Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped

by Sandy Gingras

  I say, “I think Diamond and I would like to hear more about the kind of readings you actually do. She’s a Tarot Master herself.” I gesture toward the immobile Squirt, “and we heard from our friend Feather that you do ‘energy readings?’”

  “Ah yes, Feather,” he says leaning back in his chair.

  “Could you do something like that for Diamond?” I ask him. I look at Squirt and she looks back at me. I smile at her.

  “That’s more intesib,” he says. “Body work is something that we work ub to.” He begins shuffling the tarot cards. Then he places them on the coffee table in front of Squirt. “Are we ready?” he asks.

  There is something about a deck of cards that makes you just want to get a hand dealt to you, isn’t there? I can see why these guys make their money. It is almost hypnotic, that full deck. “Deal me in,” I want to say.

  Squirt reaches out and puts her hand on the deck. “Which card,” she asks him evenly, “is the one that tells a woman that she should have sex with you?”

  He cocks his head and pauses. He appears unruffled.

  “Feather told us,” I say. “We’re actually investigating the death of Ernie Stank. He was blackmailing Feather over her…” I’m thinking of the right word “activities… with you.” I don’t know if this is true, but I say it anyway.

  “Febber killed him?” he asks us.

  “I don’t know that,” I tell him, “but I do know she paid him not to reveal her secret affair with you to her husband.” I lie.

  “Why ever would she do that?” he says.

  “She loves him. She would never allow her husband to find out,” Squirt says

  “Pah,” he says dismissively.

  “You don’t seem surprised though,” I say.

  “That Ernie man tried to blackmail me too. He said he could ruin me. I told him, ‘Go away, you little worm ob a man.’ He tells me, ‘I hab a tape!’ I laughed at him. Everybubby has a tape these days…”

  “So you didn’t pay him?” I ask.

  “What for?” he asks me. “I am doing nothing wrong. My clients are grown ubs. They can hab sex with me if they want to. It helbs them free up their frozen selbs.”

  “Don’t you have any shame?” Squirt asks him in a clenched way.

  “People are so ub tight. Especially those women wib their tight little asses and their big cars.” He looks at me, “They need to let their energy blossom,” he extends his arms out in the heavy red air.

  “Blossom?” Squirt asks.

  I admit, I’m amazed by the whole tableau. How the guy has a whole theory, how he feels entirely justified in what he does.

  “That’s abuse of power,” Squirt tells him.

  “Abuse?” he laughs. “I provide a service,” he says. “I don’t hear Febber or Fred complaining about the services I provide.”

  “I’m complaining about the services you provide,” she tells him.

  He reaches over to Squirt and rubs her thigh. “You need to let your energy flow,” he says. He rubs her thigh some more.

  Oh no, I think. The next moment Squirt is standing up and pointing a gun at the tarot guy. “You can’t TOUCH me,” she yells.

  “I didn’t,” Ivan says.

  “You can’t GROPE me,” she says to Ivan Newton, both hands on the gun.

  “Which gun is that?” I ask, but nobody is paying any attention to me.

  “I wasn’t groping,” Ivan insists.

  “You WERE groping,” she informs him.

  “I didn’t MEAN it,” he say,s but Squirt is towering over the little tarot guy. I almost feel sorry for him. He’s curled into the corner of his plush red chair. “Help,” he says. He throws a tasseled pillow at Squirt. She ducks and the gun goes off. It’s the Nerf gun. Ivan the Tarot Master squeals and jumps up and hides behind his desk.

  Brightly colored Nerf discs propel out of the gun like flying saucers. About a million of them. They’re zooming around the room bouncing into everything. The gun is making a kind of whirring sound as it spits out the discs.

  My mouth is open. Squirt has the trigger nailed down spraying the room with Nerf saucers. Ivan the Tarot Master is huddled under his desk with his eyes closed. He can’t figure out what’s going on. Then one of the discs hits the biggest mirror up near the ceiling. It tips back and forth slowly, and then falls off its nail and slams into about a hundred other mirrors on its way down. For long few seconds there is the sound of a lot of property damage. Then there’s a ringing silence.

