Careful What You Wish For

by Lucy Finn

  “You’re right,” I said. “It takes a while for things to happen in the legal system.”

  Peggy Sue was staring at me with haunted eyes. “What am I going to do? I don’t even have the money to pay you, Ravine, until I get that money back. I don’t have a red cent. I’m real sorry. Will you still help me?”

  I let out a deep sigh. I didn’t have much more in the bank than Peggy Sue did. “Yes, sure. I’ll help you.” Then I had an idea. “Look, maybe I can find some other way to get the money back from John. It would help us both.”

  “Your mother said you’d come up with something. She said you’re real smart, Ravine.”

  I looked at Peggy Sue again, sitting there fragile in body and spirit, beaten down by life. She had been one of the girls my mother lost, one who had gotten pregnant and never had a chance. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until you see somebody who has a whole lot less. I replied to Peggy Sue from my heart. “Thanks for the compliment, but I need you to be real smart too. If you get sick—and it looks like the next stiff wind is going to blow you over—you’re not going to be able to work or take care of your kids. You have to stop working at Pump ’n’ Pantry.”

  “I know that,” she said, reaching for a Kleenex from the box on the edge of my desk. “I’m so tired I can’t see straight. But I can’t make it without the extra money.” She blew her nose. Her shoulders sagged even more.

  “Let’s compromise then. The weather’s getting so bad that the convenience store isn’t going to have much business today anyway. I want you to go home and call in. Tell them you can’t make it to work. Do the same thing tomorrow. Stay home this weekend and get some rest. Will you do that for me? Give me your word on it.”

  I could see Peggy Sue arguing with herself mentally about her pay, which, if I guessed right, couldn’t be more than forty dollars. “Peggy Sue,” I broke in, “trust me. It will be all right. Trust in the good Lord to provide, will you?” I’m not a religious person but I’ll bring in the big guns when I need to.

  I could tell she wasn’t convinced, but she said, “All right, I promise.”

  I spent another half hour with her filling out information so I could file her divorce papers first thing on Monday. Then, after I glanced out the window and saw that the weather had worsened, I told her to get herself home. I promised to call her on Monday and give her an update. If things worked out as I planned, I might have something more tangible for her than just news. I told her to keep thinking good thoughts.

  Peggy Sue looked at me and nodded. Hope had crept into her eyes and a new spark of life had put the palest of pinks into her wan cheeks.

  “Women rule!” I said and high-fived her. It was an act of bravado. I couldn’t let her down.

  As soon as she was out the door, I hurried into the living room where Brady and Gene were sitting on the carpet watching Barney on television. Evidently even Barney was fascinating to someone who had recently discovered the boob tube.

  “Done already?” Gene said.

  “I’m taking a break. I still have a couple of hours of work to do on the computer, but I need to ask a favor. It’s not a wish, mind you. Whether you do it or not is strictly your choice.”

  Gene propped himself up on one elbow and gave me a warm smile. “I’m trying to get on your good side. It makes me a sucker for doing favors. What is it?”

  “You remember those casseroles you made up for me the other day, the ones in the freezer?”

  “Sure. You want me to fix some lunch?”

  “No,” I said, my words spilling out trying to catch up to my racing mind. “I need you to get them over to Peggy Sue’s. Maybe you can put them in a box or something. Sneak up to her front door and leave it on the stoop. She’s having a hard time of it right now. I suspect she’s not eating, using the money to feed her kids. I know she won’t take charity. She’s proud. Would you do that for me?” Even as I spoke the words, the holes in my plan became clear to me.

  “But maybe that won’t work. My car’s not good in the snow, and you don’t have a driver’s license, do you? I guess I could drive—” My nerves were getting all worked up. I glanced over at the window. The snow looked like sheets of white, and the wind was blowing it sideways. I wondered if this “snow event” had reached blizzard force. I couldn’t take Brady out in that, so Gene would have to stay here. If I left right now maybe I could beat the worst of the storm.

  Gene sat watching me. “Ravine,” he called softly.

  “What?” I said, shaken out of my thoughts.

  “Look at me.”

