by Elise Sax
“She’s right,” I heard a voice that I recognized say. “I know that butt. It’s no boy’s butt.”
“Whose butt is it?” I heard another woman ask. “Do you know that butt?”
“Don’t you recognize that butt, Margie?” he asked her.
There was a short pause. “I do sort of recognize it,” she said. “Hold on. Is that the Chief’s butt?”
“Yep. The Chief’s butt.”
“I’m not the Chief’s butt!” I insisted. “Help me out of here. I have a mouth full of radiator.”
The smell of cologne and a boatload of testosterone wafted toward me, and Remington’s head joined mine under the hood. “That’s not the radiator, babe.”
“Throw the book at her,” a woman yelled. “It’s time for justice in this town and for law-abiding citizens to breathe free.”
“I don’t have a book to throw at you,” Remington whispered to me and winked. “Looking good, Gladie. High and tight, as usual. Don’t tell the Chief I told you that.”
“Stealing school bus batteries is a federal crime!” one of the DICK ladies announced.
“On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t help me out of here,” I whispered to Remington.
“Captain Kirk would never let a damsel in distress stay stuck under the hood of a school bus,” he said and lifted me out of the bus like I was light as air and put me down gently on the blacktop next to the bus.
There was a sea of cardigans, and they were all pointing at me. “It’s not what it looks like,” I said, but I didn’t even sound convincing to myself. “I was just trying to help.”
“I guess there’s no short circuit video this time,” Margie said, looking around and shielding her eyes from the sun.
“I was putting the battery back,” I insisted.
“You stole it and had second thoughts?” she asked.
I shot Remington a look, and he shrugged. “I just work here,” he told me.
“I was just trying to help. Look,” I said, turning toward Remington. “How about you let me go, and you don’t tell Spencer about this?”
Remington looked down at me through his steely, dark eyes and shrugged, again. “There’s a lot I’d like to not tell him.”
“Tell me about what? What do you not want him to tell me?”
The voice boomed past the DICK voices, which were demanding my lynching or whatever torture and punishment they envisioned for my crimes. Only one voice could outvoice so many cardigans. It was the man I loved. The man I was going to marry. The man who was building a house for me. The man who hated when I wreaked havoc on the town.
I turned toward his voice, and there he was perfectly dressed in his Armani suit, his hair perfectly cut and perfectly slightly disheveled. His body tall and muscular, not as much as Remington, but impressive nonetheless and perfectly proportioned. His face was sharp and angular, his expression quick to move between fun and flirty and imposing and ferocious.
He was leaning toward the imposing and ferocious right now.
“Are you kidding me?”
“It’s not what it looks like,” I told him.
“She’s the ringleader,” one of the DICK women shrieked. “She was caught red-handed, stealing school bus batteries. She’s probably the ringleader of the bubble gum bandits, too.”
Another DICK woman waved a lock of her hair in Spencer’s face. “I got bubble gum in my hair from those heathens. The only way to get it out is to cut it out. Do you know how long it’ll take me to grow back this much hair at my age? Forever, that’s how long! Decency! We need decency here!”
“I have bubble gum stuck to my private hair,” a DICK man announced. “A person shouldn’t have anything stuck to their private hair. It’s private! We must bring decency back to this town.”
“Let’s start with her!”
“Lock her up!”
“This is getting ugly,” Margie said. “I thought Cannes was relaxing. I moved here for the Cannes Needlepoint Society. I wanted to needlepoint until I die in a nice relaxing setting.”
“I didn’t know you did needlepoint,” Remington said to her. “Can you make me a Princess Leia in her metal bikini needlepoint pillow?”
“Sure. That shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Arrest her!” a DICK man yelled.
“Use shackles, not those wimpy handcuffs!” another DICK man yelled.
“They use zip-ties now, Ralph.”
“Like they use for bread? This country is going to hell in a handbasket.”
