by Elise Sax
“And it’s my birthday, but you don’t have to do anything special. Maybe a little cake or a tasteful gift, but nothing big.”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny,” she said, turning on the espresso machine.
“Just kidding. I didn’t think you would give me something for my birthday.”
She heated the milk. “Maybe I should get you what you’ve gotten me for my past eighty birthdays. Would you like that?”
She meant nothing. I had never gotten her anything. I was terrible with presents, mainly because I was poor and had no talents for crafts.
“Stop singing,” she ordered.
“Was I singing?”
“Yes. Some Enchanted Evening. You don’t have the voice for that song, Gladie.”
Ruth finished preparing my latte and put it in front of me on the bar. Then, she put a plate down next to it. It was a chocolate chip scone with a candle in the middle. She flicked a lighter and lit the candle, shocking the hell out of me.
“Don’t say anything,” she said. “Just blow the damned thing out.”
“I can’t say thank you?”
“No.”
“Not even a grunt of gratitude?”
“The wax is melting onto the scone that I made with my arthritic hands. So, if you don’t blow the damned thing out, I’m going to have to throw away the scone, and it might be the last one I ever make because I’m older than dirt and could die any second. But sure, you take your time since you’re going to live forever. I get it. The arrogance of youth. What is a scone to you? Nothing. What’s my hard work to you? Nothing. You’re the instant gratification generation. You don’t work for anything. You want it now and you get it now. Fingers on your phone all the time. Smartphones! What an oxymoron. They should be called dumbphones because they make folks dumb. Click. Click. Click. Nobody talks to anybody anymore. They just click their phones. Facebook, Twitter, YouPube.”
“YouTube.”
“Whatever. You should be ashamed of yourself that you know that. It used to be we wanted to know things. Real things. Now you think you’re a genius because you know YouTube. What a stupid name! Damned smartphone, corporate coffee morons.”
“I have a flip phone, Ruth. I found it on the street.”
“You know what I mean.”
She took a breath. Her face was red, and I hoped she wasn’t going to have a stroke because that would have made my birthday a real downer.
“May I blow out my candle now?” I asked.
“Are you baiting me, girl?”
I blew, and the flame went out. Ruth slapped a small, wrapped gift onto the bar. “Here. Happy birthday.”
I swear that real tears filled my eyes. Ruth had already given me her car and free lattes for a year, and now she had remembered my birthday. I didn’t know why she was being so nice to me, since she was the orneriest woman on the planet.
“Thank you, Ruth,” I said, opening the box. Inside, there was a beautiful silk scarf. Blue and green with an intricate design. I had never had something so beautiful.
“It’s not new, mind you,” she growled. “I picked it up in France right before the war. That’s World War Two to you.”
“France? Really?”
“I thought the colors would bring out your eyes. Let me show you how to tie it around your neck.”
She walked around the bar and tied it for me.
“There. Just like I thought,” she said, not looking me in the eyes.
“You look pretty,” Julie squeaked at me, the dustbin in her hand. “Like an old-timey movie star, like Julia Roberts.”
“Thank you so much, Ruth,” I told her. Under normal circumstances, I would have given her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but I thought that would make her angry at me, and Ruth was terrifying when she was pissed off.
“Drink your latte before it gets cold, or don’t you care about coffee, either?”
She made a show of wiping down the clean bar, and I made a show of sipping the latte and nibbling the scone.
Julie dumped the broken plate in the trash and walked up to me. “Gladie,” she squeaked. “I’m so scared.”
“Did you set fire to your bed, again?”
“No, not for a month. I’m worried about… about… about… Fred.”
She wiped her nose on her sleeve. Fred was her boyfriend, and my first match. He was Spencer’s desk sergeant, and when Spencer said there wasn’t a person with half a brain on the force, Fred was included in that statement.
