Till Beth Do Us Part (A Jamie Bravo Mystery Book 2) Read online

  “No time. Look, I’m going to make this short.”

  “Like your dog,” Trish said.

  “Lay off the dog.” Ivan growls on cue. “Just so you know he’s in the employ of some pretty rough people.” Ivan growls again.

  “Okay, okay, already. Like I said, the pizza guy’s gonna be here any minute.” Trish flounces down on the couch. “So what’s on your dog’s mind?” She picks up an emery board from the coffee table and begins to rake it across her nails.

  “You need to break it off with Angela.” I stare hard at her.

  Trish scoffs. “And tell me why I should do that?”

  “Because if you don’t, you might end up with a bullet between the eyes.”

  Trish scoffs again. “What, you gonna shoot me right now?”

  “No, but the goombahs will if you don’t break up with Angela today.”

  “What the hell are goombahs? Some sort of religious crazies?”

  It’s my turn to scoff. “Do you know what Angela does for a living?”

  She shrugs. “She’s in waste management.”

  “Sure. That means she manages to waste lots of people.”

  “You mean like in that TV show?”

  “Angela is with the mob, and she has mob friends, and they want you gone,” I explain. And in case she’s too hard-headed to understand that, I point at my temple and make a gun-cocking noise.

  Trish blanches. “But Angie loves me.”

  “She loves your accoutrements.”

  “My what?”

  I point at Trish’s tits.

  “She bought these for me,” Trish says, sitting up straighter and placing one hand over her breasts. It didn’t escape my attention that she left off filing her nails somewhere around ‘Angela is a mobster.’

  “You can keep ‘em. Call it a going-away gift. Just break up with Angela today or her friends might take them back.”

  “What am I supposed to tell Angie? She’s not gonna be happy about this,” Trish says. “She might be the one who. . .” She points her forefinger at her temple and makes a gun-cocking noise.

  Trish has a point. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Then it hits me. Italians are all about family. So, I ask her, “Does Angela know anything about your mother?”

  “Nah, we don’t talk so much,” Trish says.

  “Not talking is good. Let me ask you, have you always dated girls?”

  Trish shakes her head. “Angie just walked into my life and one thing lead to another.” She pulls a pack of Juicy Fruit out of her bra, and stuffs two more pieces into her mouth. She offers me a stick.

  “No, thanks.” I wave the gum away. “You’re Catholic, right?” I gathered this bit of information from the statue of Mary sitting on top of the TV. Some childhood habits are hard to outrun.

  “Yeah,” Trish answers. All the sass and bravado are gone. Only the gum remains. She chews furiously.

  “Here’s what you tell her. You need to go out of town for a few days to take care of your dying mother. While you’re there your mother pleads with you to leave off women and go back to the ways of the church. She wants you to promise her you’ll find a nice boy and get married. It’s her dying wish.”

  “You really think that’ll work?” Trish says, popping her gun like it was an AK-47 spewing shells.

  “Goombahs love and obey their mothers. She’ll understand. And being out of town will help.”

  “I ain’t got money to go out of town,” Trish says.

  There’s a knock on the door jamb. “Pizza, pizza.” The pizza guy is here. He’s no more than a kid with skin so bad it looks like he’s wearing the pizza on his face.

  “I barely have enough dough for the pizza,” she says.

  I don’t know if Trish is trying to roll me for some cash or not. Probably not. If she had enough money to get out wouldn’t she have done it by now? I reach in to my pocket and pull out two hundred dollars. My utility bill’s going to have to wait to be paid.

  Trish hands the pizza guy one of the twenties I just handed her and takes the box from him. “I’m eating this and then I’m gone. You wanna piece?” Trish asks.

  “I want a piece,” the pizza guy says with a leer.

  “Get outta here,” Trish and I say at the same time.

  The pizza guy shrugs and leaves.

  “So, you got a girlfriend?” Trish asks, inflating her breasts in my direction. She takes the gum out of her mouth and sticks it on top of the pizza box.

  I ignore her question. “Remember, don’t screw this up or you’ll be sorry.” I walk out the door before she can offer me another piece of a different variety.

