The Black Thumb

by Frankie Bow

  “It’s a privilege to meet you,” she whispered.

  The hard-to-impress Honey Akiona wore an expression I had never expected to see on her: Starstruck.

  Atticus smiled amiably. “I better get back to work, Molly. Hug?”

  I stood up and he gave me a big hug, leaving a smear of pizza grease on my sleeve.

  “Nice to meet you, Honey. Bye, Molly.”

  Honey, starry-eyed, watched him amble out.

  “Do you know him?” I asked. “Honey?”

  “Oh. Do you remember when you wrote me the recommendation letter? For the conference fellowship?”

  “I do remember. That’s why I was surprised to find out you’d gone to law school. I always thought you were going to end up doing something with computers.”

  “He was one of the featured speakers.”

  “Atticus Marx was a speaker at your hacker conference?”

  “It was a security conference. We don’t call ourselves hackers. Professor, his work is amazing. He was the one who found the security breach that...ah, you don’t wanna know the details. It’s technical.”

  “Atticus Marx? The guy who just—the man I was just having pizza with?”

  “No one knows his real name.” Honey was still staring at the glass door, the jaunty lettering spelling out Chang’s Pizza Pagoda Express in mirror image. “Everyone just calls him Mad Dog.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I CALLED DONNIE ON the way back down to my office. He answered the phone after one ring, even though it was the height of the lunch rush.

  “Donnie, I do want to go to the Business Boosters volunteer dinner with you. If the ticket’s still available.” I hoped I didn’t sound desperate.

  After a pause, he said, “Okay. I didn’t get back to Jennifer yet.”

  “Tell her you’re going with me, and she can’t have the ticket. I mean, if you don’t mind.”

  “No. No. Of course I don’t mind. Want to meet at my house around five-thirty? We can drive together from there.”

  “Sounds great. See you then.”

  I hung up feeling greatly cheered.

  Emma and Pat were in my office when I returned. Emma was not cheery at all.

  “Just lost another paddler,” she snarled.

  “Did someone else get murdered?” I asked.

  “Not this time,” Pat said. “Amazingly.”

  “Oh, shut up, both of you.”

  “You have to admit, your crew has had some bad luck,” I said.

  “It’s Sherry. She decided to get married and move back to the mainland.”

  “Oh, great. I mean, for Sherry. Who’s she marrying?”

  “Who else? Mad Dog, of course.”

  “Mad Dog.”

  “Yeah. Is there an echo in here?”

  “That’s why the name sounded familiar. You guys are not going to believe this. I was just up at the pizza place having lunch with Atticus—”

  “Oh, who cares about your hipster boyfriend?” Emma groused.

  “He’s not my hipster boyfriend, Emma. He’s Sherry’s hipster fiancé. Atticus Marx is the notorious hacker who goes by the name Mad Dog.”

  “That little schmendrick is Mad Dog?” Emma was incredulous. “The love of Sherry’s life? The one she dumped her husband and kid for? The dangerous outlaw she moved to Mahina to get away from?”

  “Did you say schmendrick?” Pat asked.

  “Emma went to Cornell, don’t forget.”

  “It’s in New York,” Emma explained.

  Pat looked confused.

  “So wait a second. Wasn’t Sherry just doing the Jocasta thing with her stepson?”

  “I was thinking Diane de Poitiers,” I said, “but Jocasta works too.”

  “Well, she was screwing him. If that’s what you two are trying to say.”

  “It’s what we were trying not to say, Emma.” Pat rolled his eyes.

  “That’s the beauty of a liberal arts education,” I added. “You can discuss the most appalling topics in broad daylight using only opaque historical references and allusions to classical mythology.”

  “So Sherry was with Mad Dog,” Pat said. “Then she dumped him, came here, got mixed up with the stepson, Mad Dog followed her out here, was briefly distracted by Molly, but now Sherry’s back with Mad Dog. Did I get it right?”

  “Pretty much,” Emma said.

  “And here I thought I had bewitched Atticus with my personality and charm. But he probably just liked me because I reminded him of Sherry.”

