Bubbles All The Way

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “How much?”

  “Four hundred bucks.”

  Holy crapola!

  “She should have gone to the attorney general’s office. But she was so embarrassed by having findamannow. com on her credit card bill she couldn’t. Of course, she really was trying to find a man, so that made it worse.” Stiletto shook his head. “I had to pour a fourth cosmo into her to get that out.”

  This was fascinating, though I suspected Debbie had more on Tess than Tess was willing to tell Stiletto, no matter how many cosmopolitans she had in her.

  Stiletto frowned at me. “What? I didn’t do good?”

  “You did good. Probably too good.” I reached up and tried to wipe off the lipstick.

  “Oh, that. Well, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  “You and James Bond.”

  “Hey. It’s a public service I provide, sacrificing my body for the pursuit of truth.”

  “What a noble ethic.”

  He grinned. “Ethics have nothing to do with it, I’ll have you know.”

  “Yes,” I said, “that doesn’t come as a surprise.”

  He put his hand up against the wall and leered down at me. “Any more sacrifices I can perform on behalf of . . . the cause?”

  I took a minute to think. “Three things. The most important is that you convince Tess to talk to me on the record.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “And if she won’t talk to me . . .” I paused. Man, it sucked to say this. “Ask her if she’ll talk to Lawless.”

  “He of the vending machines?”

  “Like you said. A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do. We also need the names of more women, especially this nurse in Debbie’s allergist’s office, Zora.”

  A phone rang inside. We both jumped. It wasn’t a cell phone. It was a hotel phone. I tried to think positively. Maybe it was the front desk looking for the waiter.

  Stiletto and I stared at each other, breath held.

  The door opened and the waiter came out, discreetly closing it behind him. “I’m guessing that of the two of you, you’re Bubbles,” he said.

  “Oh, no.”

  “That’s right. The phone’s for you.”

  “Who is it?” As if I couldn’t guess.

  “Your husband. He sounds pretty, um, upset. He wants you to come upstairs right now and to stop making out with what he called the Italian gigolo.” And then he gave Stiletto the kind of look that for as long as I live will make me laugh so hard, tears will roll down my cheeks.

  Dan was standing.

  That in itself described how angry, how furious, how ready to rip my head off he was.

  He was also beet red and, possibly, foaming at the mouth.

  “So you were with him, like Wendy said.”

  “Wendy couldn’t wait to call you, could she?” I walked past him and got my purse. “Stiletto and I weren’t making out. We were talking in the hallway. It was hardly a scandal. I see your back is better.”

  “What were you doing, then?”

  “Work. We were talking about work and I can’t discuss it with you because you’re representing Phil Shatsky on a related matter”—I paused—“unless he fired you already.”

  “He didn’t fire me. That’s not the point.” He took a step and grabbed the small of his back. “It’s a spasm,” he hissed. “I’ve had them before. They’re killers.”

  “Maybe you should go home and take a nice hot bath, pop a couple of Tylenol and call it a night.”

  Dan regarded me through pain-filled eyes. “I get what this was about now. The sex. The room here. You had no interest in sleeping with me tonight, did you? You just wanted to be under the same roof as Stiletto.”

  I slapped my hand to my chest in exaggerated indignation. “Why, Dan Ritter, how could you say such a thing to me? You know I find you the sexiest, studliest man on Earth.”

  He hesitated, debating whether to allow himself to believe I was sincere. Men can be so gullible that way.

  “And I knowww you find me the sexiest woman, too. I also know that after we’re married you’ll be just as loyal as before we got divorced. Oh, that’s right. You cheated on me, just like you cheated on Wendy with your secretary.”

  He winced again, though I couldn’t distinguish whether this was because of his back or because of what I said.

  “I knew you and Vern were gossiping in the clerk’s office.” He twisted as if in agony, as if somewhere Wendy had a voodoo doll of Dan and was poking pins in him, which, now that I thought about it, was not such a bad idea. I would have to look into getting one of those dolls for myself.

