by Leanne Leeds
“How did you know that’s what we were thinking back and forth?”
“I didn’t then. I knew after it happened, though. It became the past.”
“Right,” I said. “Heck, I’ve seen it happen, and it bothers me.”
“Yeah, but you know it’s just the way it is. He doesn’t. It was a bit of a shock to him.”
“I know you haven’t seen me in a while, but I have to tell you,” I told Aidan as we parked in the restaurant parking lot. “I am finding myself asking why things are the way they are a lot more often than I used to.”
“Goodness, Charlotte. Don’t you think healing the paranormal world is enough for one person to take on?”
“Hey, if you’re going to change the world? Go big or go home,” I told him as I reached for the car door. “Besides, I’m not one person. I’ll have a lot of help. Including you.”
Aidan stared at me, his eyes narrowing gently. We watched each other for a moment as if suspended in time, hands on the car doors ready to jump out… yet neither of us moved.
Aidan’s eyes grew unfocused, and as I stared into them deeply it almost looked as if they contained stars and universes that sparkled. I was so comfortable with my friend, knew him so well that his change didn’t frighten me. Yet looking into his eyes, I knew that change in him was so… incredibly profound. Maybe for the first time.
“You are a thread that may weave another layer of the world, Charlotte,” Aidan whispered, and I shivered at his words. “Even if you don’t live up to all that you could be, if you accomplish even a tenth of what you could, the world will be so much better for it.”
The whispered words hovered in the air for a moment more until the stars cleared from Aidan’s eyes.
“Wow, I’m starting to sound like some freaky modern gay Gandalf,” he laughed. I laughed, too, grateful for the breaking of an uncomfortable tension.
A loud knock echoed from Aidan’s window as an impatient Detective Roberts urged us to get a move on.
“Let’s go solve a murder,” I said as I opened the door.
“While you’re doing that, get the lasagna,” Aidan told me. “It’s fantastic.”
My opinion of Kyle wasn’t all that high to start. I mean, his super suspicious detective smarmy thing wasn’t all that fun to be on the receiving end of, especially in front of my parents. What had really got me, though, was how cold he had been to Aidan back at the shelter.
As the four of us walked into the restaurant, though, I did sense that Kyle was fond of Aidan. He cared about him to an extent and wasn’t quite as cold as I first sensed he was.
The two, though, had precisely zero chemistry.
“A table for four?” a gentleman in meticulously pressed khaki pants asked us as he reached beneath the podium for menus.
“A booth, if you could,” Kyle answered as he pointed toward the back of the restaurant. “That one in the corner with the high-back? That would be perfect. We’d appreciate some privacy.”
“Of course, if you will all follow me.”
The restaurant was crowded even though it was early. Older couples and young families with children contributed to the loud din of the casual Italian eatery. Waiters and waitresses balancing large trays of cheesy, steaming dishes walked briskly from one end of the large room to the other.
“Here we are,” the host said as he stepped back. Once we all slid in the circular booth, he handed each one of us menus. I opened mine to find two pages of standard Italian choices but no prices next to the options.
“How do you know how much it costs?” I asked the host.
“The gentleman’s menu contains all the information they’ll need to be able to pay for the lady’s meal,” he answered, smiling.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I responded loudly.
“Charlotte, just let it go,” Aidan murmured quietly.
“She’s new the place, buddy. We’ll take care of her,” Kyle told him. With one more quick glance of concern, the host nodded to Kyle. Once he let us know that our server would be around shortly, he headed back to the front of the restaurant.
“Okay, someone better explain to me why I basically just walked into the nineteen-fifties,” I said as I set down the sexist and exceedingly insulting menu. “No one has a problem with this? Really?”
“We’re not here to protest the restaurant’s misogynistic practices, Charlotte,” Kyle told me quietly. “We're going to attract attention just by being here. Let’s not fight two battles at the same time.”
“This is absolutely offensive,” I mumbled.
