Chapter 25
Gran should probably have dropped Pippy off at the house, where she could rest and recover after the terrible ordeal she’d suffered. But instead, she decided to take her along on our mission. Which might not have been such a bad idea either. It might distract her from her current predicament.
“So we are going on a mission?” asked the timid Coton de Tuléar as we all filed into the BearCat.
“Yeah, we’re on a reverse-Cupid mission,” Clarice explained. “Instead of bringing sundered hearts together, we’re going to be the ones to sunder them and to sunder them good.”
“But… isn’t that a bad thing?” asked Pippy.
Clarice grinned. “Trust me, it’s the best thing you can do for your humans. If they end up in a bad match, they’ll be miserable for the rest of their lives.”
“Huh,” said Pippy, who probably had never gone on an inverse-Cupid mission before. Though I have to admit it was a first for me, too.
“So how do you break up a couple?” asked Scarlett as she settled in next to Gran.
“I can tell you how to break up a couple,” said Mercedes, who was riding in the back with us. “I have plenty of experience, so you can ask me anything.”
“Have you broken up a lot of couples, Mercedes?” asked Scarlett, who seemed surprised that someone would be engaged in that type of activity. Mostly people try to play Cupid or matchmaker, but clearly there were others who did the opposite thing.
“My son was in a bad match a couple of times,” said Mercedes. “The one he’s in now, for instance. Or at least the one he was in, before someone went and shot him.”
Pippy gulped at this. Clearly the wound was still fresh.
“Do you know this woman, Pippy?” asked Harriet.
“Never seen her before in my life,” said Pippy. She looked a little ill at ease, I thought. Either she was suffering from motion sickness, which was a definite possibility, or she wasn’t enjoying the present company.
“She’s Harley’s mom,” Harriet explained. “But you’ve never met her?”
“Harley and his mom were estranged,” Pippy explained.
“After she tried to break up his present relationship with Philomena, he stopped talking to her. Though in recent weeks they had started chatting again, and a family reunion was planned.” She suppressed a burp.
“Is it just me, or is this vehicle rocking from side to side a lot?”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “It’s a military vehicle, so it’s not built for comfort but durability and sturdiness.”
“The downside is that riding in this thing is like riding in a tank,” said Brutus. “Though personally, I enjoy it. Makes me feel as if we’re really going on a mission, you know.”
“So your son and his current wife are together in spite of your attempts to break them up?” asked Gran, who had gotten the gist of what we had been discussing quite accurately.
“Yeah, I never liked Philomena,” said Mercedes. “I figured Harley could have done much better than her. But love is love, and with Harley, that meant he lost his mind.”
“So how do you break up a couple?” asked Scarlett, who had turned in her seat to have this little chat with Mercedes.
“Well, first you need to dig into the past of the prospective party of the second part,” said Mercedes, warming to her subject.
“Which means you need to find out everything you can about them. Usually, this involves hiring a private detective. To dig up any dirt they can find. And then you simply lay it all out to the party of the first part. And if they’ve got any sense, they will quickly see that their beloved has feet of clay and end the relationship. ”
“And when they don’t?” asked Scarlett. “Have any dirt, I mean? When they’re squeaky clean?”
“Then you invent some dirt,” said Mercedes with a shrug.
“Which is exactly what I did with Philomena. I hired a private dick to snoop through her past, check her garbage cans, all of that stuff. And when he told me she was like Mother Teresa—practically a saint—I understood a different approach was needed. So I simply fabricated an arrest report and let it lie around where my son could find it. Harley was always a stickler for honesty and adhering to the law.”
“But you’re saying it didn’t work?” asked Scarlett.
“He confronted Philomena with the arrest report, and she said it never happened. That it was a fake. So Harley being Harley, he drilled down and talked to the arresting officer—or rather, the alleged arresting officer.” She sighed.
“Let’s just say it didn’t go well. Philomena accused me of tampering with the truth, Harley took her side, and he cut me off. ”
“If Philomena really is as bad as Mercedes says she is,” said Dooley, “maybe you shouldn’t go and live with her, Pippy. I mean, she doesn’t sound like a nice person.”