At that moment, I was so happy that I was sleeping with the Chief of police. It was only a matter of minutes before DICK was going to bring out the tar and feathers, and I needed all of the allies I could get.
Throughout the shouts to hang me from the rafters, Spencer never took his eyes off me. His ferocious look of Lucy, you have some splainin’ to do had changed to his normal little smirk that seemed to say: “I know how you look naked with your feet behind your ears.”
“I was putting the battery back,” I told him. “I was trying to help.”
“You were being a good Samaritan,” he agreed.
“Exactly.”
“You decided to do some auto work, even though you’ve never changed a tire or even checked your oil.”
“I worked in a car wash for one afternoon in Memphis.”
Spencer nodded. “If I let you go, there’ll be a riot. I have to make a show of it.”
“But I’m on my way to visit my mother.”
Spencer gasped and took a step backward. “Why?” he asked, freaked out. “Are you sick? Oh my God, are you like Bridget?”
I sucked in my stomach. “No, I’m not like Bridget,” I screeched. “I don’t have to wait until I’m preg…preg… you know what, to visit my mother.”
Spencer shrugged. “Fine, I’ll take you and Remington will take your car home. I’ll make a show like I’m arresting you.”
“But…”
“Or I could feed you to the cardigans.”
The DICK mob had surrounded us, and I would have bet money that if they had access to some firewood and a lighter, I was going to go up in flames like it was Salem in the 1600s. “Fine. Take me to see my mother.”
I handed the keys to Remington, and Spencer made a big show of handcuffing me and putting me in the back of his car, after he got my shoe back. It wasn’t the first time that I was humiliated in front of a large crowd, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, so while he was announcing to the DICK people to disperse because law enforcement had everything in hand, I thought about my father.
What had he gotten into? He was a poet, and as far as I knew, poets didn’t attract a lot of enemies except for those who didn’t like poetry. But even the people who didn’t like poetry didn’t actively go after poets. At least I didn’t think so. I had only known one poet in my life.
Spencer was quiet as we drove out of town. Once we were past DICK territory, he pulled the car over, dragged me out, and uncuffed me. “I’m thinking I have a brain tumor from my cellphone or something because seeing you almost stoned to death by a bunch of out-of-towner old biddies got me real hot. How about you? You hot?”
“I have school bus grease in my hair, and one of the DICK people spat in my eye.”
Spencer pushed me up against the car and rubbed his magical enlarging pelvis on me. “So, what does that mean? You’re hot, too?”
“I could be hot,” I started. “Wait a minute. No. No, I’m not hot. Whatever happened to wining and dining me? What happened to romance?”
“We could stop for burgers after I have my way with you.”
I put my hands on his chest, making an inch of space between us. “Again, not very romantic. Besides, visiting hours at the prison end soon. I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Perfect. I can be in and out in about twenty seconds. Plenty of time to get to the prison before it closes.”
“You make it sound like you’re going to take a quick shower.”
“Yes, but
a lot dirtier. Come on, Pinky. Give a guy a break. These DICK people are driving me crazy. And there’s bubble gum on every surface in town. Look at my Prada shoes. They’ll never be the same.”
“I can’t believe I’m marrying a guy who wears Prada shoes. I got my shoes from the Walley’s Super Sale Dumpster on the sidewalk outside of the store. They cost $2.50. I had to fight a homeless man for them, and I paid for the shoes with dimes and nickels.”
“I love when you talk dirty to me, Pinky.”
“I still have a bruise on my arm from that fight with the homeless guy,” I said, showing him the bruise.
“You want me to kiss it and make it better?”
“Okay,” I said, my body swimming in a sea of Spencer hormones.
“How about if I start kissing a lot lower and make my way to your arm?”
It sounded good, but there was something I was forgetting about. Oh, yeah. I woke up from his seductive charm. If I gave in for his request for a quickie, I couldn’t get done what I needed to do. I pushed hard against him, making him take two steps back. “Visiting hours!”
