Between the Plums Page 4

  Diesel got out of his chair and helped Kloughn to his feet. “Way to go, stud,” Diesel said.

  “Thank you,” Kloughn said. “I’m very virile. It runs in the family.”

  “I’m tired of sitting here,” Mary Alice said. “I need to gallop.”

  “You will not gallop,” my mother yelled at Mary Alice. “You’re not a horse. You’re a little girl, and you’ll act like one or you’ll go to your room.”

  We all sat stunned because my mother never yelled. And even more shocking, my mother (having put her time in with me, the original space cadet) never made an issue of the horse thing.

  There was a moment of silence and then Mary Alice started bawling. She had her eyes scrunched tight and her mouth wide open. Her face was red and blotchy and tears dripped off her cheeks onto her shirt.

  “Christ,” my father said. “Somebody do something.”

  “Hey, kid,” Diesel said to Mary Alice, “what do you want for Christmas this year?”

  Mary Alice tried to stop crying but her breath was coming in gulps and hiccups. She scrubbed tears off her face and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I don’t want anything for Christmas. I hate Christmas. Christmas is poopy.”

  “There must be something you want,” Grandma said.

  Mary Alice pushed her food around on her plate with her fork. “There’s nothing. And I know there’s no Santa Claus, too. He’s just a big fat fake.”

  No one had an immediate response. She’d caught us by surprise. There was no Santa Claus. How crappy is that?

  Diesel finally leaned forward on his elbows and looked across the table at Mary Alice. “This is the way I see it, Mary Alice. I can’t say for sure if there’s really a Santa Claus, but I think it’s fun to pretend. The truth is, we all have a choice to make, and we can believe in whatever we want.”

  “I think you’re poopy, too,” Mary Alice said to Diesel.

  Diesel slid his arm across my shoulders and leaned close, his breath warm against my ear. “You were smart to choose a hamster,” he said.

  Valerie returned to the dining room in time for dessert. “It’s an allergy,” she said. “I think I’m lactose-intolerant.”

  “Boy, that’s a shame,” Grandma said. “We got pineapple upside-down cake for tonight, and it’s got lots of whipped cream on it.”

  Beads of sweat appeared on Valerie’s upper lip and forehead, and Valerie ran back upstairs.

  “Funny how these things come on,” Grandma said. “She was never lactose-intolerant before. She must have caught it in California.”

  “I’m going to get some cookies from the kitchen,” my mother said.

  I followed after her and found her belting back a tumbler of Four Roses.

  She jumped when she saw me. “You startled me,” she said.

  “I came to help with the cookies.”

  “I was just taking a nip.” A shudder raced through my mother. “It’s Christmas, you know.”

  This was a nip the size of a Big Gulp. “Probably Valerie isn’t pregnant,” I said.

  My mother drained the Big Gulp, crossed herself, and went back into the dining room with the cookies.

  “So,” Grandma said to Kloughn, “do you make Christmas cookies at your house? Is your tree up yet?”

  “We don’t actually have a tree,” Kloughn said. “We’re Jewish.”

  Everyone stopped eating, even my father.

  “You don’t look Jewish,” Grandma said. “You don’t wear one of them beanies.”

  Kloughn rolled his eyes up as if looking for his missing beanie, clearly at a loss for words, probably still not getting total oxygen to his brain after fainting.

  “How great is this?” Grandma said. “If you marry Valerie we can celebrate some of those Jewish holidays. And we can get a set of the candlesticks. I always wanted one of those Jewish candlestick things. Isn’t this something,” Grandma said. “Wait until I tell the girls at the beauty parlor that we might get a Jew in our family. Everyone’s going to be jealous.”

  My father was still sitting lost in thought. His daughter might marry a Jewish guy. This wasn’t a great thing to happen, in my father’s view. Not that he had anything against Jewish guys. It was that chances were slim to nonexistent that Kloughn was Italian. In my father’s scheme of things, there were Italians and then there was the rest of the world. “You wouldn’t be of Italian descent, would you?” my father asked Kloughn.

  “My grandparents were German,” Kloughn said.

