A Room with a Pew

by Peg Cochran

  “Just what we need,” Frank exploded. He pushed back his chair, threw his napkin on the table and got up.

  Lucille heard him clomping down the stairs to the rec room. She sighed. She felt the same way, although she couldn’t admit it. The house was already bursting at the seams with Bernadette, Tony and Lucy.

  They finished their dinner in near silence, the only conversation being Tony asking Lucille to pass him the Parmesan cheese.

  • • •

  Lucille insisted on doing the dishes—after all, Bernadette had done the cooking. She swelled with pride at the thought. It looked like Bernadette would be able to take care of Tony and Lucy just fine when they moved into their own place—she’d been worried for nothing.

  Lucille got out the tinfoil to cover the lasagna that was left over. Bernadette had made a lot. She paused as she was pulling a sheet of foil off the roll—was lasagna on Frankie’s diet?

  She fumbled around in the junk drawer—why was she saving these bits of string, keys that went to who knows what, even a stale pack of gum? Tomorrow she’d make a point to clean out the drawer.

  She found the diet sheet the doctor had given them and smoothed it out on the counter. There were a lot of things on here Frank could have—mostly vegetables and low-fat meats—but there was no mention of lasagna. No mention of pasta at all, or mozzarella cheese, ricotta or Parmesan.

  Lucille looked at the pan of lasagna. She could have some for lunch, but there’d still be plenty left over. Bernadette and Tony liked to buy lunch out while on the job, although she’d told them they’d save money if they took something from home.

  She hated to see food go to waste. An idea came to her—Mario, their next-door neighbor! She remembered seeing him in the A&P with his cart full of them frozen dinners and cans of chili, corned beef hash and Manwich. She didn’t know how anybody could survive eating stuff like that.

  She’d take him the leftover lasagna. She cut a piece for herself for tomorrow’s lunch, put the rest on a plate and wrapped it all up with tinfoil.

  She looked out the living room window—the lights were on next door. She’d take Mario the lasagna now. She got her jacket out of the closet, yelled downstairs to Frankie that she was going next door and headed to Mario’s house.

  It took Mario so long to answer the doorbell that Lucille almost turned around and went back home.

  “Lucille. What a surprise,” Mario said when he opened the door.

  “I brought you a little something.” Lucille held out the plate. “Some leftover lasagna. My daughter Bernadette made it but don’t worry—it’s real good. It tastes like mine. She doesn’t cook much so I was real surprised when I came home and found she was ready to put dinner on the table.”

  Mario smiled and held out his hand for the plate.

  “I thought it would make a change from them frozen dinners and canned foods you buy.”

  “It will, it certainly will.”

  As Mario reached for the plate, his sleeve crept up a bit and Lucille noticed his scar again. It really did look like an M. How funny that that should happen. She had a small scar on her knee from the time she was riding her bike and Angela pushed her and she fell on a rock. But it didn’t look like an L, unfortunately.

  “Thanks again,” Mario said as Lucille continued to stand there.

  “Right. Enjoy!” Lucille turned to leave.

  She walked back home with that pleasant feeling you got when you did a good deed.

  The house was quiet when Lucille walked back in. Bernadette must have put Lucy down because she didn’t hear no baby coos or cries. She would miss Lucy when they moved out, but she knew they wouldn’t go far. Lucille had noticed a few For Sale signs in the neighborhood. It would be great if they could find something only a couple of blocks away.

  Lucy had dropped one of her stuffed animals on the floor. Lucille picked it up and went into the dining room, where they’d set up Lucy’s playpen so they could watch her from the kitchen. She dropped the toy into the playpen and was turning around when something caught her eye.

  It was the book Louis had brought for Gabe to read about the FBI’s most wanted criminals. It was sitting on the sideboard. Gabe must have forgotten it, and Lucille hadn’t noticed it—she hadn’t been in the dining room since Sunday when she’d finished cleaning up.

