High Five

game in the sky. My mother accepts this as a daughter's obligation. My father has taken to reading Guns & Ammo.

'So what's up?' I asked. 'Why did you page me?'

'We need a detective,' Grandma said.

My mother rolled her eyes and ushered me into the kitchen. 'Have a cookie,' she said, setting the cookie jar on the small Formica-topped kitchen table. 'Can I get you a glass of milk? Some lunch?'

I lifted the lid on the cookie jar and looked inside. Chocolate chip. My favorite.

'Tell her,' Grandma said to my mother, giving her a poke in the side. 'Wait until you hear this,' she said to me. 'This is a good one.'

I raised my eyebrows at my mother.

'We have a family problem,' my mother said. 'Your uncle Fred is missing. He went out to the store and hasn't come home yet.'

'When did he go out?'

'Friday.'

I paused with a cookie halfway to my mouth. 'It's Monday!'

'Isn't this a pip?' Grandma said. 'I bet he was beamed up by aliens.'

Uncle Fred is married to my grandma Mazur's first cousin Mabel. If I had to guess his age I'd have to say somewhere between seventy and infinity. Once people start to stoop and wrinkle they all look alike to me. Uncle Fred was someone I saw at weddings and funerals and once in a while at Giovichinni's Meat Market, ordering a quarter pound of olive loaf. Eddie Such, the butcher, would have the olive loaf on the scale and Uncle Fred would say, 'You've got the olive loaf on a piece of waxed paper. How much does that piece of waxed paper weigh? You're not gonna charge me for that waxed paper, are you? I want some money off for the waxed paper.'

I shoved the cookie into my mouth. 'Have you filed a missing persons report with the police?'

'Mabel did that first thing,' my mother said.

'And?'

'And they haven't found him.'

I went to the refrigerator and poured out a glass of milk for myself. 'What about the car? Did they find the car?'

'The car was in the Grand Union parking lot. It was all locked up nice and neat.'

'He was never right after that stroke he had in ninety-five,' Grandma said. 'I don't think his elevator went all the way to the top anymore, if you know what I mean. He could have just wandered off like one of those Alzheimer's people. Anybody think to check the cereal aisle in the supermarket? Maybe he's just standing there 'cause he can't make up his mind.'

My father mumbled something from the living room about my grandmother's elevator, and my mother slid my father a dirty look through the kitchen wall.

I thought it was too weird. Uncle Fred was missing. This sort of thing just didn't happen in our family. 'Did anybody go out to look for him?'

'Ronald and Walter. They covered all the neighborhoods around the Grand Union, but nobody's seen him.'

Ronald and Walter were Fred's sons. And probably they'd enlisted their kids to help, too.

'We figure you're just the person to take a crack at this,' Grandma said, 'on account of that's what you do . . . you find people.'

'I find criminals.'

'Your aunt Mabel would be grateful if you'd look for Fred,' my mother said. 'Maybe you could just go over and talk to her and see what you think.'

'She needs a detective,' I said. 'I'm not a detective.'

'Mabel asked for you. She said she didn't want this going out of the family.'

My internal radar dish started to hum. 'Is there something you're not telling me?'

'What's to tell?' my mother said. 'A man wandered off from his car.'

I drank my milk and rinsed the glass. 'Okay, I'll go talk to Aunt Mabel. But I'm not promising anything.'

*    *    *    *    *

 UNCLE FRED AND Aunt Mabel live on Baker Street, on the fringe of the Burg, three blocks over from my parents. Their ten-year-old Pontiac station wagon was parked at the curb and just about spanned the length of their rowhouse. They've lived in the rowhouse for as long as I can remember, raising two children, entertaining five grandchildren, and annoying the hell out of each other for over fifty years.

Aunt Mabel answered my knock on her door. She was a rounder, softer version of Grandma Mazur. Her white hair was perfectly permed. She was dressed in yellow polyester slacks and a matching floral blouse. Her earrings were large clip-ons, her lipstick was a bright red, and her eyebrows were brown crayon.

'Well, isn't this nice,' Aunt Mabel said. 'Come into the kitchen. I got a coffee cake from Giovichinni today. It's the good kind, with the almonds.'

Certain proprieties were observed in the Burg. No matter that your husband was kidnapped by aliens, visitors were offered coffee cake.

I followed after Aunt Mabel and waited while she cut the cake. She poured out coffee and sat opposite me at