by Deany Ray
Glazed
by
Deany Ray
Copyright © 2018 Deany Ray
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real names, characters, places, events and incidents is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise without prior consent from the author.
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Chapter One
I glanced at the mileage on the exercise bike at Finley’s Total Fitness. I felt like I’d ridden across town, uphill all the way. I squinted at the numbers and wiped the sweat out of my eyes. Flabbergasting fudge-filled brownies! The bicycle must be lying, I thought to myself. According to the numbers, I’d barely pedaled hard enough to get out to my car in the crowded parking lot – which is where I wished I was. This was a kind of torture.
Still, I pedaled harder, because, after all, a girl has got to do what the job requires. My job required me to be in tip-top shape – or at least not a couch potato.
Most days I loved my work in undercover investigations. It was a job that had brought me back to my hometown of Springston, not too far outside of Boston. Well, let me correct myself. I loved parts of the job. I loved wrapping up the cases, seeing bad things put right. What I sometimes didn’t love was the middle of the cases, when things could get…a little hairy. I’d fallen into an open grave, had guns stuck in my face, been farted on by a red panda who’d escaped from the zoo, and came closer than anyone ever should to an exploding van. Thus, the need to get into shape, so I could run like the freaking wind if the need arose.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I was good at something. A few cases into the job, I had things down to a science. Staying one step in front of the bad guys was one part psychology, one part puzzle-solving, one part luck, and one part just hard work. The part I really stunk at was the running and the climbing and the squeezing into tiny hiding spots while trying not to breathe.
I was determined that would change with the help of Finley’s Fitness. It was my first time at a gym. Most anyone who knew me would have been surprised to see me there. I’m the girl most likely to be in the corner of Katelyn’s Doughnuts with a strawberry shortcake éclair and a hazelnut latte, extra-large. Me and that exercise bike? We were an unlikely pair, but this was where I had to be.
I glanced at the screen above my head and wondered who had picked the channel. If I had to exercise, I’d prefer the news or something to at least make me laugh. Who would pick a soap opera for company while doing painful workouts? The woman on the screen turned toward an older man, her eyes bulging out in anger.
“Don’t speak to me again!” she said. “It’s over! Please. Just go.”
Beside me on a treadmill, my best friend Marge let out a gasp. “It can’t be over, Agatha,” she cried.
Did she know the characters by name?
“Give him one more chance,” Marge said in a pleading voice.
Meanwhile on the TV screen, the man put his hand on the doorknob, then turned to face the woman. “Can I kiss you one more time?” he softly asked. “Please, let me have that.”
“Oh, it’s so romantic,” Marge said in a hushed voice. With her eyes glued to the TV, she seemed to forget to move her feet. The result was a backward stumble that sent her soft, round body airborne before she inexplicably landed on one foot beside the treadmill like some triumphant gymnast.
I stopped the bike and rushed to her. “Marge! Are you okay?”
She glanced back at the TV. “Never mind me.” She waved my concern away. “What happened on the show? Were you watching? Did he kiss her? Please tell me that he kissed her one last time.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “I was too busy watching my friend hurtling toward the floor.”
Marge rubbed at her knee. “It’s just a treadmill, hon. We’ve faced bigger dangers. This gym doesn’t scare me. This is the easy stuff.” In addition to being a kick-ass friend, Marge was my business partner.
I pushed my glasses off my sweaty nose. “Easy? Are you kidding? That bike just tried to kill me.”
She sighed. “Remember what we talked about: a little at a time. Go a little further with your workout; soon you’ll be pedaling that thing like a pro.”
“Well, at least one of us has got it down.” I glanced across the gym at my other friend Celeste, who was lifting weights like she’d done it all her life. Celeste was the third partner in CMC Services, which so far had a perfect record in solving tricky cases that had stumped even the police.
In her own way, Celeste was as unlikely a candidate as me for Finley’s Total Fitness. Her bright blue nails were shaped into perfect French tips, and her red hair, equally glowing with color, was piled onto her head in an elaborate updo. Also separating her from the types that most often filled the gym, was her frequent smoking habit. Marge and I sometimes made a game of guessing how long it might be before she lit up again.
That’s why we were shocked to see her lifting weights – huge weights – as easily as if they were the trays of meatloaf plates and burgers she used to cart around at my father’s diner.
She winked when she saw us looking, and we made our way toward her.
“I told you we could do it,” she said as she put down a weight and brushed at her bright purple workout shirt. She wasn’t even sweating, not one little bit. I was in awe of her – and a little jealous, too.
“How did you get so strong?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Let’s just say there have been times when I’ve had to be.”
We knew not to ask. Celeste was one of my best friends, but Celeste had her secrets. Here is all I knew: She somehow could afford a gorgeous home with a pool and a hot tub, too. She had some info on the chief of police that he wanted under wraps. The chief was her ex-husband (that last bit was important in keeping the jobs coming in to our agency).
