Scareplane

by Elise Sax

  So, that was the reason Mike kept making rude comments about Frank’s wife. That made two more suspects.

  “What about Detective Terri Williams?” I asked Leah. “She wanted him dead, too, right?”

  “I don’t know about her. I just met her. But what I’m saying is that Joyce is full of shit. She’s bullshitting you and everyone else involved. You understand?”

  I nodded. Joyce came out of the bathroom, and Leah walked out of the alcove, back into the dining area, as if she had never said a word to me. Joyce threw me an annoyed look as she passed me. Then, Spencer came into the alcove. It was the busiest place in the restaurant.

  “What are you up to, Pinky?”

  “About five-foot-seven.”

  “Pinky.”

  “I’m going to pee.”

  “What were you talking to Leah about?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Did you know that Mike Chantage beat up Leah’s nephew and slept with Frank’s wife?”

  “Yes,” Spencer said, matter-of-factly.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Yes, I knew, Pinky. I’m the chief of police. And I’m not a moron.”

  “Oh.” Spencer had been two steps ahead of me since Mike was murdered. For the first time, I felt that he was right about me butting in. I wasn’t helping the investigation at all. He was ahead of me at every turn.

  “Help! My wee wee is caught on the urinal!”

  “Did you hear that?” Spencer asked me.

  “Help! Oh my God! It’s caught! It’s caught!”

  It was Larry, screaming bloody murder from the men’s room.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” I said.

  “Pinky, that’s your match. He’s calling for you.”

  “You’re the cop, and it’s obviously an emergency,” I said. “And it’s the men’s room. So, you go in and see about Larry’s wee wee. I don’t need to see his wee wee.”

  “I can’t get it loose!” Larry cried from the bathroom. “Why am I cursed? Why? Why? I’ll never use Twitter again!”

  Spencer locked eyes with me and arched an eyebrow. He wasn’t going to move. He wasn’t going to check Larry’s wee wee. We were deadlocked.

  “You’re going to let your girlfriend see another man’s wee wee?” I asked him.

  “Normally, I would be upset about that, but in this case, I’m thinking I don’t have to worry. Let me know if we have to call the paramedics.”

  Spencer pushed open the door to the men’s room and signaled to me to enter while he stayed on the outside. I closed my eyes and walked in.

  “I’m here, Larry. What’s wrong?”

  “I flushed the urinal, and oh my God!”

  I wasn’t an expert on urinals. I knew men stood at them, peed, and flushed. That was about it. Yes, I had cleaned my share of toilets in my life, but I was a women’s room toilet person and never crossed over to the other side.

  The reason was that the other side had pee on the toilet seats, no matter how many urinals there were. And here was my secret, my pet peeve, my straw that broke my back: I couldn’t stand pee on a toilet seat. It grossed me out. It made me gag. In my life of tripping over dead bodies and trucks full of snakes falling on my head, pee on a toilet seat might not have seemed to be a big deal, but for some reason, it was. It really, really was.

  Luckily, Spencer had amazing peeing control and hadn’t dripped a drop on my toilet seat. He must have had an ironclad prostate. A weather-proofed bladder. A penis superpower.

  Spencer was obviously in the minority where men were concerned. Walking into the Bar None’s men’s room was proof that men were pigs with no control over their wee wees. There was pee everywhere. Urine covered every surface.

  The smell was unbearable. I gagged and covered my nose with my hand.

  The urinals were a modern version, weird contraptions with a complex, ornate flusher. The contraption had contrapted Larry, and he was hunched over it.

  “Are you sure you can’t get free?” I asked, not wanting to look too closely.

  “I knew chili cheese fries would be dangerous,” he moaned. “I’m never going to be able to have children now. You’ll never be able to match me.”

  “Now, now,” I said because I had no idea what else to say. He was right. He would be a hard sale if his wee wee was permanently caught in a urinal or worse.

  “Come on, lady,” Larry yelled. “I’m not a genius, but even I know that this is a non-starter for women.”

  “Now, now,” I said, again. Boy, matchmaking sucked. It was a lot harder than people thought.

