It Happened One Fright Read online

  Good luck with that.

  I couldn’t figure it out. Did the ice woman wander into our room, and the killer murdered her, thinking she was me? I shuddered. I didn’t like that reason. Or maybe the killer chased her into our room and killed her there? That was a more appetizing option, as far as I was concerned. Or maybe she was murdered somewhere else and dropped in our bed to frame us. That wasn’t an attractive prospect, considering my aversion to being in prison. Whatever the reason, it didn’t look good for us. I could see the headlines: Murder in the Love Nest. I could almost feel the handcuffs on me, already.

  I got dressed and looked in the mirror. My mascara had run down my face from the erotic shower. I cleaned off my face and ran a hotel comb through my hair as far as I could. My hair was a lot tougher than the comb, and three of the comb’s teeth broke off somewhere in my wet locks.

  “Maybe I’m dreaming,” I told my reflection. “Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed that a woman was murdered in my bed.” I gave my arm a hard pinch. Ouch. Damn it. I was wide awake.

  “Dolly.”

  I jumped three feet in the air and crashed back to the floor, clutching onto the marble counter for balance. In the mirror, my grandmother was standing, looking at me.

  And Grandma didn’t look good. She was pale and clutching her chest.

  “Dolly, I need you,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “Hurry. Come now.”

  I turned around, but my grandmother wasn’t in the bathroom. I turned back around to the mirror, and she wasn’t there, either. But she had been there. At least she had been there in my mind.

  Holy cow. I had had a vision.

  I touched the spot between my eyes, half-expecting to find a third eye. But nope. Nothing there except for the beginnings of some heavy-duty, what-the-hell lines. Was this the way it started? Knowing things that couldn’t be known?

  What did I know?

  I knew that my grandmother needed me. I knew it as surely as I knew that okra was slimy no matter how it was cooked and that Adam Sandler movies were totally overrated.

  I slammed the bathroom door open. “Spencer, we have to leave. Now! We have to go home. Grandma needs me!”

  Local law enforcement didn’t want to let us leave, but as Police Chief of a close by, bigger town, Spencer convinced them to accept a rushed statement and a promise to answer any further questions if needed.

  And away we went.

  “Speed!” I urged Spencer as he whisked us away from the scene of the crime to possibly another scene of the crime.

  “What’s happening? What’s happening?” Spencer asked, as he took the thirty-mile-an-hour turns at sixty miles an hour. Trees whizzed by as we traveled to Cannes in record time.

  “My grandmother needs me!” I shouted.

  “I don’t understand. Are you becoming like her?”

  Becoming like her. We both knew what that meant, but we had never exactly talked about what Grandma was like. She just was.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, but I didn’t sound convincing. Actually, I had no idea. It could have been a one-shot deal. It could have been some kind of psychic push from my grandmother, like E.T. calling home. Or I could have been seeing things, which was the most likely truth.

  But something in me told me not to listen to the most likely truth. Something in me told me to make Spencer go even faster.

  “Can’t we just call her?” Spencer asked.

  “No,” I said, but I didn’t know why.

  “This is the first time you haven’t gone ape-shit over a murder. Normally, you’re in high Miss Marple mode at this point. You didn’t ask one question about the murdered girl.”

  He was right. My concern over my grandmother had superseded my Miss Marple curiosity and compulsion to solve mysteries. Or maybe my Miss Marple was broken.

  “There!” I shouted when I saw the sign for Cannes, California. Population 2501. Elevation 4226 feet.

  “I know, Pinky. I’ve been here before.”

  “Turn left here!”

  “I know, Pinky.”

  Spencer drove up the driveway, and I jumped out of the car before he turned off the motor. I opened the door and ran inside the house.

  The place was packed with people, as usual. My grandmother’s house was the center of the action in town. Because she was a matchmaker and a shut-in, those searching for love and community organizing were forced to go to her. And they were never disappointed.

  However, it was late at night to have so much action at her house. Normally things wound down by seven in the evening. Now it was closer to nine, and every folding chair was out in the parlor, and the mayor was lecturing the horde of volunteers.