Marge looked at her watch. “That’s enough for one day. We said we’d leave at two. Unless this superwoman here wants to lift up the drink machine or a small building before we leave.”
“Very funny, Marge,” Celeste said. “It’s good to keep in shape. Don’t think I didn’t see that acrobatic tumble. You landed on your feet; that’s good.”
“Well, we have our share of experience tumbling on the job,” Marge said. “Better to tumble in the gym than to tumble out a window.”
Yeah. That had happened, too. Funny that my parents thought I fixed computers. So far, hardly anyone had figured out just what we did; we hadn’t blown our cover.
As we headed out, a flyer caught my eye on the bulletin board next to the lockers. An apartment was for rent in a dreamy part of town, near some of my favorite streets with cute shops and small cafés. The surprising thing was the price: well within my budget.
I stared at the picture of the neatly landscaped lawn and the attractive stone façade of the well-kept townhome. “It’s in Clarkston Heights, and cheap,” I said. “Those things don’t go together.”
Marge came closer and took a peek. “Oh, this looks beautiful!” she squeaked.
Celeste looked hard at the ad and frowned. “Something must be wrong with it for the rent to be so low,” she said. “You just mark my words.”
She was right; she had to be, but I was desperate to move. I’d been living with my parents (temporarily!) since I’d moved back to Springston for the job. I
needed my own place. My dad told the worst jokes ever. He told them very loudly, and he told them all the time. My mother taught yoga and exercise to the over-ninety set, who could barely stand up straight, let alone do yoga moves. Disaster seemed to be always looming as they teetered precariously in positions that I was afraid might one day kill them. Plus, my mother often turned the music up at crazy hours of the morning to get started with her classes while I tried in vain to sleep.
Even if my household were more…sedate, it would still be time to go. I was twenty-nine, too old to live with Mom and Dad. The problem was my paycheck. While I found my new line of work to be rewarding, we weren’t getting rich, although we hoped that would change soon. In our first few cases, we had proved our worth. Plus, the chief of police owed Celeste.
“Speaking of paying rent,” I said to her, “when do you think Bert might send us another case?” With the last one just wrapped up, we were taking time to catch our breath, but were ready for another one. We had to keep the money coming.
Celeste’s face turned hard. “I called him yesterday,” she said. “And he knows he’d better call me back.”
“I’m sure he will. I wouldn’t want to mess with you either,” I said and gave her a wink.
“I wonder what our next case will be,” Marge said while she opened her locker. “Maybe a drug operation again. Or maybe assault. Or burglary. Or maybe we’ll infiltrate as spies…”
I held up my hand. “It’s almost as if you wish all those crimes took place.”
Marge blushed. “Well, they happen if we like it or not. It would be so cool to solve another badass case again.”
I rolled my eyes.
Celeste grabbed her purse out of the locker and pulled her cell phone out. “Hey! What do you know?” she said. “Guess who left a message.”
“Bert?” I asked.
“Yeah. This might be our next case. Let’s see if Marge is proven right.”
“Oh, hon, call him quick,” Marge said, hopping around in glee just like a little kid. “I can’t wait to hear what our new case will be.” Her voice rose to a squeak when she got excited. A new case for Marge was like a brand-new episode of her beloved CSI.
Celeste punched in some numbers. “You got something for us, Bert?” she asked in a clipped, professional-sounding voice.
Marge and I were silent and were waiting anxiously. We saw Celeste’s face turn white. That was not a good sign. Celeste never looked alarmed.
“How long ago?” she asked. “What happened exactly?” She paused to listen to the answer. “I’m with the girls. We’ll hurry. We’re on our way right now.”
“What’s going on?” I asked when she hung up.
She was already headed toward the door with Marge and me running close behind, trying to keep up. “It’s my nephew, Lucas,” she called back over her shoulder.
Marge bounced along in a little walk-run while fishing through her flowered purse to find her keys. “Is he okay? Where is he?”
“He’s at the station,” Celeste said grimly. “The boy’s got himself arrested.”
We’d never met anyone from Celeste’s large, extended family. Apparently, that was about to change.
“You’ve mentioned your nephew before,” I said as we got to the car. “What happened to him?”
Celeste pulled a cigarette from her purse before she had even opened the car door. “He’s a good boy, almost too good,” she said. “There is just no way that he did what they said. The police, as usual, have got it absolutely wrong.”
“Shoplifting?” I asked. Or maybe he’d been at a party that had gotten out of hand.
“Bank robbery,” Celeste said.
Chapter Two
A ride in the back seat of Marge’s car was just another hair-raising part of my life fighting crime. To Marge, stop signs and speed limits were suggestions and not rules – suggestions that she often decided not to take. Not that she was a rebel or didn’t care about her safety. It was just that her mind could wander to so many places that a quick turn or a red light might come as a surprise. Still, it was Marge who always drove us. We never stopped to wonder why.
