Bosom Bodies (Mina's Adventures) (9 page)

Maledizione.
Ginger had an answering service? Since when? Maybe the guy she married had a lot of money and wanted privacy. If he was so rich
,
why did Ginger need to work at Bosom Bodies? The frustration from the call helped Mina overcome her fear, and she decided to get into her comfy robe and watch television.

She had barely slipped her arms into her robe when the doorbell rang. She froze. Visitors were supposed to check in with the guard. No one had called from the gate.
Dio
m
io
.
DeFiore
’s words echoed in her brain. “
D
on’t open the door unless you ask who it is first
.”

The doorbell rang again. She tiptoed to the corner of the hall wall, trying to catch any noise on the other side of the door without being seen through the peephole. Little noises came from the front door, like the sound made by
fingers
drumming on a tabletop. Whoever was ringing the doorbell was also finger dancing on her door?
Somehow that frightened her even more.

She tiptoed back to her bedroom. Time to set pride aside and call
DeFiore
.
Her corduroy skirt lay on the floor where she had dropped it. Mina retrieved
DeFiore
’s card from the pocket.

He picked up right away. “Hello.” He sounded—happy. She could hear music and laughter in the background. She felt so guilty. “Hummm,
DeFiore
? I
t’s me, Mina.”

“Mina, you okay?” Suddenly he was detective
DeFiore
, even the music and the laughter faded.

“I am, it’s just
…
I don’t know. Sorry to bother you at home. You see, there is somebody at my door.”

“Now?”

“A few minutes ago. Maybe he is gone now.”

“He? You know the person?”

“Not really, but a new neighbor moved in next door. He may be the one ringing the door bell.”

“Did you ask who it is?”

“No, just a hunch. I’m sitting here in the dark, feeling stupid. Maybe I overreacted.”

“Mina, remember the old saying, ‘better safe than sorry.
’
However, if he had bad intentions and your place is dark, he would have assumed you weren’t home and forced his way in. Could he just want to meet his neighbor?”

“This late at night?”

“Mina, it’s
eight
o’clock.”

“Oh.”

“Do me a favor, turn on all the lights, even the outside ones, put the TV
on, make a lot of noise. While you do that, I’ll call the guards at the gate and ask them to send someone over. Shhh, listen, no big deal. They’ll come by and say hello. How is that?”

“Oh, okay. I guess.”

“And Mina, this is good, you calling if there is a problem, no matter how small. Call me back if the guard doesn’t come fast enough. I’m here
. C
all.”

Mina hated to admit to it, but she felt relieved. She went around the small condo and turned on all the lights, just like
DeFiore
said to do. She switched on the terrace lights last.

Five minutes later the guard rang the
doorbell
, announcing in a loud voice, “Miss Calvi, it’s Herb from the front gate, making a welfare check per Detective
DeFiore
’s request.”

She ran to open the door before the guard woke up the whole building. Herb breathed heavily like he had run up the four flights of stairs instead of having stepped off the elevator.

“Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. So kind of you. All is well. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“No problem, Miss Calvi.”

“Call me
Mina, okay?”

“Would you like for me to walk through the house?” The guard asked.

Mina shook her head. “No need, really. Do you get calls like this often or am I the only pain in the neck?”

Herb must
have
weigh
ed
some two hundred fifty
plus pounds and reminded her of the Pillsbury
D
oughboy
.
“You are not a pain
. B
esides, if no one need
ed
us, we’
d
be out of a job.”

Mina nodded. He was probably a retired professional who never did any physical work in his life. Someone’s asthmatic grandpa.

“Thanks, Herb, you make me feel better. I’ll be fine. Thanks again, and good night.” Was she supposed to tip him? What did other people do?

After he left, Mina sat on the couch. She no longer wanted to watch the news. She felt lost and lonely. Was this a preview of her life? She didn’t have a job or a purpose. She stopped going to school the same month her mother died. At first she kept busy straightening out her birth papers, the inheritance. All that legal stuff she hated so much because every paragraph, every word, every comma, reminded her that her mother was gone forever.

Brian and their budding romance lightened her dark days. Then came the sale of the home and soon after
,
the
merger
of the business. Her friends were more acquaintances than friends. Paco and Adams would always be there for her if she needed them, but both had families and professions that came first. Here she sat in this high-end condo staring at a blank wall, too sad and depressed to even finish unpacking. Herb, the guard, must have thought she had been robbed or something since the bare walls left the condo looking as warm and lived in as a highway rest stop.

Looking back
,
she realized the reason she had so easily accepted the Ginger/Bosom Bodies charade was more because it sounded exciting than because she wanted to do a favor for a friend. Same story with driving Angelina, or whatever her name really was. Ginger, Barbara and Angelina were not her friends. She didn’t even know where they lived. Come to think of it, she didn’t know the name of Ginger’s husband either.

Enough with self
-
pity. She would make herself something to drink, and then watch TV. Maybe Brian would call after all, and she could apologize.

