by Elise Sax
“When do you think Ruth will start to soften?” Lucy asked, reading the sign.
“Maybe five years after she’s dead.”
“What does she mean about the corporate devils?”
“I think that would be me,” a man wearing a hard hat said, walking toward us from the construction zone next door. He smiled wide. “I do take umbrage over the criticism of my coffee, however. I make the world’s best lattes, and that’s a fact. May I make you one? On me?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, suspicious. It wasn’t every day that a strange man offered to make me coffee. In fact, this was the first time.
“I’m Ford Essex, owner of Buckstars, the new, best coffee place in Cannes.”
“You’re opening a coffee place next to Tea Time?” I asked. It was the craziest thing I had ever heard. It was like opening a Jewish deli next to the KKK headquarters. It was a declaration of war. It was suicide.
There was no way I was going anywhere near Ford Essex. Ruth was going to explode all over him, and the shrapnel was going to take down innocents in a ten-mile radius. I couldn’t afford to be murdered now when the world’s biggest Easter egg hunt was only eight days away.
But it looked like Lucy’s curiosity was stronger than her survival instinct. She put her hand out like Scarlett O’Hara. “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers,” she gushed. “We would love to.”
CHAPTER 4
Look sharp. That’s what a matchmaker must do. Not just your two eyes, dolly. Look sharp deep into your matches. Feel their feelings. Fear their fears. Hope their hopes. It’s more than walking around in their shoes, bubbeleh. It’s knowing their essence. Look sharp. And listen. And feel. There’s a story they need to tell, but they don’t know how.
Lesson 44, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
As we walked into the store next to Tea Time, the workers were hammering in the Buckstars sign overhead. The inside of the store was almost finished. It was the opposite of Tea Time. Ford Essex had made a mighty effort to erase every bit of history from the building and replace it with all of the trappings of modernism. It was Silicon Valley on acid.
Ford Essex walked behind the stainless-steel counter. “A latte and a cappuccino. Am I right?” he asked.
“It’s like you’re a mind reader,” Lucy gushed in full Scarlett O’Hara form. He turned around and flipped on the espresso machine.
“Ruth is going to kill him fifteen different ways,” Lucy muttered to me.
“This is madness. Doesn’t he know the dangers involved with this craziness?” I muttered back.
He handed us our coffee in paper to-go cups. “Taste that and tell me it’s not the best coffee in the world.”
I tasted it. It wasn’t the best coffee in the world. Just like Ruth had said, it tasted of corporate evil, like the coffee had been delivered in the same box as the paper cups and plastic swizzle sticks. It was cold and anonymous, and it would probably make a fortune and put Ruth out of business.
“It’s the best coffee in the world,” I lied. “I thought the water main broke.”
“Oh, that,” he said and smiled slightly, which gave me chills up my body. “Sometimes I’m a playful man. I like to play. She started it, by the way. She called the cops on me because the crew started at seven this morning. But I’ve got to get this place up and running on Monday. I don’t have time to dick around.”
Lucy shot him another charming Southern comment, which pleased him. We promised to be his most loyal customers, and he let us go with our coffees. Once outside, I threw it away.
“That man gives me a bad feeling,” I told Lucy.
“Be nice, Gladie. He’s breathing borrowed air.”
Lucy drove us over to Bridget’s townhouse to convince her to sneak away from tax season and have lunch with us. Our argument was going to be something like, “Everyone’s got to eat, Bridget,” and we planned a united front to bend her to our will to enjoy her company while we ate Cobb salads.
Lucy rang the doorbell when we arrived, and Bridget didn’t answer. I could hear her clicking the keys on her computer through the door. I tried the doorknob, and it turned. Bridget must have forgotten to lock the door, and Lucy and I walked in.
Bridget was sitting at her dining room table with her laptop. She was drowning in mountains of paper. “What are you doing here?” she asked as she continued to type.
“We’re kidnapping you, darlin’,” Lucy told her. “Lunch with the girls.”
Bridget pushed her hoot owl glasses on her nose. Her bright blue eye shadow practically glowed through the lenses, like it was signaling some kind of message. “Oh, that’s right, the lunch,” Bridget said and made a theatrical winking gesture to her. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“What’s happening?” I asked. “What are you two up to?”
“We’re kidnapping you,” Bridget said and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, darn it. I spilled the beans.”
“You would be the worst spy,” Lucy complained, pouting.
“I’m so confused. I thought we were kidnapping Bridget,” I said.
“The romantic vacation,” Lucy said. “You and Spencer. We want to know what happened.”
“Did he ask you? Did he ask you?” Bridget asked, breathlessly, hopping up and down in her chair, her seven-month baby bump putting on an impressive show.
“Be careful, Bridget,” I told her. “You’re going to have Lech right here and now.”
“I changed his name. The baby is now Delano.”
“What kind of name is that?” Lucy asked. “A commie?”
“That’s the middle name of our greatest president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
“It’s a very nice name,” I said, continuing with my strategy not to judge or criticize a mother. Parents were terrifying creatures. Even though there were a million ways to raise a child, I had learned in my life that every parent thinks their way is the best way, and it’s best for an outsider to just agree with them. Lucy hadn’t learned this lesson, however.
