Scot Free

by Catriona McPherson

  “Can I at least talk to Mizz Vi?” I said. “Now that I’m taking her seriously? God, what a nerve I had. Dismissing her like that! But now that I’m taking her seriously, can I ask her again for anything else she might know so I can talk to Mike and leave the Last Ditch out of it?”

  Noleen gave me a curt nod. “Bombaro understands business,” she said. “You might think she’s some kind of mother hen—keeping the little tidbit about the cable ties from the workers—but if you were a boss, you’d know it’s all about productivity. She’s no fool.”

  “Okay then,” I said. I paddled to the edge and hauled myself out. “I’m going to go and call her right now.”

  I felt marvellous, climbing the stairs. My skin was tingling all over and even my mouth felt fresh enough to fizz. If that’s what a mouthful of pool water did, I thought, I might gargle with it every morning.

  Inside my room, I wrapped myself in a towel and settled down for a nice chat. Except for the subject matter and the late hour and the fact that I had been told not to say the very things that would be most helpful, I was looking forward to it.

  “It’s pretty late,” Sparky said when she answered the landline.

  “I think I’ve thought of something relating to your uncle’s death,” I said. “Something that will exonerate your aunt. And everyone associated with her,” I added hastily.

  “Is anyone associated with my aunt under suspicion?” said Serpentina coldly.

  I prickled with either annoyance or embarrassment, hard to say. But this woman literally rubbed me the wrong way. I chafed the goose bumps off my arms and tried again.

  “I’m not being very diplomatic,” I said. “I had no idea I needed to be. But I’ll try to step more gently around this area now I know it’s a sore spot for you.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Serpentina said. “I’ll transfer you up to Auntie’s room.”

  People are so easy to manipulate, it’s a blessing I only use my powers for good.

  “Hi, Vi,” I said a minute later. “The day ends as it began, I’m afraid.”

  “We’re not going back to the morgue!” said Visalia. I heard the television sound go down and then a lot of fluffy rustling as she sat up. I could imagine her rearranging her bed jacket. I needed to tread carefully. I needed to make this easy on her. I needed to stick to the spirit of what Noleen had said rather than the letter.

  “I think one of the Poggios is in Cuento,” I said.

  “Not still,” said Mizz Vi. “But yes, of course. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. One of them was here on Sunday. To kill Clovis. Did you tell the police? Did that nice detective convince you I’m not just a crazy old lady after all?”

  “I’m going to talk to the police in the morning,” I said. “And he was still here yesterday, you know.”

  “How do you know if you haven’t been to the police yet ?” Vi said. “Do you have contacts at the airline?”

  “No,” I said. “What airline?”

  “Oh!” said Vi, and there was more rustling as she fiddled with her neck ribbons. “I’m such a creature of habit. I still think only Alitalia flies to Rome. Of course, these days everyone with a pilot’s licence and a big box of peanuts flies just everywhere. So what makes you think there was a Poggio in town yesterday?”

  “He was caught on video,” I said. “Although, actually, that was before.”

  There was a long long long silence. No rustling; no bed jacket work going on.

  “Before,” said Vi, at last. “Do you mean to tell me that you have a videotape of my husband’s murder?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m saying I’ve got a videotape of someone recognised as a member of the Poggio family, on Wednesday, pretending to be a pizza delivery boy and putting a dead raccoon in a hotel bathroom.”

  It wasn’t the sort of sentence a sleepy eighty-six-year-old needs to parse every day and I was ready to have to tell her a few more times before it went in. What she said next floored me.

  “For the flies.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Well,” I said. “There certainly were flies.” My skin prickled again and all of a sudden I had a sour taste in my mouth too.

  “And there have been other … disturbances too?” Vi said. She might have been taking lessons from Noleen, her voice was so cold.

  “There have been,” I said. “Several.”

  “Figlio de puttana!” she said. “Stupido figlio de—”

  “What?” I said.

  “They never change, those Poggios,” she said. “This is very bad, Lexy. This is terrible.”

