There was silence, then Jake asked, “Does this mean I’ll have a little brother or sister?”
This was what I was afraid of. “No, even though I’m the mom, you won’t be related. After the baby’s born, it will belong to Tina and her husband.”
“So I don’t have to share a room or, you know, my stuff or anything with this newbie?”
“No.”
“Good!”
I had counted on Jake’s self-interest to win his approval. “Then you don’t have any objection?”
“Naw. Sounds like a really nice thing for you to do…. Knock yourself out, Mom.”
Downstairs, I found Mother seated at the dining room table, furiously making notes on a yellow legal pad.
She looked up, her magnified eyes behind the glasses dancing a wild jig, her hair frozen in its own bizarre dance step. “I know who would be perfect to cast as the male lead in the Christie play…but he can be awfully temperamental, and somewhat undependable.”
“Glad it’s coming together.”
Mother studied me. “Something wrong, dear? You’re frowning. You’re making wrinkles!”
I plastered on a smile guaranteed to make even more lines. “No! Everything’s fine.”
(You didn’t think for a moment that I would tell Mother about my surrogacy offer, did you? If so, you’re either a new reader or not paying attention. Good Lord, it would be all over town before Tina and Kevin even had a chance to think it over.)
I said, “I take it you want to go out for dinner.”
Mother smiled up at me. “How did you know, dear?”
“Because it’s almost six and there’s no yummy smells coming from the kitchen.”
All right, I’ll admit that my using words like “yummy” had something to do with my mother treating me like a child.
“You see, dear! As much as you try to resist it, your natural sleuthing skills are a part of you.” Mother brushed the legal pad aside. “How about going to that new Mexican restaurant you’ve been wanting to try?”
This surprised me, as Mother doesn’t care for spicy food because the resulting indigestion almost inevitably keeps her up all night watching Home Shopping Network. And I don’t care for the bills we get for the vitamin complexes, exercise gizmos, and kitchen miracles that ensue, so I hadn’t pressed my Mexican yen.
Nonetheless, I said, “Great! But I’ll have to give Sushi her food, first.” I glanced around for the dog, who should have come trotting in at the sound of the word “food.”
“I’ve already taken care of the little darling,” Mother informed me.
“You have?”
She lifted her chin, eyes sparkling with pride. “And given her her shot of insulin.”
“You did?”
Mother had only done that once before, when I was too sick to get out of bed with a migraine; she has an abject fear of needles (slightly less so when it’s someone else getting stuck).
I narrowed my eyes. “All right…what’s going on? My natural sleuthing skills tell me you’re up to something.”
Both her hands came up in “Lawsy, Miss Scarlet” fashion. “Why, nothing, dear! It’s simply that you’ve seemed so very down in the dumps lately, and I only wanted to please.” She gave me the kind of smile a bank teller gives a holdup man. “The idea that my gesture might be anything other than heartfelt…well, it wounds me, dear…right here.” She thumped her chest.
As if anything could pierce that egotistical heart.
But to keep the peace, I said, “Forgive me, Mother,” and trundled off to get our raccoon coats. It only seemed fair to warn the world we were coming.
On the drive to the Mexican restaurant, Mother chattered on and on about her plans for the new production, and—as with most of her one-sided conversations—I had to either rise to her level of enthusiasm, or fade back entirely. Not having the energy, I chose the latter.
Mother, tiring of own voice for a change, began to sing “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” which if you’ve never heard it (or even if you have) is about a monkey and a chimp and consists mostly of the words “aba” and “daba.” Which pretty much summed up our relationship these days.
La Hacienda was located in South End, and everything on the menu sounded both authentic and delicious. Not knowing when I’d have an opportunity to be back, I ordered guacamole (made directly at our table), chiles rel-lenos, Spanish rice, refried beans, and for dessert, flan. Fat bucket be damned.
Mother questioned the poor waitress exhaustively about all of the dishes, and what was in them, asking her in her best John McLaughlin fashion to assign a relative hotness on a scale of one to ten (ten being “metaphysical hotness”), finally making me kick her under the table to let up.
