by E J Cochrane
The one standout in the dimly lit and unkempt space was the bar itself. It spanned almost the full length of one wall, its gleaming surface beckoning thirsty patrons like a Siren. Leigh had already found herself a seat at Beverage Central, and wanting to get started (on the lubrication as well as the investigation), Maddie strode up to the bar and settled herself in the empty seat next to Leigh, who, in a pleasantly surprising turn of events, was chasing her beer with water.
“You made it!” Leigh’s effusive greeting startled her.
“I told you I would,” she said, but Leigh’s attention was already elsewhere.
“Kittens!” Leigh called out, and for a moment Maddie worried that her friend had been stricken by the same affliction that fueled Dottie’s love of pet names. But in truth, Leigh’s outburst had been a summons for the last person Maddie expected to find tending bar in a lesbian establishment.
“Kittens, this is my good friend Maddie. Take care of her.”
“What can I get you, love?”
If the British accent hadn’t surprised her, the appearance of a stout, bald man (the least kitteny person ever to be saddled with the nickname Kittens, Maddie suspected) did the trick. His stern expression caught her more off guard. It didn’t exactly inspire friendly banter, nor did it explain why a lesbian-owned lesbian bar had made him, to an extent, the face of their establishment, but at least she didn’t feel inadequate or undeserving of his attention.
Conscious of the need for levelheadedness, she dismissed the part of her that wanted to sample Pi’s impressive bourbon offerings and instead ordered a Mudhopper from Skinny Frog, a small, local brewery. She planned to stretch it for the duration of her stay. If the raised eyebrow and gentle nod were any indication, Kittens approved of her choice.
“I hope this one sticks around,” he said to Leigh as he placed Maddie’s drink in front of her. “She’s got better taste than you and your usual company.”
“Bite me, Kittens.” Leigh added an obscene gesture for his benefit.
“Don’t make offers you aren’t prepared to follow up on.” He winked at Leigh, a jarring display of playfulness that made the exchange all the more surreal.
“I take it you come here a lot,” Maddie said to Leigh.
“No, I’m just the only person who’s nice to that guy. I’d be even nicer if he’d quit giving me grief about my beer of choice.”
“Make better choices, love,” he said and dodged the peanut Leigh threw at him as he moved on to another customer.
“Are you sure this is the best place for us to talk?” She looked around the bar, whose business was surprisingly robust for a Monday evening. It seemed like prying ears lurked in every corner. Not that they were discussing classified information, but she doubted she’d want to publicize her own connection to a murder, no matter how tenuous it might be.
“Relax, Maddie. No one here is listening to us. They’re too busy searching for their next failed romance.”
Leigh’s bleak outlook on love notwithstanding, she didn’t see how that excluded her friend from the other patrons’ attention, but she didn’t have the chance to argue.
“Besides, this is where I came the day Terry died. If anyone can vouch for my whereabouts, this is where we’d find them.”
Maddie looked around the bar with renewed interest, wondering if her job could be as simple as finding someone in this crowd who remembered seeing Leigh on the day in question. Probably not, but she wouldn’t rule it out.
“So tell me about that day, the day Terry died.”
“There’s not much to tell, Mads. I skipped work because I wasn’t feeling great, but I started feeling better around dinnertime. Thought I’d come here.”
For a liquid dinner, Maddie suspected. “Did you talk to anyone?”
“Kittens, of course.”
“Of course.” She made a mental note to visit with Kittens later. “Anyone else?”
Leigh scrunched her face in thought. “There was a brunette, maybe.”
Because it would take no effort at all to locate the right brown-haired woman somewhere in the city. “You can’t be more specific about the brunette?”
“It was a while ago, and I wasn’t the most perceptive I’ve ever been.”
She closed her eyes and gulped her beer in her struggle to quell her frustration. How was she supposed to prove Leigh’s innocence when all she had to offer as evidence was Kittens and an unidentifiable brunette? She would have to go about this a different way.
