Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

  “Your mama used to hit you?” Fighting child abuse was Cady's number one crusade. “Did she do drugs?” Drugs had done to African American women what no other horror—not even slavery—had ever done: it had made them bad mothers.

  “Na,” Fatima said. “She was a boozer. Drank herself to death. You are not going to see that happening to me, I promise you. I am clean and sober—eight whole months.” She bounced again. “Hey, here's one from 1960! You want me to read it?”

  Cady took a breath as memories flooded back. “Is it silver leather, with a picture of Cinderella on the cover?”

  “It's got Cinderella, and a couple of bluebirds—but it's more what you'd call cracked gray plastic.”

  Cady sighed. “Regina would have been barely eleven years old then. That was even before I moved up there—a tough year for us both.”

  Painful memories came flooding back; the foster home with six girls crowded into the tiny bedroom; the poor white girl in the bunk above her who used to wet the bed; the endless chores and no time for homework.

  But for Regina the year had been even worse. That was the year she'd lost her father.

  Cady felt a catch in her throat. Everyone was telling her she had to let herself grieve, but if she started, would she ever be able to stop? There was so much to mourn; all the dead; her own lost childhood.

  But here was Fatima, whose childhood had been cut short by the horrors of drugs and prostitution, offering support and friendship. Was this on orders from Tyrone? Would she be so kind if she knew Cady's true feelings; how much Cady had hoped to have Tyrone for herself?

  “I'd like that, Fatima,” Cady said finally. At least the reading would keep her mind off Tyrone and fill the time she had to spend lying here. “Let's do some time-traveling.”

  Chapter 22—Cady: The Stupid Book

  Fatima cleared her throat and started to read Regina's diary in a pretty, clear voice:

  “December 8, 1960

  “Stupid Book:

  “No, I'm not going to write 'Dear Diary' because this stupid book is not dear and it's not going to be a diary because you have to write in a diary every day and I refuse.

  “It's a snow day and we have no school, so I have nothing to do, and Mother still has to go give lessons because they don't get snow days off at the College. So I'll write something, but don't expect it all the time, okay?

  “She gave me this stupid thing so I could write down my thoughts and get over my father dying.

  “Okay: My Papa is dead. He had a heart attack and he died. He died two days before my birthday, so I didn't get a cake. Papa made the best chocolate cake in the whole world. But now he's dead, dead, dead, DEAD. It's been four months and seven days and he's still dead. We didn't have a funeral because we're atheist and churches are about ignorance and superstition.

  “Oh, sure. Now I'm over it. I have to go to my piano lesson, and I haven't practiced. Mr. Finkelstein will kill me. Bye.

  “December 16

  “Stupid Book:

  “The person I hate most in the whole world is Artie Fry. He used to be my best friend in kindergarten, but he skipped a year and now he's in the eighth grade and a snob and the cutest boy in the school.

  “Today on the way to school be threw a snowball at me and knocked me down and then he said I was stupid for going to school on a holiday. I said it wasn't and he said yes it was a Jewish holiday and I was being a traitor to go to school and pretend I'm not Jewish.

  “He said he knew my name wasn't really Ingram and we changed it in order to come to America. I don't know how he knew that. I never told him, even back when we used to be friends, and I said that doesn't mean I'm Jewish. My grandpapa used to be a Count and if it weren't for the Nazis I'd be a princess with a castle of my own.

  “But stupid Artie said that was a lie because he saw the number tattoos on my father's arm that they did to him at the concentration camp, because his Bubbie has them, too—not Mrs. Levine that has the dress shop—his other grandma that used to live with them before she went into the home.

  “Only Jews had to go to the camps, he said, and there are no Jewish Counts. Only accountants. Ha ha. That was so funny I forgot to laugh.

  “Then he gave me some chocolate money called Hannukagelt, and it tasted wonderful, so I went ahead and skipped school and we went up to the college football field and made snow men and snow women and a whole bunch of weird snow children that looked like sculptures in the modern art museum.

