The sun had almost set by the time we found Tremont Road. It was at the edge of town and only three blocks long. Small Cape-style houses were set back from the street, their homey lights twinkling amidst the whish of falling leaves in the breeze. Unlike most neighborhoods in Slagville, this one was suburban, but the homes were as surgically immaculate as all the other homes in the anthracite region. People here had spent the Saturday raking up and pruning hedges.
Except for Twelve Tremont Road.
There were no lights on in the house and brown leaves littered the overgrown grass lawn. It was neglected.
“It’s almost spooky,” Jane said. “Slap a gargoyle on the roof and it’d be haunted.”
“It’s all the Halloween decorations around here,” I said, getting out of the car. “You coming?”
“No thanks.” Jane clutched her sweatshirt and slid deeper into the seat.
I rang the doorbell five times until a neighbor’s light clicked on. I was being watched. Good. I strolled next door to Fourteen Tremont Road where the light had gone on and tried there. The welcome mat read THE FESTER’S.
A male Fester in a T-shirt, dirty jeans and work boots answered, smelling of mowed grass and barbecued ribs. In the background a mother Fester and two boy Festers were gathered around the table.
“I apologize for interrupting your dinner,” I said. “I’m not soliciting.”
“That’s too bad. You look like you might have something that I’d want to solicit.” He chuckled.
Mrs. Fester got up and joined her husband at the door. “What’s wrong? You got a flat? Andy has a jack. He won’t mind fixing it for you.”
By now both boys were out of their seats. “I’ll go get your jack, Dad!” announced one.
“No, it’s not like that.” I pointed to Twelve Tremont Road. “I’m trying to contact the woman who lives there. Do you know if she’s at church and I should wait? Or out of town?”
All four Festers gaped at me as though I had asked if they could loan me the spare keys so I could break in and clean out their neighbor’s silver. I reached in my purse and gave him the same House of Beauty business card I’d given to the McMullen Coal security guard. “I’m a hairdresser.”
The mother frowned at the card over her husband’s shoulder. “I don’t think Mrs. Sullivan needs her hair done. What do you want her for?”
“It’s kind of personal,” I said, “and I’m leaving town later tonight, so if you know where she is, that would help.”
Mr. Fester handed me my card. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Mrs. Sullivan’s dead. She passed on at St. Vincent’s two weeks ago.”
“Dead?”
“Oh, dear. You’re not like a long lost baby Mrs. Sullivan gave up for adoption, are you?” mother Fester asked. “That would be so sad.”
“That would be impossible,” her husband scoffed. “This woman’s barely forty.”
Forty! Why didn’t he say thirty? I had to start taking Vitamin E.
“No,” I said, “it’s that I . . . I thought she was alive. I just sent her flowers.” Liar, liar pants on fire.
Mr. and Mrs. Fester exchanged uncomfortable looks. “So, you’re the one,” Mr. Fester said. “We’ve been trying to figure out who’s been sending a ninety-year-old woman flowers all summer.”
Ninety-years-old? Hugh McMullen was making it with a ninety-year-old woman?
“Would have been nice to think she had an admirer,” Mrs. Fester said. “She was so alone.”
“Except for that man who visited her occasionally,” Mr. Fester said. “We assumed he was the one who was sending her flowers. Thought maybe he was her grandson.”
“Grandson?” I said.
“I suppose he would be your long lost nephew,” Mrs. Fester said. “That is, if you are Mrs. Sullivan’s long lost baby daughter.”
“I gotta get you off Oprah.” Mr. Fester returned to the dinner table, his services as a tire changer obviously not required.
“Do you know how I can reach Mrs. Sullivan’s grandson?”
“I don’t. This other woman asked me that just the other day.” Mrs. Fester folded her arms and leaned against the door. “Said she was a reporter from New York, though she grew up in Slagville. Had a real snazzy blue sports car.”
“Snazzy blue sports car, eh?” I recalled my daredevil ride along Slagville’s winding roads, missing trees by a millimeter in one mighty spiffy Mazda Miata.
“Is this woman tall?” I said. “Red-headed? Drives erratically?”
“I’ll say. She nearly creamed my boys while they were playing field hockey in the street.”
Roxanne’s face fell, literally, as she peeled off my homemade gelatin mask. “You think Esmeralda Greene is investigating the same story?”
