Finn-agled

by Kristine Raymond

  “Thanks.” With one last glance in my direction, Spencer exited the room, leaving me alone with the pair of detectives – one amused and one clearly not.

  “You know, Zar,” I chastised primly, tugging on the blanket that covered the hideous hospital gown I wore. What I wouldn’t give to meet the person who decided that nothing would cheer up sick people more than outfitting them in mustard (French, not Dijon)-colored gowns splattered with purple squiggly teardrop shapes that disturbingly resembled sperm. “You could be a little nicer to him. He did save my life, after all.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know, would I, since he never got around to answering any of my questions!”

  “You kinda never gave him the chance.” I rubbed my eyes as her face blurred before mine. “It’s been a long night. Can we finish this tomorrow?”

  “It is tomorrow,” she pointed out.

  “No, it’s not. It’s today.” Relieved to discover my sassiness still in working order, I grinned, unable to resist giving her a hard time, my cheerful mien slipping when she didn’t smile back. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” Her eyes pooled. “You could’ve been killed. You realize that, don’t you? When I think of how close you came…”

  “But I wasn’t.” Not known for her bouts of emotional expression, seeing Zara near tears unnerved me. In the third grade, she’d earned the nickname Teflon when Kenny Weir called her a troll and knocked her to the ground. Instead of crying as most eight-year-old girls would’ve, she jumped up, brushed herself off, and resumed playing hopscotch without missing a step, the incident rolling off her back like water off a duck’s. Growing up at the mercy of six older brothers, it took a lot to ruffle her feathers and apparently me almost dying was just such a catalyst. Before I began bawling, too, I changed the subject. “So, the scumbag who attacked me; did he take anything?”

  Zara swiped at her face, slipping back into official mode. “The register was empty. Did you go to the bank after you closed?”

  Uh oh. I don’t like the direction this is heading. “No. The day’s receipts were in a cash bag by the register. Next to my purse on the counter,” I added hopefully on the off chance that one or all of the half dozen law enforcement officers who’d scoured the scene had overlooked two objects in plain sight, those hopes sinking as Duley and Zara’s heads shook in unison.

  “The first officers at the scene didn’t report finding a cash bag. Your purse was still there, but your wallet was gone,” Duley said.

  “Crap!” The force of the expletive heightened my cranial pounding. “And I just renewed my driver’s license last week!”

  Zara rolled her eyes. “That’s what you’re worried about? Having to replace your driver’s license?”

  “It was a great picture,” I pouted. Does she not understand that some things are irreplaceable?

  On the verge of asking what other precious items had been filched, I was saved from further heartbreak by the arrival of a harried-looking doctor who I’m fairly certain had only reached puberty the week before. Falling back against the pillow, I feigned weakness. “Give it to me straight, Doc. How long have I got?”

  Brushing aside my melodramatic theatrics, the newly-minted M.D. muttered unintelligibly as he poked and prodded, blinding me when his ophthalmic light burned holes in my retinas. Okay, not literally, but I’m going to be seeing spots for days. Making a few scribbles in my chart, he said, “Your vitals look good.”

  Hot damn! Best news I’ve heard all day even if it is only 3:17 am. Throwing off the blanket (mustard-purple sperm hospital gown be damned!) and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, my face took on a split-pea hue as a wave of nausea hit. Groaning, I crawled back under the covers. “Maybe I’ll hang around a little while longer.”

  “That’d be my recommendation,” the doctor remarked drily, tucking his pen into his coat pocket as he issued rapid-fire instructions to the nurse who walked in, before nodding to the detective duo and vanishing as quickly as he’d appeared.

  “Are you okay?” Zara asked, the worry lines etched around her eyes aging her by a decade.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.” And, though I’d never admit it, scared out of my wits, because the twisted individual who’d used my neck as a stress reliever ball clearly had a few screws loose and upon the realization that he (I just knew it was a ‘he’) had left a witness, would stop at nothing to finish me off. Or so every thriller flick I’d ever watched wanted me to believe. Something in my gut, other than the Moo Goo Gai Pan I’d ingested hours earlier, told me there was more to this incident than simple robbery, and I suspected it had something to do with a certain mahogany and brass writing case and the coded message hidden inside. For a brief moment, I debated sharing my suspicions with Port New’s finest, but a little voice told me to wait. Or maybe it was the sedative that nice nurse administered. Either way, I kept quiet, my eyes drifting shut.

