Chapter Twelve – Tuesday, June 21^st

 

Using one-half cup of slightly rancid mayonnaise as a hair conditioner restores the luster to one’s glorious mane in a dramatic fashion. The caution is to rinse well and to use a nose clip. - Aunt Piadora’s Beauty Hints

 

When Mary Grace stumbled out of Pictographs, Inc., there was a brown sedan waiting next to Callie’s Mazda Miata. It looked suspiciously familiar. So did the man who got out when he saw her. Brogan unraveled his length from the car and glared at her from fifty feet away. Even if it hadn’t already been hot to the melting point, the mercury would have popped its glass container if scrutinized under that glare.

Freezing in place, Mary Grace remembered that she had, in fact, sort of, oh, agreed to tell Brogan where she was going to go and what she was going to do. And once he’d thrown out the ‘honey-don’t-you-bother-your-little-pea-brain-head’ gauntlet, Mary Grace had promptly forgotten to do exactly that. So here she was at Pictographs, interrogating one of the suspects, without any kind of backup, to include Callie of the broken leg, and no one had a clue to where she’d vanished. Except of course, whoever was following her and who had called Brogan to let him know that his caged and cranky chicken had flown the coop again.

Or perhaps, she considered idly, it’s a coinky-dink and Brogan came by to question Jack himself. And I have the most abysmal timing in the history of the world, unless one counted Janet Jackson’s little ‘wardrobe malfunction’ at half time at the Super Bowl.

Either way, Mary Grace was royally hosified. Her feet unfroze and she made her way toward the detective, trying to act nonchalant. She would have whistled if she could have found moisture in her mouth to work her lips and tongue. Hey, I’m getting my paycheck. I’m picking up personal belongings. I’m working out details with Jack, Trey, or the secretaries. I could have a thousand legitimate excuses of why I’m here today. It’s not like its dark outside and I’m waving a ‘SHOOT ME, PLEASE!’ sign. It’s broad daylight and no one, I repeat, no one is lurking within a hundred feet of me wearing a trench coat and carrying a pitchfork or other equally lethal implement with which to kill me in a dramatic manner.

“What are you doing here?” Brogan uttered coldly as soon as Mary Grace stepped within a reasonable speaking distance.

Mary Grace’s eyes skated first to the right and then to the left. Out of the corner of her eye she could see someone watching her from the inside of the dry cleaning store. She turned her head slightly and the mini-blinds that had been parted skittered back together as the someone vanished into the store. Future reference for Lolita Lewis, but I digress.

“It’s where I work,” she said lamely, her gaze coming back to Brogan. She nearly couldn’t help herself. At first sight, she wouldn’t have thought he was hot. Mostly, he had been unashamedly leering at her breasts, but the rest of him was becoming an acquired taste. As a matter of fact, she would have called him very tasty, almost better than shopping. Almost. Her thought train stumbled and she quickly added, “You know, to bring in the money, pay the bills, go shopping with, to conquer the world in my own little graphic artistic fashion.” Inwardly she winced at her tone, but Mary Grace knew that she had to stand tough on the issue or Brogan would be dominating her every waking moment of the day, no matter how flavorsome he was or wasn’t.

Brogan’s eyes rolled. “So if I go inside and say, talk to Jack Covington, he won’t say anything about you being on a temporary leave and maybe asking him questions about the night you were attacked?”

Mary Grace attempted to look innocent. It was the same method she’d used to her parents a dozen times in her teenaged years, when she had been caught doing something particularly wicked. The bow lips pursed slightly. The eyes widened as far as possible. A hint of moisture leaked from a corner of one eye, and that wasn’t an easy feat to do on command. Her shoulders slumped somewhat as if all the weight in the world rested on her back. Then came the clincher. Her lower lip trembled as if she were about to burst into a fit of noisy, unladylike tears. It wobbled and then quivered in a fashion that would have had the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bursting into unified applause.

