Hit and Nun

by Peg Cochran

  “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?” She turned her back on Lucille and continued what she was doing.

  “I need to tell you something,” Lucille said, looking around. She didn’t see no signs of Rocky, which was good.

  “Well, tell me. I’m listening.” Nicole picked up her empty tray and began heading toward the kitchen.

  “I ran into this guy in the A&P just now, and he ain’t too happy with you. He claims he’s coming after you to get the money you owe him.”

  Nicole stopped short and spun around.

  “What guy? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “He’s the guy you got to put the roach in his pizza.”

  Nicole’s face turned white. “What did he say?”

  “He said Tiffany Zambino was supposed to pay you, and you were supposed to split the money with him, but you didn’t. And he’s really pissed off.”

  “Do you mind if we step outside? I could do with a smoke.”

  “Sure.”

  Lucille followed Nicole through the kitchen and out the back door. Nicole dug around in the pocket of her apron and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. She lit one and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. She opened them and looked at Lucille.

  “Why are you poking your nose into things that aren’t any of your business?” She blew out a puff of smoke.

  Lucille waved a hand in front of her face. That was fine for Nicole to act all pissed off—didn’t she realize that Lucille only wanted to warn her?

  “I thought you should know that this guy was threatening to come after you. I didn’t want nothing to happen to you.”

  “How nice of you,” Nicole said in a snippy tone. “But now that you’ve told me you can stop worrying about it, okay? Just forget all about it.”

  “So is it true that Tiffany paid you to get that guy to pretend he’d found a roach in his slice?”

  “Tiffany had big dreams.” Nicole looked bitter. “More power to her, I say. She thought if she put Rocky out of business, she could expand hers. She had this idea about opening a chain of pizza places.”

  “And she promised to pay you?”

  Nicole dropped her cigarette on the pavement and ground it out under her heel. “Yeah, she promised to pay me. I needed a down payment for a new car since mine had crapped out. It seemed like easy money and right when I needed it.”

  “You must have been pretty mad when Tiffany stiffed you.”

  Nicole shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  “Did you decide to do something about it?”

  Nicole’s head whirled around. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing. Only that Tiffany just turned up dead.”

  “You can’t think that I had anything to do with it.” Nicole pushed past Lucille and reached for the door handle.

  “Then how come one of Tiffany’s neighbors saw you leaving her house not long before we found her body? She recognized your tattoo.” Lucille pointed to the cross that was just visible beneath the sleeve of Nicole’s T-shirt.

  “Look, don’t go thinking you can pin anything on me. I stopped by to see Tiffany, but when I rang the bell, no one answered.”

  “You can see how that wouldn’t look none too good if the police found out.”

  “Yeah?” Nicole sneered at Lucille. “While you’re telling them that, tell them that I saw a car pulling out of the driveway as I was coming down the street.”

  • • •

  Lucille had just walked into the house when the telephone rang. She put her purse on the chair and grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Lucille, is that you?”

  “Yeah, Ma, it’s me.” Who else would it be? Lucille thought as she wound the phone cord around her finger.

  “I’ve got a small problem.”

  “What’s that, Ma?” Lucille groaned. Her mother defined small as blowing up her pressure cooker and spattering berries all over the kitchen, making it look like the set in a horror movie. It had taken Lucille and Frankie a whole day to clean the place up.

  There was silence on the other end of the line, and then Lucille heard shouting.

  “Ma, what’s going on? Tell me, would ya?” Those background noises were alarming Lucille.

  “See, it’s like this. I went to visit my friend Mildred Kozinski—she lives in that assisted living place over in Berkeley Heights. Eternal Meadows or something like that.”

  “Eternal Meadows is the cemetery, Ma.”

  “All right, so it’s not Eternal Meadows. Maybe it’s Green Meadows. Yeah, I think that’s it. It’s on Springfield Avenue.”

  “I know the place.”

  “I pulled into the driveway, but then I had a little trouble with my car.”

