by Elise Sax
“How do I look?” Nora asked me. She fluffed her hair. Nora had thirteen children and worked full-time at the bank and never seemed overwhelmed or wrinkled.
“Great.”
“What do you think of my outfit? Too banky?”
She was wearing a brown sweater and a long black skirt. “Not too banky? Did they change the dress code at the bank?”
“Huh? No! I’m not at the bank anymore. This morning Jenny and Joyce came in to make a deposit and told me they were looking for a new assistant. They’ve got big bucks, Matilda. Not to mention a mansion with a gorgeous view. I figure I can bring at least three kids to work with me, and Jenny and Joyce will never even know they’re there. I’ll probably have to do some shopping and errands for them and not much else. So easy.”
“You’re starting today? What about the bank?”
“They haven’t given me a raise in six years. When I got the job offer, I told the bank to shove it. Then, they had the nerve to offer me a one-percent raise. One-percent, Matilda! Meanwhile, Jenny and Joyce are doubling my salary. You know what that means?”
“What?” I asked.
“No more generic pasta. I’m going to buy the name brand kind.”
“And name brand toilet paper?”
“I’m not Midas, Matilda,” she said. “You know how many butts need wiping in my family?”
Adele tossed a plate on the table in front of me. “We were out of potatoes. So, Morris used rutabagas.”
“What’s a rutabaga?” I whispered to Nora when Adele walked away.
“I don’t know, but it’s twenty cents a pound at Goodnight Grocery.”
Feeding so many mouths made Nora an expert on food prices. I tasted a rutabaga fry. It was nothing like a French fry. It was hot, and that’s where the similarities stopped. I could hear Adele in the kitchen, pleading with Morris the cook not to quit, so I decided not to re-order.
“How do I smell?” Nora asked me.
“I only smell rutabaga and that guy’s pimento omelet.”
“So no baby spit up? My youngest did some projectile stuff this morning that would have made Stephen King afraid.”
The door to the diner opened, and Mabel stormed in. She stomped over to Rocco in her sensible green tennis shoes, clutching her large purse to her chest. Her lips were pressed together so much that they nearly disappeared into her mouth.
“You!” she shouted at him, pointing at his face. “You’ve ruined this town, and now you’re ruining my business.”
Rocco turned a dark shade of red, and he dropped his fork on his plate. “Mabel, you look very nice today. Did you get a new hairdo?”
“I’ve cut my own hair with nail scissors since I was fourteen,” she said. “Don’t try and distract me, Rocco Humphrey. What’re you going to do about these giraffes?”
“It’ll be handled soon, Mabel. I put a bounty on them. There’s folks coming in from all over to make sure those giraffes are safe and sound.”
“You’re an ass, Rocco. A complete fool.”
“Don’t be like that, Mabel,” he whined. If Rocco had been a dog, he would have been on his back. The normally egomaniacal man was completely submissive to Mabel.
The diner had turned quiet, and the crowd had put their lunches on hold while they listened to Mabel dress down Rocco.
“I’m going over your head,” she growled at him. “I’m bringing in the big guns.”
“No guns! Please no, Mabel,” Rocco implored.
“Don’t be stupid. I meant I’m bringing in someone competent. Not like you. In fact, I’m bringing in two people. Meeting at seven tomorrow evening at the rec center!” she announced loudly to the patrons and walked out. As soon as she left, the diner roared back to life.
“What was that about?” I asked Nora.
“Poor Rocco is so in love with Mabel.”
I blinked. “Excuse me? What did you say?”
Nora leaned forward. “Rocco met Mabel at some kind of meeting in New York and fell instantly in love. He moved out here to woo her and make her his. ‘Course she has no interest in him. In my humble opinion, she’s not interested in anybody. She’s married to her work.”
It was hard to picture Mabel and Rocco together as a couple. First off, Mabel was six inches taller than Rocco. Second of all, I couldn’t imagine Rocco as lovesick. He wasn’t exactly a touchy-feely individual.
My stomach growled. It was going to be another peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me for lunch. I put a five-dollar bill down on the table for the rutabaga fries and Adele’s trouble. “I guess I should go. I have a story to write.”
