by Lou Fletcher
TEN
“I’ll take mine neat,” Applebee answered, when I waved the bottle of Glenfiddich in his direction.
“Same for me, s’il vous plait,” Tippi stretched out in Applebee’s recliner. “What a week.” She kicked off her Birkenstocks and wiggled her toes.
Handing her a drink, I thought how attractive she looked. Her short salt and pepper curls waved around a face softened by exhaustion.
“What do we do now?” I said.
Applebee shook his head. Tippi studied the pale liquid she was swishing around in her glass.
“I can’t get my head around this,” I said. “First Alice and now this.”
Applebee’s face was gray.
“You know, Bob,” I said as I studied my own tumbler of scotch, “when I followed you into the restroom that night, Perry was there. Standing by your wheelchair.” I let the implication of the scene sink in.
“What are you trying to say, Hank? Perry and I have had our differences but...”
We were interrupted by a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” I said irritably, yanking at the doorknob. Opening the door, I was almost knocked off my feet by a tornado of miniature beings, who jumped, shoved, and clattered into the room with shouts and whoops. Hats, mittens, and coats flew in every direction as the colorful swarm blew past me. One of the girls broke away from the group and ran toward Applebee’s ham radio station. She was just about to flip some switches on the expensive equipment when she was swooped up into Tippi’s long arms.
“Close your eyes, my darling,” a woman’s silvery voice tinkled in Bob’s direction. “Make sure his eyes are covered, children. We have a surprise for my sick boy.” Applebee’s mother, Ada Stein, a.k.a. Mother Goose, floated into the room. Her red, perfectly manicured nails clutched a large picnic basket.
A small girl in denim overalls and a red flannel shirt climbed onto Applebee’s lap and covered his eyes with her tiny fingers, nails polished in the same bright red as Ada’s.
“I gots him, Miss Ada,” the child squealed.
“Don’t let him peek, Chloe,” Ada warned. “Come here, Davey, Jack.” She gently placed the basket in the boys’ outstretched arms. “Hold it tight and take it to him, but be careful,” she added, as the boys and their cargo bounced across the room. “Now, set it down there on the divan next to him.”
Tippi’s small charge wriggled free and bounded across the room to snuggle up on the other side of Applebee.
Ada continued her instructions. “Terry, you put the present in Uncle Bob’s lap, and Elliot can open the lid for him.”
In the meantime, Applebee sat with a pasted smile on his pinched face, eyes squeezed shut, as he nervously clasped and unclasped his hands.
“He gots his hands all closed up,” Chloe said. “Open them up, Uncle Bob.” She pried his fingers apart.
Terry reached into the basket and pulled out a brown and white object that stretched upward and, before anyone could say, “It’s a dog!” shot its long pink tongue right into Bob’s open mouth.
“Phewy, blah.” Applebee pushed the animal away. “What the devil?”
“It’s a puppy,” Chloe said. She picked up the animal and snuggled closer to Applebee. She didn’t seem to mind as the dog licked her face, mouth, and ears.
“Her name is Frenchie,” said Terry, who also wiggled his way nearer to Applebee for his share of the puppy’s attention. “She’s a get-well present.”
A little girl with red braids, dressed in worn clothes obviously meant for someone older and larger, had been standing quietly next to Bob while the gift was presented. She bent over and cupped her hand around his ear.
“He’s a guard dog, too,” she whispered, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “He won’t let nobody hurt you.” Her eyes said she knew something about humans’ ability to inflict pain.
“It ain’t a ‘he,’ Marcy, ’member?” Davey spoke up. “She’s a girl,” he added with pride. “She might have babies. Then we could all have a dog.”
“Dog? Babies?” Applebee looked at the small faces that lit up at Davey’s suggestion. “What am I going to do with a dog? How will I walk it, take care of it? I mean, a dog?” He was clearly bewildered.
“Don’t you like him, I mean her?” Marcy started to cry. “You got to like her, Uncle Bob. You just got to.” The tears came faster.