“Anthony Drake is really, really old-fashioned,” Aidan told me.
“I don’t think I understand exactly what’s going on,” Gunther said, confused.
“This is a ladies menu,” I told him as I waved the leather bound book in the air. “It was so women didn’t know how much money men were spending when they took them out to dinner. The assumption being, obviously, that a woman would never pay for dinner.”
“To be fair, only high-end restaurants did that for the most part,” Kyle said. “And it was prevalent in Europe back in the day.”
“This is a casual restaurant, and this hasn’t been a practice since, like, forty years ago! What kind of person is he that he still provides a ladies menu at a casual Italian restaurant in Mickwac, Texas?”
“Someone who can do anything he wants,” Michael Hayden said as he slid into view at the front of the booth. He gazed out over the filled tables and sixty customers enjoying themselves. “If you don’t like it, there are certainly other establishments to patronize. Clearly, the restaurant will not rise or fall on your meal.”
“How would you feel if your sister was given a ladies menu?” I asked him. “You don’t think she’d be insulted?”
Michael Hayden’s eyes narrowed, and I felt that emotional sheet flutter between us. He continued to be unreadable from a telepathic mental standpoint, but his expression flashed concern he couldn’t conceal.
“What do you know about my sister?”
“I know she thinks you’re a decent guy. Though she seemed nice, that indicates she’s a pretty bad judge of character,” I told him.
“I do what I need to do to protect her,” he responded. “I’m sure you would do the same for your family.”
“I am. That’s why I’m here.”
“That’s not why you’re here,” he told me, his eyes narrowing.
“Oh? So why am I here?”
Hayden glared at me and then turned to Kyle.
“Detective Roberts, did your captain neglect to inform you that your investigative services were no longer needed in the Tiffany Drake case? Or do you just like to live on a dangerous edge?”
Kyle sat back and gazed calmly at Anthony Drake’s assistant, but he didn’t respond.
“You’ve given up a lot for your sister,” Aidan said quietly.
“Shut up,” Michael said as he leaned over the table. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know what any of you are doing here, but I suggest you order your meal and then eat your meal and then get out. The quicker, the better.”
Pulling back, he turned and pointed a finger at Kyle.
“If you know what’s good for you, Detective, you will stay away from my sister, and you will keep these nosy busybodies away from her as well. She’s been through enough.”
Kyle continued to stare while saying nothing.
“You folks enjoy your meal, now,” Hayden finished as he dropped his hand and walked casually away. “Terry? Comp table fourteen’s meal. Anything they’d like. We have to support our local police force, now, don’t we?”
“Yes, Mr. Hayden,” the frightened waitress answered quickly she popped up to replace him at the edge of the booth.
“Just one second, Terry,” Aidan told her. She nodded and walked away nervously.
“What a tool,” Kyle growled quietly.
Aidan looked around as if he wanted to say something, but couldn’t quite figure out how.
His gaze fell on Kyle for a few seconds. I watched his eyes narrow and his fingers dance under the table. A subtle magic woosh blew over the table.
After just a few seconds, Kyle’s face looked confused. Then he shifted slightly in the booth. A few seconds after that, he moved again. Then his face grew tense.
“Wow,” Kyle said as he turned red. “Suddenly, really have to hit the head. Gunther, you mind letting me out?”
As soon as his boyfriend's mad dash down the hall to the men’s room ensured Kyle was on the other side of the door, Aidan leaned forward and whispered.
“Michael Hayden and Tiffany Drake were involved romantically. Or… no, wait. They were supposed to get married.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw it in his past.”
“How did she not tell us this? And how did you not see this in Tiffany’s past?”
“Maybe he wasn’t that important to her,” Aidan said. “I don’t know why I see the parts that I see, not really. I can—”
“If you start giving me the whys and wherefores and codicils and addendums to your power and why it’s not perfect, save it,” I whispered as Gunther broke into a grin. “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Kyle said as he came back to the table looking much relieved of his previous pressure. Gunther slid in next to Aidan and Kyle sat across from me. “Did you figure something out?”
