The Hitwoman Hunts a Ghost (9 page)

“My fault?” I shrieked.

“Shhh! You’re attracting attention with your histrionics,” the lizard admonished.

As usual, he was right. A woman and her son who had just parked their car were watching me curiously because of my shriek.

Gritting my teeth, I lowered my voice and reminded the lizard, “It’s your fault. If you hadn’t been whining about your housing...”

“Whining?”

“Whining.”

“I don’t whine,” he informed me haughtily. “I simply pointed out that the situation was deplorable.”

“It sure sounded a lot like whining.” I spun around in a circle, hoping for some sign of DeeDee, but saw nothing. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“We’re supposed to go to the store and find me a decent place to sleep.”

“But she’s gone. I can’t just…”

“It’s not the first time you’ve lost her,” the lizard reminded me. “She’ll find her way home. She always does.”

I considered that for a moment. Grudgingly, I had to admit to myself that he was probably right, but it didn’t make me any more inclined to take the lizard shopping.

“Are you going to stand here all day bemoaning your lack of judgment, or are you going to fulfill your promise to me?”

“Only if you promise to shut up,” I muttered, walking over to my car. “We’ll go to the store so you’ll stop your belly-aching and then we’ll go home and hope DeeDee is there.”

“You seem more hostile than usual,” God remarked as he clambered out of my shirt and perched on my shoulder as I drove away from the hospital.

I didn’t reply. I just grit my teeth.

“I know things haven’t been easy for you.”

“Ya think?”

“But look on the bright side, Katie is improving and Marlene is home. Focus on that.”

His tone, suggesting that all was right in my world, irritated me.

“Or,” I snapped, “I could focus on the fact Ms. Whitehat has tasked me with finding a missing dog and I don’t know what the consequences will be if I don’t, Delveccio has given me an impossible timetable with this Ira guy, Aunt Loretta is on some obsessive search, and I didn’t think twice about attacking Aunt Susan’s boyfriend… Who does that?”

“You are
such
a Negative Nellie.” God sighed. “If you’re not careful, that frown you’re always wearing is going to become permanent.”

I considered rolling down the window and tossing him out of the moving car. I wondered how his “sensitive skin” would like that.

“Really, biped,” he lectured. “You have to choose to be happy. Sure you’ve got some less-than-desirable things going on in your life, but there are some spectacular happenings too.”

Pulling into the lot of the pet store, I parked, adjusted the rearview mirror so that I could see the television-obsessed little guy perched on my shoulder, and asked, “You’ve been watching endless hours of some feel-good-improve-your-life shit, haven’t you?”

Flicking his tail, he huffed. “Dismiss my advice if you will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.”

I glared at his reflection. He stared back impassively. Lizards don’t have eyelids so it’s pretty much impossible for me to beat him in a staring contest. He just doesn’t blink. Ever.

Frustrated, I looked away. “Are we going to do this, or are you planning on reprimanding me about my attitude all day?”

“Therein lies your problem. I’m trying to help you and you choose to see it as criticism.”

“You called me a Negative Nellie,” I reminded him.

“That,” he said, latching onto my bra strap and sliding back down into his hiding space, “is a statement of fact. No one who knows you would ever say you’re an optimist.”

“I never claimed to be.” Getting out of the car, I slammed the door to emphasize my point.

“But you should try to be,” he whispered softly.

The little guy can be a pain in the butt, but he tends to be right more often than he is wrong. Maybe he was right. Maybe being more of an optimist wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

So I tried to be.

Guess how that turned out.

The entire time we were in the pet store looking for a new enclosure for God (a mercifully short time, light on lizard snark), I told myself that DeeDee would, once again, be waiting at home for us. How’s that for optimism?

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

When my aunts asked where she was, I told them she’d run away again. Leslie and Loretta both tsked sympathetically. Aunt Susan, on the other hand, muttered something about insanity and irresponsibility being bedmates. It was one of her favorite sayings, something she often muttered about politicians, but this time it was directed at me and it stung.

I set up God’s terrarium and was all set to go search for DeeDee when Piss wandered down the basement stairs, informing me on a bored meow, “She’s back.”

