Ken instructed the hostess to fetch another chair and bring more menus. Kate and Ron Haver joined us.
“Where’s Mongo?” I asked my sister.
“He’s in jail, Colleen. Your paper ran a front page story on him when he was arrested last month. Remember?”
Haver grinned. Nothing bothered the man.
“How do you and Ron know each other?” I inquired.
“I stopped by Mom’s house the night you found Jason Whitley’s body. You were already gone, but Ron showed up to talk to Dick. The rest, as they say, is history!”
I finally knew who to blame for my daughter’s drama queen genes.
The waitress reached our table, and we placed our orders. Meredith, Ken, Ron, and Kate all ordered fajitas. I went for the Burrito Diablo because it had more gooey cheese than anything else on the menu.
“You don’t want to fill up on those,” helpful Kate said when I reached for the basket of tortilla chips. “They’re loaded with grease and carbs.”
I loved my sister and would have walked through fire for her. At that moment, however, I wanted to rip out her tongue. I didn’t need my sister admonishing my caloric intake in front of Ken Rhodes. Luckily, he didn’t hear the comment. His attention was focused on the other side of the room.
Meredith kicked me under the table. “Do you see who that is?”
The rest of us looked over.
“Betty Vernon, isn’t it?” Ron Haver said.
I recognized the polka dot scrunchy and the vivid blue-and-orange dress from our meeting earlier in the day. “And that’s Stanley Da Silva, Kevin Sheffield, and Jennifer Whitley sitting with her. What are they all doing together? Jennifer Whitley hates Betty Vernon.”
“They’re toasting something,” Meredith said.
The four people at the table lifted goblets filled with blood-red sangria. Kevin Sheffield talked, something long-winded and somber. When he finished, they clinked their glasses together and took a sip.
“Either they’re conducting their own little memorial service or they’re congratulating themselves for bumping Whitley off,” Ken Rhodes said.
I addressed Ron Haver. “Are they all suspects?”
Haver shrugged again. I was getting used to the response.
“Did you get a chance to speak to any of them today?” Ken asked me.
I nodded. “Betty Vernon and Da Silva, but I didn’t get his interview yet.”
Kate leaned across the table. “Da Silva’s that basketball guy, isn’t he? Didn’t you go to high school with some of them, Colleen?”
“No. I think they were all a year or two behind me. Maybe they were in a few of your classes.”
“Not my class,” Kate said. “I was five years behind you. Still, that big woman looks familiar.”
“Sure she does. You probably noticed her working the streets around the Port Authority when you take the bus into Manhattan on your buying trips.”
Meredith giggled. The waitress returned with our orders and, except for Meredith, we all dug in.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I’m just a little tired.” She put her hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn.
I buried my overstuffed burrito in guacamole and sour cream and took a bite, entering Mexican heaven. I wrote a few sentences about the hot and cold sensations in my mouth and the enormous portions, and turned to ask Meredith if I could sample her fajita. Her eyelids were at half-mast.
“I think she fell asleep,” I whispered.
“She’s totally wasted,” Kate said.
Ken Rhodes leaned across the table and reached for Meredith’s plate. “We don’t want this to go to waste then.”
I cut off a small piece of the fajita before Rhodes confiscated her entire meal.
Even the fajitas were good, and I was sorry I didn’t order a few more dishes to sample. Forty-five minutes later, our plates were clean and we sipped steaming mugs of coffee. My pants were causing me all kinds of pain, but I didn’t dare unbutton them.
“Are we doing dessert?” Ken asked.
“I’d rather not explode, thank you,” I said. “I just wish I knew how to spell half the things they serve here.”
“Swipe a menu on your way out,” he suggested.
At the far end of the restaurant, the group at the memorial dinner stood and left the restaurant. At our table, Kate gazed into a compact mirror and reapplied lip gloss. Meredith sat up straight in her chair with her eyes completely shut. Every few minutes her head would bob and she’d snap awake, then doze off again.
