Hit and Nun

by Peg Cochran

  Chapter 15

  They heard footsteps in the hall and they both jumped.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.” Flo grabbed Lucille by the arm.

  “Take it easy. That hurts.” Lucille pulled her arm away.

  Just then Sambucco strode into the room. He stopped short when he saw Flo and Lucille. “What are the two of yous doing in here?”

  Lucille began to sidle toward the sink. “Getting a glass of water. My throat’s gone all dry.” She gave a couple of coughs.

  Sambucco scowled. “I thought I told you not to touch nothing.”

  “We haven’t,” Flo reassured him. “And we won’t. Right, Lucille?” She turned to Lucille.

  “Right. Right-o. Right-e-o. We’re on our way out anyways. Come on, Flo.”

  She linked her arm through Flo’s.

  “Good. And don’t touch nothing on the way out,” Sambucco called over his shoulder to their retreating backs.

  The front door was already open, and Flo and Lucille slipped outside gratefully.

  “Phew, that was close,” Flo said, wiping her forehead.

  “Richie didn’t have no cause to be so cranky.”

  Flo shot a glance at Lucille. “We were disturbing his crime scene. He does have a job to do, after all.”

  Lucille blew a piece of hair off her forehead. She really needed to make an appointment with Rita for a cut. She’d missed her regular appointment on account of having to go for that mammogram. The thought made her stomach turn over, and she pushed it out of her mind. She would think about it later.

  “Yeah, but going by what he said, he doesn’t think it’s a crime scene. He thinks Tiffany committed suicide.”

  “True. But once we tell him about the deposit slip, I’m sure he’ll change his mind.”

  Lucille stopped short and grabbed Flo by the arm.

  “Ouch, Lucille. What’s gotten into you?”

  “Don’t go telling Richie about no deposit slip. Then he’ll know we’ve been snooping.”

  “But if it helps him solve the case . . .”

  Lucille shook her head. “Just give me a day or two. I think I’ll have it figured out by then.”

  Flo looked doubtful. “Okay, have it your way.”

  “Yoo hoo!”

  They both turned to see a woman coming up the walk. She was wearing a pair of denim capris, a faded blue sweatshirt and had a pair of clippers in her hand. There was a smudge of dirt on her right cheek.

  “Yoo hoo,” she called again. “Is everything okay?” She was slightly out of breath as she came abreast of Flo and Lucille. “I was working in the garden clearing out some leaves and I saw the police pull up and then the ambulance . . .”

  “Are you good friends with Tiffany?” Lucille asked.

  “Well . . .” The woman hesitated. “We’re neighbors. I wouldn’t say we were good friends, but she was always willing to loan me a cup of sugar if you know what I mean.”

  “I hate to tell you this.” Lucille looked around but Sambucco was nowhere in sight. “But Tiffany is dead.”

  The woman gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. Was it some kind of accident?”

  “Kind of.” Lucille put up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, which had popped out from behind a cloud.

  “No wonder she didn’t answer the door when that woman rang. I suppose she must have already been . . . you know . . .”

  “What woman?” Lucille asked as casually as possible.

  “I didn’t recognize her. You don’t think she . . .”

  Lucille shrugged. “We don’t know. The police won’t tell us nothing.”

  “What a shame.” The woman shook her head and her chin quivered. “First her husband and now . . .”

  “What did this woman look like? The one who rang the doorbell?”

  The woman frowned. “Ordinary.” Her face brightened for a moment, and she snapped her fingers. “She was wearing a T-shirt, although if you ask me, it’s a bit chilly for that, but maybe she left her jacket in the car. But the T-shirt had a picture of a man on the front and said something about pizza. And she had a big tattoo on her arm”—she pointed to a spot on her own arm—“that peeked out from under the sleeve.”

  Nicole! Lucille thought.

  “So she rang the bell, and no one answered?” Lucille glanced at Flo.

