Last Call

by Libby Kirsch

  Last Call

  Libby Kirsch

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Also by Libby Kirsch

  About the Author

  Last Minute—Special Preview

  The Big Lead—Special preview

  Thank you, Tom.

  You’re so supportive, and I’m so lucky.

  Chapter One

  Janet slammed the drawer of the cash register. By the time Cindy Lou jumped at the noise, Janet had her phone out to make a call.

  “Hey, darlin’,” Jason said when he picked up the line. “I was hoping I’d hear from you.”

  Janet smiled, in spite of her foul mood, and pushed wisps of light brown hair off her face. Her hand came away damp. She’d been sweating in the Knoxville summer heat since before she even rolled out of bed, and the ancient air-conditioning unit behind the bar couldn’t seem to keep up with the soaring temperature. Then she remembered the reason she was calling and frowned. “I just counted—and then I re-counted. Money’s missing again.” She walked toward the back of the room, away from Cindy Lou and Frank, her bouncer, who’d just arrived for his shift. “This time we’re short eighty-two dollars.” She couldn’t stop herself from turning back to look at her employees suspiciously.

  “And?” her boyfriend asked.

  “And Elizabeth was working last night.” She watched Cindy Lou disappear into the back cooler with an empty bucket.

  “Anyone else?” Jason asked.

  Her lips puckered. Why did he always sound so irritatingly reasonable? “Well, yeah, but I don’t think—”

  “I’m just saying. Don’t fly off the—”

  “I can keep my cool, okay?” she snapped, then flushed. She hadn’t meant to shout. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Jason, can you please just check the video? I gotta go.” They disconnected, but before she could shove her phone back into her pocket, the screen lit up with a delayed notification telling her she’d missed two calls overnight from the very employee she suspected of theft. She glared at the walls, then realized it wasn’t the poor reception here that was the problem. She’d been home all night with Jason, and for some reason the incoming calls from Elizabeth were only now showing up.

  She tapped a few icons and shook her head. Her youngest staff member hadn’t left a message, but the timing seemed suspicious. Janet had learned just days ago that money was disappearing from the register, and now Elizabeth was trying to call her on her cell phone for the first time ever? Did she know, somehow, that Janet knew about the missing money?

  Cindy Lou hobbled out from the walk-in cooler, her gait awkward as she wrestled a full bucket of ice behind the bar. As usual, she was dressed to kill—or at least maim. She had poured herself into a bright pink tube top that ended just above a shiny green belly-button ring. Her tight jeans rode so low that her hip bones jutted out, and Cindy Lou had tied her bleach-blond hair back with a teal bandanna. Body parts were spilling from every piece of her outfit.

  “You gained a set there.” Janet motioned to Cindy Lou’s chest. Something had happened when she dumped the ice bucket into the freezer drawer, and her two boobs had turned into four.

  “Oh my gosh! They musta come unstuck!” Her twang made the words musical. She bent over and reached into her tube top to rearrange things.

  “Come on!” Frank turned away from the bar in disgust and headed for the far side of the room.

  Janet watched him walk off before asking Cindy Lou, “What’s under there?”

  “It’s a silicone push-up thingamajig. Sticks right to my skin and pushes the girls up—but I’m sweating so much, they must’ve slipped down.” She wiped beads of sweat from her brow and then smoothed the fabric of her tube top over her restored figure. “You know, I didn’t used to need all this business under here, but after Chip, everything just kind of . . . fell.”

  Chip, Chip, Chip. It was all Cindy Lou ever wanted to talk about. Janet plastered on a smile when her bartender looked up. “Kids, huh? How old is he now?”

  “Seventeen, going on forty.” She smiled indulgently. “He leaves for college soon.” She turned back to the bar, a towel and spray bottle in her hands, the goofy grin still on her face.

  Frank slammed two chairs down from the table in the corner, still scowling. He might not have liked Cindy Lou’s methods, but he took his share from the tip jar every night without complaint. Janet only paid minimum wage, but they all cleared more than thirty dollars an hour on a good night, thanks in some part, perhaps, to Cindy Lou’s ramped-up double Ds. Their nice pay made it even more frustrating to discover someone had been stealing money from the register, and if Janet’s new accounting program was right, it had been going on for weeks. That’s why she’d had Jason install a state-of-the-art surveillance system. She was ready to catch a thief.

  “Damn gum,” Frank muttered, scraping the tabletop with a razor blade.

  He fit the job description for a bouncer—tall and strong—but his light brown hair was smashed flat on one side, as if he’d fallen asleep while it was wet, and his eyes were red and puffy.

  Was he the sticky-fingered employee? Though Elizabeth, Janet’s other full-time bartender, was her prime suspect, Frank was no prize, so if Jason saw him stealing in the surveillance video from the night before she wouldn’t be shocked.

