Not A Girl Detective by Susan Kandel Read Free Book Online Page B

us because we simply don’t have the money
    to pay for it. We’re penniless. Let them pay for it, I say.”
    “Lois. You do realize that tree is a hazard to the community.” After a particularly windy day, the sidewalk in front of Lois and Marlene’s house would be littered
    with its enormous black pineapplelike pods. Once,
    when I was walking back from the market, I watched
    one smash into the roof of an inauspiciously parked
    sports car with the force of a missile.
    “Like I was saying, between the tree and the visits
    from animal control”—now she was crying again—
    “they don’t need to hear I was involved in something
    like this. They’ll target me for brutality, I just know it.
    Or they’ll take away our parking spot.” Lois and her sister had somehow bamboozled the city into giving them
    their own handicapped spot, though neither seemed to
    have any problem visible to the naked eye.
    “Please, Cece, I don’t want to talk to them. Just let me help you get the locks changed, and that’ll be the end of it. Marlene’s ex-brother-in-law is a locksmith.
    He can be here in a twinkling.”
    As it turned out, Marlene’s ex-brother-in-law was the best I could do. My unburglary excited little to no emo-tion in the guy manning the phones at the West Holly-
    wood Sheriff’s station. He suggested I come in at my
    earliest convenience to fill out a report, which I inter-preted as a polite way of saying, “You must be kidding, lady.” I tried not to take it personally. After Lois left, I gave Lael a quick call and talked her into spending the night. Her kids were already gone, so she agreed. But I should have known the first thing out of her mouth
    would be something sensible.
    “Cece,” she said, not even halfway in the door, “I
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    don’t care what that guy on the phone said, you have to call Gambino. He would want to know about something
    like this.”
    “She didn’t mean to step on you,” I said to the lock-
    smith, who had arrived a few minutes earlier, and was crouching in front of the doorway. “Listen, can you do something about that knob while you’re at it? It comes off in people’s hands. And this is for you, Lael.” I
    handed her a huge pile of laundry. We were washing
    those sheets before we were sleeping on them.
    “Cece, I said you had to call Gambino. Why didn’t
    you answer me? Are you ill? You look pale.”
    “Peter and I aren’t actually speaking right now,” I
    said. “What should we order for dinner? Do you like
    mee krob?”
    “Stop it. Why aren’t you and Peter speaking?
    Again?”
    “He told me he loved me.”
    “And . . .”
    “And I don’t believe him.” I grabbed the laundry out
    of her hands and headed for the washing machine. She
    followed me into the kitchen.
    “You are one sick cookie.”
    “Is that an offer?”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I have this recurrent fantasy. I’m listening to
    Mozart. I’m eating your chocolate chip cookies—”
    “We have to clean up this mess. It’ll take us all night.
    And your cookie sheets suck, if I remember properly.”
    “You could spin gold from dross.”
    “Cece.”
    “You put Sweet Lady Jane to shame.” Sweet Lady
    Jane was the best bakery in L.A.
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    “All right. You can stop it, Cece. You win. But we are having a long talk about you and Gambino.”
    “We have all night to talk about my tragedy of a love life.”
    “Your love life is not a tragedy. You are the tragedy.”
    “That’s a lovely thing to say.”
    “Where do you keep the brown sugar?”
    I opened the door to the pantry and pulled out the box.
    “There’s flour, baking soda, and vanilla in there, too.”
    “I’ll take care of it,” she said, pushing me away. She’d found an apron I had no idea I owned, and put it on.
    I stared at her, bemused. She had a permanent post-
    coital glow. She glowed when she was paying bills.
    When she was scrubbing toilets.