiom Another nail in the coffin, but with the salon located in the middle of retirement country, Charlotte felt confident they hadn’t misunderstood anything.
The woman enjoying her nail buff was Susan Strazza, a familiar Pineapple Port resident. Mariska and Charlotte waved and said hello before taking their places in their favorite pedicure chairs. Charlotte knew she spent too much of her meager income on pedicures, but she liked them and she lived in Florida. She imagined the money that people in Maine saved on pedicures they turned around and spent on socks.
As warm water filled the foot bowl, Charlotte ran through the various settings of her massage chair. She liked the shiatsu setting that poked her hard beneath the shoulder blades, but it took some skill to force the mechanical thumb to stick in just the right position.
“So anything new?” asked Mariska.
“A lot. I went to see Declan last night.”
“Did you!”
“I was there when that Declan fellow was picking through poor dead Laurie’s things,” said Susan without turning. “He said her miniature tea set was darling. Straight men don’t say darling so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“I’m sure he was surrounded by old ladies and trying to be polite,” said Mariska.
Susan scoffed.
“And that has nothing to do with anything anyway,” said Charlotte. “I went to talk to him, not to marry him.”
Susan chose not to respond.
“Did he kiss you?” asked Mariska in her version of a conspiratorial whisper. Mariska’s whisper-voice was so loud, the nail tech’s family back in Vietnam could probably hear her.
“No. We…we might have had a moment though.”
“Oh!” said Mariska, her face blooming with surprised delight as if someone had goosed her.
“But, again, that isn’t why I went there. Al Taliferro came to my house after the meeting yesterday. He told me—”
Charlotte spotted Susan tilting toward her like a tree in a strong breeze. She leaned closer to Mariska to whisper.
“He told me he thought he nearly hit a girl on the side of the road with his car about the time that Erin went missing.”
“What?”
Susan’s head swiveled. “What?”
“I said Al told me his secret pizzelle recipe.”
“Oh,” said Susan. “I already have that.”
Mariska lightly slapped Charlotte’s arm to regain her attention.
“Did he—?”
“I don’t think he did,” she said, cutting Mariska’s incompetent whispering short.
“Oh good. That would be terrible.”
“I’ll give you more details later, but I don’t think the two things are related. I had him tell his story to Frank just in case. He wanted to.”
“Oh double good. Frank should know.”
“Frank doesn’t even eat pizzelles,” said Susan, craning her neck to look at them. “I tried to give him one once and he turned it down.”
“That’s funny,” said Charlotte. “He ate a whole plate of mine and then asked for more.”
Susan caught eyes with Charlotte in the mirrored wall behind her nail tech, scowled, and looked away.
“You’re terrible,” said Mariska. “So, you told Declan about Al?”
“Yes. That, and—”
Charlotte trailed off and glanced at Susan. She covered her mouth and leaned towards Mariska.
“Frank got the autopsy back, and it is definitely Declan’s mom.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
“You want eyebrow today?” asked the girl working on Charlotte’s toes.
“Yes, thank you.”
“You want mustache?” the girl asked, rubbing her finger under her nose.
Charlotte groaned. Every time she came to the salon one of the girls scolded her for the gunslinger’s mustache they insisted she had. Charlotte didn’t see any mustache, but they managed to shame her into agreeing to have the invisible hairs removed fifty percent of the time.
“Sure.”
Susan’s phone rang and the nail tech held it to her ear to avoid ruining her manicure.
“Hello?’ said Susan, much too loudly. The nail tech winced and leaned away from her.
“What? Oh! I’ll be right there!”
She nodded to the tech to hang up the phone and pulled her nails out of the tiny nail driers. The tech dropped the phone into her handbag on the floor.
“Is everything okay, Susan?” asked Mariska.
With her foot, Susan pushed her purse towards the woman at the checkout counter and pointed at it with a bright pink nail. Familiar with the drill, the cashier picked up the purse, retrieved Susan’s wallet and extracted the appropriate amount of cash.
“There are police cars all around George and Penny’s house!”
“What?” said Charlotte. “Are they okay?”
Susan shrugged. “I said police, not ambulance.”