“Who?

“The psychic.”

“Armani?”

“You know other psychics, Sugar?”

“Go find out what Loretta’s looking for,” God urged.

“I’ve got to find DeeDee.”

“You won’t,” Piss said with unnerving certainty.

I looked her in her one good eye. “How do you know?”

“I just do.” Her tone indicated the discussion was over. To emphasize her point, she wandered back out of the room.

“Now you’re free to eavesdrop,” God declared cheerily.

“I’m not going to eavesdrop on my aunt,” I told him.

“Why?” He stretched out along the piece of driftwood that occupied most of his terrarium.

“It isn’t polite.”

“
You’re
not polite.”

“Ha!” I scoffed. “There’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

He lifted one of his tiny lizard shoulders in the semblance of a shrug.

I tried a different tactic. “Why should I care what Loretta’s looking for?”

“Because it might keep Templeton from coming down here and rooting through corners while I’m trying to nap.”

“He was down here?” I asked.

“That’s what I said.”

Frowning, I decided that the lizard was probably right. I needed to know what Loretta and Templeton were searching for.  I turned to ask Piss to go listen in, but she’d already slunk away. Hurrying up the stairs, I muttered, “The optimist in me thinks this will solve all my problems.”

“Liar!” the lizard called after me, sounding quite pleased with himself.

I found Aunt Loretta and Armani getting set up in the dining room. Apparently Loretta was catering the event since there were a dozen of her “love muffins” in a basket at the center of the table and she was pouring Armani a cup of coffee.

“Hey, Chiquita.” Armani grinned at me, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Getting into any trouble?”

I thought about Ms. Whitehat and Delveccio. I nodded.

“Good! I’ve got a message for you.”

Inwardly I silently groaned, but I managed to keep the semblance of a smile pasted on my face. “Oh yeah?”

“What kind of message?” Loretta interrupted curiously.

“This and that,” Armani replied breezily, taking a muffin.

Considering that a couple of her messages had saved my life, I wasn’t about to discount anything she said…. even if it did sound like utter nonsense, like her “meet the man” prediction a while back.

“But I thought you came here to help me?” Loretta pouted.

Armani cocked an eyebrow at her. “Keep your panties on. I can multi-task.”

“I’m looking for a lost dog,” I said. I let them assume I was talking about DeeDee, but I was really hoping that Armani could give me a clue about Ghost’s whereabouts. “Any chance your message can help me with that?”

“Beg hers,” Armani replied.

I frowned. “Beg who?”

“Dunno. That’s the message,
Beg hers
.”

“That’s not much help,” I said, wondering if I was supposed to be Ms. Whitehat for mercy or something.

Armani shrugged.

“Now can you help me?” Loretta asked impatiently. “I’m looking for something too.”

“My gift makes me a conduit to the other side,” Armani told her. “I’m not some take-out window where you say what you want and I deliver it to you. That’s not how it works.”

“I understand,” Loretta murmured. “It’s just that I’m so desperate to find it.”

“Find what?” I asked.

Loretta looked around the room, reassuring herself that we were the only three there. “You can’t tell them.”

Her secretiveness made me nervous. “Tell who?”

“Susan and Leslie. You have to promise me, Maggie.”

I hesitated, not wanting to get caught between my aunts.

“Promise,” Loretta pleaded.

Against my better judgment, I nodded.

“I’m going to lose The Corset Closet.”

I gasped.

“The Corset Closet?” Armani asked.

“It’s my business,” Loretta explained quickly. “We sell ladies intimates, nighties, underwear.” She warmed to her subject. “Though more recently we’ve branched into toys and props. We have some tame aids like oils and flavored—”

“She gets the idea,” I interrupted, not needing to hear my aunt describe the attributes of sex toys. There are some things you just can’t un-hear.

“Are you blushing?” Armani asked.

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, dear,” Loretta assured me.

“Can we get back to the point? What do you mean you’re going to lose The Corset Closet?”

“I can’t find the deed to the building and
someone
wants to tear it down to put in a gymnasium.” She shuddered her distaste.

I wasn’t sure if it was an indication about how she felt about losing the building or how much she’s disgusted by the idea of exercise, but that wasn’t the important thing anyway.

