Monkey Wrench

by Terri Thayer

  My breath caught. The vanity that I’d had made from Mom’s dresser would be ruined. Buster and I had spent hours refinishing that piece. Time I’d spent thinking about my mother, and the young wife she’d been when she’d first found that dresser in an antiques shop on San Carlos Street. We’d stripped away layers of paint that my mother herself had applied as the dresser went from the boys’ room to mine and finally to the office at Quilter Paradiso. Blue, pink, yellow.

  I gave myself a mental shake. I was getting distracted. The dresser was not my biggest worry now. There was a syringe with my name on it just behind me in the classroom.

  Sonya turned the taps on harder. Water splashed onto the floor and started to leak out underneath the door. The hall was flooding.

  “My shoes are getting ruined, Dewey,” Sonya singsonged. “I paid three hundred dollars for these shoes. I’m not happy right now.”

  Her voice got louder and she rattled the knob for punctuation.

  I wasn’t going to answer. With the water running, she would have to struggle to hear what was going on out here. All she knew was that the door wouldn’t open. I could be down the hall or outside for all she knew.

  I looked for a way to secure the door.

  If I had the right size of something, I could jam it under the doorknob. The souvenir wooden yardsticks might be the right length. From here, I could see one standing in the hall, next to the greeting table. Good ole Kym. She never cleaned up her spot.

  I braced my feet and stretched my hand out. The yardstick was out of reach. I pulled back, and twisted at the waist, trying to give myself a little more length.

  The water shut off. “Dewey, you out there?”

  The door shook as she banged on it. I didn’t answer. I liked her uncertain.

  The light coming from the window in the back door faded. The sun was setting. The only light was the light in the classroom and a small sliver coming from the bathroom. Pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to see my hand in front of my face.

  I leaned as far as I could, skootching my foot along the hall, the soles of my sneakers slipping. I felt the yardstick under my fingertips. I exhaled and bent as far as I could. I needed to add yoga to my schedule.

  I gave myself one final push. I had it. I swiped up the yardstick and wedged it under the knob, moving away as I did.

  Sonya had the timing of a psychopath. She pushed on the door, snapping the yardstick into three pieces.

  I ran, my feet sliding on the slippery floor. I went down just in front of the classroom door, my head hitting the jamb hard. I saw stars. I tried to shake it off, but the roiling made my head hurt more.

  I had to get the syringe before she did. She was right behind me. I held onto the doorjamb for support and kicked. I felt a surge of energy as my foot connected with Sonya. She grunted in pain. She grabbed her shin.

  I reached up and grabbed her tote bag off the shelf and tucked it under my arm. I had to avoid getting stuck. Whatever Sonya had loaded that thing with, it was lethal.

  Sonya came into the classroom, steadying herself. The hem of her long skirt was wet and her hair had come half down out of her bun. She looked like a witch from a dark fairy tale.

  Her wide eyes swept the room, finally coming to rest on the bag under my arm. I shifted, trying to hide the bag, the syringe. Her face twisted in anger. She knew that I knew.

  I held up a steadying hand. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll give you the drugs. You get out of the country.”

  Sonya’s hair was flying across her face. She brushed it back, holding it with one hand. She cocked her head at me. “Why would you do that?”

  I twisted my face into what I hoped was a good imitation of disgust. “I didn’t want that cop Zorn to get the bust. You don’t know all the history between us. He’s ruining my boyfriend’s career. All he cares about is scoring points with the FBI and the DEA. I can’t have Zorn getting the upper hand on Buster.”

  She swiped at the tote bag. “How about I just kill you now?”

  I kept the bag out of her reach. “You’ll never find the drugs. There were thousands of dollars worth of prescriptions in that bag. You can’t really afford to let that go, can you? You need that money.”

  “Damned right I do. Do you know how much money a part-time college instructor gets paid?”

  I did. “Didn’t you want to go to Florence to paint? Go away, stop dealing drugs in San Jose.”