  I hadn’t enjoyed the raccoon so I wasn’t going to argue, but my private opinion was that neither it, those nanowhatsits, nor the worms, were in the same league as Clovis and the firework.

  “Should I go to the cops tonight?” I said. “I was planning it for first thing but I can easily bob down there. Tell whoever’s on duty.”

  Mizz Vi took her time and then said, “No, you’re right, cara. Better to tell the horse’s mouth in the morning. Let’s get our beauty sleep.”

  Which was ironic, given what happened next.

  I made myself a cup of chamomile tea, snuggled down as best you can snuggle under a thin sheet in a hot room, and drifted off. The dreams that visited me weren’t my usuals (teeth falling out, stuck in a tunnel, still married to Branston) and I kept struggling up out of them, almost to waking, only to sink back again. I was in a church, listening to Father Adam preach in Italian and asking my mother “What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” and then I was in a doctor’s waiting room at a renaissance fair waiting for it to be my turn and hoping my prescription wasn’t leeches. I could see them in a jar behind the doctor’s desk, jumping and landing like Mexican beans. They weren’t leeches. The name was on the tip of my tongue and I couldn’t say it. I turned to my neighbour in the queue to ask them and it was Barb, trying to open a take-out pizza. But, when she finally raised the lid, a jack-in-the-box bounced out, its eyes wide and its mouth a perfect O. I turned and ran, my feet leaden and my voice a plug of glue in my throat. And then they started screaming. I felt myself begin to surface. My feet were freed, the fair was gone, and I was awake.

  But people were still screaming and my throat was still closed.

  I opened my eyes and what faced me was worse than the Clovis-death-head-jack by far.

  I tried to scream for real, failed for real, and thrashed my way out of the tangle of bedsheets. Two zombies were leering at me. My whole body crawled with terror and I spun away to see Todd, wrapped in a bath sheet, tears pouring down his face. And another zombie behind him.

  Except of course they weren’t zombies. They were Roger, Kathi, and Noleen, red-eyed and raw-skinned, angry pustules erupting all over their faces.

  “Mmrhmhm,” I moaned.

  “Open your mouth!” said Todd then, when I did, he took a step back. He looked round at Roger. Rather, at the Quasimodo wreck of Roger’s beautiful face. “Saline gargle?” Todd said. Roger nodded.

  “It’s going to sting, Lexy,” Todd said. “But you’ve got it in your mouth for some reason, as well as all over your body.” He went over to my little kitchenette and started mixing.

  “How come you’re okay?” I tried to ask Todd. “Huh hm mmuuu ayy?” was what came out, but he understood me and opened the bedsheet to reveal the horrors from his neck down.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “What is it?”

  “It’s Poggio,” said Kathi. “It must be. I just don’t know how he did it.”

  “An allergic reaction?” said Roger. “Something in the mojitos? Are you sure it was mint, Nolly?”

  “But why does Lexy have it worse than us?” Noleen said. “And how come Todd’s head is okay? Lexy, are you allergic to anything that looks like mint leaves?”

  I thought back to the night before. We all d
rank the mojitos. It couldn’t be that. We all floated around and … Suddenly, I could see it clearly. Kathi and Noleen jumping in; Roger swimming under water; me sinking and gulping. And Todd, his vanity keeping his beautiful face up out of the chlorine like an old lady doing laps in a flowered skull cap.

  “Fuh-ing hulll!” I said.

  “Telling me,” said Roger. “Let’s all get our asses over to the ER.”

  “Ih wa hu wooooo!” I said, grabbing him with my scabby hands and making him yelp. “HEYHO!”

  He blinked at me just once. Then he got it. “It was the pool!” he said. “DIEGO!” He wheeled round, but Todd, finished with my salt draught, caught his other arm and made him yelp again.

  “Baby,” he said, “you can’t knock on Della’s door looking like that. Let me go.”

  “I’m a pediatric—” Roger got out, then he deflated. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Hurry, though.”

  We all crowded onto the balcony to listen.

  “Do you know what time it is?” came Della’s muffled voice after his knock. Then, “What the hell are you wearing?”

