Tandem Demise

by Duffy Brown

  “You’ve really turned this place around,” Rudy said to me while still petting the kits. “Before you landed here the shop was on its last legs and I had a busted one.”

  “Before I landed here, I lived in a fourth-floor walk-up with three college guys and a monkey for neighbors. The monkey was the best of the lot and-”

  “Where is she?” Curtis growled as he burst through the door. He had a wild look in his eyes and his hair looked like it had been combed with an eggbeater. This was the other curse of a full moon. Some people fall in love and others go bat-crap crazy when that love didn’t go as planned.

  Curtis still wore the same suit from the engagement party, with coffee stains dribbled down the front of his once white shirt. He hadn’t shaved or probably bathed at all in who knows how many days. “I need that lawyer lady to get things straightened out right now,” Curtis added. “Katie, my floozy of a fiancée, is threatening to sue me for breach of contract when she’s the one playing hide the salami with... with you!”

  Curtis pointed to the front door and lunged for Bladen Powers as he strode into the shop.

  Chapter Ten

  “Me?” Bladen held up his hands in surrender and backed up to the door. “Who the heck are you?”

  “You planned my freaking engagement party!” Curtis bellowed as Bladen darted behind a row of bikes for protection. “And as your bonus you slept with my fiancée.”

  “Katie?”

  “How many fiancées have you slept with!”

  “She was nervous about riding on the ferry.”

  “What ferry? You were already here at the inn and...” Curtis’s eyes bulged. “You slept with her more than once?”

  “She was really, really nervous.”

  “And you should be nervous too, you no good cheating piece of slime. ‘Cause I’m going to settle the score right here and now.” Curtis pushed over the line of bikes to get to Bladen when Rudy and I grabbed his arms before he landed a punch.

  “Let me go!” Curtis struggled. “This ratfink has it coming.”

  “Ignoramus seems to be the name of choice,” I offered to Curtis as Rudy and I hauled him to the stool by the workbench and sat him down. “And,” I said, turning to Bladen while keeping a hold of Curtis who was a lot stronger than he looked, “You need to get out of here while you can. If you’re hunting Petula, she’s on a wine glass quest.”

  “Right, wine glasses. I forgot about the glasses.” Bladen slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I just wanted to thank you for the bride and groom bikes.” Bladen added a sheepish grin then bolted out the door.

  I got a bottle of water from under the workbench and handed it to Curtis. “You need to calm down before you rupture something. Your attorney is away for two days, but she’ll be back in town on Monday and can handle all your legal needs at that time.”

  “Monday! Are you kidding me? I can’t wait until Monday! I want action now, right this minute. Katie’s leaving on the noon ferry and I want her arrested for fraud. She tricked me and I want her locked up and the key thrown into the blasted lake. I’ve had enough of just sitting around doing nothing. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I’m a mess.”

  “So, maybe you should rethink this.” Rudy hunkered down beside Curtis.

  “You’re right. Brilliant idea! I should hire a hitman.”

  “Not what I had in mind,” Rudy soothed. “It’s like Mark Twain said, anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it’s stored than to anything on which it is poured. Write this woman off and let this whole thing go. Get on with your life.”

  Little blood vessels throbbed at Curtis’s temples and his eyes looked like roadmaps. “Screw Twain. Screw you! Do you know how much money’s involved here?” Curtis gripped the plastic water bottle shooting water out the top like an angry volcano and doused Rudy from head to toe.

  “But think of this, things could be worse,” I said to Curtis as I handed Rudy the roll of paper towels to dry off. “You could have married Katie.”

  “There is no worse. I look like a total fool. My dad warned me about her being a conniving gold digger, so did my uncle and my brother and my ex and she’s just going to love being right again. Another thing I’ll never hear the end of. Well, Katie’s gone, but Bladen’s still here and why that police chief can’t arrest him for sexual harassment is beyond me. Bladen messed up my wedding...”

  Curtis stopped ranting then added a laugh that sent shivers up my spine. “But now I think I’ve got a plan, a big plan, to mess up his life. ’Bout time Romeo got a taste of his own medicine and I’m just the guy to do it.”

