A Family Affair Page 6

  “You look like a drowned rat!” Irene said, picking up the bowl and headed toward the sink.

  Hattie grabbed a mirror she had on the table. She looked this way and that. She pushed the skin around on her cheeks. “I think I look much better!”

  Irene was back at the table. “Well, you must have looked pretty darn bad before you started.”

  Hattie laughed. “I did!” Did that woman ever get offended?

  “Get dressed,” Irene barked. “We’re heading out. Apparently, those gangbangers are back and we’re going to scope them out.”

  “But I haven’t even had breakfast!” Hattie protested.

  “I have bacon and eggs in my purse,” Irene told her. “Now let’s get a move on!”

  Hattie disappeared down the hallway and came back a few minutes later. She was dressed in the same black velour tracksuit she had worn days before when we were scaling the fence. She pulled on a black baseball cap. “Let’s roll!”

  I followed the Grannies out the door, completely amazed at the two of them. They could really hold their own.

  When we got back to Grandma’s door, the other Grannies were waiting outside for us. “For Pete’s sake!” Grandma said to us. “What took you so long?”

  She gave Irene and Hattie the evil eye. “And don’t think I didn’t hear about your little escapade last night! What on earth were you thinking? Stealing a bicycle and riding around drunk!”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Hattie answered innocently.

  “And what does it seem like now?” Grandma scowled.

  Hattie thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. I’d have to ride a bike without being drunk to compare the two.”

  Grandma rolled her eyes, and I heard Irene chuckle.

  “Let’s head downtown,” Virginia said, getting us back on track. “Greta and I saw the gang members head inside the old sewing building.”

  We climbed into Virginia’s SUV, and Greta explained to Hattie and Irene what had happened at Rosa’s the day before. We were all lost in thought when we pulled into the downtown area.

  The old sewing building was three stories tall and looked like it had been abandoned years ago. Windows were missing in the top story and black streaks up one side hinted at a fire sometime in the past. Graffiti in bright yellows and greens marked the doors and most of the first floor exterior.

  “See that green lowrider?” Greta said, pointing to a car parked in front of the building. “We saw it pull up and a couple guys got out. They’ve been in there for at least an hour.”

  Hattie whistled like a construction worker at a pretty girl. “That is one good-lookin’ car. I bet it’s got hydraulic wheels just like in the movies.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” Irene asked.

  Virginia put the SUV in park. “We’re goin’ in!”

  12

  “We’re all going in?” I asked, surprised. “Wouldn’t it be better if just a few of us went in?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Irene agreed. “We’ll need a getaway driver if things don’t go well.”

  Virginia looked disappointed. “I guess that will be me since I drove us here.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Greta told her. “And I’ll be ready to call 911 if I need to.”

  “Irene and I can be your lookouts!” Hattie said excitedly. “We can loiter in front of the building and call you if more people are headed in! Just like in the movies!” Hattie gasped. “We can come up with code names!”

  Grandma rolled her eyes, then looked at me. “I guess that leaves you and me.”

  “Just you and I are going in?” I didn’t like this idea at all. “What are we even doing here? Why don’t we just call the police?”

  The Grannies all laughed.

  “Gang members aren’t going to talk to the police,” Irene said, like I had just suggested the dumbest thing in the world.

  “We’re going to talk to them?” Now I was really freaking out.

  “Dear,” Greta soothed from the front seat, “gang members are people too. I’m sure they’ll be completely reasonable.”

  “That’s not how they are in the movies!” Hattie interjected.

  “This isn’t the movies,” Grandma snapped. “This is real life. And sometimes in real life, you just need to go talk to people and get answers yourself. And this is one of those times.”

  Hattie looked hurt. “Well, I’m still going to use code names.”

  Grandma sighed. “Alright, you can still use code names.” Hattie perked back up. “Come on,” Grandma said to me as she got out. “Let’s do this.”

