Charleston with a Clever Cougar: A Dance with Danger Mystery #6

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Iraq, Afghanistan. Medic.”

  “Brutal,” Walter responded. “Those IED’s are bitch. We didn’t have to deal with that crap in my day.”

  “You’ve got that right, buddy. You had other stuff thrown at you, though.”

  “Yeah, we did.”

  The men worked side by side as the morning went on. I paid the bills, put in supply orders, and by noon, I was ready to roast coffee to replace our dwindling supply of beans.

  “Doc, can I get some help with this?” I asked, my hand on the roaster.

  “No problem. What’s the plan?”

  I went over all the details of how the machine worked and what to watch for, and then I gave him a formula for the two-pound batches we would roast over the next several hours. He would add the green coffee beans in the proportions I gave him and each batch would go through an eighteen-minute process. If we did it continually for the next four hours, we’d end up with about twelve pounds of beans, enough to last about two days at Cady’s Cakes.

  “You know, you could sell your coffee in little bags, probably make some decent money,” he told me after he complete three rounds with the roasting machine.

  “Enjoying the process, Doc?” I had to laugh. I could see he was getting into it. No doubt he was still in search of that perfect cup of coffee. By the time we had the Henslacker wedding cake in the oven, baking, Doc was even more enthusiastic.

  “You could sell the beans, Cady, in little bags with your store logo. You could probably turn a good profit on it.”

  “The coffee is really just a sideline for me,” I explained. “I’m really a baker, Doc.”

  “But still....”

  We had our back-up cakes ready to go into the freezer by two-thirty. Normally, I didn’t ever freeze my cakes, but I needed to hedge my bets for the wedding, just in case we faced another disaster. If I didn’t need them, I would frost them and sell them as individual cakes or slices in the shop after the wedding. Tomorrow, we would bake the actual wedding cake I would use, frost it, and come Saturday morning, it would be decorated and delivered to the Saybrook Point Inn.

  “Daisy, how are you?” I heard Mrs. Ruttinger call out from the front of the shop. “I heard what happened. I’m so sorry you had that terrible experience, dear.”

  The elderly lady’s kind voice floated through the air like a warm hug and soon several other voices were raised in agreement. It seemed to bring comfort to the teenage girl that so many town folk commiserated with her plight. I poked my head out in time to see the group conversing at the little table where Dorothy Ruttiger sat with her afternoon cup of English tea, a weekday ritual at Cady’s Cakes. I went back to the kitchen, knowing that Daisy would find me soon enough.

  I was showing Doc how to run the commercial dishwasher when I felt a hand on my good shoulder.

  “Guess what. Rowan McGowen asked me if I wanted to be in his study group for biology.” Daisy had a satisfied smile on her face. The handsome boy was constantly being chased by the majority of girls at the high school.

  “That’s good,” I told her, returning the smile.

  “It gets better. Jacinda Olav got really mad at him for inviting me.”

  “And that’s good because....” I wasn’t sure where she was going with that.

  “He told her to stop being such a bitch and that’s when she tried to slap him!”

  By now Doc was leaning back against the counter, fascinated by the teenage tales of high school angst. Walter had to work around him. Doc didn’t seem to care. He was focused on the girl.

  “Please tell me he wasn’t dumb enough to hit her back,” Doc wanted to know.

  “Oh, she didn’t even get to hit him. Rowan grabbed her hand, but Mrs. Pazzo saw the whole thing and now Jacinda has detention for two whole weeks!” It was hard to ignore the glee in Daisy’s voice. She had finally been vindicated. The teen queen who ruled the halls with an iron fist had gotten her comeuppance. “And she’s out of the study group!”