“I really liked your last one about the repaving of the Goodnight UFOs parking lot,” Nora told me.
“Thanks. It’s harder than you think to write about asphalt.”
“I bet. Has the dead girl shown up again?”
“No. I think she must be deader now. Like too dead to talk.” Speaking of too dead to talk, I thought about Leonard Shetland and the mystery of his letter. “Hey, do you know a guy named Leonard Shetland?”
Nora’s face brightened, and she smiled wide. “Sure. That’s who I’m replacing at my new job. Jenny and Joyce said Leonard up and quit this morning.”
Chapter 3
My internal friend-o-meter told me not to mention Leonard Shetland’s demise to Nora. She had quit her job, and she was so happy about her new one that I couldn’t bring myself to rain on her parade. She would find out soon enough about her predecessor’s fate. Besides, it was completely possible that her new employers had nothing to do with Leonard’s death. So, when Nora gave me a hug and left to start her new life as an assistant, I let her go with a “good luck,” a “congratulations,” and a hug. Even so, I promised myself to get to the bottom of Leonard’s death as soon as possible and make sure that Nora was safe.
I drove home and parked next to Klee’s Cadillac. There was still no sign of Boone’s truck. Walking past the Gazette’s office, I turned right into the living quarter’s section of the house. The home was hundreds of years old, and it looked like it. My friend Faye was a local contractor and had decided to redo my house in her spare time. I had been thrilled at first, but her latest efforts were delayed so that she could do another job, and now half of my house was in shambles. I sidestepped a large hole in the floor in my living room on my way to the kitchen. Abbott and Costello were sound asleep in the corner. I retrieved the jam and milk from the refrigerator and took them to the pantry to make my sandwich. After, I brought my sandwich, a glass of milk, and a box of Cheez-Its to the Gazette office.
“You get the story?” Silas asked me. He was eating at his desk, too. A corned beef sandwich and a pickle. I was dying for meat. Peanut butter wasn’t cutting it anymore.
“Where’d you get corned beef?”
“Grocery store. I hope Adele gets the diner under control soon. I’m not a lunch bag kind of guy. I miss my burritos and tamales.”
“I think the whole town does, too. Carne asada burrito. Yum.” I took a bite of my sandwich and tried to pretend that it was a burrito, but my imagination wasn’t that good. I took a deep breath before telling Silas that I didn’t have the whole story about Leonard Shetland for the obituary yet, and I needed another day. Klee stopped typing, and Silas gave me his best disapproving uncle look.
“Normally, I would tell you to get back out there and wear through some of that shoe leather, but there’s been another one. So, I’ll have you go out there for that,” Silas said.
“What do you mean, another one?”
He slapped a slip of paper onto my desk. “Stella Hernandez,” I read.
“She died three days ago of the flu. The wake starts in an hour. She was the deputy sheriff’s stepmother, so we need to do something special. You know, for the press-law enforcement relationship and all of that blah blah blah. You got a black dress? That’s usually what they wear at these things. And the food should be good. Maybe you’ll get that carne asada burrito you’ve been wanting. Here comes Ja
ck. He wrote her obituary. You can ask him about her.”
Silas waved at Jack when he walked in the door. “Don’t you ever go to school?” Klee asked the fifteen-year-old paperboy.
“I went for the first half, but the fourth-period biology teacher has greasy hair,” he said, taking a seat at the desk next to me.
“Jack understands the importance of the fourth estate,” Silas announced with his usual fervor. “No greasy-haired biology teacher can give Jack the education he gets from the watchdog journalism that the Gazette does better than anybody. What’s more important? Dissecting a frog or seeking justice for our democracy?”
“Well, I’m not bailing him out if the truant police come to get him,” Klee said.
“There ain’t truant police in Goodnight. I checked,” Jack said.
“Jack,” Silas said, seriously. “I don’t mind truancy, but using the word ain’t has no place in the Free Press. Show Matilda your piece about Stella.”
