“Oh,” Bernie said. “I thought that was a treat.”
Sean laughed. “I know Ellen gets worked up over things, but talk about exercising bad judgment. I gotta say this is really high up on the list of the stupidest things I’ve heard of, and I’ve heard of a lot of them.”
“Ellen told me she’d tried everything else, but nothing worked.” Bernie thought of her and Ellen’s conversation in the park. “I should never have said what I did.”
“Someone who wasn’t off somewhere in la-la land wouldn’t have taken your suggestion and run with it.”
“And then when we were looking at the body she told us she had to go to the bathroom and she took off,” Libby said. “We tried to catch her, which was another mistake.”
“I think she overheard us talking about calling the police and got spooked,” Bernie added. “We probably should have talked outside.”
Sean massaged his temples. “Leaving Ellen’s craziness aside, the thing that interests me is the body on the bed. Who is he?”
“We don’t know,” Bernie replied. “He didn’t have any ID on him. We checked.”
“And Ellen said she didn’t know who he was or how he got there?” Sean continued.
“That’s what she said,” Libby responded.
“And you believe her?” Sean inquired.
“I want to,” Bernie said.
“That’s different,” Sean pointed out.
“I know,” Bernie said.
Sean turned to Libby. “And where do you stand on this?”
“With Bernie,” Libby said.
“This makes no sense at all,” Sean observed. Then he reached for the remote and turned on the TV. The sound of Law and Order filled the room. “I’ll tell you one thing though,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy being on that fishing boat. At least it’ll be peaceful there.”
Chapter 10
It was a little after six-thirty the next morning when the doorbell of the Simmons’s flat started ringing.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Libby said, stifling a yawn as she looked out the living room window and saw Ellen Hadley’s sons standing outside. She automatically pulled down the hem of the oversized T-shirt she had been sleeping in, the one that was from the gristmill down the road, and sighed.
She was exhausted, as was her sister and her dad. They’d all fallen asleep late. It had been a little after three in the morning when Sean had finally calmed down enough to be able to drift off, while Libby and Bernie had come up from downstairs after two-thirty, which was when they had finished boxing up the macaroons. Even though they’d both had trouble keeping their eyes open, they couldn’t fall asleep and, once they finally did, they had both tossed and turned in their beds for the rest of the night. Neither one could get the picture of the dead man lying on the bed out of their minds. There was something about him, both sisters agreed, something nibbling at the corners of their minds. But what it was neither Libby nor Bernie knew.
RING. The doorbell went off again. Libby could see Ethan, Ellen’s youngest son, pushing on it.
“What is going on?” Sean barked as he stalked out of his bedroom.
Libby explained.
“What the hell do they want?”
“I’m guessing to talk to us about their mom,” Libby replied.
“Well, I don’t want to talk to them,” Sean declared. “Tell them to go away or I’ll come down and shoot them.”
“I don’t want to talk to them either, Dad, but I think we have to.”
“I’m serious,” her father said.
“So am I. I’ll ask them to come back later.”
“You do that.”
“I will.” Libby had too much to do to deal with Ellen Hadley’s children right now, especially with Bernie semi-out of commission. She had to start prepping for Mother’s Day. She had to slice up the bread, start it soaking, sauté the spinach, and cube the Gruyère for the strata. Then she had to make the filling for the chocolate babka: roll out the babka dough, put the filling in it, roll it back up, braid it, and allow it to rise for another hour before she put it in the oven.
Lastly, she had to make the Grand Marnier syrup and slice the navel oranges that would be served with it. Libby loved the dish. It was truly beautiful. The oranges looked like cut glass, but she wished she wasn’t making it today because julienning the rind was extremely time consuming. This, of course, was in addition to all the rest of her prep. In fact, just thinking about everything she had to do before they opened the shop made her feel like going back to bed and putting her head under her pillow.
