The Immaculate Deception (28 page)

Standing in the shelter of a small overhang, I threw my back up against the fortress I called home. The whole Spyglass Street was blacked out. Spooky. A flicker in an upstairs window across the street caught my notice. I stared for a while, making sure I did see something. Candlelight flickered behind the shades. I observed a silhouette.

I scrambled across the street and up Dick’s red brick steps. I lay on the doorbell, ringing frantically. He didn’t answer. Oh God, he must be pissed at me. Couldn’t say I blamed him. Wait a minute, no electricity, so no doorbell. With a tinge of relief, I knocked.

I huffed at myself and leaned backward against his black wrought iron railing. I grabbed the wet bar with both hands and arched my back. Yep, I could still see the silhouette. Hey, it looked like he was doing hand puppets. Let’s see, what was that, a rabbit? No, more like a carrot. A long carrot, with a mushroom head. Oh silly me. That was no carrot. Naughty officer. The shadow danced around. And grew. I could see the outline of someone else. Definitely a woman. Very nicely stacked. While I enjoyed a bit of wicked voyeurism, the pelting hail got the better of me. I trotted back to my place and leaned up against my garage door, trying to flatten myself out so that the overhang afforded some elemental protection.

I heard the rumbling roar and saw the flash. The transformer was trying to restart. Yes. The streetlights illuminated. I punched the garage code and jerked back as it wheezed and grunted upward. Hooray.

I remembered the snake and kept a scared eye out for it, didn’t want it slithering in. Any vipers den in a storm and such.

I untwisted the half-empty bag of potting soil and shoved my hand inside, midway up my wrist. The vermiculite fluffed under my fingernails. I felt the hard stick and yanked out my spare house key. I held the bag in the air and spun it and then tucked the top down underneath, returning it to the metal shelf.

Hey, the rain stopped. As I punched the code in to close the garage door, I heard giggling. Turning around, I watched Officer Dick, dressed in his signature boxer shorts, holding a car door open. A woman patted his fly and eased into the car. I caught a glimpse of her face. Well, well, well. If it ain’t the proper business-like
Officer Estrogen
who questioned me as to his whereabouts. So Fawn Fiddler definitely couldn’t be Dick’s sister. She must be his ex-wife. It certainly looked like an amicable divorce. She must live close by because I saw her at the Mexican restaurant the other day. Why did they bother divorcing? Oh who knew? Who cared?

Oops, Dick spotted me. So I waved and smiled. He turned his attention back to his lover. I unlocked my front door and gratefully stepped over the threshold.

I shoved the door until it clicked and threw the locks on. Hey, where in the devil was the Chinese delivery guy? What time was it anyhow? I returned to the kitchen.
You’ve got to be kiddin’ me.
It had only been eleven minutes since my thunderous snakey shadow dancing in the deluge began. Seemed like all night.

“
Oh for sh—” I muttered as I realized I’d tracked mud and grass and rain through the foyer, down the hall and into the kitchen. I yanked the paper towel roll and ripped four off. Under the sink, I opened the cabinet door and grabbed the disinfectant wipes. I flipped the top open with my thumb and played tug of war, ultimately winning one moist cloth.

Crawling and wiping back from whence I came, I smiled as I reached the front door. Murky headlights pulled into my driveway. I trotted back to the laundry room, shoved the soiled towels inside the trashcan, wiped my damp hands on my soaked sweater and returned to the foyer where I grabbed a ten and three ones out of my purse.

“
Aura Lee” went the doorbell. I turned the portico light on and peeked through the peeky hole. One small Asian man, holding one small bag. I unlocked the door and opened it.

He smiled as I said, “Hi.” As he handed me the bag, I offered him the small wad of cash. He nodded and said “Thank you” without counting it. I closed the door, pushed on it until I heard the click and then threw the locks on. I gave him time to get down the steps and then turned the porch light out.

The air conditioning kicked on. I shivered as I passed the thermostat in the living room. I punched the button up to eighty but now I had to wait for it to cycle off.

Gosh darn it, I was too cold to eat. I tossed the food in the refrigerator and went upstairs to take a hot bath.

