Foxy Roxy Part 26

"Quality takes time." Roxy pulled the tarp back down over the fireplace. "But I have a couple more ideas up my sleeve. I just don't want you to be shocked at the price tags."

"You can't shock me."

Shanna used that as her parting shot before she headed back to her Hummer, mincing across the mud in her silly shoes.

Grinding her teeth, Roxy climbed back into the Monster Truck and started the engine. Rooney licked her face for consolation.

Nooch got into the truck, glum with disappointment. "She's never going to buy anything."

"Yes, she will. She just needs the right kind of nudge. And then I hope she wanders out on an ice floe, and gets mistaken for a baby seal and beaten to death."

"Did you tell her about that naked statue?"

Surprised that Nooch remembered it, she said, "No. She doesn't deserve it. Besides, now I'm thinking we shouldn't sell it locally, you know? Obviously, Julius had a lot of people in his house. Eventually, somebody will recognize the statue and start asking the wrong questions. I need a new plan."

Nooch sighed. "I was hoping to see Lapraxo."

"We'll try again."

He perked up. "Yeah? Soon?"

"Soon," Roxy promised.

"Is it lunchtime yet?"

Roxy made a detour into a suburban fast-food drive-through-it was much cleaner than the one in the city-and bought Nooch a couple of sandwiches with a supersized order of French fries. For Rooney, she bought a hamburger, no condiments. Pickles did bad things to Rooney's digestion.

Driving while they ate, Roxy said, "I've been thinking about your hearing."

"Mmph?"

"We definitely need a couple more character witnesses. People who like you. Upstanding citizens. Got any ideas?"

Around a mouthful of fries, Nooch said, "What about Flynn? He's upstanding."

"No, he isn't. He's got a record. It's old, but it's still on the books."

"What books?"

"Never mind. Not Flynn. Who else do we know?"

Nooch scrunched his face in concentration and finally said, "I know the lady at the bank where I cash my checks."

"You go to the same bank teller every week?"

"Yeah, she shows me where to write my name."

"No, we need somebody who knows you more intimately. Somebody who likes you. A friend." She added, "A friend who hasn't been arrested for anything."

Nooch said, "I don't have any friends like that. Except Sage."

"Sage isn't old enough." Reminded, Roxy checked her watch. Too early to call Sage yet. She'd still be in school.

The little alarm bell beeped on the truck's dashboard. The gas gauge blinked-almost empty. Fortunately, Roxy thought of a stop she could make that might result in some much-needed gas money.

She pulled into the rutted parking lot of an old church scheduled to be demolished to make room for a highway. There, Roxy left Rooney in the truck and took Nooch for a stroll past the trucks of a bunch of other scavengers who'd also come to check out the church. Roxy gave the building a once-over. The Gothic arched windows might be worth saving if Nooch could wrestle them out of their mooring without breaking anything ... including his neck.

"You want the pews?" asked the sad-faced volunteer standing inside with a clipboard. He might have been part of the small but stubborn Croatian community that had kept the old church going for generations.

Pews were a dime a dozen. "No, thanks. What moron smashed the front door?" Roxy nodded at the splintered remains of a handsome mahogany doorway-another Gothic arch decorated with the lives of saints, but now sporting the kind of damage inflicted only by heavy machinery.

The volunteer winced at the damage. "Some kids hot-wired a backhoe in the parking lot and rammed it around for an hour before the cops showed up. Maybe you could fix it?"

"For what? Firewood?"

He sighed. "I'll take your bid for the big windows. A couple other people want them, too. But there's a small stained-gla.s.s panel in the lavatory behind the nave. Did you see it? It's too small to interest anybody else. It's got a shepherdess with a flock of lambs."

"I'll take a look." Finally, Roxy let herself feel sorry for the volunteer. "Thanks."

The window was pretty. Easy to remove, too. The volunteer gave her permission, and she wrote him a check. A check that was going to bounce if he beat her to the bank. But the window was an item Roxy knew she could flip fast. In half an hour, Nooch was carrying the little window out to the truck. Roxy went looking for some bubble wrap under the driver's seat.

What she found was the package of money from Carmine.

"s.h.i.t," she said to herself. She couldn't keep driving around with all that cash in the truck. She needed to hurry up and decide what to do with it. On the other hand, she could really use the dough. She peeled off a hundred.

She pushed the rest of the money back under the seat and took the bubble wrap to Nooch. Together, they made a neat business of protecting the window.

Back in the truck, she tried calling Sage. No luck. Roxy checked her watch. School should be over by now. But Sage wasn't answering. Had she decided to skip her meeting?

The truck's engine was sucking on fumes by the time she pulled into a gas station near the Thirty-first Street Bridge. Nooch climbed out of the truck to pump the gas, so Roxy strolled into the convenience store inside the garage. She checked out the aisles and found a home pregnancy test. She read the expiration date and was glad to see the test hadn't lost its potency five years ago. She took it to the cash register.

Pepper Patrone was counting cash on the cracked gla.s.s counter, but stopped at the sight of the box.

"Whoa. What's that about, girlfriend?"

"It's not for me, Pepper." Roxy plunked Carmine's C-note down on the counter. "So don't start any nasty rumors."

Pepper laughed wheezily. She sold cigarettes by the carton, but her best customer was herself. She had one cigarette slowly burning on the windowsill and another on her lip.

