2 Days 'Til Sundae (2 'Til Series Book 1)

by Heather Muzik

  “It matters to me,” he stressed, putting his hands on the door and leaning in toward her. “Please get out of the car?”

  “Like I said, Joel, I don’t have a minute. I’ve got a flight to catch.”

  -42-

  Pissed and pieless, she drove back to the cabin and stormed in much like she’d stormed out less than twenty minutes earlier. She just wanted to grab her carry-on and go. She didn’t give a crap if her friends were ready or not. She was blowing this pop stand.

  “What’s up? Where are you going?” Tara asked.

  “Home. Now.”

  “The next direct flight isn’t until tomorrow,” Tara said quickly. “I checked. They cancelled this afternoon’s due to a technical problem.”

  “I’ll take one with a layover or three. I don’t care. Whatever it takes to get back to civilization again,” Catherine groused.

  “We could beat you back just by waiting until tomorrow,” Georgia pointed out.

  “Maybe. But at least I’ll be accomplishing something in the process, instead of biding my time here.”

  “Wait a minute,” Georgia said, trying to project her calm.

  “No. I’m not waiting or sleeping here or anything else. I just want out.”

  “But what about what you came for?”

  “I’m done. Let Cara have it. That was who he bought it for.”

  “Oh,” her friends said in unison, looking at each other.

  “Listen, why don’t we just hang out and rent some movies and kick back and relax until tomorrow?” Georgia offered.

  “Because I don’t want to hang out with you two anymore,” Catherine countered.

  “Ever?” Tara asked.

  “Well not tonight anyway. Or tomorrow definitely. Maybe in a couple years I’ll get over your misguided ass-istance.”

  “Fine,” Tara relented.

  “Fine?” Catherine asked, noting that Georgia shot Tara a questioning glance as well. It wasn’t like her not to spar.

  “I’ll make the reservations—NYC here we come, by way of Chicago, Atlanta, and Buffalo.” Tara picked up the tickets and her phone and stepped out of the cabin.

  “You really want to leave now?” Georgia asked.

  “Of course! What did you think was going to happen? Did you think I would stay here forever—move here to be near my long-lost dollhouse?” Catherine asked, carefully escaping her friend’s gaze by finding something more interesting on the floor next to the bed. “Is that an earring?” She reached down, grabbing a nail off the carpet—probably one of Fynn’s; the place reeked of him.

  “All right. If you say so.” Georgia dutifully packed up her stuff and shoved it in her suitcase.

  “It’s done,” Tara announced, bursting back through the door. “We have three seats on four different flights—hope to God we don’t miss any connections and we might make it home by Sunday, otherwise….”

  “Good,” Catherine said around the lump in her throat.

  “I’ll take the little beeber,” Tara said excitedly, grabbing Catherine’s keys. “You go with Georgia. I need a break from the old lady’s driving.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Georgia sniffed.

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  “Don’t kill my car on the way to the airport,” Catherine cautioned.

  “That’s cold. Shouldn’t you be telling me not to get myself killed?”

  “I didn’t buy the rental insurance…. So I mean it, Tara, don’t screw around.”

  “Okay—got it.”

  “Anybody need to have a potty break before we get on the road?” Georgia asked.

  “Man, it’s like you channel mothers everywhere,” Tara said in wonder. “Is that what happens when you get knocked up? Does mom-talk just start oozing out of your pores and orifices?”

  “Eew,” Georgia complained. “I don’t even get morning sickness and you’re making me queasy.”

  “I have to take this call,” Catherine said suddenly. “You guys got everything here?”

  “Wait, what call? I didn’t hear the phone,” Tara said quickly—jumpy.

  “I have it on vibrate.”

  “You really are lonely,” Tara giggled, her body and tone suddenly relaxed again.

  “Shut up! It’s Lillian,” Catherine hissed, covering the mouthpiece. She opened the door and stepped outside.