  “Maybe if you hadn’t made the poor clerk stay after hours and if you hadn’t stiffed her the mere forty bucks, which will undoubtedly have to come out of her wallet, she wouldn’t say such nasty things behind your back.”

  “All right, all right. I get your point. Now come over here and massage my back. Where’s that hot-water bottle?” He tottered to bed and fell with a crash, like a giant redwood.

  I walked over and stared down at him as he barked orders.

  “Don’t just stand there. Get the Tylenol. And some ice. I’m going to need round-the-clock care. This is all your fault, Bubbles. If I could sue you, I would. Now go get a doctor!”

  “Okay.” I bent over and removed Dan’s wallet from his suit jacket, pulling out the hundred-dollar bill I’d seen him waving about earlier.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You want me to get fast service, don’t you?”

  He grumbled that fast service would be damned nice for a change.

  I stuffed the wallet back in his jacket and slid the hundred neatly in my cleavage. Then I kissed my finger, pressed it on Dan’s cheek and went to the door.

  “Don’t take too long!” he hollered after me.

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  I exited our presidential suite and hit the elevator button. It arrived creaking and lurching ominously. I went down, passing Stiletto’s floor and trying not to be bothered by the idea of him with his lipstick-stained collar in a room with Tess. I hummed “Silver Bells” to keep my mind off their hot and heavy petting. The tune was stuck in my brain from the earlier elevator ride up. It struck me as oddly romantic.

  The lobby was a lot less crowded now that the Help the Poor Children couples were all tucked away in their rooms, getting to know one another. I went to the front desk and politely reminded them of the hot-water bottle.

  “Yes. I’m sorry,” the man in the dark green jacket said. “It should be on its way up. We’re somewhat busy tonight because of a special event we’re holding.”

  The Help the Poor Children event, I assumed.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  Yes, I told him. I wondered if he could be so nice as to call me a cab.

  Had I been wrong to leave Dan? I halfheartedly asked myself as I looked out the window and admired the star of Lehigh on the top of South Mountain, lit up as it only was during the Christmas season. I rolled down the window and let the brisk night breeze fly into my face as we crossed the Hill-to-Hill Bridge.

  Someone had put a lone electric candle in one of the mill’s dirty windows, and through the grime and soot, it still shone bright, a testament to the spirit of people like us. People who’ve grown up under the spewing smoke-stacks, the clouds of orange sulfur and snow of ashes. We still shine through. We cannot be extinguished.

  “Is this okay?” the cab driver asked as we pulled up to the News-Times.

  “This is fine.” I handed him the hundred.

  He let it lie in his palm. “I don’t know if I got change for this. This is a big bill.”

  “I don’t want change. Merry Christmas.” And I got out. There is no satisfaction so sweet as spending the money of a person you truly despise.

  It was after nine and there was no point in me returning to the newsroom. All I really wanted was to go home, take the phone off the hook (so Dan couldn’t call)
and indulge in a long, hot shower.

  Then I would pad downstairs in my slippers and robe, where Mama would have dinner waiting for me. Sauerbraten, marinated since Saturday, made with ginger-snaps, and German spaetzle with green beans. A baked apple and cranberry crisp topped with vanilla ice cream and a handful of chopped walnuts and raisins for desert. Yum.

  The Christmas tree would probably be decorated to ridiculous lengths. Those big, multicolored lights, crazy glass balls and all the ugly ornaments Jane and I had made in elementary school, which Mama had saved carefully. Tinsel, of course, and gold garlands. And how could I forget the angel on top.

  The house would be perfumed by the cinnamon of the baked apples and the metallic odor of Genevieve’s musket grease, since she never went to bed without oiling her musket. I could see the two of them in my living room, finalizing the last-minute details for their senior citizen Christmas pageant and fair while Jane sat at the kitchen table doing her homework.

  I had to admit it was nice having those two crazy broads at my house. I couldn’t wait to get home.

