by Susan Kandel
Anita? Or somebody else?
Cops don’t make that kind of mess.
The bed was unmade. White sheets, high thread count, half ripped off the mattress. I hoped the last night of Anita’s life had been filled with wild sex, not bad dreams.
There was nothing much underneath the bed. A stained T-shirt. Dust balls. A jump rope.
I rose to my feet.
Aha.
A desk.
Desks are important places.
Desks are where people keep things.
This one was ersatz Chippendale, with ornate legs, fretwork, and gold leaf. The surface was covered with pages torn out of magazines. There were pictures of watches on most of them. Expensive watches. Gold Rolexes and Omegas and Cartier tank watches modeled by beautiful tennis players with impressive serves. Maybe the boyfriend who liked bedsheet-ripping sex and Slim Jims was the generous sort.
The desk had only one drawer. I slid it open. Then I closed it with my elbow. I was out of my mind. I needed gloves. The last thing I needed to do was leave fingerprints.
Back in the kitchen, I opened the cabinet under the sink and found a dozen pairs of rubber gloves, all white. Anita must’ve liked a clean kitchen. I slid a pair on. They were too big, but I wasn’t complaining.
The last time I’d worn white gloves was junior prom. They were silk, full-length, and crushed slightly at the wrist. My gown was red chiffon, with a matching shawl. I’d wanted to wear lavender, but my mother talked me out of it, claiming that psychologists had proven that the majority of men do not like the purple family.
I took a seat at the desk and resumed the search.
Inside the drawer was a stack of take-out menus: Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Indian, Brazilian.
Then there were catalogs: Bliss Spa, Harry & David, Robert Redford’s Sundance catalog, where you could buy a high mountain earflap hat, a vintage Tyrolean sled, or a set of peace-sign coffee mugs.
A huge pile of credit-card solicitations. Anita must’ve been a pack rat.
Some change-of-address forms. Maybe she was planning to move.
At last. Her Filofax.
I flipped it open to the week of October 22.
And there it was.
Wednesday, October 26th, 5:00 p.m.
It was marked with the letter B.
That was no help.
B for Beachwood Canyon?
Or B for the bastard who killed her?
Shit.
I looked up.
Someone was at the front door.
Diving into the Bloomingdale’s pile was an option, but I worried about suffocation.
There were footsteps in the hallway now.
I dashed into the closet, pulled the accordion doors shut, and squeezed my eyes shut.
This was the scary part of the movie.
Like when the heroine decides to get out of the car along the deserted highway even though everybody knows the psycho killer is waiting for her behind a bush with a hatchet.
Or when the beautiful lady detectives who are supposed to be upstairs drinking coffee come wandering down the hallway to catch the falsely accused killer as she tries to abscond with clues as to the real killer’s identity, while wearing the dead woman’s rubber gloves.
Or worse yet, when the guy being blackmailed breaks into the person’s apartment to destroy the evidence against him but winds up killing an innocent, barefoot bystander with big brown hair and a pageant-worthy smile.
The footsteps were in the bedroom now.
Something was clawing at the doors to the closet.
I held my breath. It was only a matter of time. I looked around wildly. Could you impale someone with a hanger?
“Charley?”
I heard meowing.
“Come here, you bad boy. Let’s go back upstairs. I can’t have you wandering around the dead lady’s apartment.”
His nails scratched against the wooden floor as she swooped him up.
“But first, let’s grab that bottle of Chardonnay out of her fridge. She can’t drink it anymore, can she? No reason it should go to waste.”
That made two times Charley had crossed my path in one day. Like I needed more bad luck.
I waited until I heard them close the front door, then I made a run for it.
Back at home, I had another message from Bachelor Number One.
Who happened to be named Ben.
Which starts with a B.
Ben had been at the theater that night. He could’ve easily dropped the phone in my purse. He could’ve set this whole thing up.
But B could just as easily stand for bald.
Or blonde in a robin’s-egg blue dress, for that matter.
