Bubbles Ablaze

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “How old is this mine?” I asked in a feeble attempt to change the subject.

  “Opened about 1901 and operated until the Depression hit. It started up again after World War Two.” Donohue unscrewed a thermos and poured himself another cup. “McMullen’s only operating two mines now. They’re barely taking out two-hundred-thousand tons of coal a year. Peanuts. And from what I hear he’s cutting back.”

  “Who’s McMullen?”

  “You don’t know who Hugh McMullen is?” Donohue guzzled his coffee. “McMullen is the fourth generation owner of McMullen Coal Inc., which is what owns the Number Nine mine below us. He’s on his way up from Pittsburgh as we speak.”

  I nodded as though interested, trying my darnedest to keep from imagining Stiletto wearing a bib and drooling cream of wheat.

  “What about my Camaro?”

  “It’s been towed down to the Texaco. You had more than a weak battery there, hon. I’m thinking alternator.”

  Alternator! That fell into the category of nightmare repair. And me here with three-hundred bucks in my savings account—my incredible windfall from the nineties economic boom.

  “Okay. We’ve taken a ten-minute break.” Donohue checked his watch. “Time for more questions.”

  It was difficult to believe there could be more questions. Donohue had already asked me my mother’s maiden name, the last time I voted and where my daughter went to school. That was after he grilled me about the apparently bogus fax I’d received, the body in the mine and the explosion.

  “Back to your car,” he said, flipping open to a new page on the legal tablet. “Where’d you buy it?”

  I thought back. “One of my clients at the House of Beauty had a son-in-law who lost his license in a DUI. Had to sell it cheap. What does that matter?”

  “You’d be surprised.” Donohue looked up from the tablet and scrutinized me. “How do you feel about legalized gambling coming to Pennsylvania?”

  I was about to object again, but Donohue said, “Just answer the question.”

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “It’s already one state away in Jersey. Why do we need it here?”

  “Uh-huh.” Donohue made a check mark. “But no personal religious objection? You ain’t one of them fundamentalist Christians or nothing.”

  “I’m Roman Catholic. We’ve been gambling every Wednesday evening for centuries.”

  Donohue grinned. “Got that right.”

  “But I still don’t see—”

  “Are you now, or have you ever been, the victim of blackmail?”

  I brought my hand to my chest. “I’m a hairdresser in a two-sink salon in Lehigh. A divorced mother of a teenage daughter and I’m usually in bed, alone, by ten. Who’d want to blackmail me?”

  “Stinky Koolball, that’s who.”

  Stiletto’s fate slipped my mind.

  “Stinky Koolball a blackmailer? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “What, you’re shocked? A half hour ago you provided a sworn statement in which you posited that Stinky Koolball had sent you the fax that nearly got you killed. And, lo and behold, the number on the fax was traced to an establishment, one Mr. Koolball has been known to frequent.”

  Stinky’s Lexus was gone when the cops arrived, Donohue had told me. I showed them the fax and they had traced the number to a pay phone outside a Slagville bar called the Hole. I didn’t know how you sent faxes from pay phones, but Donohue assured me it could be done.

  “Yeah, but Stinky wouldn’t try to hurt me,” I said. “Play a joke that got out of hand, maybe. But whack Stiletto? Explode his Jeep? Blackmail? That’s not the Stinky I know.”

  “Then you don’t know Stinky. He’s a changed man.” Donohue leaned forward conspiratorially. “He got laid off last month as head cartographer for McMullen Coal and started acting postal. Calling up people, making threats. Guess you might say he went loco mentis.”

  “He hopped a train?”

  Donohue blinked. “Means crazy as a rabid coon. It’s Latin.”

  “Really?”

  “All I know is he’s one dangerous S.O.B. Roxanne kicked him out after the blackmail. Since then he’s been laying low, hiding from authorities. Until you came to town and just happened to stumble upon his car at the Number Nine mine late at night.”

  There was the implication that my arrival was not so innocent. “I didn’t want to get involved,” I said. “I was doing my job.”

