A Family Affair

by Shannon VanBergen

  “What do you think, Kitty Purry?” Grandma asked the cat. “Curly or straight?”

  “We don’t have time for either!” I protested.

  “Nonsense. So,” she said, looking at her cat, “which shall it be?”

  Kitty Purry meowed, and Grandma’s face lit up. “Curly it is!”

  “You know she doesn’t actually speak to you,” I said while Grandma Dean spritzed my hair with something that smelled like roses. “You just use her to get your way.”

  Grandma laughed. “How do you know? I think Kitty Purry and I have a connection. We understand each other. I think Catalie and I do too, but not on the same level as Kitty Purry and I.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever you say.”

  As she was spritzing and scrunching, I remembered my run short run-in with Owen. For a moment, I thought about not mentioning it to her, but then I was afraid she would fill the conversation void with a hair and makeup lecture.

  “So, I ran into Owen at the coffee shop this morning.”

  Her eyes perked up. “Oh? And how is his side pain today?”

  “His side pain?” I asked. “What happened to his side?”

  “Well, apparently, he laughed so hard when you were on the fence the other night, he pulled something in his side.”

  Seriously? Well, it served him right.

  I ignored her comment and continued. “He got a phone call while we were in line for coffee. Sounds like a body was found today.”

  “A body?” she asked. “Like a dead body?”

  “I assume so. He asked if there were any witnesses. And then he asked something strange. He asked if they were sure the tattoos were the same…or something like that…something about tattoos.”

  Grandma straightened up and her body stiffened. “Tattoos? What else did he say?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, suddenly alarmed at her changed demeanor. “Why?”

  “Nikki, listen to me. I need you to think. Did he say anything else?”

  Why was she suddenly panic-stricken? I started to get worried. Something definitely wasn’t right.

  My mind raced. Did he say anything else? Oh yes, right before he hung up. “He said it looks like he might have struck again.”

  Grandma dropped the spray bottle and stood there with a look that sent a chill down my spine. “What’s going on?” I asked. “Grandma, tell me what’s happening.”

  Instead of answering, she grabbed her phone off the counter and took off for the kitchen. I stood there looking at my half-finished hair in the mirror. Just moments before, I thought the scariest thing I’d come across all day would be my own reflection, but now there was something even scarier out there. And somehow, it involved Grandma Dean.

  3

  “Come on!” I pleaded. “Let me stay! Or at least tell me what’s going on!”

  “You can’t stay,” she said firmly. “The group is on their way over. You either need to go hang out by the pool or go get us coffee.”

  This was a tough decision. If I stayed and waited by the pool until their meeting was over, I might be able to get a little information from one of the Grannies when she was leaving. Then again, I also risked having to talk to Lloyd, the resident ladies’ man and all around creepy guy. If I went to get coffee, I’d avoid Lloyd but wouldn’t have a chance to glean any information from one of the Grannies. I decided to take my chances by the pool.

  I made some coffee and put out the cream and sugar. Grandma Dean was the only one who drank hers black, and she’d already had her cup from my earlier coffee run. The Grannies were knocking on the door within minutes since they all lived in the same retirement community.

  They stood around the table staring at me. Oh, right. I was supposed to leave. Normally at this point, they would all pull something out of their purses to keep me company while I was sent out to the pool—candy, a Reader’s Digest, a can of beans. But today, I could tell they were all worried and that made me worried. What was going on?

  I sat on a lounger by the pool and was thankful Lloyd was nowhere in sight. I closed my eyes and felt the mid-morning sun on my face. I could tell it was going to be a very warm day. I let the sun heat me through and before I knew it, I was dozing. I didn’t even hear him walk up to me.

  “Hey there, get kicked out of another ‘meeting’?” I jumped and opened my eyes. Lloyd’s body was blocking the sun, and I suddenly felt cold. I sat up, trying to ignore what Grandma Dean called “Lloyd’s uniform”—an open robe and a Speedo. In the months since I moved here, I hadn’t once seen him in anything else.

  “Notice anything different about me?” he asked, the sound of pride in his voice.

  “Nope,” I said, not even looking at him.

  “Oh, come on! Look at me! See if you can figure it out!”

  I finally made myself look at him. He looked exactly the same as he always did. I looked a little closer. Was his gold chain different? Nope. Did he wax hair from anywhere? Not that I could tell. A new robe maybe? No, I’d seen him wear that one at least a dozen times. “I don’t see anything different,” I admitted. “What is it?”

  “It’s my birthday!” he said proudly.

  I felt exasperated. “How was I supposed to figure that out by looking at you?”

  He looked hurt. “Look at my banana hammock!”

  I looked around, confused. “What’s a banana hammock?”

  “You know,” he said with a smile. “My grape smuggler.”

  Now I really didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

  Lloyd could see my confusion and he went on. “My nut hut. My nugget-hug-it…”

  “Lloyd!” I yelled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  He looked dejected. “You always take all the fun out of stuff.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  “My Speedo! Look at my Speedo.”

