by Elise Sax
“Holy cow, it’s the demolition derby,” my mother said. We were approaching the scene fast.
“The cars are hooked together,” Spencer’s mother said, aghast. “Their bumpers are locked together. They’re heading for your house, Zelda.”
“What are the odds?” Bridget said. “I hope they don’t hurt your house, Zelda.”
Matilda was a better driver, and she swerved out of the way, but so did the police cars. Just then a Burger Boy eighteen-wheeler turned onto the street.
“Holy smokes, even I didn’t see that one coming,” my grandmother said.
Then, it happened. The dictator swerved out of the way of the truck, but he overcompensated and flew onto the sidewalk.
“This isn’t happening,” I said.
“What? What isn’t happening?” Spencer’s mother asked.
“That,” I said, pointing.
She followed my finger to her baby’s dream home, custom-made for his new bride, the biggest house on the street, and it had a pool.
The cursed house.
The mayor’s truck was the first to hit it. The maniac dictator had turned so sharply that the truck hit the house right through the front door, as if it was dropping by to visit.
One of the cop cars almost collided head-on with the mayor in Remington’s stolen car, which was attached to Ruth’s car, but the cop car managed to miss it. “And there goes another one!” Bridget yelled, as it slammed into the side of the house.
“I think that was my cedar walk-in closet,” I said.
The Burger Boy truck’s brakes squealed, and smoke billowed out from under it. My mother slowed the bus down. “Uh oh,” she said.
The truck started to jackknife. The mayor and Ruth swerved around it, and they jumped the sidewalk like a flying train of expensive cars and landed through the other side of my new house.
“That was the kitchen. It had a double-sized refrigerator,” I said.
“It’s like the house is a magnet,” Bridget exclaimed. “Every car is irresistibly attracted to it. It’s like an episode of the X-Files.”
The Burger Boy truck jackknifed and sideswiped the other cop car with it, tossing it like it was a puck in a hockey game.
“It’s like bugs drawn to a bug light. Zap! Zap! Zap!” my mother yelled.
Matilda’s car screeched loudly as she tried to get around the truck, but it was no use. She went over the sidewalk, too.
“Matilda missed the house,” I said hopefully. “Nope. Nope. She got the back corner. That’s Spencer’s man cave.”
“Maybe the basement is intact,” Spencer’s mother said, hopefully.
The truck went over on its side, landing on the front yard. Uncle Harry hit it and kept going into the house. “And there’s the master bedroom,” I noted.
The back of the truck broke open and tons of French fries flew out, like it was raining delicious, salty carbohydrates. My mother stopped the bus, parking it in front of my grandmother’s house.
“Zelda, your house is fine,” she assured her. The bus was fine, too. We piled out and looked across the street.
“I love you. You’re so sexy,” someone said.
“Who said that?” Bridget asked.
“I’m going to please you all night,” the voice said, again.
From the rubble of my custom-made house, the sex robot emerged, holding Spencer, who was struggling against her. “Let me down! My house! My house!”
“You make me hot,” the robot told him. Spencer pushed away from the robot and dropped to the ground.
“My house,” he moaned. “How is this possible?”
A fire truck and two ambulances raced down the street toward our dream home. Miraculously, the mayor, Ruth, Matilda, the two cops, Uncle Harry, Lucy, and the Burger Boy truck driver all escaped unharmed. They stumbled out of the house, looking confused.
“What happened?” the mayor asked.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Ruth growled and hit him with her clutch purse. “You braked for your stupid donkey, that’s what happened.”
I walked across the street to Spencer. “Are you all right?” I asked him.
He kissed me. “Our house is gone.”
“No, it’s not,” I assured him, rubbing his back. “It’s just a little damaged. The bones are still there. It’s still intact.”
We looked across the street at our custom-made dream house. Six cars had crashed through it, a Burger Boy truck was lying on the front lawn, and it was covered in French fries. But it still looked like a house. The roof was intact and some of the walls were still upright.
