by Maddy Hunter
“We do now,” said Dick Teig.
Maria shook her head. “And here I was complaining about a fanny pack. Geesh.”
The boys emptied the contents of Osmond’s small suitcase onto a chair and refilled it with our phones. “Where’s the key to lock it?” Fingers asked him.
“Back home on my bureau dresser,” said Osmond. “In my coin dish.”
“This one’s lyin’, Ma.” Finger’s mouth began to twitch with barely suppressed excitement. “Can I break his little finger?”
“No!” I sprang from my seat, but Jackie yanked me back down. “He’s not lying. None of us use keys anymore. The TSA wants luggage accessible for random inspection, so we simply don’t lock them. It saves a lot of hassle.”
Nana threw a long look at the boys. “You young fellas don’t get out much, do you?”
“Take your belts off,” barked Maria, gesturing to the entire room. She nodded to the boys. “Wrap the belts around the suitcase. Every single one of them. That’ll work better than locking it.”
She heaved a sigh as Fingers and Snitch whipped their belts out of their pant loops. “Not your belts, you morons. Their belts.”
I regretted that Bernice wasn’t here. She and Maria probably would have gotten along famously.
After Osmond’s suitcase had been wrapped tighter than a ball of rubber bands and placed on the dining table like a Christmas ham, Jackie stood up. “May I please be excused to check my cake now? If not, I hope you’ll be willing to accept blame when my masterpiece hardens into an inedible charcoal briquette.”
Maria looked her up and down. “There’s something about you I can’t quite put my finger on.” She canted her head. “You’re very tall, aren’t you?” Then, gesturing to Fingers: “Go with her.”
At the sound of car engines, Snitch darted to the window overlooking the parking lot. “It’s cars, Ma. Like a whole convoy of ’em. One, two, three, four cars and a big passenger van. Five vehicles.”
He’d go far with math skills like that.
“Whadda youse want me to do?”
“See what they want, then get rid of them.”
“You mean, waste ’em?”
“I mean see why they’re here, then make up an excuse to turn them away. Do you have an excuse ready?” she questioned as he turned away from the window.
“Yeah. I’m gonna tell ’em they can’t come in because we’re holding a bunch of old people hostage until one of ’em fesses up to killin’ my brother and we put a bullet in his brain.”
Maria inhaled a deep breath. “That’s the truth,” she explained patiently. “You don’t want to tell them the truth. You want to make up a reason why they can’t come in. Understand?”
“Ohhh. I get it now.”
“I’m not sure you do,” she said, sighing.
“Try this, junior,” suggested Dick Stolee. “Tell them all the guests have come down with measles, so the place is in quarantine.”
“That won’t work,” objected Margi. “Most people have been vaccinated against measles. Tell them we’ve had an isolated outbreak of super deadly tuberculosis.”
“Or an infestation of rats,” said Dick Teig. “Everyone hates rats.”
I rolled my eyes in disbelief. Yup. Feeding excuses to the Snitch was really helpful.
“What about mold?” asked George. “The black kind is toxic and can wreak havoc on your lungs.”
“Or fleas,” Lucille added. “Once they’re in your carpet, your life can become an itching, scratching hell.”
“Okay, okay.” Snitch headed for the door.
“Hide your gun!” ordered Maria.
“There it goes again.” Spencer cocked his head. “Don’t tell me you can’t hear it. You have to be able to hear it. God Almighty, it’s really loud.”
Maria lowered her brows, regarding him with suspicion. “What’s he hearing?”
“Dragons,” said Nana.
Snitch returned from his assignment without firing a single bullet. As car engines revved and faded from earshot, Snitch grinned at his mother. “How’d I do, Ma? Good, huh?”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told ’em the walls were crawling with mold so the place was in quarantine until we could all be vaccinated.”
He’d only been around the gang for a half hour and already he was suffering the effects.
“Why were they here? What did they want?”
“They were here because of the food they’ve been reading about on the blogs. They wanted dinner reservations, Ma. But here’s the best part: since I turned ’em away, there’ll be more food for us. When do we eat, anyway? I’m starvin’.”
