“You married Spencer because he was the sweetest guy on the planet and you absolutely adored Chelsea.”
“She was nine at the time. I didn’t realize she wouldn’t stay nine. Now she wants a tattoo but needs a parent’s permission to get one. I’m afraid her space-case mother might agree. The kid’s only fifteen, for criminy sakes.”
“Do you have to go to work later?” I asked to change the subject. She is a maternity nurse and after the birth of her son four years ago, she has taken to wearing scrubs all the time. I know it is because she still has a leftover muffin-top from the pregnancy, but I don’t get it. She used to be so stylish. Today’s ensemble was a blue bunny print. “No, why?”
“No reason.”
We were on 101 heading south to our favorite restaurant, Klondike Pizza, in the charming old town area of Cala Grande. The owners had migrated from Alaska, so hence the name and rustic decor: bear skins, moose antlers, snowshoes…and peanut shells on the floor. A short line was at the register when we walked in, so we got a menu and debated our choices, then ordered what we always ordered. We fetched our sodas and a basket of peanuts and sat at our favorite table under the wood stairs.
Neatnik Sam was rooting around in the basket for a triple peanut. “Got an interesting call from your mom yesterday.”
I grabbed a handful of nuts and smashed them to smithereens on the blue gingham tablecloth, causing Sam to wince. “What did she want?”
Sam delicately cracked a peanut into two perfect halves. “She asked if I knew any nice guys I could introduce you to.” She poured the three peanuts into her mouth.
“So not ready.” I concentrated on sifting through my peanut shell mess for a nut. “Please say you said no.”
“Uh, I may have mentioned that Spencer knows a guy you might like. He has most of his teeth and is gainfully employed in the food service industry.”
“Really?” I smashed another handful of peanuts just to annoy her. “Nice going. Now I’ll never hear the end of it.” I sipped my root beer, thinking real beer would have been a better choice. “So, what happened to his teeth and where exactly is he gainfully employed?”
Samantha swiped my mess off the table with a paper napkin. “Are you interested, Katy?”
“Hardly.”
“He lost his front teeth in a nursing home brawl where Spencer’s grandpa lives. He works in the kitchen.” She tried to keep a straight face as she cracked another peanut. “The residents were protesting the bland food and in the ensuing food fight, he got belted in the chops with a portable oxygen tank.”
I nodded, holding a poker face. “Sounds painful. How did the protest turn out?”
“They now have salt and pepper on the dining room tables and Tuesday is taco night.’
A perky teenaged girl, June according to her name tag, set our pizzas on the table and asked if we wanted anything else.
“No, we’re good,” I said. “Oh, wait. Would you bring me an Alaskan Amber?”
“I need to check your I.D.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
“Sorry, it’s the law. Anyone who looks under thirty has to have valid I.D.”
I rummaged through my purse and extracted my driver’s license. “Here ya go.” I smirked at Samantha, knowing this was making her fume over her aging frown lines. Hee-hee.
June scrutinized it and glanced at me. “Wow. I sure hope I look as good as you when I’m old.” She handed back my I.D. and scurried off to get my beer.
Sam propped her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her hands. “Wow.”
“Oh, be quiet. She meant it as a compliment. And you don’t need Botox. Yet.” I slid a slice of hot veggie pizza onto my plate and forked off a section. “This was a good idea.” I chewed in blissful contentment. “I can’t wait until I’m gainfully employed so we can do this more often.”
“I will never understand why you took the house and let Chad keep the business,” Samantha said. “You put your heart and soul into The Bookcase Bistro. At least you’d still have a steady income.”
“I’ve told you I wanted a clean break from everything having to do with him, and no way did I want to run the business by myself. I got great joy when I sold that ostentatious monstrosity of a house that he had to have for a humongous profit. So it’s not like I’m broke. I just need something to do. You know, something that gets me up in the morning. I’m sick of feeling sorry for myself.” I smacked the table. “Oh! Did I tell you I finally cleaned out that dirty old garden shed in my backyard and set it up as an office? I’ve got my drafting table out there and all my art supplies.”
