Page 29 of A Matter of Pedigree (A Carole and Poopsie Mystery #1)

W ednesday morning, Carole picked up Mom, and they went together to get Frank-O out of the hospital.

He looked much improved and was sitting up, impatient to be released.

Carole left Mom to help him get dressed and went downstairs to deal with the paperwork.

It was quite simple: all she had to do was essentially sign her life away by promising to pay whatever the health insurance company decided it wouldn’t cover.

The figures for a three-day stay without surgery were quite staggering, even to her.

“We could have put him up in the Four Seasons for less than this,” she told the clerk. “And there the food would actually taste good, and he could’ve had a massage.”

The clerk didn’t appreciate the joke, but merely handed Carole a release form that she was supposed to give the nurse at the duty station.

In the elevator on the way back up, Carole wondered if she was supposed to tip the nurses, like you had to tip everyone when you checked out of the Four Seasons.

She decided against it, suspecting that they considered themselves professionals.

Poor Frank-O wasn’t looking as good as he had earlier.

Getting dressed had tired him out, and she was glad for the wheelchair the nurse insisted they use for the trip down to the parking garage.

She brought the car right up to the door, and he got in under his own steam, but he was out of breath by the time he’d hauled himself into the SUV and got his seat belt fastened.

“Whew,” he sighed. “I guess I’m not as well as I thought.”

Carole checked him out in the rearview mirror and discovered his face was quite gray again.

“It’s always like that,” she told him, remembering her two hospital stays when she’d given birth to him and Connie.

“You feel great sitting in bed in the hospital, but it’s a different ball game when you get home. ”

Especially with an infant to care for, she thought.

“Don’t worry,” said Mom, “you’re still healing. You’ll feel a lot better after we get you home and you have some of Big Frank’s garlic soup.”

“Yeah, Nonna. Plus I got a whole bunch of prescriptions.”

When they got to the house, Big Frank came out and helped him get out of the car and into the house, where they sat him on the sofa, which Mom had covered with a fresh bedsheet and a couple of pillows.

Once Frank-O was settled with a cup of soup and the TV remote and covered with a cozy, crocheted throw, Carole went off to CVS to get the prescriptions filled.

When she returned with the drugs, she found he’d fallen asleep, and she joined Big Frank and Mom in the kitchen, where they were sitting at the table.

Mom was working on a sudoku, and Big Frank was rolling tiny little meatballs.

“For wedding soup,” he said. “Nothing better when you’re sick. Poor kid, he’s gonna need some building up.”

“He’s got a bunch of pills,” said Carole, opening the bag.

“I got one of those plastic things with a box for morning, afternoon, and night, so you can keep them all straight.” She peeled off the plastic wrapper on the pill organizer and studied the instructions on each vial, counting out the doses.

“I feel like Nurse Nancy,” she said, with a little chuckle.

“At least it keeps my mind off Frank’s troubles. ”

“That reminds me!” exclaimed Mom, putting down her pencil. “You know, when I was over there on the East Side, getting the boot off Christina Fornisanti’s car, something funny happened.”

“Yeah?” Carole was working her way through the bottles. One blue to be taken three times a day with food, one small white before bed, one green to be taken two hours after eating; just taking the pills was going to be a full-time job for Frank-O.

“Yeah. I had to wait around quite a while, because they’re not as quick to take the darn things off as they are to put them on, and while I was waiting I saw that old lady come back.”

“Millicent Shaw?”

“I don’t know her name, but she lives in the basement apartment.”

“Right, that’s Millicent.”

“Well, Millicent goes in the apartment, and pretty soon this big Black guy comes walking down the street, and when I say big, I mean big. He must’ve been at least six six, something like that, with huge shoulders.”

“Sounds like some sort of athlete,” offered Big Frank.

“Yeah, like that, but he was in regular clothes. Well, sorta regular. One of them workout outfits you see people wear, with a black sweatshirt and a hood. Sunglasses, too. Like he was up to no good and didn’t want anybody to recognize him.”

“He doesn’t sound like the sort of person you generally see on the East Side,” said Carole.

