by Elise Sax
“You were very brave, Meryl,” I told her.
“The thing is, Gladie, that I liked DICK before all of this. I was rooting for them against the bubble gum bandits.” She lifted her head off the table. “I’ve been scraping bubble gum off every surface in the library, you know. Pounds of bubble gum, Gladie. But the bubble gum bandits never touched the books. They had respect for the written word. Not like those DICK people. Those DICK people are dicks, Gladie.”
Bridget stood over us in a Wonder Woman pose. “I’m feeling great,” she said. “My feet even de-swelled a little.”
My phone rang. It was Lucy, and I answered. “You found the weird animal man in his refrigerator?” she demanded.
“I’m sorry.”
“You never wait for me. I’m never there for the big action.”
“There’s still a dragon on the loose. Maybe you’ll stumble over it.”
“I need more information,” she insisted. “Come here for lunch.”
“We just ate.”
“I could eat, again,” Bridget said.
“Come over,” Lucy said. “Harry invited a chef from Italy to feed us.”
“Okay. We’ll be right over.”
Lucy must have been watching out her front window because she opened the front door before I had the chance to ring the bell. “There you are,” she said, breathlessly. “Come in. Quick.”
A couple months ago, Lucy had married a man I called Uncle Harry, even though we weren’t related. They had both sold their mansions to buy an even bigger mansion. It dawned on me that I could have moved in with them, and they wouldn’t have even known. It looked like the Czar of Russia lived there.
“Hey there, Legs,” Uncle Harry called to me. He was sitting at the table in the dining room. A big television was on, playing a boxing match, and Harry’s attention moved between us, his food, and the fight at regular intervals.
“Hi, Uncle Harry. How’s tricks?”
“I lost three-thousand at my poker game this week. Lousy luck. Where’s the cop? I like when he joins my game. He gives me good luck.”
“He’s been busy, building his house. And now, he’s trying to slay a dragon.”
“His house? Don’t you mean your house?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
“Do you mind if I put my feet up when I eat?” Bridget asked. She sat down sideways on a chair and put her feet up on the chair next to her.
“Lucy sat at the head of the table, across from Harry, and she motioned for me to sit on her right.
“What the hell happened?” she asked me.
“Today, I’m so happy to have such wonderful people to serve,” the Italian chef said, appearing in the dining room in his chef’s coat and hat. “For lunch, I have prepared melon with prosciutto, carbonara, salmon with--how do you say--potatoes, and for dessert, tiramisu and coffee.”
“Sounds great,” Harry announced and went back to watching the fight.
“I like me some pasta,” Bridget said.
The chef left the room, and Lucy asked me again to tell her what happened the night before. I told her about the dinner party and about Fart Boy.
“I can relate to that title,” Bridget said.
Lucy gasped. “So, Adam did it. He stole your daddy’s idea and killed him.”
The chef served the melon, and we dug in. “That’s what I thought,” I told Lucy with my mouth full. “That’s why we broke into Adam’s house after dinner.”
“You broke in?”
“Well, the door was open.” I explained about Adam coming home and about Spencer and me falling asleep.
“And you found him in the refrigerator,” Lucy breathed.
I nodded. “After I let the dragon loose.”
“I heard that that dragon spit poison juices at some old lady’s dog, and melted the pooch into the ground,” Uncle Harry said and finished his melon.
“Where did you hear that?” Lucy asked.
“It was on that entertainment show before the fights.”
“So, who did it?” Lucy asked me, returning to the topic of Adam’s murder.
“I don’t know.”
The chef took our plates and came back with the carbonara.
“I guess it had to be a man,” Lucy continued. “I mean, someone strong enough to stuff him into the refrigerator.”
“I resent you stereotyping along gender lines,” Bridget said. “This carbonara is awesome. Is there enough for seconds?”
“I guess a woman could have done it,” Lucy said, considering it. “If she ate keto and did weights or something.”
Bridget wagged her fork at Lucy. “Or Pilates. That stuff is hard.”
My cellphone rang, and I answered it. “Pinky, oh my God. Oh my God!”
“What?” I asked, panicked. Spencer was on the other line, and he sounded terrified.
“The dragon!”
CHAPTER 12
Love is a process. Just like baking a cake. Of course, I have no idea how to bake a cake, but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that there are steps. So, love is a process. There are steps, but the steps are not the same size and not the same difficulty, and you never know when one is going to show up. In other words, dolly, there are no rules to the process. Confused? Don’t worry. The important thing is that you prepare your matches not to want everything at once and accept one step after another until love is there for as long as she lives.
Lesson 45, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
“Spencer? Are you okay?”
“It treed me! I’m treed!”
“What does that mean?”
“I wanted to tell you, in case, ohhhhh eowah!”
“Eowah? What does that mean? Spencer? Spencer?” I looked at the phone. He had disconnected. “He hung up.”
“Is he investigating the murder?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t think so. I think he’s working on the dragon thing.”
“Tell him to be careful of its poison spit juices,” Uncle Harry said, focusing on the fight on TV.
