Scareplane

by Elise Sax

  “What’s happening?” Lucy whispered.

  “We’re going to be arrested. I’ll probably get the needle. Is the death penalty still legal in California? Who am I kidding? She’ll probably shoot me, herself. It’s Spencer’s new detective, and she hates me. She’s going to shoot me. She’s going to beat me to death. Tase me to death. All kinds of things that wind up in death. My death, Lucy. My death.”

  Lucy handed me my Diet Coke. “Drink,” she ordered. “You’re getting splotchy and sweaty.”

  I gulped it down, but I didn’t feel better. The knocking and yelling on the other side of the door was continuing and getting louder. I grabbed a handful of Lucy’s dress.

  “We have to get out of here,” I whispered. “She’ll arrest me.”

  “Maybe we can talk our way out of trouble.”

  “Breaking and entering and eating ham under false circumstances,” I counted on my fingers. “I’m not a lawyer, but I know that amounts to at least ten years. I’ve already worn an orange jumpsuit, Lucy, and I don’t look good in it.”

  Lucy blinked. “Orange isn’t my color, Gladie.”

  “Grab your purse.”

  We tiptoed through the house and made it into Cynthia’s bedroom just as the front door was busted open.

  “Is she allowed to do that?” Lucy whispered to me.

  “Come on,” I urged her. As quietly as I could, I opened the window, praying that Detective Boobs Bitch took her time with the rest of the house before she made her way to the bedroom.

  I laced my fingers together and crouched down. “Come on,” I whispered. “I’ll hike you through.”

  “You’ll what?”

  “Come on. Hurry.”

  Lucy took her heels off and tossed them through the window. She put one of her perfectly pedicured feet on my hands and put her hands on the windowsill, and I heaved ho my friend. She sailed through the window, and I heard her hit the other side with an oomph. I peeked through the window to see Lucy roll off the hedges and onto the ground. She stood and gave me the OK signal. It was my turn, but I didn’t have anyone to heave ho me. I looked around for a chair, but Cynthia didn’t have chairs in her room.

  That’s when I heard Detective Doom Va Va Voom coming down the hallway. I had to think quickly.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking quickly. In fact, I wasn’t thinking at all. But I was panicking like a champ. I spun around in a circle, hoping something would come to me, but I was blinded by images of me behind bars. She was coming closer, and I was standing in plain sight, easy to be shackled and thrown into a dungeon.

  Just as she was about to enter the room, I ducked under the bed. Yes, it was a stupid thing to do. Yes, hiding under the bed was the number one cliché in hiding. The first place she would look was under the bed. I was sure that she was going to find me. I prepared myself for my eventual incarceration: Bad lighting. Pooping in front of others. Being the sweet honey of a woman named Brad. I didn’t want any of those things. Especially the bad lighting. I had a yellow undertone to my skin, and fluorescents made me look jaundiced. I didn’t know what jaundiced meant, but I knew it was bad and very unattractive, and that would piss Brad off, and… Oh, crap. Pre-incarceration was driving me crazy. I was one dust bunny away from losing my marbles.

  And there were a lot of dust bunnies under Cynthia’s bed. She had a lot left to be desired in the domestic goddess arena.

  “Cynthia, you bitch,” I heard Detective Nasty Britches say. I watched her shoes, as she walked to the closet. “You took a powder. You hit the road. Well, you can run, but you can’t hide. I’ll track you down if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Wow, there was very little difference between her and a 1980s-adventure movie script.

  She sat down on the bed, and it sagged into my back. I held back a moan of pain, as all of the air was squeezed out of my lungs. For a woman with six-percent body fat-- except for her plentiful, perfect breasts-- she sure weighed a lot.

  “I’m tired of this pissant town,” Detective Adorbs Asshole grumbled. “Bunch of moronic, ingrate incompetents. First that idiot Burger woman who can’t stop herself from butting in like an old lady at a bridge tournament, then a bunch of rotten, so-called top cops getting murdered. And now this. This. This, this, this, middle-aged nobody getting one up on me.”