She went into the kitchen to explore her options. No hot cocoa, the thought of it made her nauseous. She had a bottle of Prosecco a vendor had given her as a gift because the wine came from V
icenza, a town
very close to her birthplace.
She was s
aving it for a special occasion
but
remembered some instant tea bags
in
the welcome basket left in the condo by management. Green tea, perfect, it suited her mood.

She
filled
a small saucepan
with
water
, and put it on the stove to heat up, the she
went
to
look for a mug.
DeFiore
had taken two of her mugs and the other two were
still
in the dishwasher from coffee with Margo that morning. How much more pathetic could her life get? She had to wash a mug in order to drink a cup of tea. Damn.

A
noise, like something bouncing on glass
, she turned
. Oh, no. The water
had come to a
full boil
and
sputtered over
causing
the saucepan
to
quiver and sh
ake
on the smooth stovetop.

“No, no. What’s wrong with me? I can’t even boil water.” She grabbed the saucepan handle, burning her fingers while spilling water all over the kitchen floor.

Mina sat on the wet floor, paper towels spread around her, and sobbed.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, crying and calling her mother’s name. She knew she had to stop the nonsense, take control of her life.
Grow up.
When she tried to stand, her left leg had gone to sleep.

“So be it.” She hopped to the refrigerator, grabbed the bottle of Prosecco and went looking for a
flute
.

She had never ‘popped’ a bottle of bubbly
on her own
before. Time to learn. It shouldn’t be as painful as boiling water. Waiters in restaurants always used a napkin around the bottle, like people do with scarves around their neck on winter days.
She could do that. The closest thing
she had
to a napkin was a dishcloth.

She wrapped the top of the bottle carefully, untwisted the silver wire holding down the cork and waited. Nothing happened. Mina tried to pry the cork with her thumbs, but again, nothing budged. “
Never shake a sparkling wine
bottle.”
That part she remembered, so what next? She carried the bottle and the
flute
into the living room,
set
the glass on the low table, sat on the couch
,
squeezed the bottle between her knees
and
pulled on the cork with both hands. With a loud POP it flew from the bottle, right between her fingers, ricocheted against the ceiling, and loudly hit the glass door to the terrace. Mina felt giddy over such an accomplishment.

She poured the foamy wine into the
flute
and admired her handy work. Not a drop had been spilled.
All right!

Where was that cork? Down on all four
s,
she crawled around looking for the
cork,
which
had
bounced off
the glass door
. She was searching in that general vicinity when she glanced through the glass.

The
terrace
light shone on a pair of pointed, dark boots standing outside her door.

Mina jumped to her feet, but instead of running to hide in her bedroom, she turned to look straight into the intruder’s eyes.

“Huh?”

Diego, the cook
from Bosom Bodies
, stared back at her, a grin on his face, a poster-sized white cardboard saying
Howdy Neighbor
in his hands.

A thousand thoughts zoomed through Mina’s mind
,
the wish to kill Diego being the clear winner. It could have been seconds or hours the two of them stood staring. Waiting for the other to make a move?

With a sigh, Mina opened the door. “You’re my new neighbor? What? You missed me so much at Bosom Bodies you decided to move next door? Let me guess, they made you manager, and you decided to ‘elevate’ your life.” Mina meant to play on the word elevate because of the condo’s location, hoping Diego would feel the insult and remember.
He started it with his
remark the night he drove her home because of the flat tire.

“You don’t know?”
H
e stepped uninvited into the room.

“Know what?” She caught a whiff of that scent of mountain pine he seemed to carry on him.

“Bosom Bodies is closed. Indefinitely.”

“Oh. Because of Barbara’s death?”

He ignored her question. “I rang your door bell earlier, I guess you weren’t home.”

She wasn’t going to tell him how his bell ringing sent her into a fear
-
fueled frenzy.

Mina closed the
terrace
door
. H
er phone rang in the bedroom.
Brian
. Without hesitation or explanation she rushed to answer, leaving Diego standing alone in the middle of the living room.

“Brian
?
” She spoke into the mouthpiece.

“Sorry, kid, it’s Dan.
DeFiore
.”

“
DeFiore
?”

“Did you call Ginger Miller’s phone number?”

“Huh, yes. How do you know?”

“Mina, pay attention. The police are monitoring Ginger’s calls. When you call her, you are really calling the police station, so do me a favor and don’t call again. Okay?”

“What did you do to Ginger?”

“For God’s sake Mina, there is no Ginger. If there ever was one, she is long gone. We don’t need you to complicate things.”

“I beg your pardon. Are you saying I lied to you? I made Ginger up?”

“No, I’m saying someone else made her up and got you involved, and until we get this sorted out, I’m telling you to stay out of it. Go shopping, watch a movie, anythin
g. Just
stay out of this.”

“How can I stay out of it if I don’t know what it is?”

“You sound more like Paola every day
.
I swear.”

“Really? You really mean that? I sound like my mother? What a nice thing to say. By the way, do you know who my new neighbor is?”