“Last night,” she says as she starts walking again, this time at a slower pace, “Mom told Paluchek she thinks they should slow things down — that maybe a fall wedding isn’t such a good idea.”
“What did he say?”
“He wasn’t happy.”
“No, exactly what did he say? And her, too.”
“She said she thinks their plans aren’t sitting too well with us,” Connie says, a note of triumph in her voice. “Paluchek says she should think of herself, but she says she can’t stop being a mother, no matter how old we are.”
I can’t believe Connie feels so good about this. Can’t she see what this means? Our mom is putting her happiness on hold because of her two grown (or, in my case, nearly grown) daughters. Doesn’t that cause Connie even a twinge of unease? I mention this to her, but she just shakes her head.
“Doesn’t matter why, Bianca. She doesn’t know what we know about Paluchek. We’re saving her from a bad future. If it means she’ll hate us for a while, so be it. She’s our mother. It’s a sacrifice we have to make.” So Connie has somehow turned our meddling into a noble cause, worth the pain it will cause us all because it’s important to save Mom from a dreadful fate. I stick to her like glue on fingers after a craft project. She’s going too far with this. I feel as if I’m trying to stop an out-of-control train with nothing but a fence post.
“I’m not so sure we should save her from anything,” I say as we near Connie’s office. “I mean, it’s her life. She should be free to make her own mistakes.”
Connie pulls out her keys and unlocks her office door. “I can’t believe you’re saying that. You’d be willing to let our mother walk right into catastrophe? What if the guy is a killer, Bianca? If we don’t try to stop her, we’d be endangering her life.” She sounds convinced as she saunters over to her desk/table, sits down, and whips out her cell phone.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
Before punching in a number, she looks over at me. “I think I found Gregory Holdene.”
It took her a while to mine this new nugget, she explains after retrieving a voicemail. She used every connection she had at the department. She had Kurt use his as well. Nobody was talking.
I’m just glad she hasn’t used those same connections to discover what I know.
“It was as if he dropped off the edge of the earth,” she says, holding the phone between her knees. “I started thinking Witness Protection and geez, that’s always a tough nut to break. Nobody talks about those cases.”
“So how’d you break it?” I’m leaning on her desk, arms crossed over my chest. I’m mentally kicking myself for not using Brenda to find Holdene. Then again, if the guy’s in Witness Protection, Brenda’s mom probably wouldn’t have had access to those files, let alone the willingness to share the intel with me.
Connie leans back and smiles. “He wasn’t in Witness Protection— at least nothing the cops put him in.”
“What do you mean?”
“He changed his name. Moved to Arizona. Got lost.”
Changed his name. Like Gardenia. Is this a new trend — the tattoo of the early 21st century? Something I should consider? I’ve always liked the name Beatrice. It seems so regal.
“His name is Gregory Hill now,” Connie says. “Smart choice if you’re running from something. Very nondescript.”
“What’s he running from?”
“That I don’t know. Yet.” She punches in the phone number again and even I can hear the robotic automatic voicemail message. She snaps off.
“So how’d you find him?”
“He might have wanted to get lost, but I figured he’d want to claim any money owed him. He left the force on disability. Some back problem or something. Gets a check every month. I tracked him down through some clerk.”
I don’t probe how she did this. I imagine it involved pretending she was someone she isn’t and using the guy’s Social Security number, which she shouldn’t have.
She punches the redial button and the numbers boing up and down the scale. Then the phone rings — the dude’s off the phone now. No voicemail kicks in on the second ring. Connie sits up straight. I hold my breath. After five rings, a gruff male voice comes on the line.
“Mr. Holdene? My name is Connie Balducci and …” And my sister, the primo private investigator, goes after this fellow with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
I can’t get mad at her, though. She’s so ripped up inside about Dad’s death that she’s willing to throw her heart before any Joe who might have some crumb of information about him, who will help fill out the picture she’s kept wrapped in tissue paper in the treasure-trove part of her memory. She’s so concerned about her own plight, she figures others will be, too. She listens as the voice squawks out something. My palms itch from nervousness. My neck bristles. What if Holdene cracks that perfect picture of Dad?
