by Sandra Balzo
She held out the drink to me. ‘Doesn’t he usually say goodbye when he leaves?’
‘Nobody actually says “goodbye”.’ I set down the towel and took the latte. ‘We say “bye”, or “catch you later”, or even just “see ya”.’
I sank into a chair and took a grateful slurp.
Caron sat down across from me. ‘So,’ she hazarded, ‘if someone actually says “goodbye” . . .?’
‘They mean goodbye. As in bye, for good.’ I stood up to snag a raw sugar from the condiment cart.
‘Aww, Maggy. I’m so sorry.’ Caron sounded like she was going to cry. Didn’t I tell you she was a good friend?
I sat back down with the little packet of sugar in my hand. ‘Maybe it’s for the best,’ I said simply, not wanting the conversation to get maudlin. Or more maudlin.
I changed the subject. ‘Tell me what happened between Pavlik and Ted while I was in the office.’
Caron’s brown eyes got wide. ‘I think Pavlik arrested Ted.’
How could Pavlik arrest Ted for a crime he wasn’t even sure had been committed? What if Rachel had just run off? Gone on a little vacation?
Caron sometimes heard more than was actually said, if you get my drift. I needed to know Pavlik’s precise words.
‘What did he say exactly?’ I asked Caron.
‘That he knew that he hadn’t killed Rachel.’
Well, that was a relief. But it didn’t explain why Caron thought Pavlik had arrested Ted. ‘So why do you think he arrested Ted?’
‘Because he said he was taking him in for questioning.’
‘But why? Hadn’t Pavlik just said that Ted hadn’t killed Rachel?’
Caron looked puzzled and then her expression cleared. ‘Oh, I get it. We’re getting our hims crossed.’
‘Our “hims”?’
‘Actually, I guess it would be our “he’s”.’
I just looked at her.
‘See, it was Ted who said that he, Ted –’ she held up her finger – ‘knew that he – Ted, again – hadn’t killed Rachel.’
Ohhh. ‘So what did he, Pavlik . . .’ My God, now I was doing it.
I got hold of myself and started over. ‘I mean, what did Pavlik say when Ted said that he –’ Caron gave me a look – ‘Ted,’ I clarified, ‘didn’t kill Rachel?’
Caron sat back and folded her arms. ‘What could he say?’
I was going to scream. ‘What did he say?’
‘He said, “Then how do you know she’s dead?”’
I had to admit Pavlik’s question was a good one, and I was still thinking about it a half hour later as I cleaned out the pastry cabinet for Caron.
No one had said Rachel was dead. On the other hand, we’d all seen enough episodes of Law and Order to assume that when the ‘authorities’ are questioning you about the disappearance of your wife, they’re thinking you ‘offed’ her. Maybe ninety percent of the time that’s not true in real life, but most of us see a whole lot more TV than we do real life.
Which in and of itself is a little sad and a lot scary.
As I brushed the crumbs out of the cabinet, the sleigh bells on the door rang out. I glanced up at the clock. Five minutes to closing. It’s what we got for starting on the cleaning early. I heard Caron, who was in the middle of taking apart the espresso machine, swear under her breath.
‘Dang it,’ a cheery voice said. ‘It’s not frickin’ closing time already, is it?’
Sophie Daystrom, one of my favorite senior citizens, was at the counter. She was wearing a forest green pantsuit – her Sunday church outfit. You could tell what day of the week it was by what Sophie was wearing. I wondered if she had day-of-the-week undies, too.
‘Heck, yes,’ I said, standing up and with a broad smile.
There’s something about talking to Sophie that makes me break into pseudo-profanity. Maybe it’s because every other word out of her mouth was, as Eric would have said at the age of ten, a ‘swear’. Sophie is a PG-version of who Sarah will be in thirty or forty years.
‘Fudge,’ Sophie said, looking wistfully at the pieces of the smoothie machine already laid out on a towel to dry. ‘I was hoping for a mango smoothie.’
I held up a basket of muffins. ‘Can I tempt you with free pastry, instead?’ I asked.
‘Free?’ Sophie perked right up.
‘We either have to throw them away or take them home and I don’t think either Caron or I need any more leftover pecan rolls or muffins at home. Right Caron?’
