MIAMI ICED

by Susan Sussman

“I’m going to the condo meeting, tonight.” My sister works at supersonic speed. Batches of cookies cool on racks, dough rises in assorted bowls, overripe bananas find new life in loaves of sweet bread. The condo valets and security staff love my sister’s baking Mondays. “There are things going on in this building,” she says. “Important things.”

  I pour a flagon of Cabernet and pull up a barstool. Evidently, she’d spent a couple of hours at the pool where a resident Chicken Little glommed onto her, warning:

  “The SKY IS FALLING and our condo will take a DIRECT HIT if concerned tenants don’t RISE UP and DO SOMETHING.”

  “The meeting’s at seven,” says Bitsy. “I’ll make dinner at six. That should give us time.”

  Us? “You go,” I say. “I’ll hold down the fort.” I’ve never attended a condo meeting, see no reason to start now. As soon as my condo sells – probably around the same time the Chicago Cubs win the pennant – I’m outta here.

  “Well, I’m going,” says Bitsy, stirring golden raisins into a bowl of glop. “We need to find out what’s happening.”

  “Why?”

  She’s not listening. “Do you think they’ll let me into the meeting?” stirring in more raisins. “I’m not technically a resident.”

  “If you show up, they’ll draft you for president.”

  “Really, Laura.”

  “Look, no one here knows who I am. Go to the meeting, pretend you’re me, knock yourself out.”

  She stops beating up the dough. “What do you mean, no one knows you?”

  “Michael and I lived here less than four months before he died. We were busy moving, buying the boat. I never sit at the pool,” I say, “never attend Friday Night Socials, don’t sign up for condo outings to comedy clubs or theater or concerts. I don’t play cards or Mah-Jongg. I don’t golf. I don’t shop. Two of my neighbors are New York snowbirds whose lives here revolve around their country clubs and whose conversations – the few times I’ve actually run into them at the elevator -- are a patchwork of articles they’ve read in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The other two neighbors I’ve only caught glimpses of near the trash chute and I swear they speak no known language. I’m telling you, no one here knows me.”

  This is impossible for Bitsy to process. She’d crammed her married days with charity work and social events and bridge clubs and garden clubs and family and friends, making sure life ran with the precision of Italian trains for her three children, aging parents, in-laws and her husband Sheldon-the-dyspeptic camel.

  I break the news as gently as I’m able. “I can’t drive you to your manicure and book club tomorrow,” I say. “You’ll have to find another ride.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m going back to court to listen to a murder trial.”

  She looks confused. “But, you said you’re not on a jury.”

  “No. It’s…it’s just an interesting case. I’d like to see what happens.”

  She punches the dough. “I don’t understand,” left hook, right hook. “Why go back to that terrible place?” Bitsy spent her last Chicago months in court detaching her life from Sheldon-the-selfish. People who hang around courthouses frighten her. Murder frightens her. Running out of butter frightens her.

  “It’s your fault,” I say. “You’re the one who noodged me to go to jury duty.”

  “That was out of respect for our father.”

  “It’s still your fault. I went. Now it’s your turn to do something meaningful for God and country.”

  “Like?”

  “Learn to drive so you don’t have to rely on me. Michael’s perfectly good car is rusting in the garage.”

  Bitsy’s mouth tightens. She spills the raisin glop onto a flour-dusted board and kneads it with astonishing vigor. For some reason, she has always feared driving a moving hunk of tonnage. That was fine when she lived downtown Chicago where she could walk everywhere. Sheldon-the-skunk encouraged this. Living with a wife who didn’t drive meant never having to say, “Oops, you caught me schtupping my secretary at the Cum-on-Inn.”

  After dinner, Bitsy leaves for the condo meeting. I head to the office Michael constructed in our third bedroom. Ghosts hover as I fire up his computer. My son and daughter, increasingly nervous about my ‘state of mind’, made me promise to e-mail them every night.

  Dear Stacey and Ethan, I’m fine. A bit of excitement. It seems there’s an axe murderer on the loose in my building. Oh, someone’s banging on my front door. Must go see who it is. Love, Mom.

  I set the Sun Sentinel article next to the computer then Google variations of Joseph Galdino/Brandy Lucas/Melvin Lucas/Jersey Construction Co., printing out articles from Florida and New Jersey papers. Once I’ve built a healthy stack, I refill my wine glass and curl up in bed to read.

