The Pink Flamingo Murders (30 page)

“Rags,” I said. “My grandmother had a rag bag. She’d cut the buttons off old shirts, keep the collars, if they weren’t frayed, and use the rest for dust rags.”

“That generation understood recycling,” Patricia said, smiling for the first time. “We’ve forgotten all their good habits. I bet your grandmother also washed and reused aluminum foil, glass jars, and plastic bags. She also cleaned her house with environmentally friendly cleaners like vinegar and water.”

“Right again,” I said. Patricia was calming down.

“And she cleaned everything without using a single paper towel,” she said, a not-too-gentle jab at my ignorance. But at least she was smiling.

“True,” I said. “But I’m not sure she would now. Grandma thought rags were a drag. They mildewed. They had to be washed and hung up. And they could be embarrassing. I remember getting in trouble as a kid because I went in her rag bag without permission and used her rags to make a kite tail. Unfortunately, I flew her old underwear in Sublette Park. I never heard the end of that one. But I love pawing through rag
bags—I always have. You can see a person’s life history in there. Let’s see, what do you have?”

Mostly worn and faded T-shirts, which was no surprise. The memorial service was the only time I’d seen her out of uniform. One shirt looked newer than the others. I pulled out her “Walk for Wildlife” T-shirt. It had been washed but was splotched and spattered with blood. Lots of blood. Walk for Wildlife? The shirt looked like she’d been walking on wildlife.

“Jeez,” I said. “What did you do, step on a possum?”

Patricia turned whiter than her funeral shirt. What a strange reaction. Why would Patricia go pale over an old T-shirt? Her eyes looked frightened—and almost as colorless as her skin. They used to be such a brilliant blue. What changed them? Why were Patricia’s eyes so washed out? I stared at her. She was wearing glasses. But they were a recent addition. “Contact lenses!” I said. “That’s why your eyes were so blue. You wear blue contact lenses.”

“Gas-permeable contacts,” Patricia said. “They take a week to ten days to replace. I dropped one down the sink the night . . . Caroline died.”

The blood on the shirt. Patricia wore the “Walk for Wildlife” T-shirt the day of Caroline’s death. Patricia looked frightened when I pulled out the bloody T-shirt. Patricia said she always borrowed Caroline’s tools and Caroline always used her kitchen equipment. It was all falling into place for me. “And you didn’t want to wait more than a week for a new contact lens. So you ran over to Caroline’s to borrow her big pipe wrench, in case your lens was still lodged in the sink pipe.”

“No,” Patricia said. But she was shaking all over and edging back toward the pantry.

“Yes,” I said. “You killed Caroline with the pipe wrench. You hit her with it and got her blood all over yourself. You wore that ‘Walk for Wildlife’ T-shirt the day she died. I remember it. So will Dina. Caroline
killed those people, didn’t she? You knew it. But you didn’t care if she killed Otto or the drug dealer.”

“I didn’t know she killed Otto,” Patricia said. “Not for sure.”

“But you suspected, didn’t you?”

Patricia said nothing and took another step backward. “She killed the dog. That bothered me,” she said. “It was a nasty animal, but only because of the influence of its human companion. It wasn’t right to send it to the shelter to die. But I never knew if Caroline killed Otto.”

“But you suspected, didn’t you?” I said. I felt frightened and queasy, but I couldn’t stop talking, because suddenly I saw how it all came together. “Someone as handy as Caroline would have no trouble fixing Otto’s Christmas lights so he was electrocuted. When did you find out for sure Caroline was a killer—when she murdered the drug dealer? That would have been her third death, if you counted the dog. She was getting careless by then.”

Patricia seemed relieved to talk. “I figured it out when she came home so late that night. She was sweaty and dirty, and I saw her red gas can, the one she used for her lawn mower, in her wheelbarrow. She didn’t bother hiding it. I knew she wasn’t cutting grass at that hour. The next day I heard about the drug dealer being burned out, and I knew she did it.”

“He wasn’t burned out, Patricia. He was burned to death. Roasted alive. That’s murder. And you said nothing.”

