Bubbles Ablaze

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s you who’ll be out in the cold when Jane’s father threatens to sue his own university because you sexually harassed his daughter. Colleges are very sensitive about professors hitting on students these days. It’s a far cry from the love-ins when you were a freshman.”

  “What? You have no evidence of that.”

  “See, that’s the beauty of being an ambulance chaser like my ex-husband, Dan. He doesn’t need evidence. Jane said you two stayed up all night after that Celtic service you performed Thursday. Dan could file a federal case on that alone.”

  “Mommm!” Jane moaned.

  I dismissed her with a wave. “Think how that’s going to look to the provost.”

  Tallow had gone paler than Keith Richards during a blood transfusion. Slimy sweat greased his forehead and his eyes darted back and forth searching for the right response.

  “Oh, pooh,” he exclaimed, staring wildly toward the road. “I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t abide all three of you.”

  I craned my neck to get a view out the door. An apple red BMW roadster was riding slowly over each rock and ditch with earnest concern for its delicate bottom. It stopped and my ex-husband’s new wife got out, giving the door a hearty slam. Wendy.

  “Speak of the devil’s mistress,” I said.

  “Where is that weasel?” she yelled, pushing up the sleeves of her Talbot’s camel cashmere sweater set. “Tallow! Don’t try to run from me.” In her other hand she clutched a small black object. This was going to be good.

  She threw open the screen door so hard that she ripped it off its hinges. Wendy entered ready for battle, her tight, surgically enhanced face straining against the cream headband that held back her brown bobbed hair.

  “You!” she screamed.

  “Eek!” squeaked Tallow, who was now cowering in the corner by his glass cabinet.

  “You told me this was an ancient ogam grave marker. I showed it to Amanda Crowe of the Bucks County archaeological commission. Amanda Crowe has one just like it. She made it herself. As a Halloween hoax!”

  “Calm down, Mrs. Ritter,” Tallow whimpered. “I assure you that it is an authentic . . .” His hand slowly slid into his Barbour.

  “I paid twenty thousand dollars. Twenty thousand dollars. Do you know how dumb I feel? I’m the laughing stock of my history group.”

  Tallow’s hand gripped something under the waxed cloth of his coat.

  “He’s got a rock in his pocket, Wendy!” I shouted.

  “Ha!” And with that the bogus ogam rock left Wendy’s hand and went sailing in a perfect arc through the air.

  I covered Jane. Tallow looked up pitifully as the rock hit his forehead with a crushing bull’s-eye, bounced off and smashed into the glass cabinet, sending shards everywhere.

  We froze. Paralyzed in fear and shock. Tallow slumped against the wall, a huge red gash oozing blood from his forehead down to his oat Ralph Lauren sweater underneath the Barbour. That was going to require serious dry cleaning. I stepped carefully over the crunching glass and felt for a pulse. There was one, but it was faint. Although that might have been a permanent condition for him.

  “He’s alive,” I said. “He’s unconscious, though.”

  “Oh, he’s okay,” Wendy said. “Just fainted like a girl.”

  “Nice arm,” observed Jane. “You been lifting?”

  “To head off osteoporosis, sure. And then there’s tennis five times a week. Between the two, I got muscles that could take on the Yankee bullpen.”

  Another car pulled up. “That must be Mickey Sinkler,” Wendy said. “I told him to meet me here and cuff the crook. I hope Tallow gets a helluva lawyer ’cause Dan’s going to sue him to kingdom come for defrauding me like that.”

  “See?” I said to Jane. “I told you Daddy didn’t need evidence.”

  “Thanks for tipping me off yesterday to the possibility that I’d been scammed, Jane,” Wendy said, with uncharacteristic sweetness. “As soon as you called, I contacted Amanda. I couldn’t stay put a minute longer after I realized it was a fake. Ogam, my ass.”

  “Aww geesh,” Mickey said upon entering, shaking his head at the sight of Tallow. “Now what have you ladies done?”

  We all told him at once and Mickey, sickened by the sound of female chatter, put both fingers in his ears. He felt for Tallow’s pulse, came to the same conclusion I had and radioed for an ambulance. What excitement there must be at the Limbo Fire Department. Finally, finally someone had called.

