Glazed

by Deany Ray

  Celeste rubbed her forehead and mumbled something like “Man, I would love a cigarette right now.”

  “Will you shut up already?” Suspicious Guy yelled.

  We all turned to him and remembered he had a gun.

  “On the couch! Right now!” He kept the gun pointed at the five of us as we took our seats. To make room for us to squeeze in, Celeste shoved aside a pile of dirty napkins, empty cups and comic books. I was on the end, pressed in tightly against Eddy – because of course I was.

  Nervously, we all watched as the guy pulled a walkie-talkie from his jacket. “You can come in now,” he said into the thing.

  There were more?

  After a rush of footsteps from the back of the apartment, two more guys were waving guns and scowling in our faces.

  Where did those two come from?

  “What the…?” Celeste asked, looking as confused as the rest of us were.

  Suddenly it hit me. There had to be a back door to the apartment. Some detective I was – lamest of the lame.

  “Oh my God! It’s the two guys from the alley,” Lucas said in a hushed voice. Every bit of color had drained out of his face.

  For what it was worth, I noticed his description had been on the mark. Shoulder-length blond hair? Check. Dark, slicked-back hair and a mustache? That described the guy staring this chick in the face, not looking very friendly.

  Celeste put a comforting hand on her nephew’s shoulder. Marge began to hum quietly. And Eddy munched more chips – like this was just some cop show he was watching on TV.

  Suspicious Guy rolled his eyes. “Great. Now the kid recognized you. I told you to do something with your hair and you, with your freaking mustache! How hard can it be to buy some hair dye and a razor?”

  The two thugs stepped forward to mumble their excuses and in their haste, they stumbled into one another.

  “Sorry, we forgot.” The blond one rubbed his shoulder and stared down at the ground.

  We were up against these guys? I guessed you could be a moron and still get the best of me and my detective friends. We had to up our game.

  Not two seconds later, I heard shuffling from the back of the apartment, the same direction where the two brainiacs came from.

  Great. Another one.

  Suspicious Guy had a better view that way. He glanced up and grinned.

  “We’ve got them, boss,” he said, as the fourth person entered the living room.

  Boss? Suspicious Guy had a boss? I was almost certain he was the one in charge.

  Everybody on the couch turned to the new person. But what I saw was not at all what I expected. Staring at us was a pale, blond girl with an evil look on her face. Somehow, she looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. It took a couple of seconds. Then my jaw flew open. Everybody on the couch gasped.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Eddy said and dropped his bag of chips.

  Standing in front of us was Doughnut Girl.

  She did not look shy and fearful like she had before when we met her at The Glazed Doughnut Box; she was not falling all over herself to please everyone around her. This time, she looked ready to rip someone’s face in two.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Marge said, as her hand flew to her chest.

  “This cannot be happening,” Celeste said.

  “It’s you who runs this show?” I asked.

  She gave me an evil grin. “You didn’t expect this, did you?”

  I remembered when we were all at The Glazed Doughnut Box talking to what appeared to be a naïve girl. Eddy laid out his suspicions about the guy pretending to read the newspaper but nobody would have thought that the girl behind the counter, serving us doughnuts, could be the mastermind behind all of this.

  Doughnut Girl cocked her head to the right and studied me.

  “What happened to your eyebrows?” she asked.

  I shifted in my seat and patted the area where my brows used to be.

  “I’ve had…an accident,” I mumbled under my breath.

  Her brows, on the other hand, were shaped in perfect arches over perfectly lined eyes. This girl apparently found the time to keep a business going and make sure her makeup was expertly applied.