  “Well you just liked him because things weren’t working out with Donnie, and you were bored,” Pat said.

  I tried to think of a snappy rejoinder, but I gave up. Pat was right.

  “I can’t believe how selfish Sherry is being,” Emma said. “The long distance season’s already started, and I only have five in my crew. What am I gonna do, huh?”

  A soft rap on my door frame alerted us to Nicole Nixon standing in my doorway.

  “Hi, Molly. Oh, hi Pat. Hey, Emma. So Molly, my dean wants someone else on the search committee for the opening in our department, and he asked me if I could ask you. You’d be really good, cause your degree’s in literature and—”

  “Hey Nicole,” Emma interrupted. “You ever thought about canoe paddling?”

  “What?” Nicole looked nonplussed.

  “I have to decline the search committee, Nicole,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I have so many research commitments this summer. There’s this conference paper I’m working on with Betty Jackson from psychology, and I’m trying to learn all of these statistical methods from scratch. Can’t you guys just go ahead with a smaller committee?”

  Nicole folded her arms, leaned on the door frame, and sighed. “I was hoping you’d say yes. I thought it would be nice to have a friend on the committee. Pat can’t do it, because he’s just a part-timer like me.”

  “Alas,” Pat said. “Otherwise I’d jump at the chance to spend all summer serving on a search committee for no compensation.”

  “How about this?” I said. “Why don’t I write you a recommendation letter?”

  Nicole brightened. “Really? It would really help to have a letter from someone at Mahina State. And I obviously can’t ask my husband, that cheating sack of—”

  “Pat didn’t write you a letter?” I interrupted.

  “A recommendation letter from a part-timer won’t count for anything. I’ll email you my CV right now, Molly. Thanks.”

  “Nicole,” I called, “wait.”

  She reappeared in my doorway.

  “Any news on Scott?” I asked, at the same time Emma said,

  “How’s your upper body strength?”

  Nicole made a face, shook her head and disappeared again.

  “Was that about canoe paddling or her husband?” I asked. Emma shrugged.

  “Hey Pat,” Emma said, “Maybe you should do a story about Scott Nixon’s disappearance.”

  “Oh, good idea, Pat. You’ve found people before.”

  I thought about the investigator fees I would save if Pat were to track down Scott Nixon for free.

  “You haven’t had anything interesting in Island Confidential for weeks,” Emma said. “It’s all county council meetings and stolen ukuleles.”

  “This career book’s taking up a lot more time than I thought it would,” Pat said. “I owed my publisher a rewrite like two weeks ago.”

  “You have a publisher?” I said. “I thought you were self-publishing.”

  “No, I have a real publisher. Signed a contract and everything.”

  “Do you have a title?” Emma asked.

  “I wanted to call it The Death of the American Dream. But they’re insisting on some horrible name like Winning at Work.”

  “I agree with your publisher,” Emma said. “Who’s gonna buy a career advice book called Death of the American Dream?”

  “I told them I’d compromise and go with Abandon All Hope. I mean, I’m not completely inflexible.”

&
nbsp; “Pat,” I said, “they’re the professionals. They know what works. What, are you worried a title like Winning at Work might harm your reputation as a world-class pessimist?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to publish under my real name, anyway.”

  “What name are you going to use?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I have to come up with something plausible.”

  “How about Professor Plausible?” Emma said.

  “I’ll think about it. Okay, you convinced me.”

  “About using the pen name Professor Plausible?” I asked.

  “No. About tracking down my prodigal department chair.”

  “Maybe he’s really in trouble,” I said. “You might save his life.”

  “If you do, don’t tell Nicole,” Emma said. “She’ll never forgive you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  THE NEXT DAY PAT, EMMA, and I were crowded around my computer screen, examining a photograph. It had been taken at a music festival out in the California desert. If you looked closely at the crowd, where Pat had inserted a highlighted circle, you could see Scott Nixon, missing chair of the English department, holding a red Solo cup. A teenage girl in cutoff jeans and a swimsuit top sat on his shoulders.

  “What’s the date on the picture?” I asked.

  “From the date stamp, it was three days ago,” Pat said. “It looks like he’s there of his own free will.”