After glaring at me, Mother ordered huevos rancheros, but when they arrived (the orders came quickly), she merely picked at her food, pushing the spicy eggs around her plate as if rearranging furniture. Apparently, she wasn’t in the mood for a night of Home Shopping Network.
Which was fine with me, because I would never be in the mood for the credit-card bill that would follow.
As I was taking my last bite of the delicious syrup-topped custard, the bedraggled waitress came over to ask if we wanted anything else, and Mother said, “Sí! An order of beef tacos to go.”
As the waitress trotted off, I asked, puzzled, “A midnight snack to watch while Suzanne Somers sells you an exercise device, or Ernest Borgnine’s wife peddles you some perfume?”
She gave me a primly offended look. “The tacos are not for us, dear.”
I put down my fork, the custard curdling on my palate. “Well, they’re certainly not for Sushi.”
Mother neatly folded her paper napkin as if it were quality linen, placed it on the table, and said matter-of-factly, “I thought, as long as we’re down here, in this part of town, we could just stop by and see how your little friend Chaz is getting along.”
At last, the real motive for dining at La Hacienda reared its bug-eyed head. The order-to-go reflected a standard Mother strategy: She rarely dropped in on anyone uninvited without bringing something along to take the sting out of her sudden appearance…even if said item was unwarranted, unneeded, and unwanted.
I asked fractiously, “What if Chaz doesn’t like tacos? Or would rather have chicken than beef? Did you ever think maybe she’s a vegetarian?”
Mother’s expression turned sour. “Brandy, sometimes I wonder why I bother doing anything nice for you!”
I raised twin palms in surrender. “Okay, I appreciate it, you letting me try out La Hacienda. I’ve been wanting to.”
She nodded smugly.
“But, Mother, there was no cause for turning it into the D-Day Landing. I’d like to know how Chaz is doing myself. I don’t need to be tricked or handled.”
Mother blinked. “Oh. All right, dear, I will try to remember that. From now on, I will endeavor to be as straightforward as possible. I will indulge in neither subterfuge nor sophistry. I will…what were talking about?”
“Beats me.”
The tacos came, we paid the check, and left.
A few minutes later, I turned at the convenience store into Happy Trails Trailer Court, driving down the icy, main lane, the Christmas lights and yard decorations lending red and green twinkles to a landscape otherwise dominated by sludgy snow. Up ahead, I spotted a police car parked in front of Mr. Yeager’s mobile home, and I put on the brakes, skidding a little.
Mother and I exchanged alarmed looks.
“Yikes,” we both said.
I drove on slowly, easing my Buick in behind the squad car. We got out, and I climbed the couple of steps to the door, Mother waiting below, holding the sack of food. I knocked.
Chaz opened the door immediately, which startled both Mother and me—it was as if the girl had been standing there, waiting for us. She stepped aside for us to get in out of the cold.
“Is anything wrong?” I asked the girl.
“Your mate’s ’ere,” Chaz said, nodding towa
rd a familiar figure.
Brian, standing stiffly in the little living room, seemed none too happy to see us, and I didn’t think Mother’s steaming sack of tacos was going to turn the tide.
“What’s going on?” Mother demanded, as if she were in charge. Tact, it should be noted, was in my mother’s opinion something that one put on the teacher’s chair.
Brian took a few steps toward her. “Frankly, Mrs. Borne,” he said, his boyish handsome face as tight as his terse words, “this is police business, and not any of yours.”
If I had a dollar for every time something of that sort had been said to Mother by the Serenity PD in the last year, we could have afforded tacos for the entire force.
Chaz offered cheerfully, “’E came to tell me the chief inspector ’imself wants to talk to me downtown, ’cause I’m an interesting person, innit?”
“You mean a ‘person of interest,’ dear,” Mother corrected.
Chaz screwed up her face. “Eh? That’s wha’ I said!”
