The Devil Wears Tank Tops

by Destiny Ford

  “I don’t know…” I said, hedging.

  “Tell you what,” Michelle said, picking Gandalf up. “I’ll keep him at the shelter until you decide. That gives you some time to think about it, and figure out if you think it will be a good fit. If not, you can tell me and I’ll adopt him out to someone else.”

  My stomach clenched at the thought of little Gandalf going to anyone but me, but getting a dog and caring for it was a huge decision. It wasn’t something I wanted to decide lightly. “Okay,” I said to Michelle. I reached down to pet Gandalf one more time. “But if anyone comes in and tries to adopt him, let me know first.”

  She nodded, and I walked away thinking of little Gandalf and wondering if I was really old enough, and prepared enough, to be responsible for another living thing. I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t stop thinking of that cute, furry little black and gray face.

  I passed by the booth with the cookies, and Michelle was right. Everyone in the entire county seemed to be crammed into it. Clearly, these cookies were a big deal, and a story the Tribune should be covering. There was no way I’d get through the throngs of people to talk to them now, though, and last time I was there with my mom, it was just a bunch of teenage employees working, not the actual cookie business owners. I wrote down the company name—not that I could forget something like Saints and Sinners Cookies—and made a note to call them for an interview.

  I was on my way to get some pictures of cute kids winning stuffed animals and eating ridiculous food like fried Oreos, when my phone started playing “Sweet Caroline.” I looked at the number, but I didn’t know the caller. I answered, “Hello?”

  “Kate, this is Jay Peri.” I took a few seconds, trying to place him. “With Peri towing.”

  Oh, right. “Hi, Jay. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I was hoping you could come to Miller’s pond.”

  I wrinkled my brow. “Is there a news event happening that I didn’t get word about?” Spence monitored the police scanner almost as well as the Ladies and other town busybodies. If he didn’t know about it, then it was a situation that was still happening, or one that the police didn’t have word of yet.

  Jay gave a strained laugh. “Oh, it’ll be news all right. Get here as soon as you can.”

  He clicked off the phone.

  I frowned, thinking that was a really weird conversation. I rummaged through my bag for my keys and called Spence to let him know he needed to send someone else to get photos of cute fair kids before they made themselves sick from all the crap they were eating, and wouldn’t be cute anymore. “Where are you off to?” Spence asked after I told him I had to leave.

  “I’m not quite sure,” I said, arriving at my Jeep. “I got a tip that something’s going on at Miller’s pond.”

  “Hmm, sounds interesting.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  I hung up, and drove five miles across town. Miller’s pond runs next to the road on the Miller’s farm property. It’s about twenty feet wide, forty feet long, and between three and five feet deep depending on how much irrigating the Millers are doing at the time. By those measurements, I felt like it was better classified as a ditch.

  I pulled up next to the tow truck, and pond-ditch, and noticed something in it. I got out of my Jeep, my eyes squinting in the bright light from the late afternoon sun. All at once, the scene came into focus and I stopped dead in my tracks, my heart shooting into uneven palpitations. My dad’s 1966 silver Mustang, the one he’d been meticulously working on for more than a year in an effort to combat the stress from my mom’s Catasophies, was angled in, and partially submerged in the water. Apparently it wasn’t an irrigating day.

  Jay had just started pulling the car out of the water. I stood by and watched as one of my dad’s favorite things in the world was birthed from the pond, covered in mud and dripping. Jay hopped out of the truck and said something to another guy standing by a bright orange car that looked like it had ears on top of it. I was trying to calm down by attempting to decipher the car’s costume when I heard Jay’s voice, “Hey, Kate.”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Please, please, tell me that’s not my dad’s Mustang.”

  He winced. “Wish I could.”

  The profanity running through my head was epic. And it would be nothing compared to what my dad would actually verbalize when he heard about this. “How did it end up in the ditch?” I already had an excellent theory about who had deposited it there, and it said something that the thought of my dad driving it into the pond didn’t cross my mind even once.

  I looked around and saw two wide eyes peeking above the hood of the tow truck and recognized them as being attached to the means of Mustang destruction. Her hair was sticking out in every possible direction, and her gaze went back and forth in a jittery motion. She looked like me the time I’d accidentally ordered a drink with six shots of espresso in my morning coffee instead of two. I stared at her, wondering what in the world was going on. She looked really strange. “Mom!”

  She jumped up immediately, spryer than I’d seen her in a long time. “I’m fine!” she yelled, like I was suddenly hard of hearing. “Don’t worry about me one little bit. And Jay says the car will dry right out.” She punctuated the statement with a decisive nod, her lightning strike-like hair bouncing with the movement.

  I stared at her face, really taking her in. I realized my first impression of ‘strange’ was an enormous understatement. Aside from the hair that looked like it had been styled by a tornado, she was wearing some weird thing tied around her head...a scarf, maybe? “Jay might be able to save the car, but I’m not sure he’ll be able to save you from Dad,” I answered.

  She blew out a laugh through her mouth, her lips vibrating like she was blowing on a baby’s stomach. “Don’t be silly,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face like it was completely normal to drive rare, classic cars in ditches and be forgiven for it, “I’ll make him a pecan pie.”

