Assault and Buttery

by Kristi Abbott

  He shot bolt upright. “No. There’s absolutely nothing you can do. This has nothing to do with you and you need to stay out of it, Rebecca. I’m serious.”

  I sat back, stung. “I know that. I don’t even know who this Lloyd guy is. Why on earth would I have anything to do with it?”

  “All I know is that you could not—would not—keep your nose out of the last two murders in Grand Lake. You poked and prodded and you were nearly killed twice,” Dan said.

  “And you nearly got me killed in the process,” Haley said, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “You also nearly had me giving birth on the back porch of POPS. I’m with Dan. Stay out of it.”

  I looked over to Garrett for some backup, but he was sitting with his arms crossed over his chest and absolutely no smile on his lips whatsoever. He was still cute and still a good kisser, but I wasn’t so sure he had my back on this one.

  It didn’t seem fair. I hadn’t asked to be embroiled in Coco’s murder or in Melanie’s murder. It had been bad luck, a stupid series of unfortunate incidents, crazy mixed-up fate that had had me twisted up in unraveling what had happened to them.

  On the other hand, they had a point. While I’d helped bring two murderers to justice, I’d come damn close to being a sacrifice on the altar of truth. I raised my right hand in the air. “I solemnly swear to stay out of it.”

  “Excellent,” Dan said.

  “Besides, I have my own mystery to solve,” I said.

  Haley cocked her head to one side. “You mean the diary?”

  • • •

  I did mean the diary. Days before, while Carson and I had been pulling down the remnants of the wall in what was left of my kitchen after the grease fire that had been supposed to demolish both me and POPS, we’d found a diary. Well, find might be exaggerating. We jumped back and squealed like kids on a roller coaster when it unexpectedly fell out of the wall at our feet. We hadn’t known what it was at first. It was wrapped in an old pillowcase and had looked like a bundle of dirty clothes. Carson and I had both stared at it and then each other.

  “Pick it up and see what it is,” I’d said.

  Carson had shaken his giant dandelion of a head—really, he had the most amazing hair—and said, “I’ve found some freaky-ass stuff in walls. You pick it up. It’s your shop.”

  “Yeah, but I’m paying you to fix it,” I’d pointed out.

  “Not enough,” he’d snapped back.

  He was right. He could have charged me more. He might have been Grand Lake High’s head stoner back in the day, but now he was Grand Lake’s most reliable contractor. I was definitely getting the friends-and-family rate from him. Apparently, you had to pay full price to get him to deal with freaky stuff. I couldn’t dispute the fairness of the arrangement.

  I had taken a deep breath and poked the pillowcase with a yardstick and had been relieved that whatever was inside the pillowcase was hard, since I figured something dead would be soft. I’d crouched down, picked up the pillowcase by the tiniest part of the corner that I could pinch between my finger and thumb and shaken. A book had tumbled out.

  Both Carson and I had let the air out of our lungs with a whoosh. He clutched his chest. “Oh, man, Rebecca. I thought it was going to be a dead baby.” He sat down heavily on one of my spindly ice cream chairs.

  “Seriously? That’s the first place your mind goes? Dead babies?” I sat down next to him, my heart beating too hard for having just unearthed a book from a pillowcase, even though I swear dead babies never crossed my mind. I’d been more focused on a severed hand for some reason.

  “You’ve had kind of a bad run with dead bodies, you know? And this was small. Definitely not a full-sized customer.” Carson ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up even taller.

  “I’m aware.” If I hadn’t noticed it myself, the constant comments from friends and family about the bodies and the murder rate would have probably clued me in. I reached down and picked up the book. The cover was a faded pink with a few water stains marring it, but not marring it enough that you couldn’t read the words “My Diary” in a dark pink cursive script across the front.

  “Whose diary do you think it is?” Carson asked.

  “Not a clue.” I pressed the button and the lock popped open. There was no name on the inside bookplate. No address. No marker. No introduction. It had just started in.