  Sonya grabbed a bin off the shelf. She spilled out the contents, dumping the fabric strips that Ursula and Pearl had cut. She piled the plastic bin in the doorway, grabbing another and doing the same. She was building a barricade.

  “Don’t you want in on my business? Everyone else wanted a piece of the action. My action. No one was as smart as me. No one saw the potential between the older women and the younger men. That was all me. Do you think Wyatt would have been clever enough to figure out the GrandSons? No way. Oh, he could pull together several hundred stoned kids to gather in the park but he wasn’t smart enough to run the whole show. He thought he was.”

  Sonya dumped another bin. This one was full of threads, and the spools scattered across the floor. I picked up my foot to let several roll past.

  “And Lois? She thought she was brilliant, too, coming to me. When she saw Ross with Pearl, she went a little nuts. She told me I had to get Ross out of Pearl’s house, then she would give me the drugs. Where are the drugs, Dewey? Lois told me she had my drugs.”

  “I don’t know. I thought Ross had them.” I backed farther into the classroom. Sonya was blocking the doorway. I needed to put space between us.

  “I don’t believe you. Lois showed me a scrip. She had them when she was here the other day. She must have given them to you to hold.”

  I squirmed my hand into the bag, and felt the barrel of the syringe. My head throbbed. Sonya’s instrument of death. Would I be able to stab her with the needle?

  My grip slipped, my fingers wet from falling on the floor. I wiped my palm on my pants. The syringe had clung to my hand and before I realized it, the syringe was skittering across the classroom floor.

  I cried out and threw myself on the floor. My knee landed hard on a spool of thread. I cried out in pain, twisting up in a sitting position. As I asked my knee to ignore its pain and help me stand, the syringe traveled the length of the room and landed close to Sonya’s foot. She scooped it up, her eyes flashing in triumph. Her mouth twisted in a rictus smile sending chills down my back.

  I scooted on the floor, backing into the far corner of the room, stopped by the inventory shelves.

  She would kill me. She’d have no problem stabbing me with poison. I reached behind me, trying to pull myself up. My fingers touched cold metal. I glanced back. The iron that Pearl had ruined.

  Sonya was nearly on me. I closed my fingers on the handle, feeling the iron’s heft. I stood and swung with all my might.

  The ruined iron landed on Sonya’s temple with a satisfying thwack. The tiny woman went down in a heap.

  I leaned on my knees, panting. Sonya groaned and I pulled the iron back to hit her again.

  Her eyes fluttered and she stopped moving. A roaring in my ears subsided and I could hear someone pounding on the back door.

  “Dewey!”

  Buster. Even the sound of Buster’s voice couldn’t keep my knees from shaking.

  I took the syringe from her hand and backed out of the room, watching her. I ran down the short hall and flung open the door. Buster rushed in. He held my upper arm and searched my face.

  “I’m okay. Sonya’s in the classroom,” I said.

  Buster led the way. Sonya seemed to be coming to. She moaned and tried to turn over. He put a foot on her back, keeping her down.

  “Are you okay?”

  I moved closer so he could put an arm around me. My shoulders heaved at his touch. I nodded.

  Buster pulled Sonya around and handcuffed her. Then he picked me up and carried me to a chair. His big brown eyes looked into mine.

 
; “I knew that wasn’t you on the phone,” he said. “I got here as fast as I could.”

  “Thanks, sweetie. Go turn off the water in the bathroom, please.”

  Nineteen

  Buster took me home. He’d left Sonya and Ross with Zorn. I took a steamy bath and wrapped up in Buster’s terry robe. Buster had made tea for both of us. He was strumming his guitar when I came into the living room.

  He patted the couch next to him. He kept his eyes on me, his brow knitted. He was worried about me.

  I had never felt so tired. I put my feet on the coffee table next to where Buster had laid his guitar and sipped the tea. The hot drink did nothing to penetrate the cold spot in my belly.