  I took stock of the people around us. Right in front of us, were Doughnut Girl and the two brainiacs. They were standing behind Doughnut Girl, pointing their guns with empty gazes at a couch full of people. They were probably thinking where the next shop would be to buy hair dye. I noticed Doughnut Girl didn’t have a gun. She could have one strapped somewhere on her body, for all I knew. Suspicious Guy was more to our right, guarding the front door, also gun in hand. The pizza box he brought was now laying on the floor beside him. I glanced at it with a sense of longing. That right there was proof that my mother’s healthy-eating plan was about to do me in. I should have been purely focused on getting out of there alive. There were three guns pointed at us, for crying out loud. Instead, my thoughts took an odd turn to cheese-stuffed crust and pepperoni. I found myself wondering: did this whole men-with-guns thing mean the pizza box was empty? Hey, even killers on death row got a final meal.

  Doughnut Girl leaned against the wall and smiled. She was loving this.

  Celeste was furious. “Does this make you happy?” she asked in a firm voice. “Hurting two young boys and sending in these goons to wave guns in our faces?”

  Doughnut Girl answered calmly. “That wasn’t my preference, no.” She glanced at the white-faced Lucas. “But it was necessary. The boys saw too much and we couldn’t leave witnesses behind.” She sounded in charge and assured, like she’d turned into a whole new person.

  Celeste held Lucas to her side and glared fiercely at the girl, which I thought was pretty gutsy. This girl could snap her fingers and we’d all have bullets in our heads.

  Trembling, Marge raised her hand as if she were in class. “I don’t understand. When the boys saw your…uh…employees in the alley, getting rid of…uh…the body, why did you leave it there? It was still there the next day when we found it.”

  Doughnut Girl flinched and looked annoyed. “Because Cleanup screwed up and didn’t pick up the body in time.”

  Whoa. The meek counter girl was gone. I hoped no customer would ask this one for cream or extra napkins. She’d tell them where to stuff the napkins – and the sprinkled doughnuts too. This girl was in charge. She could control – with her perfectly manicured pinky finger – the management of The Glazed Doughnut Box, the Urban Rock Café, and most likely others too.

  “So what was the deal with Clayton?” I asked. “He refused to pay and you killed him?”

  Doughnut Girl raised an eyebrow (and I missed mine). Her look told me she knew what we knew about the extorsion business. She was good, I had to give her that. But my only thought at that moment was to stall for time by getting her to talk. Then I might have the chance to live to eat another cookie – and you could bet I would. I was done with tofu. Stalling was the only thing I could come up with, being that we were surrounded by a couple of thugs with guns. Not even The Persuader would be of any help right now.

  Doughnut Girl stared at me. “You all made a big mistake, sticking your noses in where they didn’t belong.” She paused and flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “To answer your question, no. Peter Clayton paid us.” She gave us a smug smile. “We have very effective methods of collecting what we’re owed. The issue wasn’t money; it was the connections he was making with other people that we dealt with.”

  I thought of the list of businesses we’d found at Clayton’s place. The last piece of puzzle fell into place.

  “He wanted businesses to band together to make you stop what you were doing,” I said.

  She twirled a curl around her finger. “He thought I wouldn’t find out. But guess what? I know everything. So, he had to learn his lesson. Now the other owners know to pay up or they’ll end up like him.”

  It was all about the money; she didn’t even care that a man had lost his life.
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br />   “He was a person,” I said. “With a family. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  Doughnut Girl just shrugged.

  Eddy whistled under his breath, still munching on his chips. “That’s cold, man.”

  During the whole exchange, Marge had been deep in thought. “Clayton must have gone to The Glazed Doughnut Box to talk to Mrs. Park about his plan to put a stop to your little scheme. That’s when you knew what he was up to.”

  “Well, aren’t you the smart detective?” Doughnut Girl asked sarcastically. “Do you always figure things out when it’s too late?”

  Marge ignored her comments. “Then the doughnut shop was in the spotlight with the whole murder thing, so you sent your guy over there to hang out and keep his eyes open for anything that could compromise you.” She glanced over at Suspicious Guy then back at Doughnut Girl. “And you were there too, pretending to work there. You were afraid that Mrs. Park would talk.”

