Dial M for Mascara

by Bevill, C. L.

  “Bubba,” Mary Grace said. “And not only is Bubba not Italian, but he walked with his knuckles dragging on the ground and, and, AND you refused to go out with him, way before Ottavia tried to unload him on me.”

  Callie tried not to laugh. “I wondered why he has calluses on his knuckles.”

  “And Ivan, well, Ivan doesn’t want to be married to multiple women,” Mary Grace informed Callie with poisonous seriousness. “He just wants to knock them up. Apparently he thinks they can all live together happily, dispensing little Ivan clones upon the world, so they can worship his being for ever and ever. Amen.”

  Callie hissed suddenly and sank deep into her leather seat. She yanked on Mary Grace’s arm, trying to get her to duck, too. “There he is,” she whispered.

  The Saturn pulled into Jack’s driveway and sure enough Jack clambered out of the driver’s seat holding a bag from McDonald’s. The passenger door opened and out climbed Jack’s five year old son, Morgan. Morgan ran for the door, waving a light saber menacingly.

  “Kid’s going to put his eye out with that thing,” Callie murmured. “Told you he’s cute. The kid’s not bad, either.”

  “We’re a block away, Callie,” Mary Grace whispered back. “I’m pretty sure they can’t hear us.”

  “Yeah, but it sounds right,” Callie whispered. “We’re staking the place out, see?” She did a bad Edward G. Robinson impression out of the side of her mouth. “‘Listen you crummy, flat-footed copper. I’ll show you whether I’ve lost my nerves and my brains.’”

  “They’re inside,” Mary Grace said in a normal voice. “Now what?”

  “Wait for them to leave,” Callie said firmly. “Then, we break in.”

  “What if they don’t leave?”

  “He’s got the kid for the weekend,” Callie observed. “Kid’s just got a sugar injection from Micky D’s. Jack’s either going to kill the kid and bury him in the back yard in a shallow grave or he’s going to take him to the park and let him play his little sugared up brains out.”

  Mary Grace groaned. “Callie, you have too many nieces and nephews. Is that what you do with them when you sit for your brothers and sisters? Sugar them up? I think you should have a tubal ligation, just like I’m going to have.”

  Callie gasped and glared at Mary Grace. “I know you didn’t mean that, MG. Your mother is going to have fits if you don’t produce just as many offspring as a liquored up bunny rabbit on shore leave in the land of female bunnies.”

  “My mother can go take a flying-hey,” Mary Grace stopped as she saw Jack and his son, Morgan, exit the house almost as quickly as they had gone inside. Jack had a bag and Morgan had obtained a Dorothy the Dinosaur hat. “You were right.”

  “Six and a half nieces and nephews under the age of eight,” Callie said conceitedly. “I am wise with the force of children.”

  “Well, Yoda,” Mary Grace said. “Shall we kick down the front door or look for a hide-a-key.”

  “I can’t believe we used to take baths together,” Callie articulated. “You’ve gotten to be so tight; you’re going to explode one day.”

  “I think I already did,” Mary Grace said. “Baseball bat. I almost beaned a cop.”

  “You did not.” Callie almost choked. “I thought you were kidding.”

  “There was a strange person in a strange car parked down the street after I was almost murdered for the third time.” Mary Grace held up three fingers for effect. “So I got the Louisville Slugger out of the umbrella stand and went to kick ass and chew bubblegum.” Her voice got louder. “And I was fresh out of bubblegum!”

  Callie stared at her for a long moment. “Remind me not to piss you off anytime soon.”

  Mary Grace put her hand down. “So I think that we should break into Jack’s house and look around for evidence.”

  Callie held up a key ring. “Got this in Jack’s office while we were looking for a way up to the roof. Since it’s labeled ‘home’ I figured it would come in handy.”

  “Well okay then,” Mary Grace said firmly. “Let’s do this sumbitch.”

  “And you think I’m bad.”

  •

  They left the Miata in place in the deep shade of an oak tree. It reminded Mary Grace of Brogan for a moment, parked under Mr. Flagg’s mulberry all night. Puppy-dog eyes, she thought. Tall and lean. He’s kind of appealing in a David Duchovny way. And he knows Italian. “He knows Italian,” she said curiously.