“More butt smuggling?” I asked. When Terri arrived in town as the new hotshot detective, she put Fred on butt searching detail. It was surprising how many criminals hid things in their butts. Poor Fred had had a nervous breakdown because of the butt thing, but Terri had been demoted, and I had figured that Fred’s butt searching duties were over, but maybe I was wrong.
“No, it’s worse than butts. It’s that woman. The pretty one. The one who looks like a supermodel.”
“Terri Williams.” My nemesis. The woman who hated me and kept giving me tickets for being annoying. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get her to like me, and she wasn’t a good woman to have not like a person.
“She’s after my Fred,” Julie blubbered, her nose running down into her mouth. “She wants to take him away from me.”
I blinked. “Wait a second. Terri is after Fred? What do you mean? Like she’s trying to kill him?”
“No. That wouldn’t be so bad,” Ruth said, interrupting. “That hot number is after our doofus Fred to snag him. Get him in her bed forever. Bed him and wed him. She’s mighty determined.”
It was crazy. It was ludicrous. It was gravity that made things fly. It was left going right and right going wrong. Terri had told me that she was after a man in the police department, but it had to be Spencer. That made more sense. And that’s why she hated me. She loved Spencer and Spencer loved me. So, she hated me. Right? She wanted me out of the way so she could get Spencer. Right?
“If she loves Fred, why does she hate me?” I asked Julie and Ruth.
“Maybe she knows you,” Ruth said.
“I’ve been so nice to her,” I complained. I was a nice person, and I wasn’t used to people hating me for no reason. It made me crazy.
“I heard you bit her,” Julie squeaked.
“Merry Ferry bit her. I was just there.”
“I heard you pushed her in front of a motorized couch,” Ruth said.
That was sort of true. “I’m a nice person,” I insisted. My birthday joy was flying out of my head.
“Can you help me?” Julie asked. “Fred and I were going to get married this summer. We were thinking July fourth so there could be fireworks.”
“Fireworks?” Ruth asked. “You two? You’ll blow up the town.”
Julie and Fred were getting married? My first match was going to get married in July. I was a success. Suddenly, I was filled with professional pride and purpose. I had made a real match.
But Terri wanted to derail that. I had to stop her, but short of killing her, I didn’t know how.
Then my brain clicked into place.
“What did you say?” I asked Julie.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes you did. Before. You said Terri was the pretty one. The one who looked like what?”
“A supermodel. Actually, she looks like Gisele.”
I smiled, and I felt a weight lift off of me. The solution was crystal clear.
I took Julie’s hand in mine. “I’ll help you,” I promised.
After I finished my coffee, I walked out, and Ruth went outside with me. Buckstars was still doing bang-up business. Ruth stared at it with a scowl plastered on her face, and she stood with her arms crossed in front of her. “I like your sign,” I told Ruth.
“It’s just the beginning.”
“You’re not going to set fire to it, are you?”
“Don’t be silly. A fire could take down Tea Time. A flood, on the other hand, would be effective.”
I watche
d as half of the town went in with their coupons and came out with a free hot beverage. Then, I saw him. Bradford Blythe, Bridget’s baby daddy and her tormentor. He looked around and walked into Buckstars. My stress returned, and any urge to sing vanished.
“See ya later, Ruth,” I said. “Thanks for my birthday presents.”
I quick-stepped into Buckstars. I didn’t have a plan. It was stupid to confront him again. Spencer had already promised to handle him, and I had only managed to make the bastard more aggressive when I had spoken to him. No, it was stupid to follow him into Buckstars. But I couldn’t stop myself. It was like evil was a magnet that I was helpless to resist.
The small coffee place had more people than Studio 54 on Saturday night in 1977. Brad walked through the crowd, looking around as if he was searching for someone in particular. In front of me, Ford Essex, the owner of the shop was watching Bradford, too. He watched his every movement. And he was scared. Did they know each other, or was Ford a good judge of character?
A hand gripped my shoulder. “Gladie, there you are.” I turned around to see Josephine. Her hair was a large frizzball around her head, and she was holding a coffee to-go cup. “Look at me. No, I haven’t stuck my finger in an outlet. I boiled eggs all night long. I’m not the only one. Look around.”