“I assumed I was the only one checking Hugh McMullen’s alibi on the night of Bud Price’s murder, but I was wrong.” I fiddled with a tube of mascara on Roxanne’s vanity. “I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.”
“Not about this face mask.” Roxanne pasted her face against the mirror. “I can hardly see my pores.” Roxanne was getting ready for her reunion with Stinky and she wasn’t sparing a drop of makeup, nail polish or glitter.
“And it’s a lot less expensive than those nose strips you buy in the drugstore for fifteen bucks,” I said. “Maybe I should stick with beauty and drop this news business. Wouldn’t have to work before dawn on Sunday mornings and I wouldn’t have to compete.”
“Or read the boring stuff in the newspaper,” Roxanne added. She sipped from her Diet Pepsi and applied glue to a false eyelash. “Anyway, seems to me like you’ve been batting a thousand in this news business. You broke the story about the violations against McMullen Coal, right?”
“Thanks to you and that box of documents.” I winced as Roxanne pulled off the sticky false eyelashes and tried for a more exact fit. “What are you going to say if Stinky asks if you still have the documents?”
“I’m going to hope he doesn’t ask.” She displayed a can of silver glitter. “Do you think all over body shimmer would be too much?”
“Go for it. Oh, shoot.”
“What’s wrong, baby?” Roxanne blinked. The eye with the false lashes looked abnormally enlarged.
“Those Catasauqua Republicans. I didn’t make advance calls and now it’s almost eight.”
Roxanne deployed one last spritz of body shimmer into her cleavage. “Stop it. Saturday night and all you’re talking about is work, work, work. It’s the Hoagie Ho! Aunt LuLu’s coming and I tried to talk Jane and G into going, but I couldn’t convince them. They were eager to get home, I guess. Tired of this old coal town.”
“Jane’s got a party in Lehigh she’s dying to go to.”
“Yes, but . . .” Roxanne held up a finger. The nail was painted black and had a tiny rhinestone pasted in the center. “I reminded G that the Hoagie Ho is a great place to pick up clients.”
“You think G is that talented, say?”
“I don’t think. I know.” She pinched a second lash from its container. “Mr. Salvo called, by the way.”
“I’m not calling him back. He’ll only tell me I’m fired again.”
“Actually, it wasn’t about work.” She pressed the lash onto her lid and held it there until it set. “He was asking if you’d seen Steve Stiletto. The AP bureau’s been trying to reach him and they can’t find him anywhere.”
All of a sudden my stomach felt very, very hollow. I could sense blood slipping out of my face. Visions of Wednesday night, Stiletto in the coal car, bloodied and unconscious, flashed in my mind.
Roxanne noticed right off. “Oh, I shouldn’t have put it that way. I’m sure Steve’s fine. When was the last time you ate, Bubbles?”
I thought about breakfast with Stiletto. “Not since around eight.”
“Shame on you. You’ll go all kinetic. Run downstairs and fix yourself something to eat.” She let go of the lash and blinked.
“Maybe a sandwich,” I said, heading downstairs.
“And don’t forget to change,” she yelled after me. “I don’t want to be the only woman done up tonight.”
I picked up the portable and dialed Mr. Salvo at the News-Times. Tucking the phone under my chin, I explored Roxanne’s refrigerator for easy food. I was famished, I realized, but almost incapable of making myself a meal. Too darn nervous.
Where was Stiletto? Why hadn’t he called? He’d promised that I could call him and he’d come. But now he was missing. He wouldn’t go missing. Darn. I didn’t know if he even had a new cell phone.
“Salvo. Speak.” He was always grumpiest on Saturday nights, the end of his work week.
“It’s me, Bubbles.”
“You still in Slagville?”
I found some lettuce, a half a tomato and turkey. “Yup.”
“You call the Catasauqua Republicans?”
“Nope.”
“Christ. I wanted an advance story on that. Three to four inches saying they were meeting. Who? What? Where? and When? I’ll have to take Eddy off obits to do it. Is Stiletto with you?”
“No.” I cut the tomato with Roxanne’s dull knife, sending seeds everywhere.
“Where the hell is he? The AP can’t reach him in New York or the number he gave them in your area. There’s no answer at his house in Saucon Valley and he doesn’t have a new cell phone yet. They need him to cover the President tomorrow. He’s doing a last-minute stumper in Jersey for statewide Republicans.”
