Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction! (20 page)

“Oh,
well then that explains everything,” Aunt Muriel said, smoothing her headband
back over her charred bangs and sitting down.  Vito stared at her.

“Oh!”
Vito exclaimed.  “You mean about the wine and cookies at St. Bart’s?”

“We
call it the Eucharist, Vito,” Aunt Muriel corrected.  “After all, if you’re
going to pretend to be an Episcopalian, you’ll have to know these things.”

Ma
and I exchanged looks.  Aunt Muriel was on her way to garnering yet another
Episcopalian for St. Bart’s.  Even if he was Jewish and in a witness protection
program.

“Well,
I didn’t want to be impolite,” Vito explained sheepishly.  “I thought I was
supposed to drink the whole thing, lest I offend.  I never been somewhere where
everyone passed the same glass.  Hey, you think that’s sanitary?

Aunt
Muriel assured him it was.

Bauser
asked, “Where is Bumville?”

“It’s
kind of lodged between Lodi and Carlstadt,” said Ma.  “It’s a pretty small
town.”

“With
a bar on every corner,” Vito beamed.  Somewhere, far, far away, I thought I
heard a ka-ching from a remote corner that housed a barstool in Bumville.

“Anyway,”
Vito said. “After I ratted these punks out, I was offered witness protection. 
They said I had to pick between Tampa or Lancaster.  I really don’t like the
heat.  So I came here.”

I
recalled Vito’s orange neck.  Yup.  Florida would definitely not work out for
him or his fake hair.

“And
everything was going great too, until Red started hanging around Mrs. Phang’s. 
But then we came up with another system, and I thought we were fine.  But since
I found out she’s with Mike it makes things a little awkward.”

“But
why would your niece visiting you be awkward?” Aunt Muriel asked.  Ma picked up
Auntie’s coffee mug, sniffed it, and put it down.

“Oh.
Well, uh… Mike’s kind of like my U.S. Marshal godfather.  He said he stopped
by because it turns out that the Young Squirts I got put in the pokey have been
talking about getting even.  I guess they stood to lose a bundle with those
deals not going through.  It was heard they paid someone on the outside to make
an impression on me.”

Gack. 
Didn’t Vito have to go home?  Wasn’t my townhouse up for sale any minute now?

“So
Mike’s probably going to be hanging around for awhile, off and on.  Which is
kind of stupid.  So long as it’s obvious he’s hanging around, no one’s gonna
really make a move.  But I had no idea Red – Annie – was with Mike.  Until
today,” Vito finished and gulped some coffee.

“But,
now that we know who you are, doesn’t this blow your cover?” Norman asked.

“Yeah,
it probably will. That is if Mike and Annie think it’s blown,” he said.

“How
do you mean?” Bauser asked.

“Look,
yous alls are my friends.  Heck, Mina’s like family.” Vito shrugged.  I
silently wondered if I’d become kosher by osmosis with all the cooking Vito – Vladimir – had burnt in my kitchen.  And as fake-family, I also wondered if I was destined
to be marked for fish food.   “Unless any one of you is going to put me in the
news, or write a book or something, I can’t see it being that big of a deal. 
Unless, of course, you blab to a cop or something,” Vito said, looking
pointedly at Trixie.  “Which would not exactly be in your best interests,” he
added.

“Nope,
nope, nope… what happens in Mina’s kitchen stays in Mina’s kitchen, ha ha,”
Trixie stammered.  Well, whaddaya know.  So much for impersonating a cop’s
girlfriend.  Huh.

Aunt
Muriel furrowed her brows.  “Well, what are we going to do now?” she asked.

Ma
yawned.  “I suggest we all go nighty-night.” She yawned again.  Which was
catching.  Because then we were all yawning.

The
coffee mugs got collected and stacked in the sink.  Ike lay passed out on my
sofa with the Ratties.  Trixie checked Norman’s noggin again and gave him a
cleanish bill of health.  Then she checked mine, got out a package of frozen
peas and thumped them on my forehead.  “You better hold this on there for
awhile.  You’re gonna have quite a lump.”  Great.  I hoped it wouldn’t clash
with the other lumps.

Trixie
started telling Bauser about waking Norman up every couple hours.  Bauser said
that wouldn’t be a problem, since they would probably be up in a couple of
hours, anyway.  We all shuffled to the door to say our final goodbyes, and took
turns patting the various pets goodnight.

