“I wondered when you were going to call. This place has been frantic with gossip,” Sandy shouted into the phone. “Is it true someone’s out to kill you?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I thought I’d stick around in Slagville to find out. Also my alternator’s busted.”
“Take all the time you want. Tiffany will fill in. Honestly, Mrs. Coleman will be relieved.”
“I thought Mrs. Coleman dreaded Tiffany.”
Sandy stopped blow drying. “Yeah. But Tiffany doesn’t have a price on her head. Mrs. Coleman was worried she’d be blown away if you were doing her hair and the hitman showed up.”
Mrs. Coleman watched too much HBO.
“By the way, Martin wonders if the explosion could have been spontaneous combustion. Sometimes he comes across that in the bakery. Bread has too much yeast and boom!”
Thank you, Sandy’s wacky baker husband. “It was a mine, Sandy, not a doughnut.”
When I hung up, Mama was right behind me, hands on fake-leather hips.
“Now I suggest you find something decent to wear and hurry up or we’ll be late.”
“Where are we going?”
“To Madame Vilnia’s.”
“Good idea,” Roxanne said, rolling the last curler into Mrs. Wychesko’s hair. “She knows everyone and everything in town. If the person who lured you up to the Number Nine mine last night is from Slagville, Vilnia will know who it is. Wear the black knit hanging in my closet, Bubbles. My funeral dress. Madame Vilnia likes women to be modest. No pants. That goes for you, too, Aunt LuLu.”
“I ain’t changing for nobody,” Mama said.
I protested that visiting local hags was not a way to research newspaper articles, but Mama and Roxanne would have none of it.
“What you should be worried about,” Roxanne advised as I climbed the stairs, “is where you’re going to get a live chicken at this last minute’s notice.”
Having been unsuccessful in rounding up a breathing bird, Mama and I had been forced to stop off at the A&P to purchase our gift for Vilnia. I lobbied for an African violet or scented candles, but Mama was adamant. It was poultry or bust.
“I hope this works.” Mama pouted at the four-pound Perdue Oven Stuffer Roaster on her lap. “Usually Vilnia likes them alive. Back in the old country the wise women got only living chickens as payment for their services. Vilnia’s gonna be insulted when she sees someone else snapped the neck first.”
My stomach turned. Between Roxanne’s oversugared coffee, Chief Donohue’s doughnuts and chicken decapitation, I was ready to puke.
I swung Genevieve’s boat of a Rambler into the patch, an outcropping of run-down row homes on the outskirts of Slagville that had been built once upon a time by the mining company for its laborers and their families. The homes were painted every color of the rainbow, as if to counteract the dark and dusty life of the pitch black mines. Compact, well-tended gardens in the back yards brimmed with autumn pumpkins, carrots, spinach and broccoli.
Mama grabbed the roaster and we climbed the stairs. We rang the doorbell and waited in the cool air. The patch was in a hollow, damp and cold. I pinched the plunging cleavage of Roxanne’s “modest” black dress, which clung to my every nook, curve and cranny. If this is what Roxanne wore to funerals, what was her New Year’s Eve getup? Pasties?
The door opened and a doddering man in gray pants and a white T-shirt answered. He removed a set of old-fashioned headphones, the kind from the public library, and ushered us in without a word. We entered a dimly lit living room lined by wood-paneled walls and numerous family photos. A gigantic La-Z Boy faced a wide-screen television. A game show played on what I thought was mute until I realized that it was attached to Mr. Vilnia’s headphones.
He pushed on the swinging door into a white kitchen where a woman sat at a table cutting carrots. There were various pots boiling furiously on the stove and the oven light was on, revealing a bubbling apple crisp. The room was a steam bath of cooking carrot, cabbage and apple.
“Visitors,” he announced.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” the tiny woman barked. “Let them in.”
“Yes, dear,” he mumbled, waving the way for Mama and me to enter. Then he turned like a zombie and returned to the game show.
Clutching the carrot knife, Madame Vilnia stood, so short she and Mama were eye to eye. She was rounder than my mother (if that were possible) and older. She wore a gray tweed dress, bifocals and large plastic pearls at her flabby neck. Her lips were a bright shade of carnation, unlike my mother’s bloodred ones—of which Vilnia clearly disapproved.
