Scot & Soda

by Catriona McPherson

  “There’s no way the pictures could have got switched round is there?” I asked. “Because there might have been a news story about one of these girls. But not that one. And Becky Worth got them mixed up too, didn’t she? She said Joan had dropped out of view. But it was Patti.”

  “Patti Ortiz?” said Noleen. She took her feet down off the hearth and sat up straight. “It’s not Patti Ortiz you’re talking about, is it, Lexy?”

  “It is,” I said. “What do you know about it?”

  “Patti Ortiz was older than me,” Noleen said, “but her name was still the name our parents were using when we got to high school and went driving and dancing. And parking.”

  “You did?” said Kathi.

  “Yeah, I did,” Noleen said. “Whenever some ’phobe tells me I don’t know what I’m missing, I can straighten them out, no pun intended, in extreme detail.”

  “Never mind all that,” I said. “What do you know about Patti Ortiz? Because Todd spoke to someone we think was her mum tonight and she was not okay with the idea of chatting.”

  “I don’t know anything,” said Noleen. “That’s the point. No one knows anything. Patti Ortiz just disappeared off the face of the earth. Right after graduation. I mean, the night of graduation. She went to the party and she never went home. She was never seen again.”

  “Fifty years ago,” I said. “Her poor mother.”

  “Mother, father, and a brother,” Noleen said. “The brother never came home from ’Nam. The dad died a while back too. Heart attack, stroke, something. But the mom, old Mrs. Ortiz, is still in Cuento. Still waiting. With the porch light on every night. Fifty years, Lexy, like you said.”

  We were all silent for a moment after that. Todd slid his phone out of his back pocket, I guessed to text Roger. It was Kathi who spoke first. “Speaking of porches … ”

  I had forgotten about the bin bag. But there it was.

  Todd spread a few double sheets of Voyager on my nice hardwood floorboards and unfolded the neck of the bag. Kathi pulled her feet up, in case of scampering rats or sloshing bin juice, I supposed, and Todd got going.

  “Draught excluder,” he said, pulling out another of the fake limbs we’d seen in the earlier stash. “Private joke,” he told Kathi and Noleen. “Fake kilt. Jimmy wig. Fake junk. Fake Braveheart vest with bootlace ties.”

  “Fake junk?” said Noleen. “The wiener and meatballs?”

  “To have an authentic Scotsman sitting up on a porch at eye level with passersby,” said Todd.

  “Ewwww,” said Kathi. “I thought that was a myth.” Then she held up a hand. “There’s someone on deck,” she said. “Jesus, if it’s Mike, we’re all in trouble.”

  But I was ahead of her. I knew there was someone on deck and I knew it was Della. She wasn’t keen on water and so, when she lifted her back foot off dry land, she always gripped the PG&E pole hard enough to make the boat sway, just once.

  “Come in,” I said. Della edged round the door. She was still wearing her uniform from work although she had taken off her hairnet and changed her clogs for a pair of slippers. She was holding a baby monitor under her chin—Diego must be asleep in their room—and a kitten in each hand. “Oh God!” I said. “Della, I’m sorry.”

  “No sorries needed,” she said, bending down to let Flynn and Florian go. And go they did. Unimpeded by armpit nests, they streaked once round the living room at floor level, once more at tabletop, mantelpiece, and shrimp bowl level, then shot up the curtains to balance, eyes rolling and tails lashing, on the pelmet. “They are groomed, Lexy. You are free.”

  “They look fantastic,” I said. “Where’d you take them? What do I owe you?”

  “Nothing,” said Della. “It was free. Free cat grooming for anyone named Deifilia today.”

  “Son of a—Good for you,” I said. “Seriously? Deifilia?”

  “It’s a beautiful name,” Della said. “It means ‘daughter of God.’ What isn’t serious?”

  “So where was this?” I said. “One of the mobiles?”

  “Aristocats up in Madding,” Della said. “Main Street. Very fancy.”

  “Probably the best idea,” I said. “Those folk that work out of the back of their cars are a funny bunch. Rude, for a start. But that reminds me. Todd, remember Becky Worth didn’t know what I meant about John Worth’s little part-time cat-grooming business?”