  “That’s right. At least I don’t think anyone did. I was on my way out for an appointment and had to get going. But if Tiffany was already, you know, as you said . . .”

  The woman lingered for a few more minutes, but when there was nothing more to see she said good-bye and made her way back down the walk toward her own house.

  “That had to be Nicole,” Lucille said as soon as the woman was out of earshot.

  “Nicole?”

  “She’s the waitress over at Rocky’s Pizza Parlor.”

  “What would she want with Tiffany? It couldn’t have been about a job since Sal’s is closed.”

  “I don’t know,” Lucille said, turning to look back at Tiffany’s house. “But maybe she rang the bell again, and Tiffany did answer the door, only the neighbor had already gone by then. The door wasn’t locked so Tiffany most likely let someone in. Me and Frankie always keep the front door locked since we never go in or out that way.”

  “True.”

  “And maybe Nicole had some beef with Tiffany that we don’t know about.”

  “You could be right. They do work for rival pizza parlors.”

  “See?”

  “So what do we do now?”

  Chapter 16

  Frankie was already home when Lucille got there.

  “What are you doing home so early?” She slipped off her jacket and slung it over one of the kitchen chairs.

  Frankie was sitting at the table reading the paper. “My last job rescheduled so I thought I’d call it quits and come home.”

  “Is the baby napping?”

  “Nah. She was fussing so Bernadette took her for a walk.”

  “That always calms her down. The fresh air is good for her. Makes her little cheeks all pink and rosy.”

  “She is a cutie, isn’t she?” Frank smiled. He folded up his newspaper. “Listen, Lu, you given any more thought to our Vegas trip?” He reached out and drew Lucille closer.

  So now it was our Vegas trip? Frankie made it sound like it was a done deal. He must really be worried that she had cancer and was going to die. And his losing his faith. Was that on account of this whole thing? Anger that God might have given her this disease?

  “I don’t know, Frankie. I still think we should put the money aside in case we need it. We just got through paying for Bernadette’s wedding. It would be nice to have a little something in the bank for a change.”

  Frankie grabbed her hands. “Think about it, okay? Promise me? You know, Lu, when I married you, I vowed that I would give you a good life. And what have I managed so far? Not much.” He swept his hand around the kitchen. “A house we still owe money on, a couple of measly vacations at a cheap rental down the shore, you driving a car that’s ready for the junk heap.” He shook his head. “Heck, I wasn’t even able to give you more than one kid.” He looked at Lucille. “Let’s do this. Let’s live a little.”

  “None of that’s true, Frankie. You’ve given me a good life. All I’ve ever wanted.” She turned toward her husband and shook her finger at him. “And don’t you go talking about the Olds like that.”

  Frankie laughed. “All right. But promise me you’ll think about it, okay?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  Lucille went into the powder room to wash her hands. She looked in the mirror. What if she did have cancer and had to have one of them operations? She lifted up her blouse and stared at her reflection. Would Frankie mind if she didn’t look like a woman no more? Would he go looking for someone else?

  Lucille sighed and tucked her shirt back in. She had to get busy and think about something else or she would drive herself crazy. She should be hearing
from the doctor’s office any day now. She prayed it would be good news.

  • • •

  Lucille woke on Saturday morning after a troubled night of tossing and turning. She wished the doctor’s office would hurry up already with the results of her mammogram. Nowadays they had tests that could tell if you were pregnant before you even rolled over to go to sleep, surely they could tell if she had cancer or not?

  She pictured rogue cells running around in her body gobbling up the good cells—sort of like that Pac-Man game Frankie used to like to play in the arcade on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights.

  If she didn’t do something to take her mind off things, she would go crazy. Frankie had a job—one of them big houses in Summit had suddenly been overrun with stink bugs and the owners were in a panic, so he was going to be gone most of the day. Lucille decided she would give the house a thorough cleaning. It had been too long since she’d scrubbed the baseboards and dusted the ceilings.

