Leann Sweeney - Shoot from the Lip

The two women who’d gotten out of the van, one black, one white, dragged to my doorstep a vacuum, mops, and two plastic pails filled with cleaning supplies. I opened the door before they could ring the bell and welcomed them inside.

“I am thrilled you could do this on such short notice. I’m Abby, by the way.”

The older woman set down her vacuum and pail in the foyer and pulled a folded paper from her uniform pocket. “Ms. Rose, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Dolly, and this is Angela. You understand that ’cause this is a rush job your credit card’s already been charged in advance?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you.”

“One dirty house is the same as any other,” Dolly said. “Don’t make no difference to me. How many bathrooms you got?”

“A powder room down here and two upstairs.” I smiled at Angela, hoping she might be someone I could chat with, because Dolly was already wheeling her vacuum into my living room. From what I could tell, she was all business.

“Angela’s gonna do the upstairs, and I’ll-” Dolly stopped talking when Webster loped into the living room to greet my visitors. The woman’s stiff posture indicated that she wasn’t happy to see him. He sat patiently in front of her, waiting to be petted. I knew he wouldn’t get his wish. “I didn’t get no alert about animals. You got any more?”

“A cat. But they’re both really sweet and-”

“I don’t care if they got angel wings; you gotta put them up. And if they’ve made messes anywhere, we don’t touch animal waste.”

“I understand. I’ll put Webster in the utility room.” I turned to see if Angela felt the same way about pets, but she’d disappeared up the stairs. I didn’t blame her.

After I bribed Webster with a rawhide bone and closed him in, I decided to try to endear myself to Dolly one more time, hoping she’d open up, but she was muttering about cat hair as she unloaded her supplies onto my kitchen counter.

“The cat’s probably upstairs. I’ll have to find her,” I said as I passed her.

Once upstairs, I saw the guest bathroom rugs neatly folded in the hall and heard water running. I walked to the bathroom and leaned against the doorframe. “Hi.”

Angela was on her knees cleaning around the base of the commode. She returned my “Hi” and held up the canned bathroom cleaner. “You want me to use something different? We bring our own, but the customer can always-”

“No problem. I didn’t get to say hello to you down there. You been doing this long?”

She went back to spraying and wiping. “Couple years.”

“How many houses do you clean in a day?”

“Maybe five. Sometimes six if we have a few small places.”

“Sounds like a tough job,” I said.

Angela looked at me. “She’s gonna come up here and get on my case if you keep talking to me. You saw what she’s like.”

“Sorry, I always chatted with my former cleaning lady. But she wasn’t with a big agency like Purity. How many people work there?”

“About thirty.” She pulled a wand from her pail and attached a disposable toilet brush, then flushed the commode and began to scrub the bowl.

“You always work in pairs? Because I think that’s a good idea. You could-”

“Ma’am.” Angela sat back on her heels. “What do you want from me?”

“I’m a talker; that’s all.” She was wearing rubber gloves, so I couldn’t tell if she was married, but asking about kids might make her more talkative. “You have children?”

“Two.” She was back to scrubbing. “I don’t mind if you like to talk, but Dolly gets all over me if I don’t finish on time. You’re making that kinda hard.”

“Okay. I’ll leave you alone.” But I wasn’t about to quit without getting any useful information. I took a few steps toward my bedroom but came back and stuck my head in the door. “You look young to have two children. They must be little.”

This time Angela laughed and shook her head. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”

“You got me pegged. How old are they?”

Pretty soon I knew all about Angela. How her husband worked on an oil rig and was gone for months at a time, how some days she had to work as late as eight at night, even though she started at seven in the morning, but I mostly learned how much she loved her husband and kids and how every penny she made went into a savings account for the children-so they could go to college and not be cleaning houses when they were twenty-five.

By then, we’d moved through my bedroom and into the master bath. “Lots of women in the same boat at Purity?”

“Most are worse off. At least my husband’s got a steady job.”

“There was another cleaning woman recommended to me before you two were assigned. Her name was Loreen, I think. Is she worse off?”

“The only thing I know about Loreen is that she’s got some monster houses on her schedule. She’s been around a long time and makes more money.”

“You wouldn’t know her last name? My sister had a team of cleaning women about eight years ago. One was Christine or Catherine or something like that, and the other was Loreen. I was thinking maybe Loreen’s the same person.”

“Why you asking about Loreen?” came Dolly’s unexpected voice from my bedroom doorway. She’d climbed those stairs as quiet as a coon stalking a crawfish.

I turned. “No reason. Just making conversation.”

She stared past me at Angela, who looked like she wanted to jump into the shower and hide. “Angela, you haven’t even changed the sheets. What the heck have you been doing all this time?”

“She’s been doing a very thorough job on my bathrooms,” I said. “They really needed attention.”

“Right.” Dolly looked at her watch. “Not much time, and you got three bedrooms and a hall to clean. I know you don’t want to miss lunch, Angela.”

Dolly gave me a look like I had a houseful of manure that had to be cleaned up-but no. She wouldn’t touch “animal waste.” Had to be me.

The plan to get anything out of the maids seemed to have hit a roadblock, but I wasn’t defeated-not yet. I had another idea. They drove company vans, and that meant they had to drop them off at the end of the day. Fiona Mancuso must do the same, and since I had her mug shot, a stakeout at the Purity agency might work. A stakeout. I’d never done one of those before. I’d like being the follower rather than the followee for once.

After the maids finished and went on their way, I got busy. Since I didn’t know Mancuso’s schedule, I couldn’t risk waiting until later in the day to show up at Purity. Though it was unlikely, she could be working a short shift. Besides, I was too antsy to wait around. We were having a real fall day after yesterday’s rain, so I changed into cotton drawstrings and a long-sleeved T-shirt, packed up a few Diet Cokes in a small cooler and took along a package of potato chips. I remembered how Jeff said stakeouts were boring as hell ninety-nine percent of the time while you waited for something to happen. I almost forgot the binoculars and had to go back for them. What was a stakeout without binoculars?

The agency office was north, off Shepherd Drive, and I soon realized there was more to a stakeout than I planned. You had to find a place to park. Duh. Stakeout equals parking. I finally chose a busy Mexican restaurant, but my first spot did not offer a view of Purity’s fenced-in lot, where several minivans sat. This made me anxious. I might miss Loreen coming and going. But I shouldn’t have worried. I found a parking place facing the street fifteen minutes later-a good five hours before I needed to.

By the time Purity vans started arriving to end their day, I’d used the restaurant bathroom twice, and both times felt obligated to buy takeout, waiting and watching outside while it was prepared.