Polkacide (10 page)

I almost answered it. But then the
whole conversation popped into my head, start to finish, and I
didn't want to deal with it.

Luke wanted a status report
on the money. I couldn't blame him; I knew we needed it soon to pay
our creditors. But there was simply no status to report.

If I answered the phone and
told him there was no news, he'd just get more frustrated, and I'd
get more frustrated with him. And we would lose a little more
ground between us, the way we'd been losing ground since our
troubles with the club had begun.

Better to let it go to voice
mail.

Wishing for a cigarette, I
headed for the door and reached for the knob. As soon as I pulled,
and a widening gap opened up, a familiar blur of white flashed in
from outside.

Ghost the cat was back for a return
visit.

Caught off guard, I was slow
to react. Ghost shot right past me, tail held high, and dove under
my bed like a baseball player sliding into second base.

"Ghost, no!" I hurried over
to the bed and kicked at the spread hanging over the side. "Get out
of here! I don't have time for this!"

Ghost wasn't going to cooperate. He
stayed holed up in his secret bunker, not making a
sound.

Hunkering down, I lifted the
spread and peered under the bed. Two glow-in-the-dark eyes stared
back at me with keen interest and zero movement. Ghost didn't seem
the slightest bit inclined to evacuate.

"C'mon! Get out of there!" I stuck my
hand under the bed and waved back and forth, which had the same
effect I'd expected--namely, none. Ghost really liked it under
there.

Kneeling on the dark gray carpet, I
considered my options. I was already running late; chasing the cat
out would make me even later.

Or I could just leave it
there and move on. Handle the cat the same way I was handling Luke,
which was to deal with it later.

It went against my grain to leave the
room with a strange animal on the loose. On the other hand, it
wasn't exactly a mangy, diseased stray. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to
leave it to its own devices for a while.

"Okay, you win." I braced myself on
the bed and got to my feet. "You've got the run of the place. Just
do me a favor and don't tear anything up, okay?"

I heard nothing from under the
bed.

With a sigh, I headed for
the door again. "We'll clear this up when I get back." I switched
off the light, opened the door, and stepped outside. "Bye,
Ghost."

Still not a sound from my uninvited
white-furred guest as I pulled the door shut behind me.

Chapter 15

My sister Bonnie lived with
her five children and the occasional boyfriend in a little white
house in Punzak Township. It was a decent downtown neighborhood,
cramped but safe, lower class but well kept by neighbors who still
took pride in their humble surroundings.

The house had been handed
down by a spinster aunt who'd always been Bonnie's number one fan.
Bonnie had been named after her, in fact, and had gone to live with
her after graduating high school, before cranking out the kids. Now
the place was all Bonnie's.

When I pulled up in my
rent-a-car, the house looked quiet enough. There were three cars in
the driveway--Mom's sea-foam green Toyota Camry, Baba Tereska's new
blue hybrid Prius, and Charlie's ancient white Chevy van. I saw
lights through the curtains inside the house, but no signs or
sounds of ruckus could be seen or heard outside.

Since the driveway was full,
I parked on the street and walked through the grassy yard to the
front stoop. Still, I detected no trace of the commotion I'd
expected.

I climbed the three short
steps to the stoop and tried the doorknob. It moved freely, so I
turned it clockwise as far as I could and pushed the door open.
Leaning inside, I peered into the small living room and
frowned.

The room was a mess, as
always, cluttered with toys and articles of kids' clothing.
Half-empty plastic cups and bowls of chips and pretzels crowded the
mismatched end tables and coffee table. The TV set in the corner
was on with the sound down. And no one was home.

Scowling, I stayed in the
doorway with one hand on the knob. Had something bad happened to my
family? All the talk of death threats and murder had made me a
little paranoid.

"Bonnie?" I called out into
the house, still poised to spring back and run away at the first
sign of trouble. Or was somebody playing a joke on me? I couldn't
imagine it, given the gravity of this weekend's events. "Are you in
there, Bonnie?"

Still, there was no reply.
Heart pounding, I swung the door wider and took another step
inside. Visions of my family, dead in the next room, rose up in my
mind. As crazy as they made me, I couldn't bear the thought of not
having them around...even if, most of the time, I only spoke to
them sporadically over the phone from L.A.

"Anyone here?" I craned my neck,
looking past the stairway at my right into the kitchen doorway. I
saw the edge of the kitchen table but no sign of life.

It wasn't like Bonnie to
invite me over and disappear. Worried now, I backed up onto the
front stoop, pulling the door shut...and then somebody grabbed me
from behind.

Crying out, I jumped forward
and twisted around to fight off my attacker. But when I saw who it
was, I caught myself before lashing out.

For there behind me on the stoop of
Bonnie's house stood a grinning little girl with jet black hair and
a bone china face.

"Milly!" I gaped at Bonnie's
eldest daughter in all her seven-and-a-half-or-three-quarters
years' old glory. "What's the big idea?"

"I scared you good, didn't I?" Milly
nodded with eyes wide and clapped her little hands. "I snuck right
up on you, Aunt Lottie!"

Leaning against the door
jamb, I took deep breaths and tried to calm down. "You shouldn't
scare us old people like that, honey."

"How old
are
you?" Milly cocked her head to
one side, shut one eye, and sized me up. "Sixty-seven?"

Thanks a lot, Milly. "Just
don't do that again, hon." I ran my hand over the top of my hair
braid and looked around. "So where's everyone else?"

Milly whipped around and pointed up
the street. "Walkin'."

Sure enough, the sound of
multiple voices reached me a second later, kids and adults
combined. So there it was--the commotion I'd expected, getting
closer. No danger after all.

"Hey, look who's here!" I heard my
sister Charlie shout out from half a block away, as she and the
others rounded the corner. "You missed out on some great exercise,
Lottie!"