  I didn’t want to talk about what had just happened but I couldn’t stop the words from flowing.

  “Buster, Sonya and her GrandSons were hooking women on prescription drugs. Like Pearl.”

  Buster was nodding. He knew. My eyes filled with tears. Buster put a comforting arm around me and drew me in close.

  “Vangie and Pearl. This could have ended so differently.”

  “We—you—put the perpetrator behind bars,” he said. “That’s something.”

  I nodded into his chest. It was something. But was it enough? It was enough for Buster, because his job was to deal with the never-ending parade of bad guys. Human nature, he’d say, is to screw up. My job is to make them pay their debt to society. Nothing personal. That’s how he stayed sane.

  I wanted my life to be normal. No more dead bodies, no bad guys.

  “I’m not doing this anymore.”

  Buster reared back. “What? Us?”

  I patted his face and kissed his cheek. “No, stupid. Us is forever.”

  He leaned his head on top of mine, his chin digging into the top of my skull with an uncomfortable amount of pressure. “Forever,” he said.

  “I don’t want to be the one who finds dead bodies, who solves murders. I’m finished.”

  This business had left me feeling tainted, as though Sonya had tarred me with her brush too. As if I’d taken too many over-the-counter drugs, leaving me logy and sluggish. Bath and tea and even Buster didn’t help.

  I couldn’t shake off the feeling that putting Sonya in jail solved nothing. Lois was still dead. Pearl was still a sad widow. Vangie was still on overload with a dead friend. Ursula was in chronic pain and without health insurance. The problems that Sonya had unearthed—and exploited—were still there.

  Buster was quiet.

  “What if I went back to school?” I said. “Learn to be a drug counselor. Something useful.”

  “You could do that,” Buster said quietly.

  “I don’t know how long it’ll take,” I said, warming to the idea. “Couple of years, maybe. We’d have to put off buying a new house.”

  “We can live here,” Buster said. “I’m getting used to bumping my head in the shower. I think I’ve developed a callous.”

  I laughed and reached up to rub his head.

  “Would you sell QP?” he asked.

  The idea sent a chill down my back. QP was my connection to my mother, my connection to the world that I’d grown to love.

  “I might need the money.”

  We were quiet and I rode Buster’s chest as it expanded with his breathing.

  “I have two things to say,” he said finally. “One, you haven’t had a choice when it came to the dead bodies and the bad guys. They entered your life and wouldn’t let go. You did what had to be done. I know you didn’t invite this mayhem into your life, and while I’ll always worry about you, I’m proud of you, too. You’ve stepped up every time.”

  He stopped and I let his words sink in. It was true. There wasn’t anything I could have done differently. People I loved needed me.

  “Second, running QP is doing something useful,” Buster said, kissing the top of my head with gusto. “You help people. Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me that quilting heals?”

  I smiled. I had learned that over these last couple of years at QP. Quilters came in with broken hearts, broken marriages, broken homes. They sewed and the pain eased. I’d seen women with difficult lives find solace and comfort in making quilts.

  “At least sleep on it,” Buster said.

  _____

  We fell asleep fully clothed on the couch. This is what people mean when they say love finds a way. Ordinarily when we watched TV, we took turns spreading out. But that night, we lay entwined for eight hours on the narrow couch.

  The sun coming in the front window woke us. I opened my eyes as Buster opened his. His lids fluttered shut and he yawned.

  “Good morning,” I said. The newness of the day washed over me.

  We had a chance at a fresh start. The sun was shining. The mourning doves were cooing. I heard my neighbor’s dog bark urgently. “Let’s go,” he seemed to be saying. “Time’s a wasting.”

  Buster was by my side. I could do anything. My heart was telling me it was time to move on. Let QP run itself. Let the police do their job. Fighting crime was their job, not mine. I had my own destiny to fulfill.

