Bubbles Ablaze (19 page)

“Cops around a Saab and a man in the front seat. What is it?”

“That's Hugh McMullen. Someone told me he's been shot.” There were gasps from the hotel employees and the other guests. “In the head.” And Myron ran off to catch up with the cops, who were taking their own slow time. An ominous signal. If McMullen had been alive, he'd be in an ambulance speeding off to the hospital. But he wasn't alive. His corpse was merely one part of a crime scene now.

I closed my eyes and murmured a quick prayer, but all I kept thinking was Hugh McMullen dead? My mind raced, leaping from image to image. Hugh nervous at the press conference reading stiffly from a prepared statement. Hugh in the church, rumpled and mad to find Stinky.

Uh-oh, Stinky. If Hugh McMullen was dead, shot like Price, and if McMullen had been Price's murderer, then what did that mean for Stinky?

“Come on, Bubbles.” Stiletto had his camera equipment together, was dressed and ready to go. “This is going to be another media zoo.”

I slipped into my shoes and pulled out my notebook. I stuffed my broken bra in my purse and gathered up my cosmetics from the floor. We didn't say anything to each other except bye as I headed out the door to the parking lot.

Sometimes I hate this business. I really do. When you're a hairdresser and you want to have sex, you just have sex. You don't have to stop for sirens.

Sasha's Miracle-Whip Facial (Slightly Improved)

Miracle Whip has less fat than regular mayonnaise and the vinegar in it does wonders for skin. My advice is to apply a thin
layer and rub it off before a shower so you don't smell like chicken salad all day. It really does exfoliate, though, like Sasha says, it is kind of gross.

2 tablespoons Miracle Whip
½
teaspoon ground, uncooked oatmeal

Mix Miracle Whip and oatmeal. Spread thinly on clean, dry face. Leave on for thirty minutes. Wipe off with moistened face-cloth and wash and moisturize as usual.

T
he preliminary word from Chief Donohue was that Hugh McMullen had committed suicide with a Smith & Wesson to the temple. This did not register with the other reporters, but it certainly registered with me. I suppose if I had been Esmeralda Greene and had been eager to impress the Barbie and Ken of Channel Three, I would have asked at the press conference if that was the same Smith & Wesson that had blown away Bud Price.

But my ego didn't need stroking. My ego had been stroked enough tonight.

I approached Donohue as he stepped into his cruiser. “Is that the same Smith and Wesson that—?”

“Won't know until the ballistics tests get back,” he said, sliding his paunch behind the wheel. “But it appears likely. The bullets in Price came from a forty-four magnum S and W revolver and that's what was in McMullen's hand tonight.”

I wrote this down. Why was Donohue being so nice to me? Usually cops fresh from a suicide tell reporters to buzz off. Half the time they refuse to release police reports on suicides, even public ones. Gosh. I hoped Donohue's kindness wasn't because I didn't have a bra on.

“You think he shot himself because he was going to be arrested for murder?”

“His lawyer was informed this evening that he had twenty-four hours to bring his client in or we were going to come for him.” Donohue shut the door and leaned out the window. He looked over my shoulder. “Aw, shit. Myron Finkle. That twerp bugs the hell out of me.”

I folded up my notebook.

“What were you and Donohue talking about?” Myron asked after Donohue peeled out of the hotel parking lot.

It was fun to thumb one's perfectly powdered nose at Channel Three, but Myron was just a kid. He needed a break. “What time do you publish, Myron?”

“I don't know. I think the paper gets delivered at four a.m. Why?”

“When you get back to the newsroom, give Donohue a call. Ask him about the weapon.”

“The gun McMullen used to shoot himself?” Myron exclaimed. “How come?”

“Shhh.” I put my finger to my lips. News-Nine-All-The-Time walked by, pretending like he wasn't eavesdropping. “Keep a lid on it, Myron. I'm giving you a tip.”

Myron smiled. “Thanks, Bubbles. No one ever gives me tips. Not even my father and he's a state trooper.”

“Awww.” I resisted the urge to pat him on the head. “Hopefully this will be the first of many scoops, hon.”

Stiletto was reloading his camera and talking on a cell phone when I walked up to him at the other end of the parking lot. “Give me an hour,” he told me, tucking the phone under his chin. “I'll find some place to develop this and then we'll take up where we left off. You can stay with me tonight.”

“Can't. I've got to get back to Roxanne.”

“Roxy's a big girl. She can stay with herself.”

“Not tonight,” I said, “though, knowing her, she'll be spending the night with Zeke Allen. Next time you assign me a bodyguard, make him short, fat and ugly, okay?”

