“Of course not.”
Sandy exhaled. “Oh, brother.”
After that, we took turns putting our heads on each other’s laps, napping.
Finally, to keep our rising anxiety at bay we played the game Worst Song Ever. Sandy voted for Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded,” which just so happened to be one of my secret favorites, ever. I voted for the Four Seasons’ “Who Loves You, Pretty Baby?” and Sandy hit me.
I’d forgotten that it had been her first dance song with Martin at their wedding.
We were so wrapped up in debating the virtues of Bad Company versus Frampton in his Frampton Comes Alive glory days that it took us a while to realize people were outside. There were voices above us.
And, more ominous, a strange hissing sound.
“Oh, shit. It’s started,” Sandy said, leaping to her feet.
I got up too, my muscles tight and sore from the dampness. “What’s started?”
“The Christmas party upstairs. He said that was when they were going to kill us. His plan was to fill up our cell with undiluted oxygen. No one would hear our screams, the party would be so loud. And there’d be no evidence afterward.”
That was ridiculous. “You can’t die from too much oxygen.”
“Yes, you can. I read it in a divers’ magazine they sent to the House of Beauty. You need carbon dioxide to trigger lung function. Too much oxygen and your lungs stop working.”
“What about Michael Jackson and his little oxygen tent he sleeps in?”
Sandy’s hand was on my shoulder. “I like you, Bubbles. You’re my best friend and a lovely person. But sometimes you get so distracted.”
I wasn’t sure, but I suspected this was her polite way of calling me dumb. Well, she could call me dumb all she wanted. She wasn’t the one who had just determined the identity of our captor.
I had.
The voices were coming closer. They did not sound like party voices. They sounded like Genevieve. And another woman whose voice I recognized.
Vava Wilson, the cop.
“Scream!” I ordered to Sandy. “Bang on the door.”
We screamed our hearts out and made our fists and toes sore as we pounded mercilessly. Yet no one seemed to hear us.
“The furnace is on. It’s drowning us out,” Sandy said, alarmed. “They’re turning away. They’re going up the stairs. Please, people, don’t do that. Come back, come back!”
What to do? Quick. Think, Bubbles. What resources were at hand? I didn’t have my purse, so any hair-spray mechanism was out. My earrings were useless on the padlock outside our door.
And then it dawned on me. What gets people’s attention more than anything else these days?
“Sandy. Light a cigarette.”
“I only have one left. And it will burn really fast in this oxygen. We might even explode!”
“Just do it.”
“You do it. I’m too scared.” She handed me the cigarette and lighter, fumbling so badly she dropped them on the floor.
Ignoring all centipede concern, I felt around the dirty, wet concrete until I found them. Okay, this was the moment of truth. Now or never.
I put the cigarette in my mouth and flicked my Bic. A flame shot up.
“Wow.” Sandy backed off.
I brought the cigarette to the door and exhaled. If I knew Genevieve—and, unfortunately, I did all too well—she’d smell smoke and put up a racket. Genevieve was a rabid antismoker. Or just plain rabid.
“It’s not working. They can’t smell it,” Sandy whined.
“Just wait. It takes a while.” I knew this from my days sneaking butts in my bedroom. As I recalled, it took Mama exactly four minutes from cigarette ignition to detect the smoke downstairs. And by then I had out my Lysol.
The furnace took a break from its incessant roaring. It was silent, except for the murmur of partygoers upstairs. I finished the cigarette to the bitter end and tried to push the butt under the door, taking solace that my vice had not been wasted.
That was when we heard it: stomp, stomp, stomp.
“They’re coming back!” Sandy said.
“Don’t say it. Scream it.” We set to pounding and kicking and wouldn’t give up even when we heard the commotion of people trying to break the lock on the other side.
Finally, the lock clanked to the floor and the door whooshed open. Sandy and I fell out, right onto Vava Wilson, Martin and Genevieve. Detective Burge was noticeably absent.