  She stood up and kicked the bed. Then, she systematically went bonkers through the room, ripping apart every piece of furniture. She pulled out the drawers and tossed them across the room. She flung off the lamp shades. She cut open the mattress with a knife. She looked everywhere except for under the bed.

  Go figure.

  She screeched some more, mainly cursing “The Burger Woman”, which I thought was totally unfair because I had barely butted into her investigation, if she didn’t count me breaking and entering and hiding under the bed.

  I wished she would hurry up with her rampage because my boobs were getting mushed in a very uncomfortable way. I also had already snorted more than my share of dust bunnies, and I was fairly certain that a spider was crawling up my shirt.

  It was all I could do not to scream. If Detective Hotsy Bitchy didn’t hurry up, I was going to have to escape from under the bed and try to talk my way out of this mess, even though I didn’t think that was possible. She was out for blood. My blood.

  Finally, she moved on to the next room. I could hear her turning Cynthia’s house into a shambles. She was going at it with a vengeance, all the time talking to herself. It was now or never. Time to escape. While she was in the kitchen tossing plates as if it was a Greek wedding, I decided to get out of there. I was going to use every athletic fiber of my being to climb out the window, meet up with Lucy, and speed away in her luxury automobile before we were caught and dragged off to our doom.

  I made my move, but I couldn’t move. There was no moving at all. I tried to get my hands underneath me, but the only underneath me there was rust-colored shag carpet from 1966. I tried to wiggle out, but I couldn’t wiggle. I tried to shift my legs, but I couldn’t shift. I was totally out of action verbs under the bed.

  I was stuck.

  I needed a jar of Crisco to get out of there. I was wedged in like a sardine but worse.

  And I had to pee.

  I was stuck forever. I was going to die there. I was gripped with claustrophobia and whatever phobia it was to be afraid of being stuck under a bed.

  I was in a quandary. If I cried out, Detective Rat Gorgeous would save me, but then she would shoot me and throw me into the slammer. If I didn’t cry out, I would die under the bed, and that wasn’t the way I wanted to die.

  Actually, I was still up in the air about how I wanted to die, but I was leaning toward getting bonked to death by Spencer while eating Malomars.

  I didn’t cry out. I focused on trying to breathe while Cynthia’s house was tossed. Then, somehow, I fell asleep and dreamed that I was eating Malomars while Spencer was sucking my toes. All in all, it was a really good dream.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Keep sucking,” I moaned.

  “This one takes the cake.”

  I opened my eyes and saw Spencer’s head as he crouched down and looked under the bed. “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “I think you’re hiding under the bed. Not your bed. Not my bed. A stranger’s bed.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, forgetting where I was. Then, I tried to move and it all came back to me. “Oh, Spencer, thank goodness you’re here! Please save me. I’m stuck. Wait a second. Is you-know-who here?”

  “Who?”

  I clamped my mouth closed. I didn’t know how much Spencer knew about my situation. With one move, he threw the bed onto its side, freeing me.

  “How did you get stuck?” he demanded, giving me a hand up.

  I dusted off my clothes. “I’m not sure. I got in just fine, but then I must have swollen up like my feet do when I wear tight shoes.”

  Spencer stared at me, unblinking, for a moment. Then
he blinked. “No. What I mean is, what were you doing under the bed? What were you doing in Cynthia Andre’s house?”

  “What was I doing under the bed? What was I doing in Cynthia Andre’s house?”

  Spencer squinted at me, as if I was hard to see. “Pinky, why are you repeating everything I say?”

  “Why am I repeating everything you say?”

  He pointed at me. “There. You did it, again. Why are you doing that?”

  “Why am I doing that?”

  “Stop it, Pinky. Are you trying to make me crazy?”

  “Am I trying to make you crazy?”

  It was a weak effort to try and get him off the scent. I didn’t know what else to do. My goose was cooked.

  Spencer shook his head at me, like I had gotten a word wrong in the local spelling bee. He shrugged his shoulders, as if he had decided something. Without preamble, he grabbed me and kissed me hard, like it was 1917, we were at the train station, and he was going off to war. Everything spun around as our tongues touched, and I melted against his hard body. Spencer was in charge. My body, my self, and my heart, were totally his while he kissed me. When he finally stopped, he held me up since I had gone boneless, slumped against him like a newborn baby.