“Who’s driving Meredith home?” I asked.
Kate looked away from the mirror. “I’ll drive her car if someone tells me where she lives. Ron can follow me and take me home.”
“Convenient,” I said, raising an eyebrow.
Ken Rhodes paid for dinner. Kate and Ron helped Meredith to her feet and escorted her to the parking lot.
I grabbed one of the takeout menus and walked with Ken to my sad little Escort.
“I doubt Meredith’s head will feel well enough for her to edit your review tomorrow morning. It’s better if you email it to me,” he said.
“I don’t usually email stories.”
“Why not?”
“I can never find the file I have to attach, and I don’t do the cut and paste thing all that well. For some reason, paragraphs get lost. I usually print out my stories and bring them into the office. Meredith scans them and does her editing.”
“It doesn’t take a knack to cut and paste,” Rhodes said. “Any idiot can do it.”
I grumbled under my breath.
“Enough said. Drop it off at my office tomorrow. Get home safely.”
* * *
I thought I could finally peel off my tight pants when I walked through my front door at a quarter past nine. Sara had other plans for me.
“How could you, Mother?”
It was a Kafkaesque moment. I had no idea what I had done. I put on my standard dumb expression.
Sara threw her arms in the air in an amazing portrayal of teenage angst. “You went behind my back and spoke to my guidance counselor. How embarrassing!”
Oh. That.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to see her?”
“I didn’t see her specifically for your grades, Sara. I ran into her, and your grades came up.”
“I’m passing everything but Algebra II,” she argued.
“Your grades are sinking like cement blocks and Algebra II is almost a done deal. If you don’t catch up now, it means you have wake up early every single day over the summer. And it won’t only be inconvenient for you. I’ll have to drive you to school, pick you up, and schlep Bobby over to Grandma so he doesn’t have to be here alone.”
Sara rolled her eyes. Apparently the discussion was over for the time being.
“Did you eat at Grandma’s house tonight?” I asked.
“Bobby did. Grandma made beef stew. I can’t eat that. You know I’m a vegetarian.”
“Since when?”
“Since I decided to be one. I’m starving, Mother. There’s nothing in the refrigerator but ketchup and hard cheese.”
“I’ll go to the store,” I offered, forgetting all about the uncomfortable pants.
* * *
I pushed a gimpy-wheeled cart down the aisles at ShopRite and tallied the prices in my head. With Neil’s dependable weekly paycheck gone, the entire family felt the financial pinch. I needed bread, milk, chicken cutlets for tomorrow night’s supper, pre-packaged salad mix, diet soda, Bobby’s Mountain Dew, green beans, and apples. I hoped the twenty in my wallet would cover everything.
Helen Gordon, a fellow PTA mom with gentle eyes, inflated hips, and her own financial worries, was working the late shift at the ten-items-or-less register.
“Can you get me in under twenty?” I asked her.
We rummaged through my wallet and found a wrinkled coupon for fifty cents off the Mountain Dew.
“Even with the double c
oupon, it comes to $20.16,” Helen told me when she finished tallying the order. “Want me to lend it to you?”
Normally, I would have been highly insulted, but it was only Helen asking. “I’ll check the bottom of my bag,” I said.
I turned my pocketbook upside down and dumped the contents on the grocery belt—used tissues, my key ring, three pens, a comb that hadn’t been cleaned since the second Bush was president, matches, fuzz, one dime, and four pennies.
Helen took two pennies from a tray she kept beside her register. “We made it, kid. How come you’re so strapped for cash? Tell your lawyer to get on the ball.”
The parking lot was nearly pitch black by the time I was finished shopping. My Escort was parked two rows back from the store’s entrance. A kid collecting carts crossed my path and a Saturn whizzed past me. I stopped and looked both ways before I ventured further.
I got halfway to the first row when I heard the awful screech of tires on the blacktop. A car came out of nowhere and bore down on me.
