Brownie and the Dame (12 page)

Yeah, sweetheart, we’re the ribs, the patsies, and we ain’t goin’ take it no more. We got your number. We’ve got you crabbed, dingus.
 

It was a little difficult to see through the crack in the door. The edge of the door was lined with a strip of rubber to keep the cold out, and the strip was blocking them, even though it was cracked and peeling. There was enough of a gap to let the light through and little else. Brownie adjusted his stance, propping his hand on Janie’s back. Janie was trying to jam her face against the door in order to see through the obstruction.

Inside were figures moving, which was odd considering that the parking lot was empty outside.

Highly suspect,
Brownie thought. He leaned forward just a tad.

“What do you see?” Janie muttered.

“People moving inside. A lot of ‘em,” he whispered back. “Sounds like they’re chanting, just like you said. Could be a cult. A cult who wants weird stuff.”

“Do you see any of the missing items?” Janie said lowly.

Brownie tilted his head. “No, I don’t see anything except some folks moving back and forth and saying, quiet down, they’re saying…”

Janie said, “What the heck?”

“‘
On top of spaghetti
,’” Brownie sang along, “‘
all covered with cheese
.’”

“What?”

“‘
I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed
.’”

“My grandma sings that song,” Janie said with disgust.

“That’s not chanting,” Brownie concluded. “‘
It rolled off the table and onto the floor. Then my poor meatball rolled right out the door.
’”

“It’s, like, for little kids,” Janie said. “Babies.”

Brownie leaned forward again, and that was his mistake. One of his hands came up to rest on the door, but his weight must have been a little too much for the decades-old doors. The door made an ominous cracking sound. Brownie found himself without any support. The doors were pushed open by his inadvertent movement. He tumbled inside the room and accidentally brought Janie along with him.

They fell to the ground, and both scrambled to get up.

All of the occupants of the inner room abruptly froze, and the immortal words of an ancient camp song died away.

Brownie and Janie were startled into a similar frozen position. For a long moment, the two children stared at the six people standing there, and the six people stared at the two children.

Finally, one of the gang brought up her weapon, which had been conveniently hanging at her shoulder, and shot the coon-dog-carp out of the two children. Actually, the gang member shot the coon-dog-carp out of one child because Brownie threw himself in front of Janie and took the barrage of ammo raining down upon them. There was an abundance of noise overwhelming the area. Someone was screaming. One of the gang was shrieking orders. The shooter was laughing maniacally. “BWAHAHAHAHA!”

It all ended because the weapon ran out of ammunition. The finger on the trigger moved spastically, and the weapon went click-click-click. “Fie upon it!” the gang member yelled forcefully.

Brownie coughed, “I think this is the end of me, chickie.” He groaned and fell over onto the floor, holding his chest where most of the hits had concentrated. “I should have never switched from scotch to martinis.”

Janie awkwardly patted his shoulder.

“Everything’s going black,” Brownie muttered. One hand fluttered theatrically in front of his face.

Someone turned on another set of lights.

“Now it’s going white,” Brownie said. “I don’t see a tunnel. Tell Ma I love her, but she’s a lousy cook.”

The perpetrators came and stared down at Brownie.

Miz Demetrice said, “I thought you were investigating a missing tree, Brownie dearest.”

Brownie coughed weakly again. “It’s fading and I’m so cold. Cooooold.” His eyes started to close because they were so heavy. The eyelids slid shut, and Brownie waited for the feminine wailing of distress to commence over his dramatic death scene.

“It’s two degrees hotter in here than the hinges of hell,” Miz Adelia said.

Janie poked at Brownie’s chest with one finger. “Hmm,” she said. “That’s a nice tight shot grouping.”

Someone else snarled, “Thou pasty, rough-hewn clotpole.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have given Thelda that gun,” Miz Demetrice supposed.

“
Why
were ya’ll singing?” Janie demanded.

“It’s hot as the devil’s portapotty in here, and we’re setting up for…the Pegramville Women’s Club meeting tomorrow,” Miz Demetrice said weakly, “of course. Why aren’t you children detecting for further thefts?”

