Coming Unclued (16 page)

“Are you putting in an order?” Julie sounded incredulous. “What am I supposed to do? Walk up to the front door with your coffee and bagel? You don’t think the neighbors might find that the slightest bit suspicious?”

“Come in the back.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Julie was talking in a very slow, very calm voice, the way mothers talk to a two year old in the midst of a tantrum. “Someone could see me, and we’d both be in very deep doody. Doody extremus.”

She’d lost her mind. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I’m trying to be upbeat here. Look — lay low. There’ll be something to eat in the kitchen. Diane’s a real foodie. There must be some arugula spread or roasted green pepper dip around.”

“Red pepper.”

“What?” She sounded grumpy.

“It’s red pepper dip. Nobody roasts green peppers and turns it into a dip. Nobody who likes food anyway.”

“Look, I have some people to interrogate. I’m going to call the cab company, see what I can find out. It would really help if I knew which cab you used.”

“Well I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there.”

“Is there anything else I need to know,” Julie asked, “besides how many people were in the cab?”

I was struck by a revelation. “See if they picked up someone from my building later that night. If the killer came in a cab, he might have left in a cab.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant,” said Julie, suddenly impressed with my acumen.

“And if they picked up someone carrying a pointy, blood-stained instrument, that would be particularly helpful.”

“Just lay low and I’ll get back to you,” said Julie, and hung up. She was a woman with a newfound mission and didn’t have time for goodbyes. Meanwhile I was a hungry woman with a caffeine withdrawal headache. I headed down to the kitchen, walking slowly since my body still ached from my tumble into the ravine, and stood in the doorway to make sure there were no windows a neighbor could see into. There was a small window over the sink that faced a high hedge. It looked safe. The kitchen was state of the art restaurant quality with a six burner gas cooktop and two ovens. I opened the fridge and found a few condiments and a lemon. The freezer was similarly empty. An ice cube tray and half a bag of freezer burnt raspberries. The woman had four kids. Where was all the food? I started rummaging through the cupboards looking for something quick and edible. And coffee. Definitely coffee. It was all grains and rice and extra virgin olive oil. I’m all for healthy eating, but this was nuts. Oh — but what was that? Way in the back of the cupboard, behind the steel cut oatmeal was something. Hostess cupcakes. Ahh — Diane wasn’t perfect. Thank God. Preservative infused cupcakes were not my first choice for breakfast, but so preferable to quinoa. I bit in to the chocolately covered goodness and immediately felt better. It had been ages since I’d had anything so delicious. Over the past year I’d lost over thirty pounds, using a combination of healthy diet, exercise, Lean Cuisine and laxative tea. It sounds like a lot, thirty pounds, but it just kind of crept up on me. As my sister liked to say, it only takes an extra apple a day to pack on the pounds. My extra weight didn’t come from an extra apple, but a Twix bar here, a coffee shop muffin there and suddenly, there I was, griping about the lack of fashionable clothes for us plus size ladies.

There was a sharp knock on the door just as I was picking the last cake crumb off my chest. My heart started racing again. It would be a miracle if I survived this without a heart attack. What to do? First I had to calm down. Whoever it was couldn’t get in the house. There was another knock and I sat motionless, trying not to breathe too loud. After a couple of minutes I slithered on my hands and knees into the hallway. When I got to the front door I slowly got up on my shaky knees and peeked out the little window beside the door. A police officer was making his way down Diane’s steep front steps. I sank back down and leaned against the front door. Those assholes were doing a door to door search. A door to door search for me with a killer still out there. I got back on my hands and knees and crawled along the floor to the stairs. I slowly, painfully, made my way up the stairs. Stress seemed to be exacerbating the ache in my joints. When I made it to the landing, I limped over to the window and peeped out. There were three police cars on the street. This was going to be so embarrassing for Julie. A notorious alleged murderer escaping from her house. One officer was in deep conversation with an elderly man across the street who was still attired in a bathrobe and appeared to be contending with a brutally itchy stomach. Just then the man’s hand reached lower and disappeared down his pajama pants. Was he scratching his balls? He was. Right there while he talked to the police. The officer standing closest to him must have noticed what he was doing because he took a quick step backward and had to flail around for the railing as he stumbled off the porch. The elderly man didn’t seem fussed. He was too busy scratching. The two officers in the street started cackling with laughter as they watched. Nice. Laughing it up when they were supposed to be out looking for a brutal killer.

