Love Notes

by Penny Mickelbury

  “That little bastard destroyed my car and he and his sorry-ass sister laughed about it! I’d like to get my hands around their sick, disgusting necks and squeeze until I can’t hold on any longer.”

  “Did he say anything, Mimi?”

  “He said he was going to sell the parts off my car!”

  Gianna grabbed her by both arms and gently shook her until her eyes focused. “Jodi got away and I need you to tell me if he said anything that could help us find him.”

  Mimi rubbed her wrists where they had been bound and tied to the chair. She touched Gianna’s face. “I think they were going to kill me.”

  Gianna held her and she shivered. “Let’s go back in.”

  Mimi shook her head. “They talked about going to Texas. They did it for the money, Gianna. They killed those women so they could steal their assets. That’s why they got them to move here and to buy new furniture and cars and clothes. They’ve got all that stuff and they’re going to move to Texas.” Mimi shivered again and Gianna thought she could be going into shock.

  “You need to be checked by a doctor, Mimi.”

  “I’m all right. I haven’t been dropped or hit on the head and I’m not in shock, I’m just mad. And sad.”

  “Hey Boss!” Tim came galloping around the corner of the barn. “They’ve got him! The stupid fuck went home. Shit for brains, huh?”

  “Glad he’s not one of ours,” Gianna said.

  “He’s on the job?” Tim was incredulous.

  Gianna shook her head. “Not any more.” To Mimi she said, “I’ve got to get you home. Tim, would you—”

  “Got it covered, Boss,” he said, offering Mimi his arm. “My pleasure, Miss Patterson.”

  “It won’t be if I don’t get to a bathroom,” she snapped, crossing her legs.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mimi’s exclusive front page story on the arrest of the three Thompsons for the murders of six women over the last two years restored her to favor with the higher-ups at the paper. Even the Weasel expressed his admiration. So pleased was he, in fact, that he didn’t flinch when she asked to do follow-up stories that would focus on menopause and society’s treatment of women “of a certain age” and how that treatment may have led to the Thompson’s almost getting away with murder.

  DOES MENOPAUSE KILL? was the headline of the first story. The first paragraphs read:

  It is ancient, older than civilization

  itself, the time when women cease

  experiencing their monthly men-

  strual cycles. It is called menopause

  and it is not a single event but a process,

  a series of events and changes that can

  take longer than a decade to complete.

  The majority of women don’t know

  this, though every one of them will

  experience this process if they live

  long enough. What women do seem

  to know is that menopause is some-

  thing to be hated, feared, resented,

  resisted, reviled. And why not, asks

  53-three year old Phyllis, who also

  asks that her last name not be used.

  “It’s an ugly word. My mother and

  grandmother and aunts called every-

  thing to do with female bodily func-

  tions ‘the curse.’ And now I’m

  supposed to embrace something

  that sounds so ugly and does such

  ugly things to my body?”

  The word, menopause, is Greek

  in origin, and means “to bring an

  end to the moon,” or monthly

  cycle. Some of the effects on the

  female body include weight gain,

  loss of libido, night sweats, brittle

  nails, thinning head hair, growth

  of facial hair. Some of the effects

  on the female psyche are much

  more subtle and perhaps even

  dangerous.

  The public response to Mimi’s story was immediate and overwhelming. The phone lines were jammed. Email to the paper and to Mimi caused the system to shut down for over an hour. Every television news channel in town rushed to do similar stories. Clinics and hospitals were overrun with requests for information on menopause, and therapists were bombarded with requests for appointments from previously silent women wanting to talk about what was happening to them, many of them under the mistaken impression that they’d either imagined what they were feeling, that it was unique or unusual, or that there was nothing anybody could do about it. And that was the positive response. The negative response was as vociferous if not as plentiful. The detractors found the stories lurid, unchristian, even Satanic.

  “Looks like you touched an exposed nerve,” Tyler said, stopping at her desk the morning after the second menopause story ran. “Way to go, Patterson,” he said, actually shaking her hand as if she’d won some kind of prize. “You may be free at last of government graft and corruption for a while. The bosses are happy.”

  Which didn’t mean very much to Mimi at the moment. She was happier about the phone call she’d just received from Sue. She’d emailed Sue and Kate all the articles and Kate finally had opened up and expressed her feelings: She saw herself as fat and balding and not at all sexually attractive. “She’s got an appointment with a therapist and a doctor,” Sue said. “I think we’re going to be all right, Mimi.”

  But not everybody was pleased with her. Alice Long was not. Mimi had kept their Wednesday evening appointment at The Bayou, intending to tell Alice who she really was and why she’d been at Happy Landings, and to tell her that friendship would be the extent of any relationship that might develop between them. Alice already knew.

  “I’d figured you were more than a day tripper,” was her opening greeting, “but a reporter! Damn!”

  “Ouch, Alice, lighten up,” Mimi said. “Everybody’s got to earn a living and there are lots of people who don’t think much of cops, so be careful about disparaging other people’s professions. Besides, it could always be worse. We could be lawyers.”

  The levity was lost on Alice. “But you’re not one of those people who thinks badly of cops, are you Miss Patterson? Especially if the cop is a lieutenant.”