Well, she couldn’t do that, but she could wake Bernie up and have her peel the potatoes for the Spanish sausage and potato omelet they were serving. Libby was just about to knock on Bernie’s door when her sister came out of her room.
“Who is making all that racket?” Bernie demanded.
“Ethan,” said Libby.
Bernie flipped her hair out of her eyes. “Ethan?”
“Ellen Hadley’s son,” Libby explained. “The youngest one.”
“God, I hope everything is all right.” Bernie tied her bathrobe sash. Her bathrobe was a peach-colored silk and matched her nightgown. She’d gotten it on sale from one of the fancy lingerie stores on Madison Avenue and it was still one of her favorites.
Libby snorted. “Not in this case. They probably dragged Ellen off to jail. Or maybe she’s found another body somewhere and she wants us to come over and dispose of it.”
“That’s rather harsh, Libby.”
“Given last night, I don’t think so, Bernie.”
Sean smoothed his hair down with the flat of his hand. “Well, all I can say is one of you better go down and tell Ethan to stop making so much noise before he wakes up the neighborhood.”
Ethan leaned on the bell again.
Bernie pointed to her ankle. “I’d go but . . .”
Libby held up her hand. “I know. I get it.”
“It’s not my fault,” Bernie protested.
“Actually, this is your fault,” Libby countered.
“I don’t care whose fault it is,” Sean snapped. “One of you needs to get down there pronto.”
“I’m going,” Libby said, never mind that she was so tired that her bones were aching. She went into her bedroom and put on her bathrobe.
“Libby, be nice,” Bernie said to her sister as she went by her.
“Nice? At this time of the morning? I wouldn’t count on it if I were you,” Libby replied as she opened the door to the flat and headed down the stairs.
How did people exist on three or four hours of sleep a night anyway? she wondered. She certainly wasn’t able to. In addition to her back bothering her, her head was hurting and each ring of the doorbell was like a sharp knife through her eyes. Boy, she wished they were closed on Sundays like they usually were, but they made too much money on Mother’s Day not to stay open.
“I’m coming,” she cried as she descended the stairs.
The ringing continued. She got to the door and jerked it open. “What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Don’t you know what time it is?”
Ethan jumped back, looking, Libby decided, like a surprised deer.
“Ah,” he stammered. “Sorry.” He swallowed and looked down at the floor. Skinny, all hands and feet, and the youngest of the three, he was still in his pajama bottoms and a Batman T-shirt and looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Which he probably had.
His two older brothers standing a little ways behind him didn’t look much more put together. Matt, the seventeen-year-old, had on a pair of stained khaki cargo shorts and an old stretched-out T-shirt that read Mets Forever, while fourteen-year-old Ryan, the blond wannabe gangsta of the group, was wearing baggy pants and an oversized white T-shirt. They both looked as if they’d been up all night.
“Sorry about my little brother,” Matt said, reaching out and lightly cuffing Ethan on the top of his head. “I told him to ring once, but he never listens.”
> Libby highly doubted that, but she wasn’t about to get into a debate. “I don’t care. You guys have to go home.”
“Please,” Ryan said, stepping forward. Libby thought he looked as if he’d been crying. In fact, all three of them looked as if they had been. Ryan held out a heavy plastic bag. “You have to help my mom.” He nodded toward the bag. “There’s three hundred and seventy-five dollars in there, in quarters. That’s all we could come up with on short notice.”
“But we’ll mow lawns,” Matt said.
“And I can walk dogs,” Ethan added.
“So we’ll get more.” Matt nodded toward the bag. “We know this isn’t enough, but we’ll come up with more. We promise.”
Ethan raised his right hand. “I swear.”
“We all do,” Matt said, looking like twelve instead of seventeen.
“Take it,” Ryan told Libby, placing the bag in her hands. It was so heavy she nearly dropped it.
Ethan’s voice cracked. “Mom said we should talk to you. She said you’d know what to do.”
