by Tracey Quinn
“It's too dark,” she whispered. “I can't tell who it is.”
“Who do you think it is?! Zoom in!” I hissed.
“I did, but I still can't be sure who it is,” she answered. “Can you turn on the lights for just a second?”
I looked around and saw a mini flashlight on Mark's bedside table. That could work. However it was attached to his keys. Keys rattle. Feeling like I was getting as crazy as Charlene, I carefully closed my hand over the keys, picked them all up in a bunch, turned on the flashlight and snapped the picture before turning it back off.
“There!” I said, “You can see that Mark's alive! Now I'm going to call the sheriff.”
“But his eyes are closed and he's not moving,” she said. “Is he okay?”
“Charlene, he's asleep!” I snapped, “He's not dead and he's certainly not in the dumpster behind the diner!”
“Okay, Miss O'Shea,” Charlene said tentatively. “But who's in the dumpster?”
“I don't know,” I replied, “but I'm going to go downstairs and call the sheriff right now. Please go to sleep!” I hung up.
“Go ahead and call from here,” Mark said, startling me. “I might as well hear the back story on all this.”
I decided to call my brother Bob, the Deputy Sheriff instead of Sheriff Wilkerson. Bob was less likely to charge Jimmy with anything in case this was all a mistake. When I explained the situation to Bob the best I could, he said he would check it out right away and let me know what was going on. I didn't go into the details about Charlene and her suspicions that I had murdered Mark. I thought it best if that subject never came up.
Mark leaned up on his elbow and looked at me. “So let me get this straight. You just told your brother that Jimmy, your 16-year old busboy, identified my body, not by DNA, but by means of a chocolate pie smashed into my face. He immediately decided that you must have smashed the pie into my face and then shot me behind the diner, several shots, mind you, because I was getting fresh with you. Then, for some bizarre reason, you proceeded to wrap me in bubble wrap. Next you, who are about half my size, hoisted my 185 pound body up over the side of a five foot high dumpster and made it all the way back here in about five minutes when Charlene called you?” he summarized. “So now none of them can call the cops, because of course they like you and they have to give you a chance to skip town before the law closes in. You, therefore, decide to see if I'm alive because apparently you aren't sure whether you murdered me or not. Have I got that right?”
“Well, sort of,” I said, “but you don't understand ---”
“Here's what I do understand,” he went on, “I, a weary public servant, was sleeping peacefully in my bed after being up half the night fighting a fire, and I hear someone creeping up the stairs and see the door slowly open. I know it has to be you because you are the only one with a key to my apartment. I watch you sneak over to the bed and I wonder if you want to get to know me better, but no, you want to take my picture while I'm sleeping. And text it to your 16 year old waitress. Apparently the first picture wasn't satisfactory so you shined a light in my eyes. I assumed this was all part of a somewhat strange fetish until you said you were going to call the Sheriff. That got my attention, but since you called Bob I figured he'd sort it all out and maybe we could each try for a few more hours of sleep.”
“Look, I'm sorry about all this, but there's no need for sarcasm and insults,” I retorted.
“By the way, that night gown is see-through,” he commented.
“By the way, shut up!” I said. What with dealing with Charlene, I hadn't paid any attention what I was wearing. I grabbed a denim jacket from the back of his chair and wrapped it around me as I stalked out.
Chapter 3
Later that morning around 9:30 I was startled to hear what sounded like someone moving around in my kitchen. I could smell coffee. I went into the kitchen and found Mark making coffee.
“What do you think you're doing?” I asked. “How dare you think you can just break into my apartment and help yourself to my coffee!”
He turned and looked at me. He was wearing a rumpled tee shirt and pajama shorts. His face had dark circles under the eyes, beard stubble, still no eyebrows.
“You seriously want me to answer that?” he growled.
Actually, I didn't. On the other hand, I've never been a pushover for anyone.
“Well, somebody got up on the wrong side of the cage this morning,” I replied. “And if you're referring to that little incident last night, which, by the way, only lasted about two minutes, I think you should put on your big boy pants, and just suck it up like a grown-up.”
