Bubbles All The Way

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “Because I don’t have school,” Jane said, coming in quietly, carrying what looked to be a newspaper. She was wearing a black T-shirt that said in gold letters CAL-IBAN that at first glance I misread as TALIBAN. “It’s the Friday before Christmas. We have vacation.”

  I slapped my forehead. I was a bad, bad mother. Dr. Caswell had been right. I couldn’t keep track of my kid’s vacation. I even let her wear T-shirts advertising terrorist groups.

  Jane sat on the corner of my bed and eyed me with alarm. “Were you passed out?”

  “Yes! I was so tired.”

  “You mean, you got wasted on shots like Grandma?”

  It took me a while to figure out what she was saying. “No, no. I stayed up all night spying on Phil Shatsky. I didn’t have anything to drink, well, except for a couple of pots of coffee. I had to stay awake to see if he came home.”

  “Oh.” Jane seemed confused, though I couldn’t imagine why.

  “Have you heard from Sandy?”

  “No. Where is she?”

  “Good question.” I pointed to the newspaper. “Is that today’s?”

  “Wednesday’s. I wanted to read Debbie Shatsky’s obituary.” She folded it to the obituary section and pointed to a paragraph. “What does this mean, Order of the Eastern Star?”

  I took the paper. “Hah! This is why Mr. Salvo taught us in Two Guys journalism class never to abbreviate on the assumption the reader always knows. For example, you shouldn’t write ACLU on first reference. It’s the American Civil—”

  “Mom. What is the Order of the Eastern Star?”

  “It’s one of those secretive Masonic women’s organizations. Genevieve knows all about it, being a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist. Don’t get her started. She’s got this map of Washington, D.C., that shows how the Pentagon, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol and the White House make a Pentagram and the Masonic sign.”

  Jane stared at me. “How much coffee did you say you had?”

  “A lot. What do you care about the OES?”

  “I don’t know. Those four biblical names kept me up all night. G and I were working on them.”

  “G?”

  “He knows a lot about codes, actually. From playing video games. They’re all about codes.”

  Of course. I knew there had to be some value to playing Super Monkey Ball for twelve hours straight.

  “Hold on. I want to get that encyclopedia.” Jane left the room.

  I took the opportunity to slip on a pair of jeans and a royal blue turtleneck sweater. I grabbed the pump bottle from my dresser and wetted my hair, pulling it back into a bun. Then I did my eyes in blue with blue mascara and plunked in a pair of blue earrings Stiletto had given me.

  I was very blue, in more ways than one.

  When I was done, Jane was back, reading furiously. “This is it, Mom, though I have no idea what it means. The star in the Order of the Eastern Star is upside down. The points all mean something: Ada, Ruth, Martha, Esther and Electa.”

  “Electa?” I made a face. “Who names their kid Electa?”

  “Not to pun but you’re missing the point. Rearrange them. Ada, Esther, Ruth and Martha. Those are the names in the computer file. 1-5-19-14. Those are the numerical equivalents.”

  I’d seen that number before, though not in that way. Split up. But where?

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” I asked rhetorically, having finally grasped that concept. “It means we have to go to Genevieve. Genevieve will know what this means.”

  “That’s okay. I love Genevieve.”

  “She’ll be dressed as the Virgin Mary and riding a donkey while selling snow globes.”

  Jane swallowed hard. “No one said investigating a crime was pretty. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Oh,sure.Ada,Esther,Ruth,MarthaandElecta. Should’ve come to me right off. I’m your go-to gal for that bunch of no-goodniks.” Genevieve pushed back her Virgin Mary blue headdress, exposing her white wimple. “I ain’t gonna mince words, ladies. It’s common knowledge among us who keep track of such that the Order of the Eastern Star is a Satanic cult that entices innocent women through the devious attraction of bake sales.”

  “Bake sales?” Jane asked.

  Genevieve shot her with her finger. “Watch it, you. You’re too young to appreciate the allure of a wellcrafted Bundt cake. They don’t call it devil’s food for nothing.”

  Jane snapped her mouth shut.

  “Okay. So what is it you want to know, Sally?”