  “Uh oh,” I say unnecessarily.

  Ivan’s head peeks out from the behind the desk. “Eek,” I think he says.

  “Run,” I tell Squirt. For some reason, she’s standing on top of the coffee table. I grab her arm and scramble out of the room. Dreamer is standing on the porch, her ears up and her head cocked sideways staring at the front door, when we burst out. I grab her and run for the car. I open the back door and she kind of hops up this time. She’s getting the hang of getaways. I’m in my seat, but Squirt’s door is still open. She’s arranging her purse on the floor, situating her seat belt. “Get in, get in!” I yell.

  “Hold your horses,” she says.

  We peel away from the curb. There’s no sign of anyone in the neighborhood, no sign of Ivan running after us. “Holy moly,” I say after we put a little distance behind us. “I bet he peed in his pants under the desk.”

  Squirt says, “Those mirrors did make a lot of noise.”

  “He thought you were really going to shoot him.”

  “It would serve him right…,” she announces.

  “You better tie a little teal colored ribbon around your pepper gun so you know which is which next time,” I say.

  She’s a little catatonic. She nods.

  “You need a tootsie roll,” I tell her. “He rubbed your thigh.”

  “I know,” she says shaking her head. “I know.”

  I shake my head too.

  “Green light,” she tells me. I look back at the road.

  “You shot his wall with a Nerf gun,” I say.

  “Zoltan is gonna be mad. I used up all of his discs. I got over-excited,” she adds.

  “They probably have replacement packs,” I tell her.

  She nods. “Can we stop off at Toys ‘R Us?”

  “What if he calls the cops?” I ask.

  “He won’t,” she says. “It was self-defense.”

  “It was,” I say automatically. “Maybe you didn’t need to do QUITE so much damage…”

  “His business might not be criminal legally, but I don’t think he’d want the cops to know what he’s up to. He won’t call them.”

  I’m thinking about what Ivan said and didn’t say. “Ernie blackmailed Feather about her relationship with the tarot master. He tried to blackmail Ivan, but Ivan didn’t go for it. At least he said he didn’t. Ivan said that Fred wouldn’t have cared, didn’t he?” I ask Squirt.

  “I don’t think that’s what he said. I can’t remember. I’m very hot,” she says and rolls down the window.

  “You’re not going to throw up are you?” I ask, looking around in case I have to pull over.

  “I got over-excited,” she tells me again. “I just need some air.” I lower all the windows. We stick our heads out the window like dogs do as we motor along. I didn’t expect my life to turn out like this, I really didn’t.

  “I remember,” Squirt tells me, pulling her head in. “He said something about Fred not complaining about the services he provided.”

  “As if Fred already knew?” I ask.

  “And he said something about Ernie having a tape,” she says.

  “How would Ernie get a tape?” I ask.

  Chapter 42

  When Dreamer and I drive up to my little trailer at five o’clock, it’s buzzing—literally. At first, I think the stress has gotten to my head, but when I get out of the car, I find, no, it’s true. My whole trailer is vibrating.

  “What the…?” I say.

  When I open the door,
I can’t move. Two large folding tables fill up my entire living room. There are two sewing machines going and my mother and Miss Tilney are pushing fabric through them, this way and that. The room sounds like it’s full of bees.

  They pause when I open the door. “Hello dear,” my mother says. “We’re making curtains.”

  “We got the tables from the rec room and borrowed the machines from the Quilting Bee Club. They only meet on Mondays,” Miss Tilney explains.

  I edge around the table into the kitchen. There’s a new TV perched on my counter. It’s tiny, the screen must be eight inches wide, and there’s a DVD player in it, and it’s playing Under the Tuscan Sun. “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Your father had that,” my mother says. “He never used it. You’re supposed to mount it up under your kitchen cabinets like a toaster oven.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I was getting used to the silence.”

  “You like this material?” My mother hold up a hibiscus laden floral.

  “It looks like a Hawaiian shirt,” I say.

