Mother Gets a Lift Read online

  I looked at my watch. “I’m going to be late, honey.” I patted him on his arm, gave everyone except the dog a kiss and ran for my car. When I looked back, Fred, kids, and dog were moving around in the family SUV like a football team at practice.

  “Your bag,” yelled Fred. I ran back and got it, then sped off. Once on the turnpike, I settled back in the seat and reached for a piece of gum from my purse, but it wasn’t my purse. In his flummoxed state, Fred had handed me the diaper bag. To be fair, I was in such a hurry I didn’t notice. Oh, well. I had my driver’s license and wallet in my back pocket of my jeans, which were still too tight to be zipped in the front. I pulled my smock down over my stomach.

  Mom was still applying her make-up when I pulled up.

  “Estevez wants to move on this thing as soon as possible.” Of course he did. Then he could take a vacation, retire or resign and forget about mothers. I turned off the curling iron and took her cosmetic bag out of her hands.

  “I don’t have a thing to wear.” She entered her walk-in closet and began looking through the clothes hanging there.

  I knew there was no sense losing my patience, so I decided to join in the seriousness of the decision-making process.

  “It is a big moment, I agree, so I’d select something eye-catching, but casual. How about this?” I pulled a turquoise warm-up suit off the clothes bar, hoping I could fool her into thinking I actually cared about what one wore to arrest a killer.

  “Not dramatic enough.”

  She spent the next ten minutes selecting and rejecting outfits.

  The doorbell rang. Thank goodness. I was about to drop her in a Neiman-Marcus bag and deliver her to the nearest thrift store that dealt in secondhand mothers.

  I dashed to answer it.

  “It’s Detective Estevez, and he wants to get going. Now.”

  “He’ll have to wait.”

  Estevez looked as if he were going to cry. I held up my finger and whispered to him. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “The detective told me they just released Clay and he should be here any minute. So I guess you want to wait for him. Right?”

  She walked into the living room wearing the turquoise warm-up suit. “I’m ready. Let’s get it on.”

  Estevez was right. The so-called clinic location was in a crummy section of Miami off the southernmost end of I95 before it spilled into even crummier neighborhoods.

  “My men are already here.”

  Estevez made Mom wear a wire, something she was reluctant to do at first until she found out she wouldn’t have to pull up her shirt and expose her stomach. “I gained a lot of weight in captivity at that woman’s house eating canned stuff and drinking beer.”

  They planted the tiny device in her earring. She was very happy, but kept tugging on her ear.

  Estevez reached over and grabbed her hand. “Please don’t do that Mrs. Davis. You might pull it out. All you have to do is go in and get him talking about how he threw the other woman overboard. A confession would be good. Not that your testimony about seeing him kill her isn’t enough.”

  I was skeptical about what he said. I’ve found my boys tend to smile a lot when they lie to me, and Estevez was showing enough teeth to hypnotize a dentist. Obviously he had doubts about Mom’s story or how she might be perceived testifying before a jury of people who might not share her fascination with rhinoplasty.

  “Then you say, ‘Now what about my facelift?’ Think you can get him to believe you’re serious about having work done? It’s a stretch after what he tried to do to you.”

  “Just look at me. Don’t you think I need a little nip and tuck, detective?”

  Estevez glanced at me with a terrified look on his face.

  I took pity on the guy and got him off the hook.

  “Oh, the detective will tell you look fine, but we gals know the truth, right, Mom?”

  “This way we can get him for the murder and for running a clinic with no license, the whole ball of criminal and medical malpractice wax.” Estevez looked happy again.

  I found the scheme a bit much, but as long as Mom believed she’d get a new face in return for her cooperation, I knew it was a go.

  From across the street we watched as Mom approached the door, knocked, and was let in.

  The conversation skimmed along as planned, but after she said “what about my facelift?” all we heard was a door open and close, followed by silence. We waited a minute or two, and then we broke into the front entrance and through a door, which led into a make-shift operating theater, a small room draped in plastic curtains. Mom lay on a table not moving, not breathing.

  “I think he killed her.” Anger flooded through me. Destroy Mom’s dreams and her life? He’d pay. I rushed through the back door to the operating room and into an alley where a man dressed in a white lab coat ran for a car parked at the end of the building.

  I yelled at him to stop as Estevez attempted to get by me, but my elbow accidentally caught the detective in the nose. The doctor took out his keys and inserted one into the car door giving me enough time to grab his sleeve. Then I used the only weapon at my disposal, the diaper bag. I hit him with it. He went down with a solid thunk, covered by the contents of the bag—bottles, diapers, baby clothes, and, most unfortunate for him, some used diapers Fred had tucked into the bottom.

  “Help. I’m being gassed.” The ersatz plastic surgeon rose to his knees and began vomiting.

  “Hold your noses,” I warned Estevez and his men. Estevez signaled several of his bolder men in. They held their noses and handcuffed the doc.

  I ran back into the clinic in time to see Mom’s eyes open.

  “Thank goodness.” I wrapped my arms around her.

  “So how do I look?” She fluttered her eyelashes.

  *

  Mom was furious at all of us. She waved off Estevez’s comment that she’d been very brave. “If you’d waited another few minutes I could have gotten what I deserved.”

  I thought about replying to that, then decided I was being ungracious.

  “But, Madam,” said Estevez, “we made the case because of you.”

  “Oh, who the hell cares. Look at me! I’m a mess.” She held a tiny compact mirror up to her face as we traveled in the squad car back to the station.

  “Don’t be silly, Mom. You deserve the best. Not some second-rate cutter who might make you look older rather than younger.”

  She sighed. “I’ll have to reschedule, won’t I?”

  “Meantime you can meet your new grandchild. Stella. She looks just like you. I think.”

  “I’m not crazy about babies, you know that.”

  *

  The two of them stared at each other for almost a full minute. Stella squeezed her eyes shut and let out a wail. Mom squeezed hers closed too and handed the bawling bundle back to me.

  “This baby is going to cost you when she hits her adolescence.” Mom looked into the hall mirror and fluffed her hair.

  “How so?”

  “Look at that overbite. And her ears stick out. You could try plastering them back with scotch tape. I did that to you.” She gave me a look. “It didn’t help much.

  “Better watch the calories. She’s gonna be a little piglet.”

  “Mom, she’s less than a week old. Babies change a lot.”

  A horn honked outside the front door.

  Mom grabbed her sweater and roll-on bag. “That’s my taxi. Well, I’m off to the spa in Scottsdale.”

  I knew what she meant by “spa” was a center for plastic surgery. She was hell bent on that facelift.

  By now Stella had calmed down. Fred and the boys gave Mom goodbye kisses. The dog hid under the couch. I gave Mom a quick hug, and, Stella in my arms, I walked with her out to the car. Another vehicle pulled up behind her cab. It was Clay. She opened the cab’s door and threw herself into the back seat.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” she yelled at Clay.

  “I give up. I’ll pay for your surgery. Anything.
Just don’t leave me.”

  There was a pause as Mom thought it over. The door of the cab opened and Clay got in. I watched them drive off together. I guess love is better the second or sixth or so time around, especially if it’s with someone you barely recognize, and you’re smart enough to give the gift that you need to keep on giving—surgery.