The state had moved my mother to a progressive prison farm up in the mountains, not far from Cannes. There, inmates ran an organic farm because caring for goats and cows was supposed to be great for rehabilitation. I didn’t know if it was working in my mother’s case because I hadn’t spoken to her since she was arrested for operating a mobile meth lab on a used moped.
“I want to see her by myself,” I told Spencer when we walked inside, and he flashed his badge in order to get us special service.
“Okay, but stay away from her mouth.”
“Is that code?” I asked him.
“She’s bitten a few people since she’s been incarcerated. Although, it’s been all quiet on the western front since she’s been at this farm.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been keeping tabs on her.”
“You have?”
“Su casa es mi casa,” he said, as if that said it all, and I supposed it did. He had staked his claim to everything that was my life, and he was determined to take care of me and make sure my life ran smoothly.
Poor bastard.
A guard escorted me through the grounds of the farm. The prison was a square of one-story buildings with the farm in the center. Inmates wore blue jeans and yellow and green striped shirts. It was nerve-racking having prisoners walking free near me, but I figured the farm was just for stupid criminals like my mother who made meth on mopeds.
I didn’t hold out a lot of hope that my mother could shed light on my father’s death. After all, after he died, she turned inward and to the bottle. She wouldn’t feel the need to do me any favors, and I wasn’t even sure that she cared about my father or why he died any longer, if she ever did.
“Here she is,” the guard told me.
“Where?” I asked, looking around.
“There.” The guard pointed at a young woman, pulling weeds in a vegetable garden. She looked nothing like my mother. She was younger, more relaxed. Sober. Then, she touched her chin in a way that made me flashback to my childhood. An image of my mother working with my grandmother’s rosebushes flashed through my brain. She leaned over the roses, laughed and cut a pretty pink flower, handing it to me and warning me to be careful of the thorns. And she touched her chin in just this way.
“Mom?” I asked.
The woman in the vegetable garden turned and smiled at me. “Gladie, I’m so happy to see you,” she said, standing. She wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Mom, are they drugging you?”
“Drugging me with clean air and good, honest work,” she said, still smiling.
Then, my mother did something she hadn’t done in years. She hugged me.
CHAPTER 7
Third eye or no third eye, people will shock the shit out of you, dolly.
Lesson 68, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
We sat cross-legged between rows of chamomile tea plants. My mother told me I looked good, and that she was happy and was learning Tai Chi. I tried to shut my mouth, but my jaw kept dropping open. Finally, after her telling me how wonderful her life was in prison, I got around to asking her if she ever thought my father’s accident was suspicious.
“I never stopped thinking it was suspicious,” she said, and a tear rolled down her cheek, which she wiped away, self-consciously. The powers and longevity of grief are amazing. Even Superman couldn’t take on this supervillain.
“Did Dad have any enemies? Maybe someone out to get him?”
“Everyone loved your father. He was so full of life. He was bursting with it. And folks wanted to grab some of that life that was bursting out of him.” She touched her chin and looked up at the sky and then back at me. “Have you noticed that most folks are only about three-fourths full of life? The rest is death, creeping up on them like mold. So, they search out life, like a man searching for water in the desert. Well, there was your father, overflowing with life, and wherever he went, people attached themselves to him. He was like a magnet. When he left, all that life was snuffed out. I had never thought such a thing was possible, Gladie. But there you go. Impossible happens morning, noon, and night in this world.”
She took a jagged breath and wiped at her eyes again. I was tempted to reach out and touch her, to console her. But we didn’t have that relationship, and I couldn’t bring myself to touch her.
“So, he didn’t have any enemies, nobody who wanted to hurt him?”
“Jonathan was tied to the hips of five fast friends. They would sit around your grandmother’s parlor every night until three in the morning and talk about Blake and Sartre and who knew what else. I never even graduated high school, so I just sat there like a lump on a log not understanding a word until I fell asleep.”