  “This is going to take every ounce of our egg boiling and egg dyeing abilities. It’s like D-Day, but harder and much more important. Much more important!”

  “Eggs are more important than D-Day,” Meryl, the blue-haired librarian sneered. The mayor wasn’t known for his intellectual strengths. I had heard something about an epic Easter egg hunt this year, and I figured the meeting had something to do with that.

  “Meryl, where’s Grandma?” I asked, interrupting the meeting. All heads turned to me, surprise plastered on their faces. The whole town knew that Spencer and I were supposed to be away on a super romantic vacation, and my early return would definitely be the number one gossip topic for a while.

  “She’s in the sunroom with a client,” Meryl told me. Spencer walked into the house, and he followed me when I ran through the kitchen to the sunroom.

  Grandma was there with a huge man, sitting next to him on the yellow cushions of the sunroom couch. “Nobody understands me,” he said with a thick Japanese accent. “Women don’t want me.”

  Grandma took his hand. “You are a beautiful, talented sumo wrestler. I know that there’s a woman in Cannes who will recognize your specialness. You will be understood. And you will be loved.”

  Spencer came up behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders, his chin on the top of my head, and sighed a sigh of relief. I realized that I had been holding my breath, and I sighed, too. Grandma looked fine. She was doing a matchmaking consultation, the first step in finding love for a client.

  The sumo wrestler stood. He was a nice-looking man, and there was lots of him. He towered over my grandmother and seemed to take up the entire sunroom. He was wearing a massive blue suit with a tie tied into a Windsor knot.

  Everything was fine.

  Then, Grandma turned, and we locked eyes. She nodded ever so slightly, and at that moment, I knew I had been right. She needed me. Something horrible was about to happen. A small tear rolled down her face, and I ran to her.

  I learned something that day. There was a difference between a heart attack and a heart event. An event was better than an attack, or so the doctor said. Still, he wanted my grandmother to go to the hospital, but since she never left her property, she refused to go.

  Luckily there was a sumo wrestler around when Grandma clutched her chest and keeled over. He caught her easily and swept her up into his enormous arms. I ran to her, and miraculously, I kept a clear head. While, running, I whipped my cellphone out of my purse and dialed the doctor. Then, I was a drill sergeant, ordering the wrestler to carry her to her room and Spencer to get her cold water. And then we waited and prayed and made deals with God to take care of my grandmother.

  God came through. Either that or it wasn’t her time. Either that or my grandmother was strong as a horse.

  In any case, by midnight my grandmother was tucked into her bed, comfortable and high on tranquilizers. The house was cleared of guests with promises to make at least two thousand casseroles. And Spencer turned around in circles, unused to not being useful. Finally, I urged him to go to bed, and I wrapped myself in a quilt and curled up in the chair next to my grandmother’s bed.

  “You’re a good girl,” Grandma told me, slightly slurring her speech.

  “Are you comfortable? Do you need something?”

  “I’m fine,
bubbeleh.”

  “But…” I wanted to ask her if she was going to stay fine, or if I should start crying and never stop, if she would continue to be there for me, or if I would be an orphan. But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I was such a coward.

  “Dolly, I’ve always been hazy about myself, you know,” she said. My throat grew thick, and I willed my eyes not to fill up with tears, but they didn’t obey me. “But I have the feeling that I’m going to be up and ready to match folks in about ten days.”

  I wiped my eyes with the quilt. “Really? How strong of a feeling do you have? Like a for sure feeling? Or just a so-so kinda feeling?”

  “Ten days,” she said and started to snore.

  I sat up in my chair. “Wait a second. Ten days? You’re going to be in bed for ten days? So, who’s going to be in charge of the matchmaking? I can’t do it for ten days. Grandma? Grandma?”

  She was out and snoring like she was trying to inhale the sheets. I should have been exhausted, but I was wide awake with the panic that only filling Grandma’s shoes for ten days could provoke.

  “Honey, you need a peel. I’ve never let my face look like what you’ve got going on. Come into the salon pronto.”