  The phone rings. “Aunt Laura? It’s Sally.”

  Bitsy’s youngest daughter is calling to check on her mom. “She’s at the condo meeting,” I say.

  She laughs. “What else is new? Can’t you take her clubbing?”

  “Baby seals?”

  “Aunt Laura, honestly. Drag her to a movie, go shopping at the mall, take in a jazz club.” Spoken like a twenty-something single city gal living on a steady diet of sugary come-on lines and steamy chick-lit. She seems reluctant to hang up.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I say. “I might just hire a couple of buff stud-muffins to escort your mother and me to South Beach this weekend.”

  “I think that would be great!”

  “I’ll run the idea past your mom.”

  “I wish I could see her face when you do.”

  “Say goodnight, Sally.”

  “Goodnight, Sally.”

  I slide between the cool sheets and settle into my reading. A New Jersey paper shows a childhood photo of sisters Maria Galdino and Brandy Lucas walking the Coney Island boardwalk, arms around each other, licking three-scoop ice cream cones dripping in the summer heat. The article quotes neighbors and friends who say the sisters were inseparable growing up. If Mrs. Galdino is testifying in her husband’s defense, she must be convinced he didn’t murder her sister. No wonder the courtroom knitter was so keen on hearing what Galdino’s wife has to say. I fall asleep over the articles, the lights still on, not hearing Bitsy-the-condo-commando return from the wars.

  6

  Morning rush-hour on I-95. The driver in front of me steers with her forearms which frees her hands for texting. The man to my right reads a newspaper propped against his steering wheel. The gal riding my bumper brushes on mascara. A helmetless motorcyclist in pursuit of the land speed record flies the line between cars. Suddenly, the driver on my left guns his car across three lanes of traffic, screeches to a stop on the shoulder and backs up toward a missed exit.

  Florida drivers. Don’t get me started.

  By the time I park and race to the courthouse, the security line stretches halfway down the block. Fifteen minutes later, I reach the X-ray machine. It immediately spits my purse back out. “No phones allowed in court,” says the X-ray tootsie with air-brushed claws.

  “But,” I say, “I brought a phone yesterday.”

  “Not through my machine you didn’.”

  “No, I came in the jury duty entrance.”

  “Honey,” fist on hip, “this look like jury duty to you?”

  “How was I supposed to know?” I ask. “Someone should have come outside and warned all of us waiting in line.”

  She eyes the impatient crowd behind me and calls out, “Anyone a you got maybe a phone you shouldn’t oughta be bringin’ into my courthouse?” Nary a hand goes up.

  I run back to the parking lot and toss my phone in the car. By the time I pass back through security and ride the elevator upstairs, the outside courtyard is empty, the courtroom doors shut. Court is in session. A Sumo-sized guard blocks my way.

  “Courtroom’s full,” he says.

  No. I have to get in. Yesterday, in that courtroom, something sparked in me. For the brief
est instant I felt alive, buzzing with the first emotional currents I’ve felt in months. Not getting into the courtroom is not an option. I size up the guard. He may be twice my size, but the shoes I’m wearing are twice his age. To a kid like him, anyone over forty is on death’s door.

  “Oh,” I say, putting a creak in my voice, “I’ve already been inside. ” Liar, liar. “I just dashed out to go to the ladies room.” I try to look in gastric distress. “My friend is in there holding my place.” He’s not buying. I take a chance. “I’m sure you know her. She usually sits in the last row. The knitter?”

  His face relaxes. “Mrs. Mendez?”

  “Yes. Such a dear dear lady.” I fairly reek of lavender and old lace.

  He opens the door and I step into the sub-zero courtroom. Mrs. Mendez beckons me to the back row, lifting her knitting cart off the space she’s saved next to her. “I thought you might come,” she whispers.

  “Thanks.” I untie Michael’s old Lake View High School sweatshirt from around my waist and shrug it on, bumping a young woman next to me. “Sorry.”

  “Whatever,” she says, not looking my way. There’s not an ounce of meat on her skinny bones, yet she’s wearing a gauzy summer dress. This waif could die of hypothermia. A yellow legal pad jumps on her lap as she bounces a nervous leg. She’s staring at someone up front with ferocious intensity. I follow the direction of her stare. It could be the Galdino daughter in the first row or maybe the Lucas brats slouched on the bench behind her. This girl seems young for a reporter. But, then, my gynecologist looks twelve.

