by Audrey Faye
Carly laid a quiet hand on my arm. “It’s weird, this not-working-alone stuff.”
“Yeah.” I shuddered a little, glad to have company in my odd little cave. “Makes that itch between my shoulder blades all twitchy.”
That earned me a snicker. “About time you got some itches.”
That particular tone was way more dangerous than my partner’s knives. “I hear you stayed at Rosie’s last night.”
Carly snorted. “Did not.”
“Well, you should have. She likes you.”
“She likes you too,” said Carly dryly. “What, I’m supposed to shack up just because she’s the only other lesbian in town?”
It didn’t seem like the most terrible reason in the world. “Or because she’s sexy and smart and she grows monkshead in her backyard?”
“Okay. Those are better reasons.”
“And because you snore and Lelo and I could use a decent night’s sleep.” The snoring part was true, but the rest wasn’t. I could sleep through a minor tornado, and I assumed any self-respecting teenager could do the same.
Carly grinned. “You could go shack up with Rosie. I hear her snores are really ladylike.”
I wasn’t Rosie’s type, for all kinds of reasons, and I’d given up shacking up for Lent four years ago and never looked back. Some things are way overrated, especially when you’re a middle-aged woman in flannel. However, I was not having any part of that discussion in the middle of a small-town coffee shop.
My partner just grinned, well aware of what my usual array of responses would be. And whispered her parting blow as she walked off to help the streamer ladies with their lefts and rights. “I can probably get you a visitor pass to Lesbian Island if you want.”
I sighed. At least she’d whispered.
CHAPTER 17
It was just your average early evening in The Cuppa—with about two hundred extra people. Some of them were layered three deep on chairs, although that mostly seemed to be the teenage crowd, and the ones at the bottom of those piles didn’t seem to mind.
I was trying my best to stay invisible, but that’s hard when you actually occupy physical space and very little of that was left to be found. There was a small circle of airiness around Cici and her camera guy, but no way I was getting anywhere close to that.
A toddler in the back raised a sudden ruckus and got quieted with a bite of cinnamon bun. We were ready.
Cici’s phone pinged and she favored us all with her six-o’clock-news smile. “He’s on his way. Mr. Peterson says he just walked past the hardware store.”
I was astonished that Mr. Peterson could text—he was about a hundred years old and moved at the speed of your average arthritic turtle. Which probably meant Chad was a lot closer than the hardware store. I studied Cici’s face, looking for any hints of how this sting might go. A lot depended on her taste for the truth. Hopefully, the story would grow some legs no matter what happened, but the reporter would have a lot to say about how those legs were dressed and what kind of boots they were wearing. I voted for a good, strong pair of stompers, but today, my vote wasn’t going to count. A town needed to decide how they wanted to spin a man’s character and the quality of his life.
Which is the kind of line that should make everyone glad I’m not a reporter. I ignored the voice in my ribs that knew it was the kind of line that made a great song.
The collective intake of breath near the door suggested our man was in sight. Cici loaded up her game face and sidled toward the window, making sure to stay out of the camera guy’s way.
Chad pulled open the door, his other hand on Ally’s arm—and spied the camera. The crowd. And then he made his first mistake.
His body shifted, moving into optimal range for the viewing TV audience, leaving Ally standing in shadows behind him. “Well, well. What’s all this?”
It rang like a guy who was trying to act surprised in the face of overwhelming leaks.
I’d figured as much. Small town. Hopefully what had leaked was the garden-club version of events or we were going to end up in the Dumb Assassins Hall of Fame.
Ally slid her way around Chad and merged into the crowd, smiling the whole time. Honoring her man and oblivious to the fact that he’d just rendered her invisible—or opting to forgive. I knew both choices well enough.
Lelo scowled from her stool near the cash register, but chilled out as Rosie nudged her shoulder. We had to let this play out, and the first act wasn’t going to sit well in some stomachs.
“Surprise, Chad.” Cici stepped forward, camera already running. “We’re all here because a little birdie whispered a few of your secrets in my ear.”
