An Affair to Dismember (28 page)

Bird ran to wash the color out of a client’s hair. I followed her and stood by the basin, where I played with the shampoo dispensers. “Lulu Finkelstein!” Bird announced, gesturing with the hose. “I haven’t thought of her in years. She was troubled.”

I should say so. Looney Tunes, in fact.

“How so?” I asked.

“She started off normal enough. She lived in town. She did some kind of art projects. Then something happened. I don’t know what. She moved way up in the mountains, like the Unabomber or something. She used to call me out there every once in a while to do her roots. Then she stopped calling.”

“Bird, do you remember her phone number?”

“No phone. She called from the pay phone at a nearby gas station.”

“Do you remember her address?”

“You know I remember everything, Gladie. But it’s not really an address. There’s trees involved.”

ACCORDING TO Spencer, stakeouts, mountains, and trees meant provisions. He gave me twenty bucks and stayed in the car while I went two doors down to the drugstore to stock up on Pop-Tarts and root beer.

“I’m never going to get rid of my paunch,” I mumbled, knocking two boxes of strawberry Pop-Tarts into my basket.

“Gladie, if I didn’t know better, I would say you were following me.”

I jumped three feet in the air in surprise and threw the basket back over my head, shooting it clear out of my aisle. It landed somewhere on the cosmetics counter with a loud crash.

“Did I scare you?” Betty Terns put her hand up to her mouth and looked at me in wide-eyed wonder.

“No, not at all, Betty. I’ve been a little jumpy lately,” I said.

“That’s understandable.”

“Who the hell threw the basket?” the manager yelled from the general vicinity of the cosmetics counter, then added a few obscenities.

“Maybe we should go outside,” I said.

“I’ll protect you. I’ll be your alibi. I was with you the whole time, and you never had a basket.” Betty winked.

“Thanks, Betty.” I felt an instantaneous warmth and attachment to her. I wanted to protect and nurture her like a lost puppy. She had suffered through an abusive, cheating husband, five rotten kids, and a crazy stalker woman, and now she was stuck in a falling-down home and a polyester wardrobe. Betty looked at me with inquisitive
eyes. Perhaps she saw a kindred spirit in me as well.

“What?” she asked, her smile gone.

“Excuse me?”

“What is it? You’re looking at me funny,” she said.

“Nothing, really. I was just thinking about Lulu.”

Betty gasped. “You know her name? You found out somehow.”

“Yes, Betty. I know. I know all about her. I am so sorry. You have been through so much.”

“I tried to tell you about her. I told you she was evil. I don’t think we should talk about this here.” A perfect round tear rolled down her cheek.

“I’m sorry, Betty,” I said. “I sort of stumbled on it. Did you always know?”

“A couple of years ago I intercepted a call. She screamed and threatened Randy. Called him unspeakable names. I had thought he was just a nervous man, but then it clicked. He had something to be nervous about.”

“What did he say about it?”

“Oh, he never knew that I knew,” Betty said. “I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t dare. If he wanted to talk to me about it, he would have. I didn’t want to trouble him.” I bit my tongue. Betty was a prime candidate for counseling or at least a subscription to
Ms
. magazine. As they say in Egypt, she was in de Nile.

“Randy didn’t know you knew?”

“Not even after I spoke to her.”

“You spoke to her?” I asked.

“She called me when he was away at a doctor’s appointment, like she knew his schedule. She told me horrible things about them together.” Betty’s voice hitched, and her tears flowed in earnest. I patted her shoulder. I took a Kleenex box from the shelves, opened it, handed her a tissue, and took one for myself. I couldn’t stand
hearing people’s problems. I shouldn’t have said anything to Betty. I had sympathy pains down to my toes.

“I’m sorry, Betty. This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

“We all have our crosses to bear.”

“I’ll come by later. I’ll bring Danish,” I said.

Betty perked up. “That sounds great. Could you bring tacos, too? I knew you would be a great friend.”

Betty picked up her prescriptions. I got a box of Pop-Tarts, two Slim Jims, and a six-pack of root beer. Grandma was rubbing off on me in the worst way.

I caught Spencer in the middle of a call to his officers, ordering them around. I put on my seat belt, and he clicked off his cellphone.

“A ball outside in the middle of the week with no advance notice whatsoever, and we have to arrange traffic and security. They couldn’t leave the damned dance in the school gym where they’d planned it all along? Who cares about fog? Now I have to hand out overtime, and I’m screwed on budget. We have to make this quick,” he grumbled.

We drove an hour up into the mountains. The road went from asphalt to gravel to dirt. “How many trees, Pinkie?”

“We should be near a gas station. Or we’re lost, and in that case I get the Slim Jims,” I said.

A couple of minutes later we found the gas station. It consisted of one pump and a little shack.

“Civilization,” said Spencer. “I’ll fill up the tank.”

I got out and stretched my legs. It was a gorgeous day, a perfect day for a long hike and picnic. But I wasn’t so sure I would ever want to live out in the middle of nowhere. We hadn’t seen a house in the last twenty minutes. Besides the gas station, there was no sign of life.

I found the pay phone around the back of the shack. I touched it, trying to sense Lulu Finkelstein. She had
come down here, put coins in the slot, and called the Terns to threaten them. If Betty was a case for counseling, Lulu was a case for the butterfly net.

Bird was amazing. Her directions past trees and around rocks brought us right to Lulu’s cabin. It was about the same size as the gas station shack.

Spencer parked behind a tree a ways away from the cabin. He opened the car door. “Stay here, Pinkie.” He slammed the door, walked two steps, and turned around. “I mean it, Pinkie. Stay here.”

