Creeps Suzette

J
UDITH
M
C
M
ONIGLE
F
LYNN
grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen wall, aimed it at her mother's feet, and squeezed the lever hard. A thick cloud of white spray all but enveloped Judith and obscured the rest of the kitchen.

“Hey!” Gertrude yelled, dancing as much as her arthritic legs would permit. “Cut that out! I'm not on fire!”

“Then move,” Judith yelled back. “You're standing right by the flames.”

Gertrude coughed. “Nasty,” she gasped. “I can'tâ¦breathe.”

“Good,” Judith said as the flames died out. “You're the one who set the dishtowel on fire. It serves you right. I think you did it on purpose.” She opened a drawer, got out some rags, and began to mop up the foamy residue left by the extinguisher.

The white stuff must have looked like whipped cream to Sweetums, who appeared from behind Gertrude's walker and put out an experimental paw. Judith lunged for the cat, slipped on the wet floor, and fell flat on her face.

It wasn't turning out to be a good day.

To Judith's dismay, Gertrude was chortling. “I love a good belly flop,” she said, stopping to catch her breath.
“You're not bad, kiddo. But you better get up. The cat's lapping up that funny-looking foam like it's dessert.”

“He wouldn't!” Judith clambered to her knees and grabbed Sweetums. “That stuff's poison. I wonder if I can make him throw up, just in case.”

Gertrude tipped her head to one side as she gazed at the squirming orange, yellow, and gray mass of fur. “He does that all by himself. Hairballs. Gruesome.”

“I know that, Mother,” Judith retorted, finally getting to her feet and carrying Sweetums to the sink. “Now if I can put my finger down his throatâ¦Oww! He bit me!”

“Can't say as I blame him,” Gertrude remarked, turning on her walker. “What's for lunch?”

“Motherâ¦” Judith eyed the tooth marks on her index and middle fingers, then decided she might as well give it another try.

Sweetums, however, had other ideas. With a sharp twist of his head and a terrible growl, he wrenched himself from Judith's grasp and streaked for the back door.

“Damn!” Judith cried. “He's gone. Now he'll probably go off into the shrubbery where we can't find him and he'll die.”

“I've thought about doing that myself,” Gertrude said. “The trouble is, I can't get down on my knees. I'm too stiff. It doesn't seem right to hide yourself standing up. On the other handâ¦” She stopped, and her small, wrinkled face went blank. “Did you say pickled beets?”

“What?” Judith's gaze was still fixed on the cat's door where Sweetums had beat his hasty retreat.

“For lunch. Pickled beets. They sound mighty tasty.”

“Pickled beets?” The response came not from Judith, but from her husband, Joe Flynn, who had just come down the back stairs and into the narrow hallway that led to the kitchen. “I hate pickled beets, Jude-girl. You know that.”

Judith whirled on Joe. “Then I quit for the day. You get dinner.”

“Dinner?” Gertrude echoed. “I thought it was lunch.”

“I can't,” Joe said, his green eyes looking startled. “I'm going golfing with Bill.”

“Golfing?” Judith was aghast. “You don't like golf. Neither does Bill.”

“I didn't say we were going to play golf,” Joe said. “We just go over to the lake and wander around the pitch-and-putt course.”

Fists on hips, Judith glared at Joe. “Does Renie know what you and Bill do in your so-called retirement?” she asked, referring to her cousin Serena and her husband, Bill Jones.

“Sure,” Joe replied. “It's exercise. Sometimes we walk around the lake. It's over a mile.”

“Then why do you call it golfing?” Judith demanded.

“Because we always meet at the pitch-and-putt course,” Joe said reasonably. “Say, did you know your hand is bleeding?”

“Oh!” Judith had forgotten about the cat bite. “I'd better get some antiseptic,” she said, racing for the back stairs and the third-floor family quarters.

“What about lunch?” Gertrude called after her. “What about pickled beets?”

Judith didn't respond.

After cleansing the tiny wounds and applying a couple of Band-Aids, Judith went in search of Sweetums. She got as far as the small patio when Joe called to her from the back porch.

“Where're you going, Jude-girl?” he asked, hands in pockets and a vaguely wistful expression on his round face.

