May 26, 2002
Faith & Family "We have monsters in our basement," Chica informed Gabriel, tugging on his stone-washed jeans. Her expression was quite serious for a six-year-old. "Big purple monsters."
The remaining Houstons -- and Gabriel -- were all gathered in the living room, the young 'uns having just learned that the adults planned to investigate said basement in regards to Billy Bob's death. Jerry was hyperenthusiastic about this latest development, while Suzy and Dominic were intrigued enough to stop their game of checkers. Chica, however, was downright grave.
Gabriel had little experience with children, and his biggest fear was that he'd step on one by accident. He wasn't familiar with how their minds worked -- he'd been an overly precocious child himself, as far as he could remember. When he was 8, he'd undergone clinical depression over the state of world hunger, while his friends merely fought over Transformer toys.
He wasn't sure how to handle this "monster" issue. Still, he figured that if he were a kid, he'd want to look a grown-up in the eye, so he squatted down and met Chica's gaze.
"Monsters, huh?" he pondered. "Purple, you say?"
Chica nodded solemnly.
Gabriel rolled his tongue from side-to-side within his mouth, mulling over what he should say to reassure the young girl.
"Purple's a lovely color," Aunt Mae murmured absently as she patted her hair. "I remember when Fancy dyed her hair purple. She looked adorable."
Heads swiveled at once to stare at the red-faced Fancy. Gabriel's lips twitched as he watched the mild, unassuming woman grow flustered.
"Mommy! You had purple hair?" Chica's horrified eyes grew to the size of quarters.
"Why Fancy, I had no idea!" D.B. boomed.
Aunt Mae blinked in utter guile. "How else did you think she managed to snag dear Ackson, D.B.?"
"Ma," Fancy wailed. Ackson blushed.
Martha sniffed in disapproval. "I remember it well, I do. Looked like she'd dipped her head into a vat of eggplant sauce."
Eight-year-old Dominic wrinkled his nose. "They have eggplant sauce? Ew!"
Faith grinned and patted Fancy's shoulder. "Pictures, cuz," she said sotto voce. "I want pictures."
Fancy merely moaned in chagrined defeat.
Chica pondered this latest piece of news. "Well, if Mommy was purple, then purple monsters are okay," she conceded to Gabriel. "But stay away from yellow monsters." Her voice lowered to a hushed whisper as she imparted devastatingly important information: "They eat wood."
Gabriel inwardly blinked, and wondered what was so bad about monsters eating wood (then again, so did termites, so maybe she was on to something there), but he promised Chica he'd run at the first sight of a yellow monster.
"Well, come on, everybody," D.B. boomed, rubbing his hands together in anticipation (Gabriel noticed D.B. seemed to boom a lot. Apparently he was a boomer). "Off to the basement."
"Whoa, there, D.B.," Jefferson objected. "We can't all go tramping down there together. Can't conduct a proper investigation that way."
"Why not? It's not like we're gonna wake anybody up. Billy Bob's dead."
"And at the morgue," Suzy added helpfully.
For a brief moment, D.B. appeared nonplussed by his daughter's jocular tone. "Well, yes. That too."
"But a crowd of us might inadvertently ruin any evidence related to the investigation," Jefferson pointed out. "Better to have just a few of us take a look."
Tippy rolled her eyes. "The police have already gone downstairs, Jeff. Any evidence that might've been in the basement have already been bagged and tagged."
"They might've overlooked something," Jefferson insisted.
"That's right," Gabriel agreed. "That's the reason we're checking it in the first place, remember?"
Faith gestured at Gabriel. "I'm with him on this one."
Tippy eyed Faith skeptically. "You're not just saying that because you're engaged to him, are you?"
Gabriel grinned. "No, she's just saying that because she wants to see me get eaten by yellow monsters. Less complicated than breaking off the engagement."
Faith reached over and flicked his hair.
* * * In the end, four people made the trip to the basement: D.B., Jefferson, Faith, and Gabriel. It was a very clean basement -- old furniture, bicycles, several cardboard boxes, five wooden crates (two of them empty) and a broken-down fridge without any coating of dust. Then again, that might've been because of the police investigation last night.