  She came out from behind the truck and I froze. My eyes went over her in complete disbelief. I didn’t know who had chosen her outfit, but I was fairly certain it hadn’t been her. She looked like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Her black Capri pants were tied at the bottom with some sort of material—the same material that seemed to be wrapped around her head—and she had it tied around the short sleeves of her billowy lavender top. She looked like she’d been getting fashion tips from an 80s boy band.

  I was stunned speechless for a good thirty seconds. “What in the world are you wearing?” I finally asked.

  Jay leaned over, his head close to mine. “I wondered about that, too,” he said in a low tone, “but thought it best not to ask.”

  She reached down and pulled at each of the strips, tightening the material. I wasn’t close enough to be sure, but it looked like the fabric might have cowboy hats on it. “Protection! That’s what!”

  When I thought of protection, I thought of it in two forms: self-defense, and birth control. The knotted material didn’t look like it would be helpful in either case. “Protection? How is that protecting you? And from what?”

  “From the mice!”

  Jay nodded. “She told me about the mice. I thought she might be having some sort of breakdown, that’s why I called you.”

  “Mice?” I asked.

  “In the car!” she answered, exasperated. Jay and I stared at her in response, so she continued her explanation. “I was taking some warm brownies to the Brody family—they just had a baby, you know. My car is in the shop, so I took the Mustang instead.” I was one-hundred percent certain she didn’t have the authority to take the Mustang. Frankly, I was surprised my dad had given her the location of the keys. “It took a while to find the keys.” There you go. “But once I did, I was ready! I walked out to the garage and saw one of the nasty little buggers run across Xena’s seat. Scared the bejeebers out of me, I tell ya!” She shuddered at the memory.

  “Xena?”

  “The Mustang’s name! Keep
up, Kate!” She huffed as she put her hands on her hips. I had no idea the Mustang had a name, let alone that it had been christened after one of my teenage heroes. I wondered when that had happened. “I couldn’t let it run around in there willy-nilly. I had brownies to deliver! I had to take action!”

  Of course she did. Because going back inside and calling for help just wasn’t her style. “So you thought it would be a good idea to drive Dad’s classic Mustang into Miller’s pond?”

  She pressed her lips together, a sign that she was irritated. “No, that was Arnold’s fault.”

  I blinked. “Arnold?”

  “Yes!” she said, her voice going higher on the ‘s’. “Arnold the mouse. And all of his furry siblings. There were a herd of them.”

  My eyes went wide. “A herd, huh?” I waved my hand, encouraging her to go on and tell me the captivating story of Arnold and his mice herd.

  She brought her index finger to her lips and gazed at the Mustang thoughtfully. “They might have been building a colony and preparing for a hostile takeover. Who knows? I can’t believe your dad has never seen them. It’s not like they were trying to hide. And a few of them are downright evil. Not Arnold, but some of his family members are little delinquents.”

  With a lot of my mom’s “adventures,” there’s often too much information to digest all at once. You have to break it down and take it a bit at a time or you get completely overwhelmed and don’t even know where to start. It’s a good thing being a reporter had trained me for these situations, and growing up with my mom had probably trained me to be a reporter. “Okay, so you had your warm brownies, and the car was being taken over by tiny mice tyrants. How did Dad’s car—I’m sorry, Xena—make it into the lake?”

  She pressed her lips together and gave me a solid glare. If I’d been thirteen instead of twenty-five, it would have terrified me. “Well, first things first, I marched right back into the house and grabbed some quilt strips from the baby quilt I’ve been working on. Then I tied them around my pant legs and arms. And my head. I put that one on because it made the outfit really come together.”

  I stared, completely confounded. I looked to Jay for help, but he held his hands palms up and shook his head. His expression indicated he didn’t know what to do with her, and really hoped I did. Unfortunately, my training—both as a reporter and as Sophie Saxee’s daughter—hadn’t included mice herds and fabric strips. That certainly explained her current attire, though. I had the thought that if Rambo was a quilter, he’d look a lot like my mom. “Okay, so tell me why you tied quilt strips around your legs and arms?”

  “To block off access, silly! They’re mouse-ties!” She said this like I was the crazy person. “I couldn’t have Arnold and his buddies running up my pant legs or into my arm holes while I was driving! That would be dangerous!”

  I gave a pointed look at the Mustang hanging from the tow truck and still dripping water onto the ground in streams. “Yes, I can see how you’d be worried about that.” Her eyes narrowed and I quickly pressed on before she could remark on my level of sarcasm. “Even after seeing the mouse herd in the car, you still decided to take it to the Brodys’ house?”

  Her brows pushed together and her mouth fell open a bit, incensed. “Of course I did! The brownies were warm! Priorities, Kate!”

  I shook my head, astounded. Only my mother would risk a mouse attack and car accident to get warm brownies delivered before they cooled. The postal service had nothing on my mom.

  She kept talking, “Luckily, I had one of those spider trapping sticky pads in the garage by the door. Those pads are so helpful!” She paused, her face wrinkling in thought. “It already had some dead spiders on it, but…”

  “Warm brownies,” I offered by way of explanation.