  Leave it to the young to bounce back. I realized how different my experience was as a teenager compared with what Daisy had gone through. All around her were adults who looked out for her and protected her. We were not going to let her suffer, no matter what the purpose of the attack, be it an assailant at night in the parking lot behind the shop or a teenage bully who wanted to get rid of her competition for the teenage heartthrob in biology class. A little part of me suddenly felt a pang of jealousy. Why not me? Why couldn’t I have been the lucky one, instead of being the girl brutalized by the man with the bad breath and cruel hands? Why did I have to carry this shame with me everywhere I went? Because I earned it. Because I didn’t fight hard enough. I didn’t run fast enough. Because I failed to get away. As soon as I felt those feelings, I pushed back, trying desperately to keep them at bay. There was a world of difference between what happened last night and what happened all those years ago. Daisy didn’t deserve what happened to her last night. She was just a kid taking out the trash. But then, neither did I all those years ago. I was just a kid saying goodbye to my dying mother. I was just waiting for Aunt Pinkie to take me home with her. Not my own home. Her home. A place I never really ever felt I belonged. I should have been with my mother, but she got sick and died. I should have been with my father, but he was killed in the war. So many reasons for heartache -- that assault was just the rotten cherry on a horrible sundae. All I had ever wanted as a kid was to have a real family, my real family, even before I was touched that night by a man who left his indelible mark on my soul. It was one moment in time, but it had forever wrenched me out of line and cut me loose from the pack. I was destined to drift through life, unable to anchor my heart to any other. I didn’t even want to have kids, for fear of somehow causing them the same kind of pain I had experienced. Would I always be alone?

  Looking back on the events of that night, I could see it wasn’t a lack of trying on the part of Aunt Pinkie, my mother or even Roger. Aunt Pinkie was trying to comfort my mother as she lay dying that night. Roger was thousands of miles away, on his submarine, unable to come home and be with us. And I was aching for what I knew was to come, my mother’s final breath. My assailant took pleasure in adding to my burden of pain, using the cover of darkness for his evil act, but it was because he saw me in the light that I became his target. Coming out of the hospital, a girl alone and crying. What kind of monster attacks such a wretched soul?

  “You okay?” It was Doc, speaking softly into my ear. “A little flashback?”

  Chapter Nine --

  “Mmm....” I didn’t trust myself to speak. Instead, I surreptitiously wiped away a stray tear. Time to pick myself up with my bootstraps, before I completely crumbled under the weight of the past. I headed back into the office cubicle to compose myself. It must have been the trip to the emergency room last night that triggered all these memories. I still could remember Aunt Pinkie and the hospital security guards escorting me into the brightly lit room, the doctor gently checking me over for injuries, giving me a shot, probably penicillin. He was kind, apologetic. All the adults were. They kept telling me it wasn’t my fault. But if it wasn’t my fault, whose was it? Someone had to be responsible. Someone let that man do horrible things to me.

  “Only child?” Doc was watching me from the doorway and his voice startled me.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” I wanted to know.

  “Not much in the way of family after your mother died. Not much in the way of support.”

  “I did okay. Aunt Pinkie was a great comfort. She took very good care of me,” I said defensively.

  “Of course she did. But she was only one person, Cady.”

  “What’s your point, Doc?” I snapped, feeling like I was under the microscope.

  “You’re not used to people helping you. You’re not used to having anyone really do for you. I saw that look on your face. I just want you to know that what happened back when you were a kid was terrible. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. It w
on’t ever completely disappear. But what you learned was real. That’s what drove you to the door last night, to check on Daisy. You prevented her from having her childhood snatched away from her. You did a good thing.”

  “Sure.” I put a hand up to my brow, trying to keep Doc from looking into my eyes.

  “The pain of a traumatic event never really goes away, Cady, until you confront what happened to you, you mourn it, and you make your peace.”

  “Like you?” I snapped. Did Doc really know so much about the subject? He was acting like he was an expert. I just wasn’t sure I wanted a lecture from someone who had never walked the walk. It’s hard to explain how hard it is to get the stink of an assault off of you, no matter how much soap you use or how long you stay under the water. Long after the sweat of my assailant was washed down the drain, I could still smell him on me every once in awhile, like when I showed up at the hospital emergency room twice in a week. I felt like I was reliving the horror of those days, and most of all, that hole in my heart because my mother was gone and I was alone.