“Other than the fact that Michael Hayden doesn’t seem to like you much? Not really,” Aidan told him. “Should we order?”
“No, you should leave,” Anthony Drake rasped as he appeared at the end of our table. “Get the hell out of my restaurant. You shouldn’t be here, and you don’t belong here.”
I could play this one of two ways. The confrontational approach wasn’t likely to get me anywhere, at least not here. I also worried about the dozens of children around the restaurant. Anthony Drake wasn’t worried about getting in trouble for anything he did. I doubted beating up a girl in his restaurant would even rank very high on the concerned scale.
So, I went the other way. Even though it turned my stomach.
“Mr. Drake, we just want to get some dinner,” I told him as I fluttered my eyelashes and gave him my best feminine demure look. “These boys have been dragging me all over Mickwac all day, and I’m just so fatigued and hungry.” I fanned myself with the abominable ladies menu.
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be running around with these two fruits,” Anthony Drake told me as he leaned over close enough that his exhalation of garlic filled my nose. “Your mother and father know that you’re running around with the town perverts?”
A sparkle ash end was too good for this jerk.
What are you doing? Gunther asked.
I don’t know. Talking to him. I’m going to see if I can get information about Michael and Tiffany. It’ll at least make it easier for the four of us to talk since we’ll be able to explain where the information came from.
Gunther nodded imperceptibly.
“Yeah, there really aren’t too many men in this town left that are real men, you know,” I told Mr. Drake as I sat straight up and stuck my chest out as far as I could without being obscene. “I knew them when I was here before, but you’re right, they are not real men. Not like the man that would work for you.” I giggled and reached up to twirl my hair.
I felt like an offensive stereotype and thought for sure Anthony Drake would call me on it. Yet the gangster troglodyte smiled in a friendly way, at least for a predator. He was buying it.
Kyle made a valiant attempt at keeping his facial expression unreadable, but his eyes were as wide as saucers.
“No, the men that work for me are real men,” Anthony Drake said proudly. “They would take care of you just the way a man should so you don’t have to do any of that pesky thinking that gets women in trouble.”
“Is that what you think got Tiffany in trouble?” I asked as I leaned forward to show more cleavage and fluttered my eyes like an idiot. “I’m so surprised that she didn’t have someone to take care of her. I would’ve thought you bein’ the perfect Daddy and all you would’ve made sure that she had a real man to look after her.”
How on earth is this actually working?
Magic, Charlotte, Gunther said in my mind. You’re concentrating so intently on the illusion you’re trying to project that you’re basically hypnotizing the guy.
I thought I can’t use my ringmaster power on someone off the fairgrounds?
Not your ringmaster power, Gunther said. This is everyday old witch magic, and you are terrifyingly effective at wrapping that dangerous man around your finger.
I really didn’t know precisely what I was doing that was making this work, so I just kept doing what I was doing.
“Of course I had my little pumpkin ball taken care of,” Anthony responded with a wide smile. “I made sure she had my best man, Michael. I wouldn’t have even sent her to college, Michael insisted that we had to keep up appearances. He didn’t want to wife an ignorant woman, you see.”
He didn’t want “to wife”? What does that even mean?
“Well that’s just wonderful,” I cooed as I leaned forward even further. “When did they start dating?”
“They didn’t date,” the gangster said looking shocked at the suggestion. “You can’t let women date. Then they think they have choices, or can change their minds. No, she was promised to Michael, and they were going to get married. That was just the way it was, you see. They didn’t need to date. They had a betrothal ceremony. When she graduated from college, they get married. Done.”
I stopped twirling my hair and stared at him, shocked. “So, they didn’t spend any time together? Or get to know each other at all?”
