1 Hot Scheming Mess (22 page)

Spenser said, “Remember the one-word note that you showed to Daniel? He said it was in Cyrillic. Russia was still the Soviet Union back then, and one of the articles mentioned a Soviet girl who was homesick and wouldn’t leave her room.”

“How is it even possible,” Madison asked, “for a girl to be that far along in her pregnancy and no one can tell?”

Spenser said, “Remember Elsie in high school?”

Madison blinked. “I forgot about that. She fooled everyone.”

“We all just thought she was fat until she went into labor,” said Spenser. “Some girls can pull it off.”

The implications continued to open up to Madison’s understanding. She said, “If it was one of the students, then the guardians had to know. That’s why they allowed her to skip the Exposition and stay in her room. They probably insisted.”

“But why wouldn’t they fly her home?” asked Spenser.

Madison stood up from the floor. The sight of the stained fabrics and box made her heartsick. She said, “I don’t know. This was a fast and dirty job, to keep it a secret.”

The hacking at the UW must have been to find the gardeners on payroll that year. They found her grandfather, who still lived at the address of the first house he’d ever bought. And whatever it was that he said to Unibrow, Unibrow didn’t like it. She remembered hearing Unibrow shouting “niet” which she now understood was Russian for “no.” It led to their desperate fist fight.

At first she had felt a little sick at the memory of hitting that stranger with a drill. But now… now that she had seen evidence of how callous the treatment of a newborn baby had been, a baby who had grown up to try to be perfect, to the point of driving Madison crazy, but a desire to be good and perfect nonetheless… well, Madison had no regrets about swinging that drill.

I’ll do it again if he tries to hurt my grandpa.

She heard the dryer ding. Time to fold up the laundry, yes. But she was also ready to fight.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Wearing her little black dress and low heels with her hair neatly tied back into a lovely barrette, Madison entered Holme’s Memorial Chapel carrying her usual tote bag and followed the signs to services for Eddie Willet. Looking around she located the attendant from Holme’s Memorial Chapel, introduced herself, and handed him her card from Phil’s agency to identify herself as the entertainment hired for the occasion. She made it clear that she would treat this very sober occasion with dignity and respect. The pudgy attendant looked at her with knit brows and asked, “Are you sure you were hired to do that? I know this crowd. Actually, I knew the deceased. He had a… reputation. It’s hard to believe that he would want to suddenly be so conservative on the occasion of his own funeral.”

Madison asked, “You knew him? You knew Eddie Willet?”

“Well, not personally, but he attended other funerals here. He always put on quite the show.”

Other people were starting to arrive and sign the guest book. Madison asked, “What do you mean by a show? What kind of show?”

“Well, there was the time he showed up dressed as a clown and juggled some urns for the audience.”

Madison blinked, “Juggled?”

“I’m afraid so. The urns were empty of course. He also sang ‘My Funny Valentine.’” He smiled and nodded at an older lady walking up to the guest book, before continuing. “Then there was the time he arrived very early, dressed as a doctor in surgical scrubs and rubber gloves. He planted dozens of whoopee cushions under the cushions of the pews. Every time someone arrived and sat down, the whoopee cushions would, of course, go off, and people would giggle. But as they kept arriving and sitting, it got to the point that they were laughing in the aisles. Eddie would run up to each person who had set off one of the whoopee sounds and say that he was a proctologist that could help them.”

Madison’s mouth was hanging open. She could hear a few sniffles behind her. She turned around and saw a man comforting a lady by gently hugging her and patting her back. The lady held a tissue to her eyes. Madison turned back around to the attendant. The attendant said, “He made so many people laugh. It’s a large family and he always helped them get through these tough times. Odd sense of humor, I know, but—”

“Are you telling me that all these people that are arriving, are
used
to that sort of thing? At their family
funerals
?”

“Oh, yes,” he answered. “It’s been a Willet family tradition for years. But now there is no one quite like him to do it for his funeral. That’s probably why he called your agency.”

“I see,” said Madison.