“Bodyguard? I assigned you a bodyguard?”

“Uh . . . that's what I understand.”

Stiletto got back on the phone and told his editor he had to get off, quick. He had an emergency. He shut the phone and turned to me. “What's this about a bodyguard?”

“Give it up, Stiletto. I know all about how you hired Zeke to
look after me. Genevieve said you wanted him to spy, but he's such a squeaky clean—”

“Zeke Allen from Slagville?”

Stiletto was not joking. He was not trying to pull my leg. He had the look that made my mouth go dry. That this-is-not-funny-this-is-serious look. “Okay. There's this guy,” I said slowly, “Zeke Allen—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know Zeke. He was thrown in the slammer for building a church in Mexico. I ran into him when I was doing a story on jailed American kids in Cerro Huerro. I ended up bribing a judge to spring the poor bastard.”

“And then,” I said, keeping my voice calm, “you hired him to look after me while I was here working on this story.”

“No, Bubbles.” Stiletto placed his hand firmly on my shoulder. “I didn't. I haven't talked to Zeke Allen in at least a year.”

For a few minutes we didn't say anything, just stared at each other.

“Then what's going on?” I said. “He said every night you call him and ask a few innocuous questions about me. You've apparently paid him a thousand bucks with the promise of twenty-five-hundred more. Directly wired into his bank account.”

“Shit!” Stiletto slid his phone into his pocket. “This is too much like the fax you got at the Passion Peak and my e-mail message. It's got to be the work of the same guy. He knows every detail about us, that I was in New York yesterday, that you were at the Passion Peak on Wednesday, what my e-mail address is.”

We were silent, pondering. “What happened when you traced the e-mail?” I asked.

“That phone got blown up in the Jeep, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. So, what are we going to do?”

“I've got to get this film developed and find out what's going on. Until then, Bubbles, I want you to lock and bolt the doors when you get back to Roxanne's. And stay away from Zeke.”

It was a long, dangerous drive back to the Main Mane and not because I imagined menacing headlights in my rearview at each twist and turn. (For I did repeatedly imagine menacing headlights.) No. The drive was dangerous because I was beat. So tired that I almost didn't care if I crashed.

I had called in my update about McMullen's murder from the inn well in time for the
News-Times
deadline and after that I was ready to collapse. For a fleeting second I considered joining Stiletto in his room, but then my conscience got the better of me. I remembered Roxanne and how panicked she'd been after the burglary. So I got in the Camaro and did my duty.

My heavy eyelids flickered as I negotiated the pitch black back roads. This was torture. Absolute torture. I should have pulled over and slept. But I kept on until I pulled up to the Main Mane and put on the parking break. I'd made it. I'd never felt so relieved.

It was after one
A
.
M
. and Roxanne's house was quiet and dark. There were no lights on in the three bedrooms upstairs. Mama and Genevieve had been assigned twin beds in the guest room. The door to Roxanne's room was closed and Jane was on a couch in the office.

I tiptoed in and kissed her like I have every night since she was one day old. Her cheek still had a trace of baby-girl fat and she clutched the sheet protectively about her. If I squinted, I could picture what she looked like at four years old, hugging her blue Smurf.

I went into the kitchen and made myself a meat-loaf sandwich, consuming it in four bites. Downed a glass of milk. Washed up. Brushed my teeth and slipped into a black Journey T-shirt with matching thong. What a night. Sex. Death. Myron Finkle and Sasha with the straight, straight hair. Like the old feminine hygiene commercial used to taunt, “So you wanted the busy life of a reporter.”

Roxanne had been kind enough to make up the foldout downstairs. I slipped in between the cool sheets and wiggled my toes.
I didn't mind the thin mattress or the iron bar that ran under my back. I kind of liked it. It massaged out the kinks. Needless to say I was asleep as soon as I clicked on my Donald Duck night-light.

Asleep, but not at peace. My dreams were so vivid and frightening it was like having a front row seat at IMAX. Flames spewed from St. Ignatius Church with its red and blue broken stained glass. Hugh McMullen's bloodied face warned me in silent urgency about a monster who was after me. Who was it?

“You should know,” McMullen kept saying. “You've met him. He knows who you are.”

And then there was Professor Tallow, his thin white finger slowly tracing the multiple pierced ear of a helplessly enthralled Jane. For some reason Keith Richards was nearby with an electric guitar and a bandana around his forehead, a cigarette dangling from his lip as he crooned with . . . G.

G?

