Top O' the Mournin'

by Maddy Hunter

  I shot Jackie a nervous look over Nana’s head. Okay. Other than showcasing the fact that she was pretty rusty with the subjunctive mood, she hadn’t given anything away. Had she?

  “Emily’s husband used to call me Mrs. S.,” Nana reminisced fondly. “He was such a nice young man. Handsome too. You ever hear from him, Emily? I wonder what he’s doin’ these days.”

  Jackie looped her arm through Nana’s. “You thought he was handsome?” she prodded, seemingly delighted. “How handsome?”

  “Real handsome. Emily’s grampa told me he thought Jack Potter was too pretty to be a boy.”

  Grampa Sippel had always been a bit psychic.

  “Really?” Jackie preened, giving me a disgusted look. “I wonder why Emily never bothered to tell that to Jack? An actor’s ego can always use a boost.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Do you mind? We’re discussing someone else’s problem at the moment. Go ahead, Nana.”

  Nana’s mouth drooped in discouragement. “It hurts to admit, dear, but when you stack me up against Tilly, I come out lookin’ pretty pathetic. She’s everything I wish I was. Taller. Smarter. She’s got her own teeth.”

  “She is not smarter,” I protested.

  “She uses bigger words. That makes her sound smarter.”

  “You could buy a thesaurus,” Jackie suggested.

  “Tilly looks like Cindy Crawford,” Nana sulked. “I look like that singer who lives on Long Island.”

  Since I hadn’t I clue who that was, I made a wild guess. “Jennifer Lopez?”

  Nana shook her head. “I think his name is Billy Joel.”

  “You do not look like Billy Joel!” I balked. “You look like”—I stared down at her, trying to come up with a complimentary example of another person who sported three chins, Howdy Doody ears, and the hair from hell—“like…a Boyd’s Bear. A sweet-faced, huggable Boyd’s Bear.”

  “Men don’t want their women to look like stuffed animals,” Jackie argued. “They want them to look like Barbie dolls.”

  “In New York, perhaps.” I gave Jackie the eye and snarled silently at her. “Men in the Midwest have a different value system.”

  “What a crock,” said Jackie. “Listen to me, Mrs. S. Men are men. If you want to snare this George, there’s only one way to do it.”

  “Give it to me straight,” Nana pleaded. “That’s why I asked.”

  “Naughty lingerie,” Jackie announced. “Parade past him in a satin thong, and he’ll follow you anywhere.”

  Nana looked crestfallen. “My bum’s not my best feature. It slid down to my knees some years back. You think that’ll be a turnoff?”

  “If he has cataracts, he might not notice,” Jackie said optimistically.

  “He got ’em removed.”

  “Okay, a see-through bra then. Picture this. A nylon cup. Light underwire. Front closure so he doesn’t have to fumble with hooks and eyes at the back. Those can be such a nuisance, especially if a guy is older and has arthritic joints.”

  This idea seemed to perk Nana up a bit. “I tried on one a them sheer lace brassieres at the Victoria’s Secret in Ames, but it didn’t give me no support. I need underwire that’s industrial strength. The salesgirl was real sweet, though, and she worked on commission, so I ended up buyin’ one a them lacy cleavage-enhancin’ Miracle brassieres with what they call Liquid Lift.”

  “That’s fabulous,” Jackie cooed. “I have one of those, too. George will love it. One small word of caution, though. Avoid contact with sharp objects. I punctured my left cup with a toothpick at a party one night and spent the rest of the evening lopsided. Did you bring along something low and plunging to show off your décolletage?”

  “Sure did.”

  Jackie clapped her hands with excitement. “Tell me what.”

  “My Minnesota Vikin’s sweatshirt.”

  Jackie arched an eyebrow. “You might want to think about something a little more daring. A scoop-necked tank top. A V-necked blouse. You need to wear something with a neckline that reveals your assets.”

  “My sweatshirt reveals enough. When I strap that brassiere on, my assets get hiked to my chin.”

  “Would you take a minute to listen to yourselves talk?” I scolded. “Women do not have to be sex kittens these days to attract a man’s attention.”

  “Maybe not, dear, but it can’t hurt none.”

  “I can’t believe this!” I fussed. “What happened to the concept that everyone drilled into my head when I was growing up? ‘If you want to catch a man, just be yourself.’”

  “Who taught you that, dear?”

  “You did!”

  Nana looked stunned. “I did? I’m sorry, Emily. That was an awful misguided thing for me to do.”

  I rolled my eyes so far back into my head I saw the top of my skull.

  “Well, would you look at that,” Nana marveled as we approached the causeway. The site was a vast boneyard of twelve-inch-wide upright stone columns that were chimney-stacked against each other like patio tiles in a supplier’s warehouse. Some columns had eroded down to nubs, with smooth, flat surfaces. Others were tall as a man, while others reached the height of a two-story house. “I never seen nothin’ like it,” Nana said. “All these rocks look to have the same shape. They’re all six-sided. How’d that happen?”

  “Ashley said it was an anomaly of nature,” I answered.

