Double Dog Dare

by E J Cochrane

  “You mean other than lying to me, sneaking around behind my back, disregarding my right to make decisions about my own property, taking my friendship for granted, and assigning zero value to my opinion? I guess she didn’t do anything at all.”

  “It was for your own good, panda.”

  “And she roped my grandmother into her scheme. My unfailingly forthright grandmother, who I look to to know what’s right. You’re supposed to make the smart, moral, good choices, not get wrapped up in deceiving your grandchildren for the benefit of their manipulative friends. I don’t even understand how you thought any of this was a good idea.”

  “Well, I don’t understand why you think it’s such a bad idea to put Dottie in charge of the renovations. She has the resources to fund the project out of pocket.”

  “You don’t,” Dottie chimed in.

  “She has time to deal with designers and contractors.”

  “You don’t.”

  “She has impeccable taste.”

  Maddie spun around to face Dottie. “Don’t you dare say, ‘You don’t.’”

  “At least you’re speaking to me again.”

  She glowered at her but said nothing.

  “You shouldn’t let them treat you that way.” An unexpected ally, Kat laid her hand on Maddie’s arm, but before she recovered from her astonishment, another shock befell her.

  “What the hell is this, Maddie?” Nadia stood behind her, her expression a dark cloud of jealousy. “Not only did you forget our date, but you’re also out at a bar with another woman. Again.” Her eyes flashed with an anger that sent a corresponding chill throughout Maddie’s entire system. She could understand Nadia’s irritation at her absentmindedness, but the intensity of her reaction seemed extreme.

  “I’m not here with anyone. I came alone, and now I happen to be standing next to someone I have a passing acquaintance with. We’re hardly laying the groundwork for romantic bliss here.” She scooted a fraction of an inch farther from Kat, putting as much distance between them as possible (though given the crowd at the bar drinking in every word of her regrettably public argument with Nadia, that distance was negligible).

  “You looked awfully cozy to me.”

  “Look around, Nadia. Every lesbian within a ten-mile radius is packed into this place.”

  “Not to mention family and friends,” Dottie interjected helpfully.

  “That’s not cozy. That’s crowded.”

  Nadia seemed to contemplate Maddie’s point, but not enough to concede her argument. “That still doesn’t let you off the hook for forgetting about our plans.”

  “In my defense, I was a little distracted when we talked this morning.” Maddie hoped a reminder of the more pleasant start to their day would help her move past her anger. Judging by her stony gaze, Nadia wasn’t going to be forgiving her any time soon. “I’m sorry, Nadia. I got a bit blindsided after Granny and I finished with Esther, and with that on top of the investigation—”

  “You did not just try to use that stupid investigation as a reasonable excuse for standing me up, did you?”

  “Not exactly,” she offered meekly, remembering much too late that she was supposed to be taking the night off from crime solving to focus on their relationship. “It’s just that Granny and I made some progress, and then Harriet had some news, but unfortunately so did Granny, and—”

  “What about me, Maddie?” Nadia’s voice rose in her anger. “You were supposed to be with me tonight, focusing on us, not thinking about your grandmother or your sister or Dottie or that stupid investigation. But you’re so wrapped up with trying to figure out who killed Terry and Lindsey that you aren’t even thinking about me, are you?”

  “Lindsey killed herself,” Kat jumped in.

  “Of course I am.” She ignored Kat’s interjection but made no further progress defending herself thanks to yet another interruption.

  “Is there a problem, Miss Smithwick?” Murphy appeared at her side, imposing cop persona in full effect despite her civilian clothes.

  “Everything’s fine, Murphy. Thank you.”

  “You know the bouncer?” Nadia sounded incredulous. “How often are you here?”

  “Third time this week,” Kittens chimed in and earned a stern glower from Maddie.

  “She’s a client,” Maddie clarified.

  “That explains so much.” Kat seemed disproportionately pleased by Maddie’s explanation.

  “Just a client?” Murphy looked somewhat disappointed but refused to leave her side.

