by Sandra Balzo
Not the soft leather jacket he wore when riding his Harley, but the coat did look great on him, its color setting off his eyes, which could range from clear blue when he was laughing through gray to nearly black, when he was angry.
I’d seen them black and I have to admit it frightened me.
But maybe that was part of his fascination. Or, more accurately, my fascination with him.
That and the dark hair that curled at the nape of his neck. The feel of his hands on me. The mouth, when . . .
‘Maggy?’ The mouth spoke.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, gathering myself. ‘You asked if we know the—’
‘Brigid,’ Sarah, silent until now, said. ‘Brigid Ferndale. She worked for me.’
‘For you?’ Pavlik glanced between us. ‘In the coffeehouse?’
I shook my head.
‘Shit.’ Pavlik rubbed his temple. ‘You’re saying the deceased was a real estate agent?’
‘Apprentice,’ Sarah said. ‘In my office.’
‘Kingston Realty, correct?’
‘Correct.’
Pavlik scribbled on his pad. ‘Her name again?’
Sarah spelled both first and last names for him.
When Pavlik finished writing, he looked up. ‘What was she doing here?’
‘No idea.’
A tap of pen on pad. ‘But you do own this building, right?’
He glanced at me for confirmation. I nodded and then, feeling like a traitor, checked sideways on Sarah.
But she didn’t seem to be following the thread. ‘Brigid was just a kid. I should have looked out for her.’
Sarah had a maternal streak that I never would have believed existed had she not stepped up to become the guardian of two teenagers. When my former partner, Patricia Harper, died, Sarah took her best-friend’s kids, Sam and Courtney, into her own home.
I’d say ‘and into her heart’, too, but Sarah would gag at the sentiment.
Not that it wasn’t true.
I had a feeling that the same instinct that drove a single woman in her forties to fight for – and with – two teenagers not her own, was now driving said woman crazy with guilt.
I put my hand on Sarah’s and turned to Pavlik. ‘Brigid was an apprentice in Sarah’s office, but because two other Kingston Realty employees recently . . . left, Brigid was pretty much on her own.’
Sarah shook off my hand and stood. ‘Sheriff, do you think this has anything to do with the other shootings?’
Pavlik cocked his head and even in the spotty lighting I could see the lines of stress in his face. ‘Three women dead in the last ten days. All of them real estate agents, though we don’t have a cause of death in Ms Ferndale’s case. Still, what do you think?’
‘Only weren’t the other two killed while they were working?’ I asked as the technician appeared in the bathroom doorway and signaled to Pavlik.
The sheriff held up a hand to us and approached the other man. After a sotto voce exchange, Pavlik let the techie precede him into the bathroom.
‘But Brigid wasn’t showing a house,’ I said to Pavlik’s back. ‘She was here, in a room I didn’t even know existed.’
His words floated over a shoulder and on toward me. ‘Someone sure as hell did.’
Chapter Six
When I turned back, Sarah was gone.
Alone in the room, I stepped up through the low-bridge doorway and into the daylight. Blinking, I saw no sign of my partner.
I was even more surprised that Ward Chitown, Kate McNamara and Elaine Riordan were also gone. I’d had the lot of them pegged as ambulance chasers, two at least operating under the credentials of investigative journalism.
I still wasn’t sure what Elaine Riordan’s shtick was.
The area around the base of the platform’s staircase had been cordoned off. A sheriff’s deputy held up the yellow ‘Do Not Cross’ tape so I could duck under it and climb the steps.
When I entered Uncommon Grounds, I found Luc Romano tending the counter. Sarah was sitting at a deuce table in the corner. In front of her was coffee that someone, probably Luc, had poured into a latte mug. Sarah was stirring it with a tiny espresso spoon.
‘Luc,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much. How did . . .?’
‘Not a problem,’ he said, lavishing the last touch of foam on a cappuccino and tamping the lid of the Styrofoam cup down tightly. A male customer wearing a Bluetooth headset ponied up some bills, looked me over while Luc made change, then left hurriedly.
‘Huh,’ said Luc. ‘Kind of abrupt, even for a coffeehouse.
