Chapter Four
Dinner was at the dessert stage, Joe and I had chatted calmly, very pleasantly. Weird… He was being way too attentive, so something must be up like he wanted something. Right…
Grandma Mazur thought Lula and I looked divine and Lula kept us entertained with her 'Diva' presence through the entire meal. It made me wonder who the lucky guy was. She really did glow!
Then, everyone had a huge piece of incredibly delicious pineapple upside-down cake on their plate and silence reigned for a few moments, other than the smack, click-click of my grandmother's new dentures. She'd lost them a month ago at a funeral viewing and didn't like the new ones at all. It had ruined Friday night dinner two weeks ago when she got really disgusted with the dentures while trying to chew her meatloaf and she SPIT them out! Disgusted, we all left the table and amazingly, poor Grandma Mazur was still trying to chew the meat without her teeth when we came back an hour later after escaping to Cluck-in-a-Bucket for chicken. So, tonight we were all happily tasting our scrumptious cake when the door flew open and Valerie burst into the house.
Pointing her finger at me, she vehemently exclaimed, "It's all your damn fault. My daughter has gone missing and you're to blame." She marched up to the dinner table, picked up the last piece of pineapple cake and threw it right at my head. I didn't even have time to duck.
Splatt! It hit me right in the forehead, bounced off and landed on my plate. Everyone stared at the piece of cake for a second, then at Valerie. She was still steaming, so I sat there speechless. I mean I couldn't be mad at my sister for ruining the best part of dinner when I was more concerned with my niece, whom I was assuming was Mary Alice. But I hadn't even seen my niece for two weeks.
Lula wiped crumbs off my face and asked us if anyone wanted a second piece of cake. Ignoring Lula while she happily scarfed up the piece Val had thrown at me, we tried to console Valerie and get her to talk sense to us. Morelli took Valerie aside and asked typical detective questions while she occasionally wiped a tear from her cheek in between spastic answers. Soon, a squad car pulled up and Gazarra, our favorite policeman and my cousin's husband, hurried inside. He asked for a picture of Mary Alice, my miscreant niece, so he could post it if needed. My mother went to get the latest photo we had.
Turns out Mary Alice was upset with Valerie, her mother, for not letting her jump off the roof while wearing butterfly wings. Val had caught her standing on the edge of the roof next to the second story window, all ready to jump! So, after getting yelled at and grounded to her room, Mary Alice had packed a bag and stomped off down the street before Valerie had time to realize she was gone.
Now, what did I have to do with that I asked myself? Well, according to Valerie, I had discussed the stages of butterfly development with Mary Alice. Now I remembered we had gone through the stages; larvae, caterpillar, cocoon and finally the emerging butterfly. I had been so proud of her and even told her she was like a butterfly in the cocoon stage. Some day she would be a beautiful butterfly.
I hit my head with my palm remembering another detail. She had asked me if she would fly too. Being the idiot I was, I told her yes, that she would get her wings too, just like I had. She'd asked to see my wings and I told her they were invisible and only special people could see them. Mary Alice had walked around me, scrutinizing me up and down, finally shaking her head in wonder, "Don't see 'em, but I bet they're red!" she'd exclaimed.
"Red," I said, "Why do you think my wings are red?"
"Well", she'd answered, her finger slanted against her cheek, "Dorothy had ruby red slippers in the Wizard of Oz and she escaped from the evil witch just like you can escape from all the bad guys! So, they must be red…" and she'd skipped away happily flapping her arms like they were butterfly wings. Geesh! What a ding-a-ling I could be at times!
No wonder Valerie was disgusted with me. Open mouth, insert foot…
Lula was looking at me like I'd just stolen Christmas from her too.
"Now, girl, wha'd you do this time? Ya know I can't leave one'na my baby girls roamin' out there with all those perverts waitin' ta snatch 'em up and, uh, never mind what they do, let's just get lookin' right now. Hope we can find that chile before I miss out on the best prospect for a man that I've had since Tank got those darn cats. Ahh-choo! See, I can't even think 'bout them!" Lula had a bad cat allergy, one of the reasons she was not with Tank anymore. She took out a hankie, blew her nose and then practically tore off my arm getting me out the door.
I filled Lula in on the butterfly details as we drove the few blocks toward Valerie's house, looking up and down alleys and driveways, stopping to look in and around garages, calling her name. People would come out to see what was going on and Lula would fill them in and tell them to get busy looking for Mary Alice. In about twenty minutes my best guess is that we had about two hundred people looking for a little girl who resembled me, just a lot shorter and pretending to have wings.
Some of the searchers obviously had some predisposed ideas about me because they made comments about another wacky Plum chick trying to fly off the roof.
