The Pink Flamingo Murders (12 page)

“I wasn’t surprised that Hawkeye fell for her,” I said. Dina flinched at my poor choice of words, but I kept going. “Stunning people aren’t impressed with beauty. They already have it.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Margie said. “He and Patricia had so much in common. They both knew the difference between soy and whey protein drinks and could talk compost until your eyes crossed.”

Dina shook her head, as if she didn’t want to hear any of this. We had drifted down the street by Otto’s house. It looked different. What was it? I stared for a minute until I saw it: the purple paint patches had been painted over with a discreet brick red. The turquoise trim was gone, too. Now it was a respectable
forest green. “Who covered up Otto’s paint job?” I asked.

“Caroline,” Margie replied. “She’s already made an offer to the nephew in Columbia to buy Otto’s house. I heard it’s way below market price, but the place needs a lot of work. Anyway, the nephew accepted. He just wants the house off his hands and the estate settled. It will take awhile for the final details, but meanwhile, Caroline convinced him that she should paint over that purple spot on the brick. I’m trying to get the nephew’s phone number from her, so I can pick the contents. Otto’s mother had some nice old pieces I’d love to get my hands on.”

Something else was different. I did a mental inventory. The backyard was still littered with dandelions and beer cans, and Otto’s rusted metal lawn chair sat under the maple tree. Next to it was a pile of cigar butts and an old
Gazette
, yellowing in the heat and humidity. It looked as if Otto would come out the back door any moment. But something was missing. What was it?

“The dog,” I said. “Where’s Hansie?”

That’s what was missing. The noise. The constant high-pitched, ax-blade-in-your-skull barking. The ugly little yapper was silent. “Did the nephew take Hansie?” I asked.

“Er, no,” Margie said, and looked slightly ashamed. “Caroline relieved him of that burden. She called the animal shelter right after they took Otto’s body away and had Hansie taken away, too.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I said. “She had the dog killed.”

“Hansie was old and would pine for his master,” Margie said.

“He’s dead and I’m glad,” Dina said, but her cat T-shirt said she was no dog lover. “He yapped constantly, and Otto wouldn’t do a thing about it. Caroline
lost at least one tenant because of that dog. I could hear him all the way up the street. His barking drove the neighbors out of their minds. Poor Miss Siemer went crazy when she was recovering from her shoulder surgery. She finally called Otto to complain about the noise. You know what Otto did? He let that dog outside even more, so it barked night and day.”

“I’d never have had the nerve to send that dog to the pound, but I’m glad Caroline did,” Margie rasped. It was the first time I’d heard her praise Caroline.

“She does all our dirty work for us,” Dina said.

More death on North Dakota Place. The jogger, dead in the alley. The drug dealer, burned alive. The disgusting Otto, electrocuted. His noisy dog permanently silenced. The large, smelly piles Hansie left in the yard were his only memorial, and those biodegradable markers would soon be gone. Four deaths. I left. I was sick of North Dakota Place. Even the
Gazette
looked better to me right now.

It was another hour before I got into work. Mrs. Indelicato just happened to step out of the confectionary when I returned and wouldn’t let me upstairs until I gave her the lowdown on Hawkeye. By the time I got dressed and made it into the office, it was after ten o’clock. As I walked into the
Gazette
newsroom, I braced myself for the usual sullen quiet. But for once, the place was convulsed in laughter. Even more unusual, the entire staff seemed to be reading the paper. Most Gazetteers were ashamed of the mediocre mush that went out under its masthead and rarely read it except to see what inaccuracies the copy desk had added to their stories. But now they were eagerly—no, gleefully—reading every word.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“The new day has dawned on our politically correct paper,” said young Jennifer, looking like a chirpy little brown bird today. “The new computer program, the
one that automatically changed black to African American, went into effect yesterday, right before deadline. Now, in today’s paper, in the All About Science section, scientists have discovered an African American hole in space.”

“Instead of a black hole?”

“Yes!” She was laughing so hard, she could hardly get out that one word.

“Wait! Here’s another one!” Jasper yelled. “Bet you didn’t know that Nelson Mandela was an African American leader.”

“We could use him,” Tina said, but then she too collapsed in laughter. Tears were running down her face. She was pointing to another page.

“What’s making you laugh?” I asked.

“The police report,” she managed to get out, but she couldn’t read it. She simply pointed at it.

