Read Online Bubbles Ablaze by Sarah Strohmeyer - Free Book Online Page B

and numerous family photos. A gigantic La-Z Boy faced a wide-screen television. A game show played on what I thought was mute until I realized that it was attached to Mr. Vilnia’s headphones.
    He pushed on the swinging door into a white kitchen where a woman sat at a table cutting carrots. There were various pots boiling furiously on the stove and the oven light was on, revealing a bubbling apple crisp. The room was a steam bath of cooking carrot, cabbage and apple.
    â€œVisitors,” he announced.
    â€œWell, don’t just stand there,” the tiny woman barked. “Let them in.”
    â€œYes, dear,” he mumbled, waving the way for Mama and me to enter. Then he turned like a zombie and returned to the game show.
    Clutching the carrot knife, Madame Vilnia stood, so short she and Mama were eye to eye. She was rounder than my mother (if that were possible) and older. She wore a gray tweed dress, bifocals and large plastic pearls at her flabby neck. Her lips were a bright shade of carnation, unlike my mother’s bloodred ones—of which Vilnia clearly disapproved.
    â€œLong time, no see,” Vilnia said. “I heard you were back in town.”
    Mama raised her nose and sniffed. “Do I smell Zupa Kartoflana with mint?”
    â€œSo what if you do?” Vilnia circled Mama slowly, taking in the hot-dame biker package. “Seeing you, I remember that there’s a reason why women shouldn’t wear slacks. Your legs look like knockwurst. Only one woman could pull it off and she’s dead.”
    â€œJackie O,” Mama said, getting misty eyed. “Come to think of it. . . .”
    Oh, no. I wasn’t going down that road again. I yanked the Oven Stuffer Roaster out of Mama’s hands and thrust it toward Vilnia. “For you.”
    â€œNot another chicken.” Vilnia’s shoulders drooped. “Can’t you come up with anything else? There’s a Bed Bath & Beyond in Wilkes-Barre, you know. You two ever hear of napkin rings?”
    â€œI knew we should have brought candles,” I said.
    â€œIt cost eight-fifty, that chicken,” Mama said. “In the old country a professional gossip would’ve been proud to get Perdue.”
    â€œOld country, mold country.” Vilnia opened the Frigidaire and tossed in the gift. It joined a half dozen frozen roasters. “This is America in the twenty-first century. Palm pilots. No-fog showers. Refrigerators in drawers. Get with it.”
    Mama poked her in the chest, right under the pearls. “No one tells me to get with it, sister.”
    â€œThis is your sister?” I asked. “I didn’t know you had a sister, Mama.”
    The women quit their bickering. “Let me venture,” Vilnia said. “This is Bubbles.”
    â€œI told you Vilnia was good,” Mama said, dropping her finger. “She knows everything.”
    â€œIncluding who killed Bud Price? And where Stinky is?” I asked. “And if he was the one who tried to kill me and Stiletto? And if he sent me the bogus fax?”
    â€œKid comes with tall orders,” Vilnia said to Mama.
    â€œI blame TV. You got cake?”
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    We sat as Vilnia put out coffee cups and unwrapped an Entenmann’s cinnamon crumble cake.
    â€œHere’s the skinny,” Mama said as Vilnia served us each a slice. “Bubbles got a fax from her editor ordering her to cover a press conference at the Number Nine mine, where a businessman has been found stabbed.”
    â€œShot,” I corrected.
    â€œDon’t talk with your mouth full, Bubbles.” Mama handed me a napkin. “Anyway, turns out her editor didn’t send the fax. No one knows who did. Though Bubbles did end up finding a businessman dead in the mine last night. Bud Price.”
    Vilnia crossed herself. “May he rest in peace.”
    â€œWhat we want to know is who sent her the fax. According to the sending