by Kelly Rey
"What's with the sugar overload?" Maizy asked. She was behind the wheel, having finally regained some of her mojo after the DMV blacklisting. She hadn't lost any of her skills. As usual, Maizy drove like the wheelperson of a getaway car. She'd lost the summer motif on her nails and gone with pure black with a grinning silver skull on each middle finger. Silver nose stud and Lord only knew what other studs in place. She wore a black leather vest as a shirt, torn-up jeans, and scuffed Doc Martens. The blue hair would have been right at home.
I'd gone with my usual jeans and T-shirt combination, heavy on the insect repellant. I smelled like a chemical bath, and next to her, I looked like I was on my way to the local Walmart to buy some white bread and whole milk.
"I'm trying to gain some weight." I popped two Kisses into my mouth. "So my clothes fit better."
"You're kidding, right?" she said. "You wear sweatpants half the time."
"My other clothes," I snapped.
"Why don't you just buy smaller clothes?" she asked.
I glowered at her. "Why don't you—"
"Oh, I get it," she cut in. "You're talking about the black thingy Uncle Curt bought you, right? What's the big deal? He gave you a blanket to cover yourself up, didn't he?"
"It was a bathrobe," I said.
"Whatever. I thought Uncle Curt had more game than that."
"His game is fine," I snapped. It was my game I was worried about. I didn't have one.
"The only way that black thingy'll fit better is if you buy some boobage," she said. "But you don't want to do that. You have a perfectly serviceable body."
"'Serviceable'?" I repeated.
"That's not an insult," she said. "It does what it's supposed to do, only with no bells and whistles. Like a manual lawn mower."
I closed my eyes.
"There are other ways to close the deal with Uncle Curt," she said. "I can help."
"Kind of wish you wouldn't," I told her.
"Wait," she said. "I know. This girl at school sticks chicken cutlets in her bra to get extra boobage. I saw it in gym class. I can ask her where she got them if you want."
I ate another Kiss. "Chicken cutlets?"
She nodded. "They're not real. They're made of rubber or something. But the way you cook—"
"Never mind," I snapped. "How do they look?"
"Bodacious," she said. "Except once the clothes come off, you're on your own."
"That's false advertising," I said.
"So what? Men have been doing that forever, right? I mean, why do you think tube socks were invented?"
"For women," I said. "We get cold feet."
"Men have been doing that forever, too," she said. "My mom's friend Winnie has been left at the altar six times, four times by the same guy. Winnie's a slow learner. Hey, you know what? You should sleep in the nude. Skin always fits."
"I'm not ready for nude," I said. "Do you sleep in the nude?"
"Me? No." She shook her head. "I sleep fully dressed. I never know when I'll have to deploy. But if I was as old as you, I might think about it. I mean, how many good years have you got left? Might as well make the most of them."
"I'll give it some thought," I said sourly.
"If you're ready for nicky-nack," she said cheerfully, "you're ready for nude. Your decision. Remember, you can always use the horse blanket Uncle Curt bought you."
"You're being unfair," I said. "It wasn't like that. It was really sweet."
"Is that what women want?" She hung a left and floored it. "Sweet?"
I thought about it while I massaged the whiplash from my neck. "Sometimes."
"What about the other times?"
"I'll tell you when you turn 18," I said.
"No, don't," she said. "I'm not that interested. I've got an agenda of my own. Gilbert Gleason turned up."
"The band's old agent?" I popped another Kiss. My supply was starting to dwindle. It was almost time to move on to the Kit Kat bars. "How'd you find that out?"
"Talked to his ex," she said. "He's staying at a trailer park not far from here. He's not very smart for a fugitive."
"Maybe he's not a fugitive," I pointed out. "Maybe he came back because he missed his family."
"Sure," she said. "That happens. You and your sister have lots of kumbaya moments."
"That's not fair." My sister and I couldn't have been more different. While I'd followed a high-powered career path of kowtowing to lawyers with dubious ethics, Sherri worked at a bridal shop and spent her spare time husband hunting. Her criteria were male and blond. She'd even dated Wally briefly, before his roots grew out, and then she'd gone back to Frankie Ritter. Frankie was a human troll, but he apparently had an endless stockpile of bleach.