  I really didn’t want to, but he was so insistent. I stole a quick peek since he was still just a few feet from me, and it was right in my line of sight. At first, I didn’t see anything, but then the image became clear—his white Speedo was covered in little pink cupcakes.

  He turned this way and that like he was modeling it for me. “Do you like it? Hattie bought it for me.”

  Hattie was one of Grandma’s closest friends and a part of the Glock Grannies. She was also one of the craziest women I had ever met. She had the kind of bravery and gumption you only got when you’re in your seventies with the kind of energy and “great ideas” you had when you were five. She had a no worries, fly by the seat of your pants kind of attitude that frequently got her in trouble, except that half the time, she didn’t even realize she was in trouble. And this tiny, crazy woman had once dated Lloyd. Then again, most of the women here had dated him.

  “It’s lovely,” I managed to say.

  “Thanks!” Lloyd flashed me a proud smile. “I think so too. So, my birthday party is this afternoon. You coming?”

  “Um, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with Grandma Dean.”

  He looked dejected again. “You don’t want to come to my party? There’ll be cake!” Then he got this obnoxious twinkle in his eye. “Cupcakes!” He gave a little hip shake and against my will, I looked at his Speedo.

  He laughed. “Made you look!”

  It was clear that I had made the wrong choice about where to spend the meeting. I got up and walked toward Grandma’s apartment.

  “Oh, come on!” he called after me. “I was just having fun!”

  “Good-bye, Lloyd!” I said without looking back.

  “You’ll be at my party, right?”

  He sounded so sad, so pathetic. And even though I could hardly stand the guy, compassion twitched in my heart. I turned and looked at him as I reached Grandma’s door. “I’ll think about it.”

  “I knew you couldn’t stay away,” he said with a smile. “The ladies never can.”

  I could hear the Grannies talking as I turned the doorknob, but as s
oon as I entered, they stopped. Their faces were twisted with concern. I had never seen any of them look like that before.

  I walked into the kitchen where they were all seated around Grandma’s oak table.

  “We’re not finished yet,” Grandma said, quickly flipping over a paper in front of her. Evidently, it was something she didn’t want me to see.

  “I know you said we weren’t going to open the shop today after…well, whatever is going on, but I think I might head over there and open for a few hours.”

  All the Grannies twisted in their seats except for Grandma Dean.

  “Geraldine,” Greta said in her sweet voice. Out of all the Grannies, she was the most grandma-like, well, her and Virginia. Irene and Hattie were on the opposite end of the spectrum. “I think maybe we should tell Nikki what’s going on.”

  Grandma leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “Absolutely not. We’re not getting her involved in this.”

  “I think Greta is right,” Irene said. “She might be able to get some information out of Detective Owen for us. He’s still not happy with us after the incident.”

  I assumed she meant the fence fiasco. “Would you guys stop talking about the fence! It was embarrassing enough the first time. I don’t want to keep reliving it every time you bring it up!”

  Virginia reached out and touched my arm, as if to comfort me. “We’re not talking about the fence.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  Grandma Dean got up from her chair. “We’re not talking about that either.” She tried to push me toward the kitchen door that led out to the parking lot, but Hattie let out a laugh.

  “We got pulled over the other night with a body in the trunk,” Hattie said excitedly. “Apparently, that’s frowned upon.”

  “You what?!”

  “Oh, don’t worry, dear,” Greta explained. “We were taking him to the police station. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize he had kicked out the taillight and stuck his arm through. Someone called the police. It was really just a misunderstanding.”

  She said it so casually, like everyone carried bodies in their trunk.

  “I agree with Greta and Irene,” Virginia said, this time softly reaching out to touch Grandma Dean’s arm. “I really think she can help us on this one.”

  Grandma looked at me, concern in her eyes. “All right,” she said quietly. She looked around at the Grannies. “But if anything happens to her, it’s your life for hers.”

  Well, that got serious fast. Maybe I didn’t want to know what was going on. “I, uh, changed my mind,” I said, moving toward the kitchen door. “I don’t want to know what’s happening. You ladies carry on…”

  “Sit,” Grandma Dean said sternly, pointing to an empty chair. I sat down reluctantly.

  Grandma sighed a deep, troubling sigh, and I could see the worry on each of the Grannies. “Three years ago, we started this group for one reason…”

  Oh my goodness, this was the story I had been waiting for! The story of how the Glock Grannies got started! I couldn’t believe I was finally going to hear it! My stomach twisted with both excitement and concern. I knew once she told me the story, there was no going back. I was all in. And I was already sure I would regret it.

  4

  “You know Rosa,” Grandma said to me. “The one who owns Rosa’s Café.”

  “Of course,” I answered, my mouth already starting to water just thinking about her beef sandwiches with that au jus. I could practically drink that stuff.

  “Well, three years ago, one of her sons was murdered. Found dead behind Sinner’s Storage.”

  “Poor Cliff,” Greta said, shaking her head. “He was shook up about it for months. He felt so guilty that the boy was found on his property. He set up a little memorial for him. Rosa’s daughter-in-law owns a little art gallery down town, and she made a little statue for him. I wonder if it’s still there.”

