Bubbles All The Way

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “Yeah. She was sitting right here.” He pointed to a green metal bench.

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “She left with some guy about five minutes ago.”

  Her new boyfriend, Jason, I thought with relief. “Was he driving a Dodge Durango? Did he have supershort hair and a gun rack in his truck?”

  “No, ma’am.” The security guard pulled a walkietalkie from his belt. “He was in a fancy black late-model BMW and took off doing sixty in zero seconds. I kind of thought it was strange, a nice girl like her going off with him, but I didn’t ask. Not my business.”

  I was hit by a wave of crushing panic as I thought about the man who’d been trying to break into our house the night before and Debbie Shatsky’s murder and the stalker across the street from the Christmas tree lot.

  Jane had been kidnapped.

  Again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  My knee-jerk reaction was to call my buddy Mickey Sinkler down at the Lehigh Police Department. For once he wasn’t in a meeting or out on patrol or dawdling over coffee in the Lehigh Diner with his fellow detectives. He was behind his desk, defying his job description.

  “Jane’s gone!” I wailed so loudly the receptionist in the lobby looked up from her magazine in concern. “Someone’s taken her.”

  “Calm down, Bubbles. Tell me what happened.”

  I told him how Jane had been whisked away in a late-model BMW. “I don’t even know anyone who drives a BMW.”

  “How about Stiletto?”

  I hesitated. Mickey had never liked Stiletto, partly because he had been harboring a simmering crush on me since grade school. However, with Mickey’s beanpole body, his big ears and five kids under five, he didn’t wrap up into what you’d call a sexy package.

  “Not Stiletto. He drives a beat-up Jeep.”

  “Okay, I’ll have dispatch radio an alert to keep an eye out for a speeding, black, expensive BMW. That’s the kind of vehicle they enjoy pulling over anyway. It’ll be a fun way for them to kick off their Tuesday.”

  Thanks heavens for police discrimination.

  “Why don’t you try the school? Knowing Jane, she took the ride because she didn’t want to be late. It is after nine, you know.”

  I knew and I didn’t buy it. Jane was so cautious these days that she’d ask Mama for her mother’s maiden name before she’d let her in the door. She wouldn’t just up and leave with a strange man in a black BMW.

  After Mickey hung up, I called up to Dan’s office. But he was already in a meeting, and even though I told his secretary this was a “dire matter” that required his “immediate attention,” she refused to interrupt him.

  Just as well. I was tired of being lectured.

  I was now fully charged on anxiety and Dr. Lori’s bad coffee as I headed to my car. I was also extremely stressed. My hand shook as I fumbled for the keys to my Camaro and I was so unsteady behind the wheel I didn’t dare drive.

  Jane gone again. Kidnapped!

  The all too familiar nauseating mixture of adrenaline and helplessness cramped me in pain. There was only one tonic that could soothe my nerves: Stiletto. But as I had nuked that relationship, I turned to the next best thing.

  Popping in a tape of Jon Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” I sucked strength from his immortal words. Yes, I would have to hold on to what I got. I would have to live for the fight because that’s all God wrought.

  I exhaled and inhaled deeply. My hands stopped shaking and I turned the ignition. Whatever awaited me in the next few hours, we would survive. This was a promise pledged to me by none other than Mr. Jon Bon Jovi himself. And Mr. Jovi—or Mr. Bon Jovi, I was never sure—was hardly ever wrong, except maybe with Have a Nice Day. That album sucked.

  I took a left onto Schoenersville and headed up Elizabeth, skipping red lights and doing sixty toward Liberty. Might have been Debbie’s ex-con ex-husband, Ern, who took Jane. He was the kind who probably simmered with anger. Anyway, he’d been in the back of my mind as the possible Peeping Tom from the night before, if indeed there’d been a Peeping Tom.

  Not that Jane was lying. Just that she was, um, kind of hysterical these days.

  Then, before I could move on to other possibilities, the whole crisis was over in a flash.

  I could see them from the corner of Elizabeth and Linden. Bright red and blue lights lining the driveway to Liberty—not that this was an unusual sight. Between the drug dealing and gang fights, the cops here think of Liberty High School as their home away from home.

