Perplexity on P1/2 (Parson's Cove Mysteries) (2 page)

     The moment their dishes were full, they forgot who had fed them. Cats, I’ve learned, never say ‘thank you.’ With a sigh, I picked up the teakettle and filled it with water. After bingeing at ‘all you can eat’ buffets during my trip, I hadn’t returned to my usual cooking routine. Nothing seemed to taste good anymore. My taste buds were too accustomed to grease and gravy. I’m sure I ate at least twenty thousand calories a day while I was away but I hadn’t gained an ounce. Flori says it’s disgusting. Sometimes I’m convinced she thinks I have some sort of eating disorder.

     “I can’t help it,” I tell her. “It’s my metabolism. The scale is stuck at a hundred and two and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

     “But it’s not fair,” she wails. “I look at food and get fat.”

     To make her feel better, I always say, “Don’t say fat, Flori. You are voluptuous; that’s what you are.”

     “Oh, thank you, Mabel.” And, she wipes away the tears.

     I opened the fridge door to see if anything looked appealing and seven cats rushed over.

     “All right, you heathens, you’ve eaten. Get out of here.” Three of them already had half their bodies inside. I yanked them out and shut the door, hoping no heads were still there. It was then that I noticed the answering machine light blinking.

     I obtained the touchtone phone and answering machine to appease Flori. It seems that’s one of my many purposes in life. If there were any way I could get away with it, I would get rid of that contraption. Unfortunately, it’s part of the phone and I don’t even know how to shut the stupid thing off. Besides, Flori would never speak to me again if I did.

     I figure if someone phones and there’s no answer, that person knows I’m not home or I’m in the bathroom or I don’t want to talk to anyone and she or he can try again. With this idiotic machine, they leave a message and then the onus is on me; now
I’m
under obligation to return the call. Something isn’t right with that. If I don’t call, everyone gets in an uproar: “Mabel, you didn’t return my call.” “Mabel, didn’t you get my message?” “Mabel, how come you didn’t call back?” “Don’t you ever check your messages, Mabel?”  

     No matter how long I stood and glared, the light kept right on blinking - three messages and probably all from Flori. She’d be wondering why I wasn’t home yet. I told her I was getting my pictures printed right after work but she probably forgot. If I called her back now, she could easily take up an hour or more of my time. Not that I didn’t enjoy her calls, it’s just that I was so looking forward to savoring my pictures over a quiet cup of tea. I left the light blinking and sat down at the table. Before I could pull the pictures out of the first envelope, the kettle whistled. I grabbed the teapot, a cup, a spoon, and the little jug of honey and sat down again.

     I still couldn’t get over the fact that I, Mabel Wickles, from little Parson’s Cove had won a five day trip to Las Vegas. Sin city. Of course, what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas, right? Since in my case absolutely nothing had happened there, I guess I could bring it all home with me. In fact, I would never think of telling anyone here (well, perhaps Flori someday) but after about three hours, I was homesick. I will admit, Hoover Dam lived up to its name - it was ‘dam’ interesting. Other than that, if you’ve see one slot machine, you’ve seen them all. Of course, there was the food. I suppose that in itself could be worth the trip. Overall, however, there was too much noise, too many people, and too many lights - too much hustle and bustle. Did I say too many lights? I still get flashes in my eyes occasionally.

     Four other people had also won the trip: three women and one man. I was the oldest and the only one who could sit on the airplane seat without bulging over the side. The man, Ralph Murphy, was probably in his fifties. He had a nasty habit of scratching his scalp every five minutes or so, thus leaving behind a layer of white flakes on all his shirts. Other than that, I liked him better than I liked any of the women.

     Sally Goodrich was my seating partner. It was hard to guess her age because she’d had so many surgeries on her face. Her swollen lips formed a puffy straight line and she had to talk through her teeth. She reminded me of Flori’s kids when they were small and made scary faces. Her long blond hair was in desperate need of a retouch and she must have weighed over two hundred pounds. All the fat was in the right places; it’s just that there was an over abundance of it. You always had the feeling that she might explode out of her clothes. Since she was so honest about all her face-lifts (at times, going into gory details), I thought I’d ask another obvious question and one that everyone was talking about behind her back:

     “Have you ever thought of liposuction?” I asked, one morning as we were waiting in the hotel lobby to leave for a tour.

     Her eyes got big and she said, “I would never do that. Why should I?” With that, she tried to lift her chin but I think the skin was too tight. She did manage, however, to swing her hips as she walked to the bus. If a person watched them for too long, I imagine one could almost get seasick.

     Grace Hobbs and Andrea Williams were the other two women. We used to have a Mr. Hobbs living in Parson’s Cove but Grace said she was sure he wasn’t a relative. Of course, after I learned she was married, I realized he wouldn’t have been her relative anyways - he would’ve been Mr. Hobbs’ relative.

     I didn’t see too much of Grace and Andrea after the second day because, I discovered, they would rather gamble than tour. Gamble and eat. Preferably at the same time. I didn’t see much of Sally or Ralph anymore either because they, I discovered, liked each other. I was happy to have my camera and a good pair of walking shoes.