  “Wasn’t she just in the shop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind of trouble are you having? She making a funny noise or is she stalling on you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “So what then?” Lucille looked around the kitchen. She really wanted to get on with her cleaning.

  “I think you’d better come and see. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lucille hung up the phone, picked up her purse again and headed out the door. What was wrong this time? Couldn’t her mother just call a tow truck? They’d gotten her AA so that if she ever broke down she wouldn’t have to worry. Personally, Lucille thought they ought to get her off the road, but her mother refused to give up the keys to the Impala. Said she only went to the church, the A&P and home again. And also, apparently, to Green Meadows.

  Lucille went to plug in her tape and then remembered it was broken. Where did you even buy music anymore? It seemed as if everyone somehow got music off their computer. Bernadette kept telling her that she could put her favorite songs on her phone, but then Lucille had ruined the phone so that was the end of that.

  Lucille was lost in thought as she drove down Springfield Avenue toward Berkeley Heights. If Nicole was telling the truth, then someone else was at Tiffany’s house that day.

  Nicole said no one answered the door when she rang the bell, but that didn’t mean nothing. She could be lying, or maybe Tiffany saw it was her and decided not to answer on account of she knew she owed Nicole money.

  Lucille put on her blinker and turned left into the parking lot of Green Meadows Manor. It was a two-story building with a main section where they had a dining room and stuff like that with wings off to each side where the residents lived. Lucille had gone with her mother once to visit Mrs. Kozinski and thought it was a nice place. She thought it would be a nice place for her mother someday, when she needed extra help, but her mother said they’d put her there over her dead body.

  The driveway curved around in front of the building, and in between the building and the road was a decorative pond with a fountain in the center. There were usually plenty of geese swimming around in it, but not today.

  Instead, there was a car in the middle of the pond, and it looked just like Lucille’s mother’s car.

  Lucille pulled into the first empty parking space and jumped out of the Olds.

  “Ma!” She ran toward the pond.

  She could see it wasn’t very deep, and the Impala had come to rest with water halfway up the doors. One of the manor employees was in the process of wading toward the car, and Lucille could hear sirens in the distance. It wasn’t long before a fire truck pulled into the driveway, followed close behind by a tow truck.

  Lucille stood on the edge watching as a couple of firemen pulled her mother through the open window on the driver’s side of the car. They wrapped her in a blanket and sat her on a bench. Lucille ran over as quickly as she could.

  “What happened, Ma?”

  “I don’t know.” Her mother’s hands were shaking. “I stepped on the brake, and next thing I knew I was flying into the water.”

  “Ma, if you had stepped on the brake, the car would have stopped. You
must have hit the gas instead.”

  Lucille’s mother fixed her with a beady stare. “I did not step on the gas. Something is wrong with the car. You’re going to have to get Frankie to take it down to the garage for me.”

  Lucille jerked a shoulder toward the tow truck waiting in the driveway. “They’re going to have to tow it to the garage, Ma. I doubt anyone could drive it in the condition it’s in.”

  As Lucille watched, the fire truck moved farther down the curved driveway and the tow truck took its place. A fellow in a T-shirt with Ben’s Towing on it jumped out of the cab and began attaching a chain to the bumper of the Impala. A few minutes later, he was winching the car out of its watery grave.

  “You feel up to going home now, Ma?”

  “What about my car?”

  “They’re taking it to the garage, see?” Lucille pointed at the tow truck. The Impala was now up on its back wheels like a horse rearing.

  “I got to get my car back, you know.”

  “Sure, sure,” Lucille said, but she knew it was time that she and Frankie had a talk with her mother about giving up the keys.

  They were quiet as they drove back to Lucille’s mother’s house. Theresa looked very tiny huddled in her blanket in the passenger seat. Lucille felt sorry for being so harsh with her. Usually Lucille tried to give her mother rides when she needed to go somewhere—the less the Impala was out of the garage the better—but today she must have been out when her mother called.

