Cloud Nine- When Pigs Fly Read online

  Grunting just didn’t seem to fit her normal repertoire.

  Another grunt sent my eyes scanning her backyard. I spotted the skinny septuagenarian behind one of her many prize rose bushes. She was standing next to a newly built section of fence she’d had erected to house a compost pile. At six-feet-something in silver high heels, Laverne towered over the four-foot tall, six-by-six square of wooden fence like the Jolly Green Giant’s albino grandma.

  I watched as she scraped a plate of food over the fence into the pit. Laverne took care not to get any on her outfit, which happened to be a full-skirted, red-polka-dot dress that could have been torn from a 1956 Sears catalogue. I half-expected an animated bluebird to twitter by and land on her shoulder.

  I laughed to myself. Laverne was a notoriously bad cook. At the rate her indigestible comestibles would be ending up in that compost bin, I figured it wouldn’t be long before she’d be needing to expand her facilities.

  “Now you be good, you hear?” she said to the food scraps as they tumbled off into the bin.

  If I hadn’t known Laverne so well, I might’ve thought it odd for her to be talking to compost.

  “Hey, Laverne,” I called out. “What ‘cha doing?”

  The sound of my voice made Laverne jump as if she’d been stuck in the posterior with a pitchfork. She froze in place, shushed the compost pile with a quick, “Shhh!” then turned and beamed her perfect, pearly dentures at me.

  “Hi! Uh...Val. Yes, it’s just little old me. All by myself, here. Alone, you know.”

  I’d heard better adlibbed lies from a first-grader.

  “Okaaay,” I said, and looked over toward the compost bin. Laverne shifted her body to block my view.

  “I’m not up to anything,” she volunteered. “Nice day, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  Laverne spotted the puppy bounding at my feet. Her huge, doe eyes and lit up.

  “Oh! It’s little Sir Albert Snoggles! Isn’t he just a handful of precious?”

  “He’s a handful, all right,” I smirked.

  Laverne bent over the picket fence to pet Snogs, who danced at the opportunity to have his head petted.

  “You’re such a good boy!” Laverne gushed.

  A sudden creaking sound made me look up. The gate to Laverne’s compost bin flew open. A pinkish blur streaked across the yard. It headed straight for Laverne, who was still bent over the fence, petting Snogs.

  Before I could utter a word of warning, it rammed into her. Laverne shot straight up and let out a squeal something akin to the sound a rubber chicken might make if it was being squeezed by a talkative harbor seal.

  “What in the world is going on?” I asked.

  “Nothing!” Laverne squealed.

  She grabbed the edges of her hoop skirt and squatted down in the lawn. Her flouncy skirt parachuted around her, making it appear as if Laverne were an ancient, strawberry-blonde fairy who’d just popped halfway through the middle of a red, polka-dotted mushroom.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Before she could answer, something began to move underneath Laverne’s skirt. It poked the fabric upward here, then a moment later, over there. Laverne forced a smile at me, and tried valiantly to chase the poked-up spots with her hands, as if she were participating in a covert game of Whack-a-Mole.

  But it was no use. Despite her best efforts, eventually, a little face peeked out from under the skirt’s round blanket of polka dots.

  The face was pink. And it had a snout.

  It was a pig the size of a Boston terrier.

  “What in the world...?” I gasped.

  Laverne winced. She eyed me sheepishly, and said, “I think you already know Randolph.”

  Chapter Five

  “Randolph?” I gasped as I stared at Laverne over the white picket fence.

  She was kneeling in her yard, encircled by a red, polka-dotted skirt that was harboring a fugitive pig underneath.

  “How did you end up with a pig, of all things?”

  Laverne shot me an apologetic look and let out a huge sigh. She stroked the pig’s cheek, then confessed her clandestine operation to me as if I were the pope.

  “Randolph’s the pig from the yard sale, Val. You know. The one I got to kiss because I won the bake-off.”

  I felt the strain of my eyes doubling.

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding!”

  Laverne shrugged sheepishly. “No. I adopted him from Arnie, the Boy Scout. Right, Randolph?”