  But Elizabeth still seemed the most likely culprit, although Janet couldn’t articulate why to Jason. She just had a feeling the other woman was hiding something.

  “Anything unusual last night?” she asked lightly as she walked back behind the bar.

  “Oh, you know,” Cindy Lou said without taking her eyes off the two bottles of top-shelf vodka she was combining, “same old, same old. We had to throw poor Ike out just before midnight, bless his heart. Other than that, it was the usual.”

  “Did he make a fuss?” Janet already knew the answer, since she hadn’t been called.

  “Nah.” Cindy Lou placed the full bottle of vodka back on the shelf and dropped the empty one in the recycling bin.

  Frank cleared his throat. “No fuss?” He hefted two more chairs off a table and dropped them to the ground with a bang. “He shouted the whole way out the door, ‘The man will always find you—he knows,’ not to mention the hail of curse words he spewed at Elizabeth.”

  Cindy Lou shrugged as she took two bottles of well vodka from the bin and unscrewed the caps.

  Janet looked shrewdly at her bartender. “Did we call him a taxi?”

  “Yes, ma’am, we sure did, and didn’t kick him out until it arrived,” Cindy Lou said, unconcerned.

  “Well, shit,” Janet nodded and shrugged. Really, you couldn’t ask for a better outcome.

  Cindy Lou raised her eyebrows and look
ed pointedly at a jar on the counter.

  Janet grinned. “Aw, hell, Cindy Lou,” she drawled, making a show of pulling not two but three dollar bills out of her back pocket and pushing them into the oversized, washed pickle jar. The swear jar already had five bucks in it from the last hour alone. “I keep forgetting to watch my damn mouth.”

  Her good humor was tested, however, by Frank, muttering in the corner.

  “That’s not how you’d have handled it on the force?” she asked.

  “It’s not a police issue. I just don’t know why he’s welcomed back time and again.” Frank turned away from the women and kept working.

  Janet had hired him a few weeks ago, desperate for a bouncer and impressed by his pedigree. She figured a former cop would surely know how to handle the door of her small bar. So far, however, he’d been a disappointment, always ready to escalate a situation and challenge the status quo.

  “I suppose you think that kind of behavior is fine?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “No, but this is a bar, not a bookstore. It’s going to happen.” Janet crossed to the back cooler and emerged minutes later with a white plastic bin full of lemons and limes. She looked up at a sudden clattering at the front door. A gray and grizzled man with greasy hair and dirty clothes pulled at the handle. She could practically smell his days-old sweat through the glass.

  “Door’s broken!” he called, cupping a hand over his eyes so he could see into the bar. “Ma’am? It won’t open.” He jiggled the handle again, and then, as if he’d expended too much effort, he leaned in, leaving a streak on the glass with his forehead. Janet and Cindy Lou exchanged amused looks, but Frank crossed his arms and stared daggers at him.

  “We’re not open,” Frank said, looking at the man like he was the leftover foam at the bottom of a pint glass.

  “Not open?” The man smiled, revealing several missing teeth. “How’d you get in?”

  Janet chuckled and looked at Frank. “Take care of it.” She pointed to the number for the taxi company nailed to the wall behind her, then waited until Frank picked up his cell phone before she took the empty fruit bin to the back room.

  There, Janet caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the back of the door. She turned to the side to check her boobs. She was thirty-one years old and had no kids, so they were right where they were supposed to be. She smoothed her black T-shirt with the bar’s logo on it and tucked it into her jeans before heading to the desk.

  She spent a few minutes going over the books. It was Thursday, which meant they could expect a big college crowd thirsty for deals. She squinted through the window into the back parking lot. If the beer truck didn’t show, she’d have to change her happy-hour special, as her inventory of cheap, crappy beer was low.

  Janet looked at the clock on the wall and blew out a sigh. She’d check the cooler to see what would make a good replacement.

  But first, she decided to call Elizabeth. The call went straight to voicemail, so she left a message, telling her bartender to call in; she wanted to ask directly about the missing money. Her phone chirped—the battery was low—so she laid it on the desk and called Jason on the landline, leaving him a long, detailed message about her plan for Elizabeth.

  Despite the missing money, she liked being in charge. It was freeing to think that if there was a problem with an employee, she could fix it.

  Buying the Spot a year ago had made her a boss for the first time ever, and she was on a mission to be unlike any crappy boss she’d ever had. She wanted to be calm, be unflappable, and stay the hell out of her employees’ personal lives. With a final nod to herself, she logged out of her computer and left the office.

  As she cut through the main room, however, her step stuttered and her heart slammed into her chest. What was it about seeing cops that made you feel instantly guilty?

  The man and woman in uniform were chatting with Frank by the front door. Cindy Lou was behind the bar, not making eye contact, but Frank looked up defiantly when she cleared her throat.

  “Hello, Officers,” Janet said. “What’s going on?”