“What about all the people he murdered with his drugs? No one cared about them. He was a human cockroach, and she stamped him out,” she said defiantly.

“But maybe if you’d said something and stopped her then, Caroline wouldn’t have killed the human hunk. That’s what you discovered when you went looking
for the pipe wrench—something that told you she’d killed Hawkeye the jogger.”

Patricia’s eyes began to fill with tears. “Don’t call him that silly name. His name was Johnny,” she said, “and he was a beautiful man, spiritually and physically. He believed in recycling and composting. Caroline killed Johnny. She didn’t even care.”

“Caroline had the same attitude as you did—Hawk-eye was another pest, and she exterminated him.”

“No, no,” she wailed. “Johnny was different.”

“Yeah, he was a white boy. A handsome white boy you found attractive. Caroline was truly without prejudice. A pest was a pest, regardless of race or muscular development.”

“You’re despicable,” Patricia said.

“Yep. Now back away from that wooden block of kitchen knives you’ve been heading toward. Go stand over there by the microwave.”

The only other thing I saw on the microwave cart was an electric blender. I wondered how someone with Patricia’s environmental sensibilities could justify electric appliances and a microwave, but I’d ask that question later. I suspected I knew the answer, anyway. She had them because they were convenient for her. Just like it was convenient for her that Otto and the drug dealer died. She felt more remorse over the death of a dog than a human being.

“You found something that told you Caroline killed Johnny Hawkeye,” I said. I was moving slowly backward across that endless kitchen to the wall phone by the door, so I could call 911. I didn’t want to turn my back on her.

“I couldn’t find the pipe wrench on the garage wall pegboard,” Patricia said. “That’s where Caroline usually hangs her bigger tools. So I started rummaging around in her tool box. I found the pipe wrench about the same time I found a spool of thin wire. I’d heard
that the police thought a wire had been stretched across the alley to kill Johnny.”

“So you killed Caroline for that? For wire that could be found in half the toolboxes in the city?”

“No,” Patricia said sharply. “I killed her because she came into the garage right then and saw the wire. And when I asked her if she killed Johnny, she didn’t bother denying it. She knew I’d figured out that she killed Otto and the drug dealer and I’d said nothing, so I guess she thought I approved of all her murders.”

“You did.”

“Not Johnny!” she screamed. “She said something so callous, so cruel. She said instead of ruining her grass, he was making himself useful pushing up daisies. Then she laughed. She laughed and walked away again. She was outside, standing on the grass between her place and mine. Her back was turned to me. I picked up the pipe wrench, walked up behind her, and swung without thinking.” I stared at Patricia in fascination while she grabbed the heavy glass blender by the handle and swung. I started thinking and ducked. Now I understood how she killed Caroline. For a skinny woman, she had an arm like a stevedore. If she’d hit me in the head, I’d be pushing up daisies like Hawkeye. Instead, she cracked me on the left elbow. I shrieked, half blinded by the flash of pain. I slipped to one knee, then staggered to my feet, but I couldn’t move my left arm at all. Good thing I was right-handed.

She ran for the kitchen cabinets, pulled a gun out of the silverware drawer, aimed at me, and fired. Damn! She hit the phone. There went my chance of getting help. The second shot went wild, too, and took out the glass in the side kitchen window. I hoped her next-door neighbor would hear the noise and call the police. Then I remembered the neighbor on that side was Caroline.

Patricia was furious. “That’s the original glass,” she said. “It’s your fault.” I was crawling toward the butler’s pantry, when she closed in on me. The gun was only a few feet away from my head, and this time, I didn’t think even Patricia could miss. She pulled the trigger. I waited for the sound, probably the last one I’d hear. There was nothing. The gun had jammed. She threw it at me and finally hit me. It hurt, too. But it got my brain working.

“You bought that gun from the kids in the trouble house,” I blurted. “They were selling stolen weapons, and those don’t come with money-back guarantees. You’re the one who shot at me on the Fourth of July. You missed then, too.”

