Bubbles All The Way (16 page)

She pointedly fixed her gaze on me. “Jane is under the impression that some kind of crisis is going on. She’s extremely anxious—not to mention frightened—as to why you haven’t dialoged with her about it, Bubbles.”

Dialog. It’s not a verb.

“There’s no crisis,” Dan answered for me. “Bubbles’s friend messed up at the salon and administered the wrong product to one of her clients, who was allergic—fatally allergic. The ditz’s license hadn’t been renewed. She’s so screwed, it’s unreal.”

I gripped the armrest of my chair, willing myself not to lunge for Dan’s throat as I had the day before.

Dr. Caswell lowered her glasses. “Was this the House of Beauty incident I read about in the paper this morning?”

The House of Beauty incident? So that’s what it was being called. Shoot. Alison Roach must have done a story after all. Probably skewed all the facts so Debbie’s death came off not as a murder, but as an act of negligence on Sandy’s part.

Poor Sandy. With all that was going on, I hadn’t bothered to call her last night to tell her what I’d learned from Jeffrey Andre and Ern Bender. I’d totally dropped the ball on our friendship.

“I don’t read the
News-Times,
” Dan was saying. “Why would I read that rag?”

Because your wife-to-be writes for it,
I answered mentally.

Dr. Caswell tapped a pencil on the table. “I don’t know if the House of Beauty incident is the crisis to which Jane is referring. What she told me was that some crisis is going on and that it has to do with a man in the neighborhood and Bubbles’s work.”

That Jane. Still smart and perceptive as always.

Dan rushed at the chance to accuse me of wrongdoing. “What did you say to her, Bubbles?”

“Nothing!”

“Come on.”

I looked him straight in the eye. “I haven’t said a thing.”

“She probably hasn’t. That’s the problem,” Dr. Caswell said. “Jane has very keen intuition. And then there was that man who upset her last night, the one peeking in the windows.”

Dan was almost out of his chair. “What’s this? What man? Bubbles, why didn’t you tell me?”

This must have been the man Jane had referred to on the drive over. I tried not to let it bother me that Jane chose to discuss the incident in full with Dr. Caswell and not me. “All she said was that she looked outside last night and saw a man walking around the house. Maybe, just maybe, he was trying the knobs on the doors. She didn’t say anything about him peeking in the windows.”

“Trying the door? That’s worse than looking in the windows, Bubbles.” Dan was practically growling. “And where the hell were you?”

“At work,” Dr. Caswell said with distinct disapproval, as though I’d been dancing on tables at a bar.

Dan folded his arms. “Some mother you are.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. “It was probably Mr. Hamel from next door coming over for his
TV Guide
after it got mixed up in our mail.”

Wrong answer.

Dr. Caswell raised an eyebrow to signal that my cavalier dismissal was not acceptable. “Really? Would your neighbor have tried the doorknob without first knocking or ringing the doorbell?”

No. Mr. Hamel would have shouted for me to open up. And if no one had been home, he would have broken the glass and opened the door himself. Nothing stands in the way of Mr. Hamel and his
TV Guide.
Nothing.

“Would he have looked in the windows?” Dr. Caswell pressed.

“Christ.” Dan’s hand was working into a fist. “Who the hell was this pervert? I’ll kill him.”

Dr. Caswell ignored him, choosing to spit her venom at me. “Would this neighbor have gone to the back door and tried that knob, too?”

That was my cue to act contrite so we could get off this topic and move on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dismiss Jane out of hand.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” she said smugly. “Children don’t lie. Adults do.”

Dr. Caswell didn’t like me. I had no idea why. She just didn’t. I must emit some hate pheromones, what with Wendy, Mr. Notch and Lori Caswell all scratching me off their Christmas card lists.

“You assured me that Jane would be safe if she stayed with you, Bubbles,” Dan said. “I wanted to bring her to my house, which happens to be in a very safe gated community, but you said no.”

“Because you’re moving out this week and giving the house over to Wendy. How many moves is Jane supposed to make? Stability. Remember that?”

“Please, please. This isn’t helping Jane.” Dr. Caswell’s tone reminded me of a nun from my catechism class, the one who used to routinely toss me out for showing so much of God’s creation.