I could see whatever magic I had weaved around Anthony Drake accidentally was fading at my incredulous question.
Twirl, Charlotte!
What?
Twirl your hair!
I giggled again and tossed my hair, wrapping a chunk around my forefinger. As soon as I began mindlessly circling the strands, the broad smile returned to Anthony Drake’s face, and he nodded.
“No, of course not! What’d it matter whether they spent any time together? Got to know each other? Tiffany was my daughter, dumb as she was. Michael’s my right-hand man. He’s like a son to me. Michael had to marry Tiffany if he wanted to take over.”
“Why?” I asked breathlessly and fluttered my eyelashes.
“Because I said so, little girl,” the gangster said proudly. “This isn’t some crime family where there are rules. I make the rules. I have the money, I have the power, and I make the rules. If Michael wanted to make the rules someday, he had to marry my idiot daughter.”
“Why do you keep calling Tiffany your idiot daughter?” I asked breathlessly. More eyelash fluttering. Head tilt. Hair twirl. Hold down nausea.
“Because she’s a girl,” he said as he held his hands up and looked at me like I was a moron. Which is clearly what he thought because, you know, female. “Girls are dumb. They’re just stupider than men. Well, maybe not these men…”
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said as I dropped my hand and stood up in front of the dangerous crime boss. “Your beliefs belong to the dirt heap of history. How you ever got any woman to have a child with you is beyond me.”
“I have my ways,” he sneered, anger and treacherous threat shooting off of him as if a champagne bottle had been shaken up and then uncorked. “Believe me, no one says no to me for long. Those that do wind up dead.”
“Freeze!” I snapped, my eyes narrowing.
“What are you, a cop now?”
“Darn it,” I mumbled. “I really hoped it was him.”
“Charlotte, what are you doing?” Detective Roberts asked as he got up.
“Sit down, fruity pants,” Drake sneered.
“I think we should all just calm down,” Gunther interjected as he struggled to get up.
“I think
it’s time for us to go,” Aidan said politely but firmly. “Mr. Drake, we apologize if we caused a disruption in your restaurant. We definitely should have thought about the stress this would cause you before we showed up to eat. Your lasagna is the absolute best in the plains, though, and I would’ve really enjoyed it.”
Anthony Drake stared at Aidan as if he didn’t know what to make of them. After a few heart-pounding moments where I wasn’t sure which direction this confrontation was headed, the gangster nodded and stepped back. “Appreciate the apology. Now get out.”
As the restaurant watched, we headed quickly toward the door and left.
13
“Does someone want to explain to me what the heck that was in there?” Kyle asked as soon as we were far enough away from the restaurant that no one could overhear. “Even in high school you didn’t act like that much of a bimbo. I didn’t want to cause a scene, but c’mon!”
“Have you seriously never gone undercover before, Detective Snotty?” I asked Kyle. “No pat on the back for finding out that Michael Hayden and Tiffany Drake were engaged? Well, okay, not engaged in the traditional sense, but still. No ‘Atta boy, Charlotte’ for finding out that Anthony Drake didn’t murder his daughter?”
“How are you under the impression that you found out Anthony Drake didn’t murder his daughter somehow? Did I miss something major while I was in the bathroom?” Kyle asked as he stepped up in my space. Which was annoying, especially when I couldn’t teleport him back to somewhere not in my face.
“I don’t think he murdered his daughter,” I told Kyle defiantly. “And if you think that he did, you’re a terrible detective.”
“Again, know it all, just because you think he didn’t do something? That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. Believe it or not, criminals can be cagey. They lie sometimes. And you didn’t even ask him if he killed his daughter!” the detective pointed out.
“Hey, guys…” Aidan said calmly, but Kyle ignored him.
“I didn’t have to ask him if he killed his daughter. Frankly, who would ask somebody if they killed their daughter? He obviously didn’t,” I told him as I took a step back. “Why do you even think he did? Just because of who he is?”