by Gina LaManna
“Thanks, Harold,” I said, grabbing Meg’s arm and giving her a tug in the direction of the Great Hall. “I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”
I was wrong.
A few minutes later, we pulled up short in the doorway of the living area. Meg took a slurp of coffee through a straw. She’d found both the cup and the sludgy coffee in the kitchen, though it might not’ve been brewed in this decade. “You going in?”
I weighed my options. Meg and I stood outside of the living area, a space where Carlos often retired with a cigar and a shot of grappa after dinner. He said he liked to listen to his favorite radio program, crunch the numbers in his accounting books, and prepare for another day’s work. My theory was that he just closed his eyes and napped the whole time.
I peered around the doorframe again, then popped my head back before anyone inside noticed. Meg was right: things didn’t look good in there. A fire roared in the hearth while a sectional couch sat plump on the outskirts of the room. A bookshelf lined another wall filled with old classics, dusty from un-use. Just in front of the classics was Carlos’s armchair, a La-Z-Boy so fluffy I could hardly see my grandfather when he sank into the middle. The seat had molded around his figure over time, becoming more of an extension of his body than a piece of furniture.
But the normally quiet, peaceful room was not so today. Anthony sat on one couch, his back rigid and his expression falling somewhere between mildly unamused and excruciating pain. Nora had set up shop on the same couch. In fact, she’d adopted my boyfriend’s lap. She’d plunked a pillow across Anthony’s thighs and rested her head on it, whimpering a few words every now and again. She had a blanket decorated with dancing reindeers in tutus pulled up to her chin, and her tiny legs curled underneath her body.
I watched as Anthony reached out and patted her head once, like he might a fragile puppy. When that didn’t seem to stem her crying, he withdrew his hand and crossed his arms, staring across the room at my grandfather, who was sitting in his chair, puffing away on a cigar.
“Nora must be really distressed,” I whispered to Meg. “She never lets Carlos smoke in there if she can help it.”
“Carlos smokes in here all the time!”
I shook my head. “It’s this little ritual they have. Carlos lights up, and she gives him a minute or two alone to huff and puff. Then she storms in and yanks it out of his hand and screams that it’ll give him cancer.”
“I bet those are nice cigars,” Meg said. “Tell your grandmother to donate them to the ‘Meg fund’ after she confiscates his goods.”
“No, they’re bad for you!”
“I’ve seen Nora take a puff or two after a holiday.” Meg raised her eyebrows. “After we went sledding on Christmas? I caught her.”
“Yes, well, when you’re eighty-something, you can do whatever you want.”
Meg crossed her arms. “Those’ll be the good days. Can you imagine me and you? We can sit in wheelchairs and yell at people to give us cigars and push us around. Race down the hallways. It’ll be great.”
“If you smoke cigars, then I’ll win every race. Your oxygen tank will hold you back.”
“Except, I’m going to ask for my nurses to stock my oxygen tank with laughing gas. I think laughing gas would be more fun than plain old oxygen, don’t you think?” Meg sucked in a long, deep breath. “See? I can get plain old air for free. That’s like paying for bottled water when you got perfectly good tap water coming from the sink. I don’t get it!”
“We can worry about our wheelchair races later. We’ve gotta give them the note.”
“You go in first.”
I hesitated. Then I peeked once more, and I watched as Anthony tried to pat Nora’s head again. This time, it spurred a wail. The wail deteriorated into screeches from Nora about the Boxcar Children. I pulled my head back. “Do you really think now’s the time to interrupt?”
“Maybe we can check it out and try back later?” Meg looked down. “I love Nora and all, but if she keeps crying like that and gets her slobber all over my new pants, that’s gonna be one heck of a dry cleaning bill.”
“Let’s just walk in, drop off the note, and leave.” I rolled my shoulders up and down, trying to gather up the courage to go inside. In reality, if Nora kept crying, it’d derail all my attempts to keep on a brave face. I wouldn’t be able to keep my eyes dry looking at her in this state. “Meg, I’m a little afraid.”