  At the mention of his name, the pig grunted and rubbed its snout against the back of Laverne’s liver-spotted hand.

  “Good grief! What were you thinking?” I asked, before I remembered that thinking wasn’t one of Laverne’s major talents.

  Laverne looked up at me. Tears brimmed her huge eyes.

  “Val, Arnie told me that if someone didn’t do something, Randolph was going to be...”

  Laverne put her hands over the young pig’s ears.

  “...turned into bacon and pork chops!”

  My heart pinged. “But Laverne, you can’t keep a pig in the city limits.”

  “I know. I was going to take him out to the country. But then I didn’t have the heart to let him go. Val, I’ve been lonely since J.D. and I broke up. Randolph’s been good company.”

  Laverne looked endearingly at the pig. “And you just love my cooking, don’t you, little Randolph?”

  Randolph grunted. It sounded as much like ‘yes’ in pig language as I could give him credit for. But then again, maybe sentimentality had begun to swamp what was left of my good sense.

  “So the compost pile was just a ruse,” I said.

  Laverne nodded guiltily. “He got too big for the laundry basket. And I had to keep him hidden from my nosy neighbors.”

  The bridge of my nose crinkled defensively. “I wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Not you, Val. Nancy Meyers.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  I visualized the blonde battleaxe who lived across the street. Nancy Meyers took the “ho ho ho” right out of HOA.

  Even though my neighborhood, Bahia Shores, didn’t have an official home owners’ association, Nancy had made it her mission in life to sterilize the streets of any semblance of human activity, including garbage cans in driveways, bicycles on sidewalks, and grass blades longer than 5.25 inches.

  I bit my lip and shrugged at Laverne. “If it helps, I can give you the pet rulebook Nancy handed me when she heard Snogs was moving in. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t cover pigs.”

  Laverne glanced in the direction of Nancy’s house, even though it wasn’t visible from her backyard. I thought I saw a flash of panic in her eyes.

  “Val, promise me you won’t tell Nancy!”

  I blanched. “Of course I won’t!”

  “Don’t tell Tom, either, okay?”

  Laverne’s pleading doe eyes were hard to resist.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But you’ve got to do something Laverne. And I mean quick. Randolph’s hardly a little piglet anymore. He must have doubled in size in less than a month. By next week, he could be as big as a Great Dane!”

  Laverne hugged Randolph to her and looked into his eyes as she spoke.

  “I know. But what can I do? My big boy is always hungry, aren’t you?”

  She looked up at me with those big, irresistible eyes again.

  “Will you help me find a place for him, Val? Somewhere out in the country, where he can run free?”

  “You mean like a farm?” I asked.

  Laverne smiled brightly. “Yes! That’s it. A farm!”

  Geeze. Just say no, Val. Say no! For crying out loud, say NO!

  “Okay,” I said. “In the meantime, keep Randolph in his pen...and whatever you do, keep him from getting loose again!”

  “I will,” Laverne said. “I promise. Come along, little Randolph.”

  Laverne stood up and pulled a treat from a pocket in her skirt. She waved it in front of Randolph’s snout. The
pig grunted enthusiastically and followed her as she coaxed him back to the fenced “compost” area that was actually his covert pen. Laverne tossed the treat inside. Randolph strolled in, and she slid the lock on the gate.

  Snogs’ little paws thumped against my shin as he danced at my feet. I picked him up and waited as Laverne tottered back over to the picket fence between our properties.

  “Thanks, Val. I feel better now that we’ve got a plan.”

  “I didn’t realize that you had Randolph so well trained. I’m impressed.”

  “Huh?” Laverne cocked her horsey head at me. “Oh. You mean these? He’d do anything for one of these.”

  Laverne pulled something from the pocket of her skirt. It was a brown-and-yellow-striped, bacon-flavored treat. Apparently, the irony of it went over Laverne’s head like a whole squadron of flying pigs.

  “You don’t say,” I said as Snogs squirmed in my arms, trying to reach the treat. “Are you still up for riding along to the college tonight for your baking class?”

