by Tracey Quinn
“Come on! Answer!” I muttered.
Suddenly I heard a clank! behind me and the vault door swung open. I turned and found myself face to face with Mark. He was dressed in his firefighting gear and his eyes grew wide when he saw me.
“Dani?! What- how?”
“Oh, Mark! You were just in time!” I gasped. I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him hard.
I heard the voice of Pat Duffy call, “Hey Mark, if you're finished making out we could use a little help with this fire!”
“Dani, what are you doing here?” Mark asked. “We got a call that the movie theater was on fire, and we were on the way there when we saw the smoke coming from the rec center.”
Just then I saw his eyes move from my face to the hole at the back of the vault. “Oh, you're kidding!” he groaned. “Dani, are you out of your mind?!”
He picked me up and carried me to the front door of the bank, as smoke began to fill the room. Through the front windows I could see the flashing lights of the fire engines and the silhouettes of men running toward the rec center with fire hoses.
“Mark, I can explain-” I started.
“We'll talk later,” Mark snapped. “I'm so damned mad at you I don't trust myself to speak right now!”
Once we got outside I saw Bob getting out a police car that had just pulled up behind the fire engine. Mark waved to him and he started in our direction. Good Lord, he looked mad, too! What was wrong with these people?
Mark put me down on my feet and called to Bob, “I've got to help put the fire out! Try to keep her from killing herself until then, okay?”
“What in the hell did you do this time, Dani?” Bob demanded.
“I beg your pardon!” I retorted in my best indignant voice. “I'm not in the habit of setting buildings on fire! I'm the victim here!”
“And just what were you doing the bank?”
“I wasn't in the bank! Not on purpose, anyway. I was in the rec center; I, um...” I tried to remember my cover story. “I'm planning to rent it to host an event for the Breezy Spoon, so I had just come to look around to see if it was big enough.”
“Really? What event?”
“Um...” Rats! I hadn't bothered to work that part out!
“Is it the sort of event where you stick your nose into an ongoing police investigation, even though you said you'd stay out of it?” Bob asked.
“Not exactly,” I said. “You see, I bought a black light and was trying to see if there were traces of blood in the bank vault so I could prove that Lloyd Duval wasn't killed in the onion bin. People coming into the diner won't eat onions since he died and I've got bushels of onions that are going to rot and-”
“And, of course, you thought we were too stupid to use Luminol to check the vault for blood. We did that right away and found plenty of traces of blood in the vault that someone had gone to pains to clean up.”
“Oh... you didn't tell me that.”
“And there was some reason why I should share evidence with you? You're not a detective, sis.”
“No, I'm a business owner, and I was only trying to do something about my onions!”
“Somehow I doubt if you were all that worried about 20 bucks worth of onions. Hell, the black light probably cost more than that.”
“It wasn't that much,” I said. I wasn't about to admit that he was right. I put my hand in my pocket and found that it was empty. “Omigosh, I must have dropped it in the vault! I'll have to go back in and get it after the fire's out.”
Bob sighed. “You know, I'd really prefer not to be around to watch Mark's head explode when you go back into the vault, so how about I take you to your car and you go back to the Breezy Spoon instead? You can give Mark a break and drive Brendan nuts for a while.”
I decided to give Bob the silent treatment. Actually, I didn't really. It's just that I couldn't think of anything else to say.
As I drove back to the Breezy Spoon I thought about the fire and the murder and the robbery and tried to get it all to make sense. It seemed like whoever murdered Lloyd Duval was also determined to burn down everything he had ever touched, too! But why? They had the money from the bank and they had Gene McGee to take the blame for the murder; why not leave well enough alone?
There must be some piece of evidence that they needed to destroy; Lloyd must have had it in his possession, but whoever killed him couldn't find it. Ransacking his hotel room, burning down his house and now setting the rec center on fire was all part of a desperate attempt to get rid of that evidence. They were taking a lot of risks when it seemed like all they had to do was sit tight for a while and wait for Gene McGee to take the fall for the crime. It didn't add up.
When I got to the Breezy Spoon I saw that Brendan had made up some trays of food to take to the city fair booth and I volunteered to take them there. I knew that Brendan would have heard what had happened at the rec center by now and I was in no mood to talk about it.
After I got back from the fair I checked my watch and saw that it had been over an hour and a half since Mark had gotten me out of the bank vault. I decided to text him and see if the fire had been put out successfully. In other words I wanted to find out if he was still mad, which of course would be totally unfair, my being the victim and all that.
I texted, “Are you doing all right?”
He texted back, “ys.”
“Do you want me to bring food for a late supper?”
“k”
I went into the kitchen and showed the texts to Brendan. “Can you tell from these texts whether Mark might still be ticked off at me, which we both know that he has no reason to be?”
He looked at my phone. “Not really.”
“Well, what's your best guess? Do you think he's still unfairly blaming me for something that I had no control over and was only trying to help an innocent person who has been falsely accused of a crime?”
“It's three letters, Dani,” Brendan replied. “It's kind of hard to read a lot of emotion into that. Besides, why should he be upset with you just because you put yourself in a position where you might have been killed and then, according to Bob, wanted to go back into the inferno to get your ten buck black light? Nope, I can't see why anyone would be ticked off with you over that.”