“I would be.” Meg took another long slurp through her straw. “This coffee is terrible. I’m worried about my intestines, and you probably should be, too.”
“No! About them.” I nodded my head towards the den.
“Oh, Anthony? Yeah, I’d be worried. He looks like he wants to put that pillow on the other side of your grandma’s head.” Slurp, slurp. “Over her mouth and her nose, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I can’t handle when other people cry,” I said. “What if I break down?”
“You can’t think about your emotions now,” Meg said. “That’s the trick. You gotta push them away until you solve the mystery. Then let them come floodin’ out of you.”
“You don’t let your emotions come flooding out, ever,” I said. “Why?”
“’Cause I drown them.” Meg grinned. “Food, drinks, boys. That’s what they’re there for – to numb the emotions.”
I shook my head. “That’s not healthy.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Meg said. “But who cries more, me or you?”
I looked at my shoes.
“Exactly. I’m just sparing my eye ducks.”
“Eye ducks?”
“The things tears come out of.”
“Tear ducts?”
“Mine are eye ducks, because tears don’t come out of them.” Meg set the coffee cup on a table in the hallway. “Yours, now, yours are flood ducks. They just let water stream around willy-nilly.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.” I poked my head around the door and took a quick look. But it didn’t make me feel any better; Nora, all curled up and small, looking like a rag doll with shaking shoulders. “How do I talk to Nora when she looks like that? My heart is breaking from out here.”
Meg reached out then, her big hands clasping around my puny biceps. She lifted me right off of my feet and pressed my back against the wall with enough force that my head wobbled a little bit. Thankfully, Nora took that moment to chatter about reading materials for children, and as far as I could tell the shudder of the walls went unnoticed.
“You listen to me, chickadee.” Meg narrowed her eyes, her fingers cinching into my skin, my feet dangling a few inches above the ground. “If you want to be a mobsterista, you’ve got to learn to control your ducks.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your tear ducks,” Meg said. “Your emotions. If you let your ducks run about freely, you’re at a handicap. And I won’t let my best friend be handicapped against the biggest, baddest dudes, you got it?”
“Ducts,” I said. “And yes, I get it. But Meg, it’s easier said than done. I can’t just tell myself to stop crying and, voila, I stop.”
“Why not?” Meg pressed me harder against the wall. “You can do exactly that. Do you think The Fish goes around crying when he doesn’t get his way? The man’s killed people, and he hasn’t cried as much as you.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to be like him.” I blinked. “I like my emotions.”
“Then figure out the correct time and place for them.” Meg shook me up and down a little bit. “Because if you’re too busy crying to concentrate, you’ll have more tears down the line. If you just focus now and push those emotions away, you’ll have happier emotions down the line when you solve your case.”
I tried to shrug, but my shoulders didn’t have a whole lot of mobility, thanks to Meg, whose hands doubled as straitjackets. “It still surprises me when you make sense.”
“Yeah, I like to keep you guessing.” Meg smiled. “Now, I’m gonna let you go. Can you land on your feet
?”
I wiggled my toes. “I think so.”
“Are you going to go in there and start crying?”
“No,” I said. But this time, my face scrunched up a little bit in pain. I was starting to not be able to feel those wiggling toes. “I’m not going to cry.”
Meg let go. I crumpled into a ball on the floor.
“What was that?” My grandfather called from inside the living area. “Who’s there?”
“Lacey,” Meg called back. Then to me, she said, “You didn’t land on your feet.”
“Hard to land on my feet when I can’t feel them,” I said, pulling myself up against the wall. I flexed my wrists, my toes, my neck, and then gave a full body shake to get myself straightened out. “Surprisingly, I feel pretty good.”
“It’s called tough love.” Meg clasped her arm around my shoulder. “Lucky for you, I’m full of it. I’m so full of it I just ooze tough love.”
“Too much information.” I tried to put the image of Meg oozing any sort of love out of my mind, and stepped through the doorframe. Not a whole lot had changed from a few minutes before when I’d been peeking around the corner. I raised a hand and gave a quick wave. “Hi, it’s just me.”
