Although I do realize that humanity is somehow connected, and that the death of even just one of us diminishes all mankind, nonetheless, I approached the scene before me with a mixture of awe and revulsion. Spread out on the floor, without even his personality to contain him, Big Larry seemed to take up twice as much space in death as he did in life.
I read somewhere that nowadays funeral homes are stocking plus-size coffins in order to accommodate the helpless victims of fast food chains, but I doubted if even one of those would be adequate to see Big Larry into the ground. Since Charleston is a port city, stacked to the gills with containers, it would make more sense to pick up the deceased in one of those, seal it, and use that as his final home. The only downside in my opinion is that metal containers are generally fireproof. The Devil’s flunkies were going to have their work cut for them.
“I didn’t see him go down,” I said. “What happened?”
“You shouldn’t be here, Mrs. Washburn,” the fake duke said. “Agent Krukowski,” he bellowed, “take her outside!”
“Agent Nadel,” she said calmly, “we owe a lot to Mrs. Washburn, not the least of which is an explanation.”
Agent Nadel grunted and pointed to one of the other Zorros with his chin
“I shot six rounds into him,” said the third Zorro. To his credit, he sounded sad. “I used a silencer; that’s why you didn’t hear anything, that and the fact that Agent Krukowski kept you occupied. Plus, all this machinery humming makes a lot of ambient noise.”
Agent Nadel grunted again, but with less hostility. “We can’t have civilians watching people die—not if we can help it.”
“Thanks—although to be entirely honest,” I said, “it would have been interesting.”
The fourth Zorro snickered, but stopped abruptly when Agent Nadel whipped off his mask and glared at him. “How about some professionalism, Agent Newman?”
Suddenly I felt like throwing up. One minute I’d been fascinated by the corpse of a killer, the next I saw a man lying dead on the floor at my feet. No doubt Big Larry would have happily killed me, had perhaps killed others, but he was a husband and a father, as well as somebody’s son. At some point he had even been an innocent child brimming with potential. What a waste of life, what certain heartbreak for others.
I felt Agent Krukowski’s arm across my shoulder. “Mrs. Washburn, are you going to be alright?”
“Yes—just not anytime soon. I feel like it’s somehow—I know it doesn’t make any sense, but—”
“That it’s your fault?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“Because you’re a kind, caring human being, who unfortunately got mixed up in this awful mess. But you have to understand, Lively Tupperman’s death had nothing to do with you. He was going to take out Agent Nadel; that’s why we brought him down.”
“Come again?”
“Big Larry.”
“Ah yes, of course. I remember now. Mama read that off his library card—Mama! We have to save Mama!”
“Where is she?”
“What do you mean where is she? I was beginning to think you spooks lived inside our underwear. How come you don’t know where Mama is?”
“Mrs. Washburn—”
“You have your arm around my shoulder; you may as well call me Abby.”
“Thank you. Abby, as you’ve probably guessed by now, we’ve been keeping close tabs on you.”
“You stayed at the Princess and the Pea, didn’t you?”
“Don’t you think that with a name like that, they should have provided better mattresses?”
“For real—hey, we don’t have time to compare motel amenities.”
“Right. As I was about to say, we knew you were headed out here, so when you stopped at Bojangles we went on ahead and got into place. Security was absolutely appalling—although easy on us. We took everyone out, except for Mr. Tupperman. Sorry, Abby, but we needed to keep him in the game in hopes of getting a confession out of him. But thanks to you, we did better than that! Your conversation with the Rug Lord herself was brilliant.”
I shook off her arm. “But Mama! We have to get back to Mama!”
“Yes, certainly. Where is she?”
“She’s having coffee with a killer named Cynthia,” I wailed.
They used to say that death and taxes were the only two inevitable things (although the very wealthy get closer each year to avoiding both). Now they’ve added a third exception to this rule: Abigail Louise Washburn cannot be kept from her beloved Mama.
Short of pistol-whipping me into submission and tying me up with yarn, I left the FBI no choice. In fact, so intently (and perhaps eloquently) did I plead my case that they let me pick my own team; I picked Agents Elizabeth Krukowski and Clyde Dilworth Standingwater. Agent Standingwater was the man who’d brought Big Larry down. He was also a member of the Cheyenne Nation.
