by J. D. Griffo
“Lisa Marie stop jumping on the bed!”
The squeaking only stopped after Alberta heard a thud.
Running into the bedroom, her panties and slacks bunched up around her calves, Alberta saw her daughter sitting quietly on the bed while her son lay on the hardwood floor still sleeping, his head turned to the right and sliding slowly down the side of a pillow. On the TV screen Jack LaLanne was showing his audience how to master the trampoline, bouncing up and down in a variety of positions. Furious that her daughter would mimic a TV personality and ignore her mother, Alberta glared at Lisa Marie, who appeared unfazed by her mother’s rage.
“I told you not to jump on the bed!”
Lisa Marie looked away from the TV screen and directly into her mother’s eyes. “I wasn’t jumping. Rocco rolled over and fell on the floor. I didn’t pick him up because I heard you coming, and I didn’t want to hurt him.”
Alberta hadn’t been surprised by the lie, all children lie, but she had been startled by the ease at which the lie formed in her four-year-old daughter’s mind. She was frightened that her young child could and would choose to concoct an alibi so effortlessly instead of admitting the truth.
Pressing Lola a little closer to her body, Alberta wondered if she could have prevented her daughter from relying on telling fabrications as an easy escape to avoid handling the truth had she challenged Lisa Marie further or made her understand that her lie wasn’t acceptable. Maybe she could’ve prevented so many mother-daughter arguments and fights had she only trusted her instincts. But Alberta had been too afraid to listen to her own inner voice urging her to guide her daughter down a better path, so she just picked up her son, grateful that he hadn’t been injured, and let her daughter get away with her lie. She couldn’t make the same mistake again with Kichiro.
For some reason she suspected the cop was concealing more than the fact that he was having an affair with a married woman, but could that other lie, even if it did exist, have something to do with Jonas’s murder? As long as there was the possibility that she could be right, Alberta knew she was going to have to act. There was a lot more at stake than a child’s broken arm. Several lives and reputations were on the line, a presumably innocent woman was in jail, and a man had been murdered. She wasn’t entirely sure how to act, but she was grateful that she wasn’t going to repeat the same mistake and remain silent. She would trust her gut and figure out what to do, but for now, she’d settle on trusting her cat.
When Lola squirmed in her arms and tried to break free, Alberta knew that Jinx would walk through the door in less than a minute. She wasn’t sure if Lola could hear Jinx’s Chevy Cruze from a few blocks away or if she possessed some feline extrasensory perception, but she always sensed when Jinx was about to arrive. Tonight was no exception.
“Lovey, thank God you’re back!” Alberta cried as Lola squirmed in her arms.
“What are you talking about, Gram? I’m early,” Jinx replied entering the kitchen carrying two large shopping bags. “I told you I probably wasn’t going to get back until six and it’s only five-thirty.”
“Sorry, but do we have news for you.”
“So do I, but first things first,” Jinx said, hoisting her bags onto the kitchen table as Joyce gathered her cards and put them back into their deck. “I brought dinner for everyone.”
Alberta and Joyce remained silent as Jinx pulled out several cardboard boxes each with a sticker on it that read VVV and spread them out onto the table. Alberta wasn’t sure what was more confusing: what the initials stood for or what the smell was that emanated from the boxes. She thought she would start by taking the safe route.
“What’s VVV?” she asked.
“Very Very Vegan,” Jinx replied. “This great little restaurant I found in Princeton. You’ll love what I got for us.”
Alberta and Joyce glanced at each other and without either of them saying a word knew they had to change the conversation until they could think up an excuse to avoid eating whatever horrible-smelling food was contained in the boxes without hurting Jinx’s feelings too badly. Lola came to their rescue by purring loudly.
“I’m sorry, Lola!” Jinx squealed. “I didn’t mean to ignore you, come here.”