  “It was pretty warm and the snow was sticky like clay. All the snow people looked like they were falling down and getting hit by bombs and stuff. We had so much fun, and we didn't get hungry because of the Hannukagelt, that I forgot to go home when school should have been over and my mother went out looking for me. Now I am in so much trouble, you wouldn't even believe it. I can't go anywhere for a whole month except for school and piano practice.

  “Artie's real name isn't Fry, either—it's Freiberg.”

  ~

  Fatima paused for breath. She read pretty well for a high school dropout. Cady could hear Regina's childish phrasing come through Fatima's adult voice; the Regina she had met thirty-seven years ago.

  And Artie—beautiful, clever, doomed Arthur Fry.

  The nurse came in with Cady's lunch tray. She could smell the savory aromas of cinnamon and chocolate and chilies.

  “You're in luck, Reverend,” Fatima said. “She made you chicken mole. That's her specialty. Too bad I'm not hungry. I ate a whole bag of M&Ms this morning.”

  Cady smiled. M&Ms were one of her weaknesses, too. She dug into her chicken as Fatima resumed reading:

  “December 20

  “Stupid Book:

  “Finally Mother decided I wasn't some kind of a criminal and let me go to the Christmas tea dance. I wore my old plaid taffeta dress which is too small and my Mary Janes and I looked about three years old.

  “Linda O'Reilly had a new Orlon sweater and a short straight skirt and Capezio flats and Sal Russo danced with her almost every dance. Nobody asked me, so I hung around the refreshment table and ate a million cookies.

  “When she stopped being mad at me, I asked Mother about the stuff Artie Fry said about the numbers on Papa's arm, but she got all sad and told me about the rats.

  “All she ever tells me about World War Two is the rats. I guess back in Amsterdam Papa would hunt rats with a bow and arrow when he was hiding in the attic. He was there because he was Grandfather's music student when the Nazis came and he couldn't get out.

  “Papa would cook the rats, too, and he made them taste okay, I guess, because he learned how to cook rabbits and squirrels when he went hunting on his estate when he was a kid.

  “That was when the Nazis wouldn't let any food come into Amsterdam for a whole winter and lots of people died, including my grandfather, but Mother and her sisters didn't because Papa was hiding in the attic, cooking rats.

  “But later on the Nazis found him and sent him on a train to Poland, but the train wrecked. Then the Americans came and the war was over and Mother and Papa got married and Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in their bunker.

  “Mother always tells the story the same way and then she cries a lot, so I couldn't ask her if that means I'm Jewish or not. She's not Jewish. She's Dutch, but she doesn't like that word, which sounds like Deutch, which means German. She likes 'Hollander'.

  “But she's American now, anyway.”

  ~

  “That's some heavy-duty stuff for a little kid, you know?” Fatima said. “All that stuff about Nazis and rats.”

  Cady had put down her fork.

  “That sure isn't great material for lunchtime reading, is it?”

  She remembered Astrid telling the story whenever anybody asked her about the war; about Lazlo making the bow and arrow and hunting rats.

  “My Mama had a story like that. It would kill our appetites any old time—about living down south during the Depression—how they lived on nothing but weevily flour and sorghum wh
en Grandpa was laid up with a broken leg. She'd always laugh and say how the weevils were the only meat they got that whole winter.”

  “I can't even picture eating rats and bugs. I thought we had it bad when we ran out of food stamps and had to eat that funky give-away cheese.”

  They were interrupted by noises outside the door. Cady could hear Lupe's voice, talking to the nurse.

  “No calls,” said the nurse. “Reverend Stanton must take her medication now. She must sleep.”

  “I know.” Lupe sounded agitated. “I told her, but this lady said Ms. Stanton would be angry if I did not get her for the phone. I said everyone else would be angry if I did, but she told me what Don Quixote said; 'There is nothing we can do that someone will not find fault'.”

  Cady laughed. “She's quoting Cervantes? That would be my secretary.” She reached for the phone. “Flo?” she said. “Where have you been?”

