Glazed

by Deany Ray

  “Only here in Springston would you find a pay phone right away,” Marge said. “It’s like we’re in the nineteen eighties.”

  Celeste shrugged. “Sometimes it’s a good thing to be backward. Sometimes backward keeps you safe. Oh! There’s more good news. Perry’s come out of the coma. He’s gonna be okay.”

  “Oh, that’s so good to hear,” I said, taking a big sip of my strawberry shake.

  “Bert said they’re dropping all the charges they’d filed against the boys for carrying. They’ll both be testifying against our friend, the Doughnut Girl, along with the idiots she recruited to do her dirty work.” She sighed. “I think Lucas and his buddy will be the best behaved young boys at their school. After all they’ve been through, they’ll keep themselves in line. I’ll make sure of that.”

  “Speaking of Doughnut Girl,” I said, “wasn’t that a plot twist? Can you believe it was her?” I remembered that Celeste somehow managed to get the ringleader on the ground during the ordeal. “What happened with you two while I was wrestling my guy?” I glanced at the one long blue nail on her right hand that was less than perfect. “Sorry about your nail.”

  Celeste smiled. “I decided to fight that witch. She’d messed with my boy Lucas; now she had to deal with Aunt Celeste.” She paused. “I got lucky when that gun appeared right beside me. I already had the upper hand when I looked down at the ground and – kiss my sweet Sunday pot roast – there it was.”

  I leaned forward in my seat. “That was the gun I tossed away! I took it from my guy. I wanted to hold on to it, but I didn’t think I could handle the guy, the gun and the grenade. That was about the limit of my superhero moves. I’m glad you grabbed it and not her.” A shiver ran through my body. There were so many points at which this story could have gone another way.

  Celeste saw that I was shaken and reached out to grab my hand. “Aren’t we the best team ever?” she said. “I knew I had to act fast, so I just grabbed the gun and shot her in the leg.”

  “That’s why I saw so much blood. I’m so glad it wasn’t you who was bleeding,” I said.

  Marge dipped her fork into her mashed potatoes and flashed us a proud smile. “In the meantime, there was stellar work by Marge and the Persuader. We make a good team too, me and my trusty gun. We kept two bad guys in check.” She took a bite of her potatoes. “Oh, and Eddy helped. It also was very useful that the guys were…well, I hate to say it…but it was very lucky that they were about as sharp as a marble.”

  “That always helps,” Celeste said. “The lower the IQs of the evildoers, the easier they are to catch.”

  Marge nodded. “We were about to lock them in the van when – kaboom! – the place lit up like a Christmas tree and exploded.” She demonstrated with her arms, as if we couldn’t remember the way an explosion felt.

  With the added sound effects added in by her, other tables turned to stare. It really was amazing that we’d stayed undercover as long as we had.

  “Marge,” I whispered to her, “we are supposed to be technicians in the computer industry. There should be no kaboom in repairing people’s laptops.”

  Marge frowned. “Well, yeah. Unless you’re really bad at it.” She broke out in a grin. “No matter what, we did it!”

  We all raised our hands in an enthusiastic high five, which we soon discovered was a huge mistake. The high five really hurt.

  “There’s even more to celebrate.” Celeste took a sip of coffee. “Not only are we all alive but our little business is no longer broke! Bert will be sending us a check to reward us for our efforts in wrapping up the case.”

  “We sure earned that check,” Marge said, massaging her left arm.

  “They’re all in jail,” Celeste reported. “The Doughnut Girl and her employees. They even found the cleanup crew. Apparently, these losers have been extorting money for eight months here in Springston.”

  “What’s the scoop on the girl?” I asked. “What did Bert tell you about her?”

  “Her name’s Christina Thompson and she grew up here in Springston, local girl gone bad. She went to school in Austin and came home with a nice degree – media and communications, which is proof right there she could have gone a different way. The thing is, she got greedy. She couldn’t get a job with a pay in her range of expectations and instead of being patient, she thought it was better to just outright steal from hardworking business owners.”

  Celeste had a hard look in her eyes; she had very little patience for fools like this Christina person.

  She continued with her story. “When her team of deadbeat losers saw their evil plan was working and the money rolled right in, they wanted more and more. They pushed harder for more money, and that’s when Clayton put his foot down. The guy had enough, so he got the other business owners all together to resist.”

  “Why didn’t he just go to the police?” Marge asked.

  “Because there were threats. Clayton probably couldn’t trust the police with managing the arrest without the threats being put into action. The police have to follow certain protocols in order to make an arrest. And then it would have gone to trial. Or maybe not, if not enough evidence had been found. Clayton knew that was a higher risk. The other business owners on the other hand, had a vested interest to end the crime since they were all in the same boat.” Celeste took a sip of coffee. “As we all know, Clayton’s plan didn’t pan out as expected. Thompson got wind of it and her thugs took him down at The Glazed Doughnut Box when he went to talk to Mrs. Park.”

  “Then they dragged the body to the alley and the cleanup crew had to sweep in and get it out of there,” I said. “That’s where their scheme went off the rails.”

  “Because the boys saw them.” Marge filled in the rest.

  I swiped a meatball off of Marge’s plate. “Well, that explains why Mrs. Park looked scared to death when we tried to ask her questions. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.”

  Marge took a sip of her drink. “And the police had no idea what this Thompson girl was up to?”