  Chapter Two

  “I’m telling you for the last time, Frank, you either get on board or you get out. Your ninety-day probationary period isn’t over, so there won’t even be any paperwork to file.” Janet spoke low and fast to her bouncer. She’d pulled him aside after gleaning that he’d dialed 911 instead of the taxi company.

  “Why do you care if that homeless guy has to spend the night in jail?” Frank’s superior smile was almost enough to make her snap.

  With a supreme effort, and ignoring the roar of blood rushing in her ears, Janet turned on her heel and marched over to the officers. “More sweet tea?” She attempted to cover her anger with acute kindness. After all, it wasn’t the police officers’ fault she’d hired an idiot.

  The woman shook her head, but the man smiled and held out his glass. After she topped it off from the pitcher on the bar she said, “What are you booking him in on?”

  “We got a call for a drunk and disorderly person, but now I’m thinking public intox is a better fit.”

  Janet shot a disbelieving look at Frank. “Disorderly? He called me ‘ma’am’ when he tried to open the door. He really just needs a ride home . . . or—or a meal, maybe.” She looked out the glass door and saw the person in question huddled in the backseat of the cruiser. “Cindy Lou,” she added, “get him a sweet tea to go.” She watched her bartender pull a large Styrofoam cup from an upper shelf. “Y’all don’t mind, do you?” she asked the woman cop, purposefully bringing out a little Southern flair.

  The officer smiled and held out her hand for the drink, but her partner said, “He is getting a ride . . . just not home.”

  Janet bristled at his attitude. Business would plummet if her bar got a reputation for calling the cops on people who were minding their own business. She shot Frank another dirty look.

  “Frank here did the right thing.” The male officer nodded with approval. “Public intoxication is a class-C misdemeanor.” The two men fist-bumped.

  “You two know each other?” Janet asked, looking at the pair shrewdly.

  “Frank worked under me for a bit,” he answered, then turned to Frank and said, “I still think you got a raw deal, man.”

  “Thanks, brother,” Frank said. He walked the cops to the door.

  “He’ll spend a few hours in jail, sleep it off, and be on his way,” the woman said over her shoulder to Janet as they left.

  Janet’s expression darkened. She’d have liked nothing more than to fire Frank right then and there, but she couldn’t. He’d been the only one to apply for the job when she posted it at the start of summer, so for now, she was stuck.

  She had gone over her policy with all the employees many times: if someone was drunk, she would pay for their ride home. The steps were outlined in the employee handbook Jason had insisted she write up when they bought the bar. A bartender took away a customer’s car keys and called a cab if they’d had too much to drink. The customer could get their keys back the next day after reimbursing Janet for the cab ride. Sure, they’d had complaints from some customers, but usually only on the night in question. The next day, most were not only apologizing but also thanking Janet for saving them from themselves.

  She even had a deal with the local taxi company for a discounted rate for her customers—a system that should have worked seamlessly.

  Unfortunately, her newest hire seemed determined to forge his own path at her bar, and it was starting to piss her off.

  She spotted a lone lemon lying forgotten next to the cutting board and angrily grabbed the knife.

  Thwack.

  The blade slammed through the lemon and she shook her head, thinking about Frank’s attitude. He was a self-serving, sanctimonious—

  “Ouch!” All the air squeezed out of her lungs as the knife sliced right into her finger.

  Cindy Lou jumped at the sound and then rushed to the cabinet for the first-aid kit.

>   After Janet caught her breath, she went to the sink and held her hand under cold running water. The red-tinged water swirled down the drain as Janet’s anger swirled up inside of her.

  “Am I unclear, Cindy Lou?” she asked under her breath. “Am I not articulating the rules well?” She took the bandage the other woman held out and clumsily unwrapped it with one hand.

  “No, you’re clear, boss. Clear as a bright, sunny day. He just wants to do it his way.”

  “When he gets his own bar, he can do that. It can be like the goddamn OK Corral if he wants, with cops there every night. But that’s not how we are going to do business here.” She shrugged off Cindy Lou’s offer of help, finally freed the bandage from the wrapper, and then wound the small strip around her left index finger. Cindy Lou lowered her head and looked at Janet through her eyelashes, then put a dollar in the swear jar from her own pocket.

  Was she paying for Janet’s swear word or swearing at Janet in her head? Janet was surprised enough that she had to fight off a smile. But her good humor faded when she tossed the bloody towel into a trash can. The bin was overflowing—no one had bothered to empty it after closing the night before. Janet pulled the black trash bag out of the waist-high trash can, groaned when her finger pulsed with pain, then tied off the bag and headed for the alley door.

  “I sure wish people would share the work around here, instead of their opinions on every damn decision I make,” she called to Frank as she pushed through the heavy metal door to the side alley. Within seconds, her tank top stuck uncomfortably to her skin and her jeans felt heavy. The heat of the day was already oppressive.