  “That means she likes it,” Miss Tilney snaps, and puts her nose back to the grindstone.

  “I thought it looked cheerful,” my mother says.

  “We could use a little cheer around here.” Miss Tilney looks around disparagingly.

  I don’t say anything. We? I think.

  “And the fabric will pick up the greenish beige of the couch,” Miss Tilney adds.

  “Couch?” I ask.

  “It pulls out,” Miss Tilney says.

  “To where?” I ask, looking helplessly around the little room.

  “We have to go pick it up tomorrow. There wasn’t room in the cargo van,” my mother tells me.

  “Your mother measured,” Miss Tilney says.

  “Your father rented a U Haul.”

  “How big is this couch anyway?”

  “She walked in grumpy,” Miss Tilney tells my mother.

  “Something happen at work?” my mother asks.

  “I failed my P.I. test. I knew I wasn’t ready for it. Dad was pushing me, pushing me to do it like it was a cliff he wanted me to fall off.”

  “Oh, I’m sure not,” my mother says.

  “How am I supposed to know about caliber of guns and wiretapping laws?”

  “Didn’t you review?” Miss Tilney asks.

  “I didn’t like the book,” I say. They both look up at me. “What?” It scared me, okay? I thought it would be better if I didn’t psych myself out. I can take it again.”

  “She sabotages herself,” my mother tells Miss Tilney. “Ever since she was a little girl she’s been laying traps and walking into them.”

  “What?” I say.

  “I’m sorry, dear. Maybe I could help you study. I could ask you the questions,” my mother offers

  “No, thank you,” I say and get up to get a glass of wine. My cupboards are filled with glasses. I open a drawer. A whole set of silverware gleams at me. I open the pantry, the refrigerator. Stocked. A sinking happens inside of me. “Wow,” I say, “it looks like I settled in.”

  “About time,” Miss Tilney says. “Who lives with one fork?”

  “Uncle Paulie is quitting and I’m supposed to take his place in the Polenta family slot,” I tell my mother.

  “That’s nice,” my mother says. “Isn’t it?”

  “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Your father said something.”

  “He should let Squirt be a partner. She passed her test.”

  “I’m sure your father would rather have you.”

  “You mean he’s stuck with me.”

  “Like I said—grumpy.” Miss Tilney says to my mother. “Don’t buy into it.”

  “Why don’t you have a glass of wine and relax?” my mother says. “I’ll start supper as soon as we finish here. “We’ve already done the other rooms. It shouldn’t be long.”

  “Petal to the metal, right, Angie?” Miss Tilney says.

  Nobody ever calls my mother Angie, but she smiles at Miss Tilney, and says, “That’s right, Clara.” They’re all buddy-buddies now.

  “Why doncha go look?” Miss Tilney glares at me like I’m some ungrateful wretch of a person.

  “Why does everyone call you MISS Tilney if you were married?” I ask her.

  “I took my old name back. Harold’s name was Rump. I didn’t want to offend him when he was alive, but I couldn’t wait to change my name back after he died. I had enough years as Mrs. Rump.”

  My mother laughs. I stomp down the hall. The bed is all assembled and made with the crisp white bedding I bought, and the windows are hung with the aforementioned curtains. A fuzzy rug is beside the bedside. “Who assembled the bed?” I yell.

  “That nice man, Joseph,” my mother yells back. “He’s coming over for dinner so I can repay him. There were a lot of pieces though. That might be two dinners, don’t you think, Clara?”

  “A big dessert oughta do it,” Miss Tilney says.

  I look into the bathroom. Little green rug, green and white coordinating towels. There’s even a green soap dish. All for moi… the grinch.

  I hear chuckles from the other room. “I love this part,” Miss Tilney says.

  I go back in the room. A tiny little Diane Lane is talking to a tiny little Italian man on the beach. “He just uses her,” I say. “There’s nothing that works out in the movie unless you count the dweebie guy at the end with the backpack, and I can’t believe that Diane Lane would fall for a guy with a backpack and hiking boots. I hate hiking boots.”

  They both look at me.