‘Right,’ Caron said with a sour look. ‘Take it all. Again,’ she added under her breath.
Either my partner was having another mood swing or there was a story here. Either way, there would be time to talk about it after I foisted all the leftover pastry on Sophie.
‘I suppose this is how you keep those girlish figures,’ Sophie said as I packed up three blueberry muffins, two pecan rolls, a cinnamon bun and three scones. ‘Danged if I shouldn’t be doing the same thing now that tennis season is almost here.’
Sophie was eighty, if she was a day, but I heard she played a hell of a game of tennis.
I handed her three white paper bags. ‘Just don’t eat these all tonight and you’ll be fine.’
‘Oh, heavens,’ she said, waving her veined hand at me. ‘I’ll put these in the freezer and take one out a day. They’ll last me a month.’
‘More like a week,’ I heard Caron say over the sound of the vacuum that she was now using.
When Sophie had left, I turned on her. ‘What was that all about? Did you want that stuff?’
‘No way,’ Caron said, chasing an errant coffee bean that wouldn’t succumb to the vacuum. ‘But she shows up at closing time at least a couple of times a week. I know she’s doing it to get freebies.’
‘Really? I’m surprised.’ I slid the coffee bean toward her with the toe of my shoe.
‘Why?’ Caron took the hose attachment and placed it over the bean. It still wouldn’t budge. ‘You don’t think she’d do that?’
‘It’s just that I’ve never noticed.’ I leaned down to pick up the bean and tossed it in the waste basket.
Caron flipped the vacuum cleaner off. ‘Must be you don’t close enough.’
‘Must be.’ I gave her a smile. ‘Hey, thanks for being such a good friend today.’
‘You’re welcome and I appreciate you staying to help me close.’ She was rolling up the vacuum cleaner cord. ‘I’m going to wash the floor. Will you cut up the boxes?’
‘A coffeehouse owner’s work is never done,’ I said with a feigned sigh. The truth was I was happy to keep busy. I wasn’t looking forward to going home and telling Frank about my day.
I spent the next fifteen minutes cutting up cardboard boxes so I could stack the pieces flat and tie them up. When I was finished, I loaded up a grocery cart we kept in the service hall.
Caron stuck her head out into the hallway. ‘I’m done. Let me get my purse and the trash and I’ll go out to the dumpster with you.’
I balanced one bag of coffee grounds on the back of the cardboard-filled grocery cart and Caron carried another, plus both of our handbags. The service hallway ran behind all of the businesses on our side of the L and let out into the back parking lot where the dumpsters were.
As I rolled the cart up and over the threshold into the parking lot, Caron shivered and looked around.
‘Cold?’ I asked. It was still near sixty degrees, but maybe her hot flashes had been joined with a few cold ones.
‘No, it’s just so dark out here it gives me the―’
A metallic clang interrupted her.
‘That sounded like it came from the dumpsters,’ I whispered.
‘Maybe it’s a raccoon,’ Caron suggested.
‘Aren’t you the one who said someone’s been leaving things? Who do you think it is, Rocky Raccoon?’
Caron gave me a nervous look. ‘You’re not going in there are you?’
I eyed the stockade fence that surrounded the dumpsters. A d
umpster corral, they called it.
There was just one light in this parking lot, and it did a better job of casting shadows than it did illuminating the corral.
Still, we had a shopping cart of cardboard and trash bags to dispose of, along with Caron’s angst about people leaving trash with our garbage. It might seem to be splitting hairs, but I owed it to Caron to solve this problem for her.
‘You stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll go check it out.’
I rolled my cart toward the corral. If there was anyone there, they’d have no doubt, what with the chattering of the cart wheels, that I was coming for a showdown.
‘Lock’s broken,’ I said as I got close enough to see the hasp hanging, the screws that had anchored it pulled from the wood. ‘The padlock doesn’t do any good if there’s nothing to attach it to.’
I lifted the steel plate and dropped it. It made the sound Caron and I had heard. ‘I’ll have Way get someone to fix it.’ Way Benson was our landlord and the owner of Benson Plaza.