  Donohue tossed the cup in a wastepaper basket. “Gonna have to arrest you anyway.” He unhitched a pair of cuffs from his belt. “Trespassing. Theft of private property. Noise in the nighttime. And, depending on what forensics determines when we find that body, conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “Oh, please.” I put my coffee on the floor and crossed my arms, hiding my wrists. “The only gun I’ve ever held blows hair. And I never saw that dead man before in my life.”

  “That’s not just some dead man,” said Donohue. “If it’s who I’m betting it is, the local rag’s gonna regret they didn’t send no one out tonight. Hold out your wrists so I don’t have to get physical.”

  There was an excellent chance Donohue would have cuffed me then and there had not an anxious fireman shown up at the door of the ambulance.

  “You better come quick, Chief,” he said, taking off his helmet and wiping a brow. “It’s bad.”

  I sprang into position. “You find Stiletto?”

  The fireman frowned in sympathy. “I’m sorry, miss.”

  Donohue plunked his hard hat on and hustled out of the ambulance. “You wait here,” he said, pointing a stern finger in my direction. “I don’t want to add fleeing an arresting officer to your list of charges.”

  And they were gone. I sat down on the cot and gazed forlornly at my once well conditioned hands, which, scratched, bloodied and swollen, mirrored what I was feeling inside. I’m sorry, miss. What did that mean? I’m sorry miss, I don’t have time to talk? Or I’m sorry miss, your boyfriend is toast?

  How could I have left Stiletto down there? I should have dismissed that ladies and children first stuff and insisted that he follow me. I considered Donohue’s list of hazards. What had killed him? A falling boulder? Rising water? Bad air?

  My cheeks felt wet and I realized I was crying. Self-pity and exhaustion combined for a total meltdown. I threw myself on the cot, the sheets damp under my face. Scenes of Stiletto flashed in my mind like a montage of sappy Hallmark greeting cards filled with blurry photos. Stiletto precariously perched on a beam at the Philip J. Fahy Bridge in Lehigh, giving me the thumbs up. Laughing as we sat in his Jeep, top down. Wrestling a hired assassin to the ground. Making out with me on the hood of my Camaro in a downpour. Helping me break into the home of a brownie-baking neo-Nazi. Gallantly carrying me in his arms under a moonlit sky.

  Our plans. All our plans for the future were . . . ruined! And we never even had sex! What a waste. Well, that’s the last time I ever make a personal chastity vow. Curse you, Oprah!

  There was a “thump” on the metal ambulance floor and then a voice boomed, “What the hell happened to my goddam Jeep?”

  My head popped up.

  “Stiletto?” I turned.

  Sure enough, there he was, his chest naked and covered in sweat and grit, his biceps bulging. His nose swollen and bloodied. Those mischievous blue eyes flashed under the ambulance’s fluorescent lights. He’d never looked so Mel. Better even than in Braveheart. Would someone please get this man a kilt!

  “You’re alive,” I said, wiping my eyes and hoping they weren’t underlined by streaks of black mascara. “But the rescue workers—”

  “Would’ve taken forever to reach me. I couldn’t wait around like a helpless baby, for Christ’s sake. Here, I got your shoes.” He tossed me my slingbacks and opened a bottle of water from the ambulance’s supply, consuming it in one manly swig, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  “I’m gonna kill that Stinky friend of yours.” Stiletto wiped his mouth with a broad forearm. “He
put the explosives in my Jeep. My Jeep! I took that Jeep cross-country. I loved that Jeep.”

  “I doubt Stinky blew it up. Like I keep telling everyone, he’s not that kind of guy. Anyway, forget Stinky. What about us? We survived!”

  Stiletto snapped out of it and grinned warmly. “You’re right. We survived. For now.”

  With two long strides, Stiletto approached me on the cot and planted a purposeful kiss on my lips. “You were fantastic back there, Bubbles,” he whispered. “So brave. I can’t wait to get you alone at the Passion Peak when this is over. We’ll find our would-be killer and then we’ll go away together. Someplace secluded and safe where no editor can reach us.” He leaned down and kissed me again.

  I felt slightly woozy. Stiletto’s kisses, even furtive ones, were intoxicating—as was the idea of life without editors. “At least we ended up in bed together.” I patted the cot.