  May 17

  Friday

  I cannot believe I am home again on a Friday evening when everyone else—EVERYONE ELSE—is out. I can see them from my bedroom window. GT, Shoop, Twinkletoes. They’re all there. Walking up and down. Sitting on benches. Eating ice cream. Talking to each other like normal people.

  Me? I’m inside. Reading. I hate my mother. I want to kill myself.

  I gasped and showed the entry to Carson. “Do you think she really wanted to kill herself? Do you think this is like a suicide note?”

  Carson took the book from my hand and leafed through. “No. Or if she did mean it, she changed her mind. This thing goes on for another fifty or sixty pages. Plus, teenage girls are kind of into all the drama, right?”

  He was right. It was probably how I sounded when I was fifteen. All drama all the time. By the time I was sixteen, I wouldn’t have sat in my room whining about it to my diary. I would have gone out the window, shimmied down the porch overhang, caught on to the willow tree branches and swung myself down to the ground. Dan would have probably been waiting.

  I flipped a few pages forward and read an entry from a few weeks later.

  Went to the lake with Bubbles yesterday. We swam all the way out to the buoy and back, then went back to her house. Man, can she swim! Her mom made us popcorn and hot chocolate when we got to her place. Boy! That lake sure is cold.

  Bubbles? I knew someone whose nickname was Bubbles. Well, I didn’t really know the person. I carried her DNA.

  I put my finger on the name. “I think that’s my grandmother. Ella Conner. I remember Mom once telling me that Grandma’s nickname in high school was Bubbles because she could stay underwater longer than anyone else by blowing bubbles. Whoever wrote this diary knew my grandmother.” I barely got to know my grandmother. She died in a boating accident when I was seven. Now here she was on this diary page and she was eating popcorn! Popcorn! Maybe popcorn was in my blood.

  “Très cool,” Carson said. “I wonder what other fun factoids are in there.”

  “I wonder who the diary writer was,” I said. I shut the diary and put it in my bag. “I’ll read more tonight and see what I can figure out.”

  • • •

  Figuring out who wrote that diary now seemed like a faraway fairy tale as I sat in my cell waiting for my lawyer. Huerta had let me out to make the call to Cynthia, who had had trouble stopping her hysterical laughter when I explained why I needed her to come to Grand Lake.

  “Seriously? Dan arrested you? Again?” she’d cackled.

  “Yes. But it feels different this time. This time they put me in a cell and made me put on one of those orange jumpsuits.” I looked down at my new outfit. The legs were too short and the waist was too big and whoever had washed it had clearly not used fabric softener. Dan had never made me put on the jumpsuit before. I’d always gotten to wear my own clothes and been out in an hour.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she’d said.

  Sprocket, my standard poodle, arrived at my jail cell before Cynthia did, though. Less than thirty minutes after my phone call to Cynthia, Dan led him into the cell block with a pained expression on his face.

  “Seriously? You’re locking up my dog, too? What’d Sprocket do? Pee on the wrong fire hydrant?” I walked over to the cell bars, my eyes narrowed and my voice as sarcastic as I could make it.

  “No. Or maybe. I don’t know where he peed. He’s been howling for hours, though. Haley said he started at almost exactly the time we locked
you in here. It’s like he knew.” Dan knelt down and let Sprocket off his leash.

  Sprocket trotted over to me and got up on his hind legs. He’s a big boy, and stretched out he was nearly face-to-face with me. He whimpered. “I know, boy,” I said. “It’s crazy.”

  He licked my face through the bars.

  Dan motioned for me to stick my hands through the bars. He handcuffed me, pulled out his keys and unlocked my cell. I started to step out, but he held up his hand. “Oh, no. You’re staying in there. I’m going to let Sprocket keep you company. That way if he howls, you’re the only one he’s going to keep up.”

  “What am I? Chopped liver?” Cathy asked from the next cell over.

  Dan shot her a look, but didn’t answer. Apparently she was chopped liver.

