“You look nice,” I said.
“Of course I do,” she said. “Milly’s a genius when it comes to hair. You know, you could stand to sign up for a little of her magic. Your hair is too long for the shape of your face. It gives you a hangdog look. You should take off at least six or seven inches.”
There was nothing wrong with the way I wore my hair. I thought it looked nice, and I knew Glenn liked it just fine. A retort flew to my lips, but I held my tongue. We still had to spend a lot of time together today, and I didn’t want to be combative.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Where do you want to eat?”
“Anywhere,” she said. “Just get me some food, and then we’ll run by your mother’s house. I left some toiletries in her bathroom, and I want to get them before that Neanderthal boyfriend of hers uses them.”
She sure knew how to push my buttons. The last thing I wanted to do was swing by Mama’s. If I was lucky, I could get away with waiting for her in the truck while she ran in to get her things.
My first instinct was to take her to Parker’s Tavern, but Arnie might be there, and I knew he wouldn’t appreciate my showing up with his sister.
“I have just the place,” I said cheerfully. “You’ll love it. We’ll hit the drive-thru and then head over to Mama’s.”
A few minutes later, I pulled into the drive-thru lane at Chummy Burgers and More. I liked all the food choices at Chummy’s, so I didn’t care what showed up in my bag. I’d get a better look into Addie’s personality and tolerance after she received her order.
A voice crackled over the speaker box. The only intelligible word was order.
Addie didn’t bother to look at the menu. “I’ll take a deluxe liverwurst on marble rye.”
I knew full well liverwurst wasn’t on the menu. I opened my mouth to tell her, but she cut me off with a snappish tone.
“Place our order. You’re holding up the line.”
No problem. Whoever filled the liverwurst order was going to give her whatever they wanted anyway.
I yelled into the speaker box, “I’ll have a footlong coney, curly fries, a large sweet tea, and a deluxe liverwurst on marble rye.”
I waited for my total, but there was no response from the employee. It was possible the speaker box finally died with the liverwurst order.
“Quit dawdling and pull around,” Addie said.
“I’m waiting for our total.”
“Pull around and get it at the window.”
I regretted coming here. This should have been a simple in and out, but Addie’s order and her attitude, and now the broken speaker box, were making it all too difficult.
I pulled up to the window. The employee leaned down to get a good look at both of us. “The owner wants you to pull up in the spot marked number one. He’ll be right out.”
“Why?” I asked. “I’ve never had to pull forward for food before.”
“Don’t argue and do what she says,” Addie said.
I let out a sigh and pulled forward.
A few minutes later, I saw Chummy in my rearview mirror. He had come out a side door and was heading for the truck. I expected him to come to my window, but he walked around to Addie’s side. She had already lowered the window. He bent down and leaned in.
“Addison Chambers, it’s been a long time,” he said.
“Chauncey Hewitt, you’re as charming as ever.”
Now I was sure I had entered another dimension. How could Chummy have known Addie was in the truck with me? And they were certainly chummy – no pun intended.
“Have dinner with me tonight,” he said.
Was he flirting with her? She was considerably older than he was.
“I’d love to,” she said.
The coyness in her voice made me cringe inside, and I knew my mouth was hanging open again, but I couldn’t help it. Everything about this trip to Chummy’s had been bizarre.
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said. “Where are you staying?”
“I’m staying with this nitwit and her husband. Do you know where they live?”
Chummy looked over to give me a big smile. “I know where Jo and Glenn live.” He handed a Chummy Burgers and More bag to me and another one to Addie. “I’ll see you then.”
He walked away. I opened my bag. Inside was a tuna salad sandwich on wheat bread. There were no fries, and he didn’t bring my drink.
Addie didn’t bother opening hers.
“Aren’t you going to see what’s in your bag?” I asked.
“I already know what’s in my bag.”
“It’s not liverwurst.”
“Of course it’s not. Who eats liverwurst? It’s crab salad on a dinner roll.”
I let out a little harrumph and muttered, “I doubt it.”
She tossed the bag over to me. I opened it and pulled out a wrapped sandwich. I was dumbstruck when I opened the wrapper and found crab salad on a dinner roll.
The look on my face caused her to laugh. It was the first laugh I had heard from her since she arrived.
“I have a dinner date tonight,” she said. “I’ll skip eating for now.”
I no longer had an appetite. I put both bags on the back seat and pulled out of the parking lot. Glenn’s words to play nice came to mind again. I attempted polite conversation.
“How do you know Chummy?”
I didn’t have to look at her to know her eyes were boring into me. She must have refrained from calling me a nitwit when she said, “You know I used to live here. Everyone who’s ever lived here knows Chauncey Hewitt.”
“Yes, but you know his real name. Most people don’t, so I assume you know him better than most.”
“You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes.”
I waited, but she didn’t provide an explanation. Maybe she used to babysit Chummy when he was a young boy. It still made me smile to think of my babysitting Glenn when he was eleven and I was sixteen.
Addie returned to her sharp self. “You look addled. What are you smiling about?”
Two could play her game. I killed my smile but didn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer.