Jennifer read it for us: “‘A blue Buick collided with an African American Cadillac,’” she said. “Sounds racist to me.”

“This African American drives a Volvo,” Tina said.

There were more whoops of laughter, which quieted when a grim-faced Charlie marched across the newsroom and into the glass-walled room where the editors assembled for the morning meeting. He slammed the door and pulled the blinds so we couldn’t see inside.

We eagerly scanned Nails’s business column for bloopers, but there were none. It was an endless story about the disposable diaper controversy, with information that had appeared before in a hundred other stories. For Nails, the definition of serious reporting was dull.

Enough fun for the day. I went back to my desk, answered phone calls, and checked my mail. It included a photo and press release for a new Mommy-in-the-Making doll that looked like a pregnant Barbie,
right down (or up) to the nose-cone boobs and blond hair. She had to be designed by a man. Mommy’s long, skinny legs were made for high heels, terrific for a pregnant woman.

There were two letters from readers who liked my column and one who thought I should hang it up—or hang myself, he didn’t much care. There was also another postcard from Erwin Shermann, the man with the dead mother. If his last postcard was a little creepy, this one seemed downright threatening. “It’s a dirty, lousy shame, isn’t it?” it said in that spiky ballpoint. “No one really cares for anyone else. Everyone looks out for Number One. That’s what you did. You didn’t really care. I could tell in your letter that you didn’t understand. Not like my lovely Mother. She understands, but she’s no longer with me. It’s not fair, is it? You are here, and she is gone. She cares and you don’t.”

Birr. That’s enough for you, Erwin. I don’t want you as a pen pal. I stuffed his postcard in my Weirdo file, where I keep death threats and bizarre communications. Lyle had instructions to show it to the police if anything happened to me.

The phone rang. “Hi,” a voice said, nearly breathless with excitement. “My name is Candy. I’m just a reader, but I have a great story for you. The talking virgin has been run over.”

“I didn’t think there were any virgins left, talking or silent,” I said.

“This is a shrine to the Blessed Virgin that talks,” Candy said.

Oops. I’d better watch the jokes. South Siders took their religious statues seriously. They treated lawns like knickknack shelves and decorated them with concrete bird-baths, swan planters, pink flamingos, and plastic sunflowers that twirled in the wind. But they always saved room for a shrine to the Blessed Virgin.
Some painted the statues, some made little shrines out of bathtubs sawed in half, and some put spotlights on the statues. But Candy’s neighbors, Bud and Dorothy, went one step forward. Bud added sound.

“But not to defraud anyone,” she said. “Bud wasn’t faking miracles or trying to get money out of people. He just wanted to make the experience more devout. He and Dorothy bought a particularly large and fine concrete Madonna and painted it up real nice, with blond hair and a blue robe. Then they planted a garden of blue-and-white flowers around it. Those are Mary’s colors, you know. Naturally, people would stop on the sidewalk to admire the statue and the garden. When they did, Dorothy said prayers in a muted voice into the mike. Respectful, Virgin-related prayers like the Magnificat or the Hail Mary. But if someone walked on their lawn, she’d hand the mike to her husband. Bud had a deep voice and he’d intone, ‘WARNING: Do not tread on holy ground.’”

“Let me guess,” I said. “The statue was hit by lightning.”

“No,” Candy said. “It was hit by an eighty-seven Toyota. Jumped the curb and went up on the lawn. Has Mary pinned under the car. You have to see it.”

I agreed and rushed over to the unholy scene. It was just as Candy said. The gray Toyota was up on the neat little front yard. It had plowed through the garden, taking out a moon vine and several hydrangeas with softball-size blue flowers. The Virgin was under the crumpled front fender. The car owner said he swerved to avoid a kid on a bike, and “the next thing I knew, I ran over the Virgin Mary.” Mary did more damage to his car than he did to her, but Bud and Dorothy said the concrete Madonna would be relocated to a safer spot in the backyard. “This is God’s way of telling us to move his Mother,” Dorothy said, which I thought gave new meaning to auto-da-fe.

