The Pink Flamingo Murders (26 page)

At eleven o’clock that night the phone rang. I grabbed it, hoping it was Lyle calling. “It’s me, Pam,” an urgent voice said. “Get over here quick.”

“What for?” I said. I’d been dozing in my grandmother’s recliner in a sad, restless sleep that left me tired. I didn’t want to go out again. But Pam insisted.

“It’s Erwin. He’s in his backyard, digging in his garden.”

“Maybe it’s legit,” I said.

“At this hour?” Pam said scornfully. “With no light? Do you want to catch him or not? Get over here. I’ll meet you at the top of his street. And hurry.”

I slipped on my shoes, grabbed my house keys, and ran down the steps. I didn’t stop running the three blocks to Erwin’s street. Even at eleven o’clock at night, it was hot. The heat added a velvety quality to the darkness. The blue-black sky had a scattering of stars, but no one was outside to enjoy them. Most of my neighbors were in bed, with their lights out. I noticed there were no lights on at Sally’s house. I still wanted to talk to her, but I didn’t stop at her place after my fight with Lyle. I was too upset to talk to anyone then. But I was convinced Sally knew something useful. The more she eluded me, the more I wanted to talk to her.

I met Pam at the top of Erwin’s street, and we ran
half a block to the alley entrance. “How did you spot him digging?” I said, talking in whispers. We were getting close to Erwin’s and I didn’t want to scare him off.

“I can see his backyard from my deck,” she whispered back. “I let the dog out and saw Erwin digging by the light of the streetlight. It looked fishy to me, so I called you.”

“I sure hope he’s up to no good,” I said. “Otherwise, he’ll add stalking and harassment to his other complaints against me.”

“He’s guilty of something,” she said firmly. “I saw his face the night the police were at his place. I haven’t been a mom all these years not to recognize that guilty look.” She put a finger to her lips for quiet. We were two houses away. We tiptoed up to Erwin’s, and Pam eased open his back gate. There was enough light that we could see Erwin standing in front of a shallow hole, pulling out something the size of a small suitcase. It looked like it was made of hard plastic. He had just opened the box when Pam cried, “Okay, Erwin, drop it.”

Erwin let out a frightened yelp.

“What’s in there?” she said.

“It’s mine,” he said, shutting the lid quickly. “It’s perfectly legal.”

“Then why did you bury it?” I said. His face swung toward me, and that gave Pam enough time to open the red-orange plastic watertight box.

“My, my,” she said. “It’s packed with porn. Just look at these magazines:
Bad Girls of Dicks High
. Here’s a good one,
Perky Peterville Pom-Pom Girls
. Ugh, look what those women are doing with that Pekingese. Erwin, you are absolutely disgusting.”

Pekingese? I thought that was a hairy pom-pom. At least Erwin wasn’t into underage porn. These women hadn’t seen high school since around 1965. They looked really dissipated in their super-short Catholic
school girl uniforms. Those hard faces weren’t made for Peter Pan collars and plaid jumpers. At least they didn’t wear those outfits for very long. The pom-pom girls were particularly athletic performers in the pictures.

“And you’re a high school teacher, too,” Pam said, her voice oozing disgust. “What would your students’ parents say if they knew the slop you read? What about the school administration? And your mother?”

For the first time Erwin showed real fear. “Don’t tell my mother,” he pleaded. “Please don’t. I’ll do anything you say.” Erwin was afraid of his mother. That was interesting.

“You’ve got some nerve claiming Francesca damaged your reputation,” Pam said. “Why are you burying this scummy stuff? Are you too ashamed to keep it in the house?”

“I tried,” Erwin whined. “Mother always finds it. She cleans everything. She vacuums between my mattress and the box springs. She goes through all my closets and drawers. There’s no place she won’t clean. I even tried hiding the magazines in the furnace ducts. She found them there. Mother dusted the furnace ducts.”

The angel mother was a cleaning fiend. “What about the garage?” I suggested helpfully.

“Have you seen the inside of that garage?” he said.

I had, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “There are curtains on the windows,” I said truthfully.