“Maybe I should talk to him …” I say, holding out my hand for the phone. But the diversion’s not necessary. Connie’s flipping the phone shut, her face stiff with deflated hopes.
“He hung up on me.”
I’m relieved the guy didn’t give up anything on Dad, but a hang-up stings like a slap in the face.
“We can try again later,” I say — as in, I can try again later when Connie’s not around.
The next morning, Connie’s on take-Bianca-to-school duty. After we get in the car, I ask if I can assume the wheel.
“I never get to drive!” I protest.
“Drive Mom’s car.”
“C’mon, Con. She told you to let me drive in sometimes.” This pushes the right buttons. As much as Connie wants to break up Mom’s romance, I know she’s probably feeling a teensy bit guilty about sending Mom into the dumps.
Connie sighs heavily and gets out of the car. I exit as well and we exchange places. Just as I ease the car out of the parking spot, I exclaim, “Crap. I forgot my English book.” Which is true. Only I don’t need it today.
Connie gives me a hard stare. Translation: You’re going to make me go get it, aren’t you?
“I can’t leave the car standing here in the road,” I say.
She growls, asks me where it is, and scampers into the house to fetch it. Meanwhile, I grab her purse and pull out her cell phone. With trembling fingers, I punch in the number for her call history. There it is, right before a call to Kurt. Hmm … wonder what she called him for. Just as I hear the front door slam, I memorize Holdene’s number and slip Connie’s cell back into her purse. She mutters a curse or two as she throws my three-ton English tome into the backseat.
“Hi-ho, Silver,” she says in a deadpan voice. To confirm her poor opinion of my driving, I lurch away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MY PLAN IS simple. Wait until the afternoon, call Holdene, find out what he knows, and then …
And then my mind kind of drifts off, onto a blank page. I guess I’m hoping Holdene knows only a discrete amount of information that doesn’t tell us anything bad about Dad, but satisfies Connie’s lust for the lowdown about that fateful night. Heck, I’m lusting for the info, too. I just don’t want it to bite us. I want to be able to get Connie off the trail and wrap this up. Even if Holdene gives us little more than we already know, I’m now prepared to embellish it with enough what-ifs and has-to-be’s that Connie will be satisfied. I’m tired of walking the long pier to a sea of trouble and I’ll soon wrest the controls away and set us on the course for Happy Land.
The problem with this plan, though, is it involves waiting. And I’m not good at waiting. So I spend a distracted day saying “What?” to repeated questions from teachers and friends, and endorsing the idea of going on an after-school shopping spree with Kerrie.
You heard that right. During a vulnerable moment after lunch, I get suckered into moving up our mall crawl from the weekend to this afternoon. I’m sitting at the table with Brenda, Kerrie, Kerrie’s soccer teammate Jen, and Brian. Yes, Brian. We don’t normally share a lunch period, but he was in
the caf early, he explains, because he’s using his regular lunch time to help set up the school science fair.
Having Brian at the table makes me simultaneously happy and uneasy. Happy because I like him. Uneasy because … well, I like him. And I just strung him along about going to the prom, as my sister could recount in excruciating detail thanks to her wiretapping excesses.
So when Brian asks what I’m doing after school and Kerrie jumps in and says, “She’s going shopping with me!” with a wink in my direction (translation: I’m saving you from an awkward rendezvous for which you are not yet ready), I nod with the enthusiasm of a Golden Retriever asked if he wants a gravy-dipped doggie biscuit.
But the shopping extravaganza doesn’t turn out too badly. As I sit in Kerrie’s SUV later that day, I realize that calling Holdene from Kerrie’s cell phone provides the perfect cover.
“Your number and name will appear on the dude’s caller ID,” I explain to her as she takes off for Towson Town Center. “And I’ll pretend I work for your father.”
“What if the guy doesn’t have Caller ID?”
