by Nic Saint
“So did you hear about Mrs. Peach?” I asked, not to beat around the bush.
“Oh, my God,” he said, placing his hand on his cheek. “Is it true she was murdered?”
“It’s true. The detective in charge of the investigation dropped by this morning. He told us she was murdered in St. Michael’s Church. Someone dropped—”
“A huge cross on her head. I know. The story is all over the neighborhood. What a horrible, terrible tragedy.” He then directed a quick look over his shoulder, let it linger on Estrella’s back for a moment, then gave me a cheeky smirk. “Then again, she truly was a horrible, terrible person. Did you know what she once did to Erick and me?”
“No, what?” I asked. All right. I already knew the story, but it didn’t hurt to hear it twice, and straight from the Smurf’s mouth this time.
“Well, it’s no secret that Erick and I like to sunbathe in the nood.”
“In the…”
“In the nood.”
“Oh, in the nude.”
He arched his expressive Eastern-European eyebrows. “That’s what I just said. So we like to sunbathe in the nood, which we are allowed to do in the privacy of our own home and garden, no?”
“Of course,” I said, though I had no idea if that was actually true. Ernestine would know. She was the legal beagle in our family.
“So one day we were sunbathing in the nood, just Erick and me and our two Labradoodles Max and Minx—who are always in the nood, ha ha.”
“Ha ha.”
“And up pops Mrs. Peach, her face red as a… peach.”
“More like a tomato.”
“Yes, I see your point. Peaches are rarely red.”
“Never, actually.”
He cocked his head. “Honey, are you going to let me finish the story or what?”
I held up an apologetic hand. “Go ahead. I won’t interrupt you again.”
“Thank you. So Mrs. Peach’s ugly prune-faced head pops up above our boxwood hedge, and she yells something about public decency. Erick yells back that she just has to lower her head and not look over our hedge but she keeps yakking on and on about indecent exposure and public noodity. Erick explains to her that this is our own private backyard and she has no business poking her nose in our affairs and yadda yadda and so on and so forth.” He took a deep breath and continued, “And then suddenly the cops show up and it’s like a scene from some Keystone Cops movie all of a sudden. They don’t really want to arrest us, but Mrs. Peach keeps egging them on so finally we get a slap on the wrist and that’s it. Cops exit stage left.”
“Only that’s not it.”
He pointed a finger at me. “Exactly. Next time we sunbathe in the nood, same thing happens, and the next, and the next. Only after about the fifth time, when we invite the cops to join us—they were these two exceedingly nice and buff and very handsome police officers—we immediately took a shine to them and since they kept showing up every weekend we started getting along really well—Mrs. Peach saw she was fighting a losing battle and so she decided to bring out the big guns.”
“The hose.”
He smiled. “You know the story. Erick told you, didn’t he?”
“No, actually one of our neighbors did. Renée Reive?”
“Of course. Sweet Renée. She’s so wonderful. Did she also tell you about the blue paint?”
“She might have mentioned it.”
“I didn’t think it was funny at the time—especially since I couldn’t get this paint off me and I’m in sales so I had to go and visit my customers looking like Poet Smurf—though Erick says I’m Vanity Smurf, with a touch of Grouchy Smurf—so I wasn’t very happy about it. But now I think it’s hilarious. We tell the story at every party and it’s always a big hit!”
“Did you take pictures?”
“Of course we took pictures! Lots and lots of them. And we posted them everywhere. You want to see my pictures? Here, I’ll show you my pictures.” He took out his phone and scrolled through a few of them, holding the phone away from me. “Not for your eyes, honey. They’d burn. Oh, here we are.” He put the phone on the counter. They were all selfies of him and Eric, looking extremely blue.
Estrella and Ernestine had joined us, and they couldn’t stop laughing at the sight of these two grown men, looking like something from Comic-Con.
“You look just like Mystique,” said Ernestine.
“Or Sam Worthington in Avatar,” said Estrella.
“I think they look like the Smurfs,” I said.