  At that moment, there was a lot I wanted to know.

  Right off, I wanted to know how Mama and Genevieve had managed to convince seven busloads of senior citizens in the tricounty area that Lehigh could steal Bethlehem’s Christmas business by offering deep, deep discounts on snow globes.

  I wanted to know how they managed to turn the courtyard between the library and city hall into a manger with stables, several camels, three wise men, a bunch of arthritic shepherds, eight angels in Depends, a couple sheep and, inexplicably, a Jersey cow.

  Mostly, I wanted to know where Genevieve got off portraying herself as a teenage virgin appointed by God to be the Blessed Mother of Our Savior.

  But, as time was limited, I asked her the significance of the four names.

  “Question numero uno. Where’d you get this info, Sally?” Genevieve asked. “Where’d you find out about them?”

  I reminded her of the woman in the veil at Ern’s shiva, the woman who had followed me out into the hallway. The woman who turned out to be Fiona Swyer from Get Together Now! Travel, where Debbie had worked. I told her about how Fiona kept emphasizing that she’d been more than a friend of Debbie’s—she’d been a sister.

  “Did she use any hootchie-cootchie code?”

  I tried to think back. “No hootchie-cootchie code that I can remember. She asked me if I had Excel. Then she shook my hand.”

  “How did she shake your hand?”

  “She shook it. That’s all.”

  A shepherd went by wearing striped robes over his winter coat. He told Genevieve to go long and then he threw a doll. Genevieve caught his pass like the football receiver she should have been.

  “The new baby Jesus,” she said. “We lost the original. Think some kid stole it out of the crèche. Either that or it was drop-kicked by those teenagers on skateboards.”

  Jane covered her eyes.

  Genevieve tucked the baby Jesus under her arm. “Listen, no one just shakes a hand, not if they’re with the OES. Try me.” She stuck out her mitt.

  I put my hand in hers and did my best to re-create the way the woman had pinched the fleshy part between my thumb and forefinger.

  “Oh, yeah. There’s some serious OES stuff going on there.” Genevieve checked over her shoulder and led Jane and me around the side of the library to the Japanese garden, placing the baby by a miniature bridge. “You know what the secret phrase of the OES is, don’t you?”

  “Fairest Among Thousands, Altogether Lovely,” Jane said. “I read it online.”

  Genevieve said, “Read that another way and it spells FATAL.”

  I felt a chill and it was not the wind coming up from the Lehigh or the snow that was falling in big flakes. FATAL. That had significance. That meant something.

  “Fatal,” I repeated, things clicking.

  “That’s right. FATAL. Like I told you, it ain’t just bake sales at the OES. Also, the Eastern Star, a direct reference to the star of Bethlehem, is upside down. How’s that for blasphemy? And each of the points represents something. For example, Esther is white. Wheat is for Ruth.”

  I grabbed Jane to steady myself.

  “Mom?” Jane was staring at me, aghast. “What’s going on?”

  “Wheat,” I said. “Fatal.”

  Genevieve nodded with approval. “Good girl, Sally. Now you’re catching on.”

  “No,” I said. “Debbie’s last words were ‘wheat’ and ‘fatal.’ I’d asked her if she was having an allergi
c reaction and that’s what she answered. I thought she was saying she had a fatal wheat allergy.”

  Genevieve emitted a high whistle. “See, that’s what happens when we let you civilians dabble in matters of which you know not. You’re ignorant, is all. Now, if I’d been there, with my knowledge of the Masons and their ilk—”

  Bingo! I realized where I’d seen the numbers 1-5-19-14. “The Masonic temple. I have to go there. Jane, you stay with Genevieve.”

  Jane looked pleadingly. “Mom. Please?”

  “Now don’t be down, little Sally. I got plenty of funnel cake to keep you happy, just like they make at the Allentown Fair with powdered sugar and everything.”

  “Mom!” Jane called again.

  I couldn’t stop to listen or worry. Jane would be safe with Genevieve. About ten pounds fatter when I returned, but safe.