Martin shoved me aside and gathered up Sandy, who collapsed into hysterics, a far cry from her stoic presence in our cell. He was crying, too. They looked as one, two heads buried in each other’s neck, sobbing and hugging. I had the feeling that Sandy could tell him she hired a spaceship to sleep with multiple aliens and Martin wouldn’t have minded.
They’d be fine.
“I knew you were here,” Genevieve said proudly. She was still in her Virgin Mary blue. “The folks upstairs said they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of you. Your car wasn’t in the parking lot or nothing, but I had faith. I knew you was in here even if your Camaro wasn’t.”
My car. He’d taken it. I was really beginning to dislike Santa Claus.
And then I remembered. “What time is it?”
Genevieve checked her watch. “Eight twenty.”
Crap. I’d missed him. Unlike Genevieve, Stiletto had probably lost the faith and was off to Greece with Sabina.
“You okay?” Vava asked.
“As okay as can be expected.” I felt dull, as if all energy had leached out of my body and into the basement drain of the Masonic temple.
I turned to Genevieve. “Thanks. If it hadn’t been for your neurotic, paranoid delusions, Sandy and I would be dead.”
“No thanks necessary or deserved.” Genevieve put her hands on her broad hips. “I thought I knew the layout of this Masonic temple like the foxholes around Camp David. Turns out I was missing a few details. Damn those online maps.”
Vava said, “Who locked you two in here?”
“Eric Wachowski,” I said. I’d recognized his poor manicure from the night before at Hubba, Hubba. Also that cologne. It was unmistakable. Like they used to say in the commercials, an Old Spice man was unforgettable.
Vava’s eyes widened. “You mean Eric the tech over in the medical examiner’s office?”
“Exactly.”
Vava reached for her radio. I held out my hand and stopped her. “But he didn’t kill Debbie Shatsky. If you give me a chance, I’ll prove to you who did.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
It took less than twenty minutes of a conference call between Vava Wilson, Detective Burge, me and—oh, brother—Judge Hopkinton, for Hopkinton to grant us an emergency warrant so I could wear a wire. I had to hand it to the corrupt history of the Pennsylvania judicial system—sometimes crooked and lazy judges came in handy. Hopkinton didn’t think twice.
Vava snaked a wire into my bra. “Nice bra,” she said.
“JCPenney, two for eighteen bucks. Excellent support.”
“I need support.”
“Don’t we all.”
She clipped the wire to a recording device strapped on my back. It was nice to know I didn’t have to worry about those ethical violations anymore, that I could go around being wired and kind of misrepresenting myself and I wouldn’t have to face the wrath of Dix Notch.
Those News-Times days were sooo over.
It was well past nine when we pulled out of the station. I’d called Dan at the restaurant where the rehearsal dinner was under way without me and apologized for missing everything.
Get this. He didn’t buy that I’d been locked up in the Masonic temple until I explained about Hopkinton and that the police were about to arrest Debbie’s real murderer. Then his mood improved because an arrested murder suspect meant a solid defendant to sue in Phil Shatsky’s civil case, a defendant who wasn’t Sandy.
He couldn’t wait to hang up and call Phil right away, offering his services in the legal representation area. Money, that was
all Dan really cared about.
With Vava’s permission, I used her cell phone to call Stiletto. I got his housekeeper. He was gone. He’d left for JFK an hour ago.
I clicked the cell shut and told myself there would be plenty of time to cry when this was over.
“Man trouble?” Vava kept her eyes steady on the road, carefully negotiating the blinding snowstorm.
“Yup.”
“Aren’t you getting married tomorrow?”
I looked out the window, at the snow clouding up my view. I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t.
Eric Wachowski’s car was in the driveway when Vava pulled to the curb, her lights off. We sat watching the kabuki play silhouetted in the plate-glass window.
“I’ll be right behind you. There are already four officers stationed around the house.” She gestured with her chin to a pine tree, where, sure enough, a man in a Wind-breaker sat hunched.
The radio truck was parked a block away. All I had to do was turn on the transmitter and they’d be listening to my every word. It was go time.
I opened the door and got out, fumbling under my turtleneck to click on the transmitter as Vava had shown me. I adjusted my faux-rabbit-fur coat and marched up the front walk, doing my best to ignore the pair of eyes in the bush by the front door.