She pulled to a stop in front of a neat brick building that housed the offices of the Springston cops. The jail sat across the parking lot, but Celeste wanted to hear from Bert what was going on before she went in to confront her nephew. He was twenty-one. One of her sisters was his mother.
Who exactly was this sister? How many sisters were there? Maybe we were about to finally learn a little more about the Ortiz clan.
Celeste marched into the office and nodded at the young girl behind the desk. “Celeste Ortiz for Bert,” she said. “He’s expecting us.”
Speaking of mysteries in Celeste’s life, it was very rare that I came face-to-face with Bert. To me, he was mostly just a deep voice on my friend’s cell phone when she called him about a case – or, more frequently, to ask him when he was going to send us one.
What had gone wrong in the marriage? How long had they been together? Like everything in her life, she didn’t talk about it. It was like her life had been a blank space until the day I walked into my father’s diner and found her serving patrons side by side with Marge. That had been the day that I met my best friends.
Now at the police station, the receptionist reached to pick up the phone. “I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said.
Before she could pick it up, Bert came out of his office. A graying, handsome man, he motioned for us to enter.
Marge and I took seats on a low leather couch, but Celeste had no time to sit. “Give me all the details,” she barked at her ex. “What the heck is up with Lucas? And why, for goodness’ sake…”
Before she could get out her questions, two officers rapped on the door and quickly entered. One was tall enough that he had to stoop to enter; the other was barely half his size.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the shorter of the two. “We thought you’d want to know that there’s been a development in the…”
“Can’t you see I’m busy here?” thundered Bert. “Can’t you see these people? For once in your life, can’t you wait your turn before you just barge in?”
Whoa. Bert really was lacking people skills.
The short guy held his hand up in surrender as they both backed away, red-faced.
“Sorry, sir. So sorry,” the taller officer whispered.
Bert was a brilliant guy and ran a well-organized department, but, truth be told, most people around Springston were kind of scared of Bert. Or so I’ve heard from Celeste. Now I understood why.
Of course, not everyone was intimidated by the chief.
Celeste crossed her arms. “Can we get started here?” she asked in a sharp tone. “I haven’t got all day.”
“I apologize,” he said, not sounding at all like the man who’d just berated those two guys.
Celeste moved a little closer. “As I was asking earlier, what’s going on with Lucas?”
Bert sighed as he leaned against his desk. “It’s unfortunate,” he said. “I know he’s always been a good boy, but one of our officers caught him in a…suspicious situation. He was sitting in a car in front of the Gold Trust Bank with the motor running. He was with a buddy. They’d been sitting there a while. Mind you, not in a parking spot, but idling near the door.”
Celeste looked super pissed. “So that’s against the law?” she asked. “Sitting in a running car? How is it suspicious to be sitting at the bank? Folks have checks to cash, you know. Folks come in to make deposits.”
There wasn’t any love lost between Celeste and her ex.
“Now, Celeste, calm down,” he said. “We didn’t have a choice; we had to bring him in. They’d been there a good while, just sitting in the car.” He rubbed his head like he felt a headache coming on. “A couple of the tellers were starting to get kind of spooked. The boys had been there more than twenty minutes by the time a manager made the call to us. For more than twenty minutes, they were just sitting in th
e car. Some of the people who worked there had been watching from the window; they said Lucas and his friend kept glancing all around them, like they were watching out for something. At one point one of them even seemed to duck down in the seat.”
I cringed. That, indeed, didn’t sound so good. But Celeste wouldn’t even hear it.
“I’ll admit it’s odd, but what exactly was the crime?” Celeste sat down in a chair beside the desk.
Bert looked her in the eye. “I know that he is family, but those boys were up to something.” He sighed. “They were carrying, Celeste. They had a .22.”
We were dumbstruck and there was silence in the room for what felt like an eternity. Even Celeste didn’t have any good comebacks.
“Loaded?” Marge squeaked out the question. She loved nothing more than a good conversation about guns.
“Unloaded,” Bert replied. “But robbers have been known to use unloaded guns. They’ll take the guns in just for show.”
Celeste frowned and seemed to accept the fact that Lucas might not be as innocent as she thought. “Yes, the presence of the gun is unfortunate.”
“They didn’t have a license for the thing,” Bert said. “Just that in itself could get them eighteen months.”
“Did they say why they were there?” I asked.
Bert just shook his head. “Neither boy had much to say. But they cooperated, handed over their IDs and registration, both of them quiet and polite.”
Polite. Having worked before as a secretary for the police in Boston, I’d always found that word confusing in descriptions of the suspects whose cases I’d write up. They might have blown up somebody’s car or slashed someone with a knife, but please let it be noted that they said thank you and yes, sir when the cops came in with the handcuffs.
Still, something told me that Lucas was indeed a nice young man who’d somehow gotten caught up in something bad. In the car, Celeste had made it clear that she believed in her nephew’s character – and not much got by Celeste.