  “Shh! Yes,” Laverne whispered. She glanced behind her for a second, then leaned in toward me. Boney fingers covered in rings went up to her mouth, as if she were trying to form a screen against prying eyes.

  “I want to surprise Randolph with a new recipe,” she whispered.

  I glanced toward the pen, then let out a sigh that could probably be heard in the next county.

  “All right, then. Come over around five-thirty.”

  “Can we make it five? I need to stop somewhere on the way.”

  “Sure.”

  Randolph let out a loud grunt. Laverne winced and locked eyes with me. A line of worry trailed across her forehead.

  “Val, do you think the college has classes on how to train pigs?”

  “I dunno, Laverne. But I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

  I sighed again, and tried to shrug away the niggling feeling that had suddenly taken root in the back of my mind. I’d felt it before. I knew its name well. Or, perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that it knew mine.

  It was the feeling of impending calamity.

  Chapter Six

  “So, what’s this detour you want to make on the way to class?” I asked Laverne as she angled her long, stork-like legs into Maggie and plopped down on the passenger seat like a geriatric grasshopper in a strawberry-blonde wig.

  “I need to get some pig chow for Randolph. Animal Attic is having a going-out-of-business sale.”

  Laverne snatched a coupon from her purse and waved her trophy at me like the proud bargain hunter she was. “See? I can save fifty percent!”

  “I wonder why they’re going out of business,” I said dryly. “I guess there aren’t enough pot-bellied pigs in Pinellas County to make a go of it.”

  Laverne’s red lips wilted into a pout. “That’s not very nice, Val. Randolph doesn’t have a pot belly.”

  “Sorry, Laverne. You’re right. He’s...uh...pleasantly plump. And juicy.”

  Laverne smiled. “That’s right.”

  “So, where we headed?”

  “Over off Thirty-Fourth and First Avenue South.”

  I shifted into reverse. The address sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I backed Maggie out onto the road, shifted gears again, and tooled down Bimini Circle toward Gulf Boulevard.

  “So, how did you come up with the name Randolph?” I asked, trying to distract myself from the trickle of sweat crawling down my back. With the top down, even the forty-mile-an-hour breeze wasn’t enough to wick away the heat of an August evening in St. Pete.

  Laverne looked up at the sky wistfully. “I called him Randolph because he reminds me of an old boyfriend I had back in Vegas.”

  “Let me guess. Was he a pig, too?”

  “Sort of,” Laverne grinned. “He was a cop.”

  “A policeman? Really?”

  I swung Maggie right onto Gulf Boulevard and rumbled past the familiar rows of tacky tourist shops and 1950’s-era mom-and-pop beach motels that lined both sides of the road. As I headed north, peeking out from behind the buildings I caught glimpses of the Gulf of Mexico on my left, and the Intracoastal Waterway on the right.

  It was a subtle reminder of our rather precarious geography.

  Gulf Boulevard was the main road that straddled a chain of narrow strip islands that outlined the mainland of Florida’s west coast like a crumbly, broken-off pie crust.

  Not much more than an overgrown sandbar, the long strip of sand ran north all the way to Clearwater, where its remnants formed Caladesi and Honeymoon islands. The fingers of land stretched south along the coast past Treasure Island and Sunset Beach, before coming to an abrupt end just past St. Pete Beach at a place called Pass-a-Grille. There, it dangled precariously into the open mouth of Tampa Bay. Just to its south was Fort Desoto, a state park boasting a semi-wild stretch of coastline that consistently ranked as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

  “Yes, Randolph was a policeman,” Laverne said, and stretched her knobby knees. They were so sharp I feared they might cut through her Spandex yoga pants. “Not as handsome as your Tom, of course.”

  I would hope not. Especially if he looked like a pig!

  “You said Randolph is good company, Laverne. How so?”

  “Well, he’s polite, and he never argues.”

  “I hear that. But he doesn’t have much of a vocabulary.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” Laverne turned and showed me a pout. “As much as I hate to admit it, Val, I got used to having a man about the place. You know, I’d been fine on my own until I met J.D. He kind of filled a hole in me I didn’t realize was empty. You know what I mean?”