“I guess you’re right,” Spencer said. “We can renovate, I guess.”
As we stood across the street, there was a loud creaking noise, and our dream house’s roof caved in, landing with a huge crash.
“My television,” Spencer moaned. “My beautiful television.”
“That house is cursed,” Uncle Harry announced. “There’s no other explanation.”
Spencer held me in his arms. “Pinky, one minute the house was there, and then it wasn’t. There. Not there. There. NOT THERE. What happened? What happened?”
“The maniac dictator drugged you and kidnapped you and Dulcinea. The rest sort of just happened.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Spencer said.
“Don’t. If you do, he’ll make you wear the uniform.”
Spencer dealt with the first responders. There were going to be a million reports to write. My mother offered to drive everyone home in her pot bus.
“The wedding was beautiful,” I said.
“I told you it would be perfect,” my grandmother said.
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Matilda said. “But I had a profitable morning. Oh! I’ll be right back.”
Matilda walked across the street.
“It really was a beautiful wedding,” I told Grandma, as we watched Matilda circumvent the army of law enforcement and first responders and walk around to the back of what used to be my house.
“The pictures are going to come out great,” my grandmother told me.
After a couple of minutes, Matilda walked back toward us, and she was carrying a metal box. “A box,” I breathed. “One of Fanta’s boxes. How did she get it?”
“Matilda has a gift,” Grandma said. “Not our gift. A different one. A powerful one. She doesn’t know about it, yet, though.”
“I’ve been busy this morning,” Matilda said, reaching us. “I went back to the car smashing place. Look what I found.”
She opened the box and showed it to me. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Is it alive?” Grandma asked.
“No,” Matilda said. “It’s dead. It used to be part of Fanta’s husband, Chris. It’s his nose. A small, English nose.”
“What happened to his face?” my grandmother asked.
“That’s what I asked Fanta,” Matilda said and showed us the text messages on her phone. Matilda had threatened Fanta with ratting her out to the police. Fanta insisted that Chris was alive. After a few more of Matilda’s texts, Fanta stopped insisting that Chris was alive and moved on to saying that she was innocent. Then, nothing.
“We’ve got her right where we want her,” Matilda told me.
“We?”
“Don’t you want to find justice for Chris?”
I didn’t know Chris, but I was sorry that he had been chopped up into little pieces. And then there was my buttinski nature that wouldn’t allow me to mind my own business. So, I guess I did want to find justice for Chris. But now wasn’t a good time. My house had just been pulverized, and my new husband was probably going to need a Xanax IV drip.
“Don’t you want to stick it to Fanta?” Matilda continued. “Don’t you want to put her in prison for the rest of her life so that Rockwell never sees her naked, again?”
Matilda wanted that. She wanted that real bad, as far as I could tell.
“I feel responsible,” Grandma said. “I made a bad match. I’ll help you sti
ck it to Fanta.”
“You will?” I asked, surprised. “But you do love. You don’t do murder.”
My grandmother shrugged. “Maybe you’re contagious.”
Matilda’s phone dinged. “She texted me again.”
I read the text message. Fanta wanted to meet at the mine. She was going to tell Matilda everything in exchange for the nose.
“Let’s go,” Grandma said. She walked up the driveway and opened the driver’s door of my Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. “I’ll drive,” she announced.
I didn’t have time to change out of my museum-quality wedding dress. Matilda was itching to get to the mine, and Grandma insisted that it was now or never.
“I have a feeling that never would be the better option,” I said.
My grandmother drove us past the emergency vehicles toward the mine. “I’m a good driver,” she said, running through a stop sign. “I don’t know why they took away my license.”
The old gold mine was the birthplace of Cannes. Gold was discovered there in the late 1900s, but it dried up quickly. It was now considered a historical landmark, but it was closed to the public because it wasn’t safe.
Matilda pointed at a Toyota Camry. “That’s her car. Park there.”
