The Lovely Chocolate Mob (12 page)

“Okay,” he said, “I’m all ears.”

“What I’m going to talk to you about can’t go any further than us.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It’s not serious for me, more like personal. But it is serious for a college classmate of ours.”

“Which classmate?”

I took a breath. He wasn’t going to like this.

“Helen Ceraldi.”

“Wh-a-a-a-t?” he bellowed. People turned and look.

“Sh-h-h-h! Not so loud! I don’t want anybody to know!” I said, gesturing him with hands to keep the volume down.

“Wh-a-a-a-t?” he whispered.

“Yes, it’s Helen Ceraldi. Helen Ceraldi-Burke.”

“That Jezebel?”

“She’s not a Jezebel, she’s a married woman.”

“Jezebel was a married woman,” he reminded me.

“She’s not a Jezebel.”

“Look at you,
defending
her!”

“Sh-h-h-h! Hold it down,” not wanting to draw more stares. Maybe meeting David in a public place wasn’t such a great idea.

“
Defending
her!” he whispered.

After a few more parlays back and forth, David calmed down enough to say, “Okay, okay. Well, what does
she
want?”

I told him the whole story. He already knew that Helen Ceraldi married Franklin Burke, the dashing pre-med student from college, instead of me, the dull engineering student. He had witnessed my implosion, as had Walter Dale. Being my friend, he was on my side in the matter, but without going to war with Helen and Franklin. He still had to attend school and finish his degree around them, so it was important to keep the peace.

“What are you doing helping her?” he asked.

“I don’t know if I can help her. There’s doesn’t seem to be much she can do, either. It’s her husband who seems to be causing most of the problem here.”

“That’s tough. She had it coming.”

“She’s got four kids, who are totally innocent in the matter. This has already crushed her first kid.”

David hushed up to give this some thought. He took a drink of his tea and said, “If you go through with this, you’re a better man than me. I’d tell her to go jump in a lake.”

I chuckled. “That’s what Walter said.”

“Walter? Walter Dale? He knows about this, too?”

“Yes. He said she should take a running leap into Lake Jackass. He’s my eyes and ears on this, and has supplied me much useful information.”

“Well, you certainly picked the right guy!” said David, remembering Walter’s talents for getting the questions and answers to tests from professors back during college, usually involving unknown, unseen methods.

“Walter had high scores in all his classes,” he muttered.

“I need to bounce some ideas off of you, and maybe get some more insight into all this mess,” I said.

“Okay, shoot. What can I do?”

“Dr. Franklin Burke, husband, is having some kind of dalliance with a young, beautiful, and rich socialite. Now you and I know that when a fellow becomes enamored with a female, all logical thought processes come to a screeching halt.”

“Right,” said David. “Assuming that there were any logical thought processes to begin with.”

“Well, when the girl you’re involved with is the answer to all your imagined needs, a fellow is bound to get off-balance. We’re all vulnerable here; you know I am. I know what you’ve been through as well.”

David nodded but said nothing. He was just glad he hadn’t missed the marriage-boat, even if it was years after our pre-conceived ideal time for matrimony.

Here was the big question I had for Dave: “When a man is so involved with a female, or in love, or enamored with her to the point that he’s stupid in love, what does it take to set him straight?”

David thought on it for a moment, and declared, “Time and observations have shown me that when a man, any normal man, has made up his mind to do something as stupid as leaving his wife and children for an attractive bimbo, there’s nothing on this earth that you can do which would make him do the right thing. You can talk to him until you’re blue in the face, and he’ll still choose to do the most stupid thing, even trading in his home. He’s enamored. He’s ‘in love.’”

We both chuckled at that, the “in love” part. Dr. Franklin had probably been dumbstruck, and there's no known cure, unless a prettier, richer, and maybe younger girl came along who would show an interest in him. But that wasn’t going to happen, and it would still be no solution if it did.

“What does Franklin love, besides himself? What means the most to him, besides this ‘fling’?” asked David.

I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know. I did the same with the next few questions from Dave.

“Does he have any scruples? Is he a member of a church? Would this reflect poorly with his kinship of doctors in the city? How about the country club?”