  “They were on to her, Bert said, but they had no proof – or not enough to bust her.” Celeste touched her forehead as if she too had a headache. She told us that the cops knew, just like we did, that the operation was headquartered on Moraine Avenue.

  “That makes sense,” Marge said, “because that fine man of Charlie’s seemed to appear right out of nowhere when we were doing our surveillance on that street.”

  I didn’t bother to correct her; perhaps he was my man. I took a bite of Eddy’s pot pie. Someone should eat that before the crust got cold. The pot pies at Jack’s were good.

  Marge turned to Celeste. “Your family must be so relieved.”

  “So relieved,” she said, “and so thankful to you girls for all you did to help. The only thing is, Hank feels guilty that he left his post to grab a bite to eat.”

  “All ended well,” I said.

  Speaking of Celeste’s family, Eddy wandered up just then with the redhead on his arm.

  “Talk to you soon!” she told him. She giggled at him shyly, which I took as a sign she didn’t know he was a dimwit.

  He preened and winked at her as she turned to leave. “Catch you later, sweet thing. We’ll make some plans about that dinner.” Then he slid into the empty seat – next to me.

  I was never fast enough to slip in next to Celeste or Marge. Luckily, he didn’t try to put his arm around me. He’d finally learned, I guessed, that I wouldn’t stand for that, or he might be like the rest of us – too sore to move too much.

  “Well, I’m afraid this is goodbye, girls.” He aimed his wink at me. “It’s been fun and it’s been real, bringing law and order back to our fair town.”

  Celeste let out a throaty laugh. “Well, thank you, Sheriff Eddy. May I extend a hearty welcome to the right side of the law?”

  He smiled the kind of smile that was meant to charm, still clueless that I was immune to that foolishness. “I’ve loved every minute of it, but I’ve missed my buddies. It�
��s been a while since I hung out and drank some beer and caught a few games on TV.” Slowly, he stood up. “I’m glad we’re all alive to see another day. Some of the time, I wondered.” He grinned and pointed a finger at us. “You really kick ass.”

  He turned, and as he was walking toward the door, Alex made his way into the diner. They glanced warily at each other while Eddy rubbed in too close to Alex to make some kind of macho point. Alex only stared and let Eddy walk on by.

  “Well, my goodness,” Marge exclaimed. “There’s a lot of testosterone in here.”

  I felt a rush of a familiar warmness as Alex made his way toward the table.

  Celeste eased out of the booth. “Marge, you know the drill. It’s time for you and me to ‘look at the cakes’ up at the counter.”

  Marge giggled as she got up. “You lovebirds behave, okay?”

  “We’re not…oh, never mind.”

  They nodded and smiled at Alex as he eased in across from me. We were quiet for a few beats. I could smell the familiar oaky scent of the cologne he wore, and his eyes seemed bluer then I remembered. His eyes were still filled with a softness that made my legs feel weak.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked in a gentle voice.

  “I’ve felt better, I admit, but I’m just glad to be alive, with all my body parts intact.”

  He smiled. “Well, almost all your parts.” He reached across the table and lightly touched a spot where an eyebrow used to be.

  I enjoyed the feel of his finger lingering there. “Yeah, that needs to grow back soon,” I said.

  There was more awkward silence when he moved his hand away and stared shyly at the table. Finally, he found more words. “I’m so glad that operation is shut down. They hurt some good people here in Springston.” He watched me quietly, a look of worry on his face. “You sure that you’re okay?”

  “Sore. And still a little freaked out. But yeah, Alex, I’m okay.”

  “I can’t even describe what I felt when I heard the explosion. We were on our way to you and not that far away when it happened. I was afraid that you’d been hurt – or even worse.” A look of anger crossed his face. “Those guys had no idea about the kind of blast they could let loose with that grenade.”

  “Well, they weren’t the brightest.”

  He shook his head and grinned, and he stared into my eyes. “I guess this is my life now, running to the scene when Charlie Cooper gets in trouble. Wherever she goes, the crazy seems to follow. I guess you’re not the type of girl who loves a quiet, boring afternoon.”

  “Oh, a quiet afternoon sounds absolutely perfect. The crazy hurts too much.” I reached up to rub my forehead. “I am now a fan of quiet.”

  He paused and leaned back in his seat. “How does a quiet dinner sound? And maybe a quiet movie too? Later in the week, when you’ve rested up?”

  I stared.

  “A dinner and a movie? Like a date?” I blurted foolishly, like I’d been dateless for so long that I had to make sure I understood the definition of the word.

  “Yeah, I think that’s what you call it.” He smiled at me, amused.

  Across the room, Celeste hugged a cake box to her waist, and Marge gave me a thumbs-up.

  “I would love that,” I said, and I was sure I blushed so hard I probably looked like a tomato.

  Alex smiled. “It’s a deal then.” He got up from his seat. “Well, I’d better pick my food up and head on back to work. They called in a big order for the office. Lots of paperwork when you close this kind of case.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said and took another bite of Eddy’s meal, which he hadn’t touched.

  Just before Alex walked away, he reached into his jacket and took out, of all things, a bright-pink can of hairspray and set it on the table. “Extend to Marge our thanks for giving up an essential beauty product in the line of duty. Also, tell her please to only use this can for its intended purpose. I can’t take one more explosion.”

  He winked and then he was off.

  ***

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