  She realized she was tired—it would be nice to put her feet up for a bit. She tucked the book under her arm—maybe she’d glance through it while she sat on the couch.

  Lucille eased herself onto the sofa. It felt good to sit down. Looking at the book made her sad—poor cousin Louis, he hadn’t gotten much out of life, although they’d given him a nice send-off. Of course it was his own fault for drinking and gambling. In the end it looked like he might have been turning himself around, but it was too late.

  Lucille sighed, opened the book and began to read. Some of the criminals she read about had escaped from prison and others had never been caught. She heard a noise and glanced toward the window nervously. She sure hoped none of them lived around here.

  She started to get sleepy and was about to close the book when something caught her eye—a handsome young man with dark eyes and dark curly hair. Lucille started to read the entry—he might have been an attractive young man, but he hadn’t been a very nice one. He’d committed a string of murders almost fifty years ago and had then completely disappeared.

  He would look quite different today, Lucille thought. Fifty years was a long time. He must have hidden real good. It said he had a scar on his forearm. Lucille turned the page and there was a picture of the scar. It was in the shape of the letter M and looked exactly like the one her neighbor Mario had on his arm.

  Lucille was so startled she almost dropped the book. Were her eyes deceiving her? She took the book over to the end table and looked at it more closely under the lamp. There was no doubt—the scar looked exactly like Mario’s. But the face . . . ? It was so hard to tell. The man in the picture was young—in his twenties—and Mario was at least seventy.

  Lucille studied the picture. The face shape was similar and the nose . . . She slapped the book shut. It was Mario.

  She thought back to Thanksgiving dinner. She remembered Louis giving Mario a strange look. At the time she’d thought it was jealousy because Mario was talking to Mona. Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe Louis recognized Mario from the picture in the book?

  She shuddered. Mario had already killed—it was easy to picture him shooting poor Louis to keep his secret. The police would never find out about Mario unless Lucille told them.

  She went into the kitchen and lifted the telephone receiver but then hesitated. Would the police think she was some sort of nut case? People probably called them all the time thinking they’d nailed a criminal. She needed proof. Maybe she ought to call Flo and get her to talk to Richie. That was probably the best.

  Lucille dialed Flo’s number and listened to the phone ringing at the other end. Flo finally answered. She sounded sleepy.

  “Did I wake you? It’s only nine o’clock.”

  “I’m catching up on my beauty sleep, Lucille. Sleep is incredibly restorative according to Dr. Hacker.”

  If sleep was so restorative, why did Flo look as old as Lucille did? Lucille wondered. Lucille’s sleep was hardly restorative, what with Frankie’s snoring, Lucy waking during the night and crying for her bottle and all the worries that went round and round in her head. How could she get restorative sleep when she didn’t know if Bernadette and Tony would ever get their own place, if Bernadette would manage to keep her job at the Napoleon Club—or if she even ought to, seeing as how the place looked to be mobbed up—or if Frankie’s heart was really fixed and she didn’t have to worry no more.

  “Listen, you got to talk to Richie about something. Do you remember Mario, our neighbor, who came to Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “Sure.” Flo yawned.

  “I think he’s one of the FBI’s most wanted.”

  “Is there a reward?
”

  “How should I know, Flo? I need you to ask Richie to check into this. Assuming you two are talking again—otherwise I’ll call him myself.”

  “We are. And I’ll tell him. Now can I go back to sleep?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  Lucille hung up the phone and opened the door to the refrigerator. She was feeling kinda hungry. She didn’t want to go to bed with her stomach rumbling—then for sure her sleep wouldn’t be restorative.

  She poked around until she found the last slice of the apple pie she’d baked for Thanksgiving. The Mediterranean diet stressed fruit, and apples were fruit so she didn’t see any reason not to finish off the piece.

  She sat at the kitchen table and opened Louis’s book again to the page about Mario. His real name was Luigi Romano. Lucille tried to picture the face in front of her with added weight and lines and topped with close-cropped gray hair instead of the black curls in the photo.