  “Okay, I’m looking. What?”

  Gene winked. I heard bells again. Today, their clear, high sound made me think of prayer bells in Tibet. I concluded that their pitch varied with Gene’s mood.

  “Your wish is my command.” He smiled.

  My heart skidded. “I didn’t wish!”

  “Sorry, it was a turn of phrase. I know you didn’t. I wanted you to stop worrying. You don’t have to go out. A box of groceries with everything Peggy Sue and her kids could possibly need for the next week is sitting in front of her door. I was glad to do it.”

  I exhaled with relief. “Thank you. Thank you a million times over. You don’t know how much I appreciate what you did.”

  “I can think of a way to show me how much,” he said, his eyes full of mischief.

  “Okay, I’ll call for a pizza. Maybe Joe’s Grotto at the lake is still delivering.”

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  “You have a one-track mind. I need to get back to work,” I equivocated.

  “I can take a rain check,” he offered.

  I didn’t answer, but started back to my office.

  “Okay, order the pizza. Order a couple,” he called after me.

  I had just gotten back to my desk when the phone rang. I figured it had to be my mother, so I simply said, “Hello?”

  “Is this the lawyer?”

  “Yes, this is Ravine Patton. Who is this?” I glanced up at the clock. It was barely nine o’clock on a Saturday.

  “You don’t know me. I got your number from a friend. My name’s Tawnya Jones. I wanted to hire you for…uh…a legal matter.”

  “What kind of legal matter?”

  “Queen Nefertitty went and stole Ron.”

  “Queen Nefertiti? The Egyptian?”

  “No, not that Queen Nefertitty. This one’s an exotic dancer. Her real name is Sandy.”

  “Who is Ron?”

  “My husband.”

  I put my forehead down on the desk and stifled a groan. Then I sat up and said, “Ms. Jones, if you want to file for divorce, I can do that. But if you want to reconcile with Ron, that’s between you and him.”

  “Hell, I can’t do that. Ron’s dead.”

  “Huh? Are we talking about a body snatching?”

  “No, course not. Don’t be crazy. She took his urn. You know, with his ashes in it. She has it in her backpack and she’s going around saying that Ron was going to leave me for her, and now he is sleeping in her bed every night. It ain’t right.”

  “Did she break into your house to get the urn?” I asked.

  “No, she didn’t have to. A bunch of his buddies took it down to the Shadyside Inn for one last drink. She stole Ron off the bar. It’s still stealing, ain’t it? I paid for the cremation and all. The ashes belong to me.”

  “Absolutely. But this is a police matter. You need to file a complaint.”

  “I knows that, but they wouldn’t listen. They said it was a domestic matter.”

  “I could understand how they might get the wrong idea. I think you have to explain the whole story.”

  “To tell the truth, I don’t want this to get on TV. If they go arrest her, it will, won’t it? I’ll look like a fool. I can’t even hold on to a dead husband. You go talk to Queen Nefertitty. Tell her she’s going to be in real trouble with the cops if she don’t give you Ron.”

  “I don’t think I can do that. You need to
let the police handle it.”

  “Ms. Patton, it’s real hard for me to beg, but I’m begging you. I miss Ron something terrible. Those ashes are all I have. Can I send you—what do you call it? A reminder?”

  “A reminder?”

  “You know, like a deposit. I can put a hundred dollars in the mail right now. I make good money. Queen Nefertitty talks big, but I don’t think she wants Ron bad enough to get into trouble over him.”

  I thought for a moment. She would be my second paying client and beggars can’t be choosers. “Okay. Please include your phone number on the check. Do you know where I can find Queen Nefertitty?”

  “Sure. She dances down at the Ring Ding.”

  The Ring Ding was a topless bar in Wilkes-Barre. I knew that much, and I knew I had no intention of going there. “Look, I need her home address. Whatever else you can find out, write it down for me. Can you do that?”

  “Sure will. Thanks. I mean that.”

  “Thank me after I get the urn back. I can’t promise anything.”

  “Sure, I understand. And one more thing—”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful, hear? The guys down at the Shadyside say Queen Nefertitty has a gun in that backpack with Ron.”