June set down my beer and asked Sam if she wanted one.
“I wish. But I have to take my little boy to gymnastics, not to mention I’m driving.”
I watched the girl walk away, then turned back to Sam. “The bookstore years were great, but that was Chad’s dream, not mine and I’ve always missed being a graphic artist.” I held my glass aloft and offered a hardy, “Here’s to new beginnings,” and took a refreshing swig.
“That’s great about the shed,” said Sam. “Where’d you put your gardening stuff?”
“Everything’s been in the garage since I moved in. I kept meaning to move it all to the shed, but this is a much better use of the space.” My pizza was now cool enough to pick up, so I chomped a bite and spoke with a full mouth. “Yup, Chad can have the business and all the headaches associated with trying to keep a bookstore afloat these days. With the mood I’ve been in, I might’ve gone postal on some of those customers and wound up in jail. Especially that irritating woman who always returned books because she didn’t like the endings.” I shook my head, relieved I would never deal with her again. Yup, right decision. “Speaking of jail, did you see the story in the paper about Lindsay Moore?”
“No. Why would there be a story about her after all these years?”
I told her about Phil Hobart’s upcoming parole hearing. “I’m wondering if there’s something I can do to make sure this guy doesn’t get out.”
“I would think Lindsay’s mother will be at the parole hearing to speak up for her daughter. I know if I was her and he got parole, I’d be waiting outside the prison gates the day he was released and get a little justice of my own.”
“You’re probably right. This is her business, not mine.” I sipped my beer. “It’s not like I knew her that well in high school, anyway.”
“Cheerleaders and band geeks—not really the same crowd.”
“She was a really nice girl though, and what happened to her was so awful,” I said. “It hurt everyone in our school. God! I get so sick of monsters like him getting paroled. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“But getting caught up in something you can’t do a darn thing about isn’t going to be good for you right now.” Sam was in mother-mode and patted my hand. “I’ve got an idea for you. Ever thought of writing a blog?”
“Why would I do that? I don’t even like Facebook. Especially when people write about their oh-so personal problems for everyone to see. The other day, one of my friends posted ‘I think my boyfriend gave me herpes ‘cause I’m really itchy.’ Eew. So not my business.”
“Yeah, I saw that because you shared it, thank you very much.”
“I meant to hit the like button, but, oops. Too funny.”
“Anyway, a blog would be like a diary or a journal.”
“Then why don’t I just get a diary or a journal?”
“You can, but by having it in a web cloud, you’ll never lose it and you can set it up so it’s totally private. No one’ll ever see it but you, and you can access it from wherever you are and add entries. Even on your phone.”
She paused, waiting for me to say something, but I remained silent, listening to the white noise in my head.
“Chelsea can help you set it up. She set up mine. It could be very cathartic for you. Write about everything you’ve been going through this past year. Get it all out there. Purge your anger issues before you m
ake yourself sick.”
“Let me think about it.” I tapped my chin. “Mmmm. Sounds like work to me. No thanks.” I decided to button her up by changing the subject. “Know anybody who needs a new logo?”
“Mmmm. Sounds like work to me.”
Guess I’d annoyed her. Now I felt bad. “Okay. You may have a valid point about my anger issues. I’ll think about doing a blog.”
THREE
Monday, April 8
Graphic Design Work
Freelance graphic designer with years of experience. Logo designs, cartooning, advertising layouts, business cards, design concepts, etc. I will take your idea and make it a reality. No job too small. My rates are reasonable, my hours are flexible, and I’ll give you a fast turn-around.
I posted the ad on Craigslist, then Daisy and I hopped in the car for a run to the bank to transfer some money from my savings to checking. I could have done it online, but Daisy wouldn’t have gotten her doggy treat at the drive-thru window.
