by Peg Cochran
The officers had barely stepped into the room when the door opened again and Detective Richie Sambucco stood leaning against it. He was wearing a pair of tight-fitting dark wash jeans and was working a toothpick that was stuck in the corner of his mouth.
Lucille had to admit he’d kept himself in shape. She glanced down at her own stomach and tried to suck it in. She only succeeded in scrunching up the front of her blouse, so she let it out again with a sigh.
Sambucco looked over at Lucille. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”
Lucille felt herself bristle. Sure, she’d come upon her share of dead bodies, but was that any way to talk to her? It’s not like she went looking for them or nothing.
Sambucco edged past Gabe and his fellow officer and pushed open the swinging door to the church hall. Lucille was right in back of him and nearly collided with him when he stopped dead in the doorway.
He scanned the room, his head slowly swiveling from right to left and then back again.
He turned around and smiled at Lucille.
She felt her face go red as she took a step backward. Richie might be engaged to Flo, but Lucille still remembered the two months they’d spent together back in high school the time she and Frankie had had that big fight and broken up. She could tell by the look in Richie’s eyes that he remembered, too.
Lucille took another step backward and heard a muffled oath from Father Brennan.
“Sorry, Father. I didn’t mean to step on your foot.”
He sighed. “That’s fine, Lucille.”
Sambucco walked into the church hall followed by Lucille and Father Brennan. He stopped for a moment to read the Weigh to Lose poster that still sat out on the table along with the remains of Dotty’s healthy snacks.
He swiveled around toward Lucille.
“Do you know who this is and what she was doing here?”
“Yeah. That there is Dotty Garibaldi. She’s the owner of Weigh to Lose. She was holding a meeting here at St. Rocco’s. She’s going to be on Oprah.”
“Not now she isn’t,” Sambucco murmured, peering at Dotty’s body.
He looked up and motioned to the two policemen.
“You see a knife around here anywhere? Or something that could have caused that wound?”
Gabe glanced at the body and quickly looked away, his complexion becoming pale and pasty. Lucille hoped he wasn’t going to faint. Maybe she ought to tell him to put his head between his knees.
Gabe shook his head. “We haven’t found nothing. The killer must have taken the knife with them.”
Lucille glanced at the table where the remains of Dotty’s healthy snacks were.
“The melon baller,” she said suddenly. “The melon baller isn’t here.”
Sambucco stood up, his knees giving a loud creak. “What’s melon balls got to do with it?”
“Dotty brought a melon baller with her on account of she wants us to eat healthy snacks. She says that fruit, cut-up vegetables and—” Lucille broke off when she saw the expression on Sambucco’s face. “Anyways, she brought a melon baller with her to make the melon balls.” Lucille pointed toward the glass on the floor. “She put them in that there dish.”
Sambucco closed his eyes and exhaled loudly. “What on earth is a melon baller.”
Lucille couldn’t believe that Sambucco didn’t know what a melon baller was, but that was men for you.
“It’s a thing you use to scoop melon into little balls.”
Sambucco scratched his head and muttered something.
“What does a melon baller look like?”
“It’s got a sort of bowl on the end—you know, like a tiny ice cream scoop.”
Sambucco looked back at Dotty’s body. “How on earth did someone use that to cut her throat then? It doesn’t sound too dangerous to me.”
“Yeah, but on the other end, there’s a blade, see, for cutting the melon open.”
“Now that makes more sense. And it looks like it’s nowhere to be found,” he said half to himself. “Seems like the killer took the murder weapon with them.” He turned to Lucille. “Can you tell if anything else is missing?”
Lucille looked at the table. Dotty’s brochures were there and so was that big cardboard cutout she’d brought with her.
“Wait!”
“What is it?” Sambucco took a piece of gum from his pocket and unwrapped it. “You notice something?”
“Yeah. Her purse isn’t here. It was on that table over there next to the brochures.”
“What did it look like?”
“It was one of them fancy ones with initials all over it.”
Sambucco sighed. “Any specific initials?”
“Yeah. I think it was an m and a k.”
“Any idea what that means?” He folded his gum in half and put it in his mouth.
Lucille shook her head. “No. I don’t go in for handbags like that.”
Sambucco snapped his fingers. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a motive. The thief was after her purse.”
“Yeah, and she got in the way.”
Chapter 4
“Lucille, is that you?”
“Yeah, Ma, it’s me,” Lucille said as she kicked the back door closed with her foot.
Her hands were full of grocery bags—she’d done a big shopping on Saturday, so how come they were already out of food?
She put her purse on the kitchen table, opened it and pulled out the diet instructions she’d gotten from Dotty at the Weigh to Lose meeting. Just because Dotty was dead didn’t mean she’d have to abandon her diet. It would have been nice having a support group, but she’d been on plenty of diets before—she could do this one on her own.
Theresa wandered into the kitchen as Lucille was putting away the groceries. Lucille’s mother had been living at a retirement place where there were loads of activities and all the ladies got dressed up for dinner hoping to impress the few men that lived there.