Of course I filled the tub with the hot water tap only, seeing how shivery I was. It was wonderful, for about three minutes, when my body temperature returned to ninety-eight six and then I was uncomfortably flushed. I let all that expensive hot water down the drain while I dried off and slipped into some pink shorty summer pajamas. I caught a glimpse in the vanity mirror. What a mess my hair was. I sprayed some detangler in and tried separating and reviving the curls. It’d be Medusa’s nest in the morning. My pulse reacted as I remembered the snake. Of all the creatures in the world, snakes were my terror. I could deal with spiders and rats but not anything that slithered. Oh God, I needed to think about something else.

I crawled into bed and flipped on the TV. The three local stations were all broadcasting the sports segment of the nightly news. I was not a sportsy kinda girl. Football made me yawn. I did like watching baseball for a couple of years until Cal Ripken retired. He was a phenomenal player. I always meant to go and watch a Baltimore Orioles home game. Too late now. Man, did that guy have some sparkly blue eyes. Nice rear too. Must be something about sprinting that sculpted the glutes. Baseball players always seemed to have great home plates.

I flipped through the channels, briefly watching the latest amazing all-in-one cooker. The spokesperson touted that it would roast a whole turkey, steam green beans, bake potatoes, corn bread and pumpkin pie, all in the same pot, all in ten minutes. Yeah. Uh-huh. Flip. Oh yeah. I loved the makeup magic. The dowdy old lady picked randomly from the audience and turned them into beautiful swans right before your eyes. Makeup ladies. Tammy. I’d bet Tammy could do anything these wizards did. She was really good at it.

I felt sadness in my tummy. Tammy and I never did each other’s hair and nails and makeup when we were growing up. She never had time for me. Tammy Payne. The sister I always wanted but who never wanted me back.

Flip. A black and white movie. Doom-doom music.
No, don’t do it, girl, don’t go up the stairs!
Hey, that was Vera. Perry’s momma. She’d been an actress. This must be
Mother May I
, the movie she debuted in back in 1945. Vera Blandings sure was beautiful with her tall willowy figure and screen goddess face. Perry got his features from Daddy’s side. Poor guy. Daddy wasn’t very handsome. I clicked the TV off. The snake and the storm were bad enough. I didn’t want to watch the movie that Alfred Hitchcock said scared even him. No sir-ree Bob. Bob’s your uncle. I smiled, thinking about Mr. Jones, my dream mate.

Well, I was wide awake now.
What to do, what to do when your foot is stuck in the glue?
I padded down the stairs, flicking every light switch along the way.

I sat at my cubby desk in the living room. I stretched and turned the surge protector on with my big toe. Toe-bidextrous, I was. Momma too. That was about the only familial trait we shared.
Momma, where are you?

Well, I wasn’t filing a missing person’s report. For all I knew, with Perry’s power of suggestion, they probably had an all-points bulletin out for her arrest. For a murder that never happened.

Momma was probably on the lam. And she knew how to take care of herself, assimilating into the locals. Yeah, she was eighty-three years old now but not on the inside. Contrary to Perry and Daddy’s salacious lies. Those two old farts used to enjoy sitting around in the dark, making up wild twisted tales about whatever family member wasn’t present at the mo. And it was like “Here’s the secret, pass it on…” where the rumor got more outlandish with each participant. Except they didn’t need any more than their own two disgusting imaginations.

I hated them. Perry and Daddy. I absolutely hated them. And I felt very guilty about it. Momma taught me to overlook weaknesses and see the good in everyone. The thing that really confused me was why Perry and Daddy treated me and Momma so bad, yet they were charming to everyone else, especially Tammy. And they were also very good citizens, who had contributed so much good to the world through their professions. To the outside world, Judge Perry Payne and Doctor Nathan Payne were pillars of the community. To be fair, they had achieved many great honors and earned them. It was just they had slacked off in the family relations part of their lives.

There used to be a tiny little piece of heart tissue inside of me that knew my daddy loved me. Some day I had hoped to understand why he treated me so differently to Perry and Tammy. But thanks to Uncle Howie, I now understood that Daddy had not loved me at all. Well, no, I could never know what was truly in his heart. But at least I finally knew why he treated Perry and Tammy with preference. They were his biological children. I wasn’t.

