Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction! (35 page)

Both
Helena and Annie exploded into tears.

“Now
what’s wrong? What’d I do?”

Helena
and Annie blew into dueling wads of tissues while Ma and Mu served up the econo
size box o’tissues.

“I
feel like such a failure,” Helena sniffed.  “What kind of a girl has a baby
with the father in jail?”

“Well
then I’m a double failure,” Annie said and blew into her wad.  “I can’t
maintain a subject’s cover, or surveillance, and I almost lost Mina’s cat,” she
said tearfully.

“Huh?”
I asked.

Annie
sighed.  “I know you’re gonna think this is kind of funny, or really not so
funny,” she began, “but my boss was afraid that Vlad – Vito – was starting up
some maybe too noticeable sideline activities.”

“How’d
you mean?” Vito asked carefully.

Annie
blew her nose.  “He thought maybe you might be into some kind of money
laundering scheme, because of all your trips to Lickety-Split laundry. 
Especially since your niece is involved with Mickey the Mouse,” she said.  She
took a deep breath and continued.  “Mike told me to keep a steady watch on you,
that it would mean a real promotion for me.  And I guess I got a little
overzealous.”

“Huh?”
I asked again.

Annie
hung her head.  “I pretended to help out at the dry cleaners, thinking I could
find an angle there.” Bauser, Vito, Ma, Mu, Ethel and I exchanged furtive
glances and took long collective swigs from our beverages.  Helena and Ike
nodded from their respective corners of oblivion at Annie.

Annie
took another tissue and dabbed at her eyes.  “I couldn’t find anything there. 
I guess I got a little frustrated.  I really needed to find something,
anything,” she said, looking at me.  “So when I watched Vito coming and going
from your house, I figured you must be involved with whatever he was involved
with.” She sighed.  “That’s why I broke into your house while you were at the
polo match with your Aunt.”

Vito
looked at her levelly.  “Annie, you means to tell us you’re the one what let
Vinnie out?”

A
giant light bulb clicked on above all of our heads.

“Good
Lord, you made all that mess?” Aunt Muriel shrieked.

“I
know, I know! I told you I was a worse failure,” Annie cried, and sniffled into
a new wad of tissues.  “But I didn’t know you had a cat, or a bird. That part
was really a series of bad luck,” she continued, and took a gulp from her prune
daiquiri.  “Everything was fine until I got upstairs.  Your bird started
shrieking.  So I popped my head in quick to look at her, and saw she had her
toe stuck in the cage door.  I couldn’t leave her like that.  So I opened the
door a teensy, weensy bit – and she flew right downstairs.  That was when I saw
Vinnie in the hallway.”

As
if on cue, Vinnie sauntered into the living room, and sat in front of Annie
neatly cleaning his paws and stared at her.  Detective Purr-o.

“Vinnie
growled at me and chased me into the kitchen,” Annie sniffled.  “I wanted to
shoo him into the basement because I was afraid of leaving him out with your
bird.  But he roared at me.” Annie shivered.  “So I slipped out the back as
quick as I could.  I figured it would be alright since you would be in the
house any minute.  But he chased after me.”

We
all looked at Vinnie.  Vinnie looked around at his court with an exceedingly self-satisfied
look on his face.

“Wow,
feline security.  Whaddayknow?” Vito said.

Vinnie
turned and stared at Annie to demand the rest of her confession.

Annie
sighed.  “I didn’t want to have anything happen to him, even if he did growl at
me,” she said.  “But he chased me all the way back to my car. I managed to get
him inside by giving him my leftover Buddy Burger. Then I drove to the nearest
pet store, and got a carrier. I went back to your house, and waited.  But then
your Aunt came over.  And Vito.  And your friend Trixie shows up.  Then the
police arrived.  Crimaney – your house is like Grand Central.” I shrugged and
nodded.   What could I say?  She was right.

“I
finally found a moment after Appletree left.  I would have carried Vinnie
inside, except he’s too big.  So I hid with him behind some shrubs, and then
shoved him in through the back door once you finally looked away.”

Bauser
blew out a whistle.  Jim came trotting over.  The Ratties followed and sat
pretty.

