Scot Free

by Catriona McPherson

  “No deal,” said Kathi. “You open that door and I will throw you out onto the street with my own two hands.”

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” said Todd. “You are going to go to my room and get a roll of extra-wide duct tape. You will bring it back here and seal all four edges of that bathroom door. And then Kathi and I are going to walk out. Kathi, I’m going to go somewhere else for the rest of the night, but you can come with me.”

  “We’re not going anywhere!” came Roger’s voice from outside. “There’s nowhere else to go!”

  “You can stay here if you like but … ” Todd began. His voice shook and his cheeks had flushed.

  “Roger,” I called. “I’m in session here. Eavesdropping is not part of the process.”

  That was California-ese for piss off out of it, sunshine and I had delivered it perfectly. I heard Roger’s bare feet slapping on the concrete as he schmopped off.

  “You too,” I called and heard the muffled thumps of Noleen’s bunny slippers retreating too.

  “What went wrong,” I said, turning back to Todd and Kathi, “was that your expectations were confounded and that tipped you into crisis. Todd, you were expecting an empty room you could light up and check for bugs before using the bathroom and, Kathi, you were expecting a room untouched since you last left it. Am I right? But you met each other and lost your balances?”

  “No,” said Kathi. “We met each other and that was a bonus. I said I would check the bathroom and then Todd could use it.”

  I smiled at her. “You are a kind woman and a good friend,” I said. “It’s an act of love for you to project all your anxiety onto imagined dirt instead of onto your friend.”

  “And as for me, if Kathi hadn’t been here, I might have had a stroke and died. Or a heart attack and died. Or an aneurysm and—”

  “You can’t have an aneurysm from shock,” I said. “So you could only have died twice at the most. But you didn’t. What did happen? After you found each other in here?”

  “We opened the bathroom door,” said Todd. “Duh.”

  “And then?”

  “Armageddon.”

  “The seventh circle of hell.”

  “Catastrophising language doesn’t help you,” I said kindly but firmly. “Now how about this. We’ll talk for just five minutes now, then we’ll all go back to bed and back to sleep and we’ll talk for ten more minutes tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” said Kathi, but she was watching me closely for clues to the catch.

  “What’s the catch?” said Todd.

  “First I open the bathroom door and we all look at the pristine, bug-free emptiness.”

  Todd dropped Kathi’s feet and they both sprang up to stand pressed against the back wall, once more clutching each other.

  “Okay,” I said. “You take any precautions you need to. You’re not screaming now, so that’s an improvement. Well done. Good work, both of you.”

  I slid down off the table, gave them a beaming smile, and opened the bathroom door.

  My first thought was that the illegal insecticide Kathi got from her cousin in Costa Rica was strangely fragranced, like formic acid, or vinegar maybe. That was it. It smelled like a very old banana in a pickle jar.

  I clicked the light on.

  Legions upon legions of shiny red-brown insects skittered and scuttled over every surface. The folds of the shower curtain seethed with them. A helpless wriggling heap of them roiled in the bottom of the wash basin and the should-be-white lino was spattered all over with the reeking crumbs of their droppings.

  I gulped and snatched at air, clawing for a breath to scream with but stuck like a gargoyle with my eyes bulging out and my voice turned to dust. Until, that was, one of the stinking little shitbags crawled onto my foot and bit me.

  “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, THEY’RE REAL!” I howled, kicking off my attacker and trying to squish him. He didn’t squish. He crunched. I slammed the bathroom door shut, blatted the room door open, grabbed Todd and Kathi, one in each hand, and fell out into the safety of the big bad world.

  “There’s an in—” I screamed, but there were still half a dozen guests clustered around the walkway hoping for more action and infestation isn’t a word hotel guests want to hear. “—teresting discussion to be had here,” I finished, quite a lot quieter. “Where can we go to talk?”

