Tutu Deadly

by Natalie M. Roberts

  “Tate?”

  “Yes?”

  “Where’s Taylee?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know, Jenny. But I intend to find out. ”

  FIFTEEN

  DREAMS had become nightmares.

  No matter how good a dream started out, it inevitably deteriorated into shouting matches with psycho dance moms, or me going to jail for a variety of crimes, none of which I committed. I woke up Tuesday morning with my hair sticking up straight and fuzzy, and I assumed with big bags under my eyes. I’d showered and then collapsed into bed while my hair was still wet—not good. I had not slept well. I had no control over my dreams, and what was worse, I also had no control over my waking life.

  I jumped out of bed and padded into the bathroom, avoiding the mirror, mostly because I was pretty sure of what I would see. I splashed water on my face, dried it with a towel, and then moisturized with the “miracle cream” yet another of my dance moms sold. So far, no miracles, but since they mostly supported me, I felt like I had to support them.

  I needed to do something to try and solve my problem, but I didn’t know what, especially since it had become pretty apparent someone either wanted me behind bars, or dead. I changed into my favorite pair of sweatpants, T-shirt, and jacket, and went back into the bathroom to run a comb through my unruly mop, wetting it and slicking it back and then pulling it into a tight ponytail. It would take another shower and tons of conditioner to make my hair behave after a night like last night—a night spent tossing and turning—and I needed to get proactive. I had the biggest performance of my life coming up—yikes, it was less than a week away!—and I could not afford to let it fail just because people were dying around me. Okay, one person, and a nasty one at that, but still . . .

  A loud honk in front of my apartment building caught my attention, and I walked over to my window, looking out to see a big yellow school bus sitting in front of my house. Marlys. Every once in a while, especially when she knew I was down, Marlys would show up and take me for coffee and pastries. There was still one day until tuition was due, so Marlys would have to buy. She usually did anyway. Our favorite spot was Grounds for Coffee on 30th and Harrison. The upside was I got pastries and good coffee. The downside was Marlys drove a school bus, and since it was her break and she still had more driving to do, I had to drive my Bug.

  A quick tap on my door told me Marlys was waiting. I opened up, and said, “This is a good morning for coffee and pastries. Especially pastries.”

  “Is there ever a bad morning for pastries?”

  “No, but some are better than others, and this is a really, really good morning for pastries.”

  I gathered up my purse and keys, and we headed out the front door. I was careful to lock both the doorknob lock and also the dead bolt.

  “Where’s the Pepto Mobile?” Marlys asked, looking around.

  “I had to park around the corner last night. There wasn’t a space out front. I got home too late.”

  “Oh, hot date? A certain detective?”

  “Marlys! I am not dating Detective Wilson. He’s just investigating a murder in which I am the central suspect, and I...”

  “You sound like a television show. Or your uptight aunt. Come on, Jenny, the guy is hot, and I haven’t missed you two giving each other goo-goo eyes.”

  “Goo-goo eyes? Marlys, you are hanging around kids way too much.”

  “Look who’s talking,” she shot back, and then a real shot rang out.

  “Holy shit,” Marlys said, as we heard a crack and my apartment’s front window shattered. I looked around frantically and grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the school bus where we could hunker for cover. I’d dropped my purse on the sidewalk but I wasn’t going after it. I noticed that Marlys’s purse was in the same place, right next to mine, both of our cell phones inside the respective purses. So much for calling for help. We leaned against the bus and I frantically turned my head left and right, trying to see where the shot had come from. I could see nothing. Until I spotted something that made my heart nearly stop.

  Around the corner came two young men, dressed in suits, carrying their church books. No, no, no, no, no.

  “No, no, no, no, no.” I had to utter that aloud, as if to convince myself of how bad this situation was getting.

  “Hiya, Jenny,” Elder Martin yelled, waving his hand cheerily. Was near poisoning and stomach pumping not enough to keep these two missionaries away?

