Page 30 of Crazy Spooky Love
“You practically do, remember?”
It’s a fact that Marina and I spent most of our formative years in and out of each other’s houses, a fact I’m glad of at this moment because Nonna’s chocolate-dipped cannoli are keeping me from getting up and putting my fist through the TV screen as Leo bangs on about his startling discoveries inside Scarborough House. “Just go inside already.” Marina chucks a plastic pencil sharpener at the screen and it bounces off Leo’s artfully lit nose. “Ooh, that’s quite satisfying. Have a go, it’s like playing paper-toss with the added advantage of taking Leo Dark’s eye out.”
“Behave,” I chide, and she just shrugs, thoroughly unapologetic as we watch Leo stalk down the hallway of Scarborough House and into the same room we’d sat in a couple of days ago.
“As you can see,” Leo whispers into the mike as if he’s David Attenborough entering a rare baboon colony. They’ve gone for aBlair Witch–style of handheld filming, presumably to add atmosphere, and the lighting isn’t great, which again is clearly for effect because I know for a fact that the living room is flooded with natural light from the windows at the far end.
“Do you remember there being a suit of armor in there?” Artie frowns at the screen.
“I didn’t notice,” I murmur, listening to Leo give the same potted history of the house we’d unearthed within five minutes of research.
“He’s trying to hide the fact that he knows bugger all,” Marina says, offering me a second cannoli. I’m about to take one when Artie leans toward the TV and squints.
“That suit of armor just moved. I’m sure of it.”
We all stare hard at it, and sure enough, the arm raises up slowly, more than enough to be clearly noticeable. It’s behind Leo, out of his line of sight, but the cameraman has certainly noticed it because hisBlair Witch–shake has suddenly become decidedly more distinct, and I think I can hear his heavy breathing.
Leo is talking about Isaac Scarborough, but his big brown eyes keep flicking distractedly away from the lens, presumably to the face of the terrified cameraman in front of him.
“What the…” I say, getting up and walking closer to the screen to get a good look.
“It’s a setup for TV ratings,” Marina says. “Even I know that much.”
I’m not so sure. “You reckon? It makes him look a bit of a joke though, don’t you think?”
Suddenly, there’s an almighty commotion on the screen as the suit of armor keels over and scatters to the floor, and the camera appears to fall dramatically from the operator’s hand before the picture cuts hastily back to the agog presenter in the studio.
Marina and Artie look at each other open-mouthed, and I drop my head in my hands, because as the camera dipped and swung wildly around, I’m sure I caught a flash of pink spandex and golden Hollywood pin curls. In a panic, I open my desk drawer to check that the back door key to Scarborough House is still there. Oh shitballs.
I screech Babs to ahalt along Brimsdale Road twenty minutes later and find a pantomime going on in the front garden of Scarborough House, with Leo prancing around like a buccaneer and Gransmoking a Gauloises in her purple kimono, pink spandex leggings, and kitten-heeled fluffy Hollywood slippers.
Snatches of Leo’s rant carry to us on the wind as we pile out of the van.
“Laughingstock…made a fool of…discrediting our profession…ought to be ashamed…” He’s laying it on thick as he paces the unkempt front lawn like a disappointed father, and she is taking a drag from her ebony cigarette holder and looking into the middle distance like a bored teenager. She rarely smokes, only at times like this when she wants to use it for dramatic visual effect, and only ever Gauloises. I think she’s had the same box of twenty on the go for at least the last decade.
Leo looks up and catches sight of us as I open the garden gate. He marches over with his chest thrust like a turkey, his voluminous white shirt untucked from his skinny jodhpurs and billowing in the breeze. He looks more like he’s stepped from the set of a costume drama than a daytime TV broadcast.
“I take it you put her up to this?”
I catch my gran’s eye over his shoulder for a second. Family loyalty almost suggests I should lie to cover her bony ass, but to do that would be professional suicide, and doing that in the first week of business would be pretty fast work, even forme.
Gran saves me the bother of having to decide whether to cover her backside or my own by stepping forward and waving her cigarette holder imperiously in the air.
“I’m a lone ranger,” she practically growls. “I dance to my own tune.”
We all take a moment to stare at her, and Marina high-fives her across the garden path. “Kudos, Dicey.”
“Your gran’s amazing,” Artie whispers beside me, awed by his first meeting with her, as most people are. Even at her advanced age she exudes a certain feline charm, and men have always been putty in her bejeweled hands, although to be honest I’m pretty sure Leo is immune to her at this very moment in time.
“What were you thinking of?” I ask Gran, because however hard I try, I can’t come up with a reasonable explanation for her behavior.
“Just lending a hand, darling,” she responds, as if she truly believes that she has in some bizarre way assistedme.
“Gran…how, exactly? Why would you imagine that crashing around inside a suit of armor on live TV would help anyone, least of all me?”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “He saidyoushouldn’t come over today, andyoudidn’t.”
“No, I didn’t, and I didn’t ask you to either.”