I thanked Bud and Dorothy and counted my blessings. I had a column, and I had dinner with Lyle, and if I left now, I had just enough time to get there on time. We met at Rizzo’s, an Italian restaurant in St. Louis Hills. For a so-called German city, we had far more Italian restaurants than German ones. Even Germans like me would rather eat pasta than sauerkraut. Besides, Italian food satisfied other basic St. Louis needs. It was cheap and filling. But it wasn’t quite fried enough. After all, we were a Southern city, too. So the local Italian restaurants made a little alteration to their cuisine. They invented toasted ravioli, which are really deep-fat fried ravioli. We dunk them in a ketchupy red sauce. That’s what I ordered for my appetizer.

“How can you eat those things?” Lyle asked, as he dug into his eggplant Parmesan. “They taste like a french-fried football.”

“You didn’t grow up here,” I said. “Toasted ravioli satisfy a deep-seated need for grease. This is South Side soul food.” He grinned his little boy grin, but I don’t think he believed me.

The chicken speidini put a satisfying layer of garlic on top of the grease. For dessert, we walked hand in hand across the street to Ted Drewes, the frozen custard stand. Ted Drewes was wonderfully nostalgic. The white-painted building with the steep roof and wooden icicle trim looked like an elf’s cottage. The yellow bug lights over the screened windows belonged to the summer of 1955. So did those fresh-faced kids working the windows, cheerfully calling out “May I help you?” and swiftly serving up our order. The lines were long at Ted Drewes. There were so many customers, the place needed police for crowd control every night, but the waits were entertaining. We had a chance to talk and meet with neighbors.

Lyle ordered a regular soft custard cone, and I ordered a chocolate dip, a foolhardy act, since I was still
wearing a suit and dip cones dripped like crazy. But I couldn’t resist that sweet chocolate coating. I bit into it, picked off a huge piece of chocolate that slid off, and ate it. Melting frozen custard dripped down my fingers and turned my paper napkins into a sticky mess.

“Here, take this,” Lyle said, handing me his handkerchief. “Why do you eat those messy things?”

“More South Side soul food,” I said. “I like it when you fuss. Reminds me of my grandmother.”

“Thanks a lot.” Lyle took the last bite of his cone. He didn’t drip anything, depriving himself of the full Ted Drewes experience. We were sitting on the trunk of his car, Sherman, an enormous gold ‘67 Chrysler. Sherm was the size of a sun porch and made a comfortable seat.

“I like watching the West Countians, watching us,” I said.

“How do you know they’re West Countians?” he said.

“How many South Side women wear itsy tennis outfits and little socks with fuzzy balls?” I said. “Besides, most South Siders don’t drive BMWs.”

“Or Jaguars,” Lyle said.

“Touché,” I said. “I admit that Ralph is not your average South Side car. But those people are still West Countians. It’s a thrill for them to drive into the big, dangerous city, even if they are only a mile or so from the city limits. They sit inside the sliding doors on their minivans and stare at us South Siders. Look at them, pointing at that family in the station wagon. That’s rude.”

“Those folks are kind of fat,” Lyle said.

“West Countians aren’t fat?” I asked.

“They are, but their fat is better tailored.”

“Handsome is as handsome does,” I said.

“Now you sound like your grandmother,” Lyle said,
laughing. “Feeling superior is the favorite St. Louis sport.”

“I can always go to the nontourist Ted Drewes on South Grand if the crowds bother me. No West Countian would venture that deep into the city. Do you believe in coincidence, Lyle?” I asked, abruptly changing the subject.

“Sure,” he said. “Happens all the time.”

“Do you believe four deaths could be a coincidence?”

“Which four?”

“The ones on North Dakota Place. Everyone who disagrees with Caroline dies.”

“You’ve told me about Hawkeye, but refresh my memory about the others.”

“The first death was Otto,” I said. “He was electrocuted after an argument with Caroline. She even sent his dog to the pound. Next was that drug dealer who died in an arson fire after he killed six of Caroline’s trees. The fourth death was Hawkeye, who ran on her grass.”

“That’s only three deaths,” Lyle said.

“I’m counting Hansie, Otto’s dog.”

“Oh, come on, Francesca. A dog? Anyway, wasn’t Otto involved in ticket-fixing and other illegal activities at City Hall?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“There would be lots of reasons someone would want to kill him, then. And it’s no surprise when a drug dealer dies. Most never make thirty. You don’t even know if Hawkeye was murdered.”

“Katie will tell me for sure tomorrow. But Mayhew was crawling all over the alley where he died.”