by Harper Lin
“What is the perfume you are wearing, Lila, that gets these fellows all worked up? You’re like a bee with honey.” Amelia laughed.
“You know what I’m wearing? I’m wearing the scent ‘unreachable.’ I find more guys trying to get my attention now than I did when I was in my twenties. I blame it on the fact that I don’t want any of them. My mother used to say treat them like dogs and they’ll always come back for more. How right she was.”
“But you don’t treat Rusty that way.” Amelia played devil’s advocate.
“No.” Lila tilted her head to the left. The fact that she didn’t say another word made Amelia smile. Just as she was about to pressure her friend for more information, her phone went off.
“Let me guess.” Lila pulled out the morning’s receipts to work on. “John?”
“What tipped you off?” Amelia groaned.
“The red color that took over your cheeks.”
“Hi, John.” Amelia pinched her face as if the phone had suddenly transformed into a dirty sock or block of Limburger cheese that she didn’t want close to her.
“Amelia. What is this that the kids don’t want to go to the reception?”
Amelia shrugged. “What do you want from me, John? You left a voicemail for your son, sacking him from the role of best man. You didn’t even tell him in person. What do you expect them to do?”
“You need to fix this, Amelia.”
“Me?” She clenched the phone in a death grip. “No.”
“Amelia, how is it going to look if my own kids aren’t at the reception?”
“John, what did you think was going to happen? Did you think they were going to just say, ‘Oh, okay, Dad. Cool. Whatever you and Jennifer want.’ Is that really what you thought would happen? Your children are growing up with or without you. They are both old enough to decide how they want to proceed with what was a raw deal from their father.”
“Amelia. It’s my wedding.”
“Who’s the bride here, John, you or Jennifer? I know it’s your wedding. Which is why you should have stuck up for your kids.” Amelia could tell John was trying to think of a rebuttal. In his universe, this should have been accepted without question.
“Maybe they shouldn’t come at all.”
Amelia felt like she’d been punched in her gut. “I’m not telling them that,” she spat. “You don’t mean it. I know you’re trying to make Jennifer happy because she’s probably freaking out over flowers and napkins. But these are your children. They aren’t me. Don’t beat them up over this.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” John stammered.
Amelia let out a deep breath. “Let the kids do what they want, John. You know they’ll look beautiful. They’ll behave. And if they want to leave after the ceremony, then you make sure they get in a cab and have cab fare.” Because I’m not paying a sixty-dollar cab ride from your freakish ceremony at Agate Beach in Portland, the little devil on her left shoulder snickered.
“I’ve got another call, Amelia. I have to take this.” John’s voice sounded defeated. Amelia didn’t care. She tapped the red button that disconnected the call. Her lips stuck out as she thought for a moment and felt her boiling blood reduce to a simmer.
“You okay?” Lila asked carefully.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Amelia said as if she were quoting gospel. “My kids are fine. Better than fine. They are wonderful. But their dad… I think he’s starting to forget that.” She clenched her fists.
“Well, there may not be anything you can do about that,” Lila replied.
“I know.”
Before Amelia could continue, she saw Joyce Ross come out of the revolving door and link her arm through that of a man Amelia thought was very familiar.
As she watched, Joyce was talking earnestly to the man. He appeared to be half listening when he looked at Amelia, smiled, and waved. “Amelia!” he called to her as he quickened his step, slipping out of Joyce’s grasp and approaching the truck.
Amelia snapped her fingers. “Mike!” She smiled and reached her hand out the service window to shake his. “I knew you looked familiar but couldn’t place it until I heard your voice. How in the world are you?”
“Fine. Just fine. I don’t think you ever met my wife, Joyce.”
“Awkward.” Lila coughed.
“Only from buying a couple of my cupcakes. It’s nice to meet you, Joyce.” Amelia extended her hand, but Joyce merely looked at it. She gave Amelia that same don’t really like you flash of a smile.
“How do you know my husband?” It sounded like a loaded question.
