Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [53]
Dave is dashing through the living room toward the black telephone that sits in an alcove in the hallway like one of the shrines up at church. I’m hoping with all I got that somebody in the neighborhood saw Molinari lurking outside his garage and they called the station and now the cops over on Burleigh Street are ringing Dave up so he can help capture Greasy Al, who they have trapped in a dragnet.
“Rasmussen,” he says into the horn. “Yes, sir. When? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I’ll get right on it, Captain.”
After Dave drops the phone back down in the cradle, I ask, “Is it Molinari? Did they catch him?”
He shakes his head and runs his fingers through his usually light blond hair that has gone knotty pine–colored from his baseball sweat. “When we were at the game, somebody broke into the Livingstons’ house.”
“Oh, no. What . . . what got stolen?” I ask.
“They haven’t had a chance to go through the whole house yet to check what’s missing, but so far, Tom’s rodeo belt buckle is gone along with their best silver. I need to get over there.”
I know that Greasy Al isn’t the regular cat burglar because things were getting stolen before he escaped from reform school, but it could be him just this one time. It’s been weeks since he has been on the run and his stomach should be growling. He can’t just show up at his family’s restaurant or the Milky Way in his striped prison suit. Yes. That makes perfect sense. Greasy Al burgled some food and the Livingstons’ silver because even he isn’t uncivilized enough to eat raw meat with his bare hands.
“You should check the freezer in their basement,” I tell Dave when I’m done thinking it through. Mr. Livingston is our butcher. His daughter, Kit, is in my grade at school. She brought a hunk of beef for show-and-tell. When she was done explaining to the class that her father is originally from Montana and that’s why he knows how to cut up cows, she told us they had a whole freezer full of T-bones in their basement. “There’s probably a few steaks missin’.”
Dave’s pale eyebrows shoot up straight as exclamation points. “Sally . . . that’s . . . why would somebody take—are you okay?”
I should tell him right this minute about my suspicisons about Greasy Al. And Mary Lane, who I’m sure has been doing the burglaries this whole time. It’s got to be one of the two of them who broke into the Livingstons’. At the game tonight, Mary Lane was looking extra skinny. She mighta slipped away during the seventhinning stretch for a late-night snack. But Dave’s unbuttoning his baseball shirt in a hurry and heading into the bathroom, just missing Mother, who walks past me on her way to the kitchen. If she hears me telling Dave anything having to do with police business of any kind she’ll get mad all over again.
She calls out to him, “I’ll make us some popcorn and pour us a couple of beers. I thought we could watch Jack Parr. I kid you not. Hardy . . . har . . . har. Who was on the phone by the way?”
Dave sticks his head out of the bathroom, sighs and shrugs, and I do the same back to him. She knows darn well he can’t stay to cuddle up with her while they watch The Tonight Show. He’s gotta leave and do his detecting job. Mother’s trying to make him feel like he is letting her down. Again. This is something that she is astoundingly good at. She could be the Eighth Wonder of the World when it comes to letting you know how much you disappoint her.
“There’s been another burglary,” Dave says, down in the mouth. “That was the station calling.”
Mother says like this is the first time the thought has crossed her mind, “The station?”
“I’m sorry. I know you made plans, but I’ve got a responsibility to—”
“But you promised,” Mother says. “You told me that . . .”
Dave must apologize to her five times a day and I don’t want to hear him doing it one more time. She was so happy when they first got together again and moved into this house with the white shutters and window boxes that my father keeps filled with red geraniums because that’s her favorite flower, but nowadays,