He couldn’t wait to hang up and call Phil right away, offering his services in the legal representation area. Money, that was all Dan really cared about.
With Vava’s permission, I used her cell phone to call Stiletto. I got his housekeeper. He was gone. He’d left for JFK an hour ago.
I clicked the cell shut and told myself there would be plenty of time to cry when this was over.
“Man trouble?” Vava kept her eyes steady on the road, carefully negotiating the blinding snowstorm.
“Yup.”
“Aren’t you getting married tomorrow?”
I looked out the window, at the snow clouding up my view. I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t.
Eric Wachowski’s car was in the driveway when Vava pulled to the curb, her lights off. We sat watching the kabuki play silhouetted in the plate-glass window.
“I’ll be right behind you. There are already four officers stationed around the house.” She gestured with her chin to a pine tree, where, sure enough, a man in a Wind-breaker sat hunched.
The radio truck was parked a block away. All I had to do was turn on the transmitter and they’d be listening to my every word. It was go time.
I opened the door and got out, fumbling under my turtleneck to click on the transmitter as Vava had shown me. I adjusted my faux-rabbit-fur coat and marched up the front walk, doing my best to ignore the pair of eyes in the bush by the front door.
Sissy Dolan answered wearing a Christmassy bathrobe of green chenille. I bet she had a whole set of Christmas items—Christmas table runners, one of those crochet Christmas toilet-paper covers. She even had a red Santa Claus suit tossed over her wingback chair.
“Bubbles? What on earth are you doing here?”
“May I come in?”
“No!” Eric leaped up from the couch, flicking off the television. He was dressed in a navy sweatshirt and jeans. No Santa outfit for him tonight.
It was too late. I was in. And Sissy Dolan, though a murderer, was too polite to let her hairdresser stand out in a snowstorm during the Christmas season. She did, however, draw the drapes over the sheer panels. Crafty little thing.
“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” I said, walking over to Eric, for better reception. “It’s just that I think you may have picked up the wrong CD today. I was hoping, maybe for a price, we could exchange.”
“What?” He tried to smile and was so nervous he couldn’t lift the corners of his mouth. “What CD?”
“The one you took when you took my purse. It’s the Mahoken Town Budget and some really awesome Styx tunes. I think you were after something different, unless you, like me, can’t get enough of ‘Too Much Time on My Hands,’ though, I’m partial to ‘Lady’ myself.”
He didn’t answer. He went to a bedroom, opened a drawer and came back with the CD, shoving it into the laptop that was on a dining room table. While he did the computer stuff, I said to Sissy, who was glaring, positively glaring, at me with hatred, “You should come in for a wash and set. We’re running a postholiday twenty-percent discount now that the House of Beauty is reopening.”
Sissy pressed her lips together.
On cue, “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)” blared from the speakers.
“I LOVE that one,” I trilled. “Crank it!”
“Shit.” Eric flicked it off. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
“Good going!” Sissy said, eyeing my coat.
I bet she had a hunch I was wired. I had to get her talking, fast.
“What do you care about the CD, Sissy?” I said. “It’s Eric who’s going to jail if he gets caught. He’s the one who killed Ern Bender with an overdose of methamphetamine and then tried to murder Sandy and me with oxygen. Those medical supplies really come in handy, say? Does the med school know you’re using their equipment?”
Eric got up from the laptop and approached me. Those guys in prison were going to love him in the yard. Such a bod.
“What do you want?”
“What do I want?” I pressed my hand to my chest. “I think the question is, what do
you
want? And why?”
“I need Debbie’s list.”
I was keeping an eye on Sissy, who had slipped into the kitchen. “You mean the old Save-T Drug prescriptions?”
“Right. There was one more copy. There are names on it. People’s lives could be ruined if it got out what they were taking.”
“For example, in your case it was”—I took a wild guess—“steroids?”
“Steroids? Hah!” Sissy was back. And, darn it, if she wasn’t holding the most adorable little pearl-handled pistol.
“Grandma, don’t!” Eric ran to her and she motioned him away.
“Get over there, Eric. You were the one who got me in all this trouble. Put your hands up, Bubbles, where I can see them.”
I looked at Eric and shook my head. What grandmothers will do for their grandsons.
