by Dana Donovan
Carlos straightened his back and snapped me a salute. “Got it, Capitán. In the meantime, what will you do?”
“First light, I’m going to Gitana Freight Lines headquarters to do some snooping around.”
“You know where it is?”
“Yeah, out in Quincy, barely an hour’s drive.”
“Want some company?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I think I’ll use the ride for some quiet time to think. Let me know if you find anything.”
I suppose it’s the detective in me that drives my suspicious mind. What possesses me to act on that suspicion is something else all together. Probably the compulsive need for me to know what others wish me not to. I guess it was that unhealthy motivation that compelled me to search Lilith’s room when I got home that night. I had always been good at trusting my instincts, but since my return to prime, I found that my instincts were far less reliable and therefore less trustworthy. Though I really expected to find nothing of earth-shattering consequences in her room, I hoped that by just searching it, I might pacify the mistrusting beast within me.
I started my search as methodically as possible, starting on the left as I stood at the bedroom door and working clockwise. The first thing I scrutinized was her dresser. It’s the one she had me sliding back and forth across the room like a hockey puck while holding me under her whisper box spell. The dresser consisted of three large drawers below two smaller top drawers. I opened the top left one first. In it, I found her lacy undies and bras—very sexy stuff. At the risk of overlooking some crucial evidence, I resisted the urge to pick them up for closer examination. A detective with fewer scruples, perhaps, would have bent to a weaker will, but I refused to stoop that low. Instead, I merely reached my hand in the drawer and felt around for anything unusual, like a bone sculpture maybe, or a vintage locket. Finding nothing of interest, or should I say, nothing of importance, I moved on.
The next drawer held more of the same. Lacy panties, bras and stockings. I patted down the silky pile of garments and then ran my hands below them, feeling only the soft velvety fabric brushing against the backs of my hands like fluffy down. It made me think of things I should not have been thinking, which only added to the guilt I felt for invading Lilith’s privacy to begin with. So, I quickly slammed the drawer shut and moved down to the big drawer below it. To my utter amazement, I found yet another drawer full of the hottest, sexiest, frilliest undergarments that I had ever seen in my life. Victoria Secret could hardly hold a candle to the collection that girl owned. The thought of reaching into the drawer to feel around for evidence gave way momentarily to a fantasy daydream, one with me climbing into the drawer like a burrowing rodent and rolling around until the lacy straps and spaghetti strings had me tied up tight as a witch’s…. Well, you get the picture.
I frisked lightly through the contents before dropping down to the next two drawers. Those, at least, held a more traditional assortment of clothing: blue jeans, blouses, sweaters, vests, etc. A similar frisk through the inventory revealed nothing of concern.
After debriefing Lilith’s dresser, I turned my attention to her closet and the apparent mugging in progress there, as she seemed obviously less organized about her affairs in that manner. Coats prescribed for winter mingled brazenly among jackets suitable for spring. Tank tops and sleeveless jerseys hung like bookmarks between see-through nightgowns and heavy sweatshirts. A terrycloth bathrobe, of which I had never seen her wear, draped the back of a hanger already occupied by a formal dressing gown. My inclination to tell them to break it up nearly forced me to take out my weapon.
The closet floor proved no better. Shoes, dozens of them, fell scattered like bones on a dry lakebed. In the corner, a coiled bundle of belts lay tangled like snakes in some bizarre mating ritual where heads and tails remained indistinguishable. I poked my foot at a pile of dirty clothes and gasped when I thought I heard a muffled cry escape from below it. The shelf above the hanging rod sagged with boxes of varying sizes, the largest of which I thought could hold the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. I reached up, pulled it down from the shelf and looked inside. There, I found the smoking gun: several pairs of pants, shirts, shoes, hats and gloves, all black and all smelling of campfire smoke and axle grease. My heart nearly skipped a measured beat. I considered the likelihood that a woman, especially a witch, like Lilith would own an assortment of jet-black clothing. It was not hard to believe. A pretty lady dressed in black jeans, shirt, boots and hat can look mighty sexy. And the fact that Lilith hid the clothing in a box on the top shelf of her closet didn’t really bother me, either. She’s an odd cookie with peculiar habits. I have learned not to question her nuances. What I couldn’t wrap my mind around, however, and what no amount of explaining could justify, was what she was doing with a tin of camouflage makeup and seven witch’s keys, identical to the one that Carlos and I found by the tracks where poor old J.T. caught out.
