Bubbles All The Way Read online

  Water off a duck’s back. Mr. Notch rolled his hand. “And . . .?”

  Right. Notes. “And I have notes.” Okay, I might have taken them in my car afterward, writing from memory, but notes were notes. And I should know because recently I was threatened with jail for not turning over my notes to the prosecution.

  “Let’s see them.” Notch held out his hand and I gave him my notebook. He flipped through a few pages and said, “They’re awfully neat.”

  “Stenography 101 at Two Guys, Dictation for Dummies.” I winked at Mr. Salvo, my editor and former Two Guys journalism instructor, the one who first convinced me I was a natural reporter, if not a natural blonde.

  “Who’s this Andre guy?” Notch asked.

  “He runs a competing salon. He has some connection with Debbie, though I don’t know what. She was on the phone to him when she dropped dead. I obtained her cell and counted over twenty-six incoming and outgoing calls to his salon and home within twenty-four hours of her death.”

  Notch continued reading. And then something miraculous happened. He said with absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever: “Interesting.”

  I was stunned. Notch never says my stuff is “interesting.”

  Mr. Salvo flashed me a thumbs-up underneath his clipboard.

  “You think you can run this past the cops and write up a story tonight?” Notch asked. “If you can get police confirmation, this is page-one material above the fold.”

  Unreal! This was too good to be true! Page one above the fold. “Absolutely, I—”

  “Actually, Dix, I’m afraid Bubbles has to work for me tonight.” It was JoBeth, the editor of lifestyle, a department Notch passed off as “women’s stuff,” like panty hose and menstrual cycles. “She has to cover the Help the Poor Children fund-raiser.”

  What? What was this? Since when was I covering the Help the Poor Children fund-raiser?

  “She can’t do the fund-raiser. She’s got to cover the Mahoken Sewage Council,” Mr. Salvo countered. “The planned unit development is on the agenda for approval and they don’t even have the leach field designed. I budgeted that for B1.”

  Leach field versus hooking up with Stiletto. Hmmm. How ever could I choose?

  JoBeth fiddled nervously with her pen. JoBeth was always nervous. She had a long, thin nose that tended to drip moisture and a grotesquely long neck, which she tried to minimize—unsuccessfully, I’m afraid—with mock turtlenecks. She resembled one of those rescued greyhounds that are never quite right, still chasing the mechanical bunnies in their minds.

  It didn’t help that she was known for having “melt-downs” in the newsroom when art fell through or a correspondent didn’t meet the deadline for a feature on how to bake the best peach pie.

  But tonight JoBeth found her mettle. “I’m sorry, Tony. Bubbles has to cover that fund-raiser. She just has to. Flossie demanded it. From her bed in the St. Luke’s emergency room. Poor woman, somehow she ended up with a smashed kneecap.”

  I was overcome with a sickening feeling. My own kneecap throbbed in sympathy. The pain must have been horrific. Though now, with Flossie being in the hospital, Mama and Genevieve wouldn’t have to take her out. . . .

  Take her out. I slapped my forehead. I’d actually said to Genevieve that she should take her out. And, of course, Genevieve had interpreted this the way any average person would—provided the average person was Tony Soprano.

  “I don’t know.” Mr. Salvo hemmed. “This could be big stuff. If that sewage proposal passes, it could be an increase of .05 cents in the Mahoken millage.”

  Stop the presses.

  “The fund-raiser raises fifty thousand dollars in one night!” JoBeth exclaimed. “And everyone who’s anyone will be there. It’s being run by Sabina Towne.”

  Sabina Towne. That name was so not Allentown. Only girls from swanky places like Stroudsburg could pull off a name like Sabina Towne.

  “You know?” JoBeth was saying. “The actress? She is incredibly hot right now.”

  “So’s her new boyfriend, from what I hear.” Mr. Salvo gave me a knowing look.

  I ignored him. “I can do it all, JoBeth. I can stop by the fund-raiser and get some color.” Okay, meet Stiletto. “Then I can zip over to the Mahoken meeting and, in between, write up the piece about Debbie and Ern Bender.”

  “Ern who?” Notch snapped to attention.

