Читать книгу Why Is Murder On The Menu, Anyway? - Stevi Mittman - Страница 11

Design Tip of the Day

“Family photos can personalize your space, but they have their place. Limit your office to two or three, and save your rogues’ gallery for a hallway or small wall where they can be studied in relation to one another and serve to reveal how you came to be who you are.”

—TipsFromTeddi.com

I hit “post” and the tip appears on my Web site. Unfortunately, the two photos that are supposed to accompany it disappear. If only it were that easy to dispose of a couple of the people in my life. And their baby-to-be.

Family, even ex-family, sure can make your life interesting. For example, there’s my mother, who certainly makes life…interesting.

And I wish Bobbie would stop laughing about what that mother of mine did, because she’s spitting soda on my kitchen counter and my laptop, and because what happened at my parents’ house is not really funny. But you be the judge. I stopped by my parents’ house to check on my mother—you know, see how she was doing after finding Joe Greco and all. She answered the door and told me that my father was “washing his hands.”

While I hit computer keys in an attempt to find what happened to the pictures of my bathroom wall and Bobbie’s husband, Mike’s, credenza, which are supposed to illustrate my point about family photos, Bobbie tells me she thinks that so far my story is “the first normal thing you’ve ever told me happened in your mom’s house.”

Of course, since it’s my mother’s house, it doesn’t stay normal for long. My father took forever, and it turned out he wasn’t in the bathroom, but in the kitchen, really washing his hands.

Bobbie whines that I already told her this part. She’s holding up earrings to her ears and checking out her reflection in the glass of my kitchen cabinets, seeking my opinion, which she will ultimately ignore. “Tell me again how your mother told him she bought him the ring.”

“And that he shouldn’t let me see it because I’m so poor and I’ll think she’s being extravagant?” I ask, copying and pasting the pictures back where they belong and indicating the dangly earrings over the studs while I tell the story. “It’s so totally my mother. So I tell my dad that she didn’t buy it, she stole it from a dead man. Which doesn’t help get the ring off his finger and now he’s desperate to get it off like it’s cursed or something. Only the harder he tries, the tighter it gets.”

“Windex,” Bobbie says in that matter-of-fact, doesn’t-everyone-know-this way she has. “They use it in jewelry shops when you can’t get the diamonds off your hand.” I tell her we could have used her at my mom’s house.

“Instead, we had to go to the emergency room because his finger was swelling up,” I tell her. “Four hours later, after my mother has made up half a dozen cock-and-bull stories for every nurse and physician in the hospital about how the ring was smuggled into the country by her Russian ancestors, he’s handing me the ring.”

“And he wasn’t furious with her?” Bobbie asks. I tell her we’ve all learned that there isn’t any point in being mad at my mother. It doesn’t bother her in the slightest and it just drives us insane.

“Anyway, now I’m the one who’s got to get rid of the thing,” I say, pushing Joe Greco’s diamond pinky ring across the kitchen counter toward Bobbie with one finger while I peruse the questions posted on my site—in the hopes that I can answer one of them. I’m amazed that people out there are actually seeking my advice. Especially when Bobbie opts for the diamond studs instead of the longer earrings.

“Sell it,” Bobbie says, flicking the ring back toward me as I settle on the question of how to remove blood stains from draperies. “You could use the money.”

I remind her it isn’t mine to sell and type in a question of my own. I hate to ask, but how does one get blood on the draperies in the first place? I know the right thing to do is to just turn it over to the police, but my mother’s had enough trouble with them, and then again, Drew is already calling it my murder. I push the ring back toward her and it dances off the counter onto the floor and caroms off the baseboard.

“But it would give you a good excuse to see him again,” Bobbie says while I stoop to pick it up off the floor.

I tell her that I’m afraid that is precisely how it will look. Like I took the ring so that I could “produce evidence” and get involved with him on a case again.

Frankly, if that didn’t seem so embarrassingly obvious, I’d consider it.

“And maybe it’s some family heirloom or something,” I say, though it looks like a pretty generic Zales sort of thing.

“Okay then, Miss Goody Two-Shoes, give it back to the dead guy, why don’t you?” Bobbie says as if she doesn’t care much one way or the other, while I type The best way to deal with blood stains on draperies is to take them to the dry cleaners and let a professional do it. However, if you are sure they are washable, you could try an enzyme presoak and then wash as usual. Good luck!

