Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped (25 page)

“Who says I’m not happy?”

Miss Tilney looks at me. She’s got her blue eyebrow thing going again. She shakes her pruners meaningfully.

I see the curtains twitch in George’s trailer. Someone is watching us. “Be careful,” I tell Miss Tilney. “Don’t say anything about Susie and Richie.”

“Everybody knows they’re going to Disney,” she says. “Susie’s been wearing her Mickey Mouse cover-up to the pool for the last week!”

I walk off with Dreamer. Susie and Richie are leaving? My mother is moving in?

Joe catches up with me as I round the corner. “Where’s the fire?” he asks me. “Why’re you walking so fast?”

“Did you know that Susie and Richie are leaving for Disney the day after tomorrow?”

“Nope,” he says. “Do the cops know?”

I slow down and call Detective Johansen and leave a message on his cell phone.

“Let me ask you,” I say to Joe. “What happens if my trailer just tips over? Like a bus crash. And me and my mother and Miss Tilney end up in a big pile in the icky swamp, and we have to climb all over each other to get out.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Now that’s there’s furniture, I think it’s a lot more likely all the weight is just going to shift one day, and there we’ll be topsy turvy in the muck… all the furniture and sewing machines on top of us.”

“Topsy turvy?

“I thought a mobile home would be a good idea, but now…”

“All homes are mobile homes, Lola. There’s really no such thing as security. No such thing as immoveable. Everything shifts and changes.”

“Maybe I need something more solid,” I say. Then I pause. There I go again with the solid stuff. It got me into my whole inert marriage in the little stone cottage. “I could be swamped at any second.”

“Swamped?”

“You know, I could fall into the swamp.”

He nods slowly. “Are we talking an emotional swamp here, or a swamp-swamp?”

I sigh.

“You just keep moving forward,” he tells me quietly. “One moment at a time.”

I’m living in the now, I think, I’ve been forgetting to say that. I think I’ve been too busy to say that. “Maybe I think too much,” I tell him.

“Maybe,” he says.

“Why is Johnny calling me?”

“To keep the idea alive, I would guess,” Joe says. “He probably needs the idea in his life. The possibility of you. The question is, do you need the idea of him?”

“I don’t know anymore,” I say. “I think I’ve been keeping it alive too though.”

“It’s just an idea,” he tells me. “It can’t really keep you company on a lonely night.”

“I know it,” I say.

I look around at the swamp. The reeds are waving gently in the breeze. “Did you know that my mother is moving down here and she’s starting a business… with Miss Tilney… in my trailer?” I ask him.

“Hmmm,” he says. “Wonder if your mother likes Bingo?”

I sigh. “Tonight we’re going to the rest stop, right?”

“What is our plan anyway?” he says.

I shrug. “Don’t you have one? It was your idea.”

“But you’re the detective.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, I don’t know. We’ll hide in the bushes and watch to see what happens. Although those bushes will really be spooky at night.”

“We’ll go early.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll just play it by ear.”

“Somehow this plan does not fill me with confidence.”

We walk on. I might even be getting in shape, I think. This walking thing is good for me. After a while, Joe says, “I found out where the path is.”

“Path?”

“Through the swamp.”

“Oh no,” I say. Who wants to go on a path into a nasty swamp?

He points to a gap in the chain link fence. There’s a slight abatement of foliage there, but I wouldn’t call it a path per se.

“That?”

“Let’s go,” he says.

“What if we get eaten by an alligator?” I ask.

Joe keeps walking.

“Do they have quicksand in Florida? What if they have quicksand in Florida?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to go in there,” I tell him, kind of pleading.

He just looks at me. “We’re going in,” he insists.

The path is on a raised berm and winds here and there are looping along the edge of the swamp. Little lizards and frogs keep scurrying off in front of us. Mosquitoes are humming around us in clouds. “Do you see any snakes?” I ask.

“Not so far,” he says.

“I don’t like this,” I keep telling Joe. “These mosquitoes!”

“Focus,” he tells me. “Look for birdhouses.”

Finally, after what seems like a million scary curves in the path, we come around a bend and, there’s a birdhouse. We both pull up suddenly. “Surprise, surprise,” Joe says. We look at it. It’s a gray weathered little house, unexceptional really, except it’s on a 4x4 post sitting about eight feet high in the mucky muck of a tiny shady pond area and there’s no hole for a bird.