  Curtis bolted for the door, flung it open, barging into customers on their way in. Rudy dried his face and soggy mustache. “You know that saying about a woman scorned?” He ran a towel through his bushy, Twain-inspired hair. “It goes double for a rich guy made to look the fool.”

  Leaving Rudy to deal with customers, I righted the bikes and tried to shake off the bad vibes I got from Curtis. He had that wild look in his eyes, the look that promised trouble. If there was on thing we did not need more of around here it was trouble.

  I rushed upstairs to try to find clothes suitable for serving wedding cake. I pulled out the curling iron and fried my hair into submission, winding up with a Shirley Temple/Marge Simpson ‘do without the blue. As for clothes, I considered pink polka dots the perfect outfit for serving cake, but in keeping with the wedding attire I hunted for black slacks. I found a pair in the back of the closet that I could squeeze into if I left the top button undone and added an untucked white blouse to cover the gap.

  “’Bout time you be getting yourself here,” Irish Donna tsked when I rushed up to the delivery wagon parked outside the Blarney Scone. “Ye be looking like a French poodle with all those curls.”

  “Rudy says I look adorable.”

  “Rudy’s wanting cake and buttering you up to get it.”

  “And about that cake,” I pushed on. “You know Daniela will strangle us with her bare hands if something happened to it, so that makes this cake delivery a matter of life and death and we should call the ambulance to take the cake to the fort. Right?”

  Wrong. It took a nerve-racking half hour of Irish Donna driving the wagon with me in the back, trying to keep cake layers from sliding into cake soup. As we trotted along, I thought about getting Irish Donna to keep an eye on Sutter, but then I’d have to tell her why. Then the whole town would know why, putting everyone in danger. If the killer found out we were all onto him, he would go into hiding and we would never find him...or her. Besides, like Finn said, what could happen with so many people around.

  Irish Donna avoided Fort Street and the main entrance flanked with the white limestone walls and wood posts. She headed for the more level back entrance though the Avenue of the Flags. Each flag leading to the fort and fluttering in the breeze represented a country that had owned the island at one time. Everyone at the Stang thought they needed to add a flag with a slab of fudge to represent the current occupants.

  Once inside the fort, we clip-clopped past the cream and brown soldiers’ barracks and across the grassy parade ground. I waved to Cal in his blue uniform calling out orders to the other soldiers practicing a drill and none of them looking too happy about marching around in the hot sun.

  “It seems Daniela’s wanting the cake served up there on the cannon platform overlooking the town,” Irish Donna called back to me from her driver’s perch. She pulled a paper from her dress pocket and read, “The order of the day from her majesty is that the bride arrives through the Avenue of the Flags with soldiers forming an arch with their muskets, not that a certain someone has a mighty big opinion of her ego-inflated self. Cocktails at the quartermaster’s house, and then ceremony on the front porch of the soldier’s barracks followed by the firing of the muskets. Those things might be old as the hills, but they do cut up a ruckus even when just shooting off black powder like they do and always scaring me half to death.”

 
Donna pulled Paddy to a stop and continued reading, “There’ll be tables on the parade ground for dinner followed by cannon firing at the gun platform. I think the woman’s got a thing for artillery. She and Cuddle Cakes...does anyone know the man’s real name...cut the cake and then carriages take everyone on a sunset drive to the Grand Hotel for a night of dancing. Sounds like a USO show if you’re asking me.”

  I hopped from the back of the wagon and Donna pointed to the cake layers. “Let’s put Mariah Carey in the fort commissary so she won’t melt all over and before you go making a thing of it I name all my wedding cakes just like you be naming your bikes. This here cake we have today is top heavy and hard to work with so Mariah Carey fits and to prove my point here comes the bride right now.”

  “Where in the blazes are the tables?” Daniela shrieked, charging up to the wagon. She wore short shorts, a pink t-shirt with Bling, Bling, I Got the Ring, her hair in fat blue curlers, and a big red zit on her nose.

