Citizen Insane

Chapter Three





ROZ HAD EVERY REASON TO be afraid of the man, Frankie Romano. Not too long ago, he had sprained her wrist when he and his sidekick, Elvis Scarletti, kidnapped us by order of lady organized crime boss, Viviana Buttaro. Mafiosi in the suburbs of Virginia. Who knew? Very scary ordeal. I could write a book.

On the other hand, Frankie and Elvis eventually helped me assist the FBI in bringing down the chain-smoking, spikey-heeled Viviana and her cohort group of corrupt pharmaceutical executives, so I knew that Frankie wasn’t really such a bad guy after all. In fact, I learned later that he had a serious aversion to killing, so we were never really in danger of being whacked. Regardless, Roz and Peggy still quaked in their seats.

Unbuckling the seatbelt, I tried to offer some consolation. “It’s okay. He’s harmless—I’ll go talk to him. You stay here.”

Frankie had watched us drive up. He stood, looking uneasy, with a lasagna pan in his hands. He had a face like a pug-dog, but dressed himself smartly in a black leather jacket and shiny shoes that surely boasted designer labels. “Mrs. Marr . . . nice to see you.”

“Don’t call me that, Frankie. We were tied up together, you threw up on my back, and we got shot at with an AK by a guy named No Toes—I think you can call me Barb.”

He smiled. “How you doin’ Barb?”

“I’m . . . good. I guess. Where’s Elvis?”

“Went back to Philly. He never was a fan of dis place you know.”

I nodded as if I really knew the guy well enough to understand that comment. “So, um . . . what brings you by?”

He cleared his throat. “I brought you dis. It’s for you and your friends.” He handed me the warm pan. The aroma of basil and cheese wafted upward and tickled my nosehairs. My stomach roared like a hungry lion.

“Is dat them in dat mini-van there?” He asked.

Looking at Peggy’s van, I laughed. “That’s them. They’re still kind of afraid of you.”

“Dat’s why I’m here,” Frankie said, putting his hands in his pockets. “I’m turnin’ over a new leaf. Makin’ amends. I got me a list—you know, like dat guy on the the TV show dats talkin’ about karma all the time.”

“So you brought us a lasagna to make amends?”

“No! Dat’s baked ziti. It’s my specialty. I got me a real job—I’m da chef over at dis place you mighta heard of. Fiorenza’s.”

“Really? We eat there all the time.” So does my husband and his bimbo girlfriends, I thought.

“No kiddin’? Well next time you’re there, ask for me—I’ll make you a real special dish.”

I felt a little uncomfortable at the thought of forging a friendship with Frankie the ex-mobster, even if he hadn’t been the murdering kind.

“Oh!” Frankie’s face lit up and he started to pull something out of his pants pocket. “I forgot I wanted to give you something else, here.” The first time I met Frankie, he pulled a gun out of that pocket. Today he produced a chunk of business cards and handed me one. It read simply: Frankie Romano. Below his name was a phone number. “You call me should you have a need—anytime you need anything. Well, nothin’ illegal as I’m turnin’ over the new leaf and all. But, I would like if I could give one of these to each of them ladies there too. Especially the lady whose hand I mangled. I feel awful bad about dat.”

Looking back at Roz and Peggy, I saw the terrified expressions on their faces had not weakened, despite our friendly exchange of food and business cards. “You know, I think it’s best if we build them up to you gradually. Let me give them the cards after you leave, and I’ll tell Roz—that’s the lady whose wrist you sprained—I’ll pass on your apologies to her. Maybe in a couple of weeks we’ll stop by Fiorenza’s and say ‘Hi.’ Or something.”

Frankie’s smile filled his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And you call me anytime, you hear?”

“Absolutely.”

The big lug moved in and hugged me so tight I thought I might drop the baked ziti on his designer shoes.

“Well, I’ll go then. Need to get to work. Get ready for the dinner crowd.”

I patted his back. “You do that.”

Frankie practically skipped to his Volkswagen, grinning and waving at Peggy and Roz as he passed. Each gave a very hesitant and tentative wave back.

After he puttered away in his clunker, they left the safety of Peggy’s van and followed me into my house.

