The Pink Flamingo Murders (32 page)

We both ate another lemon bar and solemnly agreed with each other, although I wondered if I’d feel the same way about face-lifts in another ten years or so. Mrs. Meyer, in her white tennis shoes and flowered housedresses, had the courage to let herself age gracefully. I hoped I would.

Mrs. Meyer also told me the trouble house family moved out the day after Patricia’s arrest. “The police were over there asking questions about where Patricia got that gun,” she said with great satisfaction. “Must have scared them. The whole bunch took off in the middle of the night, and good riddance. I watched them load a pickup full of furniture and appliances. Packed it so high they had to tie everything down with rope. They loaded up three beds, an almost new couch, some lamps and tables, a stove, and a refrigerator. I thought that was odd. That was a furnished apartment they were renting, you know. But I didn’t call the landlord.
Couldn’t even if I’d wanted. The landlord unplugged his phone at night.”

“One of those, huh?” I said. The city was plagued with landlords who ducked their responsibilities. “Let me guess. He lived in West County.”

“Chesterfield,” Mrs. Meyer said. “In a great big new house. On a very quiet street. You can bet he doesn’t put up with the noise like we had to. Dina found his address and phone number in the city records, and we all started calling him to complain about those people. His tenants were selling drugs, and guns, and had loud music blasting late at night. Ooh, you couldn’t believe the pounding sound and the filthy language that so-called music used. But the landlord didn’t want to hear about that. All he wanted was his rent check. One Saturday night at two
A.M
., when we were awakened for the second night in a row, we all called. The landlord must have heard from ten or fifteen neighbors. After that he unplugged his phone when he went to bed, so we couldn’t bother him. So I couldn’t call him when his tenant drove off with all that furniture, and it wasn’t my place to call the police.”

“Right,” I said, knowing Mrs. Meyer called the police about as often as most people dialed time and temperature. She fed them lemon bars and wrote nice letters to their superiors about how helpful the officers were, so she got a pretty good response.

“The next morning I called the landlord at his office and told him his renters had left and he’d better secure the front door, because it was wide open. He drove right over here. When he found out his renters had hightailed it with his furniture, you could hear him yelling all the way back to Chesterfield.” Mrs. Meyer grinned. “They owed two months back rent, too. There is a God, and she is just.”

During another lemon bar session, Mrs. Meyer also told me the latest Dale and Kathy rehabbing disaster.
Actually, I ate the lemon bars. She was busy knitting something yellow. “Dale and Kathy patched all the cardboard-covered holes in the walls, except for one on the third floor. Dale was going to fix it. He was about to plug in his screw gun, when he noticed something odd. It wasn’t a regular wall receptacle. It was a cheap brown extension cord, papered right into the wall. He followed the cord around, and found it was a series of extension cords stapled into the molding. The previous owner had been running a TV and a fan off that crazy arrangement. It’s a wonder their house didn’t burn down. Dale and Kathy only used that floor for storage, and they never noticed the extension cords before. I don’t have to tell you they had an electrician over there right away.”

“I guess they’re going to be busy fixing up the third floor now,” I said.

“No, not really,” Mrs. Meyer said, and smiled. “They’re both working feverishly on the second-floor nursery. Kathy’s expecting. They’ve been trying for some time, and they’re both deliriously happy about the baby.”

“They’re always deliriously happy,” I said, sounding somewhat churlish.

“That’s because they don’t need or want the same things you do, dear,” Mrs. Meyer said, calmly knitting. “You would be miserable with a husband and children. You know that, don’t you?” Then she abruptly changed the subject. “I’m knitting this for the baby,” she said, holding up something that looked like morning sunshine with arms and legs. I wasn’t sure what it was, and I was ashamed to ask. I guess I’m not cut out for family life.

I don’t hear much from Dina these days. She called once or twice to see how my elbow was healing, but she is busy with her new job at the mayor’s office. The last time I heard from her, Dina asked if I still wanted
to contribute something for Caroline’s flowers. I told her I’d given Margie a ten-dollar bill the day of the memorial service. Dina called Margie, who said she’d forgotten it, and she’d bring it right over.