  It didn’t take much to enter the Masonic temple, where Stiletto and I had made out in the storage room. All I had to tell the housekeeper, a broad woman in a gray dress with poorly dyed red hair and a deep Irish brogue, was that I’d lost an earring there the other night and ask if I could look for it. She held out her hand. I shook it and she instantly warmed.

  The secret handshake of the Order of the Eastern Star. How many other doors would it open?

  I went up the stairs, trying to remember where Stiletto had taken me. The temple was empty, aside from the housekeeper, who seemed more interested in salting the front steps than what I was up to.

  Was it four doors? Five doors? Definitely past the coat closet. I found it at the end of the hall. I put my hand on the doorknob and opened slowly. It was the storage room, all right. File cabinets, easels, folding chairs, card tables, the awards.

  Instantly, I was overcome with memories of Stiletto’s kisses, the insistent way he’d forced me in here, the fabulous passion and unquenchable hunger we had for each other.

  Mustn’t go there now, I thought, running my hand along the filing cabinets, looking for the plaque I’d seen the night I was here. There it was. Hanging in the same spot, untouched.

  It was in commemoration of the OES Northampton County Chapter’s inception on January 5, 1914. 1-5-19-14. Ada. Esther. Ruth. Martha. It was a long shot. Then again, it was too much of a coincidence not to be.

  Carefully, I removed the plaque from the wall and turned it over. Nothing but green felt. Disappointing. I shook it. There was no rattle. Damn.

  And then I saw it. The thinnest slip of plastic sticking out from the green felt backing. With my superb acrylic nails, I pinched the felt and pulled it slowly to reveal a CD in a thin plastic case affixed underneath.

  This, I was certain, was the star file and I bet it opened with Excel.

  There were footsteps in the hallway. Most likely the housekeeper coming to check on me. I had to act as if I’d been searching for an earring.

  I tossed my purse aside and went on my hands and knees. She would come in and ask if I’d found the earring. I would have to look disappointed and tell her no, but that it was okay. It hadn’t been worth anything and then she’d leave and I’d follow. I couldn’t wait to get back home and see what was on this CD.

  The linoleum tiled floor was incredibly dusty. My nose itched and I felt the pressure of an oncoming sneeze.

  Ah-choo!

  “God bless you,” a man’s voice said right as I felt the hard, unmistakable pressure of a gun on my vertebrae. This was not good.

  I glanced over my shoulder and was surprised to find Santa Claus in full costume, the white beard, the bushy white eyebrows, the apple cheeks, red suit and black boots, holding not only the gun, but also my purse.

  “Let’s go,” he said gruffly. “And hurry up. We don’t have much time.”

  Well, I guess that made sense. I mean, he sees me when I’m sleeping. He’s sees when I’m awake. He sees if I’ve been bad or good, so I better be good for goodness’ sake.

  I wasn’t about to pout or cry. I did as I was told. Santa Claus had come to town and he was looking for the star file.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  It was a sad sign that my initial reaction upon seeing the gun and then being forced to the basement of the temple was one of relief. Thank, God, I thought. I won’t have to go through that idiotic rehearsal dinner. I had nothing to wear, anyway.

  And then an even more promising concept: Maybe he’ll kill me so I won’t have to marry Dan! Talk about your lucky loophole. Death was the ultimate excuse, was it not?

  But . . . what about Stiletto? He’d asked me to meet him by seven under the Hill-to-Hill Bridge and already it was around one and I had the feeling jolly old St. Nick didn’t plan on letting me go, well, ever.

  “Keep moving,” he ordered, shoving the gun into the back of my neck as we descended a dark, musty-smelling cinder-block staircase. That was the problem with Lehigh basements: rot. Really, the Masonic temple should look into getting a dehumidifier before they contracted a bad case of black mold.

  We were in definite centipede territory now. I stepped carefully as we passed a roaring furnace and a dripping pump room.

  “It’s haunted, you know,” my captor said. “This mansion was built by Elisha Wilbur so he could keep an eye on the train track, make sure it was on time. Others have said they still see him at night, watching from the windows.”

  “And yet the trains are still late. How’s that for irony?” Irony and a rhetorical question in one. I was getting these down.

