Bubbles Ablaze (12 page)

“Jane Ritter!” Professor Tallow's eyes brightened. “Of course, she's auditing my Local Celtic History course at Lehigh. A terribly bright student.” He regarded Wendy warmly. “Don't tell me you're Bubbles. Jane talks about you all the time.”

“Bubbles!” Wendy screeched as though a rat had run over her toes. “I should say not. That's Bubbles.” She wagged a limp finger toward me.

“Brilliant,” said Tallow, stepping away from Wendy and taking both of my hands in his soft ones. “Your daughter has been regaling us with stories of your adventures up in Slagville. What a nasty experience that must have been, although worse by far for Mrs. Price. How awful to wake up and find out that your very successful, very wealthy husband has been shot in a coal mine.”

“Yes,” I said, eager to get back to the topic of Jane. No point in “elucidating” him about how I had been a murder target, too.

“I want to know every detail of that incident. You must tell me. I have quite a connection to that area. As is widely known, I was the first to discover dolmens similar to those of Syrian design in Columbia County near Limbo, where I maintain a family getaway. My discovery was written up in
Modern Archaeologist
. Volume twenty. Perhaps you read it?”

“Sorry. Missed that issue,” I said. “About Jane—”

“Yes, as Jane and I have discussed, I am very concerned about the plans for a casino there. That so-called Dead Zone is a gold mine of Celtic stone structures. My theory is that, later, Irish and Welsh immigrants were attracted to the anthracite region specifically because of the similarities in topography to their native—”

“We're very worried about Jane,” I interrupted. “Please, if you know where she is, tell us.”

“Haven't seen her at all this morning.” Tallow seemed confused. “But you didn't let me finish—”

“Listen, Indiana Jones.” Dan tapped him on the shoulder. “I happen to be a lawyer with some pretty influential connections at
my alma mater, which is your place of employment. If I find you . . .”

The police scanner on Mickey's belt went off. All conversation stopped as Mickey listened to numbers and words that made no sense except for “teenage runaway . . . short royal-blue hair . . . black vest . . . numerous earrings . . . army boots.” Last I recalled, Jane's hair was raspberry red and she'd tossed those Doc Martens months ago. But it was close enough.

“She's at the corner of Linden and Mulberry,” Mickey said. “Hitching.”

“I'm going with you,” I said. “Jane's never hitchhiked before.”

“Mothers.” Mickey hooked the scanner back on his belt. “They're so naïve.”

“I'll stay here and cross examine Doctor Crackpot,” Dan said, pulling out his business card like it was a loaded gun.

We said goodbye to Tallow and company. I tagged after Mickey, the heels of my boots getting caught in the uncut hay and clumpy dirt. We skirted past the pits and budding archaeologists and made our way to the cruiser. Mickey got in and I had opened the passenger-side door when what should appear at the road into the field but my daughter stepping out of a truck.

Jane waved merrily at the driver and then proceeded to plow through the tall grass. What about all those lectures about not accepting rides from strangers? Hadn't she been listening?

Mickey surveyed the scene in the rearview. “I could bust her for that, you know. It's freaking insane of her to hitchhike. She could end up with her throat slit.”

“Hey, Mom.” She waved. “What're you doing here?” Not a care in the world.

“I had to find you. You were kidnapped.”

Her brown Lehigh University backpack slid off her shoulder. She was wearing low-rider jeans and a white shirt that said
HOT STUFF
in pink glitter under her zippered black sweatshirt. What a combination.

“Kidnapped? What're you talking about?”

I took her by the elbow and escorted her over to the Camaro, so we could speak in private. “The house was torn apart when I came home. And the car was there and your purse. I figured Stinky grabbed you and you two were halfway to Canada.”

“You have to be the most hysterical mother ever.” Jane shifted her feet. “Stinky did stop by about an hour ago and stayed for a few minutes. When you didn't show, he gave me a message. He said it's important.”

“What is it?” I asked eagerly.

But Jane's gaze had fallen on Wendy's apple red midlife-crisis special. “Oh, no. You didn't. Dad and Wendy are here?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Your father loves you, too, you know.”

Jane hid her face in her hands. “This is so embarrassing.”

Embarrassing? Wait until she saw Dan's pants. Now that was embarrassing.

She ducked behind my Camaro. “Ohmigod. There's Thea Pippis. She's never gonna let me hear the end of this.”

“I wouldn't have worried if I hadn't come home and found the place trashed.”

Jane flinched. “Trashed? It was neater than when you'd left it. G found a pair of your underwear in the upstairs bathroom, by the way.”

