“About her cousin. Brandi Paulson, the barmaid. I just got a call from Milwaukee PD. They found Brandi’s body last night—she’d been murdered—shot and dumped in an alley.”
“Oh, God! Do they—”
“It was the Skulls, no questions about it.”
“But Brandi helped the Skulls, didn’t she? Told them where they could find Shayla?”
“Probably. Bad bargain on her part. If she thought they’d reward her for ratting out Shayla, she was wrong. They couldn’t let her live, not when she could testify against them.”
“What about Shayla? Have you heard anything?”
Johnny sighed. “No idea whether she’s alive or dead, but if she was dead, I think the Skulls would have let the word get around. They want to create fear; they want people to know what happens to girls who cross them.”
They talked for a few more minutes, then Mazie rang off, thinking of Shayla, out there somewhere, in danger. She tidied up the shop, sweeping spiderwebs out of the front entryway, bringing in Magenta’s mail, and adding water to the flower arrangement. Her mind leaped from flowers to Seymour Steiner.
She couldn’t afford to send flowers to him, but she could cut zinnias and cosmos from the flower bed she’d created in Magenta’s tiny backyard and send him a homemade bouquet. She phoned the hospital, got put through to the intensive care unit, lied about being a family member, and was told that Mr. Steiner was in stable condition and resting comfortably. He was not able to have visitors, but she could call again tomorrow to see whether he was up to seeing her.
Her heart feeling lighter now that she knew that Mr. Steiner was going to be all right, Mazie turned her mind to more immediate concerns. Like retrieving Muffin. With Magenta gone, Muffin was in the daytime care of Irma Schirmer, the retired woman who lived next door.
Muffin was overjoyed to see her. That was the best thing about dogs, the trait that made you forgive them for the barfed-up crickets in the middle of your carpet, the slobbered-on shoes, and the six-in-the-morning walks in freezing sleet. Even if you only left the room to go to the bathroom, dogs greeted you like a returning god when you reappeared.
Mazie clipped on Muffin’s leash and walked him the six blocks over to Lake Park. He lost his oomph on the way back and Mazie had to pick him up and carry him.
“No more cookies for you,” she told him. “You weigh a ton.”
She was almost home when a horn beeped and a yellow MINI Coop veered over to the curb and zipped into the loading zone. Juju hopped out, grinning, holding two Lucky Liu’s cartons. Then, to Mazie’s surprise, Lester Pfister emerged from the Coop’s driver’s side, looking a bit sheepish.
“Hi, Mazie,” he said. “Juju’s been giving me driving lessons.”
“He did very well,” Juju said.
“Then we decided to go out for Chinese. We got enough for all of us. We would have picked you up, but we knew you had to work.”
“Not anymore,” Mazie said, trying to sound breezy. “I got the old heave-ho.”
They all trooped into her flat. Setting plates and forks on her kitchen table, Mazie told them the story of how she’d been fired.
“Let me get this straight,” Juju said, spooning kung pao shrimp into a bowl. “You save the life of one of your peeps and your creep of a boss fires you?”
“Basically, yeah—but not just for that.” Mazie snagged a clump of garlic broccoli with her chopsticks. “I committed a lot of other offenses, too. Driving someone to a doctor’s appointment in the company car, going on a date with the relative of a client—”
“Do you mean me?” Lester nearly choked on his spring roll. He was dressed more casually than he’d been the other night, in khaki pants and an open-necked green polo shirt; Juju was already working her style voodoo on him.
“Yup. Apparently that’s taboo, like wearing white shoes after Labor Day.”
Lester put his face in his hands. “You got fired because of me, Mazie? I’m s-so sorry.”
“Hey, don’t be.” Mazie patted Lester on the shoulder. “You were a fun date. I’d do it all over again. Anyway, the dating thing was just an excuse. Thorndike’s been wanting to give me the ax for ages.”
“But”—Lester looked as though he were going to cry—“you got in trouble because of me and now I feel like a louse. Because”—he glanced at Juju—“I—I kind of asked Juju to go out with me. Not that I didn’t like you, Mazie, but I just sort of—”
Mazie burst out laughing, spraying rice grains. “Lester, it’s okay. I could tell you were gaga over Juju from the moment you met her.”