  Fourteen

  The countdown has begun. There are forty-five minutes left to take off. I pose in my white tux in front of the full-length mirror. Travis, Michael, and Zelda are all crowded on my bed, watching me. I’ve never had so many people in my bed. It looks like I’m about to have an orgy.

  “Hmmm. . . I don’t know,” Michael says. “Personally, I think the pants are a teensy bit too loose.” He’s doing leg lifts in the middle of the bed. Each time Michael’s leg goes up, Zelda goes down. And each time his leg goes down, Zelda goes up.

  “Will you stop doing that? I’m getting seasick,” Zelda snaps.

  Michael stops with the leg lifts, but switches to butt squeezes. I know because I can see his pelvis twitch with each flex.

  “Michael’s right. Your ass is one of your best features, especially now. Zelda, you are a body magician. Are you taking new clients?” Travis asks.

  I don’t burst his bubble and tell him that my butt has nothing to do with Zelda and everything to do with ziti.

  Zelda preens inside her silk Armani tux that looks like it was made especially for her. “I’m sure I can squeeze you in.”

  “Sign me up. I can’t be hanging out with this bad boy,” Travis says, playfully tugging on one of Michael’s toes, “and not be in stellar physical condition.”

  I try to twist around enough to get a good look at my butt in the mirror. “I can’t see it. I don’t want anybody looking at something I can’t see. Where’s the jacket?” I grab the jacket off the chair and slip it on. “There. Now nobody can see my butt.”

  “That’s true,” Michael says. “But the pants are puckering in the front because of the belt.”

  Travis points out the cummerbund. “That covers up the belt.”

  “I know that, but the belt still makes the fabric pucker,” Michael says tersely.

  Travis and Michael have a staredown. Theirs is going to be a tumultuous relationship. Michael backs down. “I just think she should lose the belt and take in the pants,” he says, his tone conciliatory with a little bite sprinkled in.

  “The reunion is in forty minutes. I don’t think we have time to tailor my pants,” I point out. I look down at the front of my pants. The belt does make them pucker. Not to mention the belt is black and cheap looking because it is black and cheap. “What if I get a white belt?”

  “Doesn’t help the pucker,” Travis says.

  “I don’t see any way out of it. Maybe the lighting will help,” Zelda says. She checks her watch. “We’ve got to get a move on. I don’t want to miss the grand entrance.”

  “Oooh, we have to hurry!” Michael says. He looks at me and asks, “Do you have any safety pins?” His expression worries me. It’s like he’s MacGyver and a bomb is ticking.

  “I have no idea.”

  “I do!” Travis says, leaping off the bed. “My previous boyfriend, who really was never a one-and-only, left them here when he dropped me. Well, it was really more of a mutual parting.”

  “What were you two doing with safety pins?” I make the mistake of asking. “Never mind.”

  Travis puts his hands on his hips and reprimands me, “It wasn’t anything sordid, Jamie. He thought my curtains were too long so he pinned them up one day while I was at work. That was the deal breaker. No one touches my curtains and gets away with it. I felt violated.”

 
Zelda and I exchange a looks that says, “Who knew?”

  “I wouldn’t go touching his curtains, if I were you,” Zelda tells Michael.

  “Oh, no, I would never be that presumptuous. I mean, I would help if they were too long,” Michael says. His tone implies that he does think the curtains might be too long.

  I had no idea curtains could be too long or too short. I thought they just hung there as a barricade against the sun and the outside world. Silly me.

  “So you think my curtains are too long?” Travis asks.

  Michael raises one eyebrow. “Maybe a teensy bit.”

  “Sweet Jesus, get over the curtains. I’ve got puckers,” I say.

  “Geez Louise, can we say it’s all about you?” Travis says over his shoulder as he leaves the room in search of the curtain-violating safety pins.

  “I’m concerned about this home tailoring job. I’m not sure I want pins anywhere near my woo-hoo.”

  “Woo-hoo?” Zelda says with a laugh.