My grandmother parked next to it, and I pocketed the keys. “You realize this is a trap, right?” I said.
“Of course it’s a trap,” Matilda said. “But we can take her. I’ll go for her knees while you karate chop her neck.”
“I don’t know how to karate chop.”
“I’ll bite her,” Grandma offered, happily. “I’ve got great choppers.”
“You stay at the car, Grandma. Let Matilda and me handle this.”
“No, Dolly. I’m supposed to go in the mine with you. It’s my destiny.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, alarmed.
“C’mon, let’s get this bitch,” Matilda said and marched toward the entrance of the mine.
“Stay behind me, Grandma,” I told her.
Matilda turned the light on her phone, and I held on to my grandmother as we made our way deep into the mine over a rocky and uneven dirt path. My poor dress.
“Dave will clean it,” my grandmother said, as if she had read my mind.
“Stop right there,” we heard as we reached the inner recesses of the gold mine. It wasn’t Fanta. It was a man, his voice steely and cold.
“Rockwell,” Matilda said. “I knew you were going to help your murderous girlfriend.”
Fanta stepped out from behind Rockwell. She didn’t look like a confident, scheming killer. She looked scared. She looked like she didn’t want to be there any more than I did.
“You can’t protect her,” I said. “We have proof of what she did.”
“About that, we need it back,” Rockwell said.
Matilda waved her hands in front of her. “Wait a second. Wait a second. It’s you. You helped her kill Chris,” she accused Rockwell.
“It was him,” Fanta announced. “It was all him.”
CHAPTER 19
Welcome to Zelda’s Matchmaking, dolly! I’m so glad that you said yes and moved in with me. You have the gift, bubbeleh. As you know, you come from a long line of matchmakers, and you’re the next in line. You’re going to make beautiful love matches. Now, I have to warn you that there’s a learning curve to this business, but I know that within a year, you’ll be the queen of love. I’ve written this short book of matchmaking advice for you, but you don’t need it. You’ve got the instinct, and my helpful hints aren’t going to make a difference. But here are my little lessons. Take them or leave them. I love you, dolly. Don’t forget…you have the gift. You can do this. With me or without me.
Lesson 1, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
“I thought you were the perfect match. I’m so sorry that I was wrong,” my grandmother told Rockwell.
“What’re you talking about? We were the perfect match,” he said.
“Ha!” Matilda barked.
“She was a gift. Perfect for our plans,” he said.
“Not my plans,” Fanta said. “I was fine the way we were.”
“Shut up,” Rockwell growled.
“I know what the plan was,” Matilda said. “You gaslighted me so that you could get rid of me and be with your mistress.”
“You figured out about the gaslighting?” Fanta asked.
“As soon as Gladie saved me and took me to Zelda’s, I realized that I wasn’t having any more episodes,” Matilda said. “Then, I thought about it. All the times that Fanta came over, walked into the kitchen, and announced that I had left the oven on. You were in it together.”
She was right. They had gaslighted her, but something was missing. Why would they kill Fanta’s husband, but gaslight Matilda? If they wanted to be together, why didn’t they just get divorced and marry each other? Why all the drama?
“You think you know so much,” Rockwell sneered. “You were a pawn. A cog in the works. It was perfect. You still have no idea what was really going on.”
“But Chris found out,” Fanta said. “He wanted in on it.”
“On what?” I asked.
“I know,” Grandma said. “I don’t understand why I didn’t see it before. Rockwell’s great aunt Liberty died. That must be it. She was a weird one, rich, and she had a thing about marriage. Am I right, Rockwell? She left you money in her will, but you had to be married? That would explain everything.”
“Five years. I had to stay married for five years,” Rockwell explained. “That bitch. Do you know how hard I have to bust my ass, making a living in sales? I’m on the road all the time. Do you know how many doors I’ve had slammed in my face? Do you know what that does to a man?”
