by Elise Sax
“I know.”
I smiled. “In Spencer speak, that means I’m hot and you love me, right?”
“Right.”
“So, would you give me the box, again? I’m ready for it, now.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want to push you.”
“I’ve never been a homeowner before. And a pool owner. Can you believe I have a pool?”
“Well, right now it’s a putrid, plastered cesspool, but yes, you own a pool. Here you go,” he said, handing me the box.
In the light of the porch light, the box looked blue, instead of red.
“It’s blue,” I said. “I thought the box was red.”
“It’s blue. This is a different box. I was going to give this one to you after the one with the key in it.”
My heart stopped. There wasn’t one thump thump happening in my chest. The blue box was completely unexpected.
“You had this with you at the restaurant?” I asked.
“I brought two birthday presents for you.” Spencer’s voice was soft and low in his throat, as if he was nervous and choosing his words with care. “The key and this.”
I held the box in my hand, feeling the weight. “Is it another key?”
“The key to my heart, Pinky.” I opened the box. “It took me a long time to find it,” he explained. “I didn’t think a hunk of diamond was really you. But I thought this was you. It’s vintage from the 1920s. A sapphire to match your eyes, circled with small diamonds. I stole one of your rings to get this one sized. It should fit you. Should I put it on your finger?”
I nodded because I couldn’t get my vocal cords to work. Spencer pocketed the box and slipped the ring on the third finger of my left hand. It fit perfectly. I loved the ring. It was exactly my style.
“What does this mean?” I asked.
“It means that I get a man cave in our house.”
“And I never wash your clothes,” I said.
“And baseball season is sacrosanct.”
“And you never arrest my friends, again. And we order takeout every night. And we get one of those fancy beds that can be adjusted up and down. And you’ll be in charge of the trash. And we’ll have a landline because I always have problems with my cellphones. And wood floors everywhere except for the bedrooms.”
“I agree.”
“You do?”
“Yes, carpet in the bedrooms.”
“Okay,” I said, studying my ring. “I guess we’re getting married.”
“Who said anything about marriage?” he asked. I punched him in the arm. “Love taps. Very sexy. Will you marry me, Pinky?”
“I’ll marry you, Spencer.”
“Good. I’m going to bang your brains out in the bushes. Married people do that, you know.”
He swept me up in his arms and walked onto the lawn. “Be careful of the roses,” I warned him. “Grandma will kill me if we damage them.”
“Trust me, I’ll avoid the roses when I’m naked.”
“Oh, naked,” I giggled. “I like you naked.”
He got naked very fast. And he got me naked very fast. “Oh my God, Spencer,” I said, looking at his shlong. “Did you take a pill? Or ten pills?”
“This is what you do to me. This is me as a marriage kind of man.”
Spencer as a marriage kind of man was very impressive. Aggressive. Having sex in the front yard behind the bushes was naughty, but it was late, and the neighbors were all tucked into their homes. Spencer laid me on the grass, and nestled his mouth between my legs. “Oh, Spencer,” I moaned. He tasted me, and I writhed against his talented tongue. I combed my fingers through his hair, and my mouth dropped open. “Ohhhhhh,” I moaned. I was singing, again. Opera this time. Owning a house and a precious gem had made me a classy opera singer.
We flipped over, and I straddled him, carefully slipping him inside me. “Oh, Pinky,” he moaned. It was his time for moaning. Normally, he was a quiet lover, but I guessed the marriage kind of man Spencer was loud.
Because he was being loud.
“Ohhhhh!” he moaned, as I went up and down.
“Look at this!” a familiar voice said, interrupting Spencer and me. A bright light shined on my face and my naked breasts. I stopped moving, and Spencer stopped moaning.
“Terri?” I asked, shielding my eyes and trying to see past the light.
“Indecent exposure!” Terri announced with unabashed glee at catching me in a true infraction instead of just being annoying. But she didn’t seem to realize the extent of it, that I wasn’t just naked, but that I was having sex with her boss in the bushes. “Naked outside. Oh, this is a good one!”
