by Peg Cochran
She had to plop down flat on her stomach to grab the thing and pull it out. It was an old purple Crown Royal bag. Lucille scrambled to a sitting position and undid the gold cord. Crammed inside she found a strand of pearls, a gold bracelet, a platinum wedding band that had been Lucille’s father’s, a set of ruby earrings and an assortment of other smaller pieces.
It looked like her mother had stuffed the bag in the corner of the vanity and had forgotten about it. Lucille had almost missed it herself, so no wonder her mother hadn’t been able to find it.
Theresa’s eyes were closed, but they flew open when she heard Lucille come down the stairs.
Lucille held the purple bag out in front of her.
Theresa struggled to a sitting position on the sofa. “You found it.”
“Yeah, it was in the bathroom vanity all the way in the back.” Lucille perched on the edge of the sofa.
Theresa reached out and patted Lucille’s hand. “Thanks. Now I’ve got to find a new place to hide it.”
“Why don’t you put it in your drawer? I don’t think anyone is going to break in here.”
Her mother sniffed. “Shows how much you know. You should read the police blotter in the Independent Press. Just last week someone grabbed one of them newfangled phones from an unlocked car.”
Lucille knew it was useless arguing with her mother. “Just let me know where you decide to hide it. That way if you forget, I’ll be able to tell you where to look, okay?”
Theresa looked sulky. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Listen, when I was putting some of the stuff away, I found a page from an old newspaper. I think you saved it because Aunt Marie’s obituary write-up was in it. On the other side was an article about a trial for a guy who had been the driver in a drag racing accident. Do you remember anything about that?”
“Yeah, of course I do. That’s why I saved the paper, not on account of your Aunt Marie’s obit, that whore.”
“Ma! That’s not very nice.”
“Well, it wasn’t very nice of Marie to go having affairs behind your Uncle Vinnie’s back either. It put him in an early grave, and it broke your grandmother’s heart—he was her favorite son.”
“He was her only son.”
Theresa shrugged. “That proves it then, don’t it?”
“So why did you save that newspaper page?”
“It’s on account of the trial of that young hothead who got all those kids in that accident. He got what he deserved if you ask me.”
“What difference did it make to you?”
Her mother thumped her fist against her chest. “My friend Fabiana Uccello—you know, from bingo—has a grandson who used to hang out with that group of juvenile delinquents. He could have been in the car that night. She hasn’t stopped talking about it since. Except not so much now that her grandson went into that business.”
“What business?”
“Tattoos. He’s got a shop in Plainfield somewheres.” Theresa shuddered. “Fabiana said he’s covered in ink. That’s what people in the biz call tattoos, you know.”
Lucille raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
“Anyhow, Fabiana wanted him to go into the family business—they own a septic tank cleaning company. I can’t imagine why he didn’t want to join them, they make good money.”
“By any chance do you know what happened to the other girl who was in the accident, this Denise Collins? Seems like she’s one of the only ones left alive.”
“I don’t know. But maybe Fabiana’s grandson does. Like I said, he was friends with them kids back in high school.”
Chapter 19
“You want to get a tattoo?”
Lucille pulled the phone away from her ear. “You don’t have to shout, I can hear you, Flo. And no, I don’t want to get a tattoo, I just want to go to Tattoos Ink to talk to this guy.”
“I’ll come with you. I’ve been thinking about getting a small rose put on my ankle. I’d like to see what kind of work they do.”
“Are you sure, Flo? What will Richie say?”
“Richie? Who cares? It’s my body, and I’ll do what I want with it.”
Lucille wondered how Frank would feel about a tattoo. Maybe he’d like it. Maybe it would take his mind off the fact that if she had cancer, she might end up having surgery and losing a body part or two. Besides, all the kids was getting them these days. Lucille sighed. She wasn’t a kid no more—her body reminded her of that every time she tried to bend down.
“Do you want to go now? I can pick you up in ten minutes.”
“Sure.”
Lucille hung up. Flo used every excuse she could to drive that Mustang of hers. And to avoid riding in Lucille’s Olds. Maybe she should listen to everyone and try out a new car?
Flo had the visor down and was checking her makeup in the mirror when Lucille got into the car. Flo wiped a smear of lipstick off her eyetooth and flipped the visor back up.
“Where to?” Flo pulled out her phone and paused with her finger hovering over the screen.
Lucille gave her the address, and Flo touched a button or something—Lucille couldn’t quite see what it was—and then began speaking into the phone.
“Siri, we want Tattoos Ink in Plainfield.” Flo repeated the address Lucille had given her.
“What the heck are you doing?”
Flo shot a glance at Lucille as she backed down the driveway. “My phone is going to give us directions. It’s the newest thing, Lucille. You should get one.”
Lucille looked at the phone suspiciously. She wasn’t sure she wanted someone named Siri listening in while she was driving. She liked to sing along to the radio sometimes, and she sure didn’t want nobody to hear that.
A voice from the telephone told Flo to make a right turn at the stop sign. Suddenly Flo slammed the heel of her hand against the steering wheel.
“Shit!”
“I’m going to ignore that remark,” Siri said.