Due to the rave reviews of her culinary skills, Nana was allowed to return to her cooking. The rest of us settled into an unspoken truce as seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into quarter hours. Maria dragged a chair into the center of the floor where she could watch us with an eagle eye while resting her feet. Fingers remained in the kitchen, keeping an eye on Jackie and Nana as they provided more appetizers for the group and proceeded with dinner prep. Snitch’s role became twofold: turning away more carloads of people who’d read the blogs and hoped to eat at the inn, and accompanying guests to the loo. And even though the ladies needed to use the facilities on a regular basis, I noticed that the guys’ usage seemed to drop to an historic low. Probably because without their belts, their pants fell to their ankles every time they stood up.
With no cell phones to divert their attention, the gang was forced to invent other ways to entertain themselves. Dick Stolee and Grace engaged the masses by conducting a sing-along that included Hollywood musicals, folk songs, Christmas carols, and classic songs like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” that are sung in three-group rounds. Unfortunately, the activity came to an abrupt end when Osmond’s screechy flat notes caused so many people to cover their ears, he ended up singing all three staggered rounds of “Three Blind Mice” by himself.
Tilly started the memory game of “I Put Something in My Suitcase Starting with an A,” but that game came to a grinding halt when the gang refused to put anything in their suitcases other than their cell phones.
Helen asked if anyone recalled the first trip they’d taken as a group to Switzerland, which sparked a nostalgic walk down memory lane. Dick Stolee remembered my clunking him on the bridge of his nose with room deodorizer when he ran into the corridor of the Grand Palais Hotel with his CPAP paraphernalia still attached to his face. “I’ve still got a bump,” he said, removing his wire rims to flaunt it like a war wound. George recalled my diving into Lake Lucerne fully clothed in the fog to save him when he fell off the sightseeing boat. I remembered breaking my tooth on vegetable lasagna on top of Mount Pilatus and ending up with a funny lisp. Dick Teig recalled the nudies he’d seen on the spa beach in Titisee-Neustadt in Germany. Lucille recalled the angry words she’d exchanged with her husband, Dick number three, before he died near that very spa.
“I miss old Dick,” admitted Dick Teig in a moment devoid of self-absorption.
“I miss him, too,” sniffed Dick Stolee, struggling not to choke up.
“I don’t miss his practical jokes,” said Grace.
“Or his cockiness,” said Helen.
“Or his stinky cigar,” added Lucille. “Dead all these years and I still can’t get the smell out of the drapes.”
A smile split Osmond’s face. “How come we don’t talk about the good times we’ve had together anymore?”
They cast looks back and forth amongst themselves, completely stumped.
“I’ll tell you why you don’t talk anymore,” I piped up. “Because you don’t look up from your cell phones long enough to talk!”
“Emily?” Caroline crept into the lounge, still looking half-asleep. “Have I missed dinner?”
“Who’s this?” demanded Maria in
an ominous tone. “Where’d she come from? Have you been holding out on me?” She motioned to Snitch. “Search the rooms. See if they’re hiding anyone else. And get your brother and those women in here on the double.”
But Snitch didn’t move. He stood anchored in place, staring at Caroline. “I know who she is, Ma. She’s the dame on the video.”
“What video?”
“The one where she’s taking all our money. I swear it. It’s her.”
“It can’t be her.” Maria speared Caroline with a piercing look. “She’s dead.”
nineteen
“VINNIE!” The Snitch angled his head toward the dining room. “Get in here! And bring the broads with you.” He motioned Caroline farther into the lounge with the barrel of his gun. “So I got a question. If youse are dead, what are youse doin’ here?”
Vinnie bounded into the dining room with his gun at the ready, herding Nana and Jackie in front of him. “What?” he shouted at his brother. “Youse can’t step into the kitchen and ask me something in a nice tone of voice?”
“Get in here!” barked the Snitch. “Look whose come to visit.”