Spencer crept around the perimeter of the area. He sidestepped a few times as he approached the house. It took a good five minutes for him to reach the front door, and once there, he stood still. Listening, I figured.

The front of the cabin was peppered with all sizes of flowerpots and boxes, but there was no sign of actual flowers. Spencer eyed the pots, looked inside. Then he drew his gun but kept it at his side. He walked around the cabin, peering into the windows. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just knock on the door. Finally Spencer came back to the car.

“Pop open a root beer for me, would you? We’re going to be here for a while.”

He drank half a can. I handed him a Pop-Tart.

“She’s one paranoid number, let me tell you,” he said.

I opened a Slim Jim and took a bite. “Paranoid how?”

“She has booby traps all over her property. It’s like Vietnam. I should bring my men out here to train in dismantling explosives. Meanwhile, there’s no sign of her. The plants are all dead. No one is in the cabin, as far as I can tell, but there’s furniture inside. We have no alternative. We have to wait for her.”

“What would have happened if you’d tripped one of the booby traps?” I asked.

“I would have gone kaboom, and you would have inherited my share of the Slim Jims.”

I looked longingly toward the woods. “Are the booby traps everywhere?”

“Why? You want to test them?”

“Yes.”

Spencer raised an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“I have to pee.”

“Pinkie, are you asking me to help you pee?”

“As much as I hate doing it, yes. I’m asking you to help me pee.”

SPENCER TRACED a safe path to a grove of trees.

“Go away,” I told Spencer. I was dancing the pee-pee dance. My bladder was ready to explode like one of Lulu’s booby traps.

“I’ve got my back turned. Hurry up. I want to finish my Pop-Tart.”

“Don’t peek.”

“I won’t peek. I don’t want to peek.”

“What does that mean? You don’t want to peek?”

“It means I’m not fourteen years old. I’ve seen women with their pants down before.” Spencer had his back to me. He tapped his foot, making a small crunching noise as it hit the leaves on the forest floor.

“Don’t peek,” I said again.

“I’m not peeking. Hurry up.”

I unbuttoned my jeans and unzipped them. Spencer broke out in stripper music. “Da, da, da, da, da!”

“Jerk! Stop that. I can’t do this. You’re going to have to go back to the car,” I said.

“You could have peed three times by now.”

“I can’t pee with you there. It doesn’t matter if you peek. I don’t want you listening.”

“I’m not leaving you alone. It’s too dangerous. If you don’t want to pee, you can hold it.”

I was going to rupture something important if I held it in any longer. “Fine. Put your hands over your ears and sing the national anthem, loudly.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Start singing!”

Spencer put his hands over his ears and started singing. And I squatted.

BACK AT the car, I put my seat all the way back. Spencer took another bite of his Pop-Tart.

“Wow, that was loud,” he said.

“You weren’t supposed to listen.”

Spencer smirked his annoying little smirk.

“And women like you?” I asked. “Maybe they mistake you for a human.”

“Ouch. Okay. Let’s play nice. I was just teasing. I didn’t hear a thing. Not one drop.”

“What kind of name is Spencer, anyway?” I demanded.

Spencer looked honestly shocked by my change of topic. “Excuse me?”

“It sounds like a made-up name,” I said. “Like you’re trying to be manly or macho.”

“I am manly. I am macho. And it’s not a made-up
name. My mother gave me this name, may her soul rest in peace.”

“Oh.”

“While we’re on the subject, what kind of name is Gladie? Sounds like a third grader’s name.
Gladie. Gladie
. Why don’t you use your real name, Gladys? Gladys. Sounds like a schoolmarm. Horn-rimmed glasses, tweed skirt Gladys.”

I put my hand up. “Fine. We won’t talk about names.”

Spencer smirked. “Ready to play nice?”

“Yes.”

“It was a cheap shot about my name,” he said.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been on edge. People dying around me.”

“I know. It can rub a person’s nerves raw.”

“You seem okay,” I noted. “Not stressed at all.”

“I’ve been in the business for a while.”

“You came from L.A., right?” I asked.

Spencer raised an eyebrow. “You checked up on me, Pinkie? I like that.”

“People talk. I can’t help if people talk.”

“Yes, I was in L.A.”

“Big town. Lots of opportunities. A far cry from Cannes.”

“You want to know why I came here.”

I shrugged. “Only if you want to tell me.”

“It all happened when a man pulled out his eye and ate it,” he said.

I put my Pop-Tart down. “On second thought, I’m not sure I want to hear this story.”

“I’ll skip the worst part. That’s the part where I arrested a man for killing his wife and their two very young children and ripping out their hearts.”

“Thank you for skipping that part,” I said. I had a big lump in my throat, and I was having a hard time swallowing.

“And the murderer is in jail because I put him in jail, and he’s about to go to court, and he takes his own eye out and eats it.”

“You’re making this up, right?” I asked. “This is some kind of stakeout hazing you put people through, right?”

Spencer ignored me. He was into the story, more intent than I had ever seen him. “And the judge says he’s incompetent to stand trial. The murderer goes to a cushy psych ward. Gladie, I found the dead woman and the dead babies, and I swore I would get them justice, and I couldn’t do it.”

“And Cannes has precious few murders,” I supplied.

“Until recently,” he said.

I scooted closer to him and leaned my head against his shoulder. He draped his arm around me and nestled his face in my hair.

“I like your hair,” he said, his voice muffled. “It smells like you.”

I let him hold me. He was strong and comforting, and I liked that he liked my hair. I nodded off and woke sometime later to Spencer on the phone with a federal agency, telling them to come clear away the explosives.

Our provisions were gone, and Lulu was nowhere to be seen.