Crimes by Moonlight

I asked the crucial question. “What was Angela wearing?”

The dead in the doorway always wore whatever they had on when they passed to the other side.

“Not a stitch,” Grandma said, disapproval in her voice. “And let me tell you, she’s not a natural redhead.”

“She’s not a natural anything, Grandma. Angela puts on heels and a suit to take out the trash. This is good pie.”

“Thanks,” Grandma said. “I put up the apples last fall.”

“If you saw Angela naked, maybe she had a heart attack in the shower,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” Grandma said. “I saw your aunt Tillie when she had her stroke in the bathtub. Her hair was wet, and she clutched a bar of Palmolive soap. Tillie was my own sister, but that woman had serious cellulite. Angela was perfectly dry and looked like she’d just gotten out of bed. Her hair was mussed and her lipstick was smeared.”

“Maybe I should say something to her,” I said, taking another bite of pie.

“No!” Grandma said. “You can’t! Remember Bill.”

Her favorite brother had shown up in Grandma’s doorway wearing a green hospital gown. Grandma was so upset, she called Bill at two in the morning about her deadly vision and scared the stuffing out of the man. When Bill had chest pains three days later, he refused to go to the hospital. By the time he collapsed and was taken to St. Mary’s by ambulance, it was too late. Bill died in the ER wearing a hospital gown.

Grandma swore she’d never say anything to anyone again. She kept silent when my father showed up in her doorway minus his head and his wedding ring. Grandma never liked Dad. She knew he cheated on her daughter. Heck, the whole neighborhood knew. Mom always forgave my father and took him back. Grandma thought her daughter would be better off without him. Three days later, when Dad was supposed to be at work, an irate husband blew away my father’s head with a shotgun as he slipped out of a hot-sheet motel. The errant wife locked herself in the bathroom and survived.

Somehow, Mom found out that Grandma knew about Dad’s death in advance. She never forgave Grandma-or spoke to her again. Two years later, Mom appeared in Grandma’s bedroom doorway in a hospital gown. She was dying of cancer. Grandma rushed to St. John’s Mercy and begged her daughter to forgive her. Mom went to her grave in stone-hard silence.

My cousin Jimmy wore jungle fatigues in Grandma’s doorway. Grandma wept when she saw her favorite grandson with a seeping chest wound. Then she called the Red Cross and said she needed to get in touch with Jimmy-it was an emergency.

“Does this concern a death in the family?” the Red Cross contact said.

“Not yet,” Grandma said.

The Red Cross dismissed her as a harmless nutcase. Three days later Cousin Jimmy was shot in Vietnam, but we didn’t know about his death for two weeks.

Grandma mourned Jimmy and blamed herself. “I should have lied,” she said. “I should have said his mother had died, and then they would have let my grandbaby come home.” But she was unable to lie about what she saw. It was part of her unwanted gift.

Here’s the weird thing about my grandmother: She looked like a picture-book Grandma. She had a comfortable flour-sack figure and permed gray hair. She put up grape jelly, made apple butter in a big kettle, baked pies with flaky crusts, ca

My grandfather did not stop by Grandma’s door before his heart attack. Grandma believed that was her punishment for her silence when my father was murdered. She found her husband of fifty years dead at the kitchen table, a deck of cards spread out on the Formica top. He’d been cheating at solitaire.

Why did Grandma see the dead three days before they passed over-when they were still alive? Grandma said time didn’t run in a straight line, the way we saw it in schoolbooks. “Time is all around us,” she said. “It’s happening all at once.” That was a pretty fair explanation of quantum physics from a woman who’d never finished grade school.

Much of what Grandma saw didn’t make sense until after it happened. Aunt Leila appeared in the doorway wearing a raincoat and fluffy pink bedroom slippers. Grandma thought that outfit was so ridiculous, she blamed the pickled herring she’d had for di

“I was wearing a raincoat and slippers? What have you been drinking, Emma?” Leila asked. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that getup.”

But she was. Three days later, Leila overslept, and her daughter, A

“I should have tried harder,” Grandma wept. “She wouldn’t believe me. Now I’m warning you.”

“What was I wearing in your doorway?” I asked. I couldn’t keep the fear out of my voice. I had a fifteen-year-old daughter. I wanted to see my Sarah go to her senior prom. I wanted to be there when she graduated from college, and at her wedding. I wanted to hold my grandchild in my arms.

“Oh, I didn’t see you,” Grandma said. “I just had a feeling.”

I took a deep breath and relaxed. Grandma’s “feelings” were right maybe half the time. I had a 50 percent chance of escape.

In 2006, Grandma “had a feeling” the St. Louis Cardinals would win the World Series and talked me into getting season tickets with her. She was triumphant when they won. Of course, she also thought the Cards would win in 2008. They had a miserable season. The Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.

I took Grandma to the race track twice because she “had a feeling.” The first time, she won twenty-seven dollars. The second time, she lost fifty bucks on broken-down nags in what I called the Dog Food Trifecta-all three of her horses came in last.

Still, Grandma might be right this time. I fortified myself with more pie and asked, “Well, if I didn’t stop in your doorway, what’s going to happen?”

“I’m not sure,” Grandma said. “But it involves you and Angela and a crime.”

“Angela in a crime? No one is more honest than Angela. She keeps our books and insists on an independent audit every year. Besides, our design business doesn’t make enough money for her to steal.”

“I didn’t say she was stealing,” Grandma said. “Your Jack is working late a lot lately, isn’t he?”

“Jack’s architectural firm won the renovation project for the old NorCo shoe company building. They’re turning it into loft apartments. His proposal is due in two weeks.”

Why the sudden shift from my business partner to my husband? Oh, no. Jack wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. Angela was no angel, but she wouldn’t have an affair with my husband. Would she?

I put down my pie fork. “Grandma, Jack is working late. And he doesn’t like Angela. She’s not interested in him, either.”

“That’s what your father used to say, until-” Grandma said.

“He was shot,” I interrupted. “Jack is nothing like my father. That’s why I married him.”

“But what about Angela? She’s a good-looking woman.”

“Much better looking than me,” I said.

“Francine! I would never say that,” Grandma said.

“No, but you think it, like everyone else. Angela has a boyfriend. Actually, he’s a friend with benefits.”

“What’s that?” Grandma said.

“It means she likes him, and she sleeps with him sometimes when she feels like it.”

“In my day, we called that a husband,” Grandma said.

“I’d better go,” I said. “It’s getting late, and I need to get home before Sarah.”

“You worry too much,” Grandma said. “She’s not a little girl anymore.”