I drive an orange 1976 Volvo DL wagon that I grew up riding in. At eight years old, I discovered a box of Mom’s old Betty and Veronica comic books while snooping around in the garage. I thought Veronica was so glamorous. I wanted to dress like her, wear my hair like her, have boobs like her, and change my name to Veronica. Mom said no to the first two and the boobs never happened, but she agreed to a compromise and we named the Volvo “Veronica.”
Veronica became mine on my seventeenth birthday, even though it killed Mom to part with her. I appreciate not having a car payment, but power windows sure would be nice. Especially at the drive-thru when Daisy wants to stick her head out the back window to say “hi,” and I have to twist into a pretzel to roll down her window.
After I completed my banking, I decided to run over to my stepdad’s appliance repair shop to talk to him about Phil Hobart’s parole hearing. Pop had been a cop until he was forced into early retirement after pursuing an unhappy, gun-toting housewife who was chasing her philandering husband down the street. She had tripped over a tree root and Pop had caught a bullet in his knee.
After Pop’s retirement, he had driven Mom bonkers. He was bored but clueless as to what to do with the next stage of his life, and poor Mom had borne the cranky brunt of it. When the escrow office next door to her beauty shop had become vacant, she had suggested he take the space and open an appliance repair shop. Ever since I can remember, Pop has rattled on about how people hadn’t thrown things away when he was a kid: “You bought a toaster once, and you kept it forever. If it broke, you fixed it. My grandmother had the same Toastmaster she got for a wedding present in 1932 until the day she died in 1978.”
Pop’s Fix-It Shop is a quaint throwback to a simpler time—or more simply put, a symptom of having watched the Andy Griffith TV show in his youth. An ongoing chess game sits on a table under the window, and there is a vintage appliance museum on shelves lining an entire wall featuring Great Grandma’s gleaming old Toastmaster. Under the shelves is a working mahogany Magnavox Astro Sonic Stereo Console, circa 1969, that Pop inherited from his folks, along with all of their old records, when they moved to a condo in Palm Desert.
The little bell over the door jingled as Daisy and I entered. Cool jazz filled the room, so I stepped to the stereo to check the current selection playing. It was the soundtrack to a 60’s movie called Walk on the Wild Side—music by Elmer Bernstein.
“Hey, Pop. What’cha doing?”
He was perched on a stool behind the counter, hunched over a commercial espresso maker. “Darn thing won’t steam.” He switched the machine on and it wheezed as though suffering an asthma attack.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
He turned it off and continued tinkering. “What brings you here on this beautiful spring day? Shouldn’t you be outside playing?”
“Did you see the story in the paper about Phil Hobart’s parole hearing? You know, the guy who kidnapped and murdered Lindsay Moore back when I was in high school?”
“Of course I remember who Phil Hobart is, and yes, I read it.” He set down a tiny screwdriver and pushed his “cheaters” down his nose, giving me his full attention. “So why are we talking about this?”
“It’s just not right that her death has so little value that fifteen years covers the debt.”
“Nothing can cover that debt, Katy. Should have been life with no possible parole. Better yet, should have been death for what those boys did to that little girl.”
I shuddered. I don’t believe in the death penalty. So barbaric. A dark, cold dungeon works for me, or even better, a lifetime sentence of Jerry Springer reruns 24/7. The crime rate would plummet.
“There must be something I can do to help stop this guy’s parole,” I said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Protest? Picket the prison? But before I do anything, I want to be absolutely sure he’s guilty. That there’s no possibility that he was wrongly accused. You know, bad DNA, that sort of thing.”
“Katy, he confessed. He and his friends raped her, kidnapped her, and murdered her. He doesn’t deserve freedom. Come over for dinner tonight and I’ll tell you what wasn’t in the paper.”
Pop was relaxing on the patio when I arrived, nursing a Firestone Pale Ale while grilling chicken breasts and a vegetable kabob for me. I went to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Chablis out of the fridge and poured a hefty glassful before flopping on the chaise lounge next to him.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Working on a wedding. This may be the last wedding she ever does. Too much drama. The bride can’t decide if she wants her hair up or down. She’s so upset about it that she’s broken out in a rash.”
