by Sandra Balzo
The crowd, still leaning on its collective right foot, suddenly shifted and parted, letting the stranger pass, followed by the doctor. The door closed behind them and all hell broke loose.
“Oh, my God, is she de—” Laurel began.
Rudy started in on Matt, backing him up against the door. “I’m the town chairman, by God, and—”
I didn’t wait around to hear the rest. Signaling Laurel that I would call her later, I rescued Caron from her pastor, Langdon Shepherd, and we made for my blue Dodge Caravan.
Nine years old, simulated wood-grain panels, six cup holders—the minivan was one of the last remnants of my former life as wife, mother and PR executive. I wasn’t sure what I was anymore, but it wasn’t that.
On the other hand, I’d probably be driving the Caravan for ten more years or 200,000 miles—whichever came first—so I should probably shut up about it.
I pulled the van around the corner of the parking lot, out of sight of the crowd, and stopped at the traffic light leading to Civic Drive. As I waited for our presence to trip the signal, I looked over at Caron. “You okay?”
She nodded.
The light changed and I turned left, ignoring the glare of a morning commuter who would now be exactly two and a half minutes late for work because of me. I tried again with Caron. “Should we go to your house? It’s closest.”
She nodded wordlessly and I made another turn, this one down Pleasant Street. I had always thought “Pleasant” seemed too pedestrian a name for a street on which Caron’s house, at a mere forty-five-hundred square feet, was one of the smaller homes.
Bernie, Caron’s husband, was a successful corporate lawyer, and Caron had been an ad copywriter. That’s how I’d met her. We had worked together at First National in the marketing department some twenty years before.
When Caron married Bernie and became pregnant with their oldest, Bernard Jr. (known to everyone, for some reason, as “Nicky”), she decided to stay home. By the time Emma had come along, Caron was happily settled in, as successful at being a full-time wife and mother as she had been a copywriter.
I, on the other hand, had stayed at First National after I married my dentist, Ted, and gave birth to Eric. I scaled back my hours and managed to achieve a fairly good balance between work and home. That didn’t stop me from feeling guilty, though. About work, about home—it didn’t matter. Guilt is as much a part of my Norwegian heritage as the ice Ted swore coursed through my veins. Just because I told him to bite me when he said he didn’t love me anymore. Not that I’m bitter.
I pulled up the driveway and stopped in front of Caron’s big Cape Cod. Toby, a pudgy golden retriever, ran up to greet us and I turned off the engine and sat back. Caron was staring fixedly out the front windshield.
She hadn’t spoken a word since we left the shop, which was very unCaron-like. She normally chattered when she was upset. Now she wouldn’t even look at me.
“Listen, we need to talk about this,” I said. “I know you were close to Patricia—”
She turned toward me and started to say something, but then stopped, putting her hands up to her face. “I can’t,” she mumbled through her fingers, and then started fumbling with the car door. Finally getting it open, she dashed up the sidewalk, Toby at her heels. The front door, when it slammed, nearly took off the dog’s nose.
I climbed out of the van and walked up to the door. Toby and I looked at each other and decided to investigate. I rang the doorbell, and Toby sniffed. No answer to the bell, but the dog seemed to be deriving some pleasure from a wad of chewing gum stuck to the mat.
I left him to his fun and headed back to the van. Inside, I folded my arms on the steering wheel and tried to think. One partner dead, another catatonic. This wasn’t good.
The crunching of tires on the gravel apron of the driveway interrupted my thoughts, what few there were of them. Caron’s husband Bernie was home. He pulled his Navigator up next to me and got out. I watched in my side mirror as he disappeared around the back of my van and then reappeared in my window.
I adored Bernie, all bald, five-foot six inches of him. He and Ted had been best friends in college. In fact, Bernie had introduced me to Ted. When Ted and I separated, he took the car and the boat, but I got to keep Caron and Bernie. I figured I came out on top.