Margie no longer calls me with funny story ideas. She called once to thank me after Patricia was arrested and gave me an antique silver cigarette case as a present. I don’t smoke, but I like the case. Mellow old silver has such a lovely sheen. I leave it out on the coffee table, except when Jinny comes to call. It’s not that I believe Margie stole this one from Jinny’s friend. I just don’t like complications.

Nothing much changed at the
Gazette
. Most of the staff was busily backstabbing everybody else or working to turn out a third-rate paper in a first-rate city. I kept out of sight, wrote my columns, and enjoyed the wacky tales my readers told me. They kept me sane. But the best story didn’t come from a reader. It was the saga of Charlie’s wife. Excuse me, ex-wife. The woman we’d dismissed as a dull little sparrow had been canny as a hawk. While Charlie had been busy skirt-chasing at the
Gazette
, “the Wife,” as he called her, had been quietly taking courses at Midwestern State University, so she could complete her degree in art history at his expense. The Wife, who was actually named Natalie, had a plan. She confided it to a friend, who told the whole world after Natalie’s divorce. Natalie wanted to get a job in the university’s art department as soon as she had her master’s degree. She knew two instructors would be retiring that same year, and she had a little pull with the college board. She was pretty certain she could swing a low-level instructor’s job. As soon as she did, she planned to divorce Charlie. Instead, he divorced her first. Because Nails was pregnant and he needed to untie the knot fast, Natalie’s lawyer was able to negotiate a hefty cash settlement and monthly
maintenance. She used some of the money for a makeover, a new wardrobe, and a health club membership. The rest she spent opening the small, chic Showcase 26 in the hot new Clayton arts district. Tina, our City Hall reporter, told me the twenty-sixth was the day Natalie’s divorce from Charlie became final, but that could have been a coincidence.

The Showcase 26 opening was quite an event, thanks to heavy hype on the
Gazette
arts page. Charlie ordered the
Gazette
arts reviewer to give the show, a display of feminist origami, a favorable review. Charlie was terrified that if the gallery failed, the judge might up his maintenance. With two kids in college and one on the way, he couldn’t afford any more debt.

Even the bitchiest
Gazette
staffer said Charlie’s ex looked stunning that night. Natalie’s hair was streaked blond, her body looked tanned and toned, and her short, low-cut black Ungaro showed off trim legs and a first-rate boob job. What a change. When she used to make public appearances with Charlie, she always wore long gathered skirts and artsy loose tops. Babe claimed he could see the face-lift scars around her ears, but he always said that when a woman over forty looked good.

Several people noticed Natalie was being particularly nice to Nails. At eight months, Nails’s wardrobe choices were somewhat limited, and she’d opted for the sweet impending motherhood look. An unfortunate late-stage waddle and a natural tendency to sweat made her look more frump than mother figure. But Charlie’s ex-wife brought Nails a cool nonalcoholic drink with her own hands and praised her outfit. Several people overheard Natalie say “Those little ducks around your collar are so retro, my dear. I can’t tell you how much I admire a woman who has a child after age forty. Late-night feedings and diapers were almost more than I could handle at twenty-five. But
you’ll be surprised how fast the time will pass. Why, Charlie will be seventy-two-years old when your little one graduates from college.”

Nails did not seem comforted by this revelation, but with less than a month to go before the birth, I doubt if anything made her comfortable. Babe insisted that he heard Charlie hitting on his ex that same night, when Natalie was alone in the gallery office, and she turned him down. But you can only believe about half of Babe’s tales.

We did know for sure that Natalie is dating a Clayton lawyer. That wasn’t a surprise. Clayton, with its huge county courthouse, was overrun with lawyers. But this one was Charlie’s worst nightmare, a libel lawyer. Natalie knew many intimate
Gazette
secrets from years of listening to Charlie rant about libel suits, and Charlie was worried she’d impart them to her new lover. She never mentioned the subject to Charlie when he called to ask about their two college-age children. I wondered if Nails had to listen to Charlie go on about potential libel suits, his ex-wife, and her lawyer lover.