  I crossed Broadhead Avenue, bending my head to a blast of wind coming off South Mountain. The neighborhood was particularly deserted as it usually is on a cold winter night. Even the Tally Ho across the street seemed dark and subdued.

  Mine was one of only two cars in the darkened parking area, which wasn’t much more than a gravel pit. As soon as I inserted my key into the Camaro, I knew something was off. The car was already unlocked.

  I hesitated, debating whether I’d remembered to lock it that morning. Surely I had, especially with all those Santa Clauses shooting at me. Then again, I had been known to space out and just forget. Moreover, I couldn’t call the cops. If I called them in a panic the second time on the same day, Mickey Sinkler really would have me committed.

  And then I heard it, an awful gurgle coming from within. It was the unmistakable, desperate sound of an animal in the last throes of life. I reacted to it almost instinctively, throwing open the door and peering inside, not stopping to consider the danger of what I was doing.

  I should have. For slumped in my passenger seat was a Santa Claus in bad, bad shape. I could barely make out that his head hung in a grossly distorted way and that a whitish foam bubbled on his lips.

  It was Ern Bender, and tonight he was no jolly old elf. He was an unconscious one.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Dead.”

  “Shit!” I got up from the wooden table so fast Detective Vava Wilson reached for the gun in her holster. “He was alive when I found him. Barely, but alive. I got him to the hospital as fast as I could.”

  Senior Lehigh Police detective Jim Burge closed the heavy steel door and said nothing. I didn’t like that. Then again, I didn’t like being in this green-painted cinder-block room with the one wooden table and the one-way mirror where who knew was watching.

  “Died from a combination of rapid kidney failure and a heart attack. Typical result of a methamphetamine overdose.” Burge dropped a file folder on the table as if for emphasis. “When you found him, he was breathing rapidly, choking on his saliva, and his temperature was elevated. Those are standard meth-overdose symptoms. That man was an addict. His parole officer predicted this might happen.”

  “What?”

  “That as soon as Bender got out of the pen he’d go back on the smack.”

  “Smack’s heroin,” Vava Wilson corrected.

  “The twiz, then. Crizzy. Crotch dope. Yammer bammer. Whatever. The point is, Ern was an incurable junkie who couldn’t quit his lethal habit.”

  Couldn’t quit? I wondered. Or was killed?

  Detective Burge didn’t care. His only concern—as always—was how his latest case would elevate or diminish his status in the department.

  Tonight, Burge was in an undercover uniform of tweed slacks, red suspenders and a white turtleneck sweater. I didn’t know what Ginger, his wife, had in mind, letting him walk out the door like that. With his graying hair and middle-aged paunch, he was looking more like Santa Claus than any number of the Santa Clauses who’d been following me lately.

  “So you think Ern Bender’s death was an accident, too?” I asked.

  “Unless he intentionally overdosed himself. The medical examiner hasn’t made a final report, but according to a quick inspection of the body, Ern was found with the needle and syringe still in his pocket, half the meth mixture gone.”

  “I didn’t think you shot up meth,” I said.

  “Snort it, smoke it, swallow it, sprinkle it on your Wheaties.” Burge hitched up his pants, a move intended to emphasize his authority over all matters pertaining to crotch dope. “But for the real rush, the so-called flash, what you want to do is shoot it up. That’s what hardcore addicts like Ern craved. Idiot ended up killing himself.”

  I had serious doubts that Ern had killed himself, but I didn’t say anything. Already Mickey thought I had gone loco for running around town claiming that a woman with a well-known allergy had been murdered. No point in adding Burge to my list.

  The thing was, I was beginning to seriously question if Debbie’s death and now Bender’s were about illegal drugs. I thought about his meth lab at Save-T Drugs, which burned half the store, destroying the entire pharmaceutical area, including all medications and, according to the article I’d read, all records, too. And now he was dead of methamphetamine after serving time in jail for lacing cherry Cokes.

  You’d think that stint behind bars would have been enough to cure him.

  “Okay, Bubbles,” Vava said in a soft, understanding voice, placing her well-manicured hand on my thigh, “tell Detective Burge what you described to me a few minutes ago, about when Ern Bender called you at the News-Times.”