I shook my head. ‘He may have just heard the news. Or gotten a whiff of our air quality.’
A solemn nod. ‘I stopped in to invite you and Sarah over to dinner to test out some recipes Tien and I have been developing. When an earlier customer came in, I decided to help out until you got back.’
‘Luc, how long ago did you get here?’ I asked, glancing at the clocks above our heads.
‘Ahh, maybe . . . an hour?’
Yikes. Between Sarah and me, we didn’t have a responsible bone in our bodies. She ‘abandons’ her apprentice and I . . . we, abandon our coffeehouse.
I glanced over at my business partner.
Luc lowered his voice. ‘She told me what you found downstairs. I figured the best thing to do was leave her alone.’
Good judgment. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Luc.’
‘Like I said, Maggy, happy to help.’
And Tien’s father did look happy. More so than ever after both our former locations were destroyed by a freak storm and he’d subsequently decided to retire.
An’s Market, named after Tien’s mother, might have been his life, Luc said, but he didn’t want it to be his daughter’s life as well. Now that Tien had launched her own business, though, ‘Dad’ was more than happy to help her. And us in the bargain.
Before I could ask what wonders Luc and Tien had whipped up for tonight, the bells on the streetside door jingled.
‘What’s going on out there?’ Art Jenada asked. ‘Did someone run into the loading platform this time?’
A car had landed on our front porch just a few months back, so his question wasn’t quite the long shot you might imagine.
I told Art about the ‘waiting room’, but left out for now, what – or who – had been found there.
‘The mob?’ he snorted. ‘Not here, not now.’
Sarah stirred at her table, but not with the spoon. Apparently she was actually taking a renewed interest in her surroundings. ‘You don’t believe the mob was in this area? You’re Italian, you should know better.’
Ignoring, for now, the assumption that anyone of Italian descent is an expert on the Mafia, I looked at Art. ‘Italian? I thought “Jenada” was Greek?’
‘It’s neither, but what does my heritage have to do with it?’ he demanded, echoing my thoughts.
‘Nothing,’ I said hastily. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘The restaurant and slaughterhouse across the tracks were rumored to be mobbed up,’ Art continued, ‘but the scum, if any, stayed over there where they belonged.’
In my experience, nobody was content staying where they were supposed to belong. In fact, it was the one place that often became intolerable.
I glanced out the platform-side windows in the direction Art was indicating, just in time to see Pavlik stride past. The man did walk with conviction. I just hoped it wasn’t Sarah he was interested in convicting.
Luc appeared at my shoulder and cleared his throat. ‘Gotta go, Maggy, but we’ll see you tonight? Say seven thirty, our place?’
Perfect. That would give me time to run home after we closed and let Frank out.
Frank was my son’s sheepdog or, truth be told, now that Eric was away at school, Frank was my sheepdog. He was also, at times, my best friend and most trusted confidante.
‘Dinner?’ Sarah, my other best friend asked from the table. Food always perked her up.
‘Yes,’ Luc said, ‘and pl
ease bring Courtney and Sam.’
‘They have after-school stuff,’ Sarah said, ‘but I’ll be there. Thanks, Luc.’
‘We’ll be glad to see you both,’ Tien’s father said. ‘And Frank, too, if you want, Maggy.’
Pretty sad when your ‘plus one’ is a four-legged herder of wool on the hoof.
Watching Luc leave, I said, ‘I’m sorry, Art.’ It was always awkward to discuss an invitation when a listener hadn’t been included in, but this was a business dinner of sorts and Art, as a caterer, was competition. ‘You were saying?’
But Art was saying nothing because he, too, was gone.
###
I’m fond of categorizing my post-divorce house as ‘up the creek’. My ex-husband and I differ on who was left without the proverbial paddle in the divorce settlement.
The creek in question is named Poplar and runs north and south to form the western boundary of Brookhills. The farther downstream you go, the nicer the houses are.
Which is why mine is ‘up’.
The outside of the house might be neat-white now, but when I bought the place it was a grotesque red. Somehow I had been able to see past that – and the overgrown pine trees – to the place’s potential. As in, potentially, I could afford to live there and still eat. Sadly, with the exception of the ramshackle signal-house near Uncommon Grounds’ new location, it might well be the only structure in Brookhills where that was possible.