“Me too,” said Flavio with a smile. “I like the Smurfs.”
“So what happened with Mrs. Peach?” I asked.
“Well, we called our dear friends the cops again,” said Flavio, tucking away his phone. “They were very surprised to see us. And this time Mrs. Peach was the one who got the slap on the wrist. We never heard from her after that incident.”
“She never sprayed you again? A different color, maybe?” Estrella asked.
“No, she did not. We kinda hoped she would. Maybe chartreuse? Or Hollywood cerise—that’s a kind of pink—very pretty. But she lay low after that. I think she learned her lesson. Never mess with a couple of nood queers. You can spray them and call the cops on them but you’ll never win.”
“Nude queers,” said Ernestine.
“Nood queers. That’s what I said.”
“Forget it, Stien,” I muttered.
“So I take it you didn’t kill Mrs. Peach?” asked Estrella.
“Oh, no!” said Flavio. “I would never kill that woman. Flash her, maybe, but definitely not kill her.” He shivered visibly. “All that blood. I’m allergic to blood. Erick might have done it. He is a brain surgeon, after all. He likes blood. No, I’m just kidding. Erick wouldn’t hurt a fly. No, literally. I always have to swat the flies, and the mosquitoes. And catch the spiders. You would think a surgeon wouldn’t mind butchering a few bugs, but no. He draws the line at butchering people. No, I’m just kidding again. Ha ha. Erick has never butchered anybody, not even on the operation table. He’s very good at what he does. In fact he’s so good that no one else can do what he does, so if he would bump his head and need brain surgery he’s the only one who could do it, which he wouldn’t be able to. It’s quite a dilemma.”
“Better he never bumps his head,” I said.
“That’s what I keep telling him! Which reminds me, do you have any pink freesias? It’s Erick’s birthday and I want to surprise him with his favorite flower.”
I sold Flavio his pink freesias feeling pretty sure that the guy wasn’t capable of having murdered Mrs. Peach. In fact it seemed like he was grateful to the old lady for giving him a great story to tell at parties.
“I don’t think he did it,” said Estrella when Flavio walked out after a cheerful wave in our direction.
“I don’t think so either,” said Ernestine.
“Yeah, I don’t think he’s capable of murder,” I agreed.
“So who did it?” asked Estrella.
“Must be one of the others,” I said. “But who?”
We shared a look. “Oh, no, you guys,” said Ernestine. “I don’t want to get involved in this mess.”
“We already are involved in this mess,” I said. “The moment Sam dropped this mess in our laps we got involved.”
“How is that? I don’t see how that’s true,” she said.
“We have two suspects living under our roof,” I said. “Gran and Father Reilly.”
“And Sam said neither one of them is a strong suspect,” Ernestine countered.
“I still think we owe it to them to clear their names,” I said.
“I agree,” said Estrella. “It’s up to us to find out what happened to Mrs. Peach.”
“No, it’s not,” Ernestine insisted. “It’s up to Sam. He’s a cop.”
“It’s our street. Our responsibility,” I said.
“No way! Not everything that happens on Nightingale Street is our responsibility. Why else do we have cops?”
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br /> “To look good in a uniform?” Estrella suggested. “And to date our sister?”
“I think this is a horrible idea,” Ernestine insisted. “This is exactly why Gran took away our witchy powers, remember? Because we kept getting ourselves in trouble.”
“Well, now we’ll get in trouble without our witchy powers,” I said.
“Oh, and that’s supposed to make me feel better? I say no and that’s final. I’m putting my foot down on this one. And you two can’t do this without me.”
Fifteen minutes later we’d closed down the shop and were on our way to St. Michael’s Church to take a good look at the crime scene.
Chapter 8
We stood gazing up at the entrance of St. Michael’s Church. No matter how many times I passed it, the sight of its arched entrance never failed to impress me, as did its blocky clock tower that kept watch over the neighborhood. A police car trundled by, and a scrawny cop stood sentry in front of the entrance, but those were the only signs that something horrible had happened here this morning.