  She would have apologized, but the suggestion that Murphy might be more to her sparked another jealous tirade from Nadia.

  “You’re so busy running around trying to figure out who killed Lindsey that I have to pencil in a date with you. When do you have time to get so close to clients?”

  “I’m not the only one with a full schedule.”

  “Hello? No one murdered Lindsey,” Kat said again. “She committed suicide.”

  Nadia shifted her attention from Maddie long enough to glare at Kat. “How is this any of your business?”

  “Aside from the fact that we’re practically sitting in her lap while we argue?” Maddie asked, earning an icy glare from Nadia.

  “Lindsey made it my business when she stole my girlfriend, and if you think anyone other than Lindsey had anything to do with her death, you obviously didn’t read her note.”

  “What did you just say?” Maddie asked, a dim awareness of something amiss forming in her mind.

  “How slow are you?” Kat answered snidely. “She explained in her note exactly why she killed herself.”

  “And you read her note?”

  “Duh, that’s what I’m telling you.”

  “When?”

  “What?” Kat’s face morphed from smug superiority to budding panic in a fraction of a second, like she realized in that moment the mistake she’d just made.

  “When did you have access to Lindsey’s suicide note?”

  “After she died,” Kat said with as much confidence as a first-grader attempting to spell “triskaidekaphobia” in the school spelling bee.

  “And who showed it to you?” Maddie asked, certain she already knew the answer.

  Kat’s mouth fell open, but the only sound that emerged was a low, plaintive groan.

  “You were there, weren’t you? You’re the other person Esther overheard.”

  “So what if I was there? It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But it does seem awfully suspicious. Why would you be visiting the widow of your ex?”

  “I was worried about how she was dealing with her grief. She wasn’t the most stable person on the planet, so I decided to check on her.”

  “I thought you hated Lindsey.”

  “With good reason.”

  “But you thought you’d just overlook your painful history with her to make sure she wasn’t feeling too heartbroken, is that it?”

  “You don’t know what it was like, watching Terry fall all over that bitch. It’s not like she was even pretty. She was fat,” Kat growled. Maddie decided against pointing out that fat and attractive weren’t mutually exclusive.

  “But what did you hope to gain by killing her? Terry was already dead. It’s not like you were going to get back together.”

  “I tried to. I stopped by to talk some sense into Terry, to help her see how horrible Lindsey was, and that she’d be happier if she came back to me.” Kat spoke as if she couldn’t acknowledge Maddie’s point any more than she’d acknowledged Terry’s decision to move on. “But she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t leave me any choice.”

  “I somehow doubt your only options were reconciliation or murder.”

  “Desperate measures,” Dottie chimed in, meriting death stares from both Maddie and Kat.

  “I am not desperate,” Kat growled.

  “Aren’t you? You’ve hurt everyone who’s rejected you. Isn’t that why you worked so hard to make Leigh look guilty? Because she chose Lindsey over you.�
�

  “I was there for Leigh after Lindsey dumped her. I comforted her and helped her get her life back together, but she still went running after her the first chance she got, and she ditched me as soon as Lindsey let her back in. What else could I do?”

  “Almost anything other than framing your alleged friend for double homicide?”

  Out of nowhere Kat grabbed Maddie by the hair with one hand, and with the other she smashed her half-full beer bottle against the bar. Cheap beer and glass shrapnel sprayed the room, shredding Kat’s hand and causing several people to panic and flee. Murphy, Nadia, Harriet, and Patrick all surged toward Maddie and the disturbed and bleeding woman who held her, but she thrust her glass shiv at the entourage, keeping them at bay as she retreated to the rear of the bar, abductee in tow.

  “This is ludicrous,” she heard Dottie say as Kat dragged her through the bar.

