Macaroni and Freeze

by Christine Wenger

  Peter took a seat and put his cell phone down in front of him. I got the tea box out, put it on the table, and poured hot water into everyone’s cup. ACB scoured her pantry, and after much noise and rearranging, pulled out a package of Oreos.

  “Found ’em!” She pulled opened the cellophane with the tab and placed the cookies in the middle of the table. “Help yourself.”

  Peter reached for the Oreos and lifted a perfect row with his thumb and index finger, as if they were a stack of poker chips.

  I admired his skill.

  “So, Peter, have you heard from Jill Marley? How is she doing?” I asked. It was time to get some information.

  He shrugged. “Beats me. We don’t really talk.”

  “I noticed that you guys don’t seem to get along. What happened?” I asked casually.

  “I think she was jealous of my relationship with Priscilla.”

  I stirred sugar into my tea. “But Priscilla seemed to depend on her a lot. How long was she working as Priscilla’s assistant?”

  “Twelve years, I think.”

  “I was kind of surprised that you didn’t want to stay in Priscilla’s motor home, too,” I pressed on.

  “I did, but the charming Jill beat me to it. Which is a shame. This . . . uh . . . place is better suited for a woman,” he said. “You know, because of how it’s decorated.”

  At least he was being diplomatic about how he described ACB’s avant-garde, clutter-is-me house decor. There wasn’t a bare spot on any wall. If it wasn’t heavy with pictures or paintings, there were swags of silk flowers and faux ivy trailing over hill and dale. The furniture was early funeral parlor—filled with velvets, brocades, tassels, and pom-poms. Every botanical flower was represented either in the wallpaper or on the curtains and furniture.

  It was Antoinette Chloe, through and through.

  Like a nervous twitch, Peter picked up his gray clam cell phone and opened and closed it. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. I almost prayed that he would get a phone call just so he’d stop doing that.

  “Peter, why don’t you go out in my car and get those takeout bags that are in the backseat? We’ll heat up that sandwich for you. And you’ll just love the fruit hand pie. It’s peach.” I needed to send him outside for my plan to work.

  He didn’t blink and didn’t move.

  “My car is unlocked, and we already made a path for you. It’ll be a quick trip,” I said. “Right, Antoinette Chloe?”

  “Oh, yes. And Trixie’s meatball subs are to die for. She makes the best sauce in the county.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m fine with the Oreos.”

  Say what? No one in their right mind turns down one of my famous meatball subs.

  “Then be a dear and get the sandwich for me. I’ll eat it,” ACB said. “I’m famished.”

  “But you’ll both be leaving in a while, won’t you? You can eat it at Trixie’s,” he said. “No sense in me getting cold, too. I just got out of the shower, and my hair is still wet.”

  Spare me. He was as much of a diva as Priscilla!

  Antoinette drummed her fingers on the table. I could tell she was changing channels in her mind, contemplating what she was going to do.

  Her next move was to reach for the bag of cookies in the middle of the table as she was drinking her tea. She slid the bag across the table, and in one slick move, Peter’s cell phone came with it and both dropped to the floor.

  Antoinette Chloe bent over to pick everything up from the floor. She plopped the cookies and his cell phone back onto the table.

  Huh? Why didn’t she take it? Well, actually, on second thought, she probably couldn’t. Given the way Peter was attached to the phone, he most likely would’ve asked for it back immediately.

  ACB gave me a quick wink. I guess she wanted to leave now.

  Peter moved the phone toward him.

  Oh well. Maybe I could think up a plan. I could ask Peter to borrow it, and perhaps I could quickly study the contact list and phone numbers.

  Antoinette Chloe got up and pushed in her chair. “Well, Trixie, I changed my mind about our tea. I think we should get going before the snow starts falling again. I heard that we are supposed to get another foot of snow tonight. We’d better hit the road.”

  So much for our tea party and getting more information.

  I was getting cranky and anxious to take back my house, my parking lot without a motor home, my freedom, and my good name.