I didn’t know why I suddenly believed Uncle Howie. But I knew now, deep inside, that Daddy hadn’t been my real father. Perhaps I had always known on some level. But what about the other things Uncle Howie had mumbled? That Momma was supposed to have slept with Kennedy. That still didn’t make sense. Unless… Flashes of Daddy discussing ovary implants with
Miss Pippin
darted through my brain. He’d told MM he needed someone with a healthy uterus who had lost her ovaries. Another flash shot through me. Daddy telling Momma he had to remove her right ovary and fallopian tube. Momma and MM… MM and the President… What sick experiment had Daddy planned?
No way!
Momma would never have agreed to be a guinea pig for Daddy. Plus, Uncle Howie said that she hadn’t slept with Kennedy. Of course not! Things like these happened in Frankenstein movies but not to boring Oh-Donna. Shouldn’t have peeked into Vera’s horror movie. Just over-stimulating my writer’s imagination. And I wasn’t into writing horror.

My computer booted up. I decided to Google Vera Blandings. I typed “Vera Blandings” into the Google search box. It found seventy-one thousand nine hundred results in point twenty-four seconds. I clicked the top link. It was broken. I pushed the back button and clicked the second link. It carried me to an eBay auction of a used
Mother May I
DVD. I clicked back again to the Google page.

The next link took me to
Our Cats Let It All Hang Out Of The Bag
tabloid tidbit sight. I scrolled down the table of contents and clicked
Vera Blandings Murder
. The screen popped up.

Actress Vera Blandings, age 54, was found dead in her modest Beverly Hills bungalow on October 31, 1970. Her ex-husband, Dr. Nathan Payne, prominent Washington, DC gynecologist, discovered the body. The two had one son and remained close friends. Miss Blandings had been asphyxiated in the bathtub. An uncut sheet of hundred-dollar bills was affixed to her back. The police found signs of forced entry.

To counter any suspicion, Dr. Payne voluntarily submitted to a lie detector test, which he passed. Miss Blandings had a sixteen-year-old son with Dr. Payne and two grown daughters from her previous marriage to Bill Blandings. During her fairy-tale life, Miss Blandings was the personal secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She left that position when Alfred Hitchcock cast her opposite Cary Grant in Mother May I. She went on to make seven more films between 1945 and 1954, when she retired to become a housewife. The case is still open.

My stomach churned.
An uncut sheet of hundred-dollar bills. Like Perry had behind his couch. Perry…
Tammy had said that Perry was up to no good and that she needed to talk to me. I closed the browser and shut the computer down.

I hurried over to the foyer closet and tugged my big navy blue handbag off the shelf. It was weightless. I turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing. What happened to the bundle of uncut hundred-dollar bills that I obtained from behind the couch in Perry’s office? I clasped a hand over my mouth as I bit my lip. I began hyperventilating. I’d been robbed. No, burglarized. Robbed was when someone pointed a gun at you and said, “Stick ‘em up.”

Think, Donna, think. Call the police. No, imbecile. What are you gonna say? I want to report a burglary, someone stole counterfeit money that I stole from a judge? Oh was my gut churning up acid. I kept swallowing. I couldn’t stay here, not when someone had invaded my privacy. I grabbed my fanny pack with my wallet and keys in it. I shoved it inside my big blue tote bag, along with Momma’s purse. I strode outside, slammed the door and zoomed down to the garage.

In Daddy’s old gold Chrysler, I catapulted myself over the river, around the beltway and exited into College Park, Maryland. I knew my sister was living in the new Svenson Luxury Apartments. I didn’t know which one exactly but I had no other choice. I had no one else to run to.

~*~

My dash radio glowed an amber twelve seventeen a.m. Well, no sense in checking in at the management office in the middle of the night. Man, I needed to pee. Great, now what? Wonder what time the fast food restaurants closed. Not that I recollected seeing any recently. Shoot.

I circled around in the complex. Thank goodness it wasn’t a gated property. Hey, there it was. Tammy’s cute little pink Mazda Miata. It had a Rocky’s Gym magnetic cling logo in the rear window. I backed into the space next to it. Oops, I thought I was over the line, so I had to pull out and try again. Make that four tries.