  “Who, Jack?” Callie said, surreptitiously sneaking down the sidewalk toward the front of Jack’s house. “Look innocent,” she added.

  “Not Jack,” Mary Grace corrected. “And don’t sneak, Callie. It’s mid-afternoon on a Saturday. People are going to notice if you sneak.”

  Callie straightened up. “Ixnay on the eakingsnay.” They passed a woman in a flowered muumuu plucking weeds out of a bed of roses. “Good afternoon,” the muumuu said. Interested blue eyes stared at the pair walking past.

  “Good afternoon,” Mary Grace replied. “Nice looking roses. I can’t grow anything myself.”

  “You have to fertilize them every week,” the muumuu said. “I use coffee grounds myself.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Mary Grace responded politely. The muumuu returned to the roses and yanked venomously at the weeds. Obviously, the weeds were her mortal enemy.

  Callie glanced over her shoulder when they were in front of the next house and hissed, “Why didn’t you ask for her recipe for key lime pie?”

  “Sorry, I forgot to cloud her mind,” Mary Grace said cheerfully. “Only the shadow knows. And the lady in the muumuu. And that dog over there. And that kid up the street playing dodgeball with his brother. Ouch. That ball is way too big for a kid that size. Did I miss anyone?”

  “The postman is delivering mail two doors up from Jack’s,” Callie said sourly. “We’ll have to come back and intimidate all the witnesses. Or kill them. Whatever. Maybe we should have worn disguises. I could have been an exquisite countess from Italy and you could have been my lowly, countrified maid.”

  Two minutes later they were standing inside Jack’s house. They looked around the little foyer and Callie said, “Yikes.” She pointed at an alarm system box mounted on the wall beside the door. “We’re in trouble. Run.” She reached for the front door knob.

  “It’s green,” Mary Grace said as she pulled Callie’s hand away from the door. “Not armed. Probably doesn’t have a service now. Or he forgot to arm it when the kid was here. Look, it’s covered with dust. He hasn’t used it in a long time.”

  Callie took a deep breath. “Okay. I know this was my idea, but what do we look for? Blueprints for bombs? Utensils for cutting brake lines?”

  Mary Grace cogitated. “Where would you make a bomb? In the garage?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  They tiptoed through the moderately large ranch style house. Passing through the kitchen towards where they judged the garage door to be, Callie said, “Other than dust, he’s pretty clean, huh?”

  With a groan, Mary Grace opened the door to the garage and stopped in place. Callie was admiring a Henckels knife set when she bumped into Mary Grace. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, my God,” Mary Grace muttered.

  “What?” Callie said, craning to see around her friend. “A body? Torture device? A bag of unopened mail from the seventies? Smuggled cigarettes from Canada?”

  “He uses the garage as his art studio,” Mary Grace said. She flipped on the light so that she could more clearly see what she thought she had seen. “Look.”

  “Boobiferous,” Callie commented loudly. “Look, that one is…uh…MG, is there something you should have told me?”

  “Caledonia Caprice Branch,” Mary Grace said vehemently. “Does that look like me?”

  Callie tilted her head while examining the largest canvas which was also the closest one to them. It was somewhat hard to miss seeing as how it was the first thing anyone would see upon opening the garage door. And the subject matter was v
ery… conspicuous, especially the two parts that stuck out the most. Hooters, ta-tas, boobies, boom-booms, jaboos, mammoth mammaries were all terms that popped into her head. “It’s not finished,” she said at last, not willing to give up the point.

  “I have the potty mind?” Mary Grace threw up her hands. “Look for something bomb-like. Look for a gun. Maybe he has one in his bedroom.”

  “I’m not going in his bedroom,” Callie said. “You go. I might get man cooties.”

  “Just look for something that might be a reason for him to kill me,” Mary Grace said finally. “Or something that would clear him.”

  Callie gestured dramatically at the painting. “Well, there’s a big fat motive.”

  “That’s not me,” Mary Grace gritted.

  “Let’s say it is you,” she went on as if Mary Grace hadn’t spoken. “Well, he’s obviously a warped creepoid bent on having you. And if he can’t have you,” she lowered her voice to a harsh whisper, “then no one can.”

  “He didn’t even try to have me,” Mary Grace objected. “And that portrait isn’t me, dammit.”