  “You know, I’m not a private security force, Wendy,” Mickey said, while we waited for the paramedics. “You could have called the local police.”

  “Did I not purchase the stone in Lehigh?” Wendy lifted her chin defiantly. “Is not the jurisdiction of the crime dependent upon the location of the fraudulent transaction?”

  “Did you ever think there might be more serious crimes than badly scratched rocks?” Mickey countered.

  The Limbo ambulance arrived and took Tallow away. Mickey and Wendy followed. Jane and I stood by the Camaro watching them go.

  “About that older man,” I began.

  “It’s over.” Jane opened the door and got in. “You were right about G. He’s got his good points. Though I have to admit I was kind of taken aback when you started talking him up. I thought for sure this other guy was more your type.”

  Yeah, I thought, I’m a softie for psychopaths.

  Chapter 24

  “Where are we going?” Jane asked as I sped along Route 61 toward Slagville. “Back to Roxanne’s, I hope. Justin Toritsky’s parents are out of town and I don’t want to miss his party. Given how slow G’s car goes, if we don’t leave by seven we won’t get to Lehigh until the cops have cleared out all the kids.”

  “Plenty of time,” I said, turning past a gate that advised us not to enter. “I just have to take care of business first.”

  We bounded over a wide gash in the road. The ground around us was dusty and spare of trees. A breaker loomed ahead, so large that it reminded me of a metal Godzilla. The rickety reddish wooden building next to it was identified by a sign as MCMULLEN COAL INC. I stopped the Camaro and started fishing through my purse.

  “It’s Saturday, Mom, I think they’re closed.” Jane stared out the window. “And didn’t the guy who owns this kill himself yesterday?”

  I pulled out a tube of lipstick. “Exactly. You going with me?”

  Jane watched me as I applied a new thick coat of Fuchsia FooFoo to my lips.

  “You’re up to something. The brighter the lips, the darker the deed.”

  “The brighter the lips, the more of a distraction.” I capped the lipstick and tossed it in my purse.

  A stiff fall breeze blew us back as we made our way to the McMullen offices. The deserted colliery could have been out of the 1930s—the dust in our faces, the wind howling through the broken windows on the breaker and rattling the empty coal cars on the track, the way the broken storm door whap, whap, whapped, the yellow sulfuric clouds above us.

  Funny how wealthy industrialists like Hugh McMullen or the late Henry Metzger from Lehigh Steel went to work in such dusty, weather-beaten places and then drove home to palatial surroundings. I’d never seen McMullen’s home in Pittsburgh, but I imagined that if he sold a family mansion in Glen Ellen, it must be fairly nice.

  “Hello, John Steinbeck,” Jane said, when we arrived at the broken storm door.

  “What made you think of pianos?” I asked, opening the door and letting her in first.

  An equally forlorn security guard in a wrinkled blue uniform sat at the front desk watching a Pittsburgh Steelers game on a tiny television. He swung around in his swivel chair as soon as we entered the narrow hall that served as a lobby.

  “We’re closed,” he said, putting the TV on mute. “No jobs anyway.”

  “That’s good because I’ve got a job.” I smiled my Fuchsia FooFoo mouth broadly to put him at ease.

  “Then you should know we don’t do
tours no more, neither. Don’t know if you’ve heard, but our president died suddenly last night. Mr. McMullen.” He bent his head in a moment of respect. “All tours are off until further notice.”

  Cue for the business card. I handed him one and introduced myself as Bubbles Yablonsky, mortuary stylist.

  “What’s a mortuary stylist?” He flipped over the card to look at the back since the front didn’t mention anything about mortuaries.

  “I specialize in styling hair for funerals.”

  “Hair of the dead?”

  “No. Of the living.”

  Jane, embarrassed beyond belief, wandered down the hallway, examining the brass plaques of coal mining merit or whatever it is coal companies get from the Rotary.

  “Gee.” He scratched the nearly bald head under his blue cap. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  That’s because you don’t have any hair, I thought rudely. Instead, I said cheerfully, “Sure, funerals, why not? Hair style is often overlooked during moments of public grief. And yet, there you are, greeting Aunt Jessie and your dead husband’s boss, and every other important person in your life, all the while looking like you’d stuck your head in the blender that morning.”