  “So are you gonna write a story about it?” Emma asked. “The runaway department chair, or something?”

  “I don’t know if there’s much of a story here. It’s summer. We’re not on duty. If Scott wants to travel, there’s nothing to stop him. Making this public would just embarrass Nicole.”

  “Convenient that when the police wanted to talk to Scott Nixon, he was out of town,” I said. “I really thought it was significant that Nicole Nixon was asking whether blood and bones make good fertilizer. But now that Scott’s turned up alive, I don’t know what to think.”

  “It would depend on what your soil needs,” Emma said. “Bone meal is a good source of phosphorus, and you would use blood meal to supplement the nitrogen. So Pat, are you going to tell us how you found Scott so fast?”

  “You know the facial recognition site you guys showed me? I grabbed Scott’s photo from our department website and started there.”

  “Brilliant, Pat. Thank you.” I picked up the phone and dialed Honey Akiona. “Scott Nixon isn’t dead,” I told her voicemail. “He’s alive and partying in the high desert. Pat Flanagan found him on someone’s blog. I’ll email you the photo. I’m in my office right now.”

  “Should we tell Nicole?” Emma asked.

  “Tell me what?”

  Nicole stood in my doorway. “About Scotty?”

  Emma and I nodded.

  “Pat, I got your message. Can I see?” She came in and peered at the computer screen. “Oh yeah, it’s him. I’d recognize that entitled, self-centered...ugh”

  “How about the girl sitting on his shoulders?” Pat asked.

  Nicole looked more closely, then nodded and began to blink rapidly. I retrieved a new box of tissue from my bottom desk drawer, pulled off the plastic, and handed it to her. She was blowing her nose as she left my office with my tissue box.

  “Still looking forward to getting married?” Pat asked when Nicole was gone.

  “We’re just going to the Business Boosters thing tomorrow night. No wedding bells.”

  “And you don’t mind getting Sherry Di Napoli’s leftovers?” Pat persisted.

  “I don’t like referring to people as leftovers.”

  “It is weird,” Emma said. “And it’s happened twice now. First Donnie, then Mad Dog. First they’re with Sherry, then they end up with you. Except Mad Dog went back to Sherry.”

  “Thank you for the summary, Emma.”

  “You two do look kind of alike, you and Sherry. Everyone says so.”

  “I don’t see it,” Pat said. “Sherry’s really gaunt. Molly’s a lot more well-nourished.”

  “Thanks, Pat.”

  “What’s wrong with being well-nourished? So Molly, are you gonna be a good Catholic and have a kid every year? Put those childbearing hips to use?”

  “Are Catholics supposed to have a kid every year?” Emma asked. “Molly, I thought you were an only child.”

  “Technically you’re not supposed to use artificial birth control. But people don’t really follow that to the letter.”

  “My parents did,” Pat said. “Ma didn’t get a break till Dad kicked the bucket.”

  “Maybe Irish Catholics take the birth control thing seriously. But look at Italy, for example. It has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. You think the Italians are all abstaining?”

  “Lucky for you, Pat,” Emma said. “Aren’t you the youngest? You wouldn’t have ever been born otherwise.”

  “Yeah. Nine older brothers. Depends what you mean by lucky.”

  “Anyway, if I ever get married and decide to have kids, I think I’ll stop at two. Sorry if that makes me a bad Catholic.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me for being a bad Catholic,” Pat said.

  “Have your parents met Donnie yet?” Emma asked.

  “They haven’t. Oh, and last they heard, we had broken up for good. I’ll call them right now. They should know Donnie and I are back on speaking terms, at least.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I SPENT MOST OF THE day getting ready for the Business Boosters volunteer dinner. Had I been on the mainland, I might have attempted to iron my hair straight, but in Mahina’s damp climate, the effort would have been futile. Betty Jackson had told me she started wearing her hair natural within days of moving to Hawai`i. She’d had to assure her department chair it wasn’t a political gesture, but a practical one.