  I pulled up behind the last cruiser and said a silent prayer of hope—hope that it was Jane’s abductor they’d captured and not Vicki Mercanceti’s son for dealing dope down on Pine Street. There was a shiny new BMW and there was Jane in the arms of Mickey, who was stroking her hair and murmuring words of fatherly comfort.

  “Jane!”

  She raised her face, black mascara streaming down her cheeks as I approached. But she didn’t speak. She turned away.

  A kid in a knitted cap and long hair pointed in my direction. “That’s her crazy mom. The one who called the cops on her.”

  I wasn’t crazy. I was alert. And my alertness had saved my daughter’s life, thank you very much. For plastered against the hood of a cruiser was a very suspicious man in a buttery black leather jacket, khakis and expertly styled short, blond hair. Jane’s abductor. Aka the Perv.

  Mickey held up a hand to stop me from giving the Perv a kick in the ass. “Easy, Bubbles. It’s not what you think.”

  “Yo! Mrs. Y!”

  This didn’t make any sense. From behind, Jane’s abductor was unrecognizable, but the voice belonged to the boy who frequently raided my refrigerator. He who sprayed whipped cream directly into his mouth and then sucked the gas from the Reddi-Wip can. He who knew unequivocally that SpongeBob SquarePants lived in a pineapple under the sea and that SpongeBob was absorbent and yellow and porous. Nautical nonsense was definitely his wish.

  “Gerald Thompson Rogers,” Mickey said. “Is he known to you?”

  “Of course he’s known to me. That’s Jane’s old boyfriend G. I talked to him just yesterday.”

  “So he’s not a threat to Jane?” Mickey asked, dutifully observing police procedure.

  “G’s a threat only to the springs on my couch. I’m surprised he’s up this early. It’s against his religion to wake up before noon.”

  Two detectives gave each other looks that said it all: another morning wasted by a paranoid mother. They unlocked the cuffs around G’s wrists and ordered him off the cruiser.

  “Here you go.” One of the cops ripped off a ticket and handed it to G. “Sixty-three in a school zone.”

  “Thanks, Officer. I’ll add it to my collection.” G gave the ticket a kiss and shoved it in his back pocket.

  “Watch it, wise guy. We got penalties for sass in this jurisdiction.”

  This was all my fault. Once again I’d overreacted. “I’m sorry, G. You wouldn’t have gotten the ticket if I hadn’t called in the posse.”

  “And humiliated me forever,” Jane added, her first words since I’d arrived. “Do you mind if I actually go to class now? Or would you like to cast me in another mini drama?”

  I ignored this, which is the only definitive way to deal with snotty teenage daughters. “What was G doing picking you up, anyway? And where did he get that fancy new car?”

  “I’m rich!” G declared, rubbing his sore wrists. “I’m financially secure. I’m moderately well off. I’m comfortable!”

  “He is,” Jane confirmed. “I ran into him this morning after his meeting with his accountant, who works in Daddy’s office park.”

  “Accountant?” I turned to G. “Accountant?”

  “Hey, man. I got assets to protect.”

  Jane said, “He sold that aloe vera hair gel recipe of his to Jeffrey Andre, who’s licensed it in salons all over the country.”

  Hold on—that was MY hair gel recipe! He couldn’t steal it.

  I was r
eady to call him on the carpet when Mickey said in an ominous tone, “Bubbles? Can I see you a minute?”

  Mickey was standing by his cruiser, one foot up on the running board. He had that stern look of disapproval, the kind a father gives a daughter when she backs his car into a fire hydrant. Not that I ever had a father, really. Mine died when he was instantly incinerated in the ingot mold.

  “Lookit,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I don’t mind doing favors for you now and then, running plates and looking up sealed records—”

  “Hey, speaking of that.” I reached in my purse, pulled out my Reporter’s Notebook and wrote BRIKHOUS. Then I ripped the page off and handed it to him. “Would you mind tracing this? I think it belongs to a woman named Marguerite. Right before she died, Debbie said Marguerite was after her husband.”

  Mickey dropped his jaw as he stared at BRIKHOUS. Because he’s a congenital mouth breather, this was a frequent look for him.