“You're wrong,” I said. “That black light cost $29.95 plus shipping and handling, not to mention sales tax.”
Rats! Of course he was right; Mark was obviously holding a grudge which was why he was sending these snippy little texts. How childish! Well, I could be cold and aloof, too. I shouldn't have told him I'd bring food home for supper. Maybe I wouldn't bring in anything nice; I'd just make him a couple of bologna sandwiches and show him what I thought about his unreasonable behavior. That would get my point across.
“Uh, do you happen to know if we have any rib-eye steaks left in the freezer?” I asked Brendan.
“We do, but we also have some of the new bone-in filet mignon.”
“The rib-eye will do,” I said. “I don't intend to grovel.”
It was about 10:30 when Mark came to the back door. I knew he would be off work at 10 p.m. so I had already seared the steaks in butter and put them into the oven to finish.
“Wow, something smells really good in here,” he said. “You said late supper so I was expecting a couple bologna sandwiches.”
Note to myself: Drop the “getting my point across” idea in the future. Mark would have been happy with bologna sandwiches and I would have been stuck eating them instead of steak.
“I hoped I got your text messages right,” I said. “I'm not all that good with deciphering abbreviations.”
“Oh, yeah. I'm not good at texting with my left hand. Tim Donahue was bandaging my right hand at the time and I didn't want to make you wait for an answer,” he replied, holding up his hand which was wrapped in a white bandage. “What happened was ---”
Suddenly a combination of guilt, love, remorse, and sympathy all flooded over me like a tsunami and I rushed at Mark
, almost knocking him down, and began kissing his face all over, saying, “I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry!”
He was laughing. “I don't know what you're sorry for, but this is great! Don't stop!”
“Obviously I'm sorry that you hurt yourself rescuing me from the bank vault. How bad is it?”
“It's not from the bank vault; I scratched my hand on the locker door when I was getting dressed after I took a shower. The medical chest didn't have band-aids so Tim Donahue just wrapped some gauze around it temporarily. But let's get back to the kissing thing. I think you missed my forehead and chin. I know you got the nose because I couldn't breathe for a few seconds.”
“Oh,” I said, releasing my death grip on him. “Does it hurt?”
“Well, I was going to lie and say it does so we could continue what we were doing, but I smell steak and I don't want to interrupt your cooking.”
When I took the steaks out of the oven they looked just right. I added the garlic roasted new potatoes and creamed corn I had brought from the Breezy Spoon on the side, and set out the chocolate cream pie from Tammy's bakery on the counter. As I put the plate in front of him I offered to cut Mark's steak for him.
“No, thanks, I'm good,” he said. “Besides it would be sinful to chop up a beautiful steak like this into little chunks with that machete you always use, and I would never encourage you to sin.”
“It's called a chef's knife,” I said. “And I appreciate your concern for my morals.”
Chapter 12
The next morning I was up early so I could get to the Pumpkin City Mall and back to the city fair before it was time to open our booth. Tammy had left a message last night telling me about a dress shop at the mall that was going out of business. She said they were marking everything 50 per cent off, so it seemed like just the opportunity to get a new dress for Kitty's party without denting my emergency fund too badly.
When I got to the mall I found the store, and it looked like they still had plenty of dresses left. Near the front of the store a young woman was fixing price tags to a rack of nice-looking dresses.
“Are all these dresses 50 per cent off?” I asked her.
“Everything in the store, expect for this rack,” she responded. “These are for the new shop. My mother ran this business for years but she's retiring and I'm starting my own store, something more modern than this. I'm specializing in the size two, four and six crowd.”
“I haven't been size two, four or six since I was two, four and six years old, so I think I'll look around the rest of the shop,” I said.
The shop was crowded and it was going to take some time to elbow my way through the mob to find the right dress. After about a half hour of looking and not finding anything quite right I noticed a girl hold up a red dress and ask her friend what she thought.
“Red dress with red hair? Not workin' for you, girlfriend,” she said.
As soon as she put it back I snatched it and headed for the dressing room. I was in line for almost 10 minutes before I could try it on, but it was worth the wait. It had a square neckline and a flared skirt that was going to look great for dancing, plus it fit me just right. I looked at the price tag and I saw that it was originally $89.95 which was more than I'd ever spent for a dress in my life. I had spent the last 14 years in military uniforms so I wasn't too sure what was a good price for a dress. One thing I did know was that the clearance price on the tag read $40 and that wasn't half price.
I found the young woman again, who had just finished checking out a customer. “Excuse me, is this the right price? This dress was originally $89.95 and it's marked down to $40. That isn't 50 percent off.”
“Well, I can let you have it for $35, but that's as low as I can go,” the woman said.
“No, I mean that's less than 50% off. I don't want to cheat you.”
“Look, I didn't have time to go around with a calculator and divide all those prices. I just marked them what I thought was close enough. I need to get rid of all this old stuff so I can get started on the new shop. You're welcome to it for $35. You might want to look at some of the shoes and handbags over in the corner. They've got to go, too.”