“It’s harder than you think to shoot someone,” she whined. “Besides, my hands were shaking. I was going to kill you later. But then I had a long talk with Margie and found out you didn’t know anything, so I quit worrying. I figured it was safer to let you blunder around. You were so far off, it wasn’t funny.”

She was right. I wasn’t laughing. My elbow hurt too much. Patricia’s voice turned scornful. “I heard you talked with Caroline’s ex-husband and Sally’s old boyfriend Darryl. How could you be so stupid? You weren’t even close. And then today, you wanted to talk to Sally. You thought her redneck boyfriend beat her up, didn’t you? All I had to do was make a couple of remarks, and you jumped to another wrong conclusion. Do you know why she was really wearing that bandage on her face? She had a face-lift. You were wrong again, Francesca. You couldn’t . . . you couldn’t find your ass with both hands.”

It sounded funny when Patricia said it, because she wasn’t used to cussing. Besides, I’d found the mop with one hand. My good hand, too. The one I could still move. I tried to keep her talking, so I could either hit her with the mop or rush past her and get out of
here. “Who told you that I’d been talking with Darryl?” I demanded.

“Margie,” she answered. “I took over a bottle of bourbon one night and we talked until one
A.M
. Margie didn’t suspect me, either. She was just as dumb as you, and she wanted someone to talk to. We . . .” She grabbed the biggest knife out of the block, but I hit her hand with the mop handle first. Even one-handed, I must have got her good. She dropped it and screamed.

I picked up a big crock of sugar by the handle and threw it at her, but my aim wasn’t so hot. It caught her on the shin and then skidded across the floor, scattering sugar everywhere. She went over backward in the slippery stuff. This put her in range of a shelf full of pots. She heaved a heavy Dutch oven at my knee. I slid out of the way on the sticky, sugared floor, and began throwing dirty dishes out of the sink at her. They only slowed down Patricia slightly, but at least she wouldn’t have to wash them.

I had a nasty cut on my hand, probably from crawling in the broken china. She had a cast-iron frying pan that looked positively lethal. I heard the tea kettle whistling. So did she, but I was closer to the stove. I picked it up and threw the boiling water at her. The full kettle was too heavy for one hand. My aim was off, but I managed to scald Patricia with boiling water on her face and arms. Her eyes were protected by her glasses, but her arms and face had red streaks and splotches. She screamed in horror. So did I. I’d never hurt anyone like that, not ever. The pain only seemed to enrage her and make her stronger, while I felt sick and weak. She charged me, and the tea kettle banged to the floor. She had my hand in a grip I couldn’t budge. I tried to pry her fingers off it, but she dragged me over to the butler’s pantry, where she began forcing my hand into the can crusher. “I’ll be scarred, Francesca,” she said, “but I’ll still be able to work.
You’ll be out of a job. When this can crusher finishes mashing your hand, you won’t be able to write another stupid word. You won’t be able to write anything, anyway, because after I cripple you, I’m going to kill you. But you deserve to suffer first.”

I didn’t mention that she was trying to crush my left hand, and I was right-handed. Her eyes looked wild and crazy. The veins stood out on her neck. She was beyond reason, and I couldn’t talk. Pain was shooting up my already injured left arm. I fought her off with my right, but I was getting weaker. I couldn’t think. She had me backed against the bin of brown glass.

When I quit thinking, my South Side heritage reasserted itself. Brown glass. Beer bottles—the ultimate saloon defense weapon. In finest city style, I grabbed a brown glass beer bottle by the neck and hit it against the counter. Now I had the perfect weapon—nasty, jagged, and potentially lethal. And I wasn’t afraid to use it. I rammed the jagged edges in her neck, as hard as I could.

Patricia made awful gurgling noises, and there was a bloody froth around her throat. Blood. There was lots of blood, and that horrible inhuman sound from her throat. She let go of my hand and clawed at her throat, smearing the blood. She was dying, right in front of me. I couldn’t look. I was afraid I’d pass out.

“I’m a murderer, just like my mother,” I thought.

“Patricia! It’s me, Dina.”