“What was that?” asked Roz.

“Evidently he’s traded in his shiny Lincoln Town Car and life of crime for an old Volkswagen and some good karma. He says he’s sorry about your wrist. Now let’s eat baked ziti! I’m starved.”





We’d polished off the ziti and were sipping on glasses of Pinot Grigio by the time Agent Bell showed up to question us about Bunny Bergen and her apparent mental breakdown. We needled him for information, but he was a stone-faced, pinch-lipped bugger. No fun at all, and definitely not coughing up the goods, so when he thanked us for our time and I closed the door behind him, we were still left wondering “Why had Bunny snapped?”

Back at my kitchen table, Peggy and Roz were scratching at remnants of ziti. I looked at the clock above the sink. “Two-fifty five. Callie’s bus will be here in five minutes.”

Roz took another healthy swig from her glass. “That gives us thirty five minutes until the younger kids get home. I need this wine—it will calm me for the PTA meeting tonight.” She looked at Peggy. “Barb is coming—please come too. I need reinforcements.”

“Sorry. Can’t. I’ve got book club at Cappucino Corner.”

“How many book clubs do you belong to?” Roz asked.

She counted on her fingers. “Five. But they all have different themes. Tonight is Italian Heritage book club.”

“Peggy,” I said, “You do know that you’re not Italian, right?”

Peggy leaned in, clearly pleased that I had brought up the subject. “Actually, I’ve been researching my family tree and interviewing relatives in Ireland. It turns out, that my great, great, great Aunt Fianna had a sister whose name no one can remember, but her daughter went off to Italy one summer and when she came back, she was pregnant. Well, actually, no one is sure if she was pregnant, because they’re pretty much all dead now, but the story is that somehow all of the sudden, BOOM, she had a baby girl and it had dark hair and a big nose. Oh, and she had an Italian accent.”

I shook my head. “The baby had an Italian accent?”

“No, the daughter.”

Roz was confused too. “Whose daughter?”

“My great, great, great Aunt Fianna’s sister’s daughter.”

“So, your great, great, great Aunt Fianna’s niece?” asked Roz.

“I guess you could look at it that way.”

Roz was getting into the tangled tale. “So according to people who are dead now, your great, great, great Aunt Fianna’s niece went to Italy, came back with an accent, then had a baby girl with a big nose and dark hair?”

“Exactly.”

“Peggy,” I said, “that’s got to be the strangest story you’ve ever told.”

“Yes, but it shows a family connection to Italy. Where there’s one connection, there could be more, that’s all I’m saying.”

Peggy took a sip of the Pinot while Roz and I stared at her, unable to make a reasonable response to her family connection conclusion.

“So I can’t join you at the meeting,” she said putting her glass down. “Why do you need reinforcements?”

Roz rubbed her eyes then ran a hand through her hair. “Big yearbook scandal.”

“Scandal?” I asked. “You keep using that word. Just how scandalous can a yearbook be, really?”

“Oh, very scandalous. You don’t know these parents. High strung. Uptight. Type-A. Oh, why me?” She plunked her head down on my table.

“Would you just tell us the sob story, already?”

Roz tilted her head so she could talk, but left it on the table. “Krystle Jennings was the yearbook committee chair.”

“She moved, right?” Peggy asked.

“Disappeared is more like it. Do you have a tissue? I think I’m getting a cold.”

“In the bathroom.”

Roz continued to talk, just more loudly, from my bathroom in between blows of her nose. “One day she and her son were there, the next day they weren’t.”

“Where did they live?” I hollered.

She returned, her nose red and swollen, sat down and took another sip before answering. “A small house over on Pinoak Terrace.”

“Did she sell it?” Peggy asked.

She shook her head. “Didn’t own it. She rented. And I heard that she skipped out on three months rent.” She took another swipe at her nose with the tissue.

“So where’s the PTA scandal?”

“You know the candid pictures? Of the students at The Fall Fair, Science Night, in their classrooms, in the hallways? The kids get the yearbook and start flipping through looking for pictures of themselves having fun with their friends?”

“Yeah. . . .” I wasn’t quite sure where this story was going.

