Dial M for Mascara

by Bevill, C. L.

  “An ambulance,” she said urgently.

  “I called emergency services already,” he said. Then he gently put a blanket over Callie. “Here you go, sweetie.” Pink and purple bizarrely settled over Callie’s nearly motionless figure.

  “What happened, Burt?” came another voice. Burt answered but his voice faded into the background.

  Mary Grace settled down to hold Callie while they waited. Callie said, “My head hurts, MG. Don’t tell them what we did, huh? My mom will kill me.” Then she shut her eyes.

  “Oh, God,” Mary Grace groaned again. She looked up and around, but the blonde woman with the baby was long gone.

  •

  At Arlington Memorial Mary Grace was sitting in the waiting room for the emergency room when Detective Frederick Brogan turned up. Minutes had turned into hours and the windows had gone from bright blue sky to blackest night as she waited. She had called Callie’s family and everyone but Ottavia had been located. Several were in the room when Brogan strode inside like he owned the place, stopping in front of the place that Mary Grace sat, twisting her hands together. She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes and said, “You’re like a bad penny. Oh, wait. Inflation. A bad quarter? A bad dollar.” Abruptly, she gave up. Her sense of humor had apparently vanished when Callie’s eyes had closed in unconsciousness.

  “How about coffee?” he said gently. “The cafeteria serves some pretty good coffee here.”

  “Did your buddy call you again? I don’t see how he could have when it was Callie who was hit by the car,” Mary Grace said the words and wondered if they made sense to Brogan. He was looking at her with a compassionate expression and it occurred to her that he must see a great many people in pain in the course of his job; those were people whose lives had been disrupted by some kind of criminal activity or another. He must know every hospital in the metroplex, every emergency room doctor, and every technique for telling people bad news. It must be hard to take.

  “I was going to talk to Jack Covington about what he was doing at Pictographs last night,” Brogan said. “The police band was screaming about two women involved in a hit and run very near to his house, and somehow I came up with an hmm feeling. What were you doing there?”

  Painfully aware of Callie’s relatives listening in, Mary Grace bit her lip. She knew that he meant being at Jack’s place of residence today. He suspected that she had been in the house and expected her to trip herself up. Except, she wasn’t going to admit to breaking and entering Jack’s house, a felony, wasn’t it? She wasn’t going to implicate Callie, either. It wasn’t like she had stolen anything from him. But there was the little part about the painting. Let’s see, what answers could she give him? Sightseeing? Running through the woods? Bird-watching? A new form of low-crawling bush exercise that was said to reduce one’s weight by ten pounds in ten days? “Did you say coffee?” she said insipidly.

  Ten minutes later they were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria looking out at three smokers having a puff-a-thon in the atrium. “Do you think smoking hurts plants?” she asked idly.

  “Probably,” he answered honestly. “Those plants don’t look so bad. What were you doing at Jack Covington’s house?”

  “Callie was hit on the corner of Blue Suede and Love me Tender Avenues,” Mary Grace said. “The developer must have had a thing for Elvis. Jack doesn’t live on the corner of Blue Suede and Love Me Tender.”

  “You’re like the worst witness, ever,” he commented mildly. Surprisingly his brown eyes were twinkling. “Security guards from the same complex that Pictographs has its office in called in a report that two women were fiddle-farting around on the roof earlier today”

  “I never-” Mary Grace started indignantly and broke off. I wasn’t on the roof, she thought rudely. Not fiddle-farting or any other kind of farting around. So there. Copper.

  Brogan’s eyebrows went up, silently entreating Mary Grace to answer her question. When she clamped her mouth firmly shut, he went on, “So I climbed up on the roof. And what did I find?”

  “Bird poop,” pooped, popped out of Mary Grace’s mouth before she could help herself.

  Brogan snorted. “Well, I guess you know what I found.”

  Mary Grace took a sip of coffee heavily burdened with creamer and artificial sweetener. Brogan had told a fib. Either that or he didn’t have taste buds after drinking crappy coffee for however long he had been a police officer. The cafeteria’s coffee was not good. As a matter of fact, it could have passed for the stuff that went into the gas tank to make sure it ran better. In any case, she didn’t say nothing to nobody, nohow.