It did me a world of good to see his eyes bulge a little. Three years with Carly and I’d developed a taste for scaring the shit out of slimeballs. Chad recovered fast—but for a brief moment, we’d gotten him scared. I’d hold on to that so the next part didn’t make me puke.
One of the little old ladies stood up. Mrs. Bellingham, head of the garden club. Petite, well dressed, and bossy as hell—and not in a good way. She’d confided to me that the flowers had really gone downhill ever since Rosie had taken over, and that in her day, women didn’t flaunt themselves so. It was a condemnation that I suspected she aimed at Rosie, Carly, and pretty much every other female in town under the age of sixty.
Sadly, I think she approved of my flannel.
By now, Mrs. Bellingham had positioned herself in front of Chad, carefully angled so the camera guy could catch her pearls and her lady-of-the-manor smile. “You’re such a sweet man. Why, I knew you sent me flowers nearly every week, but I had no idea how many other people got them too.”
Ouch. Even the camera guy’s eyebrows went up at her tone.
Chad was turning the shade of toddler puke.
And then she reached up and patted his cheek, one co-conspirator to another. “Silly boy—did you think I’d be jealous?” She winked for the camera. “I’m sure I get the biggest bouquet, and that’s all that matters.”
Her tone was light amusement now—a shared joke with the viewing audiences present and future. But I was pretty sure she wasn’t kidding. Small-town social status is a strange beast, and Chad’s cheek has just been accosted by a woman scorned.
Cici stepped in with her microphone, apparently deciding it was time to get this little tableau back on script. “Exactly how many women are you wooing in this town, Chad?” She’d injected just the right amount of teasing into her voice—but the question itself had pushed the man of the hour deeper into quicksand.
He tried to rally, truly he did. “Only the ones old enough to be my grandmother.” He smiled, and it almost looked genuine. “As you know, I lost both of my grandmas when I was just a boy, so I do my best to persuade the lovely women of Lennotsville to adopt me.” Some color flowed back into his cheeks. “And I admit to a weakness for Mrs. Bellingham’s apple pie.”
If Lelo rolled her eyes any harder, they were going to make like superballs and bounce.
“Well, I’m not old enough to be your grandmother.” A handsome woman by the window raised her coffee cup. “But those were lovely day lilies you sent when you couldn’t make it to our Founder’s Tea.” She smiled at another well-dressed woman across the room. “A little bird told me you managed to snag him for your charity golf foursome.” She winked at Cici. “I hear his skills with a nine-iron are in hot demand.”
Cici caught the wink—and missed the confusion brewing in the woman across the room.
I cursed the inability of a camera to be pointing in all directions at once. It was pretty obvious Chad hadn’t made the golf game, either.
“How odd,” said a prim male voice. “I do believe my wife got flowers that day as well. I recall, because she was upset that the rescheduling of her hospital volunteers’ luncheon meant she couldn’t attend the Founder’s Tea.”
Lelo was beginning a quiet happy dance on her stool. I was older and more jaded. We hadn’t succeeded yet.
A few oth
ers called out their floral deliveries, innocent data points that were beginning to shade the outlines of a picture that wasn’t nearly as lily-white as most of the colorers had thought. Chad Berrington handed out flowers like penny candy—and not always with the truth attached.
Cici chuckled, eyes looking slightly panicked, and sought out Rosie in the audience. “He must be your best customer.”
“One of them, for sure.” Rosie knew how to hold her cards close to her chest.
“One of mine, too.” A tiny woman a few chairs over from the sexy gypsy spoke up, her eyes glinting.
Cici shifted seamlessly. “Harriet, you and your husband own Harriman’s Candy, right?” She mugged for the camera. “Best fudge ever, for those of you not on a diet.”
Well-mannered brunette curls bounced vigorously as Harriet confirmed what everyone else in the coffee shop already knew. “We make fresh batches every Saturday. Chad sent three kinds to the kids on the Little League team when they won the county pennant. Some of our homemade horehound candy too, and caramel popcorn, and Pez dispensers—I had to special order those. Spent a pretty penny, he did, but my nephew got one of those candy baskets, and he was the happiest kid in Wakeman County.”