  Hattie and Irene followed us up to the building and took their position near the corner—far enough away that they didn’t look too suspicious, though they did look strange eating scrambled eggs out of a sandwich bag.

  Grandma and I made our way inside, broken glass crunching under our feet. “This place has been empty for years,” Grandma whispered. “Here in the front, there was a little store where you could buy sewing supplies. If you walked through that door—” She pointed to the other side of the dark room. “—that’s where Dahlia used to do alterations. There’s also a staircase that led upstairs to their two-story apartment. My guess is that’s where we’ll find our guys.”

  As quietly as we could, we made our way through the room, stepping over garbage and boxes as we went. I assumed the place was abandoned during the day but at night served as a shelter to homeless people.

  Grandma pointed to a small door in the back. “The staircase is behind that.”

  We walked past a turned-over table, and I saw a mannequin head in the corner. This place was creepy. Grandma turned the doorknob slowly, and I prayed the door wouldn’t creak when she opened it. Thankfully it didn’t and when she pulled the door open, we stood in front of steep wooden stairs. We were immediately hit with the smell of mold and dust.

  Unlike the silent hinges, the steps weren’t so quiet. They seemed to cry out with each step we took. When we got to the top, another door stood in our way. Grandma pressed her ear to it and listened. The only thing I could hear from behind her was the heavy beating of my heart.

  She turned and whispered, “I can’t hear them. They must be on the third level.”

  She opened the door and glanced around before giving me the all-clear. We stepped into a small kitchen. Unlike the downstairs that had been destroyed, this level was in pretty good shape. It looked like with some elbow grease and some working utilities, someone could move in within days. Of course, you’d have to talk that over with the many spiders that had made their home there.

  We moved from the kitchen to the living room. Dusty furniture sat around a large fireplace. Thanks to the large windows, the room was filled with light. I walked over to one of them and looked down. I could see the alley and the fence I had gotten stuck on and I shuddered. I hoped I never had to go through that again.

  As we walked out of the living room, I noticed markings on the door frame. A closer look revealed measurements and dates. The names James and Addie were written to the side. I ran my hand across it. I tried to imagine what it was like when they were scrawled on there. A little girl named Addie, the back of her head pressed against this very board, and a father—by the look of the unruly handwriting—with a pen, probably telling her to hold still, marked her height on July 2nd, 1969. I glanced around at the room that had once housed a family. “What happened to the people who lived here?” I asked Grandma when she walked back in from wherever she had disappeared to.

  “Abner died several years ago, and Dahlia went to live with her son,” Grandma said sadly, looking around. “She couldn’t handle the store on her own anymore.”

  We stood there for a moment looking at the shell of someone’s life, and I thought I heard Grandma sniffle. I glanced at her and saw sadness in her eyes. Was she mourning a late friend…or was she wondering if this was how her life would turn out? Her store and things left behind because she couldn’t keep up with it anym
ore.

  Before I could ask her if she was okay, we heard footsteps upstairs. Grandma looked at me, determination on her face. “Let’s go have ourselves a little talk.”

  I followed her up another set of stairs and this time, I could hear voices immediately. Two men were talking not far from the door. It sounded like they were having an argument. Suddenly, we heard a voice come closer to the door. We turned and fled back down the stairs. We made it to the bottom and ducked into a small bedroom just as a man came down the stairs. “I don’t care how you do it,” he shouted at the person still upstairs, “but this needs to end!” He made his way to the kitchen, and we could hear his heavy footsteps returning to the first floor.

  Then we heard the second man coming down the stairs. Grandma motioned that we were going in. We met him in the living room, and he was surprised to see us. “What… How’d you get in here?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Grandma said, walking closer to him. “We come in peace. We just want to know why you’re here.”

  The guy laughed. “You come in peace? Who says that?”

  I felt rattled by his cockiness, but Grandma didn’t seem to care. “We just want to know what’s going on,” she told him.