  I tried not to zit-stare as Irish Donna climbed down from the wagon and draped an arm around Daniela. “Dearie, there’s no need to be carrying on the way you are,” Donna cooed. “We have a cake table right here with us along with lovely china dessert plates and pretty pink linens and-”

  “Not that!” Daniela jabbed her finger at the parade ground. “That! Where are the tables and the chairs? I heard Bladen was buying up every basket and blanket in town for a picnic wedding and I rushed right over here.”

  Her brows narrowed. “Those baskets and blankets he’s collecting better not be for my wedding and I’m here to make sure of it. I’m serving Cornish game hens for Pete’s sake and... where’s the bunting on the porch for the wedding ceremony? The flowers and candle stands are there, but no bows, no ribbons, no zing. I bet they’re still over there in the schoolhouse. My wedding’s looking like a freaking wake. And where are the doves to be released when Cuddle Cakes and I say I do and kiss? I want kisses! I want doves!”

  “What about seagulls,” I offered. “We have a lot of seagulls. We could put out some fish to entice them except that might smell and-”

  “See this?” Daniela jabbed a finger at her nose. “See that zit?”

  “What zit?” Irish Donna gave me a don’t poke the bear look and added, “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s the size of Montana! I knew that romp in the hay with Bladen wasn’t worth having him as my wedding planner, but I did it anyway ’cause he’s so handsome and Cuddle Cakes might be from the New Hampshire Combstocks and of good breeding but he isn’t all that proficient in the bedroom if you know what I mean.” She swooshed back her hair. “It was one last fling and truly sublime and...” Daniela cut her eyes from me to Irish Donna and shrugged. “Just keep that last part to yourself if you want to get paid.”

  Daniela shoved a rectangular white lace box at Donna. “Here’s the knife to cut the cake.” She pried up the lid to a lovely engraved antique silver cake knife and...and a silver-plated antique derringer?

  Daniela grabbed the little gun and shoved it in her pocket. “The knife was my great, great - I forget how many greats - grandmother’s. She used it at the fort and I’m donating it to the museum. If those chairs and tables don’t materialize real soon,” she hissed, “I intend to use this donation in my pocket to get Bladen’s attention and take me seriously. Have you seen that worm slithering around?”

  “Maybe you could just threaten him with a bad Yelp review?” I suggested. Donna added, “And since you’re into donations, if you make a monetary one to the fort here I bet that cop standing next to the flagpole will do your bunting. No one bunts up a wedding like our chief of police. You should see what he can do with a staple gun and bolt of ribbon.”

  Daniela offered up one last harrumph. “Well, he wasn’t much use in getting Fort Road closed for my wedding pictures, but I guess it’s worth a try.” Daniela stomped off for the flagpole just as Finn came across the parade grounds heading for the soldier’s barracks. If someone were hunting Sutter, Finn had his back and it made me feel a lot better to know that I wasn’t the only one on Sutter alert. Not only were four eyes better than two, but Finn would know what to do if the killer made his move and it would be better than my plan to tackle him to the ground and beat him over the head with a cake knife.

  Donna and I carried the cake layers to the commissary and pulled out the serving table. We propped up the legs and set the table by the wall with the glorious Mackinac Bridge off to the right and the town below bathed in golden afternoon sunlight. Peaceful deep-blue water stretched out as far as I could see. It was a picture-perfect afternoon. At least the weather and view were cooperating or Daniela would be crabbing at them too.

  “Mercy be, is that there Bladen sneaking in through the main gate?” Donna nodded over the edge of the wall. “And are those baskets and bags slung over his arm? If Daniela is still here this is not going to be pretty.”

  “So,” I said to Bladen coming our way. “The picnic idea is for real?”

  Bladen swiped perspiration from his forehead nearly poking himself in the eye with the baskets on his arm. “Fall weddings are in demand and there were no tables left to rent, so I came up with this great picnic idea.”

  Irish Donna fluffed the pink tablecloth. “Heading to Mexico with no forwarding address is what I would call a great idea.”

  “Think of the photo opps on Facebook and Twitter!” Bladen forced a grin. “Think of the uniqueness.”

