That was the one thing she wasn’t going to get away with. If I caught her, and that was unlikely with her ability to sprint in stilettos, I was going to wring her neck.
Thirty-One
I ran cross-country one year at my all-girls Catholic high school. I even have the sweatshirt to prove it. Every once in a while, if only to prove Crawford wrong when he insinuates that I’m not athletic or, worse, that I’m out of shape, I put it on to show him that once upon a time, Alison Bergeron was someone. She ran cross-country.
Technically, that’s not entirely true. When the coach got a look at me, wowed by the length of my legs and my seemingly unbridled enthusiasm for running, she was overjoyed. That is, until she found out that I was incredibly uncoordinated, verged on asthmatic, and had the stamina of a postmenopausal woman with osteoporosis. In other words, I stunk. However, long arms guaranteed that I could at least be considered for shot put, and since no other girl was willing to give it a try, I took one for the team, hoisting a metal ball behind my neck five days a week and sometimes on Saturday, attempting to put my high school on the map for the “field” part of track and field. My mother, French Canadian, gorgeous, and stylish, was horrified and blamed the genetic mutation—as she saw my freakishly long arms—on my father, who found his own freakishly long arms well suited to his job as a UPS man.
Too bad I didn’t have a shot put handy. I would have thrown it farther than I had ever managed while in high school and nailed Sassy in the head. I was irate that she had desecrated my dear Alphonse’s gravestone, and she would pay. If it turned out that she was also the one who poisoned my dog, well, she was dead meat. No pun intended.
By the time I arrived at the cemetery, of course she was gone. I stood at Alphonse’s grave, my hands on the stone, panting. I hadn’t run that fast in … well, forever, and at my age—decidedly not middle-aged—it was not a good idea to go from eating scones and drinking coffee into a full sprint. Someone could get hurt. Or something could rupture. I now knew where my gall bladder resided, and it was right under the last rib on the right of my rib cage. In other words, no good could come of physical activity at my age.
Crawford arrived less than ten minutes after I had called him, no Fred in tow. With him was his colleague of many years Carmen Montoya, she of the tight pants and even tighter backside. She sidled over to the gravestone and sized up the situation.
“You need an ambulancia, chica?” she asked.
“No, I don’t need an ambulancia,” I said, struggling mightily to catch my breath. “Some oxygen might be nice, though.”
“Didn’t I tell you to stay in your office?” Crawford asked, squinting in the morning sun.
I lifted my head just long enough to give him a withering look.
“My boyfriend here filled me in on who this Sassy person is on our way over.” Carmen lifted her heel to check how much dirt she had accumulated on her black leather boots. “Sounds like a charmer.”
“She is,” I said. “She may have poisoned our dog, and she threatened his ex, Christine.”
Carmen’s face lit up at Christine’s name. “So Christine is well? Haven’t seen that girl in a dog’s age. Always fond of her.”
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“Not as fond as I am of you,” she said, realizing she had innocently stepped in it, so to speak.
“She’d be better if we could find Sassy and get her locked up,” Crawford said through gritted teeth.
“We’re sure it’s her making all of this mayhem?” Carmen asked, pulling large black sunglasses from her purse and donning them.
“Pretty sure,” he said as I chimed in, “Positive.”
“So let’s get her,” Carmen said.
I pulled a tissue that had seen better days out of my pocket and went to work on the cigarette butt scar on Alphonse’s gravestone, getting all but the last bit of it up.
“Are you cleaning that grave?” Carmen asked.
“Yes,” I said, wetting my finger and working on the black stain. “She was a friend.”
I saw her exchange a look with Crawford, but I didn’t care.
“Did this Sassy person leave all of this sugar around? Is this some kind of clue that I just can’t understand?” she asked. “A satanic ritual maybe?”
“No,” I said. “I put it here. It’s a private message.”
“A message to a dead nun?” she asked. Although I couldn’t see her eyes, I suspected that she was raising an eyebrow in my direction.
“Yes.” I dared her to make another comment.
She didn’t, preferring to address Crawford next. “What you want to do, handsome? You’re in charge.”
“Let’s take a walk around and see if there’s anything else that turns up.” He put his hands in his pockets and started loping around the cemetery.
“Wish I had worn better shoes for this,” Carmen faux-complained. She always wore high-heeled boots, no matter what she was doing. “Wait up, gorgeous! As much as I like your backside, I like your frontside even more.” Although Crawford’s back was turned to me, I knew that he had flushed deep red, and that is why, after all these years together, Carmen continues to sexually harass my husband. She was very happily married and had four kids, so I had nothing to worry about, even though she didn’t think twice about telling Crawford how handsome she thought he was whenever she had the chance. Fred would tell her where to stick it, but Crawford was too much of a gentleman, or so I had told myself. Maybe he secretly loved being told how attractive he was by a tough-talking Latina with a backside that defied gravity.
They did a canvass of the cemetery and came back a few minutes later, Carmen huffing and puffing as she made her way along the gravel path that linked the upper area to the lower, which I had the best view of from my office.
“No sign of her,” she said, leaning over and putting her hands on her knees to catch her breath.