There was no parking available in front of Mama’s. I double-parked to allow Addie to hop out. When she saw I was waiting on her, she said, “I’m not going in there. I’ve already seen enough of Roger’s hazelnuts. You can run in and grab my things. They’re in the upstairs bathroom – the one with the horrid sunflower wallpaper.”
I knew better than to argue with her. I wouldn’t win. I grabbed the sandwiches from the back seat and ran up the walk, onto the porch, and to the front door. I didn’t bother knocking and immediately regretted the decision to rush in. Roger sat naked on the sofa and appeared to be sitting on a rubber ring used by hemorrhoid sufferers. The only item between Addie’s objections and my eyes was a small strategically draped hand towel. Between the towel and the abundance of tattoos, I couldn’t stop staring. I always knew he was covered with ink, but seeing it all at once like this was an overload to my brain.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked. “Why are you naked? Don’t you own a bathrobe?”
Mama poked her head out from the kitchen. “Oh, shush. You didn’t have to barge in. You could have knocked. He would have covered up more if he knew we had company at the door.”
“My body’s been assaulted,” Roger said. “I’d press charges, but it was a doctor who assaulted it.”
Mama handed Roger a steaming cup of soup. “He had a prostate exam this morning. Unfortunately, it didn’t go well.”
“How can a prostate exam not go well? Isn’t it a quick and simple procedure?”
Roger groaned. Mama patted him on the head and made soothing noises as if consoling a child.
“His regular doctor is on vacation, so he had to see a new youngster to the practice, and let’s just say the doctor was exceedingly exuberant and Roger was exceedingly uptight in more ways than one.”
Roger spoke with a quiver in his voice. “I couldn’t help
it, and it didn’t help that the nurses kept coming in to tell me my screams were scaring the other patients.”
Mama nodded in support. “Wasn’t that ridiculous? It’s not like they were murderous screams. They were more like squeals.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but my brain quickly made the decision for me. Laughter bubbled up, and I knew if I didn’t change the conversation fast, I was going to burst out laughing.
It’s not that I didn’t have a small measure of sympathy for Roger, but after all Addie had put me through, and now seeing him like this, and hearing him and Mama talk about his examination, was more than enough to push me over the edge.
I set the Chummy bags on the table in front of Roger and said, “I have a couple of extra sandwiches. They’ll be good with your soup.” I looked up at Mama. “Can I talk to you in the kitchen?”
It wasn’t necessary to talk with Mama privately, but I couldn’t look at naked Roger any longer.
“What’s wrong?” she asked when we were alone. “Have you heard any more about Buck? He’s hurt more than he’s let on, isn’t he? He’s in the hospital. Is his condition life threatening?”
“Mama, stop. Buck’s fine. Pepper’s on her way to pick him up and bring him home. You can see him tomorrow.”
“Then what is it? Why are you here in the middle of the day, and why are you bringing sandwiches for Roger? You want something don’t you? Did Glenn throw you out already? You’re here because you need somewhere to live. Well, you’re in luck. The spare room is available again.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. It’s none of those things. Pepper won’t be available for a couple of days, so I want to know what you want me to do to help with Nancy’s shower on Saturday.”
She looked around the kitchen as though looking for something. “I can’t think of anything. The food’s covered. So are the table decorations.” She grabbed a notebook off the counter. “I think I have the games and prizes nailed down now. What do you think of these?” She handed the notebook to me.
The first few games looked like fun. A bingo game, a trivia game, and a game with bridal veils. However, the final game was a diaper game.
“Why would you have a diaper game at a bridal shower?”
“Because Hank and Nancy are going to get busy making babies right away, and everyone likes the poo diapers, so we’re doing that one last.”
“Poo? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on. Everyone knows the diaper game. Chocolate candy bars smeared inside diapers. You pass them around and everyone sniffs them to guess the candy bar.”
I screwed up my face. “That’s gross. We are not playing that at Nancy’s bridal shower.”
“Don’t be a stick in the mud. Everyone will like it.”
“If you play that game, the Baranski family will think the Frasier family is a bunch of idiots.”
She furrowed her brows, and I saw I may have hit a chord. “I’ll think about it,” she said without enthusiasm.
“Good. If you have everything covered, I’ll see you Saturday.”
“If that’s all you wanted, you could have called instead of barging in on Roger.”
Shoot! Addie was still in the truck waiting for her toiletries.
“Addie left some things here. I came to pick them up.”
Mama put on her mean face. “You tell that evil woman anything she left here has already been tossed in the trash. Good riddance to her and her crap.”
A loud squawk came from the living room. We rushed into the room just in time to see Addie turn on her heel and walk out the door. It was obvious she was madder than a wet hen.
I shook my head in defeat. “I have to run,” I said. “I’m double parked.”
“That woman is horrible,” Mama said. “What is she upset about now?”
Roger waved the small hand towel in the air over his head. “I was using it as a napkin.”
I walked out the door without looking back at Roger. I didn’t want to see if there were tattoos where the towel had been.
I climbed into the truck and said, “They already threw your stuff away.”
She didn’t complain. In fact, she didn’t say anything. She handed a folded slip of paper to me, plopped her purse on her lap, folded her hands on top of it, and looked straight ahead.
