The Immaculate Deception (23 page)

“
But—” The “Donna” song did not let me get my protest out.

~*~

I was back in my bed. Alone. Drat.

The
who who
owl, which I was now referring to as
Tammy Bird
, stared down through my skylight.

“
What are you looking at?”

I saw a gloomy gray sky. It was Sunday morning already. I rolled over and tried to drift back to sleep. I was mad. Cheated out of my special dream by that nutty neighbor Officer Dick. What was so special about Dick that gave him face time with my soul mate through history? And why was Mr. Jones so angry with him? He had him handcuffed for heaven’s sake. Oh…so that must be where Mr. Jones had disappeared to in Miami when he left me stranded on the beach sidewalk. He’d said he had to put a scare into someone. Officer Dick had gone missing at the same time then showed up on my deck mumbling about something bizarre happening to him. I guess you could call being handcuffed and transported back to the forties bizarre. And now Officer Dick was with my dream man again. Not fair.

Did my dream man have a whole bunch of clients he visited? I had just assumed I was his one and only. I sighed and rolled over. I was so tired. Just as soon as I’d drifted off to sleep, the phone rang. Great, just great. I grabbed it off the nightstand and looked at the caller ID
Payne, Howard
. Daddy’s youngest brother. He had been born while Daddy was already in the Army. He must be in his early seventies now. I wondered if anybody notified him of Daddy’s demise. I picked it up before the answering machine could click on.

“
Hello?”

“
Yes, this is Doctor Howard Payne. I’m calling to speak with Miss Oh-Donna Payne please.”

“
Hi, Uncle Howie. It’s me, Donna.”

“
Hello, little Oh-Donna, how are you?”

“
Fine.” What did he want? He had never called me before.

“
Wonderful. I apologize for the hour and day but I wanted to be sure to catch you before you left for church.”

Church!
That’s where I should go today. Boy, did I have a lot of praying to catch up on. And Reverend McFeely’s sermons were so soothing. Some chided him as the feel-good preacher, glossing over the atrocities of the world and telling everyone how good they were in God’s eyes. This was precisely why I had joined his congregation. I felt unconditional love in his church. Something I thought the world needed more of.

I glanced at the clock. Eight twelve a.m. “Not a problem. How are you, Uncle?”

“
Well, I’m in a bit of a predicament actually. This is awkward.”

“
Perhaps I can be of assistance. What is your situation?” I sat up and propped two pillows behind my head. Rain beat on the skylights and windows.

He exhaled. “I’ll just come right out and say it. Nathan’s untimely death has left some untoward doors open that need to be nailed shut.”

“
Okay. How can I help?”

He cleared his throat. “Files. Medical records of his research findings. The organ transplants he dabbled in.” Uncle Howard coughed. “I think he might have a frozen ovary stored in his house.”

“
He does. Miss Pippin’s. I found it when I was emptying the deep freezer.”

“
Good Lord. What did you do with it?”

“
I put it back and left it in the deep freezer. It’s in the basement at Little Mount Vernon. You are very welcome to it. I had wanted the freezer but changed my mind.”

How could I ship a frozen organ to California? I was stumped
.

“
Make damned sure no one else touches it. Don’t breathe a word. Did you already tell people about it?”

“
No. Who would I tell? I’d be too embarrassed. My father was really weird.”

“
Most geniuses have unique ways about them.”

Whatever.
“How will I go about mailing it to you? And I haven’t gone through his papers yet. I think they’re in the walk-in closet under the stairs. I guess I should ship them all at once. Or do you need something specific faxed to you?”

“
I’ll fly into DC and hand-carry it. Is your mother still living there or did she move in with you?”

I wondered how much Perry had told Uncle Howie. I wasn’t about to sully her good name. “She’s quite distraught and has gone off to try to relax at a spa. Doctor’s orders.”

“
Do you have a key? Can you meet me at the house and unlock the door for me?”