I crawled into Diane’s bedroom, picked up the phone and punched in Julie’s number. She picked up at the first ring.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she snapped. “Why are you calling? Do you see the cops out there?”

“I’m calling because I see the cops out there.”

“Get off the phone,” Julie said.

“Would you relax about the phone? Did they knock on your door? What did they say?”

“They didn’t have to knock on my door. I went out to talk to them,” said Julie. “Naturally I’m very worried about you and want to do everything I can to bring you in safely. I think I have them convinced. It might be the English accent. They seem quite charmed by me.”

“I’m so happy for you,” I said as I massaged a knot in my lower back. “You need some new friends seeing as your current best friend is
about to be incarcerated
.”

“Just lay low,” said Julie. “And I mean that literally. Stay away from the windows.”

“I’m going to need food. There’s not much here.” I could hardly be expected to outwit the police with only a few Hostess Cupcakes for fuel.

“You’ll have to make do,” said Julie in a curt voice, “Once it gets dark and people are asleep and these bloody cops have hopefully moved on, I will attempt you to bring you something to eat. Okay?”

“Fine,” I said. It was hardly okay by I wasn’t in a good bargaining position.

So I laid low. I crawled back into Diane’s library, wrapped the throw around me and grabbed a couple of books off the shelves. There were worse ways to spend a day.

Except I couldn’t concentrate. Every time I crawled to the window, there was still a cop car parked in front of Julie’s house. Evan was probably frantic. What kind of mother was I, putting him through this? I contemplated this for a moment. A pretty damn good mother actually. This was the first real trauma Evan had ever experienced. Well, there was the divorce, but that wasn’t much of a trauma. He was a teenager by then, and for years Jack and I didn’t communicate with much more than cursory grunts, so our separation hadn’t come as a huge shock. And after the divorce, when I had to give up my part-time job at the second hand book store and go back to work full-time, no one wanted to hire me. I was forty years old with rusty computer skills, and was given no credit for the wisdom of my years, yet I never let on to him how difficult it was. So why was I feeling so guilty about Evan? This might even be good for him, character building wise.

I spent the day reading a Maive Binchy novel with a TV break for Dr. Oz in the afternoon. He was right. I really should start getting more Vitamin D. As soon as this mess was over I was going to start taking 4,000 units a day, and eat more cold water fish and just generally take better care of myself. Ahhh… fish… so hungry. There was no way I could wait for Julie to deliver something to eat so I slid down the stairs and eased into the kitchen.

God, Diane’s cupboards really were bleak. Mason jars full of strange looking beans and grains and what could have been either black rice or rodent turds. Laura Ingalls would have felt comfortable with the contents of this pantry. There wasn’t even soup or a can of tuna. What kind of person doesn’t have soup?

Lentils. It would have to be lentils. They didn’t take too long and at least they were filling. I boiled up a cup of lentils, added some sea salt and fresh ground pepper and sat down on the floor to eat. Tasty enough, if you were famished, which I was.

Hours later as I stood in the dark kitchen, staring out at the moon which looked to my eye very much like a delicious wheel of Swiss cheese, the phone in Diane’s kitchen rang. Should I answer it? I answered it.

“Why aren’t you picking up the cell?” asked Julie. “I was worried.”

“Sorry — left it upstairs.”

“It’s too dangerous for me to come over,” said Julie. “Andrew is here and the police are still outside. You’ll have to make do. And now they will be able to trace my call and see I called Diane, so your days there are numbered.”

“I found lentils. I guess I could have some more of those.

“Sounds delicious,” said Julie. “And clean up every bit of evidence. Every bit. Diane can’t know someone was in her house.”

I eyed a shriveled lentil lying on the counter and flicked it into the sink. “It is pristine. She will never know.”

Sun was pouring in through the window when I woke up the next morning. I glanced at the clock. 9:48. The latest I’d slept in years. But I couldn’t face another day of lentils and no coffee. Something had to be done. I grabbed Andrew’s cell, which was getting low on power and called Julie, who picked up right away.