“My ex-husband plays softball with your husband,” Amelia said carefully.
“I never got a chance to tell you that I’m really sorry things with you and John didn’t work out,” Mike added.
“Well, no use complaining.” Amelia shrugged. “No one will listen.”
Mike chuckled. Joyce looked at her watch.
“This is my partner in cupcakes, Lila Bergman.”
“How are you?” Lila reached her hand out of the window and gave Mike’s hand a hearty couple of pumps. She didn’t let Joyce have a chance to leave her hanging.
“We see everybody coming and going with the truck parked here. We’ve not seen you before, Mike. You guys heading off to something exciting in the neighborhood?” Lila asked smoothly.
“Dinner,” Joyce interrupted. “And if we don’t get going, we’ll be late.”
Mike looked at his watch. His expression didn’t change, but instead he blinked quickly, looked at the sidewalk, then gathered up a smile from way down deep and looked at Amelia. “I guess we better get going.” Amelia thought of Adam telling his friends he couldn’t go out with them after he was caught with fireworks in his backpack. Mike sounded exactly like that.
“Well, it was really nice seeing you again, Mike.” Amelia smiled. “And it was nice meeting you, Joyce.” Again, Amelia got that nasty flash of a grin before Joyce turned and began walking without Mike.
“Take care, Amelia. Lila, it was nice to meet you.” Mike waved as he shuffled off to catch up with his wife.
“Now that’s an odd couple.” Lila watched with one drawn-on red eyebrow arched high up on her forehead. “You didn’t know that woman was his wife?”
“When Christine said ‘Ross,’ it didn’t even click. I mean, it’s a pretty common name.”
Lila nodded at Amelia.
“But she never went to any of the softball games. I only went to a few every season because, well, they were boring. But I had to make an appearance, you know. How it would look and all.” Amelia rolled her eyes at the bad memory of her marriage. “But I never saw her there. I’d have remembered.”
Chapter Fourteen
On her way home, Amelia wondered why Joyce Ross was so standoffish.
“Maybe she just doesn’t like you, Amelia,” she said to herself. “It is possible that not everyone will like you when they meet you.” She chuckled and continued talking to herself. “I wonder if she told Mike about our caged free eggs and the call to the Department of Agriculture and all that nonsense?” She frowned. “Probably not. From the looks of it, he was probably better off not saying anything even if she did tell him all about it.”
While waiting at a red light four blocks from home, Amelia’s cell phone went off in her pocket. She didn’t recognize the number, but something told her to answer the call.
“Is this Amelia Harley?” The voice was that of a young woman.
“Yes. This is she.”
“Hi, Amelia. This is Vivika Korseky. I’m returning your call.”
Amelia nearly dropped the phone. With all the excitement with John and the wedding and the kids, she had forgotten all about leaving her a message. “Oh, yes. Hi, Vivika. Thank you so much for returning my call.”
“I read about the murder in the paper. Have they arrested Joyce Ross yet?”
“What?” Amelia was surprised at Vivika’s bluntness. “Why would you say that?”
“I worked at Master Ketchup for eight months, right? Now, I’m no Girl Friday, but let’s face it, secretarial work isn’t brain surgery. They fired me because Joyce Ross is crazy.” Amelia heard Vivika take a sip of something on the other line. If the woman were drunk, this conversation would make a lot more sense. “And they’d rather appease that lunatic than fire her. Are you hearing me?”
“Vivika, I’m sorry, but I don’t quite follow.”
“I’ll bet you don’t.” She chuckled. “Make yourself comfortable and pour yourself a cup of tea, sweetheart, because I’ve got some stories for you. And your friend Christine—check with her on all of them if you don’t believe me.”
Amelia did make herself comfortable as she quickly got home, pulled into the driveway, shut off the engine, and sat in the truck with the phone to her ear.
“So, like I said, I worked at Master Ketchup for around eight months. Within the first week I was warned about Joyce.”
“Warned?” Amelia asked.
“The other secretaries told me that she had the tendency to mention personal things about herself that were inappropriate under the best of circumstances.”