“Well,
yous was decent enough to look after Vinnie, so I guess you ain’t so bad,” Vito
proclaimed.

“Well,
we never would have expected that.  There’s not much that can top that,” Ma
said.

“Actually,
we might be able to top that,” Ike said.

“Yes,
we can,” Ethel agreed, and proceeded to tell Ma and Mu they were soon to be a
grandmother and a great-aunt.

After
Ma and Aunt Muriel stopped shrieking, everyone went around and gave each other
little hugs and got cried on a lot.

The
phone rang.  “Hello?” I asked.

“Hey,
Mina, it’s me, Trixie.”

“Are
you on your cell?  You sound kind of funny,” I said.

“Yeah,
I’m on a break.  Can’t use cells inside the ER.  Or smoke,” she puffed.  I was
glad that as a health professional she followed the rules.

“I
thought you only worked nights?”

“Louella
called in, so I picked up the second half of her shift,” Trixie said.  I had to
hand it to her: the girl sure had stamina.  I barely handled an 8 hour working
day at EEJIT, much less a 12 hour shift on my feet.  And here was Trixie was on
another 18-hour shift marathon.  Well at least her patients had continuity of
care.  A few poor souls could count on being treated by the same worn out
grouchy nurse who admitted them earlier this evening until tomorrow morning.

“Well,
at least you’ll get her breaks, too,” I said hopefully.

Trixie
grunted.  “Yeah. I got halfway into my first break when some drunk fraternity
prankster puked all over,” she said.

Eeeeeeeew.

“But
the thing is,” she continued with another puff, “they got TVs on in the ER
waiting room.  Just in case any of the gunshot victims want to see if they made
the news.”

“Oh.
That’s nice.”

“Yep. 
Anyway, Channel 13 was showing the new Buy-A-Lots – the one that got you in so
much trouble? It got set on fire again.  The same way.”

I
sighed.  “Well, at least that’s not my problem anymore.”

“I’m
not so sure.  I just treated some of your senior Breakfast War gang for
multiple burns.”

“Huh?”

“Your
egg slinging buddy Ernie, and the one you said you’re all afraid of, Evelyn,”
she said.  “They both claimed barbecue flare-up incidents, but I’m kind of
doubtful.”

“Why?”

“Because
they both had dog doo all over their shoes.”

“Yick!”

Trixie
sighed.  “Listen, you didn’t hear this from me.  I’m honor bound to report
anything funky to the police like gunshot wounds, stabbing, contusions, or anything
else that can be associated with a crime – including dog poop.”

“Right.”
I sighed and rubbed my forehead.  It was going to be another long night.

“Look,
they both insist they were barbecuing.  I’m gonna say, they’re old.  And since
they were barbecuing in their backyards, it makes sense that they wandered into
doggie poop while they were on fire, right?”

“Oh.
Right!” I said happily. Good old Trixie!

“That’s
my story and I’m sticking to it.  But the thing is, they can’t do it again. 
You or your aunt are gonna have to have a long talk with them.”

“Oh,
right…”

“Okay…
anything new on your end? You’ve got ten seconds.”

“Ethel’s
preggers!” I said quickly.

“That’s
great! Is it a Hansel or a Gretel?”

“Dunno.”

Trixie
sighed.  “Okay, I gotta go.  I have a minute and 35 seconds left to pee. Bye.”

“Bye
bye.”

I
hung up and went into the living room and turned on the news to watch flambéed
feces on Fruitville Pike – again.

“Geez,
is that Buy-A-Lots on fire again?” Vito asked. 

“Yip,”
I answered.  I looked over at Bauser.  He hung his head.

“Well,
at least you’re not konked on the noggin again,” he added glumly.

“Hey,
yeah!” That was good, at least.  It was getting to be too much of a habit.

“And
now reporting to you live, from the future Buy-A-Lots site…” the announcer
droned.

Bauser
leaned over and turned the volume up.  A young blonde, who looked directly
related to the older blonde who accosted us on Vito’s porch, orated.  Jim
yawned.  I patted his head in agreement.  Suddenly the screen ‘split’ as
Channel 13 showed off its new technology.  The older blonde, seated at the TV
studio desk, broke into the young blonde’s reporting from a small screen on the
lower right hand corner of the TV set.