“Not this year. We got the proofs back right after she skipped town. Every single picture in that book, other than class pictures, is of her son.”

Peggy cringed. “Is he that kid with the big ears and . . . how do I put this delicately . . . unruly teeth?”

“That would be him.”

“Every single picture?”

“Every picture.”

“Can’t you send in new pictures?”

“Too late. She made the final deadline approvals all by herself.”

“Can’t the yearbook company do something?”

“Nothing that will get us yearbooks before school is out.”

“Uh, oh.”

“Yeah. Most of these moms join the committee specifically to squirm their way in with the yearbook chair and guarantee their kids pictures in prime spots. They are going to be so pissed. I’m not a violent woman, but I tell you this—if I EVER see Krystle Jennings again, I swear I’ll hurt her. I’ll hurt her very badly.”

Our silent contemplation of Krystle Jennings’ nefarious yearbook sabotage was interrupted by the familiar slamming and thumping that always accompanied my teenage Callie’s after-school entrance. For a gracefully slim and generally quiet girl, she could rouse up a cacophony akin to an elephant stampede.

“Tadaima!”

A Junior at Forest Glen High School, Callie had taken to her beginning Japanese language class with unexpected enthusiasm. While I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of attention she paid to the subject, I did suspect it had more to do with the teacher, Mr. Obayashi, who was a very handsome and charming young man who barely looked twenty himself.

“What does that mean?” I yelled back.

She popped her pretty face into the kitchen doorway. She was a younger, feminine version of Howard to be sure. Hair the color of dark chocolate—thick and wavy. Perfect nose. Intense dark, almost black eyes and flawless skin, even at fifteen. I should have been so lucky at her age.

“It means, I’m home,” Callie translated. “Oh, and Grandma’s here.”

“You said all of that with one word?”

“No. I mean, Grandma IS here. She drove up a second ago.”

Peggy and Roz jumped up from the table and grabbed their purses.

“Gotta run,” Roz said.

“Me too. Things to do,” Peggy said with fear in her eyes.

I looked at my clock again. The elementary school bus wouldn’t arrive for another half hour. “You guys have twenty minutes at least. You’re leaving because of my mother, aren’t you?”

They exchanged glances. Roz spoke. “She scares us. She’s so . . . what’s the word . . .”

“Tall,” Peggy assisted Roz with their excuse.

“Yes,” agreed Roz. “And . . .”

“Forceful.” Peggy slipped her thin sweater on so fast that it bunched up and hung all lopsided.

“Forceful,” nodded Roz. “That’s a good word.”

“Better than pushy and overbearing I guess.” I shrugged.

“We’ll just slip out your back door. Ciao!” Peggy was gone in a flash.

“See you at the bus stop.” Roz zipped out behind her waving.

I gave her a dirty look. She slammed the sliding glass door just as my mother swished in the front.

“Hello? Anyone home?” She hollered out, knowing perfectly well that I was.

Before I could get my act together or hide, she was standing over me surveying the empty wine bottle.

“Drinking in the middle of the day?” She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”

My mother commands quite a presence. She towers over my five foot eight inch frame. She’s a freakishly tall, big boned woman. Not fat, just big. Everything she does is big—she dresses big and lavish, she walks big, she talks big. As a young girl growing up, I felt dwarfed by the shadow of her character, only thankful that I didn’t inherit her monstrously large physical frame. Right now, I felt about three years old.

I learned early in life that the best way to deal with my mother’s comments was to ignore them.

“What brings you by, Mom?”

“Do I need a reason to visit my only daughter and grandchildren?”

“No, but you usually have one anyway.”

“Nope. Nope. No reason.” She sat down while giving the room a cursory visual inspection. “Not really.”

“Not really?”

“No, but while I’m here, I might as well mention that I met a very nice, handsome, respectable and SINGLE man the other day. How about I set you two up?”

“I’m married!”

“You wouldn’t know it. When was the last time Howard was here, anyway?”

Unfortunately, I didn’t answer quickly because I really couldn’t remember. He had been called out of town on lengthy assignments twice since Christmas. And more recently he’d been working some long hours, or so he said. Of course, I now knew he was probably working long hours romancing bodacious bimbos. I wasn’t going to tell my mother that, however. So I punted. “I just saw him a couple of minutes ago, as a matter of fact.”