  “Oh, you do,” he laughed again. “And what if I don’t tell you? You gonna hit me with your purse?”

  Grandma reached in her bag and pulled out a gun. “Something like that,” she said, pointing it at him.

  Well, that got serious fast. I completely froze, my feet feeling like they were now a part of the dusty floorboards.

  “Oh, I know you!” he snickered. “You and a bunch of other old ladies. I remember you from last time. You stuck your nose where it didn’t belong three years ago, and you’re doing it again. Let me guess… They’re outside waiting for me.”

  He pushed past me to look out the living room windows and into the alley below. He pointed. “They hiding in that dumpster? They gonna jump out and attack me when I walk by?” He was laughing, clearly enjoying himself.

  “Look,” Grandma said, still pointing her gun, “we don’t want any trouble. We just want to know what happened to Ricky and this latest guy that ended up dead.”

  “Ricky?” the guy questioned. “Oh yeah, he was the first kid to die, right?” He stepped forward. “Well, I don’t really feel like I’m in the sharing mood, so if you two really don’t want trouble, you better find your way outta here quick.”

  Grandma started to say something, to protest I assume, but she didn’t even get the first word out before the guy grabbed me and pulled me close to him. One arm was around my neck, and I barely caught sight of a gun when he waved his other arm around. He shook my head violently, and I tried to pry his arm away from my neck. I looked up to see Grandma, completely pale, her mouth open in shock.

  “You wanna shoot me before I shoot her?” he yelled at Grandma. “Then go ahead! Shoot!” He laughed a sick, deep laugh and took a step closer to her, dragging me along. “Go ahead, granny,” he taunted her. “Shoot me and save her!”

  His tight hold on my neck was cutting off my air, and I tried not to panic. Was this it? Was this how I was going to die? Well, I wouldn’t go down without a fight. I squirmed and tried to slide my head through his arms and then, to my surprise, he suddenly let go. I fell to the floor and gasped for air. He walked up to Grandma and poked his gun in her shoulder. “Next time, I won’t be so nice. Keep your nose out of this, granny.”

  He walked past her, and she stood firm until we heard his footsteps descending the stairs. Then she ran over to me. “Are you okay?” I nodded yes, unable to speak. I didn’t know if it was because I was in shock or if it was because I had nearly been choked to death. Suddenly, Grandma’s phone started vibrating.

  “The crow flies at dawn!” Hattie yelled from the other end.

  “What?” Grandma asked, confused.

  “The badger is hungry! The groundhog saw its shadow! The grasshopper has surpassed its master!”

  “What are you talking about?” Grandma yelled into the phone.

  We could hear a skirmish on the other end, and then Irene shouted to us. “A car just pulled up front, full of them gangbangers! Get out! Get out!”

  I looked at Grandma, panic taking over my senses. We could hear them downstairs, and I knew they would be heading up any second.

  “Come on!” Grandma said, pulling me up. “I saw a fire escape out the bedroom window.”

  We ran to the small bedroom and Grandma tried to open the window, but it was stuck. “Hurry!” I urged. The voices were now in the kitchen.

  “You try it!” she said, stepping away.

  I think it was the adrenaline, because I knew I shouldn’t have had the strength I did in that moment. I lifted the window with such force that it crashed into something at the top, shattering the window and sending glass everywhere.

  “What was that?” we heard one of the voices say.

  Grandma shoved me out the window and climbed out right behind me. We ran down the steps, skipping several at a time. When we got to the bottom, we froze, hoping we were out of sight from whoever would most likely be looking out the broken window from above. We waited for a moment, our hearts pounding. Grandma motioned to go around the building.

  I turned the corner and saw the only way out was over that dreaded chain-link fence. Grandma sensed my hesitation. “Remember how I said the other day maybe one day your life would depend on making it over?” she said, pointing to the fence. “Well, that day is now.”