Bernie was saying something, so I rolled down my window.“...I stopped by the library lobby to pick up a tax form and Mary told me about Patricia. What happened?”
I didn’t waste time wondering how Mary, the head librarian at the Brookhills Public Library, had heard the news. Like Laurel, Mary knew everyone and everything in town.
“I’m not sure. She was on the floor when we got there.” I frowned. “Caron’s the one who found her. She’s really upset. I’m worried about her.”
Bernie stepped back from the van and looked toward the house. “I’ll go talk to her.” He started up the driveway, hesitated, and turned back. “Had Patricia been sick?”
“Not that I know of. She...”Now I hesitated. “Bernie, she had a burn on her hand. There also was a scorch mark on the metal counter.”
He looked puzzled. “What are you saying, Maggy?”
I didn’t answer.
Then he got it. “Electrocution? You think Patricia was electrocuted? By what? Your coffee machine?” He shook his head. “I find that hard to believe, Maggy. But if it’s true, David Harper has one hell of a lawsuit.”
Spoken like a lawyer. Still shaking his head, Bernie continued up the driveway to the house, apparently choosing the catatonic wife in the house to the lunatic in the driveway. The lesser of two feebles.
I drove home to wait for Gary’s phone call.
My house is up the creek, and I mean that literally. Poplar Creek runs the length of Brookhills, forming the town’s west boundary. Living downstream is fashionable, upstream is unfashionable. And the farther down or up, the more fashionable or unfashionable you get. Got it?
Down, good.
Up, bad.
I was bad.
In fact, the only thing badder, or farther upstream from me in Brookhills, was Christ Christian Church, which I think got special dispensation from God.
But divorce has its privileges, too, and while my tiny ranch wasn’t quite the Bernhard house—which was downstream, naturally—it was all mine, from the blue stucco walls in the living room to the lime green toilet in the bathroom.
As I unlocked the door, I heard Frank thunder across the room to greet me. Or he would have thundered, had there been room enough to pick up speed. As it was, he ran three or four steps’ worth and then plowed blindly into the door, pushing me back into the yard.
Frank belongs to my son. Frank is a sheepdog. Frank is way too big for the house.
Forcing my way back in, I tossed my purse on the bench by the door, scratched Frank hello and headed for the laundry room. There I stripped, dumped my stinky clothes in the washer and started it.
A hot shower was next. It was only when I stood naked and shivering, a stingy stream of lukewarm water trickling down my back, that I remembered I should have turned on the washer after my shower. Not to worry, though, the fill cycle ended before my shower did, sending a last-gasp blast of scalding water through the old pipes just in time to cauterize the goose bumps.
Pulling on a clean “Uncommon Grounds” T-shirt and blue jeans, I returned to the living room feeling, if not quite human, at least fit company for Frank. But then, Frank ate dirt.
I started to flop down on the couch but it was piled high with tax papers. After days of self-inflicted misery, I had admitted defeat yesterday. I needed professional help—tax help. April fifteenth was just two weeks away, and my tax forms were still bare.
Not surprising, I guess. This was the first time I had filed a single return in twenty years. But I’d been sure I could handle it. After all, how hard could it be? Plenty hard, apparently.
So I’d given up and called Mary, who was not only Brookhills’ head librarian but also part-t
ime tax accountant, and pleaded for help. She had read me the riot act about being so late and told me to get my buns over to the library pronto with my papers.
I moved the stacks aside carefully now and sank down on the couch. Frank padded over to rub his 110 pounds against my knees like he was a cat. Itch scratched, he simply leaned there until his paws finally slid out from under him and he landed with a satisfied “harrumph” on my feet. I wiggled my bare toes under his fur.
If I was right, Patricia had been electrocuted by the espresso machine. Problem was, the machine had just been installed—by a professional—last Thursday. All of us, including the L’Cafe sales rep, had watched while the technician installed it, then the rep had demonstrated it for us.