“Miss Ada, he made Marcy cry.” Davey looked for help with the situation unraveling before his eyes. “He don’t like Frenchie, neither.” He added his own wails to those of Marcy. All the other children started crying, and the puppy, excited by the commotion, jumped down from Chloe’s grasp and peed on Applebee’s shoe.
“Oh, dear,” Ada said. “This is not going as I planned.”
ELEVEN
Bob was supposed to take it easy for a few days but when he phoned to tell me he was climbing the walls, I agreed to drive him to the center. I made him promise we’d leave right after lunch since the weather guy on Channel 5 was predicting what he called ‘mixed precipitation’ this afternoon.
“What’s this?” I asked, when Marcy opened the door of Applebee’s house. “Is the center getting a new member?”
“My momma said I can go with Uncle Bob today. I has to take care of him and Frenchie.” She stood, arms crossed, between Bob and me. The puppy sat on Bob’s lap, happily chewing on the fringe of her pink blanket. Marcy glared up at me. She tapped one small foot, her dirty tennis shoe flashing pink neon with each move. Beside the other foot sat a child’s car seat.
“I see.” I raised an eyebrow at Bob, who peeked sheepishly around his pint-sized protector.
“Marcy comes by every day to help me walk Frenchie,” he explained. “This morning, her momma got called in to work at the last minute, so instead of taking her to Mother Goose, I thought it would be fun for her to spend the day with us. Afterwards, we’re going to cook macaroni and cheese, read some stories and have ourselves a pajama party. You’re welcome to join us.”
“No he ain’t,” Marcy snapped. “”It’s you and me and Frenchie. You promised, Uncle Bob.”
I laughed and held up my hands in surrender. “It’s fine,” I said. “Besides, this one kind of scares me.” I was only half joking and tried to smile at Marcy who scowled and tapped. I felt like Darth Vader meeting Barbie.
“Then, let’s roll, people,” Applebee said.
…
By the time we arrived at the center, my head was throbbing. Between Marcy’s relentless kicking against my seat back and Bob’s relentless chatter about the kazoo competition, I couldn’t wait to drop off my charges and find a nice quiet poker game to help me relax.
Bob was greeted with the enthusiasm normally reserved for a win by the Bengals down at Paul Brown Stadium. Like that team, he relished the spotlight, knowing it would be short-lived. He introduced Marcy, who had smiles for everyone but me. Instead, I received a nose wrinkle and the pointed tip of her little pink tongue.
I decided to try one more time to win her over. I reached in my pocket for a chocolate kiss and offered it on my outstretched hand. She eyed me, then the candy, before plucking it from my palm. I made my move, recalling a game I used to play with Rachel when she was little.
“Hey, you,” I said. “What’s new?”
She looked at me, silent and blinking.
“Now you say, ‘Not much. What’s new with you?’” I prompted. “Okay?’ This will be our saying.”
She thought for a minute, trying to decide if we were going to be friends, I guess, then smiled broadly, nodding. “’K. What’s new with you? More candy.” She wiggled her fingers at me.
“Remind you of anyone?” Applebee grinned.
“I’m allowed to come here every day. My mother said so,” Marcy told us. “She’s an asternoy and has to go to outer space and...”
“Her mother is an astronaut?” Mary asked, arriving in time for this bit of news.
“Beats me,” I said, looking to Applebee.
&nbs
p; “The outer space part is true enough,” he explained. “The rest—well, I don’t think NASA knows about it.”
“You can tell us all about it over milk and cookies,” Mary said. She followed Marcy’s twirling little figure down the hall.
“Have you seen Gus?” Applebee called after her.
Mary waved her hand toward the offices in the back. “He said he had to work on the books.”
I helped myself to coffee and left to hunt up a poker game back in the utility room. On the way, I stopped by the conference room, just behind Applebee. We found Gus staring out the window at the slate gray sky.
“Who’s this?” Gus asked when he noticed us. He patted the puppy’s head, and Frenchie responded by licking his fingers.
“Meet Mother’s latest attempt as a matchmaker.” Applebee smiled and scratched the little dog’s ears. “I think this might finally be the one,” he added. We were all too familiar with Ada’s well-known, though futile, efforts to find her son a mate.
