“Okay. So I’ll deduce: You bypassed the no-driver’s-license issue by hopping a train from Kansas City, right?”
He nodded.
“And you arrived sometime in the last hour or so—”
Another nod. Damn, I was good.
“You didn’t call Mom and tell her because you didn’t want to get stuck out in the burbs.”
A mischievous smile accompanied the latest nod. I was on to something. The cocky sparkle in his proud eyes erased any doubt.
“It’s been driving you nuts being out of things here. The thought of a real, live murder mystery was a bigger pull than the senior special at Denny’s.”
He tapped his foot in mock irritation at that comment. But I also noticed he didn’t deny it. I was on a roll, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
I set the suitcase down in the little hallway (fancy word for a space the size of Ms. Rapple’s mouth—wait, bad example) and turned. “The only thing I can’t figure out is how you got from the train station to here? Did you take a cab?”
Grandpa Stu simply looked at me in silence. He was playing hardball and trying to read his face wasn’t an option. You see, unlike me, he knew a thing or two about poker faces.
“Oh, come on. Help a girl out.”
“How about a hug for your grandpa, instead? Think I can score one of those?” He opened up his arms and I ran in, just like I had since I was old enough to stand. Being wrapped in those arms was, hands down, the best place to be. We held each other for a long moment, and then I stepped back to get a better look.
His hair was gone. We’d already established that. His eyebrows, thick and white, sat atop ocean-blue eyes that twinkled like the brightest stars in the night sky. The navy blue sweater he wore fell over his shoulders—his once broad, strong shoulders. My throat tightened and my eyes watered. Grandpa Stu was no longer the spry man I remembered. Sure, he was still in fine shape for eighty years old, but he wasn’t exactly the same.
“Now let me take a look at you, Sugar Lump.”
I obliged and moved a few steps back, executing a near-perfect curtsey as I waited for the once-over.
“You’ve always been a little waif of a thing, but have you lost weight?”
Should I fess up and tell him about my diet of Cocoa Puffs and chocolate bars? Did I tell him that four hours was a good night’s sleep? That if I slept any longer than that, I dreamed of someone ripping my heart out of my chest and stomping on it over and over? Nah. He’d figure it out anyway.
“Maybe a pound or two. I’ve been real busy the past week with the new client and then the whole murder thing. It’s been a little stressful around here.”
He sat down on the loveseat and slipped off his tasseled loafers, satisfied for the moment with my explanation.
“So what’d I miss? You didn’t figure out who the killer is yet, did you?”
“I wish. I’ve learned that Mitzi Hohlbrook is Preston’s second wife. Someone as different from his first wife as you could imagine. Preston’s maid seems to think there was something going on between Mitzi and my client’s cousin, but the cousin denies it and I believe him. Regardless, the maid and even Preston’s secretary are both convinced that Preston had finally realized his marriage was a mistake.”
“Was there a prenup?”
Leave it to Grandpa to cut to the chase. “I don’t know. I need to ask the housekeeper that tonight.”
Grandpa shifted forward on the sofa, his quick smile deepening to reveal the kind of dimple that set hearts aflutter in his Sexy Seniors Single Group back home. “Tonight?”
Oh, good God. Open mouth, insert foot.
I tried to make the upcoming jaunt to The Car Crash sound as unappealing as possible. “Carter and I are just going to head over to a bar about twenty minutes away. The Hohlbrooks’ housekeeper and the next door neighbors’ housekeeper like to hang out there on Wednesday nights. I thought it would be a good place to get some information about the neighbors and pump Preston’s maid a little bit more as well.”
Without really thinking, my shoulders hiked up and my head sank into my neck, a classic duck-for-cover pose if there ever was one. Grandpa was silent. I peeked out through closed eyes to make sure he hadn’t had a stroke or anything, but he was gone, the only remnant of his time on the couch an indent where his buttocks had been.
“Grandpa? Where’d you go?”
I turned just in time to see my grandfather pull a fringed cowboy shirt and a pair of black leather pants from his suitcase. “Great. I brought some of my dress-up clothes just in case. One can never be too prepared when there’s a mystery to be solved.”
