by Vicki Grant
When he came back, he said, “Just a couple minutes, guys. I need a little more information from you.” He took out his notebook. “Your names?”
“Cam, or I guess I should say, Cameron P—”
“Oops, hold on.” The radio on the cop’s shoulder was buzzing. He raised his finger and spoke into it, then he said, “Sorry. Hate to do this. I’ll be right back,” and walked over to the ambulance. A paramedic was holding an oxygen mask over a lady’s face with one hand and waving to the cop with the other.
I wanted to see what was up but Raylene grabbed my hand and ran. Ran even faster than before. I went, “What? What? What are you doing? The cop. He’s. We have to. We’re supposed to. Stop!”
And she went, “Shut up. Move it—I said, move it!” It was as if Albertina’s spirit had left her body and immediately taken over Raylene’s. The girl who’d been sniffling into my chest disappeared.
I was—I’m not kidding—terrified. I might think I like undercover work, but the fact is I come from a long yellow line of wusses. I do not, under any circumstances, abscond from the police. I was so scared I couldn’t even appreciate the soft, pound-cakey fact that Raylene was holding my hand.
She dragged me back to the car. She beeped the doors open and went, “Get in, get in, get in.” Then she rammed in the key and cranked up the ignition. “You know how to drive?!” I said.
“I know how to drive a tractor.” She lurched out of the parking space.
“That’s not the same thing. That is not the same thing.”
“You see a tractor anywhere?”
“No.”
“So we’re taking the car.”
“This is not taking. This is stealing.”
“Maybe. But we can’t just leave it here.”
“Yes, we can. We absolutely can.”
“No, we can’t.” She gave a red Audi a light sanding on the way past. “That cop would find it and I don’t like that cop.”
“What are you talking about? He was nice!”
She was holding the steering wheel way up on the top. Her knuckles were white. “You clearly don’t know cops.”
“I do so. Ryan Sumner is a cop and he hired me as his nephew to . . . Watch where you’re going!” We hit the curb and bounced back into the exit lane.
“You don’t know cops. I know cops. I don’t want to talk to them. And I’m sure as hell Albertina wouldn’t want us talking to them either. And she wouldn’t want them rooting through her car.”
“Please. Watch. The road.”
“She probably has important stuff in here.”
“What? Animal crackers and pictures of Eldon?! We just went through every inch of the car. That’s all there is. And old Kleenexes.”
“And files. What about the files? She was working on some cases. The big ones—Janie? Lorenzo? Remember? What do you think we were doing here? There might be information in there we’ll need.”
“We’ll need? What do you mean we’ll need?”
My concerns were apparently unimportant. She turned on to the highway and veered way into the outside lane. People honked at her. She waved as if they were old buddies and got back on track.
I had my arms braced against the dashboard and my teeth clamped over my lower lip.
“Would you stop that? I couldn’t possibly be a worse driver than Albertina, and you survived her. So quit it, would you? I’ll get the car to her place, then we’ll figure out what to do next. Okay?”
“Okay.” Like I had a choice.
“You know the way?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’re going to have to open your eyes and show me.”
CHAPTER 24
She stomped on the brakes like she was killing tarantulas, and I could feel my brain slam into my eardrum every time she attempted a left turn, but she got us there in one piece.
“See?” she said. “Not so bad. Just put your head between your knees for a minute, then we’ll go inside and get her stuff.”
“Why are we getting her stuff?” I watched the drool sway over my sneaker. “What stuff?”
“We’ll know it when we see it.” That was Albertina speaking through Raylene again. I didn’t like where this was going.
It took her a while to figure out which one of Albertina’s gazillion keys opened which door, but we made it up to her apartment without anybody seeing us. Raylene whispered, “Look for anything, I mean anything, about Lorenzo Martinelli, Wade Martinelli, Wade Schmidt, or Janie Atkinson.”
“Aikens.”