  “Think of Daniela blowing your head clean off your shoulders and you might want to take that to heart.”

  “After the wedding ceremony,” Bladen went on, “every couple gets a basket with an official Mackinac Island blanket to commemorate the occasion. They find a spot on the parade ground and get served there. Pretty cool, huh?” Bladen dropped the baskets in a heap and pulled a navy blue throw with I Mackinac Island in white from a shopping bag. “And we’ll add a bottle of chardonnay and we’re putting glasses in the baskets. Some are beer mugs, but they hold more wine so it’s just fine.”

  Bladen nodded to the post headquarters. “Petula and her crew that she’s overpaying with my money are putting the baskets together right now. They’ll line up the baskets by the barracks and who’s that doing the bunting on the barracks porch?”

  “That be our police chief.” Donna held up a pink napkin. “He showed me how to fold these into swans.”

  Bladen stared at Sutter tying puffy white bows to the porch railings. “It’s... It’s the Benjamin Bow.”

  “Actually that be the Nate Sutter Bow. The other man who doesn’t know tulle from toothpaste and is reading the newspaper is Fiona’s latest fling. The way things are going between ‘em you can be planning her wedding here next.”

  “John said he was closing in on Benjamin Campbell,” Bladen continued as if talking to himself. “No one ties bows like Campbell. I think he patented the things. It must be him but it sure doesn’t look like him. Where’s the blond ponytail? Campbell really rocked the ponytail, but this guy kind of looks like him and those are his bows... It is him!”

  Bladen strode off across the parade ground. He dodged the soldiers marching in two columns of five each and didn’t slow down until he got to Sutter. I got that John and Bladen were looking for the guy in the picture who just happened to be ponytailed Sutter and who they thought ran off with the loot. So ponytail Nate Sutter was Benjamin Campbell? He was the mob boss who tied pretty bows? Tony Soprano never tied pretty bows unless they were around bodies tossed into the East River. None of this made one bit of sense. Who the heck was Benjamin Campbell and what was his part in all this?

  I watched as Bladen pushed Sutter, yelled something I couldn’t hear as Finn stepped between them and tried to calm him down. Donna nudged my arm. “We need to get a move on. If this here wedding has any chance of working out you better quit your gawking and get these baskets to Petula. Here’s hoping Bladen contacted the caterers about turning their fancy little chickens into a Colonel Sanders affair.”

 
Sutter went back to tying up the last of the bows and Bladen stomped his way to the quartermaster’s house yelling something about this not being over. Bladen passed under the line of trees and I started down the wood walkway as practice musket blasts echoed across the parade ground. Irish Donna was right, real or not they scared me half to death too. Rounding the corner I spotted Bladen sitting on the steps of the post headquarters. He was hunched over staring at the ground, the bag of blankets in a heap at his feet.

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” I said in my best Pollyanna voice to try to put a positive spin on things. I’d had my share of hunched over staring days and they weren’t fun “I think the picnic idea is great,” I lied but for a good cause. “And the Mackinac Island throws are really nice keepsakes and... and... Bladen?

  I gave his shoulder a little shake. “Hey, are you okay? Look, this wedding isn’t worth having a stroke over. Just pull yourself together and we’ll all pitch in and help and...”

  Bladen teetered for a second then tumbled off the steps head first landing on top of the blankets and leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Bladen!” I dropped the baskets, knelt down and turned him over to find eyes frozen open and a blood-soaked shirt. Daniela ran up beside me, let out a scream straight from Psycho, and crumbled into a heap.

  “What’s going on?” Petula asked. She stopped, stared, and fainted next to Daniela as Eileen from the Metivier Inn said, “Guess I wasn’t the only one really pissed off at that guy.”

  Irish Donna peered over my shoulder. “Blessed St. Patrick. I send you to deliver a few baskets and look what happens.”

  Sutter ran up with the entire militia thundering behind him as a worker in a brown shirt tore for the back entrance to get help. Sutter hunkered down next to me and said to Cal, “Looks like a stray musket round.”