  “That’s called a reboot, Pinky,” he said, more than a little pleased with himself. “Now, tell me what you were doing here.”

  I was about to tell him everything. In that moment, I would have even told him my weight. He was the kissing Gestapo. He could make me talk with one slip of his tongue.

  I opened my mouth to spill the beans when Lucy rushed into the room, pushed Spencer out of the way, and hugged me, hard. “Oh, darlin’, I thought you were done for. Done for! When I understood that you were trapped and that woman was a loony bird, I hid behind a tree and called Spencer. Thank goodness she didn’t find you.”

  “Who? Who didn’t find you?” Spencer asked.

  The effects of his kiss had worn off, and my brain’s survival instinct was restored. But even so, I was tired of Spencer thinking his hot new detective was so hot. I mean, she was hot, but she was crazy. And she hated me. Nobody hated me. Even people who tried to kill me didn’t hate me. Why did she hate me?

  “Your new detective. Terri Williams. She’s looney tunes. Look what she did to this place,” I said, avoiding any mention of my breaking and entering.

  “Williams did this? This?” he asked looking around the room. It was a disaster.

  “Serves you right,” Lucy said.

  “What does that mean?” Spencer asked her.

  She pointed at him. “You know exactly what I mean.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. Spencer shouldn’t have hired a woman who was better looking than I was, but we couldn’t say that because it was a betrayal to womanhood.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on. Why were you two here?”

  “So, get your detective under control,” I said, again avoiding any explanation of what I was doing there. “She’s a danger to the public and should probably not be here.”

  Lucy put her arm around me. “Preach,” she said with every ounce of southern belle in her body.

  I tried to avoid Spencer’s eyes, but they were like magnets, drawing me into his gaze. We locked eyes. “Gladys,” he growled, menacingly.

  “Don’t call me Gladys,” I squeaked.

  Spencer was all man, even when he was acting like he was four years old. He was stacked in the testosterone department, and when he was an aggressive he-man, he was a really aggressive he-man. Lucy dropped her arm and stepped back out of Spencer’s range.

  “Gladys,” he continued, taking a few steps forward, forcing me to back up until I was against the wall. He put his hand on the wall over my head and leaned in. “Gladys Burger, tell me what you were doing in this house.”

  “Don’t you want to know about your crazy detective?”

  His lips touched my ear and when he spoke, his warm breath sent shivers up and down my body. “I don’t sleep with my crazy detective. I don’t love my crazy detective. I’ll deal with her later. I deal with you always. Always. So, tell me why you were in this house.”

  “Oh, my,” Lucy breathed from the other side of the room. I sighed and closed my eyes. Spencer was very good at seduction.

  “Well, the thing is…” I started.

  Then, my phone rang. Saved by the bell.

  I put my finger up in the air and fished the phone out of my purse. “Pinky, call them back later. This is serious,” Spencer said, seriously.

  “So is this,” I said, rolling my shoulders back and standing tall. “I’m a professional.”

  I was so full of shit.

  I answered the phone. “Gladie, it’s Larry. Larry Doughy. Do you remember me?”

  Did I remember him? The last time I saw him, he had flown out of my car and was hanging over a highway sign, hundreds of feet in the air. He was sort of hard to forget.

  “Of course, Larry. Are you okay?” There was a ninety-five percent chance that he wasn’t okay. The curse theory was gaining traction, as far as I was concerned.

  “They’re letting me out, but I need someone to drive me home. Would you mind picking me up?”

  I was between a rock and a hard place. Between picking up Larry from the hospital and possibly getting eaten by a dinosaur or whatever other cursed thing could happen or explaining to Spencer that I broke into a house and stole ham. It was an easy decision.

  “I would be happy to, Larry. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes,” I said and hung up. “Gotta go,” I told Spencer and signaled to Lucy to hightail it out of there.

  We ran to the car without looking back. “Hurry!” I urged Lucy. She unlocked the car and started it up.