Lola practically jumped from Alberta to Jinx and immediately nuzzled in the crook of Jinx’s neck. While Jinx was catering to Lola and making sure the cat was getting the attention she believed she deserved, it gave Joyce enough time to come up with a segue that spoke right to Jinx’s journalistic ego and gave them a reprieve from having to succumb to what would inevitably be an indigestible dinner.
“I need an appetizer before dinner in the way of some news,” Joyce declared. “What did you find out?”
Bubbling with excitement, Jinx forgot all about eating and instead spewed information. “I interviewed Nola’s former neighbor, Crystal Lopez, who’s a social worker. She told me about Nola’s upbringing, which was not all sunshine and roses as you might say, Gram. Seems that Nola was adopted, which I knew, but by an older couple. They had always wanted to have children, but despite assurances from doctors that they were both capable of reproducing, they never did. So when biology didn’t work in their favor, they took matters into their own hands and adopted. Crystal said that Nola’s parents were good people, but what do you call them, Gram? The ones who just can’t catch a break, but would give you the shirt off their backs.”
“Good-hearted slobs,” Alberta replied.
“That’s it!” Jinx exclaimed. “Nola’s dad worked in a factory, but hurt his leg and couldn’t work anymore, and Nola’s mother had never had a real job so after the husband was hurt she could only find minimum wage work and waitressing gigs.”
“You never knew any of this?” Joyce asked.
“Nola doesn’t really talk about her parents,” Jinx realized. “I mean, I knew they had passed, but I didn’t know that they died within a year of each other when Nola was a freshman in college. She’s been on her own ever since.”
Alberta made the sign of the cross and whispered, “Caro signore, what a sin.”
“The poor thing,” Joyce added. “Does she have any other family?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Jinx said. “According to Crystal, there were very few visitors to Nola’s house growing up.”
During the silence that followed Jinx’s comment, Alberta aimlessly walked around the table until she sat in the chair next to Joyce. “No family,” Alberta muttered almost to herself. “How is she supposed to get through this without any family?”
Jinx placed Lola on the floor and the cat immediately stretched, yawned, and pranced over to her bed in the corner of the kitchen to take an early evening nap. Jinx then took a seat next to Alberta and placed her hand over hers. “She has us, Gram,” Jinx said softly. “And Crystal said she would absolutely be a character witness for Nola if it came to that.”
“That’s good to know,” Joyce said. “But hopefully this will never get to trial if we can prove that Nola isn’t the murderer.”
“Which we all know she isn’t,” Jinx stated firmly. She then patted Alberta’s hand just as firmly. “Now what’s your news?”
Alberta was so lost in thought thinking about Nola being abandoned by her own mother and then abandoned yet again by the only parents she ever knew, that she almost forgot the news she was aching to share.
“Berta!” Joyce shouted. “Speak up or I’m gonna steal your thunder.”
“Oh yes . . . s-sorry,” Alberta stuttered, then announced matter-of-factly. “We stumbled on the fact that Kichiro is having an affair with Sharon.”
Jinx’s jaw dropped. “Sharon? As in Principal Sharon?”
“The one and only,” Joyce confirmed.
“Are you sure?”
“We, um, caught them in . . . oh, how do you say it?” Alberta questioned. “In fragrance delectablé.”
Joyce barely stifled a laugh. “I think you mean in flagrante delicto, which is Latin for getting caught with your pants down.”
“In the basement of the high school,” Alberta replied.
“Technically the boiler room,” Joyce corrected.
Jinx’s jaw dropped even farther and she started waving her arms around like she was guiding a 747 as to where to park on a crowded tarmac. “That totally gives new meaning to putting the ‘pal’ in ‘principal,’ ” she said. “But I mean Sharon is married and the principal of a Catholic high school, isn’t she like breaking every single rule in the book? And by book I mean the bible!”
“I think she’s breaking most of the rules in both testaments,” Joyce agreed. “Which is why she was so desperate to keep it a secret that she must have convinced Nola to act as her surrogate and masquerade as Kichiro’s girlfriend so no one, especially her husband, would put two and two together.”