We laughed at the mention of the country club. Would they have a morality clause in their membership contracts? The thought of this struck us as funny, somehow. But not belonging to a club, we wouldn’t know.

“What does he care about?” David asked.

Does he still love Helen, after all these years?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I replied. Strangely enough, I honestly felt sad about this. Then it hit me.

“He loves his kids.”

David said, “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Now, here’s a hard question for you, Randall,” said David. “So don’t be getting mad at me for asking it.”

I steeled myself. “Go ahead.”

“Okay,” David continued. “I’d like to know why Helen came to you in the first place, seeing how she dumped you for Franklin many years ago.”

This was a question out of left field; I didn’t see it coming. “Her daughter Mindy said she needed someone she could trust,” I said, feeling uncomfortable.

“She needed someone she could trust, eh?” wondered David. “Or is it, she needed someone she could use?”

“Use? You’re saying she’s using me?”

“I’m not saying this, I’m wondering this,” said Dave. “I want to know why she didn’t just hire a private investigator to get to the bottom of this mess and acquire enough information to file for a divorce against the good Dr. Burke?”

I thought on this for a minute, trying not to get mad at the question. David was a trustworthy friend; it’s hard to get mad at him.

“I know they’re having financial difficulties. I also know that a P.I. can be expensive. Maybe she can’t take on any more debt without sinking their ship? Plus, she doesn’t want to break up the family.”

“That’s a plausible explanation,” reasoned Dave. “So she comes to you instead, the sucker who’d do anything for her. Here’s another possibility: She doesn’t want her rich friends on the west side to find out about this family scandal, and so she’s slumming to have this problem quietly fixed…. for free.”

“Why would she…?” I blurted out, not finishing the thought. I looked around at the people in the diner, and lowered my voice. “Why would she do this? Maybe she came to me because I could help her!”

David gave a sad look, and continued the train of thought. “Like a leopard, a user doesn’t change her spots.”

When this sank in, all I could say was “Oh,” but not as in “I understand,” but more like “That hurts.”

“Sorry to be the one who brought this up, Randall. You were rendered almost comatose years ago; I didn’t want you walking back into the same situation with your eyes closed and heart wide open.”

It still hurt. I took a drink on my soda-pop and gave the matter consideration, trying to be objective, trying to hold it at arm’s length, far from the heart.

“Thanks for pointing this out to me. This certainly sheds new light on the situation.”

David smiled, and drank his tea.

“However, I said I would help, and I will. I’ll be more ‘on-guard’ though.”

“Just trying to fill-in the gaps. Don’t want any college repeats.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” I replied. Then, switching the subject, I said, “Hey, newlywed, I know you’re always looking for part-time jobs to supplement the income. How are you with house-painting?”

“You’re talking physical labor here. But I guess I’m good with it. You know of a job?”

We were at Estella’s, by now the favorite haunt, being waited upon by Kim, where Walter and I spoke more on what he learned concerning Franklin and Helen Ceraldi-Burke.

“They attend the First Baptist Church downtown,” said Walter, “although Frank is not what you’d call a pillar among the chosen ones. Helen is the one who drags the kids to church. I think it’s more of an appearances thing. That plus she wants to expose her kids to a musical culture.”

I felt a bit of sympathy here, since I also liked the music aspect of church, and while not a soloist, did love to accompany the choir and congregation in song.

“Do the kids go to Sunday school?” I asked.

“Yeah, Helen makes sure of that. She also goes, but Frank only attends occasionally.”

I sat thinking on this for a moment. Walter noticed my silence and said, “Looks as though the deacons, or elders, or whatever they’ve got are out.”

He was on the same wavelength. Sometimes a congregation is represented by the leadership, the deacons and elders, and if they got wind that a member was heading towards a wayward lifestyle, they became instrumental in reining in that little lost lamb. Deacons had been known to show up on the front door step of church members to do just that, but it looked like this wouldn’t work in Dr. Frank’s case. He’d probably just tell them to go back home and then laugh about it.

“How is Franklin’s relationships with his parents?” I asked. “Do they like Helen? Maybe they can have some sway over his decision-making processes.”

