Seventeen

Is it okay to leave the launderette unattended?” I asked as I buckled myself into the back seat of Kathi’s SUV and sank back waiting for the a/c to kick in.

“It’s self-serve,” Kathi said. “And there’s a drop-off for the dry cleaning. You’d know if you’d been in there.” I wasn’t sure if she was chiding me for being slovenly about washing my clothes or just for being unfriendly and not dropping in to chat. I caught her eye in the side mirror and couldn’t get any clues. She was hard to read. Hard to warm to. Fierce as Noleen was, I felt closer to her after our few action-packed days than I did to this enigmatic woman who was staring back at me.

I smiled at her and she snapped her eyes away.

“So,” said Todd, “you’ve got a new job, huh?”

It wasn’t until he twisted round in his seat that I realized he was talking to me.

“What? I’m on my way to the airport as soon as I’m finished with Mizz Visalia,” I said. “Where’d you hear I’d got a job?”

“You said you were at an interview and you’d excused yourself to go to the bathroom,” Todd said, speaking a bit too loud. “You said the company was community-minded with great benefits. Have you ever considered an MRI, Lexy? Just to be on the safe side?”

“Oh that! I was listening to Mizz Visalia’s summary of her late husband’s business practices,” I said. “Have you ever considered reality as a location, Todd?”

“Some therapist you are,” he said.

“You declined my services,” I reminded him.

“Don’t make me pull over,” said Kathi, and we both laughed.

“So was it one of his employees who killed him?” Todd said. “In spite of him being such a great boss?”

“I have no idea who killed him,” I said. “And I’ll tell you this for nothing: it doesn’t look good for Mizz Vi. She was his wife and she inherits. She’s got an alibi, but it doesn’t clear her because they think it was done on a tim—I mean, remotely. And he was cheating on her. But then it doesn’t look good for his girlfriend either. Barb Truman. Because he was getting ready to dump her. But she swears she didn’t know that. And she’s got an alibi too. But it’s not a good one. She was sitting alone in a busy airport but she hadn’t checked in for her flight or gone through security. But she was wearing quite distinctive clothes. And speaking of flights, Clovis’s niece got here from Texas licketier-splitlier than seems reasonable. And she’s been acting dead weird ever since she arrived. And she’s just married his arch rival and they’re plotting to run down Clovis’s business until the Dolshikovs control everything, coast-to-coast. Which sounds mad, but she has brought two Dolshikov cousins with her for no apparent reason and these guys could walk on as Henchman 1 and Henchman 2 without make-up. But then maybe she’s not plotting against the business at all and it’s just that the firework factory foreman made it sound as if she was and freaked everyone out. And that might be because he was trying to point to her to mask his own guilt. But it might just be because he’s got a problem with powerful women. Or maybe just women in general. And Mizz Vi just keeps on and on about going back to Sicily, despite a blood feud back in the old country with some people called Poggio.”

I paused, pretty impressed with myself for the clarity of my roundup. I waited, but neither Kathi nor Todd said anything.

“I suppose I just need to leave it up to the cops to straighten it out. They’ve taken a wheen of stuff out of her safe: his will and plane tickets and house deeds. Between those three things they could clean the whole thing right up. Because if the plane tickets are for the Caymans, Barb’s in the clear. If the will leaves the whole shebang to Visalia, Serpentina’s good. And if the house deed is for Sicily, then Mizz Vi can breathe easy. It’s frustrating, because I know there’s a receipt in the safe in her bedroom that would reveal all, but she’s forgotten the combo. Poor old soul. So. Let the cops do their job and I’ll do mine, I suppose.”

I paused again. Still, they said nothing.

“Not that I’m the biggest fan of the cops.”

Nothing.

“By any means.”

I leaned forward and looked at Todd. “I was a bit of a plank to Roger, actually. I don’t know if he told you. Acted like a proper straight white doofus. I need to say sorry.”

“I was born in Cuento,” said Todd. “Did I tell you that?”

“No,” I said slowly. I hadn’t wondered where he came from because, in Dundee, most of the people who’re there have always been there, and most of the people who’re ever going to be there are there already. Me upping sticks for California was just about big enough news to get in the Courier. My best friend Alison had been my best friend since I helped her pick out the edge bits of a forty-piece jigsaw puzzle first day of primary school. And once I got back into my groove after this little swerve, she’d be my best friend till both of us were racing our electric wheelchairs round the nursing home with our catheter bags walloping off the tight turns. In short, Dundonians might as well be plants as people, really. I was like a sunflower seed that had been eaten as a last-minute snack by a snow goose in Tayside and shat out as it banked north for Vancouver.

“Yep,” said Todd. “Born here. Single mom, Caesar Chavez Elementary, MLK High, West Sac CC, transferred in on a full ride to UC.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” I said, “or even why you’re telling me.”