“Long time, no see,” Vilnia said. “I heard you were back in town.”
Mama raised her nose and sniffed. “Do I smell Zupa Kartoflana with mint?”
“So what if you do?” Vilnia circled Mama slowly, taking in the hot-dame biker package. “Seeing you, I remember that there’s a reason why women shouldn’t wear slacks. Your legs look like knockwurst. Only one woman could pull it off and she’s dead.”
“Jackie O,” Mama said, getting misty eyed. “Come to think of it. . . .”
Oh, no. I wasn’t going down that road again. I yanked the Oven Stuffer Roaster out of Mama’s hands and thrust it toward Vilnia. “For you.”
“Not another chicken.” Vilnia’s shoulders drooped. “Can’t you come up with anything else? There’s a Bed Bath & Beyond in Wilkes-Barre, you know. You two ever hear of napkin rings?”
“I knew we should have brought candles,” I said.
“It cost eight-fifty, that chicken,” Mama said. “In the old country a professional gossip would’ve been proud to get Perdue.”
“Old country, mold country.” Vilnia opened the Frigidaire and tossed in the gift. It joined a half dozen frozen roasters. “This is America in the twenty-first century. Palm pilots. No-fog showers. Refrigerators in drawers. Get with it.”
Mama poked her in the chest, right under the pearls. “No one tells me to get with it, sister.”
“This is your sister?” I asked. “I didn’t know you had a sister, Mama.”
The women quit their bickering. “Let me venture,” Vilnia said. “This is Bubbles.”
“I told you Vilnia was good,” Mama said, dropping her finger. “She knows everything.”
“Including who killed Bud Price? And where Stinky is?” I asked. “And if he was the one who tried to kill me and Stiletto? And if he sent me the bogus fax?”
“Kid comes with tall orders,” Vilnia said to Mama.
“I blame TV. You got cake?”
“What do you think?”
We sat as Vilnia put out coffee cups and unwrapped an Entenmann’s cinnamon crumble cake.
“Here’s the skinny,” Mama said as Vilnia served us each a slice. “Bubbles got a fax from her editor ordering her to cover a press conference at the Number Nine mine, where a businessman has been found stabbed.”
“Shot,” I corrected.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Bubbles.” Mama handed me a napkin. “Anyway, turns out her editor didn’t send the fax. No one knows who did. Though Bubbles did end up finding a businessman dead in the mine last night. Bud Price.”
Vilnia crossed herself. “May he rest in peace.”
“What we want to know is who sent her the fax. According to the sending telephone number, it had to have been someone from this area, with access to News-Times stationery, who also would have known that Bubbles was at the Passion Peak.”
“Stinky could have known,” I said, after a good, clearing swallow.
Mama wet her finger and wiped a smudge from the corner of my mouth. “How would Stinky have known?”
I smeared away Mama’s spit. It’s disgusting when she does that. “Through Roxanne. Didn’t you tell her I was going to the Passion Peak?”
Mama fluttered her puny eyelashes. A sure indication of guilty as charged.
“I don’t know,” she said, trying to sound vague and old ladyish. “These days I can’t remember what I s
ay or who I talk to.”
“Give it up, Mama. You’re not riding any Goldwing motorcycle. I know how you gossip about me and Stiletto. You can admit it.”
Mama opened her red lips to confess her sins, but Vilnia interrupted.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Vilnia was waving the cake knife around. “You telling me Bubbles got the fax when she was staying at the Passion Peak on her honeymoon?”
“No,” Mama explained. “With Steve Stiletto, a news photographer. Her boyfriend.”
“Bubbles! I’m shocked.” Vilnia put down the knife and slid one index finger over the other, in the universal Pennsylvania sign language of warding off evil. “Oiii. Not married and—”
“Didn’t you just tell me it’s America in the twenty-first century?” Mama said.
“Guess it’s none of my business. Not my soul that’ll be languishing in purgatory.” Vilnia sat down and plunged a fork into her own slice of cake. We all ate silently, pondering eternal damnation and Entenmann’s.
“What made you think of Stinky, anyway, Bubbles?” Vilnia finally asked.
