15.
C AT
I watched the officer walk past the window again and wondered how long he could legally leave me in this room without giving me the chance to make a phone call. My knowledge of the legal system was limited to dramas I’d watched on television and what I’d heard my grandmother mention over the years.
I knew that the most important thing I could do was keep my mouth shut, which I’d been doing since the second the officers put me in the car. I wasn’t worried about the kids since Mara and Nola were great babysitters and they wouldn’t be left alone at the house for long anyway. I was sure Mara had sent out an SOS text to everyone, and knowing those girls, they had probably already created a “Free Cat” TikTok that includes the video of my arrest and started a GoFundMe for my bail money.
If I leaned to the left, I could see the corner of the entryway the officers had led me through and hear some of what was going on out there, but not well enough to make out any words. Suddenly, a woman started shouting and then another screamed bloody murder before officers started jogging past the window toward the front.
Everything got still and quiet for quite some time, and then I was shocked to see one of the officers who had picked me up leading Chai’s Bubbe past the window. The door was quickly unlocked, and he walked in holding Bubbe’s arm. The sight of her in cuffs would have been a lot more traumatic if she hadn’t winked at me on her way past.
Before that officer was able to cuff Bubbe to the bench, he’d directed another officer to escort Dodie in. This time, the sight of the cuffs on the elderly woman didn’t surprise me, probably because she was shamelessly flirting with the cop who was blushing furiously at something she’d just said.
I waited until the officers had left the room and locked the door behind them before I asked, “What in the world is going on?”
Dodie reached up to check her hair before she touched the corners of her mouth to make sure her ever-present lipstick was okay. Finally, she looked over at me and asked, “How bad is my hair?”
“It looks fine. What’s going on?”
“Do I look okay?” Bubbe asked.
“You look fine . What in the world is going on?”
“We just want to make sure we look good in case we get another mugshot.”
“What.Is.Going.On?”
“Well, we thought we’d cause a scene so we could get locked up with you, but it turns out we didn’t have to because we had active warrants,” Bubbe explained.
“You what ?” I screeched.
“Don’t tell Mordechai. He’ll get all worked up,” Bubbe pleaded.
“A warrant?”
“It’s nothing,” Dodie said with a dismissive wave. “We had a little too much to drink at the last hurricane party and some schmuck ended up in the pool. She said we pushed her, but how would she know when her eyelids are so saggy that she can barely see to walk?”
“She got them lifted a few months ago,” Bubbe said cheerfully. “She looks a lot better. For a slut.”
I sputtered out a laugh before she said, “Anyway, we each got tickets and were supposed to go in front of a judge when the storm was over, but by then, we’d already moved on to bigger and better things.”
“Yeah. Phil and James!” Bubbe cackled before she sobered and asked, “Are you doing okay, Catherine?”
“I am so far from okay right this minute that there’s no way to measure it.”
“First time in cuffs?” Dodie asked.
“You should probably be more specific. Cuffs can be a lot of fun to play with.”
I tried really hard not to gag, and I was successful until Dodie replied, “I know, right?”
I was finally able to choke out, “Did someone call my grandmother?”
“She’s out there waiting for them to book you so she can get you bailed out and home before it’s time to put the girls to bed.”
“Do you know what I’m charged with?”
“No. I didn’t think to ask,” Bubbe said with a frown.
“What did you do?” Dodie asked.
I looked around the room and said, “There’s a good probability that we’re being recorded right now, so I’m not going to talk about why they brought me here.”
“Good call!” Bubbe cheered. “I wonder if they’ll give us a copy of it if we ask.”
“I doubt it.”
“You know, I tried to get them to give us prints of our mugshots the last time we were brought in. We were arrested at a Roaring Twenties party. I was wearing the cutest flapper dress and my hat had an adorable net veil,” Bubbe explained. “I thought it would be fun to get them blown up and framed because I just knew we’d look like gangsters’ molls. They wouldn’t let us have a copy, but it turns out you can find the pictures online, so I had it done anyway.”
“The pictures you have hanging in your living room are actual mugshots?” I asked in shock.
“Aren’t they great? The black and white makes them seem very period,” Bubbe said.
