Murder and Mayhem (25 page)

“Where are you folks heading?” Jake, the red-bearded
man asked.

“North to Port Kent, then we’ll take the ferry across
Lake Champlain to Vermont. From there we’ll drive to Maine and head down the
coast to Philadelphia where we’ll catch a flight back to San Francisco. What
about you?”

“We’ve been touring down south and are heading home.
Thought we’d mosey on up near the border, jump on Eleven and follow the St.
Lawrence River to Thousand Islands–maybe stay a day or two, then coast along
Interstate-Two to Michigan and follow the road around the lake to Pennsauken,
where we’re all from.”

Danny let out a low whistle. “Wow. That sounds like a
real nice ride. You’re going through some real pretty country.”

“Have you done that trip?” asked the gray-haired man
who had been standing on the fringe of the group. When he removed his dark
glasses and fixed his eyes on Danny, the word mesmerizing instantly popped into
Danny’s head.  The irises were cobalt-blue icebergs floating in a sea of white
snow surrounded by long, thick black lashes that turned up at the ends, as
though he had used an eyelash curler on them. Danny remembered he was the
single rider, but couldn’t remember his name. Stenos, or Stingo?

“Pretty much. One time I picked up Interstate-Two in
Bar Harbor on the Maine coast and finally jumped off in North Dakota just north
of Williston. I traveled through some real pretty country–except for the last
part.”

Judith laughed. “I take it you didn’t much like North
Dakota.”

“Not particularly.” Danny hoped he hadn’t offended anyone.

“I think that would get a vote from us. We did a trip
there once; dry plains and flat prairies. Not a whole lot going for it except
farmland and prairie dogs.

The gray-haired man looked around. “Well, I think it’s
time we hit the road,” he said and held out his hand. “It’s been real nice
meeting you folks. Maybe we’ll meet up again sometime on the road. You have a
good trip.”

Danny shook his hand and said, “You never know, it’s a
small world out there.”

“And getting smaller all the time,” Jake added as he
took hold of Danny’s hand and pumped it.

As Rastus walked away, he turned and tipped his hand
to his head in a mock salute. “Maybe we’ll catch you on the wind sometime,
bro.”

Danny smiled. “I’ll keep an eye out for you. Ride
safe, buddy.” He casually draped his arm across Nicola’s shoulder and watched
the riders mount their bikes and clip on their helmets. As the engines revved,
the pillion passengers climbed behind their rider, then turned and waved as the
Harleys took off in a roar of thunder.  

“Well, that’s enough excitement for one day. Time we
hit the road,” Danny said and  took hold of Nicola’s hand.

TWENTY-THREE

We worked out way down the room like a couple of
celebrities in a Hollywood restaurant, stopping to speak to familiar faces–a
brief greeting to some, waving to others. I spied Louanna and Chartreuse with a
half-empty jumbo size box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts lying open across their
laps.

“I’ll just go and say hello to the girls,” I said to
an elderly couple–but Rosie stopped me mid-stride.

“No you don’t!” she said, grabbing hold of my arm.
“You can’t be trusted to go anywhere near them.”

“I just want to see how the girls are doing.” A
nd
maybe sample a doughnut or two.

Rosie guided me down the room to where Susannah and
Daphne were sitting in awkward silence, the tension so thick you could cut it
with a knife.
Mr. Takamura was nowhere to be
seen but as we passed beneath the old television set Beethoven’s Fifth played
dramatically as a familiar voice-over said, ‘You are about to enter the
courtroom of Judy Judith Scheindlin’, so I figured he mustn’t be too far away. 

Daphne, as usual was wearing a kaleidoscope of colors:
long red-and-blue-striped socks that disappeared under candy pink pedal
pushers, and an apple green top cut low enough to reveal what would normally be
cleavage. On her feet she wore black high heels that, for some reason, reminded
me of Mickey Mouse’s friend, Minnie.

Susannah, on the other hand, with her voluminous
yellow hair, heaving bosom and face made up like a painted doll, put me in mind
of Dolly Parton, who, I might add, I greatly admire.

“Hey Susannah, how is the treatment going?” Rosie
asked in an effort to relieve the tension between the sisters. Daphne suddenly
burst into tears, grabbed her bag and hurried down the room. We sat in stunned
silence as the waiting room door slammed in a gesture of finality.

Susannah looked at Rosie and raised her eyebrows in a
McDonald golden arches gesture, shrugged, and said, “Does that answer your
question, Hon?” She removed a shiny new copy of the latest fashion magazine
from her bag and started flipping through the pages.

We decided to leave her engrossed in an air-brushed
photo of the current Mrs. Trump–whoever she may be. If any of the Gabors are
still around they’d be at the top of my list.

Rosie dropped into the chair next to Linda and said,
“It’s nice to see you again, Linda.”

“Hello,” Linda gave her a breathy reply as she glanced
warily at me out the corner of her eye.

I gave her my best smile–the one
reserved for celebrities or cute guys, and said in my most caring voice, “How
are you doing today, Linda?” Then I
turned
to Rosie and said, “Why don’t we swap seats, Hon, so I can sit next to Linda?”

Rosie handed me her bag and smiled at Linda. “Why
don’t you move to my chair, Linda, so Bee can take care of you while I get
changed?”

She wandered down the room, in no hurry at all,
stopping to chat to people as she passed.

I patted the recently vacated chair and said to Linda,
“Scrunch over and sit beside me, Linda.”

When Linda changed chairs, her
body suddenly developed a list–leaning away from me.

“Now, isn’t this nice and cozy?” I said and gave her a
playful nudge in the side.