  A dark look crossed Doughnut Girl’s face. “You better believe I was. That woman likes to run her mouth, and that would have messed up everything. I’ve worked my butt off for this business to take off. You think I was just going to stand around doing nothing and see everything crumble apart?”

  Suspicious Guy cleared his throat. “Um, boss? Perhaps we shouldn’t volunteer so much information.”

  She shut him down with one look. Dang, the girl was tough.

  “Why?” she asked him smugly. “Four dead-as-doornails detectives won’t have much to say.”

  I thought my heart would stop. This is really it, we would all die.

  “I wouldn’t be so fast telling your goons to pull the trigger on us,” Eddy said, suddenly coming back to life (and still munching on his chips). “Does the name Ortiz ring a bell?”

  “I know exactly who you are,” Doughnut Girl said, “and as you’ve noticed, I’m not trembling in my boots. Your cousins in the mafia will have to find me first. After we’re done with you, we’re going to collect the rest of the contributions and leave the country. Do you think I haven’t thought this out? I didn’t make it this far without a lot of planning.”

  I gulped. I had to admit…she did plan it thoroughly.

  Doughnut Girl continued. “The place on Moraine Avenue has already been wiped clean.”

  I exchanged looks with the girls.

  “Oh, yeah,” Doughnut Girl said. “Did you think we didn’t see your little spying game?”

  Suspicious Guy was nervous still. “Again, it might not be a good idea to tell them everything. Just in case…well, you know.”

  She shot him a dirty look. “In case they what? In case they get away? That will only happen if you screw up.”

  “Yes, boss,” Suspicious Guy said and stared down at the floor.

  “Do you plan on screwing up?”

  “No, boss,” he said.

  “Then you don’t have to worry about a thing now, do you?”

  I realized something then. This evil creature in front of us wanted to tell us everything. She wanted us to know how smart she is, how she planned everything down to the last detail. This was her chance to brag.

  “Why?” I asked calmly. “Why are you doing this?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Because I can! What would you suggest? A college diploma? Please! So I could work for someone else? So I could watch some guy make big bucks while I do all the work? While I do all the crappy jobs other people think they’re too good to do? I want to make my own rules. No one’s the boss of me!”

  “That’s no valid excuse,” I said. “To be a business owner, you don’t have to be a crook.”

  “Working for someone else isn’t all that bad,” Marge offered, “if you do something that you love.”

  “Oh, yeah? I tried to go the honest route. I cut hair! I answered phones. And where did that get me? Huh? I could barely afford to pay the rent on some one-bedroom dump in the scary part of town.”

  I’d probably toured that dump.

  “You ruined other people’s lives, you took a father from his kids,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure if making her angry was the right approach, but I couldn’t help myself.

  She shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t want to kill Clayton.” She gave me an evil look. “If he hadn’t decided to go out and make trouble for me, he’d still be in that shop of his serving his fancy drinks. And if you fools had simply stayed out of my business, it wouldn’t have come to this.”

  She sat down in the armchair next to the TV and curled her legs beneath her. “It’s not a pretty business, but you have to make tough calls. That’s how you stay ahead. I usually don’t do the field work, I have my men who do that. But this time I had to come and see to it that you’re all being taken care of. You were a pain in the butt, nosing around and asking questions. Four untalented detectives trying to catch me? Let’s be serious.” She rolled her eyes.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Celeste said, her eyes burning with anger.

  “We’ll see about that,” Doughnut Girl said all smugly.

  Suspicious Guy pushed the curtain away and gazed outside the window. “Boss, we need to get moving before surveillance is back again.”

  Hank! When did Hank say he’d be back? Come and save us, Hank!

  Doughnut Girl sighed and hopped up off the chair. “Yes, let’s get this over with and move on with our lives.”

  Oh my God! Was this it? Were we all about to die? I broke out in a sweat and grabbed Eddy’s hand − the only hand nearby.

  “Please don’t kill us!” Marge squeaked.