  “Exactly!” she said with wide smile, happy that I finally understood.

  “So you were on your way to the Brodys’. Then what?”

  “Well, I’d only seen one mouse running around when I was in the garage. Little did I know there were actually hundreds!”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Hundreds?” I looked to Jay. He lifted his shoulders and hands in an “I don’t know” gesture.

  “Yes!” She exclaimed. “I knew they were all hiding out under my seat, so I stomped my feet on the floor while I was driving, alternating feet to be safe, you know. I figured my feet probably looked like giant killers to them, and the tiny mice wouldn’t want to be where my killer feet were stomping, so they’d run the other way. That’s when I captured some of them on the sticky sheet. Darn convenient those sheets. I wish entire floors could be made of them. But then I’d get stuck too…and I’d always have to replace them. Probably best I just keep them in corners and wait for bugs to land there.”

  She was rambling, and I had so many questions, I could barely think straight. I was seriously questioning her mental state, and wondering if I should call for help, but what would I even say? It’s not like they have protocol for mice herds and Rambo quilters. Annie would probably understand, though. My mom broke my thought process as she continued. “The mice were running around the car, and then they started to gather on the floor of the passenger side next to their stuck comrades. They were tittering away, making the most horrible noises! I knew I’d be fine if I could just get to the Brodys’ house. I was almost there when one of the mice, the biggest brown one—he’s their king—jumped up on the passenger seat, mad as all heck! His red eyes gleamed, and I knew I was about to be attacked. He lunged, and I swerved.” She lifted her arms like she was holding a pretend steering wheel, and reenacted her jerk to the side. “Reflexes like a fox, I tell ya. That’s what I’ve got. But Xena’s reflexes aren’t nearly as quick as mine,” she gave a forlorn look at the car. “And that’s how I ended up in the ditch. I got right out and called Ned’s Exterminating.”

  Ned held back a snicker as he waved. So that’s why the other car looked like it had ears. I glanced at it again, this time noticing it also had a little black tail. “You called the exterminator before the tow truck, or anyone else?”

  “Of course I called the exterminator first! There were vermin that needed to be eradicated!”

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’d like to be there when you explain that getting warm brownies to acquaintances was more of a priority than Dad’s prized car.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, fooey,” she said, her tone dismissive. “You worry too much. It’s not his Fastback. This is just the one he tinkers with.”

  She was lucky it wasn’t his Fastback, or I’d have to help him hide her body. And I wouldn’t do well in prison. “How many mice are now stuck to the pad?” I asked, wondering if Ned could help liberate any of them.

  “At least two.” Her lips pulled down as she thought about it. “I think they died from the water.”

  “Oh my gosh!” I yelled, horrified. “You’re a mouse murderer!”

  “I am not!” Her tone took on an air of defense. “I saved myself, and Xena, from a mouse herd attack. I’m sorry I couldn’t save the mice, but they shouldn’t have broken into and entered the car, the little B & E bandits. If they hadn’t, they’d all still be perfectly alive, running around in a nice field and they would have never even met me.”

  Given her current mental state, I decided it best not to say that I was sure there were a lot of people who had similar sentiments about her impact on their lives—my dad included. People frequently called him a saint.

  “Any who, I feel really bad about the little furry fiends dying. I didn’t want them in the car, but I didn’t want to kill them either…just relocate them. I didn’t really have enough people for a funeral, but I did say a prayer that they enjoyed their lives, and judging by all the mouse tracks, they had a fantastic time on their last day in your dad’s car!” Her lips lifted in a wide smile. She seemed genuinely happy the mice had had a chance for frolicking before she killed them all. Her justification methods were astounding. She could be a politician.

  I
put a hand to my temple and closed my eyes before turning to the exterminator. “Where are all the mice now?”

  “Well, Kate, that’s the thing,” Ned the exterminator shifted from foot to foot, biting the side of his lip like he was delaying his answer. Finally he looked up at me with sincere eyes. “We didn’t find any mice.”

  My mom’s eyes bulged. Mine were pretty big as well. “What do you mean you didn’t find any?” I asked.

  He looped his thumbs in his pockets and shook his head. “I searched the whole car once we pulled it out of the lake. There’s no trace of a mouse in the space.”

  “Liar!” My mom yelled, pointing. Her demeanor, frizzy hair, and wild eyes reminded me of the woman in the cottage from The Princess Bride. “You can see tracks all over the seats and floor!”

  The exterminator raised a brow. “Actually, Mrs. Saxee, I couldn’t. Do you want to show me where you found them?”

  My mom’s mouth fell open at the insinuation that she might be wrong, and heat started rising in her face. I knew this look. I’d been the recipient of it many times as a child, and nothing good had followed. “Do I want to show you? Do I want to show you?” Her voice was getting higher with each word. “Oh, you bet your pretty pants I’ll show you.” She marched past me, grumbling about having to do someone else’s job for them. She swung the door open and started pointing to the tracks. We’d all followed her to witness the tracks ourselves, but I couldn’t see anything either. She opened the door and pointed at the passenger seat, which was still slightly damp. “See! Right there! The prints are everywhere!” Her hand went over the area in a wide sweep.