Lucille gestured toward the phone. “She don’t want to hear no swearing, Flo.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m still in charge here. Anyway, I just realized I forgot to bring the package I wanted to take to the post office later. I ordered a pair of leopard-print leggings from this online site, and they don’t fit. They’re too big.”
Flo considered anything that wasn’t skintight to be too big, Lucille thought, so she suspected the leggings had fit just fine. But she kept her mouth shut as Flo navigated the route the lady on the phone was taking her on.
“So why do you want to talk to this tattoo artist?” Flo said as she flicked on her left blinker.
“I’d like to ask him if he knows where this Denise Collins is now. She was in that car accident with Sal and Tiffany.”
“What does that have to do with the murders?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. It just seems odd that almost everyone involved in this case was in that accident—Sal, Tiffany, Joey . . .” Lucille fiddled with the strap of her purse. “Two kids were killed that night and Sal and Tiffany have been murdered. The only ones left are Joey and this Denise.”
“Do you think this Denise knows something?”
Lucille shrugged. “Maybe. You know how sometimes you can know something and not even know you know it? Or that it’s important. That could be the case with this Denise.”
By now they had pulled up in front of Tattoos Ink. It was a small shop but quite tidy. It looked to Lucille as if someone had swept the sidewalk out front, and there was a planter next to the door with some dying geraniums in it. For some reason, she found that encouraging.
The inside was clean with a simple reception desk that was surrounded by framed designs of what Lucille supposed were possible tattoos. There was a door that opened into a back room, and if she twisted her head, Lucille could see a black leather chair that looked like a cross between a recliner and the kind of chair the dentist had you sit on. A young girl was lying on her side with one leg of her pants pulled up to her knee. A young man wh
ose every bit of visible flesh was covered in elaborate designs was bending over her calf, working intensely on what looked like a cross with flowering vines wrapped around it.
The girl behind the desk put down the telephone, turned and smiled at them. The freckles sprinkled across her nose were at odds with her black spikey hair and heavy eye makeup.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Lucille said, leaning her elbows on the counter. “We want to talk to Lenny Uccello.”
The girl jerked her head toward the back room. “He’s busy. Do you have an appointment?”
Flo bustled up to the reception desk. “Yeah. My friend here made an appointment for a tattoo, right, Lucille?”
Flo turned to Lucille, and Lucille’s mouth opened and closed without no sound coming out.
Flo glanced at her watch. “I guess we’re a little early.”
The girl’s head swiveled toward Lucille. “What were you thinking about having done?”
Lucille thought about the girl who was in the chair now getting a tattoo. “A cross,” she blurted out.
“Where do you want it?” The girl leaned on the counter toward Lucille.
“Ah, ah, my ankle?”
“No, no, no, Lucille,” Flo said. She lifted her top a couple of inches. “Get it right here.” She pointed to a spot on the small of her back where Lucille was shocked to see she had a tattoo of an elaborate F with flowers wrapped around the stem.
“I didn’t know you had no tattoo, Flo.”
“I got it one time when Marco and me went down the shore. It only shows when I wear my bikini.”
A vision of Flo in a bikini crossed Lucille’s mind, and she hastily shoved it away. Flo had stayed in pretty good shape considering, but she sure didn’t have what the tabloids were calling a bikini body.
Lucille glanced into the inner room to see Lenny stripping off his disposable gloves. The girl was getting up from the reclining chair, so Lucille assumed they must be done. She felt her stomach do a complete flip-flop and dug around in her pocket for her Tums.
Lenny came out of the back room and smiled at Lucille. His head was shaved with only a bit of dark stubble visible. He was wearing a black T-shirt with Tattoos Ink written across the front in white.
“Can I help you?”
Flo pushed Lucille forward. “She wants a tattoo.”
“Most people that come in here do.” Lenny smiled. “What did you have in mind?”
Lucille’s lips felt numb, and she could hardly get the words out. “A cross?”
Lenny pulled a book from under the counter and began to flip through it. “How about this?” He turned the book toward Lucille.
Lucille looked at the picture without seeing it. “Sure, sure, that looks great.”
As soon as Lenny took her into the back room she was going to tell him she didn’t want no tattoo, she just wanted some information. Somehow, though, Lucille found herself reclining on the leather chair with her top pulled up while Lenny prepped the area on the small of her back.
“You’re Fabiana’s grandson, aren’t you?” It would be just her luck if they’d made a mistake and gone to the wrong tattoo parlor.
“Yes. Do you know her?”
“Not very well, but my mother does.”
Lucille turned her head so she could see what Lenny was doing. He appeared to be unwrapping some kind of needle. Lucille told herself not to panic. She wasn’t actually going through with this.
“She said you used to hang around with Tiffany and Sal Zambino and Joey Barba . . . that crowd.”
“Yeah, we were all pretty good friends.”
Lucille could feel Lenny’s hands on her back. Now would probably be a good time to tell him she’d changed her mind.
“Shame about those kids being in that car accident.”
Lenny grunted.
Lucille felt a sharp prick. Was Lenny already starting? She’d better ask her questions real quick like before he got too far.