  “I'm calling from San Montinaro,” Flo said, all business. “I've got about a half a minute before I go to the airport. Did you get that package I sent you—the box of the Princess's things?”

  “Yes. But it's nothing, just some childish mementos.”

  “It means something to somebody,” Flo said. “Right before I left Boston, some thugs showed up at my door and offered me a hundred thousand dollars for it. I thought they must work for one of those scandal sheets, trying to dig up some dirt, and I told them I didn't have it, and sent them away, but, well, apparently they didn't believe me, because I've had the most awful call from Hattie Phelps in Boston.”

  “Who's Hattie Phelps?” Cady wasn't making a lot of sense out of all this.

  “Hattie has been picking up my mail and looking after things, and—Cady, my whole house has been ransacked. Somebody wants those papers something fierce. I thought you ought to know. I—sorry, Cady, the limousine's here. I'm riding with Tipper. I really mustn't keep her waiting.”

  “Flo?” Cady said. But the phone connection had already gone dead.

  Chapter 23—Cady: Darkness Within

  “Reverend Cady, are you okay?” Fatima's voice woke Cady from an awful dream. Regina had been walking toward a cliff overlooking the ocean. Carrying a baby. Cady had tried to scream to her to stop, but nothing came out.

  She opened her eyes to the darkness.

  “I guess I was having a nightmare.”

  “About the princess? Yeah. I dreamed about her, too. Was a space ship in your dream? Or Elvis?”

  Cady could only shake her head.

  “I guess I shouldn't fall asleep with the TV on.” Fatima laughed as she set a food tray down on the bedside table.

  “Is it morning? Sunday already?” Cady hated the blindness most when she woke up—feeling so unanchored in time or space. Her inner darkness merged with the outer world.

  The memory of Flo's phone call came rushing back.

  “Fatima—do you have some time to spare, to do me a favor?”

  “Maybe,” Fatima sounded wary. “My girlfriend's coming over later, but I haven't got a lot to do till then—maybe some unpacking.”

  “I was hoping…” Cady hesitated. She didn't know how much to tell Fatima about Flo's call. “Would you mind reading a little more; maybe looking through that box for me—see if there's anything in there that looks valuable—that somebody would offer to buy? Maybe jewelry? Or stocks and bonds; something like that?”

  She could hear Fatima rummaging in the box.

  “Na, it's just these notebooks and diaries. I guess you could get pretty big money for them—you know, as collectibles. Like those folks who paid millions for Jackie Kennedy's old junk, you know? Some people got no lives, so they gotta buy pieces of somebody else's. Here's 1961. You want me to read this one?”

  “Sure.” Of course; celebrity collectibles. It was a multi-million dollar business. That's probably what the burglars had been after.

  Cady could smell the diary as Fatima opened it; the dry, dusty scent of ancient attic chests and long-ago, forgotten lives mixed with the faint scent of plastic and cleaning products; the smell of 1950's suburbia.

  It brought back a memory so vivid it drove other thoughts from her mind—a memory of the house in South Berkshire as it looked when she first saw it—just a boxy tract house—but a TV-glamorous jet-age mansion to a thirteen-year-old who had only known the run-down tenements of Roxbury, and the ramshackle Somerville slum where she had been sent for the foster care that had amounted to slavery.

  Her memory also brought a vision of Astrid Ingram arriving in Somerville to whisk her off to sanitary safety that morning in 1961—a tall, avenging angel, fiercely blonde, wide-hipped and formidable; the immigrant Superwoman, fighting for hygiene and high culture with a bottle of Clorox in one hand and her precious cello in the other—always in motion, cleaning, cooking, ironing, making music, then dashing off to teach another lesson.

  Poor Astrid also bore the atheist's burden of needing to believe herself the strongest being in the Universe; a burden made heavier by her baffling, ethereal daughter.

  Even at twelve, Regina had been an enigma—uncontrollable as fog—a child of dark moods and sudden disarming sweetness, her true feelings always hidden behind that storybook doll prettiness, a mask of porcelain skin, dreamy lavender eyes, and long, dark, fairy-princess curls.

