I had to admit it was nice having those two crazy broads at my house. I couldn’t wait to get home.
I crossed Broadhead Avenue, bending my head to a blast of wind coming off South Mountain. The neighborhood was particularly deserted as it usually is on a cold winter night. Even the Tally Ho across the street seemed dark and subdued.
Mine was one of only two cars in the darkened parking area, which wasn’t much more than a gravel pit. As soon as I inserted my key into the Camaro, I knew something was off. The car was already unlocked.
I hesitated, debating whether I’d remembered to lock it that morning. Surely I had, especially with all those Santa Clauses shooting at me. Then again, I had been known to space out and just forget. Moreover, I couldn’t call the cops. If I called them in a panic the second time on the same day, Mickey Sinkler really would have me committed.
And then I heard it, an awful gurgle coming from within. It was the unmistakable, desperate sound of an animal in the last throes of life. I reacted to it almost instinctively, throwing open the door and peering inside, not stopping to consider the danger of what I was doing.
I should have. For slumped in my passenger seat was a Santa Claus in bad, bad shape. I could barely make out that his head hung in a grossly distorted way and that a whitish foam bubbled on his lips.
It was Ern Bender, and tonight he was no jolly old elf. He was an unconscious one.
Chapter Twenty-three
“D
ead.”
“Shit!” I got up from the wooden table so fast Detective Vava Wilson reached for the gun in her holster. “He was alive when I found him. Barely, but alive. I got him to the hospital as fast as I could.”
Senior Lehigh Police detective Jim Burge closed the heavy steel door and said nothing. I didn’t like that. Then again, I didn’t like being in this green-painted cinder-block room with the one wooden table and the one-way mirror where who knew was watching.
“Died from a combination of rapid kidney failure and a heart attack. Typical result of a methamphetamine overdose.” Burge dropped a file folder on the table as if for emphasis. “When you found him, he was breathing rapidly, choking on his saliva, and his temperature was elevated. Those are standard meth-overdose symptoms. That man was an addict. His parole officer predicted this might happen.”
“What?”
“That as soon as Bender got out of the pen he’d go back on the smack.”
“Smack’s heroin,” Vava Wilson corrected.
“The twiz, then. Crizzy. Crotch dope. Yammer bammer. Whatever. The point is, Ern was an incurable junkie who couldn’t quit his lethal habit.”
Couldn’t quit?
I wondered.
Or was killed?
Detective Burge didn’t care. His only concern—as always—was how his latest case would elevate or diminish his status in the department.
Tonight, Burge was in an undercover uniform of tweed slacks, red suspenders and a white turtleneck sweater. I didn’t know what Ginger, his wife, had in mind, letting him walk out the door like that. With his graying hair and middle-aged paunch, he was looking more like Santa Claus than any number of the Santa Clauses who’d been following me lately.
“So you think Ern Bender’s death was an accident, too?” I asked.
“Unless he intentionally overdosed himself. The medical examiner hasn’t made a final report, but according to a quick inspection of the body, Ern was found with the needle and syringe still in his pocket, half the meth mixture gone.”
“I didn’t think you shot up meth,” I said.
“Snort it, smoke it, swallow it, sprinkle it on your Wheaties.” Burge hitched up his pants, a move intended to emphasize his authority over all matters pertaining to crotch dope. “But for the real rush, the so-called flash, what you want to do is shoot it up. That’s what hardcore addicts like Ern craved. Idiot ended up killing himself.”
I had serious doubts that Ern had killed himself, but I didn’t say anything. Already Mickey thought I had gone loco for running around town claiming that a woman with a well-known allergy had been murdered. No point in adding Burge to my list.
The thing was, I was beginning to seriously question if Debbie’s death and now Bender’s were about illegal drugs. I thought about his meth lab at Save-T Drugs, which burned half the store, destroying the entire pharmaceutical area, including all medications and, according to the article I’d read, all records, too. And now he was dead of methamphetamine after serving time in jail for lacing cherry Cokes.
You’d think that stint behind bars would have been enough to cure him.