“Wassup, Bub?” an imaginary G called out to me through the smoke, which seemed to be billowing from everywhere, choking me, stinging my eyes, filling my nose. “Hey, Bub. Is there more meat loaf? I sure could do with a sandwich.”

I sat up groggily. My chest hurt and the Donald Duck night-light illuminated waves of smoke filling the living room. It was coming from the kitchen. It smelled like grilled cheese out of control.

I slid off the bed onto the floor and crawled my way toward the kitchen door. Remember, Bubbles, lay low to the ground where the air is good. If there is a fire, get everyone out of the house first, then call the fire department. Not vice versa. There weren't flames, I was relieved to see. But as the saying goes, where there's smoke there's . . .

“Bubbles Yablonsky! What are you doing on the floor with your naked bottom in the air?” Mama's voice screeched. I was eye level with a pair of fluffy pink slippers and the bottom of a chenille zipper robe.

“Hot damn! My girlfriend's mom.” G was jumping up and
down in the smoky haze. “I saw my girlfriend's mom's naked butt!”

I gripped the green Formica kitchen counter and pulled myself up. Mama was by the stove while Genevieve was at the sink scrubbing out a pan. G was in his street clothes and holding a gray metal canister. A fire extinguisher, I supposed. All of us were shrouded in a mist.

“What happened?” I asked between coughs.

“There's been a fire. Obviously,” said Mama. “Genevieve and I came home and thought we'd brew us some Sleepytime before bed and Genevieve forgot—”

“I did not forget.” Genevieve paused from her scrubbing. “I turned off the burner. Anyway, it wasn't the teapot, it was this pan that caught fire. It had grease in it. If you ask me, those Kenmore people are to blame. Planned obsolescence so you'll have to buy a new stove every five years.”

Mama dismissed her with a wave and Genevieve turned her attention back to the pan. “Point is, G is a hero. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the basement and saved us all.”

“Hear that, Bub. I'm a hero.” G pumped his fist. “Now you definitely gotta treat me right. We're talking me getting the foldout bed. And I got some underwear that needs washing. It hasn't been washed in weeks.”

Oh joy, I thought. Dirty G underwear. Except I didn't remember a pan of grease being on the stove before. When I had made the meat-loaf sandwich, the kitchen had been entirely cleaned up. Jane, being a vegetarian, doesn't cook with grease and G, well, G doesn't cook.

“I didn't use the stove tonight,” I said. “What time did you two ladies get in?”

Genevieve and Mama exchanged guilty looks. Mama checked her watch. “About two hours ago.”

The Home Sweet Home kitchen clock said 5:15. “You were out until three?”

Mama cleared her throat and started rubbing a Brillo pad
around the charred burner. “We're grown women. We can stay out as late as we want. Anyway, we were working.”

“You go, granny!” G exclaimed.

Mama turned on him like a lioness on an antelope. “For your information, junior, I am the undisputed billiards champion in the South Side Seniors league, I can lift seventy pounds in sixteen reps and got my sights set on eighty. No one calls me ‘granny.' No one.”

G looked humbled. “Sorr-ee.”

“Ignore him,” I said. “What's this, we-were-working-until-three-a.m. business?”

Genevieve pointed to a plastic garbage bag in the corner. “We were looking for Nana Yablonsky's diary—in the trash.”

“Cool.” G lifted the bag onto the counter and began sorting through its contents.

Mama returned to her scrubbing until I snatched the now rusted Brillo pad out of her hands. “Hold on. You've been roaming the streets of Slagville searching garbage cans?”

“Pharmaceutical companies do it all the time, Bubbles,” Genevieve said. “It's how they discover the research secrets of competing companies. Good old dumpster fishing. Only difference is we don't get paid fifty-thousand dollars a year with two weeks at the shore. Then again, we aren't paid by the government not to cure cancer, either.”

“And besides, they weren't any old garbage cans,” Mama said. “They were Vilnia's.”

“Vilnia, the gossip?”

“Vilnia the thief is more like it.”

“Broken comb. Lots of dirty paper napkins. Opened can of Comstock blueberry filling.” G was announcing the bag's goodies. “An empty box of Pillsbury ready-made piecrust—”

“Knew it,” Mama said to Genevieve. “Vilnia's probably the type to do slice-and-bake, too.”

Genevieve snorted in self-righteous disgust. “Hamburger Helper, I'm betting.”

“Black bra. Tan in a can. Printer ink cartridges.” G popped his head out of the trash. “No diary.”

“That's because I've got it right here, G is for genius.” Mama reached into her robe and pulled out a small, weathered black leather diary. She handed it to me and I flipped through the pages. It was all in Polish.