  By the time she finished getting raked over the coals for the fact that she was out of town and the documents Lillian needed were at home in New York—in her locked apartment for which no one else in the entire city had a key—she was not surprised that Tara and Georgia were finished packing their bags and the cars. They said they had left payment for the cabin inside on the table, underneath the key. And they had locked the door before pulling it shut. It was all taken care of.

  “You still have a job to go back to?” Tara asked.

  “For now.”

  “If you go, I go. I’ll march right in and tell her on Monday.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think that will hold much weight.”

  “Maybe not,” Tara admitted. “But I just want you to know that I’m with you.”

  They got in the cars and Tara immediately peeled out of the parking lot, kicking up a fine spray of rocks and dust behind her.

  “So much for being with me,” Catherine said tightly.

  -43-

  “Where the hell are we?” Catherine asked groggily. She opened her eyes to find they were parked in a parking lot. She was alone, although she could hear her friends outside, their voices muffled. She looked at the clock on the dash and noticed that it had been less than a half hour since they’d left the cabin—they couldn’t have reached the airport yet.

  “Did you drug her or something?” Georgia asked.

  “No, I didn’t drug her. She just must be exhausted from last night,” Tara said.

  “Do you really think that she’s going to go for this?”

  “No. But she doesn’t have a choice, does she?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Not as long as we have the keys… and the tickets.”

  “What’s going on?” Catherine asked, popping out of the car and standing there like she meant it.

  “This is for your own good, Cat.” Tara hid the keys behind her back protectively.

  “Getting to the airport and making that plane is for my own good,” Catherine pointed out.

  “You don’t even have a plane to catch,” Tara said.

  “But you—and the packing—it was all just—” She stopped and looked from one to the other, wondering how they could be so diabolical.

  “It was all part of my plan,” Tara said proudly. “I love you, Cat, but I wasn’t going to switch planes three times for you just to get home twelve hours later than if we go tomorrow. That’s nuts!”

  “But I don’t want to be here anymore. I need to get out of Nekoyah!” she wailed.

  “And we are out,” Tara said.

  “Where? Where are we?”

  “In Dobbs.”

  “Where the fuck is Dobbs?” The name was vaguely familiar, but she feared it meant they were still in Minnesota—it’s been less than thirty minutes, of course we’re still in Minnesota.

  Tara was done explaining herself and her evil plan though, and Catherine watched her squeeze Georgia’s arm as she walked away and left them both.

  “What’s going on?” Catherine asked her best friend in the world.

  Georgia wouldn’t look at her. She kept her eyes scanning the lot instead. “Tara’s right about the flight. I have to pee constantly. I can’t be traveling for hours like that. What’s one more night?”

  “You mean we’re going back there after this—whatever this is?” Catherine whined.

  “It’s the only place we can get a room!”

  “We can go to the airport and stay at the Holiday Inn or something—or even in the terminal!”

  “Really, Cat—the terminal?”

  She couldn’t believe that Tara was now running thi
s show. That she had won Georgia over to her side. Everyone knew that Tara was absolutely nuts! She should probably be locked up, or at the very least heavily medicated.

  Time goes by even slower when you’re pissed enough to stop speaking, and it seemed like an hour went by before they could see Tara coming back toward them through the sea of cars. There was a huge building in that direction that looked out of place in the otherwise barren surroundings, like a meadow had spontaneously birthed a concrete and steel structure.

  “What are we doing here?” Catherine demanded, not that she wanted to speak to Tara either, but she was the one with all the answers.

  “Catherine Marie, we are here to have a little fun,” Tara said lightly, herding them both through the parking lot and toward the building that had doors all along its front, perfect for handling a mass exodus of people to or from it.

  As they got closer Catherine noticed the large sign above those doors—Welcome Jigsaw Junkies!—and she felt the immediate certainty that whatever was about to happen was not on the up-and-up.

  “No, Tara, I won’t do it,” she said, crossing her arms obstinately.

