Hustle was eager to play the woodpecker. “I didn’t realize you’d be joining us tonight, Detective.” He leaned forward on the couch with a steady smile.
Sean responded quietly. He locked eyes with Molly. “If you’d like me to go, of course I will.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re welcome in my house.” She was amazed at how clear her voice sounded.
“So to what do we owe this visit?” Molly rankled at Hustle’s wry tone. He was making things worse.
“What the Cat Dragged Inn is outside the township. Normally, the county sheriff deals with any disturbance, but given the… special circumstances, they called in the state police. Half the people there were taking pictures with their cell phones, and it took me all of fifteen seconds to recognize Heather. I wasn’t sure I was seeing Molly in the corner of one of the videos, but I came here after I went to Heather’s house to find out why she left the scene of a crime.”
He had more or less directed all of that to Molly. Despite his quiet, neutral tone, she couldn’t help but hear some accusation in his voice.
“Scene of the crime?” Hustle’s laughter was forced. “Some good old boys threw a chair or two. Hardly anything to get worked up about.”
“Unless of course you happen to be a policeman,” Sean snarled.
“Heather was close to passing out, Sean.” Molly shot a look at Hustle telling him to ease up on the testosterone. “I wasn’t trying to make your job any harder. She’s upstairs getting dressed. You can talk to her when she comes down, or if you like, I’ll offer to watch the shop for her tomorrow so she can come down to the station to make a statement about the bar fight.”
“Thank you.” He didn’t sound appeased.
“Anything else?” Hustle made it sound like a dismissal. Molly avoided wincing by only a little bit.
“Not from you.” Sean locked eyes with Hustle for the briefest of seconds before turning back to Molly. “I will say, Molly, I don’t…” He stopped himself and took a breath. “I don’t understand why when someone puts on a costume and starts playing hero here in Capetown you called him.”
“Oh, that’s easy, Detective.” Hustle quipped.
“Hustle…” Molly tried to interrupt, but he ignored her.
“Molly called me because there’s nothing you can do, whereas I have experience with new capes.”
“The last thing we need is a vigilante.”
Hustle snorted. “He’s not a vigilante. This kid didn’t throw a punch. There’s no assault charge, no destruction of property. All he did was save Heather and tell people to calm down.”
Sean’s voice was implacable. “Wearing a mask in public is a misdemeanor in this state.”
“On Halloween? Give me a break. There’s no crime, so this isn’t a police matter. Molly didn’t need you, so she called me. Get over yourself.”
“Stop it!” Molly’s patience had snapped. She glared at Hustle and pointed to the couch. “Sit and be quiet.” Turning to Sean, she said, “I didn’t call you because I knew that your first reaction would be to find The Aerialist and try to arrest him. I don’t think that’s the right way to handle it.”
Before Sean could respond, she whirled on Hustle. “And you will stop speaking for me. I called you because I needed your help, but that doesn’t give you license to gloat. I haven’t been anything but honest with the two of you when it comes to who I’m dating. I expected you to be mature about it.”
Sean took a deep, steadying breath. “This happened on my watch, Molly. Even if you don’t agree with me, I don’t think you had the right to cut me out of this.”
“If you don’t like it, the door’s that way, tough guy.” Hustle shot.
Sean enunciated each word precisely. “Don’t push me, Hustle.”
“Is that a threat? You gonna try to arrest me?”
Sean took a single step forward. “You’re very fast, and I’m not stupid enough to chase you, but you’re forgetting something important. When Brianna Duncan told us she knew Molly’s old identity, she also mentioned your first name, Frank. I also know you’re a dentist. So I’d like you to think about how long it would take for me to find out how many dentists named Frank work in the city and have your height, build, and general age. The only reason I haven’t gone down that road is because of this lady right here. I care deeply for her and I didn’t want to seem petty.” He turned to Molly. “I’m twelve steps past furious with you, so before I say something I’ll regret, I’m leaving now. Have Heather call the station.”
“Sean.” Molly called to his back, but he kept walking. Perhaps he didn’t slam her door behind him. He was a strong man, and maybe he just shut it a little harder than he would normally have done so.
“Jerk.”
She didn’t have to look to know he had rolled his eyes. Molly took a breath and prayed for patience. “You had that coming, and you know it.”
“Where does he get off—”
“Stop. Just stop. You were acting like a teenager. ‘Molly called me, not you. Neener neener neener!’”
“Excuse me?”
“Well what conversation do you think just took place?”
Hustle stared at her as though he couldn’t believe she had to ask the question. “From my point of view, he just bullied you into feeling guilty because you didn’t let him come in and feel like a big man trying to arrest The Aerialist.”
“I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.”
“I know that, but you sure weren’t doing it for yourself.” He gestured to the door where Sean had just left. “How come he gets to be upset that you called me, and I have to be all flowers and sunshine about the fact that he shows up?”
“Sean was upset, but he was trying to be civil. I can respect that. You were needling him every chance you got, trying to force a confrontation.”
“Well, maybe that’s because I don’t like him! How do you not get that? He’s a passive aggressive control freak who has to have everything his way or he goes into that ‘ooh look at me, I’m obviously trying not to lose my temper but I’m going to show everybody that I’m mad anyway’ crap.”