“Give it back? How?” I ask her, closing down Windows and shutting off the computer. “Put it in an envelope and mail it to heaven?”

“I don’t know,” Bobbie says. “Why don’t you just take it to his funeral and ask him if he still wants it.”

I don’t know what else there is to do but that. “Right. We have to give it back to him at the funeral.”

Bobbie chokes on her soda. “We?”

I tell her that if I’m going to put the ring on a dead man’s finger, the least she can do is come along as moral support.

She says she’ll bring bail money in her enormous new Michael Kors bag.

Four days later the police release the body and Bobbie and I traipse into Queens for Joe Greco’s funeral. Bobbie insists that I drive because she hates Queens Boulevard. “It’s city driving,” she claims. Somewhere in the Secret Handbook of Long Island Rules it explains when the Borough of Queens is the City (like when you have to drive through it) and when it’s not (like when you want to buy nice things—is there a Bloomingdale’s in Flushing, Queens? A Nordstrom’s in Astoria, Queens?).

In my purse, which sits on the floor of my Toyota by Bobbie’s feet, is Joe’s ring. Having had his ring for several days now, I’m on a first-name basis with Joe. Which is closer than I am to my mother, who isn’t talking to me because I’ve taken her booty. I keep telling her that the word has a different meaning these days, but since she isn’t talking to me she isn’t hearing me, either.

I know this whole thing is a mistake. But sometimes, even when you know something is going to go badly, there’s nothing to do but go ahead with it, so, despite all the misgivings, I join the line of cars waiting to turn into the parking lot at the Anthony Verderame Funeral Home in Flushing.

In front of me is a black Mercedes like Howard’s, only bigger. In front of that is a black Cadillac Esplanade. Behind me is a black sports car with a silver jaguar lunging for the tail of my dented red Toyota RAV4. Every other car appears to be a black Lincoln Town Car.

Bobbie and I exchange glances that question whether we could be any more conspicuous. The line crawls, and if our car is a tip-off that we don’t belong here, the preponderance of men in black suits with dark glasses heading for the funeral steps really cinches it.

“We should not do this,” Bobbie says emphatically. “This is a mistake.”

The line of cars turning into the lot has multiplied into two lanes and we are part of the inner one, next to the curb. We couldn’t leave if we wanted to. Which, despite the looks we are getting from the mourners, I don’t.

“At least we shouldn’t park here, so that we can make a quick getaway,” Bobbie says, and she has a point. Of course, there isn’t one available spot on the street as far as the eye can see.

I tell her she is worried about nothing. I don’t tell her that my heart is pounding so hard I can hardly breathe around it, that I am drenched from my armpits right down to my waist. I also don’t tell her that I still haven’t come up with a plan beyond getting in the door.

We park the car, leaving our keys with the attendant, and climb the steps to the chapel.

It occurs to me that the casket could be closed, an eventuality I hadn’t planned for. Of course, that assumes I’ve planned at all, beyond “bring the ring to the funeral.”

A man whose chest strains the confines of his size 48 suit welcomes us. He points out Joe’s mother. I expect an old Italian woman in a black dress with her stockings rolled below her knees. Mrs. Greco doesn’t disappoint. The man offers to take us over to pay our respects. It sounds like one of those offers you don’t refuse, and I nod my thanks.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to Joe’s mother, and of course, I am, because there must be nothing harder for a mother than to bury her child, no matter how old he is. I don’t tell her how I come to know this, how my mother’s life was ruined by my younger brother’s death and what it’s done to the rest of us, but I do tell her that I know. She tells me Joe was a good boy. A good son. And she introduces me to her other son, Frank, who is bigger than the usher who greeted us.

Frank, towering over me, asks me how I knew Joe.

“We’d see each other at The Steak-Out,” I say, and sense Frank’s body stiffen, so I add, “occasionally,” to sort of soften the statement.

“Wednesdays?” he asks. I don’t know what the right response is.

“Sometimes,” I say. “Just a lunch every now and then.”

“Like once a month,” he says. I get the sense that we are talking in code, only he’s a cryptographer and I’m talking Pig Latin.