  “It’s Nadine, sweetie.” Tara pointed to the nametag on her chest that had been hidden by her hair.

  “This is your plan?” Georgia asked in shock.

  “We’re crashing the Jigsaw convention?” Catherine asked further.

  “Isn’t it great?” Tara’s eyes shined with glee.

  “That depends on what you mean by great,” Georgia said.

  “I mean, when are you ever going to have the chance to do this again?”

  “I never wanted to do it in the first place,” Catherine pointed out, lagging back in an attempt to evade the building. This would be the perfect Mother’s Day gift for her mom next year…. But her? Now? She’d rather gouge her eyes out with a plastic Spork, which she was quite certain she had packed in her carry-on.

  “Aww,” Tara pouted, “and I had the perfect name for you, too.” She held out the plastic ID tag that said “Clarise” on it. It also said “Fremont, Kentucky” underneath the name, just like Nadine’s.

  “I won’t,” Catherine insisted.

  Tara tossed the nametag in a nearby trashcan. “All right. Fine. Have it your way. I didn’t want to have to do this.” She stepped close—too close—so she was toe-to-toe with Catherine, and through gritted teeth said, “I found your little doll in the car, hidden under the passenger seat. I’ll start removing his limbs one by one until you realize that this is for the best. And you’ll never see his little dog again….”

  “Huckleberry—” Catherine eked out, not liking the masochistic look in Tara’s eyes.

  “Huckleberry Finn? Seriously? Is that his name? …. Man, you’ve got it so bad.”

  “What? It’s Huckleberry Pie,” she said, completely bewildered.

  “Pie, shmie—my ass. Don’t you see?” Tara demanded, staring her down with incredulity.

  Catherine stole a glance at Georgia who seemed similarly confused and certainly not incensed like Tara happened to be, at whatever she was supposedly playing dumb to.

  Tara dug around in the bag that she had slung over her shoulder—her “purse” that was large enough to carry her wallet (when she wasn’t burgling) and a complete change of clothes (just in case things got fun)—and whipped out the doll in question, holding it in front of Catherine triumphantly. “Who does this look like to you?”

  “Huckleberry Pie,” Catherine answered plainly, a simple trivia question.

  “Huckleberry who?”

  “Pie.”

  But at the same time she was saying it, Georgia said, “Finn.”

  Catherine looked at the little doll again.

  “Get it?” Tara challenged.

  “So it looks like Huck Finn,” Catherine shrugged.

  “Hello? Is anyone in there?” Tara faked like she was knocking on her head.

  Then it dawned on her what she was getting at. “Huck Finn is spelled with an ‘i’ not a ‘y,’” Catherine reasoned, trying to put distance between the doll and reality. Tara just stared back like she was talking pure crap. “No, seriously,” she said earnestly. “Besides, this is Huckleberry Pie and I got him before I even met Fynn—I mean Joel Trager. Before I’d even heard of him.”

  “Sounds like fate,” Tara said, like it was an inescapable conclusion considering the evidence.

  Catherine humphed, unable to do more considering the coincidence was freaking her out just a bit—a little country-boy doll dressed like a cherubic Huck Finn and his little dog too—not that they looked anything like Fynn and Magnus in the flesh, or smelled like—

  “Ow!” Catherine squealed as Tara poked her with the pin from another nametag, catching her unaware while she was in la-la land and affixing a new name to her shirt. She read the tag upside down. “But isn’t this a man’s name?”

  “I gave you the chance to be Clarise and you scoffed, Francis. So suck it up.”

  “And you,” Tara said forcefully, turning to Georgia who looked stricken. “You are Betty.”

  “Why does she get to be Betty?” Catherine whined.

  “Because she looks like a Betty to me.”

  “And I look like Francis?”

  “With that sad, ugly mug on your face, you could pass for a man,” Tara admitted. “Now let’s go. We might be younger than most contestants, but we’re at a disadvantage since Clarise went on a bender and ended up face down in the trash. Our three-person team will have a lot more work than our competition. We Kentucky puzzlers take this stuff mighty serious.”

