Answer: None of the above.
Not one of her ex-boyfriends. Not Mary Grace herself. And Mary Grace was about as criminal as Mary Poppins. As a matter of fact, Mary Grace made Mary Poppins look like Charlie Manson’s evil twin sister.
Mary Grace crossed her arms over her chest and Brogan blinked. How does she do that without something banging her in the face?
“I’m waiting,” she said and it occurred to him that she had been, in fact, waiting for some time for him to answer.
“Imighthavebeenwrongaboutyou,” he said quickly.
Mary Grace brightened. “You want to repeat that, please?”
Brogan took a deep breath. A breath that said all the things he didn’t want to admit about his lack of judgment on this case. “I didn’t think there was a real threat against you, when I spoke to you the first time. I apologize. I spent the night outside because I was concerned that the perp might try again.”
His calm and honest statement deflated Mary Grace’s anger. When a man like Brogan apologized there wasn’t another damn thing that she could think of to say. “Coffee?” she asked lamely.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
When Mary Grace was done serving the coffee and Brogan was done looking around her cottage, there didn’t seem to be a lot to say. Finally, he said, “I’m looking into the explosives on your rental.”
Mary Grace perked up. “Forensics. You can tell exactly where the explosives came from and you can trace the person who made the bomb.”
Brogan winced. What television has done for my profession should be illegal. Those rotten Hollywood bastards. “Sometimes people who make bombs leave a signature, a kind of fingerprint on the bomb. It might be the components that are used. It might be the way it’s constructed.”
“What makes you think my…oh…what the heck should I call him? Or her,” she added quickly. “My perp. I like that. What makes you think my perp is a bomb-making expert?”
The way her lovely bow-shaped lips made the word, perp, come out of her mouth, he thought inanely. It makes perp sound like a nasty word. “It’s just one avenue,” Brogan explained. “We also have a bullet. One of the two that was shot from the gun last night. They found it in the mint ’68 Camero that was on display in the window.”
“Oh,” she said, for lack of anything better to say.
“We can compare it, find out what kind of gun it comes from, match it to other bullets fired in commission of crimes, and possibly identify the person that way.”
“Provided the gun was fired in the commission of a previous crime AND the bullet was collected for evidence AND consequently entered into the database.” Mary Grace not only read too many Dashiell Hammitt’s but watched way too much Discover Channel and TLC.
“You watch way too much-” Brogan said and was interrupted by, “I know. I know.”
“Have you thought about who might want to harm you?” he asked.
“Mrs. Frasier is on the top of my list,” Mary Grace said sincerely. “But since she’s mad about her poodle’s tail and that was caused by the second attempt, I figure she probably wouldn’t have come after me with a gun.”
Brogan’s mouth trembled. He didn’t want to smile, but he’d seen Mrs. Frasier let her poodle take a dump on Mary Grace’s yard not an hour before. “All right then. I think you’re safe during the day. The suspect seems to want darkness as an ally and probably means something.”
“I know the person,” Mary Grace said sadly. “I figured as much.” She had. Why else would someone try to kill her by cutting her brake lines, then blowing up her car, followed by shooting at her in the darkness?
“Who knew you were working late?”
“Yeah,” she said calmly. “I thought about that, too. Well, it’s kind of a habit with me. Everyone at work knows. I guess most of my ex’s know. My neighbors probably know, too. Friday night tends to be catch-up.”
“No hot dates, then?” Brogan stared at Mary Grace’s exquisite blue eyes.
“Is that an official question?” she shot back.
Brogan grimaced. He was about as slick as duct tape on a blistering day. “Just need to know where you’re going to be tonight.” As Mary Grace told him, he silently instructed Hardhat Harry to stand down. With another quick look at her face, he thanked her for the coffee and left.
Mary Grace watched Brogan walk down the sidewalk. Cute butt. Then he drove away in the plain brown sedan and she sat down to think about it. What she finally decided was that she was stressed enough to go out and buy two pints of Ben & Jerry’s. (Chocolate Therapy and the Gobfather, of course.) Instead of subjecting herself to intense, post-traumatic ice-cream consumption disorder after the fact, she decided to mow her lawn. Certainly, she wouldn’t obtain abs like Yardbait, but she would definitely be the better for it and her yard would be da bomb.