  Roger and Noleen were loitering over by the chain-link fence around the swimming pool, trying to look as if they just happened to have met and were passing the time of day, silk boxers and granny nightie with the ruffle neck and rosebuds notwithstanding

  ∞

  Funny thing was, Todd and Kathi came down larky and it was Noleen and Roger, after one peek round the bathroom door, who sat pale and shaking in the little private office behind reception, checking the corners and scratching now and then.

  “Your face!” said Todd to me for the fourth time. He caught Kathi’s eye and they both snorted.

  “Take a deep cleansing breath and feast your eyes on the pristine bug-free emptiness,” said Kathi in a truly terrible Scottish accent.

  “Sod off,” I told her. “I’ve never said ‘deep, cleansing breath’ in my life.”

  “If you three could stop reliving happy memories,” said Noleen, “what the hell are we going to do?”

  “Getting that extra-wide duct tape and sealing round the door would be a good start,” I said. “We wouldn’t want them to swarm.”

  “It’s bees that swarm,” said Todd. “Not … ”

  “Right?” said Roger. “That’s the thing. What the hell are they?”

  “And where in God’s name did they come from?” said Noleen.

  “Do you think it’s just that one room?” Kathi said, which sobered everyone.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” said Noleen, twisting round in her chair to look at the wall clock. “Six forty-five. People will be getting up.”

  “But what in God’s name are they?” I said.

  “And,” said Roger, “where the hell did they come from?”

  The rest of us ran through these questions a few more times, while he made off to get the duct tape and start sealing, and we concluded we didn’t know and hadn’t a clue.

  “Cindy Slagle,” Roger said, returning after a few minutes and scrubbing his hands briskly at the utility sink. He made a proper job of it, what with being a surgeon and all, but still he had to shudder once when he was done. “She’s an entomologist at the university. We had her in once at work to consult on—” He stopped. “I promised Todd I’d never tell him.”

  “Why an entomologist was called in to paediatrics?” I said. “I’m with Todd. I don’t want to know.”

  “But she won’t be able to tell us how they got in there, will she?” Todd said. “I mean, they didn’t just look in the window and like what they saw.”

  “Someone—” said Kathi.

  “Don’t say it,” said Noleen.

  “Someone—”

  “Kathi, don’t say it.”

  “Let me speak! Someone put them in there.”

  “So we call the cops,” I said.

  “No,” came a chorus of four voices.

  Noleen and Kathi I could understand. Police call-outs are public record in California. It makes for one of the more entertaining items in the Cuento Voyager each week. Verbal domestic dispute: parties counseled and Failure to stop at a red light: warning issued and the occasional Texting while travelling by skateboard after dark against flow of traffic without lights: kids today. I don’t know which of the Cuento cops wrote up the blotter, but they had a sense of humour.

  And Mike struck me as a straight dealer. I didn’t understand why Todd and Roger would be against the notion.

  “I’ll text Cindy,” Roger said. He patted his sides as though searching nonexistent pockets for his phone and only then see
med to realize how nearly naked he was. He stood, cleared his throat, and made to leave.

  “And I’d better … ” said Noleen, looking down at her nightie for the first time.

  Well, none of us had stopped to put on a cocktail dress when we heard screaming, had we? As I had the thought I glanced at my own outfit and was surprised to see spaghetti straps and a groin-high split. I stood, holding the split together to mid-thigh.

  “And I’ll just … ” I said, following the others.

  “Can you stand to look them up on the internet?” Kathi was saying, as we all trooped away through the front office.

  “Could I trawl through pics of bugs?” said Todd. “That’s no’ verrrry kind and prrrotective.” He was doing my voice again.

  “What’s the prob with the cops?” I asked Roger, trotting to catch up as he took the stairs three at a time towards our rooms.

  He looked at me a while then, just as he opened his mouth to speak, the door of the Disneyland-to-Oregon tourists banged open and the husband one, even more disgruntled than before, skewered me with a glare and jabbed his finger at me.