  Her mouse-like voice was trembling, but I noticed she had a firm grip on her flowered purse. The Persuader was on duty, as it always was. And as always, the bad guys couldn’t even imagine what she had hidden in there. She didn’t look the part. None of us looked the part, really. Not even Eddy, who looked more like a hungry doofus right now.

  “You should have thought of that before you came poking around,” Doughnut Girl said and snapped her fingers to Suspicious Guy.

  “Okay, off the couch. Let’s get moving, people.” Suspicious Guy pointed his gun at us. “To the back door. Now!”

  As we stood, Eddy held out his bag and offered me a chip.

  “Are you kidding me? How can you eat right now?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Might as well die on a full stomach. What else is there to do? These guys all have guns. We can’t exactly fight.”

  “Just stay calm,” Celeste said, “and do exactly as they say.” She still had one arm tightly around Lucas, whose face had grown whiter still.

  Single file, we headed out the back door and down a set of stairs that led to an alley. Even the back stoop looked gorgeous. This apartment had everything I ever wanted. Too bad I might not get the chance to actually live here.

  There, a van was waiting. I desperately looked around for anyone who could notice us and help. It was the middle of the day, for Christ’s sake. I looked up at the small building and glanced in all the windows. Where was a nosy neighbor when you needed one? If anyone was watching, we’d stand out for sure – five people held at gunpoint. All that it would take would be one call to the cops.

  The two brainiacs opened the back doors to the van, inviting us in. I got more sweat beads on my forehead. My experience with bad dudes and their vans was…let’s just say it wasn’t one of the pleasant ones. I looked over at the others and their expressions mirrored my anxiety.

  Suspicious Guy held his distance behind us and pulled something out of his pocket. Was that…? No, it couldn’t be. I pushed the glasses further up my nose and squinted at the object he held in his hand. It looked like a hand grenade.

  I thought I might throw up. What were they gonna do? Blow us all up in the van? This was taking on a whole new dimension of crazy.

  Suspicious Guy saw me staring in dismay. “This isn’t meant for you. It’s for the apartment.”

  Everybody gasped.

  I cleared my throat. “Say what?”

  “We
’re gonna blow this place up to smithereens,” Suspicious Guy grinned, then turned and pointed to my beloved apartment.

  I stared. “But…but…but why?”

  Doughnut Girl sighed, like she had to explain the obvious. “To distract the cops and to keep the Ortiz family busy while we get away. When they see the building blow, they’ll think you were inside. By the time they realize there were no bodies in the explosion – if there’s enough evidence for that – we’ve already gotten rid of you, collected the remaining contributions and left the country.”

  This kept getting more evil and disturbing by the second. And yet again, Doughnut Girl had her perfect plan in place. I thought about my beautiful apartment, my precious ticket out of the Cooper nuthouse and starvation center. I held back the tears – which was kind of stupid, really. I was about to lose my life! Who cared about a building? But it was way too much to think about my impending death; the loss of the apartment was all that I could handle.

  “I don’t understand,” Marge said to Doughnut Girl. “Why not just leave the five of us inside the apartment and blow us up with it?”

  “Marge!” Celeste looked at her in shock.

  Everyone turned to her and stared.

  “You’re giving her tips on how she could kill us?” Eddy asked, chips bag still in his hands.

  “What? It just seemed more efficient.” Marge blushed.

  “Sure,” I said. “How tragic it would be to die in an inefficient way.”

  “I was just thinking from her point of view,” Marge mumbled.

  “Will you all shut up and be quiet?” Doughnut Girl said. “You’re giving me a headache.” She looked at Marge. “Thank you for your input, detective, but that won’t work. Unfortunately, I still need you. You’re going to help us get to the other kid. At the hospital.”

  There was silence for a couple of beats as everyone digested this new information.

  “We’re going to do what?” Celeste asked in a voice full of anger.

  “Oh my God, poor Perry,” Marge said in a low voice.

  “Poor all of us,” Eddy added and munched on another chip.

  “But…” Lucas said with watery eyes, “Perry is in a coma.”