His jaw is working overtime and the grip he has on my arm tightens as he leads me toward the casket. I look back at Bobbie, who gives me a what-do-I-do-now? face. “My friend,” I say, pointing toward Bobbie, but Frank’s hold on my elbow is firm and unyielding.

“You’ll want to say goodbye,” he says firmly, all but ordering me to look into the casket at poor, dead Joe. This is what I wanted, after all, isn’t it? The chance to look in that casket and replace Joe’s ring.

“Well, I…” I start to say, realizing I should have put the damn thing in my pocket instead of my purse. I pretend to tear up, though it’s not hard to force out tears when you’re scared to death, and I open my purse for a tissue.

Naturally, Frank offers me a clean handkerchief. I have to say that Mrs. Greco raised her boys right, damn her. I cough into the handkerchief until I sound like I’m about to die on the spot.

“I think I’ve a lozenge in my purse,” I tell Frank and root around until I find the ring.

I cough one more time and put the ring under my tongue as I do.

Now all I have to do is not swallow it before I look into the casket, cough it into my hand and then touch dear, dear Joe one last time.

I realize I can’t do this with my eyes closed, and so I look down at Joe. The hole in his head has been plugged up, and if my mother could see him now, spiffy in his gray suit, serene in repose, she’d tell me how wrong I was to let this one go.

Frank puts his arm around my shoulder. I smile at him, lips closed, ring beneath my tongue, and I wish he’d give me a little space. Sniffling, I bow my head and look over at Bobbie, who is still standing with Mrs. Greco. I signal her as best I can that I’m stuck with Frank at my side, and spit the ring into Frank’s handkerchief.

“Is your mother all right?” I ask Frank loudly, hoping that Bobbie will get the hint. I fan my face with the handkerchief to clue her in about what she can do, and the ring falls out. I look down and cover it with my foot, claiming it’s my lozenge.

Frank offers to get it, and just as he begins to bend down Bobbie starts fanning Mrs. Greco and calls Frank’s name. “Your mother,” she says, and Frank is gone as fast as a guy who makes Refrigerator Perry look small can vanish.

I bend down, pick up the ring, and lean over the coffin. “Frank,” I say, and then realize I’m bidding a fond farewell to the wrong Greco. “Joe,” I start again, reaching my hand into the coffin and touching Joe’s hands, which are placed low on his lap.

They are clammy. Cold. They feel waxen. I manage to slide the ring on as far as the first knuckle. And then two men approach the coffin from different sides.

Softly, patting his hands with one of mine, I say, “I’ll miss our lunches.”

“Not as much as he will,” the man near Joe’s head says.

I’m still holding Joe’s hands. My left hand is trying to push the ring on and my right is trying to hide what I’m doing. The ring refuses to budge. If I let go now, it will look like I was trying to get the ring off, not on.

If I don’t let go, with his hands basically on his crotch, it will look like I’m sexually assaulting a dead man.

I could try to faint, but I’m not the world’s best actress. Beside me, both men appear to be waiting for me to finish saying goodbye to Joe.

“Oh, my God,” I hear Bobbie shout. “She’s fainting!” I turn, along with everyone else, to see poor Mrs. Greco sliding to the floor.

I jam the ring as far as I can up Joe’s finger and turn.

“Get out now,” one of the men whispers at me, and I take off, grab Bobbie’s hand, and we run out of the chapel like Jimmy Choo is giving out free samples down on the corner.

The parking lot is hopeless, so we hobble a few extra blocks to catch the LIRR heading for home. Ordinarily, women from Long Island only use the railroad to get to and from the city, and even then, the rule is pretty much only for Wednesday matinees and only if you’re too old or too poor to drive in. Don’t get the wrong idea. There’s nothing wrong with the railroad. The cars are clean and the service is good. I don’t understand it, either. It’s just one of those Long Island Rules.

I figure we can take a cab home from the station and go back tomorrow for my car. And we hide in the ladies’ room until we hear them announce the train.

“How in the world did you get Joe’s mother to faint?” I ask Bobbie after we’ve caught our breath. She claims that luck was just with us.

As we slip into the railroad car and the doors slide closed behind us, I notice a man in a black suit watching us. He rubs at his nose and I see there are two fingers missing on his right hand.

I tell Bobbie it looks like our luck has just run out.