  Before I could tell her I was changing my mind, Ms. Jones had broken the connection. Now what had I gotten myself into? I was supposed to be a lawyer, not a private investigator. Gene could be my backup for now. But what was I going to do when he was gone?

  Around noon, I did make the call to order pizza. The girl on the other end of the phone line said it would be at least an hour. The roads were still open, but they could only use their four-wheel-drive delivery van. I figured by the time the pizza arrived, I would have finished up all the work I could get done at home. The records on who bought and sold the Sikorsky farm would have to wait until I got to the courthouse, and I’d combine the trip with filing for Peggy Sue’s divorce on Monday. But I intended to do a computer search now to try to dig up some news articles on London’s Junkyard and its owners. My gut told me that some thread wove everything together. I had to find it.

  What didn’t fit into the picture was the escalating violence. Contaminating a well and running over a chicken were dirty tricks. Nobody got hurt. No felonies committed. No cops very interested. Trying to burn down my house landed in an entirely different category. It was arson. Of course that act might have been strictly a personal vendetta for Scabby and have nothing to do with the Katos.

  I tapped my pen for a minute on a yellow legal pad. Outside of that small sound and the barely audible noise of Barney’s “My Family’s Just Right for Me” leaking in from the living room, the house had the distinctive hush it gets during a heavy snowfall: the silence of snow. As the day progressed the house would be wrapped in a cocoon of white. The roads would start to close down one by one, the ever-present background rumbling of traffic getting fainter until it ceased altogether. Across the valley filling with snow, logs would be piled in fireplaces; smoke would curl from chimneys; the sharp smell of burning wood would travel for miles from house to house.

  Until the storm was over, there was nothing to do in the country except to stay inside. Some people made popcorn and watched movies. Others found a good book and curled up in a soft chair. Scrabble and Monopoly boards appeared. For me, I’d love to climb into bed this afternoon with Brady and take a nap together. It was one of our favorite things.

  But I didn’t want to think about naps, bed, and spending the weekend isolated here with Gene. I needed to avoid another intimate encounter, and proximity to him weakened my resolve. I too easily remembered the salt-tinged smell of his skin, the hard muscles of his arms, the taut, smooth flesh of his belly. I kept pushing away the niggling thought that I should be getting that third wish over with. Gene could get back to his life, and I could go on with mine. I was prolonging the agony by procrastinating.

  That thought slipped in and I let it go, leaving a gray, achy feeling behind. Then I had an idea that was part genius, part scheming. I would need Gene’s help when I went looking for Peggy Sue’s John and Tawnya’s Ron. It made sense to put off the whole business of the third wish until those two cases were over. I walked over to the coffeemaker and poured another cup. Again I felt much better having made a decision.

  I stood there looking out the window. The wind had bent back the dark green branches of the big hemlock tree at the edge of the yard. Snow drifted into mounds around fence posts and stumps. Every few seconds, a gust of wind threw snowflakes against the windowpane with such force that they sounded like handfuls of dry rice smacking the glass. I loved watching the familiar landscape disappear and become a mysterious geography, as dangerous as it was beautiful. I couldn’t deny that the energy of the storm gave me a thrill—its invisible force made manifest in the whirling snow and windblown trees.

  Tomorrow, after the storm had passed, it would be fun for Gene and me to take Brady outside. Maybe we could build a snowman, and I couldn’t deny that I was thinking that maybe my family—me, my son, my cat, and my genie—was just right for me.

  Although my Internet search turned up a few facts that went into my Kato folder, I quickly became frustrated by the maddeningly little that I uncovered about the salvage yard’s owner. I did find a report that George London had bought up a large tract of land several years ago that turned out to be dab-smack in the middle of a highway expansion. Had it been a lucky guess? I doubted it. London turned a very quick multimillion dollar profit. But George London, on paper, looked simply like an astute businessman and pillar of the community. The owner or joint owner of dozens of companies, he was unusually generous to only one big “charity”—political contributions. Officeholders from Scranton to Harrisburg had accepted hefty sums for their campaigns, and if I counted in the monies given through London’s companies, the amount literally climbed into the millions. I’m sure London saw every dollar as a wise investment.