  “Huh?” I asked, waking up. I had fallen asleep in a pretzel position, and I had a crick in my neck. There was a pool of drool on my arm. I cracked my eyes open to find Grandma’s room filled with Bird, who owned the local salon, and two of her estheticians. They got to work, washing Grandma’s hair and getting her ready for the day. She was going to look better, recuperating from a heart event in bed than I was going to look in perfect health.

  “You got some grays, you know, Gladie,” Bird told me, pointing at my head.

  My hand flew to the top of my head. “I do not. Take that back, Bird.”

  “You need to come into the salon. You need a full day. It’s an emergency. You’ve let yourself go. I would have thought you’d have spruced yourself up for the big third finger, left hand trip with the hot cop.”

  I rubbed my neck. “I wasn’t on a third finger, left hand trip. Where did you hear that? That’s a total lie,” I lied.

  “You come into the salon, and I’ll get you buffed up. It might take a power sander, but we’ll get your skin back on track. What are you eating these days, Gladie?”

  “Not much.” I had eaten a family pack of Double Stuff Oreos for breakfast the day before, but that was stress eating, which didn’t count.

  “I’m on the 1950s diet. Awesome diet. Lots of green Jello.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said, sitting up, straighter.

  “Dolly, I haven’t had coffee, yet,” Grandma said from her bed. “Would you get your grandma breakfast?”

  “Sure, Grandma,” I said, getting up.

  “Add a leftover thigh from Chik’n Lik’n. There’s a bucket in the refrigerator. And a bagel with cream cheese, of course. There might be a cherry Danish somewhere, too.”

  “Okay, Grandma.”

  I guessed heart events made a person hungry.

  “The Easter Egg committee will be here in an hour, bubbeleh,” Grandma told me.

  Oh, geez. For a brief, wonderful moment, I had forgotten that I was now in charge of Zelda’s matchmaking business. That meant that I was pretty much in charge of the whole town.

  Had the world gone crazy?

  I couldn’t be in charge of a town. I couldn’t even be in charge of my debit card.

  I hurried to my bathroom to pee. Spencer was lying in bed in sweatpants and no shirt, while he watched Simpsons reruns and laughed, pointing at the television screen. “How’s Zelda?” he asked me through the bathroom door.

  “Hungry. I have to feed her and then I have the Easter Egg committee to deal with.”

  I put a brush through my hair and tied it into a ponytail. I went back in my bedroom and stripped out of my dirty underwear.

  “Sounds rough,” Spencer said, absentmindedly watching me as I got dressed again in jeans and a t-shirt.

  I turned on him, my eyes twitching. “Rough? It’s a catastrophe. I’m going to ruin everything. I can’t do this.”

  Spencer muted the TV and got out of bed. “I don’t want to alarm you, Pinky, but you might be having a seizure.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? It’s everything I can do not to swallow my tongue right now. Any minute, you’re going to have to shove a spoon in my mouth. And I don’t want to even start on the blood thingies in my brain that are hemorrhaging.”

  Spencer arched an eyebrow and smirked his little smirk and pulled me into an embrace. “That’s rough about the blood thingies in your brain,” he said. “I know a cure for blood thingies.” He rubbed up against me to highlight his cure.

  I pushed him away. “You’re five years old, Spencer. This is serious. I have responsibilities now. For ten days.”

  “That sucks, Pinky. Does that mean that little Spencer is going to be lonely for ten days?”

  He hopped back onto the bed and clicked the unmute button. The Simpsons roared to life. “Is that what you’re doing all day?”

  “Hey, I’m on vacation, Pinky. You want to join me?”

  I stood over him, open-mouthed, watching him stare at the television, completely relaxed. He was totally happy. He wasn’t filled with panic, anxiety, and low self-esteem. He didn’t have to deal with the Easter egg committee. He didn’t have to match a sumo wrestler. I wanted to hit him with a hammer. If only I had a hammer. Why didn’t I have a hammer?

  I stomped my foot and wagged my finger at him. “You’re being insensitive. You’re being unhelpful. You’re being a man!”