We all got into Agent Krukowski’s car, which is the same car that had trailed us up from Charleston. Upon sighting Cynthia’s house, Agent Krukowski pulled over and cut the engine.
“Who’s that child on the porch?” Agent Standingwater asked.
“That’s no child—that’s my mother!”
Although the agents may have muttered words of admonishment, neither of them made an effort to stop me from jumping from the car. I took off running so fast that I plumb left my shadow behind (it made an embarrassed appearance a nanosecond later).
“Mama,” I screamed. “Mama!”
My minimadre was both tapping her feet and spinning her pearls. In her free hand she held her cell phone.
“It’s about time, Abigail Louise. I was fixing to come look for you, and in my brand new Naturalizers too. I could have gotten these new pumps all scuffed up.”
“Are you all right, Mama? Where’s Cynthia?”
“She’s taking a nap, dear.” She stiffened when she noticed my trailing entourage. “Who, pray tell, are these people? Oh Lordy, they look like Lithuanian acrobats to me; I saw some once on the Ed Sullivan show who dressed just like that. Abby, are you being held hostage by insurgents from the Baltics?”
“No Mama, they’re FBI agents. It turns out that Kitty Bohring was the mastermind behind an international distribution ring of stolen and counterfeit carpets. She’s dead now, by the way. She committed suicide just a few minutes ago, rather than be taken into custody.”
“Oh, my.” She let go of her pearls and scooped me into her arms. “You poor, poor baby.”
“I didn’t see it, Mama; it happened in Charleston. But I was there when Lively Larry Tupperman went to meet his Maker—although again I was spared the sight. Agent Krukowski, here, kept me distracted during the actual event.”
Like it or not, both agents got a dose of “Mama love.” While she fussed over them, holding their heads to her bosom, each in turn, and giving them memorable whiffs of her very expensive French perfume called Eau de Pan, commingled with the odors one might expect to pick up on a stress-filled trip sans deodorant, I sneaked into the house. Just inside the back door, mere inches from where Mama was marking the FBI with her scent, Cynthia sat slumped in a dinette chair, her head resting on a Formica-topped table. The drool seeping from her mouth was frothy in places.
I dashed back out. “Mama, that’s no mere nap. What have you done to her?”
Mama reluctantly released the very handsome Agent Standingwater, who likewise seemed somewhat reluctant to stand on his own. “I made her some coffee, dear, and then we chatted. It’s as simple as that.”
“Details, Mama!”
“Well, you know that she lied about the grandchildren. How evil can one person get? One minute those two little darlings were happy and healthy, and just as cute as buttons, and the next minute—poof!” Mama snapped her fingers. “She killed them! Just like that she killed them by saying they never existed.”
“Listen to yourself, Mama; she couldn’t have killed them if they never existed in the first place.”
“Abigail, this is no time for logic. Now where was I? Oh yes, so she’s trying to keep me occupied, and she has a gun, but she’s Southern too, you see, so she asks me if I want coffee. Of course I want coffee; it’s Sunday morning, for goodness sake. Does a hoppy toad want a nice moist spot in the garden? Anyway, then she confesses that she doesn’t know how to make a good cup of coffee on account of she grew up in a culture in which caffeine was forbidden and has never developed a taste for the stuff—did I tell y’all that this isn’t even her house?”
“No ma’am,” Agent Krukowski said.
“It belongs—I guess belonged is the word—to Kitty Bohring. This whole development does. It has no official name, because they don’t want it on a map, but some of the folks call it—in fun, they say—Stepford Acres. My, but I do seem to prattle on.”
“Prattle, please,” Agent Standingwater said. “I insist.”
Mama beamed. “Very well then, just for you. At any rate, as I was going to say, I managed to convince Cynthia that she might like coffee the way I fix it: with lots and lots of sugar and milk, and just a pinch of cinnamon. Then when she was helping me hunt for the cinnamon, I emptied the contents of my pill case into her mug. The rest, as they say, is his—”
Much to my surprise, Mama didn’t seem the least bit surprised to have her story cut short by the arrival of two squad cars and an ambulance.