“What I propose,” she continued, “is permanently moving in a relative who will stay at home with Jane and assure her that she is safe.”

“A babysitter?” I balked. “She’s nearly graduated from high school. I was a mother at her age.”

“Perhaps you could have used a babysitter back then, too,” Dr. Caswell quipped.

I sat back and crossed my legs. How come Dan never got the blame for knocking me up? That’s what I wanted to know.

“This will all be a moot point by next week when I move Bubbles and Jane into the house I’m having redecorated in Saucon Valley Estates,” Dan said.

My jaw dropped. The Saucon Valley move was not settled. I, for one, had no intention of leaving my comfortable home on West Goepp.

Dr. Caswell beamed. “How nice. I understand those new homes by the golf course are lovely. I do hope you’ll agree to this, Bubbles. The change would do Jane good. And a gated community would add to her sense of safety. You’re very fortunate to be marrying a man who is so responsible, so concerned for his daughter’s welfare.”

She made goo-goo eyes at Dan. Dan made goo-goo eyes back. Maybe Dr. Caswell should be heading down to the county clerk’s office for a marriage license instead of me.

Bad enough that I was being blackmailed into marrying Dan. Now I had to give up my house and my neighborhood. What was next? My job?

“We’ll talk about this later,” I said. “Alone.”

Dr. Caswell took a few threatening notes. It always made me nervous when she took notes. “In the meantime, I’d like to see a
responsible, mature
adult in Bubbles’s house. Jane and I discussed her options and we decided that your mother and her friend, Guenivere, should move in, Bubbles.”

“You mean Genevieve?” I couldn’t believe it. My life was being taken over by Dr. Caswell and Dan and now my daughter and my mother and my mother’s gun-happy friend. “Genevieve’s hardly responsible. She operates a firing range off her deck.”

“She seemed very capable to me, at least during our brief conference call this morning.”

I got out of my chair. “Hold on. You called Genevieve already?”

“And your mother. Jane gave me the number. Frankly, I was afraid it might, you know, slip your mind if I didn’t take the reins. You do have a reputation for being rather flighty.”

Dr. Caswell was a reincarnated ferret. And not one of those cute ferrets. She was the kind of ferret that bit your ankle or suddenly ran up your pants leg.

“Excellent!” Dan declared. “And Lulu will make sure Bubbles gets cracking on those wedding preparations. So far she’s done bubkes. I bet she doesn’t even have a dress.”

“Oh, dear.” Dr. Caswell frowned. “And here Jane is so excited about you two getting together and re-forming a nuclear family.”

Another shot of maternal guilt, straight-up.

“Do you have a dress, dear?” she pried.

“Of course! I mean I have lots of dresses, just not a wedding dress. Anyway, we’re getting married by a judge. What’s the big deal?”

“A judge at the Lehigh University chapel, Bubbles,” Dan said. “And there will be one hundred of our closest friends and family present.”

“You mean one hundred of your sleaziest clients and three members of my family, since your side is refusing to acknowledge me as a human being.”

Dr. Caswell checked her watch. “I’m sorry, but our time is up. I do hope to see you on Thursday displaying more love and harmony than you’ve shown here, Bubbles. I’m afraid that your negativity is the core reason why Jane’s not healing faster.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling her,” Dan added.

I got up, grabbed my purse and marched out, knowing full well that Dan and Dr. Caswell would raise their eyebrows and shake their heads in disgust. I didn’t care. I had to find Jane and get her to school.

I had raised Jane by myself. Not Dan. Not Caswell. How dared they accuse me of harming her? Wasn’t it bad enough that I’d had to live with the guilt that my job had caused her trauma in the first place? Wasn’t it bad enough I was sacrificing everything to make up for that?

I mumbled to myself in the elevator and as I stormed across the marble lobby, where Jane was waiting.

Except she wasn’t.

I checked outside the revolving glass doors. There was no one besides a security guard standing languidly next to a trash can.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but did you happen to see a teenage girl with a cell phone attached to her ear?”

“Yeah. She was sitting right here.” He pointed to a green metal bench.

“Do you know where she went?”

“She left with some guy about five minutes ago.”