  I pushed his jaw shut and said, “Pretty please?”

  He folded the paper and tucked it in his pocket. “Where was I?”

  “You were about to scold me for calling you in hysterics because I thought Jane had been snatched.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” He got his bearings and resumed his stern tone. “Claiming Jane was kidnapped . . . that was really over the top, Bubbles.”

  “But—”

  “Let me finish! Do you know how bad I’m going to get ribbed over this? What if every parent called in the SWAT team whenever their kid was ten minutes late for school? Jane’s a senior, for heaven’s sake. She’s almost a legal adult!”

  I’d never heard Mickey sound so angry.

  “I hate to say this, but I feel it’s my obligation as a friend to lay it on the line with you.” He took a deep breath. “You’re loco, Bubbles. Kinked in the head. I don’t know if it’s the stress of being a reporter or what happened with Jane last month, but you are not thinking straight these days. I mean . . . you’re marrying Dan!”

  True. That was nuts.

  “I’m seriously questioning whether you’re suffering from temporary insanity.”

  No. I was not suffering from temporary insanity. Temporarily insane people forget to bathe and buy new mascara every six weeks. My mascara was fresh and my body was squeaky clean.

  I said, “Aside from remarrying Dan and calling you about Jane—which I feel is perfectly understandable in light of recent events—what, exactly, have I done that would lead you to believe I’ve gone whacko?”

  “How about going around town spreading rumors that Debbie Shatsky was murdered, for starters.”

  “She was murdered.”

  “No, she wasn’t. Debbie had a very well-documented allergy of which Sandy was aware. Unfortunately, Sandy was too overworked during the holiday rush and made a tragic mistake.”

  I was stunned. Usually I could count on Mickey to keep an open mind. He was my one ally in the police department. “Don’t tell me you’re buying that bogus line?”

  “It’s not a bogus line. It’s the department’s. Didn’t you read your own newspaper’s story this morning?” He reached inside the cruiser and produced a crumpled copy of the News-Times. All I had to do was glance over the headline, Lehigh Woman Dies from Allergy: Coroner, and the byline, Alison Roach, to know the fix was in.

  “What about Debbie’s ex-husband, Ern Bender?” I said. “He just got out of jail and he’s pissed. You should have heard the way he went on about some scam the two of them had going that Debbie took over. Then she conveniently got rid of him by framing him on those drug charges and had him sent to jail. He told me outright that Debbie deserved to die.”

  Mickey didn’t seem to think this was anything special. “Ern has an alibi.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. He’s in a halfway house and under the strict supervision of a very qualified probation officer who tracks his every step. Ern’s not free. He’s in our steel-tight criminal-rehabilitation system.”

  “Oh. I forgot how steel-tight our criminal-rehabilitation system is,” I said a bit sarcastically.

  He motioned me closer. “Listen, you, I’ll give you a heads-up that could get me pink-slipped on the spot if it leaked out I was telling you.”

  Actually, I lived for moments when Mickey told me confidential police stuff that would get him pink-slipped. “Go on.”

  “You need to drop this murder stuff for your own good. Maybe Sandy’s, too. It’s in your best interests to support the theory that Debbie’s death was an accident.”

  “Why?”

  Mickey turned down his scanner so his snitch wouldn’t be picked up by dispatch. “Because Burge thinks it was murder, too, and he’s got a suspect. You.”

  “What?” What dope was Burge smoking now?

  “He has a source who claims that you’re having an affair with Phil Shatsky and he’s going to be all over you like a pit bull on a pig’s ear within forty-eight hours.”

  I suppose I should have been shocked, worried, concerned, disbelieving and all that. Instead, I couldn’t help but laugh, which only made Mickey madder.

  “It’s not funny, Bubbles. This is not a joke. This thing is shifting from a routine negligent-homicide case into a full-blown murder investigation with not only you but also Sandy as the persons of interest.”

  Okay. He was right. I stopped laughing. “The reason I laughed, Mickey, is because Burge’s so-called source is his wife, who was out of joint last night because Phil came to see me before he took one bite of her famous chicken tortilla casserole.”

  Mickey wasn’t getting it. I explained about the housewives and Phil pussyfooting over in a Santa Claus suit.