  “Okay, Callie said mildly. “But we’ve both seen Fatal Attraction. Jack could be a male bunny-boiler. That could be the motive.”

  Mary Grace didn’t bother responding. She went back into the kitchen and started looking around. Callie was right about one thing. Jack was fairly neat. Some of the knick-knacks were dusty, but that wasn’t exactly something Martha Stewart would have killed over. (No pun intended.) In any case, there wasn’t anything that really stunk like an errant red herring lying around on a summer day. His living room was littered with five-year-old-kid toys, most of which appeared to be bits and pieces of mad-scientist laboratory set-ups. The kid’s bedroom had a made bed and a desk covered with all kinds of models from airplanes to atom bombs. Jack’s bedroom even contained a completely made and unwrinkled bed. (Good example for Morgan.) There wasn’t anything hidden under the mattress and there wasn’t even something interesting like porno magazines on the top shelf of the closet.

  Rubbing her eyes with one hand, Mary Grace made a face.

  “Who speaks Italian?” Callie asked from the bedroom door.

  “I almost peed in my panties,” Mary Grace said accusingly. “And I’m wearing my Italian silk tap pants that my Aunt Maria brought from Rome. Italian silk.”

  “You never did tell me,” Callie added. “I didn’t find anything. And I did consider that portrait. The hair is black, in both places,” she stopped to chuckle. “But the face is obscured. However, you have to give me that a certain part of your anatomy is consistent with a certain part of the model’s anatomy.”

  “I can’t find anything,” Mary Grace said instead of answering either of Callie’s statements. Her friend was, regrettably, correct. The larger than life portrait of a naked woman could definitely be Mary Grace’s previously unknown booby twin. And it could have been Mary Grace, except that Mary Grace knew very well that Jack Covington had never seen her naked. Except perhaps in his head. Furthermore, there was a little niggling feeling deep inside her that was almost (ALMOST!) flattered. Ugg, she thought. I’m so man-hungry that I’m flattered by a possible stalker. “It’s not me,” she insisted. “I didn’t pose for it. I didn’t come here. And as far as I know, he hasn’t been peeping in the bathrooms at work or coming to my house to peek in between the curtains. Attila would have eaten him there, anyway.”

  “Maybe not,” Callie said. “But it doesn’t mean that he isn’t stalking you.”

  “We’re all graphic artists at work. Doing websites and advertisements and stuff like that. We’re all artists who actually want to not starve, which is why we work there. So consequently, lots of artists do nudes,” Mary Grace persevered. “I did in college. I did when I studied in Paris for that summer. Men and women.”

  “Men and women,” Callie repeated luridly.

  “I’m going to hit you.”

  “Okay. Nothing here, except a portrait that looks suspiciously like you. But there is only one so maybe it’s a one-off.”

  “He’s got an office in the back,” Mary Grace said, suddenly remembering a brief guided tour the one and only time she’d been at Jack’s house. “We should look in there.”

  Suddenly there was a fierce pounding at the front door of Jack’s house that could be heard throughout the entire structure. They didn’t even need to be close to hear someone yell, “POLICE! OPEN UP!”

  Callie and Mary Grace ran for the back door. Mary Grace racked her knee on a door jamb and Callie nearly decapitated herself when a skateboard mysteriously flew out in front of her foot. “It was the lady in the muumuu,” Callie whispered frantically. “She was a stoolie.”

  The back door had a deadbolt that had been thrown and no key in sight. They both stared at it before Mary Grace said urgently, “Quick, a window.”

  Callie glanced around. It was a small mudroom. Coats that wouldn’t be used for months hung on wooden pegs. Flip-flops had been pushed up against a wall. A volleyball was tucked into a shelf-nook next to a basketball and a baseball mitt. There categorically wasn’t a window. “The office,” she barked, panic beginning to make her voice go edgy.

  They scuttled back to Jack’s office. Someone pushed the doorbell and held it down for an indeterminate amount of time. Callie broke two nails yanking the window open and getting the screen off. She stuck her head outside and discovered a large oleander bush but no SWAT team lying in wait for them. “Hurry up,” Mary Grace urged, doing what an unprejudiced observer would have called a pee-pee dance.