"Maybe you've got a point," I conceded.
"I usually do," she agreed. "Anyway, the ex had plenty to say. Turns out Gilbert didn't give her a lot of 'sweet.' I think we should talk to him."
"And say what?" I asked. "Did you come back to town to kill Nicky D?"
She rolled her eyes. "You're embarrassing yourself. We just make strategic small talk while he does the neighborly thing and fixes our stove. He'll never suspect a thing."
Yeah, like I'd never heard that before. Wait. I shifted to face her. "What stove? We don't have a stove."
"Not with us," she said. "That would be weird. That's why we're going to borrow the one in the trailer across the street from his for a little while. Don't worry. I did some checking, and the place is empty. I think the owner is gone for eighteen months to five years."
"I don't like the sound of this," I told her. "We're supposed to be going to the Golden Grotto. Curt will be worried if we aren't there."
"He won't have time to worry," Maizy said. "He'll be busy with the old ladies stuffing money down his pants. He's just their type."
"Old ladies go to Virtual Waste concerts?" I couldn't see it.
"Only a few," Maizy said. "But they're real go-getters. That reminds me, I should've warned him to wear two pairs of underwear. I hear they can get kind of handsy."
I let out a snort. "What are you talking about? We're going to a concert, not a male strip show."
"Don't be such a noob," she said. "Women throw themselves at musicians all the time. Especially Susan Two. She's a legend."
I'd forgotten about Susan Two, but I doubted that she'd filed for Medicare yet. Every muscle in my body went rigid with indignation. "We have to get to the Golden Grotto now."
"We'll catch the second show," she said, unconcerned. "We've got important work to do."
Nothing was more important than keeping old women's hands out of Curt's pants. "Does the band have security?" I asked. "You know, to keep women from running onstage?"
"Oh, sure," Maizy said. "Flagler runs a tight ship. He moves pretty quick for an eighty-year-old, too."
I stared at her. "That's it? One eighty-year-old man?"
She shrugged. "Those women aren't animals."
I relaxed a little. "That's good to hear."
"They sneak backstage between sets instead," she said. She glanced at me. "Don't you trust Uncle Curt?"
"I don't have to trust him," I said. "We're not exclusive or anything."
She rolled her eyes. "You're delusional. What does he have to do? He gave you a horse blanket, didn't he? In some cultures that's as good as an engagement ring."
"I doubt that," I told her.
"Well, it means something," she insisted. "He gave you a horse blanket to put over a black silk nightie. You two might as well be married."
"I'm not having this conversation," I said. "And I don't think we should be doing this alone. It doesn't feel safe."
"Safe is relative," she said. "Two minutes from now, some doofus could try to run us off the road again. How safe would that be?"
I checked the side view mirror. Clear. Wish I could say the same for my head.
"Here, if it makes you feel better." She shoved a container of spray paint at me.
I hefted it in my right hand. "What's
this for?"
"Self-defense," she said. "Spray it, throw it. Your choice."
"Is that legal?"
She made a right onto yet another dirt road, this one less bumpy and hole-riddled than the one we'd been on a few nights earlier. Still, plumes of dust spun up from the tires and fanned out behind us like a train on a wedding gown.
"Is legality a concern?" she asked.
I couldn't swallow. "Let's just go to the Golden Grotto. We can talk to Gleason when Curt is with us."
"Too late." She pointed. "We're here."
Here was the Whispering Pines Mobile Park, a couple of acres of pine-needle-strewn ground carved out of the forest with trailer homes plunked down in rows meant to suggest careful urban planning. Each had a single parking slot. Many had potted flowers out front and American flags tethered to makeshift flagpoles. No sidewalks. No paved streets. No street lights. Just flickering ambient lighting from television sets or overly optimistic landscape lighting.
It was very quiet. Too quiet. The sort of quiet you get right before that hand shoots up from the grave to grab you by the ankle.