When we mounted the steps to the heavy oak front door, the scrawny cop held up his arm. “No access. Church is closed.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t considered such a teensy tiny issue like crime scene access.
We regrouped on the sidewalk. “I told you this was a bad idea,” said Ernestine.
“It’s a great idea. Now all we need to do is convince this cop to let us through,” I said.
Estrella darted a keen look at the cop. “Let me handle this,” she said, and stalked off in the direction of the stalwart keeper of the peace.
“Strel!” I hissed. “Come back here!”
“She’s going to get us in trouble,” Ernestine told me. “I’m telling you. She’s going to get us arrested or worse.”
“What could possibly be worse than getting arrested?”
“She could…” She cast around for a response. “She could get our flower selling license revoked!”
“Flower selling license? There’s no such thing as a license for selling flowers. It’s not cigarettes or alcohol, Stien. Everyone can sell flowers.”
“Well, she could still get us in hot water with the police, and we need the police on our side if we’re going to be looking into this murder. Which we’re not,” she quickly added. “But if we were to look into this murder business, we need to work together with the authorities, not against them.” She shook her head. “If only you hadn’t antagonized Sam, we could have simply asked him to give us access to the crime scene. I’m sure—”
“What do you mean I antagonized Sam?” I asked with a frown. “I didn’t antagonize Sam. He lied to me.”
She raised her eyes dramatically. “Oh, when are you finally going to forgive and forget?!”
“It’s literally been, like, half an hour, Stien.”
“Well, time to move on. You’ve said your piece, he’s apologized, no sense in beating a dead horse.”
“The horse isn’t even cold yet! The horse just died!”
“Well, dead or not, we all have to move on. And speaking of moving on, what is Estrella doing?”
We watched as our sister openly flirted with the cop, and if his dumb grin was anything to go by, she was having success, too. He was dancing from foot to foot, grinning up a storm, while Estrella giggled and cooed like there was no tomorrow.
“She’s making a spectacle of herself,” Ernestine said primly. “She’s dragging the good Flummox name through the mud.”
“What good Flummox name? Our dad was a thief and our mom was a witch. There is no good Flummox name.”
“It’s still a very nice name. It’s our name and we should wear it proudly.”
“Well, you wear it proudly. I’m going in,” I said, getting tired of this whole rigmarole.
“You can’t!” Ernestine hissed, tripping after me. “He’ll arrest you!”
“Let him arrest me. See if I care. This is my church and I’m going in.”
“This isn’t your church. You’re not even Catholic.”
“I could be Catholic. I could be having a Catholic emergency right now.”
“What Catholic emergency?!”
“I could be having a crisis of faith!”
I stalked up to the cop. “I need to see my priest,” I said.
He gulped, now faced with not just one Flummox female but three. “Huh?”
Very eloquent. “I need to talk to Father… John about… a thing,” I said.
“You mean Father Frank?”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s the one.”
“Father Frank isn’t in,” he said. “This is a crime scene—a crime was committed here so it’s a crime scene. And I was instructed not to let anyone in.”
“I’m having a crisis of faith,” I said. “I urgently need to pray.”
“Pray at home.”
“I can’t pray at home. I’m a Catholic. I need to pray in my church.”
“So go pray in some other church. There’s plenty.”
“This is my church,” I said. “I need to pray here. It’s a Catholic thing,” I explained when he gave me a dubious look.
“Look, lady, I’m a Catholic, too. God doesn’t care in which church I pray.”
“You mean it’s like Lucille Roberts or Planet Fitness?” Estrella asked. “You pay one time and you can go to any club you like?”
The cop gave her a hesitant look. “Yeah, something like that.”
“That’s so cool!” Estrella exclaimed, putting her hand on the cop’s bicep and squeezing it. “Ooh, I’ll bet you’re a fitness fanatic, Marco. You’re so strong.”