She didn’t seem convinced. “Howard should take a lesson from the way your father lived his life. Your father never would have left his family like this. He was a good, honest and dedicated family man, rest his dear soul.”

My sweet father, who was a small man compared to most, died in his sleep three years ago, supposedly of sleep apnea. I always suspected that maybe my mother accidentally rolled on top of him in the middle of the night, smothering the life out of him.

“Mom, Howard didn’t leave me. This is all my doing. I told him to live at the condo so we could explore our relationship through dating again. I thought we’d learn to appreciate each other again and make our marriage stronger.”

“Dear, excuse me for being blunt, but that’s the dumbest idea you’ve ever had.”

Sadly, she was right, but I would never admit that fact to her. I rubbed my weary eyes. “Whatever, Mom.”

“What do you plan to do about it?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t have time to talk about it now, I have to walk up to the bus stop. Amber and Bethany’s bus will be here any minute.”

“Do you mind if I use your phone?”

“Go ahead.”

The sun had warmed the air nicely over the day. I stood on the front walk, closed my eyes, and took some deep cleansing breaths, concentrating on the joys of Spring rather than the woes of Barbara Marr.

My silent reverie was shattered by a voice right next to my ear.

“It looks like you have company.”

I jumped and screamed, my heart racing a million miles a minute. The voice came from my nosy “friend” Waldo. He was easily three inches shorter than me, with fuzzy, dark hair that hovered over his eyes like a flying saucer, a waxy complexion that made him look sickly, and a wardrobe that screamed for a fashion consultant. Even though he was new to the neighborhood, he’d already succeeded in meeting just about every married woman within a two-mile radius and offering himself as “someone to listen” since he was a psychotherapist by trade.

“Waldo! Don’t scare me like that.”

“I’m so sorry. I would never mean to scare you.” He pointed at the red GTO convertible pulling in behind my mother’s Mini Cooper. I knew that GTO well. And its driver, my friend and Howard’s roommate, Colt Baron. Colt is just plain yummy. Blond, wispy hair and a smile that makes a woman’s heart palpitate. Women fall for Colt everywhere he goes. He’s also a private investigator who agreed to teach me how to shoot a hand gun. I assumed this was the reason for his visit.

“Hey, Curly!” Colt flashed his smile as he bounded up the walkway like a happy puppy. He and Waldo slipped me awkward I-don’t-know-him glances, so I felt obligated to make introductions.

“Waldo, this is my friend Colt. Colt this is –”

“Oswald Fuchs,” he interrupted, thrusting his hand toward Colt. “But you can call me Waldo. That way, when you’re wondering where I am, you can just say, ‘Where’s Waldo?’” He laughed at his own joke. It was his standard line and, since I had already heard it at least ten times, it was really becoming a sore point with me. Mostly because I felt required to laugh at it every time even though what I really wanted to do was stick my finger in his eye like Moe giving it to Larry.

Colt took Waldo’s hand, but I could see he wasn’t impressed. “Nice to meet you.” He dismissed Waldo quickly turning to me, “You got a minute?”

I nodded. “You can walk with me to the bus stop. Waldo, I have to go. Did you . . . want something?”

He just grinned and shook his head. “Nope.”

“Okay, then.” I started walking, hoping he’d get the message and skedaddle. “See ya later.”

The message wasn’t received. “I hear there was quite a commotion over at Bunny Bergen’s house today,” he said. “Do you know what happened there?”

I stiffened a little.

“Really?” I said. “A commotion? I don’t know anything about that.”

“You don’t?” Waldo looked puzzled. “Maria Nichols told me that fire engines and police were swarming around her house. She said a medic pulled Bunny out of Peggy Rubenstein’s van while you talked to someone who looked like George Clooney. Doesn’t your husband look like George Clooney?”

Colt stifled a laugh.

“Listen, Waldo, I’m really not supposed to be talking about this. Best if you left it alone.”

“I’m just so concerned about poor Bunny.” He clicked his long, gross fingernails. “Hopefully the incident wasn’t related to her obsession with Howard.”