  Mimi hadn’t asked how Alice knew about Gianna; it didn’t matter how she knew. What mattered was that Gianna didn’t know that Alice knew and Mimi needed to tell her. She kept waiting for the right moment but that hadn’t happened yet. Gianna’s post-Thompson experience had been a bit rockier than Mimi’s.

  Gianna looked at the chief and realized that she didn’t know when she’d stopped listening to him, when she’d stopped caring what he had to say. Despite Mimi’s half dozen articles, despite Peggy Carter’s appearance on four national television news and entertainment programs, despite the very public gratitude of three different law enforcement agencies, politicians in D.C. still managed to blame Lieutenant Maglione and the Hate Crimes Unit—and, by extension, the chief of police—for violating all kinds of jurisdictional and procedural rules and regulations in the apprehension and arrest of Trudi and Jodi Thompson and their cousin, Ursula. No points for the painstaking piecing together of evidence that linked the three Thompsons to six murders. No pats on the back for finally identifying two Jane Does, the first two victims, and returning them to their families. And no credit given to Gianna and Hate Crimes for preventing a cache of automatic weapons from making its way across the Atlantic to Ireland; the SWAT people got the credit for that one.

  Three weeks after the fact and the anti-Hate Crimes faction on the City Council was out for Gianna’s blood. What upset the politicians was their inability to force her to acknowledge that she’d made the procedural errors and to apologize in public. So, in the middle of the budget meeting, with the Hate Crimes Unit appropriation on the line, the most hostile city council member repeated what he’d heard on a TV news program: That Gianna first learned about the missing lesbians while at a lesbian ba
r and he asked if that were true. Gianna asked him what difference it made who told her about the missing women or where. The councilman then asked Gianna if she frequented lesbian bars. She told him it was none of his business what kind of bars, if any, she frequented. Sensing immediately where things were headed and determined to steer a different path, a friendly council member asked Gianna what church she attended. She refused to answer that question, as well as others inquiring about the make and model of her personal car and whether she owned or rented her living space and whether she kept pets. Not only was it none of their business, Gianna told them, but it had no bearing on the quality or effectiveness of her service to the District of Columbia Police Department.

  The chief of police was livid and had been expressing his feelings for the last eternity, it seemed. Gianna didn’t care. She stood up so abruptly that he stopped talking in the middle of a word. “You going somewhere?”

  “Yes sir. I’m going to the gym and I’m going to be late for my massage if I don’t leave now.”

  “Maglione—” The warning in his voice was ominous.

  “I’ve done my best for you, sir, and I’m sorry if it hasn’t been sufficient. I’m sorry the city council is so...so...whatever it is they are. And I’m truly sorry that you have to dance when they pull the strings, but I don’t have to.”

  “Yes, dammit, you do, Maglione, and that’s what I’ve been trying to get you to understand since I gave you Hate Crimes!” He got up and walked around his desk to stand close to her. “Running a unit is a political assignment and you’re judged by how well you play the game, not by how many perps you lock up. That’s all I’ve been trying to get you to understand.”

  She heard the pleading in his voice, saw in his eyes how much he wanted her acquiescence. And somewhere deep within, she wanted to give in, to accept, to capitulate. She could not. Her father, the Philadelphia street cop shot down because it was assumed that with an Italian surname he was Mafia, would not have understood and she’d have no words to explain. “I appreciate your trust and confidence. If I’m a good cop, it’s because you taught me well, and if I’m a bad politician, it’s because my father taught me well. He was the first good cop I knew and if I have to choose which one of you to follow, then I choose him.” She walked across his office to the door, her feet making no sound and dragging slightly in the plush carpet.

  “Maglione.” He hit the “g” harder than usual, it seemed, and she turned around to face him, one hand on the door knob. He held her gaze for a long few seconds. “A massage. That sounds like a good idea.”

  “Tyler’s attack dog isn’t finished with the City Council yet,” Mimi said through a yawn she didn’t try to stifle, “so don’t worry too much about what those clowns are doing. Most of ‘em can’t find their butts with their own two hands anyway, and the chief’ll settle down soon, too, don’t you think?”

  Gianna opened one eye and peered at Mimi through the steam. There already had been two stories in the paper detailing the overwhelmingly negative public response to the city council’s treatment of Gianna, and Gianna’s steadfast refusal to add any comment of her own had done nothing to reduce the apparent public and community support she enjoyed. “What does that mean, exactly?” she asked, unable to conceal the trepidation in her voice, “that Tyler’s ‘attack dog’ isn’t finished? Or is that something I probably don’t want to know?”

  “Well,” Mimi drawled, “it seems that Councilman I-Hate-Dykes was stupid enough to have an unregistered lobbyist on his staff and on his payroll. That’s a few kinds of illegal. You can read all about that in tomorrow’s paper, along with a story about some unusual deposits to his bank account.” Mimi yawned again and stretched full out on the bench. “God surely will bless whoever invented massages and steam chambers.”

  “Did you tell Tyler that stuff about the councilman?”

