Almost Home

by Macomber, Debbie; Duarte, Judy; Lamb, Cathy; Mary Carter

  “Chalese?” the chief prodded.

  “Aiden, how about if you go out on my back deck for a sec? Count birds. Make a daisy crown for your head. Nap.”

  Aiden returned my pointed stare, smiled, then stuck a hand out to the chief. “Aiden Bridger.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bridger. I’m Chief O’Connaghey. Who are you to Chalese here? I know I haven’t met you before.”

  I tilted my head up toward Aiden, beseeched him with my eyes. Pleaded with him. Not yet, don’t tell anybody yet about me, about the article. I saw something flash in those green sex pits.

  “I’m a friend of Chalese’s,” he declared.

  “Ah. A friend of Chalese’s.” The chief rocked back on his heels. “Where do you live?”

  “I live in Seattle.”

  “Hmmm. Well, pleased to meet you. Now, Chalese, why don’t we have a little chat, shall we?”

  “Good idea.” I scooted out the front door and turned to shut it behind me as quick as I could. Aiden was having none of it. He put his hand on the door and ambled on out. In the distance I heard a low, purring growl.

  That would be Brenda in her zippy sports convertible, the top down.

  “Well, now!” the chief declared in triumph. “The co-conspirator is coming to turn herself in.”

  “I…uh…hmmm…” Darn that snaky stiff, Stephen with the flabby bottom. I thought we’d had an agreement.

  Aiden was clearly amused.

  “Aiden, please go to my back deck and try to catch butterflies or something.”

  “I think I’ll stay.”

  “This isn’t your business.”

  “I think it is.” He grinned. My heart leaped. “Maybe this will explain the leather outfit and those kick-butt boots.”

  The car door slammed, and Brenda, who had changed into a skimpy, cherry-red sundress, her fluffy hair lush and clean, big glasses covering half her face, and wearing four-inch-high red heels, skipped onto the porch, hips swinging. “I’m guilty, Chief! I’m guilty! Arrest me! It was my idea, and I forced Chalese to do it! Forced her!”

  Mrs. Zebra bounded out to say hello. Brenda paused, bent to cup the dog’s face and kiss her, then was up again announcing her guilt. She dumped her designer purse and bag on the front step of my porch and held out her wrists to be cuffed, but not before she smiled brightly at Aiden and drawled, “Wellll, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? Chalese! Who! Is! This! My, oh my, you are scrumptious!”

  She shook Aiden’s hand, then flipped her hair back over her shoulders and her glasses to the top of her head. As usual Brenda was wearing bright red lipstick and elegant, flower-shaped jewelry I knew well. “Scrumptious!” she declared again.

  “Yes, indeedy, he is. Let’s wrap him up in a strawberry pancake and eat him,” I snapped. “A little powdered sugar, and he’ll go down fine.”

  Brenda humphed at me, but then a quizzical expression crossed her face and her brows knit together. “I know who he is! He’s that terrible bulldog who wants to—”

  I clamped my hand over Brenda’s lipsticked mouth. “Not now, my friend, not now.”

  The chief crossed his arms. He does that when he’s analyzing confounding situations.

  I released Brenda. “Personal information,” I told the chief.

  Brenda glared at Aiden, hands on hips, beaded bracelets jingling, “So you’re the enemy?”

  “Brenda, shush.”

  “I’m not here for personal, I’m here for the crime committed,” the chief drawled. “Can you tell me what you girls were up to again last night?”

  “Again?” I protested.

  “Yes, ma’am, again.”

  “But…” I shut my mouth. Okay, perhaps a few of Brenda’s pranks had gotten out of hand in the past, but really, did he need to say “again,” drawing it out real slow, like stretching taffy, right in front of Aiden?

  “Again?” Aiden chuckled. “This is gonna be good. My lucky day.”

  “My fault, Chief.” Brenda shook her head sorrowfully. “You can handcuff me first. I’m guilty, but please be careful of my nails, I carefully polished them all by myself! What do you think? Red to match the lipstick, get it?”

  The chief stood up straighter, chest out. “This isn’t going in one of your movies, is it, Brenda?”

  “It could, it could!”