Before I drove myself completely crazy, I returned Ben’s call and suggested we meet for dinner the following night at Musso’s. The idea was to kill two birds with one stone. Plus I remembered how delicious their pork chops were.
What I forgot, however, was that multitasking is not for the faint of heart.
Chapter 12
Neither is babysitting for two children under the age of four.
“Higher!” Alexander shrieked. “Faster!”
“Okay,” I said. “Be careful what you wish for!” Panting for air, sweat dripping into my eyes, I gave him a shove. As the swing ascended, rusty metal poles quaking, Alexander kicked his heels together and his light-up tennis shoes shot into the sky like tiny rockets to Mars.
“Whee!” he cried. “Again!”
Hitchcock had a theory about swings. Swings are the gateway drug. By age five, you’re already craving the adrenaline rush. Then come roller coasters and haunted houses and before you know it you’re an unregenerate addict, sitting in a dark movie theater, heart pounding, as Marion Crane gets stabbed to death in the shower of the Bates Motel.
“Bet you can’t fly like Spiderman,” Alexander said to the boy on the swing next to him, who was dragging his feet in the sand, enthralled by something he’d found in his nose. “I can! I can fly!”
“With great power comes great responsibility,” I said.
“I’m ‘sponsible!”
“Of course you are.” I grabbed hold of the swing to slow him down, then unhooked the safety chain. “Which is why we’ve got to stop and take care of your sister now.”
“We left her at the gas station.” He wriggled out of his seat and ran toward the giant steel mesh octopus that sprayed water every fifteen seconds.
I glanced over at Radha, asleep in her stroller. Her little chest moved up and down, as regular as the waves at sea. I pulled up her blanket and tucked it under her chin. “Why would we have left this angel at the gas station?”
Alexander was now hanging upside down from one of the octopus’s tentacles. “Because she’s full of gas, of course!”
The kid on the swing guffawed appreciatively.
At nine o’clock this morning, I’d gone over to Annie and Vincent’s sprawling house in Topanga Canyon to pick up the children. We’d arranged it over a month ago, back when I was still a beloved member of the family. It was a very important day for all of us. Alexander’s mother—with whom Vincent had been involved prior to meeting Annie—had pulled another disappearing act, only this time she’d had the sense to relinquish her maternal rights before taking off.
Today was the day Annie and Vincent were due to appear in court so that Annie could sign the adoption papers. Today was the day Alexander would officially become her son. But she’d been his mother from the moment he’d first given her one of his beautiful, crooked smiles. And I’d been his grandmother. Despite being in the full flower of my youth, I might add.
Now Alexander was digging in the sand with a yellow Bob the Builder shovel someone had left behind.
“I’m going to China,” he said.
“That’s wonderful, honey. I’ll just be over here, okay?” I pushed Radha’s stroller onto the curb and over to an unoccupied bench. “Stay where I can see you, please.”
I hated to wake a sleepin
g baby, but she needed changing. I opened Annie’s diaper bag, which was the size and heft of a carry-on, and dug through the toys and snacks and changes of clothes until I found the fully biodegradable aloe vera—infused baby wipes; a clean, fair trade white cloth diaper; and the hundred-percent-recycled changing pad.
Radha was light as a feather. “Hello, angel,” I whispered into her little pink ear. She had Vincent’s ears, slightly pointed at the top. But those were Annie’s lips and Annie’s nose. And Annie’s unearthly cry. I remembered it well.
“Uh-oh, you woke up the baby,” said Alexander, ambling over with the kid from the swing in tow. “She doesn’t like it when you do that.”
“Uh-oh,” opined his new friend.
The howling intensified.
“Sometimes,” Alexander continued, “she screams for a whole hour. Mommy and Daddy get very sad.”
“I never get sad,” I said.
Radha squirmed and shrieked, her face turning the color of a pomegranate. But not counting the small amount of blood I drew when I poked myself with the diaper pin, she was no match for me.