  “Is Diego okay?” Todd asked.

  Then Diego’s voice, rough with sleep, piped up: “Are my fishies here?”

  We heard his scampering feet and then Todd spoke again.

  “Hey, little guy! Later today, I promise. Not long now. Ontday etlay imhay in the oolpay, Della. Got it?”

  “What?” she said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “It’s locked,” Noleen shouted down and Della came out from under the balcony and squinted up at us. She paled, turned, and ordered Diego to go inside in a stream of staccato Spanish and then looked up at us again.

  “What in the name of the Holy Mother is that?” she said.

  I had swirled and spat three mouthfuls of Todd’s saline solution. He was right: it did sting. But it worked too and I could speak again.

  “Boils,” I said. “It’s a plague of boils.”

  Twenty-Three

  We didn’t have to wait long at the ER.

  I’ll take a second run at that. Once we had got past the receptionists, filled out a total of thirty-five pages of paperwork, paid four deductibles varying between fifty and two hundred dollars, and they had run Branston’s credit card for the uninsured subhuman who had the nerve to be cluttering up their waiting room for a few blemishes without even having the wit to invent a time machine, go back, get coverage, and then need medical attention, and was ungrateful enough to do a big fake “Ennn-aitch-esss!” sneeze while she was at it … we didn’t have to wait long at the ER. For one thing, the nurses wanted us out of sight and for another, two of us were doctors and nepotism rules. Thankfully.

  I only just had time in the waiting room to lay the theory out before them. “I kept thinking about Diego’s pets and sandwiches,” I said. “And I couldn’t work out why. I even dreamed about it last night.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Todd. “Sandwiches?”

  “Loaves and fishes,” I said. “And flies, and boils, and I bet if we phone Cindy Slagle we’ll find that the common name for those … ”

  “Anoplura?” said Kathi.

  “… is lice. Whose fingers aren’t too sore to Google the plagues of Egypt?”

  Noleen did it, with a few ouches and one motherfucker that made the receptionist look up and scowl. “Gimme a break,” Noleen said and the woman nodded, winced, and then looked away.

  “Yep,” she said, reading from her phone. “Lice, flies, worms, boils.”

  “The raccoon was a red herring,” I said. “It was just the host.” I wondered why that bothered me.

  “So what’s next?” said Roger.

  “Hail, locusts, darkness, and … ” Noleen said.

  “Death of the firstborn child,” said Todd. “Don’t even say it. Don’t say his name.”

  No one said it, but we were all thinking the same thing: those little feet and that croaky voice saying, “Are my fishies here?”

  “Call Mike and tell her to come,” Kathi said to me. “Nolly, you dial and hold the phone to her head.”

  “At least we dodged the blood and frogs,” Noleen said, still reading. Then she smacked her head with her hand, making both weep with watery blood. “No we didn’t, though, did we? I wiped the mess up with my own two hands and we put the frogs back in the slough.” She looked round at us all. “Okay, I’m dialling.”

  “You can’t use cell phones in here,” said an approaching nurse. Then she took a second look at us. “You do what you gotta do,” she said. A third look. At Roger. “Doc Kroger, is that you? What happened? Jeez Louise!” A fourth look, taking in Todd. “Doc Kroger II? What happened to them?”

  Todd slipped his bath sheet off one shoulder. “It happened to me too,” he said.

  “Holy crap! Get back here!” the nurse shouted, fishing a mask out of her scrubs pocket and slapping it on. “Cubicles A through E.”

  With that, our ER wait was over. Wincing and bleeding, we shuffled away.

  I got seen first, since my mouth was affected, but it didn’t get me much of an advantage in the end because, once the word got out, every doctor on duty was on deck, dabbing, swabbing, looking stuff up, and calling their old medical-school roommates to send pictures of us and ask for help.

  “The dermatologist is on his way in,” one of the ER docs told me after ten minutes.

  “Wait?,” I said. “The guy with the beer-gut and the orange hair?”