Sissy Dolan answered wearing a Christmassy bathrobe of green chenille. I bet she had a whole set of Christmas items—Christmas table runners, one of those crochet Christmas toilet-paper covers. She even had a red Santa Claus suit tossed over her wingback chair.
“Bubbles? What on earth are you doing here?”
“May I come in?”
“No!” Eric leaped up from the couch, flicking off the television. He was dressed in a navy sweatshirt and jeans. No Santa outfit for him tonight.
It was too late. I was in. And Sissy Dolan, though a murderer, was too polite to let her hairdresser stand out in a snowstorm during the Christmas season. She did, however, draw the drapes over the sheer panels. Crafty little thing.
“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” I said, walking over to Eric, for better reception. “It’s just that I think you may have picked up the wrong CD today. I was hoping, maybe for a price, we could exchange.”
“What?” He tried to smile and was so nervous he couldn’t lift the corners of his mouth. “What CD?”
“The one you took when you took my purse. It’s the Mahoken Town Budget and some really awesome Styx tunes. I think you were after something different, unless you, like me, can’t get enough of ‘Too Much Time on My Hands,’ though, I’m partial to ‘Lady’ myself.”
He didn’t answer. He went to a bedroom, opened a drawer and came back with the CD, shoving it into the laptop that was on a dining room table. While he did the computer stuff, I said to Sissy, who was glaring, positively glaring, at me with hatred, “You should come in for a wash and set. We’re running a postholiday twenty-percent discount now that the House of Beauty is reopening.”
Sissy pressed her lips together.
On cue, “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)” blared from the speakers.
“I LOVE that one,” I trilled. “Crank it!”
“Shit.” Eric flicked it off. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
“Good going!” Sissy said, eyeing my coat.
I bet she had a hunch I was wired. I had to get her talking, fast.
“What do you care about the CD, Sissy?” I said. “It’s Eric who’s going to jail if he gets caught. He’s the one who killed Ern Bender with an overdose of methamphetamine and then tried to murder Sandy and me with oxygen. Those medical supplies really come in handy, say? Does the med school know you’re using their equipment?”
Eric got up from the laptop and approached me. Those guys in prison were going to love him in the yard. Such a bod.
“What do you want?”
“What do I want?” I pressed my hand to my chest. “I think the question is, what do you want? And why?”
“I need Debbie’s list.”
I was keeping an eye on Sissy, who had slipped into the kitchen. “You mean the old Save-T Drug prescriptions?”
“Right. There was one more copy. There are names on it. People’s lives could be ruined if it got out what they were taking.”
“For example, in your case it was”—I took a wild guess—“steroids?”
“Steroids? Hah!” Sissy was back. And, darn it, if she wasn’t holding the most adorable little pearl-handled pistol.
“Grandma, don’t!” Eric ran to her and she motioned him away.
“Get over there, Eric. You were the one who got me in all this trouble. Put your hands up, Bubbles, where I can see them.”
I looked at Eric and shook my head. What grandmothers will do for their grandsons.
“He’s going to make an excellent heart surgeon someday. I’ve scrimped and saved to help him through college and med school. I’ll be hog-tied if he can’t do what he was born to do because of some brain-rotting disease.”
Say it, you old bat. Say the magic word so the posse outside can rescue me.
“I know,” I said, trying to egg her on. “I hate that disease, which is—”
She waved her hands. “Bah!”
Eric, meanwhile, was inching closer to her. He hadn’t seemed so concerned with killing me earlier. I guessed he didn’t want to make a mess on Grandma’s rug.
“Get back, Eric.” She was fast. “If I took care of that blackmailing Debbie Shatsky, you better be sure I can handle this dim bulb and make it look like an accident, too. I just gotta think, is all.”
“Now, Sissy,” I said, restraining my jubilation, “you’re not saying Debbie’s death wasn’t accidental. It was just a misfortunate allergic reaction to latex. That’s what the police said.”