She lowered her flashlight, and I could see that she was writing another ticket.
“Naked boobies in a residential district,” she continued, laughing.
“Naked everything, Terri,” I said.
“Huh?”
She shined her light again, and this time she saw the whole thing: Me on top of Spencer, and Spencer angrier than spit.
“Oh, hello, Chief,” she said, amiably, still not catching on. Then, she did. “Oh, hello chief,” said with more of a tinge of horror in her voice.
“Turn off the flashlight. Now,” he growled in his best boss voice as he laid flat on his back.
She turned it off. “I’m sorry, Chief. I didn’t know that…well…”
“Leave. Now,” he commanded.
“I… okay… well… I… okay… well…” She was stuck in a loop, probably from the shock of seeing her boss getting banged while she was on her rounds.
“Now,” he growled. “I’d get up, but I’m indisposed. So, I would appreciate it if you would leave.”
“Okay… bye… I…” It took her a good three minutes to get herself together enough to turn around and leave.
“She’s traumatized,” I said when she finally left. “She’ll probably have nightmares. At least your nakedness was covered up by my nakedness.”
“I was so close when she interrupted us. Now, I’m a wet noodle. She’s probably going to sue me.”
“She’s in love with Fred,” I told him.
“I know. Hiring her was a huge lapse in judgment. I mean, who would ever fall in love with Fred?”
“Do you really think she’ll sue you?”
“Absolutely. Her boss was having sex in front of her. I’m toast.”
“I’ll fix it,” I said.
“Oh, God, Pinky. Please don’t fix anything.”
“I’m going to match her. I have a perfect match in mind. Then, she’ll be happy and leave Fred alone and you alone.” And me alone. I still didn’t think it was smart to let Spencer know about my involvement with the couch or the biting.
“At least you haven’t lost your optimism,” he said. “Come on, let’s take this party inside. Did you notice that Terri smelled really good?”
Yes. She was wearing my birthday present perfume. That was a good sign, as far as I was concerned.
We gathered our clothes, and Spencer’s phone rang. “Chief Bolton,” he answered. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Are you kidding me? Uh huh. Okay. I’ll be right there.”
He hung up. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Aliens.”
I went to bed while Spencer went out on his aliens police call. It was hard to fall asleep because I was euphoric, and I was wearing a pretty ring. I was desperate to call Lucy and Bridget and tell them the news, but I didn’t want to rub my good news in Bridget’s face, now that she was being accused of murder, and if I told Lucy, she would have come over to get all the details, and I wouldn’t get any sleep.
So, I laid in bed and stared at my ring in the light of the clock. After a long time of insomnia due to happiness, I fell asleep. Spencer woke me up when he came to bed a little before dawn.
“Look at my ring,” I told him, shoving my hand in his face.
“Beautiful,” he said, kissing my hand. He turned over and pulled the covers over him.
“What happened? Did the
aliens call home?”
“No. Remember Urijah? Our contractor?”
The man who met with Bradford Blythe. How could I forget?
“He’s an alien?” I asked.
“No. He saw an alien. There was a bright light, and when he went outside, his pet goat had been murdered.”
“He has a pet goat?”
“Not anymore. This is a crazy-ass town. I’m the damned chief of police. I’m not supposed to go out on alien calls.”
“Was the goat stabbed?”
“Pinky, I got to get some sleep,” he said and started to snore. He was already in a deep sleep. But I was now wide awake. A murdered goat. I couldn’t help but think that it had something to do with Brad’s murder and that his murder was more complicated than everyone believed.
CHAPTER 12
Matchmaking is just like making coffee. Ask anyone how they like their coffee, and they’ll say: Strong! Dark! Robust! But if you look through their kitchen window and spy on them at home, you’ll see the truth. Their favorite coffee is pishachs. Weak as pee-pee. Full of milk and sugar. They say they want it strong and bitter, but they want it weak and sweet. So, trust your instinct, dolly. Don’t trust your match.