Now she was wearing a pair of house slippers and an old athletic outfit she’d bought years ago on QVC.
“I need to go to the store. Can you take me to the store?”
“Ma, I just got back from the store,” Lucille said, squirming out of the leather jacket Frankie had given her back when they were in high school. “I’ve got plenty of food. What do you need?”
Theresa fiddled with a loose string on the jacket of her warm-up suit.
“I want to buy a lottery ticket.”
“A lottery ticket. What are you going to do with that, Ma?”
“Hopefully win,” Theresa shot back.
“You’re not going to start gambling now, are you? You caused enough trouble when you was buying stuff from that television program all the time.” Lucille opened the refrigerator and wedged in the half gallon of milk she’d bought.
Theresa winked at Lucille. “But I have a lucky number, see.”
Lucille blew out a puff of air, sending the loose hairs around her face flying.
“Lucky number? Don’t tell me about no lucky number. There’s no such thing. And besides—” She turned to her mother and wagged a finger at her. “We don’t have no luck. It doesn’t run in our family. It’s not in our genes. So you’re not going to win nothing.”
“I tell you. It’s a lucky number.”
Lucille put her hands on her hips. “Where did you get this here lucky number, huh? Is it Pop’s birthday? Little Lucy’s birthday?”
Theresa shook her head. “No. Cousin Louis gave it to me.”
“When did he give you this number?”
“This afternoon. He came into the living room while I was watching General Hospital.” She shook her head. “I always thought it was a mistake for what’s-his-name to marry what’s-her-name.”
Lucille felt weak in the knees. What was wrong with Ma now?
“Let me get this straight. Cousin Louis walked into the living room and gave you a number to play.”
“Yes. That’s what I told you. Weren’t you listening?”
“And cousin Louis was fine. Just like his old self. He wasn’t see-through or nothing?”
“What are you talking about, Lucille? Of course he wasn’t see-through. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Nothing, Ma, nothing. Only that cousin Louis died like four months ago so you must have been seeing a ghost.”
• • •
As if she didn’t already have enough trouble, Lucille thought as she got ready to go shopping with Flo, now her mother was seeing things.
Since Bernadette and Tony had scraped up enough money for a down payment on a house, Theresa had been occupying Bernadette’s old bedroom. But now Lucille wondered if it was time to look for a nursing home. She’d been thrown out of the retirement home where she’d been living, but they weren’t the only game in town.
She was powdering her nose and freshening her lipstick when she heard Flo honk.
“I’m coming,” she yelled even though she knew Flo couldn’t hear her.
Flo’s low-slung Mustang was humming in the driveway as Lucille closed the front door. She scurried toward it. She couldn’t imagine why Flo had bought it. Getting in it made her think of some of the yoga poses she’s seen on television once.
“This isn’t no car for old ladies,” Lucille said as she fastened her seat belt.
“I’m not an old lady, Lucille. I consider myself a cougar.”
“What on earth is a cougar? What are you talking about?”
Flo was wearing some kind of animal-print leggings. Lucille had heard of leopard print and zebra print—maybe those were cougar print?
“A cougar,” Flo said as she backed out of the driveway, “is a hot middle-aged woman that younger guys lust after.”
Middle-aged? Lucille thought. They’d have to live to be over a hundred if this was middle age.
“But you have Richie now. You don’t have to worry about that stuff no more.”
“It’s an ego boost, Lucille, to have young men looking at you in that certain way.”
Lucille looked out the window. Maybe after she’d lost weight young men would look at her like that. Not that she cared. Frankie was all she ever wanted.
All this talk of cougars and young guys was making Lucille nervous. Maybe she ought to change the subject.
“You never told me what you’ve got against Dotty Garibaldi.”
“Other than that she’s a nasty witch who doesn’t care about anyone else?”
“That describes a lot of people we know and you don’t have nothing against them.”
A red Mazda cut in front of Flo, and she leaned on the horn.
“She did me dirty back when we were both working for that insurance company in Summit. You remember?”
“I remember you worked there. Not for long.”
“Yeah, well, that was on account of Dotty. We were in the same department and she screwed something up—now I don’t even remember what it was. But she told the boss that I was the one who had done it. And that got me fired.”
“I thought you got fired because you were always late.”
“No, Lucille, that wasn’t the reason. I got a warning because I was late but then Dotty goes and puts a nail in my coffin. I haven’t liked her since.”
Lucille looked out the window. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a bridal shop in Morristown that carries gowns for more mature women.”
“I thought you said we were cougars. Now we’re mature women?”
“Don’t split hairs. You know what I mean.” Flo put on her blinker. “Here we are,” she said as she turned into the parking lot of the small building that looked like a house that had been converted into a store.
A woman in a black dress with a pair of glasses on top of her head greeted them. She slipped on her glasses and glanced at the papers attached to the clipboard she was carrying.
She lowered her glasses. “You would be Florence Baldini?”
“Yes.”
“And you are?” She turned to Lucille.
“Lucille Mazzarella. That’s like mozzarella with an a.”