  She dug around in her drawer for some old clothes to put on and found the T-shirt she’d gotten at Rocky’s. That would do. She pulled it over her head. There was still a bit of a stain on the front from some tomato sauce that hadn’t come out in the wash, but it didn’t matter. No one was going to see her.

  Lucille got out her bucket and her scrub brush. She poked around under the sink and pulled out her box of Spic and Span. She gave it a shake. Nearly empty. Rats. She’d have to make a trip to the A&P. She’d tried a couple of other products, but nothing ever worked quite as well. It wouldn’t be long before little Lucy was crawling, and she wanted everything to be as clean as she could get it.

  Lucille thought of changing her shirt but figured what the heck. She was only going to run in and out of the store. Odds were good she wouldn’t see anyone she knew.

  She threw her leather jacket on over the T-shirt and headed out to the Olds. She started on the first try, and Lucille patted the dashboard affectionately. But when she plugged in her tape of Little Richard’s “Lucille,” it got stuck after the first couple of bars, repeating Lucille over and over and over again. Lucille pushed the eject button with a sigh. Would she be able to find a replacement? No one had tape decks no more—it was all CDs and iPods and cell phones that played music and did just about everything else except make dinner. Sometimes she felt as if life had passed her by. While she was busy cooking, cleaning and raising a family, the world had changed without her knowing it.

  The A&P parking lot was bustling—Lucille had to go all the way to the back to find a space. There were going to be long lines at the cashiers, but at least she could go through the express lane.

  Lucille headed down the cleaning aisle searching the shelves until she found the boxes of Spic and Span. She tossed one in her cart and began wheeling it toward the checkout. There was a display of vanilla sandwich cookies—the kind Frankie liked—on the end cap, so she grabbed a package of those and added them to her purchase.

  There were at least ten people in the express line so Lucille selected a copy of Us magazine and began flipping through the pages. She was engrossed in a story about the Kardashians when the fellow behind her cleared his throat.

  Lucille turned around. He was a youngish man with an unruly beard and a Yankees baseball cap. Lucille thought he looked like he could use a decent meal. His clothes were worn and hung off him like they once belonged to someone much bigger. He had a six-pack of beer in his cart.

  He pointed at Lucille’s T-shirt.

  She looked down. She’d forgotten she was wearing her Rocky’s shirt.

  “That girl Nicole still working there?”

  “Yeah.” Lucille turned her back to him, but he tapped her on the shoulder.

  “She owes me money, you know.” He rubbed a hand across his nose and sniffed.

  Lucille didn’t know what to say. She glanced toward the clerk, who was ringing someone up who definitely had more than twelve items. Not that Lucille would ever say anything. She hated people who did that—who appointed them the express lane police anyway?

  “I helped her pull off that trick we played on old Rocky there.” He pointed at Lucille’s shirt again.

  “Trick?” Lucille’s ears perked up.

  He leaned closer to Lucille, and she could smell alcohol on his breath. “I’m the one who found that roach in the pizza, the one that nearly put Rocky out of business.” He looked real proud.

  “That must have been a shock.” Lucille knew she would be shocked if she found a bug in her food. It was bad enough during the summer when she and Frankie would eat outside on the patio and mosquitoes sometimes drowned themselves in her glass of iced tea.

  The fellow shook his head. “No, I knew all about it.”

  “All about what?”

  “The roach.”

  Lucille was beginning to suspect that with this guy the elevator didn’t go all the way to the top floor, so to speak.

  “Really?”

  He nodded and leaned closer to Lucille. “I put it there.”

  “You put what where?” Now she was really confused.

  “I put the roach in the pizza.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  He looked at Lucille like she was the slow kid in class. “For the money.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight. You put the roach in the pizza for money, right?”

  He tapped his nose. “On the nose.”

  “So who was paying you?”

  “Nicole,” he said triumphantly.

  “Why would she pay you to put a roach in the pizza where she works? That don’t make no sense.”