Brogan stared at her with an intense glower. Mary Grace stoically kept up the look until she realized he wasn’t falling for it. As a matter of fact, he was so used to dealing with criminals and people who lied to him on a regular basis that a twenty-something Catholic woman wasn’t going to be able to pull a fast one on him. He even had a full grown son who had probably practiced on Brogan for a full decade and a half. Mary Grace didn’t have a prayer.

“I might have asked him a few questions,” she allowed faintly. A little honesty wouldn’t hurt. It might even throw him off the scent. Maybe if I brushed my breasts against his…? Oh, M.G., you hopeless hussy.

“Goddamnit,” Brogan muttered. “Why me?” Then he added something in Italian and Mary Grace positively blushed when she mentally translated some of the words. She didn’t know some of the others, but she had her suspicions. After a few minutes the words trailed off as he obviously came to the end of his inventory. A predatory light came into his puppy dog brown eyes as he stared down at her, one that made her shiver deep inside.

“Gutter Italian,” he said, not trying to be particularly helpful. “My grandfather came over from Rome in the 1930s, right before World War II. He grew up in Little Italy in New York City. He didn’t learn English until the seventies and I spent summers with him learning all the gutter Italian I could soak in. My mother, his daughter, was rather appalled at the vast command I held over the naughtiest Italian words she’d ever heard. It doesn’t hurt to keep it up.”

Mary Grace said, “You’re half Italian?” That’s why he understands and speaks Italian. Oh. Oh.

“Si, bella,” he said calmly. His anger was gone and she couldn’t help but wonder to where it had vanished.

“You didn’t mention that to my mother, did you?”

“It didn’t come up,” Brogan frowned at her. “Why? Would it be a pro or a con?”

With a huge sigh, Mary Grace said, “Because she’d probably be planning our wedding right now, if she found out, even if you are divorced. I’m pretty sure she has connections in the Holy See to deal with that situation.” She shifted awkwardly. “Did you follow me or was this a coincidence?”

Brogan yanked a thumb over his shoulder at another plain sedan that she hadn’t noticed. It was blue and a man with dirty blonde hair sat in it, looking vastly amused at their conversation. “Jones,” Brogan said. “He tailed you from your house to the hospital, and then to here. Said you never even noticed he was there.”

“Oh,” Mary Grace said. “So much for my keen eyesight and ability to perceive danger surrounding me.”

“Going home now?” Brogan asked politely.

Mary Grace folded her arms over her chest and thought about it. Having eliminated one suspect hadn’t made her feel happy. On the contrary, it made her feel more confused. At the moment, Jack seemed like the one with the most, if twisted, motive to kill her. He had a secret thing for her, and when he couldn’t get her, then he had come to the conclusion that no one could. However there was a problem with that scenario. “Jack was in Orlando?” she asked meekly. “And in Vegas? Really?”

Brogan nodded, the expression on his face was carefully blank. “Checked and double-checked. The clerk at his hotel in Orlando remembers him and his son very well because the kid puked all over the lobby one day. Too much candy at Disney World.”

“Oh,” Mary Grace said numbly. “It wasn’t that I wanted Jack to be the one. It was just that I wanted it to be over.” And everyone else seemed like a lame second. Trey Kennebrew seemed like a harmless, horny kid with too much time on his hands, and a lust for anything with breasts. Lolita Lewis was unknown, but she was a woman. It didn’t seem right that a woman as gorgeous as Lolita would know how to cut a brake line much less build an explosive device and attach it to Mary Grace’s rental car. Finally, she couldn’t imagine what she could have done to Lolita to make her want to commit homicide. They were virtually strangers, not to mention the fact that the other woman didn’t even seem to know Mary Grace.

Mary Grace wilted suddenly. The life just went right out of her.

Brogan let out a breath and held open his arms. Mary Grace abruptly melted into their strength and let her suddenly-too-heavy head rest on his muscular chest. An unwanted sniffle emerged out of her nose but she quickly stifled it. She really didn’t want Brogan to think she was the kind of girl to break down into a gelatinous mass of gooey, crying female hormones at the drop of a hat. Or in this case, at the drop of a viable suspect.