Cocoa Puffs churned in my stomach at the image of my grandfather in black leather pants and a cowboy shirt. It sunk to my toes when he pulled out an Army fatigue hat.
“I’ll fit right in. The leather gets me in with the biker dudes, the shirt with the rednecks, and the hat with the hunters and patriotic fellas.”
Dudes? Rednecks? Patriotic fellas? Who was this masked man?
I was just about to offer a feeble protest, something about the dangers of loud music and the health risks of secondhand smoke to senior citizens, when he spoke again. “See if you can’t rustle up something better than what you’ve got on now, okay Sugar Lump? Your grandma always said you catch flies with honey. Remember that.”
“Um, Grandpa?”
“What is it, Tobi?” He pulled his navy blue sweater over his head and shimmied into the cowboy shirt. Once it was completely on, he shook his upper body to showcase the movement of his fringe. “Snazzy, ain’t it?”
I had to look away. The whole thing was almost painful. “I don’t need to worry about catching flies. I’m going to this bar to talk to two women.”
My grandfather patted my back, slung his black leather pants over his shoulder, and shot me the wink I’d loved all my life. Only I preferred when it was accompanied by a new life lesson or a trip to the ice-cream parlor, not my grandfather’s social life and choice in barroom attire. “They like honey too, Sugar Lump. Trust me.”
19
I can only imagine what the neighbors thought when we walked down the sidewalk and piled into Carter’s powder-blue Ford. Sure, the car was always a sight to behold, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t the vehicle people were raising their window shades and steadying their rockers to see. It was the people getting into the car. As in, us.
Our only saving grace was the fact that it was dark and the streetlamp closest to the car wasn’t working. That absence of light made it much tougher to be completely sure of what (and more importantly who) they were seeing.
Still, I expected the late Joan Rivers and her daughter to pop out from behind a bush and hammer us: What were they thinking, America? Who dresses like that?
My answer? I hadn’t a clue. I mean, really, what were we thinking? And what happened to my trouser-wearing grandpa whose only fashion boo-boo used to be black knee-highs with brightly patterned shorts?
I looked over at Carter as he pulled away from the curb and headed down McPherson Road toward Euclid. He didn’t look much different than normal. Well, his normal for this week, anyway. His hair was still Annie-red (with a sprinkle of glitter he threw in as we were walking out the door) and he wore his standard denim jacket and moccasins. But he’d agreed to take off the Can’t We All Just Love One Another tie-dyed tee and replace it with a fairly innocuous button-down shirt. With any luck, I’d find an opportunity to flip the collar down.
I half-turned on the front bench seat and glanced back at Grandpa Stu. He was beaming from ear to ear and looking out the side window like an anxious puppy on the way to the park. The whole time Carter had been doing my hair and makeup, Grandpa’s mouth had been running on warp speed. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was simply starved for human contact. But I did know better. Grandpa met his fellow senior citizens for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. He went golfing and fishing with the men, dancing with the women. So I knew it wasn’t simple convers
ation he was craving. He was salivating at the idea of living out one of the many mystery novels he plowed through in a given week.
“So what are we doing at the pet shop again?” Carter asked, as he turned onto Maryland heading towards Newstead.
“Mary Fran had to close up early to get Sam to one of his followups with the orthodontist. So that means Rudder didn’t get fed at his usual time. He’s going to be ripping off his bandana and staging a coup if we don’t stop by and give him a snack.” I dug my hand into my backpack and felt around for my key ring. “It shouldn’t take long. You can come in.”
Carter nodded and pulled into a parallel parking spot about halfway down Newstead.
“How do you do that so well?” I asked as I gathered my assorted stuff and pushed open the passenger-side door.
“Do what?” Carter stepped out onto the sidewalk and held my grandfather’s door open. “Park?”
“Parallel park. On the first try. Usually takes me a few tries if I try at all.”
I fell into step beside Carter and my grandfather. There was a chill to the air, a hint of the winter that was to come. Grandpa Stu shivered and pulled his Harley-Davidson biker’s jacket (no, I’m not kidding—wish I was) tighter across his body.