  “What about that personal shopper friend? What’s her name?” Michael asks.

  “Reggie? What can she do?”

  “Please, every sales person worth their salt knows how to do a quick nip and tuck to sell the outfit,” Michael says.

  Travis returns with a fist full of safety pins. Michael smiles at him and says, “Call Reggie.”

  “Oh, my God, she can totally help us,” Travis agrees.

  “How is that going to happen? We’ve only got thirty minutes,” Zelda says.

  “Skype!” Michael says.

  “I like a man with a brain,” Travis says. He leans down and gives Michael a quick peck on the lips. “You’re forgiven for the curtain mistake.”

  “It’s curtains for the curtains,” I say in my best Jimmy Cagney voice.

  The three look at me like I’ve lost touch with reality.

  “Sorry, I make corny puns when I’m nervous.”

  Travis whips out his cell phone and punches a button. He begins talking almost immediately, “Skype. Now. Puckers. Hurry.” He hangs up and looks at Zelda. “No worries. Reggie will fix everything.”

  “Just so long as we’re on time for the grand entrance,” Zelda says.

  “I’ll get my computer.” Travis fairly skips out of the room. He’s back in seconds and before you can say Benedict Cummerbund, he has Reggie’s face and his laptop pointed in my direction.

  Reggie takes one look at my puckers and barks orders, “Take off the pants! Turn them inside out! Lay them flat on the floor!”

  Travis turns to me, ordering, “Strip them off!”

  I eyeball Zelda and Michael until they turn their backs to me. I slip off the puckering pants and hand them to Travis. I never should have agreed to this thing. I didn’t know it was going to mean standing around in my undies in a room full of people.

  “Start at the center and pin, taking in an inch. Wait, Jamie needs to try them on again so I can estimate how much the new seam needs to be,” Reggie says.

  “Twenty-three minutes,” Zelda says.

  “I know, I know,” I say. I put the pants back on and stand still while Reggie stares at my crotch.

  “Okay. An inch it is. Do exactly as I say and you’ll be done with time to spare.”

  Reggie was right. It only took eight minutes to complete the home tailoring job. The puckers were gone, Reggie was thanked and Zelda and I were out the door in record time.

  Once outside, I stopped dead in my tracks. A white Hummer limousine was parked near the front door. The engine was running and a really big black man with a shaved head and a tribal neck tattoo opened the back door for me.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “My cousin runs a limo company. This is his son, Leroy,” Zelda says. She hands the dude a hundred and says, “Thanks for waiting, Leroy. Her pants were too big and we had to give them a quick nip and tuck.” She looks at me and says, “Show Leroy your ass.”

  “No,” I say, hopping in the limo. Leroy gives me a hang-dog look. “Maybe later.” He smiles.

  “He likes white girls,” Zelda whispers, sliding in next to me. “Floor it, Leroy! We’ve got nine minutes.”

  Leroy puts the pedal to the metal and I stretch out. The inside of the Hummer is bigger than my bedroom. Hell, it’s bigger than the house where I grew up.

  “Champagne?” Zelda asks, holding up a bottle.

  “How about a Yoo-hoo?”

  “Yeah, I got your wimpy ass one of those too.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  I sigh. I haven’t even made it to the reunion yet and I can’t wait till it’s over.

  Fifteen

  I’m thinking if this P.I. business doesn’t work out, I should go into the limo renting business. Because by the time we get to the high school there are twelve other limos in line ahead of us. Twelve white limos. On second thought maybe I should buy stock in white limos.

  “Damn copycats,” Zelda says. She takes a swig off the champagne bottle. “Can’t find anything original in this world—‘cept your damn puckered pants.” She glares at me like I’m the one responsible for all the white limos. “We could’ve been first. Now, it looks like a damn traffic jam.” She takes another swig.

  I thought champagne was supposed to make people happy. Guess not.

  Then, to make matters worse, a red Lamborghini squeezes in right between our limo and the one in front of us.

  “What kind of asshole does that?” Zelda asks.