Anthony, still trapped under Nora’s rag doll frame, raised his eyebrows. “About time.”
“I didn’t know you were…” I gestured to the couch. “Uh, tied down.”
Carlos lay back in his armchair, smoke from his cigar swirling up in a tight spiral from where it dangled between his fingers. “Lacey, what have you found?”
“Straight to business.” Meg followed me into the room. She eyed my grandfather’s cigar. “I like it. Say Carlos, is that a Cuban?”
“I found this.” I pulled out the loose-leaf sheet of paper from where I’d tucked it into my pocket. “What do you think?”
Anthony leaned forward to look at the outstretched piece of notebook paper. He scrunched his eyes trying to read the words. Before I could take a step closer and hand him the piece of paper, Nora let out a squeal. It sounded sort of similar to Tupac the Cat’s screech the time Clay had accidentally set Veronica-the-mannequin on his tail.
Anthony flew back against the couch, his eyes widening in shock.
My grandmother bolted up into a sitting position. “Anthony, you squished my head! When you leaned over, your chest just squished down on me.”
“I’m sorry, I—” Anthony didn’t have time to explain before Nora extended a finger and shook it at him. I barely managed to hide my smile.
“I worked for hours to get this hair right, Anthony.” Nora adjusted her grayish locks into a poofy ’do that looked almost exactly the same as it had moments before, just a little flatter across the top. “And you go flattening my curls like a pancake. That is rude! You are supposed to be comforting your future grandmother-in-law.”
Anthony’s face paled at the same time my breath disappeared.
“Nora!” I said. “You cannot use this opportunity to push marriage on us.”
“I want in on the squishing action.” Meg, who’d been sidling closer and closer to Carlos’s cigar, gave up the fight when he switched hands and gave her a death stare. She changed course and stalked across the room, plopping down on Anthony’s other side and kicking her legs up on the couch. Then she thunked her head on the pillow where my grandmother’s had been seconds before. “Try to smush my hair. I’ve gotta see what this chest is all about.”
Anthony raised his hands in surrender, looking over Meg’s head at me. He gave one dangerously slow shake of his head. “Get her off,” he mouthed to me. “Now.”
Nora, however, was taking care of business already. “Excuse me.” She rapped her closed fist against Meg’s skull once. “Anthony is comforting me. Not you.”
“Isn’t that what Carlos is for?” Meg didn’t move her head from the pillow. “Anthony, smush me. I want to see how it feels.”
“Um, how about we stop the smushing for now, and focus on what’s really important?” I took a few quick steps across the room and yanked the pillow off of Anthony’s lap. “The note.”
Except, yanking the pillow from Anthony’s lap didn’t have the affect I’d intended. I’d assumed that Meg and Nora would sit up like normal human beings, and leave Anthony alone. But as usual, I’d expected too much normalcy from my family. Instead, Meg let her head plunk onto Anthony’s lap. Nora, not to be outdone, threw herself down and whacked her head on Anthony’s other thigh.
“Whoops,” I said, shooting Anthony an apologetic stare. “Well, since you’re stuck there anyway, I’ll take the opportunity to show you this.” I handed him the notebook paper. “What do you think?”
“Sharing is caring,” Nora said. “This is nice, isn’t it, Meg?”
“I could get used to it.” Meg grinned. “Wanna squish us both at once, Anthony? I still kinda want to feel your chest. Just for curiosity’s sake.”
“Research,” Nora said. “It’s just research.”
“Research for what?” I asked. “What can you possibly be researching?”
“I’m considering taking up weight-lifting as a hobby,” Nora said. “And so I’m trying to get a feel for what my body would look like once I become a power squatter.”
“Yeah, and I’m just researching the state of unavailable men,” Meg said. “It makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard.”
I shook my head. “Anthony? What do you think?”