  Oddly, though, few people actually knew what George London looked like. Not one single picture of him appeared in the archives of any local media. One news story described him as “reclusive,” rarely appearing in public and never attending charity functions or social events. And tucked away in an old news story, which I had found only by following a series of links, was a heart-stopping find: a felony conviction from a quarter century ago and rumors about London’s ties to a Philadelphia crime family. Back after the devastating Wilkes-Barre flood of ’72—the disaster during the Nixon administration that gave birth to FEMA—London had gotten a suspended sentence for running a scam to obtain flood relief money. Considering the huge sums involved, a suspended sentence, for a felony no less, smelled rotten. I was surprised it hadn’t given birth to a major scandal. I could use the LexisNexis search engine to get the details, but reading through the material might take me days, and I didn’t know if it would have any bearing whatsoever on the Katos’ problems. I made a note of the date of the trial and stuck it in the folder.

  As to the alleged mob ties, I found no hard evidence that Citizen London was “connected” to the Scarfos, Testas, Bufalinos, D’Elias or any other Pennsylvania mafia family. Nothing of substance had ever surfaced. Recently London had tried to get state approval to turn one of his Pocono properties into a gambling casino. He had been turned down in favor of granting a license to a Seneca tribe who promised to turn an antiquated city racetrack into a major gambling emporium. This huge project was supposed to boost the area’s sagging economy.

  Even so, the ruling caused a community uproar: The Valley remained an old-time Methodist and Assembly of God stronghold where gambling was a vice, no two ways about it. But no amount of protest stopped the Seneca and work was going forward. For complicated legal reasons, Native Americans enjoyed loopholes in the gambling regulations that allowed them to thumb their noses at the white man’s laws. Considering the betrayals and land grabs they had endured three centuries ago—Penn’s Walking Purchase and the dispossession of the Delaware people helped create
the state of Pennsylvania—I can’t say I blamed them.

  All in all, I dug up no smoking gun to connect London’s enterprises and the efforts to drive the Katos out of their Buddhist B and B. I hoped looking at the records of deeds and land transfers in the courthouse would turn up something. I had done as much as I could. I turned off the computer and called it a day. I stretched and yawned, then stood up when the doorbell sounded. The pizza had arrived.

  “Perfect timing,” I said aloud. After I settled up with the delivery guy, I marched triumphantly into the living room holding not one, not two, but four pizzas, two boxes of CinnaStix, and an order of buffalo wings with sides of blue cheese and celery. I figured Gene needed an introduction to some of the great junk foods developed in the late twentieth century. All we needed was a pro football game on television, and he’d have the entire cultural experience. When the thought struck me that Gene would probably be gone by Super Bowl Sunday, a frisson of sadness coursed through me.

  Live in the moment, I reminded myself as I set down the goodies, and Gene immediately conjured up plates, napkins, and tall glasses of soda complete with ice. The bells that announced this little bit of magic were loud and triumphant. Obviously Gene was a genie with the potential for a pizza addiction. Within seconds, two slices were gone—no magic involved—and strings of melted mozzarella decorated his chin.

  I suggested we watch a DVD, hoping to help Gene get up-to-date on the films of the last fifty years. I chose RV, starring Robin Williams, partly to continue Gene’s cultural education and partly because it made me laugh a lot.

  Gene was soon glued to the screen and inhaling the pizza. “Try the wings.” I nudged the box toward him even though I might be paving the way for clogged arteries in his future.

  Keeping a slice of pizza in one hand, Gene started in on a wing. “Spicy,” he said with his mouth full. “Sort of like chicken on the barbie.” Pretty soon he didn’t know which to eat first and alternated between bites of the cheesy pizza and the buffalo wings. Bones piled up quickly on his plate. Brady, who sat in his baby seat gumming a pizza crust, laughed at Gene’s performance. I had forgotten how much a young man could eat. I munched daintily on a single piece of pizza and enjoyed watching his gustatory adventure.