“You’ve talked to him for a lifetime total of fifteen minutes.”
“I don’t need more than that to figure out what you’ve missed in two months’ worth of dating. You did nothing wrong, but you’re defending him for losing his temper. Since when are you this codependent?”
“Guys?”
They both turned to see Heather on the stairs. Her hair was still wet from the shower, and Molly’s skirt left her ankles and calves bare.
“You’re yelling. A lot. I heard Sean leave, and I know you have things you have to talk about, but…”
She faltered, but Molly knew what the problem was. Heather’s parents had gone through legendary late-night arguments for almost a year before their divorce. The memory of staying in her room while her parents fought downstairs was pretty traumatic.
“You’re right. Heather I’m sorry. We’ll—”
“I’m going to take a page from Sean’s book and split for a while.” Hustle’s tone was sharper than Molly was accustomed to. “I think a cool down period is probably a good idea. Call me if you figure out how to track down the new kid.”
And then he was gone.
Heather came slowly down the stairs. “Molly?”
She turned very slowly to her best friend. “I know he saved your life, Heather, but if The Aerialist ends up being responsible for me losing both my boyfriends on the night of my favorite holiday, I’m going to personally break his nose.”
✽✽✽
Molly woke with a Halloween candy hangover. Heather had stayed until well after midnight and the two of them had kept each other company while simultaneously devouring her remaining Halloween provisions.
For a normal person, that would not have been as big a deal, but Molly, ever dutiful to the sacred customs of trick or treat, was paranoid about running out of candy. Even given the three bags of candy she had plac
ed in a bowl outside her door when she left her house to pick up Heather, that still left four jumbo-sized bags of chocolate bars, candy coated chocolate pieces, sweet and tart fruit chews, and chocolate coated peppermints in the shape of pumpkins.
After the shower which took the absolute last remnants of the harlequin makeup from her face, brushing her teeth took more than three minutes. Downstairs, she stared at the refrigerator where a perfectly lovely bowl of Orange Chicken from the night before waited for her for breakfast. She nearly vomited at the thought and left the refrigerator unopened.
Molly took a look around her shrine to Halloween. Feeling just a tinge of regret, she unplugged the flickering electric candles and prepared herself for the day to come. The day after Halloween was a day with a mission.
She checked the inventory of her purse: cell phone, wallet, and a pack of breath mints. Right before leaving, she grabbed a roll of quarters for the parking meters in the town square.
Had the weather been other than November’s bitterest, Molly would have walked. The trip into the center of town normally took all of four minutes by car. As it was, though, she only made it three-quarters of the way before she ran into the first roadblock along with a vague sign about a temporary parking restriction. She found some parking which was considerably farther from the town center than she wanted on this cold day – though on the upside, it was free.
Pulling her scarf tight around her neck and burying her hands deep in her coat pockets, Molly struggled against the cold wind which always seemed to be aimed directly for her face.
She turned the corner off Maple Avenue and found the reason for the blockade. A stage and podium was being erected in the middle of the town square. If the height of the stage didn’t change drastically from where it was shaping to be, the speaker’s head would be framed by the statues of a sailor and a soldier erected in the town square after World War One.
In addition to the podium, bleacher seating was being erected in a u-shape about thirty yards from the main stage. Molly hadn’t known that temporary bleacher seats were available in sizes that large.
The construction seemed mostly complete on both structures, though there was still considerable work being done on the lighting system built onto an archway above the podium. In addition to the workers, there were at least a dozen uniformed police officers standing in tactically important positions all around the site.
And it just so happened that Molly knew one of them.
Tim smiled as she approached him. He had briefly been Sean’s partner before Sean was promoted, and the two men remained friends. Since Molly was dating Sean – she forced herself not to think in past tense – that meant that she and Tim had developed a casual friendship of their own. Tim was on the tall side, a little gangly, with an honest open face. She had known him long enough to know that the face matched the character, mostly because Tim was too unimaginative to lie convincingly.
“Morning, Miss Molly.” Tim liked alliteration.
“Trooper Tim,” she replied. “Let me guess, not enough local cops so you got pulled in to do security?”
“Right in one.”
“What’s the party about?”
“They’re having a debate tonight for the U.S. Senate candidates.”
Molly frowned. The election was days away. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”
It was Tim’s turn to frown. “You didn’t hear about Joe Horton?”
“Other than seeing his posters in every other lawn, no.”
“Car crash. Bad one. He broke his spine in eight places. The doctors don’t know if he’ll survive.”
Molly felt her jaw drop. “That’s awful.”
Tim shrugged philosophically. “Yeah. The Governor appointed another candidate. It’s too late to get the names changed on the ballot, but if people vote in for Horton, he’ll put in the new guy.”
“Who got that job?”
Tim opened his mouth to reply when the radio at his hip went off. “Twelve twenty-nine, come in, please.”
With an apologetic frown, Tim pulled the radio loose. “Copy.”
“Can you come down to the bookstore? Kid on a bike just took a spill on the curb outside. I think he’s all right, and his mother’s on her way. I need to walk a couple people here down to the staging area so Sergeant Walters doesn’t give them a hard time.”