“He’s going to make an excellent heart surgeon someday. I’ve scrimped and saved to help him through college and med school. I’ll be hog-tied if he can’t do what he was born to do because of some brain-rotting disease.”
Say it,
you old bat.
Say the magic word so the posse outside can rescue me.
“I know,” I said, trying to egg her on. “I hate that disease, which is—”
She waved her hands. “Bah!”
Eric, meanwhile, was inching closer to her. He hadn’t seemed so concerned with killing me earlier. I guessed he didn’t want to make a mess on Grandma’s rug.
“Get back, Eric.” She was fast. “If I took care of that blackmailing Debbie Shatsky, you better be sure I can handle this dim bulb and make it look like an accident, too. I just gotta think, is all.”
“Now, Sissy,” I said, restraining my jubilation, “you’re not saying Debbie’s death wasn’t accidental. It was just a misfortunate allergic reaction to latex. That’s what the police said.”
“The police don’t know boo. They’re too lazy to do the footwork, is their problem.”
Did you hear that, Detective Burge?
“Everyone at the House of Beauty knew of Debbie’s allergy. Christ, she told us often enough.” Sissy clucked her tongue. “Everyone knew she come in on Mondays for her hair, too, boasting about her hoity-toity husband. I didn’t have no beef with her until she called up Eric and threatened to expose his drug-abuse history to the whole med school board. Methadone. So what that he took methadone? Got him off heroin, didn’t it?”
Eric’s gaze was fixated on the part of my coat that had opened when I lifted my arms. “Shut up, Grandma. She’s wired.” He lunged for me. Grandma fired and I fell back, toppling a china figurine from an end table. It hit the floor with a resounding
crash!
The front door was flung open. I heard the shouts: “Police! Put down your weapon.” And I saw Eric stand, his hands up in the air, his body weak with resignation.
It was over. He’d killed Ern Bender and tried to kill Sandy and me to cover up an overprotective old lady’s crime. And she’d killed Debbie so her star grandson, the first generation to go to college, wouldn’t have his career ruined.
It was kind of sweet, when you thought about it, in a screwed-up steel-town kind of way. It made me cry.
Styx should write a song about it. It could be their comeback tune.
Chapter Thirty-eight
T
he star file was password protected, unfortunately.
After retrieving the CD from the Order of the Eastern Star plaque, where I had left it, Vava Wilson took it to headquarters and fiddled around with some possible combinations. FATAL turned out to be the user name. WHEAT, the password.
What it opened was a treasure trove of personal information that, as Ern Bender had indicated, could bring down the entire town. I wasn’t allowed to see the whole list. However, I did learn that a certain hairdresser who had just opened up a swanky salon in the warehouse district was HIV positive, a fact that could have completely shut down Jeffrey Andre’s salon if his immunity status had been made public—as Debbie had threatened.
Debbie had managed to suck out over ten grand from Jeffrey Andre, who was a good friend of Phil and Mark’s, the two men G saw socializing in Andre’s back room. This went far to explain why Phil was so concerned about the list. He knew Debbie had been blackmailing his buddy and he was trying to help.
The only other name Vava divulged was Dix Notch’s. All I can say is I hoped he owned stock in Merck, what with all the Viagra he’d consumed over the years. And the antibaldness medication? No wonder his scalp was so red. Rogaine overdose.
I did not bother to read the papers on Saturday morning to find out how they’d covered Eric Wachowski’s arrest and the booking of his grandmother for murder. Sissy Dolan admitted to switching the glues; her grandson admitted to dumping the evidence in the toilet so Sandy would appear guilty and then calling in various tips to keep the investigation off his granny.
Anyway, I had more pressing concerns on Saturday morning.
Like getting married.
The House of Beauty was closed. Again. This time, not for murder or negligence or an expired license, but because Sandy was getting everyone ready for my wedding. Already a black limousine was parked outside, waiting. Periodically a chauffeur in a driver’s coat and cap would get out and brush off the lightly falling snow from the car’s hood. I’d never ridden in a limo before—well, not by choice. Anyway, my car was still missing, so I was, um, stuck with the limo.