“Janie Anyone. You see the name Janie/Jane/June/Jezebel—whatever—you grab the file.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We take everything we can find and put it all in the car.”
“No. No. That’s. That’s, like, disturbing a crime scene or something. That’s a—”
“Albertina died at the restaurant. This isn’t a crime scene.”
“It will be once we steal files from it.”
She laughed like I’d made a joke and kept rummaging through the papers. She looked under the bed, behind the chair, in the closet. Papers were flying around as if some mini tornado had just touched down smack dab in the middle of apartment 312.
I could hear the person next door turn on the TV. I recognized the Entertainment Tonight theme music. Someone was going to catch us here and then we’d go to jail, and Dad would have to visit me and Dalton. He wasn’t going to be very happy about that.
“Raylene,” I whispered. She stopped and put her hands on her hips but it wasn’t to listen to me. She was staring at the wall, chewing on the inside of her cheeks, thinking.
“Rayleeeeeeeene.”
“We’re never going to be able to look through all this,” she mumbled and I thought phew, finally.
“We’ve got to be reasonable.” And I thought yes!
“Let’s just grab all the files around her bed.” And I thought nooo! “That’s probably where she did most of her reading. The old files are probably stacked over there, don’t you think?”
I thought we should get out of there. That’s what I thought.
Raylene disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bunch of plastic grocery bags. “C’mon. Get moving,” she whispered. “I want to be long gone by the time the cops get here.”
I did too.
I really did.
I got moving.
CHAPTER 25
There’s a twenty-four-hour supermarket not far from our place.
“No one will find it here,” Raylene said, and parked the car at the far end of the lot. By “parked the car” I mean “slammed into the curb at top speed and lurched to a stop.”
She leaned into the back seat and pulled out a bunch of files, dumped half on my lap, and kept the rest for herself. “Okay. Let’s go through everything and see what we can find.”
“No,” I said.
She put her elbow on the steering wheel and looked at me.
“No,” I said. “Tomorrow, maybe, but not now. I feel sick.”
“Put your head between—”
“That’s not going to help.”
“Yes, it is.”
“How’s that going to help? Albertina just died. We ran away from the police, stole a car, committed a burglary. You wanna know why I feel sick? That’s why I feel sick. It doesn’t help, of course, that you drive like a—”
“Like a what?” All cute and jokey.
“I don’t know.”
“Seriously. Like a what?”
“Nothing.” She was annoying me.
“C’mon. You can’t just start to say something like that, then leave it.”
I shook my head. It hurt. “I said I don’t know.”
“You do so. C’mon . . .” She had this goofy smile on her face. She wasn’t going to stop.
“Okay. Like a gecko.”
“I drive like a gecko?” She laughed.
“See! That’s what I mean! My brain’s fried. You fried my brain.”
“Seriously—
a gecko?”
“It was the only thing I could think of that was fast and jerky and had absolutely no understanding of the rules of the road.”
“Okay. Gecko’s fair.”
“Quit laughing. This isn’t funny. I can’t do this. We’ve got to call someone, figure out what we should be doing.”
Somebody needed to claim the body or something, didn’t they? We couldn’t just run away and pretend nothing had happened.
Raylene paused. “Like who?” At least she sounded halfway serious now.
It was a good question. Dad? He’d freak. Suraj? Lot of good that would do. His parents? OMG. Raylene’s parents? Who knew if she even had them? I thought of some of the people who worked for Almost Family. Frank—incapacitated. Doreen—usually inebriated. Barbara—borderline insane. Kev, Vernon, Jenn—I ruled them all out too. There were reasons these so-called grown-ups could only get work renting themselves out occasionally as relatives. I realized, weirdly, that Albertina was probably the only person I could have called. She was the only person who conceivably would have had experience with something like this and she was gone.
I suggested the next best thing. “Reverend Muncaster. At St. Cuthbert’s. That’s where I met Albertina.”