“Because his Lexus was at the mine when I got there. It was gone after Stiletto and I nearly blew up in the mine.”
Vilnia held her fork in midair. “Seems like you left out a few details, LuLu.”
“I need more ginkgo.” Mama shrugged and pushed her plate away. “You got coffee?”
“Sure.” Vilnia got up and plucked the pot from the coffeemaker. No. No. Not more coffee! Vilnia distributed the cups and frowned as she poured, deep in thought. She replaced the pot, brought a carton of milk from the refrigerator and plunked it on the table.
“If I were you, Bubbles, I’d go home,” Vilnia said, folding her arms and sitting down again. “Go back to Lehigh.”
“I can’t go home,” I said. “I need a new alternator.”
“Why should she have to go home?” Mama asked. “Bubbles needs to write a big story that will get her a full-time job at her newspaper. Looks to me like this is it. This could be her Big Break. And, anyway, she can’t leave without finding Stinky . . . or whoever it was that tried to kill her. She’ll never get a decent night’s sleep if she doesn’t.”
Vilnia regarded both of us. “It wasn’t Stinky who tried to kill you.” She lowered her voice and we had to lean over the table to hear her. “Whoever set you up, he’s bigger than Stinky.”
“Bigger than Stinky!” I exclaimed, as though this were an impossibility. “Who?”
She sighed. “Okay. You know about the casino, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, someone very powerful doesn’t want it to go through. He’ll stop at nothing, including murdering Mr. Price, to make sure it stops. He does not want casinos to replace coal here in Pennsylvania.”
Mama and I looked at each other. “Who is it?” I asked.
“Maybe Bud Price’s murderer. I ain’t sure.” Vilnia sat back and plucked a toothpick from the toothpick holder. “But I bet Stinky knows. Stinky discovered something in his workplace he wasn’t supposed to, Bubbles. That’s what he told me when I ran into him at the library before he disappeared. That’s why McMullen Coal fired him and that’s why he’s in hiding. You get Stinky and you’ll get the straight poop.”
“What poop?” Mama asked.
Vilnia shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t give me no poop particulars.”
I tried to sort out the many stories Roxanne had prattled about this morning. She’d said her husband had quit his job because the maps at McMullen Coal hadn’t been updated, making it look like less coal was being taken out than it was. But why would that result in Bud Price’s murder?
“Are you sure Stinky’s not crazy?” I asked.
“Not crazy.” She tapped her temple with the toothpick. “Smart.” She chewed on her toothpick and winked at me.
I didn’t know whether to believe her. Vilnia might be another conspiracy nut like Genevieve, only shorter and with more plastic jewelry.
There was a faint shuffling and the door opened. Mr. Vilnia appeared. “I was thinking I might go out. You know. To the park. For a walk.”
There was silence. Vilnia removed the toothpick. “And what, may I ask, have you done about the garbage? I told you this morning to take it out and still it’s there.”
“Oh, sorry.” Mr. Vilnia scurried across the kitchen and removed the white plastic bag, tying it quickly.
“Don’t forget to put in another liner. How many times have I opened the door under the sink to throw away coffee grounds only to have them land in the bare garbage pail. Do you know what a pain that is to clean?”
“Yes, dear,” he said, shaking out a plastic bag.
“And I suppose the bathroom faucet’s still dripping.”
Mr. Vilnia dragged the garbage bag to the kitchen door. “It needs a new washer.”
“I know that,” Vilnia said, as Mr. Vilnia opened the door almost in relief. “That’s why it’s dripping.”
As soon as he left, Vilnia jumped up and quickly opened the oven door. Mama, heeding some mysterious signal, also sprang to action, bringing down a white plate from the cupboard. Vilnia slipped on two oven mitts and brought out the apple crisp. She spooned out a section as Mama reached in the freezer and found some vanilla ice cream. The women worked silently.
Mr. Vilnia returned with resolve on his mind. “Listen, Vilnia. I have a right to go out if I want to. I’m retired. I’ve worked all my life—”
Vilnia handed him the plate of steaming cinnamon apple crisp with vanilla ice cream melting over it in rivulets.
“What’s this?” he said, softening.
