Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped (32 page)

“You believe that’s all Fred found in the whirligigs?”

He shrugs.

“I think there was cash in them that Fred took,” I say. “It had to be in there. It had to be somewhere.”

“Or another stash of steroids. Or maybe more movies.” He looks at me and smiles. It’s a real smile, not a what-a-pathetic-thing-you-are smile. Perhaps he DOES find me amusing. The idea makes my stomach flip a little. I don’t know if it’s a good flip or a bad flip.

“Richie says he lost all the investment money,” the detective says.

“I don’t believe that. I think he has it all hidden somewhere. Did they look in the hamburger cookie jar?”

“What?”

“The hamburger.”

He shakes his head: “We’re doing forensic accounting.”

I tell him, “Joe says Jed Gruber says it was a Ponzi scheme. Joe says that Jed says Richie bamboozled everyone. And Mrs. Tright says Richie and Susie were going to go to Argentina after the Cayman Islands. But, then I heard Belize…”

This thing has hit Alligator Estates like a lightning bolt. The whole trailer park is buzzing with gossip and rumor.

“Miss Tilney wants to dig up Richie and Susie’s flower beds, see if they hid cash in their gnome garden,” I say.

I laugh. But then I wonder. “So did Fred go to see Ernie right before Feather did?” I ask.

“There were a bunch of people who went to see Ernie in a very short period of time. Sal, then Richie, then Fred, then Feather. Feather was actually only with Ernie a few minutes. Then she had time to get home, take a shower and put her clothes in the washer all before Fred woke up.”

“Was Fred the one who hit Marie on the head and searched her house too?” I ask.

“He said he didn’t.”

“I didn’t think he did. But, I don’t think Feather did it either, do you?”

“I’m surprised Feather could hit anyone on the head at all,” he says.

“She said she just wanted Ernie to pay attention to her,” I say.

He raises his eyebrows, “She had enough presence of mind to wipe the putter of prints afterwards and clean herself up…”

“True,” I say. “She must’ve gotten good at covering up for herself after all these years of drinking…. But I don’t think Feather hit Marie. Why would she break into Marie’s trailer? She was resigned to paying Ernie and would have kept on if Fred hadn’t put her on a tight budget.”

“So do YOU know who hit Marie then and searched her trailer?” the detective asks me.

“I think I might… I’m not sure.”

“Tell me,” he says

“It would just be a guess,” I say.

“So guess,” he insists.

I find I have a kind of protectiveness toward my Alligator Estate neighbors I didn’t think I had, even though many of them are turning out to be criminals. “Let me get back to you,” I say.

The rain is coating his shoulders. There seems to be a war of soft vs. hard going on in his expression. He hesitates, then he says nothing. Not “stay out of it.” Nothing. I smile at him. I consider this a momentous occasion.

“Your father okay?” he says.

“Broken nose. I think it was my elbow he landed on, at least that’s what he says. Always my fault…”

“He saved you. He called me when he was on his way to your trailer. I told him not to go, to let me handle it.”

“A little of his own medicine,” I say.

“He didn’t listen to me. You’re a lot alike,” he tells me.

“No, we’re not,” I say.

When I go inside, I take Johnny’s flannel shirt off. I throw it into the garbage. I look at it in there like a crumpled skin.

I get a text. I take my phone out. It’s from Johnny. It’s a picture.

Chapter 56

An hour later, Joe rings my doorbell. He’s got a yellow slicker on. It’s still drizzly. “Come for a walk,” he says smiling, “It’s rainbow weather.”

“Pshaw,” I say. I always wanted to say that.

We take our usual walk around the perimeter. I have my stupid flip-flops on. Dreamer sloshes through the puddles. “I called Johnny,” I tell Joe.

He turns and looks at me.

“You’ll never believe it.”

Joe waits.

“He’s getting married.”

“I thought he was sending you messages about still being in love with you and thinking about you?”

“He did.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Typical Johnny,” I say.

“Is it?”

I take a breath of humid grapefruit-y air. “He sent me a picture. A sonogram. It was a ten-week-old fetus. He’s going to be a father.” The words are coming out of my mouth like marbles.