I had Momma’s keys in her purse. Not that I’d ever had to use them, the door always seemed to be unlocked. Hmm…I was partly responsible, I didn’t recall always locking up. The real estate agents hadn’t either. “I have to return to work on Tuesday. When will you be arriving?”

“
I’ll fly in on the red-eye tonight. Can you meet me at, say, nine a.m. tomorrow?”

“
Sure. Would you like me to pick you up at the airport?”

“
No, not necessary. I’ll take a cab and have him wait for me. I won’t be in the house but a moment or two.”

“
Nine o’clock Monday morning it is. I look forward to seeing you again, Uncle Howie. Give my love to Auntie Roxanne.”

“
Right.” He hung up.

I pushed the end button and placed the phone back in the charger.

Driving home from church, I finally had a peaceful feeling wash over me. God bless Reverend McFeely. I wished I could carry a tune, it would be nice to join the choir. Something to fill my Wednesday nights, choir practice. Oh well. I really should find some sort of volunteer work to immerse myself in. I needed to get a life. Oh who was I fooling? If I hadn’t made anything of myself by age forty-two, I wasn’t ever going to.

I stopped for a nice sit-down lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Reston Town Center. Normally I’d bring a book or newspaper so I didn’t feel awkward eating alone. But since I didn’t have one, I savored my sweet lime chicken and corn cake.
Corn cockle
… One of the poisons my dream man showed Officer Dick. What was up with that?

I eavesdropped on the booth behind me. It sounded like a mother and two children. Girls. She kept fussing at them to color and share the crayons. Well, that wouldn’t be useful to inspire my romance writing.

I signed the credit card slip, took my copy and popped the mint in my mouth. As I left the restaurant, I noticed that lady detective on the way out. Fawn Fiddler. She was at the buffet.

The rain sloshed down as I emerged onto the sidewalk. I hesitated and decided to go back inside and use the ladies room. Perhaps the rain would let up some in the meantime. As I passed within ten feet of the buffet, the lady cop’s head snapped up and she stared at me.

I smiled and mouthed, “Hey.”

She carried her terracotta plate in one hand, squeezed her lapel microphone with the other. She mumbled something and then walked up to me.

I smiled. “Hello, Officer. They’ve got great food here. Are you dining on duty? Is your partner with you?” I scanned the lunch crowd but couldn’t locate another uniform. Well yes, there were two chubby middle-aged ladies dressed in scrubs that sported a dog and cat motif but no cops.

She ignored my attempt at small talk and cut to the chase. “You’ve been in contact with Officer Dick Fiddler. Why didn’t you report it to me?”

How did she know Officer Dick had shown up on my deck? Or did she? Was this a fishing expedition?
I had a really bad distaste for this woman now. Not that I could put my finger on it but something about her mannerism was too suspicious and arrogant for me. Fine. I could be distasteful, suspicious and arrogant too. “Officer Dick Fiddler? Hmm…nope. I’ve peeked at his house now and then and there are no signs he’s home.

I’m going to bake him a nice blueberry pie when he returns. The neighbors will all get together and have a block party. We had one in February when Stevie Collins came back from Iraq. Everyone chipped in for the food and the community association provided a disc jockey and heated tents. What a soiree.”

The lady cop’s lapel crackled and she hurried to her table, grabbing the green cloth napkin and silverware. She scurried out of the restaurant carrying her lunch.

I shook my head. I’ll bet she doesn’t return that plate, napkin and silverware. And she certainly didn’t pay the tab and leave a tip. Cops. I hated how they got away with crap like this.

I decided to forgo the ladies room and follow the flatfoot. The woman that had been seated in the booth adjacent to mine was leaving. I tried to be patient as she allowed her “big girl” to open the door. The big girl could barely reach the handle. By the time I emerged, it was still pouring down and there was no sign of the lady cop.