“Tell me about Terry.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How about anything? I don’t even know this woman’s last name.”
“Kovacs.” Leigh spat out the word and signaled to Kittens for another drink. She’d all but forgotten her water.
“Did anyone else have reason to dislike her?”
“Only anyone who ever met her.” Maddie raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “I guess some people actually liked her,” Leigh amended. “Lindsey sure did. But a lot of people didn’t.”
“Do you know who any of those people might be?” She took another too-large swallow of her drink. So much for stretching her one beer.
“Her ex, Lindsey’s ex-husband Ray, Terry and Lindsey’s neighbors on all sides, at least half of her coworkers—”
“Leigh?” someone squealed at a volume that threatened the well-being of Maddie’s eardrums.
Before Maddie had a chance to recover from the auditory assault, a full-figured blonde charged up to the bar and inserted herself between them. Once again Maddie had inadvertently worn her invisibility cloak to a gathering of lesbians.
“What are you doing here?” Blondie pulled a resistant Leigh into a muffled embrace, Leigh’s face momentarily lost in the larger woman’s décolletage, a fate that, normally, she probably wouldn’t have minded. At the moment, however, she floundered for a release from her pillowy internment.
“I’m here with a friend,” Leigh said, and Maddie peered around the interloper’s substantial form. She offered a thin smile and a wave which Leigh’s bosomy buddy promptly ignored. Resigning herself to her fate as woman repellant, Maddie flagged Kittens down and ordered another drink.
“I didn’t think I’d see you so soon after…you know. How are you doing?”
So Blondzilla knew about some of Leigh’s recent challenges. Maddie wondered what else she knew and if she could help prove Leigh’s innocence.
“It’s been hard,” Leigh answered. The woman stroked Leigh’s arm in what was undoubtedly supposed to be a gesture of sympathy, though Leigh looked like it brought her more irritation than comfort. “But my friend here is helping me get through it.”
“I know how that goes.” The blonde, oblivious to Leigh’s hint, threw a conspiratorial shoulder nudge in Leigh’s direction. Maddie would have to ask Leigh about that later, if this woman ever decided to give them privacy. “If you need anything, just call. I’ll always be there for you, Leigh.”
“Thanks, Kat. I appreciate that. Right now I just need to talk to my friend.”
“Oh,” Kat said and glared at Maddie. At least she’d finally acknowledged her existence. “I see. I just thought, you know, after Lindsey killing herself and all, you wouldn’t want to be alone, but I guess you’ve got that covered. You don’t need me.”
“Kat,” Leigh drew her into a friendly embrace, “don’t think I don’t need you. I do. Maybe we can talk later this week?”
“I’d like that,” a placated Kat said, and after glaring at Maddie once more, threaded her way through the crowd to the back of the bar, where the patrons showed the proper enthusiasm at her arrival. She guessed none of them had opted for a conversation with Kat, or the reception might have been chillier.
Once Kat was out of earshot, she hit Leigh with a Granny Doyle-inspired look of perturbed expectation. “Care to explain?”
“It’s a long story,” Leigh sighed.
“Then you better talk fast.”
Leigh shifted uncomfortably
on her barstool, the bowl of peanuts in front of her suddenly commanding her full attention. “Kat and I used to be neighbors, before Lindsey left me.”
She considered her neighbors past and present. Not once had she ever hugged one of them, let alone buried her face in any of their chests. Clearly, Leigh had done some editing, but how much?
“When did you start sleeping together?” She waited for a denial, but it didn’t come.
“About a month after we got dumped. Kat is Terry’s ex.”
Maddie choked on her beer, as surprised by that revelation as by her own minor detecting victory.
“We ran into each other here one night. Drinks and commiserating turned into sloppy, drunken comfort sex. We both knew it was a mistake, but…”
“But you’ve made this mistake more than once.”
“Is it so wrong to look for solace from someone who understands what I’m going through?”