I looked down at my pierced and honest daughter. Most parents of teenagers might have rightly judged that their precious pumpkin was lying to cover up the previous night's bash. But Jane didn't lie. This was because I had adopted a “don't ask/don't tell” policy about her extracurricular activities. Like the hitchhiking, for example. Better not to ask.

“If what you're saying is true,” I said, “then we need to get home, fast.”

“Why? I just got here.” Jane was about to argue further, but something behind me had caught her attention. She quickly stood, slipped her hands out her pockets and, I couldn't believe it, patted down her blue hair. She had gone all pink, staring in awe at Professor Tallow, who had mysteriously popped up by my side.

“Excuse me for eavesdropping,” Tallow said. “I was drawn, intrigued actually, by the intense mother–adolescent daughter repartee. The natural maturation process as the offspring separates herself from the authority figure of a corresponding gender. So
Reviving Ophelia
. Did you know that in some African cultures it is common for teenage daughters to kill their mothers—at least in a simulated ritual?”

Creep, I thought.

“Wow,” said Jane.

“You found the kid!” Dan jogged up to us, out of breath, his pot belly flopping under the baby blue polo shirt. He exhaled a sigh of relief when he saw Jane. “Great. Remind me to ground you later.”

Jane gave a salute. “I'm already grounded, Dad, though shouldn't you be grounded for wearing those pants?”

“What's wrong with these?” Dan examined his pants. “Tiger Woods wears pants like these.”

Really? I doubted that. Tiger Woods was a stud.

Dan checked his watch. “Let's get to the club, Wendy. I can make tee time if you speed.”

Wendy stomped her foot. “I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here. These stones need to be declared historical monuments and this is a project I'm interested in backing. Financially, that is.”

Tallow blew her a kiss. “You're a lovely woman, Mrs. Ritter. Simply gorgeous.”

“Aw, get off it, Wendy,” Dan said, wedging himself between Tallow and his wife. “Come with me and we'll buy you your own ogam stone. For the garden. Bigger than the neighbors' even.”

She folded her arms and shook her head. “I want an authentic specimen dug with my own two hands.”

“What will the tennis girls do without you?”

“Canadian doubles. And leave the car. It's mine.”

Dan scratched the bald spot on his head. “Now what am I gonna do?”

“I can give you a ride to the country club, Dan,” Mickey offered. “On Fridays I do a patrol near there.”

“All right,” Dan said with resignation. “But I'm playing all nineteen holes, Wendy. So who knows when I'll be home.”

Wendy waved. When he was gone I said, “I thought there were eighteen holes in golf.”

“Oh, Bubbles. Silly old Bubbles.” Wendy patted my arm. “You really have been deprived, haven't you?”

J
ane was still so angry with me that she kept her face plastered against the passenger-side window. After fifteen minutes of silence, I decided to break the ice by asking about her slack-jawed boyfriend G.

“How come G didn't drive you to the dig?” I said. “So you didn't have to hitch.”

Jane shifted in her seat. “No car. It got totaled in an accident on Center Street last week. Don't freak.”

My toes curled over the gas pedal as I stifled a freak.

“It wasn't G's fault. A stupid housewife in a minivan was handing out popsicles to her kids when she should have been paying attention to the road, and she just pulled out onto Mulberry. Broadsided him.”

“She wasn't stupid, she was harried.” I stopped at a red light and watched a mother trying to soothe a crying baby in a carriage. Oh, if you think these days are tough, honey, wait until your daughter's seventeen and her hair is blue and she hitchhikes and gets in cars driven by boys with one-letter names and one-cell brains. “You'll see when you have children and you're driving your own minivan.”

“I'll never drive a minivan. They remind me too much of hearses. Anyway, even though she was at fault, the insurance company was gonna charge G fifteen hundred dollars a year unless he agreed to lease a Teen Safety Car.”

“What's a Teen Safety Car?” I asked as we turned onto West Goepp Street.

Jane shook her head. “I don't know, but it sounds goofy, doesn't it?”

I slowed down and surveyed the cars parked in front of the tidy brick and aluminum-sided houses for which my neighborhood is famous. Ford Escort. Three Chevy Impalas. One Toyota. Must be a visitor from out of town. Japanese cars were not appreciated here in the home of Lehigh Steel. Japanese cars parked overnight on West Goepp had a tendency to end up dented and deflated by morning.

Jane was as shocked as I had been when we opened the front door. However, the strewn lamps and ripped plastic on the seat cushions didn't appear as horrifying as they had a few hours ago, now that I knew my daughter was safe and sound. There hadn't been any serious property damage. No smashed dishes or kicked in televisions.

“I did not do this,” Jane said. “If I had I'd be the most popular kid in school.”