“Is that one of Ernie’s?” I say.

“It has a heart on it,” Joe says.

There’s a heart where there’s supposed to be the hole.

“How are we supposed to get to that?” I ask.

Joe looks at the birdhouse and at the post. He looks around. “There’s got to be some way,” he says. It takes him a couple minutes while I stand there swatting bugs, pretending to be looking also. I really don’t want to move. Joe finds a wide board about eight feet long hidden behind a cypress tree about ten yards away. He considers it. It’s notched in a couple places at the end. He aims it out toward the birdhouse and slides the notched end down the post until it catches a couple feet above the marsh. The notches slide over some bolts on the post and there’s a kind of click.

“Ernie made a gangplank,” Joe says smiling. The board slants right from the berm path to the birdhouse. “Would you care to do the honors?” Joe asks me.

I don’t want to at all. “What if I fall into the slop?” I ask.

He says, “I’ll go then.”

I look at his skinny little legs, his big glasses. “I’ll go,” I say. I edge out onto the plank until I get to the birdhouse. I can reach it easily.

“Does it open? Is the heart a door?” Joe asks.

I press on the heart. There’s a little give, a little click and a door pops open.

I look inside

There’s a zip lock bag inside with six rubber bands around it. It’s filled with little blue capsules. Ernie’s stash of steroids?

“I’m coming back,” I say. He nods.

When I get back to solid ground, I say, “Maybe we shouldn’t have touched it.”

“You better call that detective again,” he says.

So I call him. He doesn’t like it that we took the drugs out of the birdhouse “We HAD to,” I tell him, “There were mosquitoes.” But he’s too mad to listen.

Then I ask him what he’s doing about Susie and Richie leaving for Disney, and he tells me to stay out of it, that he has it covered, and he hangs up on me.

Joe and I trudge to the path’s entrance to wait for him. No-see-ums nip at my scalp and the inside of my ears. The swamp pulses with humidity. It’s awful in here. Still, I keep thinking about how satisfying it was to press on that heart, to hear it click, and to have the little door open up.

Chapter 45

When I get to the office Squirt says, “Fluffernutter doughnut?” and holds out a box. I look in. She tells me, “This one is Fluffernutter and this one is Tapioca.”

“Are you kidding? What happened to good old jelly doughnuts?”

“Oh, they have jelly: Pomegranate Acidophilus or Red Ants—that’s a kind of pepper jelly. I wouldn’t recommend either.”

“Is this the same bakery that makes the meat bagels?”

“Yes.” Squirt beams. “It’s right around the corner from our house. It’s called the ‘Creative Kitchen.’”

“Well, some people take creativity too far.”

“You just have to train your taste buds to be surprised.”

“What?” I say.

“You have no sense of adventure.”

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”

Squirt doles out my telephone pink message slips. “Mrs. Black called, call her back. Mr. Drainage wants to know if you found out anything. Mr. Drainage again, same message.”

“Thanks,” I tell her and start to walk away.

“We have to go back to the tarot guy’s office.”

“What,” I say whirling around. “Why? No way!”

“I think we should ask him about the tape.”

“I already know about the tape.” I tell her about finding it in the workbench.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“The doughnuts distracted me.” And the birdhouse, but I don’t tell her about that yet.

“So Ernie was taping the tarot guy and Feather?” Squirt asks.

“No, he didn’t know the tarot guy. He could never have gotten in his house to take it. And it WAS taken in the red living room.”

“Then the tarot guy had to take it.”

“Then how did Ernie get it?”

“He had to steal it from Fred and Feather’s house.”

“Then Fred had to be the video taper.”

“But why would Fred want take a video of his wife and the tarot master? And how could he have gotten into the tarot master’s house to take it?”

“My head hurts,” I say.

“That’s why we have to go talk to the tarot guy,” Squirt says. “This makes no sense.”

“But he won’t talk to us. We trashed his house. You shot him.”

“I Nerfed him,” Squirt says. “I know he’ll talk to us.”

I go along, even though I know he’s going to slam the door in our face. He tries, but Squirt inserts her foot into the dooway.