“I didn’t think there would be,” I said. I looked at Crawford. “So now can we put out an all-points bulletin on her?”
“For putting a cigarette out on a grave?” he asked.
I shot him a look. “No. The break-ins, the harassing of Christine, stuff like that.”
“Alison,” he said, and I knew that he was about to patronize me; he always does when he starts a sentence with my name. “We’re already looking for her. Just because I don’t talk about it all day long doesn’t mean that we don’t have this under control.”
Carmen held her breath as she awaited my response, which was sure to be a good one, from the look on her face.
I didn’t take the bait. If they had it under control, I wanted to ask, why was a six-foot-tall stripper running rampant through two counties? Why was she so elusive that the greatest minds of several agencies of Westchester County law enforcement and the New York City Police Department were having such a hard time finding her? I left all that unsaid, though, because lashing out with Carmen as an audience would lead to further hurt feelings and recriminations later on. Holding my tongue, while not my usual inclination, was the best thing I could do to maintain marital peace and harmony.
He looked at me, waiting for my response, but I had none. I smiled. “You know what? I trust you. Carry on,” I said.
Carmen let out a long breath.
“By the way, what do you want for dinner tonight?” I asked.
It was not a question he was expecting, because it was one he rarely heard so many hours before the meal would be prepared—or purchased—and eaten. “Um, hamburgers?” he suggested, blurting out the first thing that came into his head.
“Then hamburgers it is,” I said. “Do I need to give you any more information for a report or anything?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. We’ve got everything we need.”
Carmen gave me a peck on the cheek and started for the car. “Catch you later, chica,” she said as she meandered down the path, her boots crunching the stones beneath her feet.
Crawford bent down and gave me a quick
kiss, too. “See you tonight.”
As he walked away, I called after him. “Any advice for avoiding a pissed-off stripper?”
He shrugged. “If she zigs, you should zag.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Aren’t you concerned at all?”
He stopped walking and turned back around. “I’m very concerned, but whatever I tell you will do no good. I’ve learned that when it comes to you and situations like this, you’ll do whatever it is you want anyway.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I can already tell that instead of avoiding Sassy, you’re going to try to find her, and then you’re going to try to tell her that we don’t have the money and get her to leave everyone alone.”
This guy was a regular Kreskin.
“Am not,” I said.
“Are, too.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know the first thing about trying to find her,” I said, and that was the truth.
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” he said. Then he walked back to the car and to a woman who thought he was gorgeous, smart, and sensible and, in spite of sexually harassing him at every turn, probably didn’t give him half the headaches that I, his devoted wife, did.
Thirty-Two
Honestly, until Crawford had made the astute observation that I might look for her, I hadn’t given a second thought to searching for Sassy Du Pris, but now that it was out there, I figured what the heck. The first thing I did when I returned to my office was a Yellow Pages search online, but as I expected, Sassy didn’t leave a forwarding address after she got out of the pen on her breaking-and-entering jag. Then I searched for her on Google and found out that back in the day, Sassy Du Pris had had quite the storied career in the annals of exotic dancing. She was a featured dancer who traveled around the country and seemed to have a substantial fan club. I pushed back in my chair and studied the screen, letting my mind wander as I reviewed the events of the past several weeks. Suddenly one word popped into my head and made me sit up straight.
Facebook.
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner. Christine had mentioned that Sassy had found her through Facebook, which meant that Sassy had a page or a profile or whatever they called it. I went to the site and tried to log on, but the school server shut me down, saying that Facebook was a restricted site. I tapped my fingers lightly on the keys, trying to think of someone besides Max, who was obviously preoccupied, who might have a Facebook page. It took me all of ten seconds.
He picked up after a few rings, a little out of breath. Exercising, maybe? Since he had left St. Thomas and the priesthood, he hadn’t been getting as much exercise, his life in the apartment below his mother not being so great for his waistline. “Hello?”
“Kev, it’s me.”
“Hey,” he said, his tone transmitting some kind of portent. “I’m so sorry about Max’s dad.”
“You know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She called me from the hospital, right after it happened.”
I felt a little tingle of something run up my spine, knowing that something was amiss. With Kevin getting a call before me about Marty’s passing, I knew that what I was chalking up to Max’s grief was something more. I let that go for the time being, thinking that I would have to hash it out with Max, not Kevin.
“Do you have a Facebook page?” I asked.
“Is the pope Catholic?”
“Last time I checked.”
“What do you need?”
I explained the story of Sassy, realizing that I hadn’t kept him involved with the ongoing saga of Christine and her estranged sister-in-law.
“You’re kidding,” he said. “Her name is actually Sassy Du Pris?”
“I believe Sassafras is her Christian name.”
“There’s no Saint Sassafras.”
“Details, Kev. Details.” I swung my chair around so that I was staring out the window, hoping, I guess, to catch a glimpse of her again. “Are you near your computer? Can you look her up on Facebook?”
“I can, but depending on how stringent her privacy settings are, we may not learn anything.” I waited while he accessed his account. “Oh, my.”
He had found her.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“Give me a minute.” I heard him typing away. “What do you want to know?”
“Does it say where she lives?”