“Not at all!” exclaimed Mom. “But he was sauntering along as if he owned the place, and he went right down to Millicent’s front door and knocked on it.”

“I know she told me she was involved in the civil rights movement, and she’s still interested in social justice,” said Carole. “Maybe he’s a political activist, something like that.”

“He didn’t seem like a do-gooder to me,” snorted Mom.

“Unless doing good pays real well. He had to wait a good while before she opened the door, and while he was waiting, he took off the hood, and I could see he was wearing a humungous diamond earring. Really big, so big I could see it from across the street.”

“So what happened when she opened the door?” asked Big Frank.

“She hugged him, that’s what she did. Gave him a big hug, just like I’d do to Frank-O if he wasn’t so weak.” Mom picked up her pencil. “And then he went inside, and she closed the door, and that was that.”

“How long did he stay?” asked Carole.

“At least a half hour, because it was that long before the parking guy came and took off the boot.”

“That’s pretty interesting,” said Carole, wondering if there was a connection between the Black man and Hosea’s murder.

Could he be a hit man, hired by Millicent, coming for his payoff?

Not likely. You don’t hug a hit man, and besides, that kind of thinking was wrong and racist. Just because a guy was Black and wearing a hoodie didn’t mean he was a criminal, as Connie would be the first to remind her.

Remembering that Polly was having lunch with Connie and the apartment would be empty, Carole decided to grab some time for herself.

It had been a while, she realized, since she’d had a free moment.

So after checking that Frank-O was comfortable and a round of hugs with Big Frank and Mom, she headed home.

“First things first,” she told Poopsie, as she made herself a huge peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and poured herself a tall glass of whole milk. The dog gave her a look when she sat down at the table with her lunch, but Carole was quick to defend herself.

“I’m splurging,” she told the dog. “I’m sick of salad and Pellegrino, and this is what I want to eat, so keep your opinions to yourself.”

Chastised, the dog settled down at her feet.

Carole savored every bite of the sandwich and even treated herself to a couple of Double Stuf Oreos, Frank’s favorites, before taking Poopsie out for her noontime walk.

Then, back at the apartment, she made herself a cup of tea and sat down at Frank’s computer.

She was no computer whiz, but she had mastered Google, which never failed to find what she needed, whether it was a Korean face mask or an Italian purse.

It had also provided interesting information about people, whether she was looking up celebrities or neighbors she’d suspected had complained about Poopsie, so she typed in Stuart Poole’s name to see what she could see.

Wow! There were absolutely thousands of references to Stuart Poole, the guy was a road hog on the information highway.

She opened up the first listing, and the computer detoured into Adobe, taking its time to load, and when the little hourglass disappeared all of a sudden, the screen was filled with dense text.

She began reading; it was all about trade in colonial times and was putting her to sleep, so she hit the little red X with the cursor and got out of there.

She obviously had to be choosier about what files she opened; she’d wasted a good ten minutes on that sucker, so she scrolled down the list of references.

As it turned out, most of them were on the same subject, something called the Triangular Trade, which took place hundreds of years ago.

The professor was apparently an expert on this subject, which she’d learned in high school involved sailing ships that carried goods like cotton or timber from the American colonies to Europe, where it was traded for guns and liquor.

The ships then sailed to Africa, where they traded these goods for captive natives.

This human cargo was then brought back to either the American colonies or Caribbean islands, where they were sold as slaves to work on plantations in exchange for sugar and rum.

It was awful and disgusting, and she wondered why it held such fascination for Professor Poole.

But, she reminded herself, having an interest in bad behavior didn’t mean a person would actually do anything bad.

She herself enjoyed an occasional romantic novel, for instance, but it didn’t mean she’d ever consider being unfaithful to Frank.

Not even with that gorgeous and very hot Bridgerton duke. No way.

She went back to Google and typed in Angelique’s name, but nothing came up.

Weird, she thought, unless it was because she’d only recently married Professor Poole.

Or maybe she’d kept her family name; a lot of professional women did that these days.

Maybe she could find out more if she had that name.