I opened the paper.
It was a ticket for double parking. My first name had been crossed out and a new name written on the ticket: Nitwit Wheeler.
Chapter Ten
I sensed it was late when Addie woke me by poking my shoulder a few times.
“You didn’t have to wait up for me,” she said.
I struggled to a sitting position. The television remote was in my hand, and I realized I had fallen asleep while surfing channels. The volume was far too loud as a man and woman did their best to sell a frying pan for seventy-five dollars. I couldn’t believe I had slept through their enthusiastic sales pitch. I switched them off.
“I didn’t wait up. I fell asleep. Did you have a good time?”
I winced inside. I sounded like my mother when she used to wait up for Pepper and me to come home from dates. I didn’t care one whit whether Addie had a good time at dinner with Chummy or not. I tried harder to shake my cobwebs.
She smiled. Why was she smiling? She should have been calling me a nitwit for falling asleep on the sofa instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour.
As she headed for the kitchen, I noticed a brown paper sack in her hand. She came back a few minutes later with two shot glasses and a bottle of whiskey. She pulled the smaller of the two living room chairs closer to the coffee table and made herself comfortable before pouring a shot for each of us.
I shook my head. “I’m going to bed. It’s late.”
“Nonsense. You young kids today get too much sleep. When I was your age, I was up until two or three in the morning and didn’t have any trouble going to work the next day.”
“I’m not Superwoman. I don’t do well on just a few of hours of sleep.” Did I just insinuate Addie was Superwoman?
She glanced at her watch. “You can have a couple of shots with me and be in bed by ten. You’ll get seven or eight hours. Isn’t that enough?”
“Ten o’clock? I thought it was after midnight. What time is it?”
“It’s nine twenty.” She shoved one of the shot glasses closer to me.
I felt confused. The cobwebs refused to leave my brain. I picked up the glass and sniffed the booze. I hadn’t done whiskey shots in years. Addie smiled again and downed hers. I didn’t have it in me to argue and downed the shot. Even though it didn’t burn as it went down, I couldn’t help choke-coughing a few times.
Addie actually laughed. “Smooth, isn’t it? This is a hundred-year-old single malt scotch. It’s my drink of choice with friends.”
Friends? I certainly wasn’t her friend. She had treated me like an enemy all day. Why would she want to share a drink with me now?
In addition to being Superwoman, she was apparently also a mind reader. “I’ve been pretty rough on you, but I like to keep new people off guard until I get a bead on them. Arnie talks highly of you and tells me you’re doing a good job. He wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.” She poured two more shots. “I’m calling a truce.”
For the umpteenth time today, I was speechless. I didn’t respond and downed the second shot. Within minutes, I was feeling the effects of the whiskey.
After four shots each, you would have thought we were friends. After six shots, you might have thought we were best friends.
I was floored when she told me she used to work with Arnie. She worked part time reading meters for the Buxley water department during the day and moonlighted for Arnie at night. He used her good looks more than a few times to snare wanted criminals. The two of them even acted as bounty hunters on occasion. After several years of working with Arnie and helping him build his business, she applied to the police academy to become a police officer.
“
Then I met Graves. He had a perfect smile and the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen. I knew the moment I laid eyes on him that he was going to be my husband.”
“Was he the musician Arnie told me about?”
She nodded. “He was a hardcore rocker and played guitar every bit as good as the greats. He could have been a star.”
She paused and seemed wistful for a moment.
“Why wasn’t he? Did sumpin’ happen?” I wasn’t sure if I was slurring my words or not. “Nancy said he used to lock you in the attic.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “One time. One time he locked me in the attic, and everyone in the family has embellished the story so much, you’d think I was a prisoner the entire time we were married.”
“You’re a big woman. I bet you could have taken that skinny punk.”
I knew my words were inappropriate, but the booze was talking now. For all I knew, Graves could have been a fat man and not skinny at all. I reached for another shot. The drinks were going down even smoother now. Maybe my throat was numb.
She didn’t seem offended. “Arnie and I were working on a case involving the Chinese mafia.”
“You were not. There’s no Chinese mafia in Buxley.”
“I was living in Cincinnati at the time. I got wind of a money laundering operation at a Chinese restaurant. I contacted the police, but they weren’t interested in investigating, so I called Arnie, and he came down for a few days. I had already done weeks of surveillance and had become friendly with some of the restaurant employees. On the night I was planning to meet with a man who knew the inner workings of the operation, Graves was beside himself. He kept saying he had a bad feeling about my meeting. I told him it was just dinner, and I’d be wearing one of Arnie’s wires. Arnie had planned to station himself across the street to listen, so he’d be close by if there was trouble. We even had a code word – eggplant.”
“I hate eggplant,” I said. “Except when Glenn makes eggplant parmesan. Let me guess. You and Arnie love eggplant.”
She smiled again. “Nope. No matter how you dress it up, it’s a gross vegetable, and Arnie and I both hate it. Anyway, Graves said he had a new gig and asked me to run to the attic for one of his guitar cases. While I was up there, he locked me in.”
Murder Wears a Veil Page 9