“What about Franklin? Isn’t that better than Delano? Frank is a nice, normal name.”
Uh oh. Lucy had used the “normal” word, which was a death sentence as far as Bridget was concerned. I didn’t know why Lucy was making trouble. Delano was a hell of a lot better than Lech, which had been Bridget’s previous name for her unborn child.
“What do you mean by normal?” Bridget asked, standing and rubbing her belly. “Do you mean misogynistic, patriarchal, racist, xenophobic? That kind of normal?”
Oh, geez. It had gotten ugly fast. Too many syllables were being flung around. I had to change the subject to something worse to steer the conversation away from bad baby names.
“Ask me what?” I asked. “What did who ask me what?”
But I understood what they wanted to know. Did Spencer ask me to marry him. Or at very least, did Spencer ask me to move into the house across the street, which I had been told he was interested in buying.
“We were only there for twenty minutes,” I said.
“Talk about bad timing,” Lucy said. “I love Zelda, but she’s supposed to be making love matches, not breaking them up.”
“Nobody broke anything up,” I said.
“So, he asked you?” Bridget asked and burst into tears. She cried big, rolling sobs. “I’m so-so-so happy,” she stuttered through her tears. “You two are perfect for each other. I don’t normally believe in the patriarchal, transactional custom of buying a woman to put her in life-long servitude to a man and make her a brood-brood-brood mare. But in this case, it’s so-so-so romantic.” She barked out the last word, loudly and broke down into more sobs.
Hormones.
They’re such a bitch.
“We need to get her food,” Lucy told me.
“I need a hamburger,” Bridget cried. “And French fries. Lots of them.”
Bridget had gone from curiosity to excitement to anger to blubbering joy in three
minutes. I thought she would at the very least need fries and would probably need a milkshake, too. Instead of going to our normal place, Saladz, we decided to drive to Burger Boy.
I had never actually eaten inside Burger Boy before. I had been purely drive thru takeout before, but now Bridget needed her burger fix, and the three us wanted to sit and dish the dirt. When we got our meals and sat down, Bridget and Lucy attacked me immediately for details.
“No proposal. Nothing about the house,” I said.
“Damn it,” Lucy replied, inspecting her hamburger.
“Was he about to ask you?” Bridget asked. “Preparing?”
“Well, we got there and starting doing boyfriend-girlfriend stuff in the shower, and that was when the dead girl showed up and pretty much stopped everything.”
Lucy’s hamburger fell out of her grip and landed with a splat onto her French fries.
“You were doing boyfriend-girlfriend stuff in the shower?” Bridget asked. “Weren’t you afraid of slipping?”
“Forget that, darlin’,” Lucy interrupted. “A dead girl showed up?”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot about that.”
“You forgot about a dead girl showing up?” Bridget asked, her eyes wide and her mouth agape. She and Lucy exchanged a what-the-hell look. “You’re the death magnet, Gladie. You’re Miss Marple. Normally, a dead girl showing up would get you all fired up. Obsessed.” She put her elbow on the table and turned in to me, her face centimeters from mine. “Are you all right, Gladie? Is it Zelda? Was the event more than an event?”
“No,” I said, but my voice croaked with the emotion that the memory brought up of the hotel and knowing somehow that something was wrong with my grandmother. It had turned out only to be an event. Ten days of rest while I took over the matchmaking. But obviously, it had turned me upside down because I hadn’t given the murdered woman another thought. Instead, I had been thinking about Easter egg hunts.
“She was murdered,” I said out loud.
Lucy put a fry into her mouth. “Wherever you go. It’s amazing. I used to know a woman like you, but with her it was spiders. They were in her bed, her shoes, her cereal. Spiders everywhere like they were attracted to her. With you, it’s murdered people.”
She was totally right. Wherever I went, I stumbled on murdered people. “That’s not true, Lucy,” I said. “And Spencer was there, too. So, I only half stumbled on her. Spencer stumbled on the other half.”
I gave them the rundown about the young woman with the ice bucket and then seeing her later in our bed, murdered. “And I passed out. When I woke up, the police were there, and that’s when I felt Grandma.”
“Felt?” Bridget asked.
“Saw. No, felt. No, saw. I don’t know.”
Lucy nodded and popped another fry into her mouth. “This is good.”
“So you left to check on Zelda,” Bridget said, placing her hand on mine. She was such a good friend. Even though she judged society and traditions on a regular basis, she never judged me. Bridget was a safe space, a friend forever no matter what.
“Yes, and then there was the sumo wrestler and the Easter egg hunt committee.”
Lucy nodded. “Scary.”
“Scary,” I agreed, but now my mind was full of the girl with the ice bucket, not matchmaking and town events. How did she get into our room? The door locked automatically, like all hotel rooms. And why was she murdered? And how? And then there was the question that always hooked me and made me go down a path of investigation: Why?
“Holy cow, she’s got the look in her eye again, Bridget,” Lucy said, pointing at my face with her finger, which was greasy from the French fries.
“Maybe she has gas,” Bridget suggested, eyeing me.