“Frank’s father passed away a few years ago, and his mother is living in an assisted living daycare facility,” said Walter. “She has Alzheimer’s, and the care costs money, but her husband left her in good financial shape. This also drains away any money that Frank hoped to inherit, though.”

“So there’s another authority figure in Franklin’s life that has passed from the scene.

“Yeah,” said Walter. “With his dad gone and his mom in a helpless state, he’s pretty much free to do what he wants.”

“And what he wants is another woman, perhaps,” I muttered. I was feeling a little jealous here; he already had one beautiful woman in his life, a girl he had taken from me, leaving me to deal with both loss and a feeling of betrayal. Now he wants to toss aside his wife as though she was yesterday’s newspaper. With this happening, and with the dissolution of his family, part of me felt that all my college suffering was for nothing.

I had forgotten something. Oh, yes. “Do you know how his parents used to feel about Helen?”

Walter said, “They worried at first that she might be a gold-digger, being from the ‘wrong side’ of the tracks, from the ‘hood’ where you and I lived. But in time they came to respect and adore her; she became the daughter they never had.”

“So, Franklin was an only child?”

“No,” said Walter. “He has a brother, but he’s worthless. Educated but trained for nothing, he can’t hold a job, drinks too much, gambles whenever he does have money, married three times, now living with some woman at her place…”

“Sounds as though you admire him, Walter!” I joked.

“He’s a real freedom lover,” admitted Walter, “but hasn’t shown much inclination towards responsibility. He has kids with all of his ex-wives; maybe they’re the reason he went through with the marriages.”

“Great. A planetary repopulator. Well, the world needs more kids, I guess.”

“Yeah, but who’s gonna take care of them?” wondered Walter. “He sure isn’t.”

“Maybe their rich uncle will,” I said, “once he gets his hands on the chocolate loot.”

We snorted and chuckled a bit, then wondered. Who’s going to take care of Helen and her kids?

I had a thought. “Walter, I need you to focus only on Franklin now. I want you to watch him the next few weeks, and get to know his schedule and habits and priorities. I want to know how he eats and drinks. I want to know how he communicates with Susan Lovely. I want to know how he communicates with his family.”

“Boy, you’re not asking for much here, are you?” said Walter. “He works at a clinic and runs to the hospital and then out to see special patients; I’ll be on the move all day!” He waited for a moment before throwing in “…and maybe all night, heh-heh!”

We both laughed at that. Poor jokes are good in serious times.

“I think it’s time you tell me more about this old flame,” said Miss Planter. “Obviously this female has made a mark on your life. I’d like to know all about her.”

“Oh,” I said, “Miss Planter, you’re looking for a long and difficult explanation.” She said nothing, so I asked, “Are you up for this?”

“That’s why you pay me, Mr. Owen.” I laughed at this. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” she remarked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not laughing at you; I’m laughing because I’m under a bit of pressure. I’ll do my best to be objective and fair. Here goes: Like I had said before, it was many years ago, while we were at college. I was an upperclassman, an engineering student, and the underclassmen were in awe. I enjoyed that; it was flattering. They looked up to us! That was quite an ego-builder. We didn’t stop to think that wouldn’t last.”

Miss Planter smiled, but there was a bit of a smirk in that smile.

“We, and I, had our pick of dates. At college, I was in my last year, and I knew I’d be graduating in eight or nine months, so I guess I was feeling confident and maybe a bit arrogant and cocky. I had my choice, but there was really only one girl I wanted. Helen Ceraldi, a girl I had known since high school. She had followed me to college, well, not really followed; she came to the same school I attended. Because she was so bright, she’d managed to test out of a year’s worth of college credits, and had entered as a sophomore. She was three years younger than me, and so since we were already well acquainted, we struck up a college romance.”

Miss Planter nodded; she wasn’t taking any notes. I guess I had her attention.

“She was beautiful,” I continued. “She was smart, popular, and somewhat well-balanced, more than the average college girl. She came from an Italian-American household. The first language in their home was Italian, but all the children in that home spoke both Italian and English fluently.”