  A number in the text caught her eye, and she read the paragraph more carefully.

  Holy cannoli! Lucille thought. According to this here book, there was a reward for Mario’s capture to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars. Her hands started to shake. If she could nab Mario, she and Frankie would get the reward money. They could give Bernadette and Tony a down payment on a house, buy her mother a condo and hire some help and maybe, if there was enough left over after taxes and all, she and Frankie could make that trip to Italy she’d always wanted to take. And maybe even one of them Caribbean cruises.

  Lucille ran to the window and looked out. Sitting right there across the driveway from them was a one-hundred-grand jackpot.

  As Lucille watched out the window, she saw the door to Mario’s house open. He came out carrying a suitcase.

  He was leaving!

  He put the suitcase in the trunk of his car and went back into the house, leaving the trunk open. He was making a run for it. Lucille was positive. Maybe the police were closing in on him for Louis’s murder.

  Lucille felt the reward money slipping through her fingers. She had to do something. Frankie was downstairs asleep—she could hear him snoring—he’d never know she was gone.

  She put on her coat and stood by the window. Suddenly she began to get cold feet. She didn’t want to go after Mario alone. She ran into the kitchen and dialed Flo’s number.

  “Geez, Lucille, I was about to fall back to sleep.”

  “This is important, Flo, listen.”

  Lucille explained about Mario and the one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward.

  “One hundred thousand dollars! Hang on, I’ll be right there.” Flo hung up.

  Lucille stayed by the window and waited. She was getting hot in her car coat, but she wanted to be ready.

  Flo arrived, breathless, in record time. Lucille didn’t wait for her to come to the door, but ran out as soon as she saw Flo’s headlights.

  “What do we do now?” Flo asked, putting the car in park. She turned to Lucille.

  Flo looked odd with no makeup on—sort of vulnerable, Lucille thought. Her false eyelashes, bright eye shadows and glossy lipsticks were like a mask that hid the real Flo.

  “Wait, I guess. He put his suitcase in the trunk, and the trunk’s still open. If you ask me, that means he’s ready to make a break for it.”

  Flo yawned. “So much for my beauty sleep tonight.”

  “Think about the one hundred thousand dollars,” Lucille said.

  Flo sat up a little straighter. “You’re right. What’s a little lost sleep, after all.”

  They were both nearly dozing when a noise from next door had them sitting bolt upright. Mario had slammed the lid of his trunk and was getting behind the wheel.

  “Are you ready?” Lucille asked.

  Flo revved the motor. “Are you kidding?”

  Mario carefully backed down his driveway, paused and then pulled out into the street. He put the car in drive and headed toward the end of the street. Flo waited until he was at the stop sign before pulling out in back of him.

  “You’re going to lose him,” Lucille said.

  “No, I’m not. You don’t want him to know we’re following him, do you?”

  “No, but I don’t want to lose him either.”

  Mario turned left and headed toward Springfield Avenue, where he turned left again toward Berkeley Heights.

  “I wonder where he’s going?” Lucille said as they passed the McDonald’s on their right.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Flo said as she bore down on the gas.

  Mario continued down Springfield Avenue and then braked suddenly, turning onto a street that led them into a suburban neighborhood.

  “Looks like a nice place,” Lucille said, peering out the darkened window at the scenery flying by. “Nice houses. Not too big, tidy lawns. Frankie always keeps our yard real nice.”

  Flo grunted as she squinted into the black night.

  “He’s turning into a driveway. What should I do?” She turned toward Lucille.

  “Go on past. We can double back.”

  “Okay.”

  Mario turned, and Flo and Lucille shot past him down the street, coming to a halt at the stop sign.

  “What now?” Flo braced her hands on the Mustang’s steering wheel.

  “Double back and pull up across the street, so if he tries to take off we can follow him.”

  Flo made a U-turn and pulled up to the curb across the street from where Mario’s car was parked.

  She and Lucille were both breathing heavily.

  “Okay, what do we do now?” Flo turned to Lucille.

