Bubbles Ablaze

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “Awww.” I resisted the urge to pat him on the head. “Hopefully this will be the first of many scoops, hon.”

  Stiletto was reloading his camera and talking on a cell phone when I walked up to him at the other end of the parking lot. “Give me an hour,” he told me, tucking the phone under his chin. “I’ll find some place to develop this and then we’ll take up where we left off. You can stay with me tonight.”

  “Can’t. I’ve got to get back to Roxanne.”

  “Roxy’s a big girl. She can stay with herself.”

  “Not tonight,” I said, “though, knowing her, she’ll be spending the night with Zeke Allen. Next time you assign me a bodyguard, make him short, fat and ugly, okay?”

  “Bodyguard? I assigned you a bodyguard?”

  “Uh . . . that’s what I understand.”

  Stiletto got back on the phone and told his editor he had to get off, quick. He had an emergency. He shut the phone and turned to me. “What’s this about a bodyguard?”

  “Give it up, Stiletto. I know all about how you hired Zeke to look after me. Genevieve said you wanted him to spy, but he’s such a squeaky clean—”

  “Zeke Allen from Slagville?”

  Stiletto was not joking. He was not trying to pull my leg. He had the look that made my mouth go dry. That this-is-not-funny-this-is-serious look. “Okay. There’s this guy,” I said slowly, “Zeke Allen—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know Zeke. He was thrown in the slammer for building a church in Mexico. I ran into him when I was doing a story on jailed American kids in Cerro Huerro. I ended up bribing a judge to spring the poor bastard.”

  “And then,” I said, keeping my voice calm, “you hired him to look after me while I was here working on this story.”

  “No, Bubbles.” Stiletto placed his hand firmly on my shoulder. “I didn’t. I haven’t talked to Zeke Allen in at least a year.”

  For a few minutes we didn’t say anything, just stared at each other.

  “Then what’s going on?” I said. “He said every night you call him and ask a few innocuous questions about me. You’ve apparently paid him a thousand bucks with the promise of twenty-five-hundred more. Directly wired into his bank account.”

  “Shit!” Stiletto slid his phone into his pocket. “This is too much like the fax you got at the Passion Peak and my e-mail message. It’s got to be the work of the same guy. He knows every detail about us, that I was in New York yesterday, that you were at the Passion Peak on Wednesday, what my e-mail address is.”

  We were silent, pondering. “What happened when you traced the e-mail?” I asked.

  “That phone got blown up in the Jeep, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. So, what are we going to do?”

  “I’ve got to get this film developed and find out what’s going on. Until then, Bubbles, I want you to lock and bolt the doors when you get back to Roxanne’s. And stay away from Zeke.”

  It was a long, dangerous drive back to the Main Mane and not because I imagined menacing headlights in my rearview at each twist and turn. (For I did repeatedly imagine menacing headlights.) No. The drive was dangerous because I was beat. So tired that I almost didn’t care if I crashed.

  I had called in my update about McMullen’s murder from the inn well in time for the News-Times deadline and after that I was ready to collapse. For a fleeting second I considered joining Stiletto in his room, but then my conscience got the better of me. I remembered Roxanne and how panicked she’d been after the burglary. So I got in the Camaro and did my duty.

  My heavy eyelids flickered as I negotiated the pitch black back roads. This was torture. Absolute torture. I should have pulled over and slept. But I kept on until I pulled up to the Main Mane and put on the parking break. I’d made it. I’d never felt so relieved.

  It was after one A.M. and Roxanne’s house was quiet and dark. There were no lights on in the three bedrooms upstairs. Mama and Genevieve had been assigned twin beds in the guest room. The door to Roxanne’s room was closed and Jane was on a couch in the office.

  I tiptoed in and kissed her like I have every night since she was one day old. Her cheek still had a trace of baby-girl fat and she clutched the sheet protectively about her. If I squinted, I could picture what she looked like at four years old, hugging her blue Smurf.

  I went into the kitchen and made myself a meat-loaf sandwich, consuming it in four bites. Downed a glass of milk. Washed up. Brushed my teeth and slipped into a black Journey T-shirt with matching thong. What a night. Sex. Death. Myron Finkle and Sasha with the straight, straight hair. Like the old feminine hygiene commercial used to taunt, “So you wanted the busy life of a reporter.”