Lesson 122, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
The goat had been stabbed. Urijah told Spencer that the aliens were after its brain. Why aliens would come millions of miles to our planet just for a goat’s brain, I had no clue. That’s all the information I got out of Spencer before he went to work. I had a million questions and no answers. But first things first. I had matches to match.
I had already eaten breakfast with my grandmother, a long breakfast where we looked at my ring and didn’t speak about the consequences and meanings of a precious gem and sliver of gold borne by a finger for what was supposed to be forever.
Afterwards, I had gotten dressed. “Gladie,” Grandma called from her room. I picked up my purse to see what she needed before I left for the day. “First things first,” she told me when I walked into her room.
“Matchmaking. I’ve got it covered,” I said.
“You’ll have to hold her hand for this one.”
“Terri might not like that. So, I called Bruce, and I set up the meet so she won’t know it’s me.”
“Smart! Matchmaking for the reluctant match. I told you that you have the gift.” She patted the place on the bed next to her, and I sat down. She took my hand, the other hand where there was no ring. “Spencer is a good man. He’s a mensch,” she said.
I felt my face get hot.
“This is a good match,” Grandma continued. “This is a true love match. A forever match.”
“Forever’s a long time, Grandma.”
“I wish.”
Bruce Coyle, pesticide truck driver and searcher for love, was thrilled that I had found him a match so quickly. “She looks like a model, and she loves cats,” I told him. I decided to leave out the part about her being a bitch and in love with another man. I gave him a copy of her work picture off the internet. He approved heartily. Why wouldn’t he? She was gorgeous.
Luckily, Tuesday was Terri’s day off. It was the perfect time to send Bruce to her house under false pretenses. Sometimes love was a dirty business and a little underhanded. I met Bruce around the corner from Terri’s house. “Here you go,” I said, handing him a kitten that I had gotten from the shelter. “You know what to do.”
The cat was orange and tiny. It was the kind of kitten Twitter followers watched in videos to reduce stress. I wasn’t a huge cat lover, but even I was tempted to take the kitten home. Terri would be a goner.
“Oh, what a cute guy,” Bruce said. “Hello, Mr. Orange, I’m Bruce. Wanna come home with me?”
“You know the plan, Bruce?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay. This should go without a hitch. I have to leave on other business. You’ll be okay, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Bruce was calm under pressure, not like the sumo wrestler who had freaked out on the phone when I gave him his match’s contact information, like a man who was one step away from happiness but was afraid of stepping. But I had done it. I had made two matches in record time. If they didn’t screw it up, I was free to find the killer and save Bridget. I patted myself on the back for filling in for my grandmother with amazing success. Maybe she was right and I really did have the gift.
I drove to Tea Time and parked in front. Buckstars had reopened, and there was a new sign that Ruth hadn’t gotten to, yet. I walked into Tea Time, which had more people than the day before, but business was still lighter than normal.
“There you are,” Ruth said, rushing me as I entered. “Time’s a wasting. We have investigating to do.”
“May I have a latte, please?”
“Here,” she said, handing me a to-go cup. “I’ve got Julie filling in for me, but we don’t have a lot of time. She’s been worried about Fred, and she’s distracted. She almost poisoned one customer already.”
Ruth had a twinkle in her eye, the kind of twinkle that Charles Manson had probably been more than a little familiar with. There was no doubt in my mind that she was using this investigation as a means of torturing her new competition.
“Maybe I should go in alone,” I suggested, taking a step back, out of her reach. “Maybe they’ll be more talkative that way.” And less of a chance that Ruth and I would get arrested.
“Don’t worry about me. I got this covered. I know just what to do.”
“You’re not going to kill them with your baseball bat, are you?”
“Not in the next five minutes.”
“I can’t go in there with your coffee,” I said, taking a sip of my latte.
