Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped

by Sandy Gingras

  “Is that where the video was taken from?”

  He nods. “But he shoubbn’t have taken a video. That was not the agreement.”

  “What was the agreement?”

  “That he watch.”

  “Fred?” I ask. “And you and his wife?”

  He nods.

  “He paid you for this?”

  He nods.

  “Does Feather know?”

  “No, no, it is his libble secret. He likes to watch.”

  “So he made a tape. And Ernie somehow got a hold of the tape.”

  “I only know that Ernie came to me to blackmail me. I say, ‘Pah’ to him. It is consensual on all barts, ‘why do I hab to bay you?’ He went away with nothing in his grubby hands.”

  Squirt looks at him. “Not entirely consensual if you are luring Feather in with fake Tarot readings.”

  “I should make you bay for my mirrors.” He almost spits at her.

  “But you won’t,” she tells him.

  ∙∙∙•••●●●•••∙∙∙

  On the ride home, I say, “So Ernie was blackmailing who? He tried Ivan, no go. Was he blackmailing Fred too ,as well as Feather?”

  “Probably both,” Squirt says.

  “Poor Feather thinks she’s betraying her husband, and her husband is enjoying watching it.”

  “Yuck,” Squirt agrees.

  Then I tell Squirt all about the birdhouse and the pills.

  “Why would he hide them there?”

  “He probably didn’t feel safe keeping his stash in Marie’s trailer. Plus, he was paranoid and crazy. It’s like all of his hiding places, kind of in your face and you are so stupid you’ll never find it…. It wouldn’t have been a big deal for him to ride back there on the mower when he wanted to; it was just not a happy walk…”

  “Aren’t you the little explorer though, Ms. Swamp Lady,” Squirt tells me.

  “I thought you said I had no sense of adventure.”

  “I’m changing my mind,” she tells me. Her tough features kind of soften a little. You could almost call it a smile.

  Chapter 45

  I call Mrs. Black when I get back to the office. First I sit in my swivel chair and go round and round in procrastination and worry. Then, when I’m dizzy, I dial.

  She answers the phone on the first ring.

  “Mrs. Black, it’s Lola,” I say.

  “Lola dear,” she says. “I haven’t paid you for your work.”

  “Well, you can send a check.”

  “But I’d like to speak with you personally,” she says.

  Uh-oh, I think. “All right,” I say.

  “Are you available tonight?” she asks.

  I can’t think of an excuse, so I say, “Fine.” Joe and I have to go to the rest stop, but that’s much later. And the only thing waiting for me at home is Martha Stewart Enterprises.

  “Excellent,” she says. “We’ll be having a nice tuna casserole. I like potato chips crushed on the top. Would that be all right?”

  “Sure.” I haven’t had that for dinner in about thirty years.

  “Five o’clock sharp then,” she says. “And you already know where we live, so that’s convenient, isn’t it?”

  She sounds a lot more chipper than I expected, so maybe things are ironed out between her and her husband. I hope. I hope.

  Squirt knocks on my open door. “Your father wants time sheet for hours and a detail of what you are spending time on,” Squirt tells me. “He knows you’re spending time on this murder investigation which you’re not getting paid for.”

  “In writing?” I ask.

  Squirt looks at me meaningfully.

  “I’ll do that later,” I say.

  “He also wanted to know if you got your P.I. license yet.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “He also wanted to know why the dog is coming to work with you.”

  “I guess I have to talk to him,” I say.

  “He’s waiting in his office.”

  I sit down in front of my father. Dreamer pads in behind me and settles herself next to my father’s desk.

  “Why is the dog here?”

  My father always refers to Dreamer as “the dog.” He says I ruined her with that name. Dreamer follows him around, sticks right to his heels when he’s around, but all I’ve ever seen him do is give her an occasional pat on the head.

  “She’s not bothering anybody. She’s having a hard time adjusting. I can’t leave her alone. She chews her fur off. It’s only til she adjusts.”

  “It’s unprofessional.”

  “It’s only for a little while.”