“Barb Truman,” said Todd, “is my mother.”

“What?” I said. “Barb’s your … what?”

“I knew she had a boyfriend and I knew she was headed out on vacation somewhere,” Todd said. “But I didn’t know his name and I haven’t been in touch. Well, of course I haven’t. I thought she was sitting on a beach with ‘my new daddy’.”

“Kathi,” I said, “can you take us to Gerbera Drive, please?”

“I already am,” said Kathi. “And after that I’m going to wherever your ‘sweet Mizz Vi’ lives. Because I don’t know much, Lexy, but you know nothing. That name you’re throwing around is a mob name. This is serious trouble you’ve got yourself into here.”

“And I don’t suppose there’s the slightest chance that ‘mob name’ is a cute little California expression for something harmless, is it?”

“Nope,” said Kathi.

“Okay, but what good will it do to go round there?” I asked. “We’ll be lucky to get her alone. It would be better to call, really.”

“I don’t want to get her alone,” Kathi said. “I want you and me to sit and visit and drink mimosas while Todd cracks the safe and reads that evidence receipt.”

It was my turn to sit like a dumb lump and say nothing. It lasted a good long while too. But I got my voice back eventually.

“What makes you think Todd can crack a safe?” I said. “It’s got a keypad that counts your attempts and sends a message to a security firm if you go over.”

“Oh, my sainted aunt!” said Todd, getting a chuckle out of Kathi. “How could I ever outwit such sophistication? Why, the very thought of it is just making my little head spin!” He turned and gave me a look that dripped scorn and pity like a mop drips soapy water. “You really are new here, aren’t you? Chavez E, King High, and a transfer in don’t mean nuttin’ to you.” His voice was changing.

“Not much,” I admitted.

“I don run with them these days,” Todd said, “but cut me through and Norteños is still writ there.”

“I feel like I’ve turned over two pages at once,” I said. “You’re an anesthetist called Todd Truman. Who’s Norteños?”

“I’m an anesthesiologist called Todd Kroger,” he said. “I took Roger’s name. Cos no hospital board in Sac would open the medication locker to a brown guy called Teodor Mendez.” He held up a finger. “Teodor Mendez Jr. I was named for my daddy.”

“Huh,” I said. “I thought it was a tan.”

Before they recovered the power of speech, I turned to Kathi. “And you! You know about the mob how exactly? What’s your real name?”

“Katherine Mary Muntz,” said Kathi. “I changed it too.”

“Changed it to Muntz?” I said. “Does Nolly have any idea how much you love her?” For the first time since we’d met, I saw warmth in Kathi’s eyes as she laughed back at me. “Okay,” I said, clapping my hands. “Let’s go visiting. It’ll be daiquiris at Casa Bombaro, by the way. Not mimosas.”

“But it’ll be bourbon at Barb’s,” said Todd. “Unless she’s changed a lot since Mother’s Day.”

∞

The neighbour lady at 355 Gerbera Drive was pushing cucumbers today, on her little wooden market stall at the end of the drive. We parked in front of it and then Kathi edged forward so we weren’t blocking the merchandise from passing trade. That brought us right in front of Barb’s happy home. The curtains were closed. There was another newspaper yellowing on the drive and a black bin bag, tied shut at the top but ripped open by squirrels, had been added to the dead plants on the porch.

“Oh, Mom,” said Todd. He took a deep breath and climbed down.

“Will we go in right now or give them a minute?” I said to Kathi.

Todd turned round and peered in at us through the tinted windows. “Get your asses out of the car and flank me.”

Kathi and I scrambled down and we marched up the drive in lock-step.

Once again, Barb answered our knock after a pause just long enough to let her put down her whisky, close her bathrobe, and stagger to the door. But when she opened it, she was dressed in an over-shirt and leggings with her hair up in a scarf and she was wiping paint off her hands onto a cloth.

“Teo!” she said. Then she looked at me. “I know you from somewhere,” she said. Then she looked at Kathi. “And you’re from the Skweeky Kleen.” She shook her head. “Picked the wrong day to stop drinking. What the hell’s going on?”

“Where’s your garbage can, Mom?” said Todd. Barb leaned out and looked at the bin bag, then screwed her face up.

“Dammit,” she said. “That looks tacky. Let me get that. Go around and in the slider, honey. There’s dustsheets down in the living room.” She gave us all a huge smile as she picked up the leaking bin bag and walked down the drive with it. “I decided to paint that man right outta my life!” she sang. “And send him on his wa-ay.” She opened the wheeliebin of her next door neighbour and dumped the bag inside, then she scuffed her bare feet over the trail of—I’m guessing—whisky she had left on their shared drive. We heard someone knock on the front window just before we turned the corner and, looking back, I saw Barb lift a finger and give a perfect raspberry accompaniment. There was nothing about this woman I didn’t love.