“You stay in contact with any of those kids?”
“Not really. Although I keep up with the Collinses. It was hard on them losing their daughter like that.”
Lucille flinched. Lenny was doing something, and it didn’t feel good. She tried to see but it was impossible. Why hadn’t she chosen a location on the front of her body?
“The one daughter lived, right? Denise?”
“Yeah, she did. It’s funny talking about this. Brings back a lot of memories.”
“What is Denise doing now?”
Lucille felt a sharp jab and jumped.
“Steady now,” Lenny said. “Denise? She’s a nun. She joined that cloister in Summit on Springfield Avenue. Her folks were heartbroken. They lost one daughter in that accident, and now their only other child had become Sister Genevieve. They’d been counting on grandkids and all that stuff.”
All that stuff was what life was made of, Lucille thought. But Lenny was probably still too young to know that.
“There,” Lenny said, stepping back. “All done. Want to see?”
All done? How could he be all done? Lucille didn’t really want a tattoo. She’d been too busy thinking and asking questions to tell him to stop. Was it possible to get one of these things off?
“Here.” Lenny handed Lucille a mirror.
It was hard to see, but there was now a small cross tattooed on the small of her back. What on earth was Frankie going to think?
Chapter 20
“Lucille, I’m so proud of you,” Flo said as she beeped open the doors to the Mustang.
“Yeah, but what on earth is Frankie going to say?”
“He’s going to love it,” Flo said, sliding behind the wheel and starting the car. “Men find tramp stamps sexy.”
“Tramp stamp? This here ain’t no tramp stamp. It’s a cross for chrissake!”
“Relax, that’s what people have taken to calling tattoos in that particular spot.”
Lucille didn’t like the sound of that. There had been girls in their class in high school who were called tramps—like Loretta Haskins. But she’d never been one of them, and she had no intention of starting now.
“So what did you find out?”
“According to Lenny, Denise, who had been in the other car, with the driver who’d been killed, is now a nun at that cloister in Summit. I’m wondering if she didn’t have no resentment toward Tiffany and Sal and the rest of them on account of losing her sister.”
“You think she committed the murders? I doubt a nun would go around killing people.”
“Yeah, but get this. The name she took is Sister Genevieve.”
Flo turned to Lucille with a blank look on her face. “So? Is that supposed to mean something?”
“St. Genevieve is the patron saint of disasters. The car accident had certainly been a disaster, so I’ll bet that’s why she chose that name. And maybe she became a nun to try to put the past behind her. These cloistered nuns spend most of their time in prayer or contemplation. Could be she thought that would wipe out the bad memories. Or at least keep her from thinking about them.”
“I still can’t see a nun as a murderer, Lucille.”
“What if she just snapped? That happens to people, you know. Luigi, my father’s second cousin twice removed, never hurt a fly in his life until one day when he discovered the butcher had been cheating him—his scale was off by a quarter of a pound. Luigi walked into that shop and punched the guy right in the face. He snapped.” Lucille snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”
“I suppose it does happen. But what are we going to do now?”
“I’d like to talk to this Denise or Sister Genevieve as she’s called now. See what she’s like, you know? Get a feeling for her—what they call women’s institution.”
“That’s a great idea, Lu. There’s only one problem. These cloistered nuns don’t speak to people from the outside.”
“Not even their own family?”
“No. When they enter the convent, they pretty mu
ch leave the world behind.”
“That’s ridiculous. They should at least speak to their own mother.” Lucille was quiet for a moment. She couldn’t imagine Bernadette not talking to her. Not that Bernadette ever did more than grunt, still . . . “Who would they talk to do you think?”
“I don’t know. A priest probably—especially if they go to confession. Other nuns I suppose.”
Lucille slapped the dashboard. “That’s it!”
“Yo, be careful of the car, would you?” Flo scowled at Lucille. “What’s it?” she asked.
“We go to the convent dressed as nuns. We can say we’re from a sister order in . . . Ohio.”
“Where are we going to get habits from? I’m pretty sure those nuns still wear them.”
“A costume shop?”
Flo frowned. “That’s an idea.”
“I don’t know of any though, do you?”
Flo shook her head. “No, but we can ask Siri.”
Lucille still thought it was odd asking a telephone for advice, but if it worked, so be it. Maybe it was time for her to loosen up a bit—get comfortable with the new technology. Like the fax machine they had over at St. Rocco’s. She still couldn’t figure out how the person on the other end could get the document she was sending when the machine spit the same pieces of paper back at her every time.
Flo had her phone out and was listening to something it was telling her. She turned to Lucille. “There’s a costume shop in Westfield not far from here. You want to go?”
“Sure, sure. If that’s the only way we’re going to get in to talk to this Sister Genevieve.”
It didn’t take long to get to Westfield, a suburb with an active downtown of big chain stores combined with one-of-a-kind shops. Lucille glanced at the windows as they drove past. It looked as if long skirts had come back in when she wasn’t looking. She wondered if they still called them maxi skirts. Maybe she ought to get one for herself now that she was going to modernize her thinking. She would modernize her wardrobe as well.