“You—don’t mind?”
“No, I think you and Juju make a cute couple.”
“Thank you,” Lester said seriously. “I know I’m not cute, but Juju is gorgeous enough for both of us. I hope you don’t mind me jumping to conclusions, Mazie, but I thought maybe you and Ben were getting back together.”
“Do not utter that man’s name in my presence,” Mazie grated out. “I never want to see him again.”
“He still didn’t call, huh?” Juju said. “Maybe because your phone’s out.”
“If a man wants to talk to a woman, he finds a way,” Mazie said. “Bicycle messenger. Carrier pigeon. A light-up scoreboard at the ballpark. Oh, but wait—I forgot! Bonaparte Labeck lives exactly six blocks away from me. That’s how many feet, Lester?”
“Two hundred sixty-four feet in an average block. That’s uhh … about sixteen hundred.”
“Right. A man who wanted to see a woman would need to take sixteen hundred steps to actually walk up, ring her doorbell, and enter her flat. How hard would that be for a man who, according to Milwaukee Tonite!, is ‘one hundred eighty-seven pounds of solid muscle’?”
Juju eyed her skeptically. “I’m not buying this boycott Labeck business. One wink from the guy and you’ll cave.”
“I will not!” Mazie snatched up the flowers Lester had brought her on Saturday night, the colorful daisies now wilting, and pitched them in the wastebasket. “Ben Labeck is history!”
“Prove it,” Juju said. “Start going out with other guys.”
“You mean dating?”
“Yeah, dating. You know, like that old saying: ‘If you get thrown by a horse, get right back up and buy a bicycle.’ ”
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” Lester said doubtfully.
“I know a guy who’d be perfect for you,” Juju said. “He’s the straight friend of my gay friend Cory.”
“A fix-up? Forget it! I hate blind dates!”
“Do you hate them because of me?” Lester asked.
Both women turned to look at Lester. “No!” they said in unison.
Juju turned back to Mazie. “Stop being such a weenie. You’ll love this guy—I promise! You have loads in common.”
“Like what?”
“For one thing, you’re a music major and he’s a musician. And he’s supposed to be really cute—Cory said he looks sort of like Bradley Cooper.”
Mazie snapped open a fortune cookie and fished out the little strip of paper. THE FORTUNE YOU SEEK IS IN ANOTHER COOKIE. She smiled, suddenly feeling that her luck was about to turn. Who was she to argue with Fate?
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it. What’s his name?”
“Brad, I think, or maybe Chad.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ben kept getting the same message: “This number is out of service.” Mazie had probably forgotten to pay her phone bill; it would be just like her.
He wondered if she’d gotten the flowers.
Maybe he should have gone for the dead-bolt lock instead.
He’d spotted the lock in the hardware store in Mount Prospect’s small downtown business district on Monday morning. He’d driven into town, accompanied by three of the boys from his squad, to buy groceries but had gotten sidetracked when he’d seen the hardware store. Ben loved hardware stores. He would happily have wandered around for hours, but the boys with him—Davey, Lashawn, and Manuel—
weren’t as thrilled and quickly grew restless. The boys were from the Big Brothers–YMCA sports camp where he was coaching this week. Most of the kids attending were twelve- to fourteen-year-olds from Chicago’s South Side. The camp offered a week of intensive sports drills and workouts, a chance to breathe fresh country air, and the opportunity to chow down on good food.
The fancy dead-bolt assembly kit, a Baldwin double cylinder, had caught his eye in the store. “I’m going to get this for my girlfriend,” he’d announced, recalling how flimsy Mazie’s lock was. Living in such a dicey neighborhood, she definitely needed a dead bolt. He’d install it himself; it would give him a chance to try out his new drill.
“Aww, man—you’re gonna buy your girl a dead bolt?” Manuel asked.
Ben looked at him. “It’s a Baldwin,” he explained, “the Cadillac of locks.”
Lashawn snorted. “Girls don’t want some dumb lock. You show up and say, ‘Look honey, I brought you a dead bolt,’ then you ain’t getting any sweet loving that night.”