Ten minutes later Mary Grace was dripping with sweat, cursing at her lawn mower, which had died and wouldn’t be persuaded to restart, despite vigorous and vicious death threats against its existence. She tromped around into the back yard to get a large hammer out of her garden shed with which to send the lawn mower to lawn mower heaven when she heard a not so quiet, “PSSSTTT.”
Mary Grace looked around. Someone was standing at her back gate. Normally, Mary Grace would have headed inside and called 9-1-1, but the someone standing at her back gate was a thirty-something blonde, would-be den-mother with a baby in a sling across her chest. The baby, also a blonde with adorable, impossibly blue eyes cooed in response and waved chubby fists. Mary Grace didn’t know the woman. Nor did she know the baby.
“PSSSSSTTTTTT,” the woman with the baby repeated loudly.
“I heard your psstt the first time,” Mary Grace said. How many times in the course of human events has a woman with a baby in a sling attacked and murdered another woman? Hmm. Nope. Not lately. Besides which where did she put the baby when she crawled under my car to cut the brake lines?
“For God’s sake,” the woman said. “Get over here, then. I don’t want your entire neighborhood to hear.”
Mary Grace took about five steps closer to the gate. The woman patted her baby on the head and deftly extracted a tiny formula filled bottle from a pocket. The baby grabbed and the nipple went right into the mouth. “Okay,” Mary Grace said. “What’s up?”
“You’re Mary Grace Castilla, right?”
“Yes. I have the distinct displeasure right now,” she admitted. “You don’t know anything about lawn mowers do you?”
The blonde mama blinked. “You’re in danger,” she said. The baby went, ‘suck-suck-suck.’
Mary Grace blinked. “Who are you?”
“Call me Deep Throat,” she said seriously.
“What, you work for the FBI?”
“You’re in danger,” the blonde repeated. The baby choked on his formula and mommy patted his stomach. “Try checking to see if the gas tank is empty. Hey, look, it’s Jimmy Hoffa.” She pointed behind Mary Grace. The baby gurgled.
Mary Grace looked. There was no one there. Stupid, she told herself. She looked back to say something scathing to the clearly lunatic pale-tressed mother at her back gate and discovered she was gone. Then Mary Grace tripped over a garden hose and fell on her face. By the time she scrambled to her feet and got the gate open, the alley was empty.
And incidentally, the gas tank of the lawn mower was abysmally empty.
Chapter Four – Saturday, June 18th
Applying Coca-Cola ® to one’s skin before lying down for a tan achieves dramatic results and one has silky smooth skin for one’s lover to worship – Aunt Piadora’s Beauty Hints
Was there really a contract on Mary Grace’s life? Who was the crazed stalker out to cut her into little, itty-bitty dead teensy pieces? How did Brogan know how to speak Italian? Was there an ice cube’s chance in the Gobi Desert that her Prada handbag could be repaired? Was Jorge the gorgeous cabana boy trying to make off with Madison Haley Jessica’s fast food fortune and did he get her pregnant or was it
her secretive cousin’s Brazilian half-brother’s identical twin’s baby?
Mary Grace got a headache trying to figure it out. She borrowed some gasoline from Mr. Flagg in exchange for all the dirty details of what he and the wife had missed that morning, and then finished mowing her lawn, leaving a wide ring of six inch tall grass around the dog doo-doo, kind of like a reverse crop-circle. Then she showered and sat down to take notes. She listed everything she could think of, including the motherly Deep Throat, who had warned Mary Grace that she was in danger.
“Well, no kidding,” Mary Grace said, ungraciously. “As if I hadn’t noticed the Explorer doing a free fall down the side of a hill, the BMW explosion, and a thug with a gun shooting at me.” She wanted to throw her pen across the room but decided that since it was a Montblanc and a gift from her father, she’d have to lump it.
Then there was Detective Frederick Brogan. Mary Grace dug his card out of her purse and grimly examined the information printed there as if it would come alive and give her answers. Watching my house all night. What’s up with that? How much danger am I in? How guilty does he feel?