Her new boyfriend, Jason,
I thought with relief. “Was he driving a Dodge Durango? Did he have supershort hair and a gun rack in his truck?”

“No, ma’am.” The security guard pulled a walkietalkie from his belt. “He was in a fancy black late-model BMW and took off doing sixty in zero seconds. I kind of thought it was strange, a nice girl like her going off with him, but I didn’t ask. Not my business.”

I was hit by a wave of crushing panic as I thought about the man who’d been trying to break into our house the night before and Debbie Shatsky’s murder and the stalker across the street from the Christmas tree lot.

Jane had been kidnapped.

Again.

M
y knee-jerk reaction was to call my buddy Mickey Sinkler down at the Lehigh Police Department. For once he wasn’t in a meeting or out on patrol or dawdling over coffee in the Lehigh Diner with his fellow detectives. He was behind his desk, defying his job description.

“Jane’s gone!” I wailed so loudly the receptionist in the lobby looked up from her magazine in concern. “Someone’s taken her.”

“Calm down, Bubbles. Tell me what happened.”

I told him how Jane had been whisked away in a late-model BMW. “I don’t even know anyone who drives a BMW.”

“How about Stiletto?”

I hesitated. Mickey had never liked Stiletto, partly because he had been harboring a simmering crush on me since grade school. However, with Mickey’s beanpole body, his big ears and five kids under five, he didn’t wrap up into what you’d call a sexy package.

“Not Stiletto. He drives a beat-up Jeep.”

“Okay, I’ll have dispatch radio an alert to keep an eye out for a speeding, black, expensive BMW. That’s the kind of vehicle they enjoy pulling over anyway. It’ll be a fun way for them to kick off their Tuesday.”

Thanks heavens for police discrimination.

“Why don’t you try the school? Knowing Jane, she took the ride because she didn’t want to be late. It is after nine, you know.”

I knew and I didn’t buy it. Jane was so cautious these days that she’d ask Mama for her mother’s maiden name before she’d let her in the door. She wouldn’t just up and leave with a strange man in a black BMW.

After Mickey hung up, I called up to Dan’s office. But he was already in a meeting, and even though I told his secretary this was a “dire matter” that required his “immediate attention,” she refused to interrupt him.

Just as well. I was tired of being lectured.

I was now fully charged on anxiety and Dr. Lori’s bad coffee as I headed to my car. I was also extremely stressed. My hand shook as I fumbled for the keys to my Camaro and I was so unsteady behind the wheel I didn’t dare drive.

The all too familiar nauseating mixture of adrenaline and helplessness cramped me in pain. There was only one tonic that could soothe my nerves: Stiletto. But as I had nuked that relationship, I turned to the next best thing.

Popping in a tape of Jon Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” I sucked strength from his immortal words. Yes, I would have to hold on to what I got. I would have to live for the fight because that’s all God wrought.

I exhaled and inhaled deeply. My hands stopped shaking and I turned the ignition. Whatever awaited me in the next few hours, we would survive. This was a promise pledged to me by none other than Mr. Jon Bon Jovi himself. And Mr. Jovi—or Mr. Bon Jovi, I was never sure—was hardly ever wrong, except maybe with
Have a Nice Day.
That album sucked.

I took a left onto Schoenersville and headed up Elizabeth, skipping red lights and doing sixty toward Liberty. Might have been Debbie’s ex-con ex-husband, Ern, who took Jane. He was the kind who probably simmered with anger. Anyway, he’d been in the back of my mind as the possible Peeping Tom from the night before, if indeed there’d been a Peeping Tom.

Not that Jane was lying. Just that she was, um, kind of hysterical these days.

Then, before I could move on to other possibilities, the whole crisis was over in a flash.

I could see them from the corner of Elizabeth and Linden. Bright red and blue lights lining the driveway to Liberty—not that this was an unusual sight. Between the drug dealing and gang fights, the cops here think of Liberty High School as their home away from home.

I pulled up behind the last cruiser and said a silent prayer of hope—hope that it was Jane’s abductor they’d captured and not Vicki Mercanceti’s son for dealing dope down on Pine Street. There was a shiny new BMW and there was Jane in the arms of Mickey, who was stroking her hair and murmuring words of fatherly comfort.