by Elise Sax
She turned and walked into the house, and Fred and I followed her. Her kitchen had turned into an egg dyeing factory. She had stacks and stacks of egg crates, filled with blue eggs, and she had pots filled with dye.
“Wow, your hands sure are blue,” I said.
“I’m dyeing eggs blue. What did you expect?”
“Oh, I don’t know anything about Easter eggs. I thought you would wear gloves.”
She seemed to think about that for a second, and she pursed her lips. “Now you tell me! Someone could have told me that before I painted thousands of eggs. Gloves!” she yelled, slapping her forehead and leaving a blue handprint there. “Is this why you came here? To make fun of my hands?”
“No. I came to say that I know that you’re in on it,” I said.
“On what?”
“You know. Griffin. Ford. Liz. Brad. You’re a drug smuggler, just like them.”
She put her hands on her hips, leaving blue splotches on her shirt. “How dare you.”
Fred took his gun out its holster and waved it at Josephine. “Not now, Fred,” I whispered.
“Sorry,” he said, holstering it, again.
“You’re all in on it,” I continued. “This town seems to attract drug dealers.”
“I was born here. I’ve never touched drugs in my life.”
“So you say!” I yelled at her, pointing my finger in her face. “But you were co-chairs with Griffin. You said you had seen a murdered body, and Alice said she would kill someone by stabbing them, and Urijah met with Brad. Griffin killed Brad and Urijah’s goat and…” I drifted off. Nothing was sounding right. “And oh my God.”
My brain was making calculations, like the Watson computer on Jeopardy. Nothing was making sense. Nothing was the way it seemed.
Everyone was lying.
“You’re not a drug smuggler?” I asked, knowing now that she wasn’t.
Fred took his gun out again. “Spill the beans, or I’ll drill you full of holes!”
“Not now, Fred,” I whispered again.
“I’m not a drug smuggler, and I’d bet my house that Griffin wasn’t either,” she said. “He sold toilet brushes, for goodness sake. How dare you come in here and threaten me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, dejected. “I was just trying to help.”
“Hogwash. I know who you are, Gladie Burger. You’re always sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
She was right. She was totally right. “That’s not true,” I said. “I just happen to find a lot of dead bodies.”
“Maybe someone should look into you and what drugs you’re sniffing. People dropping dead around you. Someone should investigate that!” She wasn’t wrong. I was a death magnet. “And that poor cop woman. The whole town knows what you did to her. Now, she’s wandering the streets like a lunatic. You did that to her.”
“Have you seen her, lately?” Fred asked. “We’ve been trying to catch her.”
“Last I heard, she was in the laundromat, eating laundry detergent.”
Yikes. Fred went outside to radio in Terri’s location, and I did my best to apologize to Josephine.
“You have to understand that I’ve had a hard week,” I began.
“You’ve had a hard week?” Josephine shrieked. “Have you prepared fifty thousand Easter eggs? Are you blue? I don’t see any blue anywhere on you, you bitch.”
Josephine quickly picked up a large pot full of blue dye and before I could flinch, she tossed it over my head.
“Now, you’ve had a hard week,” she said, and pushed me toward the door.
I stood on the front porch and dripped blue dye. “Fred, my ring! My ring!” I called. He ran at me.
“You’re blue,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Save my ring. Take it and clean it off.”
He pulled my ring off my finger and rubbed it on his uniform. “You look nice in blue,” he said. “It matches your eyes.”
“My eyes are green, Fred.”
“Prettiest green in the world.”
CHAPTER 15
Matches aren’t always easy. They’re not like hopping on the freeway to get to your destination. Sometimes you have to take the side roads and the dirt paths and sometimes, dolly, you have to go backward to go forward. It’s hard to go backward when all you want to do is make your match. But things go wrong. Matches become impossible. Starting fresh is the only thing you can do to make the matches possible, again. So, don’t be afraid to go backward. Go backward all the way to the beginning. But don’t forget to watch where you’re going bubbeleh, or you’ll trip and land on your tuchus.