Jack got the newspaper with his obituary in it and handed it to me after grabbing a pickle off of Silas’s plate. “She died of the flu. I didn’t know that can happen. I got the flu last year and pitched four innings at my school’s playoffs with a hundred-and-two fever. Anyway, Stella was seventy years old. Big family. You know she was Adam Beatman’s stepmom, right? I think he liked her pretty okay. His mom died a couple years ago. You know all that, right?”
I scratched my cheek. “Actually, no. I just moved here, and I’m catching up.”
“Oh, that’s right. Well, Adam’s a good guy, but Amos says he has a bad attitude. That means he doesn’t like to work.”
“Amos said that?” Jack was Amos and Boone’s cousin, and I wondered if he had any inside information about Boone and when he was coming back.
Not that I cared or anything.
“Adam’s a good cop, he said, but he’d rather be watching ESPN. Does that make sense?”
No. It didn’t make sense to me at all. I hated sports. But I did love a good Netflix binge while eating a large bag of peanut M&Ms, although that was a once a week sort of thing and didn’t compare to sticking my nose into everyone’s business as a journalist. My new job was so much better than ten episodes of anything back to back.
“Sure. That makes sense,” I said. “Does Boone agree with Amos about Adam?”
“Huh? Boone? He doesn’t work with Adam. Boone hates the sheriff’s department ever since, well, you know.”
I didn’t know, but my curiosity lay elsewhere. “Have you talked to Boone lately?”
“You know Boone. He goes dark when he’s out there.”
“Where?”
“You know. The boonies.”
Sheesh. Talking to a teenager was like pulling teeth.
“Who are these people?” he asked me, picking up the printout of Leonard’s letter.
“What people?”
“The initials. SH MM TE.”
I ripped the paper out of his hands. “The initials,” I breathed. “They’re initials. He sent initials. Initials! Initials! Initials!”
Jack took a step away from me, afraid. “I heard that you hid under LeBron James’s bed and when he walked into the bedroom, you jumped out and climbed him like a tree while singing the entire original version of ‘Rapper’s Delight,’” he told me.
Not this again. The whole town thought I was crazy. “I’m not crazy. My husband pretended I was crazy. It was all part of his murder plot.”
“What about talking to dead people?”
“That part’s true. At least I think it is. It’s sort of up in the air.”
“Stella’s dead, but she’s not going to wait forever, you know, boss,” Silas growled, interrupting us. “News doesn’t happen on our schedule. News has a schedule of its own. If you’re going to be a fundamental part of what makes this country great, then you need to snap to it.”
I grabbed my purse and the rest of my sandwich. “I’m on it.”
Stella Hernandez had lived in a small two-story adobe house about five blocks outside of the Plaza. Her little driveway was packed with parked cars, and there were more double-parked along the street. I spotted Adam’s Sheriff SUV about a half block down the street, parked in front of a fire hydrant.
I squeezed my Altima into a small spot on the corner and reviewed Jack’s obituary on Stella. It wouldn’t be good if I didn’t remember her name when I interviewed the guests at the wake. Stella Hernandez. Why did that name sound familiar?
I smoothed out my sweater and chastised myself for forgetting to wear a black dress. But when I walked inside Stella’s house, I was relieved to find I wasn’t out of place. The guests were all wearing shorts and jeans and assorted t-shirts. Barry Manilow was singing about Mandy on a stereo, and Stella herself was lying in an open casket in the living room. She was wearing a New England Patriots jersey, tan slacks, an inordinate amount of makeup in all shades of red, and a wig that was askew on her head, covering one of her fake eyelashes, making it look like a caterpillar was getting eaten by William Shatner’s hairpiece.
“Doesn’t she look peaceful?” I clutched my chest and tried to catch my breath. For a moment, I had thought that Stella was talking to me. But she wasn’t. It was a tiny little woman holding a plate of food who was engaging me in conversation.
“Yes. Peaceful. Did you know Stella?” I dug my reporter’s notebook out of my purse and clicked my pen.
“I live next door. I told Stella not to get the flu shot. Those things actually give you the flu. It’s a government plot. Like stop signs and tofu.”