Gus forced a smile. “Want to see how we’re doing?” he said, changing the subject. He turned his attention to the figures on his computer screen.
“Just the basics,” Applebee said. “You know I hate this stuff. Now, if you could play it on the kazoo,” he added, “then I might be able to follow along.”
“We have everybody’s registration fees for the competition, so we have four thousand dollars right there,” Gus said. “I haven’t added up all the expenses yet, and there are always unexpected odds and ends that come in at the last minute, but I think we’ll clear around twenty-five hundred. Combine that with the bingo earnings, craft sales, and the other fundraising events for the past year, and we should be looking at a balance in the members’ treasury of well over twenty grand.”
“We should have enough for a few great parties,” Applebee said, winking. “Or maybe we can persuade Herb B. to give you a raise.”
Gus, who refused pay for his accounting services, didn’t say anything. He’d volunteered for the job when the center first opened and was low on funds. He had worked as an accountant at Down To Sleep for over thirty-five years but retired early when he suffered a mild stroke. He mostly recovered but relied on a cane ever since.
“Ewwww.” I always groan whenever Herb B. Bert, the center’s Executive Director, is mentioned. “That guy is like a bedbug—hiding, waiting for an opportunity to bite somebody,” I added. Of course, he was stuck with a moniker that just begged for jokes, insults, and a plain old American “hee haw.” Add the face of a weasel to the physique of Plastic Man—let’s just say he was a hard guy to love.
Tippi waltzed in wearing a fur coat I’d never seen before. “Faux,” she said, observing my open mouth. She ran a leather glove over the chocolate-colored fabric. “A matching hat would make a lovely Christmas gift. She batted her eyes in my direction.
“Duly noted.”
She searched her pockets and popped a single M&M into her mouth. “Bert’s a real jerk. I was assigned the task of shaking down him for money to upgrade some of the kazoo band’s instruments. Violet needs catgut, Mary needs a new tambourine, and most of the kazooists need new instruments. That group generates a lot of spit.”
“Spare me the gruesome details. Catgut? Spit?”
“Man up, Hank. Anyway, he said we couldn’t afford new equipment. When I pointed out that the competition was generating a boatload of cash, he still wouldn’t budge.”
“Tell him his hero Robin Hood would give you the cash,” I said, referring to the director’s well-known passion for anything related to the folk hero. In addition to sporting a wardrobe consisting solely of varying shades of green, the walls of his office are covered with medieval weapons and artwork. His favorite is a framed cartoon of Robin Hood holding a sack of gold, one foot pressed against the neck of a fat man lying prostrate, wearing a sash that reads “Nursing Home Lobbyist.” And, if the center scuttlebutt is to be believed, Herb B. has been doing a bit of playacting after hours, with Angie, his administrative assistant, in the role of a naughty Maid Marian.
“Um, Gus—about Alice,” Applebee said. “Since she was helping you with some of the arrangements…”
“I’m fine. I can manage. We worked on most of it together so…” Gus looked away, and reached out to stroke Frenchie’s small body. “You know, she was really a good friend.” He turned back to his computer and absentmindedly scrolled down the columns on the screen. “We would work for a while and then sometimes, just talk about all sorts of things—politics, sports, travel.” He smiled. “She’s been all over the world, you know. She had just booked a trip.” Gus’s voice was low. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I keep expecting her to call and tell me what she’s done for the competition, what team she’s heard from, what we need to do next. She was really something special,” he choked.
I didn’t know what to say. Applebee responded by placing Frenchie in Gus’s lap. The puppy licked his new friend’s face, urging him to smile.
“Man, look out there.” I pointed to the scene outside. The morning sky looked more like dusk. We watched the rain gradually turn over to sleet, casting a glossy sheen on the drive. Last week’s temperatures, which had rebounded into the seventies, had suddenly taken a nosedive again, bringing back the wintery mix. People here love to say, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute.”
“It’s a mess out there,” Tippi said, referring to the deteriorating conditions. “I barely made it up the drive.” She shook off her damp coat and offered it to me to hang over a chair. “I have news.”