“This is it.” Sandy stood over me. We exchanged glances in the mirror. “You look fabulous, if that’s any consolation.”
I did look fabulous. Sandy had done up my hair in a classic twist and stuck in sprigs of baby’s breath. I was like a snow queen in the gown Mama had bought from Loehmann’s, with the halo of tiny white flowers and the real pearl earrings from my grandmother Saladunas.
Mama and Genevieve were already at Asa Packer Chapel at Lehigh University. Dan had arranged for them to arrive in a separate limousine. Jane was waiting outside in the limo. Now it was just Sandy and me, Sandy in a deep green satin dress that looked beautiful with her pale coloring and hair.
“I . . . I want to say . . .” Tears choked her voice. She put her hand on my shoulder and I put my hand on hers.
She didn’t have to say the words out loud. I knew what she was thinking. “It’s okay. You don’t have to thank me.”
“No, it’s not that.” She wiped her nose with the back of her arm and untied the apron from around her neck. “I want you to know that if you ever need to get away from him, I’m here for you. Any time of day or night. You can count on me, Bubbles.”
I spun around in my chair. Sandy’s eyes were red rimmed. It was a hell of a thing for her to say minutes before I was supposed to get married.
“That bad, say?”
She nodded. I could tell she was trying hard not to cry so her mascara wouldn’t run. “That bad.”
“I don’t want to marry a man I’ll have to run away from.”
Sandy shook her head.
The doorbell tinkled and Jane walked in, outrageously underdressed for this kind of weather. She was in a strapless red satin dress and her hair was streaked to match. “Are you coming, or what? I’ve been out in that limo waiting for hours.”
Minutes, but who’s counting?
I checked with Sandy who nodded in encouragement.
“Jane,” I said, sliding out of the chair with a rustle, “I have something to tell you.”
She sucked in a breath.
“I can’t marry your father.”
Sandy reached out and gripped my hand while I waited for Jane’s reaction.
“I don’t love him, Jane. I don’t even . . .
like
him. I was only doing it for you and that’s wrong. That’s no role model. You need a mother who follows her own heart and listens to her conscience.”
Jane stood stock-still, rigid. Then she let out a breath and exclaimed, “Oh . . . my . . . God!” She collapsed onto Sandy’s wicker couch in front of the window, still boarded and taped from the shooting. “I can’t believe it.”
I rushed over to her. “Don’t be mad—”
She sat up. “Mad? I’m not mad. I’m fucking relieved.”
“Relieved?” I was so relieved myself that I didn’t admonish her for swearing—another bad-mother moment for me.
“Living in Saucon Valley? Hello? It was going to be hell. I’d be trapped out there without my friends or my hood and with you two biting and snapping at each other.” She arched her back and unzipped her dress. “Can I get out of this now? It totally pinches.”
I looked at Sandy in astonishment. She was smiling. “Isn’t that what your mother always told you? To thine own self be true.”
“You mean it?” I said to Jane. “You’re not just being nice?”
“I’m a little old for wanting Mommy and Daddy to live together. I’m pretty much an adult, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
I’d noticed. With a burst of exuberance, I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed her so tightly she gasped for air. “I love, love, love you.”
She broke free and held me by the shoulders. “Ditto, Mom. I love you, too. Big-time. I’m proud of you for having the guts to say no.”
With this, Sandy began bawling openly. I joined her even though all this crying was going to wreak havoc on our makeup.
Jane said, “You two really are out of control—you know that? By the way, the wedding starts in five minutes. FYI.”
Sandy handed me a box of Kleenex. “You better get over there, quick. You want me to go with you?”
“That’s okay.” I grabbed a handful of tissues. “I don’t need the support.”
“I meant to redo your makeup in the car.”
Of course. Sandy had her priorities. “Not that, either. Dan will have to see me as I am.”
“That’s crazy talk.” She tossed me her makeup bag. It weighed, like, five pounds. “If you’re gonna break up with Dan, you gotta look killer good.”
No truer words had ever been spoken.
The limo let me off out front of Asa Packer Chapel. G was outside waiting for Jane. He was dressed in a bright purple tux with a pink frilled shirt and spats. It was my only regret in canceling this wedding, that I could not see him walk her down the aisle wearing that getup.