I was dismayed at how many youngsters populated the dingy operation. Outside it was a crisp, clear December day in the athletic fields and parks of Lincoln Point, and in here it was hard to tell what might be creeping or crawling around the nest of dusty wires that slithered down the walls and hugged the floor.
There were only a couple of girls among the customers, one of them holding an oversize pink plastic fake (I hoped) pistol. She was aiming at something on her screen, but her head was turned to her girlfriend at the next console. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t imagine her being heard over the thumps, pows, and explosions coming from the games, even if they hadn’t both been wearing airline pilot- style headphones. Lip-reading, I thought. It would be nice to think that our kids were developing one useful skill while they were captive to these machines.
I stepped toward the right-hand wall, where a tall counter held a cash register. Behind it and in a glass case below it were dozens of packaged games for rent or sale—titles with Laser this and Xtreme that.
A young woman approached the register from behind the counter. She looked as if she’d answered a central casting call for the part of arcade clerk—blue-black hair and a black T-shirt featuring daggers, blood, and bone fragments.
“Hey,” she said, between chews of gum (I think).
“Hey. I’m looking for Gus Boudette. Is he working today?”
“Dunno. Just got here.”
“Can you check for me?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
While she was gone, I turned for a further look at how today’s youth spent their free time. Boys in baggy jeans and hooded sweatshirts stood mesmerized by racing cars, flying animals, and dark-robed wizards. More boys sat in molded plastic seats wielding joysticks or steering wheels, “driving” at consoles with images of freeways on the screens. From their frowning, tense expressions, I could see how road rage might start on this spot.
“He’s not here,” said Goth girl, still madly chewing. I uttered a fervent wish that my granddaughter would skip this phase. “He should have been here yesterday, but we haven’t seen him. Wanna leave a message or something?” Her tongue stud clicked against her teeth.
I thanked her and wondered how her mother was coping.
Back in my Ion, I extracted the large Sadie’s cup from its holder and sipped the last of my shake, still cold and delicious. Another car in the lot had started up as I entered my car, but now the driver shut off the engine. I looked back and saw that it was a blue Cadillac Escalade like the one Richard drove (or I wouldn’t have been able to name it). I saw that its license plate was personalized, though I couldn’t read it through splatters of mud. S-something. I could have sworn the same car had been behind me in the police department parking lot.
Everybody loves Sadie’s, I thought.
I called Linda.
“Jason loved his session with you, Gerry,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
I doubted Jason would have put it that way, but, I was glad to hear it, because I had a favor to ask. “I think he’s going to be fine, Linda.”
“Yeah. A big relief, huh? What’s up? Are you ready for tonight? At the last minute I decided to make little Victorian dressmakers’ models for each table to raffle off and get more money for the cause, so now I’m behind.”
I understood the syndrome. I did it often—when I found myself on time or early with a deadline, I threw in an additional something that would put me in a state of panic to finish. Such as, Ken occasionally brought home clients for dinner. I’d plan a simple meal, then once I had all the dishes ready, with a half hour to spare, I’d scramble to create an extra side dish that was more complicated than all the others put together.
“I’m sure they’re adorable,” I told Linda now. “I’m on my way home. Beverly is with Maddie. You know, I’m still curious about how Gus knew to pick up Sofia at the old neighborhood when that address wasn’t in her file. Do you happen to know where he lives?”
“You’re going to his house?”
“I’m doing errands and I have some time, so—”
Linda gave a low, throaty laugh, a remnant from her smoking days. “Uh-huh. Sure. You happen to be in the neighborhood, huh?”
“Just curious, Linda.”
“He lives near me, actually. In one of those new condos. His parents own it and he has a bunch of roommates. I hate that. Five or six kids pile into what should be for a family of three or four, and they’re really loud and they make a mess and the property values go down.”
I’d heard this before from Linda, how noisy her neighborhood had become lately. I didn’t have a lot of time for sympathy, but I gave it a shot. “Oh, one of those groups. What a nuisance. Is Gus’s place right on your street?”