“The trail led here,” Janie said. “Is that one of the loonies?”

“Dear, loonies is such a harsh term,” Miz Demetrice chastised. “Thelda is merely expressing herself in a Shakespearian fashion. It’s remarkably refreshing. Plus, she bluffs like you wouldn’t— she, uh, makes wonderful pink lemonade. The secret is fresh cranberries.”

“Thelda,” Janie repeated. “Auntie Wills said she was the one who wore three sweaters. Sometimes four.”

“We’ve got her down to one in here,” Miz Adelia interjected. “The air conditioning doesn’t seem to be working properly.”

“Thee art a purpled, plume-plucked rabbit hole,” Thelda protested.

“I know, dear,” Miz Demetrice said.

Brownie opened one eye. Several older women were standing around looking down at him, with Janie perched at his side. He opened the other eye and stared. “Hey, what about me?”

Janie patted him again. “My hero,” she said. “Threw yourself in front of gunfire for me.”

“It stings,” Brownie said loudly. “There’s a tunnel! I kin see it now. Tell Ma not to look under the mattress in the guest bedroom because that’s where I hid some magazines she may not want to see.”

“What kind of magazines?” Janie asked with interest.

“Magazines Pa had hidden in the garage,” Brownie said and then bit the side of his cheek. “Do they have all the missing items?”

Janie looked around. “No. No spatulas, bras, penguins, or trees in here at all.”

“Dang,” Brownie muttered. “I thought we had them. But then why shoot me?”

Miz Demetrice clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Thelda was just guarding the door from, ah, interlopers. We don’t like folks wandering in when we’re setting up for the Pegramville Women’s Club. No, we surely do not.”

“With a gun?” Brownie asked. His eyes fluttered again. “There’s a big white tunnel with Papa Derryberry on the other end. He’s got a big tray of Mammaw’s special Brown Betty. I kin smell the apples and the cinnamon. How can I be hungry at a time like this?”

“Thee art a weak-kneed, knavish pantaloon,” Thelda pronounced. Brownie’s eyes opened again, and he saw that the middle-aged sometime occupant of the local mental institute was looking around for moral support. She swung her hand about and adjusted the single sweater she was wearing along with the strap of the weapon hanging at her side. “Thee
art!
”

“Oh, Brownie art all right,” Miz Demetrice soothed. “You
are
all out of ammo, Thelda dear?”

Brownie lifted his head and stared at the weapon. It looked like a very fancy Uzi. Thelda had allowed it to rest at her side, but she was keeping her hand on the lower grip and the trigger assembly. “Thee art a dankish, rug-headed minimus.”

“That’s not an Uzi,” he protested. The top of the weapon had a bowl like feature that appeared very odd. It appeared as though someone would pour the ammo in the top like…

Brownie looked down at himself. His t-shirt was covered with splatters. It wasn’t splatters of blood but splatters of five different colors of paint. There was robin egg blue, orangesicle orange, passionate pink, grasshopper green, and you-light-up-the-sky yellow. It wasn’t exactly the rainbow but it was close. “You gave a paintball gun to a loony?”

“She’s
guarding
the door,” Miz Demetrice said firmly, “and you had no bidness coming in here.”

Brownie let his head drop to the floor. He’d lost his hat in all the ruckus. With his luck it probably had paintball splatters on it. It would be marginally cool if it had been Russian red-paint splatters or vampire blood red or even surgery remnants red, but not passionate pink and grasshopper green. That would be silly. There wasn’t even going to be a decent-sized bullet hole in the brim to show to the smaller kids.
For the street cred, of course
.

Janie patted Brownie again. “It only stings for a little while,” she said. “You didn’t see a cherry tree anywhere around here, did you, Miz Demetrice?”

“I cannot tell a lie,” Miz Demetrice said with a grave expression, “I chopped it down.”

Janie scowled.

“You’re tooting the wrong ringer,” Brownie told Janie. “We’d better lam out before the crazy twist squirts metal at me again.”

