QUEENIE BABY: On Assignment (2 page)

"The man was wearing a cape," I said.

Carol looked a little uncomfortable. "He's still got the cape, huh?"

"Still got the cape! Really? A little warning would have been appreciated," I sputtered. Okay, I don't mind crappy or crazy assignments if they pay well, but Carol usually gave me plenty of warning. "So what's the deal? The guy's name is Vann Pyres and he wears a black cape and you don't think to mention it?" I said.

"I thought he was done with the cape. And besides, you've been on so many challenging assignments that I thought you could handle him," Carol said.

"It doesn't bother you in the least that this guy is crazy and, not to mention, possibly a vampire?" I asked. "Who did you send him last time?" I was getting suspicious.

Carol stalled by grabbing the ringing phone and giving the one sec finger. "Sure, Mr. Greene. Yes, that would be fine. Tomorrow? You’ll be here? In the office?" For a split second Carol’s impenetrable professional mask dropped and I saw panic. "Yes, I'm looking forward to finally meeting you. Wonderful. You too, bye." Carol hung up the phone and stared at it for a few seconds.

"Why the stricken look? So your boss is coming into the office tomorrow," I said with a shrug. "It's not like he's a vampire or anything."
 

She didn't even crack a smile at my timely joke.

"I've never met him before," she said.
 

"Didn't he hire you for this job?" I asked.

"Old Mr. Greene hired me. I had quarterly conference calls with old Mr. Greene and monthly calls with his accountant; I haven’t seen old Mr. Greene since the 2010 Boat Show. He lives somewhere in Virginia. Young Mr. Greene, his nephew, is coming tomorrow."

She seemed pretty down. "How bad can he be?" I asked.

"He said old Mr. Greene is semi-retiring and has asked him to do an appraisal of the business and the property. To me, that sounds like either I have a new boss, or they’re thinking of selling the place. "

“So no big deal," I tried to assure her. "You’ll just have calls with young Mr. Greene now."

"What if he decides to sell the business?" she said.

"Well, that's thinking on the bright side," I replied. "Hey, come with me to McGlynn’s for happy hour. Have a drink. Get relaxed."

"Are you kidding? I've got work to do!" Carol said. "This place is a wreck and I have to compile the first quarter reports. Oh God, I hope the numbers are good." She sounded slightly manic.

I left Carol worrying over her numbers after extracting a promise from her that if the numbers looked good she would be over. I wasn't holding my breath. Might as well go home and change.
 

I walked to my renovated condo/apartment on Calvert Street. It was located in an older section of west Annapolis. The house was a hundred years old. Large and boxy, with no old-fashioned charm at all. It was a casualty of the real estate boom. With high hopes, a wannabe flipper had purchased the vacant property in 2007. He had attempted to convert the 4,000-square-foot space into three luxury condos. He successfully completed the bottom two before ending up in foreclosure. Another flipper came behind him and picked the property up for fifty cents on the dollar. This flipper decided to turn the unfinished three-bedroom luxury penthouse into two utilitarian condos. I bought the one-bedroom for a reasonable price. I didn't miss the high end fixtures that my downstairs neighbors enjoyed. Knowing my mortgage was a fraction of theirs was enjoyment enough.

How does a musician/temp afford to buy anything? No, I didn’t have a hit song or land a year-long assignment running a hedge fund. My sister and I inherited half of our great Aunt Betty’s estate a couple of years ago. I only met my great aunt a few times, but she never had children or cats, so I guess we were it. I used the money to put enough down on my condo, so that my mortgage would always be affordable. My sister inherited the other half and promptly bought the most ostentatious double-wide she could find and plopped it on a two-acre lot a mile from our old neighborhood. If you could call a line of boxes on a road between two dusty fields a neighborhood, that is.