  Mrs. Mendez waves a knitting needle toward the man on the witness stand. Mid-thirties, razor-trimmed hair, mustache, arm muscles straining his suit sleeves. “Homicide detective,” she whispers.

  “So, Detective,” says the prosecutor, “you were on scene when Brandy Lucas’ body was found?”

  “Yes. Her sister, Maria Galdino, reported her missing.”

  “Lights,” says the Prosecutor. The courtroom lights dim. click A slide flashes on the movie screen showing an immaculate garage. Two long strips of carpeting sit side-by-side, a car parked on one, the other unoccupied. “Please tell us what we are looking at.”

  “The Lucas garage,” says the detective.

  “Who carpets a garage?” whispers Mrs. Mendez.

  “Rich people,” says the girl reporter.

  click A new photo of a chest freezer. It sits against a garage wall, its lid closed. Why take a photo of…?

  click Freezer with lid lifted open. I’m getting a bad feeling about where this is going.

  click Shot of a mound inside, ice-glazed and colorless. A wad of burnt breakfast bagel pushes back up my throat.

  click. Looking straight down into the freezer. The squeamish part of me screams ‘shut your eyes’ but my inner yenta can’t look away.

  click A close up. The ice-encrusted body folded inside like a fetus. Soft gasps rise around me like vapor. “Oh,” I say.

  The prosecutor lets the horrific photo twist naked in front of the jury.

  Mrs. Mendez stops knitting, crosses herself. “That’s evil,” she says. “Stone cold evil.”

  The young journalist next to me stops jiggling her leg. This is heavy stuff for a cub reporter.

  “Now, Detective,” says the Prosecutor, “please tell us how Brandy Lucas died.”

  “She was stabbed. A trail of blood runs across the garage. The fatal wound was struck from behind. There were smaller, shallower cuts, also to the back.”

  “Which might indicate,” says the Prosecutor, “she was moving away from her killer.” He pauses, letting the image sink in of a terrified Brandy fleeing a knife-wielding fiend. Joseph Galdino’s daughter sits rigid in the front row. Her cousins slouch in the pew behind.

  The detective describes the inside of the house, the trail of blood starting at the attached garage where the body was found. The journalist next to me occasionally jots notes. I’m pressing my hand over my mouth. This is not TV court where commercials give viewers a chance to regroup.

  The slides shift into the Lucas Bedroom. “Now,” says the prosecutor, moving closer, “will you tell us what you discovered behind this?” click An enormous tapestry depicting a seventeenth century village hangs on a bedroom wall. It is set against a Lady Gaga-esque marvel of black and silver velvet-flocked wallpaper enlivened by a random scatter of beaded tassels. ‘Ungapatchka’ Grandma Horwich would say, she with the Spartan esthetic of a cloistered nun. The Lucas children stir at the sight of their parent’s bedroom, leaning forward as the next slide appears. The tapestry has been pulled aside revealing a gaping hole. It looks like a low doorway.

  “We found this opening in the wall,” says the detective, “about four feet high by three feet wide, maybe three feet deep. The wood frame around the hole has jagged edges, like something was pried out.”

  The Lucas kids stiffen like dogs on point.

  “Detective,” says the Prosecutor, “in your professional opinion, could the opening have accommodated a safe?”

  The Lucas duo elbows one another. They seem more agitated by the possibility of a missing safe than photos of their frozen mumsicle. I’m guessing Brandy and Mel Lucas neglected to mention a hidden safe to their kids. No surprise there. If those two were mine, I’d check my gold fillings after their visits.

  “The space could easily have held a safe,” says the detective.

  Chilblains grip my feet. I should have worn socks. Electric socks. The electric socks inside the Moon Boots stashed in the box marked “Winter Clothing” moldering in my condo storage cubicle. What was I thinking when I put on these sandals? I wasn’t. It’s impossible to imagine this level of arctic cold when your balcony thermometer reads 88° at dawn.