I began rummaging through the box for more incriminating evidence, when I thought I heard a sound at the front door. So, I snatched up one of the witch’s keys, stuffed it in my pocket and quickly returned the box to the top shelf. As I started out of the room, I noticed I had left one of the dresser drawers slightly ajar. I knew that Lilith was no neat freak, but she was particular about things like that. Putting lids back on jars, box tops back on boxes and keeping doors and drawers shut seemed like a witch’s creed with her. I suppose when one dabbles in paranormal activities, then one needs to make sure that boundaries and containment fields are observed. Perhaps it’s the Pandora effect. I do not know. Regardless, I hurried to the dresser and pushed the offending drawer shut with a gentle nudge.
I turned around, thinking I was in the clear, when I heard, “Find everything okay?”
A fist-sized lump slid down my throat like a sandy slug. “Lilith?”
She stood at the doorway in her signature stance, hip out, arms folder, head cocked and toe tapping.” What are you doing in my room?”
I fumbled for words, my posture shrinking like melting ice. “Nothing,” I said, only, it came out broken and squeaky.
Her eyes zeroed in on my pants pocket. “What have you got there?”
I gave her the classic, what are you talking about, look, convinced there was no way she knew that I had the witch’s key on my person. As small as it was, its shape could not possibly telegraph through the relatively baggy material of my pants pockets. So, I called her bluff by turning my empty palms up to her. “What?”
She uncrossed her arms and pointed. “In your pocket. What is that?”
I stepped back until my butt hit the dresser, preventing further retreat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She came toward me, and I thought we might end up tangled in a brawl as matted as the collection of belts in her closet. Before I could react, she reached down and snatched away a small dog-eared piece of fabric sticking out of my pocket. She recoiled like a cobra, holding up the material and unfolding it before my eyes. “My panties!” she said, and I have to admit, I was as surprised as she was. “You little perv! You came in here to swipe my panties?”
I had not, of course, and I don’t know how the hell they got in my pocket. I swear, but I knew an out when I saw one, and so I rode that bus all the way to the station. I dropped the surprised look and adopted one of guilt, complete with slumped shoulders and shame-filled eyes. “Yes, you caught me,” I said, woefully. “I’m sorry.”
She wadded up the panties and stuffed them into her back pocket. “Why, Tony? Are you that sexually frustrated?”
“What! No!” I said, in high dudgeon. Although, I have to admit that it’s difficult acting indignant, having just been caught swiping lady’s panties from a dresser drawer. “I’m not sexually frustrated. Your panties mean nothing to me.”
“Oh?” She returned to her signature stance, the one with the thrusting hip, the folded arms and the toe tapping. “Then how do you explain yourself? And it better be good.”
“It will
be,” I said, but then quickly corrected myself. “I mean, it is.” I walked over to her bed and sat down on the edge, pouting, if you can believe it, for maximum effect. “It’s the guys,” I told her. They’ve been ribbing me lately, teasing me about not…you know, doing it with you.”
Already, Lilith’s posture began to soften. She dropped her folded arms, tucked her fingers into the slits of her pants pockets and leaned back against the doorjamb. “Carlos and Spinelli were teasing you?”
“Yes. Spinelli started it, but you know Carlos. The two of them together are like schoolboys. Once they know they have hit a nerve, they don’t let up. They keep teasing until they break you. I guess I just wanted to show them that I…that we….” I trailed off in solemn silence, designed to maximize my pathetic case. She totally bought it.