“She dusts my workbench, waxes the garage floor, and puts down newspapers so the car doesn’t drip oil on the waxed concrete,” he said bleakly.

“And I thought I was a cleaning fanatic,” Pam said.

“The garden is the only place she won’t clean,” Erwin said. “She has no interest in that kind of dirt. So when I get the urge, which isn’t often, I dig up my books. This is your fault, Francesca. I hadn’t needed
them for months and months, and then you got me all upset, and I had to relieve the tension.”

Jeez. Now I was accused of breaking and entering and beating off.

“You made me,” he whined. “Now is a bad time to dig. I could hurt my cucumbers.”

“Is that what you call them?” I said.

“The cucumbers in my garden,” Erwin said, shocked. “You have a filthy mind.”

“I
have a filthy mind? I’m not reading this trash. These books exploit women. Get yourself a girlfriend.”

“I tried,” Erwin said. “Mother doesn’t approve of the women I bring home. She has very high standards.”

“What would she think of these?” I said, grabbing the
Bad Girls of Dicks High
.

“Or these?” Pam said, picking up
Perky Peterville Pom-Pom Girls
.

“You won’t tell her?” He whimpered in terror.

“We will,” we said together.

“No!” Erwin said. “You can’t. You don’t understand. The last time she found them, she said I’d go to hell if I touched those magazines again. I promised her I’d never, never touch them.”

“We’re telling her unless you drop the lawsuit and the trespassing charges,” Pam said.

“I can’t,” he said. “You can’t.”

“We can,” I said. “We will.”

“You can’t prove it,” Erwin said, sounding desperate.

“I’ll have these magazines dusted for your fingerprints and then I’ll tell your mother,” I said. I sounded ridiculous.

“I’ll tell her I saw them, too,” Pam said. “She’ll believe me. We go to the same church. We were on the bake-sale committee together. I gave her my recipe for peanut butter brownies.” She sounded convincing, and
not just to me. Erwin bowed his head and accepted his fate.

“I want your letter at the
Gazette
by ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Tomorrow is the Fourth of July,” he said.

“July fifth, then,” I said. “Ten
A.M
. I want the trespassing charges dropped, too, or this goes to your mother.” I brandished the
Bad Girls of Dicks High
.

“And we want an apology,” Pam said sternly, waving the perky pom-pom girls. We slammed the gate on the way out for emphasis and didn’t say one word in the alley. When we got to the street corner, we couldn’t hold it any longer. We burst into wild laughter that subsided into helpless fits of giggles.

“I almost feel sorry for Erwin, stuck with his cleaning angel mother,” I said, still laughing and wiping the tears from my eyes.

“Don’t waste too much sympathy on him,” Pam said. “He sideswiped your career and nearly totaled it. Now I have to go home. It’s late for me.” I gave her a hug and started back home, feeling lighthearted again. Saved. I was saved. The suit would be dropped, and the charges, too, and I wouldn’t be sent to the
Gazettes
seventh circle, the city desk. Charlie wouldn’t get me this time, and he’d be madder than hell. I couldn’t wait to tell Lyle my good news. Lyle . . . Lyle was gone. He’d walked out on me. I couldn’t tell him anything ever again. He wouldn’t listen to me. My good mood went crashing through the floor. I spent a restless, sleepless night, twisting the sheets and pounding the pillows. Finally I gave up about three, got up and cleaned the house. I wasn’t a fanatic cleaner like Erwin’s mom, but I saved insomniac nights for boring chores like cleaning. Why waste a fine Saturday afternoon mopping the floor, when you could do it in the unwanted hours of the night? I finished about five-thirty and fell into bed. I slept until ten o’clock and
woke up feeling more tired than when I went to bed. My eyes were red and puffy, as if I’d been crying, but I hadn’t. I wouldn’t waste a tear on that man.

I called Marlene to tell her Lyle wouldn’t be at the fireworks picnic. I didn’t want her asking me awkward questions in front of her friends. “You had a fight, didn’t you?” she said.

“We’ve broken up,” I said. The sooner I got it out, the better.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and sounded like she meant it. “What happened?”