“I wonder if I should go help him,” I said and then Lucy, Bridget, and I broke out into laughter. There was no way I could help Spencer with a dragon. I would probably wind up getting him eaten.
“Oh, Gladie, you’re such a card,” Lucy said. “So, what’s next in the investigation?”
“I need to get back into that house and look for clues,” I heard myself say and then had doubts. “Do you think they cleaned out his poisonous spider collection?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I heard they have every animal control person in Southern California going after the dragon. Maybe they don’t have anyone to spare for the spiders.”
Ugh. I hated spiders even more than I hated giant lizards.
“Why do you think he was murdered?” Lucy asked me.
“I think he knew who murdered my father. And now the suspects are down to three.”
Lucy didn’t care about poisonous spiders if it meant she wouldn’t miss any excitement. I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t expecting any more excitement, but she didn’t believe me. So, since I had to get back home and pay Draco, she insisted that she would meet me there in an hour before I returned to Adam’s house to break into his office, again.
Bridget drove me home. Hitting a fascist with a hardback book had made her feel a lot better about being pregnant, and after she dropped me off, she was content to go home alone and take a nap.
Grandma’s house was quiet. With her out of commission in bed, and the town’s groups, committees, and volunteering in a deep drought, for the first time ever, my grandmother’s house wasn’t the center of activity in town. It was sad and abnormal, and it made me disoriented, like my reality had shifted and everything I had ever known to be true turned out to be false.
Checking on my grandmother, I found her asleep with the television on to an infomercial. I turned off the TV and made sure she was still breathing. Yep, she was okay.
I tiptoed
out and shut her door with a soft click. Then, I climbed up to the attic. Draco was sitting at the folding table, tapping the keys on my laptop with a stack of my grandmother’s index cards next to him. The Doritos bag and Pop-Tarts box were empty, and I was guessing he had finished the cream soda, too. I had expected him to be reading comic books or whatever young people did, but Draco surprised me by working diligently.
“These are some trippy cards,” he said when I entered.
“Matchmaking isn’t for the faint of heart.”
“People sure don’t want to be alone,” he said, wisely.
“Love is a powerful drug.”
He shrugged. “I’d rather play Grand Theft Auto.”
“Most guys would. Can you come back tomorrow after school? I’ll get more junk food.”
“Sure. I’ll come after school or earlier if the dragon is still on the loose. I forgot to check on your grandma.”
“That’s okay. She’s fine.”
The doorbell rang. “I’m going to get that,” I said.
“I’ll turn off the laptop and be down there in a sec.”
Downstairs, I opened the front door. A guy with a flattened nose and big, cauliflower ears was standing on the porch. “I’m here for the plates,” he said. His voice was low and gravely.
“What plates?”
“You know, lady. The plates. C’mon. Hand ‘em over.”
“I don’t know what plates you’re talking about. We’re using all our plates. We don’t have any to give away.”
The man scrunched up his face. “I got a call to come here to get the plates. I don’t got all day, you know. I’m going to be driving for hours, and if I don’t have the plates, I can’t do the driving.”
“You have to drive with plates?” I asked, confused. “Like a circus act thing?”
Draco came barreling down the stairs. “Hey, man,” he said. “Here I am.”
He handed the big guy his armful of license plates. “Oh, phase three,” I said, remembering. “Do I want to know what phase three is?”
“It’s genius,” Draco said and walked out with the goon.
As they left, Lucy drove up the driveway and opened her window. “What’s going on?” she called from her car. “Did I miss anything?”
“Nope. Nobody’s dead.”
“Oh, good. Come on and get in the car. Time’s a wasting.”
I grabbed my purse and got in her car. I was in a hurry, too. I needed to get answers on the double so that Grandma could get out of bed, and our lives could go back to normal, whatever that was.
Across the street, the construction workers were sitting on the front lawn, soaking up the rays. With Spencer busy with DICK and the dragon, he didn’t have time to be on top of the workers to actually work and finish the house on time. If I couldn’t save him from the dragon, the least I could do was fill in for Spencer with the workers. Uncle Harry’s comment about it being my house, too, really hit home. I urged Lucy to stop the car in front of the house, and I stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Hello,” I called to the men. “It’s me. Gladie. I’m with Spencer, you know. And this is his house. I mean, this is my house. Mine! And well, how’s the work going? You’re working, right?”
“Yep,” a couple men responded.
“Don’t you worry,” another man said. “We’ve got this under control.”
They went back to lying down in the sun. “All righty, then,” I said. “I mean, if you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, that’s great.”
Lucy’s car door slammed behind me, and I heard the click-clack of her heels on the pavement. “Hey, pretty lady,” one of the men said to her.
“Listen up, you egg-sucking dogs,” she announced in her thick Southern drawl. “I know what you good-for-nothing, pack of no-accounts, about as useful as a steering wheel on a mule, think you’re doing. But there’s a tree stump in Louisiana with a higher IQ then y’all, if you think that just because Mr. Bolton is busy you can loll around here all day and get your asses paid. You can butter your butts and call them biscuits, but that doesn’t make it true. So, get your smelly selves that could gag a maggot up and get to work, or I’m gonna jerk a knot in your tail, so help me Jesus. Are we clear?”