  “I wonder whose house this is?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” Flo blew out a tense breath. “Go up and ring the doorbell.”

  “All of a sudden I want to be back home in my flannel nightgown tucked up all nice and safe next to Frankie listening to him snore.”

  “I know what you mean,” Flo said. “But think of the one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  They opened their doors and got out. It was cold and Lucille began to shiver. She should have grabbed a warmer coat.

  “What are we going to say,” Lucille asked as they walked up the path to the front door of the small Cape Cod–style house painted white with black shutters.

  The bushes on either side of the walk were brown and withering and the ground was hard with frost. They climbed the three brick steps and Lucille knocked on the door.

  They heard noises coming from inside and the door was thrown open.

  “Carol,” Lucille exclaimed, nearly falling off the top step.

  What was Mario doing at Carol’s house? They’d seen him pull into the driveway so he must be there somewhere. Then Lucille remembered—she’d seen Carol visiting Mario that one day. But how did they know each other?

  Mario came down the hall. “Who’s here, Carol? I told you not to open the—” He stopped short when he saw Lucille.

  “Lucille! What are you doing here?”

  Lucille decided if there ever was a time to lie, this was it.

  “I thought I’d drop in and see how your mother is doing. On account of she must be missing Louis. I can imagine it’s been hard for her.”

  Carol looked taken aback. “I’m sure that’s very kind of you.” She turned toward Flo. “Who is your friend?”

  “This here’s Flo. She came along for the ride, so to speak. We’ve been friends since second grade.”

  Lucille’s glance strayed to Mario’s wrist and the scar that looked like an M. She looked from Carol to Mario and back again. According to the book Louis had left at her house, Mario—his real name was Luigi, of course—had disappeared, leaving behind a wife and baby daughter. Carol had Mario’s nose and there was something similar about the shape of their mouths . . .

  “You’re Mario’s daughter, aren’t you?” Lucille blurted out.

  Flo stared at her, but Lucille ignored her.

  “And you,” she pointed at
Mario, “are really Luigi Romano.”

  “Who told you that?” Carol demanded to know.

  “No one,” Lucille said with a trace of pride. “I figured it out all by myself.”

  “Well, Lucille”—Mario flexed his hands—“I’m afraid the secret is going to have to die with you.”

  Flo took a step backward. “Whoa. I didn’t know anything about this. Lucille doesn’t mean it—she doesn’t know anything either.” She grabbed Lucille by the arm and began to tug her toward the door.

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you go.” Mario smiled apologetically. “I’ve spent many years in hiding—the best years of my life. And while I have nothing against Italy, I’m glad to be back in America with my daughter.” He put an arm around Carol.

  Flo tossed back her hair and looked at Carol. “How can you let him get away with this? He abandoned you. He doesn’t care about you.”

  Carol smiled. “And I don’t care about him. It’s the money, you see.”

  “What money?” Lucille asked.

  “When my father,” she said with a sneer in her voice, “was declared dead after having been missing for seven years, my mother got the money from his insurance policy. And when she dies, I’ll inherit what’s left. Enough to pay off this place”—she swept a hand around the hallway of her house—“and buy a new car. I’m not giving that up.”

  Lucille thought about what she could do with the hundred grand in reward money and it made her weak in the knees.

  “That’s why I couldn’t let your cousin Louis turn my father in,” Carol said. “He told my mother about his suspicions, and she told me. Mario,” she said and glanced at her father, “was more than happy to take care of Louis for me.” She laughed. “At least he’s good for something.”

  Carol looked at Lucille and Flo and Lucille didn’t like the look on her face.

  “And now Mario will take care of you two.”

  “Nah, we’re fine,” Lucille said. “We don’t need no taking care of, right, Flo?”

  “Right. We’ll be on our way and leave you two—”

  “Not so fast.” Mario pulled a gun from the waistband of his trousers. “You two ain’t going nowhere except where I tell you.” He turned to Carol. “Hand me my coat.”