  “Ern Bender. That’s what E. B. stands for in my notes. He was a pharmacist at Save-T Drugs who was busted a few years back for selling drug-laced Cokes. He got out of jail last week and he told me tonight that Debbie deserved to die. Said he had a scam going and Debbie took it over.”

  “What kind of scam?” JoBeth asked.

  I threw up my hands. “I don’t know. All Ern said was that it was his idea, he had the information—whatever that meant—and Debbie stole it from him. Then she framed him and got him sent to jail. In Ern’s words, it was good she was murdered because if she hadn’t been, her scam could have turned the whole town upside down.”

  “My!” JoBeth exclaimed, her eyes glittering. “That’s intriguing.”

  “That does sound like a lead. If it’s true,” Mr. Salvo said. “Whaddya think, Dix?”

  But Dix Notch had turned to stone. He was pale. Paler than I’d ever seen him before. It was as if he’d just witnessed a dump truck crushing his priceless Old Tom Morris putter.

  “Bender,” he muttered.

  “Pardon?” JoBeth said.

  “Bender.” Notch’s eyelids fluttered. “Ern Bender the pharmacist.”

  Mr. Salvo jotted this down on his clipboard. “Lawless has written a few stories on Bender already. We ran them inside. You want me to call him in? He can help Bubbles on this.”

  I didn’t need any help. Definitely not from Lawless, whose idea of assistance was fetching peanut M&Ms from the vending machine. Anyway, I was more concerned about Notch at the moment. He didn’t look right. He might have been in the early stages of a heart attack.

  “Not Lawless,” Notch said, zombie-like. “She doesn’t need Lawless.”

  Amen to that. “Thank you, Mr. Notch.”

  “Shut up, Yablinko,” he snapped harshly, calling me by the old nickname. “Find Alison. Get me Alison Roach.”

  “The rookie?” Mr. Salvo shook his head. “She can’t handle this.”

  Notch began quivering as if an earthquake were erupting within his muscled body. “Don’t argue with me, damn it. Get her.”

  Mr. Salvo knew better than to protest further. He hopped up and popped his head out the door. “Roach! Get in here.”

  Faster than mercury, Alison was standing next to me and I felt an odd—not to mention disturbing—shift in the atmospheric pressure. Somehow I’d managed to get on Notch’s bad side—again.

  “Alison.” Notch’s jaw was clenched so tightly he could barely get out the words. “Tell me what you’ve found out about the Shatsky homicide today.”

  Alison didn’t even peek at the notebook in her hand. “Seems it’s nothing more than an accidental poisoning. I just got off the phone with Detective Burge. He’s convinced the lab reports will show that there was nothing but latex in the hair glue. According to my research on the Internet, latex allergies are rare, but they can be deadly. Debbie Shatsky displayed all the symptoms. Hives. Difficulty breathing.”

  Yes, yes, yes, I wanted to say. I knowww that. The question was who switched the glue.

  “What about the glue in the toilet?” Mr. Salvo asked.

  “That was found in the private bathroom of the House of Beauty owner.” Alison checked her notes. “Detective Burge said she was probably trying to hide the fact that she’d accidentally mistaken the two glues by dumping the latex-free one down the toilet.”

  I gasped in shock. “That is such a lie. Anyone could have been in Sandy’s bathroom.”

  Alison pursed her lips as if she found this amusing. “I don’t think so. Only the House of Beauty owner had the key.”

  “That’s not true. Lots of people had
a key. Like me, for instance.”

  Alison wrote this down. “I’ll have to mention that to Detective Burge. Thank you.”

  “Hold on. I didn’t dump the glue.”

  Alison tossed her hair. “So you’re flip-flopping again. Now you’re saying Sandy really did do it.”

  “No. Not Sandy, either.”

  “Then who did?”

  “The murderer.”

  “Murderer?” Alison snorted and glanced at the editors in the room, seeking confirmation that I was a fool. “I guess you’re totally out of it because the police have already ruled this a negligent homicide. Manslaughter at most. There’s no murder.”

  “Try telling that to Ern Bender.”

  “Enough!” Notch pointed his pencil at me. “I don’t want to hear the words ‘murder’ or ‘Bender’ out of your mouth again, Yablinko. You’ve got a serious and clear-cut conflict of interest here. It’s obvious to everyone in the room.”

