Glory Days

by Irene Peterson

  How could her life get much more miserable than it already was? But . . . new school. She’d be careful. “Who is she?”

  “She’s the one who gave you a load of garbage in gym yesterday.”

  “Her? What is she, the queen or something?”

  Bridget stared straight ahead and spoke in a whisper. “You might say that. She hates anybody prettier than her. And she’s nasty. Really, really nasty.”

  “So,” Carly wondered aloud, “does this guy I didn’t even look at belong to her?

  Bridget’s voice lowered. “She thinks so.”

  John stopped before the door, reading the name carefully to make sure. A “please do not smoke” sign filled the lower right corner. Though it had probably been there for a long time, the air in the old government office building still smelled like dead cigarettes.

  Better that than urine, he figured.

  Two quick raps on the glass got him a distracted “come in”.

  “Ms. Lundquist?”

  The woman looked up, seemingly intent on returning to her work. Then recognition flashed across her eyes, but no smile of welcome. She went back to signing papers. He noticed that her hand trembled slightly as she guided the pen. He also saw the handles on the back of her chair before the gray of the wheels that were slightly tucked beneath the desk.

  “Please take a seat,” she said, “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  He was good at this game, he reminded himself, so he sat on the gray government issue chair and crossed one leg over the other.

  Within seconds, she raised her eyes, dropped the pen and folded her hands on the desktop.

  “John Preshin.”

  Her voice sounded barely controlled. He took in her situation and smiled acknowledgement. “It’s been a long time since Belmar, Tammy.”

  She grimaced. “I didn’t even know you knew my name.”

  “Oh, I knew your name, I just wasn’t around much. I was tending bar when the other guys were guarding lives. I worked while they played.” He allowed a chuckle to ease the tension of the moment, for it was there and thick enough to spoon up.

  Tammy pushed slightly away from the desk, enabling John to see the wheelchair. “My fondest memories of the summer of ’86 were of that beach house. But my pleasure was short-lived.”

  John knew his skills at consoling sucked. “What happened?” The words just slipped out without real thought and he wanted to kick himself for being so blunt.

  Her turn to chuckle, but bitterness lay underneath it. “In late August of that year I was involved in an automobile accident. As you can see, it changed my life somewhat. But that was a long time ago and it cannot possibly be why you’re here.” She paused, looking directly into his eyes. He thought he heard her sigh. “Why are you here?”

  He sobered, forcing the smile to disappear. “I need some information from you about your friend, Bunny.”

  Her tense smile vanished and her eyes narrowed. “Bunny who?”

  John could barely contain his spurt of anger. “You know who I’m talking about. Bunny Adams. Your inseparable party animal friend from that summer. Your college roommate.”

  “Oh,” she said and pushed her chair away from the desk a bit further. “That Bunny Adams.”

  He knew there couldn’t be more than one. How the hell many Bunny Adamses could there be in the world? “Suppose you stop the games right here, Ms. Lundquist. I don’t want to take up too much of your time and all I need are some simple answers. She used to be your friend. I hoped you could tell me something about her.”

  She gave him a hard stare, probably assessing his intentions, seeing if she could detect a lie. A line appeared between her eyebrows. With a small shake of her head, she seemed to come to a decision. “I’ll tell you what I can, Mr. Preshin. It isn’t much.”

  Some of the tension eased out of him. Tammy Lundquist, wheelchairbound, still had good looks and what appeared to be no ax to grind. But one could never tell. She could be an expert at hiding the truth. After all, she worked for the government.

  “What happened to her?”

  Tammy put both hands on the wheels of her chair. “I lost track of her after the accident.”

  “Did you have a falling out?”

  A small smile, hard and terse, appeared on her lips while the wrinkle in her forehead eased away. “You might say that.”

  John leaned forward to hear her better for her voice had gotten softer and she avoided looking directly at him.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t see why that is important.”