They were clear. They jumped up and ran into the house. Lucy stuck her finger in the air, signaling me to wait a second, and sure enough, the sound of hammering and sawing began. She smoothed her dress and nodded.
“They think they can do what they want, just because we’re women,” she muttered. “Well, they can keep it up and watch me cancel their birth certificates.”
“That’s right,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Lucy turned onto the dirt road, leading to Adam’s property. “You crossed the police line,” I said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“There was a sign, saying ‘Active crime scene. Do not enter.’”
“I didn’t see it,” she said and kept driving.
“Fair enough.”
Our Thelma and Louise moment ended quickly because Margie was standing in front of Adam’s house with her hands on her ample hips in her black pantsuit. I rolled down my window.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, trying to think of a lie to tell her about why we broke through a crime scene warning.
“No problem,” she said. “Remington said you would probably show up.” Lucy and I got out of the car. “Put on these footies and gloves, and it’ll all be good. Remington’s inside, doing his thing.”
I wasn’t used to law enforcement condoning my snooping, but I didn’t give Margie another minute to change her mind. Lucy and I put on the gloves and footies and walked inside. Remington was in the kitchen, handling the forensics. He turned around and pulled his mask down off his face.
“Hey, there, sexy. How’s it hangin’?”
“Hi, Remington,” I said. Lucy batted her eyelids and twirled her hair. Remington looked a lot like The Rock, but he had hair, and in his CSI uniform, he was even sexier. “Do you have any clues about the murder?”
“The dude had a lot of blood in him, which bled out, and he had weird taste in pets. You can’t imagine the creepy crawlers I found in this place.”
“So, they’re gone?” I asked looking at the floor by my feet.
“As far as I know. He had some wacky hiding places, but I think I got them all. In terms of the murder, the guy was stabbed with a kitchen knife, but not one of his knives, as far I can tell. He was dead when he was stuffed into the fridge, and the blood was mopped up with paper towels and tossed in the trash. A killer with a cleaning fetish. Go figure.”
“I think the killer was trying to keep the murder a secret for as long as possible,” I said.
“Could be. So, you want to do me a favor?”
“I’ll do you a favor,” Lucy said, twirling her hair.
“Thanks,” he said. “Can you take a look at his office? There’s ten tons of paper in there, and we just don’t have the manpower to sift through it. Margie will work with you.”
I smiled at him. I might not have been a genius, but I did recognize when I was getting special treatment. Remington knew I was there to stick my nose in, and instead of giving me a hard time, he was making an excuse so that I could do just want I wanted to do.
He winked at me, and I blushed.
Lucy and I walked into the office, and Margie came in a few seconds later. “Remington said you’re a whiz bang at this kind of research,” Margie told me. “Where should we start?”
“We’re looking for any correspondence or notes about Jonathan Burger. And about Rachel Knight,” I added on a hunch. Two deaths within a small group of friends was a big coincidence, as far as I was concerned.
Even with three people working, we barely made a dent in the papers by the time Remington finished processing the murder scene. We didn’t find anything more than I found with Spencer. Lots of discussions between Adam and my father about Fart Boy. Nothing personal. No
thing about Rachel. There might have been more in the office, but it would have to wait until another day.
“That was boring,” Lucy complained on the drive home. “I heard Bridget did hand-to-hand combat against a guy in a cardigan. All I got to do is look through papers. I didn’t even get a papercut.”
“I guess we could search for the Komodo dragon,” I suggested. “That would be dangerous.”
“Nah. I have to be home for dinner. We still have that Italian chef, and Harry wants us to get our money’s worth. I’ve already gained three pounds. Next week, we’re getting a Japanese chef. It’s like those subscription services where you get a new mascara every month, except with us, it’s a chef.”
Boy, they say money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure buys everything else.
Dropping me off at the curb in front of my grandmother’s house, Lucy said, “Let me know if you sense another murder or general mayhem and call me, so I can be there.”
“Sure thing, but I doubt there’ll be another murder.”
“Gladie, you’re a murder magnet. Sooner or later, there’ll be another murder.”
She was so right. “No, there won’t,” I said.
She rolled her eyes, honked her horn, and drove away.
I hurried inside because my grandmother hadn’t eaten since this morning, and I was sure she was starving. But when I entered her bedroom, she was sitting up in bed, watching the news. Meryl was with her, and they had ordered a couple pizzas, two big bottles of Coke, salad with blue cheese dressing, and a dozen chocolate chip cookies.
“Hello, dolly,” Grandma said. “Nothing, huh?”
I knew what she was asking: Did I make progress in finding out about my father’s death? “Not yet.”
“I’m eating pizza for my PTSD,” Meryl announced. “And I’m taking a week’s leave right here with Zelda to try and recover from the Sharpie incident. I’ve got a cot and thirty-five romances downstairs. Can you ask Spencer to lug all that up for me?”