“Someone who?” I asked.

She blinked at me, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“The way you said someone makes me think there’s more to this than you’re telling.”  I did my best Aunt Susan impression, giving her a stern look that I hoped would cow her into spilling the beans.

Spinning her engagement ring around and around, she confessed. “It’s Leo.”

“Who’s Leo?”

She looked down at her ring. “Ancient history… one of those mistakes we were talking about.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I sighed, not bothering to hide my disapproval.

“He...” she protested weakly. “He gave me the building, I swear. But I can’t find the paper, and without it, the lawyer said I can’t keep the building.”

“Here,” Armani said, shaking her purple cloth bag filled with Scrabble tiles at Loretta, offering her a reprieve. “Pick seven.”

Her hands trembling, Loretta reached for the bag.

“But remember what I said, I can’t be expected to just deliver up the answer you’re looking for.” She waited patiently while Loretta put all her letters down on the table.

Armani quickly put them in alphabetical order and read them aloud, “A B D G I N T.”

The three of us stared at the tiles for a long moment and then Armani and I simultaneously blurted out, “Dingbat.”

“Who are you calling a dingbat?” Aunt Susan asked, breezing into the dining room.

Armani, Loretta, and I exchanged a panicked look.

Crossing my fingers behind my back, I lied. “The dog.”

“The dog.” Susan rolled her eyes. “Did your niece tell you what she did today?” she asked Loretta.

Loretta shook her head.

“She attacked Bob.”

“I didn’t attack
him
,” I protested. “I thought I was protecting Katie.”

“She tackled him to the ground,” Susan told her sister, ignoring my explanation.

“Warrior Chiquita!” Armani crowed triumphantly.

Susan turned her coldest, most-quelling look on my semi-psychic friend.

Unperturbed and certainly not silenced, Armani told me, “I like this rebellious side of you.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Susan railed. “She’ll end up just like Mary.”

Loretta gasped.

I fell back as though I’d been sucker-punched.

Susan clapped a hand over her mouth as though that could stop the words that had just escaped.

Even Armani, sensing the ramped up tension, stayed silent.

“I didn’t mean—” Susan apologized hurriedly.

“I know what you meant,” I interrupted bitterly. Before she could say anything else, I stormed out of the dining room, fists clenched.

“Hey,” Marlene protested when I almost knocked her over.

Ignoring her, I made a beeline for the door.

“Are you okay?” Marlene chased after me. “What’s wrong?”

“Leave me alone,” I shouted, blowing through the door and into the cool night air. Not stopping there, I stalked out of the B&B and down the road.

I didn’t know where I was heading. All I knew was that I had to get away from Susan’s accusation that I was turning out like my mother. Like my crazy mother. The woman who’d spent more of my life in a mental institution than out of it.

I wasn’t crazy, I told myself, as I kept walking. Sure I’d attacked someone for no good reason, and I was a hitwoman in the employ of a mobster, and I talked to a lizard, but that didn’t make me crazy.

I don’t know how long I walked, repeating my litany of less-than-sane life choices and countering them with “that doesn’t mean I’m crazy” mutters.

What
was
crazy was that it was dark and cold and that I ended up at the door of Patrick Mulligan’s hideout apartment.

My first knock on his door was timid. I waited a moment and then knocked harder, all the while wondering how the hell I was going to explain my arrival to him.

But he didn’t answer.

So I banged even harder, so hard it bruised my knuckles.

But he wasn’t there, or if he was, he wasn’t in the mood to invite me in.

I may have punched and kicked the door like a madwoman for about thirty seconds.

All of my righteous “I’m not crazy” anger whooshed out of me in one breath, leaving me empty and dejected. Suddenly exhausted, I leaned my forehead against the door as I fought back the urge to sob pathetically.

Resting my hand on the cool metal doorknob, I tried to figure out what to do next.

As I saw it, I had three options: One, I could go home and endure the pity of my aunts and the scorn of my lizard. Two, I could walk the darkened streets, searching for DeeDee. Three, I could just stay where I was with the hope that Patrick would return and magically make everything better.