  Veronica gets out of the Lamborghini and comes around to the passenger door and opens it. Gloria Lambrusco gets out. She looks fabulous in a black dress with a white silk scarf around her neck. Her hair is swept up and loose tendrils tickle the back of her neck. She looks sexy as hell which makes my already sour mood get even worse.

  Zelda is fuming and making snorting noises like an enraged bull. She powers down her window and yells, “You can’t just leave your car there! That’s a no parking zone!”

  Veronica glances over her shoulder and gives us a disdainful look. “For some people it is, but not for us,” she replies.

  Zelda has her hand on the door handle. She hands me the almost-empty champagne bottle. “I’m going to kick her ass so far up her ass it’s going come out her ass-mouth.”

  I grab her arm. “Don’t. It’ll ruin your grand entrance, plus you’ll get kicked out before you ever get in.”

  Zelda grits her teeth and thinks this over.

  “Besides,” I add, “I’m the one who should be mad. That’s my girlfriend she’s got her hands on.”

  “Can we get revenge some other way?” Zelda asks.

  “Sure, how about we get her car towed?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s good,” Zelda says rubbing her palms together. “Let’s go. This limo isn’t doing shit for our grand entrance.”

  She opens her door and gets out. I slide across the seat and get out behind her. As we walk toward the entrance with smiles plastered across our faces, I say, “You still have the biggest limo.”

  “And a good looking girl on my arm. That’s gotta count for something.”

  “I think that’s the first nice thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Don’t get used to it.”

  *

  In all fairness there’s not much decorating you can do to make a high school gym look like anything but a high school gym. Still, the balloons and streamers are sad. Even the refreshment table is depressed.

  “It looks more like a funeral than a reunion,” I remark.

  I peer through the dim lighting until I catch sight of Gloria. She’s standing near the refreshment table with Veronica. They’re both holding tiny Dixie cups of punch. The punch has probably been spiked, so I vow not to drink any. I need my wits about me if I’m going to steal Gloria away from Veronica.

  Zelda grabs my hand and drags me over to the table. She scoops punch and glares at Veronica. Veronica smiles much too sweetly.

  I turn to Gloria and smile nervously. “Hi, Gloria.”
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  “Hi, Jamie,” Gloria says.

  Well, so far we’re off to a good start.

  “You look. . . nice.”

  “So do you,” she says.

  Momentum is building. I can feel it. Unfortunately, before I can sweep Gloria off her feet, Veronica butts her big mouth in, saying, “Gloria looks more than nice. She looks simply delectable.”

  Zelda steps on Veronica’s foot. “Ouch!”

  “So sorry,” Zelda says, sounding not the least bit sorry.

  Veronica glares at Zelda. “You did that on purpose.”

  “Prove it,” Zelda says.

  In order to stop the catfight from escalating I say, “Omigod! Is that Beth Ellen Warren?” I point to a dumpy woman standing in the shadows of the dance floor. Veronica almost gives herself whiplash she turns around so fast. When she turns back, she gives me the evil eye. “That’s not her, you moron.”

  “Made you look,” I taunt.

  Zelda grabs my elbow, pulling me in the opposite direction. “Come on, Jamie, I got a few people I want you to meet.”

  “Save a dance for me?” I say over my shoulder to Gloria.

  “I will,” Gloria promises.

  Zelda drags me across the dance floor. We toe tap a little bit while crowd watching. I have no idea what all these middle-aged people are doing at my high school reunion. Then I remember— I’m one of those middle-aged people.

  Zelda interrupts my depressing thoughts by saying, “You gotta be kidding me.” She points at the strings of lights hanging from the ceilings.

  “What?”

  “Look at the lights. Closely.”

  I look. “Are those tiny pigs?

  “Yep.”

  “And they’re holding Bibles?”

  “You got it,” Zelda says.

  “Why would anyone choose to decorate with holy pig lights?”

  “Because Mary Patrice, the dumbest nun on the planet, was in charge of the decorating committee.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It was in the brochure they sent out,” Zelda says. “You evidently didn’t read it.”

  “I threw it away because I wasn’t going. Oh, look, there’s Beth Ellen Warren.”