“Yeah, it’s the second one on the right if you come in from Douglas Street. It’s light brown stucco, but it needs painting badly already. Are you really going there, Gerry?”
“I might. It depends on how much time I have. Oh, and I have another question. It’s about Ethel Hudson.”
“Who’s that?”
“A Mary Todd resident, or maybe a staffer. One of my crafters mentioned her and I thought I’d look her up, to see if she’d like to take the class.” So what if that idea dawned on me on the spot as an excuse to have Linda find Ms. Hudson. Not that I needed to keep the truth from Linda, I told myself, it was just simpler this way, what with being pressed for time today, and all.
“Doesn’t sound familiar. Certainly not on the staff, unless she’s very new.”
“A resident then. Could you look her up for me? They weren’t very cooperative at the front desk this morning.”
“You were at the Mary Todd this morning?”
Busted. I had to beef up my prevarication skills. “I stopped in, yes. Can you do me that favor, Linda?” After all I’ve done for you was in my voice.
“I get it. None of my business. Okay, I’ll be at work tomorrow and will look up Ethel Hudson.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling like Lincoln Point’s worst friend. To compensate, in my mind I doubled Linda’s Christmas present—a gift certificate to our crafts store. The case of the Muniz family had cost me a lot of time, and now it was taking money, too, but it was my fault, not theirs, that I couldn’t leave things alone.
I got out of my car to toss my empty Sadie’s cup into a Dumpster. The blue Escalade was still there, though I couldn’t tell if the driver was still in it. Maybe Ms. Hawkes was following me to be sure I didn’t continue to hassle her employees.
It turned out that I did have time to detour to Gus’s condo. It was getting close to three o’clock, but Linda and Gus’s neighborhood was not far from my own neighborhood, on the other side of North Springfield Boulevard. It wouldn’t make sense not to check it out.
I drove up Douglas Street and turned left on Hanover, Linda’s street. The second unit on the right didn’t look that badly in need of paint to me. Neither was there any extraordinary noise, just light traffic on this Saturday afternoon. In fact, I’d been to Linda’s at different hours of the day and never heard the clamor she complained about.
I parked across from Gus’s condo, facing away from Linda’s house. It was a couple of blocks away, but I wouldn’t have put it past her to drive down and see what I was up to. I hoped she was too busy getting Jason into his Abraham Lincoln costume and squeezing herself into a corset.
I sat in my car and scanned the street for about ten minutes, my radio tuned to an all-Christmas music station. I couldn’t bring myself to climb the flight of stairs and knock on Gus Boudette’s door. I was hoping for a chance encounter on the street.
Halfway through “Jingle Bells,” when I was about to give up and take myself home (and go back a century and a half in attire), a young couple exited Gus’s condo. They looked clean-cut (if that phrase still meant anything), in turtlenecks, khakis, and down vests, not quite matching, but definitely from the same pages of a his-and-hers outdoor clothing catalog.
I was
in khakis myself, with a brand-new sweater. Not threatening, I decided, especially with hair that was turning grayer and grayer each day.
I got out of my car and walked toward the couple. “Excuse me,” I said. “I noticed you came out of Gus’s house. Is he at home?”
They looked at each other, as if in silent debate: Is she okay? Shall we give up our landlord?
“Are you, like, a relative?” the young woman asked, thrusting her hands into the slanted pockets of her mauve vest.
I considered claiming to be his grandmother or his aunt visiting from the East, but I’d been shading the truth most of the day and it was wearing on me. “Just a friend. He didn’t show up at work today at the Mary Todd, so I thought I’d look in on him.” It seemed I wasn’t that tired of bending reality.
Another look, plus raised eyebrows (from her) and a shoulder shrug (from him).
“We think Gus moved out,” the young man said. His vest was army green and his hands were free to gesture. At “out,” he thrust his thumb to the side in a hitchhiking motion.