“I’m going to give her a bottle now,” I announced.
“The hot rod hates milk,” Alexander said.
Hot Rod was Gambino’s nickname for Radha. It’d stuck.
Alexander’s friend tapped me on the shoulder. He looked like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. “The ice cream truck is here. Can I have a snow cone?”
There was something missing from this picture. “Where’s your mommy, little boy?” I asked, hoisting the still-crying baby onto my shoulder.
Alfalfa spun around, then turned back to me and shrugged his shoulders. “She went home.”
I plugged the baby’s mouth with a pacifier. Then I knelt down in front of the little boy. “What do you mean she went home?”
“Look around,” Alfalfa said. “No mommies here.”
It was true. We were the only people left in the park. The dark clouds had driven everyone away. Even the ice cream man had turned on his creepy music and was decamping for sunnier climes. I felt a droplet hit my nose. Then, without warning, it started to pour.
“Head for cover, boys!” I tucked Radha into her stroller and pointed toward the small brick building by the parking lot in which the senior center and park office were housed.
Hooting and whooping in delight, the boys ran across the soggy grass. I pulled down the stroller’s hood and followed, instantly regretting it as the spokes of the wheels quickly filled with mud and wet leaves, then locked up entirely so that I had to pick the thing up and run with it the rest of the way. By some miracle, though, the bouncing had soothed the baby, and by the time I put her down under the pergola she was sleeping contentedly, dry as a whistle, which was more than I could say for the rest of us.
After shaking ourselves off, we went into the office, which smelled like freshly brewed coffee and cinnamon rolls. But there was nobody seated behind the front desk. Maybe they were all taking their break. At times like these, I always wondered why I hadn’t become a civil servant.
“Hello!” I called out, peering down the hall. “Anybody back there? I’ve got a lost kid here.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Alfalfa said, squeezing his legs together. “Also my feet are wet.”
“Can you hold it in for a minute?” I asked. “Until we see about your mom?”
“Okay.” He uncrossed his legs and went over to a little blue table in the corner of the waiting area, picked up a copy of Highlights, and started reading it upside down.
“Do you know your phone number?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “It has a three in it.”
“I have to go to the bathroom, too,” said Alexander.
“Honey, please just hold it while I think for a minute. Hello! Hello!”
Still no answer.
“Stay here, boys,” I said, “while I go back there and look for somebody.”
Pushing the stroller determinedly in front of me, I walked behind the desk and into the corridor, my wet sneakers slapping the cheap linoleum. All the doors were shut. I banged on them successively, but to no avail.
Back in the waiting area, both boys were on the verge of tears.
“No need to worry.” I smiled hysterically. “Let’s go to the bathroom, then we’ll figure out what to do.”
That’s when they really started to cry. That woke up the baby, who joined them in a rousing three-part harmony.
Just as we were heading out, a hatchet-faced woman with freckles came storming in, a uniformed cop behind her.
“That’s the one!” shouted the hatchet face. “She’s the one who snatched my son!”
I stepped back, incredulous. “What?”
“You should take those other children into protective custody.” She grabbed Alfalfa by the collar and pulled him toward her. “Are you hurt, Freddy? Why are you crying?”
“He’s crying because you abandoned him in the park! And don’t even think about going near my grandkids! Sir,” I said, turning to the policeman, “this child was left in the park, and we came here hoping to reunite him with his mother.”
“I’m sure this has all been a simple misunderstanding,” the cop said. “Can I see your driver’s license, Miss?”
I shot a triumphant look at the hatchet face, dug around in my purse, and handed it to him.
“Anita Colby,” he read. “1475 Havenhurst. Is that your current address, Ms. Colby?”
Pride goeth before a fall.
“Uh, that’s not the right one.” I grabbed Anita’s license out of his hand and shoved it back in my purse, digging deeper until I found my own. “Here it is. Cece Caruso. Just look at the picture.” I pulled my wet, straggly hair back off my face. “See? It’s me. Okay, so maybe I’ve gained a couple of pounds.”