“Solace, no, but an exchange of bodily fluids seems like a lot to ask of a neighbor.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now because I ended it.”
Maddie glanced across the bar to find Kat glaring at them. “Does she know that?”
“Of course.” She swallowed the dregs of her beer and flagged Kittens down for a refill. “We’re just friends now. We both know it’s better that way.”
“If you say so,” she muttered, but as she looked back at Kat, she wondered if Leigh was right.
Chapter Ten
Though her encounter with Leigh ran longer than expected, Maddie thought better of driving to her next appointment, for numerous reasons. One benefit of walking Bart and Goliath to Nadia’s house was that it gave Maddie the chance to wear the boys out before they descended upon her home, thus minimizing their potential for damage. As a vet raising a puppy who shared Goliath’s DNA, Nadia should understand the importance of leaving nothing chewable (in effect, nothing) within the expansive reach of her canine companions, but Maddie didn’t want to risk the chaos an energetic and excited Goliath could bring to Dr. Sheridan and her possessions. She wouldn’t put it past him to find some way to demolish an empty room, probably with his tail alone.
But for all his destructive tendencies, he was one of the sweetest dogs she’d ever met. Plus, he had saved her life, pretty much securing his place in her heart and home no matter how many pairs of shoes and sunglasses he rendered unwearable. As if aware of the not entirely favorable chain of thoughts running through her brain, he ambled beside her and nudged her hand with his head, just as though he wanted to remind her of the sweetness that was his saving grace.
“Don’t worry, buddy. We’re stuck with each other.”
Reassured, he trotted ahead to join Bart, who sniffed intently at a desiccated carcass, whether rat or squirrel, Maddie wasn’t sure, nor did she want to find out. Fortunately, a firm tug at their leashes and a handful of treats kept her from getting any closer to the dead thing in the form of prying it from one of her dog’s jaws.
In addition to giving the dogs a leg up on good behavior, the walk to Nadia’s place should have been the perfect remedy not only for her Nadia-centric nervousness and her racing thoughts as she pondered what little information Leigh gave her but also her unfortunate tipsiness thanks to Kittens’s attentive and persuasive bartending. That theory, however, was flawed. Though the initial blast of chilly night air gave her the feeling of alertness (if not the actual thing), she minimized its sobering effects once she zipped up her Little Guys hoodie. Somewhat warmer, Maddie immediately began to contemplate the latest development in Leigh’s story.
The news that Leigh had slept with Kat, the pushy blonde from the bar, hadn’t come as a shocker, but the fact that Kat was Terry’s ex and that she and Leigh had spent several nights together in a sort of post-dumped consolation coitus stunned her. Not that Maddie had never made unwise sex decisions in the wake of a broken heart (and could, in fact, be en route to one at that precise moment), but somehow she expected better of Leigh. Even in the midst of the alcohol-fueled foolishness of college, Leigh always made the mature decision.
Of course, Leigh had indulged in the standard revelry of unsupervised semi-adults. She had actually been the instigator of Maddie’s first college hangover, but for all the fun she was willing to have with friends, her studies always came first, so she more often ended up mothering the drunkards in her midst. To say it was shocking to see her suddenly so eager to drown her sorrows would be an understatement, and Maddie hoped that once Leigh ceased to be a murder suspect, her newfound love of alcohol would disappear.
Just then, a frigid blast of rain-dappled air pelted Maddie in the face, making her wish she’d thought to put on a jacket or bring an umbrella. She shivered and huddled deeper into her optimistic choice of outerwear, then urged the boys to walk faster. If their increased speed didn’t warm her up, at least they’d get to Nadia’s hopefully warm house a few minutes sooner.
The boys seemed to enjoy the brisk pace, and as they padded along the leaf-strewn sidewalks, her thoughts turned back to the warring subject matters of Leigh and Nadia. It seemed obvious that proving Leigh’s innocence with an unshakeable alibi would be about as easy as convincing Dottie that high heels were the devil’s footwear (a war they’d waged for close to a decade). That left Maddie with the daunting task of figuring out who killed Terry, an outcome that seemed as likely as Maddie surviving the rest of her night without developing an ulcer.