Suddenly it occurred to Mary Grace that she hadn’t found out why Jack Covington had been at work the previous night. Trey had said it was to pick up his BlackBerry, but was that really the reason? Not only that but the drop-dead Lolita Lewis had been about and who was doing dry-cleaning on a Friday night? If the Arlington Police detective, what had his name been?, wasn’t going to find out what the three were doing at the scene of the crime, then Mary Grace would. She dug out a second card from her wallet. Victor Bloodsaw. How could I forget that name? How did he make it through grammar school without killing someone? Why hasn’t he got someone in custody after twelve hours? Why do I have to ask why?
The phone rang and Mary Grace checked caller-ID. “Callie,” she muttered. Callie Branch was her oldest friend. As a matter of fact, the only reason Mary Grace hadn’t been calling Callie up to simultaneously cry on her shoulder and beg for a ride to work was that Callie had been on vacation in Cancun with her family. Mary Grace had forgotten (for some reason like a nutty murderous idiot wielding a gun) that the Branch family was flying in on Friday because Aloysius Branch needed to check on his business. (Not that he really needed to be present at his six pawn-shops located across the greater metroplex, but he was a notorious micro-manager and couldn’t let go.) Not only did Aloysius want to be back on location to lord over his realm, but he was also notoriously cheap and had gotten a better deal on the Mexico trip by taking weekdays instead of a weekend. Since he was paying none of the rest of the family seemed to mind.
Of course, Mary Grace could have called Callie anytime on her cell phone, but she didn’t want to bum out her best friend’s vacation by saying, ‘Someone’s trying to wax my ass and my neighbor’s poodle took a major dump on my lawn and didn’t clean it up.’ For one thing, Callie, short and red-headed, and blatantly protective of the people she loved, might have gotten on a plane and headed back for North Texas. However, that particular rule didn’t apply as Callie was back from Cancun, undoubtedly tanned and ready of a gossip fix.
“Callie,” Mary Grace said as she answered the phone. “I have had such a…”
“Bad news,” Callie interrupted vilely. “You are in so much trouble. Your butt is in such a sling. You are in the soup. In the hot seat. You’re in a spot so tight your gizzards are squishing out of your ears like Play-Doh out of a potato masher.”
“Okay,” Mary Grace said amicably, when Callie paused for air. “I get the point. How am I in trouble?” Perhaps the question she should have asked would have been, ‘How am I NOT in trouble lately?’ The emphasis was completely, utterly, and unmistakably on ‘not.’
“Guess who called my mother in Mexico yesterday, just before we boarded the plane?”
“The Pope? Elvis? No, wait, Marilyn Monroe wanting to chat about JFK,” Mary Grace said, ignoring the obvious.
“Mary Grace,” Callie chastised her friend with merely the emphasis of her name. “Mar-y Gr-ace.” The literal translation was, ‘You better stop your chatting-whining-complaining-gossiping-insert-appropriate-word-here and listen to me right now.’ In person the name would have been accompanied by the suitable hand gesture dependent on the gravity of the given situation. “Mrs. DeMarco called my mother,” Callie said at last.
“Oh, God,” Mary Grace said, the two words dripping with beleaguered and abrupt comprehension. “Not Mrs. DeMarco.”
“Yep,” Callie confirmed. “Mrs. Roberta J. DeMarco. She wanted to tell my mother something. You remember my mother, the one who makes calzones so tasty that simply looking at it puts five pounds on your hips?”
“I remember your mother,” Mary Grace said. “I remember the calzones. I remember those five miserable bastard pounds, too.” Her stomach was clenching in terror and fear. The average stranger certainly wouldn’t understand the connection between one Mrs. Roberta J. DeMarco and Mrs. Aloysius Branch, also known as Mrs. Ottavia Luciana (nee Fonti) Branch. Mrs. Ottavia Luciana Branch was AKA Callie’s mother. The Italian correlation became obvious when former names were expressed. But it was the place where the Fonti, DeMarco, and Castilla families lived once upon a time that was the real clincher. Only Mrs. DeMarco still lived on Marley Avenue in Dallas. But the Fonti’s, Callie’s grandparents, and the Castilla’s, Mary Grace’s parents, had lived there at the same time some twenty-odd years before. It was a close knit Italian neighborhood, some of whom were only a generation away from Italy.
It was also like living in the ultra-top-secret communications branch of the CIA. Secrets were the kind of thing that one person knew about and kept it to herself. If Person X told a neighbor a secret, then two hours later it would be repeated to Person X from the neighbor on the opposite side of the house.