  “Get over here, now,” I hissed through clenched teeth, as the two drew nearer. “Quick.”

  I guess maybe that came off as my Linda Blair Exorcist impression because it resulted in both Elder Martin and Elder Tuatuola stopping short right where they were. Bad move. Another shot rang out, and the big Samoan elder moved quicker than I thought humanly possible, right into the school bus, since Marlys had left the door open.

  Elder Martin stayed where he was, eyes wide, mouth agape. I would have thought, hailing from the South as he did, that he would have been a little more familiar with flying bullets and their purpose. Didn’t everyone hunt there? But no, he just stood there like one of those clowns at Lagoon Amusement Park, mouth open wide, just waiting for someone to fill it with water so its balloon head could pop.

  I did not want to see Elder Martin’s head pop, so I glanced quickly both ways, then dashed over and grabbed him, pulling him into the big yellow school bus, Marlys following close behind. Two more sharp cracks and metallic pings followed, and Marlys jumped into the driver’s seat and started up the bus, muttering something about losing her job and having to find some new friends who were more normal.

  Elder Martin was hyperventilating on one of the front bus seats, and Elder Tuatuola was stretched out flat in the aisle of the floor of the bus, not moving. He was fast learning that missionary work was a dangerous business, especially when you were trying to convert Jenny T. Partridge.

  Another shot rang out and shattered the rear bus window and Marlys pulled out quickly into traffic.

  “Can you call for help on your radio?” I asked Marlys.

  “Broken. They’ve been promising to fix it all week.”

  Great. My life was such a joke.

  “Put your head between your knees,” I told Elder Martin, not sure that was going to work, but unsure what else to do.

  “You alive down there, Elder T?” I asked. The big Samoan grunted.

  “I think it’s safe now. Just drive us to the police station, Marlys.”

  She was doing a lot of muttering as she navigated the big bus.

  As usual, I was wrong. Another shot rang out and cracked the other back window, and I looked behind us to see that we were being chased by a Humvee. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

  “I good here on floor,” muttered Elder Tuatuola.

  “I . . . can . . . t . . . br . . . e . . . athe,” Elder Martin rasped out.

  “He needs a paper bag, Jenny,” Marlys said over her shoulder, her face set and determined as she drove through the side streets of Ogden, trying to lose the silver Humvee hot on our tail. I knew, of course, that a school bus could not lose a Humvee. I suspected Marlys knew this, too, but it’s not like we had options.

  I scanned the aisles of the bus, and spotted a crumpled bag on one of the seats a few rows back. Some kid must have been too hungry to make it to school without eating his lunch, and I silently thanked him. I made my way toward the seat, trying to step around the prone Samoan. It was not easy. He was big. I snatched up the bag and turned back to the front, just as Marlys made a quick right turn. I tumbled forward into Elder Martin and knocked him flat on his back, me on top, breasts pressed against his chest, him staring up at me, his face turning purple as a man already struggling to breathe now had someone crushing him. Plus, a female someone, an event he had been expressly forbidden to even think about, let alone do while on his mission.

  I quickly scrambled off of him and pulled him upright, shoving the paper bag into his face. “Breathe into this,” I said, movin
g as far away from him as I could. I didn’t want to be responsible if he had a heart attack and died. The Mormons were already mad at me over the cookie-dough incident.

  Elder Martin breathed in and out of the bag. His breathing slowed as he regained control of his respiratory functions.

  “Did bad sneells lke una fsh,” he said, trying to speak while breathing into the bag.

  “Huh?”

  He took the bag away from his face. “I said, ‘This bag smells like tuna fish.’”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said. “Now put it up to your face and keep breathing.”

  “Dammit, I cannot lose these guys,” Marlys said, apprehension tingeing her voice.

  “Quick, pull into that alleyway and hide.”