  Callie went out the window headfirst, the hell with formalities. Mary Grace waited for a scream or something that would indicate it was unsafe, and then followed when the same voice yelled another warning. “POLICE DEPARTMENT! OPEN THE DOOR now!”

  “They ain’t gonna take me alive,” she muttered and threw herself out.

  In the midst of a large oleander with huge white blooms, Mary Grace landed, albeit ungracefully and on her back, having inadvertently performed a half-gainer in the process of escaping said house. Callie yanked her arm.

  Ten minutes later they had plowed through three backyards, a drainage ditch, and a patch of extremely dense poison ivy. They had startled a covey of doves and a miniature schnauzer who had hauled his tiny butt back through his doggy door lest they do damage upon his dogliness. They emerged on a street that Mary Grace estimated was three down from Jack’s street and with nary a police car, sheriff’s vehicle, or county constable in sight.

  Callie was listing things that she had promised to God that she would no longer do upon the condition that God got them out of this mess. “Pre-marital sex. Cheating on taxes. Breaking and entering. Gazing lewdly at my sister’s boyfriend’s butt.”

  Mary Grace interrupted, “You look at Jeff’s butt?”

  “It’s a nice butt,” Callie argued, and went on. “Talking MG into weirdness. Eating the last helping of Ben & Jerry’s. Short-sheeting my parents’ bed. Putting Vaseline on my brother’s steering wheel.”

  Callie was going on and on, apparently having a long list of misdeeds that would need rectifying before passing over. Mary Grace tripped over her tennis shoe lace, falling face first onto the sidewalk. When Callie stepped out into the street, she paused to look back over her shoulder to see what had happened to her friend. She never even saw the car that hit her.

  But Mary Grace did. She also saw the blonde haired mama standing two houses down on the corner of the street, predictably accompanied by a cherub-cheeked, platinum-tressed munchkin in a sturdy sling.

  Chapter Six – Saturday, June 18th – Sunday, June 19th

  Whole sardines applied under the eyes at bedtime, for no more than 15 minutes will reduce wrinkles and tighten your flesh. Use daily for dramatic results. And for God’s sake, never, ever fall asleep with them still applied. – Aunt Piadora’s Beauty Hints

  Callie was trashed by a dark sedan with tinted windows and no plate. It was apparent that there wasn’t a back license plate
because Mary Grace made an effort to look. There was only a sticker on the back window that said, ‘Horn broken. Watch for Finger.’ When Mary Grace’s eyes came back to Callie again, she was doing a slow-motion somersault as she went ass over teakettle over the top of the car. First she hit her hip. Her head hit the top of the car. Then her body hit the pavement with a prominently sick crunch. And she settled to a discordant and lonely heap on the dark asphalt.

  The car did not stop. Au contraire. It sped up with a grinding roar and spun around the corner. Its engine gunned as the driver evidently hit the gas pedal with a great stomp. That was when Mary Grace saw the blonde mommy with the baby standing nearby. ‘Deep Throat’ was staring at Mary Grace with an expression nine parts amazement and one part disgust.

  “I told you, you’re in danger!” Blonde mamacita yelled. The baby yelled as well, saying something like, “BAA-Ba-BAA-doop!!!” It was like a scene from Twin Peaks with the baby playing the part of the Dream Dwarf.

  “Oh, God, Callie,” Mary Grace muttered and scrambled to get beside her friend. She lifted her head and screamed at the blonde woman, “I wasn’t the one hit by a car, you dumb TWIT! Call 9-1-1!!!”

  Callie mumbled, “Did I drink too many Screaming Blue Vikings last night or what?”

  “Oh, God,” Mary Grace said again, immediately glancing downward. There was a trickle of blood twisting its way down the curve of Callie’s cheek. “Oh, God. Callie, speak to me.”

  “Oh, yeah. Not a hangover, but some kind of tank that hit me. I think my butt is broken,” Callie said. She had a scrape above her eye and her right leg appeared to rest at an odd angle. Mary Grace gulped.

  “Do you need help?” came a soft voice from behind them. Mary Grace glanced up and saw a nondescript man wearing Bermuda shorts and a tank top that showed off way too much hairy shoulders. His face was full of concern and his hands full of something colored bright pink with purple hearts.