Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) (3 page)

“Did you give Dandi your pumpkins?” I asked, bypassing the traditional “hello.”

“Marla Hepple just showed up and said that Sweet Birch Road is crawling with emergency vehicles. I figured you must be in trouble.”

I felt irrationally peeved that flashing squad car lights in Rustic Woods were taken as evidence of another Barbara Marr commotion.

“I’m not in trouble.” This, I would argue, was not a lie.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I’m just warming myself up with a cup of coffee after my walk.”

“Coffee? I thought that wasn’t allowed on your diet.”

Just then, the police radio crackled and a dispatcher’s voice squawked something in code. I cringed.

“I heard that!” Peggy shouted. “You’re in a police car, aren’t you?”

Dropping the happy-go-lucky act, I laid into her. “It’s all your fault. If you’d come with me, I wouldn’t have brought the dog. So when you read about this in the paper, just remember, you’re the reason why.”

“What happened?”

“No way, Jose. I’m not telling you with half the Tulip Tree Elementary Rumor Brigade listening in.”

“Are you okay? Should I come over?”

Her offer tempered my mood. “You’d do that? What about Dandi and your pumpkins?”

“Boy, you’re not going to let that go, are you?”

I spotted my white Grand Caravan pulling behind the cruiser. “Howard’s pulling up now. We’ll probably be home in five minutes or so.”

“See you soon.” She clicked off.

My husband, ever the FBI agent, hung around for several minutes talking to Officer Lamon and his associates. No one seemed to mind that he no longer carried a badge. I didn’t dare complain that I was cold and wanted to go home because he looked more engaged than I’d seen him in months. Even resting on the cane, you could tell he was back in his element. Howard, I thought, would never be happy brewing coffee and chai lattes.

“So,” Howard said suppressing a smirk as he buckled in for our drive home. “You can’t just pick up discarded soda cups and water bottles like normal people?”

“It wasn’t me, it was your dog.”

His mouth tugged into a playful grin. “Now he’s
my
dog?”

“Hey buddy, I’ll admit I’ve grown to tolerate, and maybe even care a little for that yappy mutt, but he’s always been
your
dog. It’s bad enough that his yowling can give a banshee nightmares, now he thinks he’s a bloodhound.”

He looked both ways for traffic, then made a U-turn to head back home. “Lamon said he’d keep us informed when they learn more about the victim.”

“No!” The shout that escaped my mouth surprised even me. “I don’t want to be informed. I want to remain blissfully ignorant. Like that chubby guy in Hogan’s Heroes. You got it?”

He smiled. “You aren’t even curious? Not everyone finds a pe-”

I put my hand in front of his mouth, preventing the “p” word from escaping before it hurt my ears. “Don’t say it. You know I hate that word.”

It’s true. There are a few words in the English language that affect me like fingernails on a blackboard, and the moniker for a male member is one of them. Others include booger, kumquat (don’t ask me why), and when George W. Bush says “nuc-u-ler” instead of “nuc-lee-er.”

I’m not a prude, don’t get me wrong. I have no issue with the actual item itself, just the name. It probably stems from an experience with sex education when my mother decided to relay the story of the birds and the bees. Only, she didn’t call them the birds and the bees, she called them “Mother” and “Father” and provided a very graphic slide show presentation to assist me achieve perfect understanding. They weren’t home pictures or anything like that—my mother considered herself progressive, but not
that
progressive. No, these were detailed drawings of both male and female organs as well as images of the act itself, all provided by the kit she had purchased, “Talk Sex Now, Avoid Pregnancy Later.” The problem was, I was only three years old, and I’m pretty sure the kit was intended for presentation to children ten or older. At the time, I thought she referred to that dangly thing hanging on the daddy as a “peanut.” Well one day, while sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, a young boy near me kept pulling at his pants. It seemed a little odd, so I whispered to my mom, “Why is he grabbing on his peanut?”

My mother became very irritated with me, and huffed loud enough for the entire waiting room of patients as well as the world to hear, “It’s a pee-
nis
, Barbara.” She emphasized the NIS. “Pee-
nis
. I’ve told you before. That little boy is grabbing on his pee-
nis
.”

Just retelling the horror story causes me to feel faint and I can only imagine the therapy that little boy has had to endure later in life.

I’ve adopted the Swahili word
uume
—pronounced oo-may. I find it much more appealing, thank you very much. And a little more masculine, quite frankly. You know, sort of like, “Oh, my.”

“What’s the word we use?” I reminded him.

He shook his head and I detected the genesis of an eye roll, but he stopped himself. “I don’t remember.”

Men, they can’t remember anything. “
Uume
. I found an
uume
. There was a hand, too, if you recall. And no, I’m not curious.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Fine, I’m curious, but that’s as far as I’m taking this. No more adventures for me. No Mafia, no bank robbing fugitives, no paranoid, corrupt politicians and their henchmen, and no vengeful wives with sharp kitchen knives bent on dismembering their cheating husbands.”

He threw me a look. “Why do you assume it’s a cheating husband?”

I covered my ears with my hands. “I’m not listening.” I began singing “The Star Spangled Banner” loudly enough to make my point and didn’t stop until we had pulled into our driveway.

In the house, Puddles lapped up every last drop in his water bowl, then crashed in his doggy bed as if he’d just run a marathon. He’d had a pretty exciting morning for a little gray poodle.

As for me, I showered immediately.

Somehow, scrubbing for ten minutes didn’t seem to wash away the vivid image of blue, dirt-crusted fingernails or the ravaged male organ. When I returned downstairs, hair dripping wet, I found Peggy and Howard laughing at the kitchen table. This was something new. I hadn’t seen him laugh that heartily since July. He might have chuckled here or there, but no genuine laughter, despite my best efforts.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, hoping they wouldn’t say it was me.