  “We actually have to make a puzzle?” Georgia asked in surprise.

  “We have to solve a puzzle,” Tara corrected.

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Well get the lingo right or it’ll be a dead giveaway—this team came in fifth last year.”

  “Seriously?” Georgia asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tara said derisively. “I just want to win.”

  “Win?” Georgia blurted.

  “Yeah, I’m very competitive. Did these all the time with my grandparents when I was young. I was the sorter and framer.”

  They moved through throngs of bespectacled octogenarians. There were blue hairs and white hairs and bottle-blonde hairs, but no one remotely on their side of fifty. There were oxygen tanks and wheel chairs and walkers dotting the landscape as well. They felt painfully nimble and overqualified.

  “Piece of cake,” Tara said under her breath after eyeing the competition.

  They reached their designated table—213—to find a sealed brown envelope awaiting them.

  “Contestants should now all be at their tables,” a voice announced over the loudspeaker. “There is no time limit, although last year’s winners, who have rejoined us today, completed their puzzle in just under three hours—that’s one thousand pieces; about eleven seconds a piece, people. Are you ready?” And then there was a buzzer and the sound of ripping paper, much more nimbly and quickly than the contestants seemed capable of at first glance.

  “Don’t just stand there, open it!” Tara demanded. But Georgia wasn’t moving fast enough for her, so Tara grabbed it out of her hands, ripping and dumping in one fell swoop, sending pieces all over and under the table. She looked back inside the envelope. “Ours must be faulty!” she yelled out, raising her hand like she was tattling.

  “They don’t give you a picture to work from,” Catherine said plainly.

  “What do you mean no picture? How do you know what it looks like?” Tara asked, now waving both hands, calling attention to herself.

  “You don’t. That’s part of the challenge.”

  “How the hell do you know?” Tara demanded. “Are you a closet Jigsaw Junkie?”

  “I read the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  “The ones taped to the table.” Catherine pointed at her corner.

  “No bathroom breaks?” Georgia whimpered, checking out the card full of rules over Catherine’s shou
lder, a look of shock and fear on her face. “It says that once you leave the table you’re done. You can’t go back, but your team can finish without you.”

  “You better not have had too much to drink, Betty,” Tara said, staring her down.

  “I already have to go,” she whined. “That’s discrimination against preggos!”

  “So help me I will beat your—”

  “I don’t think we’re even going to get that far, Nadine,” Catherine said, nodding toward two fast-moving officials—fast for seniors at least—coming right at them.

  “Down! Down! We’ll make a break for it,” Tara commanded. “Just stay under the tables. They’ll never catch us with their knee and hip replacements.”

  Georgia dropped to the floor and took off, not needing to be told twice, and Catherine followed suit, unwilling to take the blame alone.

  Francis wasn’t going down for this one.

  -44-

  “I thought we were going back to the cabin,” Catherine pouted as they crossed the line into Nekoyah. At least they now had several miles’ distance between them and their pursuers. She wondered if there was a security feed at the convention center or in the parking lot, if the real cops would be called, if this little puzzle caper would come along and bite them in the ass eventually. She really had to think about getting some new friends.

  “We are,” Georgia said.

  “Then why are we turning here?”

  “Look, I’m following Tara, what do you want me to say?”

  After getting out of the immediate danger zone, Georgia had insisted that they stop so she could take a potty break. And then Tara had called from the other car to say she wanted to stop in a store they had passed on the way out. And then they were back in the car for mere moments again when Georgia needed to take another pee break. And so on and so forth. They had escaped in fits and starts. It all seemed like a whole lot of time-wasting to Catherine who still held firm that she would have rather taken the flight full of layovers out of here than stay any longer.

  They pulled up in front of a house and Tara parked and got out of her car; Georgia pulled in behind her.