“Aw, God,” Brogan muttered. “Don’t cry. I can’t stand women who cry.” He shuffled his body around digging in one of his pockets and produced a semi-clean handkerchief for her.

Mary Grace blew her nose in an unladylike fashion and then sedately said, “Sorry.”

Brogan held Mary Grace by the shoulders and stared intently down into her face. “You sure have mellowed today. You’re starting to worry me.”

“If Jack isn’t a suspect, then who is?” Mary Grace said. “I’m all right,” she added hastily. “It was just a helpless girl moment. Don’t worry. You won’t catch boo-hoo cooties.”

He would have shaken her, she could tell by the sudden glare in his eyes, but the other car honked and the detective inside yelled out the window. “There’s a code, Brogan! You or me, Bud?”

“I’ll go,” Brogan said. “Make sure she gets home, huh?”

Jones grinned and Mary Grace winced when she realized he was staring at her breasts. She didn’t need to be a telepath to realize what Jones was thinking. He’d seen the portrait and the wheels in his head were going click, click, hubba-hubba, clunk.

Brogan leaned down and his lips brushed Mary Grace’s forehead. She quivered with reaction. His clean, male smell wafted across her and sent a sizzle of response down her spine to parts better left unsaid except by gynecologists. But since they were in the middle of a parking lot with multiple nosy witnesses, he pulled away with a woeful expression and got into his sedan.

As Brogan drove off, Mary Grace got into Callie’s Miata and didn’t have a clue what she was going to do next. However, all bets were off since her mother was waiting for her at her house.

•

Ghita Castilla was a nice looking woman of fifty-three. She and her husband had retired early thanks to the investment capabilities of her brother, Ernesto. They’d sold their Dallas home and moved to Florida, happily exulting in the warm sea breezes that blew in from the ocean. Therefore she had time to have her hair cut and styled once a week. Its color was startling white, which was all the more startling to Mary Grace because she knew her mother had hair the color of a Naval destroyer. Ghita’s nails were also manicured and painted a demure pink. She wore an ECI printed tie-sleeved tunic with magenta and purples colors intertwining in it and white cotton capris with white sling back wedge shoes.

Mary Grace knew it was all clever camouflage for the devilish she-beast that was her mother. Oh, I should give her some credit. She taught me how to shop. Especially during sales. I can hear her voice in my head now, ‘Shop for clothes on Tuesdays. Don’t take any crap from sales people. Always show up on time for early bird sales. Drink plenty of Gatorade. Clench your legs together if you have to pee. An elbow surreptitiously rammed into another woman’s solar plexus will deter her from stealing your shopping find, every single time.’

Ghita waited for her daughter on the couch in her own living room while she sipped coffee from one of Mary Grace’s mugs. Damn, Mary Grace thought. I should have never given her a key. She considered. Or I should have changed the locks and not told her when they moved to Florida.

“My own daughter,” Ghita said pleasantly. “My own daughter. Who would have ever thought?” It was as if Mary Grace had taken a sharpened pick axe, let it smolder in an oven of thousand degree coals, and then plunged it into her mother’s unsuspecting back. That or Mary Grace had deliberately not told her about a sale at The Galleria.

Mary Grace sat on the chair opposite her mother and proceeded to get comfortable. Ma was winding up for the long haul and it didn’t hurt to be relaxed while enduring the duration of her tirade. Ghita had been thwarted by Mary Grace’s head injury of the previous day and Mary Grace had only barely escaped her mother spending the night regardless of the lumpy bed in the spare room because of the emergency room doctor’s insistence that Mary Grace was perfectly fine and could be left alone. However, Ghita was aware that her offspring was injured and could not endure a few select words from her mother, so she had withheld from what would have been a time-consuming, pitiless diatribe of phenomenal proportion.

“Ma,” Mary Grace said calmly. “I told you before. I didn’t want to worry you and Dad. Besides, I didn’t know someone was really trying to kill me until last Friday night.”