I found a pair of cream colored suede boots that came a little below mid-calf and had a four inch heel. They were marked down from $49.95 to $20 and they were my size. God bless people who didn't pay attention in math class.
By the time I got back to the fair Linda was already at the booth prepping dishes for the day ahead. As soon as I pulled back the curtain at the back of the booth I was met with the aroma of Andouille sausage, and I remembered that today was sausage-making day at the Breezy Spoon. Brendan loves making sausage and I love that fact that he does. He's an expert at making all kinds, country sausage, smoked sausage, garlic sausage, ham sausage, turkey sausage, kielbasa, chorizo and even Andouille. That gives me a wide range of items I can feature on the menu such as kielbasa chili, chorizo breakfast patties, grilled bratwurst, sausage meatballs, chicken and sausage gumbo, Jambalaya, cheese and sausage muffins, buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy, and today at the fair we were offering Andouille corn dogs.
I jumped into the prep work alongside Linda and by the time the fair opened for the day we were all ready to serve great food to hungry customers. Unfortunately our first customer of the day was my self-proclaimed arch-nemesis Millie Farnsworth.
“Good heavens, Dani, you look horrible! That white uniform makes you look totally washed out,” she said as she reached the counter. “You never were much to look at but you really should do something about your appearance if you're going to represent an East Spoon Creek City business! Maybe you could get by looking homely when you were in the military, but it won't do in an upscale town like ours!”
“Good to see you, too, Millie,” I replied. “What can I do for you?”
She reached into her purse and produced a small paper bag which she pushed across the counter towards me.
“You can take this. We certainly don't need it at my father's bank,” she sneered.
“What is it?”
“It's your sex toy! You and that fireman left it in the vault of our distinguished bank after you two did your thing in there! Incredibly disgusting, even for you! I had to use three cans of disinfectant in there before I even dared go in! You should be ashamed for leading that poor young man astray with your wanton ways! He is a public servant, you know!”
With that she turned on her heel and stalked away. I looked in the paper bag and saw my black light. It was smudged with soot and had melted a bit on one end. Well, that was $29.95 plus shipping I'd never see again.
“You should have thrown water on her,” Linda said. “It worked with the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“I guess so,” I replied, “but it would have been a shame to waste our water and the Port-a-potties are too far away for me to get a substitute.”
As I watched Millie leave, I saw her pass Mark, who was just coming from the parking lot. When he reached the booth, he said, “Did I just miss a daring daylight attack by East Spoon Creek City's favorite journalist?”
“Oh, once you've seen one you've seen them all,” I said. “Would you like something to eat?”
“No, it's too early in the day for murder onions.”
“You're getting close to becoming the first person in history to die from spatula-inflicted wounds.”
“I see you left your sense of humor back at the diner. And here I was hoping to get a tour of the fairgrounds from the beautiful proprietor of the Breezy Spoon.”
“The beautiful proprietor of the Breezy Spoon will be glad to give you a tour,” I said, “but we should probably avoid the kissing booth. I saw Dora yesterday and she said she was waiting for you to stop by.”
“She'll have a very long wait,” Mark said. “Maybe Pollyanna can strongarm more people over to the kissing booth for her now that the wrestling matches have been canceled.”
“The wrestling matches have been canceled? I didn't know that. Why did they do that?
”
“Canceled due to injury. I heard about it from on of my EMT buddies.”
“Good heavens, was it Suze? I knew it was a bad idea for her to wrestle someone like Pollyanna!”
“No, it was Sammy Brown.”
“Wait, Pollyanna was wrestling her own husband?”
“No, Sammy was just watching,” Mark explained. “He was sitting in the front row to cheer Pollyanna on, and then Pollyanna threw Suze out of the ring and she landed on him and knocked him right out.”
“Ouch! I hope he's okay,” I said. “That's the second time he's been injured at one of Pollyanna's matches. Maybe he should cheer her on from the back row next time.”
We were just passing Mayor Pumphrey's booth, and I saw him wave to me. I assumed he wanted to give us one of his re-election brochures, but he had something else in mind.
“Miss O'Shea, I want to apologize for our little misunderstanding the other day,” he said, shaking my hand and then Mark's. “When I heard of Lloyd Duval's murder, I was quite shaken up. It occurred to me that it may have been a political rival who had planned to kill us both, and there I was, alone and totally vulnerable! I was simply overcome with emotion.”
At this point, the Mayor stopped, took a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed his eyes (even though they were dry) before he continued.
“I must admit that it still troubles me that I too may be at risk, and I've thought about staying out of the public eye until the perpetrator is caught, but I feel that I owe it to my loyal constituents such as yourselves to show no fear and to demonstrate that I put the good of the community above my own personal safety. As such, I will be giving a eulogy for the late Mr. Duval this afternoon as well as an informative speech summarizing the benefits that I was able to confer on our community during the past four years. As you can imagine, this won't be easy for me to do because I felt so highly of Mr. Duval and I still mourn that he was taken from our midst in such dastardly manner while I was asleep in my bed and had not left my house at all in spite of what any short-sighted busybodies might say. By the way, what's today's lunch special at the Breezy Spoon?”