Linda took a deep breath and looked up–but I could
have told her she’d find no answers there, and, I never thought to warn her
about the large hairy spider
that had
recently taken up residence behind the faded print of a mountain hanging barely
six inches from her head.

It was obvious Linda was in a contemplative mood so I
turned to the woman beside me and smiled, remembering how she had showed
interest in my conversation with Linda, recently.

The woman was small and frail-looking with pale skin,
washed-out blue eyes and had short-cropped wispy gray hair. She was wearing a
plain white blouse, good serviceable calf-length gray skirt, and a pair of
sensible black orthopedic lace-up shoes. Her demur dress and manner put me in
mind of a nun. At the time I didn’t notice, nor did I think to enquire if she
was alone or with someone else.

“How are you doing?” I asked by way of a greeting.

The woman held out her hand. “How do you do, my name
is Grace.” Her deep voice belied her small statute.

“Well, hello, Grace, my name is Bee.” When I took hold
of her hand I found her grip to be surprisingly firm and figured it was
probably from scrubbing hard concrete floors at the convent. She probably had
calluses on her knees but the modest length of her skirt gave up no secrets.

“Yes. I know,” she said with a sweet angelic smile as
she pulled me towards her and elbowed me in the ribs. “When I heard about your
sexual exploits I started having hot flushes.”  Grace pulled a white lace-edged
handkerchief from her sleeve and started to fan her face. “I didn’t realize it
was so hot in here,” she said.

I’ve had the odd hot flush myself, even though I’m far
too young to be menopausal, so I happen to know a little about them. “Maybe you
need to up your HRT dose,” I offered.

The frail nun jabbed me in the ribs so hard it brought
tears to my eyes and I almost toppled off the chair. Scrubbing convent floors
obviously has its advantages.

Grace leaned towards me and said, “Oh, you are a
character.” Even though she had a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her lips, I
kept an eye on those weapons that paraded as elbows, and stayed at a safe
distance.

I looked up and saw my sister coming towards us. “You
were quick,” I said as she
sat beside Linda
and demurely arranged the washed-out hospital gown.

“Hon. This here is Grace,” I said by way of an
introduction.

Rosie leaned across and extended
her hand. “Hello, Grace, it’s so nice to meet you. My name is Rosemary, but
everyone calls me, Rosie–or Hon.”

“If it’s okay with you I’d like to call you Hon. It’s
the name my grandmother used to call me when I was young.”

Rosie smiled. “Then I’ll consider
it a privilege.” 

I made a mental note to warn her
about those diamond-drill elbows.

“I was just telling your sister I would love to hear
more about her sexual exploits,” Grace said, straight-faced.

Rosie spluttered. Linda moaned.

“You okay, Linda?” I asked.

Linda chewed on her bottom lip and said nothing.

Rosie looked from me to Linda not sure what was going
on, then smiled at the frail, diminutive figure and said, “While you’re at it,
Grace, why don’t you ask her about all the men she’s got hanging around?”

Linda gave her a sideways look.

“Didn’t she tell you about those weird men, Linda?”

“What do you mean, all those weird men? There are only
a few!” I said with an indignant ring to my voice.

“That would have to be the understatement of the
year.”

I noticed Grace grab the
magazine off Linda’s lap and fan her face furiously.

“Tell them about the fat guy in the park,” Rosie said.

“What fat guy?”

“You know; the one on the bench with evil intent in
his heart.”

“How do you know he had evil intent in his heart? He
may have been a very nice person.”

“Nice! He was awful. And, what about that guy at the
mailbox? You never did explain who he was.”

“What man?”

“You know the one in the blue Taurus.”

“He was just a man, with a dog–remember.”

As the make-shift fan flapped faster and faster I
noticed small beads of perspiration form above Grace’s top lip. Out of the
corner of my eye I saw the thumb on Linda’s right hand disappear inside her
mouth.

“Then there’s that couple in the restaurant?” my
sister demanded.

“What about them?”

“What were they doing?”

“What do you think they’d be doing in the restaurant?”
The silence was loaded–I allowed no room for contradiction.

“Mrs. Albertson,” the nurse’s high-pitched voice cut
through the heat and the whirr, and the harrumphs, and the sighs of
exasperation–and the sudden loud snap of a polyester nail–Oh! Poor Linda!

As Rosie disappeared into the
treatment room, I looked over at Grace–and shrugged
.

“Tell me about the sex, Bee?” she asked her eyes fever
bright as she leaned in for the kill.

*****

Nicola
nodded
in time
with the music, her feet tapping to the rhythm as she gazed out the window at
deer standing beneath the skeletal limbs of a large tree. She was thinking
about last night when Danny’s voice intruded into her thoughts and dragged her
back to the present.

“Shame we don’t have time to drive to Canada, the
border’s only a couple of hours north of here,” he said.

“I’ve never been to Canada. Have you?” Nicola said.

“I’ve been to Vancouver and Vancouver Island a couple
of times and up through the Rockies to Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper. I even
went to the Calgary stampede and had one hell of a time.”

Now that summer vacation was over, the roads were
almost devoid of traffic as they drove past corn fields, disused railway stations
and pine plantations. The smell of humus from rotting leaves hung in the air,
pungent and earthy.

On the western shore of the lake, they passed an old
storage shed with wood so rotten the building had collapsed in on itself. A
piece of farm machinery, rusted from age and disuse, lay abandoned in a nearby
field where weeds grew unchecked, and creeper vines choked anything they could
ensnare. On a back lot an almost derelict two story clapboard farmhouse listed
precariously leeward as gray plumes of smoke rose from the chimney. In a
neighboring paddock, an aged Appaloosa stallion, once tall and proud, limped
lamely across the barren earth as carrion birds circled overhead.