  They pulled up in front of the split-level Lucille had grown up in. Her parents had bought it soon after they were married and hadn’t changed so much as the paint color in all those years.

  “You want me to come in with you? Make you a cup of tea maybe?”

  “That would be nice.”

  Her mother must really be shaken up, Lucille thought. Normally she resented it when Lucille fussed over her.

  Lucille helped Theresa up the walk—she was still wrapped in the blanket and nearly tripped and fell.

  “You got your key?”

  Theresa started to dig around in her purse.

  “Never mind, Ma, I’ll get the spare.”

  Lucille lifted up the edge of the doormat and picked up the key that was hidden there. She put it in the lock and turned the door handle.

  She helped her mother up the step and into the foyer.

  Lucille looked around. Things were tossed everywhere—sofa cushions on the floor, kitchen drawers pulled open and the contents spilled, potted plants overturned and the soil spread out on the floor.

  “Oh, my God, Ma, I think you’ve been robbed.”

  Chapter 18

  “What!” Lucille’s mother put her hand to her chest. “What next? All this is going to give me a heart attack. What’s missing? What makes you think I’ve been robbed?”

  “Ma, look at the mess. Stuff dumped everywhere. It looks like they were searching for your jewelry or something.”

  Not that her mother had all that much jewelry, but Lucille’s father had bought her a couple of nice pieces while he was alive—a strand of pearls, some ruby earrings because it was her birthstone, a gold bracelet for their anniversary.

  Theresa looked around. “Those weren’t no robbers,” she said. “I did that.”

  “You did?” Lucille didn’t know what to say. “Why on earth . . . geez, Ma, the place is a mess.”

  “It was on account of I hid my jewelry. But then I couldn’t remember where I put it.”

  “Why did you hide it?”

  “Didn’t you read about them breakins in the paper?”

  “Yeah. But that was in Irvington, Ma. And they was looking for drugs, not jewelry.”

  Theresa raised her chin. “They have to pay for their drugs somehow, don’t they? Next they’ll be stealing jewelry from defenseless old ladies.”

  Lucille had her doubts about her mother being completely defenseless, but she held her tongue. “I’ll help you clean up. You go sit down. You’ve had what they call a dramatic experience. I don’t want you to get that PDSD or nothing.”

  “What the hell is PDSD?”

  “It stands for post-dramatic stress disorder.” Lucille frowned. “Maybe we ought to call the doctor?”

  “Go on.” Theresa waved an arm at Lucille. “I’m fine. I got a little shook up at first, but that’s all.”

  “If you’re sure . . .”

  Lucille got her mother propped up comfortably on the sofa with the remote control in hand and a knitted afghan across her legs and then went to tackle the mess in the kitchen.

  She washed the silverware and put it back in the drawer. Why her mother thought her jewelry might be in there, she had no idea. Clean dishcloths and hand towels were scattered all over the floor. Lucille debated whether or not she ought to throw them into the washer first but then decided against it. Her mother kept the kitchen floor as clean as an operating room so they weren’t likely to have gotten dirty.

  By the time Lucille finished with the kitchen, her mother was dozing on the sofa with The Price Is Right blaring from the television. Lucille picked up the remote, lowered the volume, and headed upstairs to the bedroom.

  The drawers in the dresser in her mother’s bedroom were open with the contents spilling out of them. Lucille folded what needed to be folded and organized the drawers. She wondered if her mother ever had found her jewelry—she’d forgotten to ask.

  The spare bedroom—which had been Lucille’s growing up—was relatively tidy. Lucille leaned on the windowsill and looked out. How many times had she done that when she was a kid? The view hadn’t changed much—the elm tree across the street was taller, with thicker branches, and the split-level opposite had been added on to and painted a different color. Otherwise, everything looked pretty much the same—even the one raised square of sidewalk she had had to be careful not to trip over on her way to school.