  He nuzzled my neck. “My only regret was not having made love to you, Bubbles. That’s what I was thinking when I was stuck in the mine.”

  That’s what he was thinking when he was stuck in the mine? I would have been thinking, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I’m gonna die!

  “How did you get out?” I said.

  Stiletto’s lips traced the curves of my neck. “I climbed.”

  Like, duh.

  “Cleared the rock that had fallen behind us and found a fairly open passageway. The rescue workers had enough lights down there to illuminate Manhattan.” Then he sat up, as though he’d had a breakthrough. “Speaking of Manhattan, I gotta call the AP office in New York if I want to make the late-edition deadline.”

  “The AP? Why not the News-Times? This could be my Big Break.”

  Stiletto searched the ambulance for a phone, checking the dashboard, behind the cot, the medicine cabinet. “I’d like to help you out with that, Bubbles, but you know I only freelance for the News-Times when the AP doesn’t want the story. I’m a staff photographer for the AP. I have to contact them first. It’s in my contract. And I’m positive they’ll want this.”

  I thought of the photos he had taken of the body in the mine. Those photos were really good and my newspaper story would be nothing without them. What to do? What to do?

  I might love Stiletto. I might want to rip off his clothes and make wild monkey love to him right on the ambulance floor. But for now he was working for the AP, the dark side, and I was desperate to get hold of those pix.

  “Oh, don’t tell me the AP national desk cares about a mine explosion in itty-bitty Slagville, PA?” I cooed.

  “They do when Bud Price is dead in the middle of it. I thought it was him.”

  “Bud Price?” Who the heck was Bud Price?

  “You got it. I overheard the rescue workers talking. Price drove up to Slagville tonight to check out the Number Nine mine. Guess the Fords weren’t hot off the lot today. Aha! A phone.” He had opened a wall cabinet and found a cell phone. “The disturbing irony is your fake fax was right. Price was a prominent Lehigh businessman. Emphasis on the was.”

  I stared at Stiletto dialing the phone. “You don’t mean Price of Price Family Ford in Lehigh?” I could hear the blaring ads now: Price Family Ford. Where the Price is always nice. “Since when does the AP care about a salesman who screams on cable TV?”

  Stiletto put the phone to his ear. “Since said salesman won legislative approval to bring casino gambling to Slagville. It’s been nothing but controversy since. My guess is some religious fanatic got it into his sick head that Price was responsible for the downfall of Slagville society and took matters into his own hands. Then this sicko, whoever he is, decided to settle some score with us.”

  That would explain Donohue’s questions about legalized gambling and whether I had religious opposition to it. It did not explain, however, why Stiletto and I, of all people, had been the so-called sicko’s subsequent targets.

  “How do you know about stuff like this?”

  “Because I read the newspapers, Bubbles.” The phone wasn’t working. Stiletto glared at it with contempt. “Price’s Family Casino has been headline news for weeks.”

  Shoot. I knew there had to be a reason why Mr. Salvo told me I had to read the newspaper. And here I thought he was just trying to boost circulation.

  “You can hang up anytime,” said a no-nonsense voice behind us.

  Stiletto grimaced. “Shit,” he said, tossing the phone onto the cot.

  Chief Donohue’s portly frame stepped into the ambulance. “Gosh. It’s so nice to be around folks who are up on their current events,” he said, strolling over and slapping a cuff on Stiletto’s wrist and its mate on mine. “So rare that we’re treated to intelligent conversation about local enterprise.”

  The metal of the cuffs transmitted the heat rising in Stiletto’s body. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are—” he began.

  “Stiletto,” I cautioned, “think of Clint. Swearing at cops only makes their day.”

  Donohue patted Stiletto all over, a eureka look coming over his face as he reached in Stiletto’s pocket. “My, my, my, what’s this?” he asked, holding up a plastic canister of film. “Taking some vacation shots?”

  “Property of the Associated Press,” Stiletto said. “Confiscate that and you’re facing a First Amendment lawsuit that’ll bankrupt you out of doughnuts for eternity.”

  “Sweet talk won’t get you nowhere.”