  My father sighed and went back to concentrating on his lasagna. Yet another fuckup in the family.

  My mother was white-faced. Bad enough her daughters didn’t attend church. The possibility of non-Catholic grandchildren was a disaster right up there with nuclear annihilation. “Maybe I need to put a couple more cookies on the plate,” my mother said, pushing back from the table.

  One more cookie run and my mother was going to be passed out on the kitchen floor.

  At nine o’clock Angie and Mary Alice were tucked into bed. My grandmother was somewhere with her studmuffin, and my mother and father were in front of the television. Valerie and Albert Kloughn were discussing things in the kitchen. And Diesel and I were standing outside on the sidewalk in front of the CRV. It was cold and our breath made frost clouds.

  “So what happens now?” I asked. “Do you get beamed back up?”

  “Not tonight. Couldn’t get a flight.”

  My eyebrows raised a quarter of an inch.

  “I’m kidding,” he said. “Boy, you’ll believe anything.”

  Apparently. “Well, it’s been a real treat,” I said, “but I’ve got to go now.”

  “Sure. See you around.”

  I got into the CRV, cranked the engine over, and took off. When I got to the corner I swiveled in my seat and looked back. Diesel was still standing exactly where I’d left him. I drove around the block, and when I returned to my parents’ house the sidewalk was empty. Diesel had vanished without a trace.

  He didn’t pop into my car when I was halfway home. He didn’t appear in my apartment building hallway. He wasn’t in my kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom.

  I dropped a piece of butter cookie into the hamster cage on my kitchen counter and watched Rex jump off his wheel and rush at the cookie. “We got rid of the alien,” I said to Rex. “Good deal, hunh?”

  Rex looked like he was thinking, alien schmalien. I guess when you live in a glass cage you don’t care a lot about aliens in the kitchen. When you’re a woman alone in an apartment, aliens are pretty damn frightening. Except for Diesel. Diesel was inconvenient and confusing, and as much as I hate to admit it, Diesel was annoyingly likeable. Frightening had dropped low on the list. “So,” I said to Rex, “why do you suppose I’m not afraid of Diesel? Probably some kind of alien magic, right?”

  Rex was working at getting the cookie into his cheek pouch.

  “And while we’re having this discussion,” I said to Rex, “I want to reassure you that I haven’t forgotten about Christmas. I know it’s only four days away, but I made cookies today. That’s a good start, right?”

  Truth is, there wasn’t a trace of Christmas in my apartment. Counting down four days and I didn’t have a red bow or twinkle light in sight. Plus, I didn’t have presents for anyone.

  “How did this happen?” I asked Rex. “It seemed like just yesterday that Christmas was months away.”

  I opened my eyes and shrieked. Diesel was standing beside my bed, staring down at me. I grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to my chin.

  “What? How?” I asked.

  He handed me a large-size take-out coffee. “Didn’t we do this bit yesterday?”

  “I thought you were gone.”

  “Yeah, but now I’m back. This is the part where you say, good morning, nice to see you, thanks for the coffee.”

  I pried the plastic lid off and examined the coffee. It looked like coffee. It smelled like coffee.

  “Cripes,” he said. “It’s just coffee.” />
  “A girl can never be too careful.”

  Diesel took the coffee back and drank it. “Rise and shine, gorgeous. We have things to do. We need to find Sandy Claws.”

  “I know why I need to find Sandy Claws. I don’t know why you need to find Sandy Claws.”

  “Just being a good guy. I thought I’d come back and help you out.”

  Uh-hunh.

  “Are you going to get up, or what?” he said.

  “I’m not getting up with you standing there. And I’m not taking a shower with you in my apartment, either. Go out and wait for me in the hall.”

  He shook his head. “You are so untrusting.”

  “Go!”

  I waited until I heard the front door open and close and then I slid out of bed and crept to the living room. Empty. I padded barefoot to the front door, opened the door, and looked out. Diesel was leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed over his chest, looking bored.

  “Just checking,” I said. “You’re not going to pop into my bathroom when I’m in there, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Promise?”

