“She wanted to know if it was true that the Pink Lady had been found, and if I knew where it was being kept. Of course I didn’t tell her, but…” She hesitated, which caused Odelia to look up at her mother.
“What is it, Mom?”
“I’m not sure,” said Marge. “Just that… well, you know how sometimes you can get a strange feeling about a person, right?”
“Oh, sure,” said Gran. “I have a very strange feeling about you right now, Scarlett.”
“About me?! What are you talking about?” asked Scarlett, much surprised.
“The way you eat your spaghetti! You think you know a person, and then this happens!”
“I’ve always eaten my spaghetti this way. I like to taste it, not gobble it down like most people do—swallow it whole without chewing.”
“Let Mom finish her story, you guys,” said Odelia.
“Oh, it’s not much of a story, really,” said Marge with a light shrug. “Just… I asked her about her book, where she got the idea and if maybe the book was autobiographical, since she put so much detail into her story—almost as if she actually lived it, you know. But she became very evasive, and then practically ran off. So I don’t know.” She smiled an apologetic smile. “Just my silly imagination, I guess. That’s what you get from being surrounded by all those books and all those stories—you start seeing things.”
“No, but I’m sure you’re onto something, Mom,” said Odelia. “There is something very strange going on with that Pink Lady. I mean, I searched online, and couldn’t find anything about how it disappeared. And now it suddenly turns up on a beach, thousands of miles from where it was last seen? It’s a story I really want to get to the bottom of, don’t you?”
Gran shrugged.“I just hope Scarlett will get to the bottom of her plate at some point. At the rate she’s going that seems unlikely.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s rude to stare at other people’s plates?” Scarlett countered.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you shouldn’t play with your food?”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to comment on people’s eating habits?”
“So who’s going to Fido’s meeting tonight?” asked Marge, wanting to nip a potential argument in the bud.
“What meeting?” asked Chase with a frown.
“Oh, he’s holding a meeting at the Seabreeze Center to introduce his Flat Earth Society.”
“That’s right,” said Charlene. “I saw something about that. What’s the deal with this society?”
“The deal is that Fido has gone loco,” said Gran. “And now the whole town is going to watch him self-destruct.” She gave Scarlett a conspiratorial wink, which the latter reciprocated with a grin. Those two were clearly up to something again. “Here, let me help you with that,” Gran now said, and grabbed Scarlett’s plate and dumped half of it on her own plate and dug in.
“Thanks,” said Scarlett with a happy sigh. “I hate to leave stuff on my plate, don’t you?”
“Happy to help,” said Gran between two mouthfuls.
“Fido believes the earth is flat?” asked Uncle Alec with a frown.
“Yeah, he does. And not only that,” said Scarlett, “he wants us all to join his Flat Earth Society.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Tex said, and even though he was slurring his words a little, nobody seemed to notice.
Except the four of us, of course. But then we’re cats—and cats are born to pick up little clues like that—clues no one else catches!
13
That evening, instead of our usual program, which includes wandering around town and joining cat choir to meet our fellow cats and hang out, we joined our humans to go to the inaugural meeting of the Long Island Flat Earth Society, which promised to be quite the show, if the number of attendants was any indication. Gran was right. It almost seemed as if the whole town had decided to come and take a look at this car crash in the making.
“They might be bailing on Fido the hairdresser,” said Harriet as we settled in at the back of the theater, “but they’re clearly dying to know what Fido the conspiracy theorist is up to.”
“It’s called disaster tourism, Harriet,” I said. “Humans seem to enjoy watching one of their fellow human beings make a complete fool of themselves. It’s one of the highlights of their existence.”
“You mean like when a person trips over a banana skin and falls flat on his ass?” asked Brutus.
“Sure. It’s the exact same principle.”
Odelia and the rest of the Pooles had taken up position in one of the back rows, so as not to be too conspicuous, and the rest of the theater was filling up nicely indeed.
The Seabreeze Music Center is one of the biggest theaters in town, and caters to a very diverse audience: one night there might be a rock band giving of its best and making the rafters quake, another night there might be a movie retrospective by some obscure Scandinavian auteur, and once upon a time even Charlie Dieber had graced this hall with his presence, much to the delight of hundreds or even thousands of screaming young fans.
Tonight the audience was a lot more sedate, and as far as I could tell there would be no screaming girls, or even teddy bears being thrown at the stage. Besides, even if Charlie were here tonight, he wouldn’t stand for such nonsense. The kid had found religion, after all, and had gotten married, and was now singing songs about Jesus Christ, and no longer about his latest romantic conquest.
“Look who’s here,” said Dooley excitedly, his tail pointing in the direction of the door.
We all looked over, and lo and behold, two familiar figures had just graced us with their presence. They were Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale, the two career criminals who had, not unlike The Dieber himself, found religion, and had even joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses for a short-lived stint.
“What do you think they’re doing here?” asked Harriet as she eyed the twosome with marked interest. Johnny and Jerry were scanning the audience, and when their gazes had swept across the heads of the Poole family, returned, like the beam of a lighthouse, and a big smile slid up Jerry’s face. It’s hard for a man with a face like a ferret to look handsome, but when Jerry smiles, his innate ugliness is diminished by perhaps thirty to thirty-five percent, making his presence more or less palatable. Johnny, of course, is just a big brute, even though I know from experience that underneath that tough exterior there beats a gentle heart.
They now made their way over to where Odelia and her family were seated, and Jerry wasted no time taking a seat directly behind Marge, while Johnny took up position behind Scarlett Canyon, eyeing the latter with a touch of lasciviousness.
“Well, well, well,” Jerry’s opening statement began. “If it ain’t the Pooles. Long time no see.”
“Hi, Jerry,” said Marge, and judging from her smile she was happy to see the twosome, which didn’t surprise me, since Marge had always had a soft spot for the criminal duo. Once upon a time she’d even offered them employ at the library, cleaning up the archives in the basement. Of course they’d used this as an excuse to drill a hole through the library wall and into the bank next door, so they could abscond with the contents of a dozen or so safe deposit boxes and flee to Mexico.
But they’d been arrested and extradited and had served their time and were now upstanding and law-abiding members of the community once more. Or so they claimed.
“Hi, Scarlett,” said Johnny with a silly grin on his face. The grin was not unexpected, and neither was the look of vertigo in the big guy’s eyes, since he was now leaning over Scarlett, and had a bird’s-eye view of the woman’s d?colletage. I must say the view of Scarlett’s frontage has a powerful effect even from a frog’s-eye view, so I could only imagine what Johnny was feeling now that he got the full experience.
“Do we know each other?” asked Scarlett, her demeanor far from frosty. Scarlett likes men, you see, almost as much as men like Scarlett, and Johnny might be rough around the edges, he’s also a very large man, and presumably in Scarlett’s mind that size translated in the kind of promise of virility any warm-blooded female likes to see in a member of the opposite sex.