Raylene didn’t say no, not that it would have mattered what she said. I couldn’t handle this anymore. I got out my phone.
“I just heard,” Reverend Muncaster said when I told her Albertina had died. “It’s all over social media.”
“It is? What’s everyone saying?”
“The police aren’t identifying her but bystanders described the victim on Facebook, and I guessed. Albertina has been a regular at St. Cuthbert’s for quite a while. There aren’t many people you’d confuse her with.”
No kidding.
“Twitter’s reporting she was poisoned by some bad shrimp at that new restaurant in the mall. That true?”
I said I didn’t know. I gave her a cleaned-up version of my story with Albertina: doing the grandson thing, helping her with her business, whatever. I kept it vague. I left out Raylene and all the stuff about the various felonies we’d committed. I told her Dad didn’t know about it. She didn’t ask why. Reverend Muncaster’s relatively cool, as religious fanatics go.
“So what should we do now?” I asked. “Shouldn’t her next of kin be notified or something?”
“To the best of my knowledge, it was just Albertina. She told me once she’d had a family but—well, I’m not sure what happened there. All I know is it was source of great sadness for her. Anyway, my dear, you leave it to me. I’ll get in touch with the police, get the obit in the paper. All you have to do is make it to the church by three on Tuesday.”
I felt so much better.
“It’s a very sad day,” Reverend Muncaster said, then she hung up. It sounded like she was going to cry.
We sat in the car without saying anything for a long time, then Raylene, kind of joking, went, “I don’t think Albertina would appreciate a moment of silence. She’s not that type.”
“Wasn’t.”
“What?”
“Wasn’t that type,” I said. “Albertina’s dead.”
Raylene tucked her lips into her mouth, and her eyes got all shiny, and she turned away. I didn’t mean to upset her.
She eventually said, “I’m hungry,” and I tried to get us back into that jokey thing by picking a monkey part off the floor and going, “Can I offer you an animal cracker?”
She turned to me, looking more or less okay again. “Not that hungry. Let’s get something at the supermarket. I’ve got money.”
We locked the car and headed in. It was one of those giant grocery stores that sells everything from buffalo burgers to all-terrain vehicles. At the far end, there was a huge food court with a bunch of franchises.
“I suddenly feel the need for pizza,” I said.
“Here.” She handed me six bucks, enough for the combo deal. I was too hungry to worry where the cash was coming from.
“I’m going for Thai. Meet you back at the car in, say, ten minutes?”
I nodded. She left for the other side of the food court.
I got in the lineup. Raylene was already gone by the time my double-pepperoni, bacon, and pineapple came up, and she wasn’t at the car when I got there either.
It took me twenty minutes to realize she’d taken off again.
CHAPTER 26
I woke up at three the next morning. My mouth was dry from the pizza—or maybe just from having the life sucked out of me.
I felt bad about the whole Raylene thing.
No. I felt mad.
So something terrible had happened in her life. Big deal. I didn’t care. Reverend Muncaster was wrong about me. I wasn’t a saint. Bad things happen to lots of people. Doesn’t give them the right to treat other people like garbage. Doesn’t give them the right to just ditch a person, over and over again.
I stared at the just-barely-fluorescent stars some kid before me had stuck on the bedroom ceiling. The stars made me think of heaven, which made me think of Albertina, which, frankly, was kind of funny. I doubted she was anywhere near the place.
A tear popped into my eye and sizzled like acid.
Where the hell did that come from?
I hardly knew Albertina. She was funny and everything and she did totally nail Dr. Blaine and save all those old people a bunch of money. But she was also loud and pushy and she tricked me and insulted me and said mean things about my dad and our business. All in all, not someone I’d generally cry over.
I figured it was just the shock of having her die that was getting to me, but then I thought no. I’d actually known quite a few people who’d died. Even seen them die. Dad always makes us stay with our clients right to the end. He gets attached to the old guys, even the mean, bitter, delusional ones. We’re all just human, he says. No one’s perfect. We all need love.