  Tears stung Cady's eyes for a quick moment. They were gone now, both of them—mother and daughter—two people who somehow never inhabited the same universe.

  She said a small prayer of thanks that she had made peace with her own mother before she'd lost her to the cancer.

  She had no idea what Flo's ransackers could possibly want with all this childhood memorabilia, but for Cady, maybe it would bring peace of mind.

  Fatima sat on the bed and began to read:

  “January 1, 1961

  “Okay, book—I'm going to turn over a new leaf. I'll write in here every day and become a literary genius. Mother can't stand it that all I want to do is sit around and read Katy Keene Fashion Model comic books. She says I can't waste hard-earned money on that garbage, so I'm going to have to save up my milk money and give it to Linda O'Reilly to buy them for me.

  “Mother gave me a grown-up straight skirt for Christmas, and some Nancy Drew books. I made a pumpkin pie and we both ate a lot and cried about Papa.

  “January 11

  “I hate Mr. Finkelstein. He said I'll never be able to play Für Elise if I don't practice every day, and he's making me do nothing but awful Czerny scales this week. Then he acted like he was sorry he'd yelled at me and he hugged me and said I must miss my Papa.

  “But then he pinched me! He said I was getting little boobies and I should start wearing a bra and then he stuck his hand right down my sweater and pinched my nipple I thought I was going to die.”

  “Cady drew a sharp breath. Could that have been true? The poor, poor child. Why hadn't she gone to her mother about it?

  “Fatima went on as if she were reading a storybook:

  “January 20

  “John F. Kennedy was inaugurated today. The principal said this is a great day for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We got to go to assembly and watch it on TV. Artie threw a spitball at me.

  “January 24

  “Linda came over and we made Duncan Hines brownies and we ate the whole pan except two I saved for Mother. But she said she was on a diet so I ate hers, too.

  “January 30

  “I hate my mother. She is so stingy. She won't buy me a new dress for the Winter Frolic. I know exactly what I want. I drew a picture of it and everything and made one for my Katy Keene paper doll. But instead I have to wear my old velveteen jumper and all I need is nerdy braids and I'll look like Pippi Longstocking.

  “I asked Mother if at least I could get a bra because I'm getting boobies and she said that wasn't a nice word and besides I'm not—it's just fat and we both need to go on a diet.

  “February 4

  “The dance was so dumb.

  “Artie and Stu Conway spent
the whole time in the boys' locker room. I know they were smoking cigarettes because I could smell it and their breath stunk. Artie only danced three dances with me because he couldn't dance fast and when we danced slow, he said I needed a bra.

  “Artie said he's going away to the Choate School in Connecticut next year so he can get into Yale and be a lawyer like Mr. Fry. Good riddance.

  “February 13

  “I really, really, really hate Mr. Finkelstein and I hate my mother even more. Mr. Finkelstein keeps putting his hand under my top, even though I wore my biggest bulky knit sweater today, and when I told him I didn't like it, he said oh yes I did because otherwise I'd get a bra. Then he did it some more and he started playing with my hair and smelling my neck with his big ugly nose and I thought I was going to throw up.

  “So when Mother got home, I said I had to have a bra and she got all cranky and mean and said I'm just a little girl and what I need is to stop eating like a horse and all I could have for dinner was salad with cottage cheese which I hate.

  “She says I have to take salad to school for lunch, too, instead of buying food in the cafeteria. And tomorrow is macaroni with tomato sauce, which is my absolute favorite, even though Linda calls it trainwreck.

  “February 15

  “Last night, we got a TV! A real TV like regular people. Professor Peabody that works with Mother was getting a new one and so he gave us this one for a Valentine's Day present. He also brought some candy which mother said I couldn't have, but he let me take two pieces before he took her out to the Carriage House Restaurant for dinner.

  “Darlene from the college was the baby sitter and she was so happy we got the TV that she let me stay up and watch her favorite show, which is “Adventures in Paradise.” It's about a man named Adam Troy who is so handsome he has a different girlfriend every week.