Chris Grabenstein - Ring Toss

Half our visitors every summer hail from Philly, so it’s conceivable a herd of YACS could head down the shore. Conceivable but not very likely. Which is good news for Connie DePinna: A couple YACS see that Galuppi Family rock, they might haul her home in a sack to Sarajevo (I only memorize the names of foreign cities where they’ve had Olympics).

Thursday, we have a day off. But that doesn’t stop Ceepak from ticketing a car he sees parked in front of a fire hydrant on his walk home from the gym.

I call Becca to see if she wants to grab a burger over at the Rusty Scupper.

“I can’t,” she says. “These DePinnas are driving me crazy, Danny!”

“You want me to come over? I could wear my cop cap.”

“No. I want them to quit complaining.”

“About what?”

“Let’s see: the towels, the pool, the breakfast buffet, the beach badges they lost, the ice machines, which, by the way, they empty every night so they can fill up their coolers even though my dad has signs up asking people not to do that! They say they’re going to write a letter to the Better Business Bureau and trash the motel on-line. Tell the world the Mussel Beach Motel is a dump. Worst motel on the Jersey Shore.”

“I’m sure your mom and dad are gonna love that.”

“They’ll never let me run my own place.”

“What?”

“That’s the plan. My dad wants to expand. Buy a nother motel, put me in charge.”

I hear noise in the background.

“Hey! Stop that! Talk to you later, Danny Boy. One of the DePinna kids is trying to tip over my candy bar machine.”

So I spend the day with some other buds on the beach. Twenty-five is not too old to boogie board.

On Friday, Ceepak and I are back on days. There are no FBI bulletins to deal with, which is a good thing, because we get another 9-1-1 call from the Mussel Beach motel.

This time it’s Connie DePinna.

Somebody stole her ring.

“It was Donna. Or that witch Jackie. Maybe they’re in it together. Seriously.”

Ceepak, Becca, and I are in Room 202 with Connie DePinna and her mother. They’re both sitting on the edge of the bed. Becca is pacing behind us, back and forth in front of that clattering air conditioner. I can see a small dent where Billy kicked it last weekend.

Becca looks horrible. Like she hasn’t had time to wash her hair, sleep, or eat. She’s not even wearing a swimsuit. She’s in scruffy, baggy sweats. I can tell: she so wishes her parents hadn’t picked this week to head up to Quebec and turn the motel keys over to her.

“I swear! It was Donna and Jackie! Or their husbands!”

“You don’t know that, Connie,” says mom. Her pants suit is pink today.

“I do, too! They’ve been trying to break in and steal the ring all week!”

“How’s that?” asks Ceepak.

“There have been some…incidents,” says Becca. “I didn’t want to bother you guys again.”

Connie (who is dressed in a sensible black tank suit in mourning for her lost ring) flaps her hand toward the door. “Every night this week, ever since mom gave me the freaking diamond, somebody has been trying to break down that cheap, freaking door. I’d fall asleep, and boom — two or three in the morning, someone would be banging on it. One time, I swear, I heard this guy grunting and stuff, trying to jimmy up the window. That was probably Tony, Donna’s new husband. She probably put him up to it.”

I grin a little because I suspect it was actually, young Mr. Bill, her fiancée, who had slipped past Mr. amp; Mrs. DePinna’s door in the wee hours of the morning, eager for some, to borrow Connie’s term, “pre-marital relationships.”

“Last night,” says Connie, nearly hyperventilating, “I swear — I heard a crowbar.”

“And what does a crowbar sound like?” Ceepak asks without busting a gut like I would have.

“You know.” She does a quick vocal impersonation of a metal rod ripping into a metal doorframe. It involves a lot of “skreek-skreeks.”

“There was damage,” says Becca. “Claw marks up near the lock. Like somebody went at it with a hammer or, like she says, a crowbar.”

“We’re not paying for that!” says Mrs. DePinna. “You have no proof it was somebody in our party.”

“Did I ask you to pay for it?”

“No, but I heard how you just said what you said….”

Becca curls her lower lip and blows out a quick blast of air, enough to send her limp blonde bangs flying up over her eyebrows. She is completely wiped out. The puffy bags under her eyes are the size of marshmallows. “I should charge you, people. I haven’t had any sleep all week, what with this one ringing the front desk every night at two, three, four A.M.!”

“Oh, I’m sorry if I inconvenienced you,” says Connie sarcastically. “But that’s when my sisters or their husbands chose to try to break down my door.”

“It’s not your sisters,” screams her mother. “They didn’t take the ring!”

“Then who did?”

Now the mom is pointing at Becca. “One of her maids. They’re all Hispanics.”

That totally burns Becca’s bacon. “What?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know you’re hiring illegal immigrants, young lady.” The mom gets all patriotically snitty- like that nutjob on Fox. “I’m surprised your Mexican employees haven’t stolen everything out of all our rooms!”

“They’re hardworking, decent people,” says Becca practically shouting. I think the DePinna’s have officially worked her last nerve as my mother used to say whenever I, you know, worked her last nerve. “They’re better than you and your family, that’s for sure!”

Mrs. DePinna doesn’t like that. “The Better Business Bureau is going to hear about this! Today! I’m mailing that letter!”

“Fine!” snaps Becca. “I’ll give you the freaking stamp!”

“Don’t think I won’t!”

Ceepak stands.

“Enough,” he says. “Becca, please wait for us downstairs in the office. Mrs. DePinna, kindly return to your room and call your other daughters. Ms. DePinna, contact your fiancée. Please advise everyone that my partner and I will be coming around to ask them a few questions.”

“What?” says Connie. “When?”

“Now.”

“I have a manicure appointment.”

“Cancel it.”

The way Ceepak says that, I know we’re not leaving the Mussel Beach Motel until the ring is found or somebody confesses to stealing it.

Our interrogations begin with the bride-to-be.

“When did you notice your ring was missing,” says Ceepak.

“Like an hour ago.”

“Had you taken it off your finger?”

“Well, duh. My sisters are vicious old hags but I don’t think they’d chop my finger off to get at the diamond.”

“Of course. But, last Saturday, you told us you never intended to take the ring off.”

“Well, I didn’t mean never never. Rings can make your skin kind of skanky underneath, especially if you spend a ton of time in the pool, which, I have to. For my tan. I want to look good in my wedding dress. It’s white. You need a tan to wear white, especially a backless.”

“Where did you store the ring?”

She flicks her naked hand with the ring tan line toward the bedside table. “Usually in there. Next to the bible.”

“Was anything else missing?”

“From the drawer? Nope. The bible’s still there. The Yellow Pages. Billy’s condoms.”

She freezes.

Then, she tries to make us think she’s a cute Kewpie doll by crossing her legs, putting two fingers to her lips, and saying, “Oops.”

Ceepak is not susceptible to cute.

“Has your fiancée been a frequent visitor to your room during your time here at the motel?”

“Maybe. You won’t tell my parents, will you?”