  “Honey, I don’t need a thrill that bad.”

  I closed and locked the door, ran into the bathroom, took the fastest shower in the history of Plum, rushed back to my bedroom, and got dressed in my usual uniform of jeans, boots, and T-shirt. I refilled Rex’s water bottle and gave him some hamster crunches, a raisin, and a corn chip for breakfast. He rushed out of his soup can, stuffed the raisin and the corn chip into his cheek pouch, and returned to his soup can.

  I’d had a brilliant idea while I was in the shower. I knew a guy who might help me find Claws. His name was Randy Briggs. Briggs wasn’t an elf, but he was only three feet tall. Maybe that was good enough.

  I thumbed through my address book and found Briggs’ phone number. Briggs was a self-employed computer geek. He usually worked at home. And he usually needed money.

  “Hey,” I said to him. “I have a job for you. I need an undercover elf.”

  “I’m not an elf.”

  “Yes, but you’re short.”

  “Christ,” Briggs said. And he hung up.

  Probably best to talk to Briggs in person. Unfortunately, I now had a dilemma. I thought there was a possibility that Diesel might go away if I never opened the door and let him in. Problem was, I needed to go out.

  I opened the door and looked at Diesel.

  “Yeah, I’m still here,” he said.

  “I need to go someplace.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Alone.”

  “It’s the supernatural thing, isn’t it? It’s still got you weirded out, right?”

  “Um . . .”

  He slung an arm around my shoulders. “I bet you think Spider-man is a real cute guy. I bet you think it’d be fun to be friends with a guy like that.”

  “Maybe . . .”

  “So just pretend I’m Spidey.”

  I looked at him sideways. “Are you Spidey?”

  “No. He’s a lot shorter.”

  I grabbed my bag and my keys and shrugged into my fleece-lined jacket. I locked my front door and took the stairs to the parking lot.

  Diesel was right behind me. “We can take my car,” he said.

  “You have a car?”

  There was a black Jaguar parked a few feet from the back entrance to my apartment building. Diesel beeped the Jag open with the remote.

  “Wow,” I said, “you do okay for an alien.”

  “I’m not an alien.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying that, but I don’t know what else to call you.”

  “Call me Diesel.”

  I angled onto the passenger side seat and buckled in. “It’s stolen, right?”

  Diesel looked over at me and smiled.

  Damn. “We’re going to Cloverleaf Apartments on Grand. It’s about a mile from here, off Hamilton.”

  The Cloverleaf apartment building looked a lot like mine. It was a big redbrick cube and strictly utilitarian. Three stories. A front and a back entrance. Parking lot in the rear.

  Randy Briggs lived on the second floor. I’d met him a while back in a professional capacity. He’d been accused of carrying a concealed weapon and had failed to appear for a court appearance. I’d dragged him kicking and screaming back into the system. The charge had actually been borderline bogus, and Briggs was ultimately released without penalty.

  “And why are we doing this?” Diesel asked, climbing the stairs to the second floor.

  “There was a want ad in the paper for toy makers. When I called and inquired about Sandy Claws I got disconnected.”

  “And in your mind, this indicates that Claws is part of the toy maker operation.”

  “I think it’s suspicious and warrants further investigation. I’m going to ask this guy I know to help infiltrate the operation.”

  “Is he a toy maker?”

  “No. He has other talents.”

  We were in the stairwell and all of a sudden we were plunged into total darkness. I felt Diesel step closer, felt his hand protectively settle at my waist.

  “Power blackout,” I said. “Morelli told me they were happening all over Trenton.”

  “Great,” Diesel said. “Just what I need. Power blackouts.”

  “Not a big deal,” I told him. “Morelli said they last long enough to snarl traffic and then disappear.”

  “Sunshine, it’s a bigger deal than you could possibly imagine.”

  I had no idea what he meant by that, but it didn’t sound good. I was about to ask him when the lights popped back on, and we took the rest of the stairs to the second floor. I rapped on the door to 2B and there was no response. I put my ear to the door and listened.

  “Hear anything?” Diesel asked.

  “Television.”