  “She wasn’t the only one,” said Todd. “There’s no way that guy is a cat groomer, Lexy. What are you on?”

  “Hey,” said Noleen. “Newsflash. We don’t need to be talking about freaking cat groomers anymore. The cats are groomed. I’m thrilled the cats are groomed, since they both just ran through the shrimp. But let’s change the record, huh?”

  “You’re still going to eat the shrimp?” said Kathi. “You’re sleeping on the cot tonight.”

  “And who cares if John Worth is a cat groomer or a horse dentist or a poodle manicurist?” Todd said. Then he stopped.

  “What?” I said.

  “Dunno. Something. But it’s gone.” Todd shook his head. “The question is how come a big honking homophobe like him asks the only gay in the class to be his vice president. And how come a woman like Mo Tafoya—who’s pretty much NPR in human form, right Lex?—hasn’t woken up in the last fifty years, even if Mo Heedles is still putting on fake family values.”

  “Fake?” I said.

  “Divorced,” said Todd.

  “What about her nephew?” I said. “That guy we met today?”

  “What about her nephew?” said Todd.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Della said, holding up both her hands like a cop at a traffic stop. “Rewind. Fill me in.”

  I refreshed the sidecars and caught her up. She nodded and sipped, nodded and sipped, and she didn’t, unlike everyone else, ask who drinks lye. She asked a much cleverer and more useful question altogether.

  “Who has access to lye?” And she followed that up with, “No one at Party City or Halloween Central will remember anyone buying a Scottish costume, but they might remember someone who bought four, right? For the porches of John Worth, two Moes, and Joan. Could we get pictures and show them to the clerks?”

  I clicked my fingers at Todd to start writing some of this down while she was on a roll. But the roll was finished.

  “What does a girl who ran away after graduation have to do with a gay man being poisoned fifty years later?” she said.

  “Nothing, right?” I said. “Nothing. Poor Patti Ortiz isn’t part of this, is she?”

  “Maybe none of them are part of it,” Todd said. “I mean, the murder. Maybe Tam Shatner didn’t so much ‘come to his fiftieth reunion’ as he ‘left Florida.’ Maybe the trouble followed him here and all John Worth or one of his honeys did was try to get rid of the body.”

  “On a four-day time delay,” I said. “That’s a puzzle, but otherwise … maybe.”

  That’s how Roger found us. Five of us with empty glasses and emptier expressions, all staring into the middle distance trying to … Well, trying to do a number of different things.

  I was still stuck on the cat groomer aspect of John Worth’s peculiar life.

  Todd was tracing a finger over the photograph of Joan Lampeter, still trying to work out where he knew her from.

  Della was Googling “lye” and gagging.

  Noleen was trying to dredge up more memories of the story of Patti Ortiz.

  Kathi was gazing at the crumpled bin bag, doing some deep breathing as she tried to stop minding it being there.

  Flynn and Florian were snoring on the curtain poles.

  Eighteen

  The trouble with investigating pop-up fancy-dress shops the week after Halloween, though, is that they’ve all popped down again. Party City was shuttered with nothing but a flapping banner to show that it had ever been, and Halloween Central was in the throes
of becoming Holiday Central, in time for Christmas. I banged on the door and asked one of the polo-shirted … elves, I suppose; lately goblins but elves now for the duration … how I could find out if a purchase of Halloween costumes had snagged anyone’s attention.

  The elf took a long flatulent suck on the dregs of his twenty-ounce soda and shook his head. “You wanna know if we noticed someone buying a costume before Halloween?” he said.

  “Not a costume,” Noleen said. Noleen had announced, somewhat surprisingly, that she was coming with me today. “Four costumes all the same. Memorable, huh?”

  “Four?” said the kid. His scorn was palpable. “Try sixteen for a soccer squad. Or twenty for a baseball team.” He took another drag on the straw. It whistled this time and that convinced him he was finished. He dropped the cup into the pile of receipts, garment tags, and dead leaves he was sweeping up and twirled his Swiffer back into go-mode.