“I'm looking for Sweetums,” Judith replied. “He may have eaten some of that fire extinguisher foam.”

“I hope he didn't eat all of it,” Joe remarked. “I wanted to save some for your mother.”

“Joeâ¦” There was a tired note in Judith's voice. The Flynns had been married almost eight years. Joe and his mother-in-law had declared a cease-fire, but had never negotiated a truce. Which, Judith thought fleetingly as she
glanced at her mother's small apartment just beyond the patio, was why Gertrude preferred living in the converted toolshed instead of under the same roof as her daughter's second husband.

“I'll help you look for Sweetums,” Joe volunteered.

It was an offer that Judith didn't want to refuse, yet she was becoming increasingly annoyed at having her husband follow her around like a lost pup. It had been only two months since Joe had retired from the police force January first, and he hadn't seemed to be able to adjust. Judith loved her husband deeply, but he was getting on her nerves.

Joe searched the area along the east side of the old Edwardian-era house, including the mammoth laurel hedge that belonged to their neighbors, Carl and Arlene Rankers. Judith concentrated on the flower beds in the backyard, but had no luck. She moved to the west side of the house, peering under the azaleas, camellias, and rhododendrons. There were rose bushes, too, but they had been pruned in the fall and provided nowhere to hide.

At last, the Flynns met at the front of the house. The huge forsythia bush that threatened to take over the porch was in full bloom, a glorious, golden promise of spring. The deep red camellia was in bud, and some of the bulbs were a good three inches above ground.

But there was no sign of Sweetums.

“Do you think he might have gone off to the Rankers yard or over to the Dooleys?” Judith asked, rubbing her cold hands together. The early flora might show signs of spring, but the damp air was still redolent of winter.

“Should we look?” Joe asked without much enthusiasm.

Judith was hoping her husband would volunteer to go by himself.

“I'll call first,” she said, heading back inside. “Why don't you start the appetizer tray for the B&B guests?”

“Isn't it kind of early?” Joe inquired, glancing at the old schoolhouse clock in the kitchen.

“It depends on what you fix,” Judith said, and then let out a little yip.

Sweetums was in the hallway by the pantry, wrestling with a rather large bird.

“How about braised starling?” Joe asked, giving the cat a disgusted look.

“Damn.” Judith marched over to Sweetums, who glared at her with little yellow eyes. “Surrender your prey,” she ordered.

Sweetums tossed the dead bird around like a dishrag. “Joe,” Judith pleaded, “can you take care of this? I have to get Mother's lunch.” Judith's head swiveled in every direction. “Where
is
Mother?”

“Maybe,” Joe said in equable tones, “the cat ate her first.”

“Good grief.” Judith started back outside.

“I'll come with you,” Joe called after her, “but I won't go inside.”

“Then don't bother,” Judith snapped. “Get rid of that damned bird.”

Looking glum, Gertrude was sitting at her cluttered card table in the toolshed's small living room. “Where's lunch?”

Relieved to find her mother in one piece, Judith managed a thin smile. “I'm going to fix it now. I'll be right back.”

She met Joe at the porch steps. “I put the bird in the garbage,” he said, exuding unnatural pride. “What can we do next?”

Judith ground her teeth. “Pay bills,” she said. “Why don't you take over that job?”

Joe made a face. “I had to do that when I was married to Herself,” he said, referring to the woman who had whisked him away from Judith some thirty years earlier. “I swore I'd never do it again.”

“Well, don't break a sacred oath on my behalf,” Judith retorted, stomping into the house. “I had to keep track of everything when I was married to Dan. The only thing he could count was the number of Twinkies in the economy-sized box.”

“He sure couldn't count calories,” Joe remarked.

Judith couldn't argue. Her first husband, Dan Mc
Monigle, had weighed over four hundred pounds when he had eaten himself into a fatal fit at the age of forty-nine.

“Look, Joe,” Judith said, regaining her usual patience, “if you don't want to handle the checkbook, I'd still appreciate it if you'd go through this month's bills. January was fineâwe had plenty of business during the holidays. But this month is really tight, which is why I haven't paid everybody yet. Except for St. Valentine's Day, which luckily fell on a weekend, the B&B hasn't been full since after New Year's. Plus, you got a regular paycheck in January, but this month, it's your pension. I was thinking that maybe you could work out a budget for us, at least during the lean months, the leanest being February and March.”