“Everybody has Caller ID,” I say. Geez, even the Balduccis have Caller ID, and we still use dial-up for internet service. “Look, he’s skittish,” I continue. “He hung up on Connie. He might not hang up on me if I pretend to be working for a lawyer who can help him — with his disability check or something.”
She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds as she navigates a difficult left turn. After she’s in the clear, she nods toward her purse on the floor.
“My cell’s in there,” she says. “Phone away.”
I pull the phone out of her bag, thinking this shopping trip is a small price to pay for the goods I might be able to get on Holdene. After taking a deep breath, I punch in the number.
“Be quiet now,” I whisper to Kerrie, flipping off the CD player.
“Maybe I should make noises like we’re in an office,” she offers. Then, in a high-pitched voice, she says, “Mr. Daniels, did you want these typed by tomorrow morning or this afternoon?,” along with other office gibberish that makes me realize Kerrie is the perfect choice for drama club president.
While she’s doing her Secretary-of-the-Year routine, I hear Holdene’s phone ring and ring. And then, on comes the voicemail. I’m prepared for this. In the soothing tones of someone who works in a plush, carpeted office, I coo, “Mr. Hill, this is Beatrice King from the firm of Daniels, Smythe, and Jordan. I have an urgent matter to discuss related to your disability claim.” And I leave Kerrie’s cell number.
“What if he calls back?” Kerrie asks.
“Then I’ll take the call.”
“But what if you’re not around?” she laughs. “Tell me what you want to know. I’ll talk to him. I’ll ask him!”
So I give her a list of questions and how I plan to lead into them through his disability.
“I figured I’d say the department had outsourced some of its legal matters and I need to call to verify his address because we need to send him some materials related to a new law that requires a doctor’s visit every six months or something …”
“Sounds like a good law,” Kerrie says.
“It’s not real — so far as I know.” We near the mall and Kerrie pulls into the parking lot. “Then I was going to pretend that his back injury was related to working on something with my dad. And then I was going to move from that to questions about Dad’s death, and see what I could pull out of him.”
“That sounds tricky,” Kerrie says in a thoughtful voice. “But I think I can do it.” She turns and smiles at me. “If I have to, that is.”
Neither of us has to — talk to Holdene, that is — at least during the hour and a half of our shopping excursion. Kerrie’s such a power shopper, in fact, that I almost forget about the Holdene call. Let me amend that. Kerrie’s not a power shopper — she’s a Nuclear Power Shopper. She goes through stores as if she’s on a mission to destroy communism, snatching up luxurious examples of capitalistic materialism with something bordering on ferocity. She buys herself a new purse, a couple of blouses, a skirt, and two pairs of shoes. In the shoe store, she pulls a very clever maneuver — she buys me a pair. It’s a buy-one-get-one-free sale, and as we sit there trying on three-inch high retro pumps and bejeweled ballet slippers, I make up a haiku:
Buy one, get one free.
Capitalist pig I am.
I cannot resist.
Kerrie insists on treating me to a pair of black and white heels that look like something from a Marilyn Monroe movie. And I let her do it, figuring they’re free.
Big mistake. Little do I know that this shoe expedition is merely a prelude to …
[Insert screeching Psycho music here!] The Bra.
That’s right. She leads me through the Valley of Victoria’s Secret, through perfumed air and pink and red fluffiness, feathers and satin and lace, and she suggests — nay, insists — I “give one a try” because she’s doing the same. She even picks out several for me in purple, black, and fleshtone.
I dutifully tromp off to the fitting room and squeeze my boobs into these contraptions and am shocked to see that they not only improve my figure, they give me cleavage.
And here I suffer a Great Disillusionment.
Yes, my life as a small-chested peanut is over. However, if I can effect this change, so can others. The many well-proportioned girls I see roaming the halls of St. John’s and elsewhere are perpetrating a great fraud. They are nothing more than Walking Wonderbra Construction Sites. Their tees and sweaters aren’t covering pillowy breasts fit for a Venetian painting. Instead, they’re hiding layers of batting and wiring designed to flatter and uplift. (Is there an engineering major in bra construction? Perhaps there is. I imagine the laboratory. It is a happy place.)