Jane surveyed the back of the house where the kitchen was. I went upstairs. Every drawer was open with clothes tossed about except, oddly enough, for our underwear drawers. Those were shut and as disorganized as always. Untrifled with. My few possessions of value—the china Princess Diana plates, Hummel figurines and a commemorative porcelain Scartlett O'Hara that I had ordered from the back of
Family Circle
magazine—were still intact. So was my stash of expensive Clinique makeup.

“The leftovers!” Jane shouted from the kitchen. “We've been wiped out.” I ran downstairs. Jane had lined up my square Tupperware containers along the kitchen counter. They were next to her purse, which also, I noted, had not been stolen.

“They were empty except maybe for one bite in each and placed back in the refrigerator,” she said. “What does that tell you?”

“I got a theory,” I said. “Check the O.J.”

Jane shook the Minute Maid. Barely a splash. “But see here. The vegetables are untouched.” She displayed a bunch of
broccoli and then opened another drawer. “Although the ham and cheese are eaten up. And that summer sausage that's been floating around since last Christmas, it's gone, too.” She held up a plastic wrapper that once held the summer sausage. “Along with all the mustard.”

“Men,” I said. “Middle-aged men to be precise.”

“You mean someone broke into our house just to eat our cold cuts?” Jane was incredulous.

“Good thing you weren't here,” I said. “Otherwise you would have been forced to make them sandwiches. I'm not too worried. At least they weren't real criminals.” I did not want to alarm my sensitive daughter. “Did Stinky seem hungry?”

“I offered him some toast and coffee, but he said no thanks. He was really nervous, pacing the floor, waiting for you.”

“What did you two talk about?”

Jane twirled a white key chain around her finger. “Mostly we talked about carbon dioxide and its properties.”

I winced. “Anything else?”

She removed a small tablet from the back pocket of her jeans. “Let's see.”

“You have notes?”

“Notes are good, remember, Mom?” She flipped through several pages and started reading. “He said he didn't have anything to do with Bud Price's murder, but that he wanted to talk directly to you about Wednesday night. Something about not burdening me with that information. Oh, yeah. He kept saying that you'd missed it, you'd missed the real story. Since I hadn't read the article in the
News-Times
, I couldn't talk to him about it intelligently.”

I tapped my knuckles to my forehead. What had I missed? I'd used all the documents he had left behind. “What was the message he gave you?”

“He said it was very important that you talk to a Pete Zidukis in Limbo before you do a follow-up to today's story. And Stinky said if you need to get hold of him, you should try the Hoagie
Ho. It's a hoagie place or something.” She closed the tablet. “Stinky indicated that that's where he's been holed up.”

At a hoagie shop?

“This yours?” Jane held up the white key chain.

“No. Where'd you get it?

She shrugged. “Found it lying on the kitchen counter. I've never seen it before.”

It was clean white plastic with bright green lettering. A promotional item retailers like to hand out to prospective customers.

This particular one said Price Family Ford.

One might have expected that Price Family Ford, having been run by the family of Bud Price, would have been closed the days following his untimely death. So Jane and I were slightly shocked to see “No Interest/No Payment Down/$100 Off Sticker Price One-Day Sale” as we toured the large lot of Ford F150s, minivans, SUVs and Tauruses.

“Do you know the gas mileage one of these oversized heaps gets?” Jane asked, inspecting a sticker on a Ford F150. “Seventeen miles city, twenty-one miles highway. That's criminal, Mom. That's global suicide.”

I scanned the premises looking for salesmen. I still didn't know how I was going to begin finding who had raided my home. I certainly wasn't going to give anyone from the Price company my name, which they'd recognize from this morning's story in the
News-Times
. And what if the Prices had been the ones to burglarize my house? Though why would they have left behind a key chain?

“Look at this Ford Expedition. Twelve miles city, sixteen highway. Is that a misprint? Haven't these people ever heard of greenhouse gasses?” Jane's voice was getting louder. Other customers were rereading the stickers and clucking their tongues. “No wonder we don't have white Christmases, anymore. Thank you Henry Ford for single-handedly ending civilization.”

Jane's Earth First outrage caught the attention of a salesman in a navy jacket. He jogged out of the dealership, his lapels flapping.

“Looking for a large, safe vehicle for your daughter?” He put his hands on his hips and nodded toward the SUV. “Listen, I put my own kid in an Expedition. My wife wouldn't have it any other way. Between you and me on the QT, I sleep better at night knowing that if she hits somebody on some highway, they're dead, not her.”

Behind him Jane gave him devil horns with two fingers.

“I'm Frank,” he said, extending his hand, which I shook because it would be rude not to. “And you are?”

“Uh, looking for some men who maybe came in for a car today.”

Frank lowered his hand. “Excuse me?”