I nodded and took notes. “Tofu.”
Adam Beatman approached and looked in the casket as if he was searching for something that he dropped in it. “She went fast. She didn’t even sneeze.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.
“And she stopped at stop signs, too,” the little lady added.
“I’m writing a short piece for the Gazette,” I said to Adam. “Would you like to say something about your stepmother?”
“You should probably talk to my dad, Abel Beatman. He was the one married to her. I just had to suffer through her dinners of tuna pot pie and Velveeta ratatouille.”
My stomach growled. I really needed to get some good food in my system soon. I glanced over at the buffet table. It was piled high with casseroles, tortillas, carne asada, and various salads. My stomach growled, again.
“So she didn’t change her name when she married your father?” I asked him, trying to focus on what I was there for.
“Nope. I guess at her age, it was too hard to change from Hernandez.”
A little zing went through my brain and came out of my mouth, making me yelp. “Stella Hernandez,” I said. “Stella Hernandez. Stella. Hernandez. Stella. Hernandez.”
“Yes. Are you having a stroke?”
“No…I…Is that? Why yes, it is.” I walked away, pretending I saw someone. Standing with my back to the wake, I took Leonard’s letter out of my purse and looked at his list of initials. The first set was SH. Stella Hernandez? I gasped. Leonard Shetland had sent the paper with a list of initials, and the first one was dead. Dead from the flu. Who died from the flu? I mean, yes, people died from the flu, but nobody I knew had ever died from the flu.
Very suspicious.
Sneaking a handful of pigs in blankets off the buffet table, I tiptoed out of the living room. While I chewed on the pastry-wrapped hotdogs, I found Stella’s bedroom. It looked like Laura Ashley threw up all over it. There was a crazy amount of ruffles happening. The comforter, the curtains, even the dozen or so wedding photos on the walls were framed with lace ruffles. Her makeup and hair brushes were still on a small table, and other echoes of Stella’s life littered all corners of the bedroom. One-half of the bed had been left unmade, and I figured that was Stella’s husband’s side.
I sat down on her side of the bed. The nightstand was stacked high with tchotchkes, a lamp, a pad of paper, and a book. Fifty Shades of Grey. I picked it up. She bookmarked it on
page forty-two. But the bookmark wasn’t a real bookmark. It was a gold ticket. “VIP Ticket to Heaven” was written on it, framed by blue angel wings.
“I’ve seen this before,” I said. But I couldn’t remember where I had seen it. Still, it was a little suspicious that she had a ticket to heaven and then went to heaven. I put the VIP ticket into my purse and opened the nightstand drawer. There was nothing out of the ordinary in it. I heard footsteps in the hallway, and I slipped out of the bedroom before someone could rightfully accuse me of invading Stella’s privacy.
When I got back to the living room, I made a stop at the buffet table and piled my plate high with food. I mixed and mingled for a little while, asking each person I spoke with if they knew Leonard Shetland. Nobody did. But I did get a lot more information about Stella and some good quotes about how much they liked her and missed her.
With a stomach full of food and my reporter’s notebook full of notes, I left the wake and walked outside. Just as I closed the door, a man came up the porch stairs but stopped when black goo fell from the sky and landed on his head like rain with a loud splat running down his face.
“What the hell?” he shouted and had a violent coughing fit when the black goo dripped into his open mouth.
“Are you okay?” I asked. He hacked and coughed and spit black goo all over the stairs. “What is that on your face?”
He wiped his mouth with his shirt. “How the hell do I know what it is?” he shouted at me. “It fell from the sky! A gallon of black slime fell on me from the sky!”
“Maybe it came from a really big bird with digestive issues.”
He squinted at me. “You’re the crazy woman, right? The one from California who stalked George Clooney until he ran away to Italy? You chased away an American treasure.”
“I never did that. I’m more of a Tom Hardy fan.”
“Now black goo is falling from the sky,” he continued. “A lot of weird things in this town, but that’s the weirdest.”
I nodded in agreement, just as a giraffe galloped past, over the front lawn and between the parked cars before it ran down the street and out of sight.