“I was just telling Howard about my step-uncle’s third cousin on his mother’s side, Joe Junior the Third. He didn’t have any hands—I can’t remember why. Boating accident, maybe?” She brushed her hand in the air. “Something with propellers, I think. Anyway, he qualified for this experimental hand transplant operation, where they gave him the hands of some guy who had just died in the hospital. He was so excited to have hands that he told the doctors he wanted to meet the family of the man who gave him a normal life again. So when he was being discharged, the doctors introduced him to the donor’s parents in a lounge—they’d planned this whole affair with cake and local reporters there and everything. Well, much to his shock and dismay, it turned out they were the parents of his sworn enemy—Hugo.” She stopped and reconsidered. “No, it was Hector.” That didn’t seem to work for her either. She tilted her head in thought. “Harold?...something with an H. Once best friends, but now, even though Hector or Harold was dead, Joe Junior hated him worse than cold grits in January. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what he always said. And if I remember right, the feud was actually about grits. No, no, it was about mutual fund investments. Well, he was so upset that right there in that lounge in front of the parents, the doctors, the reporters and everyone, he ripped his left hand right off, then stomped on his right hand until it broke clean off.”

That was probably Peggy’s craziest family story to date. “First,” I said, grabbing a mug from the cupboard, “I don’t believe anyone could just rip a hand off even if it had just been sewn on. But more importantly, I don’t know why it’s funny. That’s just plain creepy.”

“That wasn’t the funny part,” she explained.

I found it hard to believe there was a humorous ending to this story, but I had to find out anyway. “So what’ the funny part?”

“The headline in the local newspaper the next day. It read, ‘Joe Junior the Turd Gives Back Hands.’”

Howard and Peggy laughed some more. I did not. The Joe Junior tale still didn’t elicit a desire to chortle or even giggle mildly, but then again, my mind still wallowed in the lucid memory of crunching on a disembodied appendage, so I probably wasn’t the right person to be judging its hilarity factor.

Mama Marr appeared in the kitchen, crunching a few bones of her own. Since she’d moved in with us a few months back, I had learned to predict her arrival in a room by the decibel level of the snap, crackle, and pop that preceded. When she walked, the woman sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies that had just been doused with a generous helping of milk.

“I hear that you and The Puddles picked up a
prącia
on your walk,” Mama Marr said, fanning herself with a pudgy hand. “I think I am glad for the sciatica this morning!”

Mama Marr always referred to Puddles as “The Puddles,” and I was pretty sure
prącia
was Polish for
uume
. I liked it. Much more oomph than the wimpy English counterpart. I added it to my mental list of acceptable synonyms.

Howard’s mother creaked and popped her way to the stove and her teapot. “I am making the tea, if anyone wants?”

“Not me, Ma,” said Howard.

“I need more of the strong stuff, thank you, Mama,” I said. I poured hot coffee into my mug.

Howard eyed me with a cocked brow. “Thought that wasn’t on the diet.”

“When a woman has to disengage a limp and leaf-covered
prącia
from her growling dog’s mouth with her numb fingers, she’s allowed to take a day off any diet.”

Pushing her chair back from the table, Peggy stood. “Tea sounds wonderful Mrs. Marr, but I have to head out again.”

“You just got here,” I whined. “I didn’t get to tell you about the
prącia
.” I put on a pout.

“Howard told me all about it.”

“Forgive me if I say that it’s not the same as from the horse’s mouth. There are subtleties he could never impart.”

She patted my hand. “Can you impart them later? Over a glass of wine, perhaps, since you’re diet-free today?”

Could I be mad at my friend for not having time? Of course not. We mothers always had some errand to run. One of Peggy’s boys probably needed new reeds for his clarinet, or notebooks for science class. Possibly there was a dental appointment on the schedule. I would not make her feel guilty.

I nodded and sneaked a quick sip from the steamy mug. “Sure, we can talk later. What do you have to do?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Goldfish.”

“The boys want goldfish now?” I groaned. Poor Peggy had been through a myriad of pets, avoiding the larger, more time consuming and messy puppy issue. They’d had hermit crabs, tree frogs, and three different kinds of lizardy looking things. Sadly, none of them had survived the Rubenstein household, may they rest in pieces. I mean, peace.

She shook her head. “No. I have to go the pet store and handle some quantity confusion with the goldfish Dandi ordered for the Fall Festival.”

Could I be mad at my friend for not having the time? I sure could, if Dandi Booker was involved. My blood was starting to boil, but I bit back my bitterness and tried to look calm all the same. “Why in person?”

“Dandi claims she ordered three hundred goldfish but the store swears she ordered three thousand and they want the little guys picked up and paid for today. Can you believe it? She asked me to sweet talk them into understanding it was their mistake plus work them down from three hundred to two hundred since it looks like attendance will be lower than she predicted.”

“What’s the pet store going to do with twenty-eight hundred goldfish?”

“It’s their mistake, not ours.”

“Sounds to me like it’s Dandi’s mistake, not
yours
.”

Peggy was already standing and slipping into her heavy wool sweater, unfazed by my obvious jab. “I have half a bottle of some white wine in my fridge. When should I bring it by? Eight?”

I turned to my hubby and asked sweetly, “Howard, will you handle bed-time duty for Amber and Bethany?”

He had checked out of the conversation some time ago, skimming over the Rustic Woods Gazette, but he caught my request and nodded. “Will do, Boss.”

“Make it seven-thirty,” I said to Peggy as Mama Marr’s kettle started to scream.

I figured seven-thirty would be perfect timing after the taco dinner that Colt had promised. He could even join us while I described every horrible detail of my grisly morning romp.

I really wanted those tacos and the wine would be an added bonus. What I didn’t know at the time was, I wouldn’t be enjoying either. Not that night.