  “That might very well be, but there were other witnesses who saw you and Shatsky together, making out in your living room just a few hours after you helped apply the hair extensions that killed his wife. That looks bad, Bubbles. Real bad.”

  Hmm. Out of context that did look bad. I had to agree with him on that one. I let all this sink in, watching as Jane lingered with G a minute longer.

  “In my opinion, the best thing you can do for everyone concerned, including Jane, is to get some professional help so you can quit being delusional,” Mickey murmured. “And if Dan loves you, he’ll put off the wedding. What you need now is rest, therapy, maybe a stint in some sort of institution, at least until Christmas and New Year’s are over. That could get Burge to cool off.”

  “Locking me away isn’t going to solve anything, Mickey.”

  “Burge is of a different opinion. By the way, the institution he has in mind throws lousy New Year’s Eve parties.”

  Not to mention, operates under a pretty pitiful dress code.

  Over by the Beemer, G was writing something down and handing it to Jane, who casually took it and slipped it into her pocket. That was one good reason to go through with the wedding right there—so those two could get together during the reception.

  After Jane ran up the steps to class, G joined Mickey and me. He was whistling, actually whistling, and rocking on his heels.

  “Gee, it’s great to be arrested. The feel of the gun in the small of your back. The look of awe on your ex-girlfriend’s face when you’re frisked. I’m telling you, nothing turns on chicks more than when you’re face-down on a cruiser with your legs spread and a lieutenant’s hand running up and down between your thighs.”

  Mickey and I stared at him glumly.

  “What’s wrong with you two?”

  “I’m about to get busted for murder,” I said. “And Sandy might be going down with me.”

  “Shit happens, Mrs. Y. Shit happens.” He patted me on the back. “Hey, Sinkler, how come the cops were all over Jeffrey Andre’s salon yesterday asking a bunch of questions about that Shatsky dude?”

  Well, well, well. What was this?

  Mickey gave me a furtive glance. “Don’t know. Not my case.”

  “I saw Phil Shatsky on TV last night. He’s down at our salon all the time, goes in the back room with Jeffrey
and shit. It’s not just fixing the toilet, either. He brings some creepy dude with him. The three of them hang out a lot. They’re doing stuff.”

  “That so?” Mickey fidgeted with his scanner, as if G’s tip was inconsequential, which it wasn’t. I found what G had to say very interesting, especially considering the number of phone calls Debbie had placed to Jeffrey Andre’s home and salon hours before her death. I wondered who Phil’s friend was.

  “I think they’re smoking weed, from the smell of it. Not that I do that or anything, Mrs. Y. I only know from what I smell on TV.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Never.”

  “Isn’t there a convenience store you need to loiter at?” Mickey asked.

  “Watch out. He’s got assets now,” I said. “He’s got an accountant.”

  “So do some of the wealthiest drug dealers in town.”

  G threw up his hands. “I’m no drug dealer. I was just being a good citizen trying to do my civic duty, letting you know about Shatsky and Andre. See you around, Mrs. Y. Bye, pig.” G huffed off.

  “Why were the cops at Jeffrey Andre’s?” I asked.

  Mickey took back his newspaper and tossed it in the cruiser. “Like I told Gerald, I have no idea. Okay. I gotta go. And do me a favor. Pretend we never spoke.”

  I watched Mickey back up and zoom off. He didn’t even wave.

  Odd. Very odd man, that Mickey.

  I returned to my own car and hooked a right toward the historic section on my way to the South Side. There was a lot going on behind the scenes with this Debbie Shatsky case, especially now that G had linked her husband with Andre and “some creepy dude.”

  I suspected Mickey knew more than he was letting on and he was truly worried that Burge would nail me for murder.

  Burge was one of those cops who fired off a couple rounds and then checked to see who got hit. He was directionless, but lethal.

  Burge was bad news.

  The traffic light at Moravian Academy, Lehigh’s only prep school, turned red for an extended period so the kids in their plaid skirts and navy blazers could cross between classes. This would take forever, I thought, enviously studying the privileged students talking to their professors as if they were real human beings and not the prison guards high school teachers should be.