“Did she? Well, she was wrong.” Libby held the bag out to Ryan. “Take it.”
Ryan backed away. “No. No. It’s for you and your sister.”
“I don’t want it,” Libby said.
“You have to take it,” Ryan insisted. “My mom said you and your sister would know what to do, and my dad said it too.”
“Your dad?” That’s not what he said last night, Libby recalled.
“Definitely,” Ryan said.
“No, he didn’t,” Matt said.
“Yeah he did, dodo,” Ryan answered. “He was yelling that she should go ask her friend Bernie to figure it out since she was so smart.”
Matt looked disgusted. “He was being sarcastic, moron.”
“Shows you how much you know,” Ryan told him.
Libby interrupted. “So if your mother wants to talk to us how come she’s not here?” she asked, figuring the boys
would say “because she’s in jail,” but they didn’t.
“Because when my dad wouldn’t let her drive his car, she locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out,” Ryan explained.
“Seems to be a pattern,” Libby cracked.
The boys looked at her.
“Forget it,” Libby said, regretting her comment. “Go on.”
“The money’s our idea,” Matt continued. “We know you and your sister do this kind of stuff and that you do it for money, so we got all our spare change together.”
“We don’t know what’s going on,” Ethan said. He screwed up his face. Two tears trickled down his cheeks. “Except it’s really, really bad.”
“Don’t be such a wuss,” Ryan said, cuffing Ethan on the head again. “She’ll be fine.” But to Libby’s ears he didn’t sound convinced.
Ethan reached up and rubbed the spot Ryan had hit. “Stop it. That hurts. I’m gonna get brain damaged from you.”
“You can’t,” Matt responded, “because you already are.”
“Ha-ha, Matt. Very funny.”
“No, Ethan. True.” He turned to Libby. “Please,” he said. “We have no one else to go to.”
Libby sighed. Before she knew what she was saying, the word yes had fallen from her lips. Looking at the pleading expressions on their faces had done her in. “All right,” she conceded. “Come on up.”
Chapter 11
Half an hour later, everyone was settled upstairs in the Simmons’s flat drinking iced Mexican hot chocolate and eating day old cinnamon rolls, strawberry muffins with peach butter, and peanut butter and chocolate chip scones.
Ethan nodded toward the plastic bag in the middle of the table. “You can count the money if you want to.”
“No need. It’ll be fine,” Sean assured him, now that he’d calmed down and gotten over his initial annoyance. After all, he reasoned, he and his daughters had intended to look into what had happened at the motel anyway—if only to satisfy their own curiosity.
“It’s all there,” Ryan said. “I swear.”
Sean raised his hand. “I believe you.”
Matt resettled his baseball hat on his head. “So you’ll help our mom?”
“If we can,” Bernie interjected.
Ryan ran his hand through his hair. “She’s in deep doo-doo.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Sean said.
Ryan spread his hands apart palms up “So what do we do now?” he asked.
Sean leaned back in his armchair. “I always find it helps to start at the beginning.”
The three boys nodded and sat up straighter, waiting for Sean’s next question.
“Now, you said your mother is home. Is that correct?” Sean asked.
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. She and my dad walked in together. He looked really, really pissed and she was crying.”
As Sean took a sip of his iced chocolate, he reflected that he loved the cinnamon in it and the slight taste of almond. “What time was this?”
“Around ten. Maybe ten-thirty,” Matt said. “I’m not sure.”
Sean made a mental note to call Clyde later and ask him what the police were thinking of this whole fiasco.
Matt continued. “I’d just gotten back home from picking up my two idiot brothers at the movies when my dad walked in the door with my mom. They were both acting weird.”
“Did either of your parents say anything to you about what had happened or about where they’d been?” Sean asked the boys.
“Kinda,” Ethan responded. “Mom told us she’d made a mistake.”
“Now there’s an understatement if ever I heard one,” Libby said, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. “Sorry,” she amended, catching sight of Ethan’s quivering lips. “That came out wrong.” She handed Ethan another muffin to atone for her faux pas.