  “Get some rest now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. And, Finn?” Zara’s voice faded as she moved towards the doorway.

  “Mmfph?”

  “We’re not finished discussing this Spencer situation.”

  Well, crap!

  Chapter Five

  After being released from the hospital Wednesday afternoon (I managed to sweet talk the doc into waiving his 24-hour-observation rule, though Mom suspects the staff was tired of listening to me whine – either way, a win in my book) I convalesced at my parents’ house, sprawled out on the sofa next to dad watching reruns of The Golden Girls. Remember I mentioned my father has a thing for Bea Arthur?

  By lunchtime Thursday, I was pretty much back to normal, the symphony in my skull having faded to a lone piccolo player performing pianissimo. Dad, too, was feeling better. His cheeks no longer resembled those of a chipmunk’s, and his tortured moaning had tapered off to sporadic whimpering somewhere around midnight. Mom, on the other hand, was going batty caring for two full-grown, yet infantile-behaving loved ones and headed out for yoga at the crack of dawn with a vague ETA of when she’d return.

  “Well, Pops,” I said, using the nickname my father hated yet lovingly tolerated. “It’s been fun, but I should head out. Need anything before I go?”

  Not known for demonstrative expressions of sentimentality, Stanislav Bartusiak gathered me in his arms and held me close. “I love you, Maudie. You know that, right?”

  Two things to note – first, my father is the only person permitted to call me any variation of the name Maude due to my deep respect for the man who indulged my mischievous behavior in the third grade when I referred to him as ‘Stan the Man’ in public at every opportunity, including church services and parent-teacher conferences; and second, his words were slightly garbled due to both the narcotic he’d taken ten minutes earlier for pain and the emotional lump in his throat, so he might have said, ‘I want money. Is it night?’

  Choosing to believe the former, I brushed away a tear and said, “Of course, I do, Dad, but I think those meds the dentist has you on have made you loopy. Why don’t you lay down and take a nap? Some sleep will do you good.” After gaining his assurance that he’d get along fine without me, I left him to his own devices and rushed over to Dough Knots to retrieve my hound-in-shining-armor, stopping first at the DMV to get a new license. My picture sucks.

  Entering Wendi’s apartment behind the eatery, I called out, “Where’s my smoochie-poochie? Did you miss Mama? Who scared off the big, bad man? Who did that? My brave boy did that! Give Mama a kiss!”

  His nose appearing first, followed by a two-foot-long, quivering Jell-O-on-legs frame, Garfunkel galumphed across the room towards me, his eighteen-inch tail circling furiously. Cradling his Bassety-noggin in my hands while offering him carte blanche access to my face, he slathered it enthusiastically in Fido Bar-scented kisses for approximately forty-three seconds – his interest lasting longer than any relationship I’ve been in, to date.

  “I appreciate you looking after him for me, Wen. I know he can be a handful sometimes but, on
the upside, he doesn’t shed.”

  “Very true.” My friend gave me a hug. “Hey, take a load off. You shouldn’t be on your feet after what you’ve been through. Have a seat, and I’ll make some tea.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t want to keep you. I know you have the lunch rush to deal with. Just point me in the direction of his leash, and we’ll get out of your hair.”

  “It’s all good. Antoine and Julie are working today, and if they need me, they know where to find me. So, what’s the scoop?”

  Wendi handed me a cup of clam chowder to forestall my departure, knowing I wouldn’t refuse. She served the best clam chowder in the world, not only preparing her fish stock from scratch but adding bits of crispy, maple-infused bacon right before serving. Pure bliss.