“Paintballs,” Janie corrected. “And she shouldn’t have shot you without safety equipment on.”

“That’s true,” Miz Demetrice said to Thelda who hung her head sadly, “You could have hit his eyes.”

“Who is supposed to be watching these kids?” another woman said. “I thought you said Brownie wouldn’t be anywhere around the game— I mean, the meeting?”

“Wilma,” Miz Demetrice said, “it’s of no consequence. And no one can
watch
Brownie Snoddy. Or Janie for that matter. They’re a force of nature. Little tornados if you will, F4s at the very best. That’s from the Fujita Scale,” she added for Thelda’s benefit.

Brownie wasn’t sure if he had just been slighted or not. Miz Demetrice and Miz Adelia both had a way of saying things that sounded as if a fellow
should
be insulted. But the two older ladies would smile indulgently, and that would be the end of that. Besides who wanted to argue with a woman who regularly said she killed off her husband by methods as varied as words in a thesaurus? He took it as acerbic teasing and left it alone.

“Come on, Brownie,” Janie said. “We can stakeout the place from the outside.”

“Stakeout?” Miz Adelia repeated. “Whatever do ya’ll think is going to happen here?”

Brownie climbed to his feet and glanced at his splattered t-shirt again. The paint was still wet, and he couldn’t brush it off. At least it wasn’t the suit. “We have reason to believe a crime will be committed here soon.”

All movement and sound ceased immediately. They might have been statues in a museum. Brownie was looking around for the errant fedora when he became aware that silence had ensued. “You know, something else gone missing,” he clarified because it seemed like the older women needed some kind of explanation.

Brownie scanned the area. It was a large meeting room with a low stage. There was a huge stuffed moose head on one wall. His antlers were terribly prodigious, and he guarded the room with aplomb. There was moose paraphernalia on the wall such as a Moose Xing sign and one that said “Moose ate my homework.” There was even a shelf of wide-ranging moose plushes, and Brownie eyed the shelf scanning for an illicit black and white moose/penguin trying to fit in.

He could easily envision a group of happy Moose cavorting and canoodling in cheerful pursuit of their aims, whatever those aims would be. In the present, there were several round tables set up in a large circle. Eight chairs were organized around each. Miz Demetrice and the rest had been singing words from a song from the eighties while putting on tablecloths and arranging sets of playing cards and multicolored chips. Placed in the center of the assembly was a flag on an oak flagpole. The flagpole was inserted into a large brass plant container holding a weary Boston fern. The large flag itself was constructed of piecemeal quilting and had a picture of a snake in several pieces stretching out across the flag. A fan was blowing from the stage, and he could see the words on the flag were “Don’t tread on me!”

Brownie frowned.
Pegramville Women’s Club looked like they was goin’ to have a poker party. After all, Ma had friends over playing something called Texas Hold ‘Em once a month. Sometimes they play something called Buffalo Flop, that used three community cards, wild face-up queens, which cost the player a dollar to keep, and they all drank a shot of tequila ifin a player had a hand of aces and eights.
It all seemed very silly to Brownie.
Ma always has a hangover the next day, and Pa takes me fishing because it was safer not to be in the same house with Ma at that time.

“Why ain’t your cars out front?” Brownie demanded. He knelt under a table and found the wayward fedora.

Miz Demetrice’s eyes darted left and then right. “The Moose don’t like us to use their parking lot, dear. They say we tear up the asphalt something fierce.” She smiled abruptly, and the change made Brownie nervous. “You know, you chillen have got to be hungry. Why don’t you run them home, Miz Adelia, and feed them something?”

“I think that’s a right fine idea,” Miz Adelia agreed. She tried to shoo Brownie and Janie out, but Janie was dragging her heels.

“Ya’ll are acting shadily,” Janie announced baldly. She crossed her little arms across her chest and stood firm.

“We’re old. It’s what we’re supposed to do,” Miz Demetrice said. “Take your Flintstones now, I always say. Avoid our fate.”

“That’s what happens when you need more fiber,” another woman said.