“Come this way, please.”
She led them into the main salon, where a small round platform sat in front of a full-length mirror flanked by two dark blue velvet armchairs.
“If you’ll take a seat,” she said to Lucille. Then she gestured for Flo to follow her, saying, “Come this way.”
Flo disappeared through a blue velvet curtain that matched the chairs and Lucille looked around.
She remembered buying her own wedding dress. Some of those gowns had made her feel real silly—like the ones with the big full skirts that put her in mind of Southern women in old movies.
The gown she’d chosen had been fairly plain but she’d liked it. And she’d been able to hitch it up in order to dance the tarantella after dinner in the church hall.
Her father hadn’t been sure about her marriage to Frankie—he’d urged her to wait and date some other young men, but she’d always known that Frankie was the one for her.
Except, of course, that time she went out with Richie Sambucco. The memory brought a rush of heat to her face. She felt ashamed of herself—she shouldn’t be thinking thoughts like that when here her best friend Flo was about to marry Richie.
There was a rustling noise and Lucille looked up.
Flo walked toward her, holding the hem of her dress up with two hands. She stepped onto the platform in front of the mirror and turned to Lucille.
“What do you think?”
Lucille pretended to have a coughing fit in order to give herself some time to think.
“It’s awfully—sheer,” she said finally. “And what are all those laces in the back?”
“It’s called a corset top, Lucille.”
“I thought you were supposed to wear those under your clothes.” She scratched her head. “Does something go over that? Like maybe a pretty jacket?”
“I like it,” Flo declared, twirling before the mirror. “It shows off my assets.”
“It shows off your ass, you mean.”
“Maybe you would like to try another gown?” the saleslady said smoothly, leading Flo back to the dressing room.
This time Flo came out of the dressing room in a strapless gown that clung to the body on top and flared into a bouffant skirt at the very bottom.
“What do you think?” Flo said as she stared at her reflection in the mirror.
“It looks like something you’d see in Vegas on one of them lounge singers.”
Flo swirled around, nearly falling as the gown caught around her ankles. “You don’t like anything, Lucille. You have no fashion sense whatsoever.”
Maybe that was true, Lucille thought, but she knew trashy when she saw it. She didn’t need to read a year’s worth of Vogue to know that these dresses weren’t appropriate for someone their age—even if they were cougars.
“You go on then,” Flo said, hands on her hips. “You pick out something for me.”
Lucille struggled to her feet and went over to the racks of gowns encased in plastic bags. She went through them one by one.
“Here.” She handed a gown to the saleslady. “Try this one on.”
Flo disappeared behind the velvet curtain again and reappeared several minutes later. She looked stunned as she stood in front of the mirror.
The dress was simple with short sleeves and a jeweled belt.
Lucille beamed. “You look beautiful.”
Flo turned this way and that and let out a sigh. “I think you’re right. Those other dresses weren’t for me. Who am I kidding? I’m not thirty anymore.”
“And Richie loves you the way you are right now.”
“What do you think, Lucille. Should I get it?”
“Definitely.”
Flo smiled. “Now that I’ve found a dress, everything should go smoothly from here on out.”
Chapter 5
Lucille measured coffee and water into the machine and leaned on the counter as it slowly trickled in
to the carafe.
She hadn’t slept well last night. She kept thinking about what Flo had told her—how Dotty had done her dirty back when they both worked at that insurance company. She couldn’t get it out of her mind that Flo might have done something to Dotty to make up for it even all these years later.
As soon as the coffee finished brewing, Lucille poured herself a cup and sat down at the kitchen table. The house was so quiet without Bernadette and little Lucy. As she sipped her coffee, her mind ping-ponged back and forth between thinking about Bernadette and that whole situation and Flo’s connection to Dotty’s murder.
She had to talk to Flo and put these ideas to rest. She couldn’t spend the whole day worrying like this. She put a hand to her chest and burped—it was giving her indigestion.
Flo would be up—she’d be getting ready for work. Lucille picked up the telephone—she still had a wall phone in the kitchen, she didn’t trust them cell phones—and dialed Flo’s number.
“Listen, Flo, I gotta ask you a question.”
“Make it quick, Lucille. My curling iron is heating up, and I’ve got to do my hair yet before I leave for work.”
“I’ve been worrying about something and it kept me up half the night. That’s why I’m asking you this on account of I’ve got to get a good night’s sleep tonight. You didn’t have nothing to do with Dotty’s murder, did you?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Flo was probably going to be mad at her now, Lucille thought. Well, it wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. They’d been friends since second grade—this too would pass.
“You don’t really think—”
“No, I don’t really think you would have done something like that, but I had to be sure. When someone loses their temper, they sometimes do things they didn’t mean to. Like that time Frankie got mad because he couldn’t get no television reception and there was that show on he’d been wanting to watch. If he hadn’t been so mad, I’m sure he never would have kicked the TV the way he did.”
“Instead of accusing me of the murder,” Flo said, her tones icy, “why don’t you figure out who really did it.”