“We can’t be out here greeting guests,” Jackie argued as she and Nana marched into the lounge at the point of Vinnie’s gun. “My cake needs me.”
“Screw your cake,” snapped the Snitch.
“And I got pots on the stove,” protested Nana.
“Tough!” He tossed his head in Caroline’s direction. “Take a look at what the cat dragged in, Vin. She look familiar?”
After plopping Nana and Jackie into available seats, Vinnie gave Caroline a leisurely look up, down, then up again. “Never seen her before. Who is she?”
“How can youse not recognize her?” squealed the Snitch. “The dame from the surveillance video? The one who took all the money? The one we had the come-to-Jesus talk with?”
“That dame?” Vinnie scrutinized her more carefully. “Can’t be her. She’s dead.”
“She’s not dead. She’s standing right in front of us.”
Vinnie shook his head. “It’s not her. The other dame had black hair and glasses and was real…blubbery.”
“That is sooo politically incorrect,” chided Jackie. “To avoid hurting a person’s feelings, you should use terms like plus-sized or horizontally challenged or—”
“Zip it!” Snitch warned her before gritting his teeth at his brother. “Youse ever heard of hair dye, contact lenses, and a diet plan?”
“I like Weight Watchers myself,” Lucille volunteered. “It’s so user friendly. If you haven’t reached your goal for the weekly weigh-in session, no one wags a finger at you or makes nasty comments on your Facebook page about your epic fail.”
“I been thinkin’ about tryin’ that 360 diet myself,” said Nana. “I seen on TV where it’s the one all them cavemen used.”
“The Paleolithic diet,” Tilly clarified.
“Are you sure that’d be the best plan for you, Marion?” asked Dick Teig. “It didn’t work out real well for the cavemen. I mean, where are they now?”
“I’ve seen some of them on those insurance commercials on TV,” said Margi, “so it worked out pretty well for the ones who had acting ability.”
The Snitch panned his gun toward the gang. “The next one of youse who says somethin’…anythin’…is gonna get a bullet between the eyes. Youse understand?”
Heads nodded. Eyes rounded. Lips got sucked into mouths.
“Who are youse?” he bellowed at Caroline. “What’s your name?”
Paralyzed into statue stillness, Caroline stared at Maria and her sons wide-eyed. “C-Caroline Goodfriend.”
“Bzzzzz. Wrong answer. I want the name youse was usin’ when youse walked outta our joint with three hundred Gs.”
I shot up steeple-straight in my chair. Oh. My. God. This wasn’t right. Caroline couldn’t possibly be a thief. Could she?
“My n-name has always been Caroline G-Goodfriend.”
“I don’t think so,” snarled Snitch. He snapped his fingers at his brother. “What was her name? Youse remember?”
“Evelyn Friday,” said Maria, dropping her voice to a sinister whisper. “Her name was Evelyn Friday.”
“That’s not my name,” swore Caroline.
“You got the video on you?” Maria asked Snitch.
“I got it, Ma,” Vinnie preempted, whipping his cell phone out of his pocket before his brother could reach his. “Hang on. It’s in the Cloud.”
“What? You gotta check the weather report before you can—”
“Here you go, Ma.” He slapped the phone into her palm. “Tap the triangle.”
Maria studied the screen for a full minute before reaching into her fanny pack for her reading glasses. Tapping the screen again, she studied the image even more intently before glancing from Caroline to the screen to Caroline again. “You.” She jabbed her finger at Caroline. “Over here.” She indicated a spot directly in front of her.
Caroline inched forward.
“You have any idea what video I’m playing back?” asked Maria.
Caroline shook her head.
“It’s showing me a blubb—a plus-size woman with black hair and glasses sitting at a blackjack table in my casino, and she’s got a whole mountain of chips stacked in front of her. Three hundred thousand dollars’ worth. And you know what she does with them?”
Caroline was so unnerved, her knees were knocking. “She goes all in on a sure bet and loses them?”