I said, “Chaz, a ‘person of interest’ is just a politically correct way of calling somebody a suspect.” I looked at Brian. “A suspect in what? If this is about that bank bag—”
“It’s not,” Brian said testily. He narrowed his eyes and lowered his head, letting me know somehow that he wasn’t just irritated as an officer, but just plain irritated. “That doesn’t mean I won’t want to talk to you later, Brandy, about how conveniently that missing money showed up.”
I muttered, “Okay…ah, sure,” and faded behind Mother, who had pulled herself up to her full five feet eight inches (she used to be five-nine, but has shrunk a little—I knew the feeling, since I’d shrunk to about three foot two ever since Brian gave me that irritated look).
“This girl has rights, you know,” Mother snapped, “even if she is a second-class citizen in this country!”
“Yeah!” an emboldened Chaz retorted. “I’m second-class, innit? Best you ’member that, mate.”
Mother continued haughtily, “And I’m sure the British embassy would be none too pleased to hear of any police brutality that was waged against one of Her Majesty’s loyal subjects.”
Chaz said, “Yeah!” Then, “Wha’? No! Don’t call ’em! I jumped me parole when I came ’ere—”
Brian’s eyes had a sort of deadness as he fixed them on Mother. “It may come as a surprise to you, Mrs. Borne, that we don’t have a British embassy in Serenity.”
I said, “But Chaz does have certain rights—”
“Settle down, all of you!” Brian put both hands up like a traffic cop. Then he turned to Chaz. “No one is accusing you of anything. We just want to ask you a few routine questions down at the station…to clarify and expand on earlier statements you made, so that we can close the file on your grandfather.”
This was pure B.S., but I had to admit Brian had delivered it convincingly.
Chaz looked from Brian to me to Mother, and back again.
“All right,” she said, “but if I don’t like the sound of the questions, I’m gonna get me a solicitor, yeah?”
Brian nodded. “Fair enough. And the sooner we go to the station, the sooner you’ll be back home.”
Mother said, “Don’t say anything without a lawyer, dear! This is a murder investigation!”
“No,” Brian said, “it is not. We’re investigating a suspicious death, and—”
“There!” Mother said, raising a triumphant finger like an old-time politician making a point. “Suspicious! He’s said it himself!”
Chaz turned to me. “Bran, what should I do?”
“Go with Officer Lawson. You can trust him. She can trust you, can’t she, Brian?”
“Certainly…Brandy, a word?”
Brian took me deeper into the living room. “I want you to promise me that you and your mother aren’t getting involved in this thing.”
“Why?” I said. Not being a smart aleck, just wanting to know. “Is it a ‘thing’? Is Mother right?”
“Your Mother is seldom right, but even if she were, you and she are going to get yourselves in real trouble if this doesn’t stop. This Nancy Drew meets Jessica Fletcher crap has to cease, understood?”
“That’s not very nice.”
“No. It isn’t. And now you’re going. Both of you.”
Then for the second time, Mother and I were unceremoniously tossed out of the trailer.
But before we left, Mother held out the sack of tacos and told Chaz, up in the doorway, what she’d brought.
“Tacos! Brilliant! Thanks, luv! Okay if I nosh on these on the way downtown, Officer?”
“Sure,” Brian said.
Chaz came down and got the sack and Brian followed, closing the door behind them.
From our car, we watched Brian put Chaz in the back of the police car, and, to make sure we did leave, he signaled for me to drive off first, and followed behind us.
As we exited the mouth of the trailer court, a black sedan was pulling in. Mother glanced over her shoulder as the vehicle passed, twisting her neck so much that it cracked as if a chiropractor had been involved.
“Did you see who that was?” she exclaimed.
“No.” I had my eyes on the icy road.
“Quick!” she said. “Pull into that convenience store…I need milk.”
I was exhausted, and exasperated. “But we’ve got milk, Mother…I bought some the other day.”
“Then…I need butter.”
We had that, too, but I could see where this was going, and mine was not to reason why, mine was but to do or strangle my mother; so I did as I was told. While I let the car idle, Mother got out and scampered into the store. That’s right, scampered.