  “I’m trying to be a man, Pinky. Little Spencer is trying to be a man, too. Poor Little Spencer. You hurt his feelings.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “You are? Come on and make it up to Little Spencer.”

  I threw my dirty underpants at him. It didn’t have the same effect as a hammer, but he got the point.

  After I fed my grandmother, I had forty minutes before the invasion was due to happen. I had plenty of time to get coffee, especially if I took my car. It was a no-brainer. I needed a real latte before it was time to crash and burn and face my failure.

  I got a half block away from Tea Time, the tea shop where I bought my coffee, before police car lights flashed in my rearview mirror and sirens went off. “What the hell?” I said and pulled to the side of the road.

  I turned off my motor and watched as Terri Williams stepped out of the police car and sauntered toward me. Oh, crap. Terri had recently moved to Cannes as its newest detective on the police force. But she had screwed up and was demoted to a beat cop.

  And she hated me.

  She hated me so much.

  I wasn’t crazy about her, either. She was a heinous bitch. But it made me crazy that she hated me. How could she hate me? I was the nicest person in the world. Nobody hated me. Even people who had tried to kill me didn’t hate me. I was a very likable person. At least I hoped I was.

  Terri tapped on my window, and I rolled it down.

  “Hi, Terri. How are you? You look great today.” I wasn’t lying. Terri was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Oh, who was I kidding? She was definitely the number one most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Even in her disgusting uniform, she was stunningly gorgeous.

  “License, registration, and proof of insurance,” she said.

  “Do I have a taillight out?”

  “License, registration, and proof of insurance,” she repeated, louder.

  I rifled through my purse and gave her my license. “I think the registration is in the glove compartment. I’m not really good with paperwork. You know how it is, right?” I laughed and tapped her arm.

  “Don’t touch a police officer,” she warned. “Are you saying that you don’t have registration for this vehicle?”

  “Of course I do.” She scribbled on her ticket pad. “What are you doing there? Are you giving me a ticket?”

  “Lis
ten, Ms. Burger, it’s none of your business what I’m doing. I’m in charge, not you. Do you have the proper paperwork for this vehicle?”

  She continued to write on her ticket pad. I opened the glove compartment and searched through it. “I don’t know who put the candy bar wrappers in here,” I told her. “Pretty funny, though. Do you like chocolate? I love chocolate. Funny thing about chocolate that not a lot of people know…”

  “If you delay this any longer, I’m going to take you in and put you on a seventy-two-hour hold.”

  She was such a bitch.

  “Eureka!” I shouted, finding the registration. I handed it to her, and she inspected it like it was garbage. “Nice weather we’re having,” I said, brightly, showing her all of my teeth. “April in Cannes. Am I right?”

  It was hard to be nice to a woman who wasn’t nice. I couldn’t figure out how to win her over and make her like me.

  “So why did you pull me over, not that I’m complaining?” I asked. “Not complaining a bit. I have total respect for law enforcement. Love the law. The law is the best. Nothing better than the law. Law is the tops. Woohoo law!” I shouted, shaking my fist at the car’s ceiling.

  Terri handed me back my license and registration and gave me a ticket. “Three-hundred-dollars?” I shrieked. “Why? For what?”

  “It’s written right there. Have a nice day.”

  “I can’t read this. It’s like a doctor’s handwriting. Young driving? You ticketed me for young driving?”

  Terri studied her fingernails. “Annoying driving. You were ticketed for annoying driving.”

  “That’s a thing? That’s real?”

  “It is now.”

  My first instinct was to claw her eyes out. But I had short fingernails, and she had a gun. There was also the problem that if I wanted her to like me, it probably wouldn’t help my case if I attacked her through the open driver’s side window.

  The thing was that this wasn’t the first ticket Terri had given me since she had been demoted. I had four other tickets crammed on the bottom of my purse. Spencer could probably take care of them, but I had a secret fear that when faced with the choice of me and Hot Mama Terri, he would choose her. After all, she had gone to college, and the other four tickets were for speeding, changing lanes without signaling, and two for rolling through a stop sign while I was applying mascara. Spencer would have given me hell if he saw those tickets.