I looked around. Brad had disappeared into the crowd. Josephine was right, though. There were at least a dozen frizzballs in the room. The town was boiling eggs nonstop. The caffeine break must have been welcome for them.
“We’re never going to make it,” Josephine continued. “There’s too much to do, and we’re a tiny town, you know. Not enough cooks in our kitchen. Our stupid, illustrious leader has really socked us one this time. Look at him over there with his world records guy. He’s been showing him off all around town, like he’s George Clooney or Barack Obama. Do you believe they were at my house at eleven last night to make sure I was boiling the eggs correctly?”
The mayor and Gregory Jones were enjoying their free drinks. Jones looked tired. His tie was askew, and one of his buttons was unbuttoned. I wondered how a man chose a career in world records. It was one of the few jobs I never had.
The mayor caught my eye and walked over to me. “Hello, Gladie. Isn’t it fabulous?”
“Fabulous.”
“Look at this Buckstars. We’re becoming very cosmopolitan, don’t you think?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Look at these to-go cups with logos on them. Just like the big city. Next we’ll get a movie theater or a Tesla dealership. The sky’s the limit! Oh, there’s Pierre. I need to make sure he’s pulling his egg weight. Hidey-ho, Pierre!”
He cornered a small man with glasses, who looked horrified to be cornered.
“Seems like it’s going well,” Liz Essex said, grabbing me when the mayor left. “I knew a coffee place would do well. So much better than the ceramic cat store that was here before.”
“I guess ceramic cats don’t do the business they once did,” I said, scanning the shop for Brad. I couldn’t find him.
“It might be the dead body buried here that turned customers off,” she said.
My head snapped back to give my full attention to the Starbucks owner. “What did you say? A dead body’s buried here?”
“You didn’t know? That’s the rumor, anyway. Crazy cat lady buried a body under the floor we’re standing on.” I looked down at my feet. The floor had been retiled in a non-threatening beige.
“You found a body?”
“No. Between you and me, I think everyone assumes that the remodel would have uncovered it, but we didn’t do any actual digging. It could literally be right under our feet as we’re standing here.” She giggled and put her hand over her mouth. “Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that. Let’s keep this between us.” She waved at her husband and said something to him in a foreign language that I couldn’t make out.
She walked into the crowd without saying another word to me. I was in the middle of the crush with people swirling around me. I needed to take a step back, closer to the wall to make heads or tails out of the crowd and try to find Brad. I began to push my way to the wall when I picked up a voice, which was just a little louder than a whisper.
“Sometimes murder is deserved. The wild need to be tamed, and when they can’t be tamed, they need to be extinguished.”
I spun around, searching for the person who was speaking, but I couldn’t figure out who had said it. It was Grand Central in the coffee place. It was amazing how the prospect of getting a cup of coffee for free instead of the regular four-dollars brought people in. I searched the faces, trying to determine which face would voice the virtues of murder.
And that’s when I finally saw him. Bradford Blythe was walking with a purpose toward the back of Buckstars. I was wedged near the sugar station, unable to follow him. “Excuse me. Excuse me,” I repeated over and over, but I couldn’t make any progress. I searched for him again, but he had vanished into the back of the store. But I saw someone else who I wasn’t expecting.
Bridget was there.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, when I spotted her. She was heading in the same direction where Brad had disappeared.
My heart stopped, and I was having a hard time breathing. “Bridget,” I gasped. “Don’t do anything stupid.” I watched as she vanished into the back, too. I was imbued with a renewed sense of purpose. If I didn’t know why I was following Brad, I was certain that I had to be there for Bridget. No good could come from her meeting him alone.
“Excuse me. Excuse me,” I said, trying to push my way through the coffee drinkers. I was making progress at a snail’s pace. I was worried about my friend. What would her baby’s father say to her? What would he do to her? He had threatened me, and he didn’t even know me. I couldn’t imagine the lengths he would go to hurt Bridget. “Coffee emergency!” I shouted, pulling out the big guns. “And I smoked a cigarette, too! You know what that means!”