  “I bet he has a car with a roof rack too and a kayak.” I kind of fade out. “Oh well, I’m going to take Dreamer for a walk.,”

  “Chicken cacciatore,” Miss Tilney says back.

  “What?”

  “What your mother’s making for dinner. She invited me too.”

  “Okay,” I say. I go outside and just start walking. Dreamer pads alongside. We weave along the dirt road through the trailers. “What’s wrong with me?” I ask her.

  I knock on Joe’s door. “What up?” he says. He’s all neat and showered.

  “Your cacciatore won’t be ready for a while yet. They’re making curtains.”

  “Your mother, she’s something else.”

  “Do you think she’s moving in?”

  “That I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “I’m afraid to.”

  “You have a lot of fears.”

  “That’s why I’ll never be any good at my job.” Some bird is screeching in the trees and rattling its throat. It clatters out through the leaves. “You don’t have those trilly little songbirds here, do you?”

  “Seems not.”

  “I failed the P.I. test.”

  “Didn’t you review?”

  I roll my eyes. “My mother is making me floral curtains.”

  “So you said.”

  “You know Ernie had a tape of the tarot guy and Feather?” He looks at me. I tell him the whole story of Squirt and the mirrors and the chubby weasel-y tarot guy. Joe’s eyes get all crinkly a couple times.

  “This is serious,” I tell him. “We almost died from falling mirrors.”

  “I wish I was there to see it,” he says. “Where do you think the tape is hidden?” We both look around as if it would be hanging in the orange tree in Joe’s yard.

  “I went around with George this morning in the golf cart. We didn’t see any more of Ernie’s birdhouses.”

  “It’s gotta be something like that though,” I say.

  “Something that Ernie made that opens?”

  “I have an idea,” I say. “Remember what Marie said about the heart being a door…”

  “Yeah,”

  “What if Ernie had the tape inside a heart door that he made?”

  Chapter 43

  Marie doesn’t respond to Joe’s knock. “Probably napping,” he whispers. “Let’s look again at the workbench.” He turns around. “We didn’t really look the l
ast time because we didn’t know what we were looking for.”

  We go back to Ernie’s workshop. The evening is still and the sky is turning pink. Everything kind of glows. I start looking more systematically. When Joe gets to the bin of crooked hearts he takes them all out and examines each one. None of them are big enough to hold a tape.

  I look at everything that has a heart on it. There’s a box with a heart on it that opens, but nothing is inside. Then I see that the heart itself splits in two ingeniously. I slide the two sides apart. There’s a picture inside. It’s another car picture. But this time it’s daytime and the car is parked next to a big brick institutional-looking building. It’s another picture of the back of a car with the license plate showing. Joe pulls the photo close to his face. “That’s a red Lincoln Town Car if I’m not mistaken. It looks like Gene Swan’s car.”

  “The red is distinctive.”

  Joe nods.

  “What’s the building?”

  “It looks familiar but I don’t know…”

  We head back to Joe’s. The walk is very quiet. We listen to our flip-flops slapping the pavement. “Where could the tape be,” I say thinking out loud.

  Joe says, “That might be the loony bin.”

  “What?” I say.

  “That building in the picture,” he says, “the loony bin.”

  “The bin!” I say and do a u-turn.

  “Where are you going?” Joe says hurrying after me.

  “The bin with all the hearts.”

  “I looked in there.”

  “Let’s look again.”

  Joe takes all the hearts out of the heart bin. He feels around the corners. Something kind of pops.

  “Aha,” he says.

  “Aha?” I ask, and peek over his shoulder.

  “False bottom,” he explains. “Little spring latch. And voila, a black plastic baggie the size of a video.”

  “It IS…,” I say as he pulls the video tape out of the bag.

  “We should tell the detective about this,” he says.

  “After we look at it,” I say, but I’m thinking, uh oh, I don’t want to watch Feather and the tarot guy.

  But that’s exactly what we do. We watch about 30 seconds. Then Joe calls detective Johansen. When Joe hangs up he tells me, “He’s coming, and he says, don’t touch it and don’t watch it.”