As she rounded a corner, the wind and rain picked up speed, whipping around her and penetrating her clothing. Again she regretted that she hadn’t worn something more appropriate. If Dottie had been privy to her fashion choice for the evening—jeans, her least wrinkled blouse, running shoes and the sure-to-offend hoodie—she would undoubtedly wish the same thing. Dottie would choke if she knew Maddie had even considered an article of clothing with the word “sweat” in its name as proper attire for potential seduction (which is, of course, the only way Dottie would view Maddie’s evening with Nadia).
Maddie still wasn’t certain the exact nature of what she was about to walk into, but seduction was off the menu as far as she was concerned, not that that stopped her from fussing with her hair and putting on perfume and makeup before she and the boys left home.
Even though Dottie wasn’t around to judge Maddie’s choice of “seduction attire,” she could easily imagine Dottie’s objections: “Are you trying to repel this woman? Or is pity the crux of your allurement tactic, sweets? It’s like you’re trying to hurt me with bad fashion.”
“Because you were my sole consideration when I decided what to wear,” Maddie said and frowned. When the boys both turned and tilted their heads at her, she realized she’d spoken aloud. “Great. Now I’m hallucinating conversations with Dottie. It’s like the DTs but with criticism.”
She sighed and raced the dogs the last few blocks to their destination.
By the time they entered Nadia’s blessedly toasty home, she felt battered by Mother Nature. The up-to-then dormant winter weather had asserted itself fully on their brief journey, and Maddie, too cold to monitor her pups’ behavior, dropped the boys’ leashes and hoped for the best as they made a full circuit of their new environment with a leaping, barking Mabel in tow.
“You didn’t wear a coat?” Nadia’s concerned expression rapidly overtook the lopsided grin she’d worn when she opened her door.
“I sometimes make poor choices,” she chattered. She rubbed her arms with her hands, trying to warm up.
“You’re frozen,” Nadia stated the obvious. Then after a moment’s hesitation, wrapped Maddie in a thawing embrace.
She waited roughly three seconds before sinking into Nadia’s softness and reveling in her tight grip. Just for the warmth, she told herself, even as she inhaled the familiar, heady scent of Dr. Nadia Sheridan and suddenly couldn’t remember why she’d wanted to keep her distance or what she was mad at Nadia about or how to breathe.
“I’m better now. Thanks.” She stepped out of Nadia’s grasp, and
not knowing exactly how to act around her maybe-date, she turned her attention to Nadia’s home.
She hadn’t expected extravagance—veterinarians (even those who occasionally performed questionable favors for wealthy clients) didn’t reap quite the windfall that their expertise and work warranted—but Nadia’s place was surprisingly small and sparse. Aside from a love seat and a coffee table, she had no furniture in her living room. Her bland gray walls (devoid of any decoration) reminded Maddie of concrete. Though she had anticipated a certain amount of puppy-proofed emptiness, this place seemed practically vacant.
She wondered how long Nadia had lived there, but that wasn’t the question that came out.
“What did you want to talk about?”
“Wow. Not even any time for small talk. Are you in that much of a hurry?”
“No. I just—this is driving me crazy. You are driving me crazy.” Unbelievably, Nadia smiled broadly. “Not in a good way.”
“Oh.” Nadia’s face fell.
“I just need to know what’s going on. What is this about?”
Nadia moved closer to her, close enough to touch her again, but thankfully, she kept her hands to herself.
“You really haven’t figured it out?”
“No, I haven’t figured it out, not for lack of insomnia-inducing effort.”
“Can we at least get comfortable first?” Nadia reached to help her out of her sweatshirt, but Maddie stepped away from her.
“No,” she said, feeling more like a petulant child than a grown woman asserting herself.