They knew what that meant. They parted like the Red Sea, allowing me a straight shot to the bathrooms at the back of the shop. I went into the women’s bathroom, but Bridget wasn’t there. Ditto the men’s bathroom. Another door said “Staff Only,” and I opened that door.
Finally, I found Bridget. She was crouched over Brad with a bloody knife in her hand. And Brad was lying prostrate, in a pool of blood.
And he was dead, dead, dead.
CHAPTER 9
Matchmaking emergencies are weird, meshugana ones, dolly. Most of them fall into three categories: Before dates, During dates, After dates. Lots of anguish about dates. I’ve shaved more than one woman’s legs before a date. I’ve had to save a woman trapped on a Ferris Wheel during a date. And I’ve taken quite a few men for VD checks after their dates. Emergencies at the time seem huge, but later—like right now—they seem ridiculous and easy. So, when you’re faced with an emergency, know that it’ll be all right. Like they say, in a hundred years, who’ll care? Of course, in a hundred years, we’ll be dead.
Lesson 96, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
“Wha… huh… uh…” I stammered. I took in the scene in jagged images. Multiple knife wounds. Brad’s bloody face. His open mouth. His open eyes. Bridget’s hand, holding the knife and shaking. Her eyes, unblinking. Her skin, drained of color.
“Bridget? Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer. She was in shock. What was I supposed to do for shock? I was probably in shock, too. My stomach was protesting, and I forced myself not to faint. Bridget needed me, and that gave me strength. I kneeled down next to her.
“Bridget, drop the knife. Please. Drop the knife and get up. You shouldn’t be here. Please, Bridget. I love you, sweetie. Let me help you.”
Nothing. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink.
Then, there was a scream. At first I thought it was me or at the very least Bridget, but as hard as it was to believe, we weren’t screaming. A coupon-bearing coffee drinker, who had taken a wrong turn on her
way to the toilets had stumbled onto a murdered man, who apparently drowned in his own blood. She was the one screaming.
“Murder! Murder! The bookkeeper did it! She’s got a gun!” she screamed while flailing her arms around, like she was the robot on Lost in Space.
“She doesn’t have a gun! It’s a knife!” I yelled at her.
“A gun! A gun! Run for your lives!”
“It’s a knife!” I hollered back at her, but she was already gone. She ran out into the crowd, screaming that the bookkeeper had a gun. Getting up, I peeked out the door and watched as panic hit Buckstars. To-go cups flew up in the air, and coffee spilled everywhere.
There was screaming and running. I didn’t blame them. I would have done the same thing. There was nothing I could do to calm the situation. It just had to wear itself out. Meanwhile, I went back to Bridget. She hadn’t moved a muscle.
I knelt down next to her, again. “Let go of the knife,” I told her, softly. She didn’t react. “Come on, let me help you.”
I heard footsteps in the hall, and then I smelled a familiar cologne. It was Spencer coming to the rescue. “No, Pinky. Don’t touch a thing,” he said, walking into the tiny room. “Come over here. Let me handle it.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” I told him, but I didn’t know if that was true. As far as I knew, it was totally what it looked like. But the Bridget I knew would never take a life, no matter how much of a bad guy he was. She had a total respect for life. She was the queen of empathy.
“I need you to leave the room now, Pinky.”
“I’m not leaving her. She’s my best friend, and she needs me.”
“You want me to Tase her, boss?” It was Terri. She was hovering behind Spencer, and she had a Taser in her hand.
“Get out of here. Take statements outside,” he ordered in his bossiest authoritarian voice.
“But…”
“Do it,” he growled, and she listened. When she was gone, he directed his bossy voice to me. “Pinky, if you’re not going to leave, back away from Bridget. Stand against the wall.”
“Be nice to her,” I pleaded.