“I work out,” he admitted. “Yeah, you’ll find me at the gym at least three times a week, if not more.”
“I work out, too,” Estrella lied. “Don’t you just love it when you’re all sweaty and hot and then you hit the shower and feel all that water wipe the sweat off your hot body? It’s just the best feeling in the world, right?”
His grin was back in full force as he gave her a long, sweeping look. “Yeah, nothing can beat a post-workout shower.”
“I like to lather up and rub my hands all over my soapy body.”
“Yeah,” he said, his eyes going all dreamy and his face all red. “Yeah, I like that, too.”
“Ooh, Marco!” she squealed. “You and I have so much in common!”
“Yeah,” he agreed with a goofy grin. “You can say that again.”
“Look, Marco,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “My sister really is suffering from a spiritual emergency.” She put her hand on the guy’s chest and gave his pecs a tentative squeeze. “And this really is her church. So could you just do her a solid and let her in? She needs to have her alone time with the big guy up top right now or else she’ll go ballistic.”
“She means God,” said Ernestine quickly. “The big guy up top is God.”
“Marco knows what I mean,” said Estrella. “Marco is very smart.”
Marco didn’t look very smart. In fact he looked downright scared, as if fully expecting me to go ballistic on him, like Strel had predicted. He glanced around, then back at me, and finally at Estrella, who gave him her best radiant smile, going full Goldie Hawn. With a commiserative smile, he finally said, “Oh, what the hell. I’ve been there. You just hang in there. This will pass, too.” And after this surprising statement, proving that New York’s finest can be deep when they want to be, he opened the door to let me in.
Chapter 9
The three of us tripped into the church, past the foyer, and into the church proper.
“This is the narthex,” Ernestine whispered.
Our feet clicked on the stone floor of the first part past the entrance. There were a bunch of candles for sale, and cards with pictures of saints. To be honest, I’d rarely if ever set foot inside a church. Well, apart from the occasional weddings, funerals and baptisms.
“And this is the nave!” Ernestine loud-whispered as we passed between the rows of pews.
&nb
sp; “I don’t care what this is!” I whispered back. “I just want to see where it happened and get the hell out of here!”
Ernestine gasped in shock and stared at me. “You just said a bad word!”
“What word?”
“You said H.E.L.L.!”
“So?”
“You can’t say H.E.L.L. in church! It’s bad!”
“Hell is the opposite of heaven,” Estrella explained. “It’s where God’s main competitor for our souls lives.”
“I know what the hell hell is!” I hissed.
Ernestine gasped again. “Stop saying that!”
“You stop acting like you’ve never heard the word hell!”
Another gasp. This was getting old.
“Let’s just do this,” I said.
Ernestine tripped along, her face a mask of worry as she darted anxious glances at the ceiling, as if fully expecting God to suddenly materialize and smite us, as he does.
“Those are the transepts,” she said in a shaky voice as we approached the altar.
“Stop doing that!” I said.
“I can’t help it. I’m nervous. I babble when I’m nervous. That’s the apse,” she said, pointing at the section behind the altar. “And that’s the choir.”
“I don’t see a choir,” said Estrella.
“It’s called the choir, even when there’s no choir.”
“Well, I think it’s damn confusing.”
Ernestine yelped. “You said a bad word! You said D.A.M.N.!”
“Oh, to hell with this,” I said, and stalked past the altar in the direction of the apse or choir or whatever the hell this area was called. And then I saw it. The big cross with Jesus was lying on the floor, right next to a chalk outline. Now it was my turn to gasp.
Ernestine and Estrella joined me. “Is that the spot?” asked Estrella with morbid curiosity. “Is that where Mrs. Peach died?”
“That’s the spot,” I said, and was distracted by Ernestine making the sign of the cross. In fact she didn’t stop, crossing herself over and over, like the Energizer bunny gone berserk.
“Stop doing that!” I hissed, slapping her hand away. In turn, she slapped my hand away, and for the next minute or so we were both engaged in a slapping match.