  “There’s dog hair everywhere.”

  “She just needs a little attention and love, then she’ll be all right.”

  “What are you doing with your life?” he asks. “Your mother tells me that now you’re getting divorced.” He peers at me over his glasses. He stacks together some papers as if there is a whole pile of more important things he should be doing rather than talk to me.

  “If you don’t want me to work here, just let me know.”

  “I just don’t understand you.”

  “What else is new?” I say.

  His eyes kind of flinch. “I checked out your mail-order detective training thing,” he says.

  “The Online Detective Training Institute,” I tell him.

  “Whatever.” He shakes his head. “You need to get that P.I. license, or you can’t work here. I have liability issues that I need to contend with. I’m giving you three days.”

  I get up.

  “And no more fooling around with murder,” he tells me as I stomp out. Dreamer follows.

  I thought I was over being mad at my father.

  I sit in my office and swirl around on my chair. I think about when he left home.

  At fifteen, I always dressed in black. I dyed my hair purple. I was not exactly a Goth; I didn’t really know what that was. I just knew I didn’t belong anywhere and I wanted to look like a kind of alien . I was always lost in books. And I was always in trouble with my father. It was teenage stuff, but my parents didn’t know how to deal with me. When they weren’t grounding me, they were arguing with each other endlessly.

  That’s when my parents decided to raise a seeing-eye dog. I think they thought it would be good for me. We had never had a pet before, although I had begged plenty. When you raise a seeing-eye dog, you take a puppy at ten weeks old and you train it, then you give it back to the seeing-eye dog people at six months old so that they can match the dog to a blind person. I guess my parents figured this was a perfect scenario, you get your kid a pet but you don’t commit to it for the long term.

  You have to be a caring person to do this, but also have a detached side to you. You have to know how to draw the line with love. You have to love the dog and then let it go.

  Budgy was the puppy’s name. He was my constant companion, the friend I didn’t have. I felt that he understood me. I truly did. And it’s a gift to be understood when you’re any age, but especially when you’re an adolescent. Budgy made me feel that I wasn’t alone.

  Then my parents gave him back to the seeing-eye people. To say it broke my heart is to miss the way sometimes you love with more than just your heart. Sometimes you love with your whole being. And it breaks you when lose that love.

  My mother, I think, understood how hard it was for me, but she told me that we had promised. We had to do the right thing. And giving away Budgy was the right thing to do. For my father, it was cut and dried.

  When they took Budgy away, my father said I would have to learn to get over it. He and my mother argued about it. Then they split up. My father moved out. I don’t think the dog was the reason, I think I was.

  I still remember standing at the door watching my father walk Budgy away on her powder blue leash, her little tail wagging, her ears flapping. She was a Golden Retriever. I remember how her fur looked in the sun that day, like a soft field that I wanted to lie down in and just roll
and roll and never stop. I can’t remember if that was the same day my father left. It’s all bundled together in my mind, giving away Budgy, my parents giving up on their marriage. And maybe I gave away something in myself then too—the trust part of love. The hard part.

  Dreamer’s under my desk. I rub her back with my foot.

  Chapter 46

  Mrs. Black hands me the check as I walk through the door. The Blacks’ house is so clean the carpet squeaks. The couch almost squeaks when I sit down on it. Good, glossy but dark pieces of furniture make it seem like we’ve stepped back in time. There’s a glass candy dish on a doily. A doily! “I love your house,” I say. And I do. It reminds me of the Salvatore’s house. They were an elderly couple on the block where I grew up. They’d invite me in sometimes, and give me a glass of ginger ale and ask me how school was going. I bet the candy is the same brand of striped peppermints.

  I meet Mr. Black for the first time, officially. He offers me a glass of white wine or a cocktail.

  “I’ll have the wine, please,” I say.

  “Oh, me too,” Mrs. Black says, “but put one of those spritzers in mine.”

  Mr. Black turns and smiles.