He wouldn’t desert them in their hour of need.
Which made me think of Raylene deserting me again and I felt better for a little while. I was definitely the good guy in this situation.
Which made me think what a jerk I was. Getting ditched at the supermarket is hardly being deserted on your deathbed-slash-table-for-three.
And that’s when I figured out where that tear came from.
I switched on the light. Albertina had died alone. I pictured her at Lorenzo’s, going grey, grabbing her throat, maybe squawking a bit while people at the other tables all pretended they didn’t notice until, of course, her lifeless body clunked on the floor, at which point, they had to do something, i.e., cry piteously for the benefit of everyone videotaping her last minutes on their cell phones.
Sad way to go. For anyone. Even Albertina.
Who I realized I liked way more than I was letting on.
I decided I was going to make it up to her. I switched off the light. I slept okay after that.
CHAPTER 27
Luckily, that Tuesday just happened to be when Dad was taking one of his mothers to lunch and a lecture on feline ancestry at the Museum of Natural History. I had the whole day to get ready.
I was worried there wouldn’t be many mourners so I checked my bank account. $122.28.
If the funeral didn’t run long, that would be enough for Frank and Doreen and one more Almost Family employee. Maybe Lindsay.
No, not Lindsay. She still had that thing for Dad and it was getting embarrassing.
I called Kev because he had a car and could get them all there and also because he knew about giving Frank toffee if he started making inappropriate remarks. (It sticks to his dentures, so it can be used to distract him.) I also asked Kev to make sure the others didn’t blab to Dad about this little gig. (Kev was in a biker gang for ages so he understands the whole code-of-silence thing.)
Then I made Suraj call in sick at the deli. I rooted around until I found an old suit from junior high that more or less fit him. We stapled up the legs and blacked out an unpleasant stain on the lapel and he looke
d okay. I even convinced him to do something with the scuzzy bacterial culture he insisted on referring to as his “beard.”
That made five of us. Not even enough to fill a pew but at least the church wouldn’t be totally empty. (It can happen. Trust me.)
Suraj and I took the bus to St. Cuthbert’s. I was relieved when we got there and saw quite a few cars in the parking lot. Not quite bingo night, but close. Albertina was dead and she was still surprising me.
We headed in. Reverend Muncaster was talking to someone by the bird-bath thing they baptize babies in.
She patted down my collar and straightened my tie and said, “Well. Didn’t you do Albertina proud,” then told us there were seats reserved for us up front.
“Don’t I have to bow or kneel or make elaborate hand gestures or something?” Suraj whispered on the way up the aisle.
I rolled my eyes.
“What?” he said. “How am I supposed to know? Not like I’ve been to church before.”
“You have to whip yourself with a cat-o’-nine-tails while chanting in Latin—but that comes later. I’ll tell you when.”
“Really? I didn’t think they did that anymore.” I could tell by the look on his face he was thinking of his series again.
The Almost Family crew was about midway in. Kev saw me and shrugged like I thought you said nobody was going to be here? I shrugged back. I nodded at Dr. Ewan and Randy the pharmacist a little farther to the front, then found our places. There was a leaflet on the pew with the title Celebrating the Life of Albertina Marie Legge and a picture of her when she was young.
“Whoa. Betty-Flintstone-goes-to-the-rodeo,” Suraj whispered. The big inappropriate smile on his face faded when the lady behind us pointedly cleared her throat.
The organ started playing and Reverend Muncaster walked up to the front, and that’s when I gave up all hope of Raylene showing. I told myself I was just mad for Albertina’s sake, but who was I kidding?
Prayers were said and hymns sung, but I didn’t really zone in until the eulogy started.
Reverend Muncaster stood at the pulpit, her arms crossed, her hands hidden in the sleeves of her robe. She smiled at the congregation. (Dad always said she’d perfected the all-purpose sad/sorry/compassionate, but ultimately-hopeful, smile.)