“Oh, she’s fine,” said Pippy, though she said it with as little excitement as she could muster. Looked like maybe Mercedes had been right about her daughter-in-law after all.
“Look, I know she presented herself as this lily-white saint,” said Mercedes now, “but I trust my gut in these matters, and I’m telling you that Philomena is bad news.”
“The same thing happened to my daughter,” Gran said.
“When she came home with Tex Poole for the first time, I figured she must have made a mistake. I mean, she could have done so much better. She could have married a businessman, a stockbroker, or even the president’s son.
But she had to go and marry a doctor. And not even a specialist—a simple family doctor! ”
“But you warmed to him, didn’t you, Vesta?” asked Scarlett. “You like him now, don’t you?”
“Oh, I like him well enough,” said Gran.
“I mean, the man is a fool, but at least he’s harmless.
You can dig in Tex’s closet all day long, but you won’t find a single skeleton.
And I have to admit he’s a good doctor. A fool, but a great physician.
” She grimaced, as if the next words cost her a great deal of pain, then added, “And a good husband and father.”
“There,” said Scarlett. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“It was,” Gran muttered as she directed a dark look through the windshield. “It very much was.”
“Where are we going, by the way?” asked Mercedes. “When you called me this morning, you said something about an important mission?”
“We’re going to do what we’ve been discussing just now,” said Gran. “We’re going to break up a couple. Or, in actual fact, three couples.”
“But… I thought we were simply making conversation?” said Mercedes, who seemed surprised by this.
“I never make conversation,” said Gran. “My granddaughter is about to fall for some hapless police academy recruit, her husband for his new partner, and Marge has fallen for the leader of a weird German hardcore band. So we need to put a stop to all of this nonsense before families get torn apart and our lives are ruined.”
“Okay,” said Mercedes. “But… what about my son? I thought you said we were going to investigate his murder? Find his killer?”
“That, too,” said Gran. “I guess we need to find a way to roll all of this stuff into one big mission. And if you knew how the Watch operates, you would find that for us, this is business as usual.”
“We often tackle very complicated and dangerous missions,” said Scarlett. “So this shouldn’t be all that different.”
Suddenly, Gran pulled the large military-grade vehicle to a stop, and we were all catapulted into Mercedes’s lap.
“Apologies,” I murmured as I untangled myself with some effort.
“Gran’s driving hasn’t improved,” said Dooley, and that was quite the understatement.
“Is this where we need to be?” asked Mercedes as she looked out of the window.
We were in what looked like a derelict part of town, and I didn’t like what I saw: broken-down houses and old factories, ripe for demolition.
“This is where the Germinator told me to pick him up,” said Gran as she looked around. “Though I’m starting to wonder if he wasn’t pulling my leg.”
Just then, from behind some of the rubble, the familiar oversized bumblebee appeared and gave us a jolly wave.
“There he is,” said Scarlett, well pleased to see the fighter for justice and peace.
Gran opened the door and welcomed the superhero into our midst. “Glad you could make it,” she said. She gestured to a discarded car tire. “Is this where you live?”
“This is where I have my lair, yes,” said the guy. “My Batcave, so to speak.”
He climbed into the BearCat to keep us and Mercedes company.
“Howdy,” he said as he thrust out his hand. “The name is the Germinator, and I fight crime in Hampton Cove.”
“We have met,” said Mercedes. “When you arrested those two crooks yesterday and tied them to a lamppost, remember?”
“Of course,” said the Germinator, even though it was clear that he didn’t.
“Okay, hold on to your hats,” said Gran. “Here we go.”
She stomped down on the accelerator, as was her habit, and the armored truck shot forward like a bullet from a gun.
This time, we were all propelled backward and found ourselves lying in a heap near the back of the vehicle.
“Gran really needs to learn how to drive,” Clarice complained. “Because this is getting seriously ridiculous.”