“He wants to get married and I don’t.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “How did the only man in America who’s not afraid to commit find the one woman who doesn’t want to?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I could feel my voice wobble. I was
not
going to cry. Time for a change in tone. “If I could figure out how men think I wouldn’t be a newspaper columnist, I’d be a millionaire.”

“You said it, sister, and I’d be the first to pay for that information,” Marlene said. “See you this evening about seven.”

It was a long time until seven o’clock, and I had to do something besides pace the freshly vacuumed floor. I tried to locate the mysterious Sally, but no one answered her doorbell. I checked her porch for signs that the house was deserted. There was no mail collecting in the box, no circulars stuck in the screen door, no yellowing newspapers piled on the porch. The lawn was mowed and the flower beds weeded. Sally was living there. I just wasn’t catching her at home.

Patricia was in her front yard, weeding her hosta bed. She waved to me, and I walked over. As I approached, I saw again how pale and sad she looked. Her brilliant blue eyes were dull and watery, as if she’d cried them out. She’d lost weight, and her bare arms looked like sticks in her “Wildlife Rescue” T-shirt. Poor
Patricia. She must be taking her friend’s death hard. But she still gave me a smile, even though it was an effort. “Hi, Francesca, what are you doing?”

“Trying to find Sally,” I said. “I need to talk to her.”

“For a story?” Patricia asked.

“Eventually,” I said. “I’m looking into who killed Caroline, and I wanted to ask Sally some questions.”

“I saw her car leave about eight this morning, and she hasn’t been back since,” Patricia said. “But when I see her again, I’ll tell her that you’re looking for her.”

I thanked her and went back home. I wanted to get another one of Mrs. Indelicato’s German chocolate cakes to take to Marlene’s fireworks picnic. But it would be tricky. I wasn’t sure I could hide my sorry state from the shrewd Mrs. I. She took a keen interest in my love life and was extremely partial to Lyle. She took over the store after my grandparents died and appointed herself my guardian. Her goal was to see me married, and Lyle was her chosen candidate. If she found out we’d broken up, I was in for one heck of a lecture. Fortunately, Mrs. I’s store was usually packed on a holiday. My strategy was to wait until there was a big crowd, so Mrs. Indelicato would be too busy to talk. Both the 15-
MINUTE PARKING, TOW-AWAY ZONE
spots in front of her shop were taken, and I counted at least six customers through the plate-glass window. Good. That should keep her busy. But the minute I walked in the door, everyone rushed out. You’d have thought I yelled “Fire!” By the time I’d grabbed a cake off the bakery shelf and headed for the cash register, the place was empty. Armed guards must be barring the door, too. No one walked in.

The widowed Mrs. I was probably in her early sixties, but she was not a young, swinging sixty. She had iron in her hair, steel in her spine, and starch in her shirtwaist. She also had a warm heart, but she was unbending on the subject of marriage. She did not believe
a woman without a man was like a fish without a bicycle—she was a fish out of water. I dreaded the next few minutes and prayed a customer would rescue me.

“Is this cake for Lyle?” she said, ringing it up and tying string around the box for easier carrying.

“It’s for a picnic,” I said. “We re watching the fireworks tonight.” I was using the royal we, but she didn’t have to know it.

Mrs. I was not fooled. “So when do I see him again?”

“Uh, he’s busy,” I said. Being a jerk.

“Tell me when he’ll be in again, and I’ll make him my special anise cookies,” she pressed.

“You only make them for me at Christmas,” I said, but she would not be distracted. The woman was relentless.

“Did you have a fight?” she asked.

“Yes. No. Sort of.”

“What about?” she said.

“Marriage,” I said.

“Ah, you want him to marry you, and he won’t. Men are like that. I don’t mean to criticize. I know things are different with young people today, but what is his incentive? Why buy a cow . . .”

“But he wanted the cow,” I interrupted before she finished that horrible old saw. “I mean, he wanted me. I just don’t want to marry him.”

Mrs. I was shocked into silence, but not for long. Soon the words poured out in a torrent. “You turned that fine man down. That good provider. That—”