  I rapped again. “Open the door, Randy. I know you’re in there.”

  “Go away,” Randy called. “I’m working.”

  “You’re not working. You’re watching television.”

  The door was wrenched open, and Randy glared out at me. “What?”

  Diesel looked down at Randy. “You’re a midget.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Randy said. “And, just for the record, midget is no longer politically correct.”

  “So, what do you like?” Diesel asked. “How about ‘little dude’?”

  Randy was holding a soup ladle, and he whacked Diesel in the knee with it. “Don’t mess with me, wiseass.”

  Diesel reached down, grabbed Briggs by the front of his shirt, and lifted him three feet off the floor so they were eye level. “You need to get a sense of humor,” Diesel said. “And you want to lose the soup ladle.”

  The soup ladle slid through Randy’s fingers and clattered onto the parquet floor.

  “So you don’t want to be called a little dude,” Diesel said. “What do you want to be called?”

  “I’m a little person,” Randy said, feet dangling in the air.

  Diesel grinned at Randy. “Little person? That’s the best you can do?”

  Diesel set Randy back down on the floor, and Randy gave himself a shake, looking a lot like a bird settling its feathers.

  “So,” I said, “now that we have that straightened out . . .”

  Briggs looked at me. “Here it comes.”

  “Have I ever asked for a favor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, but I saved your life.”

  “My life wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place if it wasn’t for you!”

  “All I want is for you to pose as an elf.”

  Diesel gave a snort of laughter.

  I cut my eyes to him, and he squelched the laughter down to a grin.

  “I am not an elf,” Briggs said. “Do I have pointy ears? No. Do I wear shoes that turn up on the ends? No. Do I enjoy this humiliation? No, no, no.”

  “I’ll pay you for your time.”

  “Oh,” Briggs said. “That’s different.”

  I hand
ed the ad over to Briggs. “All you have to do is answer this ad. Probably you don’t even have to say you’re an elf. Probably you could just tell him you’re . . . qualified. And then when you go for the job interview, keep your eyes open for a guy named Sandy Claws. He’s FTA.”

  “Give me a break. Santa Claus is FTA. How about the Easter Bunny? Is the Easter Bunny FTA, too?”

  I flashed the photo of Sandy Claws at Briggs, and I spelled the name for him. I gave Briggs my card with my cell phone and pager number. And I left, not wanting to overstay my welcome, not wanting to give him time to change his mind.

  I looked over at Diesel’s knee when we were in the car. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. He hits like a girl. Someone needs to show him how to swing a soup ladle.”

  THREE

  Connie Rosolli manages my cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds office. Connie is a couple years older than me. She has big hair, big boobs, and a short fuse. And she could probably kick my butt from here to downtown Trenton. Good thing for me, Connie never feels compelled to kick my butt since Connie and I are friends.

  I called Connie and asked her to check on water and electric accounts for Claws. Between semiclandestine computer searches and the tight-knit network of Burg women who love to dish, there isn’t a lot of information Connie and I can’t access.

  I’d barely disconnected with Connie when my cell phone chirped.

  It was my mother. “Help,” she said.

  I could hear a lot of hysterical shouting going on in the background. “What’s happening?”

  “Valerie took one of those home pregnancy tests, and now she’s got herself locked in the bathroom.”

  “Don’t worry about it. She’ll come out when she gets hungry.”

  “It’s our only bathroom! I’ve got two kids home from school for the holidays, an old lady with a bad bladder, and your father. Everybody needs to use the bathroom.”

  “And?”

  “Do something! Shoot the lock off.”

  Now if I was any kind of a good sister and loving daughter I’d have sympathy for Valerie. I’d be worried about her physical and emotional health. The ugly truth is, Valerie was always the perfect child. And I was the kid who had the skinned knee, consistently flunked spelling, and lived in Lala Land. My entire childhood was an out-of-body experience. Even as adults, Valerie had the great marriage and gave birth to two grandchildren. I had the marriage from hell that ended before my father got the wedding reception paid off. So, I love my sister and wish her well, but it’s hard not to smile once in a while now that her life is in the toilet.