I’d needed to pay cash, since no bank in its right mind would give a mortgage to a newly divorced woman who had just quit a well-paying corporate job to open a coffeehouse. Oddly enough, the necessity of paying cash had proved to be my salvation during the downturn in the market.
Now I had only my taxes and upkeep to worry about, when many of my neighbors – the ones who had applauded when I painted the eyesore in their midst – were hit with high-interest adjustable loans – or, worse, balloon-payments of principal – coming due for homes that had lost half their value.
They couldn’t sell, because they wouldn’t get enough from the sale to pay off their mortgages, but they also didn’t have enough equity in the homes to negotiate a refinancing.
Talk about your catch-22, more like your catch-22-thousand. Hell, who was I kidding? Add a zero to that for some Brookhillians. Desperate times, and the housing market still wasn’t out of the woods.
Parking my ‘Sangria Red’ Ford Escape in the driveway, I went around to the side and up the steps to my porch. ‘Frank? It’s me.’
The scrabbling of canine toenails on wood floor.
‘Sit,’ I commanded through the door.
More scrabbling, then a plop followed by a swish-swish.
Butt on floor, check. Tail wagging, check.
Houston, we have ignition. ‘Stay,’ I said firmly and put the key in the door.
Clickety-slide,clickety-slide. And it wasn’t the key.
It was the sound of a ninety-five pound sheepdog, trying to follow the letter, if not the spirit, of the law.
‘No rump-scooting, Frank. You obey, or I won’t take you to Luc and Tien’s for dinner.’
Woof! Woof-woof-woof!
My mistake, though I wasn’t sure if it was the mention of Luc and Tien in particular or ‘dinner’ in general.
‘Sit, Frank!’ I ordered again in my best dog-training voice.
Turning the key, I cracked the door. A wet black nose filled part of the space.
‘You’re supposed to be sitting.’
Sniff.
‘Sit, or I’ll close the door and leave. You’ll have only your sorry furry self to blame.’
We both knew I was bluffing. If I did what I was threatening, I’d return to a urine puddle the size of Lake Michigan and I was down to my last roll of paper towels.
A resigned sigh. Showing Frank who was the alpha dog in this relationship would have to wait. Besides, I feared we both knew the answer.
Flattening myself against the wall next to the door, I reached over and gave the door a shove.
Frank erupted out and down the steps without giving me a look.
But then he didn’t knock me over, either.
Victory. Definite, if a bit minor.
###
We arrived at Luc’s condo fashionably late, as difficult as it is to be ‘fashionably’ anything when you’re covered with the sheddings of a sheepdog.
I’d made the mistake of trying to brush Frank after I showered and got dressed. Never a good idea, especially when you’re wearing black, a magnet for dog hair.
Luc’s condominium complex, Civic Heights, was next to Benson Plaza, the strip mall where both the original Uncommon Grounds and An’s Foods had been located.
The ‘Civic’ referred to the fact that the condo’s entrance faced onto Civic Drive across from the town hall. The ‘Heights’ was anybody’s guess, though the buildings did ascend heavenward to the highest elevation allowed by code in Brookhills. Four stories.
Luc’s place was a two-level townhouse occupying the first and second floors. I parked on the street behind Tien’s Volkswagen bug and Sarah’s classic Firebird. As Frank hopped out of my Escape, I was aware of curious glances. The dogs that were being walked around us were more the size that would have fit into Elaine Riordan’s handbag, as opposed to Frank, who was . . .
‘Oh, Daddy, look at the pony,’ a girl of three or four said to her dad as they passed. ‘Can we get one, can we please?’
Frank eyed me.
I pressed the doorbell. ‘A failure of the educational system, pooch. In my day, kids could tell the difference between canines and equines.’
Tien pulled the door open abruptly.
‘Sit,’ I said to Frank belatedly, but he already was, tail thumping, as Tien gave him a good rub behind the ears. ‘You’re such a perfect gentleman, Frank, aren’t you? You’re just a lover. Yes you are, oh yes you are.’