“First of all, you knocked my big boy pants onto the floor and kicked them somewhere when you stole my jacket,” he replied, “and the only thing I want to suck up is a lot of coffee but you have this stupid, single-serving coffee maker which takes forever to spit out a thimble full. What do you do when you have guests over, give everyone a teaspoon and tell them to help themselves?”
“That coffee maker makes 14 ounces which incidentally would be enough to share,” I said, “but you're welcome to it. I'll just get something to eat.”
“You have food?” he asked. “You didn't stop anywhere when you followed me here yesterday.”
“I work at a diner,” I said. “Linda had a box of stuff ready for me to take with me.”
“Who's Linda? If she's anything like Charlene I wouldn't recommend opening the box.”
“Linda Williams works the late shift for me at The Breezy Spoon with her husband Don, and no, she is nothing like Charlene, thank God,” I replied. “Linda and Don have the apartment above the diner. She has a lot of restaurant experience and he is a retired highway patrolman.”
Mark opened the refrigerator door. “Let's see, looks like sliced ham, Swiss cheese, potato salad, deviled eggs, mustard, mayo and a whole banana cream pie. No chocolate pie, for obvious reasons.”
“No reason to be snarky,” I said. “What happened last night was an emergency; I had no choice.”
“Well, we could debate that forever,” he responded as he started to make some sandwiches. “Didn't you think about how dangerous it was? I keep my gun next to the bed. I could have shot you.”
“Of course I knew that might be a possibility but I thought that if I saw you go for it I'd let you know it was me,” I replied. “Plus I could hit the floor and start rolling. I've been trained in that kind of stuff, as you know.”
“In what?” he asked. “Rolling around back and forth on a bedroom floor so fast that a sniper couldn't shoot you? Guess I missed that part of basic training.”
“You're a sniper?” I asked.
“I'm a fireman,” he replied. “Where are the pickles?”
“On the door of the fridge next to the Arizona iced tea,” I said.
“Wait,” he said. “You have Arizona iced tea and you want half of my cup of coffee?”
“First of all, a cup holds 8 ounces and the coffee maker makes 14 ounces at a time,” I explained. “And, no, I didn't want half of the coffee but I thought you should share because it's my coffee and it would show that there's no hard feelings.”
“Overcome with fatigue as I am, I just made you a very nice sandwich which should prove that there are no hard feelings,” he replied, handing me the plate, “although I have made a list of crimes the police could charge you with if I decided to turn you in.”
“Crimes!? What crimes? I just took a picture!”
“Breaking and entering, for one,” he answered in between bites of sandwich.
“Cross that one off,” I said, “you just broke and entered too, so we're even.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed. “Then there's obstruction of a public servant in the performance of his duties.”
“And assuming that you're the public servant, how did I obstruct you?” I asked.
“Well, I can't perform my duties if I don't get enough sleep, so you were obstructing me from being capable of rescuing widows and orph
ans and, quite often, cute little puppies, et cetera. You should feel very ashamed about that, yes, you should. Pass me a couple more of those deviled eggs.”
“I'll never forgive myself,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Texting inappropriate pictures to a minor child,” he said.
“Inappropriate?” I said. “It was just a picture of you! What was so inappropriate?”
Mark stood up, spread his arms out and slowly turned around. “What's a young romantic teenager going to think about when she sees this?” he asked.
“Probably that you didn't stand too close to your razor this morning and that you've got mustard on your chin. If you're finished listing my crimes you can get some napkins from the drawer over there.”
“I'm not finished,” he replied. “Next: theft of vintage jacket.”
“Vintage jacket?” I scoffed. “You should be grateful that I took it out of the room. The odors of motor oil all over it probably would have overcome you. Not only that, it got motor oil on my nightshirt and I had to take another shower before I could get in bed. You should be especially grateful because I put the disgusting thing in the washer and I'll return it to you when it dries. Plus I had to wash my nightshirt and that's why I had to sleep in my old diner uniform. Is that everything?”