“No. She cashes them in and waltzes out the door…with my money. That’s not supposed to happen, understand? I’m supposed to be the one who comes out ahead. Not the nickel and dimers playing the slots or the whales around the roulette table or the hopefuls playing blackjack. Me. It’s my organization, so I get to keep the profits. Except when someone cheats me.”
“I…I don’t know what you’re t-talking about,” stammered Caroline.
“Let me see if I can help,” said Maria in a chirpy tone. “Do you wear glasses?”
“Contact lenses.”
“Uh-huh. Natural blond? And don’t think about lying. I know where to look to find out the truth.”
Caroline shook her head. “It’s d-dyed. And frosted.”
“Uh-huh. Lost any weight recently?”
She hesitated. “How recently? I’m up and down a lot. You know how it g-goes. Gain weight over the holidays and lose it over the s-summer. I’m the thinnest I’ve ever b-been right now.”
Maria made a tsking sound. “Evelyn, Evelyn. And you were doing so well.” She returned her attention to Vinnie’s phone. “The woman in this video is wearing a very attractive tunic with a scoop neck. And the nice thing about the neckline is, it’s low enough to expose a funny mark on the woman’s collarbone. I don’t know what the mark is, but if Vinnie zooms in on it for me, I bet I’ll be able to tell.”
She handed the phone to Vinnie, who expanded the image. “Hey, it looks like a funny-colored wart growing on her skin, Ma.”
“Lemme see,” insisted Snitch, crooking his mouth in mocking disgust. “It’s not a wart, doofus. It’s one of those gross skin tag things like youse see growing on old people. This one looks like a raisin—more specifically, a golden raisin, like Ma puts in her Christmas fruitcakes.”
Maria nodded her satisfaction. “So, Evelyn, do you have a golden raisin growing on your collarbone? No need to trouble yourself. Elmo won’t mind looking.”
Dick Stolee exploded with laughter. “Elmo? You mean, like the Tickle Me Muppet character?”
bang! Vinnie blasted a hole in Dick’s suitcase.
I leaped a foot off my seat. Holy crap! They weren’t bluffing!
Elmo pulled the jewel neckline of Caroline’s top askew and grinned. “Look, Ma. A golden raisin. Youse want I should whack her now?”
“Have you heard her co
nfess to killing your brother?” Maria asked calmly.
“Not yet.”
“then you can’t kill her.”
“I can explain,” whimpered Caroline.
Maria drilled her with a hostile look. “Why aren’t you dead? We read your name in the newspaper. You died in that commuter train wreck going into the city.”
Caroline bobbed her head convulsively. “I missed my train that morning because I was rattled. And maybe you can understand why since your two offspring paid me a late-night visit the evening before and gave me twenty-four hours to hand over my blackjack money.”
“Or boom,” boasted Vinnie, making a bull’s-eye of her head.
“It wasn’t your money anymore,” defended Caroline. “It was mine. I won it fair and square.”
“Did not,” said Elmo.
“Did so,” countered Caroline. “I used finesse and memory and excellent math skills.”
“To count the cards and cheat me out of my money,” accused Maria. “You’re a card counter! You broke the law.”
“I did not! Card counting is not illegal in New Jersey or anywhere else in the United States. It’s not illegal to use your brain.”
“Well, it’s illegal in my casino, and you broke my law.”
“Like you didn’t violate my rights when you sent Beavis and Butthead to my apartment to threaten me?”
“i’m killin’ her now, ma,” announced Elmo, trigger finger poised.
“You’ll kill her when I tell you to kill her. So tell me this, Evelyn. If you didn’t die in the wreck, why did the newspaper say you were one of the casualties?”
“Because in the aftermath, there were a number of passengers whose bodies were never identified. They were crushed beneath tons of twisted steel, and when the fire started, their remains were charred beyond recognition. I had no way of knowing the devastation would be so extreme, but it worked in my favor in the end. After the derailment the whole railway system shut down, so I was stranded at the station with no rail access to get me to the office. And that started me thinking about your goons and my newly acquired nest egg.”