The cop sat us all down, then turned away while he punched my driver’s license number into his handheld computer. After a couple of minutes, he said, “I think we’ve got a situation here.”
“A situation?” I asked meekly.
“Seems you’re wanted for questioning in another matter.” He paused a beat. “The Anita Colby matter?”
I swallowed hard.
“I’m supposed to let you know, Ms. Caruso, that you are expected at the twenty-eighth precinct Sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. for a sit-down with Detectives McQueen and Collins. I’m assuming their names are ringing a bell?”
I nodded.
“That’s this Sunday. The day after tomorrow. I apologize in advance if it interferes with your worship schedule. You with me?”
I nodded again.
“I’d like to suggest you bring a lawyer. That’s just my advice. I’m only telling you because you seem like a nice person. And you’ve got grandkids and all. My grandma’s back in Oregon. She raised me.” He started tearing up. “Anyway, you can go now.”
“That’s it?” asked Freddy’s mom in disbelief.
“You okay, kid?” the cop asked Freddy. “Lady didn’t try to snatch you, did she?”
“Nope,” Freddy replied. “But she wouldn’t buy me a snow cone, neither.”
“Remember to drive safely,” the cop said. “Precious cargo, ladies.”
Freddy stuck out his tongue at me in parting.
I reciprocated because I’m that kind of person.
Chapter 13
The children slept the whole way home, but Alexander perked up the moment he saw Vincent and Annie.
“Grandma got in trouble with the police!” he yelled, leaping into his father’s open arms. “We’ll miss her when she goes to jail!”
Annie stared at me. “Mom? What is he talking about?”
“Just a little misunderstanding. Do you have any of your special Kombucha tea, sweetie?”
Kombucha tea is the vilest substance known to man, but Annie was a devotee and I was still trying to worm my way back into her good graces.
“You don’t have to go overboard,” she said. “I’m over it. Your relationship w
ith Gambino, I mean. If you say it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Thank you,” I said. “In which case I’d love coffee.”
She went to the freezer and pulled out a bag of organic beans. “As long as you’re really sure.”
“I am.”
She waited until the grinder was done whirring. “Absolutely sure?”
“Yup.”
“So what’s this little misunderstanding with the police?”
“Unpaid parking ticket. How’d it go with the judge?”
Annie smiled and the room lit up like the Fourth of July. She was that kind of person. If she was happy, you couldn’t help but be happy, too.
“Like clockwork,” she said.
“I’m giving them their baths now.” Vincent had come in with a naked child in each arm. “Say goodnight, Alexander.”
“Goodnight, Alexander,” said Alexander. It was part of their routine.
“Vincent,” I said suddenly.
He turned around. “Yeah?”
I grabbed my purse and pulled out the hot pink cell phone from hell. “Can you do me a favor? Because you were so nice when I first got my phone. Thanks to you, I love received calls.”
“I’m glad,” he said patiently.
“Unfortunately, we never got through all the camera stuff. So I’m wondering if you have a minute to show me how to retrieve these photos I took the other day. I was on a hike and got some really beautiful nature shots. I’d love to show them to you and Annie. Maybe make Christmas cards with them. I was thinking a nice collage.”
“Since when do you make Christmas cards?” Annie looked dubious.
“I love art.”
“Christmas cards aren’t art. They’re crafts. You hate crafts.”
“I crocheted that oven mitt.”
Annie put her hands on her hips. “When you were nine.”
“Enough,” said Vincent. “I’d be happy to show you when I’m done giving the kids their baths.”
Annie sidled up to her husband and slipped the phone into the back pocket of his jeans. “There goes the rest of our evening.”
“I heard that,” I said.
“How about I sit here for a minute, then,” Vincent said, handing me the baby and walking over to his computer, “and just e-mail them to you? Then you can peruse them at your leisure.”