“Can I ask like what?”
“You can,” Vivika said. “I’ll only tell you what she told me. Let’s see, she told me she had been molested when she was four. Nice, right? She was raped when she was fifteen. Of course she was. She had breast cancer. Then she had lupus. The reason she and Mike had no children was because Mike had E.D. But then she said she didn’t want children to add to the misery of the world. Overpopulation and all.” Vivika took another sip of whatever she was drinking. “Yes, and Mike also suffered from recurring jock itch. He had several affairs. He had contracted an STD.”
“She told you all of this?”
“This was after I’d only been there about six weeks!” Vivika chuckled. “It’s crazy, right? So, she gets a hold of herself or something, and the next thing I know she’s switched gears. Now, she wants me to share. Quid pro quo, Clarice. Like that Silence of the Lambs movie, right?”
“Why do you think she wanted you to tell her about your past?”
“At first I really thought that she may have felt bad that she was constantly chatting me up and didn’t ask me anything about myself. So I really thought she was trying to be nice.”
“But she wasn’t?”
“Ha! I didn’t have any sob stories like she did. Let me just say I don’t believe the lot of them, okay? Either she’s making all that up, or she is the unluckiest woman to ever walk God’s earth. You feel me?”
“So what happened?”
“Well, as I got to know some of the other girls I started comparing notes. She’s telling one girl she was molested when she was ten. To still another, she said she had fibromyalgia. I think Lyme disease was thrown in there. She told another girl her parents died on that bridge where people claimed to see the Mothman. Right? You still with me on this?”
Amelia’s head was spinning. “So, let me ask you about what I heard.”
“I can hardly wait,” Vivika chirped. “Let me have it.”
“I heard you gave her husband a book on motorcycles and that got you fired.”
“Really?” Vivika chuckled, and Amelia was sure she could hear her shaking her head. “Mike Ross has a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that apparently is like his second wife. Joyce hates it.”
“Do you know why?”
“Sure. She told me Mike cracked his head on the street in a motorcycle accident about two decades ago. He was in the hospital for six months. She thought he was going to die. He had a near-death experience. She had a near-death experience. But alas, he would not heed the warning their combined near-death experiences offered, and still rode without a helmet.”
Amelia sat still. She wasn’t sure what to say.
“Some bad luck, right?”
“I’ll say,” Amelia concurred.
“So, by this time I was starting to call bullshit on her stories. Excuse my language. I’m crude at times. But this whole ordeal gets me fired up.”
“I can imagine,” Amelia added.
“So, whenever Joyce would approach me with a new fantasy to share, like she was going to the doctor because she was afraid her uterine cyst had returned, I’d say I was going to the doctor for a lump under my arm. She said Mike was battling with depression? I said my uncle had a goiter. Was it childish? Sure. Was it fun? Absolutely! But, I flew too close to the sun.
“I had a book on motorcycles that I had picked up several years ago. I liked the pictures, and I draw in my spare time, so it was just a reference book for me to practice with. Rather than throw it away, I waltzed into Mike’s office and offered it to him. You would have thought I offered the guy a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. He was really grateful. So I asked him about his accident.”
There was a pause. Amelia could tell that, for as much as Vivika may have been enjoying razzing Joyce, this part of the story bothered her. Amelia knew what was coming, and it bothered her, too.
“He wasn’t in an accident. Never was. No one he knew was ever in a motorcycle accident.” She cleared her throat. “I apologized and said it must have been one of the other guys. I said I must have heard it wrong. But I could tell by the look on his face that he knew where I had gotten the idea.”
“Then what?” Amelia’s voice was soft and motherly.
“Take a guess.” Vivika chortled. “Security showed up at my desk. In front of everyone, Joyce told me to pack up my desk, and I was escorted out. The end. They didn’t try and fight my unemployment. So at least there was that.”
Amelia shook her head and let out a sigh.