I
opened the front door and saw a large object sail through the air, land on
Vito’s front porch and explode into flames.  A car skidded away.

Vito’s
porch was on fire.

Honestly,
if it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any.  I sighed in resignation: there
would be no sleep for me tonight.  Except for Ike and Vinnie.  And the damn
Ratties.  I felt like pinching them all.

“Yes,
that’s right, you heard me correctly,” Trixie was saying into her cell phone. 
“FIRE!  The address? It’s, uh, next door to Mina’s.  3041 Clovernook Lane.”

While
Trixie was on the horn, Bauser and Norman were fumbling with untangling the
garden hose that lay disconnected on my front porch.  They were just about to
turn it on toward the flames when Vito stopped them.  “Just a minute, fellas,”
Vito said, turning off the water spigot.  “You don’t wanna do that when you don’t
know what the fire’s made of.  Some kinds of fires get made worse if they’re
put out by regular water.”

“How’d
you know that?” Bauser began.  Vito stared at him.  Bauser exchanged glances
with Norman.  They put the hose back down.

Pretty
soon, my neighbors were leaning off their various front porches, wondering what
the early morning wienie roast was all about.  Someone walked over to see if we
were okay.  Someone else ran over and did the same thing.  Another neighbor
came over and asked if we should bust Vito’s door down, to rescue him.  We
introduced him to Vito.  A new voice piped up, and said I should be ready to
get Vinnie and Marie out of the house, in case we caught fire, too.  Or because
of fumes.  Ethel and I gasped.  I didn’t have a carrier for Vinnie, I
admitted.  Ethel went inside to check on our respective furry and feathered
kids. Including Ike.

Another
neighbor went back across the street to get me her cat carrier to borrow. 
“Make sure it can fit a really, really large turkey,” I yelled after her
thankfully.  She swiveled and gave me a funny look, and then went home.

Ethel
came back outside.  All our pets – feline, canine, avian – were slumberous. And
not because of fume inhalation.  Ethel had got the Ratties’ travel gear set up
and Marie’s cover and supplies handy.  She put a large laundry basket of mine
in the foyer.  Along with a large, wooden carving board and a roll of duct tape
I’d forgotten about.

“What
do you want me to do?  Wash and fold him?”

“No,
stupid.  Put him in the laundry basket, and duct tape on the carving board for
a top.  We can get him to Aunt Muriel’s in about 15 minutes. It wouldn’t be so
bad.”

“Oh.”

Herb
Nelson’s son, Ned, was visiting for the weekend.  He was also a volunteer
fireman back home in Des Moines.  He was the one who brought over Herb’s
emergency kitchen fire extinguisher. (“Don’t you know every kitchen should have
one of these?  There are some fires you make worse by putting out with water,”
he said.)  Ned had the flames out in a few minutes just as the fire trucks
arrived.  And the police.

After
some assurances that neither one of our homes would be ablaze again that night,
Bauser took Norman and Jim home.  Aunt Muriel commiserated with Mrs. Phang
about the late night activities and Mrs. Phang’s dopey sister-in-law getting on
her nerves. So Aunt Muriel invited her for a last minute sleepover.  Mrs. Phang
accepted, popped open a cell phone, said something in Vietnamese – the tone of
which was familiarly unfriendly – hung up and smiled.  The girls were off for
their slumber party.  Ma pouted.  Then Aunt Muriel invited her.  Ma packed up
her NJ kit bag with what was left of the Absolut and my individual cans of
tomato juice and left.  Ethel and I furrowed.

“How
come they make everything into a party?” Ethel asked.  “I mean, even a fire,
for Pete’s sakes.”  For Pete’s sakes?  Either Ethel was moving to Lancaster, or she’d lived with the von Trapp family too long.

“I
dunno.  It’s better than worrying about it, I guess,” I said.

Ethel
sighed. “No, we do that.”

“Well,
look at the bright side,” I said, “at least we know where they are.”

Ethel
smiled.  We had the same childhood memory of the weekend when Ma and Aunt
Muriel decided they needed a girls’ night off.  This was after Dad had mangled
his toes in the lawnmower and Uncle Albert (husband #1) had mistakenly put his
fist through the closet door when he was reaching for Auntie’s credit cards. 
Or was it her throat? Probably both.