Carter laughed. “I took driver’s ed.”
“So did Tobi. She got a perfect score on her written exam but failed on the parking. The second and third time wasn’t any better,” Grandpa Stu said.
I stopped. “Wait a minute. Of course the third time was better. I got my license.”
My grandfather cleared his throat. Not a normal got-a-frog-in-my-throat kind of clearing. Oh no, that’d be too easy. This was an oops-I-walked-into-that kind of clearing.
“Grrraaannndpaaa!”
Carter folded his arms across his chest and waited, his right eyebrow cocked to the heavens in glee. He was loving this.
“Okay, okay.” Grandpa Stu raised his hands into the air, palms out. “Remember how I left you while you were waiting to take that third road test? Told you I’d be right back?”
“Yesssss?”
“I moved the cones.”
Carter laughed out loud. I stood, rooted to the cement beneath my feet, my eyes shifting side to side hoping none of the street cops were listening as my grandfather confessed—in full voice—how he fixed a government-run test. The man had finally lost it.
“No, you didn’t!” I never realized you could whisper a yell. But you can. Quite effectively, I might add.
“Yes, Sugar Lump, I did. About five feet on the back cone, about five feet on the front cone.”
I thought back to that day, to the exact moment I swung the car into the parking spot, absolutely floored that I’d made it with such ease. Now I knew why. My grandpa Stu had fixed the test. Waving my hands around, I marched ahead of them to the pet shop. I was mortified. Shocked. And grateful. Because I knew in my heart, if he hadn’t done that, I’d still be marching into that motor vehicle department every thirty days, trying to pull into a spot that was half the size of the car (okay so maybe not half, but no more than two-thirds, tops).
I ignored their whispered remarks and belly laughs and focused, instead, on unlocking each of the six locks Mary Fran had installed on the front door. Not to keep anyone from breaking in, but to keep Rudder from breaking out. We’d caught him studying the process of key insertion more times than any of us could count.
“B-bout, bout time.”
Rudder Malone was worse than my mother when there were three of us teenagers at home and she was trying to usher us out the door for Sunday Mass. She’d said that very same thing. Even tapped her foot the way Rudder did, only I swear he did it better.
“Wow, he sure is demanding, isn’t he?” Carter shut the door behind my grandfather and walked over to Rudder’s cage. “Nice bandana you’ve got there, buddy. That shade of green is perfect with your eyes. Like an evergreen tree in a sea of pines.”
I waited. Could feel Rudder’s desire for a nasty retort. Fortunately, Mary Fran and Sam were fairly easygoing. Which, in turn, limited Rudder’s repertoire of words. Sounds though, were a different matter entirely.
“R-r-r-z-z-z!”
Carter jumped back. “What the heck was that?”
“His response.”
“To what I said? About his eyes?”
I snickered as I walked behind the counter and opened the refrigerator. “Could have been. Though I’m thinking it was directed at your ‘demanding’ comment.” I pulled out a Tupperware container of pre-chopped strawberries and popped the lid open.
“B-bout, bout time.”
“Geez, Rudder, I’m getting it.” I plucked out four pieces and walked over to the cage. “You really need to learn some patience, pal.”
“Pa-patience. Patience pal.”
If only his beak was connected to his brain.
When I’d placated Rudder with his evening snack, I crossed the room to Baboo. “Hey there, Baboo. How you doing, big guy?”
Baboo looked at me with his yellowy eyes and said nothing. He looked better. Seemed less tense. But he was still heartbroken. You could sense it the moment he looked at you.
“P-pphhtt. P-pphhtt. P-pphhtt.”
I pulled Mary Fran’s stool over to the cage and sat down. “Hush, Rudder. Eat your food.”
Carter and Grandpa Stu came over to Baboo’s cage and peered inside.
“This the bird that belonged to the murder victim?” My grandfather asked as he stuck his finger between the wire slats.
“Bend it like this, Grandpa.” I pushed my bent finger through the cage and waited while Baboo looked at it. “They like that better. Mary Fran says it’s less threatening.”