I heard him exhale. “It says ‘around.’”
Not helpful.
“What else does it say? Can you see anything at all?”
“She has a fan page.”
Of course she does.
“She seems to be in some kind of dance revue.”
I laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“And she’s performing at a place called the Elegant Majestic tonight.”
“Where is that?”
“Yonkers,” he said. “Oh, wait. That’s an old listing. Apparently, any future gigs have been canceled.”
Even so, I wondered if we could get some information from the people who worked there about our friend Sassy.
Before I could get the words out of my mouth, the ones that told him where we were going later and why, he started protesting. “I have to work. And then clean my apartment. I’m having dinner with my mother. And then I’m going out.”
“Don’t worry, Kevin,” I said. “I wasn’t going to ask you to go to a strip club with me.” Knowing that Kevin was prideful, as well as a supreme gadfly, I went with the old reverse psychology. “I know you couldn’t handle it, what with what you’ve been through in the past year.”
“Are you screwing with me?” he asked. I could almost see his furrowed countenance, the phone pressed tightly against his head.
“No,” I said. “I just know you’re not up for it.”
A heavy sigh came through the phone lines. “Fine. I’ll go,” he said, “but I can’t be out late. I have to work in the morning.”
After we discussed the specifics of where we would meet and when, I hung up the phone. Like taking candy from a baby.
I gathered my books and papers and shoved them into my messenger bag, my next class starting in a few minutes. What to do about Crawford? That was my only question. We had made plans to have hamburgers together, and he was expecting me to cook them. How would I explain that I was going to be out half the night? The “show” didn’t begin until ten o’clock if the Elegant Majestic’s Web site was accurate. I decided not to worry about it; Crawford’s schedule was arbitrary and could change at a moment’s notice, a blessing for me in a situation like this. I wouldn’t even have to have someone in his precinct killed so that he could investigate; there were plenty of angry people out there who could do that for me. I didn’t go so far as to pray for another murder, but a court date, maybe? That would solve all of my problems.
That, and maybe three sleep aids.
I wondered when Sassy had decided that it was too hot to dance so close to the center of the action. According to Kevin, she had been scheduled for a one-week stint at the club, but it was listed as canceled with no explanation, and many fans had written on her Facebook page in protest.
I went off to class, putting the thought of all the questions I wanted to ask her—and the little conundrum of how I would ditch Crawford—out of my mind. When I got back to my office, starving and not at all interested in the sandwich in my bag, there was a text from Crawford.
So sorry. No fred = lots of work. Court later. Hamburgers tomorrow?
Jackpot.
When the day ended, I raced home to change. What did one wear to a strip club? This is the kind of question that Max always has the answer to, but she wasn’t available.
I decided ultimately that all black would be the ticket; I didn’t want to stand out among the patrons of an exotic dancing lounge and figured that in the darkness, people would be less likely to pick out the uncomfortable college professor if she were dressed in dark colors. I’d just have to hope Kevin didn’t decide to wear a colorful Hawaiian s
hirt, a fashion “trend”—and I use that word loosely—that he had embraced wholeheartedly. I pulled my hair up under a black baseball cap that belonged to Crawford and took off my earrings, diamond studs that had been a gift from my first husband after an early infidelity. I had a few hours to kill, so I gave Trixie the walk of her life, complete with splashing in a shallow pond at a nearby park. Then the two of us dined on a burger that I picked up from a local takeout place. After I puttered around in the house, doing a few loads of laundry and straightening up the bedroom, I donned a pair of gorgeous high-heeled black leather boots that went with my outfit, got in the car, and headed toward the middle of the Bronx and a diner that Kevin and I had eaten at over the years. It had a parking lot and was not too far from Kevin’s house at the other end of the Bronx, so it made a good meeting point. While I waited for him to arrive, I programmed the address of the Elegant Majestic into the GPS.
Kevin showed up five minutes after I had finished, jumping into the passenger seat of the car, again out of breath.
“Why are you always out of breath?” I asked.
He looked at me, his eyes wide behind his very thick glasses. “Because I’m fat! That’s why!” he said. “Isn’t that what you want me to say?”
I was taken aback. “Um … no.” He was fat, but it wasn’t my place to tell him that. He seemed to be acutely aware of it already.
He ran his hands along the legs of his dark jeans. “I’m sorry. It’s just that living with my mother hasn’t been good for my weight. She is constantly feeding me. And when she’s not feeding me, she’s asking me when I’m going back to the priesthood. That just makes me want to eat more.” He turned and looked out the passenger-side window. “I eat my feelings.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Who doesn’t, Kevin?” I took note of the fact that he had gone with the all-black look as well, old habits dying hard. I also noticed that his jacket was a Members Only piece that had to be close to thirty years old, but I held my tongue. He was already hurting, it would seem, so laying it on regarding his sartorial choices would probably push him over the edge. I also had to remember that the poor guy hadn’t really had much of a choice in what he wore for most of his adult life, so a clothing misstep was to be expected every now and again. I thought back to the Birkenstock sandals, board shorts, and hipster T-shirts that he used to wear around campus; his attempts at hip had come off as just a bit misguided.
Extra Credit Page 19