“I’m
sorry to interrupt you,” the older blonde lied, “but we have some late breaking
information from a tipster that we’d like to play for our viewing audience.”

“Great,
thanks,” the younger blonde woman fibbed back, sweating in the summer heat and
smoldering burnt poop.  “It’d be great to have a tip on this series of heinous,
heinous arsons.”

Bauser
smirked.  “She just likes to say heinous because it rhymes with anus,” he
grinned.  The rest of us gasped and stared at him.  He shrugged.  “She dated my
brother in high school,” he answered.  We all exhaled.  Except me.  Bauser had
a brother?

“And
now, live from our newsroom, is the recent information from a tipster,” the
anchorwoman said.  She nodded authoritatively in the direction of the camera
and said, “Okay, Artie, let her roll.” The younger blonde held her ear piece closely
to feign attention.

“Now
I don’t want to get a body in trouble or nothing.  Or caught with the law not
on their side.  But I just can’t live with myself knowing who’s been starting
these fires.  Now, I know he’s a church going soul, but seriously – a body
could get hurt.  Including Henry.  So I figure the best thing to do is to make
this here anonymous phone call, to make sure he behaves himself.  I mean, just
nobody barbecues that much. This is not Texas.   No, sir, I said to myself,
Norma Jean Brown, you just sit right down and use that anonymous tipster
hotline and… OH!”  Both blonde TV women both stifled smirks.

“Well,
I guess we’ll be having some more information later this evening from our
‘anonymous’ tipster,” the anchorwoman said.

“To
be sure,” the younger blonde woman beamed back at her.  “And that’s our live
coverage about the latest Buy-A-Lots fire in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”

Vito
and Aunt Muriel smacked themselves on their foreheads.  Vito wandered out into
the kitchen and dispensed another drink for himself.  Muriel and Ma followed
and retrieved their bottles of vodka from the freezer.

“I
knew those two had to be finks,” Vito said.

“Who?”
I asked.

“Norma
and Ray.  After all, who works in a kitchen and don’t sweat?  It ain’t natural.
In summer, no less!”

Muriel
clanged some ice cubes into her glass.  “Goodie goodies,” she muttered.

Annie
wandered into the kitchen.  “Do you mean to tell me that you know who’s behind
the burning Buy-A-Lots’?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“Well,
not all of them, of course,” Vito said matter-of-factly.  “Just the local ones,
I mean, pretty much.”

“Vlad
– Vito – this is a national level case,” Annie replied.  “So I-don’t-hear-you
I-don’t-hear-you,” she said, pretending to hold her hands up to her ears.

Aunt
Muriel rolled her eyes.  “Oh, please.  Who doesn’t want to burn a Buy-A-Lots?”
she said and took a swig.

I
shrugged and did what I do best when I’m stressed.  I whipped up some sausage
and peppers and onions and eggplant to go over some nice risotto.  Then I dug
out some hearts of Romaine lettuce from the fridge and tossed a Caesar salad. 
I sliced up the roast, laid it on a platter and dressed it in its own juices. 
I placed it on the impromptu buffet table along with salad, potatoes, butter,
sour cream, chives and some cream cheese for good measure.

A
short while later, my family and friends were more calm, reasonable, and
slightly more sober.  While they helped themselves to the largess, I zipped
around making sure my crazy cockatiel and cat were taken care of.  And I
remembered to throw the mini-bakery stuff on the banquet pyre, too.

I
re-entered the living room to a chorus of, “Chestnuts roasting on an open
fire.”  Apparently Ethel found my ‘Yuletide Harmony – The Sounds of Christmas’
video.  It features a ‘live’ Yule log burning in ‘real’ time, while Christmas
carols play in the background.  Ethel loves it.  I do, too.  Just not so much
in August.

“Uh,
chilly?” I asked Ethel.

She
shrugged.  “I figured we could use something calm.  Too bad you don’t have a
real fireplace,” she said.