Grandpa Stu bent his finger in imitation and looked at the African grey. “Baboo. Baboo.”
“P-pphhtt. P-pphhtt. P-pphhtt.”
“Quit it, Rudder.” I looked over my shoulder and looked daggers at the bandana-clad troublemaker.
“What’s he saying?” Carter asked.
“Darned if I know.”
As annoying as his attention-seeking tactics were, I was gleefully aware of one thing: Rudder hadn’t snorted since I walked in. Maybe, just maybe, the fact that I’d been busy lately had given him time to forget my minor little idiosyncrasy. A gal can hope, can’t she?
“You never answered me, Tobi. Was this the murder victim’s bird you told me about?”
“Oh, sorry, Grandpa. Yes, Baboo was Preston Hohlbrook’s bird.” The words had no sooner left my mouth when Baboo jumped off his perch and faced the corner.
“Would you look at that?” Grandpa Stu said, pointing toward Baboo. “He heard his owner’s name, and it’s made him sad.”
I suspected my grandfather was right. My heart ached for this creature who’d lost his beacon. “Mary Fran says that’s why he has almost no feathers left. This particular species is very loyal and often expresses stress by pulling out their feathers.”
Carter leaned against the counter, his gaze fixed on Rudder. “I bet that bird was traumatized.”
“Rudder?” I laughed and then cringed at the faint snort that followed. Fortunately, it went unnoticed. “His biggest trauma is getting one less kiwi than he’s used to.”
“No, not Rudder. The other one. Baboo.”
I set my foot on the rung of the stool. “You mean from losing Preston?”
Carter shook his head. “From Preston’s murder.”
“Huh?”
“Where was”—my grandfather lowered his voice to a whisper as he said the name—“Preston murdered?”
I shrugged my confusion. “They’re thinking the bedroom. At the very least he was dragged through it on the way to the clos—”
Then I stopped. I’d finally learned the language. Without anyone moving the orange cones. “You’re thinking Baboo witnessed the murder?”
Carter and Grandpa Stu nodded in tandem.
My heart nearly broke as I looked back at the bird who’d turned his back to all of us, unwilling or
unable to share his grief. I stepped off the stool and motioned toward the door. “Let’s leave him alone. He needs his space.”
I grabbed my backpack off the counter and headed toward the door, Carter and Grandpa Stu in tow.
“It’s too bad Baboo isn’t talking,” Carter muttered as I turned off the lights and opened the door to the outside world.
Too bad is right.
“S-snort. Snort. Snort. Snort.”
I didn’t look back as I pulled the door closed, locking each and every lock. Carter was right. Baboo could tell us so much. If he’d talk. But since that was proving more and more unlikely with each passing day, the only hope I had left was that he might teach Rudder the art of silence.
20
“Yowza at ten o’clock!”
I looked over my shoulder as I wound my way through the chest-to-chest crowd that lined the dance floor, certain (okay, praying) that I’d heard wrong. After all, the music was thumping as loudly in my ears and chest as it was inside the walls of The Car Crash. Surely that kind of deafening volume could distort a few words and wreak havoc on a sentence, right? Wrong.
While I’d been circling the room, scanning the tables and stools for Deserey, my grandfather was checking out the merchandise (and I don’t mean the colorful T-shirts with the bar’s logo ironed on the front). And as much as I hoped a yowza was a geriatric sleep-aid he took before bed each night, reality was hard to ignore. Grandpa Stu, in all his fringed-cowboy-shirt-tight-black-leather-pants-army-hat-wearing glory, was on the prowl.
I shot my best help-me face at Carter and flared my nostrils ever so slightly (slightly being the key word, since I’d promised Carter I would do my best not to ruin the look he’d slaved over). He nodded and whispered something to my grandfather, who rolled his eyes in response. Heaven forbid I put a damper on his mating ritual.
I continued on, threading my way between the throngs of women in skimpy tops (and even skimpier bottoms) and the kind of guys who found that attractive. Sidestepping a couple who brought new meaning to the phrase joined at the hip, I accidentally bumped into a man facing the opposite way.
Death in Advertising Page 17