“Five friends? Why didn’t I ever meet them?”
“Oh, you did. You knew all of them until your father died. Then, they disappeared.”
Her face changed from sadness to anger. “What do you mean, they disappeared?” I asked.
“Exactly. It’s crazy that five friends that I had seen most every day since I met your father suddenly disappeared. You know what I think? I think it was a guilty conscious. I think that one of them killed Jonathan. They couldn’t stand that he had more life in him than all of them put together and they decided to snuff it out. One of those friends took your father’s life.”
I had stopped breathing, as I listened to my mother. “How? I thought he had a motorcycle accident.”
“He died on his motorcycle, but as far as I know, they never proved it was an accident. And there’s another thing, Gladie. That motorcycle just up and disappeared afterward. No one ever saw it, again.”
It was the longest conversation that I had ever had with my mother. By the time I left her at the prison farm, I had the complete certainty that my father was murdered, and I had a list of his friends, who were the most obvious suspects. I debated with myself whether to tell Spencer the reason I had visited my mother, but when he saw me, he put his arms around me and drove me home without saying a word, which made the decision for me.
On the way home, we stopped for hamburgers, just like he had promised, and then we went home where I tried to wash the day off of me and slept in Spencer’s arms.
The next morning, I skipped breakfast to avoid my grandmother, because I was sure she could at least read on my face what I was up to. After Spencer left for work, I called Lucy.
“Are you up for some sleuthing?”
“Who died?”
“My father.”
“Oh, right. Yes! Harry’s got the boys over for poker, so this is perfect.” Harry’s “boys” were all at least seventy-years-old, and they all looked like they had jumped out of a Godfather movie. “You want me to pick you up, or are you going to pick me up?”
“I’ll come get you. Do you have any coffee and maybe an egg sandwich?”
I tracked down the first name o
n my mother’s list. Adam Mancuso. He was some kind of writer, but my mother didn’t think he was a poet. In any case, I didn’t have to Google him or look him up on Facebook, because he had never left Cannes, and I found his address easily in the phone book. He lived outside the Historic District by the lake.
I picked up Lucy in her fancy neighborhood, and she greeted me with a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich. “Where are we going?” she asked, getting into my car. “I’ve got a Taser in my purse, just in case we run into trouble.”
I gave her the rundown on my father’s friends and showed her the list. “I know two of these people,” Lucy said. “Roman Strand and Joy Lennon. But now she’s Joy Strand. They’re married and live in a humdinger of a mansion down the street from me. He’s a big deal. I saw him on Good Morning America.”
Damn it. We had driven right past it, and we were almost to the lake, too far to turn around. “What are they like?” I asked Lucy.
“Harry invited Roman to his poker game when we first moved into the neighborhood, but Roman said he was too busy. Actually, Joy said he was too busy. She sent a note to our house. I gather she organizes the house while he’s busy being a literary genius. And she likes Botox. I’ve seen her getting in and out of her car, but that’s it.”
I felt a pang of jealousy, hearing about the success of my father’s friend. It wasn’t fair that Roman got to live a long life, be thought of as a literary genius, and appear on Good Morning America while my father was cut down in the prime of his life.
I stopped the car by a dirt side road. “Is this it?” I asked.
“Looks like the perfect road for a killer to live on. Secluded back road. I have a good feeling about this, darlin’.”
Lucy was practically drooling over the idea of tracking down a killer. She was wearing a poufy peach organza dress and peach, leather pumps. Her hair was perfectly done, and I imagined she must have spent a thousand dollars a month in upkeep maintenance. Normally I would have had the same enthusiasm for solving a mystery and bringing a killer to justice, but this was different. This was personal and every step I made closer to discovering the truth about my father’s last moments brought new pain. But, pain aside, I felt the familiar drive to get down to the truth and find the dirty, lowdown murderer who took my father from me.