I say, “We saw the video. Did the cops question you yet?”

“Ob course.”

“Can we come in?” Squirt asks.

“No,” he says.

Squirt says, “I looked you up on Megan’s List last night. You have quite a background with women. I’m sure your neighbors and clients would be interested.”

He grimaces. “What do you want?”

“Just a couple questions about your mirrors.”

“My mirrors?”

“I believe one of them is a one way, see through glass. Is that correct?”

He nods.

“Is that where the video was taken from?”

He nods. “But he shoubbn’t have taken a video. That was not the agreement.”

“What was the agreement?”

“That he watch.”

“Fred?” I ask. “And you and his wife?”

He nods.

“He paid you for this?”

He nods.

“Does Feather know?”

“No, no, it is his libble secret. He likes to watch.”

“So he made a tape. And Ernie somehow got a hold of the tape.”

“I only know that Ernie came to me to blackmail me. I say, ‘Pah’ to him. It is consensual on all barts, ‘why do I hab to bay you?’ He went away with nothing in his grubby hands.”

Squirt looks at him. “Not entirely consensual if you are luring Feather in with fake Tarot readings.”

“I should make you bay for my mirrors.” He almost spits at her.

“But you won’t,” she tells him.

∙∙∙•••●●●•••∙∙∙

On the ride home, I say, “So Ernie was blackmailing who? He tried Ivan, no go. Was he blackmailing Fred too ,as well as Feather?”

“Probably both,” Squirt says.

“Poor Feather thinks she’s betraying her husband, and her husband is enjoying watching it.”

“Yuck,” Squirt agrees.

Then I tell Squirt all about the birdhouse and the pills.

“Why would he hide them there?”

“He probably didn’t feel safe keeping his stash in Marie’s trailer. Plus, he was paranoid and crazy. It’s like all of his hiding places, kind of in your face and you are so stupid you’ll never find it…. It wouldn’t have been a big deal for him to ride back there on the mower when he wanted to; it was just not a happy walk…”

“Aren’t you the little explorer though, Ms. Swamp Lady,” Squirt tells me.

“I thought you said I had no sense of adventure.”

“I’m changing my mind,” she tells me. Her tough features kind of soften a little. You could almost call it a smile.

Chapter 45

I call Mrs. Black when I get back to the office. First I sit in my swivel chair and go round and round in procrastination and worry. Then, when I’m dizzy, I dial.

She answers the phone on the first ring.

“Mrs. Black, it’s Lola,” I say.

“Lola dear,” she says. “I haven’t paid you for your work.”

“Well, you can send a check.”

“But I’d like to speak with you personally,” she says.

Uh-oh, I think. “All right,” I say.

“Are you available tonight?” she asks.

I can’t think of an excuse, so I say, “Fine.” Joe and I have to go to the rest stop, but that’s much later. And the only thing waiting for me at home is Martha Stewart Enterprises.

“Excellent,” she says. “We’ll be having a nice tuna casserole. I like potato chips crushed on the top. Would that be all right?”

“Sure.” I haven’t had that for dinner in about thirty years.

“Five o’clock sharp then,” she says. “And you already know where we live, so that’s convenient, isn’t it?”

She sounds a lot more chipper than I expected, so maybe things are ironed out between her and her husband. I hope. I hope.

Squirt knocks on my open door. “Your father wants time sheet for hours and a detail of what you are spending time on,” Squirt tells me. “He knows you’re spending time on this murder investigation which you’re not getting paid for.”

“In writing?” I ask.

Squirt looks at me meaningfully.

“I’ll do that later,” I say.

“He also wanted to know if you got your P.I. license yet.”

“Uh oh.”

“He also wanted to know why the dog is coming to work with you.”

“I guess I have to talk to him,” I say.

“He’s waiting in his office.”

I sit down in front of my father. Dreamer pads in behind me and settles herself next to my father’s desk.

“Why is the dog here?”

My father always refers to Dreamer as “the dog.” He says I ruined her with that name. Dreamer follows him around, sticks right to his heels when he’s around, but all I’ve ever seen him do is give her an occasional pat on the head.

“She’s not bothering anybody. She’s having a hard time adjusting. I can’t leave her alone. She chews her fur off. It’s only til she adjusts.”

“It’s unprofessional.”