They divided the room into quarters. D.B., of course, got the corner that had his case of wine. Jefferson picked his way through the desks and bicycles, and Faith approached the cardboard boxes warily.
Gabriel took one look at the unused fridge, then glanced at Faith. "Isn't it dangerous to keep this around?" he asked. "The kids might get trapped inside during one of their games."
Faith smiled. For someone who claimed to have little experience in children, she thought, he was doing a good job in the "concerned parent" department.
"Uncle Ackson keeps saying he'll fix it so that we'll have two fridges, which we really need," she replied, "but what with Chance, Chica, and Li'l Q taking up his and Fancy's time -- not to mention his having to manage their store -- he hasn't had an opportunity so far. But it's okay, we've taken precautions."
Gabe looked skeptical, then pulled the refrigerator door open. He blinked twice, and Faith had to keep from laughing at his expression. Inside the fridge, filled to the brim so that there wasn't even room for an elbow, were romance novels.
"Courtesy of Fancy," Faith grinned.
Gabe rubbed his jaw, still staring at the miniature library before him. "This would actually encourage him to procrastinate," he remarked. "I can't see Ackson trying to empty the fridge of these books without blushing beet-red."
Faith chuckled and turned to the boxes. Their contents were clearly labeled with black markers: "Old Clothes," "Toys," "Jefferson's College Papers," et cetera. With a reluctant sigh, she began sifting through the insides.
This wasn't how she'd wanted to spend Thanksgiving weekend, but she supposed it could be worse. She wasn't sure how, but given enough time and enough thought, she was pretty certain she could come up with a few grisly images.
Besides, Gabriel appeared to have proven his staying power. Or proving his staying power, Faith amended. He still had to sit through Thanksgiving dinner with the family, and that was an event in itself. Next to that, dead bodies were a walk in the park.
It was actually Gabe's idea to visit her family, despite her attempts to dissuade him from the idea. He was an only child in a household filled with fights, divorce, and more fights, and he'd frequently told her how foreign the term "family" was to him.
She'd known that he rarely visited his mom or dad for the holidays now, and she would've readily given up her trip home this year so that he wouldn't be alone. However, he insisted that she'd shouldn't have to choose between the two. In fact, they could both visit her family.
When she frantically tried to convince him otherwise, he grinned and said, "Hey, think of it as showing me what an ordinary family is like."
"Gabe," she'd replied in all seriousness, "the Oregonian Houstons are not an ordinary family."
She only gave in when he appeared hurt that she didn't want to introduce him to her relations.
A miniature basketball rolled out of the "Toys" box Faith was rummaging through, snagging right between Aunt Mae's old dresser drawer and the wall. Since she couldn't reach the basketball, Faith crawled over and pulled at the dresser so that it would come away from the wall.
The wall which had an unusually large mousehole.
Her first thought was, Juniper-berry's gonna hit the roof on this one. No way would Juniper tolerate mice within the same household as her kitchen. Even Dominic's hamsters had been barred from the house, despite his anguished cries.
She nearly jumped when she saw something scraggly-looking inside, but when it didn't move she breathed a sigh of relief. Not a mouse. Probably icky and disgusting, but not a mouse.
The hole wasn't bright enough for her to view whatever it was that was inside, so she grabbed an old baby T-shirt nearby and wrapped it over her hand for protection. Then she leveled herself on the ground so that she could get a better angle as she reached into the hole.
At first she thought it was something squishy, but discovered it had a plastic surface. Not that she could feel it properly through the T-shirt, but since as far as she knew there were no mice with plastic skin in the whole history of mankind, she breathed a sigh of relief.
She pulled it out gingerly, then straightened and stared blankly at the Ziploc bag in her hand. It was packed to the brim with what looked like shredded dried buds and leaves.
It took a while before Faith could find her voice.
"Gabe? Guys?"
She felt Gabe moving around the fridge to get to her. There were sounds of D.B. and Jefferson dropping whatever they were doing to come over as well.
"Find something, Faith?" Gabe asked, approaching.
"You could say that." Numbly, Faith raised the bag to the light. "What does this look like to you?"
He stared at it, similarly stunned. He, too, had seen pictures at work. "That's cannabis. Holy smoke, Faith, who's growing marijuana in your basement?"
Part 4 of the fun will continue. . .
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