  Trying not to smack my lips between spoonsful, I recounted Tuesday night’s – or rather – early Wednesday morning’s ordeal, not quite embellishing my close brush with death but not glossing over it, either. “It was terrifying. When his hands closed around my throat, I thought I was a goner for sure!”

  “His? You mean, the cops know who tried to kill you?” Wendi paled, her tan fading until the freckles on her face stood out like dots of cinnamon.

  “Well, no.” Heaving a sigh, I stared dejectedly into my empty cup before setting it on the table. “They just felt like man’s hands. Strong. Wiry. And his fingernails were clipped short. I don’t know many women who wear their nails like that these days.”

  “I do,” Wendi said, waving her culinary-gifted phalanges in front of my face. “But you’re one of my best customers, so it wouldn’t serve my purpose to murder you. Mwah-ha-ha.”

  Have I mentioned Wendi scares me sometimes?

  Thanking her for the chowder and for looking after my pooch, we headed out, stopping by the shop on the way home. The second I crossed the threshold, goosebumps pimpled my skin, and the willies locked me in their grip. I hate that feeling. Finn’s Finds is more than just my livelihood; it’s a part of me, like my arm or spleen. I don’t want to go through life afraid of my spleen. Garfunkel, on the other hand, had no such qualms, and nosing me aside, made a beeline for his Reginald bed. Sinking down into the cushion, he promptly began snoring.

  Knowing he was unlikely to budge for at least an hour – you try moving the equivalent of a sixty-five-pound log without the help of heavy machinery – I figured I might as well straighten up a bit. I vaguely recalled a table being knocked over during the struggle and–

  What the hell?

  My first real look at the interior of my shop left me speechless. Evidently, the Port New police had deemed it necessary to rearrange my entire inventory while investigating the crime perpetrated against me. Tchotchkes were mixed in with the knickknacks, Civil War relics intermingled with Colonial-era keepsakes, and a layer of fine black powder coated every surface. After checking to make sure both doors were locked (I may have shoved a chifforobe against the back door as an extra precaution), I picked up my feather duster and headed into battle.

  You’ve heard the expression, “Never bring a knife to a gunfight?” Apparently, there’s some logic to that because my choice of cleaning implement was no match for the fingerprint powder. The duster merely relocated those pesky grains of ferric oxide to one of only two objects in the store left untouched by their previous application – me.

  “Great. Now I look like I spent the afternoon climbing around in someone’s chimney.” Unimpressed with my observation, Garfunkel continued snoozing.

  It’s important to mention that while my attacker had been kind enough to knock me out of commission on a Wednesday (one of the two days during the week when the shop is closed), making the decision not to open today (which was tough, though upon seeing the state of the place, I’m glad I let Mom talk me into it) and closing the shop on Saturday afternoon in order to indulge on coconut shrimp and petit fours while angling for the best spot to stand to catch the bouquet means that hiring a cleaning crew to come in and finish what I ineffectively started will not only cost me money up front, it’ll necessitate keeping Finn’s Finds closed for an additional day, which ain’t gonna look pretty on my monthly bank statement.

  That loss of potential income spurred me into action. Wiping the grime off my face, I rolled up my sleeves and lugged an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner out of the closet; the one Dad insisted I keep on hand in case of emergency.

  “You never know what will happen. A customer might drop a vase or fall into a display case. You want to get sued when some little kid needs stitches? Mark my words, you’ll be glad to have this honey on hand if the time comes. And wait ’til you check out the suction on this thing!”

  Not that fingerprint powder is the same as broken glass, but an emergency’s an emergency, right? And, my father wasn’t wrong. This baby could thread the eye of a needle with a two-by-four!

  Three and a half hours later, the shop no longer resembling a stage set from the latest police procedural, I happened to glance outside while coiling the cord around the vacuum cleaner.

  Note to self – invest in a portable defibrillator.

  Back in high school, I drove Dad’s Monte Carlo for a week, totally oblivious to the oil light indicator glowing red on the dash the entire time. Well, at the sight of a face mashed up against the glass beneath the cleverly designed vinyl Finn’s Finds graphic on the front window, my heart seized like that Chevy big block, a scream lodging in my throat, unable to escape thanks to the pair of oxygen-filled sacs beneath my ribcage which seemingly no longer functioned.