“Look,” I said. “I can’t sit around here. I’m going over to see Rose. I think she’ll have some good ideas about how to approach this. She’s actually quite knowledgeable.”

“Are you crazy?” asked Julie. “You can’t go out! You’re wanted. A wanted woman. You can’t go ambling around dropping in on your friends for tea.”

Julie was really starting to wear on my nerves. I was beginning to wonder how Andrew had put up with her all these years. “Fine. Okay. You just keep calling cab companies and whatever else you’ve come up with. And stop telling me what to do,” I told her. “It’s my neck on the chopping block.” Not literally thank God. Canada doesn’t have the death penalty.

There was a bitterly cold wind blowing as I hustled down into the ravine, struggled through the trees and dragged myself up the hill to the adjacent street. I kept my head down, with the hat and sunglasses I borrowed from Diane providing some disguise, and strode the five minute walk to my building. My nose was running as it always does in cold weather and I gave it a quick wipe on an ancient old Kleenex I found in Andrew’s coat pocket. The lobby of my building was deserted, apart from the mangy looking artificial Christmas tree set up in a corner. Whose idea was that? The tree was probably in its prime sometime back in the sixties and was decorated with chipped glass balls, tinsel and a shaggy gold garland. The lime green tree skirt had been crocheted by loving hands at home and looked like it was made out of Phentex. Phentex. Did they still make that? My grandmother made me a pair of Phentex slippers for Christmas the year I was sixteen. Nana could usually be counted on for a decent present. She always got us to pick something out of the Sears catalogue and she’d get us exactly what we wanted up to a designated price. What it lacked in mystery it made up for in efficiency. My mother, on the other hand, ignored any lists we made because “it takes away from the spirit of the occasion.” The occasion being, in her view, an opportunity to show Sharon and me what spoiled Western lives we lived and didn’t appreciate. One year, when we were teenagers, she got us a foster child, a real life little four year old living in India. “Paid up for the whole year,” said my mother. “Isn’t she adorable?”

“Where’s my real presents?” whined Sharon after she realized my mother wasn’t kidding and there weren’t going to be any other presents forthcoming.

“She doesn’t have running water Sharon,” snapped my mother.

“For God’s sake,” raged Sharon. “This is supposed to be Christmas. You’ve ruined Christmas, just like you ruin everything.” Sharon wasn’t an easy child, but I guess if you’re the smart, pretty one you can afford to be difficult.

So Dad yelled at Sharon because she was swearing and being goddamned ungrateful and Mom started crying and it was another lovely, pastoral morning around the Christmas tree.

Trying to show what a good child I was compared to Sharon, I smiled cheerfully and opened the package from Nana that I assumed would contain the fringed suede-like vest I’d picked out, only to find a pair of hot-pink crocheted slippers made out of horrible old Phentex.

“Oh they’re lovely,” said my mother. “So much nicer to have a homemade gift rather than some stupid thing out of the catalogue.”

“Oh they are lovely,” said Sharon, who had already opened the Ouija board she had asked for and received. She reached out to stroke them. “They’re so greasy. Better keep them away from your face or they’ll make your zits even worse.”

I put on the slippers, trying to work up some enthusiasm and familial Christmas cheer, did a little dance, caught the bottom of the slipper on a loose nail on the floor and tripped and gashed my head on the fireplace grate. Christmas day was spent in the emergency room waiting for a doctor to show up to stitch up my head while my father paced around the waiting room alternately glaring at me, nagging the nurses and looking at my head wound to see if it had miraculously closed up on its own, so he could get back to his Lazyboy and eggnog.

I knocked sharply on Rose’s door while I tried to remember if Wednesday was her morning for getting her hair done. After a moment I could hear the thump of her cane coming down the hall. “It’s Val,” I hissed. “Open up. Quick.”

“Keep your pants on,” said Rose from behind the door. “I’ve got to move some stuff.”

I could hear Rose dragging and grunting as she pulled something away from the door until she was able to open the door enough to let me squeeze in sideways. Rose was leaning against the wall, panting. “Lord have mercy Val,” she said as she looked up at me. “You look like hell.” A little rich coming from someone who had used a blue pencil to fill in her eyebrows.