Dodie nodded. “I agree.”
“What were you arrested for that time?” I asked.
“It was all a misunderstanding,” Bubbe said dismissively. “That arrest is why we had the changes made to our Gators. Turns out that when you’ve had one too many martinis, they all start to look alike.”
“Your grandmother has grand plans for hers, and if it turns out nearly as nice as she seems to think it will, I'm going to have to upgrade mine. I don’t want to drive around in something that looks like I bought it on clearance at a hunting store.”
“Your Gator has a pink glitter paint job.”
“That’s so 2022,” Dodie moaned.
“She’s always been the type who wants to keep up with the Joneses,” Bubbe whispered as if her sister who was just a few feet away couldn’t hear her. “The thought of Marjorie having a classier ride really irritates her.”
For not the first time, I wondered what sort of family I’d been thrust into when I decided Chai was the man for me, not that I’d have had much choice now anyway since Grammy was now a card-carrying member of the Golden Girls clique. Even though I’d been living in her house for the last month, I rarely saw her. If I did, it was usually in the morning over coffee, but most often, it was in the afternoon when she was leaving for one function or another.
When the door suddenly opened, I looked up to find one of the officers that had arrested me - the one who said he wanted to leave before anyone came home. He glanced over at Bubbe and then gave Dodie a tight smile before he stopped in front of me and reached out to touch the cuff on my wrist. I was surprised that he unlocked the one on my wrist rather than the one attached to the bench, but I took the opportunity to rub my sore wrist.
When he stepped back, he said, “If you’ll come with me, Ms. Anders, I’ll escort you to the front.”
“I’m free to go?”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Catherine! Get going,” Bubbe hissed.
“Can they come with me?”
“Your attorney is working on that as we speak,” the officer said vaguely.
“I’ll be needing my heart medications in an hour,” Dodie said haughtily.
“And if you could ask the nurse to come in and take my blood sugar, I would appreciate it. I’m feeling woozy and my mouth is very dry,” Bubbe complained.
“Do you need me to bring you anything?” I asked.
“If we’re in the care of the police department, I believe that it’s up to them to give us adequate medical care,” Dodie said with a snarky smile. “I’m sure they understand that we’re of the age where we have quite a few medical conditions that could turn on a dime and put our lives in danger.”
In that instant, I knew exactly what the cunning old women were doing, and it took everything I had not to laugh out loud. Instead, I decided to play along and said, “I know your health problems are serious. Yours, too, Bubbe. I hope the nurse shows up before long. I’d hate for you to have another episode.”
“I am feeling a bit faint.”
“It will only be a few minutes. I promise,” the officer rushed to say.
He nudged me toward the still open door, and when he shut it behind us, I couldn’t stop myself from one more jab and said, “They’re elderly and in frail health. I’d be afraid to leave them alone for very long.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” the officer grumbled.
I walked around the corner to find Grammy seated in front of a desk with her hands folded over the purse in her lap. She smiled at me before she stood up and then put her hand out for mine before she thanked the officer for taking such good care of me and started for the door.
I didn’t utter a word until we were out in the open and I whispered, “How are we getting home?”
Just then, Chai’s truck pulled up to the curb and I saw him smiling at me. “Can I offer you ladies a ride home?”
“Yes, please,” I said as I helped Grammy up into the front passenger seat. As soon as she was settled, I hopped into the back and leaned forward between the seats before I asked, “What the hell is going on?”
“Did you encounter an unpleasant woman at the grocery store today?”
“Yes. In the parking lot. She was trying to get me to sign a petition making sure Bubbe didn’t let Chai dock his boat behind her house anymore. She also said some shitty stuff about me, but I’m not sure exactly what because I was too pissed about her ranting and raving about having criminals in our midst or some shit.”
“She made you so angry that you decided to run her over?”
“I did not run her over!”
“More specifically, her foot . . . after you stole her clipboard and told her to kiss your white ass.”
I thought about it for a second and then winced before I said, “I don’t think I ran over her foot.”
“Abbie-Cat, you didn’t realize you were driving through Rachel’s front yard until you took out one of her sprinklers and it sprayed water through the open passenger window.”