  She struggled to free herself but couldn’t seem to gain her footing well enough to slow their progress or release herself from Kat’s hold, and she shuddered at the bone-chilling thought that she would perish in a lesbian dive bar.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The part of Maddie’s brain that wasn’t fixated on how Kat would kill her was wondering what her cop friend was planning to do about the crazed killer trailing blood and hostages all over the bar she was supposed to be securing. Surely, as a trained police officer and sworn guardian of a gay flock, she must have some sort of deranged lesbian contingency plan. But Maddie couldn’t wait for Murphy to rescue her. And since neither Goliath nor Carlisle and her lethal umbrella were available, she would have to save herself.

  Recalling the last time she escaped the violent outburst of a murderer, she asked herself, “What would Goliath do?” Just then a swarm of terrified lesbians surged past them, forcing Kat to loosen her grip on Maddie. She swiveled her head and sank her teeth into Kat’s hand, sending her weapon clattering to the floor. Maddie, with the foul taste of blood in her mouth, dove to relative safety beneath the nearest pool table just as Kat launched a five ball at her and shouted, “All-State softball MVP three years in a row!”

  Maddie watched, powerless, as the blur of bright orange whizzed past, heading straight for Granny. At the last second, Murphy dove in front of Granny, the ball making a sickening crunch as it connected with Murphy’s head. Her would-be hero fell to the floor as another projectile zipped toward Maddie’s loved ones. While Patrick pushed Harriet and Nadia behind an overturned table, Dottie thrust her sturdy handbag in front of Granny, saving her from grave injury.

  “Is Granny all right?” Maddie called.

  “Yes, but my flask will never be the same.” Dottie extracted the battered vessel from her purse as proof of her suffering.

  “Not now, Dottie,” she hissed. “How is Granny?” As much as she wanted Kat to pay for murdering two innocent (if unsavory) people, in the moment she cared more about her grandmother’s well-being.

  “Spilled my drink, but I’m fine, child. Don’t get distracted on my account.”

  “It would help if you weren’t in the line of fire,” she growled as the purple blur of a four ball flew by and shattered a pint glass to Granny’s left.

  With that, Dottie whisked Granny behind the bar where Maddie hoped they’d remain unscathed.

  Finally assured that Granny most likely wouldn’t end her night sprawled on the scuffed and alcohol-infused floor, suffering from a blow to the head, Maddie continued her ill-advised pursuit of a killer. In the plus column, Kat hadn’t taken advantage of the commotion to slip out the back of the bar. The blessings ended there, however, as Kat had armed herself with a pool cue (with which she drove the remaining patrons from the vicinity of her makeshift armory) and had a full stock of ammunition from three pool tables. Apparently each table had started a fresh game in the seconds before the players fled the scene in terror, meaning she had a seemingly endless supply of projectiles. Still, Maddie felt oddly grateful that Babe had provided pool tables for her patrons rather than dart boards.

  “How did you do it, Kat?” she asked to buy time. She hoped for both a distraction and an answer, doubtful she’d get either. “How did you get Terry to eat the brownies? And Lindsey to jump off the balcony? They couldn’t have done those things willingly.”

  “Forget it, super sleuth. I’m not saying anything else that might incriminate me.” Another ball flew past and hit a tap handle, spraying beer and eliciting a startled yelp from Kittens.

  “Do you really think skimping on details now is going to help you?” Dottie called from her hiding place behind the bar, drawing her attention and her fire. She launched the cue ball in Dottie’s direction, thankfully hitting the wall several feet above her.

  “She has a point, Kat. You’ve as good as confessed to killing Terry and Lindsey, and you’re attempting to assault a bar full of people, including a cop.” Maddie’s thoughts turned briefly to the now groaning Murphy. She hoped the only damage would be a hearty bruise, but she didn’t imagine that nearly half a pound of hard resin colliding with her skull would leave her unharmed. But, she remembered as the nine ball shattered the mirror behind the bar, she had no time to worry about that now. “It’s not like you’ll be preserving your innocence.”

  “You really want to know?” Kat called out but gave Maddie no time to answer her apparently rhetorical question. “It’s called a Glock, Brainiac.”