  Instead of answering the question, Mimi said, “By the way, Trimble’s wife dropped her lawsuit when her lawyer got a look at the countersuit the paper was considering, so that’s a worry I don’t have to sweat. I can just lie here in the steam and sweat naturally and normally instead of emotionally.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Gianna said.

  “And you can’t really think the chief is going to fire you,” Mimi said through a yawn. “And yeah, I gave Tyler that stuff about the councilman though he could have found out on his own. It’s been City Hall gossip for a couple of weeks.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t been near City Hall for months.”

  “Sources,” Mimi said. “How many times do I have to tell you that we reporters have sources just like cops; probably even better ones.”

  Gianna shrugged and stretched out on the other bench and hoped nobody else came in so they wouldn’t have to sit up and make room, happy to let that subject drop and switch to another one. “You earn enough money to keep us both, don’t you? Just in case I do get fired.”

  “Not any more. I had to buy a new car, remember?”

  “But you didn’t have to buy such an expensive one!”

  Mimi snorted. “You’re the one who was just dying for a convertible with power everything and that off-the-wall color that there isn’t even a name for that had to be specially ordered from the factory. Not to mention the built-in car phone. And if the damn thing doesn’t come soon, I’m getting my deposit back.”

  “No, you’re not and don’t change the subject. Suppose I am fired—”

  “Will I keep you in the style to which you’ve grown accustomed? Sure,” Mimi said. “You don’t really eat that much and you’re a great cook and you’re really good about picking up after yourself, although your taste in movies sucks.”

  “But if there’s only one mortgage to pay,” Gianna said sleepily, “two can probably live as cheaply as one, and we can take turns with movies.”

  Mimi sat up and looked down at Gianna, who appeared to be asleep. She had positively refused to entertain the notion of their living together. Mimi had her house in D.C. and Gianna had her condo in Silver Spring and that was that. Was she proposing that they live together? Was that contingent on her being fired from her job? Where would they live? Would Mimi have to sell her house? She was trying to decide which question to ask first when the door swung open and Phyllis, Dot, Evie and June sailed in on a wave of commentary. Gianna, eyes still closed, grinned. She’d gotten to know and like them, too.

  “Wake up, Lieutenant, no rest for the weary,” Phyllis trilled, and leered as Gianna sat up. “How long do I have to spend on that chest press machine to get my boobs to do that?”

  “You could take up residence on the chest press machine and your boobs wouldn’t do that,” Evie said with an admiring glance at Gianna’s breasts.

  “Behave yourselves,” Mimi admonished, trying to stifle a giggle and sound stern as she moved over and made room for them to sit.

  “We’ve started a recall campaign against that homophobe on the City Council,” Dot said. “We’ve already got five hundred signatures. He’s at-large so you can sign, Mimi. Too bad you can’t, Gianna.”

  “She wouldn’t if she could, would you?” June asked.

  Gianna smiled noncommittally but made no comment.

  “And as for you,” Phyllis said with a menacing look at Mimi and attaching hands to hips.

  “As for me what? What did I do now?” Mimi winced as if expecting a blow.

  “You opened that Pandora ’s Box of questions and issues and then didn’t give us all the answers, that’s what you did. I still don’t know if menopause is what killed those women and I still don’t know whether I should just accept these extra ten or twenty pounds or if I should keep going to the gym, trying to get rid of them.”

  Mimi sighed. “In the first place, it’s not my job to give you all the answers. If you’re smart enough and interested enough to read a daily newspaper, you’re smart enough to find your own answers and reach your own conclusions.”

  “That’s a cop-out,” Dot said
.

  “No it’s not,” Mimi countered. “If I tell you what to think then it’s my belief, my value system you’re following and not your own and that’s both wrong and stupid.”

  “Humph,” Phyllis said.

  “And come on, Phyllis, be real. Of course menopause didn’t kill those women, Trudi and Jodi and Ursula Thompson killed them.”

  “That’s another cop-out,” Dot said.

  “No it’s not,” Mimi and Gianna said in unison.

  “But they wouldn’t have been killed if they hadn’t been going through the change, isn’t that right?” Dot asked.

  “There’s sufficient physical and forensic evidence to tie the Thompsons to six murders and no, I won’t tell you what that evidence is,” Gianna said, wishing she could tell them, especially about the piece of jewelry belonging to each murdered woman that investigators found in Trudi’s luggage, “so it doesn’t matter whether they were experiencing menopause.”

  “But Mimi said it did!”

  “No I didn’t,” Mimi said, “I asked whether it was possible that the view we have of menopause, and therefore of ourselves, is so overwhelmingly negative that an otherwise sane and rational woman would accept a sight-unseen declaration of love because she believed that would be her last chance at love. I asked the question but I did not supply an answer because my answer would be my answer. It’s every woman for herself, and I’m certain that somewhere today a woman is falling in love over the internet, in a chat room, because the truth is, you never know where or when you’ll find love.” And both Mimi and Gianna recalled that they’d found it in this very steam room less than two years ago.

  “So true,” Evie said, “so, so, true,” ending the reflective moment. “Do you know how true, Mimi?”

  “I’ll bet you’re going to tell me.”