“Oh, Tony.” She crossed the room and sat down beside me on the bed. “I had no idea. Look, why don’t you take these?” She leaned into me, shifting her weight onto one back pocket while pulling the wadded ball of panties from the other. “Tell the guys it’s a trophy, and that they can stop teasing you now.”
I took them, reluctantly. “Really?”
“Yeah.” She smiled, and then kissed me on the cheek. “I know how guys are. Go ahead. Play it up. You deserve it.”
I smiled back. “Thanks, Lilith. I won’t forget this.”
“I know you won’t.” And she stood and rubbed the top of my head briskly. “Now, get the hell out of my room and don’t come back. If you do, I’ll turn you into—.”
“I know, a frog or a toad or some other slippery amphibious vertebrate.” I laughed then, but when I saw that she was not kidding, I high-tailed out of there as fast as I could.
A half-hour later I hopped into the shower. When I got out, Lilith was gone again. I could not know if she had stepped out for just a moment, or if she planned on being away all night. Either way, and at the risk of being turned into a newt, I went back into her room to check the box on her shelf. As suspected, it was missing a pair of black jeans, a black shirt, hat, gloves and a tin of camouflage makeup. I did not want to believe it, but I had to conclude one thing. Gypsy was on the prowl again.
Fourteen
The following morning I bumped into Lilith out in the hallway. She had just gotten out of the shower and was heading for her bedroom wrapped in a towel and still dripping wet. She seemed surprised to see me, which made me think she had tried getting back to her room before I awoke.
“Hello,” I said. “You’re up early.”
She smiled nervously. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“I didn’t hear you come in last night. It’s funny, if I didn’t know any better I’d think you were just getting in now.”
She grabbed the knot in her towel and cinched it tighter between her breasts. “Yeah, that is funny. If you’ll excuse me?”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Oh, I guess. You?”
“Yes. Like a baby.”
“That’s nice,” she said, and tried sidestepping around me. “Well, the bathroom’s all yours.”
“Wait!” I tugged on her towel to stop her. “You know I meant to ask you.”
She turned abruptly, and when she did, her wet hair whipped me across the face. “What?”
“Can I use your car this morning? I have an errand to run.”
I could see her thinking about it. If she had left anything in it that might incriminate her, then the answer would be no. Otherwise, the car was mine. After careful consideration, she must have determined that she covered her tracks sufficiently. “Sure,” she shrugged. “The keys are on the table.”
She turned and started away, and for just a moment, the urge to step on the tail of her towel left dragging on the floor seemed too irresistible to let pass. But then I remembered her threat the night before to turn me into something slimy. I did not know if a harmless prank like stripping off her towel would warrant such harsh retaliation, but I decided to err on the side of caution. “Thanks!” I said, as her bedroom door shut in my face.
Forty-five minutes later, I was dressed and driving down I-95 towards Quincy to meet with anyone at Gitana Freight Lines who would talk to me. I had just started across the Tobin Memorial Bridge when Spinelli called.
“Hey, what are you doing right now?” he asked.
“Crossing the Mystic River,” I said.
“So, you’re sitting down?”
“Dominic, I’m not swimming it.”
“Yeah, right. Well, listen to this.”
“What?”
“I’ve been running E.I.N.I. all morning and—”
“Wait. You’ve been running what?”
“E.I.N.I. the Electronic Intelligence Network Interface here at the office.”
“Oh, that on-line database thing?”
“Yes. E.I.N.I.”
“Whatever. Continue.”
“Like I was saying, I’m cross-checking all the names of the victims with that of Anthony Marcella Senior, and guess what I find.”
“I don’t know, a connection maybe.”
“No. There are no connections at all.”
“Wow, great work Dom. Glad to see that all the money the county spent on that computer didn’t go to waste.”
“No, Tony, you don’t understand. I didn’t find a connection, but I did learn something very interesting.”
“What, that you can save a lot on your insurance by switching to the lizard?”