“Once, he came dressed as the grim reaper, dragging a stuffed dog on the end of a leash…”

“I get it already,” said Madison. “I need to do a fast change.” As she dashed down the hall, the attendant finished, “The dog had an X sewn over each eye…”

*****

Since Eddie had traditionally done his shtick at the start of services, Madison had to move like lightning to change her outfit. Her tote bag provided easy access to a few vitals, and she emerged from her makeshift dressing room barefoot and pregnant, her little black dress mostly covered up with ExBoy’s baggy t-shirt that had been folded up in her purse. The fact that it had a baby zombie on the front made it even better. She used a hair ribbon as a belt around her waist to accentuate her big belly, thanks to a small pillow she had grabbed from a chair in the hallway. The effect was perfect.

Her hair was half piled on top of her head with loose hair rollers hanging down, about to make an escape. She ratted some of the hair that wasn’t in the rollers. Mascara that ran under her eyes, smeared lipstick, and a few blacked-out teeth gave her the look she was going for. She found an empty wine bottle in the trash in the hallway. Phil kept her supplied with all sorts of novelty music for any occasion that might be requested, so from the dozens of CDs that lived in her tote bag, she had what Eddie Willet had requested. After confirming her musical cues with the attendant, she took a deep breath, clutched her wine bottle prop, and staggered into the main room. The music started up for “You Made Me Love You.” But this was a raucous, comedic version, complete with bump and grind drum beats at key moments in the song.

She sang and swayed to the music, pretending to lose her balance and almost knock over a chair. She would sing a verse, then hoist the wine bottle up high to take a long swallow, only to lean a little too far backward and stagger over into a spray of flowers. She acted like she’d lost her orientation and spent several seconds singing into the flowers before noticing where the audience really was. She knew the bump and grind section was coming up. To the audience, she was totally into this and having a great time, as they laughed through their tears, thankful that their tradition had been kept. But on the inside, Madison braced herself and danced over to the casket.

The body of an older man lay there, his blue suit making his final voyage quite dignified, save for the big honk horn in his dead hands, and a giant fake flower corsage in his lapel that Madison suspected could squirt water. She almost forgot the words of the song when she saw that he was wearing a big red clown nose.

I hate my job, I hate my job.

She paraded back and forth in front of the casket, pushing her belly out on a hard beat to the right, then a hard beat to the left. The music built to the last chorus, and Madison shimmied at the casket with her eyes closed, not wanting to remember Eddie Willet lying there with his red nose.

She shimmied all the way out the door as the music ended, the audience’s appreciative laughter, and tears momentarily dried, giving her some comfort. But not enough. It was the strangest gig Madison had ever worked. She wanted to kill Phil. She wanted to kill herself. Worst of all, she had to admit that in this particular instance,
My mother was right.

*****

In Giovanni’s restaurant, she adjusted her curly blonde wig, fixed her makeup in the restaurant’s employee bathroom mirror, and added red lipstick. She made sure her teeth were no longer blacked out from the funeral gig and added some nerdy glasses. When doing the Bumbling Waitress character, she liked to disguise herself a bit so that there would be less chance that a friend might happen to be in the restaurant and recognize her, ruining the gag for the victim. A gag gone wrong meant there would be no tips, for sure.

Luckily, this restaurant’s uniform was a dress for the female servers. That meant Madison could add her big ruffled rumba panties in the bit. Stepping out of her little black dress, and into the spare waitress uniform that management had provided, she locked all sad or anxious thoughts from her mind. The client had paid for an innocent gag to be played on her husband and had every reason to expect some fun and laughter with family or friends. Madison wouldn’t disappoint them.

To the side of the busy kitchen, Madison met with the manager who announced that the party had arrived and were seated at their table. There were six people in total in the birthday gathering. The main waiter introduced himself to her and said he had delivered the menus and waters to their table. It was time to introduce Madison to the birthday party as the new waitress in training.

She went through the routine, having done this so many times before. She brought them a basket of bread, then came by to refill their waters, while bringing a second basket of bread to sit next to the first one.