Harriet might look like a sweet middle-aged fudge maker, but that had been a very niftily done bit of marketing.
It had also laid the noose neatly around our target’s neck. I could see the kids reacting. Those who had gotten baskets—and those who hadn’t. Given the shaking heads and surprised faces, it was news that the post-season sugar coma hadn’t been universal. I watched as a table of six kids in front of me put together the ugly play—and missed the electrons buzzing elsewhere in the room.
A kid at a table to my left stood up, eyes full of the righteous instinct for justice that almost never outlives childhood. “Mr. Berrington, my friend Sam didn’t get a basket.”
Cici was no dummy—a quick hand gesture and the camera was glued to the tow-headed kid’s face.
Chad had pasted something that was probably supposed to look like sorrow on his. “I’m sorry, Gabe. Something must have gone wrong with the deliveries.” He cast around, clearly at a loss as to which kid might be Sam. “How about I take the two of you to the candy shop right after we finish here?”
That might have mollified Gabe—until one of the kids I’d originally been watching stood up too. The jut of his chin spoke volumes about the world he’d experienced in his nine years. “I didn’t get one, or Bubby neither.”
A woman moved in behind his shoulder, “mom” stamped in every pore. I recognized her—she worked at the tourist-trinket store across the street. Angelina. Single mom, took her lunch hour every day to go volunteer at the school helping kids learn to read. And clearly invisible in Chad Berrington’s world.
If I was reading her body language right, that wasn’t going to last much longer. I’d watched enough people over the years to know that not everyone will step in front of a bus for their kids—that kind of love isn’t as universal as we hope it is. But Angelina, she had it. And she was about to use it to plant her fist directly in Chad’s gut.
I wasn’t the only one who thought so—and judging from the avid interest in Gabe’s eyes, it would have served his sense of justice just fine. There were a lot of kids on their feet now, parents lining up behind them. The man behind Gabe wore a suit that screamed “important.” One look at his eyes said that we had Chad Berrington’s pristine reputation on the ropes.
“It must have been some kind of terrible mistake.” The man in question was back to looking pukey. He glanced at Harriet, beseeching. “A mishap with the deliveries, maybe.”
Nail, meet coffin.
Harriet stood up, five feet, three inches of spitting mad. “You had me make sixteen baskets.”
Gabe’s father laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. “How many kids are on the team, kiddo?”
Blue eyes blazed fierce. “Twenty.”
“I only made sixteen.” Harriet’s voice was solid and sincere and as certain as cement block. “I know, because I made four pounds of fudge and each basket got a quarter pound. We delivered every single one of those baskets.” She looked straight at the man who had been dumb enough to try to punt his error into her lap. “We don’t make mistakes like that, Mr. Berrington. You wrote me out the list of names yourself.”
She turned to Angelina and her son. “You come by the shop after. You and anyone else who didn’t get a basket.” Harriet looked back at Chad, eyes blazing now. “You should be entirely ashamed of yourself. Your money won’t be welcome in my shop again.”
Wow.
Nobody moved. Even Cici Boyer looked stunned.
And then the murmurs started.
I wasn’t naïve. There were pockets of riled-up water, and a lot of people who would be watching Chad Berrington more closely in the future. We’d done some damage—but we hadn’t destroyed him.
And then I realized I wasn’t looking in the right direction. This story wasn’t Lelo’s anymore, or Harriet’s, or even the four kids on the baseball team who were about to get drowned in sugar.
It had shifted and landed right square at the feet of the pretty blonde in the back corner, crying quiet tears as her dreams shattered.
The coffee shop hit one of those odd eddies of quiet when everyone accidentally stopped talking for a moment—and Allison Kramer’s intake of breath rose over the sound of her tears. She looked at the man she’d walked in with, eyes full of sad, awful realization. “You sponsor the team. You had me order hats for them in February. Twenty of them.”