  We came to a padlocked door. It was superdank and cold. I rubbed my arms as he inserted the key and pushed me inside a pitch-black windowless room.

  The door shut. I heard him set the padlock.

  Well, this was pleasant. Cold. Wet. Disgusting.

  Flick! A flame lit and over it a horrendously made-up face glowed. Holy crap! It was Elisha Wilbur himself.

  “Hey, Bubbles.” Sandy leaned over and lit her cigarette. “Nice accommodations, say?”

  Sandy! She was alive. I impulsively hugged her and nearly got my hair singed in the process. “You’re okay! You’re not dead!”

  “Not yet.” She exhaled, coughed and pushed me off her. “They plan to kill us, you know.”

  “So I assumed.” I motioned for a drag, sucking in the scratchy smoke, which immediately made me light-headed and slightly nauseous. Only true addicts crave drugs that will make them light-headed and slightly nauseous.

  “Thanks.” I handed it back to her. “You’re calm, for someone who’s about to be killed.”

  She waved the cigarette, her lit tip making a glowing curlicue in the dark. “The way I look at it, at least I won’t have to face Martin.”

  This was true. “The way I look at it, at least I won’t have to get married.”

  “Two white chicks who would rather die in a Masonic temple basement than put up with their husbands. What does that say about the state of feminism today?”

  I thought about this. “Was that one of those rhetorical questions?”

  “You know,” she said, “I think it was.”

  “Yes!” I pumped my fist. Two in a row. “Though, Dan aside, I do worry about what my getting killed will do to Jane.” I didn’t mention Stiletto. I didn’t want to open that can of worms. (Honestly, what company cans worms?)

  Sandy finished her cigarette. “Jane will be fine. Someday she’ll write a book about you being murdered in the Masonic temple and she’ll be on Oprah. It’s the best thing you can do for her future, getting murdered. I bet Princeton accepts her right away.”

  Another excellent point. “What happened to you last night?”

  “I was in the club looking for you. Everyone just kind of left me. I went down some hallway and then I was grabbed.”

  “By whom?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t let me look at him. He threw a hood over my face and tied my hands behind my back.”

  I tried to picture that. “Odd that you can walk around Hubba, Hubba with a hood on your head and your hands tied behind your back but you’re not allowed to
get onstage and lick the dancers.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Where were the bouncers?”

  “Beats me. I was wearing a pillowcase, so I couldn’t see.” Sandy said this as though I were a moron for not remembering the hood. “Probably they thought I was a celebrity and wanted to leave incognito.”

  “Was it Phil Shatsky?”

  “I don’t think so. Phil’s kind of short. This guy was about my height.”

  “Like the Santa Claus who stuck the gun in my back and brought me down here,” I said.

  “Like Phil’s lover maybe?” she asked.

  I mulled this over. “No. It wasn’t Mark Knoffler. Mark’s nails were impressive. This Santa Claus had short, bitten, stubby nails.”

  “Ick.”

  Sandy and I sat on the damp, cold cement floor and shot the breeze for an indeterminable amount of time. We talked about babies. I told her about Stiletto and Dan’s threat to have Jane and me separated if I didn’t marry him.

  Sandy revealed that she’d been of the opinion that Dan was operating on an ulterior motive, though she hadn’t thought it was her place to say so. Like Vern the county clerk, she noted that Dan rarely, if ever, did anything for love. What he wanted was status and money, and he would go to any lengths to secure both.

  I told her about Dr. Caswell’s report and was surprised when Sandy laughed.

  “Dan paid her off. It’s obvious, Bubbles.”

  “But she’s a psychologist. She has a code of ethics.”

  “She also has bills to pay like the rest of us. Wasn’t Dan the one who found her in the first place?”

  “Right.” I thought about how Dr. Caswell served as Dan’s expert witness in those crazy I-found-a-finger-in-my-Big-Mac cases that he never won. “You mean . . . I’m not a bad mother?”

  “No. However, you are a schmuck for trusting your ex.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  That was when I burst out crying about how embarrassed I’d been, how the report had filled me with shame.

  “I’m gathering Stiletto doesn’t know, either.”