  “Because that other gal was paying her. And we were going to share the money.”

  Lucille was beginning to think this guy really was off his rocker. “What other gal?”

  “The one who runs Sal’s Pizza. Who did you think I meant?”

  “You mean Tiffany paid Nicole to fix things so that you found a roach in your pizza?”

  He shrugged. “Is that her name?”

  “Yeah. She and her husband own Sal’s Pizzeria.”

  “Well, Tiffany arranged the whole thing with Nicole. Me and Nicole used to be in AA together.”

  Lucille glanced into his cart and raised an eyebrow but didn’t say nothing. Who was she to criticize? She couldn’t stand those holier-than-thou types who were always trying to tell you what to do and what not to do. Her sister Angela came to mind, and she quickly pushed the thought away and sent up a prayer to the Archangel Michael, protector from unwanted thoughts.

  “So Nicole hired you to pretend you found a roach in your piece of pizza?”

  “I didn’t pretend. I actually did find a roach.”

  “Yeah, but you put it there in the first place, right?”

  He nodded. “Nicole gave it to me. Had it in an empty matchbox.”

  “And all this was arranged by Tiffany Zambino?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so. All I know is that Nicole promised to pay me, but she didn’t. She was supposed to get money from the lady at Sal’s Pizza, and we were going to split it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Nah. She said Tiffany never paid her, but I don’t believe it. I think she wanted all the money for herself.”

  Lucille didn’t know what to say.

  He leaned real close to Lucille so that she could see the two hairs that sprouted from one of the pores on the top of his nose.

  “I think I’m going to pay Nicole a visit,” he said. His tone had changed completely from that of a confused young man to something far more sinister. “She owes me.”

  Lucille opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  “And I’m going to make sure she pays up.” He shook his clenched fist in Lucille’s face. “Or else.”

  Chapter 17

  Lucille hurried out of the A&P with her purchases. That fellow had given her what her mother always called the heebie-jeebies. It was a creepy feeling—like the hair on the back of your neck was standing up and goose bumps were marching up
and down your arms. Lucille shivered.

  She was glad to lock herself in the Olds. She put the key in the ignition and was relieved when she started right up. This was no time to be stuck in the parking lot at the A&P. Not with that nutter on the loose.

  Nutter. That put her in mind of one of them cookies—a Nutter Butter. She sure could go for one of them right now. But would they be on her diet? She was pretty sure peanuts were okay—after all, they grew on bushes and that was exactly the sort of stuff the cavemen ate. The cavewomen picked nuts and berries while the men were out hunting for wild animals, and when they didn’t catch any—like when she sent Frankie to the store and he forgot the most important things on the list—they would make do with some peanuts. She wasn’t so sure about some of the other ingredients though. Besides, there was no way she was going back into the A&P with that weirdo in there.

  He’d been pretty pissed off at Nicole. What a story—Tiffany paying Nicole to find someone to claim he found a roach in a piece of Rocky’s pizza. Well, he did find a roach, but only on account of he put it there himself.

  He’d said he was going to make sure Nicole paid up. The look on his face had frightened Lucille, mean and threatening like. Should she go warn Nicole? She’d better—she didn’t want to wake up tomorrow morning and read in the Star-Ledger that Nicole was dead on account of some nutter had come after her claiming she owed him money.

  Lucille put the Olds in gear, backed out of her space and turned right out of the parking lot. Rocky’s Pizzeria was only a few doors away. She owed it to Nicole to warn her.

  Lucille found a space for the Olds, locked it and headed around the front of the building to the entrance to Rocky’s Pizza Parlor. She prayed that she wouldn’t run into Rocky, or if she did, that he wouldn’t recognize her, but with Nicole’s life possibly at stake, she would just have to endure the embarrassment.

  The restaurant was empty when Lucille pushed open the door. Nicole was busy putting salt and pepper shakers out on the tables. She looked up when she heard the door.