Sticky Fingers (4 page)

I said, “Is she praying for courage in there?”

“I think so.”

At that moment, Rooney nosed the back door open and rushed past me. He’d probably been pooping in the neighbor’s yard. Or maybe killing their Chihuahua. In a flurry of slippery paws, the dog skidded to a stop and parked his butt at Loretta’s feet. He fixed her with an adoring stare and dropped a splat of drool on her clean floor.

“What does the baby boy want?” Loretta cooed, blind to the drool. “He’s such a good puppy! He loves his aunt Loretta, doesn’t he, sweet puppy?”

A hundred-plus pounds of pit bull, rottweiler, and mastiff mix quivered and whined. The mutual admiration society.

Loretta stopped stirring the wax long enough to drop Rooney a piece of cookie, which he snatched out of the air the way a frog zaps a fly over a lily pond.

I reached for a cookie, too, but Loretta slapped my hand away.

“Not that one! Have an oatmeal raisin.” She pointed down the counter at a collection of misshapen lumps. “Mary Pat Caravello brought those over. Poor thing doesn’t even know oatmeal raisin cookies don’t belong on a cookie table.”

“Why does Rooney get a cookie and I don’t?”

“Because you don’t deserve it.”

“Why the hell not? What have I done?”

Loretta’s mouth tightened, and for a second I thought she was going to hold back. But with a tart snap in her voice, she said, “I hear you tricked Gino into leaving his girlfriend’s apartment in his underwear.”

Aha. I’d sensed a certain chilly air in Loretta’s manner from the moment I stepped into the house. She’d given Irene Stossel a welcome kiss, but not me.

I said, “How’d you hear about that?”

“Gino’s sister told Mary Pat at the Shop ’n’ Save, who told me last night at the ladies auxiliary meeting.” Loretta fixed me with a stern stare. “Roxy, Gino’s an important man in the neighborhood. What were you thinking?”

I said, “First of all, he’s married. And second, she wasn’t his girlfriend, Loretta. Gino was banging a fifteen-year-old.”

“Don’t say things like— Wait. A fifteen-year-old?”

“Yeah, one of Sage’s friends, in fact. Gino Martinelli is a slimeball, and the rest of the Martinellis ought to throw his ass in the river before he gives away the bride on Saturday.”

Loretta crossed herself as if she’d just had a whiff of the devil. “Where did you hear such a rumor?”

“It’s no rumor. I saw the girl myself. Talked to her. Dropped her off at her babysitting job.” I munched the cookie. “She’s fifteen, and Gino is scum.”

Okay, maybe Kiley Seranelli was one of those oversexed fifteen-year-olds who took the impact of Britney Spears on American culture very seriously. When I’d gone back and dragged her out of Gino Martinelli’s love nest, Kiley had been smoking a postcoital cigarette with the aplomb of Marlene Dietrich. But you can’t blame a fifteen-year-old for fornicating with a middle-aged man. He’s the one who’s supposed to know the difference between right and wrong.

Loretta took her hand from her mouth. “So it’s true? What you did?”

I wouldn’t have gone after Gino Martinelli purely to regain Uncle Carmine’s investment. But when Sage told me her friend was sneaking away from basketball practice to hook up with an older guy, I’d done some snooping. I learned Gino kept an off-campus apartment where he and his jagoff sons regularly took very young girls for afternoons of marijuana-fueled corruption of minors. So I took it upon myself to bust the party.

After I’d tossed Gino out of my truck, I’d gone back to rescue Kiley—only to find she really didn’t want rescuing. She was smoking and weeping because Gino had removed her belly button ring. With his tongue. She couldn’t figure out how to put it back in place.

“Yeah, Gino and I had a meeting of the minds,” I said. “I think he’ll stay away from little girls for a while.”

“Good heavens.”

“There’s nothing heavenly about Gino.”

Frowning, Loretta went back to tending the saucepan. “So are you going to the wedding?”

“Hell, no!”

“If you don’t go, everyone will assume you were the one in the wrong.”

“It’ll just make Gino mad if I show up. Plus, all those Martinelli aunts will make comments about my hair.”

“I can take care of that.” Loretta lifted her spoon and with a critical eye watched a long ribbon of wax dribble back into the saucepan. “I could use my influence and make you an appointment at Valentino’s for Friday.”

“They hate me at Valentino’s!”

“They hate your hair,” she corrected, sounding gentler. “Not you. Big difference.”