  He glared at JoBeth and Mr. Salvo and Alison, the only one who was nodding vigorously in agreement.

  “After listening to you and Alison, there is no doubt in my mind, Yablinko, that you want to skew the facts to protect your friend, Sandy, to keep her from being sued. That’s an abhorrent misuse of your power as a journalist and I find it disgusting.”

  Bullshit! I was not misusing my “power” as a journalist and Notch knew it. I’d simply been doing my job.

  But Notch wouldn’t let me interrupt his rant.

  “Therefore, I’m imposing a ban. From now on you may not make one phone call, you may not ask one question regarding this Shatsky homicide. If I find out you’ve been digging into this case behind my back, I’ll have you canned on the spot. That’s the beauty of probation. I can fire you without explanation.”

  I brought my hand to my chest. “But . . . but two minutes ago you were asking me if I could write it up for page one.”

  “That was before I read all your notes. If you can call them notes. Hardly. They are the most pathetic bunch of lies I’ve read in my thirty years of being an editor. Total fiction.” He closed the notebook and discarded it into a wastebasket. Then he leaned on the buzzer and called in Justin, our high school intern, to dump the trash.

  I watched helplessly as Justin snatched the mesh wastebasket and confusedly asked Mr. Notch what he wanted him to do with it.

  “The incinerator in the basement. I can’t take the chance of them falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Those are my notes!” I begged. “You can’t burn my notes.”

  “I can do whatever I damn well please, including ordering you out of my office. See that she leaves with you, Justin.”

  This was devastating humiliation. Justin was Jane’s age. He was a kid and I was an adult. And I was being ordered to follow him. I turned to Mr. Salvo for support, but his head was bent over his clipboard.

  Only JoBeth said, “I hope this means Bubbles is free to cover the Help the Poor Children fund-raiser, Dix. Flossie is insistent.”

  “Just as long as she doesn’t come within ten feet of this story.”

  The room was silent. There was no point in filing my objections. Everyone felt uncomfortable. Everyone just wanted me to go. Everyone except Alison, who was smug with victory.

  “Come on, Justin,” I said. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Justin politely opened the door and I stepped through. As soon as the door closed, I reached in the basket and took back my notebook.

  “I was going to give it to you, anyway,” Justin said.

  “I know.” I gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re a good boy.”

  His baby face turned pink. “What happened in there?”

  “Notch. Who knows what sets him off?”

  But I knew what had set him off.

  Ern Bender.

  The question was why.

  Chapter Eight

  Parking was hard to find on West Goepp, even in my own driveway, where two strange cars sat uninvited. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  The worst of it was the dozens of housewives clutching casseroles and shivering in the December chill on Phil Shatsky’s covered porch across the street, waiting their turn to be allowed an audience with the widower so they could offer their sympathies—and maybe more.

  Dressed to the nines in furs, high heels and likely not much else, Phil’s most loyal clients were not so willing to let me pass when I asked to speak with him for just a minute.

  “Not so fast.” A woman in a soft gray chinchilla threw out her arm to block me. “You have to wait out here like the rest of us. Also, you need a covered dish.” She held out a foil-covered casserole that smelled of corn tortillas and chili.

  It was amazing what access a covered dish could provide. Through the plate-glass window at the front of the house I could discern tons of women crowding Phil’s living room, sitting on Debbie’s custom upholstered couches, passing around pieces of her Hummel figurine collection. None of them would have been allowed inside if Debbie had been alive. Seven-layer lasagna or no seven-layer lasagna.

  “This is business,” I tried to explain. “It has to do with Debbie’s death. It’s really very important.” I reached for the doorknob but Chinchilla elbowed me aside.

  “Even if I wanted to let you in, which I don’t, you couldn’t go. Over capacity. Besides, Phil’s not seeing anyone now.” She crimped the foil edges of her casserole. “He’s with Marguerite.”

  Marguerite. That was the name of the desperate housewife Debbie claimed was after her husband. A buzz erupted as soon as Marguerite’s name was mentioned. Clearly, she’d already been the topic of much speculation among the wannabes in line.

  “Who is this Marguerite?” I asked.