“Drink fast. Is that what I think it is?” she asked, eyeing my ring.
I blushed. “Yes.” I braced myself for the onslaught of teasing.
“Good,” she said, surprising me. “The cop’s a good choice. A little too pretty for my taste, but he’s got a steady job, and he looks at you like you’re the melting Velveeta cheese in a Philly cheesesteak.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s better than a kick in the pants.”
She had a point. It was better than a kick in the pants. And that’s what a successful marriage was. It wasn’t the state of euphoria that I was in, that moment when all the possibilities were presented but none of the struggles. But something told me that with all the struggles included, a marriage to Spencer would be better than a kick in the pants. Much better.
So, I agreed to let Ruth go with me to Buckstars, and I braced myself for the worst. I gulped half of my latte and handed her back the to go cup to throw away.
As Ruth and I walked into Buckstars, she whispered to me, “If this goes south, I’ll flood the place, and you run for your life.”
“We’re just going to ask them some questions and look around. This isn’t Da Nang in the sixties.”
She harrumphed. “It’s always Da Nang, Gladie. Always.”
To my big surprise, Ruth plastered a big, unnatural smile on her face. “Look at this lovely establishment,” she gushed loudly. There was more than one stunned face in Buckstars as Ruth entered. There was also a tangible rise in anxiety. “So clean! Very clean! Who would have ever thought to turn a coffee house into a surgical theater. Ingenious! Is that you, Ford? My, you look nice today.”
Ruth was terrible at being phony, probably because she had had such little practice doing it. I snuck past her and made a beeline for the room in the back where the murder had taken place. The door was closed, and I opened it, walking inside.
It had been cleaned. There was no sign that anything nefarious had happened there. I searched for any clue, any sign of who had killed Bradford Blythe and why. Nothing.
“Hi, Gladie,” I heard behind me, and I turned. It was Ford Essex, the owner of Buckstars. “Did you get lost on your way to the restroom?”
Normally under these circumstances, I had exp
erienced that honesty was the worst policy. But for some reason, this time around, I decided to tell the truth.
“No. I was looking at the scene of the crime. You know, for clues.”
I searched his face for signs of guilt. After all, the crime happened in his shop, and the way he had looked at Brad made it obvious that he knew him. But there were no signs of guilt on Ford Essex’s face. In fact, he looked like he had never felt guilty in his life. But he probably should have. Because he was looking at me like a predator looks at his prey, or how I looked at a bologna sandwich. I took a step backward.
“You like true crime, huh?” he asked, giving me a come-hither look, which made me throw up a little in my mouth.
“Yes.” It was sort of the truth. I wasn’t a fan of true crime TV or books, but I had developed an obsession with real life real crime on more than one occasion. “Any ideas about what happened here?”
“That pregnant woman with the big glasses knifed the jerk a lot of times. Why? Have you heard something different?”
He took a couple steps forward, invading my personal space. I was getting a strong man-in-the-park-in-a-raincoat vibe off of him, and I took note of how many steps it was to escape from the small room. I also noted that the noise level wasn’t that bad in the coffee shop, and if I screamed, I would probably be heard. Add to that the fact that Ruth would have loved any excuse to pound Ford’s head in like she was tenderizing steak, I wasn’t scared, no matter how grossed out I was by Ford’s intense study of my breasts.
“I think the jury’s out about the pregnant woman being the killer,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the police are looking elsewhere,” I lied. “There might have been a witness.”
Oh, geez. I was such a good liar. The lies flowed out of me without me even thinking about them first. It was kind of like a muscle spasm of the mouth.
It was a good lie, and it did the trick. Ford took a step back, and his expression changed from leering to slight fear.
“Are you saying I did it?”
Yes, that’s what I was saying. If he did it, I could save Bridget.
“Because I didn’t do it,” he continued, dashing my hopes for a confession. “I hated the bastard, but only an idiot would stab a man to death in his back room at his grand opening. You know what I mean?”