“Almost,” he replied. “The last is intent to defile.”
“In your dreams, cowboy!” I said. “You couldn't possibly think that you were in danger of being ravished in your sleep!”
“Indeed I was,” he replied. “I sat up in my bed for hours, just cowering there with my covers pulled up to my chin, afraid that you were planning on having your way with me. By the way, you don't have any ice cream for the pie. You might want to make a note of that.”
“Uh, excuse me, but you were snoring before I was halfway out of the room,” I said. “Didn't think you were too terrified.”
“That wasn't snoring,” he said, as he finished eating. “That was sobbing. I was very concerned about my virtue. By the way, my TV isn't set up yet, so can I check out the weather channel on yours? I want to know whether I need to put the cover on the truck bed before we go get your stuff at Mrs. Hamsky's.”
“Sure,” I said, “but the set in the living room isn't hooked up, so you can use the one in the bedroom.”
“Gotcha,” he replied. “Oh, and just to show my good will, let me know if the motor oil stains don't wash out of your night shirt because I'm willing to go over to the mall in the next town and spend all day going through everything they have in Victoria's Secret till I find a replacement.”
“I'll bet you would,” I said. “You're a regular prince among men, Mark, yes, you are. No doubt about it.”
“I get that all the time,” he replied as he left the room.
I was just finishing clearing up the kitchen when I heard the doorbell ring. I wasn't expecting company and didn't particularly want any right then. My hair was sticking out in every direction and I was still wearing the wrinkled diner uniform that I'd slept in. Through the front window I saw my brother Bob's car out front so I opened the door.. He'd seen me looking a lot worse plenty of times before. You don't have to look nice for family.
“Hi, sis,” Bob said. “Thought I'd come by and hook up your TV for you and let you know what happened about the body in the dumpster.”
“Who was it?” I asked. “Was it someone that we know?”
“Yes, it was the Invisible Man,” Bob replied. “There wasn't any body in the dumpster. Nothing in there but the usual trash, no signs of anything out of the ordinary. Don came down and helped me look around for shell casings or anything that would indicate that someone had been shot, or that anything had happened at all, for that matter, but there was nothing.”
“But Jimmy was so sure,” I said.
“He's still sure. He keeps telling me that he's eaten a slice of that pie before so he's positive it couldn't be anything else. And then Charlene starts chiming in with her theories....” He threw up his hands and sighed.
“I know all about Charlene's theories,” I groaned. As Bob sat down in the recliner I began to recount the details of my early morning adventure. I wanted to be sure he heard the truth before he got Mark's interpretation.
He was still laughing when Mark came out of the bedroom.
“Hey, Bob,” Mark called, “did you find the body in the dumpster and was it me?”
“No body. From what I hear, you were here the whole time being tortured by my kid sister.”
“Now, wait a minute,” I objected, “I was going by what Charlene said, and she was totally upset!”
“Let's see now, didn't you tell me last week that Charlene said that she and Jimmy were walking by the lake under the full moon and they saw two glowing red eyes shining out of the water?” Bob asked. “If I recall right, you said she asked you to email '60 Minutes' to see when they could send a camera crew out here, because she was sure it was one of those lake monsters from the internet! But she told you to let her know when they were on their way so she could get her hair done first?”
“Hey, that's funny,” said Mark. “A couple days ago some old lady with a couple of dogs on leashes rushed into the fire station and said she had been walking her dogs by the lake and she saw two fiery red eyes staring at her from the water. She wanted to know if she was supposed to report it to us or the Sheriff's office. We felt sure that you guys would want to handle it.”
“Yes, I'll bet you did,” said Bob. “That would be one of your next door neighbors, either Heather or Helen Jameson. They've got a couple of those yapping little mutts. Sheriff Wilkerson said one of them came in and told him about the lake monster.”
“Did he check it out?” I asked.