I was about to pull the gate open when it swung back at me abruptly. I stumbled against the shopping cart and fell, pulling the shopping cart over on top of me.
As corrugated cardboard cascaded down on me, I heard Caron scream, ‘You get away from her, do you hear me?’
Footsteps pounded away. I moved a piece of cardboard from a Chai Tea carton out of the way in time to see a man’s figure rounding the corner toward Brookhill Road.
‘Are you all right?’ Caron asked as she righted the shopping cart.
I shoved the rest of the cardboard away and stood up. ‘I am, but who was that?’
‘Probably our dumpster dumper,’ Caron said. ‘We must have caught him in the act.’
She swung open the door. ‘Those paint cans weren’t here.’
Sure enough, the computer monitors and box spring Caron had told me about had been joined by battered paint cans so old they were red with rust. I hefted one. ‘Still full.’
‘Full paint cans are against the rules,’ Caron wailed. ‘And look, he trashed the box spring.’
The fabric on the box spring had been stripped, leaving a network of slats. ‘Maybe he was trying to dismantle the thing and put it in the dumpster,’ I offered.
‘Right, because he’s so considerate,’ Caron grumbled, slinging her garbage bags into the dumpster.
‘Did you get a look at him?’ I asked as I trundled the cardboard in from where it lay on the ground outside. ‘Is he anybody you recognized?’
‘Of course not. If you were going to dump your garbage somewhere, wouldn’t you do it as far away as you could?’ Caron held the gate for me to go out.
‘I suppose.’ I looked around the corner at the front parking lot. ‘Where’s the car?’
‘Maybe he parked it where no one would see it,’ Caron suggested.
‘No, I mean my car,’ I said. ‘I always . . . damn.’
‘What?’
I looked at her. ‘I came with Sarah. Can you give me a ride home?’
Happily, Caron could and did. It almost made up for being abandoned by Sarah.
I was bone tired as I unlocked the door to my house. Talk about a full day. A full awful day. Rachel gone, Pavlik dumping me. And it had started out so promising.
I swung open the door, forgetting to give it the Frank Five – that is, to count to five – before I did.
Too late, I heard the pounding of Frank’s paws on the polished hardwood floor. Frantically, I tried to pull the door closed, but it was still a good eight inches open when he applied the brakes and careened into the back of the door, thereby catapulting me into the yard on my butt.
What was it with me and doors today?
I got up gingerly and brushed myself off. Then I approached the door again. Listening and hearing nothing, I opened it a crack and peered in. Frank was standing with his head down, regarding the door like a bull about to charge.
‘It’s OK, Frank,’ I called to him. ‘I’m here.’
Frank just looked at me. I think. With all that hair, who can tell?
I slipped cautiously through the opening. ‘That nasty door can’t hurt you now,’ I crooned, approaching him. ‘Mommy’s here.’
Frank looked at me uncertainly. And who can blame him? ‘Mommy’s here’, for God’s sake? It was an insult. To both of us.
‘I need a glass of wine,’ I tried.
Satisfied I was who I claimed to be, Frank relaxed and trotted alongside of me to the kitchen. Now if I could only teach the fuzzy lug how to use a corkscrew, I’d have it made.
Before I had dinner, I needed to clean up the kitchen. I surveyed the remains of the takeout from the night before. What a difference a day makes. A single phone call and everything had changed.
I washed the plates and assorted dishes Pavlik and I had used to reheat the food and dumped the empty boxes in the trash. Then I tied up the bag and looked out the window at the garbage cans, cozied up in the shadows by the side of my garage.
Frank was nosing around the trash bag in my hand. ‘Shame on me, Frank,’ I said. ‘Did I forget to take you out?’
Frank looked at me skeptically. We both knew I’d forgotten to take him out. We also knew I had an ulterior motive.
‘Fine,’ I admitted. ‘I’d like your company. A garbage bogey man knocked me down and even though I know he didn’t follow me home, I’m a little nervous.’
If I could have seen Frank’s eyes, I’m certain he would have been rolling them. Nonetheless, he padded to the back door. I opened it and he headed for the nearest tree. I went for the garbage cans.