Lesson 130 Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
“I’m in love with a woman who’s blue,” Spencer said, smirking his little smirk. He was standing behind me in the bathroom, looking into the mirror. I was blue. We had tried everything to remove the dye from my skin, but nothing worked. I was so blue that I could have joined a show in Las Vegas.
“I thought it would have worn off by now. It’s been over twenty-four hours.” I had been hiding in the house since I had been blued by Josephine. My ring cleaned off beautifully, but I was all Smurf.
“At some point, you’re going to have to leave the house, or are you going to become like Zelda?” he asked.
“You’ve enjoyed the housebound me.” Spencer had taken up the guard duties from Fred, since under Fred’s protection, I had turned blue. Spencer had made the most out of our time together. He bought a new television with all the bells and whistles, and when we weren’t watching Family Guy in bed, he was working through his high school sexual fantasies during commercial breaks. With all of the sex, though, none of the blue rubbed off of me.
My grandmother was doing much better and was hosting Meryl’s Saturday book club downstairs. “I really want one of Ruth’s lattes, but I’m blue,” I said, looking at my reflection.
“I’ll take you.”
He smiled, and I grew suspicious. “You seem awfully happy that I’m blue. You can’t wait for the town to make fun of me.”
“You haven’t seen the town, lately. It’s covered in eggs and dildos. I don’t think they’ll look twice at a blue woman.”
For some reason, I believed him. Spencer and I walked to Tea Time. It was another gorgeous spring day in Cannes. “Grandma says that there’s going to be a storm tomorrow, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky,” I said.
“Maybe she was talking about a metaphorical storm. I’ve got a crazy cop on the loose and twenty thousand children showing up tomorrow for the biggest Easter egg hunt in history. I think we’re looking at a shit-storm brewing, Pinky.”
Spencer was probably right. We turned onto Main Street. It was decked out in pastels and cardboard cutouts of Easter themes, like eggs and bunnies. I had to hand it to our town. It was crazy, but they sure knew how to volunteer.
“Careful,” Spencer said, and pulled me out of the way of a pile of Easter eggs in the middle of the sidewalk. “They’re everywhere, and they haven’t finished hiding them,” he explained.
I sidestepped another pile of eggs when Bruce Coyle ran by.
“Bruce!” I called, and he stopped. He squinted at me.
“Terri?” he asked.
“No, it’s me. Gladie.”
“You’re blue.”
“Really?” Spencer asked. “I hadn’t noticed.” He squinted at me, too. “Oh, look at that. Are you trying a new make-up, Pinky?”
I punched him in the arm. “How are you, Bruce? Any word on Terri?”
Bruce shook his head. “There was a sighting in the Historic District about an hour ago. I was going to drive down here, but my truck was stolen. Good thinking, making yourself blue, Gladie. Maybe she won’t recognize you this way.”
I swallowed. So far, I had escaped the crazed revenge of Terri, but I didn’t know how much longer my luck would hold. We said goodbye to Bruce, and Spencer and I walked into Tea Time.
“Latte, Ruth,” I ordered.
> “Sweet tea and a slice of pound cake,” Spencer ordered.
We sat down at a center table. There were a dozen eggs in a basket in the middle of it. I looked around and noticed that Tea Time was practically stuffed to the rafters with eggs. It wasn’t like Ruth to allow her beloved store to be used for town events, but perhaps she was feeling guilty for the dildos.
The shop had a few customers, about normal business for late afternoon on a Saturday. There were a few familiar faces, but just as Spencer had promised, they didn’t give me a second look.
“What are we playing at today with the blue?” Ruth asked me coming to our table. “Is this some kind of millennial thing?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“I saw that cop of yours today,” Ruth told Spencer. “She was digging through my trash in the alley. You really need to be more careful in your hiring practices.”
Spencer turned bright red. “Her online application was stellar,” he said, even though he had worked with her in LA.