  “No more crime solving,” I said. “I’ve slept on it and that’s what I’ve decided.”

  Buster nuzzled my neck. I got the feeling he wasn’t listening.

  My cell rang. I ignored it. Then Buster’s cell trilled. I scooped it off the coffee table and held it up.

  “No, no phones. Not yet.”

  “I’m good,” he said. He reached up and knocked the phone out of my hand. It landed near the kitchen door. “Besides, I have a much better idea on how to start the morning,” he said, reaching under my shirt. His fingers tickled and I screeched, involuntarily rolling away from him. I fell off the couch and Buster reached for me.

  “Are you hurt?”

  His concern was fake, so I threw a cushion at him. Buster ducked and laughed harder. He pounced, tickling me for real. I jumped up and ran a few steps. Buster tried to get up but his feet caught in the quilt I’d thrown over us last night. He went sprawling, his hands out in front of him in a protection mode. His pants slid down so his boxers were visible, making the whole scene even funnier. I danced and giggled, trying to avoid peeing myself.

  The home phone rang. “I knew I should have gotten rid of that thing. Who needs a land line anyhow?” I let it ring and reached out, getting a fistful of boxers before Buster pulled away.

  The machine kicked in after three rings. Freddy’s voice came through the small speakers. Buster tugged his pants in order.

  “Hey, you two crime fighters. What do two crime fighters do when they’re not fighting crime? Wait, I bet I know.”

  Freddy made some weird kissing noise.

  “Last day of the Crawl, Dewey. Twitter’s blowing up. People are going to come out. You’ve got to fill me in. I’m dying over here. Was Lois a killer? That’s what I heard. Did Vangie run over someone with her car? Come on, not knowing is killing me. You gotta let me in the loop.”

  Buster stayed on all fours and came after me, his large hand swiping the air in front of him. I did a jig, avoiding him. I grabbed a couch cushion and hid behind it.

  “Please, Buster, make it stop. Go hang up that phone.”

  Freddy continued, unedited, “Call me as soon as you get done. Oh no, ewww. I just gave myself a visual. Ugh. The thought of you two making sweet, sweet love …”

  “Your friend the buzz killer,” Buster said. “It’s like he knew that I was going to put the moves on you.”

  “When aren’t you putting the moves on me?” I asked, laughing. “He’d have to know when you were asleep. I take that back, I feel you sometimes …”

  “I’d have to be dead,” Buster said.

  He bellowed like an elephant. I fled into the bathroom and closed the door.

  “Come out, little girl,” he said in a villainy voice. “I will break this door down. I’ve been trained and can broach this obstacle in 3.3 seconds. I was first in my class at the academy in legal egress.”

  I
was giggling too hard to respond. I didn’t lock the door, instead jumped into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain shut.

  Buster opened the door a crack. “May I?”

  I didn’t answer. The chase was too much fun. I didn’t want it to end.

  Buster let himself in. The bathroom was tiny, and there was no place to hide but I tingled with anticipation anyhow. Buster was delaying his discovery of me and I loved every second.

  He pulled the shower curtain back with a roar. I faked a scream and fell into his open arms. He scooped me up.

  “Now I’ve got you,” he said.

  I kissed him. “You do. That you do.”

  That was all I needed. Buster in my arms. Together we could deal with whatever came our way.

  QP was my legacy. The building had been in my family for a hundred years. My mother had built the business up. With the changes I’d made, the store fit my vision. I wasn’t going to bail on it now.

  As for the other stuff, I just hoped I could always be there when my friends needed me.

  The Crawl didn’t start for another two hours.

  I pushed Buster toward the bedroom.

  About the Author of Monkey Wrench

  Terri Thayer is busy writing, quilting, and keeping an eye out for murderers at quilt shows. So as not to disappoint her fans, she is still trying to figure out a way to bring Buster to the guild’s show-and-tell.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Information

  Acknowledgments

  Monkey Wrench Pattern

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  About the Author