I held up the white plastic key chain with the Price Family Ford lettering. “They left this in my house. I wonder if you might know how I could find them so I could return it.”

Frank still looked nonplussed.

“And I, uh, assumed they must be searching high and low for it. These are pretty nice key chains.” I dangled the chain. “Yessiree. If I lost one of these, I'd be mighty bummed. So sturdy and easy to find in your purse—”

“So plastic,” Jane interrupted. “Not that you gas guzzlers care.”

Frank, not sure whether I was a prospective customer or not, but eager to get Jane and me off the lot—especially Jane—ushered us into the dealership.

Jane can rant and rave as much as she wants about how evil fossil-fuel-burning vehicles are, but I love showroom cars with the hoods open to reveal sparkling clean engines. I love the smell of genuine leather and fake leather, the feeling that if I just had this perfect automobile, everything else in my life would come together.

Frank led us into a large wood-paneled office, which was
pasted floor to ceiling with framed photos, every one showing a celebrity and Bud Price in a tuxedo grinning so hard his face was about to split open. Liza and Bud in front of the Sands Casino, arms around each other's waists. Bud and Bob Hope in a hospital bed. On the stage with Bill Cosby and Billy Crystal in Las Vegas. With Charo and Bo Derek by a pool.

It was hard not to recall the last time I saw Bud's smiling face, pasty white and shocked dead, at the bottom of a mine.

“Who is this lucky guy?”

“It's my brother-in-law. It's his office,” Frank said, slipping behind a large mahogany desk. “And he's not so lucky.” His voice took on a somber tone. “He was killed Wednesday night in a mine explosion. The whole family was at a reunion in Bermuda when they got the word, except for his wife, Chrissy. She was in town 'cause her kid had school. I flew back last night to run the dealership. Chrissy, I guess, is going up to visit the site where he was killed.”

“Oh, that's terrible,” I said, sitting on a red leather chair. I flashed a look at Jane to
keep . . . her . . . mouth . . . shut
.

“That's why I decided to have the big sale.” Frank clapped his hands. “No money down. Interest-free financing if you drive off the lot today. Bud would have wanted it that way. His last big closeout deal.”

Jane coughed. I slid my foot over and stepped on her toes. Damn those Doc Martens. Impenetrable.

“Where was the explosion?” I asked.

“Slagville. Bud owned land up there.”

“Get out!” I said, slapping my knee. “I bet that's where those men were from who left the key chain.” It was a gamble, but I was hoping to smoke out more info.

“Oh, those men.” Frank opened the top drawer and rummaged around. “Come to think of it, they did catch my attention 'cause they were from where Bud blew up. Now, where is it? I swear one of them left his name. I remember asking where they worked and they said they were retired coal miners.” He pulled
the drawer out another inch. “One of the gentlemen said a hairdresser here in Lehigh recommended he talk to Bud. She told him Bud could get him a good deal on a trade-in if he just mentioned her name. They drove a pretty decent F1 Ford. Still had the old Fordomatic.”

“That hairdresser wouldn't have happened to have been Bubbles Yablonsky?” Jane asked before I could stop her.

I froze, sweating on the red leather. Frank stopped searching the drawer. “You know, I think it was a Bubbles something. Those fellows were real interested in her. How she knew Bud. Where they'd met. They made it seem like Bud and Bubbles were,” he glanced behind each shoulder, “kind of intimate, if you get my drift.”

Jane folded her arms. “Don't you know Bubbles Yablonsky is a reporter at the
News-Times,
too? Wrote that front page story today about McMullen Coal digging under the casino Bud wanted to build.”

She hadn't even read the story. What had gotten into this kid?

Frank sat back and eyed her. “And you read that newspaper article and got it into your pretty head to visit Price Family Ford and get yourself a brand new vehicle?”

I swallowed. He was onto us.

Jane played it cool. She popped her bubble gum and said, “Yup. How about that?”

He leaned forward. “How about three percent off on today's purchase? Honey, you can't buy advertising like this. Bud must be rolling over in his grave or wherever he is.” He shut the drawer. “Well, I can't find that damn name and number. Why don't you tell me yours? Let's start with your mother, here.” He poised a pen over paper and winked at me.

I, however, was speechless, totally and completely confused. Why would a couple of retired coal miners invade my home? Zeke Allen had said not much had changed since the 1860s. Arson, assault and murder were still the ultimate tools for change. Did that mean that these coal miners, whoever they
were, were the ones who had set up Stiletto and me to die? I didn't even know any coal miners.

Frank coughed and tapped his pen. “Miss?”

“My mother appears to be having one of her episodes,” Jane answered. “Just put down that her name is Sally Hansen, like the manicure maven. That'll be close enough.”