  “Your phone’s ringing off the hook,” he said. “This place is a joke. And we’ve been to India!”

  “What did India do to des—” said Roger.

  “Answer the goddam phone!” said the tourist and turned his back, stalking off, the glitter-paint of his magic castle winking.

  Twelve

  I said goodbye to Roger and went to answer the goddam phone.

  It was Visalia, with a very timely offer for someone who wanted to quiz experts about firework-lore. She was going to the factory to address the work force and wanted moral support.

  “I think it’s marvellous of you to go and I think it’s very wise of you to take someone,” I said. “But—I think I mentioned this, Vi—I’m not much of a one for fireworks. I don’t actually think I’m the best choice. What about Father Adam?”

  “But Lexy, there won’t be any fireworks going off. Why, a firework factory is the last place on earth you’d ever hear fireworks or see them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, if you’re sure … ”

  “You’d be more likely to get shot in a bullet factory.”

  She probably thought that would comfort me.

  “In that case, I’d be delighted. Will I meet you there or can I pick you up at home and drive you?” Either way was fine by me. I could go early to the factory and schmooze the drones before she arrived or go early to The Oaks and find whatever Mike didn’t want me to find.

  “Oh, Lexy,” she said. “I’d love you to come and get me. Oh! What would I do without you?”

  Lean on her niece, nephew-in-law and, at a push, their cousins, I thought.

  “Glad to help,” I said. “I’ll be there at ten.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” she said. “I’ve got an appointment at nine with Father Adam, as it happens. But that’s something I need to do alone.”

  “Confession?” I said.

  There was a long fluffy silence on the line, like tumbleweed in aural form, and a couple of crackles, like crickets.

  “No,” Visalia said at last. “Father Adam doesn’t approve of my plans for Clovis’s send-off and he is punishing me by withholding the sacraments.”

  “He is?” I thought of the flip-flops and whale-saving bangles and couldn’t see it somehow. “Can he do that? Can’t you report him to the Bishop or something?”

  “He’s got me,” said Visalia. “We’re not supposed to confess a sin we’re planning to commit again.”

  “But don’t you pretty much just confess the same stuff every week?” I asked.

  “Planning to,” said Visalia. “That’s where you get the wiggle room. But Father Adam says Cousin Clovis spoke to him often about his horror of cremation and together they talked about the best kind of mausoleum. So he—Father Adam, this is—doesn’t believe that I’m carrying out Clovis’s wishes. Which is a sin. And I can’t confess it unless I cancel the funeral plans. And I can’t take Mass without confession. So I’m screwed.”

  “Sin?” I asked. “Did he tell you what sin? It sounds like a con.”

  “What? What sin do you think it is? Disobeying your husband, cara. An oldie but a goodie.”

  For a minute I couldn’t speak. Then I couldn’t stop. “Gimme a break! I mean, donnez moi un BREAK! That sanctimonious bachelor with a pedicure actually spouted this shit to you on a pastoral visit? When he was supposed to be comforting you? I hope you sent him packing with a foot up the Bermuda shorts, Vi. JESUS!”

  “Calm down,” Visalia said. “His hands are tied, if you’ll pardon the expression. Can’t fight two saints and two Popes. It’ll blow over.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I mean … wow. Vi, I have my opinions about schools of thought and psychological models, but I will ditch every one of them before I’d use them against you. WOW!”

  “You’re a good girl, Lexy,” Vi said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “I’ll be there at ten,” I said. I’ll be there at nine, I thought. Neighbours, beware!

  Here’s the thing about America. Okay, one of the things, as well as the portions, the outlandish friendliness, the penchant for genealogy, and the renaissance fairs: It’s huge. If you fly from coast to coast looking out the window you’ll go cross-eyed and slack-jawed from the yawning impossible enormousness of it.