“You got a picture of this girl?” Davey asked.
Ben fished out his phone, flicked to the photo gallery, and held up a photo of Mazie he’d shot in April, when a spring snowstorm had dumped a foot of snow on Milwaukee. They’d gone out in the storm and he’d snapped Mazie’s photo through falling snow. She was looking directly at the camera, grinning wickedly as she packed a snowball that two seconds later would be launched at Ben’s face.
“Whoa,” Davey said. “You need to get this girl flowers. My dad always gives my mom roses when she’s mad at him.”
“Flowers,” Ben muttered, wondering why he was taking romantic advice from thirteen-year-olds. But then again, he’d struck out with gifts the last couple of times; Mazie hadn’t seemed too thrilled with that giant-size-unclogs-all-drains bathroom plunger he’d bought her last month.
Setting the lock back on the shelf, he allowed himself to be dragged to the florist’s shop across the street. He couldn’t have identified a single flower, but he knew Mazie liked pink. He pointed to a photo in a binder, and the flower shop woman explained that their sister shop in Milwaukee would do the exact same arrangement and deliver the flowers later that same day. Ben almost fainted from sticker shock when she rang up the sale. The flowers cost more than the dead bolt. And for what? They’d be dead in a couple of days, while a good dead bolt would last a lifetime. More evidence that he didn’t understand women.
“A card, sir?” asked the clerk. “Our sister shop will have identical ones.”
Ben found a card with a bandaged teddy bear on the front. It would remind Mazie of how he’d taken care of her knee after the Roller Derby—and of what had happened afterward. Totem pole down below, just thinking about it. He had to crouch over the counter so the clerk wouldn’t notice and think he had a fetish for teddy bears.
“What’re you going to write in the card?” Manuel asked.
Smirking, Davey recited, “Roses are dumb. Violets suck. When I’m with you—”
Ben gave Davey a warning look that shut him up, but Manuel and Lashawn staggered around the aisles, cackling insanely. Annoyed with the boys, discovering that he was actually blushing, Ben instructed the clerk, “Just have it signed ‘B.’ She’ll know who it’s from.”
“The address, sir?”
“Fourteen-oh-five Brady Street, Milwaukee.” Or was it 1405A? No—he was pretty sure Magenta’s was 1405A, and Mazie’s was 1405.
After they left the florists’ shop, he and the boys grocery-shopped, then he bought them ice cream at the local drive-in before they headed back to the camp. He’d done the camp every summer since he’d been in college. He would have preferred teaching hockey, but Chicago’s schools didn’t offer hockey as a sport and he’d been assigned to teach football skills. Not his best sport, but he at least knew the basics. The camp was about more than running, passing, and catching, though—it was supposed to teach the kids how to live healthily, take responsibility, and plan for their futures. Considering the rough lives some of these kids led, one week of camp was just a drop in the ocean, but still, it was better than nothing.
WPAK always gave Ben a few days off to do the camp because it made them look good to say they supported the Big Brothers program. He’d been here since Sunday. He’d meant to tell Mazie that he’d be gone, but things had gotten a little crazy after their encounter in the first-aid room Saturday night, and he hadn’t had the chance. He’d been trying to phone or email her ever since, but each time he got the same “out of service” message. He hadn’t had any luck with email either.
The week went by fast. Ben dropped a couple of pounds from exercising with the kids and got a deep tan. Late on Friday afternoon he saw the kids off on the bus that would return them to the city. Already he kind of missed them. He liked being around kids. They made you stop worrying about your own problems because you were forced to focus on them.
He thought he’d like to have kids of his own. At one time the idea would have horrified him, but somewhere along the line his priorities had shifted. The idea had its attractions. He knew he would like little girls, but Mazie would be great with boys. Looking out over the empty football field, he could almost see her playing touch football with their sons. He hoped the kids would look like her—dark hair, bright blue eyes, and freckles.
Ben had always thought that his type of woman was tall, Nordic, and blonde. Now it appeared that he’d been mistaken all his life, that he was really a hopeless sucker for small, dark-haired, Italian-Irish women. But he was turning his mind inside out trying to figure out what was going on with Mazie. Her dating other men—did that mean she was tired of him or was it her way of saying Wake up, Clueless! Step up your game if you want to keep me.