“Okay, Bubbles,” Vava said in a soft, understanding voice, placing her well-manicured hand on my thigh, “tell Detective Burge what you described to me a few minutes ago, about when Ern Bender called you at the
News-Times
.”
I looked up at Burge, who was still standing, thumbs behind each of his red suspenders. I thought about Ginger peeking through the window to catch a glimpse of Phil Shatsky hugging me and then Mickey’s warning that Burge considered me a suspect.
“Shouldn’t I call my lawyer or something?”
“What for?” Burge exclaimed. “You’re not under arrest. Not yet.”
Vava gave Burge a look that said
Shut up.
“You can get a lawyer, Bubbles,” she said. “Heck, if I were you, I might. But let me be honest. The only reason we’re interviewing you in this room is that we need privacy. And this case has been a bitch.”
“That’s the truth,” Burge added.
“Was Debbie Shatsky’s death an accident? Or was Debbie poisoned intentionally? Who knows? And now this. It’s enough to drive us all nuts, especially with these wild tips we’re getting every five minutes.” She smiled. I liked her lip gloss. It was the kind of lip gloss your favorite teacher wore. I bet it was flavored, like with berries. It made you want to trust her.
I leaned back and repeated what I’d just told her, about visiting Ern at the Christmas tree lot, about the tree being shot and how I was saved by an Iraq War vet, then about Ern’s phone call that afternoon and his confusing claim that I had found “the star file.”
“Found ‘the star file,’ ” Burge said again, finally sitting. “Damn. What does that mean?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. But he implied that Debbie had the one remaining copy and that whoever killed her had made her a deal to buy it. She’d held out, and within twenty-four hours, she was dead.”
“Why didn’t you call us with this?” Burge raised one of his unkempt eyebrows.
“I don’t know.” I looked at a spot in the table where someone had carved FUCK THIS. “To be honest, I kind of wrote Ern off as a whacko. When we met at the Christmas tree lot, he was obviously drinking from a cough-syrup bottle. Do you know how many drunks call the
News-Times
? We should put an alco-sensor on the phone after happy hour.”
Burge snorted.
I said to Vava, “What do you mean you’ve been getting bizarre tips?”
She was about to answer when Burge pursed his lips in disapproval. “In any given day, the department gets tons of unsubstantiated tips,” he interjected. “Detective Wilson’s new to the position. She hasn’t gotten used to that yet.”
Next to me, Vava stiffened. She didn’t appreciate being disrespected in front of a civilian, especially a civilian who also worked as a reporter and was the mother of her daughter’s friend.
“Was it a so-called
wild
tip that led you to conduct a search of Sandy’s apartment?” I asked. “Or was it your wife?”
Burge ran his finger across his jaw. “How’d you find out about the search?”
Thereby confirming that it was a tip, I decided. “Sandy was a mess when I stopped by the House of Beauty on my way to work and found her crying in her back office. She said the cops were all over her apartment. Shortly after that, someone shot out her front window. Nearly blew off my head in the process.”
Vava took a few notes on her yellow legal pad. “I responded to that call. You weren’t there. Why not?”
“I had to get to work eventually. Besides, put that together with the shooting at the Christmas-tree lot and a girl gets a little jumpy. I wasn’t too eager to stick around.”
“And neither was your friend,” Burge said.
I was confused. “What do you mean? She’s the one who called 911.”
“I know. We have a tape. We saw the window. We searched the salon and found a casing that has been stored as evidence.”
“But we didn’t find Sandy,” Vava said.
Again, an electric sensation prickled my arms and neck. Sandy. When had I last spoken to her? There’d been so much going on, I’d kind of lost track. I remembered trying to call her at home and at work and there being no answer. I’d assumed she wasn’t picking up the phone. Shoot.
“Is she okay?” I blurted.
Vava shook her head slightly. “We don’t know. Her husband seems to be very concerned. It’s after eleven and she still hasn’t come home.”
“That’s three hours after her bedtime!” I said. Now I knew something was really wrong. Sandy was always in bed by seven forty-five—except on clogging nights.
“She’s on the lam,” Burge said, brusquely. “We have a warrant out for her arrest. That’s why she fled.”