  Larry’s head flopped around in despair. “I’m stuck forever! I’m stuck forever!”

  Poor bastard. Nobody deserved to be cursed, and Larry was a nice guy. He deserved to have a free wee wee. In fact, if miraculously he got out of this situation intact, I would bet dollars to donuts that he would go commando from now on.

  I couldn’t let my match suffer any longer. I had to help him. “I’m coming in!” I announced. I opened my eyes wide and inspected the damage. “Holy hell!” I shouted. “How did you do this to yourself?”

  “Is it bad?” Larry asked, his voice quivering. “It’s not that bad, right? I mean, you’ve seen worse, right?”

  It was horrible. It was a nightmare. I would need therapy for the rest of my life. It was like a Hanoi Hilton / Stephen King combo. The producers of the Saw movies would take a look at it and say it was too gruesome for them.

  It was bad.

  “It’s not too bad,” I said. “We’ll get you out of this, pronto.”

  I had bad spatial skills and was the world’s worst with puzzles, so I couldn’t figure out how to get Larry free. I worried that I was going to have to go old school in order to get him out of his predicament.

  I was going to have to get hands on, in order to get Larry free.

  “Larry, don’t take this personally,” I said. I took a deep breath and thought of England. I leaned over him and got into position. Then, I cupped his balls with one hand and fiddled his wee wee with my other hand.

  That’s when Spencer walked in.

  “Okay, Pinky. I was just joking. Just paying you back for getting in my business in front of the others. I’ll handle this.” He froze in place and his eyes were fixed on my hands, which were giving Larry full on third base action.

  “Are you cupping that man’s balls?” Spencer asked.

  “This is totally your fault,” I said. “You said you didn’t care.”

  “I didn’t care about you seeing his balls, not cupping his balls.”

  “Balls,” Larry moaned in a happy moaning way and magically, his wee wee came loose and he fell backward into Spencer’s waiting arms.

  “Pinky, we never speak of this again,” Spencer said, holding Larry in his arms. Larry’s lower half was naked, his nude buttocks leaning against Spencer’s pants front, and somehow, my hand was still cupping his balls. “Never. Do you hear me, Pinky? Never.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Maybe you should just give up. Let it go. You have a full life, plenty of other things to do. Easier things. These are all thoughts you will have from time to time, dolly. It’s not a shanda to have them. Not a shame. They’re normal thoughts. Who wants difficult when easy is so much easier? We grow up watching Cinderella sing, and we think that love is easy. How could it not be easy? It feels good. It makes you sing. But love is a bitch, bubbeleh. It’s harder than calculus or those acrobat shows in Vegas. As hard as love is, matchmaking love matches is harder. It’s not for wimps. So, if you’re a matchmaker, keep going. Never give up. Once you’re on the scent, don’t quit. Follow it to the end. The happy ending.

  Lesson 35, Matchmaking advice from your

  Grandma Zelda

  Larry was fine, but he would probably never pee in a urinal again. After washing my hands for fifteen minutes and getting the rest of our chili cheese fries to go, Larry and I left. The trip to Bar None had been a total wash. I hadn’t gotten any information on daffodils, and all I
learned was that Mike was a sadistic adulterer and nobody liked him.

  Fingers were pointing at Joyce Strauss, the skinny know-it-all who was defending Mike as a stand-up guy for some reason. But there was still the missing Cynthia, and I was hoping that Detective Stunning Nasty Ass was the real culprit.

  Spencer packed up his top cops in his white van, but he waited to make sure that Larry and I were clear of Bar None before he drove off.

  “Where are we going?” Larry asked, smiling at me. He had been doing a lot of smiling at me since the urinal incident.

  “We need to regroup,” I said. “Get back to home base and work on strategy.”

  My mojo was majorly screwed up. I was two steps behind Spencer in the investigation, I had lost one match, and I had cupped my other match’s balls. I needed some sanctuary time.