“I called him then. I didn’t want to, but I did. Turn in the direction of the skid, right?”

Joe nods. His eyes are sad.

“He thought I’d be happy for him.”

“Really?”

“That’s what he said. He thought I’d want to know.” I shake my head. I think of Johnny’s voice on the phone trying too hard. Not really pulling off happy. Every sentence had a catch in it. That same catch that always got me—the manipulative longing. The come-on embedded in the good-bye.

Nothing’s really changed. Except it has.

“I’m sorry,” Joe says.

“I think he wanted my permission somehow. I guess he’s never moved on.”

“Maybe he wanted you to say, ‘No.’ to him.”

“That too. He always wanted me and didn’t want me,” I say.

The sun is trying to break through the gray sky.

“And where does that leave me?” I say.

“Hanging? Joe says.

“This time, it made me mad.”

The air smells washed. Every tree seems to have a bird singing in it.

I tell Joe, “I heard you, you know, about not having a relationship with a real person. Just an idea of someone.”

“Did I say that?”

“You said I was not a real person myself.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I think you’re a very real person in a lot of ways,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say. “I’m working on it.”

I’m feeling a little numb, but a little tingly. Like when a part of your body has fallen asleep and then you shake it and the blood starts to flow again.

We pass by the stalled-out development. There’s a little girl on a scooter going down the deserted street. Even though there’s a good distance between us, I can hear her humming to herself some little repetitive tune. “It must be weird to live there,” I say.

“Most people live perfectly good lives perched on the edge of something bad. A flood plain. A fault line. A hole, geographic or emotional. There’s no such thing in this world as stable ground. Or safety.”

I look at him. He shrugs. He smiles. “That’s just how it is.”

When I get back to my trailer, George is out wiping off his car. The whole world is shining and dripping. I didn’t see a rainbow, but maybe it was there and I missed it.

He tells me, “My mom and William are leaving.”

“Where are they going?”

“Des Moines. Next week.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Stay here for awhile. Sal says I can keep the job. I can’t follow my mother around her whole life trying to protect her.”

“No,” I say. “You can’t really protect anyone anyway, especially from themselves…”

“From William though…”

“Yuck,” I say. “What if I told you I could get your mom away from William?”

“How?” he says.

“It wouldn’t be pretty.”

“I don’t care. I’d do it anyhow.”

“Okay then. What time does William go to the church today?”

“He’s gone for the day already.”

“Let me talk to your mother then.”

He says, “Good,” and starts to follow me up the steps.

“Alone,” I tell him.

May is in the kitchen chopping vegetables for soup. She turns her head when I come in, then continues to chop up a carrot.

“Ernie showed you that picture of William’s car, didn’t he?

“You knew what it was, didn’t you?” I ask her. I understand denial. You know something’s up, but you’re afraid to know. You close your mind so tightly that even when truth knocks on your door, it can’t find a way to get in.

May doesn’t say anything. Her back is hunched.

“Did you pay him money not to say anything about William?”

She shakes her head.

“Listen,” I say. “That night after the party, after we all went to look at the whirligigs… William went somewhere in his car… George was asleep… You went for a walk…” I try to picture it. “You had a couple drinks in you and you weren’t thinking all that clearly. You didn’t think about how you would get into Ernie’s house. But you knew Marie was supposed to be gone for the night. You certainly didn’t expect to find the door open. You must have been surprised. You didn’t know Marie would be there…”

“Our father who art in heaven,” she says.

“May,” I tell her, “You’re not going to Des Moines, you’re going to jail.” I add, “Unless you talk to me.”

Silence. There’s only the sound of the knife chopping the carrots.

“I warned Ernie,” she turns to face me, “about the wrath of god. You can’t impede the work of the Lord.”

“Impede?”

“William’s mission. He is an emissary of God. I’m glad someone stopped the heathen. I’m glad someone killed him. There is always someone out to destroy God’s work and God’s people.”

“You were looking for the picture in Marie’s trailer.”

“It’s my duty to protect William because William is the mouthpiece of God.”

“You were looking for the evidence of William’s gay restroom encounters,” I insist.

“Our father who art in heaven,” May says.

“Des Moines,” I say, “or jail.”