And if that weren’t proof enough it was working properly, the next day we spent the morning practicing our frothing and tamping, brewing and pouring ad nauseam at Patricia’s insistence. Consistency was paramount, she had declared in her dulcet tones. After four hours of this drill, I was ready to strangle her. Electrocution had never entered my mind, honest.
Frank abruptly raised his head a half inch off my foot, listening. I listened, too. Sure enough, a car door slammed in the driveway. I struggled to pull my feet out from under Frank who, having done his part, had gone back to sleep.
By the time I managed to get up, the doorbell was ringing. I moved the curtains and saw Gary standing on the front stoop. Most houses in Brookhills don’t have stoops. They have porches, or decks, or even verandas. Mine’s a stoop.
I turned the deadbolt and let Gary in. The living room, already overcrowded with tax papers, sheepdog and furniture purchased for a much bigger—less blue—space, suddenly made me claustrophobic.
“Let’s go into the kitchen,” I suggested. “I’ll make us some coffee.” A day without caffeine, after all, is like a day without...well, caffeine.
Gary sat down at the kitchen table and pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket. “Maggy, I’m afraid I have to ask you some questions. Is Caron here?”
I turned from the cupboard, coffee grinder in hand. “She wasn’t feeling well, so I took her home.” I put the grinder down. “What did the medical examiner say?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Exactly what I thought he’d say. Cardiac arrest.”
“From what?”
He pushed back from the table, crossing his left foot over his right knee. “Electrocution, apparently, though we’ll know for sure after the autopsy. I think the current either stopped her heart outright or put it into fibrillation. Either way, with no one there to pull her away from the machine or to force her heart into a normal rhythm, she died.”
With no one there...
Maybe if I had arrived on time, Patricia would still be alive. “How long had she been there, do you think?”
“At least a half hour. Probably longer. Her pupils were dilated and non-reactive.”
I was thinking about the half hour I’d been late. The half hour Patricia had probably been dead.
Gary read my face. “Don’t hit yourself over the head with it, Maggy. You likely couldn’t have done anything, even if you had found her earlier. Or you could have been electrocuted yourself. She was probably frozen to—” He stopped when he saw my face.
“The espresso machine,” I finished for him. “But how could that happen?”
He shook his head and picked up the notebook and pen. “You tell me. When did you get it?”
I explained about the installation on Thursday and the practice sessions on Friday. Gary took notes.
“Could it have been an electrical surge or something?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The whole machine was still live when we got there. When I saw Patricia’s hand, and the scorch mark on the sink, I suspected electrocution immediately. That’s why I wouldn’t let you touch it.”
I didn’t know what to say. Gary shifted in his chair. “Anyway, they threw the breaker and are getting ready to take apart the machine. Do you have a schematic? It would give them something to work from.”
“There’s one in the office.”
“Good.” He flipped to a fresh page of the notebook. “Now tell me about this morning.”
I gave up on the coffee and sat down at the table across from him. “I was running late. My alarm went off at five-thirty, instead of five. We were supposed to be at the store by five-thirty so we would have plenty of time to brew coffee and set up before we opened at six-thirty. If I had been there—”
Gary gave me a stern look. “Don’t start that again. Maybe this was meant to be. Maybe you were meant to oversleep, because it wasn’t your time. Now, when did you actually arrive?”
But it was Patricia’s time? I answered Gary’s question. “It was almost six. I ran in and—”
“Was the door locked?”
I shook my head. “Caron or Patricia must have left it unlocked when they came in.”
“So Caron was already there?”
I nodded. “She still had her coat on and was staring at Patricia on the floor. I started CPR, and Caron called 911.”
“Is that it?” Gary asked, flipping his notebook closed and starting to stand up.
I nodded, surprised at his abruptness. “Do you want me to come back with you and find the schematic?”
“I have to talk to Caron, then stop at the station.” He hesitated. “Actually, maybe you could go to the store and dig out the schematic in the meantime.”