  Sprocket leapt up onto the bed and curled up. “Are you going to bring an extra set of sheets at least?” I asked, eyeing the top bunk.

  He sighed, relocked the cell and uncuffed me. “I’ll have some brought in when they bring you your dinner.”

  “Who’s going to walk him?” I asked, gesturing at Sprocket with my head.

  “You are.” Dan leaned back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.

  “So you’re going to let me out of here four or five times a day?” At least I wouldn’t die of vitamin D deficiency before Cynthia managed to rescue me somehow.

  Dan slumped forward a little. “We will do whatever is required.”

  He looked sad. I was a little glad about it. He deserved to feel sad for locking me up like this. I hoped he regretted this. I buried my face in Sprocket’s sweet apricot fur and didn’t look up as Dan left.

  • • •

  The day I found the diary, I’d gone home not too much later. There was only so much I could do to help out with the renovations. Plus, it was my goal to have at least two new products ready to go by the time we reopened POPS. Right before the grease fire that had closed me down, I’d started selling Bacon Pecan Popcorn. It had been a big hit. I wanted some companion flavors, too. I gave Sprocket a thorough brushing and then got started on some new recipes. With the butter and the sugar bubbling on the stove, I read more of the diary. Bubbles, GT, Shoop, Twinkletoes and my diary writer had quite a few adventures that seemed to mainly center on algebra tests and which boys were the dreamiest. The big excitement happened when a relative came to visit. My diary writer christened the visitor CG. CG came from Europe. My little friend had been expecting someone glamorous and worldly. Someone who had traveled and sampled the finer things in life. She’d had a rude awakening.

  Ugh. CG is so gross! I can’t figure out how she spends so much time in the bathroom since she’s clearly not washing the four strands of hair she has on her head or brushing the seven teeth she has left in her head. To think I thought she’d be able to give me fashion tips and talk Mama into letting me wear lipstick!

  CG was also prone to night terrors, apparently.

  So tired today. Can barely drag my feet down the sidewalk. CG woke up at three a.m. screaming. Papa tried to wake her and she punched him. Punched him! Mama says I have to understand that CG has been through hard times. Well, I’m going through some now thanks to her. Don’t know how I’ll possibly stay awake through history class.

  Then something really interesting happened.

  CG had a fit downtown today. I was so embarrassed! Right on Main Street. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and pointed her long bony finger and said, “I know you!” to FW. Then she started screaming “Monster! Monster!” until Mother slapped her. I could not have been more mortified. Not in a million years. Screaming and slapping in the middle of town! My family is the absolute worst. I can’t wait to graduate and get away from them. The second I cross that stage with my diploma in hand, I’m going to the bus station and getting on the next bus. I’m leaving and going as far as I can.

  I recognized those sentiments. They’d pretty much been mine when I graduated from Grand Lake High, and my family hadn’t been humiliating. I could only imagine what kind of impact a scene like the one she described would have on a teenage girl’s reputation. Who had the monster been, though? That couldn’t have been much fun, either. The timer beeped and I hopped up to stir in the vanilla and the baking soda.

  I got back to the diary when I’d mixed everything together and spread it all out on the baking sheets to go into the oven.

  CG says that FW is a Nazi! She says that he was a guard at the camp. She says she could never forget someone so hateful and cruel. She told Papa over dinner and Papa laughed so hard I thought he was going to have a heart attack. Slapping his knee and hooting while CG pulled at his hands. She gave up after a while and quieted down. Papa told her to keep her crazy to herself. That she was seeing Nazis behind every door. Apparently she thought the dentist was a Nazi, too. She said Papa would, too, if he’d lived through what she’d lived through.

  Then they were both yelling at each other, saying all kinds of hateful things.

  I asked Mama later what CG meant. She told me some things were better forgotten. She might be right, but I can tell CG sure hasn’t forgotten whatever it was.

  Nazis? Right here in Grand Lake? I definitely had to figure out who this diary writer was. I guessed that the first step to figuring out who the diary writer was would be to figure out who owned my shop back in the 1950s.