Ghita’s finger shot out, stabbing directly at Mary Grace’s chest. “And you should have been on the phone the very next instant after you knew. After all, we’re family. My own daughter doesn’t tell me that her life is at risk from a homicidal maniac.” Her pointing finger withdrew and the entire hand fluttered dramatically over her chest as if she were having heart palpitations. “I should learn from Mrs. Roberta J. DeMarco from the old neighborhood. A woman who would gossip to Satan about her own sister’s affair with the postman.”

“I don’t think Mrs. DeMarco’s sister really had an affair with the postman,” Mary Grace interjected before the entire story started rolling. That particular event could take thirty minutes in retelling with added adjectives, invectives, and moral admonishments. Furthermore, who knew how much had been added since the last time it was told. Mrs. DeMarco’s sister had been a widow and had been entitled to fool around with anyone she chose. Besides which she was presently remarried to an Italian-American proctologist and couldn’t be happier.

“That’s not the point,” Ghita snarled. “We still have many friends and family here. Did you think that no one was going to notice that there’s a piece of a car embedded in your front door frame?”

“Well, I hadn’t thought to pry it out yet,” Mary Grace said weakly. “Besides the crepe myrtles and the oleanders were the real victims. And did I tell you that Attila the poodle took a direct hit on his tail?”

“It must have slipped your mind,” Ghita said dryly. “You could have come to stay with us, dear. I know I’m not June Cleaver, Mary Grace, but do you have to think of me as the Anti-Christ?”

Mary Grace winced. She knew her mother wasn’t the Anti-Christ. Ghita was merely a strong personality who wanted things to run along her lines and people to fall in with what she wanted. Being a chip off the old block, Mary Grace just wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to fall in with her mother’s plans. Otherwise Mary Grace would have had four children by now and a husband who was thoroughly of Italian descent. “Ma, I really didn’t want you to worry. You take blood pressure medication. Dad told me. You’ve had a few dizzy spells. You think I want to add to your worries? Are you supposed to be drinking coffee?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Ghita instructed firmly. “What are you wearing? Didn’t I raise you better?”

“I wanted to be able to run in case I ran into the killer again,” Mary Grace said doggedly.

Ghita again allowed a well formed hand to flutter dramatically over her chest. Her eyelids flickered. Her daughter wasn’t fooled. “Three attempts on your life,” Ghita said pertly, after realizing her daughter wasn’t falling for the old standby. “Is that right?”

Mary Grace nodded wearily. Actually it was four. “Unless I missed one.”

Ghita thought about it. “Brake lines cut. Bomb under your car. A person shooting at you with a gun. That’s everything.”

The CIA would be impressed by Ma, Mary Grace thought. Did she get that out of Brogan? Or was it Callie? Yikes. I wonder if I hid my birth control pills well enough. And God forbid she finds that vibrator. Would Ma know what a vibrator is? Well, no one but an idiot would not know that one is a vibrator. After all, it’s like ten inches long and shaped like…

“Mary Grace?” Ghita said warningly.

“Four times,” Mary Grace said. “The killer hit Callie with the car instead of me. I’m assuming that Callie doesn’t have her own homicidal maniac stalker, too. Or perhaps the killer was trying to be economical and wanted to take us both out at the same time, which doesn’t really say anything for Callie.”

Ghita sighed. “And this detective, Brogan, is that his name? Too bad he’s not Italian, but he might be a little old for you. He says that you’ve been investigating it yourself. That that was the reason you were at the winery.”

Mary Grace spared a glance for the kitchen where her laptop was sitting, knowing full well that Ghita had read her list, and probably cracked her email password, too, to make sure her daughter hadn’t become a lesbian while her parents were in Florida. It wasn’t that Ghita had anything against lesbians; it was that a lesbian was less likely to produce grandchildren. Her reluctant gaze came back to her mother. “The police were a tad disbelieving at first,” she said. “Someone had to make sense of it all.”

Ghita nodded approvingly. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that’s made sense all day.”