  I drove home and parked in the driveway. Grandma opened the front door before we got to it. “I’ve got fried chicken and mashed potatoes ready on the table,” she told me. “Welcome, Larry. I put safety plugs in all of the outlets.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

  I put the box of fries on the table, and Grandma and I dug in. Larry didn’t eat because the chicken had bones, and that put the fear of God in him.

  “I think my mojo is gone, Grandma,” I said. “I’m getting nowhere. Spencer hasn’t even called me Miss Marple. He’s got a team of top cops, and they’re leaps and bounds ahead of me.”

  “Are they?”

  “Yes. Aren’t they?” Grandma had a way of knowing things that couldn’t be known, but she was crap at murder.

  “I’m getting something,” she said, like she was listening for alien contact over the radio. “I think you should get back to your matchmaking and everything else will fall into place.”

  “Nice try,” I said.

  “Love is everything,” she said. And that was that. Love was everything to Grandma. I didn’t think love would help in a murder investigation, but she would never accept that belief, so I kept it to myself.

  Since I was at a standstill in my busybody activities, I decided to call it a day. Besides, I didn’t know where Cynthia was and tomorrow was goat lady day. It was wiser to keep Larry in one place where he couldn’t get in too much trouble. Grandma put him in the sun room because it had the least amount of furniture and a battery-powered television that wasn’t connected to the grid. The second his head hit the pillow on the day bed, he was fast asleep and snoring softly.

  With Larry taken care of, I took a shower and slipped into my bed. I turned on the television. A Miss Marple episode was playing, as if it was trying to shame me. In the show, Miss Marple was solving a complex murder while knitting a cardigan. There was no ball cupping for Miss Marple. No snakes. No being outwitted by the local cops. In fact, she was the outwitter. Always.

  I flipped the channel to a Saved by the Bell rerun, which was more on my intellectual level these days. Spencer came into the room during the second rerun. Without saying a word, he took off his jacket, draped it over a chair, and loosened his tie. He stripped down to his birthday suit and got into bed next me, slipping his arm under my neck and pulling me in close to his side.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking about for the past two hours?” he asked but didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve been wondering how I could get off if I murdered four top cops. I don’t know why whoever killed Mike didn’t kill the rest of them. Not a worthwhile lump of flesh in the bunch.”

  “Leah’s kind of nice,” I said.

  “Sanctimonious sack of shit,” he corrected. “Everybody’s fighting with everyone else, so now they’ve broken up and gone their own ways. The conference is over, and I have four egomaniac cops in my jurisdiction for thirty-six more hours running wild like animals, all with their own theories about Mike’s murder.”

  “Any theories you want to share with me?” I asked.

  “Funny one, Pinky. You’re off the case, and so am I. Terri’s in charge of this investigation, and I’ll let the four musketeers play around and leave none the wiser in a couple days. Okay?”

  I didn’t answer. It dawned on me that taking on the four musketeers would be easier now that they had split up and gone their own ways. That would be number two on my list for tomorrow. First up would be finding Cynthia.

  “What are we watching?” Spencer asked, taking the remote control from me. “Family Guy’s on now, you know.”

  Larry had gotten through the night and breakfast without mishap. We waited for Spencer to leave for work before we snuck out to find Cynthia. This time, we found her at home, and she wasn’t alone. Sidney Martin was with her, and they were both glowing. Somehow, they had found each other again, and obviously sealed the deal.

  “Gladie, you’re the best matchmaker on the planet,” Cynthia gushed when she greeted me. She let Larry and me in, and we all sat together in the kitchen nook, where she served us coffee and cherry Danish. She put her hand on Sidney’s, and they gazed into each other’s eyes. “We’re getting married,” she said.

  “Next week, and then we’re going on a cruise,” Sidney added. “I’m retiring. I already sent my letter to headquarters.”

  “Cruises are fine if you’re not cursed,” Larry said.

  “Huh?” Sidney asked.

  It was quick. Very quick. They met and within twenty-four hours decided to get married, and Sidney decided to retire. The timing sent all of my red flags waving.