  The chief rubbed his hands together. “Good. Something for our family’s Christmas card. I’m gonna be famous again. Okeydokey, ladies, let’s have some fun here. You want to list the charges against you and Chalese this time around?”

  I slapped both hands to my face, then regretted that move. A weak scream emerged as my glass wounds smarted.

  “Are you all right?” Aiden asked, worried. “Can I help you with your face?”

  Can I help you with your face? I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Lemme think! I love police games! What would the official words be here?” Brenda tapped her forehead with both index fingers as if she were trying to jostle her brain. “Eureka, I’ve got it! It’s not stealing, because we didn’t take anything this time and put it where it shouldn’t be. Remember that time with the truck?”

  I cleared my throat to get Brenda’s attention about the truck. Didn’t work.

  “It’s not graffiti, because we didn’t paint anything this time like we did on that brick wall. It’s not attempted assault with a tractor this time, because we didn’t—”

  “Oh, stop it, Brenda,” I interrupted, flushing red. I could not stand to hear her say “this time” again! “For heaven’s sake. It’s breaking and entering, trespassing, harassment, and destruction of property.”

  The chief pointed both index fingers at me. “Bingo! You’re the winner in today’s criminal charges! And for that, you’ve won a trip down to the police station! Congratulations!”

  I did not miss Aiden’s befuddled expression.

  “Chalese is so smart, isn’t she, Chief?” Brenda said, examining her nails by stretching her hands two feet from her face, then slanting another glare toward the Enemy.

  “Sharp as a tack, gets it from her momma. Okay, ladies, into the car, I gotta take you two downtown again.”

  “Do you have to keep using that word ‘again,’ Chief?” I sputtered. “I’m friends with your wife, and I’m going to tell her that you—”

  “Can we take my car and meet you there? That’s gotta be a ‘Yes,’ Chief,” Brenda begged. “Last time we were in your car, I got gum on my gold heels! Gum! Pink gum!”

  The chief thought about it. “All right, Brenda, we’ll make a parade of it. You lead.”

  “Yahoo. I’m the person out front with the banner, right?”

  “That’s it. Mr. Bridger here, a friend of Chalese’s from Seattle, he’ll bring up the rear.”

  “He’s the trash sweeper,” Brenda drawled to the Enemy. “They always come at the end of a parade.”

  “You don’t need to come, Aiden,” I said, trying not to be profoundly pathetic. “This isn’t going to be fun. Go to town until I get back. Shop for…something. Corduroy pants? A whale key chain? Buy beer. Ogle women. Scratch. Hang. But don’t come.”

  “But it will be fun,” the chief said. “My motto is ‘No crime and we’ll all have a good time.’ We hardly ever get to book anyone. Come on down, Mr. Bridger.”

  “No, don’t—”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Aiden told the chief. He slung an arm around my shoulders, pretending we were the best of buds. “Lead the way.”

  He patted Mrs. Zebra on the head when we left. She licked his fingers.

  I called Gina Martinez, my friend the pet communicator, as Brenda drove her humming, female midlife-crisis sports car to the police station with the chief behind her and Aiden behind him in his truck, like the trash sweeper. I had a feeling I’d be gone awhile, and I wanted Gina to check on my dogs in a few hours if she hadn’t heard from me.

  Gina loves that her first and last names kind of rhyme. She said all through school kids called her “Poet Girl”
because of it. She actually writes poetry, and it’s not bad. It is, however, all about animals who are abused and how she thinks abusers should be stuffed with cabbage, oiled, boiled, then hung over a steep cliff attached to a short, skinny tree branch, their hands tied behind their backs.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, Gina, probably a few hours…” I gripped the handle on the car door and whacked Brenda as we careened down roads bordered by pine trees or rolling meadows. “Let’s arrive alive, Brenda, okay?”

  “I’m already on my way over to your house, Chalese. Reuby is coming with me. He wants to pet the dogs.”

  Reuby was Gina’s nose-and-eyebrow-pierced teenage son. Instead of calling his mother Mom, he called her the Authority Figure. He had blond hair to his shoulders and came over all the time, although he was not allowed in my studio. He loved two things: technology and animals. “How could you already be on your way over? Brenda and I are driving to the police station at this very embarrassing second.”