“Did your dad say anything at that time?” Sean asked.
Matt answered. “Yeah. He told us to go to our rooms and not come out until he said to.”
“And did you?” Libby asked as she held out the plate of cinnamon rolls. Ryan and Matt each took one. Libby couldn’t imagine what it would take to feed these guys everyday as she watched the rolls disappearing into the boys’ mouths.
“Well, yeah,” Ryan said.
“Could you hear what they were saying?” Sean asked.
The three boys looked at each other and shook their heads.
“I was listening to my music,” Ryan explained.
“Me too,” Matt agreed.
Sean looked at Ethan.
“The same. I was playing Halo.”
Sean frowned. “Halo?” he asked. “What’s that?” The kid certainly didn’t look angelic.
“It’s a video game,” Ethan explained, surprised. Even his mom and dad knew what Halo was.
“Weren’t you curious about what happened?” Bernie asked. She knew that in a similar situation she and Libby would have had their ears pressed up against the door.
Ethan shrugged. “I figured it was just the usual.”
Bernie wrinkled up her forehead. “The usual?”
“Fighting,” Ryan said. “We always put our headphones on when they fight,” he added by way of explanation.
“They do that a lot?” Sean asked.
“Yes,” the three boys said together.
“Definitely,” Matt amplified. “Especially since Mom started her dog biscuit business. They’re always fighting about that.”
Bernie leaned forward. “What are the fights about?”
Matt looked glum. “About the way the house looks and how the laundry’s not done. You know, stuff like that.”
“And then we heard them later too,” Ryan added.
“Later?” Sean asked.
“Like three in the morning,” Ryan explained. “Or two. Something like that.” He looked at his brothers for confirmation and they nodded. “They were yelling at one another. I mean really loudly.”
“They woke me up,” Ethan said.
“Which is
saying a lot,” Ryan said, “because Ethan can sleep through anything. He once slept through the firemen putting a fire out in our garage.”
“Did not.”
“You so did.”
As Sean finished off the last of his muffin, he reflected that if he stopped eating his daughter’s baking he’d probably lose twenty pounds. “What were they saying, Ryan?”
“Dad was screaming that this was the stupidest stunt my mom had pulled in a long line of stupid stunts, and that it was time she faced the music, and they didn’t have money to mount a reasonable defense, and that if she ended up in court she’d have to go with a court-appointed one, and whatever happened to her was fine with him because he was tired of her nonsense, and Mom was crying and saying she knew she shouldn’t have done what she did, but she was desperate. Then she said that she didn’t have anything to do with what happened in the motel and Dad said he didn’t believe her. It was really, really bad.” Ryan looked down at his hands and stopped talking.
Matt took up the tale. “So I went into the living room and asked what was going on, and Dad screamed at me to go to sleep and Mom told me again to talk to you guys like soon, and then she ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.”
“So what happened at the Riverview?” Ryan asked. He reached up and began to twirl a strand of blond hair around one of his fingers.
“You don’t know?” Sean said.
“Not really,” Matt answered. “Was there like a dead body? There was, wasn’t there?” he said, looking at Sean’s, Bernie’s, and Libby’s faces.
“Yeah, there was,” Bernie replied.
Ethan leaned forward. “Did you see it?” he asked eagerly.
“I did,” Bernie said.
The three boys leaned forward expectantly. They reminded Sean of baby birds waiting to be fed.
“You might as well tell them,” he said to Bernie. “They’re going to find out anyway.”
So Bernie did. She took a deep breath and filled Ellen’s sons in on the previous evening’s events. She’d expected shock. She’d expected horror. That’s not what she got.
“Wow. A body,” Matt cried as he grabbed another muffin and devoured it. “That’s illin’.”
Sean looked at him.
“Rad,” Matt translated.
A Catered Mother's Day Page 6