“That’s the problem with this twenty-first century,” Ruth complained. “Everything’s online, and it’s all crap. Nobody’s face to face anymore. People are data. Data! You know what I care about data? Nothing, that’s what. I wish I hadn’t lived to see the twenty-first century. The twentieth century was bad enough. We’re out of pound cake, but I have sour cream cake that will make you slap your mother. You want some of that?”
“Nobody sells cake better than you, Ruth,” he said.
“Oh damn it,” she said, looking at the door. “Here comes that moron mayor. Next time, let’s vote for Urijah’s goat.”
“His goat was killed by aliens,” I said.
Ruth grunted. “Damned twenty-first century.”
The mayor walked in with the world record representative and a tall man who was dressed in an ill-fitting suit. “May I introduce you to Clovis Pemberley, our celebrity from England?” the mayor asked me. “Mr. Pemberley, this is Gladie Burger. Normally, she isn’t blue.”
“How do you do?” I asked.
“Just fine. This is my first trip to America. I’m very excited.”
“Are you an actor?” I asked.
“Oh, no. I’m…” he began, but the mayor cut him off.
“Do we really need to know that?” the mayor said, tugging at his collar. “He’s a celebrity, Gladie. A celebrity all the way from England. That’s all we need to know.”
Ruth came back with our drinks and the sour cream cake, and the mayor sat down with the mystery celebrity and the world record man. The door opened again, and Lucy floated in on a cloud of peach organza.
“There you are, darlin’. Damn it, you’re blue. I was told that you were blue, but I didn’t believe it. How crazy is that, that I missed you becoming blue? I miss everything. Is that sour cream cake? I love sour cream cake.”
She stole Spencer’s piece and took a bite, much to his chagrin.
“Where’s Bridget? Is she all right?” I asked Lucy.
“She’s home, writing her manifesto. She’s been doing it nonstop for two days. There’s a lot about the justice system and being wrongly accused in it, as you can imagine,” she said, throwing Spencer a meaningful look.
“Don’t look at me. I only work here,” he said.
“Harry has his men watching the house, and I couldn’t stand it one more minute,” Lucy continued. “I said to myself, I’m not missing the action again. So, I’m sticking myself to you, Gladie. Whither you goest I will go, darlin.”
“I don’t think there’s going to be any more action. It’s just me and Spencer having coffee.”
Lucy smiled and cocked her head to the side. “Look at you, two. You’re like an old married couple. So cute together!” she gushed. Then, she leaned forward, and her expression grew serious. “Come on, what’s happening with the murder mystery? Where are you in the investigation?”
“Oh, geez,” Spencer groaned.
“I’m nowhere,” I said.
“Because you’re not law enforcement. Finally, you understand that. You’re not Miss Marple,” Spencer said.
“You take that back before I slap you,” Lucy warned him.
“Nothing makes sense with these murders,” I continued, ignoring Spencer. “The suspects seem to fit together, but they don’t fit together. Everything is turned around and backward and upside down.”
“Rats,” Lucy said, taking another bite of the cake.
The door opened, and officer James walked in. “Chief, we’ve got another aliens sighting, and it’s a doozy,” he told Spencer.
Spencer threw some bills down on the table. “Sorry, Pinky. I’ve got to take this. I’ve got to get these creeps. Damned frat boys gone wild, I’m sure.”
He left Tea Time. “It’s so weird about the aliens,” Lucy told me. “They’re going after brains. Stabbing this goat and that raccoon.”
“What did you say?” I asked her.
“Aliens are going after brains.”
“No. The other thing.”
“They’re stabbing goats and raccoons?”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s it! That’s it! That’s where it all fits together. I’ve been looking at it backward and upside down because it’s backward and upside down. Do you get it?”
Lucy knitted her eyebrows together. “No. Are we talking about the aliens?”
“I’m talking about everything. Is your car here?”
“Of course,” she said. “You don’t think I walked here in these heels, do you?”