  “So you wouldn’t remember selling four of these?” Noleen said. Todd had photographed the kilt outfit before he’d sneaked the bin bag back onto John Worth’s porch later last night.

  “I would remember selling four of those,” the elf said flatly. “Since we didn’t stock them. That’s a Welsh man-skirt, right? Yeah, we didn’t have any of them.”

  “No Welsh man-skirts?” I said. “Really?”

  “You’d have to go up to Evangeline’s for that,” he said.

  “Evangeline’s!” I said. “Nolly!”

  She nodded at me. Evangeline’s was where the cutty sark came from.

  “While we’re here,” I asked the broom elf, as he walked away. “Did you sell fake naked suits?”

  “Huh?” he said. The lid came off the discarded soda cup and ice cubes rattled out and across the floor.

  “Neoprene birthday suits with integral genitals,” Noleen said. But I guessed there were three words in that that he didn’t know and an expression he didn’t understand and he merely shrugged, then swerved to Swiff up the ice cubes.

  “What is Evangeline’s?” I said when we were back in Noleen’s car. It was her oasis in a germ-free life and, as a result, truly filthy. I had to kick my feet around like a scuba diver to make space for them amongst the chicken buckets and Pringles tubes.

  “You ever been up to Old Sacramento?” she said, in reply.

  “Old?” I said.

  “Eighteen forty-nine,” Noleen confirmed, but not in the way she thought she was. I considered telling her the New Town in Edinburgh was started in 1767, but no one likes a smart arse and Noleen’s sweatshirt today had a picture of a pink pony cantering away across a rainbow and the slogan There Goes My Last Fuck. When I’d seen her, I’d started a sentence asking her if it was the best choice to go intervie—

  But I hadn’t finished it.

  “Cool shirt,” said the girl behind the bar at Evangeline’s. And bar it was, even though this was a shop and not a saloon. It was polished mahogany, ten feet tall, twenty feet long, and only one of the arresting sights in here. The iron-cage lift to get up to the first floor had made me feel like Sam Spade. The flocked wallpaper, pannelling, arched doorways, and finials were straight out of a shoot ’em up Western. And the costumes stretched as far as the eye could see. Ghostbusters jostled can-can dancers, Disney princesses shared rails with Stormtroopers, gangsters and their molls were everywhere. One of the flapper dresses looked good enough to wear for real to a cocktail party. I checked the price tag. I couldn’t afford it. So I drifted over to where Noleen was chatting up a serious Goth, packing Dracula masks into a cardboard box on the glossy bartop.

  “I’m surprised you’re still open,” I said.

  “Year-round,” said the girl. She had so many rings on she was having a spot of bother with the Sellotape dispenser. I took it from her and screeched out a good long tongue of it, using it to reinforce the box. “This week’s quiet, but once the holiday invitations go out we’ll pick up again.” Then she ran her tongue bolt along her lip rings making a noise like wind chimes. I grimaced an apology. She was right. I had been staring.

  “Well, since it is your quiet week,” I said, “we were wondering if you could help us.”

  “We’re interested in some kilts and Tam O’Shanters that were bought here,” Noleen said. “And leather vests and … I don’t know what you call them, but they’re like fake naked suits? Men’s?”

  “Right, right,” said Goth Girl. She was stapling shut the packaging on the Dracula masks, but her fingernail extensions made the stapler a bit of a challenge. Noleen took it away from her and cracked out a row of staples like a pro. “Yeah, the three kilts and the streaker suit,” the girl said. “I remember.”

  I felt my heart leap. That’s not just an expression, it turns out. I truly did feel my heart lift up in my chest and leave me with a bit of indigestion as it subsided again.

  “Four,” Noleen said, “wasn’t it?”

  “Four hats,” said Goth Girl. “The plaid hats with the pom-poms and the red hair poking out?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “But only three kilts,” she said. “I remember because I asked the guy if he had miscounted and he basically told me to butt out.”

  “What a cheek!” I said. The box was full and I plied the Sellotape again while Noleen started on the next one. Goth Girl was leaning against the counter with her arms folded. “Big guy, right?” I thought about how best to describe John Worth. “Beefy, fair hair, fifties.”