Mariska’s phone rang and she scrambled to pull it from her pocketbook.
“Hello?”
Mariska put her hand over the phone. “It’s Darla.”
“Susan just went running out of here,” said Mariska, watching Susan do just that. “Something about police cars at George and Penny’s? Are they okay? Is there an ambulance?”
There was a pause before Mariska added, “We’ll be there as soon as we’re done! Call me if you hear anything else!”
“What is it?”
“Oh, you’ll never believe it.”
“What?”
“They think George killed Declan’s mother!”
Chapter Seventeen
By the time Charlotte and Mariska took their beautiful toes back to Pineapple Port, a crowd had gathered around George and Penny Sambrooke’s home. Mariska pulled over and parked not far from the scene and the two of them walked straight to Darla, who stood with the others behind the crime tape at the edge of George’s beloved lawn.
“Crime tape in Pineapple Port twice in one week,” said Mariska, ending her thought with a series of disapproving tongue-clucking noises.
“Darla!” said Charlotte. “What’s going on?”
Darla turned, revealing her t-shirt, blue, with the words, I’m not old, I’m vintage stamped across the chest. Charlotte had given it to her for Christmas the year before, and she smiled to see her wearing it.
“Oh, girls, I’m so glad you’re here!”
“Did Frank tell you what’s going on?”
“He got a phone call this morning,” she said, walking away from the crowd and motioning them to follow.
Charlotte glanced at the crowd and saw several sets of eyes follow their progress. They strolled until they were out of earshot.
“Go on!” said Mariska. “We’re far enough away.”
“Have you heard you whisper? No? You know who has? Everyone.”
“Oh, just talk,” said Mariska, scowling.
“Fine.”
Darla stopped and crouched towards the other two, speaking low.
“So, Frank got a call; an anonymous call. Frank said it sounded like a man but the voice was funny, like he was talking through one of those voice changer thingies, so he couldn’t really be sure. The man said George killed Erin Bingham and he could prove it.”
“That’s crazy!” said Charlotte. “George has barely said four words since I met him and now he’s a killer?”
“It’s always the quiet ones,” said Mariska, shaking her head.
“I think he just can’t get a word in when Penny is around,” said Darla.
“Did he say anything else?” asked Charlotte. “How could he prove it?”
“He said the proof was buried underneath the orange tree in George’s backyard.”
Mariska gasped and covered her mouth.
“He buried her under the orange tree!”
Darla and Charlotte looked at her, brows furrowed.
“He buried her in my backyard. Remember?”
“Oh, right,” said Mariska, her hand slowly dropping her from her face. Her palm had barely passed her chin before it shot back up and she gasped again.
“He buried the weapon under the orange tree!”
“Or his other victims,” said Darla. “He could be a serial killer.”
Mariska gasped again.
“You’re going to hyperventilate,” said Charlotte.
Mariska moved her hand to the side of her face and shook her head, seemingly dumfounded by all the possibilities.
“How would this other person know George was the killer or about what’s under his orange tree?” asked Charlotte. “Unless they killed her together…”
“Oh no,” said Darla. “I didn’t even think of that. Poor girl; killed by two people!”
“I don’t think the number of murderers makes you more dead,” said Charlotte.
“It just seems scarier.”
“Where’s Frank now?”
“Standing by the orange tree while the crime guys dig up the evidence.”
“Can you call him and ask him what’s going on?”
Darla twisted her lips into a tiny knot. “I’m not supposed to call him when he’s working.”
Charlotte considered this, trying to picture the layout of George’s yard in her mind.
“Isn’t there a hedge between George’s yard and Jenny Teacup’s?”
Jenny Teacup’s last name was actually Teehan, but she collected antique tea sets. Someone called her Jenny Teacup once, and the nickname stuck. This supported Charlotte’s supposition that retirement communities were a lot like high school. She’d attended both high school and Pineapple Port simultaneously, so she knew better than anyone.
Darla nodded slowly. “There’s that gorgeous bougainvillea hedge between his house and Jenny’s; George’s pride and joy. Why?”
“We could stand behind the hedge and whisper to Frank.”
Darla’s and Mariska’s eyes both flashed wide and white.