I did have some gas, but I didn’t think that was it. “I don’t even know her name,” I said, more to myself than to my friends. “A stranger, murdered and put in my bed. Or murdered in my bed. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” I had fallen down on the job. I had done a disservice to my Miss Marple sensibilities.
“I bet Spencer knows,” Lucy said. “I bet he’s got the whole police report, and he’s been studying it.”
“He’s been watching a lot of Family Guy,” I said. “The murder wasn’t in his jurisdiction.”
I took a bite of my cheeseburger. I had gotten it with extra, special sauce, and it dripped onto my fries, which was a plus, as far as I was concerned.
“I need to find some time to go back to the hotel,” I said with my mouth full.
“I’ve got lots of time. I’ll go with you,” Lucy said, excited.
“I can go with you next week,” Bridget said. “After tax season is over.”
Her phone rang, and she answered it. After saying, hello, she fell into concentration, and Lucy and I continued to talk about murder while we ate our lunch.
“Please,” Bridget croaked after a moment. “Don’t do this.” She turned off her phone and turned her head away from us.
I put my hand on her back. “Bridget, what’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”
Lucy shot me a look: Danger, Will Robinson. Bridget had been hormonal, so a marketing call could have set her off, but it could have been something bad, too.
“Bridget,” I said and let my voice trail off. “Did the creation of the Bookkeepers of America Union fall through again?”
“No, I mean, yes, but that’s not it,” she said turning back to us. She wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Is it Lech? I mean, Delano?” I asked. “Is the baby okay?”
I had gone with her to all of her doctor visits since she had gotten pregnant, and as far as I knew, her pregnancy was going without a hitch.
“No, not that,” Bridget whispered, her voice hoarse from emotion. “It’s him.”
“Who?”
“Him. He’s threatening to take Delano. He says he can get full custody, and I’ll never see my child after he’s born.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her glasses fogged up.
“Who’s threatening you?” Lucy asked. “I don’t understand.”
But I understood. I knew who was threatening Bridget and her baby, even if I didn’t know his identity.
“The father,” Bridget said, her voice barely audible. “My baby’s father.”
CHAPTER 5
Love comes in many forms, split into categories with different names and attitudes toward it. But these are lies, dolly. Because love is love is love is love. There is no difference. If you have to quantify and qualify love, then it’s not real. Because love is love, and your matches will know it when they feel it. If they feel it. But they’ll come to you and ask: “Is this true love? Is it real? Can I trust it?” If they ask these questions, the answer is no. Because love is sure. The rest is kibbitzing.
Lesson 10, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
Lucy and I plied Bridget with milkshakes and onion rings, but she wouldn’t tell us who her baby’s father was. I figured that he had to be somebody really bad, like a Columbian drug lord or a serial killer. All we knew was that the guy had been a one-shot deal, and Bridget had kept her pregnancy a secret from him. But somehow, he found out, and he was coming after her with a vengeance. Bridget assured us that she would take care of it and not to worry.
But I was worried. Lucy took her home, and I promised myself to ask Spencer to help Bridget.
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do first,” Lucy said as she stopped her car in front of my house. “Do we start investigating the murder of the ice bucket woman, or do we get the thumbscrews out for Bridget’s mysterious baby daddy?”
Since Bridget was my best friend, there really wasn’t a choice. She was my priority. But she didn’t want me to be involved. She didn’t even want to tell me who the father was. “Let me talk to Spencer about it,” I told Lucy. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“We could get Harry to help, you know, if we can’t fi
x it the normal way.” Harry was more or less in retirement, but he had made his living in suspicious ways. I figured his way of fixing it had something to do with a broken nose and two broken legs, which I wasn’t totally opposed to if it would save Bridget, but that would be the last resort.
I walked up the driveway and reached the door as a group of people were leaving. “We’re never going to get this done,” Josephine from the Easter egg hunt committee complained to me as she passed. Her face was a sheen of sweat, and she looked like she had just been defeated in battle. “Do you know how many five-hundred-one-thousand eggs are?”
I didn’t know how to answer that so I shook my head.
“It’s a shit ton of eggs, that’s how many!” she shrieked.
“Shut up, Josephine,” a short, wide man said, walking around her. He was bulky with muscles instead of fat, but he was almost as wide as he was tall. Another middle-aged member of the committee, I assumed, and he was pissed off, too.
“You shut up,” Josephine said. “Just because you’re the chair. Well, I’m the co-chair.”
“I know. You never let me forget it. But we’re doing this. World record. Stop trying to put the kibosh on it with your negative energy.”
She pursed her lips at him and rolled her eyes. “Negative energy. Oh, please.”
I walked inside and was hit with an overpowering wave of hard-boiled egg stink. I pinched my nose. “Didn’t anyone think to open a window?” I shouted into the house.
Spencer stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Every window is open, Pinky. Help, me. I’m in hell.”
I put my purse down and walked into the kitchen. There were four large pots on the stove, each filled and furiously boiling eggs.
“I thought you were with Harry,” I said.
Spencer hugged me tight against him. “They drafted me, Pinky. They wouldn’t let me leave. I’ve been boiling eggs for hours. It’s my personal Vietnam. I think I have PTSD already.”