  “It’s the only way you can go on living. Otherwise, you’re just going through the motions. My last tour of duty, I lost twenty guys. I just couldn’t save them from their catastrophic wounds. I couldn’t patch up their broken bodies. Two of them bled out on me as I stitched them up. I took me awhile to understand that their injuries were bigger than my skills. Even a team of surgeons wouldn’t have been able to save those boys. Doesn’t mean I’m okay with it.”

  “But don’t you ever get mad that it happened?” I searched those green eyes for answers.

  “I learned a long time ago that life isn’t fair, Cady. You do the best you can with what you’ve got. In a perfect world, every kid would have a shiny bike and ice cream coming out the ying yang and two parents who adore her. But that’s not always what life turns out to be, is it? When you look back, you have to look not only at the bad, Cady, but at the good. Those experiences make you the person you are, even as horrible as they are. The answers aren’t always pretty, but if we can’t find ourselves in what we do as people, we’re just disconnected from what makes us human. That guy took something precious from you when he attacked you, but he probably wasn’t even thinking about that. He was in search of someone to hurt because he felt justified in hurting another human being. It doesn’t necessarily matter why he did what he did. It’s enough that he did it. But when you look back, see what really made you vulnerable. And when you do, maybe, just maybe, you’ll stop being angry with yourself for not preventing it. Maybe, just maybe, you didn’t have the skills to save yourself.”

  “What?” Stunned, I sat back in my chair.

  “You’ve spent decades beating the young Cady up for not being smart enough or fast enough to get away. Now no one ever gets close enough to you to actually hurt you because you think that’s what will keep you safe. You have a sweet candy shell around a soft middle, but that shell is pretty hard and pretty thick. That middle is the one place no one ever really goes, isn’t it? You’re kind, you’re good, but you’re alone, and you like it that way.”

  “How...how dare you!” I sputtered, wanting to push Doc into the street, maybe even under a bus. Here was a man who just showed up one day, and before I knew it, he was baking my cakes and roasting my coffee beans and saving Daisy from a man who wanted to do her harm.

  “How dare I? I dare because I’m the pot calling the kettle black. Takes one to know one. And I’m still working it out.” And with that, Doc turned around and went back to the kitchen, leaving me dumbstruck in my office chair.

  By six, the kitchen was all cleaned up and ready for Walter when he arrived in the wee hours of Friday morning. The coffee beans were in their airtight containers, ready to be ground up. Daisy had decorated the wedding bell cookies and they were in their own boxes, waiting to be bagged for Saturday. And Doc was nowhere to be seen.

  “How are we going to get home?” I wondered aloud to the only other person in the shop.

  “He said we should chill out, he’d be back.”

  “Oh.”

  “Did he say where he was going, Daze?”

  “Nope.” She was busy texting her friend. “Vicki says hi.”

  “Tell Vicki I said hi back,” I told her, peering out the front window. There were a few people on foot. There was a light rain coming down, leaving the night shrouded in mist. The day had been warm and now the temperature was dropping. Across the way, the lights went out in Ben Johnson’s accounting office. I watched him lock up before he strode down the street to his car, his tweed fedora keeping his head dry.

  At ten after six, I considered calling a local cab, but decided to give Doc a few more minutes. It was just as well. At six-fifteen, he was banging at the front door, a large package in his arms.

  “Sorry,” he told me, squeezing past me as he came in. “I had some trouble picking it up at the UPS office.”

  “What is that?” I wondered.

  “The flowers for the wedding cake. The UPS guy was late last night, so he left the slip on the front door.”

  I had completely forgotten about the package with the gumpaste decorations. How had that happened? Daisy had been attacked.

  “Thank you, Doc,” I told him.

  “Don’t thank me, Cady. It was Walter who pointed it out to me. He found the slip when he got here this morning.” I made a mental note to thank my baker tomorrow. “Where do you want these?”