  “Joey Bradonovich called me. Her daughter, Toni, works as a hairdresser, and she heard it from Kobi Chao, who was in the police station to pay a parking ticket. By now the whole island knows you girls got yourselves in trouble again.”

  “Why does everyone have to keep using the word ‘again’? It’s not ‘again,’ Gina.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “There may have been a few crazy incidents in the past, regrettable, forgettable—”

  “Not forgettable! Not regrettable! That was sooo hilarious when you and Brenda and Christie dressed up the statues of the pioneers in town square with pink underwear and bras.”

  “I don’t want to hear about the bras—”

  “Is Gina talking about Pioneer Day?” Brenda asked as she drove, laughing. “You were a daredevil, Chalese. Remember how you hid—”

  “Brenda!” I screamed as she took the corner by the glass-art gallery waaaay too fast. “Slow down, it’s not a racetrack! You’re gonna get a ticket.”

  Too late. Chief O’Connaghey’s blue and red lights started to swirl. I turned around. The chief wiggled his fingers at me in greeting.

  “Gina, I have to call you back.”

  Brenda pulled over, refreshed her lipstick, then rolled down her window. “Good morning, Chief. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

  I muffled my despair, my head still crammed with tiny knives taking stabs at my cranium.

  Chief O’Connaghey grinned. “License and registration, Brenda. Say, I’ve been thinking these last few minutes, and your last movie, Pranks and Love on the Island, was my favorite. We didn’t think that Old Man Stuckey needed to die, though. But the movie touched my heart.” He touched his heart. “Made me cry. Same with Mrs. Chief O’Connaghey.”

  I rolled my shoulders. They hurt like holy heck.

  “’Course, Mrs. Chief O’Connaghey also laughed so hard she had to leave the theater and run to the bathroom,” he added.

  Oh, please.

  As we drove into the two-lane town, the ocean sparkling in the distance, Brenda assured me she would keep it quiet about Aiden’s occupation and why he was here and not act hostilely toward the Enemy. “I’ll tell everyone he’s your lover.”

  “I beg you, no.” We both waved at friends on foot and on bikes.

  “I’ll tell everyone he’s your secret lust, your childhood love.”

  “Let’s skip that one, too.”

  “Hoo boy. I have it. He’s a previous husband…. No? He’s your vacation plaything, and he wants to be serious now…. No? Then he’s your pen pal, your e-mail pal, and he’s come uninvited…Or how about he’s a previous boyfriend released from his duty in the CIA? Hoo boy.”

  “Now, don’t you go all stalkerish on me, Chalese,” the chief reprimanded me in front of Aiden when he was getting the paperwork together at the station. “Stephen can date whoever he wants. Let him go. He was never good enough for you.”

  “You’re a stalker?” Aiden asked. “Now that’s cool.”

  “No one understood why you were dating him in the first place. He’s…dweeby,” Angie Aluko, the secretary, said. She was wearing one of her bright African outfits. She and her husband, a businessman, had six kids. She and Christie were very close. Christie had not been charged, because she’d hid out in the car. The mere thought of giving birth to twins in a cell made her numb with panic.

  “I don’t care about Stephen at all. I was up on the roof,” I said, then lost my words. I tried again. “I was up on the roof because…because…”

  “Hoo boy!” Brenda interrupted with great fanfare. “We had chugged down a few daiquiris and were insanely curious about what Snaky Stephen was up to. So we snuck up on the roof to take a peekie.” She smiled at everyone as if we were at some cocktail party. Everyone smiled back. That’s how Brenda is. Everybody loves her. “Plus, I needed a real-life experience for my next movie, and you all have been perfect!”

  The chief, two officers I played pool with regularly at Old Harold’s Bar and Grill, and Angie preened and giggled.

  “Could you handcuff me, please?” Brenda asked one of the officers.

  “So is this your new special friend, Chalese?” Angie asked. “That’s what the chief says.”

  I froze. Froze like a constipated snowwoman.

  Aiden stared at me, green eyes almost twinkling out of his head with humor, and waited for the answer. I couldn’t say the truth. Did not want to lie, but felt I had to lie to save myself.