I drove home and took a nice long soak in a hot bathtub. I used liquid hand soap in lieu of bubble bath because it didn’t leave a ring around the tub and didn’t irritate my sensitive skin.

As I lay back, I pondered Reverend McFeely’s sermon. Loyalty was today’s theme.
No matter what our friends and loved ones do, no matter how wrong they are, we should defend them with all of our might.
I blinked a few times and tried to place my family into this theme.

All right, I was going start with my beloved brother Perry. Hmm… Well, he accused my mother of murdering our father. I was going to be loyal and in his defense say Daddy would have wanted him to. He was just continuing in the master manipulator Dr. Nathan Payne’s footsteps, stirring the pot and trying to divide and conquer the family, just to keep things interesting.

Next to defend, Tammy, for…cremating Daddy. She was only trying to get this whole sad thing over with so we could all move on with our lives. Besides, with no grave to visit, I wouldn’t feel guilty for not going. Okay, this blind loyalty thing wasn’t so bad.

I realized I was bored. Which was a good thing actually, after all I’d been through. And when I was bored, I played spider solitaire on the computer. I always played the hard level, which I knew I would never win. But it passed the time. I drained the water from the tub, dried and dressed and went downstairs to my computer.

I turned the television on the movie channel and half watched the Hitchcock marathon as I concentrated on spider solitaire and obsessively checked my email. Nothing new came. My mind wandered to my novel. I needed to come up with a really great villain. Or villainess. Maybe a pair. I could model them on Perry and Tammy. Oh right. I forgot. They were good people and their actions were justified. Yeah right.

I’d heard from other writers not to worry about modeling your characters on real people because odds were they wouldn’t recognize themselves. Nobody saw themselves as others did.

~*~

I awoke Monday morning refreshed. I had slept through the night. No dreams that I could recall. I didn’t even get up to pee.

The cab was already in front of Little Mount Vernon when I arrived at eight forty-six a.m. Uncle Howie was perched on the brick-retaining wall. He adjusted his California-chic sunglasses as I parked the old gold Chrysler and hurried up the steps.

“
Hello, Oh-Donna.”

“
I’m sorry you had to wait. At least it stopped raining. Yesterday it poured. How was your flight?”

“
Slept just fine. We arrived twenty minutes early.”

“
That’s wonderful to hear. How is Auntie Roxanne?”

“
Still working at the lab. She retired once but they couldn’t do without her.”

“
It must be nice to be needed.”

We ducked under the gutter and walked up to the front door. He was carrying a cooler. I tried the knob before I dug Momma’s keys out. It turned.

“
You’re selling the house?” he asked.

“
Not really… But Perry seems to be.”

“
We have computerized lockboxes in California. Each real estate agent has a unique code. Everything is recorded electronically and they can track who entered and exited the premises and when.”

“
I guess Carla Calamari’s agency isn’t quite up to the times with their old-fashioned lockbox.”

“
Somebody is actually named Calamari?”

“
Apparently. And it fits her.” I smirked.

I didn’t bother calling out for Momma this time. We just descended the steps into the basement. I opened the wide door to the walk-in closet and pulled the brown shoestring. “His files are back in here. The deep freezer is at the end of the hall.”

I rounded the corner inside the closet and heaved one of the boxes off the heap in the back. I turned to hand it to Uncle Howie. He wasn’t there. I carried it out to the rec room. “Uncle Howie?”

He was replacing the lid on the Tupperware container. Dr. Howard Payne removed the lid from his cooler and white vapor wafted out. Dry ice. He carefully placed the organ on the bottom of his cooler and locked the lid on tight.

I called down the hall. “Here you go, this is labeled ‘Research 1960–1965’. Is this the one you want or—”

“
I’ll take that.” He hurried up the hall and snatched it from me, placing the cooler on top. “Thank you. When will your mother be back from her trip?”

“
I really couldn’t say.”

He stared down at the bundle in his arms, lost in thoughts. “It’s a damned shame Chloe had to do that.”