At this point I should say I never liked Frankie. And I liked him even less now. Because Frankie was the one who’d gone missing — the one the police suspected Mother of … um … disappearing. (The letter hadn’t said murder, but I could read between the lines.)
Anyway, Dylan had pointed out that: a) we needed our equipment, which would be easier to transport by car; b) we’d need wheels in Florida anyway; and c) we needed the think time.
He’d been right, of course.
So how’d we gather up Mrs. P? All too easily.
I’d swung by the Underhill Motel to ask if Cal or Craig — Mrs. Presley’s hulking sons who helped her run the motel — could stop by the condo while I was away, just to check on things. Not that there was a cat to feed or plants to water. Cats didn’t like me and only the hardiest of plants could survive my inattention. Hardy being plastic. Preferably self-dusting. But there had been a couple break-ins lately in my neighborhood. Mrs. P was all too happy to offer up her sons to watch the place. Plus I knew that Cal was still seeing Elizabeth Bee, now that she’d broken up with Craig, and I thought maybe they could use some alone time.
“Gee, I’ve never been to Florida, Dix,” Mrs. P had said. “And I haven’t had a vacation in years.” She pulled a pen from her shirt pocket and a small notepad from the pocket of her skirt, and began making a list.
Leave meat pies for the boys.
Tell Cal none of that spicy pepperoni till I get back.
Pack the sunscreen.
“Well, it’s going to be pretty hectic, Mrs. P and—”
She kept writing.
Get new underwear.
Pack the summer pajamas — not the footies.
“I’ve always wanted to go, but never got the chance. But you know, I might get there someday. Someday someone might do me a favor. You know, like I do favors for other folks. Especially friends in trouble. Not that I’d ever expect anything in return, no matter how much jeopardy I’d put myself in for their sakes.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “You had me at ‘jeopardy’. Would you like to come to Florida, Mrs. P?”
“Why how nice of you to ask!”
“See you at seven a.m.,” I’d said, backing out of the Underhill, pushing the door open with my ass as I did.
“Make it six, Dix. I’m a morning person, you know. I’ll be ready.”
“Six it is, Mrs. P.”
“Oh, and Dix….”
I stopped with one butt cheek out the door. “Yeah?”
“I had you at ‘Gee’.”
When Dylan and I had pulled in the next morning at quarter to six, Mrs. Presley was standing outside the hotel, her long-faced sons at her side, red suitcase at her feet, and tasseled sombrero in hand. She had four big pillows with her, and a blanket — not a bad idea really. Mrs. P liked her comforts. She wore sunglasses that covered half her face, the very same Roberto Cavallis she’d loaned me once for a disguise. Bermuda shorts floated below her knees, and the wildest Hawaiian shirt I’d ever seen covered her top half. And in the front pocket of that shirt, tucked in a pocket protector — pencil-pen-pencil. She always wore that at the front desk of the hotel.
“Thinking of doing some work, Mrs. P?” I’d asked, nodding to the shirt pocket.
She pulled a rolled-up magazine from her armpit and waved it at me. “I love crossword puzzles, Dix. Don’t you?”
Actually, I hated crossword puzzles.
Craig looked like he was going to cry as he opened the door for his mother. Cal wasn’t far from snuffing back a few wet ones himself. I looked at him.
“Allergies,” he said. “Damn lilacs.”
“It’s October, Craig.” I said. “Lilacs are long gone.”
“Goddamn super lilacs then … they’re the worst.”
The boys were 28, but still very much their mother’s sons. They were a close-knit family, and in its own way, I thought that was pretty cool.
“Now, you call as soon as you get there,” Craig said.
“Yeah, collect,” Cal added. “And it doesn’t matter how late you get in. You know we’ll be waiting up for you.”
She kissed them both goodbye, and we loaded up the car.
“Now if either of you two need me to navigate,” she offered. “Just say so. I never sleep in a car.”
“You know I’m on business, eh, Mrs. Presley?” I’d said as we started on the highway. “Dylan and I are going to be pretty busy with my mother’s … er … trouble.”
“Ah, Dix, we all got troubles,” she said. “But don’t worry, you won’t even know you’ve brought me along.”
That had been a few hundred miles and a few dozen crossword clues back.
It turned quiet in the back seat, and when I looked back, sombrero over face, head on pillow and blanket pulled up to her chin, Mrs. Presley was sound asleep.
Good. I needed some time to talk this over with Dylan.
It was still Dylan’s turn at the wheel, so I put the faxed pages before me to look things over one more time. Not that I needed to look them over again. Pretty hard not to commit the words ‘a person of interest in the disappearance of one Francis Morell’ to memory, and the whole stealing jewels things didn’t exactly escape my mind either.
But no way. No way in hell would my mother do any such thing. Okay, she wasn’t a model citizen. But any trouble she’d gotten into had been ‘fun trouble’ and usually dealt with by a not-so-stiff warning from some cop trying to hide a smile. No one could be all that stern with Mrs. Katt Dodd, 71-year-old resident of the Wildoh Retirement Village, Complex B.
Dylan glanced over at me. “So what do you think?”
“Well, for starters, what I know is that my mother is innocent of all charges.”
“And you know this because…?”
“Because she’s my mother!” I snapped.
“Good. That’s out of the way.” Dylan nodded to affirm. “Now, you know she’s innocent because…?”
With anyone else, I might have been offended. But with Dylan, not a chance. I knew his legally trained mind was doing just what it should be. Helping me build my case, helping me order my facts.
I sighed. “Well, let’s look at this piece by piece, starting with the thefts. Mother’s not what you’d call rich, but she’s comfortable enough. The condo in Marport City, the Bimmer, the condo in Florida — she owns it all outright.”
“Right, and all in use. Would she sell if she had to?”
I thought so. Didn’t I? Mother owned the condo I lived in. She insisted on keeping it, wanted me to live there, and wouldn’t take a cent of rent. Would she tell me if she needed me to move out so she could sell it? Dammit, Mother.
I dug my fingernails into my palm. “If she was having money trouble, she would come to me or Peaches Marie.”
“You sure?”
Was I? My sister, Peaches Marie, was currently vacationing in Europe with her college professor girlfriend. She was certainly closer to Mom. They lived closer to each other and they were more alike. Peaches was just as carefree as Mother, just as irresponsible. I was the steady one. The serious one. Peaches was well-educated, with that coveted Ph.D. in Philosophy, but I was the one doing better in business. I was the take-charge older sister. Surely if Mom was having financial problems, she’d tell me. We weren’t close, but were we really so far away?”
I must have drifted too long into my thoughts for when Dylan spoke again, he startled me from them.
“What did your mother do, Dix? For a living?”
I shrugged. “She was our mother. Things were different in my day.” Yes, as soon as I said the words I caught myself self. My day. As if he needed a reminder of the age difference between us. As if I did. I pressed on, before he could dwell on that too much. “When my mother was in her mid-twenties, she married my father, Peter Dodd. He was a musician and toured North America. So she quit her own job and followed him. Until I came along, that is. And Peaches two years later. Then we all followed him on tours when we were very young. I can remember some of it — the lights, the instruments, the other musicians. Me and Peaches running around the tables and playing under them while the band set up in empty clubs, preparing to play gigs that we would never see. But that didn’t last. Dad took sick. All those smoky nightclubs finally got to him, and he had to quit touring. But music was all he knew.”