Caught in its headlights, I froze like a startled deer and clenched the shopping cart in a death grip.
“Holy God!” the kid screamed.
I let go of my cart and ran back toward the store, but found myself trapped. A long line of carts blocked my escape route, as did the boy who collected them.
With nowhere else to go, I grabbed the kid’s arm and we jumped on top of the carts.
The car missed us by three feet, but the driver clipped my abandoned cart. It spun wildly.
Groceries flew from the yellow plastic bags. A package of leaking chicken landed on the hood of a red Mazda. The Mountain Dew bottle and the container of milk burst and took flight, showering a Chrysler. The six-pack of diet soda, my diet soda, smashed into a Jeep Cherokee’s hood. The skyrocketing bag of mixed salad touched down in an abandoned cart thirty feet away. One of the apples sailed up and out of sight.
The car sped away.
The driver had never once touched the brakes.
Helen Gordon raced out through the automatic doors. “I can’t believe it! Thank God you’re alive! Are you hurt?”
My hip throbbed from landing hard on the cart’s metal edge. My eyebrow stung where my head had smacked the plastic baby seat.
“Not too much,” I told Helen and turned to the boy. “What about you? Are you okay?”
The kid helped me down off the carts. “Yeah. I’m good. Jesus! Where did that car come from?”
“I didn’t see it until the last second,” I said. “Beige, wasn’t it? It was either white or beige.”
“Did you catch the license plate?” Helen asked.
I shook my head. “I was too busy trying to stay alive.”
Sirens cried out in the night—the high, maniacal screams of emergency vehicles tearing down the highway toward the supermarket.
“We called the cops.” Helen said “We thought you were a goner.”
“I’m fine,” I told her. “There isn’t that much damage and there weren’t even that many groceries.”
Helen looked at me like she thought the bump on my head had caused temporary insanity. “Are you kidding? You need that bump looked at, and the police will have to make a report.”
Wonderful, I thought. The police again.
I limped over to my lame cart, now on its side, and collected the one item that remained inside unscathed—a lousy can of green beans.
10
I walked into the Town Crier office and found Meredith resting her elbows on her desk and cradling her head with both hands. She rubbed her temples, nursing what was probably the nastiest hangover in the history of Margaritaville. Between the two of us, she looked to be in better shape. I had a round, softball-size black-and-blue mark on my hip that hurt enough to make me limp, and a huge, ugly knot just above my eyebrow.
“What happened to you?” she asked me.
“I had a run-in with some shopping carts.”
“You look like a Neanderthal. And you’re limping! I guess this means my Domingo’s story is on the back burner.”
“I finished most of it. Rhodes said he’d edit it,” I told her. “He didn’t think you’d be up for it today.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Talk to him about it! I’m only the writer.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. I knew she would never in a million years argue with Rhodes.
I looked across the newsroom. “Is he here?” I asked.
“He’s in his office. Why? Your injuries don’t have anything to do with Jason Whitley by any chance, do they?”
“Could be,” I said, though I hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought.
I left Meredith and went to see the boss.
“This is a new look for you, Colleen,” Rhodes said when I sat down in his office. “What happened to your forehead?”
“I had an accident with some shopping carts last night at the grocery store.”
“After dinner?” he asked.
“I had to pick up a few things.”
“Uh-huh.” He came around the desk and studied my bruise. “Don’t you read our Style section? The Fred Flintstone look is out this spring. Did you put an ice pack on it last night, by any chance?”
I shook my head.
“Stay put. I’ll be right back.”
He left the office and returned a few minutes later with a Styrofoam cup filled with ice, which he dumped into a clean, white handkerchief. Rhodes lifted my chin and placed the makeshift icepack above my eye.
“Ouch! That hurts. Don’t press the ice against it. And you’re washing off all the cover-stick! I’d rather have the bump!” I complained.
“Don’t be such a baby. Stop fidgeting!”