“I was just walking… thinking.… I wasn’t planning on going in,” May says. “But the door was open. It was like God wanted me to go in,” she says. “I didn’t mean to hurt Marie,” she says. “I thought she was gone.” She sounds almost like a normal person when she says this. I think, maybe under all of this, there still is a person.… “I put her yellow rubber gloves on and I walked around the trailer. I looked for that picture. That picture is a lie anyway. It doesn’t mean anything. Ernie was out to get us.”

“You went looking in Marie’s trailer for the picture. But you didn’t find it.” I try to clarify.

“I was doing God’s work.” In her own convoluted way, she looks certain.

George is still wiping his car. He straightens up when he sees me. I hand him the recorder I had rolling inside my shirt while I was inside talking to May. I love that little recorder. It’s the first time I’ve had a chance to use it. I love the way it hummed up against my belly.

“Play this,” I tell him. “Either you take it to the cops and your mom goes to jail and escapes from William, or you do nothing with it and she goes to Des Moines. I’m leaving it in your hands.”

Chapter 57

My mother and Dreamer and I are driving to the No Wake Café. It’s my mother’s last night in Florida. She’s heading home to New Jersey in the morning.

“I have a life to take care of,” she tells me. “I’ll be back to visit.”

“What about Dad?” I ask.

“He knows where I am. We’ll see. Maybe he’ll ask me to come back. Then, maybe.”

“What about Miss Tilney?”

“She has six dog bed orders. She’s a better seamstress than I am.”

I look at her.

She smiles. “We just don’t know where our lives are going, do we?” she asks.

I shrug.

“And that’s okay,” she says. “I learned that from you.”

“Me?”

“You and your mobile home.”

“We’re sinking into the marsh. I know it’s tilting more and more every day,” I say for about the fiftieth time.

“I know, I know,” she laughs. “But I don’t think you’re sinking.”

“You don’t?”

When we get to the café, there’s Joe and Miss Tilney, George and Sal, my father, Squirt (who has not forgiven her husband yet for coming to get her and making her miss out on all the action), Paulie and Tweeny. We’re having a little get-together to celebrate Paulie’s retirement and my joining Polenta Brothers and also to say goodbye to my mom. It’s an all-occasion pancake buffet.

My father’s got a big bandaid on his nose and one black eye.

George comes up to me.

“I heard that your mom confessed,” I say.

“She did.”

“What are they going to do with her?”

“She’s charged with Breaking and Entering and Assault, although Marie is considering dropping the charges. The prosecutor says they’ll at least downgrade one of them and go easy on her. They sent her to rehab for now. It’s thirty days. Her blood and urine tests were loaded with oxycodone and valium.”

“Squirt got that bread sample back from analysis. There was valium in the wine. A lot,” I tell him.

“The doctor told me it’s a wonder she was able to function at all.”

“Where’s William? I haven’t seen his car.”

“Took off.”

“Des Moines?”

“I don’t know. I’d love to press charges against him for something. But we’ll wait until my mom sobers up, and then we’ll see. These cult guys always seem to slip away…

“They ID’ed William from his fingerprints. His real name was Joe Lambone. He had an identifying tattoo on his bicep of a bone, and the word ‘Bones,’ underneath. That’s what they called him in jail. He was in prison for eight years for rape,” George tells me grimacing.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

“You did the right thing,” he says. “We’ll deal with the consequences.”

My father and I haven’t spoken since everything happened. He walks toward me now. The door tinkles open and the detective comes in with his daughter. Squirt looks over at me meaningfully

“Now what?” I mutter.

Paulie walks behind me and leans over to me and says, “Your father invited them.”

I raise my eyebrows at him.

Paulie shrugs and turns away.

The detective strides toward us. “Dave, Juliet, glad you could come,” my father says.

The detective nods at us both, shakes my father’s hand. Juliet eyes Dreamer. Dreamer puts her paw up in the air and waits to be high fived. Juliet looks at her father. “Go ahead,” he tells her, and she touches Dreamer’s paw like it’s a hot iron. Dreamer puts her paw down, then raises it up again and waits.

“Do it,” Juliet tells her father.

So her father does it.