  “Hmmph.” The security guard studied that business card again. “You must’ve seen the newspaper story about Mr. McMullen then.”

  “Yes.” I placed my hand across my heart. “I’m so sorry. I’d really love to be of assistance at this time. Do you know who is planning the funeral service?”

  “Memorial service,” he said. “I can’t say for sure, but I expect Mr. McMullen’s secretary would know.”

  Secretary. The exact person I was looking for. “And her name is?” Out of the corner of my eye I caught Jane shielding her face with her hand.

  “You can leave your card with me, if that’s okay.” He checked the Steelers. “I suppose that’s why you’ve got them. For business.”

  “I usually make it my practice to leave with a name.”

  That put him over the edge. “Listen, you’re lucky to get as far as you did.” He pointed to a sign on the door. In big red lettering it said, NO SOLICITATIONS.

  “Oh. I didn’t see that.” I picked my card out of his hands. No need to tip off the McMullen types that I’d been posing as myself. “Then you won’t be needing this. Come on, Jane.”

  “Bye,” Jane said on the way out.

  “That was a complete waste,” I said, stomping over the hard turf to the Camaro and yanking open the door. “All I wanted was a secretary’s name. A last name and a first initial would have done it.” I jammed the key in the ignition and started her up.

  “What do you want a secretary for?”

  I threw my arm over her seat to reverse. “Not just any old secretary. I wanted Hugh McMullen’s secretary, especially if she was loyal and heartbroken.” Done with the K turn, we steered straight down the McMullen Coal Road. “A loyal and heartbroken secretary would be pissed off when I told her that the cops were placing the blame on McMullen for Price’s murder.”

  “I believe her name was Lamporini. Something like Lucy or Laura.”

  Screeech! I slammed on the brakes at the bottom of the drive. “Louise Lamporini?”

  “That sounds more like it.” Jane leaned over to turn on the radio.

  “Louise Lamporini is Hugh McMullen’s secretary? I did her makeup a couple of days ago, as a favor to Roxanne. Big woman.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have any problem talking to her—unless you overdid her eyes and made her look like a raccoon. You do that sometimes, you know.”

  I knuckled her head. “You go, girl! How did you find out Hugh McMullen’s secretary was Louise Lamporini? Wait. Let me guess. You read a memo upside down on the security guard’s desk. No, that’s not it.” I snapped my fingers at the brilliance of my offspring. “You scanned the lobby photos and saw her in some company softball summer picnic.”

  “I read Professor Tallow’s copy of the Slagville Sentinel this morning. Louise Lamporini was quoted as saying she couldn’t imagine a nicer guy for a boss, yadda, yadda, yadda.” Jane turned off the radio with disgust. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you beating your head against the wheel, Mom?”

  I lifted my head and shifted into first. “Don’t ask. And don’t tell Mr. Salvo, whatever you do.”

  According to a phone book outside of a 7-Eleven, a Gary and Louise Lamporini lived at 325 Main Street in Slagville, probably one of the row homes Stiletto and I had passed that first morning out of lockup. On the way over I searched my memory banks. Had I mentioned anything incriminating to Mr. Salvo while I was making up Louise’s face? What had she heard? Had she stopped by Roxanne’s that day with the sole purpose of cashing in her promotional makeover coupons so she could spy?

  “Hey, Jane, you ever hitch a ride?” I asked as we drove past the school’s well-worn recreation fields. Two boys were playing catch in the autumn twilight while a church bell called members to evening Mass. It was getting darker and darker, earlier and earlier these days.

  “You caught me hitching Friday morning, remember? How come you waited this long for the lecture?”

  “No lecture.” I hooked a right from Terrace Street onto Main and checked the addresses. We were in the five hundreds and going lower. “I’m curious if you know about the old trick of the girl with her thumb out while the guy hides in some bushes?”

  “Yeah. G and I do that. He says men would never stop if he was with me, so he makes me stand out by myself.”

  I pictured G taking a snooze behind a shrub while Jane did all the work. I sincerely hoped G would become one of those hairdressers who decided he loved men so he would stop messing up my daughter’s life.