Pepper had grown up in the neighborhood and-a pretty and pet.i.te little fireball with a cute b.u.t.t and a red ponytail-was voted Most Likely to Marry Before Graduation. But she defied all predictions and ran off to join the army instead. When she returned, her hair buzzed in a crew cut, Pepper announced she was a lesbian and moved in with a beautiful young woman just out of college who taught kindergarten somewhere on the South Side. Pepper took over her dad's garage and did a good business in gas, tires, oil changes, and cigarettes.

Pepper rested a muscular forearm on the counter. Various tattoos showed-including one on her neck that read Doreen and featured a lipsmack. She said, "You going to tell me who's pregnant?"

"Nope."

"It's not you?"

"No way."

"Is it Loretta?"

"Not unless pregnancy can be caused by hot flashes."

"Is it anybody I know?"

"Pepper, I need a tank of gas."

Pepper transacted the business with a speedy slip of the cash and a bang on the cash register.

Watching most of her money disappear, Roxy said, "You know anything about Valdeccio, a guy married to one of the Calderelli sisters for a while?"

"Valdeccio? Yeah, sure, he's in here all the time." Pepper handed back a couple of small bills. "He takes care of all the cars owned by that dead gazillionaire Julius Hyde, you know. Drives him around a little. Drove him, I guess you could say."

"Have you seen Valdeccio since Julius died?"

"As a matter of fact, he was in here yesterday, filling up gas tanks. He charges all the gas for his own car and half the neighborhood, and he uses the Hyde credit card." Seeing Roxy's expression, Pepper said, "What do I care if he ripped off his employer? He's not the only one. I guess he was worried the card would get canceled."

"Nice guy. Did he say anything about the night Julius died? Was he around? Did he see anything?"

Pepper took the cigarette from her lip with her left hand. "Yeah, he did. He was pretty upset, in fact. Going to lose his job, which had a lot of perks besides credit cards."

"But did he see Julius get whacked?"

Pepper shook her head. "No, he left, he said, before the old guy got shot."

"I suppose he told that to the police."

With a grin, Pepper said, "I doubt it. He's a slippery dude."

Roxy supposed anyone who used his employer's credit card to buy gasoline for his entire family wasn't on the up-and-up.

Pepper put her elbow back on the counter. "I heard a couple of guys talking about you lately."

"Who?"

"I thought you didn't want me spreading rumors?"

"Pepper-"

"Okay, okay, a couple of guys who work in the kitchen at that fancy restaurant, Rizza's-they came in to get a price on new tires for their motorcycles. I hate that. They know exactly how much tires cost here, so why are they running around doing comparison shopping when they can see I'm busy? I had a minivan up on the lift and-"

"Pepper?"

"They were talking about Patrick Flynn. About how he's settling in real well at the restaurant."

"Am I supposed to care about Flynn and his job?"

"I guess not. But the guys told me that Flynn said you look just as good now as you did back before he joined the Marine Corps." Pepper scratched at one of her tattoos-an eagle with an olive branch in its beak. "They went to hear you sing at a club a couple of weeks back. Said you were dynamite. When are you gonna get me some tickets to hear you sing?"

"I'm only backup."

"Still, it's kinda cool." While Roxy put her change away, Pepper said, "You know, as men go, Flynn's not bad. He's got a real nice b.u.t.t, know what I'm saying?"

"If you decide to cross the railroad tracks, Pepper, don't leave Doreen for Flynn. He's not as upstanding as he looks."

Pepper c.o.c.ked her thumb and forefinger into a gun. "Gotcha. He's seeing somebody else, anyway. They're living together."

"What? Who?" The information caught Roxy up short. She had guessed Flynn might be doing the dirty dance with someone, but this news took her by surprise. It wasn't like Flynn to commit to sharing a tube of toothpaste. "Who's he with?"

"Marla Krantz."

"Marla-? You're kidding me!" Roxy's chest locked up tight. "Is she still doing smack?"

Pepper nodded. "But you didn't hear it from me."

Roxy grabbed the pregnancy test, slammed out of the garage, and climbed into the truck. She loosened Nooch's teeth when she banged her door shut.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Why are men so predictable?"

"Huh?"

"Marla Krantz!"

"Oh," Nooch said. "The pretty one. What about her?"

"Shut up!"

Marla Krantz, well-known junkie, was now Flynn's live-in girlfriend. Great. Exactly the kind of people Roxy wanted around her daughter.

She dialed Sage's number again. This time, she left a blistering message.

"Call me back right away, you little sneak. Or you're so grounded, your kid will be in kindergarten by the time you get out. You hear me, Sage? Call your mother."

Back at the yard, just to make her life even more complicated, Roxy found that Bug Duffy had left a note jammed in the office door.

"Call me," it said. And provided two phone numbers.

Roxy let Nooch put the stained-gla.s.s window in the garage, and she went into the office to call Bug. Fortunately, he didn't take her calls. One went to his voice mail immediately, and the other was picked up by a secretary at the police station.

"They're in the squad meeting," the secretary said on the phone. She had a thick Pittsburgh accent. "I'll tell him yunz called. What's your cell number?"

Roxy gave it and hung up, glad to have avoided talking with the police. She called Sage again. No answer.

At least now Roxy could be reasonably sure Sage wasn't with Flynn. Because he was probably at home banging his drug addict girlfriend.

To Sage's voice mail, she said, "You'd better have a good reason for not calling me."