  She shook her head, many bits of metal jangling. “Thirties at most,” she said. “But beefcake, sure. Asshole. He looked at me like I was deranged when I asked if he wanted another kilt.”

  “He was lucky you had a brain cell free to notice what anyone was buying last week!” Noleen said. She turned to me. “It’s pandemonium in Evangeline’s right before Halloween.”

  “Oh well,” the girl said. She shoved a load of unsold Frankenstein masks towards Noleen and me so we could keep at it. “It wasn’t Halloween. This was a while back. September. Maybe even August. I told him there was time to order another kilt and vest to go with the fourth hat, but he told me he was just the errand boy.”

  “Just the errand boy,” I echoed. Definitely not John Worth then.

  “You’ve got a good memory,” Noleen said.

  “Is that why you’re here?” said Goth Girl. “Double-checking?”

  I had no idea what she meant and so I said nothing. Noleen looked at me, but I only shrugged.

  “Because I already told the first cop all this,” the girl went on.

  “You think we’r—You made us as cops?” said Noleen.

  “Undercover, right?” she said, looking again at the pony on the rainbow. “Where did you get that shirt? It’s nice quality for an offensive one. Most of the really offensive ones are cheap crap. But that’s decent.” She was rubbing a bit of Noleen’s cuff between her thumb and forefinger when a phone started playing “Despacito.”

  “You gonna get that?” Goth Girl said. And she was right. It was mine. Bloody Todd!

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Nolly’s not picking up,” came Kathi’s voice on the line. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Good or bad?” I said. Her voice was unreadable.

  “Wrong question,” Kathi said. “Significant or insignificant, and the answer is I don’t know. It’s something someone brought into the Skweek.”

  “An alteration?” I said. I’d been neglecting the sewing machine for the last couple of days.

  “A kilt,” said Kathi. “A real kilt. Wool. Weighs a ton.”

  “Nine pounds,” I said.

  “But it’s just one and we’re looking for four. So like I said, who knows if it means anything.”

  Noleen had extricated herself from Goth Girl’s interest in the unusual quality of her shirt and from the much more worrying possible interest in whether we were undercover
cops, as well as from the prospect of doing all the work for the rest of the shift to save the kid’s nails and knuckles. She was over by the head of the staircase.

  “Sorry,” I said to Goth Girl over my shoulder, as I hurried to join Noleen. “Gotta dash. Got a lead.”

  “Nine pounds?” said Goth Girl. “Decapitation?”

  “So obviously, Mike is on the case,” I said as we barrelled back across the causeway over the Sacramento River towards Cuento. “She was at John Worth’s last night and she’s been to Evangeline’s asking about the costumes. So we just need to take the kilt from the Skweek and hand it over to her.” I waited. “Right?”

  “Wrong,” said Noleen. “Did you hear me saying our business was hanging by a thread, Lexy? We can’t hand over a customer’s belongings to the cops. We’ll be shut down in a hot minute.”

  “Which is … fast?” I said. I wasn’t being arsey. I honestly don’t know. It depends whether it’s melted or fried, to my mind. “Don’t look at me like that. We don’t like gay bashers, do we? We want them caught and punished, don’t we? Well, then.”

  “How about this,” she said again, as we were passing the farm stand at the turn-off to the motel. “Hey look, persimmons are in.”

  “What are in?” I said. “I thought persimmon was a colour.”

  “How about this,” Noleen said. “We’ll ask Mike how the case is going and if—IF—she mentions anything about kilts or plaids or Village People vests or anything like that, we’ll tell her about this kilt. I’ll get Kathi to hold off on cleaning it until then.”

  “Why?”

  “DNA, doofus,” Noleen said.

  “There won’t be any DNA!” I said. “Doofus yourself. Listen. The streaker suit wasn’t so the kilt looked authentic from below. It was so none of Tam’s DNA got on the outfit.”

  “Why not burn it?”

  “Because it’s real,” I said. “It’s probably a family heirloom.”

  “Why not use a costume one from Evangeline’s?” said Noleen. “Instead of risking a family heirloom.”