"Gilbert's on C Street," Maizy said. "That should be the next one."
Street was a grandiose description for a dirt path without curbs wide enough to accommodate a car.
A black cat darted out from our left, slinked across in front of us, and disappeared between two mobile homes.
"Uh-oh," Maizy said. "That can't be good."
"Nothing about this is good," I muttered. Right that very minute, Susan Two could be moisturizing her hands.
Maizy stopped in front of a trailer on the right and pointed. "Gilbert's place is over there. I don't see a van, though. His ex said he had a van."
The vehicle of choice for homicidal maniacs everywhere.
"And this one's ours," Maizy added.
Our trailer had the look of vacancy, with no lights and no decorations.
An open ladder sat in front of the door.
"You have got to be kidding me," I said. "I'm not walking under that."
"Me, either," Maizy said. "It's bad mojo."
We sat there looking at the ladder.
"It's not the mojo," I said. "It's a safety issue. That ladder could fall at any moment."
"Agreed," Maizy said. "Plus it's the mojo."
I turned to her. "I guess we're going to be able to make the first show after all. It starts in fifteen minutes. You can turn around right up there."
"Go move the ladder," Maizy said.
I frowned. "You go move the ladder."
"I've got to park the car," she said, "while you move the ladder."
"I'm not moving it," I said. "Someone put it there for a reason."
"They put it there to make it look like someone's working on the place, which they're not. Go on, before someone notices us just sitting here."
I didn't know who that someone could possibly be. I'd seen cemeteries with more activity than the Whispering Pines Mobile Park. Then I thought of the maybe-a-deer-but-probably-the-Jersey-Devil attack earlier in the week and figured we'd be safer in the trailer, so I heaved a sigh and got out of the car, slashing through the predictable fog of insects that swarmed me.
A few minutes later, we were standing in Felon X's living room while I scratched a half dozen new bites. It was too dark to distinguish detail, but I didn't get the impression he watched a lot of HGTV. The place was kind of a mess. It even smelled dusty. Trust me, I knew that smell.
"Here's the story," Maizy said. She'd moved away from me while I'd been admiring the décor, her voice coming from off to my left. "I'm the girlfriend. I just came by to check on the place, and I found the stove broken."
I squinted into the darkness. "But what if it isn't broken?"
I heard a snap.
"It is now," she said. "Where's the light switch?"
"Are you sure you want to actually see this place?" I asked.
"It'll be hard to explain to Gilbert Gleason why we're in the dark," she said.
Not necessarily. Being in the dark was a way of life for me.
I heard Maizy toggling a light switch. A light bulb flashed, popped, and sizzled faintly into blackness.
"Slight complication," she said. "Do you happen to have any light bulbs?"
"It's probably for the best," I said. "Listen, how do we know that the guy who lives here doesn't have a real girlfriend that Gleason might have seen?"
"Fine," Maizy said. "Then I'm the cousin. But I have to tell you, I'm not comfortable being related to a felon. It doesn't comport with my life code."
That's what I needed, a life code. Or a new pastime. One that didn't find me groping around a stranger's smelly trailer in the dark and questioning murder suspects. My eyes were gradually starting to adjust, although I wished they weren't. Darkness was much kinder to the place than the light.
"Can we go now?" I asked.
"Not yet," Maizy said. "Let's wait a few minutes. Gilbert might've just run out to buy cigarettes."
"Well, let's leave the door open," I said. "And I'm going to open the windows, too."
"Be careful moving around," Maizy said. "We don't want to knock anything—"
Something bounced off my hands and crashed to the floor.
Maizy activated the flashlight app on her phone and directed it downward. "Uh-oh."
A pepper shaker lay there, which didn't bother me, except its companion salt shaker lay right beside it, and that did. The cap broken, a little mound of salt bleeding from the top.
"That's bad mojo," Maizy said.
"I wish you'd stop saying that." I grabbed a few pinches of salt and tossed them over my shoulder.
"This is starting to feel creepy," Maizy said.