  So, this is it. My life is coming to an end in the most gruesome fashion imaginable at the hands of a psychopath in the middle of my beloved shop while my faithful canine companion snores away in the background.

  What do you mean, how do I know it’s going to be gruesome? Isn’t that Psychopath 101? Decapitation. Separation of limbs. Body parts stuffed into cavities not intended for those particular appendages. Need I go on?

  Paralyzed with fear, I stood frozen as the figure moved towards the door. Adopting Grandma Lena’s practice of invoking the saints in moments of crises, a prayer sprang to my lips, seven years of catechism finally paying off.

  “Heavenly Father, take me now before this inhumane creature has the chance to wrap his hands around my throat and squeeze every last ounce of life from my not quite out-of-shape body and…what the hell, Zara? Me nearly getting strangled to death isn’t enough for you? You’re trying to finish me off with a heart attack?”

  Using her key to let herself in, my BFF pinned me with her best detective’s glare. “Well, if you’d answer your phone once in a while, I wouldn’t have to drag my butt down here for a welfare check. I’ve been leaving messages for the past two hours and almost called for backup, certain I’d arrive and find your lifeless body hacked into a dozen little pieces.”

  And neither of us were drama majors. Go figure.

  Waving a paper bag under my nose, the tantalizing aroma emanating from its confines reminding me how long it’d been since the clam chowder at Dough Knots, she added, “By the way, I brought dinner.”

  The threat of my imminent demise no longer a concern, my stomach rumbled as she began laying food out on the counter. It’s hard to stay peeved at someone who comes over to check on your well-being and brings takeout from Kowalski’s. A family-owned Polish restaurant over on Fourth, they make these bite-sized pierogis that are to die for. Just don’t tell Grandma Lena I said so. She and Annika Kowalski have been feuding for years over some secret ingredient or stolen recipe or something like that. But I digress.

  “So, what’s going on in here?” Zara asked, gesturing towards the cleaning equipment strewn about the room. “You spill something?”

  “No, I didn’t spill anything.” My tone may have been a touch waspish. “I’ve been tackling the mess left behind by your investigators. What’d they use to disperse the fingerprint powder? A confetti cannon?”

  “You should’ve called me. I would’ve given you the number for the cri
me scene clean-up guys.”

  “I figured I’d save a buck and do it myself.” My teeth sinking into a pierogi, I was rewarded with a burst of rich potato and cream cheese filling. “So, why are you really here? Me not returning your messages in a timely fashion hardly seems like the type of thing you’d worry abou – oh! You know who attacked me, don’t you, and were calling to warn me he was on his way back to finish the job. That’s it, isn’t it? And when I didn’t answer, you rushed to my aid.”

  Zara cocked a perfectly sculpted brow. “Waiting two hours is rushing to someone’s aid? Glad you’re not in the emergency-anything profession.” She wiped her hands on a paper towel and wadded it into a ball. “I called you from court to see how you were feeling. Twice, to be exact. If you check the number, you’ll see the other half dozen messages are courtesy of my partner who was convinced when you didn’t answer that some terrible calamity had befallen you.”

  “Then why are you here instead of Duley?”

  “Because he’s already broken one date this week with Suzanne and she told him if he broke another, they were through. So, after checking in with your folks – by the way, you should probably call and let them know you’re still breathing – he made me promise that I’d come over personally and verify with my own eyes that you’re still among the living. Say ‘cheese’”

  The flash from her phone blinded me as she texted the image to Duley. “Forward that to Mom’s phone, would you? Save me a call.”

  “You’re a heartless child,” Zara noted, obliging my request.

  Grinning at her disapproval, I popped another pierogi into my mouth. “Not to worry. I’m sure I’ll hear all about it tomorrow when we go dress shopping.”

  “Oh, yeah. That.”

  You’d think, as my best friend, Zara would at least try to hide her contempt for Spencer, but no-ooo.