  “Ashley’s an anomaly of nature,” Jackie wisecracked. “Oh, look. There’s Tom. If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I’m going to wander over and ask him how many old people he had to knock over to get that seat on the shuttle.”

  Nana staked a claim on a low, squat rock and did a slow three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation. “Check out the rocks at three o’clock,” she said, pointing to a sprawling cluster of uneven spires. “They look like skyscrapers in the New York skyline, only smaller. And look at the big clump at high noon. If they was silver, they could pass for the pipes attached to the organ at Holy Redeemer. And would you look at those behind you. They kinda remind me a the little piles a chips on the craps table at the Meskwaki casino.”

  “You play craps?”

  “Don’t tell your mother. She don’t even like me playin’ the one-armed bandits. I don’t know about your mother, Emily. I raised her Catholic, but sometimes I think she’s got a touch a Southern Baptist in her.”

  “Marion!” Tilly shouted from a higher elevation, waving her walking stick in the air. “Yoo-hoo! Over here!”

  “Be right there!” Nana shouted back. She turned to me. “You don’t mind if I abandon you, do you, dear? I gotta make sure Tilly don’t hog George.”

  “You and Tilly would never come to blows over George, would you?” I asked a little anxiously. These rocks would be the perfect place to put someone out of commission.

  “Emily! Tilly and me wouldn’t let no man spoil our friendship. We like each other too much. But just between you and me, I think I got a slight advantage. I seen her underwear. A hundred percent cotton with maximum coverage. She don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell with him.”

  “Watch your footing!” I called after her, as she charged in Tilly’s direction. I spied Ashley not too far from Tilly, rattling off some kind of spiel to a semicircle of listeners from the tour. I saw other members of the group clustered in little pockets, snapping pictures of each other against the rocky backdrop of skyscrapers, and organ pipes, and casino chips. I shielded my eyes and looked seaward, noting long spines of black rock arched above the surface of the water like huge humpbacked whales. Some outcroppings were farther out to sea. Others were nearer to shore, close enough for a few brave souls to step across a narrow channel of water and scramble onto them, climbing like mountain goats onto their barnacle-encrusted peaks.

  The longer I regarded the terrain, the more uneasy I grew, my own recent thoughts ringing in my ears. These rocks would be the perfect place to put someone out of commission. Oh, my God! Where was Gladys Kuppelman? Where was Michael Malooley?

  I whirled
around to check out the group listening to Ashley. They were clumped too close together for me to distinguish who was there, so I hurried off in that direction, my feet skimming across the rocks as if they were stepping-stones in a brook, my mind racing.

  If what Tilly had told me about the Ticklepenny family was true, I was at a huge impasse. No family member could have passed on the syndactyly trait because they’d all died. But it was too much of a coincidence that the ghost should leave footprints with the same genetic defect that the Ticklepenny children displayed in the portrait. There had to be a connection, yet how was that possible if none of Lord Ticklepenny’s children had survived?

  I clambered up a ministaircase of ochre-colored stone, arriving at the back of the crowd gathered around Ashley. As I searched for Gladys Kuppelman, Ashley continued talking in her gooiest Georgia-peach drawl. “Legend has it that these columns were placed here by the giant Finn MacCool. He had a ladylove on the island of Staffa in Scotland, so he built this causeway as a way to reach her and not get his feet wet. Interestingly enough, the only other place in the world where y’all will find rock formations like this is on the island of Staffa in Scotland.”

  I checked out all the heads in the group. No Gladys. No Michael. I headed off in another direction, back toward the road. I’d start there and work my way systematically toward the shoreline.

  When I reached the road, I eyed a towering stack of columns to my left and a pathway that curved around it, skirting the base of the plateau. These columns were fractured into horizontal chunks that resembled hundreds of ottomans piled on top of each other. I pitied the poor giant who’d had to construct them. He probably wouldn’t have had the energy to visit his ladylove once the causeway was complete, but the idea of a ladylove led me to a sudden, more daring thought.

  A man could have many loves in his lifetime, and could father children inside and outside of wedlock. What if Lord Ticklepenny had engaged in an affair with an Irish maid or serving girl while he’d lived in Ireland? Highborn lords did that as a matter of course, didn’t they? What if the girl had become pregnant and given birth to Ticklepenny’s illegitimate child?

  A tingling sensation crawled up my spine. Could that be it? If Ticklepenny was the one carrying the syndactyly gene, was that how the birth defect had been passed down to the present generation? Not through his official bloodline, but through an illegitimate bloodline? Was it a descendant of that illegitimate heir who was leaving bloody footprints at the castle and scaring people to death? That had to be it! Someone was seeking revenge for centuries of being abused, demeaned, and shunned. Someone had his sights on Ballybantry Castle and would apparently do anything to wrest it out of the hands of its present owners in payment for past wrongs. But who was the heir? Ira Kuppelman? Michael Malooley? Could the two of them be related? There was only one sure way to tell. I needed to get their shoes off them; then the truth would be as clear as the little webbed toes on their feet.