She gave him a spoon and he dug in. After two delectable mouthfuls he said, “Maybe I will stay home. It looks like it’s going to rain and there’s that documentary on fungi I’ve been wanting to see.”
“Sounds good, tiger.” The phone on the kitchen wall rang and no one budged.
“Phone’s ringing, dear,” Vilnia announced.
Mr. Vilnia snatched it off the wall and handed it to his wife without answering.
“I’ll take it in the other room.” She left through the swinging door. Mr. Vilnia followed dutifully.
After they were gone, Mama rested against the counter and fanned herself with an oven mitt. “Whew!”
“What the heck was that all about?”
“A rare treat. You have just witnessed the casting of the Nag ’N Feed spell, a local specialty.”
“Nag ’N Feed?”
“It’s how the women in this town keep their men folk in line. They nag them constantly about the garbage, watching too much sports on TV, you know the drill. Then, just when their husbands are about to blow their tops, they bring out the food and the men cave. The chores get done and the women remain in control. Flawless system.”
“And the men put up with this?”
“They have no choice. They’re enchanted.” Mama hung the oven mitt on a hook by the stove. “These women aren’t called the Sirens of Slagville for nothing.”
I considered Vilnia with her support hose and Dentu-Crème whitened choppers. “Vilnia is a Slagville Siren?”
“Don’t underestimate her. Women from coal country got powers that science can’t explain.”
Even Mama couldn’t explain because the swinging door to the kitchen burst open, and Vilnia entered, face flushed, phone pressed to her ample bosom. “You better get over to the Number Nine mine quick, Bubbles,” she said. “They found Price.”
“Finally!” I shouted. “A scoop of my own.”
“I don’t know how much of a scoop it is,” Vilnia said. “That was Esmeralda Greene on the line. She was there when they took out the body. She and that boyfriend of yours, Stiletto.”
Chapter 7
“I told you to hit the pavement and dig up some dirt,” Mama said, barely able to see above the steering wheel, “but nooo, you insisted on wasting your morning in gossip.”
“What? Visiting Vilnia was your idea!”
�
�Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles. When are you going to face the fact that you’re too soft for the big leagues. Unless you toughen up, honey, you’ll be writing fluff pieces about strawberry festivals and high school graduations forever. I can’t do your job for you, you know.”
I would have throttled her dog-collared neck then and there except she was driving. Mama had insisted, claiming that her old race-car boyfriend had taught her a couple of tricks, including how to peel out of a neighborhood and take a turn on two wheels. Otherwise, it was little old lady as usual.
“If you’re so perfect,” I said, “then how come Stiletto was at the mine and not on Roxanne’s couch like we’d left him?”
Mama turned a right onto the dirt road by the mine’s entrance. “Slipup in the operation. Genevieve needs to check with her Sominex supplier. The stuff must have been cut with sugar. Holy mackerel. Talk about competition.”
Ye gads! Monstrous white TV news vans with gigantic satellite dishes crowded the road in front of the exploded Number Nine mine shaft where I had frozen the night before. All were local affiliates of the major networks—Channels Three, Five and Six. There were so many reporters, in fact, that the lights from the cameras lit up the place like a county fair Ferris wheel.
“You’re late!” Mama exclaimed, idling the Rambler. “Good thing I floored it.”
Going forty miles per hour wasn’t exactly breaking the sound barrier, but I didn’t have time to argue.
“You want to come?” I asked, removing my reporter’s notebook and testing my pen.
“No can do. Genevieve and I need to talk.” Mama kept the engine running.
“About how come the Sominex dart didn’t take hold?”
“Right,” she said absently. “Now, this is what I mean about you being soft. Why are you here chatting with me about my schedule when you should be out there swimming with the sharks? Get going.” And she gave me a little push out of the car.
My steps were leaden as I trudged toward the collection of cops and reporters. Perhaps Mama was right. Perhaps I was destined to be no more than a fluffy feature writer. Sure, I’d uncovered one major scandal—Henry Metzger, the ruthless chairman of Lehigh Steel. For decades Metzger had skimped on safety measures in the steel plant to rake in more profits for his own personal gain. And though numerous workers—like my own father—had died because of his cool disregard for life, no one in Lehigh had had enough guts to probe his evil doings.
Bubbles Ablaze Page 6