I won the Nails Is Nailed baby pool. The money was almost enough to cover my court costs and fines from my alley escapade, but it couldn’t help with the year’s probation. I was supposed to be grateful because all the tickets had been combined and knocked down to two: speeding and exceeding the speed limit in an alley. The fact that I was running from someone who was trying to shoot me was not considered a mitigating circumstance. The judge said he couldn’t show favoritism to a
Gazette
reporter. I wished the
Gazette
had shown more favoritism and supported his honor in the last election. I might have had a lighter sentence.

Three days after the birth Smiley Steve posted the baby’s picture on the office bulletin board. I’d watched
my mouth for a while and was back in the good graces of my mentor. Georgia. She was in a good mood, anyway. The
Gazette
book club went on hiatus when Nails went in to have the baby, and with any luck, the club would stay that way and Georgia would never have to finish
Ensheathe and Ensnare
, etc.

I’d run into Georgia in the hall, and the two of us stared at the red, angry-looking creature in the hospital photo.

“The kid’s bald and has a pot belly, so he must be Charlie’s,” I said.

“All babies look like that,” Georgia said.

“Well, with Charlie’s record for monogamy, maybe they’re all his.” Georgia was about to think up something sarcastic when Smiley Steve came by, collecting for the baby present. I threw in five bucks before Georgia made me give more.

“What are they calling the baby?” Georgia asked Steve.

“Van would be a good name,” I said, remembering where the parents had their tryst in my neighborhood. Smiley Steve looked puzzled. Georgia gave me a glare that should have peeled the makeup off my face. For a small person, she has a powerful presence.

The child’s name was Charles Junior. We all waited for Mother Nails to return from maternity leave. I was sure she’d dump the kid with a nanny as soon as possible and get back to causing trouble at the
Gazette
. But she didn’t. Two weeks later, posted next to Charlie Junior’s pot-bellied picture, was this announcement:

“Ms. Nadia Noonin is resigning as editor of the
Gazette
All Business section, effective immediately, so that she can devote herself full time to parenting. She will contribute a monthly column on child rearing to the
Gazette.”
It was signed by Charlie himself.

Nails giving up her career for a kid? I was shocked. I also didn’t believe it. That woman didn’t take up with
Charlie because she wanted a husband and child. She got pregnant and married him to advance her career. Something had gone wrong with her grand plan. We found out what it was soon enough. I heard a version of the same story from Babe, our gossip columnist, and Endora, the one
Gazette
reporter who really did move in St. Louis society. Two sources are enough to confirm any story. Here’s what Babe and Endora said happened:

Charlie and Nails’s fling went unchecked, until it finally embarrassed the publisher personally. He’d been spending most of his time at the home office in Boston, so he had no idea the scandal his managing editor and business editor were causing, and no one at the paper wanted to wise him up. When he finally came into town, a couple of his pals sat him down at the Petroleum Club and explained the facts of life to the man. It turned out Adam Eichelberg, the president of the Eichelberg Company, the one Nails repeatedly attacked in her column for sex discrimination, was a friend of these men. They didn’t appreciate their pal Adam being pilloried in the press as a woman-chasing sexist pig while Nails and Charlie were licking champagne off each other at the Opera Theatre. The publisher was steaming when he finally heard the Charlie and Nails stories. They made him a laughingstock in the sanctuary of his club. He called Charlie on the carpet and gave him a choice: She goes, or he goes. Or they could both go. The publisher didn’t much care.

Charlie cared. Nails went.

“He sold out his own wife to save his career,” I said to Georgia.

“You sound surprised,” she said. “You’ve known all along that Charlie would betray anyone.” I knew it. But his capacity for double-dealing always amazed me.

I wasn’t surprised when Marlene the waitress gave
me the final chapter to Charlie and Nails’s love story. I came in for my usual one morning at Uncle Bob’s and she was fuming. She couldn’t even wait for me to sit down before she blurted, “Charlie was in last night, without the Queen of Sheba.” That was her nickname for Nails. He must have done something really bad. Marlene was still furious. I could tell by the extra pink that stained her pretty Irish complexion.

“Nails is at home these days, devoting herself to nurturing and parenting,” I said.

“He’s in here, devoting himself to hitting on my waitresses,” Marlene said. “He came in late last night. He told Shelley, my youngest and most innocent server, that she had beautiful eyes.”