As I approached my building, I saw my downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Kester, outside and obviously waiting for me. Her arms were crossed in front her and her sun-shriveled face was pursed in a frown. The other unit on the first floor had been for sale for almost six months. The previous tenant had been a sweet, little old lady whose family had placed her in a nursing home. She had passed away a few months later. The real estate agent alluded to a family squabble over the estate as being responsible for the unit still being on the market. I had another theory. Mrs. Kester was old, but she definitely wasn’t sweet and she despised her neighbors. If she had her way, the whole building would be vacant. I think she had squashed more than one sale with her tales of out of control mold and corroded plumbing. The two-bedroom unit across from me was rented out during the tourist season. The steady flow of new tenants kept things interesting in the building during the summer and had Mrs. Kester foaming at the mouth from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

"Miss Hudson," she began, "I understand that you are used to living like a punk rock star." I glanced down at my suit. So this is what punk rock looked like a hundred years ago. "But I would appreciate it if you told your gentlemen callers to wait until they are in your apartment before removing their trousers."

Now if Mrs. Kester had jumped on a broom and flew around the block, I wouldn't have been more surprised.

"There's a man with no pants outside my condo?" I asked incredulously. "Maybe you should have called the police!"

"Well, when I hollered at him he said he knew you. And he called you by a rather familiar name," she said with a snooty sniff. "He's quite rude and much too old for you, but obviously that's none of my concern."

I walked through the front door warily, a horrifying thought crossing mind. I heard him before I saw him.

"Well, there's my Queenie Baby!" he exclaimed throwing open his arms and waving what looked like a wet pair of pants at me. “Come give me some sugar!”

Mrs. Kester was right on my heels. "Obviously someone you know."
 

"Yes," I ground out.

At the top of the stairs, stood a gray-haired, stooped man of eighty-two wearing no pants. Luckily he had on a red flannel shirt that hung down far enough to cover his parts. Strike that—most of his parts. He had a long white beard and looked for all the world like the crazy old coot he was. Granddaddy Hacker sans pants was on my doorstep.
 

I was going to kill my sister!

C
HAPTER
T
WO

I OPENED THE door to my condo and ushered Granddaddy Hacker inside away from Mrs. Kester’s disapproving looks. Although it looked like she might have been trying to check out Granddaddy’s package—ewwh!
 

“What’s wrong with your pants?” I asked.

“Had a little accident when I was waterin’ your flowers out back,” he cackled. I gave him an evil look. “I had to go and that old bitty downstairs wasn’t gonna let me in to use her facilities.”

Once I had Granddaddy settled on the couch, a remote control in one hand and a piece of beef jerky in the other and dressed in a pair of my sweat pants, I started the washer. I added extra detergent.
 

"Got anymore jerky?" he asked, never taking his eyes off the TV.
 

I put my hands on my hips. "No more jerky until you answer some questions!"
 

Granddaddy ignored my request. “My dear Jenny always kept the shelves stocked. Couldn’t cook worth a damn, but she made sure I had my jerky. Got it at a bargain too,” he added wistfully.

Now I don't normally keep beef jerky in my cupboards, but Granddaddy had spent a couple of weeks with me last fall and the stuff doesn't seem to have an expiration date. My sister was supposed to be in charge of The Grands while The Parents were on vacation together.
 

It's a strange family situation. If this were on a reality show, you’d swear they were making it all up. “The Parents” consist of my mother, Brandy, and my stepfather, Dave, my father, George, and my stepmother, Anne. They live next door to each other in The Meadows, a 55+ golf community. On purpose. As in they bought houses right next to each other because they get along great and hang out together. Yep, I know it’s weird, but it gets weirder. They moved to The Meadows because each of The Parents have one parent of their own still living at 80+, aka “The Grands,” and things would be easier to manage if everyone was in the same place, right? The reality was that The Parents took multiple vacations every year to get away from The Grands, and my sister and I had to pick up the slack when they were gone.

"How 'bout a beer?" Granddaddy Hacker asked.

"No," I said sharply. "What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Delaware at The Meadows and Ashley is taking care of everything for you while The Parents are on vacation."

"Yeah, yeah, quit your jawin’," he waved his hand dismissively and changed the channel.
 

"Why are you here? And how did you get here?" I asked again with exasperation.
 

"Hitched."

"What! Do you know how dangerous that is?" Completely unbelievable. It was like talking to a teenager.

He raised a bushy eyebrow. "'Fraid I’ll get molested?"

"No," I said through clenched teeth, "I'm afraid you'll get dead and I’ll be blamed for it."