  I had asked Betty why her department chair thought her hairstyle was any of his business in the first place. She simply shook her head and said she had learned to pick her battles. Betty looked great with her hair cut close. She was tall and elegant, with a long neck and a perfect jawline. If I tried to copy her short hairdo, people would assume I’d given up on my looks entirely and devoted myself to the life of the mind.

  I peered closely into my bathroom mirror and dabbed beads of sweat from my upper lip. I would have to get an air conditioner installed one of these days; my ceiling fans just pushed the damp air around. I stepped back, released my hair from its ponytail, fluffed it out, and appraised the effect; no, I decided. My hair was so frizzed out my head looked like a pyramid. I wet my hands, smoothed my hair back, twisted it, and pinned it in place. It was a relief to feel air circulating around my neck. I pulled out another tissue and dabbed the sweat off my face again.

  I rummaged through my closet and settled on a white blouse and grey silk charmeuse slacks. The outfit looked dressy enough for dinner, and had the added advantage of being comfortable. I finished the look with a chunky silver necklace I didn’t get to wear much. Faculty members in other disciplines could get away with a little flash, but the College of Commerce faculty were expected to follow a dress code I privately referred to as Business Boring.

  By the time I got to Donnie’s house I was sticky with sweat again, but it was too late to do anything about it. I stood at the front door, took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell. The door opened and Davison stood there, shirtless and looking like he had just rolled out of bed.

  “Eh, Dad,” Davison called over his shoulder. “Molly’s here.”

  Davison’s tattoos probably cost more than my car. His chest, arms, and neck teemed with spiders, snakes, and centipedes; a pair of scorpion claws poked up from his waistband. I felt like telling him to go put on a shirt, but of course I wasn’t his mother. I wasn’t even his father’s girlfriend anymore.

  “May I come in?” I asked.

  “What? Oh. Yeah.” He opened the door wider and absently rubbed his stubbly cheek, exposing a tuft of black armpit hair. I caught a whiff of sour body odor
as I passed. He had apparently been moping around, unshowered, for a while. Sherry was gone, probably back on the mainland by now with Atticus. Mad Dog. Whatever his name was.

  Donnie emerged from the hallway, neatly dressed for dinner in a pressed aloha shirt and black trousers.

  “Davison, didn’t you shower yet?”

  Davison muttered something under his breath and lumbered toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

  “You gonna be okay?” Donnie said to Davison’s retreating back. Davison shrugged.

  “We’ll be back in a couple hours. There’s some leftover pork roast. Take the plastic off this time when you heat it in the oven.”

  By the time we reached the Maritime Club and parked, the initial awkwardness had worn off, and I was feeling comfortable in Donnie’s company again. Our conversation seemed to flow, although maybe I was comparing it to my awkward outings with Atticus Marx. As dinner progressed, Donnie asked my opinion of the various menu items, and speculated on the storage and cooking methods used for each. I told him I approved of the rich and salty furikake salmon, I thought the Marsala sauce on the chicken was too sweet, and I would have preferred my vegetables less crunchy.

  Donnie also told me I looked beautiful. It felt like nothing could go wrong this evening. The wait staff had just started to bring out the dessert (haupia and sweet potato cheesecake) when Donnie’s phone rang. He listened briefly, and hung up.

  “I’m sorry, Molly. We have to go.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Donnie was already back on the phone, so he couldn’t answer me. I collected my purse from underneath the chair, stood up, and brushed the crumbs from my pants.

  “Yes, I will,” he was saying, “I’ll pay the overtime. As soon as possible. This is an emergency.”

  “The bathroom’s flooded,” Donnie said to me, when he had hung up. “Davison’s shower backed up.”

  “Oh no. You might have to pull up the red wall-to-wall carpet in his room. Was that Davison who just called you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t he just...okay.”

  I thought Davison should have called the plumber himself and not interrupted our dinner. But being depressed over Sherry’s departure had apparently rendered him more useless than ever. Donnie and I worked our way toward the exit, but someone of Donnie’s standing didn’t simply leave a Business Boosters gathering. Donnie was stopped at every table on our way out, and had to spend so much time handshaking and small-talking I wondered if his house was going to float away before we got back.