  The ER doc had a great poker face, but his eyes twinkled. “It’s the other dermatologist who’s on call today,” he said

  “Bingo!” a cry went up from two cubicles along. “I know what it is.” Then he let out a string of gobbledygook worse than lawyers, judges, and Professor Slagle combined. A low whistle went up from the cubicle on the other side of me.

  “Can we just open the curtains and do this together?” I said.

  Once the cubicles were combined, the winning doctor resumed. He was holding his phone on his shoulder and twirling swab sticks through the worst of Roger’s lesions. “Contaminated water and did you consume alcohol? You did. Well, you’re going to be okay. I mean, you’re not going to be pretty for a while, but you’re all going to be fine. You should see a good dentist in a week or two, League-Said.”

  “Lexy,” I told him. “I don’t know any good dentists. I only know Branston Lancer.”

  “That fucker?” said one of the younger doctors, then blushed. “Excuse me. I’m sleep-deprived and last night was a rough one.”

  “Plus it’s a fair comment,” I said. No one disagreed.

  “It’s a fungus,” the doc with the phone went on, relaying the news from his friend. “Found in the hills of northern … where? You broke up.”

  “Sicily,” said Kathi. The doctor clicked and winked.

  “Found in the hills of northern Sicily—good guess.” He plugged his free ear with a finger and listened. “Rare and easy to mistake for … yeah, I have no idea what you just said … easy to mistake for some other fungus. Harmless if ingested or applied externally unless you add alcohol. And then … Quasimodo. Instant Dermageddon. Short-lived but epic. Thanks, man. I owe you. Give my love to Laurel and the rugrats.” The doc holstered his phone with a flourish.

  “And what’s the treatment?” said Noleen. “Because I run a service business and this is not a good face for customer relations.”

  “Uhhhhhhh, Clearasil?” said the doctor. “Jamie?” He turned to a colleague. “Clearasil, right? You got any better suggestions?”

  “Can I take a group photo for our newsletter?” Jamie said.

  And so we were almost happy to hear Mike arrive. She had Soft Cop with her and made a nice contrast to him, since she looked as hard as a granite puck studded with hobnails.

  The sight of us unbent her a little. Kathi had a boil in the corner o
f each eye and tears streaming unstoppably down her face making tracks in the lotion the nurses had dabbed on. Roger had one nostril almost closed and one ear so lavishly be-pustuled that he had just slathered a poultice over the whole thing and was trying to ignore the melting ointment dripping down his neck. And then there was me. The only way I felt even halfway comfortable was to keep my tongue hanging out whenever I wasn’t using it, and my eyes were half shut because I had a boil in the crease of one that itched if I opened them. It wasn’t a great look.

  Mike subjected the four of us to close study and swallowed hard. She flicked a glance at Todd and opened her notebook.

  Todd cleared his throat. “I know I look as if I got off lightly,” he said. “But that’s only because you can’t see my bathing suit area.”

  “Oh, tell me your worries!” Noleen said. “Me, Lex, and Kathi have got nooks and crannies you can’t imagine, Todd. And I’ve got belly folds too.”

  “For your information,” said Todd, “I am intact in my lower regions and, while I’m usually thankful that my mother was a hippy … not today.”

  “Okay,” said Mike. “So who wants to tell me what’s going on? We can leave the bathing suit areas out of it if it’s all right with all of you.”

  “First, I need to apologise,” I said. “I was unfair. I took what I believed about some members of the entire class of cops and judged you on the strength of it. Basically, I profiled you.”

  “Wow,” said Mike. “You just can’t stop that mouth.”

  “Anyway,” said Roger. “We need to report a crime. Someone added an irritant fungus to the guest pool at the Last Ditch Motel and the results are before you.”

  “Well,” said Kathi, “it’s more accurate to say someone contaminated a tanker of water and pumped the water into the pool. But yes, the results are before you.”

  “And we know who it was,” said Noleen.

  “Kind of,” I amended.

  “It was a member of the Poggio crime family, from Sicily, Italy,” said Roger. “We have him on video and we have a witness who can ID him.”

  “And,” I said, “we have a motive for him to murder Clovis Bombaro.”