  And yet all the houses around Casa Bombaro, each probably worth a cool few million, were jammed onto acre plots. Just room for an ostentatious drive, enough lawn to make it worth having the sprinklers rotate, a house ten times bigger than anyone needed, a garage for three times as many cars as they owned, and a swimming pool to accommodate the household plus enough guests to fill the garage for the weekend.

  They called their acre plots “estates,” even though you could see the boundary fence from every window in the house. There was no home farm, no grouse moor, no timber forests, and no row of cottages for rosy-cheeked yokels to sleep in after long hard days spent in servitude.

  Anyway, the upshot of a huge house on a tiny lot was that I reckoned there were four sets of neighbours who could easily be engaged in a war with Clovis Bombaro and might have got fed up with attrition and decided to go into battle once and for all: the houses on either side, the house across the back fence, and the one over the road. There were two more who shared a corner of the back fence, but they had their own neighbours pressing in close on four sides of their million-dollar piles, so I shelved them.

  I was feeling confident bordering smug about knocking on their doors too, because I had stopped off at the thrift store and invested in an old but unmarked Pyrex dish, the white kind with a motif of little blue flowers and a clear glass lid; the sort of thing that might have been a wedding present in the fifties. What Californians would call, quite without irony, an antique.

  I marched up the path of the house opposite Casa Boom, put a bright smile on my face, remembered the context, toned it down a notch, and rang the bell.

  It was answered by a woman so identical to Brandeee that I took a step back before a second glance clued me in. She actually had darker hair, bigger teeth, ropier biceps, and tighter work-out clothes.

  “Yes?” she said, casting a scathing look at me.

  “Is this yours?” I asked, holding out the empty casserole. “Mrs. Bombaro just said the neighbour sent it over and asked me to return it. She didn’t say which neighbour and she’s napping.”

  “Who?” said Not-Brandeee.

  “Visalia Bombaro,” I said. “Across the way there. Her husband died on the Fourth?”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, no. A casserole? No, not me.”

  “So you weren’t aware of the incident?”

  “Not until the disturbance.”

  “You heard it?”

  “And saw it. Two police cars, with lights flashing and e
ngines running. I’ve sent an email.”

  “I’m sure you have,” I said, and moved on to the neighbour on the east side.

  “What kind of casserole?” said the not-quite-Brandeee I found there. She was in uniform—yoga pants, Lycra top, iPhone, and go-cup. It seemed a strange question and I couldn’t muster an answer at first, since nobody with running shoes that matched her Fitbit ever made shepherd’s pie, braised oxtail, or liver and onions.

  “Coq au vin?” I said at last, which was basically spotted dick all over again, only with no teenaged boy to find it funny.

  The woman blushed, frowned, then called over her shoulder. “Luisa? Did you bring a dish from home with a chicken braise for poor old Mrs. B?”

  “No, Mrs. Mandeee,” came a voice from the innards of the house. Practically.

  And so, since the poor old had seemed genuine enough, I left it there and moved on to the neighbour on the west side.

  “Certainly not,” said the third woman. I’ll call her Kandeee. “That old thing? I use brushed steel and I’m vegan.”

  I believed her.

  “And were you at home when Mr. Bombaro died? Visalia wants to know but can’t bring herself to ask.”

  “On the Fourth of July?” Kandeee said. “Of course not. I was giving service to veterans.”

  I was pretty sure she didn’t mean she was a hooker, but I checked anyway. “Service?”

  “At the soup kitchen.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Kind of warm for soup, though, isn’t it?”

  “Chilled eggplant gazpacho,” she said.

  “Ah,” I said again and left quickly before I punched her.

  I got back in the car to go round the block to the neighbour over the back fence, wondering just a bit if investigating was really this easy or if I was doing it wrong.

  The fourth place was as big a spread as the Bombaro “estate” but built on different lines. To my eye, it looked more like a house and less like a medical centre. It was white, with symmetrical windows and a proper peaked roof on top. It had pillars on either side of its red door and a brick path lined with roses, pruned like lollipops.