She set a dumpy bottle of ginger beer down in front of Todd without asking and then offered Coke, Tropicana, or Fiji to Kathi and me.

“I can’t run to so much as a glass of white wine spritzer,” she said. “This is a dry house now, Teo. And no bumming cigarettes either. I’ve quit.”

“I quit when I was eleven, Mom,” said Todd, which wasn’t quite a classic testament to clean living but was pretty impressive. Any kid who could pack up fags at puberty, when looking cool never mattered more, was exactly the kid who could dig his way out of Norteños (they had explained on the drive over) and end up where Todd had ended up. Before the mental illness and the Last Ditch anyway.

“And how’s my lovely son-in-law?” Barb said. “You should have brought him.”

“You know why that’s not going to happen,” said Todd.

“Oh honestly!” said Barb. She turned to Kathi and me and spread her hands. “I make one harmless little remark … anyone else would have seen it as the gift it was.”

“What did you say, Barb?” I asked.

“Who are you now?” she said, squinting at me. “Did we meet down at the airport on Sunday?”

“No,” I said.

“Sure? I could have sworn I remember you complimenting me on my playsuit.”

“Playsuit, Mom?” said Todd. “Seriously? You’re fifty-five years old.”

“Well, don’t take out an ad!” Barb said. She rolled her eyes and turned away from him. “Do you have kids?”

“Not so far,” I said. Kathi said nothing.

“Well, don’t count on grandkids,” Barb said. “I made one harmless suggestion and Dr. Pretty walked out and won’t come back.”

“Mother,” said Todd. “You offered us an egg and a womb if we kicked in Roger’s sperm.”

Kathi inhaled a mouthful of Coke and started cough-laughing, then blew her nose and said, “Ow. Fizzy.”

“It was a very practical suggestion, given your circumstances,” said Barb. “And plus I was hammered. So you tell Dr. Pretty to take the stick out of his butt and get round here for my steak dinner one night while he still can. If there’s one thing the last week has taught me, it’s that life is short and precious and we need to make every day count.”

“It would help if you didn’t call him Dr. Pretty,” said Todd.

“I’m willing to forget what I overheard him call me,” said Barb. Kathi and I both looked at Todd with longing in our eyes. He shook his head very slightly and snapped his fingers.

“Okay,” he said. “Mom, we need to straighten out your alibi for your boyfriend’s murder. And it wouldn’t hurt to prove that you knew he wasn’t going to leave you any money too. What have you got? Emails, letters, texts? Notarized pre-nup?”

“I did see you at the airport!” said Barb to me. “I clearly remember you admiring my playsuit. And—just for your information, Teo—I am fifty-four and I have the legs I had when I was twenty-four. The only bit of me that’s headed south is my rack and that’s from feeding you until you were a year old so you should thank me.”

“If you really want Roger to come round and eat your good home cooking, Mom, you could maybe lay off the rack talk too.”

“He’s a pediatrician!” said Barb. “He must have mommies sleeping over with their little babies all the time and feeding them like nature intended. Does he gag like a fag at work?”

“Wow,” I said. “Barb, I wasn’t at the airport. I was here on Tuesday. I suggested that your playsuit was so ‘memorable’ that someone must be able to alibi you. And then I took you to the police station. Tuesday.”

“Which was yesterday,” said Kathi.

I rolled the can of Tropicana across my forehead and tried to believe her.

“I’ve been to the police station?” said Barb. Suddenly I could believe she was only fifty-four. I could see the girl she’d been at fourteen. She looked so completely lost gazing at us.

“Ho-kay,” said Kathi. “Barb, do you have a family doctor? A primary care physician? Todd, does she?”

Todd was nodding and rootling in his back pocket for his phone. “I’ll call Roger,” he said. “Mom, you need to do a pee test and get your blood alcohol logged. We’ll get everything you said at the cop shop struck down.” He stared into space as the phone rang and then turned away. “Hey, babe,” he said. “You busy?”

“Cop shop,” Kathi said. “He learned that from you, Lexy.”

Funny how the world turns, isn’t it? That was the first moment in California that I truly felt I belonged.

Kathi took Barb to the hospital in her truck. Todd said, “I can’t. I’ll strangle her. I’ll kill her with my bare hands. And anyway, it’s time Roger manned up. When you marry you get a family, right?”

Instead, he found the keys to Barb’s car and we set off together to Casa B.

“So,” I said, after a few moments silence, “what did he call her?”

“What? Oh. Empress of Hagistan. He loves her, really. I love her, really.”

“Hey,” I said, “you’re preaching to the choir. I loved her as soon as I met her and that was with her triple bourbon dripping off my chin.”