“Most of his stuff is gone,” the woman added, “and Jerry, our other roomie, said he saw Gus carrying cartons out to his car.”
“I just saw him the other day,” I said, feigning the shock of a good friend who’s been slighted. “When was this?”
The young woman squinted in concentration. She looked at her roommate. “Yesterday morning?” she asked him.
He nodded. “Yeah, yesterday morning. Jerry said he was coming back from a run and ran into him. I mean, not really ran into him, you know.”
“Jerry asked him what was up, but Gus just said he was taking off for a vacation,” the young woman said.
“Yeah, but you don’t take your TiVo on vacation, you know?”
I wasn’t sure what a TiVo was, but I knew what he meant.
I thanked the wonderfully cooperative young couple and headed for my car. Gus Boudette had moved up in my mind to prime suspect.
Until the blue Escalade drove past and turned right on Douglas. If Gus, my designated killer, was out of town, who was following me?
This time I caught more of the license plate. A vanity plate, S-something-CH.
Not related to Gus’s initials, and not Nadine’s, either. Could the word be stitch? For a quilter or needlepointer? Or swatch for a seamstress? Sketch for an artist? I shuddered to think a crafter might be my stalker. I knew I was leaving out other words and wished I had a Scrabble set with me for visual aid.
I couldn’t help thinking how handy it would be if I had someone on the inside at the Lincoln Point PD to run the plates.
The drive to my home was too short for all the thinking I had to do. I spoke my own thoughts out loud, but softly. Passing drivers might think I was singing along with music from my radio, which I had turned off.
Who doesn’t want me to find out what happened to Carlos Guzman and Sofia Muniz?
Dolores isn’t happy with me right now. Although she wants my help, she wants it on her own terms. I’ve dredged up her lies and inconsistencies and expressed too much interest in the Muniz family history, so she might want to track what I’m doing. But Dolores drives a silver Mercedes, not a blue Cadillac Escalade.
Then there’s Sofia’s comment about wanting to leave the home because there was a bad person there. Carlos could be the bad person. One of the seniors, I forget who, mentioned that Sofia had fought with the gardener. That has to have been Carlos. There’s no way Dolores will admit it, I know, since that would tend to incriminate her grandmother.
Nadine Hawkes was clearly upset earlier that I might see Ethel Hudson, but that can be for any number of reasons. Maybe Ms. Hudson is Nadine’s mother and she likes to keep her set apart from the general population of the Mary Todd. Mr. Mooney said Ms. Hudson knows everything, but about what? She gets checks from the bank, he said, but who doesn’t? Tomorrow I’ll go back and visit Mr. Mooney and try to get a lead on where and how he’s seen her. I wonder if he likes See’s.
Who else would care how I spend my time? There’s Skip, of course. It’s not as if I can come right out and tell Skip I’m being stalked. I hope that’s too strong a word. Just someone wanting to see what I’m up to. I wish Maddie could hack into databases for me. I’m a bad grandmother! I’ll have to find a creative way to work running license plate numbers into the conversation at the ball tonight.
Ha! Look at that. Maddie saw me turn into the driveway and there she is with her hands on her hips. It won’t be long before the tables will be turned again, and Mary Lou will be standing like that, ready to lecture her teenage daughter about the meaning of curfews.
“You are so-o-o-o late, Grandma.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. Too many errands.”
“I don’t see any bags or anything.”
“Couldn’t get what I wanted, my little sleuth,” I said, ruffling her hair.
Maddie was dressed in her red drummer boy pants, with a sports T-shirt on top. I was sure Beverly decided on a last-minuteswitch for the top layer to avoid a costume adorned with spills from a refrigerator raid.
“Am I in time for snacks?” I asked.
“Barely.”
I reached into my tote. “Oh, I forgot. I have these,” I said, waving a bag of cookies from Sadie’s.