  So, what should I do next?

  Chapter 9

  “Peter, could you give us a hand with Antoinette Chloe’s stuff?”

  I thought I’d ask, but I didn’t hold out much hope that he’d help us. The man was a slug.

  “Sorry. My hair is still wet.”

  He ran a hand through his thick, wavy hair. Looked like it was as dry as a bone to me. “I’ll stand on the front porch and hand you the items from there.”

  What a man!

  “By the way, do you know how long I have to stay here in Hicksville?” he said as we stood.

  ACB furrowed her brows. “Hicksville?”

  “Yeah. Podunk. Cabbage Patch.”

  “You must have forgotten the name of our delightful village. It’s called Sandy Harbor,” I said slowly and clearly. “And we would have no idea how long you have to stay here. Only the sheriff’s department can tell you that.”

  “I thought that you might know,” he said, looking at me.

  “Why would I know? I was told not to leave town, too.”

  “I hear that you and Sheriff Ty Brisco are a couple.”

  My mouth went dry. “What? I . . . No. We aren’t a couple.”

  “Sorry. My mistake.” His lizard-lipped grin told me he wasn’t sorry at all. He was enjoying making me squirm.

  And squirm I did.

  “Well, the sooner I get out of here, the better. I need to sell Cilla’s company. I need to settle her estate,” Peter said. “She appointed me executor. There’s a million things I have to handle.”

  “Isn’t Jill handling all of that? She’s Priscilla’s assistant, after all,” I said.

  “She’d better not be handling Cilla’s estate! Cilla designated her lawyers to do that and me! I’m her sole heir and executor, too. Priscilla told me that herself a while back,” Peter said. “Plus, I have debts to pay.”

  Interesting, I thought as I stepped into my boots and shrugged into my coat. ACB stepped into her flip-flops. She had her coat draped over her arm.

  “Antoinette Chloe! Put that coat on or I’m not going anywhere with you. I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but this isn’t Hawaii. You’re my friend, and I worry about you.”

  “I’ve never had a friend who worried about me. Sal and Nick worried about me, but I’m not counting husbands who tried to kill me or boyfriends who are deceased. You’re my best friend, Trixie.”

  She gathered me into a big hug. “Aww, Antoinette Chloe, you are my—”

  Peter sighed loudly, opened his arms, and walked toward us. He was ushering us out the door. “Ladies, can we adjourn the girlfriend talk? I have several important calls to make regarding Priscilla’s business.”

  “What kind of calls, Peter?” ACB asked.

  “Obviously, I have to settle her estate.”

  “Are you going to try to straighten out the cookbook mess?” I asked.

  “I could care less about that disaster. I told Jill that she needs to handle it with the least possible disruption. She was Priscilla’s assistant, not me. I’m just going to take care of selling everything off as fast as I can and for the most money possible.”

  “I’m sure Jill must have loved you giving her instructions—instead of Priscilla, I mean.” I hoped that would encourage Peter to keep talking.

  “Jill knows better than to cross me.”

 
Sheesh. That sounded creepy.

  Before I could ask him what he meant, ACB interrupted by banging him in the shin with a suitcase.

  “Yeow!” he yelled, rubbing his leg.

  “Oh, Peter, I am so sorry.”

  As Peter was whining and ACB was apologizing, I was itching to talk to Jill about Peter’s claim that he was Priscilla’s executor. Being her executor didn’t mean that he was necessarily the beneficiary, but it would mean that he’d get at least ten percent of the money for his trouble.

  No wonder he wanted the most possible money for Priscilla’s estate. Well, I’d get my chance to ask Jill about it when we went grocery shopping in the morning.

  True to his word, Peter stood on the front porch as we shuffled back and forth across the driveway to my frosty car to load all of ACB’s stuff.

  I started the car and blasted the window defroster to let the car warm up.

  On one of the trips, I grabbed the take-out bags from the backseat and handed them to Peter. It was only right.