“Seriously, Dani?” he laughed. “They used to babysit Charlene and they're still close. The sheriff thought we might hold off on opening a lake monster investigation for a while.”
“Charlene assumed that Dani had to murder me because I made a pass at her,” Mark cut in. “I guess you know by now that nothing like that happened?”
“No, not possible, you don't look like Howard Keel,” Bob affirmed.
“Now, that's true,” said Mark, “but I've given it some thought. You know in those old movies how the actors would wear that thick pancake makeup?”
“Say, I think I know where you're going with this,” Bob said. “We don't know what old Howard looked like without that makeup, which was probably a couple inches thick. Hell, man, you two could have been twins!”
“Absolutely,” Mark replied. “Separated at birth. It could have happened.”
“But can you sing?” Bob inquired.
“Only when I'm about five beers deep, but yes, I do sing.”
“Well, there you go. No doubt about it.”
“Pardon me for interrupting,” I said, “but if you're both finished mocking one of the greatest movie actors of all time, perhaps Bob would be so kind as to set up my TV so he can get some sleep and I can go to work.”
“If you're working the night shift you might as well go ahead home,” Mark said to Bob. “I'll hook up the TV before we pick up Dani's stuff from Mrs. Hamsky's.”
“Thanks a lot, buddy,” said Bob. “I'll spot you a beer after the game Saturday.”
“You got it, man.”
Later, after Mark had hooked up the TV, he told me, “I can be ready to pick up your stuff in about 20 minutes. I assume it's a grand piano, a couple of refrigerators, and a lead safe, stuff like that?”
“It's six cardboard boxes for which I will gladly give you a free lunch at the diner,” I replied.
“No need,” he said. “I can't keep bumming free food off you.”
“Today's special is Double Cheeseburger, sunny-side up egg optional, chili-cheese fries, and choice of green salad or corn on the cob,” I told him.
“Make that fifteen minutes,” he said, heading for the door.
Chapter 4
Later that afternoon Mark stopped in to The Breezy Spoon to in
form me that my belongings had been successfully freed from the clutches of Mrs. Hamsky. He had polished off his free lunch, including the egg and the corn on the cob, and then left to run some errands. I was still grumpy about the early morning dramas, but Jimmy had left before I had gotten in, and Charlene's shift didn't start until later, so I had to keep it to myself.
As I was rehearsing the choice words I'd say to them when they arrived, I saw that the needlework ladies were just finishing their lunch, too. Business is always slow in the middle of the afternoon so I had agreed to let the local needlework club have their own corner of the diner to get together and work on their latest projects and share town gossip. They would arrive at one, have lunch, and could stay until five when the diner business started picking up. The club consisted of about ten ladies as well as one man, Tom Jordan, the local pharmacist, and beside the regulars a few others would sit in on occasion when the gossip was good.
Tom's wife, Henrietta, was a loud, obnoxious bully and we always assumed that he joined the club to have at least four hours a week in peace. When they were dating, Henrietta was all sweetness and light; jolly, cheerful, a very pleasant person to be around. After the wedding she dropped the act and Tom found he was married to what my Dad used to call “Satan's Mouthpiece”. My Dad was Tom's friend and advised him to consult Dr. Maloney to see if Henrietta had some mental imbalance. He thought maybe some medication could help. After examining her though, the doctor told Tom that “She's not insane, she's just damned mean.” His recommendation was to see a divorce lawyer.
Tom is such a nice person that most of us were inclined to agree with the lawyer, but he's a very religious man and believes that those marriage vows are meant to last forever, no matter what. But one day he went to the library where Jenny Morris, the librarian, found him a book on needlework, and he got hooked on it, so to speak. He decided that crocheting would be the easiest to learn and started practicing, and Jenny invited him to the needlework club. He seems to enjoy it a lot, plus he always sits next to Jenny at the meetings so she can help him. His project is a queen-sized popcorn stitch bedspread. He usually manages to complete one or two rows every week so he should be finished sometime before the end of the century.