  Chinchilla shrugged. “It’s a mystery. Whoever she is, she has a very high opinion of herself. Arrived in a fancy Lincoln Town Car with vanity plates that said BRIKHOUS.”

  “She must be mighty, mighty . . .” I said.

  “She was certainly letting it all hang out.” Chinchilla sniffed. “She got out of the car and marched right past us as though we were nothing. Cut in line and entered like royalty. We were shocked. I swear, there was nothing on underneath her coat.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Built. Definitely implants. Big blond hair and expensive sunglasses, the kind you buy at Sunglass Hut in the mall. Though I don’t know who wears sunglasses on a snowy December night. Someone who has something to hide, that’s who.”

  I thought of the Iraq war veteran who had saved me. He’d worn sunglasses.

  “After she showed, Phil didn’t want to see anyone else. Here I’d made my famous chicken tortilla, waxed my legs and rushed right over to console him, only to find I was thirty-sixth in line. Then she arrives, without so much as a cupcake, and gets to see him like that. I’ll be damned if I lose my place to another interloper arriving empty-handed.” Chinchilla gestured to my empty hands.

  I couldn’t hang around waiting for Phil to finish up with his mistress, either. So I wrote him a short note that wouldn’t give away much in case the housewives read it, which of course they would. I handed it to Chinchilla, politely asked her to give it to him and crossed the street to my own house.

  Unlike every other house on West Goepp, which had been decorated with at least a plastic candy cane or two since Halloween, mine was devoid of any Christmas decorations. This was the first year that I was so not on the ball and my bare door was fast becoming a neighborhood scandal.

  Jane and I lived in one half of a brick-and-aluminum-sided double with green Astroturf on the porch and, in the summer, a red geranium. The other half was tidily occupied by the Hamels, who, following the unwritten Lehigh ordinance mandating Christmas decorations on October 31, had strung icicles from the porch overhang and colored lights on the bushes out front months ago. Mrs. Hamel felt so bad for me that she had tacked a cardboard snowman on my mailbox.

  Mama was devastated that I wasn’t keeping up with the neighbors. In her mind, not having C
hristmas decorations was bad for Jane, bad for the neighborhood, bad for America and, most of all, bad for her campaign to turn Lehigh into the heretofore unknown Discount Christmas City.

  Which might explain why, on returning from Phil Shatsky’s, I found my mother industriously sawing at the ropes affixing the Christmas tree to the top of my Camaro.

  “It’s about time. How long were you gonna wait to get a tree? December twenty-fourth?”

  I’ll be married by then, I thought sadly. “What are you doing here?”

  “You’re going out tonight to that fund-raiser. Can’t leave Jane alone.”

  This was true. Ever since “the incident,” Jane hated being alone. After years of learning to cook herself dinner while I went to community college at night or stayed late at the House of Beauty earning extra tips or, more recently, covered meetings for the News-Times, she could not bear one minute by herself once the sun set. And, these days, it set pretty early.

  “Hey, everyone. I jerry-rigged us a tree stand!” Genevieve appeared on my porch holding, ominously, a hubcap with the center cut out. It looked like it belonged to the Salabskys’ Ford Windstar, which it probably did. “Jeezum. That’s a sorry-looking specimen of an evergreen if I ever did see.”

  “Help me, will you, Genny?” Mama dragged the tree off my car.

  I caught one end, feeling guilty that a little old lady—okay, she wasn’t that old and not that little and, now that I thought of it, not much of a lady—was hauling my Christmas tree.

  Genevieve heaved it onto her shoulder with ease. “Dangy, that’s dry. This thing’s going to catch fire faster than a lit match in a fart.”

  Who needed Shakespeare when there was such sweet prose from Genevieve’s lips?

  “Say, Genevieve,” I said as we carried the tree up the steps, “what exactly did you do to Flossie Foreman?”

  “Took her out, like you said.”

  “I was thinking maybe taking her out to a nice restaurant, to the movies. You know, some ice cream. I wasn’t talking about taking out her kneecaps.”

  Genevieve let the tree down in my living room with a grunt. “Taking out is taking out. She should be glad I quit at one. I was itching to pop off the right but your mother wouldn’t let me.”