It took two hours to drive back to Milwaukee and it was nearly eight o’clock when he got back to his apartment. He called his station’s personnel department and found out that he was scheduled for the graveyard shift—ten tonight to six in the morning. That didn’t give him much time. He showered and shaved. Maybe he ought to phone, make sure Mazie was home. Then he recalled that her phone wasn’t working. He’d just have to take his chances, show up on her doorstep. She’d be thrilled to see him, right? It was around eight thirty when he rang her bell, his stomach feeling tight and jittery, as though he were meeting a woman for the first time. In a way, he was. Because tonight marked the start of a whole new phase in their relationship. A fresh start.
Inside, he could hear Muffin barking. “Hey, guy—go tell Mazie I’m here,” Ben called through the door. He rang the bell again, sending the dog into a renewed round of yipping.
She wasn’t home. He tried the door, because Mazie sometimes left it open. No—it was locked. She wasn’t here. Unless … could something have happened? Things happened to Mazie all the time. Bad guys tried to bury her alive, werewolves tried to rip her throat out … she could be lying in there, bleeding to death.
He found her house key in the usual place, duct-taped to the drainpipe, and let himself into her apartment. He was greeted by Muffin, who went into spasms of joy and demanded a round of belly rubbing and ear scratching before Ben was allowed to walk around and check things out. Obviously, she wasn’t here. Probably she was out with Juju, maybe at some dating event even weirder than Phero-mates. Musical Chairs Matchup. Heartthrobs and Hayrides. Tea Leaves and True Love.
Mazie’s laptop was open on her desk. She was doing a couple of online graduate courses this summer, working toward her master’s degree in music, hoping it would help her obtain a job—maybe in a college—where a prison record wouldn’t be an issue. But it wasn’t music theories that popped up on the screen; it was small, pointy-eared creatures wreaking havoc on a mushroom patch. Mazie was a closet Gnome Gnash addict!
He found the flowers in her kitchen wastebasket. Must be the ones he’d sent, which told him exactly what she’d thought of his offering.
He knew he should have bought the dead bolt. The discarded flowers depressed him more than he’d thou
ght possible. He’d put a lot of thought into that arrangement. Well, not a whole lot, now that he considered it—he’d just pointed to a photo in a book. But flowers were supposed to convey a meaning, weren’t they? Maybe the florist had accidentally sent a bouquet that signified: You have body odor like a camel. Suddenly coming here tonight, expecting to be greeted with open arms, seemed dumb. In fact, it might be considered kind of stalkerazzi, him letting himself in, prowling through her stuff, using the flimsy excuse that there might be something wrong. He ought to leave, Ben thought, and moved toward the door.
Outside, footsteps on the sidewalk, voices. Mazie’s voice and a man’s voice.
Damn!
She unlocked the door, and now he could hear what they were saying.
“Stop it!” Mazie suddenly yelled, causing every cell in Ben’s body to go on red alert.
The man mumbled something; all Ben could make out was “hook up tonight.”
Her voice, loud and angry. “You thought we were going to—hook up?”
Mumble, mumble, “… gotta deal with the reality, babe.”
Then a sharp, surprised-sounding yelp from the man.
Muffin was already dashing toward the front door as Ben strode forward, taking in the situation at a glance: Mazie threatening a stunned-looking guy in dirty dreadlocks with the point of an umbrella. Ben spun Dreadlocks around, wrenched his arm up behind his back at a tendon-twisting angle, and frog-marched him down the sidewalk. “The lady said stop,” Ben growled. “Want me to explain what that means?”
Exerting more self-control than he’d thought possible, Ben restrained himself from beating the guy to death on the spot and settled for shoving him down the sidewalk. The guy took off running and Ben turned to inspect Mazie. She looked incredible, her face flushed, eyes flashing, lots of leg showing in what he thought might be a new skirt. He wanted to sweep her up into his arms, but she was still holding an umbrella with a very sharp point and looked like she wouldn’t mind puncturing him with it. “Are you all right?” Ben asked.
The Sexiest Man Alive Page 17