“First, thing I need,” said Mrs. P, “is a new crossword book.”
Oh, joy.
“I want to get some souvenirs for the boys. Cal wants a Panther’s hockey sweater and Craig wants a Buccaneers jersey. Oh, and I’ve got to pick up some underwear for Craig. He’s got holes all through his. Damn, I don’t know why that boy’s so hard on underwear. And Cal’s getting low on sport socks. I better pick him up a few pairs. I have to get him the one hundred percent cotton ones. His feet sweat so bad.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what those boys would do without me.”
Shudder to think.
Cal and Craig — the ‘boys’ — were damn near 30 and she still mama’d them. They still loved it.
As Mrs. P took a couple hundred bucks in bills and eight rolls of American quarters from her purse and deposited them in her fanny pack (God help the fool who tried to wrestle it from her), I told her we absolutely had to be back in time for the late morning gathering at the recreation room.
“Relax, Dix,” Mrs. P said as she folded up two one-hundred dollar bills and put one in each side of her bra. “Have I ever let you down?”
Okay, she had me there. She’d not. And she wouldn’t start now. She’d have me back at the Wildoh on time.
And with suspicions running high, it was just where I needed to be. Everyone would have to show up to avoid being suspected. Avoid being talked about and collectively declared guilty by dis-association in this instance. And of course, the gossip itself would keep people coming back.
Mother would be going, too, but not for the gossip. She’d go to the Wildoh rec center to keep suspicions about her from growing even further.
Granted, she hadn’t ventured out last night, and she didn’t go on her early morning walk today (had not donned her walking suit and shoes at all and was in fact still wearing her housecoat). But I knew Katt Dodd. She’d put on her Pinch-Me Pink lipstick, some dangling earrings and hold her head high as she walked into that rec room, even if it killed her. But it didn’t take bucketloads of intuition to know it wouldn’t be easy for her. Katt Dodd was one tough cookie. She’d handle what she had to. But still….
I swallowed down the lump in my throat.
Never had a case been so important to me.
Though the last one had been close, when it was my own ass in the sling.
“Gonna let Mona kick your ass at crib again?” Mrs. P teased when I mentioned our need to be back in time. “How much you going to lose to her today? Eight bucks? Ten?”
Mona was a gambler, that’s for sure. Small dollar amounts, but I saw the desperation in her when she played. That was one woman who absolutely craved a win like some people craved a smoke.
“We’ll see, Mrs. P.”
“Oh, and don’t forget that Lance fellow? Eh, Katt.” She elbowed my mother, trying to draw her into the teasing. “Is he coming around today?”
“Let’s see,” Mother said. “Yes, Big Eddie instructed golf yesterday, so Lance will be around to dive for the balls today.”
“There you go then, Dix! Gonna bring your camera?”
I rolled my eyes. Shook my head. Tsk-tsked. Discreetly pocketed my digital camera.
Okay, yes, I knew this was going to be a weird day…. I just didn’t know how weird.
Mrs. P and I were on our way out the front door, waving goodbye and promising to pick up a few things at the store. It was then that I (sharp PI that I am) noticed something else about my mother this morning.
She was screaming.
Her eyes were saucered wide, and her hand shook as she pointed to the floor by the patio door. The exact same door via which Dylan Foreman had entered the condo last night and made his way into my bed.
~*~
“Oh my God! He’s been here! Right here in this very room last night!”
Crap! Busted!
Weirdly, this felt like the time in high school when I’d been caught sneaking Cody McNally into the house late one night. (We were just going to watch a movie together, I swear.) Not that I thought I was in for the same lecture now as I’d gotten then. But still … Dylan Foreman’s presence at all was something I necessarily had to keep a secret from mother.
And the other stuff … that I definitely wanted to keep under wraps.
“I … I can explain, Mother,” I sputtered.
Mother looked at me like I’d lost my last marble. “Why would you explain anything?”
“Guilty conscience, Dix?” Mrs. Presley’s grin spread across her entire face. “Something we don’t know you’d like to tell us about? Something about last night?” Mrs. Presley gave an exaggerated wink.
Damn, she knew. Her catlike smile confirmed it.
Thankfully, while I was silently instructing Mrs. Presley (okay, pleading with hands clasped together in prayer and mouthing no, no, no) not to tell Mom about my visitor, Mom was crouched down staring at the floor. I joined her.
There was a puddle of water on the hardwood floor. A very small puddle. Barely noticeable, in fact. Mother picked something up as I looked at the lock on the patio door.
Goddamn it! I knew that door had been locked when I’d gone to bed! But now it was open. And no one had been out yet this morning. The lock itself was unscratched. Very few lock pickers can actually do the job without there being at least one or two tell-tale nicks and scratches (present company excepted, and Dylan, too, it seemed). The unannounced company of last night had either had his or her own key, or been damn good at what they were doing. This was no hack job.
“Did Frankie have a key, Mom?” I asked.
“Of course! How else would he have gotten in.”
Was she finally ready to admit Frankie could be the culprit? Was she finally admitting that the man remained in human form after all? Was she —
“Though it’s beyond me how his little green arms could reach all the way up to unlock the door,” she said.
Crap.
I crouched and touched the water on the floor. As I suspected, it was cold. I looked at it on my fingertips as I rubbed them together. Nothing out of the ordinary. I smelled the water — odorless.
Okay, in case you’re wondering, no way in hell was I going to taste it.
It had not rained last night. Florida weather is unpredictable at best, but a quick check of the weather station this morning confirmed what the tanned, blond, bubbly weatherman had promised last night. No rain in sight.
So where did the water come from?
I looked up at the ceiling. No drips.
Open door, water on floor — there really was only one answer.
Someone else had broken into my mother’s home while I’d slept soundly through it. That unsettled me. Big time. They’d have seen me sleeping. They might have watched me, and I had not stirred. They might have stood right over me….
“Mother!” I gulped. “Go check the lucky diamond.”
“But Frankie would never—”
“Just humor me, okay?”
She tsk-tsked, but went to the wall safe. Discreetly, with an ‘I’d better go pee again’, Mrs. Presley headed to the bathroom rather than be there when Mother opened the safe.
Mother laid the picture of me and Peaches Marie flat on the table. I watched over her shoulder as she worked the clicking dial. Not that I was trying to see the combination. I knew it, of course, Peaches and I both did — 2 left, 18 right, 4 left. But what red-blooded offspring wouldn’t be at least a bit curious to see what their parent kept in their wall safe. It was like snooping through the bottom dresser drawer when your parents are out. Finding a lost love letter in someone’s old coat pocket — you had to read it, it was practically the law, wasn’t it?