“Turns him into murderer?” I asked. “That’s what it does?”
“I didn’t want to kill Chris,” Rockwell insisted. “He made me do it.”
“He found out about our affair, and he was blackmailing us,” Fanta said. “He wanted a piece of the action. He was stirring up trouble.”
“I get it, now,” I said. “You two were already having an affair when Rockwell married Matilda. But Fanta was already married to Chris before that. Rockwell’s rich old aunt dies and leaves him a bunch of money, but he has to get married and stay married for five years. He couldn’t marry Fanta because there wasn’t time for her to get divorced and marry him. So, he goes to my grandmother and gets matched on the double. Within a week, he was kosher. Married and ready to inherit.”
“You’re good at this,” Fanta said.
“She has the gift,” Grandma said. “And this isn’t her first time. She has a lot of experience with murders.”
“The gaslighting was simple,” I continued. “Put Matilda away so that you’re still officially married, but you don’t actually have to live with her. When you killed Chris, that was just gravy and allowed you to finally be able to live with Fanta. Pretty simple. Usually, murderers are a lot more complicated.”
“I think it’s pretty complicated,” Matilda said.
Grandma rubbed her temple. “Me, too. Love is so much simpler than murder.”
“Well, this’ll be simple,” Rockwell said and pulled out a crowbar from behind his back. “I’m going beat you to death. Your bodies won’t be found for years.”
“Rockwell, sweetie, maybe we can do this a different way,” Fanta said, much to her credit. “We could hop in the car and drive away. Somewhere where they won’t find us.”
“That sounds like a good plan to me,” I said.
“I’ll never stop looking for you. I’ll bring you to justice if it’s the last thing I do,” Matilda threatened. Rookie mistake. Never tell a killer with a crowbar that you’re going to hunt him down. Now Rockwell was determined to bash our brains in.
He raised the crowbar over his head. “This is too much for me,” Fanta cried and ran for it. I guessed in her book, killing three unarmed women was a tad worse than chopping up her husband.
&nbs
p; “Come back!” Rockwell called. “I’m doing this for you!”
The moment he was distracted, Matilda leaped for him and tried to get the crowbar away. But he was much too strong for her. He threw her off of him, and she lost her balance. She flew backward and hit her head hard on the wall of the mine.
“Gladie, help,” Grandma moaned. I turned around to find her clutching at her chest with both hands and sinking to the ground. I helped her down gently, holding her in my lap. Even in the darkened mine, I could see that her face was ashen and scrunched up in pain.
“Is it another heart event?” I asked. She moaned and doubled over in agony. “Help! Call 911! Get help for my grandmother!”
But Rockwell wasn’t going to help us. He was still determined to silence us forever. He raised the crowbar over his head and ran at us at full speed.
But the mine was dark, and the ground was rocky and uneven.
And sometimes, justice is swift and fair.
Rockwell tripped. As he fell to the ground, he swung his arms, trying to regain his balance. But he swung too wildly, and the crowbar caught a piece of his skull. Rockwell was unconscious before he hit the ground.
I turned my attention back to my grandmother. Her head had slumped back, and she was grabbing my hand.
“I’ll get help,” I told her.
“No. I need to talk to you first.”
“But Grandma. Is it your heart? Let me call for help.”
She shook her head and squeezed my hand. “I don’t have much time. Nobody can help now. This is what’s supposed to happen. This is where I say goodbye and leave this earth.”
I choked up and started to cry. “No, Grandma. No. It’s just a heart event. You’re going to be fine.”
“No, bubbeleh. This is my end of the road. This is where I die. I’ve known it for a long time. But I need to talk to you before I go, and we don’t have a lot of time.”
“But Grandma…”
“Listen to me closely. I won’t be able to say it again. You must remember my words and take them seriously. Gladie, you have the gift. Don’t look at me like that. This is important. This is the only thing that’s important. You have the gift. You have the third eye. You’re more talented than I ever was.”