It doesn’t matter. I’m not buying one of these things, for one simple reason — I can’t afford it.
But when I tell Kerrie this bit of news, she smiles mischievously and points to the sign above the bra rack. “BOGO.”
“And I’m buying two,” she announces in a voice that will brook no protest, “so that means you can get two, too.”
I try to point out that if she buys only for herself, she’ll get one gratis, but this has the same effect as nonalcoholic beer on a wino. It just irritates her.
“I was going to pay the full amount,” she says. “I’d budgeted for it.” Kerrie with a budget? Can we all say “har-de-har-har” together now? “And I don’t need four new bras, so it’s a waste if you don’t get them.”
A waste. Yes, as we speak, there are girls in third-world countries suffering from lack of bosom-enhancing bras. How can I not take advantage of Kerrie’s generosity?
I have to admit I don’t put up much resistance. I’m starting to think how nice my yet-to-be purchased prom dress will look with one of these modern-day corsets underneath. But thoughts of the prom make me think of my whole Brian/Doug conundrum, so Kerrie and I examine this issue in great detail as we dine at the Food Court on some fries, a smoothie, and a cookie. Kerrie takes various sides in this discussion. She starts out dumping on Doug big-time, then lightens up and suggests I give him a second chance. But in a u-turn, she tells me he doesn’t deserve that chance. Finally, she says that maybe I could just explain it all to Brian and … on and on it goes. I add my fair share to this to-and-fro and am so confused at the end of twenty minutes that I have to leave or I’ll burst.
Literally. I have to pee.
“I’m going to the ladies’ room. Be right back,” I say. In the ladies’ room, I’m tempted to change into one of my bras, but I decide to keep them fresh for tomorrow, when I plan to dazzle everyone with my perky new bosom. Grabbing my bag and purse, I head back to the noisy Food Court, where I see Kerrie finishing up a phone call. When I reach our table, she smiles.
“That was Gregory Holdene,” she announces.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MAYBE IT’S A good thing Kerrie took that call. As much as I’d planned what
to say, I would have been a nervous loon given the stakes I have in this case, especially in the Food Court with all the ambient noise. But Kerrie’s a peach. She’s not only Wonder Woman, the superhuman shopper, but she’s also a fantastic actress, having bamboozled Holdene into believing she was a secretary for her father’s firm. She tells me all this as we skedaddle out of the mall to get home in time for her family’s once-a-week-all-sit-down-together-for-dinner dinner.
“How’d you explain all the mall noise?” I ask as she scoots behind the wheel of her SUV and starts the engine.
“I told him we were having a meeting of plaintiffs in a huge class action suit so things were kind of noisy.” She chuckles. “He bought it. Even asked me what the suit was about.”
I am in awe. Maybe these wonderbras do come with extras— extra intelligence and mental acuity. Perhaps wearing one to AP Physics will have a beneficial effect … “What did you say?”
“I said it was related to asbestos.” She shrugs. “Anyway, I told him we were taking over some of the city’s legal stuff …”
From the sound of it, she really hooked him, getting him to give her the full story on his disability — something to do with slipping on some ice while on patrol — and things were so friendly and good-natured that mentioning my dad and Paluchek turned out to be a breeze.
“Yeah, I told him I had an uncle who used to be on the force and the only guys he talked about were Paluchek and Balducci,” Kerrie says. She says it in a real gum-snapping, “hon”-gabbing Baltimore accent, too. She’s a veritable East Bal’mer Sarah Bernhardt, I tell ya. I half expect her to break into “Good Morning, Baltimore” like Nikki Blonsky in Hairspray. “And I made up some story about Paluchek being a real jerk about stuff and how he got my uncle in trouble once and how I always wondered if he didn’t have something to do with that Balducci tragedy.”
“And then …” I’m sitting on the edge of my seat, at least as far as the seat belt will let me go.
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