  We both took off toward the fence and somehow, Grandma made it there just before I did. We both hit the fence running and climbed over as fast as we could. Dear God, please let me get over the top. To my surprise, I swung my leg over without a problem, and we both dropped safely to the other side.

  We heard tires squeal and we turned to see Virginia barreling down the alley. She slammed on her brakes just feet from where we stood. “Get in!” Irene yelled, opening the passenger side door. We jumped in, my feet still hanging out the door as Virginia threw it in reverse. I scrambled to get in the back seat and sat up just as we pulled out of the alley. I could see, all the way down the alley on the other side of the fence, three men looking back at us. That was close…way too close.

  I glanced at Grandma, who was sitting next to me. It took a second for my brain to catch up to my eyes, but when I realized what was going on, I really panicked. “Grandma’s bleeding!” I yelled to the others. “It’s going to be okay!” I shrieked. “Just hold on! It’s going to be okay!”

  13

  “Of course it’s going to be okay!” she said, shoving me away. “I cut my arm when you broke that window!”

  I was shaking so badly I couldn’t think straight. I tried to calm myself, but I couldn’t. A warm hand reached over and grabbed my shoulder. “It’s okay,” Irene said, trying to comfort me. She looked at Grandma Dean. “But you should have your arm looked at. It might need stitches.”

  “It doesn’t need stitches!” Grandma said, grabbing napkins from her purse. “I can bandage it up fine myself.”

  We were all silent for a minute as Virginia drove us toward the retirement community. Greta finally broke the silence. “What happened in there?”

  Grandma and I looked at each other. Neither one of us wanted to admit the truth—we were both too weak to defend ourselves.

  Grandma and I sat at her kitchen table, her arm stretched out over some paper towels. “Are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor for this?” I asked as I pulled out another small piece of glass.

  She pulled her arm away and examined her wound. “I don’t need to see a doctor,” she said for the hundredth time. “I think you got all the glass. Now we just need to bandage it.” She extended her arm to me again, and I pulled a gauze pad from her first aid kit. I didn’t really think she needed stitches, but I would’ve felt better if a doctor had made that decision and not her.

  As I wrapped her arm, I thought about the ride home. I ended up telling the other Grannies t
hat we got cornered and the guy had threatened our lives. I left out my near strangulation and Grandma’s inability to pull the trigger—which, by the way, I was extremely thankful for. Who knows which one of us would’ve gotten that bullet, me or the gang member? I assumed that was why Grandma didn’t shoot—fear of which one of us would actually go down.

  “I think I’m going to go rest,” Grandma said once her wound was bandaged. “It’s been a crazy morning.”

  That it had. She walked to her room, and I sat at the table alone. It was about noon, but I wasn’t hungry. I was too on edge to take a nap. So where did I go from there? I didn’t really feel like being alone, but I didn’t want to call Joe. I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. And I certainly wasn’t going to call Detective Owen after all that had just happened. So that left Les. Some of the heaviness in my heart started to lift just thinking about it. Yes, I would invite him to lunch! Our deep conversations were exactly what I needed at the moment to get my mind off things.

  Thankfully, when I called him, he was available and said that he’d love to have lunch with me. When he asked where, I said anywhere but downtown. We decided on a new pizza place not too far from the retirement community.

  I left Grandma a note and headed out the door, glancing around in paranoia. In my heart, I knew I hadn’t seen the last of that gang. I just didn’t know when or where I would see them again. My heart skipped a beat just thinking about it. Maybe next time, I could be more prepared to defend myself. After lunch, I knew who I had to meet with—the one person I knew who could defend themselves in any situation. Hattie Sue Miller.

  14

  I pulled up at the Tipsy Tomato Pizza Parlor, and I could immediately smell the delicious smell of pizzas cooking.

  “Good afternoon!” I was greeted by an overly happy college-aged guy wearing a bright red shirt. “Welcome to the Tipsy Tomato! A table for one?”

  Wow, did I really look that lonely? “Actually, it will be for two.”