After a minute she returned with…nothing.
“What? No butter?” I asked. I wasn’t surprised, of course, but I couldn’t give her a completely free pass.
She gave me a long-suffering look. “Honestly, Brandy, sometimes you can be ever so slow on the uptake. Now that we’ve shaken Officer Lawson, I want you to turn around and go back.”
“What for?” I asked.
Mother gave me a stare hard enough to crack a mirror.
I gave her one back. “Brian says we’re going to get in trouble if we get involved in this.”
“Do you think Mr. Yeager was murdered, dear?”
“Not really, no.” I hadn’t shared with her my fears that Joe Lange might have been involved, somehow, with the old gent’s passing. My Prozac hadn’t allowed me to even mull it over much myself.
“Well, then, since it’s not a murder, what harm does it do, humoring your eccentric old mother?”
Referring to herself as “eccentric” and “old” was not an admission—that was Vivian Borne–style sarcasm.
So, as you damn well know I did, I drove the car back down the main road of the trailer court, and as we got closer to Mr. Yeager’s mobile home, Mother bounced up and down in her seat like a child on a long trip spotting the first service station bathroom in miles.
“I thought that’s who it was,” she said excitedly.
In the short driveway of Yeager’s trailer, two men in black topcoats were retrieving equipment from the open trunk of their sedan.
My eyes were wide, and my mouth yawned, but not because I was tired. “As Chaz might say, crikey. Those are crime scene guys.”
“That’s right.” Mother’s eyes shown as brightly as my car headlights. “Now slow down as we pass,” she instructed.
I was already going at a snail’s pace, and as we crawled by, Mother powered down her window and shouted ever so pleasantly, “I hope you boys have a war-rant!”
I cringed behind the wheel, then snarled, “Mother! Do you have to make trouble?”
And I hit the gas.
Mother sat back, huffing, “Well, they better have. But I bet they didn’t even bother! Brandy, they were tricking that poor girl. Your boyfriend was tricking her!”
“Do you have to rub it in?”
Rather than drive by again, I
searched for a back way out of the court.
Mother was sneering, “‘To clarify earlier statements’ my foot! Your precious Brian wanted that girl out of the way so those test-tube gestapo agents could search that trailer. This proves Mr. Yeager was murdered!”
“Okay, looks like you may be right,” I admitted. I had found the back exit of the trailer court. “What got you suspicious?”
Mother smiled grandly. “Because I attempted to give the poor man artificial respiration, and in doing so smelled the distinct odor of bitter almonds—the signature of cyanide!”
“You know this how? Did I miss the part where you went to pharmacy college?”
“Agatha Christie was a pharmacist’s nurse, and I’ve read every one of her mysteries, at least twice!”
“And you didn’t tell anyone about this?”
She harrumphed. “What good would it do? No one would listen. Everyone but you seems to think I’m just a crazy old woman!”
She had a point, except for the part about excluding me.
I frowned. “Where does someone even get cyanide, nowadays? On the Internet?”
Raising an eyebrow, Mother said, “Not without a great deal of red tape. After all, I should know—I’ve already tried.”
“Tell me you didn’t!”
“But I just said that I did.”
“When?”
“The other day.” Mother sighed, shrugged; how hard it was for her, bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders. “But there was a thirty-day wait for the cyanide, and endless questions. Then, when the computer asked me what I was going to use it for, and I typed in ‘murder,’ they disconnected me! How insufferably rude!”
I groaned. “Please tell me you didn’t do this on my computer….”
“Well, of course, dear. I certainly don’t have one.”
One more entry in the FBI file of Brandy Borne, compliments of Mother—if we were lucky. We might get a knock on the door from who-knows-who in law enforcement.
Mother was musing, “Of course, I probably could get my hands on cyanide if I wanted to.”
“Please…you’re starting to scare me.”
She went on almost dreamily, “I dare say there’s still some up in the rafters of our garage outside…”
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