  I looked up at Burge, who was still standing, thumbs behind each of his red suspenders. I thought about Ginger peeking through the window to catch a glimpse of Phil Shatsky hugging me and then Mickey’s warning that Burge considered me a suspect.

  “Shouldn’t I call my lawyer or something?”

  “What for?” Burge exclaimed. “You’re not under arrest. Not yet.”

  Vava gave Burge a look that said Shut up.

  “You can get a lawyer, Bubbles,” she said. “Heck, if I were you, I might. But let me be honest. The only reason we’re interviewing you in this room is that we need privacy. And this case has been a bitch.”

  “That’s the truth,” Burge added.

  “Was Debbie Shatsky’s death an accident? Or was Debbie poisoned intentionally? Who knows? And now this. It’s enough to drive us all nuts, especially with these wild tips we’re getting every five minutes.” She smiled. I liked her lip gloss. It was the kind of lip gloss your favorite teacher wore. I bet it was flavored, like with berries. It made you want to trust her.

  I leaned back and repeated what I’d just told her, about visiting Ern at the Christmas tree lot, about the tree being shot and how I was saved by an Iraq War vet, then about Ern’s phone call that afternoon and his confusing claim that I had found “the star file.”

  “Found ‘the star file,’ ” Burge said again, finally sitting. “Damn. What does that mean?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. But he implied that Debbie had the one remaining copy and that whoever killed her had made her a deal to buy it. She’d held out, and within twenty-four hours, she was dead.”

  “Why didn’t you call us with this?” Burge raised one of his unkempt eyebrows.

  “I don’t know.” I looked at a spot in the table where someone had carved FUCK THIS. “To be honest, I kind of wrote Ern off as a whacko. When we met at the Christmas tree lot, he was obviously drinking from a cough-syrup bottle. Do you know how many drunks call the News-Times? We should put an alco-sensor on the phone after happy hour.”

  Burge snorted.

  I said to Vava, “What do you mean you’ve been getting bizarre tips?”

  She was about to answer when Burge pursed his lips in disapproval. “In any given day, the department gets ton
s of unsubstantiated tips,” he interjected. “Detective Wilson’s new to the position. She hasn’t gotten used to that yet.”

  Next to me, Vava stiffened. She didn’t appreciate being disrespected in front of a civilian, especially a civilian who also worked as a reporter and was the mother of her daughter’s friend.

  “Was it a so-called wild tip that led you to conduct a search of Sandy’s apartment?” I asked. “Or was it your wife?”

  Burge ran his finger across his jaw. “How’d you find out about the search?”

  Thereby confirming that it was a tip, I decided. “Sandy was a mess when I stopped by the House of Beauty on my way to work and found her crying in her back office. She said the cops were all over her apartment. Shortly after that, someone shot out her front window. Nearly blew off my head in the process.”

  Vava took a few notes on her yellow legal pad. “I responded to that call. You weren’t there. Why not?”

  “I had to get to work eventually. Besides, put that together with the shooting at the Christmas-tree lot and a girl gets a little jumpy. I wasn’t too eager to stick around.”

  “And neither was your friend,” Burge said.

  I was confused. “What do you mean? She’s the one who called 911.”

  “I know. We have a tape. We saw the window. We searched the salon and found a casing that has been stored as evidence.”

  “But we didn’t find Sandy,” Vava said.

  Again, an electric sensation prickled my arms and neck. Sandy. When had I last spoken to her? There’d been so much going on, I’d kind of lost track. I remembered trying to call her at home and at work and there being no answer. I’d assumed she wasn’t picking up the phone. Shoot.

  “Is she okay?” I blurted.

  Vava shook her head slightly. “We don’t know. Her husband seems to be very concerned. It’s after eleven and she still hasn’t come home.”

  “That’s three hours after her bedtime!” I said. Now I knew something was really wrong. Sandy was always in bed by seven forty-five—except on clogging nights.