  “Just go on, Tammy. Talk to me about her.”

  “Your card says you are a private investigator. Are you on a case?”

  He nodded. “A very important one. I represent a sixteen-year-old girl who is looking for her father. She believes that he met her mother in the summer of 1986 in Belmar. I’m following leads and they got me here.”

  Tammy rested her back against the chair. She wasn’t buying his story, he could tell. He needed to add something to bring it home to her.

  “The kid has lived with nuns in Philadelphia all her life. She was let loose a couple of weeks ago, left on the streets. But she’s a smart kid and took some things out of her file when the Mother Superior wasn’t looking. She has a list of names and they all have Belmar in ’86 in common.”

  “What about the girl’s mother?” Tammy’s eyes narrowed again.

  “Oh, didn’t I mention that? They told the kid that her mother was dead.”

  Her fingers drummed out a little math, but if she reached any conclusions, she kept her figuring to herself. “You asked me about Bunny Adams and if we had had a falling out. Well, Mr. Preshin, remember that little Morgan convertible she drove?”

  Something niggled at his mind. He remembered every cool car he had ever seen. Yes, he’d seen a British racing green Morgan outside the house in Belmar but had never gotten a ride in it. It had belonged to Bunny Adams?

  He shrugged the question away. “Sort of.”

  Tammy rolled back the wheel, readjusting her position behind her desk. “That belonged to my good friend Bunny Adams. She and I were going to Atlantic City when we got hit by a jerk in a pick-up truck. I spent three months in the hospital and after that more months in physical therapy.” The bitterness oozed through the words. He sensed the pain it caused the woman to recall this and wished he could get her to talk faster, to finish so the pain would stop. For her sake, and his own.

  “That must have sucked.” Good going, Preshin. Mr. Blunt and thoughtless.

  “You’re damn straight it sucked. No more fun and games for me, that’s for sure. But Bunny was driving.”

  John uncrossed his legs. “She got the worst of it?” That wouldn’t fit the theory. She couldn’t have died that day.

  Tammy’s face became a mask, though he detected tears forming in her eyes. She kept them out of her voice. “Actually, Mr. Preshin, Bunny Adams walked away from the accident with a small cut on her right forefinger.”

  “Damn.”

  Tammy’s lips drew away from her teeth. “Her parents were very good about my injuries, though. They actually paid for my hospitalization and therapy. Out of pocket, but then, they had mighty deep pockets. They even paid my tuition once I was able to return to U of D.”

  “That was generous of them.”

  His comment didn’t go over well with the lady because she snorted. “Generous, sure. Considering their daughter was trying to kill herself playing chicken with a trucker and ended up ruining my life while she walked away with a cut on her finger.”

  “She wanted to kill herself?”

  “Yes. She told me so.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Depressed, maybe. That’s why we were going to AC. She wanted some action, to do something crazy. I thought she’d calm down with a roadtrip.” Tammy remained still and the tears never did leave her brimming eyes.

  John rose from his chair slowly. “Tell
me, did she eventually succeed in killing herself?”

  Tammy rested her hands on the desk, stared at her fingernails a few seconds and finally looked up at John. “Of course not. Although I haven’t seen her since the accident, she sort of disappeared after that, I’ve seen her photograph in the Inquirer. She’s alive and well and married to the junior senator from Pennsylvania.”

  And I’m stuck in this wheelchair for the rest of my life, John added to himself.

  “I’ve taken up a great deal of your time. Thanks, Tammy. Take care, okay?”

  “Yes, I’ll take care, John. Have a nice day.”

  John sat in his Jeep, thinking over every word of his chat with Tammy Lundquist.

  The short list of mothers had gotten even shorter.

  Carly’s mother was alive.

  She lived in Philly, maybe just a few blocks away from where her daughter had lived for the past sixteen years.

  Christ. He knew the name of Carly’s mother.