  At the defense table, Galdino’s head sinks down, nearly disappearing into his suit jacket. Ichabod Crane. It’s a look. Does the prosecution really expect us to believe this scrawny twerp killed his zaftig sister-in-law, lifted her body into the freezer then went back and hacked a large safe out of the wall? I know it would help explain how Brandy’s jewelry wound up in the hands of Galdino’s New Jersey fence, but I can’t picture it.

  Even with Michael’s sweatshirt, I can’t stop shivering. The knitter pulls the first half of the Afghan she’s working on out of her bag and spreads it across my lap. A random act of kindness. Tears sprout and my nose leaks. “Thanks,” I say. By the time the judge calls a morning break, feeling has almost returned to my extremities.

  The line for the ladies room reminds me that, if I ever come back to court again, I need to cut out my third cup of morning coffee. By the time I finish, people in the courtyard have started returning to the courtroom. The knitter leans against a cement planter, her face to the sun. “Feels good,” she says.

  “Thanks for sharing your blanket,” I say. “You saved my life.” I extend a hand. “I’m Laura Marks.”

  “Lucille Mendez. Nice to meet you.”

  Next to her, the young reporter stares at the Lucas children huddling off to one side. “Nikki?” says Lucille. “Nikki?” The girl looks up. “This here’s Laura Marks. Laura, this is Nikki Delano.”

  “You’re a reporter,” I say, making conversation.

  She tilts her head the way the Lucas girl does. “Noooo,” sounding snippy. “I’m an actress.”

  “Oh, I thought because of the way you were writing things down--”

  She walks off, following the Lucas kids back inside. I turn to Lucille. “Did I say something to offend her?”

  “Don’t you think a thing about it. That’s just Nikki being Nikki. She tries on different characters the way other people try on clothes. With that girl, I never know who’s gonna show up.”

  “Is she always that unpleasant?”

  “Nikki’s into that method acting. Says it’s important for her to stay in character. Since this trial started, she’s been studying the Lucas girl, been a real snot nose this whole time. But, come next trial, Nikki might be sweet as Mother Teresa.” The guard at the d
oor waves to us. Lucille stands and brushes the back of her dress. “We’d best be getting back.”

  Defense attorney Maureen Smith slides out of her chair and approaches the detective. Her slender legs begin slightly below her neck. “Detective,” her voice smooth as butter, “you said you found Mr. Galdino’s prints in the Lucas home.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Of course you did,” she says sweetly. “The Galdino family visited the Lucas home many times.”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, didn’t Mr. Galdino’s daughter, Caprice, recently stay at the Lucas home for several weeks.”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  Caprice? That can’t be Galdino’s daughter’s name. The somber girl in the front row is an Agnese, a Theresa, a Bernadette -- a saintly figure in sackcloth and ashes. Caprice is pure thong.

  The beatific smile on the defense attorney’s face is the stuff of Byzantine icons. “And, since the murder of Brandy Lucas, there has never been any sign of her husband Mel Lucas, has there?”

  “No.”

  “Not in their home?”

  “No.”

  “Not on their boat?”

  “No.”

  She turns slightly toward the jury. “And after Brandy’s body was found in the freezer, Mel Lucas’ car was discovered in the Palm Beach International Airport parking lot.”

  “Yes.”

  “It had been there for some time.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you fingerprinted the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find the defendant’s fingerprints on the wheel?”

  “No. But we did find his prints in the car.”

  “And, why wouldn’t you? Mr. Galdino was a frequent visitor to the Lucas home. He often rode in his brother-in-law’s car. You would expect to find Mr. Galdino’s prints, would you not?” She turns to the detective. “The fact is, Brandy Lucas was murdered. The fact is, Mel Lucas has gone missing.” She makes a gesture, as if to say, ‘This is a no-brainer. Mel Lucas killed his wife and fled with the millions.’ But what she says is, “Thank you, detective. No more questions.”

  Judge Kossoff gavels the noon recess. “Lunch,” says Lucille, and I reluctantly relinquish the Afghan so she can stow her knitting. I’m thinking of going across the street to the library park and finding a nice warm bench where I can eat the lunch Bitsy packed for me. She’s assembled creamy Brie on crusty French bread with sliced heritage tomatoes. A side of homemade vegetable chips. A bag of baby carrots, celery sticks, rose-cut radishes. Two chocolate chip cookies without nuts, (Sheldon-the-shrill was allergic.) A can of organic apple juice.