  Roxanne had been kind enough to make up the foldout downstairs. I slipped in between the cool sheets and wiggled my toes. I didn’t mind the thin mattress or the iron bar that ran under my back. I kind of liked it. It massaged out the kinks. Needless to say I was asleep as soon as I clicked on my Donald Duck night-light.

  Asleep, but not at peace. My dreams were so vivid and frightening it was like having a front row seat at IMAX. Flames spewed from St. Ignatius Church with its red and blue broken stained glass. Hugh McMullen’s bloodied face warned me in silent urgency about a monster who was after me. Who was it?

  “You should know,” McMullen kept saying. “You’ve met him. He knows who you are.”

  And then there was Professor Tallow, his thin white finger slowly tracing the multiple pierced ear of a helplessly enthralled Jane. For some reason Keith Richards was nearby with an electric guitar and a bandana around his forehead, a cigarette dangling from his lip as he crooned with . . . G.

  G?

  “Wassup, Bub?” an imaginary G called out to me through the smoke, which seemed to be billowing from everywhere, choking me, stinging my eyes, filling my nose. “Hey, Bub. Is there more meat loaf? I sure could do with a sandwich.”

  I sat up groggily. My chest hurt and the Donald Duck night-light illuminated waves of smoke filling the living room. It was coming from the kitchen. It smelled like grilled cheese out of control.

  I slid off the bed onto the floor and crawled my way toward the kitchen door. Remember, Bubbles, lay low to the ground where the air is good. If there is a fire, get everyone out of the house first, then call the fire department. Not vice versa. There weren’t flames, I was relieved to see. But as the saying goes, where there’s smoke there’s . . .

  “Bubbles Yablonsky! What are you doing on the floor with your naked bottom in the air?” Mama’s voice screeched. I was eye level with a pair of fluffy pink slippers and the bottom of a chenille zipper robe.

  “Hot damn! My girlfriend’s mom.” G was jumping up and down in the smoky haze. “I saw my girlfriend’s mom’s naked butt!”

  I gripped the green Formica kitchen counter and pulled myself up. Mama was by the stove while Genevieve was at the sink scrubbing out a pan. G was in his street clothes and holding a gray metal canister. A fire extinguisher, I supposed. All of us were shrouded in a mist.

  “What happened?” I asked between coughs.

  “There’s been a fire. Obviously,” said Mama. “Genevieve and I came home and thought we’d brew us some Sleepytime before bed and Genevieve forgot—”

  “I did not forget.” Genevieve paused from her scrubbing. “I turned off the burner. Anyway, it wasn’t the teapot, it was this pan that caught fire. It had grease in it. If you ask me, those Kenmore people are to blame. Planned obsolescence so you’ll have to buy a new stove every five years.”

  Mama dismissed her with a wave and Genevieve turned her attention back to the pan. “Point is, G is a hero. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the basement and saved us all.”

  “Hear that, Bub. I’m a hero.” G pumped his fist. “Now you definitely gotta treat me right. We’re talking me getting the foldout bed. And I got some underwear that needs washing. It hasn’t been washed in weeks.”

  Oh joy, I thought. Dirty G underwear. Except I didn’t remember a pan of grease being on the st
ove before. When I had made the meat-loaf sandwich, the kitchen had been entirely cleaned up. Jane, being a vegetarian, doesn’t cook with grease and G, well, G doesn’t cook.

  “I didn’t use the stove tonight,” I said. “What time did you two ladies get in?”

  Genevieve and Mama exchanged guilty looks. Mama checked her watch. “About two hours ago.”

  The Home Sweet Home kitchen clock said 5:15. “You were out until three?”

  Mama cleared her throat and started rubbing a Brillo pad around the charred burner. “We’re grown women. We can stay out as late as we want. Anyway, we were working.”

  “You go, granny!” G exclaimed.

  Mama turned on him like a lioness on an antelope. “For your information, junior, I am the undisputed billiards champion in the South Side Seniors league, I can lift seventy pounds in sixteen reps and got my sights set on eighty. No one calls me ‘granny.’ No one.”

  G looked humbled. “Sorr-ee.”

  “Ignore him,” I said. “What’s this, we-were-working-until-three-a.m. business?”