  Donohue shook out a baggie and dropped in the film. “In the meantime, this is evidence. I don’t have much truck with journalists . . . unless they’re hairdressers.”

  He turned and winked at me. “Nice hairdressers like Bubbles don’t cause trouble, do you?”

  I blinked innocently. “No, sir.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Stiletto flashing me an incredulous look.

  “Yes, you’ve been very cooperative, I must say, Bubbles.” Donohue turned to lead us out of the ambulance. “Don’t you worry your pretty head about a thing. I’ll have you processed and out of my jail in a jiffy.”

  Stiletto raised an inquisitive eyebrow in my direction.

  I arched a defiant (not to mention perfectly plucked) eyebrow in response.

  Stiletto and I had been the only two journalists at the scene of what promised to be a blockbuster of a news story. But for the first time in our relationship, we were on opposites sides. He with the Associated Press. Me with the News-Times.

  We both wanted the same things—to find our apparent murderer and win the scoop of the year. And we both wanted to hop each other’s bones. The question was whether we could have it all.

  “The gauntlet,” I said to Stiletto, “has been run.”

  Stiletto’s lips twitched in amusement. “I believe, my dear, you mean thrown.”

  Chapter 4

  I was left with no choice but to make my one phone call to the most deceitful person I knew. He who had no compunction about lying, browbeating and whining to get his way. Dan the Man. My ex-husband and, not surprisingly, a darned good criminal defense lawyer. (For more explanation, see above.)

  “It’s three a.m.,” he barked when I placed my call from the Slagville Police Department. “What have you done now?”

  I explained what I had not done, but for what I had been erroneously charged. I waited for the inevitable: his protests that he was too busy and that Slagville was too far away. When the inevitable came, I reminded him about the dirty little secret I’d discovered—that he had fraudulently filled out Pennsylvania Student Assistance Corporation loan applications to pay for my community college education.

  “What’s that chief’s name again?” he asked.

  As I provided the particulars, I could overhear Wendy demanding to know what I wanted at that hour of the night. Wendy is Dan’s second wife, chicken-bone thin and just as dry. Her only attractive quality was a fortune she stood to inherit from her father’s cheeseball empire. After Dan met her, he had his name legally changed to Chip and gave up knockwurst and the World Wrestling Federation for t
he Episcopal Church and golf at the country club. As though that was all it took to shed his German working-class heritage.

  “Jane wants to talk to you,” Dan said when I was finished. “She got in around one this morning and I read her the riot act. I’m telling you, the kid’s out of control.”

  While I was out of town, Jane was supposed to check in at Dan’s by midnight—sans G the slack-jawed boyfriend. This was one area where Dan and I agreed. No G. Lots of parents worried about their kids messing around with dope. In our case G was the dope.

  “Let me talk to her.”

  The Slagville patrolman sitting at the desk where the phone was located put aside his Field and Stream and pointed to his watch. “One minute,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Mom! I can’t believe you got trapped in a coal mine explosion. How boss is that?”

  Only a teenager would describe near death as boss. “Pretty boss. Listen, Jane, you gotta call Mr. Salvo for me at the paper. Make sure to ask him about the fax he supposedly sent to the Passion Peak and let him know what happened. Dad will tell you all about it.”

  “What about Stiletto? Isn’t he there with you?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  The patrolman was winding his arm for me to wrap it up.

  I pressed my mouth against the receiver. “We’re kind of competing for the same story.”

  The patrolman leaned forward.

  “I’ll explain later. Leave a message for me at my cousin Roxanne’s. Mama has the number.”

  Jane was no fool. “Gotcha. You’re going undercover, aren’t you?”

  “Ten-four. Are you giving your father a hard time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Keep it up.”

  Dan must have threatened to bring the full wrath of the American Civil Liberties Union upon Donohue for holding two journalists investigating a story, because Stiletto and I were released early the next morning, a Thursday, as soon as the sun rose over the ash-strewn, stripped hills of Slagville.

  Not only were we let go, we weren’t charged with any crimes, Stiletto got his film back and we were provided with cups of sugar-laden Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and directions to the Texaco gas station three blocks away so that I could pick up my car.