  Lucille turned from the window and got back to work. Her mother had pulled a large cardboard box out of the closet and the contents were scattered across the rug. Lucille got down on her hands and knees. She heard a loud crack—her bones must be getting old. She needed to start doing some exercises like Flo was always telling her. Flo could still touch her toes, and Lucille could barely get to her shins.

  The box looked to have contained a bunch of memorabilia—old black-and-white photographs, yellowing newspaper clippings, a pair of baby shoes and a dried corsage with a faded ribbon. Lucille sifted through the stuff as she put it back in the box.

  A news clipping caught her eye—it was a whole page folded into quarters. She unfolded it carefully since it was wanting to rip along the creases. The date was August 17, 1999. August 1999? It rang a bell with Lucille but for the life of her she couldn’t remember why.

  She scanned the page—it was half obituaries with a large ad at the bottom for Kenmore washers and dryers taking up the rest of the space. One of the pictures in the obits looked familiar. Lucille dug her reading glasses out of her pocket. The name under the picture was Maria Corsi—Lucille’s grandmother’s sister-in-law. That must be why her mother had saved the paper.

  Lucille glanced through the other obits, but none of the names rang a bell. She flipped the page over. Although 1999 didn’t seem all that far back, it was already fifteen years ago. Even clothing styles had changed, Lucille thought as she glanced at the ads for Macy’s and Bloomingdales.

  There was a bold headline in the upper right corner of the page along with six small pictures that looked like yearbook photographs. There were names underneath—Tiffany Polsky, Sal Zambino, Joey Barba, Denise and Nancy Collins and Dave Wilson. Lucille read them and gasped. Tiffany and Sal she knew from the pizza parlor and Joey, too. Denise, Nancy and Dave weren’t familiar.

  Lucille leaned back against the dresser and began to read the article. It seems that Joey Barba had been sentenced to fifteen years in jail on account of he was the driver in a car accident that had killed Nancy Collins and Dave Wilson. Lucille continued to read. The kids—well, they weren’t
exactly kids, the boys had been in their early twenties—had been drag racing. Joey was driving one car with Nancy, Sal and Tiffany in it, and this Dave was driving the other one with Nancy’s sister Denise.

  It looked like none of them had been wearing seat belts, and Sal and Joey had been thrown from the car. Lucille shook her head. Kids! Sal had gotten off with two broken legs, Joey had suffered a head injury, and of course Tiffany ended up with that scar on her face. It didn’t say nothing about Denise. Funny, she didn’t remember reading about any of this at the time. There must have been a lot of talk about the trial and all. Maybe it was on account of her aunt dying and all the stuff that had had to be done. The funeral lunch had been at the church hall, and Lucille remembered putting together ten giant pans of lasagna for the meal. That would have been enough to keep anyone busy.

  And now Joey was working with Sal and Tiffany at their pizza parlor. At least he had been until Sal and Tiffany were murdered. Had they stayed friends all those years Joey had been in jail in Rahway State Prison? You’d think they would have been bitter about what had happened, but then they’d probably all been in it up to their necks, egging Joey on, thinking it was all great fun. Lucille shook her head. That drag racing stuff was dangerous. She was glad Bernadette had never gotten in with a crowd like that. She knew it still went on—some nights when it was really quiet she could hear the squealing tires all the way over to where she lived.

  She folded the clipping up and put it back in the box. She felt sad—those young lives lost. She wondered what had happened to Denise? It must have been awful seeing her sister killed in that car wreck. Lucille could imagine it—the horrible crash, the street strewn with metal and running with blood, the wail of the sirens in the distance. How scary it must have been.

  She shuddered and put the box back in the closet.

  It was strange how so many of them were dead now—only Joey and presumably this Denise were still alive. Lucille shook her head. Life was strange, that’s for sure.

  She finished straightening the room and went into the bathroom. The doors to the vanity were open and cleaning products had been pulled out. Lucille knelt down and began to put away the spray bottles and cans of cleanser. She noticed something dark shoved way back in the corner of the cabinet. She reached in as far as she could, and her fingers just touched the object. It felt soft, like velvet.