Rhodes had very large hands, like a prizefighter, yet he was surprisingly gentle. I sat perfectly still, face-to-face to with Ken’s crotch. There was no place else to look. I closed my eyes. It seemed like the polite thing to do.
Finally, he removed the handkerchief and bent down to examine the bump. “Great colors, Colleen. This looks like a Canadian sunset.”
“If you think that’s spectacular, you should see my hip,” I said.
“Have you considered seeing a doctor?”
“Are you for real? I don’t even know if I have health insurance anymore.”
Rhodes gave me the ice-filled hankie and went back to his chair. “Exactly how did you come to have a run-in with a shopping cart?”
“This car came out of nowhere in the parking lot. I jumped on top of some carts and landed funny. The car missed me, but it clipped my wagon. Twenty bucks worth of groceries ruined!”
Ken’s brow furrowed. “Did the driver stop?”
I shook my head. “No one got the plate number. We couldn’t even make out the model. It all happened so fast.”
“What color was the car?” he asked.
“Hard to tell. Silver, white, maybe beige. The lot has those amber fog lights that make everything look pink. It took off like a shot.”
I could see Rhodes making a list in his head. “Was it a sports car? An SUV?”
“It had four doors. You know, a regular car.”
“A sedan?” he asked.
“Definitely a sedan,” I told him.
“Maybe you’re making someone uncomfortable with these Whitley columns,” Rhodes said, echoing Meredith’s earlier words.
“There’s nothing but facts in the columns. I certainly don’t speculate. If a killer was after us for writing about Whitley’s murder, we’d know it by now.”
“We probably would, but nobody else nearly got flattened in a parking lot last night. Only you, my dear.”
Rhodes had a point.
“Did I tell you I had a talk with Betty Vernon up at the high school yesterday? She told me she wasn’t Jason Whitley’s last love interest.”
“I have an interesting tidbit that relates to being a good reporter. People often lie,” Ken said.
“Jennifer Whitley told me Betty
Vernon wasn’t Jason’s last when I worked with her at the concession stand, too. I doubt they’d both lie. Wouldn’t you like to know who Whitley slithered around with during his last days?”
Rhodes stood and walked over to the picture window behind his desk. “It isn’t worth risking your life.”
“Come on! I was a sitting duck in the ShopRite parking lot,” I argued. “If someone really wanted to kill me, it would have been easy enough to do.”
“Next time they might. What kind of car does Betty Vernon drive?”
“How should I know?”
“How about Jennifer Whitley?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Were you able to do the restaurant review?”
“It’s not quite finished yet,” I told him.
“Leave it with me. I’ll finish it.”
“You?”
“I’m not completely incompetent,” Rhodes said. “I’ve done restaurant reviews before. Any moron can write one.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Go home, Colleen. Call your lawyer. Find out if you still have health insurance. Then take a few days to relax. Give yourself a chance to heal.”
“Relax? I still have to prepare for my interview with Da Silva and my kid has a game tonight.”
“Let the basketball story slide for now.”
“Maybe for a day or two,” I agreed.
Outside the building, I looked up at the pewter sky and prayed Bobby’s baseball game would get rained out. I wanted nothing more than to stretch out on the couch and watch mindless TV until my bruises healed.
* * *
The air was crisp by four thirty, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I walked down to the field in large, incognito sunglasses. Neil’s Lexus was not in the parking lot, and I felt relieved I would be able to avoid the pleasure of his company during the game. I noticed Stanley Da Silva’s Camry had a FOR SALE sign in the back window, and wondered what the chances were of Neil coughing up enough money to buy it and unload my old Escort. Probably as good as the Pirates winning today, I thought.
Bevin Thompson sat close to the dugout, ready with her buck-for-a-base-hit bribe should Dennis actually connect with the ball. The way the kid was hitting, Bev’s money was safe. I refused to stoop to racketeering to make Bobby more productive at the plate. Besides, I didn’t have enough cash to cover even a modest incentive. I went directly to the bleachers and secured two spots at the very top.
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