  “And a cherry! I love maraschino cherries,” she confesses to me. “Sit down, sit down.” She throws a cat to the other end of the couch. “That’s Frank. He’s more like a little area rug than a true animal.”

  And she’s right. He doesn’t even readjust himself, just continues sleeping the way he’s landed.

  When Daniel leaves the room to get the drinks, Mrs. Black tells me that Daniel goes every day to visit Mrs. Devon now. “I told him to,” she announces proudly. “There isn’t that much time left.

  “I went with him yesterday. I wanted to bring her some of my chicken soup. She thought I was her mother. It was very sad.”

  Mrs. Black’s face looks suddenly old. She perks up though when Daniel comes back with her drink. “Yum,” she says, tasting it. “It’s like a Shirley Temple with a buzzer in it.”

  Then she goes to check on dinner. Daniel nods at me. “I owe you, young lady.”

  “Mrs. Black already paid me.”

  “No, I mean… it is so hard to have unsaid things in your life. I didn’t realize quite what a burden it was. It’s funny,” he pauses, “how two people can see things so differently…”

  I nod.

  He tells me, “Jeanette always thought Linda, Mrs. Devon, was the love of my life, that I ended up settling for her after our engagement was… over.” He shakes his head. Then he smiles. “Marrying Linda would have been the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

  I cock my head.

  “She was a wonderful girl, kind and thoughtful. On the surface, we seemed like we were made for each other. But truthfully, she was too much like me. She would have bored me to death. Who wants a relationship that’s like looking in the mirror?

  “Even now, when she’s so close to death, I can see her nod her approval when I fold the newspaper over precisely the way I do to read it. We shared orderly habits like that.

  “Mrs. Black, now, she will read a paper all willy-nilly. She hops from one article to the next. The paper, after she’s done reading it, looks like a cat has been rolling in it.

  “Thank God for her,” he tells me. “She understands me, but she saves me from myself. She makes me laugh. She makes my life so unpredictable. And she loves me,” he says, surprised at this after all these years. His eyes are kind of blurry.

  I smile at him. “She IS a kick,” I admit.

  “She never knew how thankful I was my plane went down. The road of my life was going straight and narrow, and then I was thrown into a wild detour. She thought I mourned for the loss of that old life, when really, I’ve never looked back.” He pauses.

  I look at him. How brave he is to have gone with the detour, I think.

  “I’m glad I could do this for Linda,” he continues. “It gives me great peace and a kind of resolution to the whole business. And not too many people get closure in life. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

  “I know,” I say. “I know.” And I really do. I am the queen of no closure…

  “Jeanette and I, well, we’re free now. And I have you to thank, young lady.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and I really mean it. Maybe I’m a failure at my own life, but maybe I’m not so bad at solving other people’s problems.

  “Supper’s ready,” Mrs. Black announces. She’s got an apron with chickens printed all over it tied around her waist.

  Turns out, not only do we have the tuna casserole with La Soeur canned peas on the side, we have Campbell’s Tomato soup (with oyster crackers) to start, and Jello butterscotch pudding for dessert. People still eat like this, I think in wonderment about twenty times during the dinner. It makes me feel like a kid again, a happy kid.

  “Life is full of strange gifts,” Mr. Black says at the end of the meal.

  We all nod.

  “It’s true,” Mrs. Black says happily, a little bit of butterscotch pudding on her chin.

  Chapter 47

  Joe and I are hiding behind a bush that has leaves that stretch out like giant hands. It’s very dark. I am busy imagining large spiders and lizards stalking us. We are wearing black pants and black shirts and I’m wearing my Yankees cap. Joe is wearing a golf cap from Sea Oaks. We look like spies. Kind of.

  If I peek through the bush’s fronds, I can see the parking lot and the restroom building too. We are sitting on two plastic pads that are really boat flotation cushions. It’s a gluey hot Florida night. We are eating finger-fulls of the peanut butter that Joe brought along to smear on my license plate.

  “Why?” I ask him. “Ernie’s dead now. There’s nobody around to take pictures of the back of my car.”

