Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 02 - Christmas Bizarre (26 page)

I tucked and rolled on the kitchen floor for all
I was worth – my shoes and jeans were on fire. Suddenly I felt a cloth thrown on me, and got tackled. We rolled then abruptly stopped. Mitchell got off me, and stood leaning on the kitchen sink, like a smoking gun. Which he really was. His jeans were smoldering and he was holding a gun.

We heard crashing down the steps.
Myron came into view, holding Mrs. Phang with his gun to her head.

“Forget something, Kitchen?”
But his eyes opened wide seeing Agent Mitchell, aka dead Leon Martini.

“
Nope,” Mitchell answered, just after he blasted a bullet straight through Myron’s forehead.

Myron fell.
A small explosion sounded beneath us.

“C’mon! Let’s get out of here!” Mrs. Phang screamed, grabbing my hand.
Mitchell followed.

Myron, Bernie and Dexter did not.

“You almost ready,
Toots?”

I surveyed the
mitigated damage in the mirror.

Trixie shrugged.
“It’s hair. It’ll grow.”

Thanks to Agent Mitchell, I’d been spared the
severe burns I might have had. But my pony tail suffered a casualty so a good three inches of singed hair got hacked a day after the hospital declared us A-OK, at the Godmother’s insistence, and on her tab. I now sported a kind of layered bowl cut. It wasn’t completely unflattering. But it wasn’t me. I looked like me in someone else’s hair. Luckily, I didn’t cave at the stylist’s suggestion (insert grappling of wills here) to have my hair tipped ala Ombre. Right now, I wished I could press my belly button and make it grow like my childhood doll had.

“Almost,” I called back to Vito.

He and Miriam spent a couple days in a panic about my disappearance, as I found out. Which is why they’ve been acting a little clingy. That, and Ma and Aunt Muriel told them to. They want to make sure I stay safe and sound, until I go visit them in Virginia since the twins were born earlier than expected. Although their arrival might not have been premature, considering my sister thinks she swallowed a button instead of a birth control pill.

So
there was an upside to Vito holding onto the spare key to my place: Vinnie and Marie were well fed and petted in my absence. The downside was Vito’s past life and associated thinking. After he found my van and not me, and after a ton of phone calls from Ma wondering where the hell I was, he checked in with Trixie. She blabbed to him about to my non-date with James. Since James was the last person to see me before Dexter kidnapped me, Trixie and Vito assumed the worst and dragged Mike into the picture. Lucky for James that K. wandered into the mix, otherwise we’d still be bailing him out. Mike isn’t big on kidnapping, even if it was just me.

Hence, Agent Mitchell.
Sort of. Mike wasn’t convinced it was as dire as Ma and Trixie made out. But after he chatted up Bauser and Norman, and they told him about the non-fortune cookie, he had a buddy investigate. Thank goodness Mitchell took his undercover work seriously, and made sure there was a backup plan in place. When he hadn’t called his partner soon after the fake fortune cookie delivery, the rest of his plan fell like dominos. The game, not the pizza. So right after Mrs. Phang, Mitchell and I busted out of Dodge, the house exploded and the cops showed up. Pretty much in that order.

Eventually
the firemen came out to play. What was left of Myron, Dexter and Bernie wasn’t pretty, but was identifiable.

“Girls, really!
We’re going to be
late!
” For all of K.’s wonky creative tendencies, he does harbor a sincere work ethic. Which I guess is why he’s so successful. As well as becoming increasingly compulsive about
never
being late.

“Coming! Coming!” Trixie clopped down the stairs.

“Brrr-wuf?”

“Yep, I’ll be back
soon, sugar bear.” I hugged Vinnie hard. In fact, since I got released from the hospital, I hadn’t ventured about the house without him tagging alongside. And vice versa.

Mike Green stood at the bottom of the steps,
his arm around Trixie’s shoulders. “You be good. Don’t spend too much. And nothing…fancy, right?”

“You’re so boring.”

“That’s why you love me.” He kissed her softly on her forehead.

“Are you sure you’re okay staying here
, Mike? It’s not necessary,” I began.

“
Yes it is!
” chorused everyone else. Marie piped up from her room.

Yeeshkabiddle.

Mike pretended to clear his throat. “I’m better off here. I’m not big on craft sales.”

“Besides which, your pets are on the nervy side.
They didn’t know what happened to you!” Miriam bobbed her head up and down emphatically.

Vito flapped his arms.
“Sure they did! They smelled burnt hair, right?”

“What’s that supposed to tell them? Their mother stuck her head in the oven?”

He frowned. “The oven’s electric.”

“
You see?”

I considered it.
Unless my pets thought I was about to commit suicide with an electric oven, this made sense. That, and Vinnie’s trip to the vet – thanks to Miriam, after she noticed him walking funny – probably did mean they were on the nervy side with my taking off for a bit. Even if it was just for a couple hours at the Christmas Bazaar.

“I don’t really need to buy anything.
Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

K. rolled his eyes.
“Of course you should go! You shouldn’t shop because you
need
something!”

“But my Christmas
shopping’s done.”

“No
it isn’t. I saw that stash of chicken stock in your freezer and I refuse to accept it as a gift.”

“It’s useful.”

“So is toilet paper. But you don’t give it as a present!”

I gave him the squinty eye.
“Ha! So
you
dumped the Hoisin Duck!”

“Huh?”

“I made a glazed duck. I left it in the fridge.”

Trixie leaned in.
“That sounds yummy!”

“I hoped so. It was going to be your present.”

Miriam cleared her throat. “You mean that big chicken?”

“Chicken?”

“In the middle of your fridge.”

“It was a duck.”

“Well, it was.”

“Was what?”

“Delicious!”

“Huh?”