  My heart pinged with a strange, somewhat unwelcome familiarity.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “If you don’t mind me asking, Laverne, why’d you and J.D. break up?”

  Laverne sighed. “I don’t mind, honey.”

  I waited a beat and rolled my eyes. “So, why’d you break up?”

  “Same reason most people do. Irreconcilable differences.”

  Laverne sighed and shook her head. “But we all know that’s just a made-up term for plain old, everyday hard-headed stubbornness.”

  I glanced over at the idiot savant sitting beside me. Disguised in a sequin-splattered shirt, purple yoga pants and gold high heels, she looked as if she might have escaped from a geriatric mental ward. But I knew better. I smiled and waited for her next words of wisdom.

  “Turn here,” she said.

  I hooked a sharp right onto scruffy Thirty-Fourth Street. A block later, I took a left onto First Avenue South. The ugly, run-down buildings blighting the roadside jarred my memory.

  That’s it! Ferrol Finkerman’s office is around here somewhere....

  Finkerman was the lousy, ambulance-chasing dirtbag attorney who’d plagued me like a starving mosquito with his hair-brained libel suits and thinly-veiled extortion plots. The last thing I needed was to get back on that jerk’s radar screen.

  “Do we have to go this way?” I asked.

  But by the time the words had left my mouth, it was already a moot question. The dingy strip mall that housed the lout’s office came into view on the right.

  As I drove past it, I caught sight of a sign on Finkerman’s door. It read, “We’ve Moved.” A banner above Sultry Sam’s Sex Shoppe next door read, “Going Out of Business.” As we cruised a little further along the strip mall, I spotted a sign posted amongst the litter and weeds between the sidewalk and the asphalt parking lot. It read, “Coming Soon: The Shops of Heron’s Walk.”

  It appeared as if the whole strip center was going to be demolished. I guess that was one bit of progress I wasn’t going to complain about.

  “There it is, on the left,” Laverne said, and pointed a finger across the street. “Animal Attic.”

  I pulled in, parked, and in a self-preservation tactic, waited in the car while Laverne ran in. I was afraid if I went inside, I’d buy another tchotchke for Snogs. He already had a thr
ee-foot-tall mountain of toys. But for some reason, he ignored them all in favor of chewing up my shoes.

  Go figure.

  As I sat in the parking lot, a red tow truck flew by, hauling an obnoxiously yellow Hummer. Ferrol Finkerman drove just such a vehicle. I sat up and tried to get a glimpse of the license plate as it passed. But I was too slow.

  Still, I was pretty sure the Hummer belonged to Finkerman. I hoped so, because the thought that there might have been fleets of the blasted things burning up the roads made my nose crinkle in disgust. I tapped a finger on the steering wheel.

  Had Finkerman’s Hummer broken down? Or, better yet, had he not made his car payment?

  The thought of Finkerman’s Hummer being repo’ed gave me the best smile I’d had in a week.

  It was still on my face when the door to Animal Attic flew open, and Laverne emerged with a hairy ape-man behind her. The bag of pig chow he was toting over his shoulder was almost as big as he was.

  “Hi, Jake,” I said. The swarthy guy from New Jersey was my neighbor and a doppelganger for the illusive Missing Link. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

  “It fills in the gaps between appointments,” Jake wheezed. “Where you want this?”

  “Oh! Hold on.” I jumped out of Maggie and opened the trunk.

  Jake dropped the huge sack of chow in. It landed with a thud like a dead body, making Maggie squeak and bounce like a carnival ride.

  “You could use some new shocks,” Jake said.

  “Speaking of shocks,” I joked, “how’s the dog psychology biz?”

  “Slow,” Jake said. “Thus the necessity of this lovely gig.”

  “Jake, do you train pigs?” Laverne asked.

  “I haven’t,” Jake confessed. “But you know, pigs are pretty smart. Smarter than dogs, for sure. In fact, the only animals smarter are chimps, dolphins and elephants.”

  “Well, that explains my ex-husbands,” I quipped.

  Jake shot me some side eye, then directed his conversation at Laverne.