Guess my reputation always precedes me. I think in my previous life I must have been an eagle or something because during my childhood I was just like Mary Alice, always looking for a way to fly through the air. Only I did actually manage to jump off our roof a few times.
So I could sympathize with Mary Alice a lot, especially with Valerie being her mother and so prissy perfect. I mean who wouldn't want to jump off the roof?
An hour later, Mary Alice was still missing and Valerie was a sobbing mess of motherhood. She was beyond throwing cake at me and people were starting to look at her like they thought Mary Alice was already dead and stuffed somewhere in a dumpster or something.
It made me start to think that we had it all wrong. We weren't thinking like a child who wanted to fly.
And if I wanted to fly where would I go? Lula and I decided to head for the school to look over the playground. We knew we were grasping at straws, but the other options were just not acceptable to me. Besides, I had not had any disturbing vibes like I get sometimes when people go missing. That bad feeling was just not there. Yet…
Ranger rang me up a few minutes later as we ambled out of Lula's car and walked toward the school playground. "What's this I'm hearing on the news? An Amber Alert for your niece? Have you found her yet?"
I ended the call after giving him a quick update.
A hot tear slid down my cheek. With Ranger on board, Mary Alice would be found and that was a certainty. But would she be found in time?
Obviously, she was not at the school. So, where was she?
I looked at Lula, "You're going to miss your date, you need to get going and there's nothing to do now but keep searching. We have a lot of people looking, so…" my voice kind of trailed away. I was thinking about Mary Alice and what she might do.
The zoo wasn't open and I couldn't picture her hitching a ride to Coney Island or anything like that.
"Girl, you're makin' me mad if you think I'd leave one 'o my little girlfriends helpless out there just to go on some blind date with one of Rangers Merry Men". She clapped her hand on her mouth like she couldn't believe she'd just spilled the beans on herself.
Right then, my heart began to hammer in my chest. I felt like Mary Alice really was in trouble, but where to go look for her was the big question. Where was Mary Alice?
"Lula", I began, "Take me home so I can get a few things."
"What's up, Miss Stephanie, you gettin' some ideas or somethin'?"
We ran back to her car. She jumped into the car and revved the engine, "Let's go girl!"
Lula floored it while I strapped myself in.
"Merry Men" I said, "How many Merry Men?"
Lula fanned herself and said she planned to take 'em one at a time.
"Go girl." I replied as Lula wrenched the steering wheel left and then right at the next block. It only seemed like about forty seconds passed before we made it to my apartment. It must have been in record time as her tires screeched to a stop right in front of my apartment complex on the main street. I dashed into the building and took the stairs two steps at a time and barged into my apartment, only realizing at the last second that my door had been open.
There on the couch sat Mary Alice. Her hair was messed, tears were streaked down her cheeks and her blue eyes were rimmed in red. Relieved to see her, I took a step toward her and she saw me and yelled, "Don't Aunt Stephanie, get out before he kills you!"
At that moment the Peeper stepped out from my kitchen. He held a gun in his left hand and was trying to bandage his other hand with some paper towels.
I tried to stay calm and get him to talk or something until someone came to help us.
"What happened to your hand?" I asked Mr. Peeping Tom.
"This lunatic brat tried to cut it off, that's what happened. I should just shoot her to put her out of my misery, the little hell-cat." He started towards her and I stepped calmly in front of him.
"You don't want to do that. The neighbors will call the police and then you'll go to prison for murdering a little girl and the guys in prison will do you like a girl 'cuz they don't put up with that shit, if you get my meaning. Excuse my French, Mary Alice." I stood between the peeper and Mary Alice who was sobbing.
"It's going to be ok, Mary Alice", I added, trying to calm her down and get her to focus on staying alive.
Mr. Peeping Tom was looking a bit faint, but he brandished the gun at us while talking, "Okay, Miss Wiseass, then you tell me what I'm supposed to do with her big mouth telling everyone I'm trying to kill you two, plus I got this hacked up hand! She's the one who tried to kill me!"
Now he was sweating and his hand was heavily bleeding through the paper towels. It looked like Mary Alice did a dang good job of hacking up his hand all right.
"Well, who's going to believe you with you holding that gun?" I yelled back at him. I told myself to get a grip for Mary Alice's sake. Softer, I added, "Why don't you give me the gun and we can explain that it was all a big mistake. She just thought you were trying to hurt her, right?" I held out my hand waiting for his response and attempted to look like I knew what I was doing. In reality, I was praying that he would miraculously hand the gun over to me. Then, I was going to clobber him or kick him or … Shoot? Hmmm…
And this was all due to that dang color red!