“We got a little side-tracked, what with looking for you and still working on the Manishewitz contest and all. And then we found the chicken – errm, duck - with the glaze on it. And we wondered if it tasted like our glaze.”

Vito help up a hand.
“You wondered.”

“
I did not!”

I rolled my eyes
and shrugged at Trixie. “So much for your present.”

Trixie
smiled. “You can make us another.”

“Or maybe actually buy something normalish, at the
bazaar?” K. asked pointedly.

“Whatever.”

Trixie and I hopped into her Jeep and waited to tag behind Vito and Miriam to St. Bart’s.

K. took off in his loaner Mini.
Staring after the matchbox size car, I hoped it was a phase.

“Thanks for
cleaning up all the blood in the basement.”

She shrugged.
“No biggie. I do it all the time.” She pulled out a cigarette and puffed.

“I thought you quit?”

“I did. This is an e-cigarette.”

“Oh.
Mike’s okay with that?”

She exhaled.
“I can’t keep snappin’ gum all the time. My jaw hurts.”

We followed
Vito’s new Towncar into the parking lot and parked side by side. Vito popped open his trunk and pulled out a gigantic cardboard box loaded with cartons of tape.

I stared at it.
“I thought there was a shortage?”

Vito shook his head.
“I wondered what everyone was making such a fuss about. I knew I smelled a rat.”

“Or in this case, a
vampire!” Miriam wiggled her eyebrows.

Vito stared at Miriam.
“I told you, that wasn’t no such case.”

“I know, I know.
But it sounds lots more interesting.”

“I told you I had the whole thing figured out.
Especially after finding the pickle.”

“Pickle?” I asked.

He nodded. “It was Bernie’s signature. I figured he was behind blowing up my car. Especially after I out-bidded him at the auction.”

“Auction?”

“A wholesale auction for tape and giftwrapping and such. I was bargaining for the bizarre.”

“Bazaar.”

“Whatever. Anyway, Bernie had a fit after he saw me there, bidding on a bunch of office supplies, which included a ton of tape.”

“Naturally.”

“It seemed to me he was acting like a complete whack job. Especially after he bit me on the neck and all.”

“Natch.”

“But I didn’t figure out how involved Myron was with you getting kidnapped, until after I got your ride dusted.”

“Dusted?”

“For fingerprints!” Miriam was really enjoying this. “You see, Vito was worried about the Doo-doo getting blown up, after finding more doo-doo again, see? And especially since he knew Bernie blowed up his car. He thought we’d find Bernie’s prints.”

I rubbed my forehead.

Vito waved at her. “A friend owed me a favor.”

“
What do you mean?” I had to ask. I needed closure to the poopy thing.

He tapped the side of his nose.
“Myron got fingerprinted, after he got arrested for the Världen Vänder caper, right?”

“So?”

“So before that, there was no record of his fingerprints. Afterward, there was.”

“And?”

Miriam hopped up and down, giddy with excitement. “His paws were all over your van! Especially in the wheel well, where he hid the poop!”

I rubbed my head some more.

Trixie unwrapped some more gum.
“What I’d like to know is where he got all that poop from? And how he got it inside your van? It’s parked inside your garage every night.”

“But not while she worked as a Sidekick!” Miriam was fully in her element now.

“Huh?”

“Vito
’s pal tracked down the prints to Pets Galore! They were all over a whole bunch of crates used for pet grooming! One was even big enough for a mastiff!”

Huh.
“Anything about a cursing parrot? Or a fat cat named Hamlet?”

Miriam looked at me funny.
“Maybe you got hit on the head harder than we thought.”

Vito tossed his arms in the air.
“She’ll be fine.”

“She needs looked after!”

“She’s all grown up!”

“But her mother’s in Virginia!”

They walked off together, bickering their way toward the bazaar.

Trixie grabbed me by the elbow, and we followed.

“Buddy – Bernie – was on Mike’s watch.”

“He was in the program?”

“Barely.
He wasn’t much for laying low. But the department gave him a loose leash, to see what he was up to.”

“The counterfeiting?”

Trixie nodded. “Apparently it’s a widespread problem. Especially with the holiday crazies Bernie exploited.”

“Huh?”

Trixie opened the door to the church. “Bernie had a hook into one of the producers at WPAL.”

“
What?”

“
Blackmail. So the producer came up with the cockamamie scheme of creating local tabloid news about a tape shortage, right before the holidays.”

“How was that supposed to work?”

“Easy. Anything that’s on TV people take as gospel truth. Just like
War of the Worlds
.”

“
That was radio, not TV.”

“Same difference.”

“But it’s so dumb! Just saying there’s a tape shortage doesn’t create one, right?”

“
But it did. Because most shoppers believed there was a shortage, they created one by buying up all the tape.”

“That sure was a long shot.”

She shrugged. “For the kind of money wired into Bernie’s account, Mike figured he thought it was worth the gamble.”

“Really? How much?”

“Millions. Plural.”

“Wow.
From stamps?”

“Bernie sure
would have been rolling in it, if he had lived.”

“That’s true.
Except that as a vampire, he wasn’t technically alive, anyway.”

Trixie stopped in her tracks.
“Bernie wasn’t a vampire, you kook!”

“
Yeah? What do you make of this?” I showed her the bruised spot where he’d gummed my neck.

She rolled her eyes.
“Bernie wasn’t one of the un-dead. He was one of the un-hinged.”

“Huh?”

“After the house blew up, his cover was over. His only next of kin was his wife, Dolores.”

“They separated.”

“Actually, they didn’t.”

“But
he said…”

Trixie waved me to shush.
“Yeah, they lived separately. Apparently he left it up to her to file papers, which she never did.”

“
Why?”

“Because
she was worried about him. The guy was nuttier than a fruitcake. At least, that’s what she told Mike, after he contacted her to give her the news.”