  “You know, you’re going to be alone with him tonight at your house,” Lucy said, reasonably, as we drove away.

  “I’m hoping by then he’ll be focused on his detective.”

  “That woman is nuts,” Lucy said. “But she’s got a bangin’ bod. I peeked through the window and saw her. She looks like she hopped off a cover of Vogue, but you know, in bad clothes.”

  Lucy dropped me off at home, and she went to meet Harry. I drove to the hospital to pick up Larry. It took a couple of hours to wait for him to get through the paperwork. He was wearing a boot for his broken toe, and his spirits weren’t particularly high. I felt guilty, even though I wasn’t the one who had cursed him. I didn’t even have a Twitter account.

  “You want me to take you to dinner?” I offered. “You’re probably hungry, unless you want to get home right away.”

  Larry’s face brightened. “I could go for a pork chop, and I know a place. I’ll treat.”

  That sounded perfect to me. Larry needed to stop at the bank on the way to the restaurant. Since his ATM card was lost in the bridge incident, he needed to go inside the bank. Luckily, we arrived just before it closed. I opened the door to the bank, and Larry limped inside.

  While he waited in line, I remembered Cynthia’s check that she had given me. I had forgotten to deposit it. I fished the envelope out of my purse and opened it. Inside was a check for four hundred dollars, which was the easiest money I had ever made. There was a note, too.

  “Gladie,” it read. “Did you know that Frank Fellows has a degree in botany? Also, Mike Chantage loved oatmeal cookies.”

  I turned the note over, but that was all that was written on it. No admission of guilt from the escaped murderers, if they were really guilty. It was a strange note. She was pinning the blame on Frank, and hinting that he killed Mike with oatmeal cookies. Perhaps Frank had brought them from home? Or had he slipped away to bake poisonous cookies in a borrowed kitchen somewhere? There were so many suspects, but I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who done it. I put the note back in my purse and signed the back of the check.

  As I waited in line, I looked around. Larry and I weren’t the only ones who were banking at the last minute. Frank Fellows, Leah Wilder, Detective Bangin’ Bod, and Arthur Fox, the plane
crash survivor, were all there. Frank and Leah were each being served by bank tellers. Arthur Fox was sitting at a desk with the bank manager, and the detective was waiting to go into the safety deposit box room. Luckily, she didn’t see me, and nobody else seemed to notice me, either.

  I figured it was kismet to see Frank at the moment that I had read the note about him. I put the check back in my purse and positioned myself between him and the exit. It was perfect timing to interrogate him about his college degree.

  Someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned around. It was a bank employee. “Can you step this way, miss?” she asked.

  “What way? Where? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, but we need you to come this way.”

  She walked ahead of me into a small room with a thick, safe-like door. “Would you wait here?” she asked.

  “I guess so,” I said. I didn’t know what was happening. I hadn’t been overdrawn in a couple of weeks. As far as I knew, my account was in the black. But ever since I had moved to Cannes, I had been in trouble with my bank more often than not. I guessed whatever was happening now was bad because they had stuck me in a side room for privacy.

  I was surprised when Larry walked in, too. “I got the money,” he said. “Things are looking up. I really could go for that pork chop. What are you doing in here?”

  “I was told to wait in here. I don’t know what this room is.”

  “It’s the back of the ATM machines,” Larry explained. He showed me the metal boxes sticking out of the back wall.

  “I’ve never seen the back of them,” I said, interested. There was a soft click behind us.

  “What was that?” Larry asked.

  We turned around. The door was closed. I went to it and tried to open it, but it was shut tight, and we were sealed in.

  “Don’t panic,” I said. “Don’t panic!” I said, louder, panicking.

  Larry’s face turned bright red, and his whole body was shaking. “I think I’m going to panic.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Love is like a breath of fresh air, bubbeleh. When a match meets their soulmate, it’s like they’re alive for the first time. But sometimes love is smothering. It sucks the breath out of a person. It makes you feel like love itself is taking away your life. I’ll give you a hint, dolly. That’s not real love. Real love doesn’t smother. Real love is like a ride in a convertible on a cool fall day. That’s some good air.