by Bill Hopkins
Chapter 24
Saturday Afternoon
"Mrs. Bolzoni, I want to introduce my friend, Ollie Groton. You may have seen him around." They'd driven to The Four Bee after leaving McDonald's.
Mrs. Bolzoni, clutching a broom and standing on the top step of the front porch of her bed and breakfast, peered down at Ollie shuffling on the sidewalk. Shading her eyes from the afternoon sun with her hand, she angled her head first left, then right. "This thing on your head, this purple thing, is what should I think?"
"It's a purple star, Mrs. Bolzoni."
"Looks like spider."
Ollie nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
"Purple?"
Ollie nodded again. "Yes, ma'am."
"You got reason for purple spider drawn on the top of your head?"
"Good question, the answer to which escaped and is wandering loose."
Mrs. Bolzoni caught Rosswell's eye. "It's a good question says he, somewhere running around." She turned to face Ollie. "Why all the grease?" She sniffed the air. "You smell like oil well."
"It's Vaseline, ma'am. It keeps my bald head from chafing in the heat and the wind."
"Mrs. Bolzoni," Rosswell said, "Ollie and his daughter own a restaurant downtown. Mabel's Eatery. Maybe you've eaten there."
"I don't go to the downtown." Her eyes squinted and her lips pursed, as if the idea was worse than biting into a French fry. "I fix good food right here."
She began sweeping the porch, aiming for things that Rosswell couldn't see. Women, he'd decided long ago, had evolved the detection of dots of dust to a much higher degree than men. In fact, he admitted to himself, that skill was lacking in men altogether.
She said, "I'm busy. Go away."
"Please, Mrs. Bolzoni. You should hear this. Ollie discovered a method to keep all the bugs out of his restaurant."
Mrs. Bolzoni smiled and shook her finger at Ollie. "You do good thing then. Keep all them frogs out of your restaurant. Not good to have frogs where decent people eating. No frogs allowed here."
Ollie scratched the purple star. "Frogs?"
Rosswell whispered to Ollie, "Shut up, I'll tell you later," then closed his eyes and prayed to Whoever was listening for strength. When he opened his eyes, he saw the look of love shining in Mrs. Bolzoni's countenance. She stared at Ollie in rapture. "No, Mrs. Bolzoni, not frogs. Bugs."
"Oh. Bugs." She started the sweeping routine again. "They bad too."
Ollie said, "I'm quite the genius, you know." He reached for his wallet.
Rosswell leaned forward and again whispered to him, "Leave your Mensa card in your billfold."
"Okay." The wallet returned to Ollie's pocket.
Rosswell climbed the steps so he could stand closer to Mrs. Bolzoni. "You know how the health department is, all snoopy and scaring up things to bother restaurant owners with." The closer he got to the house, the stronger grew the delicious odor of beef stew-tonight's special. And pouring a big helping of stew over a chunk of cornbread would be the closest approach he could make to heaven this side of death. When supper was over, he'd be cast down to earth by the nap monster that followed him after large meals. "Ollie's process can help you keep the health department bureaucrats happy when it comes to certain issues."
"Like bugs." Mrs. Bolzoni spit on the grass. "Health department all over people who let the bugs roam free."
"Right." Rosswell moved closer to Ollie. "This man right there has found a way to get rid of roaches. And it's a way the health department approves of."
"Why you tell me this stuff?" Mrs. Bolzoni waved her hand, starting inside. "I got to fix the rest of the food. No time to listen to purple spider men about roaches. Good thing I don't got no roaches." She put her hand on the knob to the front door of The Four Bee.
Rosswell spoke in a low, yet distinct voice. "You have roaches."
The old woman froze. Rosswell listened to her breath, rasping as she started panting. "No."
"Mrs. Bolzoni, I'm sorry, but you have roaches. I've seen them."
"That's a cockroach and bull story. I've not seen them bugs." She whirled around, stomped down the steps and skidded to a stop, within an inch of Ollie's midsection. With one hand, she raised the broom above his head. "You try to steal an old lady's life savings. I saw about this on the television."
"No, ma'am. I won't charge you anything. You see, this method I've got, while it's wonderful, isn't perfect. I'm trying to get all the bugs out of it."