“Sounds like the problem isn’t really about her hair but maybe second thoughts about the wedding.”
“That’s very astute of you.” Pop got up and slopped more BBQ sauce on the chicken. “These days the marriage is usually kaput before the wedding bills have been paid off.” He saw my puckered brow. “Katydid, I’m sorry. That was thoughtless.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
I sipped my Chablis. “I will be. Far worse things happen in life than getting divorced from a rat. Like what happened to Lindsay.”
He took a long pull on his beer. “I don’t know what you can do to stop Hobart’s parole, Katy, but it’s unlikely he’ll get out on his first go-round anyway.”
“I’m confused. He’s serving fifteen years to life and this is his first parole hearing. But the crime happened in 1996, so it’s been more than fifteen years. Why didn’t he have a parole hearing sooner? Bad conduct or something?”
“It took over a year for the case to go to trial, plus it had to be moved to another county to get a fair trial. Then several postponements on final sentencing. These things drag on and on. It’s not like the TV shows, honey.”
Pop pulled the chicken and my kabob off the grill, set them on a platter, and we went into the kitchen. “Your mother said to go ahead and eat if she isn’t home in time. You get the salad in the fridge, while I get the rolls out of the oven. Oh, and grab me another beer, will ya?”
I did as told and was about to top off my wine when he said, “Are you walking home?”
No, I wasn’t walking. I put the bottle back.
A few bites into the meal, I said, “Why did they kidnap and murder Lindsay after she’d already made a statement? The police had their descriptions, so what was the point?”
“They were morons, Katy. None of them had a criminal record and Lindsay had no idea who they were or what they looked like.”
Pop and I finished dinner, and while he caught the basketball scores on TV, I scavenged in the refrigerator hoping to score something “dessertie” and came up empty-handed, as usual. Pop keeps a slim figure, but is pre-diabetic, so Mom diligently keeps the house sweet-free. But I know she has a chocolate stash somewhere in their house and one of these days, I’m going to find it.
“Did Mom tell you your si
ster’s coming home for a while?” he called from the next room.
“No. When?”
Pop returned to the kitchen. “Sometime in June or July, when her lease is up.”
“Why’s Emily coming home?” I love her, but I love her more from afar.
“So she can concentrate on her writing.” Pop finger-quoted.
“Please tell me it’s not rap.”
Emily is my half-sister, nine years my junior. Two years ago she dropped out of college in her sophomore year to come home and become a rapper, LayZeeE. A gritty, street-wise, middle-class, suburban rapper, rapping about growing up in the ‘hood. We’re talkin’ quarter acre lots on tree-lined streets with a strict homeowners association pushing you around and not allowing you to paint your house pink kind of ‘hood. The mean streets of Santa Lucia.
The high point of LayZeeE’s career was an “open mic afternoon” in the bistro at the senior community where Grandma Ruby lives. Yes, it really happened and I have the video proving it. Since then, she’s been living in San Diego with friends and working at Bed, Bath & Beyond.
“She’s writing a murder mystery,” said Pop. “She called it a paranormal-fantasy with ghosts, alternate universes, fairies, werewolves, zombies, shapers or shafters—”
“Shapeshifter?”
“That’s it. What the hell is that?”
“It’s a human who morphs into other things, like a werewolf.”
“And how would you know this?”
“I read the Sookie Stackhouse series that the TV show True Blood is based on. Speaking of writing, I’m thinking about starting a blog.” I was interrupted by the squeaky rumble of the garage door opening. “Mom’s home.”
“Pour your mother a glass of wine while I dish up a plate. I’m sure she’s frazzled. You’ll find an open red in the pantry.”
“No more weddings!” Mom hollered as she came through the door. “I’ve had a day and a half, let me tell you.” She threw her purse and tote bag onto the rattan settee in the kitchen, then ripped off her sweater and tossed it onto the pile. “I am boiling.”
Pamela Frost Dennis - Murder Blog 01 - Dead Girls Don't Blog Page 2