  “Thanks, Trixie. You’re the best!”

  And you should have helped us, slug-o!

  We got settled in my car, and I turned to ACB. “Wish we could have snatched his cell phone.”

  She held up the gray clam. “Got it!”

  “What? How?”

  “I made a switch when I dropped everything on the floor. Peter has my ex-husband’s old cell phone now. I realized they looked the same. Fortunately, it’s not charged, so Peter will think he needs to charge his phone, and by the time he realizes that he has the wrong one, we’ll get everything we need from Priscilla’s phone. Right?”

  “Antoinette Chloe, you are totally and undeniably brilliant!”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s get back to the Big House and see what we can find on it.”

  “The sooner we can solve this case, the sooner I can move back home and the sooner your name will be cleared.”

  “Sooner is good,” I agreed. “But I do enjoy your company.”

  She held up the phone. “Right back atcha.”

  We rode together in silence for a while. “Trixie, what are you hoping to find on the cell phone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe see what calls Priscilla made before she died. Who is on her contacts list. I want to see if there is a pattern. And I might as well check out the calls Peter made in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay. I’ll make some tea for us,” she said. “We never really got to enjoy our tea party at my house.”

  I drove down the narrow streets of downtown Sandy Harbor, made even narrower by the snowbanks on both sides of the road.

  “No tea, not unless you put a shot of something stronger into it,” I said, thinking how glad I was that Linda Blessler was covering for me for a while.

  Then, of course, the Polish-Catholic guilt that had been my constant companion for thirtysomething years took its position over my head like a storm cloud about to rain on my parade.

  “I feel guilty letting Linda work for me when I’m supposed to be sleeping,” I said, hoping that ACB would tell me to knock it off.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, Trixie. Linda wants the extra money. She’s lusting over a red Mini Cooper she saw for sale in Barney Pardo’s roving lot. She has to hurry before the lot—and Barney—roves again and she can’t find him.”

  Barney’s used-car lot was always roving because no sooner did he set up business than someone shut him down. Barney didn’t believe in paying taxes for property or staying in one place for any length of time. He said that it was the gypsy in his soul. So once you found Barney and a car you liked, you had to act fast or risk losing out.

  “Okay, then. That makes me feel better.”

  As I turned down Route 3 and got closer to the Silver Bullet, I noticed a lot of cars in my nonroving, snowplowed lot. I could see how fast the snow was falling by looking up at the tall lights positioned around the lot.

  “Looks like another blizzard is on the way,” Antoinette Chloe mused, taking the words out of my mouth.

  “Check out all the customers at the diner. Must be all the media still churning up stories about Priscilla’s death.”

  “Or . . . maybe something hit the fan.”

  I’d just pulled into the driveway when I saw Ty Brisco walking toward me. He was wearing his uniform jacket, gloves, and hat, and by the glow of my headlights, he looked madder than a bear.

  “Uh-oh. Looks like we’ve been caught,” ACB said. “Do we have to tell him where we’ve been?”

  “I think we can just tell him that you needed to pick up some things from your house. Maybe he won’t remember that Peter McCall is crashing there,” I hoped.

  Yeah, right.

  Holding my breath, I got out of the car, trying my best not to look guilty.

  “Good evening, Antoinette Chloe . . . Trixie.”

  “Hello, Ty.” We both sang it in unison, like schoolgirls caught hiking up their skirts by Sister Mary Mary.

  “Where’ve you been? What have you been doin’?” he asked in a singsong tone, imitating us.

  “Antoinette Chloe needed some things from her house, so we took a quick ride,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “And since you’re here, you can help us lug it all inside.”

  “Of course I’ll help,” he said, opening the back door and pulling out muumuus on hangers. “And since you haven’t been here, you probably haven’t heard the news.”

  “What news?” ACB asked. “Tell us!”