He got all the way to the door before he turned around. “One thing you should know, though. When the county medical examiner got the call, he saw who the victim was and called Jake Pavlik, the new county sheriff. The Harpers are important people, and the bureaucrats don’t want anything to...slip through the cracks.” He seemed to be quoting.
“Slip through the cracks?” I got angry, since Gary was too well-mannered to do it for himself. I like to think of myself as an advocate for those less bitchy. “You’ve protected presidents, for God’s sake.”
Gary shook his head. “Nobody cares about what I did ten years ago. To them I’m just a retired security guard turned small-town cop.”
He was heading for the door. “Anyway, like it or not, Pavlik is at Uncommon Grounds now, and he’s in charge. And Maggy, tread carefully. I hear he can be a real prick.” He closed the door softly behind him.
Chapter Three
I wasn’t all that anxious to get back to Uncommon Grounds, but I couldn’t stay holed up in the blue room all day either. Besides, I needed to know what was going on. I filled Frank’s food and water bowls, handed him a pig’s ear, gathered up the tax papers to drop off with Mary later and headed out to the van.
Gary’s last words were still echoing in my head. Gary Donovan calling somebody a prick, of all things, was totally out of character. It would be like your mom saying it. Gary had been an Eagle Scout, for God’s sake. Or still was. I think that’s like being an alcoholic, you never completely recover. In the ten years I’d known him, I’d never heard Gary curse. Not once. Pavlik had really gotten to him.
So Pavlik must have been the mysterious dark-haired man with the medical examiner. I hadn’t paid much attention to the election, but I knew he’d replaced our former sheriff, an obese man who had died of a heart attack at his desk.
If memory served, the new sheriff in town had been some sort of hotshot in Chicago. His “Take Action” campaign slogan had struck a chord with an electorate who had watched their last sheriff do little but slowly eat himself to death. Pavlik pledged to take an active role in law enforcement in the community. I guessed this was it.
Poor Gary, he didn’t need this. He had paid his dues, going from the Milwaukee PD to ATF, and then on to Secret Service. When he had retired from the government at fifty, Gary took over the security at First National, bringing the albatross of a financial organization into the modern world, security-wise. He irritated the execs by making sure they didn’t travel together and endeared himself to me by taking over the security and risk management aspects o
f two very large events First National sponsored and I managed.
Gary was an enabler in the best sense of the word. For example, when there was a sexual assault in the bank’s parking structure, he not only provided security escorts, but also taught self-defense classes so women could feel confident about protecting themselves. Gary figured his job was teaching people not to need him.
Which might explain why, four years ago, First National had downsized him. That and the fact that the bank had been robbed of nearly four million dollars a few months earlier.
I’d always suspected that Gary had taken the robbery “on my watch,” as he put it, harder than he had the downsizing. But at the time, he’d sworn he was itching to get back into real police work anyway and didn’t mind having a nice severance package from First National to finance his search. Not that it had been much of a search. Gary was a Brookhills native and the town had jumped at the chance to bring him in as police chief.
Speaking of the police, as I turned into our parking lot, I saw they had cordoned off the sidewalk in front of the store. At first glance, business around Uncommon Grounds seemed to go on as usual. Until you noticed no one was moving. At the corner, the patrons at Rudy’s barbershop looked like they had planted themselves there till the next haircut. Next door, dental patients appeared to be lining up for extractions.
I walked up to the door of my own store and knocked on it.
Inside, I could see a group of suits. One of them moved away from the group and peered through the window. It was Pavlik.
He opened the door. “Yes?”
I had started in, but stopped. I had to, he was blocking the door. “This is my store,” I said. “I’m—”
His eyes—yep, dirty gray Chevy—narrowed. “This,” he said, “is a sheriff’s investigation of a potential crime scene.”
Gary’s description of Pavlik was proving apt. “Fine. Chief Donovan asked me to give you the schematic for the espresso machine.” I stepped back and started to turn away. “But if you’d prefer to find it yourself...”