  He knew he would have to make an attempt to reunite mother with daughter, but his gut told him it wasn’t going to happen. Anyone who would dump a kid with nuns and see to it she was unadoptable—why would she do something like that? Did she know about it? Had she some motive, some reason for doing it? Or was there something behind it that no one could understand?

  Some sort of conspiracy?

  Christ, now he was starting to think like some kind of wacko. No conspiracy. But there had to be some sort of reasoning behind paying the kid’s way all those years. And now, all of a sudden, why stop?

  The kid. Her welfare was at the bottom of all this. He debated the options. If he told her, would she be better off? Should he say anything at all?

  He’d taken on the job of finding her father. She believed her mother was dead.

  Maybe it would be better to just let sleeping dogs lie.

  Enough wrestling with moral dilemmas. He had more work to do, something that would bring in some money to make up for what he’d spent on the kid’s wardrobe. But since he was already in Philly, he thought he’d do a little drive by and check out how the kid’s mother was making out.

  Tammy hadn’t been uncooperative in the least. Reluctant. With good reason. She didn’t owe him anything. They hadn’t even known one another except by sight. He felt a twinge of regret for the woman. Strange the way things turned out for her.

  Parts of Philly were about as bad as Asbury Park while other parts were downright magnificent. Outside the city was where the old money still lived. The Main Line—a string of mansions lined old Route 30, wrought iron gates keeping out the hoi polloi. Well, after he finished dealing with the riffraff downtown, he’d tool on out there and check out the digs of Carly’s people.

  The phrase stuck in his brain, refusing to leave him alone. Carly’s people.

  Not really. Not at all.

  Chapter 19

  Liz and Flo stepped out of their shoes and plopped into the welcoming chairs in Flo’s living room. Liz fanned herself with the sheaf of papers they’d spent the last three hours obtaining at the borough hall. Her grandmother groaned softly.

  “Well, that’s over.” Liz tossed the papers onto the ottoman, hoping they would stay together because if they slid off, she didn’t have the strength or desire to pick them up just yet.

  Flo exhaled with stage drama. “Who knew there would be such a fuss over changing a luncheonette into an ice cream parlor and soup bar? I mean, I thought they were the same thing. We’re not changing anything, we’re just uncovering things. Not one piece of equipment will actually be moved anywhere and we’re not putting in new windows. I thought maybe some plants or something, but nothing like making the outside any different.”

  Liz laughed at her grandmother’s pursed lips and peeved expression. “You’d think since we were doing something to improve Asbury Park, they’d give us a break. But permits are revenue and this city needs revenue.”

  “Not worth all the mazooma we had to put out,” Flo fumed. “Why, when your grandfather bought this place, it didn’t cost as much as we shelled out today for lousy permits.”

  Going over to sit on the edge of Flo’s hassock, Liz picked up one of her grandmother’s stockinged feet and began rubbing it. “This is a good idea, though, Gram. It’s going to do well. We’ll still have sandwiches, but it won’t be as frantic. We can make the soup overnight. We can even freeze it and it will be ready in minutes. Our work will be easier and we’ll attract the business people who are trying to make a go of revitalizing the town. In the summer,” she continued, rubbing the other foot now, “we’ll have parents bringing in their kids for ice cream. We’ll get cute high school girls to work the front and we’ll make a mint.”

  Flo nodded, her frizzed curls dancing. “Low overhead. I own this dump, so I don’t pay rent. Just taxes. They’re bad enough, sure, but we ought to do all right.”

  For the first time since leaving the town hall, Flo smiled. Liz hugged the old woman. She’d been surprised at her grandmother’s decision to change her life. It meant trying something different after all the years of working the luncheonette. But she knew now that Flo looked forward to the experiment. She’d gone from dancer to showgirl to wife to mother and eventually to short order cook in her lifetime. The flexibility of the woman struck a chord in her own mind.

  If her grandmother could change at this late date, perhaps it was okay for Liz herself to do some changing.