Soon after, she brought the coffees and tea and placed everything with the wrong person. She then hurried off to bring back a third basket of bread, though the first basket was hardly touched. She returned with the bread, and knocked over someone’s water. Apologizing profusely, she proceeded to wipe everything down much too hard, pulling the tablecloth partly off of the table. She said she’d be right back with a water replacement, but instead she brought back two more baskets of bread.

Everyone at the table was in on it, except for the birthday boy, who was starting to act impatient. She made a fuss, apologizing about forgetting the water, hurried off and brought back a pitcher of water, with a sixth basket of bread to add to the bread mountain. Then she refilled each water until it spilled onto the table, and poured water into the poor birthday man’s coffee.

When he protested loudly, she set the water pitcher down knocking over the salt and pepper shakers and the little vase of flowers. Pretending to stand them all back up, she knocked his silverware off of the table. He was quite disgusted by that point, but she proclaimed, “Never fear!” and dove under the table pretending to retrieve the silverware. While under the table, she purposely thumped her elbow up into the underside of the table to make a loud bang. She screamed, then stood up holding her head as if she had injured herself.

The man leaned back in his seat and seemed frightened of her. She shoved her hand into his glass of water to grab the ice, put it on top of her head, and ran away. The others at the table were capturing video of the whole fiasco trying not to laugh too hard, too soon, but were red in the face with the effort, their shoulders silently shaking.

The birthday man told the waiter what was happening and with animated gestures, demanded they get rid of her. That’s when Madison walked back up to the table carrying a chair. She ignored everything the poor man was trying to say, and climbed up, standing on the chair, proclaiming that she was the worst waitress in the world because she had missed her calling. Her calling, she said, was to be a singer.

She asked, “Would you all like to hear me sing?” The birthday man’s wife nodded a vigorous yes, causing her angry and frustrated husband to slap his hand on the table, begging her not to encourage this. The entire table joined in, clapping and cheering, saying, “Yes!” Even tables nearby were amused and egging her on. Still standing on the chair, she bowed to everyone at the table, turned and bowed to the other tables, and made a point of bowing so that her big ruffles on her rumba panties presented themselves quite near the birthday man’s face, forcing him to jerk his head back a bit.

She sang Happy Birthday like a diva, turning heads around the restaurant. As usual, once the birthday victim realized he’d been had, he was flooded with relief that this whole train wreck had been a gag played on him for his birthday. He grabbed his heart saying, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”

When Madison started to sing his name, she stepped down, prancing around the chair as she sang his name, holding it out, modulating upward, her voice demonstrating its strength. In the two seconds between finishing his name and starting the last verse, Madison could hear several people inhale to join in on the last verse.

On the last word “yoooou!” she tore off her nerdy glasses and wound up in his lap, leaving a big red lipstick kiss on his forehead that his friends caught on camera. Her lips were no sooner releasing that kiss when she saw a familiar woman across the restaurant, sitting alone, and watching Madison with a smile. She had red hair. A big sun hat sat on the table.

Patrons around the restaurant contributed to the clapping and Madison, in the man’s lap, smiled for the cameras. But her eyes kept going back to the woman across the restaurant. She wondered if she was not seeing a lot of redheads lately, but rather, she was seeing one particular redhead at various places. It was seeing her face, although across the room, that made Madison realize she hadn’t been able to see her face before now. She’d only seen the hair. So how could she be familiar?

She tried to stand up to leave even though the cameras were still going. The man laughed and pulled her back down, saying, “What’s your hurry?” Madison chuckled along with him, her eyes darting over to the woman’s table. She was already gone. The birthday man was laughing in relief, swearing revenge on his wife by not letting this pretty girl go, but of course it was a brief jest and he let Madison stand up. She wished them all a wonderful day, while the wife smiled and slipped her an envelope.

Yes. The tip.

She made her exit from the birthday table, looking all around the room.
How did she disappear so fast?
Her heart dropped as she remembered the last time she had that exact thought. It was last night in the parking lot, the figure in black.