“Ten-Four. There in two.” He addressed Molly. “Gotta run. Say hi to Sean for me. I won’t see him until next week with the shift changes.”
In answer, Molly simply smiled, swallowing the lump in her throat. Tim took no notice and jogged away toward the other side of the square.
Molly forced any thoughts of her boyfriend (either one) from her thoughts as she turned and set her sights on the first strike zone. As the old-fashioned bell rang behind her, Molly inhaled the warm cinnamon-scented air of the card shop. In days past, it had certainly been a drug store. It just had that feel to it. Why it had changed to the greeting card and assorted kitsch shop, Molly didn’t know. What she did know was that she had been in here four times in the last month, and now that Halloween was past…
“Twenty-five percent off.” The older man greeted her with a smile and pointed at the shelf of Halloween merchandise. “I was going to start taking some of it down, but I was waiting for you to get here.”
Molly eyed him for a moment, and the man chuckled. “Don’t look so surprised. I remember you from the last two years. You cleared out my gargoyle candlesticks one year, and the next you bought all those little clothing pins.”
There was one on her coat as they spoke, a black cat with fake emeralds in the eyes. Molly smiled, conceding the point.
“Are you adding to the Halloween village again this year?”
Every year she had purchased one of the small ceramic buildings with working lights from the set the shop sold. They had a hallowed place on the mantelpiece over the fireplace in her finished basement.
With a nod, she lifted the haunted clock tower she’d been eyeing since late September. Molly handed it to the shopkeeper and said, “For a start.”
She was sixty dollars poorer when she left. In addition to her clock tower, she had purchased a lamp with a jack-o-lantern face and a wrought iron candle holder in the shape of a gravestone, to name a few. She faced the evil winds, still somehow blowing directly into her face, and took her treasures back to the car, locking them securely in her trunk. Capetown’s crime rate wasn’t high enough that she needed to worry about them there, and driving back seemed like a waste of gas. No sooner had she locked them in, than she was back walking into the wind.
The pattern continued. She walked to The Friendly Bag Boy on the edge of the town square and stocked up on seventy-five cent candy corn and a set of plastic goblets in the shape of skeletal hands. After another wind challenging walk to her car, she walked to Georgina’s Craft Emporium and got a two-for-one deal on a spider and a mummy ornament for the leafless tree which sat on her dining room table. These she carried with her as she gave herself a well-earned treat at Espresso Yourself. She relaxed at one of the tables drinking a pumpkin-spiced cup of yum until the cold had been mostly forgotten.
Rather than take this last bag to her vehicle, she kept the ornaments at her side as she made her way to the other side of the town square and then down another block to La Belle Dame. She waved to Heather as she entered.
“Successful hunting?”
“Good so far. Later today I’ll head down to Halloweentown at the mall. I might get another tombstone for the garden. Did you talk to the police?”
“Before I even opened the shop. Apparently all they needed was a phone call.”
“And how bad have the vultures been?”
In answer, Heather rolled her eyes. “This is the first lull I’ve had today. The usual gossips followed by a few online reporters with questions about our new cape.”
“And you refused to answer questions unless someone bought something?”
Heather bobbed her
eyebrows. “Three hats, two winter jackets, and four of those autumn skirts with the leaf pattern. A man bought the last one. And, of course, there’s this.”
She produced the Capetown Sentinel, a weekly rag which usually listed the high school football scores on the front page. Today, it had a picture of Heather, suspended in midair in The Aerialist’s grip. Bold face type underneath read: “Capetown’s got it’s own Cape!”
“There’s no apostrophe there,” Molly pointed at the headline.
“Sadly, there is. And there are six more typos in the first four paragraphs. He spells ‘aerialist’ three different ways. About the only good thing is that after we left, the Cat decided to award me first prize in the sexiest costume competition. So drinks are on me next time we go there.”
“Did you see what they’re up to in the town…”
“Square” was interrupted by a heavy pounding. Molly and Heather both raised eyebrows since it was coming from the back entrance. That way led to a back alley with scarcely more than a dumpster Heather shared with the business next door.
Tony Archer stood apologetically outside the door when they opened it. “Do you have a hose?”
He gestured behind him, and it was clear why he was asking. Heather’s shop had been the victim of Halloween trickery, and two dozen eggshells littered the alleyway, leaving a slimy trail down onto the floor from where they had been hurled against the wall.
“I came to empty the dumpster.” He pointed to the truck idling in the street. “And I spotted the mess. You’ll probably need to repaint the walls. Eggs can do a number on paint. But if you’ve got a hose, I can clean up the worst of it.”
Heather groaned at the destruction then tried to look appreciative for Tony’s sake. “You don’t need to do that.”
He shrugged. “It’s no trouble. You were my last stop, and it’s not like the landfill is going to close.”
Heather dithered for a moment and replied, “All right, I guess. The hose is in the storage closet. Give me a minute.”
Molly cocked her head at Tony, who smiled sheepishly at her. The smile faltered as he noticed the increased interest she was showing.
Ex-Cape | Book 2 | Ex-Cape From A Small Town Page 4