This piece of news sent me out of my skin. “A warrant for her arrest? Why? Is she a suspect? I thought the department was ruling this an accident.” I was on the border of hysteria. First my best friend was missing. Then an arrest warrant was issued for her. This was madness.
“We need to bring her in for questioning,” Burge said. “Nothing more. So if you see her, kiddo, don’t think of being a Thelma driving Louise down to Mexico. Then she will be criminally charged, definitely.”
“If she comes to you, call us,” Vava added. “Promise.”
“Sure,” I said, though I was thinking,
No freaking way.
Whoever had done this table’s graffiti had had the right idea.
FUCK THIS.
It was after midnight when I finally straggled home, noting, almost casually, that Phil Shatsky’s house was dark aside from the second-floor bedroom window, where a rather pornographic red light glowed. I studied it dully. I was just too tired to process what that meant.
Mama had left the Christmas tree on, not a wise move considering the hot lights and the brittle needles. I unplugged it, tossed my purse on the couch and went to the sink to wash my hands. The kitchen phone was off the hook, which meant Dan must have called so often that Mama disconnected. He’d be asleep by now, so I hung it back on.
I was in trouble. He would find a way to get me back for ditching him in the Hotel Lehigh. He would get me back big-time.
Tonight, however, Dan was the least of my problems. Sandy had now won the dubious honor of becoming head trouble doll.
I picked at the sauerbraten Mama had left on a foil-covered plate. I realized that Ern Bender had been my only link to the group that wanted the star file. And now he was gone. That left me feeling strangely vulnerable, as if Ern had been a friend, which he hadn’t been. In fact, there was good reason to believe he might have been the one shooting at me.
So why didn’t I feel relieved?
“Bubbles?” Mama was standing on the stairs in her pink chenille bathrobe. Her hair was in a mass of foam curlers that no human being could sleep on without suffering permanent brain damage. “When did you get home?”
“Only a few minutes ago. Thanks for saving me dinner.” I ate some spaetzel.
“Don’t eat standing up. It’s not healthy.”
“What’s unhealthy about it?” What was unhealthy were these green beans. Overcooked beyond recognition.
“It messes up your GI track. Trust me. I know.” She pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and pushed me down, slapping the plate in front of me. Then she sat at the other end, grabbed a toothpick out of the toothpick holder Genevieve must have brought and said, “What did you do to Dan?”
“I didn’t do anything to Dan.”
“He’s very angry.”
“Yes, I know.”
Mama pointed to the beans with her toothpick. “Eat your beans. You need something green in you.”
“These aren’t green. They’re”—I scrunched up my nose, trying to think what they were—“tan.”
“Eat them, anyway.”
I ate one. It tasted like metal from the can.
“He threatened to call off the wedding.”
Hallelujah,
I thought.
Thanks be to God.
Mama picked at a molar as I scooped up a baked gingersnap. “You don’t seem too upset by that.”
“Should I be?”
“He’s the father of your daughter who needs to be part of a family. I thought you were doing this for her.”
“I was and now I’m thinking that maybe I made a mistake.”
Mama pounded the table so hard the sugar bowl rattled. “That is so selfish of you, Bubbles. Dan is a good man. Okay, he’s no Stiletto with the tight jeans and the long hair, but he’s a decent, hardworking, honest man who wants what’s best for his daughter, even if that means remarrying a woman he never loved in the first place.”
I put down my fork and pushed aside my plate, trying to reel in my anger. It was time to lay it on the line with my mother. “For your information, the man you think is so honest happens to be blackmailing me into marriage.”
Mama didn’t even blink. “Is that what Stiletto told you?”
There have been very few moments in my long and often trying relationship with my mother when I could have slapped her. This was one of them.
“No. That is what Dan told me. That if I didn’t remarry him, he would use a report by our family therapist, Dr. Lori Caswell, to discredit me.”
“Discredit you how?”
This was the hard part. I stared at my hands, which were dry and in desperate need of lotion. Stress. That’s what ruins skin. Stress. Sun. Smoking. The three sins of skin care.
“Dr. Caswell has decided because I did not protect Jane, and therefore set her up to be kidnapped while working on a story that was over my head, this made me an unfit mother.”