  I figured the best place to do that would be City Hall. I could ask in the city offices. It would give me something to do the next day. I’d been getting a little stir-crazy. There’d been times when I’d first started POPS that I would have given anything for a few days off in a row. Now that I had them, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Oh, sure. The first few days of sleeping until I woke up, taking Sprocket for long walks by the lake, cooking meals in my own kitchen had been luxurious. Too much luxury was apparently not good for me. I was getting antsy. I’d find out who the diary writer was and who the secret Nazi was. It would give me something to fill my time.

  I finished my S’Mores Popcorn Bars and started making dinner.

  Garrett walked into my apartment a few hours later bring a gust of cold air with him and said, “Smells good.” He shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the coatrack by the door.

  “Thanks.” I knew it smelled good. Pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon with a beurre blanc sauce always smelled good. At least it did when I made it. I knew he’d take the first bite and not say anything else for several minutes because he’d be too busy eating. I knew I’d enjoy that moment of silence that every chef enjoys when she knows her meal is good. I knew Garrett would thank me afterward. He was good to cook for.

  He was also, however, simple to cook for. Every once in a while, I missed the challenge of cooking for an educated and discerning palette.

  People used to ask me all the time if I’d been intimidated by cooking for Antoine, my ex-husband and celebuchef of the moment. I’d tell them they clearly didn’t understand what cooking for Antoine was like. Antoine loved food. Food was his passion. Food was his calling. Food was his life. He loved to eat food, to talk about food and to think about food. Cooking for him was an adventure of the senses and of the mind. It wasn’t intimidating. Frankly, it was fun. Big fun. We would talk and taste and dissect and discuss. We’d tweak and tinker. I missed it a little. Only a little, but I still missed it.

  I’ll admit to feeling a little bit wistful as I finished the beurre blanc sauce, but then I turned around and saw Garrett sitting on the floor with Sprocket, playing tug-of-war with Sprocket’s toy alligator. For a moment, the clean line of his jaw as he sat in his dress clothes on the floor with my dog took my breath away. “Dinner’s ready.” I set out our plates on the breakfast bar. “Wine?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I need to do some more work tonight. I’d better steer clear.”

  We sat side by side at my kitchen counter and ate. It wasn’t the best presentation
, but my apartment over the garage was small and a proper dining room table took room I didn’t have. When we were done, I set my fork down and started to clear our plates.

  He held up a hand to stop me. “You sit. I’ll do the dishes.”

  I didn’t argue too much. I’d spent plenty of time washing dishes. It wasn’t my favorite kitchen activity. It was better than mopping the floor, but that was all the faint praise I had to damn it with. As he rolled up his sleeves—an added benefit of him doing dishes, he had marvelous forearms—I twirled the diary around on the breakfast bar. “Check out what Carson and I found hidden in a wall at POPS.”

  “What is it?” He ran hot water into a plastic tub in the sink.

  “A diary written by a teenage girl who lived in my shop when it was a house. I’m pretty sure she was friends with my grandmother.” I ran my fingers along the edges.

  He squirted in some soap. “Interesting. Anything else interesting about her?”

  “She had a crazy relative visiting who thought everyone was a secret Nazi.” It was a more interesting factoid than what had happened in her gym class, although that dodge ball showdown sounded epic.

  “Of course. Because northern Ohio was where all those Nazis went to hide. The rumors about Brazil and Argentina were spread to put everyone off the track.” He put the dishes into the hot water. “Does it say who the supposed Nazis were?”

  “Not yet. She uses a lot of initials and nicknames. I think she was afraid someone might read the diary. Her parents were crazy overprotective. Plus, I’ve still got quite a few pages to go.” I held it up to show where I’d made it to and how much was left.

  “How does it end?” Garrett has a very annoying habit of reading the ends of books before he gets there. He seeks out movie reviews with spoilers. He says he likes things wrapped up neat and nice so he can relax and enjoy the journey.