  “You never know who’s watching,” he tells me as he half obliterates my plate with extra chunky Skippy. “I signed up for your detective class.”

  “Really?” I say.

  “I’m already on Lesson Four. That’s surveillance. That’s where I learned the license plate trick.”

  “Lesson FOUR?” I say.

  He shrugs. “I’m retired,” he says. “I have nothing better to do.”

  At twelve ten, the first car pulls in. A man (in a Zorro mask!) goes inside the building. The light doesn’t switch on, but it suddenly looks less dark inside.

  “Flashlight?” I whisper. “Candle?”

  Joe shrugs.

  “Did you see the mask?” I say.

  He nods. We look at each other. “You smell like Mr. Peanut,” I tell him.

  “Shhh.”

  I can see why Ernie took pictures of the backs of cars and license plates, it’s often all you can see when you are being a spy.

  There’s something familiar about this whole scene. “Does this remind you…,” I say.

  “Something déjà vu-ish,” he ponders.

  “It looks like that photo!” I whisper.

  “What photo?”

  “That photo,” I say, “of William’s car.”

  Another car pulls up. Then another. Eight men, in total, go into the building with masks on. Then it’s quiet. It’s not a nice quiet. It’s one of those expectant cringing quiets that you know someone is going to jump out of and yell BOO!

  “Come on,” Joe says.

  We edge toward the side of the building where the little window is. There’s a ladder conveniently placed.

  I look at Joe.

  “Okay,” he whispers, “So I planned a little…”

  We hesitate to see who will go up the ladder first. I point to myself and then to him. I climb carefully up without making a sound. The ladder is off to the side of the window. I go up as high as I can. Joe follows. The ladder is a little rickety but not so bad. We both peek in, then pull our heads right back.

  There’s a candlelit circle of men with their pants unzipped and everything hanging out. There are two guys in the middle doing things to each other. I blink. I peek in again. Yup.
Still happening. I look at Joe. He shrugs. I wave at him to start going back down.

  That’s when the sky fills with red swirling lights and sirens. My heart jumps and I step down onto Joe’s hand. He pulls back and the ladder tips. “Oopsie,” I say as we careen backwards. We land right in a big hedge-like bush. “Oops,” I reiterate. We’re both on our backs saved by the bush. But the problem is, we’re stuck in the dent we’ve made in the top of the bush.

  Joe rocks back and forth flailing his arms.

  “You’re not having a stroke or anything, are you?”

  Then I hear PLUNK, as he lands on the sidewalk. “Try rolling,” Joe tells me. I shouldn’t giggle, but I do. I’m so inappropriate in times of stress. He grabs one of my hands and pulls, and I try to oomph with my butt. Then a really bright light shines on us. “Oh,” I say as I squint into the glare. It’s one of those blinding flashlights that cops have.

  One cop grabs Joe and zip ties his hands. When Joe lets go of me, I roll back into the dent of the bush. “Hey,” I say. Another cop grabs my arm and launches me out. “Thanks,” I say, and then I get zip tied too. “But,” I say. We are led to a squad van along with all of the Zorros, and we’re packed inside. “But,” I keep saying to no avail. What am I going to say, “We were just watching?” That’s the crime. We’re going to be booked just for being there.

  As we pull out of the parking lot, I look back at the building. Now I’m sure it’s just like the photo of William’s car. I look for William’s car, then I look for William in the van. It’s hard to tell because they all still have Zorro masks on, but I don’t think William is among us. William looks like Ronald Reagan with pompadour-y black hair, and most of these men are shorter, plumper, balding or gray.

  I do not enjoy the journey in the prison van. It is filled with a needle-y silence. I am across from Joe and he looks utterly embarrassed. I feel a little nauseous.

  Once we get to the station, we are given summonses. I keep saying, “But we’re Private Investigators!”

  Finally the cop says, “Let me see your licenses.”

  I look at Joe. He shakes his head at me. I call my father from the station, and he comes to pick us up. “Lewd conduct, Lola? This is a first for you.” Joe stands by my side sheepishly.