She threw her arms around me, so I knew I was forgiven. Also, from her reaction, I suspected I’d been correct that Maddie preferred Sadie’s chocolate chips to my famous ginger cookies, though she’d never tell me.
Maddie skipped ahead of me to the house. I looked at my bright, completely engaged granddaughter and wondered if I dared ask her if there was a way to look up license plates on the Internet.
Chapter 15
Two hours later my car was full of lace, velvet, fake fur, and one little drummer boy, complete with a red-and-green drum. We headed south on Springfield Boulevard toward city hall, rum-pa-pa-pum blaring out of my car’s tinny speakers. Maddie sat rigidly, as if the tiny bit of makeup Beverly had dusted on her face had turned her whole body stiff.
It was nice to go to an affair where I had very little to do besides show up and have a good time. I’d delivered room scenes around town and helped with the items for the silent auction for the Mary Todd ball, but those were minor activities and hardly any work, compared to times when I was in charge of fund-raisers and crafts fairs. Skip had arranged for our tickets, so even the logistics of ordering were taken care of.
The downside was that we arrived with all the other guests and jockeyed for parking rather than pulling into a prime spot hours earlier than anyone else.
I followed a line of cars into the civic center’s semicircular driveway and to the left into a special lot the police department had made available for the evening. I lowered my window and turned down the volume of the Christmas music so we could chat with the people in the parking lot—the lucky ones who’d already found a spot and were now walking toward the hall.
Gail Musgrave, our newest city council member and excellent crafter (a master at the split-level ranch) leaned in on Beverly’s side.
“Did you see the article in yesterday’s paper about Steve Talley’s newest proposal? I’ll be circulating a petition against it,” Gail said. The political pitch was incongruous with Gail’s lovely white, square-necked gown. One of her puffy sleeves brushed against my side mirror and I dreaded seeing the smudge of dirt it most certainly deposited on the lace.
“I read the piece. On restoring the Nolin Creek Pines neighborhood, right?” I said.
“Doesn’t matter what you call it. Upgrading, restoring, whatever. The point is that no one who lives there now will be able to afford to stay once Steve brings in his crew to . . . ahem . . . improve the quality of life there.”
“Having just visited the area, I have to say the neighborhood could use improving, Gail.”
Gail leaned in closer. “Not the kind he has in mind. What those buildings need is someone to clean them up, repair the basics—and police them.” Shades of Dolores’s pitch. I
was glad Dolores had someone on her side. “Whatever he tells you, Steve’s plan is to level the buildings. He’s been itching to do that and put in upscale condos and chichi shops.”
Beep beep. Gentle but firm taps on horns from the cars behind me. “We should discuss this later, Gail,” I said.
“Merry Christmas, by the way,” Beverly said, getting a laugh from Gail. “I guess politics never sleeps.”
“Are you kidding? This is the kind of event where most of it gets done.” Gail walked away fanning herself with a lovely lacy number I recognized from Lori Leigh’s collection. Though the chilly evening hardly required an additional breeze, her gesture made for great theater.
Nadine Hawkes walked by on my side of the car, an old woman on her arm. I had a flash of possibility—Ethel Hudson?
“There’s Nadine with her aunt Helen,” Beverly said.
Too bad. I waved, but Nadine didn’t make eye contact.
“Do you know an Ethel Hudson, a resident at the Mary Todd?” I asked Beverly, who knew everyone.
She shook her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Is she in your class?”
“No. Her name came up, though.”
Beverly was distracted from Ethel possibilities by the Russell family, who lived next door to her. We exchanged oohs and aahs over their costumes, collectively amounting to several bolts of silklike polyester, I guessed.
When they walked on, Beverly turned to me. “We could never have done this in the Bronx in December—visiting with our windows open. We’d have frozen.”
“We didn’t have a car in the Bronx,” I reminded her.
“True.”
“No car?” Maddie asked. She’d been quiet in the backseat, except for the occasional drumbeat in time with the music. “How did you get to school and soccer?”
Mayhem in Miniature Page 14