I brought my latte with me into Lucy’s peach Mercedes. “Where are we going?” Lucy asked as she started the car. “Is this going to be good? I have a pearl-handled gun in my purse in case I need to shoot somebody.”
“I don’t think we’ll have to shoot anybody,” I said. First Fred and now Lucy. Everyone wanted to shoot someone. “We’re going back to the beginning of this stupid thing, where I should have started to begin with. I’m so stupid! I totally let my Miss Marple down.”
“Oh, this is going to be good,” Lucy sang cheerfully. “Holy crap, Gladie, look over there.”
Terri was running down the street, wielding a cardboard cutout of a bunny over her head. She noticed me as we drove by, and she shook her fist at me and shouted something that I couldn’t hear through the closed windows.
“Oh yes, I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Lucy said. “You’re where the action is.”
It was dark by the time we reached the Love is a Splendored Thing Inn. We passed the sign, saying it was “for lovers who crave luxury.”
“Nice place,” Lucy commented. “Spencer has good taste.”
“We’re going to have to fly under the radar here. Act nonchalant.”
“Gladie, you’re blue.”
She had a point. I stuck out like a sore thumb. “You have a point. Change of plans. Follow my lead.”
We walked into the lobby. At first, the man at the counter didn’t notice the blue woman enter with the southern belle in flowing peach organza. But then he did.
“May I…?” he asked, drifting off, his eyes never leaving my blueness.
I slapped my hand on the counter and flashed him my library card for a split second. “I’m Gladie Bolton with the CPD. We’re here to review the crime scene.”
“What’s CPD?”
“Cannes Police Department.” It wasn’t a total lie. I was with Spencer, who was the chief of the Cannes Police Department.
“I thought the room was released and ready to be rented out,” he said. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, and he still had acne on his face. I would have bet money he would have preferred to be snooping around a murder scene instead of standing behind a counter.
“I’m from CSI Las Vegas,” Lucy said. “There’s always more to find. I can find blood in a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“You can?”
“I could curl the hair on your chest with my stories,” she continued. “You ever hear of Charles Manson?”
“Ye
s,” he breathed, his attention rapt.
“Me, too,” she said.
“We just want to look around the room. It shouldn’t take very long,” I said and batted my blue eyelashes.
“I guess it can’t hurt.” He pushed a few buttons on his computer and walked around the counter, holding a key card. “Business has been slow since the murder,” he explained, as he walked us to the room.
“We just want to make sure justice is served,” Lucy said.
“I thought the husband did it with a steak knife. I heard he’s in jail,” the clerk said.
Lucy looked at me, and I shrugged.
“Just tying up loose ends,” I said. “What have you heard about the husband?”
“I heard they were on their honeymoon. We get a lot of honeymooners or proposers. You know, when men propose marriage.”
I suspected that was why Spencer had brought me there, too.
“Any idea why he killed her?” I asked.
“Maybe he had second thoughts about marriage?” he answered like a question.
That was reasonable. I was having second thoughts and third thoughts and fourth thoughts. Marriage was complicated.
“I can show you their room first. She wasn’t killed there, though.”
“Take us to the ice room first,” I said.
“You want ice?”
Lucy and I spent hours searching the rooms for any clues about the murder, but the hotel had already cleaned it up, and nothing looked out of the ordinary. After a while, the hotel clerk left us alone to go back to the lobby.
“I’m a curse,” Lucy said. “Whenever I’m around, all action stops.”
“You’re not a curse. This is my fault.”
“At least you got to use the Bolton name. That was very exciting. How did it feel to say it?”
“It felt good,” I said and giggled. We held hands and jumped up and down. Being happy was so much nicer with friends. But we had one friend who was in a terrible predicament, and I had to help her. I grew serious, again.
I closed my eyes and tried to make sense out of the murder. I retraced Mamie Foster’s steps from her room to the ice machine and to my room. What could have happened to precipitate her murder?