I wasn’t so sure. The neighborhood beauty salon was the kind of place where I was talked about, not talked to. But complaining to Loretta was only going to result in me going to bed hungry. So I said, “I’ll check my schedule.”

“If I make an appointment, you’ll rearrange your schedule. An hour at Valentino’s is hard to get on a Friday. I don’t want to waste my influence.”

“I’ll think about it.” I opened the refrigerator. “Is there any real food for people to eat?”

Loretta went back to the stove. “There’s egg salad on the middle shelf. I’ve been too busy to make anything else for dinner.”

It took a big event for Loretta to skip making dinner.

After my mother died, it was Loretta—my father’s cousin—who came to rescue me in Jersey. Loretta found me in foster care, packed my clothes into her car, buckled my seatbelt, and drove me three hundred miles across the Pennsylvania Turnpike to her home. I didn’t said a word on the trip, she told me later, but I remember that at the first meal she cooked for me—pasta shells stuffed with a savory mixture of ricotta, cream, and gently steamed spinach, unlike anything my own mother threw on the table—I cried like a baby. Since then, she’d raised me pretty much as her own daughter—or as close to it as I’d allow.

The idea of egg salad wasn’t very satisfying, though, so I closed the refrigerator door.

As I did so, the powder room door burst open, and Sister Bob bustled into the kitchen. She stood five feet tall and was shaped like a beer barrel. Since I’d seen her last, her gray hair had been poufed, her wardrobe primped. She was wearing a purple velour track suit with racing stripes down the outside of her chubby legs—an outfit I’m pretty sure even the most progressive convent would veto.

“Roxana Marie! Where have you been keeping yourself?”

“Hi, Sister Bob.”

Sister Bob gave me an exuberant hug, squeezed my face, and planted noisy kisses on my cheeks. Her mustache prickled, but she gave me a sparkly-eyed smile. “I heard what you did to Gino Martinelli. Bless you, dear! That man is a weasel.”

“How on earth do you know about Gino?” Loretta demanded.

“What? You think the nuns can resist listening in on confession sometimes?” She had a raucous laugh. “Just kidding. That’s convent humor. I volunteer at the public library now. Kids talk there, and they say the most awful things. Gino deserves worse than what Roxy gave him. He should escort his daughter down the aisle with a black eye.”

I couldn’t help grinning. “That’s pretty Old Testament, Sister Bob.”

“Darn tootin’,” she replied. “If you need backup next time you decide to administer some street justice, you can count on me.”

“Thanks.” Dirty Harry had nothing on Sister Bob.

“I’m not listening,” Loretta said. “I’m an officer of the court. I’m not hearing a thing. Vigilantes simply get in the way of the judicial system.”

Sister Bob winked at me. “Don’t listen to Loretta. If that man went after Sage, she’d be first in line with an ax and garbage bags.”

“Yeow.” I dusted cookie crumbs from my hands into the sink. “Where is Sage, by the way?”

“In the living room.” Loretta lifted her spoon again to judge whether the wax was ready, and she sent me a glance that said I’d better hightail it out of the kitchen before I got stuck helping with Sister Bob’s mustache. “Go make sure she isn’t doing something she shouldn’t be doing with That Boy.”

“Zack Cleary is here?”

“Yes,” Loretta said darkly.

Sister Bob said, “He looks very sweet to me.”

I snorted.

A year ago, Loretta and I wouldn’t have worried about what Sage was doing, because she was either studying or playing basketball. But in the last several months, Sage had found love—or something like it—with Zack Cleary, a kid a few years older who was going to cop school.

We’d already had one pregnancy scare, and none of us wanted to go through that again.

So when I exited the kitchen and caught sight of Zack Cleary with his tongue in my daughter’s ear, I blew a fuse.

4

I could have grabbed a table lamp and clonked my daughter’s boyfriend over his crewcut head. Or used the extension cord to strangle him.

But at the last second I caught sight of the untouched Italian sub sitting on its waxed paper on the coffee table, and my heart did a happy dance.

“Is that sandwich from Bruno’s?” I asked.

Sage and Zack sprang apart, and Sage flushed the color of a pomegranate. Zack, the horndog, sat back, stretched his arms out on the back of the sofa, and smiled at me.

“Yep,” he said. “Capicola and mozzarella. With hot peppers. You hungry, Mrs. A?”