“Oh yes,” said Todd. “She’s always been a big drink thrower. She taught me and I was awesome in my day.”

“Well, you’re going to school now,” I said. “Mizz Vi will put you both to shame.” I cleared my throat and then did my best Dorabelle voice. “Do you know, she doesn’t have a single piece of her wedding china left to her name!”

And so, despite the mission we were on, and the mess his mother was in, and the mob and the bugs and the dead raccoon, when we got to the gate we were laughing.

“I’m so glad to see you, Lexy,” Visalia said. “And your handsome companion.” She batted her clogged, stumpy lashes at Todd and he winked, making her trill with girlish laughter. “Come in, come in. Can I fix you something to eat?”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m famished. That would be great.”

“Not for me,” said Todd.

We sat in the breakfast bulge while she warmed up chicken noodle soup (comfort food cares not for heat waves) and grated cheese onto bread to make toasted sandwiches. She put out a bowl of crisps and a tub of onion dip to keep us going in the meantime.

“So, how did you get on at the factory?” she said.

I boggled. I hadn’t officially told Vi I was investigating. I boggled again as I thought that; I hadn’t officially admitted to myself I was investigating. Then, just in time, I remembered my cover story. “A couple of girls from packing came to talk to me—DeeDee and Carla?—and I spoke to Bilbo in the design office too. He seemed kind of overwrought, but I don’t know how he is normally.”

“Bilbo?” said Mizz Vi. “Hm, strange boy. But a whizz with all that fancy stuff he does for us. He once designed the Governor’s inaugural ball finale and our orders doubled for weddings and races. He’s working on Cousin Clovis’s send-off already, you know.”

“You’re having a firework show for your husband?” said Todd.

“Of her husband,” I muttered. “So, Vi—you don’t mind speaking in front of Todd, do you? Can I ask—”

“I don’t mind at all!” said Mizz Vi, fluttering again. “As long as you don’t mind an old woman satisfying her curiosity: how did you meet and when, and how will you cope long-distance when Lexy goes back?”

“Not at all,” said Todd. “Although, actually, how rude when I’ve just met you, but can I ask where your little boys’ room is, Mrs. Bombaro? I need to go tinkle.”

“Of course! It’s just along the hall and on the left there.”

“And … is there anyone else in the house?” Todd said. “You’ll think I’m a silly old thing but I have a horror of a locked door and I wouldn’t want anyone to walk in on me.”

“Oh no, no one will,” said Vi. “My niece and nephew are golfing and the boys have gone for a massage. They won’t be back for hours.”

It was neatly done. Todd excused himself and hurried out with a hand lightly cupped over his lower abdomen, explaining the refusal of food, suggesting the “tinkle” was a lie, and assuring himself a good stretch at the safe with no chance of Visalia coming near him.

“Poor boy,” said Vi. “What have you been feeding him?”

I gazed at her. Not everyone has strong intuition—I know that—but Todd couldn’t look any gayer if he burst out of a cake in a gingham leotard.

“So,” I said, “it’s good in a way that Sparky and Jan are out, because I want to ask about them.”

“About what about them?” said Vi. She set a bowl of soup down before me and slid a sizzling grilled sandwich onto a side plate.

“How well do you know the Dolshikovs?”

She served herself a tiny cup of soup and picked some of the crusted cheese shreds off the bottom of the frying pan. “I’ve been hearing about them for the last twenty years since they started expanding westwards,” she said. “When they were only in Jersey, Cousin Clovis used to joke about them. He said they’d done him a favour, taking New Jersey off his hands. Said it saved him having to go back there. Then they were in Pittsburgh. He kept joking. Who wants to go to Pittsburgh? And Boston, and Miami. Miami was the first time I saw him worried. Like he had bit down on a sore tooth? But we were the only show in town all the way from Denver to Hawaii.” She drank a few spoonfuls of her soup, pushing her lips out and sucking noisily.

“Then came Dallas,” she went on. “And Clovis just wouldn’t see reason. He was only months from retirement.”

“But he must have wanted to hand the business on in good shape,” I said. “My dad had a carpet shop and fitting business and he worked harder the year before he retired than any other. He gave it to my brother and dropped onto the couch to eat biscuits and watch soaps for a year. Drove my mum nuts.”

“If he had known about Sparky and Bang-Bang, he might have worried less. He might have retired a bit earlier. We could be in Trapani right now, sipping cocktails.” She looked down at her soup and pushed it away. “Assuming he could swallow a Dolshikov in the family. But chances are he’d have suspected a coup.”

“Or worse.”

“How ‘worse’?” she asked.

“You don’t think Clovis would maybe have been … right … to suspect the Dolshikovs of bad intentions? I mean, you don’t think Jan and his cousins are maybe … ”

“Killers?” said Sparky. I jolted and sent a long splat of soup over the breakfast table.