Death With All the Trimmings
Page 26
“I’m going to take a right here,” she yelled over the Beach Boys singing “Fun, Fun, Fun.” “Because I’m afraid turning left will make you too anxious.”
“You could be right,” I said with a pained smile.
She drove the few blocks from White to Truman without incident and pulled into the left-turn lane. “See, now,” she said, craning her neck around to look at me. “I’m putting on my directional signal. And my hearing is perfectly good, so I’m not going to leave it on after I turn, like the other old people do.” She cackled out loud, but I kept looking straight forward through the windshield, praying she’d get the message and do the same.
“Green arrow!” Miss Gloria sang out, more to herself than to me. She piloted the Buick like a boxy Carnival Cruise ship from the left-turn lane onto Truman Avenue and lurched across the intersection to the right lane. “What are you working on today?” she asked.
I tried to ungrit my teeth and relax my jaw. “It’s an article on lunch,” I said. “I’m planning to include Firefly, and maybe Azur and the Café.”
“What about Edel’s bistro?” she asked. “Aren’t they serving lunch?”
“Everyone knows Edel and I are well acquainted after all that publicity,” I said. “I’m going to give her place a rest for a couple months.” Edel Waugh had opened a bistro on the Old Town harbor last December. A fire and a murder had almost tanked the restaurant. I’d been a little too involved to be considered a disinterested party. “Besides, she’s gotten so popular lately, it’s hard to get a table.”
“Jesus lord!” Miss Gloria yelped, and leaned on the horn as an unmarked police car cut in front of us. She slammed on the brakes and rolled down her window. “Where did you get your license—Kmart?”
“That’s a cop car,” I muttered. “Roll up the damn window and keep driving.”
“I don’t care who it is. He’s driving like a horny high school student late for his date.”
I goggled at her in amazement. As we reached the intersection of Truman and Palm Avenue, where another left turn led to our marina, I noticed the flashing of blue lights from the water.
“The cops,” said Miss Gloria. “Let’s pull over and see what’s happening.”
Before I could protest, she had hurtled up onto the sidewalk, thrown the car into park, and scrambled out. A tangle of orange construction webbing floated in the brackish water closest to the new roadway, dotted with assorted trash and a lump of something bigger. Three or four policemen stood on the sidewalk, looking down, seeming to discuss how to get the whole mess ashore. One of them glanced up and then hurried toward us, scowling.
“Get back in the car and keep moving, ladies. This isn’t a sideshow. And you’re blocking traffic, ma’am.”
“Let’s go,” I said, herding Miss Gloria to our sedan. “You can watch them from the back deck with the binoculars.”
“I swear, Hayley,” she said, turning to look again, “I think they’ve snagged a body.”