“That’s it in a nutshell, Amelia. I’ll bet if you asked around, you might find a few other stories, ailments, diseases, loss of limbs that grew back, and I’m sure there’s an alien abduction in there somewhere.” Vivika laughed. “You probably think I’m cruel because I make fun of this.”
“I don’t know you, Vivika. I can only imagine how it felt to be in this position at work. I’m not sure how I’d have reacted if it were me.”
“Truthfully, I don’t know who is more of a crackpot, Joyce Ross or the staff that keeps her on board. I’m glad to be out of that lunatic asylum. Getting fired was anything but the end of the world.”
“I’m glad you landed on your feet, Vivika,” Amelia said sincerely. “I appreciate your calling me. Can I give you a call again if I have a question?”
“Sure. I enjoy badmouthing that place. If I could get paid for that, I’d be a rich woman.” She chuckled.
“Thanks, Vivika.”
“Take care, Amelia. Good luck.”
Once inside the house, Amelia heard the kids talking upstairs.
“Hello!” she yelled to them as she dropped her purse on the floor.
“Hi, Mom!” they yelled in unison.
Both of them together in Meg’s room? Those kids are planning something, Amelia thought, but proceeded into the kitchen. Whatever it was, she’d worry about it later. Her conversation with Vivika left her exhausted.
It all sounded strange, but Joyce Ross’s behavior, if what Vivika said was true, was not murderous. Was it? Amelia could remember girls she knew in high school who bragged about hanging out with rock stars or famous actors, and everyone knew there was no truth to it at all.
One girl insisted the band Guns n’ Roses came to her house to party with her on weekends. Utter nonsense! But that didn’t stop her from continuing to talk as if it were gospel truth. It was a cry for help, maybe. But not a motive to kill.
Now, an ex-husband that doesn’t invite his children to his wedding was another story. That might be considered a motive to kill.
No matter what was going on with Master Ketchup, Amelia’s stomach was in knots after her conversation with John. She waited to see if he’d called the kids before bringing it up to them. There was no way she was going to breathe a word of his idiotic idea unless she had to.
Chapter Fift
een
“Thank goodness it’s Friday,” Amelia mumbled while rubbing her head. “I was up half the night. I’m worried about this wedding business. My dreams were all jumbled up. Now I’ve got a screaming headache, and we’re out of aspirin.”
“You poor thing,” Lila said soothingly, handing Amelia a bottle of water. “There is a drugstore about two blocks from here. We aren’t officially open yet. Why don’t you take a walk? The change in scenery will do you good, and a little cardio can’t hurt.”
“I think I will, Lila. Thankfully it’s a cloudy day or the sun would just burn me.” Amelia grabbed her purse and hopped off the truck. “I’ll be back in ten.”
“I’ll hold down the fort.” Lila winked.
As Amelia started walking in the direction of the Walgreens drugstore, she thought that maybe she’d pick up a nice-smelling soap or some lotion for Lila. Where would she be without her? Still struggling and probably missing several thousand dollars due to bad bookkeeping, that’s where she’d be.
It would be nice to get back to Food Truck Alley, too. That was where her cupcake business started, and she missed seeing all the familiar faces, not to mention the smells from Gavin’s Philly cheesesteak truck and Charming Wok’s Chinese, mixed with the freshly cut grass of the dining area.
Still, business was surprisingly good. Great, in fact, regardless of the rumbling trucks that shook the street as they roared by.
Not to mention you got to see your best friend every day for a week. Amelia smiled. Seeing Christine was great, even if it was just to chat for a few minutes in between work. But I don’t think I helped solve Danielle Wilcox’s murder, and unfortunately it looks like Dan apprehended the right guy, no matter how much Christine liked him.
She shook her head and shrugged as she talked to herself. When she got to Walgreens and stepped through the automatic doors, she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to hear the dispute happening at the pharmacist’s desk at the back of the shop.
First, she meandered down the soap and lotion aisle. A pretty purple box with red and pink flowers on it caught her eye. Holding it to her nose, Amelia inhaled the sweet smell of lavender and cherry blossom.