  He smiled. “Jill Marley walked into the Silver Bullet and asked for a press conference. She issued a statement that the cookbook was indeed copied almost verbatim and that Priscilla Finch-Smythe shouldn’t have done such a thing. She said that Priscilla was under a lot of pressure from her network and her publisher to do another cookbook, and she never thought anyone would find out that she used recipes from a little-known church cookbook.”

  He closed the door to my backseat. Looking like a sales rack from Muumuus ’R’ Us, he began walking up the sidewalk to the Big House.

  Antoinette took the handle of one of her suitcases and began rolling it behind Ty.

  “Peter McCall said that he instructed Jill to handle the cookbook fiasco, and she did,” ACB mumbled.

  “What?” Ty turned toward ACB. “You talked to Peter McCall?”

  “Oh . . . oops . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha . . . um . . . uh . . . um . . .” That was my friend, quick on her frozen toes.

  “What else did Jill say at the press conference, Ty?” I said, trying to change the subject. “Don’t keep us in suspense!” Ty was purposely dragging out the punch line.

  He shrugged. “Jill said that Priscilla’s estate will give all future profits to the Church of the Covenant of Saint Dismas.”

  “That’s a good compromise,” ACB said as she dragged her suitcase down my sidewalk.

  I dragged the other one. “Although that’d be money that Peter McCall won’t see if he’s the heir, like he claims.”

  “Trixie Matkowski!” Ty snapped. “You’d better not be interfering in another one of my cases or I will lock you up right now.”

  My mouth suddenly went dry and the snow was looking nice and cool under the glow of the moon . . . all except for the yellow areas Blondie had visited.

  “Why, Deputy Brisco, what on earth makes you think that I’d ever interfere in one of your cases?” I sang the words. In fact, we all were singing tonight. “And by the way, if it weren’t for me, you’d have a backlog of unsolved cases!”

  He knew exactly how to press my buttons.

  Oh, what the hell? I made a snowball and let it fly. It hit him right in the back of his hard head.

  I don’t really run, and it’s basically impossible to run on an icy sidewalk anyway. So I did the next-best
thing. I hid behind Antoinette Chloe as Ty formed his own snowball.

  “This has your name on it, Trixie,” he said.

  “Don’t stand behind me! Take it like a woman,” ACB said.

  I was being a chicken. I peeked out behind ACB, moving just as Ty whizzed the snowball at me. It hit me in the thigh—a heavily padded area—but it still stung.

  “Sheesh, cowboy. Did you pitch for the Houston Astros?”

  “They recruited me, but I joined the force instead. I pitched for the Police Benevolent League.”

  “Unfair advantage!”

  He grinned. “Do you want to go again?”

  “Children, time-out!” ACB shouted. “I’m getting cold out here.”

  “Oh, all right. It’s a time-out, Ty, but I reserve the right to get you back.”

  “Anytime you’re ready. I’ll be waiting.”

  We trudged up the sidewalk with ACB’s suitcases and muumuus, careful not to fall. Ty, the gentleman that he was, helped us up the stairs even while loaded down with muumuus.

  When we were all inside the front porch, I scooped up a coffee can full of ice melt from the handy bag in the corner and shook it down the stairs. By the time Ty left, the stairs would be in better shape.

  Blondie greeted us by twirling around our legs. I knelt down and petted her. She had been alone too long today. I should have taken her with us to ACB’s.

  I opened the door, and she hurried outside to do her business.

  “Coffee or tea, Ty?” I asked as we deposited Antoinette Cloe’s stuff near the stairs.

  “Coffee, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “How about you, Antoinette Chloe?”

  “Coffee. I’m done being British for a while.”

  Ty raised an eyebrow. “I want to hear more about your conversation with Peter McCall.”

  “There’s not much to tell other than there’s no love lost between Peter and Jill,” I said. “Jill thinks that Peter is after Priscilla’s money, and Peter thinks that Jill was taking advantage of Priscilla’s trust.”

  “I know that already.”

  “And Peter is a lazy sloth,” ACB added.