Taking advantage of Jinx’s preoccupation with the revelation that Kichiro was Sharon’s male mistress, Alberta stacked the cardboard boxes of food one on top of the other and pushed them to the side so she could cut a piece of Entenmann’s lemon pie and pour some glasses of lemon-flavored vodka. She took a bite of pie and savored the tart citrusy filling before adding, “The main question is, did Sharon convince Nola or did she blackmail her?”
“No, the main question is, How does Jonas fit into this very messy equation?”
The presence of Helen in the kitchen startled all of them so much that Lola very unhappily woke up from her nap, hissed at Helen, and trotted out of the room.
“Holy Benito Mussolini!” Alberta shouted. “Where did you come from?!”
“The front door.”
“Nobody uses the front door!”
“I do from time to time,” Helen said, taking off the plastic head covering she had been wearing and placing it in the dish drainer to dry.
“Did you drive up?” Joyce asked. “We didn’t even hear your car?”
“I had one of the other volunteers drop me off so instead of walking around the house in the rain I came in the front door.”
Helen took the empty seat at the table, placed her pocketbook in front of her, and proceeded to cut herself an extra-large piece of pie. “But who cares how I got here? You should just be happy I’m here now so I can bring some reality to this powwow. I overheard everything and it’s good, efficient detective work, but ladies it has nothing to do with Jonas or the murder investigation.”
The three women wanted to rebut Helen’s comment, and Alberta even opened her mouth to speak, but quickly shut it closed. As much as they all wanted to argue with Helen, they couldn’t because she was right. Kichiro and Sharon were having an affair and Nola was an accessory to that moral crime, but none of it tied them to Jonas’s murder.
“Wait a minute!” Alberta cried. “We’re all stunods.”
“Why?” was the collective response.
“Jonas worked at the high school and, most damaging, he has a track record of stalking Nola,” Alberta reminded them.
“But Nola retracted her restraining order,” Jinx said.
“So she had a change of heart,” Alberta said dismissively. “It doesn’t change the fact that at one point she was scared enough to demand police intervention.”
“Okay, that’s a link,” Helen said, munching loudly on her pie. “But it still doesn’t connect Jonas’s murder to Kichiro and Sharon’s adultery.”
“Maybe Jonas was stalking Sharon too, and as a result found out about her affair with Kichiro,” Alberta surmised.
“Very possible,” Helen replied. “Or he found out that Nola was covering for her boss, saw her as the weak link, and blackmailed her for money or else he would tell Sharon’s husband.”
“Or maybe Jonas had been stalking Nola because he liked her and when he found out she was dating Kichiro he thought it was for real and he got a bit more aggressive in his stalking,” Jinx hypothesized.
“That’s at least two ‘ors’ ladies,” Joyce pointed out. “Not that I’m keeping count.”
“But each ‘or’ has one thing in common,” Helen said. “Which you’re not going to like.”
“What’s that?” Jinx asked.
“Each one gives Nola motive for killing him,” she replied.
The only sounds in the kitchen were the rattling of the blinds in the window stirred up by a rain shower breeze, Helen’s chewing, and Jinx’s long, deep intakes of breath.
“Whether Jonas was blackmailing Nola about her role in covering up the affair or if he was stalking her more aggressively, which made Nola fear for her life, she might have gotten desperate, decided to take the law in her own hands, and killed him,” Helen described. “I’ve seen women do worse things.”
Jinx leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her chest, textbook body language for when a person was on the defense. Whether it was plausible or not, Jinx did not want to hear any theory that hinged on Nola being a murderer even though she knew her friend was keeping secrets and acting oddly.
“And what if Jonas didn’t know Nola was involved in the covering up of the affair?” Jinx speculated. “What reason would she then have for killing him?”
Helen took a long sip of vodka and placed her jelly glass on the table. “I know it sounds strange and you may not understand it, but she could have acted out of loyalty to Sharon.”
