Seventeen

We scooped up Kathi and Noleen on the way past the office. They were folding service-wash laundry on the signing-in desk, waiting until ten when Noleen would finally give up on the hoped-for walk-ins and switch the night bell on.

“What’s that?” said Kathi, pointing to the bin bag swinging from Todd’s hand.

“Another porch zombie,” Todd said. “Not garbage. Can we tip it out here if I put newspaper down?”

“And I’ll tell the Skweeky Kleen clientele that their undershorts were folded and packed in the same room as someone else’s trash?” said Kathi. “Should I get stickers made?”

“You and your stickers,” I said.

“Who and whose stickers?” Noleen chipped in.

“You lot,” I said. “All of you. With the bumper stickers. But I take it back. Sorry.”

“Ain’t no stickers on my ride,” said Noleen. “And I wanna say two things to you, Lexy. One, there’s no better way to get outta jury duty than a bumper sticker. It’s public, see? So they get to ask you about them in discovery.”

Todd was laughing. “What was it you had again, Nolly?”

“Keep Gitmo Open,” Noleen said. “Worked like a dream when the defense got to me. My feet didn’t hit the ground. Course, I also had a Close Gitmo Now, in case the prosecution asked first. Guess which one peeled a chunka paint offa my bumper when I got outta the courtroom?”

Kathi and Todd both just laughed. I couldn’t have guessed to save my life and get a free margarita, so I said nothing beyond, “What’s the other thing?”

“What?” Noleen said. “Oh. Yeah, well it’s not us lot that’s got that horny caveman painted on the side of a hill fifty feet high, is it? Speaking of signs.”

“How do you even know about …?” I said.

“PBS documentary,” said Noleen. “The Cerne Abbas Giant, right?” I shrugged.

“Anyway,” I said. “What about Mount Rushmore? And Crazy Horse?”

“Could we table this for now?” said Kathi. “While you get that nasty garbage bag out of here, please?”

“We’ll take it to Lexy’s and go through it right now,” Todd said. “It’ll be long gone by the time you get there.”

“No,” Kathi said. “I don’t want to miss the opening. I just want to be able to walk out and grab a shower if it’s gross.”

“Deal,” said Todd. “We’ll go and make … sidecars, I’m in the mood for … and grill some shrimp? When you close at ten, we’ll be waiting. I need to process some of this stuff before we find out any more. Don’t know about you.”

“And Roger?” Kathi said. “Should we wait for him?”

“Roger needs some time alone to reflect on his choices,” said Todd primly. Kathi and Noleen shared a troubled look.

“Roger very kindly gave us some tip-top info earlier today,” I said. “But he’s got a semi-stalker at work that he said was ugly and isn’t.”

“Baw-bag,” said Noleen.

“Twunt,” Kathi agreed.

“You can’t cheer me up with British swearing,” said Todd. “I am very angry.”

“How about if I call him a douche nozzle?” I said. “An asshat? A mother—”

But a chorus of whoas told me I’d better not finish that one. Our cultural exchange still had a ways to go.

“So what do we know?” Noleen said, as she kicked off her crocs and put her socks up on the hearth just after ten.

“Thomas Oscar Shatner,” I began, “graduate of the class of sixty-eight, out gay back when it was brave—er” I added hastily, as Todd started to bridle, “left Cuento for—we think, Florida, but that’s based on how much of Henry Higgins’s identical twin I am, so best call it soft data—and came back to town to attend the fiftieth reunion on Saturday, where—or after which, anyway—he was poisoned with—”

“What?” said Kathi.

“Roger busted the autopsy results,” I said. “The bullet wound was fake. He drank lye.”

“He drank lye?” said Noleen.

“Who drinks lye?” said Kathi.

“And then was left sitting on someone’s porch dressed up as a Scotsman—we think, based on the hat—until Wednesday, when he was redressed as a regular joe and dumped in the slough. Now here’s where it gets interesting.”

“Because that was such an everyday tale?” said Noleen.

“Earlier today we saw three porches, didn’t we Todd, where figures had been removed. One of them was at the house of the class president of the class of sixty-eight, one John Worth—”

“I know John Worth,” said Noleen. “And Becky. Veterinary nurse. Nice kid.”

“Right,” I said, wondering—and not for the first time—how old Noleen was and what she used on her skin. “Thank you for directing us to their place. We got there just in time to find Becky trying to get rid of a dummy, a kilt, a Jimmy wig, and sundry other bits and bobs.”

“But … if there was a dummy,” said Kathi, “that means Tam wasn’t there. If ‘dummy’ still means mannequin. Right?”

“Right,” I agreed, “but there was an empty armchair on the porch of Mo Heedles, and an empty rocking chair on the porch of Mo Tafoya.”

“Who?” said Kathi. “I think we need to catch up.”

“Hence the current catch-up session,” Todd said, still sounding grumpy for him. “We found Maureen Heedles because she was at the reunion and still lives in Cuento. Nothing more than that. But we lucked out. She turned us on to Maureen Tafoya,”

“Her, I know,” said Noleen. “Woodstock never ended?”

“That’s the one,” I said. “And then we discovered that both Moes, along with Joan and someone called Patti, were John Worth’s … bevy of lovelies.” I had been flipping through the yearbook and I held it up to show them all the full-page picture of John Worth, back when he was burly, rather than bloated, and the four quarter-page shots of Mo Heedles, looking older than she did now under her helmet of backcombed hair with her thin brows and her pale lips; Mo Tafoya, showing the first signs of her prayer-flagged future with a broochless, scratchy-looking polo-neck and a centre parting in her hair; Patti Ortiz looking up from under her fabulous brows with a gaze poised on a knife-edge between innocence and sizzle; and Joan Lampeter, fresh-faced and freckle-dusted with her hair back-combed on top to be sure but flicked up in feathers behind as if it knew the end of school and setting lotion was on its way.

“Bevy of lovelies!” Kathi said. “The student council, you mean?”

“She looks familiar,” Todd said, putting down his napkin and bending forward to peer at the open pages of the yearbook. “Joanie. Doesn’t she?”

“We saw her photo at the reunion,” I reminded him.

“Oh please,” said Todd. “Fifty years later? No, it’s not that. I’m sure I’ve seen that girl in a different context. And recently.”

“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.