This isn’t good, Bubbles, my mind was scolding. Stiletto would call. He would leave a message to see how you are. He wouldn’t just drop off the face of the earth.
“You’re not interrupting,” Mr. Salvo said. “That means you know something. You always talk when you don’t have anything to say and, ipso facto, the opposite is true. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Someone’s been pretending to be Stiletto. The imposter has been making phone calls from Stiletto’s house in Saucon Valley to a private detective in Slagville.”
“Holy crow. What for?” Mr. Salvo was concerned. Almost like a real live human being. I unwrapped a loaf of rye bread.
“Whoever hired the detective wanted to keep tabs on me. It’s a lot like Wednesday night when I got the fake fax from you and Stiletto got the e-mail message. Steve and I are pretty convinced it’s the same person.”
Mr. Salvo was silent. There was a pencil tapping in the background and then he said gruffly, “I’m gonna take this in Notch’s office. Hold on.” And he put me on hold.
I spread mayonnaise and lay down some lettuce and tomato to the digital music version of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” Salvo got on right after the turkey.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” he demanded. “After what happened Wednesday night, Dix Notch wanted to be updated on any new developments with you. This would definitely count as a new development, Bubbles.”
“I didn’t know much until Stiletto told me this morning that the calls from the imposter had been made from his house. He knows the detective, Zeke Allen. He’s a nice guy, religious. The fake Stiletto sent Zeke on a charter flight to Colorado yesterday, though he should be back by now.”
“What’s Stiletto doing about this?”
“He said he was going to meet Zeke at the Lehigh Airport. Then they were going to the state police and then back here. Zeke’s flight was supposed to get in at four this afternoon.”
I bit into the sandwich. It filled the void in my stomach, but not the pit. I was getting increasingly worried. My sixth sense was vibrating faster than a Dr. Scholl’s battery-powered foot massager.
“I’m going to make some phone calls on this,” Salvo said. “Spell that sham detective’s name for me.”
“He’s not a sham. He’s really nice.”
“Don’t get hoodwinked, Bubbles. You’re a reporter. Keep an open mind. Now spell it.”
I spelled it and took another bite.
“Allen. Like the Green Mountain Boys. You coming home now?” he asked.
“No, I, uh.” I remembered that I hadn’t confided in Mr. Salvo about Stinky’s request that I meet him at the Hoagie Ho. I was afraid that if I had, I would have to reveal that Stinky stopped by my house Friday morning. Then Mr. Salvo would mumble all that legal mumbo jumbo about harboring a fugitive or obstructing justice and how modern reporters don’t pull those tricks anymore. But I was one of those reporters who introduced herself as a mortuary stylist to get a secretary’s name, so he and I shared a difference of opinion on what was technically ethical and what was technically not.
“I have to escort my mother to a dance. Her friend Genevieve has a date and she doesn’t.” That was a lie. Mama and Genevieve were at Pete Zidukis’s house for a pre-Hoagie Ho get together.
“Christ. Then are you driving home?”
“Never fear, Mr. Salvo. I’ll be at the five a.m. waste hauler’s meeting.”
“I don’t care about that. I just want you home, safe and sound.”
“You want to schedule some other reporter to cover the waste haulers?” I asked brightly.
“Hell, no. You can’t use this as an excuse.”
“Okay.”
“And Bubbles?”
“Yes.”
“For what it’s worth, you’re not fired.”
I felt a lump in my throat. Though it might have been turkey. “I know.”
Bubbles’s Peel-Off Face Mask
Gelatin is a mystery to me. Kids eat it for dessert. Adults mix it with vodka at parties. I use it to strengthen my nails and teenage girls wear it as a face mask. Hello? This recipe produces a firmly sticking mask that peels off like a Band-Aid. Be careful not to apply it to sensitive areas—e.g., upper lip. Think, Would I want a Band-Aid peeled off that part of my body? And don’t use it everyday. It’s really intense.
1 packet of Knox gelatin
1½ tablespoons of milk
2 drops of glycerin
(Optional: Substitute ½ tablespoon of straight aloe vera for ½ tablespoon of milk)
Mix in microwave-safe cup and heat on full power for ten seconds. Stir and test on inside of wrist. When it is cool enough, apply. Apply in covering coat across nose and face, careful not to spread into sensitive areas or to hairline. Let sit thirty minutes or until hardened and rubbery. Peel off. Moisturize.