  Genevieve pointed to a plastic garbage bag in the corner. “We were looking for Nana Yablonsky’s diary—in the trash.”

  “Cool.” G lifted the bag onto the counter and began sorting through its contents.

  Mama returned to her scrubbing until I snatched the now rusted Brillo pad out of her hands. “Hold on. You’ve been roaming the streets of Slagville searching garbage cans?”

  “Pharmaceutical companies do it all the time, Bubbles,” Genevieve said. “It’s how they discover the research secrets of competing companies. Good old dumpster fishing. Only difference is we don’t get paid fifty-thousand dollars a year with two weeks at the shore. Then again, we aren’t paid by the government not to cure cancer, either.”

  “And besides, they weren’t any old garbage cans,” Mama said. “They were Vilnia’s.”

  “Vilnia, the gossip?”

  “Vilnia the thief is more like it.”

  “Broken comb. Lots of dirty paper napkins. Opened can of Comstock blueberry filling.” G was announcing the bag’s goodies. “An empty box of Pillsbury ready-made piecrust—”

  “Knew it,” Mama said to Genevieve. “Vilnia’s probably the type to do slice-and-bake, too.”

  Genevieve snorted in self-righteous disgust. “Hamburger Helper, I’m betting.”

  “Black bra. Tan in a can. Printer ink cartridges.” G popped his head out of the trash. “No diary.”

  “That’s because I’ve got it right here, G is for genius.” Mama reached into her robe and pulled out a small, weathered black leather diary. She handed it to me and I flipped through the pages. It was all in Polish.

  “How did you know?” I asked, handing her the book.

  “Potato soup. Remember when we were at Vilnia’s? There is only one woman in the world who put mint in potato soup and that was Nana Yablonsky. Once I saw that recipe cooking on Vilnia’s stove, I knew we had our woman. I also knew she’d toss the evidence. Genny and I been through her garbage every day and night since.”

  Genevieve yawned so loud it sounded like a B-47 overhead. “ ’Cept tonight Vilnia was up awful late with guests. She got to bed way after two. We had to wait until everyone was asleep to go through the trash.”

  “Looked like a secret meeting of the Slagville Sirens to me,” Mama said. “I’m telling you, those sirens are up to something. And if I know them, it’s no good.”

  “Man, these old ladies. Sirens. Prowling the neighborhoods until three rustling through other people’s trash,” G said. “Wilder than I ever imagined. You guys should get a website.”

  Roxanne appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a fluffy green robe and an eye mask around her neck. Her hair was a mass of red, rumpled curls.

  “Heavens!” She clamped her hand to her mouth. “So it was a fire. I knew I shouldn’t have taken those batteries out of the smoke alarms. It’s just that I can’t stand those things when they go off. So loud.”

  “It’s okay. I put it out,” G boasted, patting the fire extinguisher, “with this.”

  “Really? One of those cylinders Jane found in the basement tonight?” Roxanne yawned.

  “Jane said she thought it was a fire extinguisher and she was right.”

  “Still say the dang-fool boy could’ve blown the top off the house,” Genevieve said. “Even if it is just CO-two in them cylinders, you can’t mix your chemicals. Fire extinguishers are not a one-size-fits-all kinda deal.”

  My brain was busy taking all this in. Fire extinguisher. Basement. Stinky’s visit to Limbo with his maps and measurements. Interesting. “How many of those tubes are down there?” I asked.

  Roxanne shrugged. “I don’t remember. Dozens. Jane found them after Genevieve’s dowsing rods went crazy over this one spot. I’d tell you to ask Jane, except she’s not here.”

  “Yes, she is. I kissed her goodnight,” I said.

  “She’s not there now. I checked before I came downstairs.”

  “Where could she be?” I was slightly alarmed, given tonight’s events. A missing daughter was not what I needed right now.

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Mrs. Y,” G said, tying up the garbage bag and tossing it back into the corner. “She’s run out with that old geezer Tallow. Something about watching the sun come up through a bunch of rocks.”

  Now I was really alarmed. “She went all the way back to Lehigh?”

  “Nah. Right here,” G said. “Tallow’s got a camp in that Blair Witch place I was at yesterday. What was it called again?”

  “Limbo.” I was stunned. “But why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t she even leave a note?”