  “It looked like the imprint of a gun,” Brogan said conversationally. “So I’m going to take a leap here, maybe err on the side of rationality, and also the side that says that you’re not registered to own a .38.”

  “A .38?” Mary Grace repeated thoughtfully. The only kind of 38 she knew of was the Jezebel Scandalous Lace Unlined Demi Bra she had on.

  “A .38 caliber gun. Also, your mother and father aren’t registered to own one. Not in Texas, or in Florida, for that matter.” Brogan paused to take a theatrical sip of coffee. “I didn’t check your friend, Callie. But then I didn’t know she’d be roof-crawling with you today.”

  Mary Grace’s lips trembled in an effort to keep them shut. She absolutely adored a man who had a sense of humor. Plus a killer butt was always a nice adjunct. However, the downside of a man who had a sense of humor was that he could be disgustingly annoying and perceptive. God, it was like she couldn’t help herself. “Why do you need to know if I or someone I know or someone I’m related to has a .38?”

  Brogan stared at the top of his coffee. He was wearing a nice blue shirt today, along with a nicer blue tie. It was too bad he was wearing brown slacks and a black belt that didn’t quite pull it off. A Gucci tie would look great on him. A light blue one with little black dots, she thought. Well, hell, what did he just imply that I’m supposed to react dramatically to? “Oh,” she said finally. “I guess that’s what the bullet came from. That kind of gun. And you think that,” she tilted her head in order to facilitate the thinking process, “Callie and I went to retrieve the evidence.”

  Brogan popped his lips.

  “Ah-ha!” Mary Grace said loudly. “Callie was in Cancun! She couldn’t have been the shooter from the poopy roof.” One of the cafeteria workers looked rather startled at the overloud declaration. She harrumphed almost as loudly and turned back to what looked like a hefty and largely inedible container of chili mac.

  “Cancun,” Brogan said. “Okay, well, that obviously clears her.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “I wasn’t suggesting that you had an accomplice at Pictographs last night to fake a murder attempt.” He scratched his head. “But as for retrieving the gun,” his lips twitched, “well, it wasn’t there when I showed up.”

  “You know I think maybe Callie might have been at DFW by then. But regardless, someone beat us to it,” Mary Grace said sullenly, thinking of Callie so nearby with a fractured skull and a broken leg.

  Brogan took that in with another sip of coffee. “This coffee isn’t as good as the last time I was here.”

  “It tastes like liquid poopoo,” Mary Grace commented.

  “Okay, then, you and your girlfriend,” Brogan continued blithely, “went to Pictographs because you figured that the roof was where someone must have thrown the weapon. The perp threw it up there in order not to have it when the cops showed up.”

  “Only if the person had been present immediately after I got attacked and I recognized him.” Mary Grace said this with gusto, as if she had been thinking about it for quite some time and she had reasoned it out for herself, which she had once Callie had thought of it first.

  “Jumping to conclusions,” Brogan admonished. “So you suspect Jack Covington and oh, whatshisname, Trey Unibrow.”

  “Kennebrew,” Mary Grace corrected. “He waxes his eyebrows you know.”

  “Men do that?”

  “Yes
, men do that, too. It’s called being metrosexual.”

  “Well, hump a rhino, uh, never mind that,” Brogan muttered, absently fingering the hairs in between his eyebrows.

  “Don’t worry,” Mary Grace said comfortingly. “You don’t really need to wax.”

  “No?” Hopefully.

  “Just a little tweezing here and there.” She mimicked the motion with index finger and thumb, indicating where she would pluck.

  Brogan scowled.

  “You said I’d be safe.” Mary Grace withdrew her hand and suddenly attacked.

  “Where did I say you’d be safe?”

  Mary Grace frowned. “Hah. Trick question. You said, ‘I think you’ll be safe during the day.’ Not stay at home and hide out like a little chicken-butted wimp.”

  “Chicken-butted wimp,” he said. “I don’t believe I ever heard it put that way before.”