  I took a bite of my cherry Danish, as if I wasn’t at all surprised about the wedding. “This is great news. I’m so happy for you, Cynthia.” I chowed down on the Danish while I tried to figure out how to segue into the murder and why Cynthia ran out of the conference. No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t figure out a natural transition from weddings and retirement to a discussion on motives and poison.

  There was a loud knock on the front door, shaking me out of my thoughts. The knocking evolved into pounding. “What the devil?” Cynthia asked. She went to the front door and opened it.

  “Cynthia Andre, you can’t hide from me.”

  I knew the voice. It was the cold-hearted Detective Legs and Boobs. Drat.

  “What do you mean?” I heard Cynthia say. “This is my house. I’m not hiding.”

  “You better talk to me. You understand?”

  “I guess so?” Cynthia said like a question.

  I heard the door close, and then they walked into the kitchen. Detective Hotsy Totsy’s expression was priceless when she saw me. Gobsmacked. Thunderstruck. Flabbergasted.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded. I took another bite of the Danish, and Cynthia answered for me.

  “Gladie was here to wish us well. She fixed us up.”

  Detective Fancy Pants looked from Cynthia to Sidney and back again. I could almost hear the cogs in her brain move, as she tried to take it all in. Her suspect and a witness—who could also be a suspect. Who knew? – were together, happy as clams, the day after a man was murdered. She was practically drooling.

  I washed down the rest of my Danish with the coffee. One of the best parts of matchmaking was the food. “Ms. Burger, would you excuse us while I question Cynthia?” Detective Hot Bossy asked, but it didn’t sound like a question.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll clear the table with Sidney.” I gave Sidney some elaborate signals with my eyes, and he caught on. We cleared the table, while Detective Hardass Hottie and Cynthia went into the living room to discuss the murder. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall, but at least this way, I had Sidney to myself.

  “Quick,” I whispered to him. “Tell me everything. Where was Cynthia? Why did she run out of the room? Why did you hate Mike?”

  Sidney’s mouth popped open. “I didn’t hate Mike,” he said. I put my hands on my hips and arched an eyebrow. “Okay. Okay. Of course, I hated Mike. Everyone did. He was a monster. He called Internal Affairs on me and said I was corrupt. It took me months to clear my name.”

  “That’s bad,” I said.


  “No kidding. He was a bastard. But that’s not the worst thing I heard about him.”

  Deflection. That’s what it sounded like to me. He might have had motive but not as much as someone else.

  “And Cynthia?” I asked.

  “Her stomach was upset. That’s why she ran out. She doesn’t like chicken.”

  Didn’t like chicken? How was that possible? I loved chicken. I wanted some chicken right that second. I would have eaten a chicken Danish. I didn’t believe Sidney’s excuse, and as a top cop, I couldn’t believe that he believed it, unless he was lying to protect her. Cynthia’s discomfort at the lunch was not about chicken aversion. It was something else. Something bigger. And there was the pesky fact of her bumping into Mike right before he died.

  I wanted to grill Cynthia, but she was cornered in the living room, and I had promised to get Larry to his goat ritual.

  “Will you tell Cynthia goodbye for me?” I asked Sidney.

  “Sure thing, and she put this aside for you.”

  He handed me an envelope. A check for my services, I assumed. I put it in my purse and thanked him.

  Larry and I got back in my car. “I don’t get it,” he said. “You’re a matchmaker, but you talk an awful lot about murder. Is that normal?”

  “I’m a multi-tasker.”

  “I think that pretty detective did it. She’s an angry person.”

  I slapped the steering wheel. “Yes! Thank you! That woman has an attitude. She could have definitely murdered him.”

  “I hope no one will murder me,” Larry said, staring out the window. “I don’t know how far this curse goes.”

  “We’re heading over to the goat lady, now, Larry. Then, you can get on with your life, and I’m going to find you love, too. Don’t forget that.”

  “That might be nice,” he said, wistfully. “Those two seemed happy. I’ve never been on a cruise. I’ve always wanted to go to Puerto Vallarta.”

  I had never been on a cruise, either. Spencer and I were going on our first vacation together, and I was nervous about it. What if it changed things between us?