  “You have a gun?” Maddie’s courage wilted at the thought of confronting a more lethally-armed Kat Russell. Not that her combination pool-softball blood sport was a picnic, but she thought she’d have far better odds of dodging a pool ball or surviving the hit from one of them than if Kat switched to bullets.

  Kat cackled maniacally but otherwise ignored the question, barreling ahead with the details of coercion. “Terry laughed at first. She thought I’d never hurt her. But when I threatened to shoot Lindsey, she took me seriously. I gave her a choice between me or the brownies.”

  “It must have hurt to know she preferred excruciating death to being with you.” Questioning the wisdom of her plan, she began crawling toward Kat.

  “Shut up!” She launched another ball. “She loved me. She was just blinded by Lindsey. Even when I offered her another chance to end her suffering, she still refused to leave Lindsey. That’s when I gave her the EpiPen.”

  “I thought it didn’t work,” Maddie called out, inching her way toward her target.

  “That’s because I replaced the epinephrine with succinylcholine,” Kat said, as if that explained everything.

  “Obviously that would be a problem.” For the first time in her life, Maddie regretted pursuing a Liberal Arts degree rather than focusing on the sciences.

  “She thought she was getting relief from her allergies. Instead she got a muscle relaxant. She couldn’t have gotten help no matter how hard she tried. And she did.”

  “You watched her suffer and did nothing to stop it?” She was aghast at Kat’s cruelty.

  “She made me suffer first.” She hurled another ball in her direction.

  Too late, Maddie ducked and felt the impact in her shoulder. “But,” she spoke through clenched teeth, “if you’d already gotten even with Terry, why hurt Lindsey?”

  “Because she ruined everything, and still everyone wanted her. There I was, throwing myself at Leigh, but all she could do was cry over stupid Lindsey. If she was gone, we could be together. I wouldn’t have any competition.”

  “So you pushed her off her balcony?” Maddie crawled around the pool table closest to her assailant. Kat’s legs were only a few feet away from her.

  “I needed to stop her from hurting anyone else.”

  “You know you aren’t going to get away with this.”

  “No one’s stopped me yet, and I’ve got plenty of ammunition left.” To punctuate her comment, she launched three more balls across the bar.

  “This is ridiculous, Matilda. Just hit her with a pool cue already.”

  “It’s not that simple, Granny. She has
a gun.”

  “Nonsense, child. If she did, she would have shot us all by now.”

  “Well, that’s a comforting thought.”

  She spared a moment to glare at the bar her grandmother hid behind, paying the price when Kat landed another blow to her already throbbing shoulder.

  “That’s it.” She grabbed a pool cue that had rolled to a stop a few feet from her. “I have had a seriously rotten night, and I am so ready to take it out on you.”

  Caught off guard by Maddie’s unexpected forcefulness, Kat looked almost terrified when she swung the stick at her. She managed to deflect the blow with her own pool cue, but her defensive maneuver knocked her off balance, and she stumbled backward. Before she could right herself, Maddie used the cue to trip her, then following Goliath’s example, sat on her chest, pinning her to the floor until a thankfully alert and still agile Murphy could take over. Kat kicked and shrieked but remained more or less under control (though hardly subdued).

  “Finally,” Maddie said, grateful for the backup that prevented her and Kat from engaging in the barroom equivalent of a swordfight.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Despite a lifetime of things not magically improving with the arrival of a new day, Maddie felt let down by life when she woke the following morning. Even as the sun streamed through her window, bathing the lower half of her bed in a patch of white light her dogs found irresistible, signaling another reprieve from the often brutal weather of October, the day already felt bleak. She glanced at the empty space in her bed where Nadia had spent the past few nights (and where she surely would have been that morning if not for the havoc of the previous night) and refused to succumb to self-pity. She had no doubt that, even if she and Nadia survived this most recent setback, their future looked dismal at best. Not that they’d discussed it. Once Maddie’s well-being had been established and an especially perturbed Fitzwilliam gave them permission to leave, Nadia did just that. Maddie hadn’t heard from her since.