It was hard to be nervous with a hundred pounds of sheepdog watering a tree nearby. Putting the metal top back on the can, I waited for Frank to finish and then called him. Time for dinner.
I’d been trying to cut back on wine, not only because of the alcohol, but the empty calories. Tonight, though, empty calories were on the menu. I even dug out my secret stash of organic chocolate. Dark chocolate with crushed hazelnut brittle in it. Heaven. I pulled out a plate and put the candy bar on it. Then I added some pretzels. Wine, chocolate and salty snacks. The triumvirate.
But I still needed the wine. I opened the fridge to see if I had a partial bottle.
I did, of course. The bottle of red Zinfandel that I had opened when Rachel was there. Just yesterday, but it seemed like a lifetime ago.
‘I hope it isn’t Rachel’s lifetime ago,’ I said as I reached in the cupboard for a wine glass.
Frank looked at me. Perhaps it was because I keep the doggy treats next to the wine glasses. I liked to think, though, that he was listening to me. Just in case, I slipped him a treat.
‘So what do you think, Frank?’ I asked as I poured myself a glass of Zin. ‘Do you think Rachel is OK?’
Frank was too busy wolfing down the treat to answer. He did wiggle his butt, which was the equivalent of a wag, given that he really didn’t have much of a tail.
I added a couple of doggy treats to my plate and took it and my glass into the living room.
‘And if she’s not OK,’ I continued, settling down on the couch, ‘did Ted have anything to do with it?’
I was thinking about Ted’s reaction to Pavlik’s appearance at the store today. He – that would be Ted – looked shocked when Pavlik told him Rachel knew he was cheating on her.
‘So was he honestly surprised?’ I asked Frank, holding up another treat to get his attention. ‘Or is he just a good actor?’
Frank answered by nearly taking off my fingers, going after the bone. I didn’t need his opinion, though. The fact that Ted had fooled me for so long told me he was a good liar. What it didn’t tell me was whether he was lying this time.
I felt like I was going around in circles. Looking for answers for questions that hadn’t even been asked yet. First and foremost, was Rachel dead? Because if she wasn’t dead, if she was just fine, maybe sitting on a beach or having a facial, I was going to kill her.
I looked at Frank, like he’d heard my thoughts.
‘Not literally, you understand.’
Frank gave me a disdainful look and went to lie down by the cold fireplace.
I’d had problems dealing with males of both species today. Ted I’d played Jekyll and Hyde with, running to his rescue this morning and then reaming him out this afternoon. Pavlik, I’d made love with and then . . .
‘Pavlik left me,’ I said, and even to my ears it sounded plaintive. Whiny, even.
Left me? How could he leave me when he’d never been with me. Except for that once. Once and once only. Last night. And again this morning. OK, twice and twice only.
‘He says I don’t trust him.’
Frank gave me the eye.
‘Maybe he’s right,’ I said. ‘I like to make my own decisions. Is that a crime?’
Frank got up and stalked out.
‘At least I never disappoint me,’ I yelled after him.
Then I drained my wine glass and went to bed.
Chapter Nine
I was busy trying to find the store keys in my bag or I would have seen him.
Uncommon Grounds opens at six thirty in the morning, so that means the person opening has to be there at five thirty to plug in the brewers, grind the coffee and follow the rest of the seventeen-step A.M. Checklist I’d put together when we opened.
Sadly, this morning I was the one opening the store, which meant that I was reduced to following my own rules. I hated that.
Since it was the middle of April, it was dark at five thirty. Hell, it’s nearly always dark at five thirty. And when it’s not, it should be.
It was tough to be cheery at this time of the morning. You had to talk yourself into it. Remind yourself that the days were getting longer and that by this time next month, maybe the sun would be coming up when you opened. Or think about all the things you would do this afternoon, because you’d gotten work out of the way early.
I was in the midst of my atta-girl-Maggy morning pep talk, when I pulled into the parking lot. The tall lights meant to illuminate the lot were flickering, apparently sensing the approaching sunrise. There was no other evidence of it, though, as I got out of the car. The lot was shadowy, with no lights coming from the storefronts on either side of Uncommon Grounds.
As I said, I was getting the store keys out of my bag as I approached the door.