“Huh? No. Listen, I learned that Anthony Marcella Senior went off to fight in Europe in early 1942, but that he never returned.”
“What?”
“He’s listed as killed in action.”
I turned the wheel sharply to avoid rear-ending the guy in front of me. After swallowing my heart back into my chest and picking my cell phone up off the floorboard, I asked Spinelli, “You still there?”
He seemed genuinely worried. “What happened?”
“I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Dominic, are you certain about Marcella?”
I could hear him sigh. “Yes, I have a photocopy of the official document from the DOD, listing his disposition. He parachuted into occupied France on September late 42 with fourteen other GIs. None of them made it back alive.”
I do not know why I felt such a crush of disappointment from the news. I mean, I knew that Anthony Marcella was not my real father. But I had carried his name for so long that I felt a kinship to him that was hard to explain. I gripped the steering wheel and wrung my fingers around it until my knuckles turned white. I thought of Lilith and what she might do upon hearing the news. That alone could provide the answers I needed from her. A long, reflective silence might indicate that she knew him all those years ago. She need not say a word and I would know it. On the other hand, a shrug of indifference might suggest that she had never heard of him before, and her care-less attitude might lead me to conclude that she and Gypsy are as individual as night and day. I could have gone on speculating for hours if not for Spinelli pulling me back into the fold with his yelling.
“I said, are you still there!”
“Yes, Dominic. I’m still here.”
“Oh, thank God. I thought I lost you again.”
“Sorry.”
“So, did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you, yes.”
“What do you think?”
Good question. But what could I say? Even I was not sure what I thought. My head was spinning faster than the wheels on my car. “Dominic, this is all such a surprise. If Anthony Marcella died in France, then who the hell is at the hospice care center, dying of cancer?”
“I don’t know, maybe an imposter looking for the VA to pick up the tab for his funeral.”
“No. The guy knows me,” I said. “Or, at least he knew me as a child. He told me things that no one else would know.”
“Then, maybe he is Marcella.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just saying that maybe he never went in behind enemy lines.
A lot of guys go AWOL in the heat of battle. If one disappears in the fog of war, then who’s to say that he didn’t get killed?”
“You think Pops is who he says he is?”
“I don’t know, Tony. I’m just tossing it out there.”
“Right.” I turned at the off ramp and signaled with the merging traffic. “Listen, Dom. I’m gonna have to get back with you on this later. In the meantime—”
“Wait, there’s something else,” he said, and I swear I knew it was coming.
“What?”
“We have another body. This one’s in our neighborhood.”
I found myself checking the odometer and doing a quick calculation to determine how far Lilith might have driven the night before. It didn’t seem like it could have been very far. I asked Spinelli, “You and Carlos on it?”
He came back quickly. “We’re leaving now.”
“Keep me in the loop.”
I hung up thinking I should have told him what I found in Lilith’s closet, but glad that I did not. I still needed time to digest it all. I suppose you could say I was in denial. It is what I would say if it were anyone else. And I am sure it is what Spinelli would say. You’re too close, he would tell me, scolding me in a way that even Carlos would not dare. You live with her. She has those witch’s keys. What more evidence do you need? Then he would throw out the most obvious and damning prejudice. You are in love with her, for God’s sake! Man, how I hate it when he’s right. I turned the radio on for the rest of the ride to drown my thoughts. It did not work, but it kept me from talking to myself, which was a good thing, because I really did not think I would like what I had to say.
I am not sure what I expected to find when I pulled into the parking lot of Gitana Freight Lines. I guess I thought that all railroad companies were large corporations with megalithic structures for office buildings. But if that were generally the case, then Gitana was the exception. Their office building resembled something more modest, larger than a gas station, but smaller than a country barn. I found an empty parking spot out front, next to a Cadillac setting in a space reserved for J. P. Stevens. I did not know who that was, but I figured he must be important. His reservation sign came complete with a warning to visitors that violators will be towed at owner’s expense. Funny, I thought, that they would tow the violator and not his car.