"Not my time yet. Got a lot of livin’ left in me," he declared.

"Okay, then why aren't you doing your livin’ at The Meadows?" I asked.

"I'm not livin’ with a thievin’ sumabitch!" he growled.

"What did Uncle Grover do this time?" It figures. To save money The Parents had moved Uncle Grover and Granddaddy Hacker into one unit and Mammaw and Aunt Pearl into the other. They couldn't have set up a more dysfunctional arrangement if they’d tried.
 

"The man is a thief, I told you!" he huffed. "And he's light in the loafers to boot!"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. I heard my cell buzz with a text message. "Uncle Grover had three children, Granddaddy, he’s not gay."

“Then why is he always prancing around arranging flowers and burning candles? I can’t stand candles!” Granddaddy had worked himself into a lather thinking about the candles. “And that little dog of his! Always yapping, yapping—like some old woman. I can’t take it no more!”

Obviously I was going to have to be the reasonable one here. “Okay, I get all that. Uncle Grover is not easy to live with.” Like you are, I wanted to add, but restrained myself. “But he’s not a thief. What do you think he stole?”

“He stole my rifle!”

Now I knew that my stepmother had confiscated Granddaddy’s rifle after he and Aunt Pearl tried to set up a target range in the open space at The Meadows. Luckily, my Dad happened to be coming back from Wal-Mart—where he spends an unusually large part of his day—and was able to disarm the two troublemakers before The Meadows’ security guard showed up. Granddaddy, however, didn’t know this. He thought it was locked in his rifle case.
 

“How do you know he stole your rifle?” I asked carefully.

“Because it wasn’t in its case,” he replied.

“But how did you open the case? Anne kept the key, so there would be no more incidents,” I asked.

He looked a little sheepish. “I broke the lock. Well, it’s my gun, ain’t it? Annie got no right to keep a man from his gun. The constitution says so!”

Now I wasn’t getting into a second amendment debate with Granddaddy Hacker, but I think he could be a poster child for the gun control movement. Maybe if I straightened this out right now, I could take Granddaddy home tonight. “It wasn’t Uncle Grover, Granddaddy. It was Anne. She never locked the gun back in the case. She kept it.”

His eyes narrowed. His face was reddening, sort of like when Yosemite Sam blows his top. “What? I didn’t raise my only daughter to treat me this way. Take a man’s gun away from him. I’m going to whip her keaster for this!”
 

I sometimes felt the same way about my stepmother and it would be fun to see Granddaddy try to “whip her keaster”, but I defended her nonetheless. “She was only trying to make sure you didn’t get in trouble. She was doing her job as your daughter. She was protecting you. Maybe she should have talked to you about it first,” I said consolingly.
 

“Don’t this beat all,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess I was wrong about Grover.”

I sat down next to him on the couch and patted his arm. “It’s okay. As soon as your pants are dry, I’ll take you home and you can patch things up. Maybe you could play Scrabble with him. You know how much he loves Scrabble.” I picked up my cell phone. Two texts from my sister.
 

“No,” he said firmly, “I think I’ll stay here.”

My jaw dropped. “What?”

“Let’s just say I don’t think Grover will be welcomin’ me home with open arms.” He started flipping through channels again.

“What did you do?” I asked suddenly. My phone rang. It was my sister.

“Is Granddaddy there?” she snapped.

“Yes, Ashley. He showed up at my door with no pants on. Great job keeping an eye on The Grands!” I snapped back.

“Well, you can just keep him!” she shouted.

“Whoa—just hold on—he is not staying with me. I had my turn.”

“Did he tell you what he did?” she asked. I glanced over at Granddaddy surfing the channels looking guilty.

“We were just getting to that,” I said.

“He took Honey-Bunny to the SPCA!”
 

My eyes narrowed at Granddaddy. “You took his dog to the SPCA?” I whispered furiously at him.
 

My sister continued, “And when Uncle Grover found out he fainted and hit his head. I’m at the hospital with him now.”

“The doctor is coming in now,” she said. “I’ll call you back later.” Click.

I just sat there staring at my phone for a second. Granddaddy was getting uncomfortable. “So, did the old coot go get his stupid mutt from the pound or what?” he asked pretending not to care.