She told us that Ed, Applebee’s nurse at the hospital, had written up an incident report about the fact Tippi and an accomplice—namely me—had been caught on hospital grounds. Ed was demanding we be charged with illegal trespassing, and now we were both in hot water. She told us the hospital called Sheriff Grange, who tracked her down at Graeter’s while she was eating raspberry chocolate chip ice cream slathered in hot fudge and whipped cream.
“Oops,” she said, licking her finger and rubbing a spot of chocolate on her sweater.
“And?” I prompted.
“Oh, right,” she continued. “Gert Stein, who was there with Don Juan Ernie, overhears the sheriff and comes waltzing over, swinging those big old hips of hers. She almost knocked some kid right off her chair.”
“Focus, please?”
Tippi rolled her eyes. “Gert butts right in and tells Grange that when she and Ernie witnessed Applebee doing his swan dive into the lake, they ran in to get help and nearly slammed into a person at the top of the hill who was standing there watching the whole thing.”
The scene came back to me then. The two lovebirds, en flagrant délit, running into the center with news of the accident.
“Well, then, Grange is looking at me real funny when Gert goes on to say she’d seen the person there earlier as well, when she and Ernie—her words—went for a walk.”
“Did she recognize him?” I asked.
“No, but she did say he, or she, was about my height but much thinner.” She sniffed and went on. “She says she remembers I was wearing those red heels. You know the ones? Toeless with the little ankle strap?”
“Okaay, I guess.”
“Hank, I don’t know why I even try.”
“Back to Gert, please.”
“Grange doesn’t know what to think since Ed told him about the incident in the morgue.”
“Go figure,” I said.
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Can you leave out the editorializing?”
“Not as interesting, but I’ll try.” She went on, nonplussed. “The person was wearing a dark-colored overcoat and a wool hat pulled down to just above the eyes. She couldn’t even tell if it was a man or woman but—and this is weird—the person she saw had what looked like webbed feet.”
“Webbed feet?” I repeated.
Tippi shrugged. “Yeah. So Gert says when she went back outside to watch the rescue operation, she noticed he had m
oved down the hill. He waited there until Bob was hauled away in the ambulance like a piece of gnarly old driftwood.”
“Thanks a lot,” Applebee said.
“After that, she didn’t pay much more attention to him and couldn’t remember if he...”
“Or she,” I put in.
Tippi ignored me and went on. “He went back into the center or headed to the parking lot.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Being a woman, naturally Gert noticed the shoes. And, of course, the fact that she had her, uh, I’ll be kind and say her mind, on other things, probably diverted her attention. I guess I should be grateful Gert is a slut.”
I was stunned. “Why didn’t she come forward before this?”
“Mon doux enfant,” Tippi said, “the good Lord blessed Gertrude with talents completely unrelated to her brain.”
Applebee was clearly shaken. His face was the color of chalk, and his hands shook as he held Frenchie up to his ear. “I wanted to believe there was some other explanation for my brakes being messed up,” he said. “I almost convinced myself it was just the result of normal wear and tear. You know, navigating the drive at the center puts a lot of pressure on the brakes.”
I patted my friend’s hand. “None of this makes sense,” I said. “This is Goose Down, Ohio for cryin’ out loud, not D.C. or Philadelphia.”
“Somebody did murder Alice.” Gus rose from his seat. “And this attempt on Bob. It’s terrible,” he said. “Just terrible. I can’t listen to any more. Sorry.” He retrieved his cane and tapped his way out of the room. Applebee followed.
“At least we know it wasn’t Joe who watched Bob do his swan dive,” I said after the two left.
“I guess,” Tippi said. “He sure doesn’t fit Gert’s description,” she added, since Joe, who stands about five foot five, is also about that wide.
“No.”
“What would be his motive, anyway?” Tippi said.
“I don’t know.”
“Gus is sure taking all of this hard,” Tippi murmured, her fingers brushing the keys of Gus’s laptop. “Do you think he and Alice had something romantic going on?”