  “Anyway,” Grandma continued. “They found a tattoo behind his ear that wasn’t there before he died.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “How do they know?”

  “Your body gets all weird when you die,” Hattie said matter-of-factly. “Doesn’t behave the same as it did when you were alive.”

  “It was obvious it was a fresh tattoo,” Virginia spoke up, “but there was no blood. Since your blood stops pumping after you die, a post-mortem tattoo wouldn’t bleed and scab over.” Virginia used to be a nurse, so I just took her word for it. It sounded very creepy…and gross.

  “What was the tattoo of?” I asked. “And why would someone tattoo a dead person?”

  Irene was the one who answered. “It was a spade with a tiny ring, a circle, in the middle. The police said it was gang-related.”

  “But the weird thing is that we heard that there wasn’t a lot of gang-related activity before he was killed…” Greta chimed in. “But there was after.”

  I thought this over for a moment. “So, did they catch the killer?”

  Grandma shook her head. “No, and of course poor Rosa was devastated. She’s a dear friend of ours and when the police couldn’t…or didn’t…catch the murderer, we decided to form this group and try to find answers ourselves. But no matter how hard we’ve tried, we’ve always come up empty handed.”

  “We’ve put away a lot of slime-balls in the process, though,” Irene said proudly. “No thanks to the police.”

  “We’ve learned a lot too,” Hattie said wide-eyed. “Like you can’t put people in trunks. But really, we should’ve known that with the seatbelt laws and everything. It makes sense once you think about it.”

  We all just looked at Hattie, and Grandma shook her head before continuing. “Well, now we’re thinking our guy might have struck again. We need to see the body, see if it has the same tattoo as Rosa’s son.”

  “How are you going to do that?” I asked, but deep down, I knew the answer. This was why they needed me.

  Greta smiled warmly. “We need you to talk to Detective Owen and find out.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “We’ll do your hair, put on a little makeup…” Grandma said, reaching out to try to smooth my half-finished hair but quickly withdrawing her hand again.

  “Oh no! I’m not going through that again! I went out with Lloyd’s son to get information and it was the worst night of my life!”

  “But this is Detective Owen we’re talking about,” Virginia assured me. “He’s nothing like Lloyd’s son!”

  “You’ve got that right,” Irene said with a smile. “That man is hot! Like hotter than the equator hot!”

  “Hotter than the sun hot!” Hattie joined in.

  “He could make people in Hell sweat, he’s so hot,” Irene added.

  “He’s so hot, he could eat bread and poop toast.” Hattie looked around at all our shocked faces. “Too far?”

  “Yes!” we all said in unison.

  Hattie shrugged. “I still stand by it.”

  “Anyway,” Grandma Dean said loudly. “We need to know more about the tattoo that was found on the body. Will you help us?” She looked at me with pleading eyes, and of course, I couldn’t say no.

  I nodded slowly, and the Grannies erupted in cheers.

  “Okay, okay. Settle down,” Grandma Dean said as she pulled out her phone. She punched in a few things then handed it to me. “It’s ringing.”

  “It’s ringing?” I shouted. “Who did you call?”

  Grandma looked at me like I was crazy. “Detective Owen! Who else would I call?”

  “What? I’m doing this now?”

  “Well, when else would you do this?”

  Before I could answer her, I heard Owen’s voice on the phone. I quickly put it up to my ear and was relieved that it was just his voicemail.

  “What do I say?” I whispered to the Grannies as his message played.

  “Ask him out!” Irene loudly whispered back.

  “But what about Joe?” What would he say when he found out? And in
a town this size, he would definitely find out.

  “Oh, now there’s someone who’s really hot,” Hattie said with a smile.

  There was a beep on the other end of the line and for a moment, I panicked. The Grannies all got animated and urged me to say something.

  “Uh, hi. This is Nikki. Um, it was great seeing you today. Maybe we could get coffee tomorrow…” The Grannies got animated again, arms flailing in all directions.

  “No!” Grandma whispered. “Today!”

  “I mean today,” I continued, and the Grannies sat back in their chairs, relieved I had moved up the date. “Um, call me back.”

  I hung up and slid the phone back to Grandma. “Wait a minute, isn’t that going to look weird that I called him on your phone and not mine?”

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with some excuse,” Grandma said, patting my hand. “Okay,” she said to the group. “So, what do we do next?”

  Before anyone could answer, Irene’s phone rang. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “It’s Dottie!” I had no idea who Dottie was, but the Grannies got excited. “Hello…yes…okay…Oh thanks, Dottie! I really owe you one!” And just that quick, she was off the phone and standing up. “Grab your purses, ladies. We’re going to see a body!”

  5

  Fifteen minutes later, we pulled onto a long gravel driveway that led to a lumberyard on the edge of town. We could see several police cars inside the chain-link fence that surrounded the business and parking lot. As we passed the fence, I had flashbacks of being cut off the fence downtown. I shuttered and regretted riding along.

  No one was at the gate to stop us from pulling in, but once we got inside, a uniformed officer motioned for us to stop. When he got closer, Virginia, who was driving her big SUV, rolled down her window. “Hey, Tom,” she said casually. “How are you today?”