  “It wasn’t like the police were taking me seriously,” Mary Grace added, wincing inwardly at her abrupt viciousness. She was tired of being the good girl, the girl who did everything right, the girl who didn’t piss off her mother, and the girl who went through the ten-items-or-less line at the grocery store with under ten items. By god, she was going to put eleven items in her basket and rebel against authority. All that good behavior wasn’t getting her a husband, if she were really inclined that way. It wasn’t getting her mother off her back, even if she was on her way from Florida. It wasn’t getting her safe. Someone had tried to kill her THREE times and she was not a happy Girl Scout. As a matter of fact, fuck the Girl Scouts.

  Brogan stared at Mary Grace. It wasn’t hard to figure out what he was thinking. He thought she was nuts. “Okay, I get why you went to Pictographs. You don’t trust the cops. You figured out that someone you know is probably the would-be killer. You thought there’s three people last night at Pictographs that conveniently are there at the right time, so they’re up there on the suspect list. So if one of them tried to kill you, then they must have dumped the weapon. So the Arlington cops didn’t find the weapon, i.e., the weapon was somewhere close by that the cops didn’t check. The roof, voilà.”

  Mary Grace nodded slowly. “That sounds good.” It sound good. Not in a good good way, but in a that-sounds-plausible way. Perhaps Brogan didn’t think she was nuts. Maybe he thought she was simply borderline. It was something to work on.

  “Then you find no weapon,” Brogan said. “Only an imprint in bird crap that might have been where a weapon had landed.”

  Her eyes rolled. Callie had said there was an imprint of a gun and she believed Callie.

  “Okay,” Brogan said slowly. “Why focus on Jack Covington? Why go to his place? Why not the metrosexual he-man, whatshisname? Why not the other woman?”

  “Kennebrew,” Mary Grace supplied thoughtfully. “And her name is Lolita Lewis.” Not only does Brogan have nice puppy-dog eyes, but he’s got nice lips. Full, ready to kiss. Definitely a yummy factor of…She shook her head violently.

  Brogan lifted a questioning eyebrow.

  Mary Grace scrambled to cover up. “Trey’s about as threatening as a potato chip. He’s all hot air. He’s like a…Hostess Cupcake. Pretty on the outside. Fluffy on the inside.”

  “Poor kid,” Brogan commented pityingly. “So you think Jack’s your man. But why not the Lewis woman?”

  A large piece of artwork flashed into Mary Grace’s head. The focus of the composition was on the breasts on the black-haired woman. It was clear from the other works in progress that Jack thought a great deal of nudes and in particular of a generously endowed and unidentifiable woman. Mary Grace had seen Jack’s ex-wife before. She was a thin blonde; she was the kind of woman Callie called a PTB, or perky-titted bitch. Mary Grace also knew all the people at Pictographs, some ten souls. She was the only black-haired woman on the premises. And of the four women that worked there, she was, by far, the one with the largest wongas. If my mother ever saw that portrait she would die on the spot. Simply up and instantaneously die.

  Callie had called the portrait a big fat motive. If the portrait really was of Mary Grace, then it was. If it were just a study, it wasn’t. If it were, then Jack had a thing for her that bordered on making the latest and most fascinating entry to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

  Mary Grace snapped back to the moment. So did Brogan know that the pair had been inside Jack’s house? Had someone seen them enter, like Ms. Muumuu or the postman or the kid with the ball? Had the police found the screen window busted out in Jack’s office? Had Jack been back to determine that nothing had been stolen? Had the police noticed that Callie still had Jack’s keychain in her pocket?

  Answers to these questions and more on next week’s episode, Mary Grace thought. Same bat time. Same bat channel. “How did you hear about Callie getting hit? I mean, how did you know she was my friend?”

  Brogan considered Mary Grace carefully. At last, he said, “I was on my way to see Jack Covington. The police band reported a break-in at that same address. Then ten minutes later, as we were waiting for the right detective to show up, yes, I was at the house, waiting, there was a report of a hit-and-run only three blocks away. Two young women. I made another leap. Two women at Pictographs. Two young women involved in a hit-and-run very nearby. Voila.”

  “There was a report of a break-in?” she said. Had Brogan been at the house or in the house waiting? Had he seen the portrait? “Do you know who reported it?”