Joe, who was leaning against the refrigerator, frowned at Judith. “Are you saying we can't make it on my retirement?”

Mixing tuna salad, Judith tried to smile. “No. That's not true. Originally, you were going to wait until you were sixty-two to retire so you could collect Social Security. But that's a year and a half away.”

“I decided I'd go out at sixty,” he said, on the defensive, “because the benefits are good, and after thirty-five years on the force, I'd had it.”

“I know,” Judith said, spreading the tuna mixture on buttered white bread. “It was your call. But couldn't you go over our accounts and see what we can do to manage our money better?”

Joe's frown deepened. “I suppose. Hell, Jude-girl, before we got married, you used to get along here at Hillside Manor without any help from me.”

Puzzlement crossed Judith's face. “I know. I can't imagine how I did it. Maybe I used mirrors.” She piled potato chips next to the sandwich, added some apple slices, and started for the back door. “Here,” she said, using her hip to nudge the counter where she kept her computer. “I have separate programs for us and for the B&B.”

Joe grimaced. “I hate computers.”

“You used them at work.”

“Only when I had to.”

“Try it. Please?” Her black eyes were pleading.

“Later, maybe,” Joe said. “What are we doing after lunch?”

The February sun shone through the windows of Moonbeam's Coffee House, though a fire crackled in the grate. Judith, however, felt glum as she stirred her latte and listened to cousin Renie talk about how well Bill Jones had adjusted to retirement.

“He still sees a few of his nut-case patients and serves as a consultant to the university's family therapy department,” Renie reminded Judith. “Granted, that doesn't take up much of his time, but I don't think I've ever seen Bill so busy. He actually gripes about it.”

Judith gave Renie a mordant look. “Very funny. Do you know I had to sneak out of the house to meet you here? Joe traipses after me like a little kid.”

“Not good,” Renie said with a shake of her head. “Bill and I've been lucky. Our transition has been almost painless.”

Judith knew how smoothly Bill Jones had eased into retirement a year and a half earlier, and couldn't help but resent it. He'd never taught summer quarter, so his wife was used to having him home. Bill was a morning person; Renie slept in. As her cousin had pointed out, Bill was still involved in consulting and private practice. Renie, meanwhile, had her graphic design business, which she ran out of the Jones basement.

“The truth is,” Renie admitted, “we don't see all that much of each other during the day. Joe needs to find something to occupy his time. A hobby, volunteer work, whatever. He's at loose ends.”

“I'm at wits' ends,” Judith asserted, tugging at her short salt-and-pepper hair. “For Christmas, I bought him a big stamp album, a new fishing rod, some oil paints, and Shelby Foote's complete history of the Civil War. He's been indifferent to all of it, except the fishing rod, but he doesn't
go winter steelheading, and everything else is closed until spring. Joe prefers watching me make tuna salad and wrestle with the cat.”

“Don't you have chores for him?” Renie inquired, polishing off her mocha.

“Of course. He ignores them.” Judith grimaced. “I started making a list two years ago.”

“You need to get away,” Renie declared, after a brief silence during which the cousins had waved and nodded to three of their fellow Our Lady, Star of the Sea parishioners. “Take a break. From the B&B. From Joe.”

“Hunh.” Judith rested her chin on her hand. “How do I do that? I can't go anywhere without him, and even if I could, we're quasi-broke.”

Renie's brown eyes sparkled with mischief. “What about free room and board at a secluded palatial mansion with servants to attend to your every whim?”

Judith gave Renie a scornful look. “What about a teepee next to the Rankers' hedge with Sweetums sitting on my head?”

“I'm not kidding,” Renie insisted. “Do you remember Beverly Burgess?”

Judith's high forehead wrinkled as she searched her memory bank. “The name's familiar, but I can't place her. Did we go to high school with her?”

Renie shook her head, which was currently adorned with a very unflattering pixie cut. “Bev went to that exclusive private high school, Forest Glen. I met her at the U. We had several classes together until we both branched off into our respective majors. Although she marriedâher name's Ohashi nowâand moved away, we kept in touch with letters, and I've had lunch with her a few times when she's come home.”

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