Ugh. We really had to find somebody for Tien. Maybe Jacque, as unlikely as it seemed, would be the lucky guy.
As for Frank, sheepdogs were like kids. They always behaved better for other people. ‘Traitor,’ I said as Frank pranced in behind Tien, shooting me a look that said, Now this is a woman who knows how to treat a dog.
I closed the door behind me. Beyond the foyer, Luc’s condo had a good-sized living room, eat-in kitchen and half-bath. Upstairs were two bedrooms and bathrooms, accessible by a compact circular staircase.
Sarah was already sitting on one end of the couch in the living room, feet up on the coffee table, a glass in her hand.
My partner was a scotch drinker when I met her, but in deference to the medication she took for bipolar disorder, she’d switched to clear liquids.
‘Another Grey Goose, Sarah?’ asked Luc.
Drinking what she shouldn’t – ever the mother, I wanted to scold my partner.
But talking to Sarah was like talking to Frank, currently padding along behind Tien to the kitchen. You could talk, but you never knew if they were listening.
In Frank’s case it was because his hair covered his eyes. Sarah just didn’t give a shit.
But to my surprise, Sarah shook her head. ‘No thanks, Luc. I’m fine for now.’
‘Wine, Maggy?’ Luc asked, picking up a balloon-shaped glass. ‘I’ve got a nice Chardonnay – that I used making the entrée – or a Cabernet.’
‘The Cab, please, Luc.’ While I agreed that some dishes were best paired with whites, I fully intended to be drinking the wine both before and after I ate. And I preferred red.
I sniffed. ‘Something smells wonderful.’
‘Dad developed a fantastic Chicken Francese recipe,’ Tien said, re-entering the room with a plate in her hands and my dog at her heels.
She put the plate on the floor and whatever had been on it disappeared in a blur of fur, yellow teeth, pink tongue and consequent drool.
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘She means before it was barbarically attacked,’ said Sarah, nodding toward Frank walking away from the dish snuff
ling.
‘Meatloaf,’ Tien said. ‘I hope it’s OK?’
‘Better than OK,’ Sarah said, ‘judging by Frank. Got any left? I’m not much for French food.’
I began with, ‘Sarah . . .’
But Luc just laughed. ‘Francese is an Italian word and it means “in the French way”, or “Frenchman”, literally. You’ll see the dish served in a lot of Italian restaurants. Chicken breast, lightly battered in flour and egg and served with a lemon sauce.’
My stomach growled.
‘Not only is it delicious,’ Luc continued, ‘but it should reheat nicely. And I’m doing a nice angel-hair pasta to go with it.’
‘Plus,’ Tien interjected, ‘it’s low fat. My father is a culinary genius.’
‘Aww, now. Anybody could do this. I’ve just had the time since I retired.’
‘Retired?’ I said, settling onto the other end of the couch from Sarah. ‘You’re developing recipes, helping Tien with the cooking and today you were tending the coffeehouse.’
‘You were?’ Tien asked with surprise. ‘When?’
Of course. She’d been gone by the time Sarah and I had abandoned our post to go in search of what was stinking up the place. Maybe she’d left with Jacque Oui and maybe she hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to raise the subject.
The Frenchman and Tien’s father had been friendly, quasi-competitors, with Jacque running Schultz’s, specializing in seafood and fish, just a few blocks from An’s, which featured an excellent meat counter, deli and breads.
I didn’t know how Luc would feel about Tien seeing Jacque, if that’s what they were indeed doing. But Tien was an adult – into her thirties now, though she seemed younger – and who she dated was really none of her father’s business.
Or mine, for that matter.
‘Around noon, maybe?’ Luc, answering Tien’s latter question.
‘Yeah,’ Sarah said, stretching. ‘Tien had already taken off with her Francese.’
Meaning Jacque, of course.
‘You brought the chicken there?’ Luc asked his daughter, confused.
Sarah threw a knowing grin in Tien’s direction and then opened her mouth.
I wanted to put my foot in it. Before my partner could further embarrass Tien, I said to her, ‘Your father pitched in when Sarah and I had to leave.’