Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 03 - The Ladybug Song (10 page)

Chapter 18

“We literally
dig up our best clue, and we hand it off to Sheriff Fox.” Alma was in top form while
she fussed about the money suitcase. “We should have our heads examined.”

“As I
recall, you had the far-fetched idea for us to keep and spend the money
probably to build your sun parlor,” said Isabel. “But you never said anything about
it being our best clue while we had the suitcase.”

“Seeing enough
money to buy a Ferrari rattled my nerves, and I couldn’t think all that clearly.”

“All the
more reason we let Sheriff Fox be the one who handles it.”

“No, we
didn’t think it through enough. There may have been clues found inside the
money suitcase. If we’d taken out the money and looked there, who knows what
may have turned up?”

The
sisters were riding in the sedan, Isabel at the helm. Since Phyllis had gotten
out at her townhouse, she missed getting an earful of Alma’s tirade. The only
thing that could defuse Alma was Petey Samson, and he was asleep on Isabel’s
bed at the manor. Isabel usually let Alma emote until she wound down, but this
time Isabel had put up with enough, and she spoke in a stern tone.

“Would you
feel at ease holding all that money with Ladybug’s killer on the rampage?” she
asked.

“Since
you put it that way, I suppose I wouldn’t,” said Alma.

“So now
it’s Sheriff Fox’s worry and not ours. We can get on with our work.”

Alma pictured him as if in a comedic skit because folks having that much cash on hand acted
nutty as a slice of pecan pie. He opened the mango yellow suitcase to do his count
since he didn’t trust his deputies to do it. He picked up a bundle of the C
notes and riffled them with his wetted thumb, the bundle held an inch away from
his ear. The snappy swish of the paper money sounded sweet, but it was too bad he
couldn’t spend one red cent of it.

“I bet I
can tell where you are taking us,” said Alma to end her amusing reverie of
Sheriff Fox.

“Five dark
chocolate éclairs say you don’t know,” said Isabel.

“Make
that five bear claws, and you’re on.”

“Done.
So where is our destination?”

“We’re
off to Rosie’s house where we’re also bound to find Lotus doting on her.”

“Congratulations.
When do you wish to collect your winnings?”

“I’ll
imagine eating the bear claws since my girlish figure needs close watching, you
understand.”

“Can you
think of what our first question should be to ask Rosie and Lotus?”

Alma laughed. “How in the devil did you break your shinbone, Rosie?”

“Okay
then, our second question should be did either of them see or hear about Ladybug
and her one hundred-dollar bills?”

“Using a
one hundred-dollar bill to buy something isn’t as amazing as it once was. One
hundred dollars doesn’t stretch as far anymore.”

“Even so,
I think a townie would gossip over having seen her making a purchase with the large
bill.”

Alma took in a breath and let it out slowly. Rosie and Lotus were like a giant pair of human
sponges that soaked up the gossip and rumors spilled in town. Wringing anything
useful from them was tricky to do. They usually refused to give up anything
without getting something of par value in exchange. A visitor had to bring them
something juicy. Today the sisters didn’t have anything juicy to trade, only to
appeal to Lotus and Rosie’s sense of decency on how they could be a help in the
hunt for Ladybug’s murderer.

Rosie’s
gingerbread cottage featured pearl white shutters and begonia pink trim. Only the
gawky rooftop TV antennae detracted from the curb appeal. Lotus resided in a
similar style cottage, chartreuse in color, located closer to the town’s baseball
field and fire department carnival grounds. Parked cars lined both sides of the
street with one space left empty, and Isabel eyed it with zeal.

Alma shuddered while her heartbeats increased. Parallel parking for Isabel posed a
challenge at best, an ordeal at worst. She glided past the empty space, eased
on the brake pedal, and slipped the sedan’s gear shifter into reverse. Alma reached over and tapped Isabel on the forearm. She stopped and gave Alma a look.

“What
say we not put another dent in the bumper or ding in the door,” she said. “Just
double park us in front of Rosie’s cottage.”