“So what did Mrs. DeMarco have to say?” Mary Grace asked with false hope. The false hope was that the subject matter was something unrelated to the present crisis, such as Mary Grace’s alleged affair with the grand poo-bah of the KKK or something equally innocuous.
“Oh, a little something about a BMW deciding to arbitrarily blow up in your front drive way,” Callie said conversationally. “Why didn’t you tell me? That was before we left, you dipwad.”
“I didn’t want to ruin your vacation,” Mary Grace said weakly.
“So this morning, Mrs. DeMarco calls back and says we should read page 5 of the Metro section of The Dallas Morning News,” Callie went on. “You know. ‘Woman Attacked in Arlington by Masked Gunman.’”
“I missed that page.” Mary Grace paused for effect. “Besides, I don’t remember if they had a mask on.”
“Ma doesn’t miss that section. You know who happened to call this morning?” Callie went on slyly. “Just to chat about the weather in Florida? How shuffleboard is going? How her husband’s arthritis is? How the kitchen in the condo isn’t as good as the one on Marley Street?”
The answer choked in Mary Grace’s throat.
Callie said it for her. “Your mother, that’s who. Ghita Rose Castilla. And she got an earful from my mother. Then I think they both broke the phone trying to have a conference call with Mrs. DeMarco so they could all harpyize the lines at the same time. Ma called for me to fix it but I was hiding in the upstairs closet, trying to call you with the cell phone. Watching your six, you know. And you didn’t answer.”
“I was mowing the yard,” Mary Grace said quietly, not adding the other part. After stalking the cute police detective who’s guarding me during the nights with a Louisville Slugger and getting warned by a baby-toting, flaxen haired mama who wants to be called Deep Throat. “Is She already on a plane?” she said hoarsely. The ‘She’ did not refer to H. Rider Haggard’s immortal character, but in fact was an allusion to another lesser known hell-beast, her mother.
“Ghita’s on her way to the airport, even as we speak,” Callie said. Mary Grace was always impressed by the way her mother allowed Callie to call her by her first name. Ever since the time Ca
llie had saved Mary Grace from certain shopping death at…well, she didn’t really want to think about that. Not even Mary Grace’s father, Gianni, called his wife by her first name. Ma was ‘Mother’ or ‘Mrs. Castilla’ or ‘Your Worship,’ but always said in a respectful manner lest a rolling pin was to fly out of the kitchen and bean him in the back of his head.
Mary Grace always suspected that Ma had been a pinch hitter for the Red Sox. As a matter of fact, she assumed that it been Ma who had given the bat to Gianni to give to Mary Grace. The reason was that it wouldn’t have been ladylike to say the same things to Mary Grace. Ma didn’t swear. She also didn’t drink caffeine after 3 pm. And if someone ever blasphemed in front of her, she kept a roll of pennies in her purse so that when she smacked the back of the blasphemer’s head it would really hurt and the lesson would stick.
“Good God,” Callie said. “I think you should go into the DPP.”
Mary Grace didn’t want to ask but she did. “DPP?”
“Daughter’s Protection Program,” Callie said and laughed. But then she instantly sobered. “So does this have anything to do with your brakes failing a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah, Callie,” Mary Grace said seriously. “Someone cut my brake lines, blew up my rental BMW, and tried to put a bullet or two in me last night. A really puppy-dog looking detective spent last night watching my house. Mrs. Harvard’s yarddoll kind of propositioned me. Mrs. Frasier’s poodle crapped on my yard. I tried to hit the detective with the Louisville Slugger. And a strange blonde woman with a baby in a sling warned me that my life was in danger.”
Silence was Mary Grace’s answer. Callie was dumbfounded. Finally she said, “I’ll be right over, and I’m bringing Ben & Jerry’s.”
•
Just inside Mary Grace’s foyer, Callie looked deeply into Mary Grace’s eyes and said firmly, “Tell me about his butt.”
“Whose?”
“I have ways of making you talk,” Callie said with a bad accent that didn’t sound like any particular nationality. She produced a plastic sack and added salaciously, “Also, I have Phish Food and Karamel Sutra.”
Dial M for Mascara Page 4