“The police don’t know boo. They’re too lazy to do the footwork, is their problem.”
Did you hear that, Detective Burge?
“Everyone at the House of Beauty knew of Debbie’s allergy. Christ, she told us often enough.” Sissy clucked her tongue. “Everyone knew she come in on Mondays for her hair, too, boasting about her hoity-toity husband. I didn’t have no beef with her until she called up Eric and threatened to expose his drug-abuse history to the whole med school board. Methadone. So what that he took methadone? Got him off heroin, didn’t it?”
Eric’s gaze was fixated on the part of my coat that had opened when I lifted my arms. “Shut up, Grandma. She’s wired.” He lunged for me. Grandma fired and I fell back, toppling a china figurine from an end table. It hit the floor with a resounding crash!
The front door was flung open. I heard the shouts: “Police! Put down your weapon.” And I saw Eric stand, his hands up in the air, his body weak with resignation.
It was over. He’d killed Ern Bender and tried to kill Sandy and me to cover up an overprotective old lady’s crime. And she’d killed Debbie so her star grandson, the first generation to go to college, wouldn’t have his career ruined.
It was kind of sweet, when you thought about it, in a screwed-up steel-town kind of way. It made me cry.
Styx should write a song about it. It could be their comeback tune.
Chapter Thirty-eight
The star file was password protected, unfortunately.
After retrieving the CD from the Order of the Eastern Star plaque, where I had left it, Vava Wilson took it to headquarters and fiddled around with some possible combinations. FATAL turned out to be the user name. WHEAT, the password.
What it opened was a treasure trove of personal information that, as Ern Bender had indicated, could bring down the entire town. I wasn’t allowed to see the whole list. However, I did learn that a certain hairdresser who had just opened up a swanky salon in the warehouse district was HIV positive, a fact that could have completely shut down Jeffrey Andre’s salon if his immunity status had been made public—as Debbie had threatened.
Debbie had managed to suck out over ten grand from Jeffrey Andre, who was a good friend of P
hil and Mark’s, the two men G saw socializing in Andre’s back room. This went far to explain why Phil was so concerned about the list. He knew Debbie had been blackmailing his buddy and he was trying to help.
The only other name Vava divulged was Dix Notch’s. All I can say is I hoped he owned stock in Merck, what with all the Viagra he’d consumed over the years. And the antibaldness medication? No wonder his scalp was so red. Rogaine overdose.
I did not bother to read the papers on Saturday morning to find out how they’d covered Eric Wachowski’s arrest and the booking of his grandmother for murder. Sissy Dolan admitted to switching the glues; her grandson admitted to dumping the evidence in the toilet so Sandy would appear guilty and then calling in various tips to keep the investigation off his granny.
Anyway, I had more pressing concerns on Saturday morning.
Like getting married.
The House of Beauty was closed. Again. This time, not for murder or negligence or an expired license, but because Sandy was getting everyone ready for my wedding. Already a black limousine was parked outside, waiting. Periodically a chauffeur in a driver’s coat and cap would get out and brush off the lightly falling snow from the car’s hood. I’d never ridden in a limo before—well, not by choice. Anyway, my car was still missing, so I was, um, stuck with the limo.
“This is it.” Sandy stood over me. We exchanged glances in the mirror. “You look fabulous, if that’s any consolation.”
I did look fabulous. Sandy had done up my hair in a classic twist and stuck in sprigs of baby’s breath. I was like a snow queen in the gown Mama had bought from Loehmann’s, with the halo of tiny white flowers and the real pearl earrings from my grandmother Saladunas.
Mama and Genevieve were already at Asa Packer Chapel at Lehigh University. Dan had arranged for them to arrive in a separate limousine. Jane was waiting outside in the limo. Now it was just Sandy and me, Sandy in a deep green satin dress that looked beautiful with her pale coloring and hair.
“I . . . I want to say . . .” Tears choked her voice. She put her hand on my shoulder and I put my hand on hers.
She didn’t have to say the words out loud. I knew what she was thinking. “It’s okay. You don’t have to thank me.”
Bubbles All The Way Page 30