  “Hide? You want me to hide? Did you somehow miss that we are driving a freaking school bus?” Marlys’s voice was filled with tension as she tried to maneuver corner after corner, and I began to feel a little sick, my stomach churning with each turn. I glanced back every so often to see if the Humvee was still following us. About three blocks from the police station it veered off and disappeared.

  “It’s gone,” I announced loudly. “They must know where we are headed.”

  “Yeah, to the depths of hell,” Marlys muttered. She wasn’t taking this very well. Most of the time, Marlys’s life was pretty tame. She drove a school bus, raised her kids, and laughed at the psycho dance moms. She wasn’t usually in the line of fire. To be honest, neither was I. But I’d had a few days to adjust to being attacked and all that.

  The big yellow school bus slowed to a stop in the parking lot of the Ogden police station.

  “Are you okay, Marlys?” I asked gently.

  She didn’t speak for a moment, and I felt movement and turned around to see the giant Samoan raise his head a tiny bit and look around. “It safe now?” he asked.

  “Marlys?”

  Elder Martin was still breathing into the paper bag, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Marlys.

  “This is serious shit, Jenny,” she finally said, a deep breath following her words, her body almost visibly collapsing, shoulders slumping. “I have kids. I have a husband. They need me. I can’t afford to die.”

  Despite the fact I had no kids and certainly no husband, I really didn’t want to die, either. I needed to do something to keep my friends safe, even if I couldn’t keep myself safe.

  There was a rap at the bus door and we all jumped, and then Marlys looked over and pulled the lever that allowed my favorite detective, Tate Wilson, into the large yellow bus, followed by a few uniforms.

  “Well, this is quite a crew,” he said, surveying the scene. “Who’s the big guy on the ground? And why is he there? Do we need an ambulance? Is everyone okay?”

  “I safe,” Elder Tuatuola muttered. “I safe?”

  “You can get up, big guy,” Tate told him. “This is the police station.”

  Elder T rose up and brushed off his white shirt, which was now stained with all manner of little people gunk. I doubted it would ever come clean, but it was definitely better than a bloodstain. Elder Martin continued to breathe in and out into his tuna-flavored bag, his eyes traveling back and forth, surveying the scene. He had a weird look on his face, something akin to pleasure. Was he enjoying this?

  “How’d you know?” I asked Tate, wondering why he was right there, always right there. Except for the other night, of course.

  “Fallon. They were parked about a block away, since you weren’t real excited about their presence. Once they heard the shots, they tried to catch up to you, but that bus was moving pretty fast. You training for the Indy 500?” He directed that last part to Marlys, who finally found her sense of humor and grinned.

  “Did they see the Humvee? Did they get the plates?” I asked.

  “Humvee?”

  Of course not. Why would anything, ever, work in my favor?

  “Yes, we were being chased by a big, silver Humvee.

  I did not see the plates.”

  “Can anyone else here verify that a vehicle was chasing you?”

  “Uh, I was kinda busy,” drawled Elder Martin, who was still holding his tuna bag, although he was not breathing into it anymore.

  “I was driving. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw a flash of silver, but I was too worried about navigating turns in this big mother to tell what kind of vehicle it was,” Marlys said.

  “I see nothing,” Elder T uttered in his deep voice.

  “You sure there was a Humvee? Fallon didn’t mention a Humvee.” Tate gave me a studied look.

  “But he heard the shots, right?”

  “Yes, he heard the shots, and several neighbors called in reporting the altercation.”

  By this time, I was getting a little worked up. “Altercation? Some nut job shoots at me, my apartment, my friends, a school bus belonging to the Weber County School District, and two Mormon missionaries, and you call it an altercation? Doesn’t an altercation imply that it’s two people who know each other? I don’t have a damn clue who’s doing this. Do you?”

  “Bad choice of words.”

  “Damn bad.”