  We took them into the kitchen to inspect them, on the off chance I would have to order more if we had a box of broken decorations. I was pleasantly surprised. All of the delicate flower sprays looked fabulous. The Henslacker cake was sure to be a hit.

  “Shall we pick up pizzas on the way home?” Doc asked.

  “My mom made dinner already,” Daisy sighed. “Fish. Ugh. Boy, pizza would be really good tonight.”

  “We’ll do it another time,” was Doc’s reply. “We’ll have a little party after we deliver the wedding cake to the bride and groom. But we should get going before the roads ice up. The weather report is calling for more freezing rain.”

  Daisy sat on the air mattress in the back of the van on the way back to the Soundings. I sat up front, next to the determined driver. The windshield wipers kicked out a steady rhythm as they cleaned away the tiny sprinkles that hit the glass surface. Doc hit a couple of patches of black ice. I knew because I saw how tightly he gripped the wheel and steered into the skid.

  “Am I going with you on Saturday to deliver the cake?” the teenager asked.

  “Why? Did you want to go?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s the Saybrook Point Inn. That place is gorgeous!”

  “Well, I...we could use your help,” I told her. Doc took his eyes off the road long enough to give me a wink. “Besides, don’t forget we have to bag all those cookies and tie them with the gold ribbon.”

  “Are you going to be able to do the royal icing, Cady? That cake is supposed to look like lace, remember.”

  “We’ll see. It depends on how my shoulder feels.”

  Doc pulled into a parking space in front of my unit. Daisy popped out of the back, text books in hand, and slid the van door shut. “See you guys tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” Doc replied.

  “Good night, Daisy,” I called after her. She threw a hand up in the air as she practically skipped down the sidewalk. “What did you tell her about the man you grabbed last night?”

  Doc looked at me, standing a few feet away. And then he shrugged.

  “I told her we delivered a message, that he was to stay away from Daisy and her family or my buddies and I would hunt him down.”

  “And she didn’t want to know why you didn’t take him to the cops?”

  “Nope.” Doc pulled his raincoat closed. Raindrops fogged up his glasses as we stood there.

  “Doc, why didn’t you?”

  “You want to go out for a bite?” he asked. “It’s either that or we get inside, before one of us catches a chill.”
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  I unlocked the front door, flicked on the living room lights, and felt Doc’s hands carefully removing the coat from my shoulders. He hung it up in the hall closet, along with his oversized raincoat.

  “You want to know why we didn’t bring that guy down to the local police department?” I nodded. He sat me down on the sofa and plunked down beside me. “It has to do with what the bastard told us before we took him for that little drive up north. We caught him peeking in the windows. He was there to do surveillance. It seems Daisy’s stepmother hired his buddy to kill her.”

  “What?” One look at Doc told me he was telling the truth. Mimi hired a couple of guys to kill Daisy. “But why?”

  “The bastard said they didn’t know. His buddy got three thousand bucks upfront, and he was supposed to get ten thousand more when they delivered the proof Daisy was dead.”

  “You have got to be kidding me!” My hands felt cold and clammy on my lap. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to kill that poor girl. But Mimi? Why? She got Doug. She had her triplets. She even had her career as an attorney. If anything, she had it all. Why would she want to kill a teenager? And why not Dylan and Carole, while she was at it?

  “Cady?” Doc was looking at me with concern. “You okay?”

  “I just don’t understand it.”

  “We’re going to get to the bottom of it, believe me. There’s a sting in the works. You remember I told you we took the driver of the pickup for a ride? That’s because he flipped on his pal. We got the second guy and dragged him...er, convinced him to accompany us to the police station and make a confession, because he was the one who did the actual assault and collected the retainer for the hit. He confirmed his buddy was just along for the ride.”

  “So, what happens now?”

  “We give Mimi a new hitman to hire to finish the job. She doesn’t know the first one got caught. We’re going to lure her to Connecticut, so the local cops have jurisdiction. We’ll record everything.”