The Alibi – Chapter 43 Section V Mega Chapter 2 (part 10)
Cranston stood in his kitchen going through the cupboards. An empty, resusable cotton grocery bag lay on the counter in front of him like a sleeping kitten. “Leddy? Dr. Cuccello invited us over to her place for dinner. She gave me a list of things to bring. Care to help me find them? What we don’t have here I’ll have to pick up on the way. Leddy?”
Leddy, in a “Go Pats” neck to knee nightshirt, slid across the kitchen’s linoleum flooring on stockinged feet. “You have a list?”
“No.”
“She didn’t give you a list? C’mon, Pop. She’s more anal than you.”
Cranston kept shifting things around in the cupboards. “She TXTed me.”
Leddy sat on the countertop facing her father. “She TXTed you and you lost it, right? Deleted it by accident?”
“Damned phone.”
She held her hand out. He gave her his phone without looking. A few swipes and taps later she read off, “Hot or sweet Italian sausage. From Buello’s, not Brüdermann’s. Hey, Maria’s cool. She even umlauted the u in Brüdermann.”
“Women. And it’s Dr. Cuccello.”
“She lets me call her Maria.”
Cranston turned to her. “Maria? Not even Maria Francesca?”
“Just Maria.”
“She never let me call her just Maria.”
Leddy raspberried her father. “You know she likes you, right?”
Cranston stopped going through the cupboards and looked at the grocery bag. “She tell you that?”
“Women know these things.”
“Yeah, right. And since when are you a woman?”
“Pop, I’ve been having my period for two years now.”
“Do I need to know this?” He looked at his daughter. “For two years now?”
“You never noticed the box of mixed tampons in the shopping cart every month or so?”
He went back to filling the grocery bag. “I know I don’t need to know this. And where’d you learn about tampons?”
“Maria told me. She asked before my period started and told me to get ready and what to do.”
Cranston sagged. “Oh, god.”
“She even gave me a couple tamps and told me to keep them handy just in case.”
Cranston focused on the grocery bag. He roved his cupboards and moved items, desperate to return them to their place.
“It’s a Sisterhood thing, Pop. We Sistahs know things about each other.”
“Can we change the subject?”
She pumped her arms up over her head and sang, “Sistahs, are doing it for themselves!” She kept pumping her arms and shaking her head. “Come on, Pop! Sing! Sistahs, are doing it for themselves.”
Her father kept moving cans and tins back and forth on cupboard shelves. “What else is on the list?”
She read the remainder of the list and glanced at the clock on the stove: 8:30am. “Hey! We’re making pizzas, right?”
Cranston closed his cupboards, rolled the grocery bag into a ball, and took his phone back. “We’re going shopping.”
Friends offered to back Maria Francesca Cuccello should she want to open a pizza parlor. She politely refused. “I make pizza for friends, not for money.”
She had lots of friends. Her pizza was known from Portland to Atlantic through Central Canada, down to Chicago and Denver, over to Atlanta, DC, Baltimore, NYC, and back to Boston. Also overseas. In Naples. Where her life was jokingly threatened if she didn’t give up her recipes. “Watch me. Learn that way.”
But it didn’t matter. Each time things were slightly different based on the feel of the flour, the taste of the water, the freshness of the yeast, what vegetables were local, …
Leddy, ready in short order, came back into the kitchen with her backpack over one shoulder. She grabbed the car keys off their hook by the back door. “I’ll drive, Pop.”
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Cranston picked a second grocery bag from the closet. “Remember your father is old and scares easy.”
Maria Francesca opened the door as Cranston reached the top of the stairs, a full grocery bag in each hand. Leddy, in the rear, guided him with a hand on the middle of his back. “Congrats, Pop! You made it.” She pointed at two kittens silkscreened on Maria’s long-sleeve t-shirt. “Wow, nice. One over each boobie, and it looks like they’re playing with each other.”
Cranston turned and glowered at his daughter.
“What? I meant the kittens, not her boobies.”
Maria Francesca burst out laughing. “Thanks. Picked it up at a fleamarket.”
Cranston turned back to Maria. “You never heard of elevators? Don’t you own this building and you couldn’t install an elevator?”
“It’s my combined senior citizen-solicitor deterrent system. You soliciting for something?”
“No.”
“Then you must be a senior citizen.” She lifted one bag from him. “Leddy, bring your old man in here before I have to give him mouth-to-mouth.”
Leddy stepped around her father, glared and nudged him when she passed. He rolled his eyes at her.
Leddy followed Maria into the kitchen. “Hey, Maria, you won’t need me for a while once we get the sponge going, right? I need to install new software in SIMON and run some tests.”
Maria emptied her grocery bag on her kitchen table. “I keep the roof keys in my bedroom. Come on and I’ll show you where.” Leddy followed Maria as dutifully as a novice following a nun. Maria stood behind the door and motioned Leddy in close. “I didn’t get it at a flea market, Led. It was a gift from an old teacher.”
Leddy burst out laughing and Maria glared at her. “Shhh!”
Leddy kept her voice girl-talk confidential. “God, don’t let Pop hear that. He’ll be jealous and never ball up.”
“Ball up about what?”
“He likes you. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Maria lifted a red-ribboned skeleton key off a rack behind her door and walked back to the kitchen. “First rising’s in an hour. Irene Casey’s coming later. Said she’s bringing a friend. We should have plenty of hands to help. Take your time.”
Leddy checked her phone. “Who’s Irene Casey.”
Maria and Cranston talked over each other. “New lab assistant.” “Patrolwoman.”
Cranston placed the remaining grocery bag on a chair. “Is this so SIMON will do what I ask?”
Maria opened the package of white butcher-paper wrapped sausages and held them to her nose. “Good choice. Fresh this morning. There’s nothing on the roof to get her in trouble, Detective.” She picked up a spatula and shook it at Leddy. “You’re not going to make a liar out of me, are you, Sistah?”
“Women.”
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Eric and Julia seek tree grafts on the outskirts of their medieval eastern European village as a summer storm gathers. Sullya, a witch hiding among the trees, grabs Julia. Eric swings his axe and severs Sullya’s hand from her arm. The witch seeks refuge in the deep bole of an old oak. Her hand falls onto the same oak and crawls up the trunk to join her.