  “And the answer is…” Brenda paused for an imaginary drum roll. “This is Chalese’s new special friend. Isn’t he devilishly handsome? A raw, masculine specimen!” She waved her hand from his head to his feet, then made a growling sound.

  Aiden jokingly lifted his arms and flexed his muscles: to the right, the left, then back to the right. Angie hooted. Brenda cackled.

  “What exactly is a special friend?” Officer Doytoech drawled. “How is a special friend different from a regular friend, precisely?”

  “Yes, what does that entail?” Officer Lopez asked. “Sometimes department stores have special sales—red sales, blue sales. Is this the same thing?”

  “I know,” the chief said proudly. “This means you’re dating.”

  I fumbled, I blushed, I stuttered. I sounded like this: “Sdfkjlksad…”

  Aiden grinned. “Well, she’s hard to resist. Especially in her leathers. And those boots! Dangerous!”

  “She’s beautiful,” Angie declared. “Not looking so fresh this morning, but other days she’s a beauty!”

  “A true beauty,” Aiden said quite seriously. “Naturally beautiful. That hair, those eyes. She’s irritated now, but still.”

  “Chalese is a superpolite criminal.” Officer Doytoech thunked me on the back. “She never argues with us when she’s brought in—” I kicked him with my heel. “Ow!”

  “Yep, our Chalese is a lady, through and through,” Officer Lopez added. “Why, that time we had to go and rescue her and Brenda from the water tower, she was real cooperative. Took a couple of fire engines and a special unit from another island, but we got ’em down. Why were you all up there anyhow? Can’t remember…”

  “It was because Brenda thought she was a terrible writer,” Angie jumped in helpfully, “and needed a new perspective. So they climbed up the water tower, and then the ladder broke. I remember that scene in The Water Tower Diaries, Brenda! And I loved that Courtnay Hayes played me in the movie!”

  They then discussed the movie, at length, with Aiden enthusiastically adding his comments about character development, while Brenda was handcuffed at her request.

  “Chalese has said no four times to eager-to-be fiancés,” Angie said to Aiden, holding up four fingers.

  “Yep, four,” Officer Lopez confirmed. “Four men asked her to marry them, she gave ’em a big nope. Nope nope nope nope.”

  “Why a nope nope?” Aiden asked the group, not me.

  Everyone spoke at once. I heard “Too pompous…too showy…not manly enough…too hairy…
not smart enough for our Chalese, mind like a steel trapdoor…no one liked him…hot temper, Chalese has a hot temper…he was dull/flighty/bum…Chalese indulges in crazy stuff…wouldn’t have worked…” And the finale: “She wasn’t in love with any of them, we could tell.”

  “Yoo-hoo! I’m still here!”

  No one stopped talking.

  “Yoo-hoo!”

  Before we criminals were released on an unsuspecting public, the officers reminded us that Tuesday night was the annual Whale Island Poker Tournament and invited Aiden, who said, “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  But not before Aiden heard again:

  That Stephen wasn’t good enough for me, to which he said chivalrously, “I can’t imagine any man would be good enough for her.”

  That I was a “treasure, a gift to any man” (Angie), to which Aiden said, “I treasure every moment with her.”

  That I was “an upright citizen (Officer Lopez said this while laughing like a drunk hyena), to which Aiden said, “I understand she was upright while scaling Stephen’s home. Perhaps she should stay off skylights?”

  I was also the woman who made the best jams and jellies this side of the Mississippi (the chief), to which Aiden said, “She has so many talents. I could drink her jams all day.”

  “When’s you ladies’ next prank?” Officer Lopez asked. “Can I film it? I could probably send it to one of those funny-videos shows and get me enough for a new truck!”

  “We’ll keep you updated!” Brenda swung her handcuffs around one finger.

  I hot flashed.

  Before he headed for the fifty-year-old blue bed and breakfast by the bay, Aiden leaned in and whispered in my ear, “I think this is going to be one of my best stories.”

  I closed my eyes. Heavens. He was even handsomer close up. “Why?” I asked, strangled.

  “Because of you.” Would it be inappropriate to tell him he smelled like mountain vistas and sunny days on a clear lake?

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are not at all what I expected.”

  “Gee, is that because you didn’t expect to see the creator of Cassy Cat get arrested?”