  “I don’t believe these things just happened,” I heard Ethel Minch say as she rounded the corner of the towering columns, heading toward me.

  “Ashley said they were a natural phenomenon,” Gladys Kuppelman said, strolling beside her.

  “They’re too perfect.” Ethel rapped her knuckles on the stone, as if checking to see if they were hollow, or made of Styrofoam. “I think some guy built this whole place so he could call it the eighth wonder of the world and charge people an entrance fee. The whole thing’s a scam.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gladys whined at her. “The place is real. It says so in the brochure.” Gladys saw me and motioned for me to join them. “These rocks are real, aren’t they, Emily?”

  Relieved to see Gladys alive, I jogged over to them. “They sure look real to me.” But I thought Cinderella’s castle in Disney’s Magic Kingdom looked real too, so maybe I wasn’t a good judge.

  “They’re fake,” Ethel reiterated. Then to Gladys she said, “The only reason they look real to you is because you don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s phony anymore.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Gladys huffed, her bland expression belying the anger in her voice.

  “Oh, get off it,” Ethel shot back. “Sometimes your innocent routine makes me want to gag.”

  “Really? Speaking of gagging, when’s the last time you had your hair colored by a professional? I hate to be the one to tell you, but that color went out with the dinosaur.”

  Uh-oh. “Where’d you leave your husbands?” I jumped in, hoping to avert the squabble that seemed to be brewing.

  Ethel tossed her head toward the shore. “They’re looking for some rock called the Wishing Chair. If you make a wish while you’re sitting in it, it’s supposed to come true.”

  I wondered what a guy like Ernie Minch would wish for. I knew what I’d wish for if I were a bald-headed vegan whose waist started under my armpits. I’d wish for a pound of hamburger.

  “Bunch of nonsense,” Ethel continued. “I wish my feet would stop hurting, but sitting in some stupid chair isn’t going to make it happen.”

  “So you ladies aren’t up for a little frolicking over the rocks like everyone else?”

  “Those rocks are a disaster waiting to happen,” said Gladys. “You wait and see. Someone’s going to fall down and break a leg, or crack his skull, but it’s not going to be us, is it, Ethel?”

  Ethel shook her head. “We’re staying on level ground, but I hope we’re not here much longer. Staring at fake rocks is downright boring.”

  “They are not fake,” protested Gladys.

  Okay. They were back to where I came in.

  I was feeling much better about Gladys’s well-being as I returned to the Grand Causeway. If she stayed away from the rocks and remained with Ethel, she’d be safe, unless she made another snide comment about Ethel’s hair. Then it could get a little messy. I still wasn’t entirely sure that Michael Malooley had been hired to kill her, but maybe my best option would be to find Michael and keep my eye on him. I’d tailed people before on my trip to Switzerland and I’d discovered I was pretty good at it.

  I leapfrogged from one level of rock to the next, exchanging pleasantries with other tour members, my gaze ranging in a wide arc in search of Michael Malooley. I whipped out my Canon Elph and snapped a panoramic shot of the waves that seemed to be breaking higher on the shore, a wide-angle shot of the formation that resembled a pipe organ, a classic shot of the New York skyline cast in stone.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Twenty.

  I found the Wishing Chair, a wobbly horizontal stone that tourists used as a primitive rocking chair, and waited my turn to sit down and make a wish. Ira Kuppelman and Ernie Minch had become the official photographers at the site, so they were too preoccupied snapping pictures of the chair’s occupants to get into any trouble. After I took my turn and made a simple wish that Etienne and I would be able to spend one quiet evening together, I wandered over every inch of the causeway and finally found Michael leaning against an errant boulder close to the shoreline, smoking a cigarette.

  I imagined the wise thing to do would be to hang back, stretch out on a rock, and watch him, but I’d learned something about myself that I hadn’t realized before I accepted my escort job. I’m not the “hang back” type.

  “Top o’ the morning to you,” I called out as I approached him. He stared at me through a fog of smoke, neither acknowledging my greeting nor looking happy to be interrupted. “Quite a place you have here!” I stopped in a spot that I prayed was downwind of him.

  He scowled at me and blew a mouthful of smoke into the air. “It’s not my place, but they tell me you tourists like it well enough.”

  “It’s nice you decided to join us at the site. I mean, usually the bus driver waits at the visitors’ center and never gets to see the attraction.”

  “Does he now?”

  “But you’re a rookie. Maybe they forgot to tell you the drill.”

  H
e took another drag on his cigarette and turned his head away from me to glance out across the North Atlantic. Geesch, this guy really did need to kiss the Blarney Stone.

  “So…if you don’t mind my asking, what line of work were you in before you decided to become a bus driver? I used to be in phone solicitation before I became a tour escort.”

  “Brilliant,” he said, throwing his cigarette to the ground and crushing it beneath his heel.

  Hmm. This was going well. Maybe I needed to change my strategy. “Do you live close to the ocean?”

  “Close enough.”

  “You probably know all about the tides then. I live in the Midwest, so I don’t know diddly about these things. Can you look at the ocean right now and tell if the tide is coming in or going out?”