  Three twenty-five Main was a simple brick row house surrounded by a wrought iron gate in the pattern of a grapevine. A light was on in the plate glass living room window and a green Saturn sedan was parked out front. A woman’s car.

  “You run up and knock on the door. Tell Louise you’re related to Roxanne. Stall. Make up something. Ask her if she left her wallet at Roxanne’s. Anything to get you inside and I’ll come around the corner. Exactly like hitching with G.”

  “That sounds a little complicated, but okay.” Jane got out of the car and ran up the steps. I parked on the side street, got out and turned the corner to see Jane and Louise smiling and chatting on the front porch. Brilliant.

  They stopped when I appeared on the sidewalk.

  “Don’t I know you?” Louise said. She was in a white bathrobe with matching towel. Clearly, she’d just stepped out of the shower. “You’re from the Main Mane.”

  “That’s my mom,” Jane said. “The one I was telling you about.”

  I joined them on the porch. Through the plate glass window I could see two children in their pajamas lying on the floor and laughing at cartoons on TV. “Bubbles Yablonsky. I did your makeup,” I said, offering my hand. “You getting ready for the Hoagie Ho tonight?”

  Louise shook my hand politely, if not warmly. “More like a girls’ night out. But, listen, I can’t talk to you about Mr. McMullen. I mean, his body’s not even in the ground. It wouldn’t be right.”

  I glared at Jane. “You told her?”

  Jane threw up her hands. “What was I going to do? Hi, I’m Roxy’s second cousin twice removed, uh, did you leave your wallet in my second cousin twice removed’s salon two days ago? It was a stupid plan.”

  “She’s right,” Louise said. “I would have seen right through it. I can’t tell you very much, anyway, except that the company will likely get sold since none of the other McMullen brothers wants to get in the business and their father is in poor health. That’s it.”

  A man even larger than Louise came out of the house and onto the porch. He scared me a bit with his tattooed forearm and Hell’s Angels T-shirt, his four-inch brown beard and nasty scowl.

  “See ya, Louise,” he said, pulling on a navy windbreaker and stamping down the front steps.

  “Where the hell do
you think you’re going, Gary?”

  Gary shoved his hands into his coat. “Out.”

  “What about the kids?” Louise slapped her hip. “Who’s going to babysit? Tonight’s my night with the girls.”

  “Ahhh.” He waved her away with both hands. “That’s your problem.” He zipped up and trudged down the sidewalk.

  Jane mouthed, “What a pig.”

  Louise folded her terry-cloth arms. “At least eat some dinner. I made it for you. Sausage and peppers in a skillet on the stove.”

  Gary stopped, wavering a bit in place. “With onions?”

  “Fried.”

  He reversed, leaped up the steps, and threw open the front door without saying a word. There was the clatter of lids and pans on the stove and a plate being pulled out of the cupboard. Louise smiled knowingly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said sweetly. “Where were we?”

  “The police are saying that Hugh McMullen shot Price over business dealings,” I said. “If that’s not true, you should speak up.”

  “I don’t know if it’s true.” Louise sat down on an aluminum folding chair covered in green and gold plastic plaid. She leaned her elbow on the chair arm and thought for a bit. “Hugh McMullen was a mystery. If I had to describe him, I’d say he was a rich playboy who just wanted to spend the family money on cars and trips and fun.”

  I reached into my purse for my reporter’s notebook, but Louise shook her head. “This isn’t for publication. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand that there’s not much I could know.”

  Great. Essentially a long no comment. I folded my arms and leaned against the porch railing of iron grapes to stick it out. Jane sat in a matching folding chair next to Louise and glanced through the window at Gary, who was sitting on the couch with his children and enjoying a heaping plate of sausage.

  “What do you mean about Hugh being a spoiled playboy? How does that matter?” I asked.

  “Mr. McMullen could never live up to the reputation of his father, Donald,” Louise said. “They called his father Senior McMullen in the company. When Senior McMullen came back from World War II, his own father gave him the colliery, which had essentially closed down after the Depression. Senior McMullen built it up and made it a legitimate business again. When he had a stroke five years ago, he gave it to Hugh, who siphoned off its cash to pay for cars and trips and expensive clothes.”