Zack Cleary had been a skinny, long-haired sneak a couple of years ago—the youngest of seven, who rebelled against his father, the city’s chief of police, by shoplifting cigarettes at convenience stores. But after two years of college, Zack must have drunk the family Kool-Aid, because he suddenly quit school, cut his hair short, put on some muscle, and got himself into the police academy, where he was working hard—to hear the neighborhood tell it—at getting into the Cleary family trade.

The fact that my daughter was dating the chief of police’s kid had given me more than a few sleepless hours.

Sage, on the other hand, seemed as happy as any teenage girl coming into her own. Instead of a T-shirt, basketball shorts, and sneakers, she was lounging around the house in black tights and a long shirt with a bunch of bracelets on one wrist. She wore hoop earrings, too, tangled in the curls of her glossy dark hair.

I said, “You forgot your pants, Sage.”

She rolled her eyes. “This is a dress, Mom.”

“It’s too short for a dress.”

“It’s
fashion.
As if you’d know anything about that.”

“I know you need to go put on your jeans before your butt falls out of that outfit.”

“At least I won’t be humiliated by my mother.”

“Say, what?”

Sage had a hard look in her eye. “Kiley Seranelli, that’s what. Mom, did you have to make a spectacle of her boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend? Do you know who her so-called boyfriend is?”

“No, but she said—”

“He’s Gino Martinelli. Shelby’s dad.”

“What?”
The information shook the disdain out of Sage’s attitude.

“Yes, and he’s old enough to be Kiley’s— Hell, he’s a statutory rapist, that’s what he is. And you were the one who told me about it!”

Sage clamped her mouth into a severe line. “I didn’t tell you so you’d go off like a crazy woman on him.”

“Oh, no? I was supposed to wait for Gino to grow a conscience? Or your friend to reach legal age?”

“Mom, everybody in school heard about what you did. Somebody’s cousin even took pictures with her cell phone.”

“Good,” I said. “Let’s hope the photos are admissible in court.”

“Kiley can’t go to court!” Sage cried. “Her mom would kill her! Her whole life is practically ruined now.”

“All I care about is Gino getting punished. For Kiley, things will blow over.”

“No, they won’t. She’s already talking about transferring to a whole different school. We need her for basketball season! Mom, you really screwed up this time.”

Being the mother of a teenager, I had learned, means screwing up all the time. There is no winning with teenagers—only staying one step ahead of them if you’re really vigilant. One day you’re up, maybe, but the next day you’re the lowest form of life known to man.

“Look,” I said, “Kiley needed help, whether she realized it or not. I did what needed to be done.”

“As usual, you bullied your way into a situation with a bazooka instead of a sensible argument.”

“If I’d had a bazooka, I’d have used it.”

“You’re a bully,” Sage snapped. “You can’t be a sensible human being in a crisis. You always explode.”

“I do not, damn it!”

“Kiley’s life sucks, and it’s your fault!”

Before I could make a snappy comeback, Sage’s phone, sitting on the coffee table, began to buzz.

Zack, who had been observing us argue like he was watching a tennis match, suddenly rolled his eyes and grunted his disgust.

I pointed at the phone. “You going to answer that?”

“She doesn’t have to,” Zack said. “She knows who it is.”

“Who is it?” I asked my daughter.

Sage, who had never been a pouter, suddenly had a lower lip big enough for a bird to land on. “Brian.”

“Who’s Brian?”

“Brian Stinkler,” Zack said.

“Sinkland!” Sage corrected.

“He calls every five minutes,” Zack told me.

I said to Sage, “Why don’t you just answer? He’ll stop calling.”

“She doesn’t want him to stop,” Zack said. “She’s got a crush on him.”

“I do not!”

“Then why are you going out with him Friday night?”

“I haven’t decided if I’m going,” Sage said.

“You’re stringing along the mystery man?” I asked. “Meanwhile, you’re going to first base with Zack?”

“I’m not going anywhere with Zack.” She grabbed the phone and leaped off the sofa. “I don’t know why I try to make conversation with either one of you. I’m going upstairs.”

Sage took her phone and ran up the stairs. When she was almost out of sight, she answered her phone with a sweetened voice. “Hello?”

We didn’t hear the rest of the conversation because she slammed her bedroom door.

Usually, I cut Sage a lot of slack. She was a better kid than I had been at her age. The thing I didn’t like was her growing up at all. I’d been happier when she was ten and showing me how to use a computer than I was now, when she had one sly boyfriend in the house and another one on the phone. And a skirt so short I could practically read the tag on her panties.