“I can’t concentrate.” Anthony had been staring at the sheet of paper for over minute, and his eyes had scanned back and forth across the text at least a hundred times. But based on the twitching, hazy sort of expression on his face, he hadn’t taken in a word of it. “I need peace and quiet.”
“Give him quiet,” Nora whispered. “Got it, Meg? Let the man think.”
“Got it,” Meg hissed back. “Silence. Ten-four.”
“Carlos, how about you take your wife to the kitchen for a, um…” I hesitated. “A drink?”
Carlos gave Anthony’s pain-stricken face one glance, then let his eyes trail down to where his wife and Meg were looking quite happy to take joint naps on Anthony’s lap. In response, Carlos raised his cigar to his lips, and took one long puff.
I rolled my eyes. “Anthony, can I see you outside for a second?”
He stood up faster than I’d ever thought possible. Both Meg’s and Nora’s heads bounced once on the cushion he’d just vacated. “Of course.”
I slid my hand around his forearm and pulled him into the hallway. Somehow, Meg’s coffee mug had disappeared from the table. Maybe Nora really did have gnomes running around the house and cleaning up stray cups. “Well, look at the bright side.” I smiled up at Anthony. “You got Nora to stop crying.”
“It was only a matter of time,” Anthony said, his lips in a straight line. “The woman only has so much water in her body, and she’s used it all up.”
“Well, her body’s seventy percent water, they say.”
“And I imagine she used every last drop of it.” Anthony said. “All that’s left is skin, bones, and air.”
“And a little bit of flirtation.” I poked him on the chest. “She likes you.”
Anthony stiffened. “I was only doing it as a favor for Carlos. He’s worried enough. The least I can do is help.”
“Sure you were.” I winked. “You have a soft spot for Nora, admit it. If you really wanted to, you could have disappeared on her, but you didn’t.”
“I don’t—”
“Hey, I like Mr. Softie.” I threw my arms around Anthony’s neck and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I fell in love with the tough guy on the outside…” I ran a hand through Anthony’s hair, then traced a finger down past his forehead, pausing just to the outside of his left eye, the iris glittering black. “And I fell in love with the sweet guy on the inside.” I dragged my finger the rest of the way down his face, swiped it across his chin, and concluded the whole thing with a kiss. “I love all of you.”
Anthony rolled his
eyes to the ceiling. I think he mumbled an “I love you” back, but it also might have been something more like “You owe me.”
“Yeah, yeah, we can figure that out later.” I reached down towards Anthony’s pockets. His eyebrows raised suggestively. “I said later.” Pulling the loose-leaf free from his pocket, I held it up for us to examine. “About this. What do you think?”
“Where did you find it?”
“Nicky’s mailbox. It was tucked into the side, not on top like the rest of the bills.”
“Who else saw it?”
“Just me and Meg. We were over there looking for anything we could possibly find this morning. We almost came away empty handed, until I found this.”
“You didn’t find anything else suspicious?”
I frowned. “Meg found a banana, which I thought was strange.”
“A banana.”
“Yeah, like a real banana.”
“No innuendo.”
“No, like a real, live banana.” I shrugged. “One that monkeys eat.”
Anthony shook his head. “So, all we’ve got is the note.”
I nodded. “Do you think it’s their handwriting?”
Anthony looked down again, staring for a while. Then he looked back up at me. “Do I look like a guy who knows the answer to that question? I have no idea what the handwriting of a young girl is supposed to look like. I don’t even know if she can read. Can she drive? I don’t know, Lacey.”
“They can read, but they can’t drive,” I said, tilting the paper towards me. “Handwriting varies. Is Nicky around?”
Anthony nodded up the hallway. “We made him try to nap. He didn’t get any sleep all night. He started talking nonsense, so we set him up with a cup of chamomile tea and a bed.”
“Was it plain chamomile tea?” I raised my eyebrows. “Or did you add a little something extra soothing?”
Anthony took a few steps forward. “He should be awake now.”
“Hey, that’s not an answer.” I hurried to catch up with Anthony, jogging a few steps to each one of his. “Is Nicky doing okay?”