Starting to? When it wasn't itching, my skin had been in full prickle since we'd turned into the Whispering Pines. The whole neighborhood was too quiet and still. It was unnatural. I could hear the breeze soughing high in the trees, just the way Eunice had described it right before the Jersey Devil's appearance.
"Listen, Maize," I said. "I don't think Gilbert Gleason is coming back anytime soon."
"Yeah." She was quiet for a second. "It might be a good opportunity to check out his real trailer."
"I'm not stepping foot in another trailer tonight," I said.
"But there might be evidence," she said.
"Like what? A picture of an amplifier?"
"Like a written confession," Maizy said. "Lying on the night table next to the open bottle of sleeping pills."
I must have missed something. "What sleeping pills?"
"The ones he used to kill himself," Maizy said. "On account of he was riddled with guilt over killing Nicky D."
"Now there's a dead body in there, too?"
"Not necessarily," she said. "He could have spontaneously combusted."
Oh, for Pete's sake.
"Forget it," I said. "I'm not going in his trailer."
"You don't have to," she said. "You can wait outside and give me the signal if anyone shows up."
I didn't want to wait outside. Outside was where you-know-who lived.
"Then you can wait in the car," Maizy said.
"Will you please stop doing that?" I blew out an exasperated sigh. "Fine. What's the signal?"
"Blow once on the kazoo."
"What kazoo?" I asked. "I don't have a kazoo."
"You don't?" she said. "You left it home?"
"Yes, Maizy," I said. "I left my kazoo home."
"Then just blow the horn," she said. "And have the car running. We may need to make a quick getaway. You should probably wait in the passenger seat."
"You know," I said, "Just because his van isn't here doesn't mean he isn't. Maybe he traded it in for a pickup that just happens to be in the shop right now."
"Good point," Maizy said. She painted a circle around our feet with the light. I didn't look. I didn't want to know what was down there. Then she swept it quickly over the walls, where I caught quick glimpses of NASCAR posters as wall art. "
We need to find out who owns that, too," she added.
"Tried that," I said. "It didn't go so well."
"But now we have a secret weapon," she said. "Eunice. Ask her to cook something, and we'll go see Hank again."
"Okay, fine." I'd offer to hand-feed him if it got me out of that dingy little trailer. "Now let's get to the Golden Grotto."
"Did you forget already?" she said. "I'm going to check out Gilbert Gleason's trailer."
"Fine," I snapped. "Then let's get to it."
"Wait." Her voice was hushed. "Look at that penny."
It wasn't doing anyone any good lying there on the ratty indoor/outdoor carpeting. I reached for it.
She grabbed my arm. "Don't. It's heads down."
"So? It spends the same either way."
"Heads down is bad mojo," she said.
"Will you stop saying mojo?" I threw her off more forcefully than I'd intended to, knocking her arm upward. Her cell phone flew out of her hand and smashed into the mirror above the sofa. A splinter appeared diagonally across the face of the mirror.
"Oh, come on!" Maizy yelled.
"That's seven years of bad mojo," I said kind of snidely.
"For you," Maizy said. "You broke it."
"It was your phone," I said.
"But you knocked it out of my hand," she said. "I was just trying to save you from yourself."
"Don't do me any favors," I snapped. "If I'd had my way, I'd be at the Golden Grotto right now watching Curt perform instead of in this dark, smelly—"
"Look out!" Maizy yelled, shoving me out of the path of the giant black bird that had just soared in through the open door. It settled on the back of the sofa, shook its head, spread its wings, stretched its legs, and sat there staring at us with beady little black bird eyes.
Maizy and I looked at each other.
"We'll check out Gilbert Gleason's trailer another time," Maizy said.
"Last one to the door pays the cover charge," I said. And I'm proud to say it wasn't me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Twenty minutes later, after we'd finished calculating the ninety-two years of bad luck that were headed our way, Maizy said, "It was a good plan."
I had my doubts about that, but I was so happy to have the Whispering Pines behind us that I said, "It got a little weird back there is all."