“Aunt Helen, that’s ridiculous. Nola might be indebted to Sharon for her job, but it’s hardly worth killing someone over.”
“And we don’t know for certain that Sharon is aware that Nola isn’t truly qualified to be a teacher,” Joyce reminded them. “In fact, I hate to say it, but we aren’t certain of much of anything.”
Another long pause crept its way into the kitchen. The women nibbled on pie, took sips of vodka, and stared into empty space until Helen broke the silence.
“Here’s one thing I do know,” Helen said.
“What’s that?”
“I am not eating any of the junk that’s in those boxes.”
“Aunt Helen! How can you say that? You don’t even know what’s in there.”
“I can smell it! And whatever is in there is either dead, rancid, or both,” Helen wisecracked.
“The veggie burgers aren’t rancid, they’re delicious. I had them for lunch!” Jinx cried. “So are the tofu fries, the quinoa, kale, and especially the fungi salad.”
“Fungi salad?” Alberta shouted. “Oh mamma mia, Jinx! You were brought up better than that.”
“Also too,” Joyce said. “I don’t think you can actually use ‘delicious’ to describe fungi.”
“I have an idea,” Helen started. “Why don’t you bring all this . . . food . . . to Nola in prison? It can’t be much worse than the slop that poor thing is being forced to eat in there.”
“Trust me, if Jinx likes that stuff, it’s definitely worse than what they fed me in prison.”
“Nola!” Jinx cried. “What are you doing here?!”
“I’m sorry, the front door was open so we came right in,” Nola said.
“No, I mean . . . you’re like . . . supposed to be behind bars!” Jinx cried again.
“Please don’t tell me you broke out of jail!” Alberta said.
“Are you a fugitive?” Helen asked. “In addition to being a bad director.”
“I’m out on bail,” Nola explained. “And my show got raves by the way. One reviewer said that New Jersey was never more alive with the sound of music.”
“Because Jersey is tone deaf,” Helen snapped.
“Ignore her,” Alberta instructed and guided Nola to take her seat at the table. “But honey, we were told the judge refused to allow bail because he thought you were a flight risk since you don’t have real roots here in Tranquility, otherwise I would’ve posted your bail.”
Nola looked down at the table in the hopes that her tears wouldn’t be so obvious. “I know,” she replied, her voice soft and thick. “That’s why we came here. We went to my apartment first, but Jinx wasn’t there s
o I assumed she’d be here and, well, I didn’t want to be alone.”
“But you’re not alone, honey,” Joyce said. “Who’s the boy?”
All heads turned to the door leading into the living room and saw a young blond-haired man, who despite his navy pinstripe three-piece suit and bright red power tie, looked to be no more than twenty years old.
“This is my lawyer,” Nola said.
“Don’t you mean your lawyer’s intern?” Jinx asked.
“I’m Nola’s public defender,” the man said, his deep voice an almost comical contrast to his youthful looks. “And before you ask, no this isn’t my first case.”
“Is it your second?” Helen asked.
“Your third?” Joyce added.
Unable to suppress a smile during the cross-examination, he replied, “It’s actually my two hundred and twenty-fourth. And because I know everyone likes to keep score, I’ve only lost thirty-six of those cases and only fifteen of them have resulted in significant jail time so my track record is rather good.”
“When did you start practicing law?” Helen asked. “Kindergarten?”
This time he laughed out loud. “I know I look young, but I’ve been practicing for over five years,” he explained. “I’ll be thirty in December, but I inherited my mother’s smooth Swedish skin so I’m blessed or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with a baby face.”
Alberta grabbed a folding chair from the hall closet and wedged it between where Nola and Helen were sitting. “Here, sit down, and have some vodka and pie,” she ordered. “Did you pay Nola’s bail?”
“No, I only got the judge to change his mind,” he explained.
“So who paid your bail?” Joyce asked.
“I don’t know, it was posted anonymously,” Nola replied as she began to devour her pie. “This is seriously amazing. I know I was only in prison for a few days, but it felt like an eternity.”