No one breathed. And then Ally dried her eyes and said nine very final words into the silence. “When I was a kid, I wasn’t important either.”
CHAPTER 18
I settled down on the vacant end of Rosie’s couch, scanning the other people in her living room. This was different. Carly and I don’t really have a routine when we finish assignments—sometimes we eat, sometimes we drive, sometimes we take a little personal time to decloak from the messy and the ugly and the knowledge that what we’ve just done doesn’t always work.
But whatever we do, it’s never more than the two of us. I looked over at Lelo. “How’s your sister?”
“Okay.” The kid shrugged, tired and a little forlorn. “She thanked me and that made me feel like crap. And then she ate three pieces of Mrs. Beauchamp’s cake, so she’ll probably die of food poisoning.”
The cake had been astonishingly good, if you could get past the atomic icing. “He might pull the wool down over some people’s eyes by morning, but she’s not going to be one of them.” Usually, we tried to change the guy. In this case, we’d changed the girl. Which meant that our sixteen-year-old sidekick was going to get her sister back and I could stop feeling maternal about a cussedly independent teenager who wouldn’t thank me one bit for coddling her.
Lelo just offered me a slightly crooked smile that confused my instincts all to hell. I was nobody’s mother.
“Here, kid.” Carly was rummaging in the monstrosity she calls a gear bag. “We’re heading out in the morning, but I have a present for you.” A ball of black cloth sailed through the air.
I knew what it was, but it was still fun watching the kid spread it out and read the sparkly letters. She looked up at the two of us. “It freaking glitters.”
My partner rolled her eyes. “It’s the only one we have in a stick-person size.”
Lelo snorted. “Rosie should get one too.”
Carly leaned back and scrunched a pillow under her head. “I hear you’re pretty bad at strip poker, so she’ll probably have one soon enough.”
Rosie grinned. “I’m not stick-people-sized. You can bring me one the next time you come to visit.”
That was different, too. Roots, of the kind with poker nights and sexy gypsies attached.
Oh, I knew we’d be on the road again soon enough, quite possibly by morning. Slimeballs didn’t conveniently cluster in one town. But this time, we might come back—and not only to
check on Chad Fuckwit Berrington.
We had somehow become assassins with friends.
EPILOGUE
Carly’s boots warned me she was coming about two seconds before she emerged on Lelo’s rooftop deck. Her eyebrows flew up as she realized what she’d interrupted.
I grimaced—the only damn plants up here were way too small to hide the guitar in my hands. “Don’t ask.”
She sat down slowly, eyes glued to mine. “I didn’t.”
The hell she hadn’t. “I found it in the closet. Stupid. I’ve got nothing to play.”
My pants were going to ignite any minute. A damn song had been chasing me ever since I’d seen Ally’s tears. My bloody muse had escaped the dungeon and she was wielding a machete.
“It’s just the two of us up here,” said Carly quietly. “And I can disappear—just say the word.”
She calls me the brains of our outfit. It’s moments like this when we both know that’s just a load of horse shit. “No big deal—I was mostly done anyhow. Where are we headed tomorrow?” The itch between my shoulder blades had turned into a couple of regiments marching through the Louisiana swamp.
Or maybe that was my muse’s fault too.
“Just play, dammit.” It was barely a whisper. “Tomorrow you can go back to pretending the music’s dead.”
That was a really low blow, aimed by a woman who knows exactly how to fight and win.
And apparently, I wanted to lose.
The first chord strummed under my fingers. Begging. Keening, almost. Too much. I changed to fingerpicking, one light note at a time, like Mr. Peterson’s arthritic turtle. A quiet, aching line of notes from six strings already sliding out of tune. Cheap piece of guitar shit.
My muse didn’t care. She saw the ordinary light of a slightly shabby small-town coffee shop and the shadows of the lives gathered there. The small heartbreaks, fed by the lies and the eyes that didn’t want to see. The day the rose-colored glasses broke and let the tears fall. The world that kept turning just because it had to, and the woman who walked out right over the slime on the floor and caught herself a ride into something better.