I frowned at Chai and said, “There’s no reason for a piece of expensive equipment like that to break so easily.”
“There’s also no reason for it to be run over by a truck since it’s in the middle of her damn yard !”
“Are we going to have this argument again?” I asked.
“Let’s not,” Grammy interjected. “Cat, sweetheart, this woman could easily sue you for a large sum of money, and with the evidence they have, she would probably win.”
“Well, shit.”
“I have a feeling that when Bubbe and Dodie get wind of this, she won’t even try,” Chai boasted. “Are you sure they didn’t say where they were going, Marjorie? It’s not like them to miss the opportunity to be right in the middle of some drama like this.”
Grammy turned and stared at me with a blank expression before she lied, “I have no idea where they might be, Chai.”
“Is the lady I ran over okay?” I asked.
“That is the last time you will admit guilt to anything regarding this case. You don't remember running over her foot and have no knowledge of how she might have been injured.”
“Technically, that’s not a lie. I don’t think I ran over her at all.”
“The case against you for theft holds as much water as a kitchen sieve, so they won’t even try to pursue that. And since the petition she was circulating had something to do with Chai, I have a feeling that Bubbe and Dodie will rally the troops to make sure that whatever might be wrong with that woman’s foot is the least of her worries.”
“I live on the boat because the HOA won’t allow me to buy a house in the neighborhood. You know as well as I do that my sisters have way too much on their plate to chase Bubbe and Dodie around to make sure they stay out of trouble.”
“Have they listed a specific restriction in the HOA contract that states a felon can’t live in or own property in the neighborhood?” Grammy asked.
“They said it’s on a case-by-case basis which is obvious because the president of the HOA is married to a man who served federal time in the 90s for running a Ponzi scheme.”
“That’s not a violent crime. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that your felony conviction was.”
“My charges were for violent crimes, but I was found not guilty of those. I was convicted of tampering with evidence after the course of a crime.”
“Which could have been something as simple as erasing a hard drive or destroying documents related to a crime.”
“That’s not exactly what they were going for, but I guess you’re right.”
“Even if it is on a case-by-case basis, that has to be decided by a committee, not just one person, especially if that person is one of the subjects of said committee,” Grammy said.
I knew that tone of voice. It meant that the attorney side of Grammy was plotting out a case.
Grammy was a force of nature, not just in everyday life, but in the courtroom, too, and had a list of incredible wins on her resume and very few losses. The HOA of our new neighborhood wouldn’t know what hit them. They might be expecting something from Bubbe, Dodie, and their geriatric band of crazies, but they’d be completely blindsided by Grammy. She would most certainly use that to her advantage.
“So, jailbird, how does it feel to be a free woman?”
“Like it’s a little too soon to make jokes about getting arrested.” Chai started laughing and Grammy joined in. “I’m sure at some point I’ll be able to laugh about it like Bubbe and Dodie were doing, but right now, I’m . . .”
“When were Bubbe and Dodie laughing about getting arrested?” Chai interrupted. When he stopped the car at the next intersection, he turned and looked at me before he asked, “When did you see Bubbe and Dodie, Cat?”
“As a newly minted criminal, I feel that I should plead the fifth in this interrogation.”
“Son of a bitch! Are they in the pokey again?”
“Maybe.”
“Does this happen often?” Grammy asked.
“More often than you’d think. Well, probably not. You know them well enough by now to understand that underestimating their ability to find and enjoy trouble is a bad thing.”
“It’s a good thing I’ve kept my license to practice law and am working toward taking the Florida bar then, isn’t it?”
“Any chance you can get that done before one of us goes to trial?”
“It just so happens that we know an attorney, and I’ve already called him to consult on your case. He’ll do until I’m able to take over, but I’m sure everything will be cleared up by then.”
“God, I hope so.”
“Once the women of my family light their torches and ride at dawn, we won’t need an attorney,” Chai boasted. Although it did worry me when he finished with, “But we might need a fallout shelter.”
I couldn’t count the number of times I’d wished for a big, loving family. I was beginning to wonder if that might have been a crazy idea.