Mrs. Bolzoni clamped her mouth shut. When she relaxed, she said, "You get bugs out of it? I thought you try to get bugs in of it."
Rosswell said, "Ollie, cut the corny jokes."
"Mrs. Bolzoni, I promise you that you will not see one roach in your house when I'm through. But you won't pay a cent. I'll get my money from the customers I help after I help you. When they hear you praise me, they will line up at my door, asking for my help."
"Don't chase off my ghosts. I charge extra for the ghosts talking." Mrs. Bolzoni's free hand grabbed Ollie's belt buckle. "You try to mess with this old woman and she cut you." Clutched in her other hand, a broom waving close to his head emphasized the threat. The sun glinted on her thick glasses, throwing a sparkle into Ollie's eyes.
He winced. "Yes, ma'am, I believe that."
"We are Italian. My daughter got paper to shoot gun. You hurt her momma, she shoot you. You try something funny, I cut you."
"Not a doubt in my mind."
"Mrs. Bolzoni, Ollie believes you. Now, can we poke around for the roaches?"
"Where you poke first?"
"We'll start with the parlor, if that's all right with you."
"Okay," she said, "but if this purple spider guy messes with me, I cut him and feed him to the fishes down there at that river."
Mrs. Bolzoni absented herself into the kitchen. Rosswell and Ollie huddled in the parlor at a table under the three-tiered chandelier, consulting the plan Ollie had gotten from the assessor's office. The old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs cast a bright, colorless light into the room.
Ollie rapped his knuckles on the table. "Any ghosts here?"
"Mrs. Bolzoni tells everyone the place is haunted. Guests who stay in the attic have to pay more than folks on the ground floor because, she says, the ghosts up there are far superior to the lower level ghosts."
"Sounds reasonable to me." Ollie reached into his pocket. "I got something better than we had last time. These are little but strong." He displayed two black flashlights. "Ultra-bright LEDs. About three thousand candles in each of them. Good for five hours. Lithium battery. We won't go blind into a dark place this time."
"Thanks." Rosswell shoved one of the flashlights in his pocket, then traced a path on the paper. "There's a passageway right behind that bookcase."
Rosswell knocked on the wood at the back of the bookcase. He reckoned it measured about twelve feet high, eight wide, and stretched from floor to ceiling. Nine shelves held a lot of stuff, mostly books, knick-knacks, souvenirs, and other unidentifiable stuff.
A hollow sound resounded when Ollie again tapped the back of the bookcase in a different place. "There! Something's not back there." He rapped once more. "What's missing is a solid wall. The plan is right so far."
Rosswell checked the parlor door. "Locked. Mrs. Bolzoni won't bother us." He also tapped different places. "Do you think we can open it and snoop around a bit?"
Ollie ran his hands over the edges of the bookcase. "It's got piano hinges floor to ceiling, not two or three dinky hinges like you'd find on a regular door."
"If you can see the hinges, that doesn't make for a secret passageway."
"The assessor told you and I told you. They're not a secret."
Rosswell needed to make his point. "Still, shouldn't the hinges be invisible to the naked eye? At least for aesthetic reasons."
"This thing was built God knows when. Why did the builder let the hinges show? I don't know. I gave up guessing motives in 1998."
"What happened in 1998?"
"I stopped wondering why people did things."
Why do I let Ollie trap me in his silly word games?
"They're hefty." Rosswell glided his fingers along the exposed hinges. "Pure brass is my guess."
"Piano hinges are a good thing."
"You say that like there's a bad thing."
Ollie folded his arms across his chest, then lifted one hand to his mouth. He hemmed and hawed, muttered and stewed.
"Tell me what's wrong."
Ollie examined a couple of the hundred or so books and inspected a few doodads in the bookcase. "If we open that and it tilts toward us, we could have a pile of books and those thingamawhackies falling on us. We'd be crushed like ants at a picnic."
"I wonder when it was opened last?" Rosswell caressed the grain of the wood. "Oak. Heavy as the purse of a bad nun with a good run at a casino."
"That's another thing. Mrs. Bolzoni may not know about the passageway. Or if she does, she's too scared to open it." Ollie's breath hitched, like a sob. "So am I."