  Starting with letting go of the past.

  She wanted to do something symbolic. Something to signify her change in attitude.

  What?

  “Gram, do you have a hammer?”

  Flo’s eyebrow lowered. “What the heck do you need a hammer for?”

  “You’ll see.” Liz made puppy-dog eyes at the old lady.

  Flo shook her head. “In the basement somewhere. Probably on the old workbench. I can contain myself, dearie. I’ll wait up here while you go search for the dang thing.”

  After rummaging through what she estimated as at least fifty years’ worth of debris, Liz returned with a claw hammer. She went into the luncheonette, dim now in the late February sun and whacked at the plywood covering the soda fountain equipment her grandfather had boarded up so many years ago.

  Flo hobbled in at the first squeal of nail being pulled from wood. She stood watching as her granddaughter ripped away so many years to reveal something glorious. That dull nickel plated brass, irreplaceable at today’s costs, jutted up from the front counter defiantly.

  “Look at it, Gram. It’s beautiful. A little cleaning, a little polishing—we’ll have to check all the gaskets and mechanicals—but it’s going to be a real thing of beauty. Just you wait. Hiding there all these years, it’s about time all this elegance saw the light of day.”

  “Yep,” observed Flo. “That’s just what I was thinking.”

  “Wow !”

  Both women looked up to find Carly standing in the doorway.

  She scurried into the luncheonette. “I heard the racket and had to see what was going on.”

  Flo beamed at her. “Here it is, little girl. See for yourself. All the fountain equipment . . . of course, it’s going to need some work . . . I guess I could find somebody to clean it up. . . .”

  Carly lit up. “No need. I’m right here! I’d love to help with this work.”

  Flo shot a look at her granddaughter then turned back to Carly. “I was hoping you’d say that, seeing as how it was your idea to start this whole enterprise.”

  “You know I want to help!” She fairly danced with excitement. Flo put her hand on Carly’s arm to hold her down.

  “Kiddo, you have to do your schoolwork first, and then you can help down here. That comes first.”

  Carly put her hand on the smooth metal of one of the syrup pumps. “I can handle it. Believe me, I can handle it.”

  Liz, buoyed by the enthusiasm of her grandmother and Carly, suggested supper. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m hungry and it’s getting late. Carly,
feel like making up some burgers and fries?”

  “Me, by myself?”

  Liz put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Sure. You’re part of this now. It’s a team effort. You get to make the burgers and clean the grill. Part of the profits means part of the work.”

  Carly stammered. “Part of the profits?” Her eyes widened and she shook herself.

  “That’s what I said. You don’t get paid for suggesting it, but you’ll get paid for helping out. Deal?”

  With a little jump, Carly did a few quick steps that got Flo dancing too. “Deal, girlie?”

  “Deal!”

  People are assholes.

  He’d spent most of the day searching records in Chester, PA, only to find that the individual he was looking for happened to work for the town garage. He’d never have found the man if one of the secretaries hadn’t looked over his shoulder and read the name out loud. No secrets in this town, he realized.

  The man was delighted to learn that he was about to come into money from an insurance policy he never knew existed. A friend of his mother’s, childless, had named him beneficiary when he was born and the guy never had a clue.

  So here he stood to make a cool ten grand and he started getting jumpy. Asking questions about taxes and if it was some kind of scam. John had given him the appropriate papers and told him what he had to do to claim his small fortune and the guy started getting all defensive and weird on him.

  John couldn’t be bothered. He did what he had to do and walked away with the guy yelling after him.

  Absurd. Why did money or the prospect of money turn people into complete assholes?

  He wanted a drink.

  He’d driven past the address where Carly’s mother lived. Too posh for words. Huge wrought iron gates, not any of that plastic crap or even aluminum, but iron, with stone walls surrounding the mansion. There was real money involved, John knew, and if he could land the kid inside for a happy reunion, she’d live happily ever after for sure.