I watched as the whole gang
strolled down the twilight street as one: Charlie and my other
sister Ellie in front, each pushing a stroller with a toddler
inside; Mom and Baba Tereska in the middle, both waving in my
direction; Bonnie behind them, a toddler holding each hand; and the
rest of the ADHD dozen scattered around them, chasing and
chattering in a state of perpetual motion.

"It was such a lovely
evening," said Mom. "We decided to go for a walk, sweetie. We
thought you'd catch up with us."

"Yeah," said Ellie. "Didn't
you get the note we left on the door?"

"It must've blown off." I took a quick
look around but saw no note in the vicinity. Then again, of the
four sisters, Ellie had always been the most likely to tell a
lie.

Also the most likely to needle me.
"I'm surprised you even made it, what with your big new job and
all."

Too bad I wasn't about to
take the bait. "Milly, honey?" I turned to my little niece, who was
running up and down the front steps. "Weren't you going to show me
some of your gymnastics moves?"

Milly stopped running and
lit up like a sun. "I sure will!" It didn't matter that we hadn't
talked about it until that moment; she was all too happy to prance
and spring and flip across the yard for the next fifteen minutes.
Consider the spotlight redirected and the subject
changed.

Though I knew it wouldn't
last.

Chapter 16

Bonnie's idea of making dinner had
nothing to do with preparing food. Her idea of a cooking implement
was a trusty telephone with a pizza delivery place on speed
dial.

When the gang retired inside
the house after their walk and Milly's gymnastics demo, Bonnie
ordered up pizza for everyone in seconds flat. Mom offered to pay,
but Baba Tereska wouldn't hear of it; picking up tabs for the
family was an art form to her, though she wasn't exactly
loaded.

As we waited for the pizza
to arrive, the ADHD Dozen swarmed me like ants on a candy bar. As I
sat on the beat-up plaid sofa in the messy living room, the twelve
kids literally crawled all over me. They jockeyed for position on
the cushions beside me, the backrest behind me, and the carpet in
front of me. The two littlest ones squirmed on my lap like
salamanders on a wet rock. All twelve of them fought for my
attention with the ferocity of starving puppies fighting for the
mother to feed them.

The Furies, always grateful
when the kid spotlight shifted off them for a change, chattered in
the kitchen with Mom and Baba Tereska. I strained to hear snippets
of what they were saying, but the ADHD Dozen drowned them out with
their never-ending fussing.

"Aunt Lottie! Aunt Lottie!"
Milly's younger sister, Crystal, held up a scrawled crayon drawing
on a crumpled sheet of paper and rocked it back and forth to catch
my eye. "Here's a picture I drew of you!"

"Why that's beautiful, Crys." I smiled
and nodded.

Crystal shoved the drawing
at me, swiping the paper across the faces of the two toddlers in my
lap. "Put it on your wall in Los Agnes! Make people pay to look at
it!"

The toddlers started crying,
so I bounced my knees up and down to distract them. The boy, Derek,
belonged to Charlie, and the girl, Jamie, was my sister Ellie's.
They both had fine blond hair and were the exact same age--three
years, five weeks, and two days. Even though they weren't twins,
they'd been born on the same day and acted like twins when they
were together.

"My pitcher's
better!
" Five-year-old
Roy, Bonnie's boy, shoved a drawing of his own in front of
Crystal's, which set off the Un-Twins all over again. Dark-haired
Roy shook his drawing in my face so I couldn't help but see it--a
swirly scrawl of red magic marker that looked like it had taken him
all of three seconds to crank out. "Put
this
one in La Agnes! This one's
the
best!
"

Reaching between the
Un-Twins, I took both Roy's drawing and Crystal's. "They
both
rock! You
know
I'll put them
both
up when I get
home!"

Crystal leaned forward and
whispered loudly. "You don't have to put up Taylor's and Mitch's if
you don't want to. We won't tell them."

Looking past her, I saw Taylor, Mitch,
and three other kids clustered around the coffee table, churning
out their own works of art for me.

Before I could say anything
else, a little hand drifted around from behind me, wriggling in
front of my face. A little boy's voice, pitched higher than normal
in falsetto, chirped in my ear. "I'm Handy Fingers! I'm gonna kiss
you, Aunt Fingernails!"

Then, the little hand swung
toward me and lightly pinched my cheek. The voice made a smacking
kissing noise, and the hand darted away in a twitching
blur.

Twisting around to look over
my shoulder, I saw the cherubic face of six-year-old Louie grinning
back at me, hanging upside-down over the back of the sofa. He was
one of my favorites, and I think he knew it; not only was he sweet
and imaginative, but he had the kind of musical talent you might
expect from Polish Lou's namesake.

Louie's bright green eyes
sparkled with mischief as he gazed back at me. "That kiss was
delicious, Aunt Fingernails!" He fluttered his fingers as if his
hand were doing the talking. "Mmmmm!"

"Well,
I'm
Handy Tickle-Tock!" I raised my
hand, flickered the fingers, and spoke in a deep bass voice. "And
I'm gonna tickle me a little boy!" Then, I lunged my hand at the
side of Louie's neck and let my fingers dance over his
skin.

Louie instantly dissolved in
giggles and threw his head to one side, trying to pin down my hand
and stop the tickling. It didn't work. My fingers kept twitching,
Louie kept howling with laughter, and the next thing I knew, he'd
slid down into a writhing ball on the sofa cushions.

I laughed out loud. It was something I
hadn't done much lately, between losing Dad and the troubles back
in L.A. I actually felt happy for a moment, lost in the simple play
with my little nephew.

But things only stayed
simple for a moment, because I'd forgotten a basic rule of kids: if
you did something fun with
one
of them, you had to do it for
all
of them.