  Mama shook her head. “You gotta have a talk with that girl, Bubbles. Forget Limbo. She’s gonna put you through hell.”

  Chapter 19

  I awoke sometime later to a piercing Beep! Beep! Beep! and the smell of rotting grapefruit and spoiled milk.

  “Hey, lady. Move it. You’re blocking the driveway.” A garbage worker in navy overalls was pounding on the windshield, through which I had a full view of the trash-strewn rear end of a waste management truck. McDonald’s wrappers, moldy cucumbers and eggshells galore up close and personal. “I can’t get to the dumpster, lady, if you don’t move.”

  “Okay, okay.” I yawned and wiggled up on the seat. My legs, having been stuffed under the dashboard, felt like they’d been squished in a tuna can and my shoulder, ouch. I tried to rotate it but I feared it was permanently damaged from hugging the stick shift all morning.

  Thank you, G, I thought as I started up the car and parked it down the block. After saving the house from fire, G had demanded the pullout bed in the living room. And since I was afraid that denying Prince Precious any little whim would result in him going back to Lehigh and my daughter being abducted by a cradle snatcher, I agreed to sleep in the Camaro. The front seat made the so-called mattress at the Slagville lockup a heated water bed in comparison.

  I got out and stumbled toward the salon in the freezing gray dawn. It was not until I was halfway up the walk that I remembered I was wearing a thong and a T-shirt that came down an inch past my navel. Oh, what the heck. So I had made some garbageman’s morning. Call it a public service.

  All was quiet inside except for G’s nasal snoring in the living room. I picked up my skirt that I’d tossed on the floor the night before and found a note from Jane. She had left with Professor Tallow and would return later in the morning. To the note she had taped a press release written by Tallow himself.

  The press release invited members of the media to join him at a sunrise gathering Saturday morning around an “historically significant menatol standing stone” (whatever that was) in the so-called Dead Zone. Tallow wrote that his goal was to have the entire zone declared a historical site before a casino could be built there. After the sunrise gathering, the press was encouraged to return with him to Tallow’s Limbo cabin where they could view—and photograph—other Celtic artifacts he had gathe
red from the area.

  “Isn’t he amazing!” Jane wrote in loopy cursive right below the directions to Tallow’s cabin. “Maybe you should do a story on him.”

  Right. Considering every reporter in a fifty-mile radius had been up past midnight covering Hugh McMullen’s suicide, I doubted Tallow was going to get much of a turnout. I should go, though, I thought, looking out the window. Darn. The sun was already up.

  So was Stiletto—hopping out of his spanking new black Jeep. He was carrying a pair of running shoes and what appeared to be blue spandex bike shorts and a jogging bra. Boy, I sincerely hoped those weren’t for me. I don’t do running. It’s against my religion.

  “Hi,” he said when I opened the door. “How about breakfast?” Stiletto was wearing a gray T-shirt and black shorts composed of a filmy, athletic nylon that hung—and that is the operative word here—well from his hips.

  “My, oh my,” I said, trying to maintain eye contact at a ladylike level. “What do those have to do with breakfast?” I pointed to the athletic wear.

  “Breakfast is going to be at Lou’s Eggs.” Stiletto stepped in and closed the door gently behind him. He held up the clothes. “These are what you’re going to wear and,” he held up the Nikes, “these are going to get you there. Three miles away. Piece of cake.”

  “Piece of cake, my ass!” I exclaimed, forgetting about G and the rest of the snoozing household. “I can’t wear arch-supported rubber-based footwear.”

  Stiletto tossed me the running gear. “Unlike cake, running does your ass wonders. Reduces the stress of being a reporter and it keeps you on your toes, so I don’t have to worry about whether you can out distance creeps like Zeke Allen.”

  “Zeke Allen is a creep? He seemed so goody-two-shoes.”

  “We’ll discuss it over coffee.” He threw me the shoes. “C’mon, I want to beat the crowd.”

  “But I . . . my toes . . . all those years of high-heeled shoes.”

  “Bubbles. Excuses aren’t going to get you anywhere but prematurely dead.”

  Ten minutes later there I was, Bubbles Yablonsky, she of “get the closest parking space to the mall and drive the car around the block for a quart of milk,” on the sidewalk in her dazzling running gear. I ran my hands over my smooth and silky tight blue hips.