     Of course, there was Mr. Hatcher. He was the cereal company’s representative. He sort of drifted in and out of our lives while we were there. He was always in the background, making sure we were looked after, making sure we didn’t get lost, making sure we didn’t get too bored or get into trouble, I guess. It was hard to form an opinion about him because it seemed to me, he wasn’t very interested in his job. I asked him how many times he’d been to Vegas with a group of winners and he gave me a dirty look.

     On the last day, all of us grand prizewinners met in the lobby of our hotel. It’s hard to believe but I think I was the only one who looked like I’d had a fairly enjoyable time; therefore, that wasn’t saying much for the others. I assumed Grace and Andrea were going home much poorer because they were very sullen. It appeared that Sally and Ralph must have had a tiff because they weren’t talking to each other. Or, perhaps it was just Sally not communicating with Ralph. It made me feel much better; at least, I would have pictures of Hoover Dam and the desert to take home. In my opinion, all of them had wasted what could’ve been a perfectly good free vacation.

     Moreover, I did have some excellent pictures. I slowly examined each of the one hundred and twenty three pictures that I’d taken. How could so many photos fit on that small memory card? Of course, I now realized that no matter how many you took of the dam, you could never really get the depth of it all. Forty-four pictures taken at different angles and every one looked the same. I guess I got a bit carried away with the shots of my bedroom too. Five pictures of my whirlpool tub were a bit much. I thought Flori might find those interesting though. Also, my bed with the canopy. I took four different angles of that.

     Flori had been right about that one picture. I had snapped it outside one of those hotels where a twenty-foot tall mechanical cowboy kept lifting his hat off and then putting it back on. I took that one for Jake. I, obviously, hadn’t noticed the man walking right in front of me. All my attention was on the cowboy and his hat. It took some concentration to catch it at the right moment with the hat in midair. Now I not only had the cowboy holding his hat up in the air, I had a gangster staring at me from the corner of the picture. At least, that was my first impression. Well, no need to get too carried away. After all, this was Vegas. He was probably someone’s doting father or husband. 

     I realized after examining it more carefully, he wasn’t looking at me at all; he was looking at someone or something either behind me or beside me. For some reason, that made me feel much better.

     The phone rang. I jumped and the pictures flew to the floor. The cats raced over, thinking it was a treat for them, sniffed, gave me a disdainful look, and walked away in seven different directions. Meanwhile, the phone continued to ring. I left the pictures where they lay and stood up. I got up slowly because both knees were bothering me. I figured it was from walking on cement all day during my vacation.

     “Where, on earth, have you been? I’ve been calling and calling,” Flori yelled in my ear.

     “Well, you haven’t been calling and calling, Flori. I’m sure I told you that after work, I was getting my pictures printed. You can get instant pictures now, you know. My goodness, how did you manage when I was gone? You must’ve been up half the night worrying about me.”

     “If you must know, I was. All I could do was imagine you alone in that huge city with all those gamblers. You have no idea how relieved I am that you’re home, safe and sound.”

     “I phoned you every night. You knew very well that I was safe.”

     “If you’re home now, why haven’t you returned my call? It’s after eight. I left two messages for you.”

     “Or did you leave three? My machine is saying there are three messages.”

     “I phoned twice. Good Heavens! You have messages and you haven’t checked them? You’d better listen to the other one, Mabel. Who knows? Maybe you won another trip!”

     “One is enough for me, thanks very much. By the way, why don’t you come to the shop in the morning to look at the pictures? It’s much nicer than trying to see them on my camera. And,” I added, “why don’t you bring over breakfast?”

    Feeding people is one of Flori’s favorite things.

    I hung up the phone and pressed the blinking red light. The first two were from Flori. In the first message, she sounded a bit tentative, as if she hadn’t left a message in five days and had forgotten how to bawl me out. In the second, almost hysterical (more normal).

    The third one made shivers run down my spine. Perhaps, ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ is only a myth.

     The twinkling lights of Parson’s Cove grew smaller and smaller in the distance. In less than an hour, the dark late model car merged with the other traffic onto the Interstate. One vehicle blending in with hundreds, unnoticed and unmemorable. The driver’s hand relaxed and dropped down. It touched the cold object on the seat. The gun. Quickly both hands gripped the steering wheel again.

      At least the shaking was gone. It was easier to drive now. No more watching every car and holding your breath until it passed. No more panicking when a siren sounded in the distance. Thankfully, there wasn’t much blood. Not like in the movies with blood dripping down faces and pooling on the ground. That, in itself must be a good omen.

    If there were any truth to what Mabel Wickles said, that old sheriff with his incompetent deputies would never solve the case anyway. It was the perfect place to dump a body. It would have been better deeper into the woods but that woman showed up. She didn’t see anything though- only the body. Perhaps, she was still screaming. 

     Didn’t matter now anyway, did it? All is well that ends well.