  Tate ushered us all out of the school bus and inside the police station. Elders Martin and Tuatuola got downright perky as they were questioned, and I was starting to wonder about their motivations. Were they coming around because they wanted to convert me, or because their lives were so boring they wanted to live vicariously through me? None of that mattered, of course, when the same uptight, dark-suited man showed up. The one who came to my house before. He was seriously going to put me on some kind of list. I just knew it. He hustled the two missionaries off after Tate told them they could go, but the looks he gave me were even nastier than before.

  “This is so unfair. I did not ask those missionaries to come back. You would think that stomach pumping would put them off a little.”

  “Maybe they crave the excitement,” Tate said. “Mission work can’t be that action packed.”

  “Unless you hang around me.”

  Marlys’s supervisors had shown up at the police station, as her bus was currently being processed for evidence. Tate had assured them that Marlys had been quite heroic in saving the lives of not just one erstwhile dance teacher, but two Mormon missionaries, and I saw the two men’s eyes light up as they considered the PR possibilities. Marlys would undoubtedly not be in trouble, the media would probably be alerted, and my life was going to get worse.

  “I ask you this a lot, but here I go again,” Tate said softly, after he pulled me away from the hullabaloo and bought me a bad cup of police station coffee. “Are you okay?”

  “This is getting too serious. My friends are involved. I’m scared. I’ve been scared the whole time, but now other people are involved.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I do. You’re my responsibility, and I’m going to make sure you are okay. Starting now, you have a twenty-four-hour police guard.”

  “Didn’t I already have that, or at least a watchdog? Marshal Fallon? And fat lot of good that did me.”

  His face hardened. “It won’t be them. It’ll be me.”

  I gulped. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. I think I’m more afraid of you than anything else.”

  “Then it’s time you started living, Jenny T. Partridge.”

  I gulped again, and he laughed.

  “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll take you home. I think you need to cancel your dance classes for today.”

  “Can’t do that. In just a little less than a week I have my first Nutcracker performance, and no Taylee, so I have to work with the two Seniors I have who are capable of pulling it off. Plus Wednesday is dress rehearsal, and Monica is coming tonight for the final fittings for costumes, and you have already seen what a nutbag she can be, and the buffoons look like crap, and since I gave Ella a role, and now her mom has hightailed off with her, I’m up a river without a paddle. I’ve got to
fix windows, and . . .”

  “All right, all right. I have no idea what half of what you just said meant, but I guess I’m going to dance class tonight.”

  TATE sent over someone the police department used to fix my windows, and then he took me to lunch. Good thing, since I never got my pastries and caffeine fix at Grounds for Coffee. Since we were down at the police station, he took me to a small Italian restaurant on Washington, Bocca D’Italia, and I had fettuccini alfredo. I also sampled some of Tate’s lasagna, which was to die for. Good, carb-loaded food. I would make it through another day.

  After we finished, he drove me down 25th to my building, and parked in the lot. “The dance moms will scream bloody murder if they don’t have a place to park,” I told him.

  “The department will have my hide if this car gets dinged in that little alleyway,” he countered. “And I will help you handle the psycho dance moms. I have a gun.”

  “You win.”

  He followed me up the stairs, and I self-consciously realized he was staring right at my butt. Great. At least I couldn’t afford to buy a lot of food, otherwise it would be much wider. When we got to the top, I jostled my key in the lock, opened the door, and then turned to stare at Tate, who had a funny look on his face. “What?” I asked him.

  “You go in. I’ll be right there.”

  “Is something wrong? Did you see something bad? Is the Humvee parked here somewhere?” I scanned the parking lot but could see nothing out of place.

  “I’ll be right in, Jenny. I just need a minute.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s wrong? What do you see?”

  He sighed loudly and then pulled me up against him, tightly, and I could feel his arousal pressing against my groin. It caused my heart to thump and moisture to pool in my nether regions, and I felt a flush rising from my crotch up to my face. “I think I understand now,” I whispered.

  “I hope so. It isn’t easy to follow you up a flight of stairs and not react. I’m only human, and I’m incredibly attracted to you, crazy life and all.”

  “I think I understand now.” I parroted my last words.