“We’ll
get a parking ticket and have to pay a fine.”

“Sheriff
Fox has conferred special deputy status on us, and we’re entitled to double
park when we’re in a pinch like now.”

“I
wished Quiet Anchorage used diagonal parking on its streets.”

“The
town streets aren’t wide enough to do that.”

“Well, I
would like to parallel park once without grazing another vehicle.”

Alma rolled her eyes but only on the inside. “Is your parallel parking once so important? Saint
Peter won’t hold it as a strike against you.”

“I
wouldn’t presume to put words in Saint Peter’s mouth, but I like your thinking,
so I’ll double park us by Rosie’s SUV.”

Wiping
the beads of sweat from her brow, Alma also smiled. “Thanks and I’ll call us
even on our five bear claws bet.”

“Parallel
parking is a challenging task,” said Isabel.

Alma nodded. “It’s even more challenging than playing a seven-letter word in Scrabble.”

“I don’t
know when I last did that. What about you?”

“Not in
recent memory but I’m not too worried about it. We’ve still got a lot of
Scrabble games left in us yet to be played.”

“Rosie
and Lotus have probably seen us pull up,” said Isabel, cutting off their engine
after parking alongside Rosie’s champagne silver SUV. Erring on the side of
caution, Isabel also put on the emergency brake. “Let’s not keep them waiting,”
she said.

***

At seeing
Rosie wearing a clunky plaster of Paris leg cast that ended high up on her
thigh, Alma had to bite down on her lips to keep them buttoned. Still the ticklish
urge to laugh aloud stirred in her throat. It wasn’t a bit nice, but Rosie was such
a sight. Slim as the green Gumby cartoon character, she lay supine on her
living room sofa.

The throw
pillows stuffed under her neck and back propped her up. A column of throw
pillows elevated her leg cast. The pair of titanium under-arm crutches,
probably a drugstore rental from Eustis, lying on the floor indicated her awkward
and limited mobility. The cell phone she used to obtain the updates from Vito at
the launderette was on the coffee table. Her fractured shinbone was mending but
nowhere fast enough for her satisfaction. Her beady blue eyes read her
visitors’ bemused expressions.

“All
right, Isabel and Alma laugh if you must,” she said. “Get the yuk-yuks out of
your system, so we can talk without any interruptions or distractions. I won’t
get angry and snap at you.”

The
tactful Isabel spoke. “Oh, Rosie, you should stop being so oversensitive and melodramatic.
Nobody in the room is laughing at you. All we hope for is your speedy recovery
to get back on your feet.”

“Isabel
is nothing but right,” said Alma. “We stopped at Clean Vito’s, and the launderette
is dull as watching popcorn pop without you and Lotus holding court there. Vito
said the place just isn’t the same in your absence.”

A
big-hipped woman who favored burgundy and taupe wardrobe colors, Lotus (she served
as Rosie’s caretaker as if she needed one) pointed out an irony. “He was the
one who booted us out, and his ban lasts for ten days. He informed us he can’t afford
to run the insurance risk of having Rosie reinjure her leg. She slipped on a soap
bar left in her bathtub. Now I ask you the same question I asked him. Does he
leave soap bars lying around on the wet launderette floor? I haven’t ever seen a
soap bar there if he does.”

“Maybe
you gals were due for taking a short break.” Isabel regretted making the
inadvertent pun and hoped Rosie wouldn’t notice it.

“Short
break. Har-har, Isabel,” said Rosie. “That’s about as funny as my pair of
crutches lying on the floor.”

“Sorry,
Rosie, but it just slipped out like that,” said Isabel.

“Slipped—there
you go doing it again!” said Rosie.

“Might
we get down to business,” said Alma. “We brought a few questions about Ladybug
Miles, may she rest in peace, with us.”

“It’s all
over town now she was murdered and didn’t drown in the Coronet River,” said Rosie.

“She will
be missed by everybody,” said Isabel.

“Not by
me, she won’t be,” Lotus blurted out in anger.

“Oh?”
said Isabel, taken aback.

