Free Monkey Wrench by Terri Thayer Page B

dressed alike, black skirts with black vests and white shirts with low pumps. Both had worked for years for other dealers in the area.
    The tallest one, Rebekah, I think, glided toward me. I geared myself to see her disappointment.
    She and her counterpart, Inez, hated wasting time on people not interested in buying a sewing machine. I knew she didn’t recognize me because she smiled and trailed her hand over the sewing machines seductively.
    “Good morning. What are you in the market for?” she asked, stopping by what I knew was a souped-up version of the machine I had at home. Not the most expensive machine in the place, but not the cheapest by far.
    This was a rerun of the first time I’d been in the store. That time it’d been Inez who’d tried to sell me a machine. These two were sharks. Customers did not escape their grasp easily. Freddy pitted his two saleswomen against each other, giving out prizes for the most machines closed, the best dollar amount, even keeping track of accessories sold. He ran his shop like selling was an Olympic sport.
    I had to nip Rebekah in the bud before she got too far into her spiel. Otherwise she’d be sticking pins in a voodoo doll that looked disturbingly like me before I got out of the parking lot.
    I held up the stack of maps. “It’s me, Dewey Pellicano. I’m here to see Freddy.”
    Something like contempt crossed her face before she rearranged her features into a wrinkle-free smile. She pointed to the back of the store. “He’s in his office.”
    Freddy called out. “C’mon back, Dewey.”
    Rebekah held her hand out. “I might as well take them from you,” she said. “He’s going to want them on display out here.”
    I gave her half and took the rest to Freddy.
    “You picked up the maps?” Freddy said. He spun around his desk chair. “How were you able to get through downtown? I saw on the news that it was a crazy night in San Jose. Was Buster involved in all that?”
    The protest seemed like it had happened days ago.
    I looked for a place to sit but there was no extra chair. Freddy didn’t believe in paying for space that wasn’t being used to sell merchandise. His office was a repurposed closet with the door off. When he worked, he faced the inside wall with the clothing rod still over his head, always watching how quickly he stood up. The desk was high with paperwork.
    I nodded. “But that was only the beginning. Vangie was at the protest. Her friend died later. In her car. While she was with him.”
    “What? That’s nuts.” Freddy pounded the arms of his chair. “Where is she now?”
    I crossed my arms and hugged myself, supporting myself with the doorjamb. “Still being questioned by the police.”
    Freddy reached for his desk phone, dialing a number from memory. He waited a beat, then left a terse message. “Larry, call me back right away,” he said.
    “Who’s Larry?”
    Freddy smiled, the reptilian one. “Did I never tell you about my brother—the defense attorney?”
    I clasped my hands over my heart like a heroine in an old movie. “Are you serious?”
    “Me? Not so much. But he is. Deadly serious.”
    _____
    Back in my car, I noticed the bottle of pills. Pearl’s prescription from Vangie. I’d forgotten about them. I spilled a few of the small yellow pills out into my hand and took a closer look. Ambien, the bottle said. I knew that drug was supposed to be a sleep aid.
    Insomnia had been Pearl’s friend. She’d always said that she was at her most creative in the middle of the night.
    Maybe these drugs accounted for some of Pearl’s spaciness yesterday. What to do about Pearl?
    I remembered the brochure on Sonya’s bulletin board.
    That GrandSons service brochure that I’d seen at the college might be a great answer for Pearl. Having another human being around would give her a reason to take a shower in the morning. She used to love to cook for Hiro; maybe a GrandSon would bring that out in her again. Any kind of interactivity