  Brogan flashed a brief set of white teeth. “Telephone at the car wash two blocks away from Covington’s house. Said they didn’t want to get involved but felt a moral duty to report a crime.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “The Arlington detective thinks it’s a woman. But it was hard to be certain.”

  “Did they fingerprint the phone?”

  Brogan groaned. “For what? Because someone’s house got broken into? Hell, no. You know, CSI has made life for regular cops a living hell. People get a burrito stolen out of the refrigerator at work and want detectives to do DNA testing and make molds from the footprints on the carpet.”

  Mary Grace sighed. “Why would someone call the cops about a break-in and not want to get involved? That sounds silly.” Brogan knew very well who had gone into Jack’s house. Maybe the other detective, Bloodsaw, even suspected. But since nothing was taken and certainly it was obvious that neither Mary Grace nor Callie were carrying Jack’s plasma screen TV through the bushes, then they weren’t going to push the issue.

  “Maybe if someone stopped trying to do the police’s jobs,” Brogan suggested politely. “Then there wouldn’t be any break-ins to report.”

  “Maybe if the police had taken me seriously the first time,” Mary Grace said, just as politely.

  “Jesus tap-dancing Christ,” Brogan swore. “Beat a dead horse will you?”

  Mary Grace studied a stain on the Formica covered table at which they sat. She was about to confess everything. Every last little niggling detail of Callie and her plan to find a would-be murderer before that person became successful at their desired endeavor would spill out to the puppy-dog eyed detective. He was cute. He was concerned. He had full firm lips that would kiss her like a handsome sheik out of an old black and white movie. He’d even admitted that he’d been wrong about her. So how could Mary Grace resist?

  “I-” she started and was immediately interrupted by, “MARY GRACE CASTILLA!”

  Mary Grace sank into her chair, wishing that she could make herself invisible at will. Harry Potter’s handy-dandy cloak would have come in helpful about that time. The ability to change colors and blend in like a chameleon would also have been extremely accommodating. But all she had was the capacity to sink lower into her chair and pray that the person who had cried her name out so impudently wouldn’t actually see her. It was, of course, far too late.

  Ghita Castilla, wife of Gianni, mother of Mary Grace, had arrived. She had badgered an airline employee into kicking a Miami businessman out of his business c
lass seat and successfully threatened at least three and no more than five people who had, at various times, demanded that she be removed from the flight. She had frightened a cab driver so much that the poor man was, at the very moment that she screamed her daughter’s name into the cafeteria, resigning from his job so that he could become a priest in Africa.

  Ghita had arrived at Mary Grace’s house to discover that her daughter was conspicuously absent, but to find a neighbor named Mr. Poteet, who was more than willing to share all the dirty details of recent days. This included one particularly thrilling event in which Mary Grace attempted to beat a police officer to death with a bat whilst dressed in a transparent, feather-trimmed negligee. Never mind that Mary Grace didn’t actually own a transparent, feather-trimmed negligee or that she actually hadn’t touched the police officer. But Mr. Poteet did get the part about the bat correct. Then she let herself into Mary Grace’s house and located the remnants of an ice-cream pity party, made the connection to Callie, and called Callie’s mother.

  Callie’s mother, Ottavia, had just heard from one of her sons and was tearfully getting ready to go to the hospital. Ghita called the cab company, got a pluckier cabbie to pick her up and drop her off at Arlington Memorial, where she briefly commiserated with Ottavia and Aloysius Branch as well as several of their offspring, their offspring’s spouses and children. They also thanked God and Callie’s patron saint for her non-life threatening condition. Then, finally, at last, in conclusion, Ghita hunted her only daughter down at the cafeteria of the hospital, where she was flirting shamelessly with an unknown man.

  Ghita did note that Mary Grace looked tired, bloodshot eyes, one cheek scraped, with a blood stained shirt and depressed all to death. But that didn’t excuse the fact that she should be wearing a hair shirt in the emergency room’s waiting area and ripping bits of flesh from her bones in her zeal of loss and pain. Ghita stopped. Well, maybe not that bad. But who the hell is this guy and what is he doing with my daughter?