“She
said spiteful things about me.” Lotus’s face had a contemptuous look with her eyebrows
beetled and her eyes shiny as the steel blades to daggers. Evidently, Isabel
had pushed one of Lotus’s hot buttons.

Isabel
glanced at Alma, and their eyes met. They made the quiet acknowledgement they might
have found their first murder suspect as much as they were reluctant to accept
it.

“What
did Ladybug say about you?” asked Isabel, careful in trying to draw out Lotus.

She straightened
to her full height and sucked in her tummy but without much success. “Ladybug
called me ‘a fat cow’ to my face. I have never felt more insulted in my life.”

“How did
you react?” asked Isabel.

“My first
impulse was to lash out and slap Ladybug across her face,” replied Lotus. “She richly
deserved it and plenty more if I wished to dish it out to her.”

“Why did
she call you the name?” asked Isabel.

“I don’t
remember what led up to it, but I was the better person who kept my cool, and I
walked away, and that was the end of it.”

“Apparently
you didn’t let go of all the anger you felt,” said Isabel.

Rosie at
realizing what Isabel was up to flew to her friend’s defense. “Just because
Lotus had every right to resent Ladybug’s ugly comment doesn’t mean Lotus would
be offended enough to bump off Ladybug. I was there, and it happened just as
Lotus said it did.”

“Nothing
could be truer,” said Lotus, more composed. “Ladybug and I may have had our
differences and even occasional tiffs, but I did not kill her. End of story.”

Less
than persuaded by Lotus’s sincerity, Isabel nodded. “Then let’s move on, shall
we?”

Lotus
was more back to her old affable self. “Yes, let’s.”

“Did
Ladybug ever bring up anything about her past after she moved away from Quiet
Anchorage?” asked Isabel. “Did she mention any of her exes like a gentleman
named Curt Miles?”

“No, she
never dropped Curt’s name on us,” replied Rosie.

“Reflecting
back, I can say she never used any of her exes’ names,” said Lotus.

“She seemed
content with her solitary lot to live in town,” said Rosie. She stretched out
her good leg and squirmed like an otter on the sofa to get in a more
comfortable position. “I’ve got an itch like a bad case of the chiggers on the
inside
of my leg cast. It’s driving me out of my ever-living mind, too. The surgeon
won’t remove my leg cast for another six or seven weeks, and I know I cannot possibly
hold out for that long to scratch it.”

“I
wished I could do something to help you,” said Lotus.

“Bless your
heart, Lotus,” said Rosie. “I wish you could, too.”

“I remember
this one time when Ladybug lugged her full laundry basket into Clean Vito’s,”
said Lotus. “The washer at her townhouse had broken down, and she was forced to
rely on the launderette which I could tell was a real comedown for her.”

“She acted
none too happy about having to wash her underclothes in a public place,” said
Rosie. “We don’t mind washing ours there. Vito is nice enough to let us meet
and greet his customers.”

Lotus was
blunter. “Oh, quit mincing words, Rosie. We sound like a pair of chattering peafowls
while gossiping, and I’m not too embarrassed or ashamed to say it. The townies
know that’s just us being us, and it can’t be helped.”

Rosie quit
trying to dig and get at the itch inside her leg cast. “We’ve alienated a few
townies, but most of them take us in stride, accepting us for who we are.”

“We social
butterflies can never change our colors,” said Lotus.

Isabel
nodded. “When did you last see or speak to Ladybug? Did anything about her demeanor
strike you as out of the norm?”

“I last bumped
into her at Matthiessen’s Hardware Store about a week before she died,” replied
Rosie.

“It was
longer ago than a week,” said Lotus.

“No, it
wasn’t,” said Rosie. “You had gone to the dentist, and I was picking up a new
tape measure for my home projects. Anyway, Ladybug bustled on her way out the
door carrying a garden shovel. Since the townhouse folks with so little yard don’t
have much call for using garden shovels, I asked her about it. She looked down
at it, blinked once or twice, and gazed up at me.