Ma
and Auntie swore up and down they told us all where they were going.  But they
hadn’t. Ethel and I wondered.  Mostly about dinner.  Dad and Uncle Albert
worried.  Mostly over Dewar’s.  Then Dad worried about how he was going to get
to the bathroom without Ma; he wasn’t about to lean on two teenage girls. 
Uncle Albert worried more matter-of-factly and called the New Jersey State
Troopers.  Which was why Ma and Auntie and Ma’s cousin Patsy got busted and
interrogated alongside Englebert Humperdinck in Atlantic City.  Apparently
they’d decided they were due for a casino romp at Patsy’s suggestion.  So they
watched the show and got invited back to Englebert’s dressing room ‘for a
beverage’.  To this day, neither Ethel or I want to know how they achieved
this.  Ma and Auntie came home very cranky and very unhappy that their one
night as late blooming groupies was a bust.

“Was
it Tom Jones, or Englebert Humperdinck?” Ethel asked.  “I always get them
confused.”

“Englebert
Humperdinck,” I said.

“How’d
you remember that?”

“Dad
kept yelling about ‘the Dink’ until Christmas that year.”

“Oh.”

“You
think that’s why they split up?”

“No. 
Maybe.  I dunno.”

“You
think that’s why we found Dad’s presents on the curb?”

I
sighed.  “Maybe.”

“I
always thought it was because we didn’t leave the Manhattans out for Santie
Claus that year, like usual.  I figured Santie got mad.”

Vito
and Trixie and K. came up behind us.  “Hey, Toots, we, uh… moved a few things
over to your house, for safe keeping.” Vito winked.

“Huh?”
I asked.

“Umm…
some supplies and such.”

Trixie
stared at me, and then nodded back to Vito’s house and the multiple entering
and exiting policemen.  “For SAFEKEEPING,” K. shouted understandingly.

“OH!” 
I nodded and whirled right around into Archie Daley.

Archie
Daley had hoisted his girth up my front path.   He was an even less cheerful or
convivial Fire Marshal after midnight.  “Oh, you again,” he huffed.

“I
live here,” I said.

“Huh.
Where’s the owner?” he asked, nodding his head toward Vito’s charbroiled front
porch.

“Right
here, sir,” Vito piped up dutifully.

“Well,
looks like you’ve got a theme here,” Daley said.

“Huh?”

“A
theme.  With your neighbor.” He nodded at me.  “You work for EEJIT, right?”
Daley asked.

I
nodded miserably. “Yes.”

“That’s
the place that got torched with dog poop.”  We all nodded mutely.  “And it
looks like your porch got put ablaze here with some fecal flambé.”  I looked at
Vito.  Vito looked at me.  “Burning poop,” Daley clarified, shaking his head.

“Doggie
poop?” Trixie asked.

“Probably.”
He shrugged and leaned over to Vito’s porch and sniffed.  “It’s pretty stinky.”

A
car pulled up quick and parked at the bottom of my driveway. Appletree hopped
out wearing 101 Dalmatians jammies topped off with his police officer’s cap,
and huffed up my driveway and toward my front porch.  I glanced at Trixie and
hoped she wouldn’t rearrange her cleavage in front of mixed company again. 
Trixie’s fingers twitched, but she held firm.  Her self-control was probably
helped by Appletree’s being mostly out of uniform.

“Archie. 
Mina.  Vito.  Trix,” Appletree said.  I introduced Ethel.  “Heard the address
on the radio, thought I should look in,” he explained.

“Hey,
that’s real nice of you officer,” Vito beamed back at him.  “It being pretty
late and you’re being off duty and all.  But it looks like I’m okay here.  We
was all getting ready to head in, anyway.” He stretched and faked a yawn.

“We
were?” K. asked.  Vito pinched him. K. yelped.  Clearly he was hoping that the
all night party was going to be an all night party.

“There’s
been an awful lot of burning poop getting thrown around lately,” Daley said.

“Hey,
yeah, you know, you’ve got a point about that,” Appletree dully realized.  We
looked at each other and then quickly away to avoid any further eye contact. 
An ancient black Hyundai hatchback pulled up short and parked at the bottom of
my drive, double-parking Appletree’s car.