It Happened One Fright

by Elise Sax

  “Hi,” I started.

  “Hi. Can’t stop to chat. It’s hard to balance in this thing. Ha-cha!”

  “Sure thing,” I said.

  “I’m doing the sumo workout. I’ve gone down a half size already. Boy do I sweat in this thing. I do thirty minutes a day, but I have to keep walking. Otherwise, I fall over like a bowling pin.”

  “It’s okay,” I yelled back at Terri. “She’s doing the sumo workout!”

  “Stop in the name of the law!” Terri yelled at the sumo woman. Ruth stepped out of our path, but Terri planted her feet shoulder width apart, and her hand was still on her gun.

  “So, do you cook?” I asked the sumo woman.

  “That’s my problem. I don’t stop. What can I do? It’s my method of meditation. So, I have to work out. I found this one during a commercial break when I was watching sumo wrestling on TV.”

  “Watching TV with your husband?” I asked.

  “No, I’m single.”

  Ding. Ding. Ding. Could making a match be this easy? It was almost like it fell in my lap. Like a sumo wrestling fan cook walked into my life. We were getting closer to Terri.

  “You should probably get out of the way,” the sumo woman called to Terri. “I don’t brake too well in this thing.”

  “Stop in the name of the law!”

  I rolled my eyes. Being Terri’s friend was a monumental task. “She has balance problems!” I warned Terri.

  “I’ve heard that one before. What do you have hiding in that suit?”

  The sumo woman started to sweat and then she started to wobble. If she kept going, she would run into Terri or get shot. “Hop off the sidewalk,” I urged her. “There’s no traffic. You’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” she said. “This is only my third time doing the sumo workout. I’m sure I’ll be better with more practice.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “She’s going to walk on the street!” I called to Terri.

  “Not on my street!”

  I wanted to punch her in the face.

  “It’s like I’m watching the Titanic happen,” Ruth said. “Or the Hindenburg.”

  She was right. It was a disaster about to happen. Any idiot could see that. With the added pressure and a gradual downward slant to the street, the sumo woman was seriously wobbling, now. A physically unfit and wholly uncoordinated woman in a sumo wrestling costume was going to go down like a ton of bricks, and nobody could stop it.

  We were almost on top of Terri, and the moron wasn’t moving. “Stop in the name of the law!” she yelled again.

  “I don’t know what to do!” the sumo woman yelled.

  “Hop onto the street!” I said. “I’ll help you!”

  “Okay! I’m hopping!”

  She hopped.

  Sort of.

  One foot landed, but the other foot was stuck for a split second on the sidewalk. “Hop! Hop!” I urged.

  “I can’t look away!” Ruth shouted.

  “I’ll help you!” I yelled at the sumo woman.

  It was times like these that I wished I minded my own business. Nothing good came from being a Good Samaritan. As Ruth would say, no good dead went unpunished. I should have let the sumo woman ram into Terri and go on my way. Terri deserved it, for sure. But for the poor woman, who was desperate to lose weight and had donned an enormous sumo wrestling costume and ran down the street, I had to help. Besides, I was going to match her, and the number one rule in matchmaking was you couldn’t match a dead person.

  Like a ninja samurai, I flew into the air. Just as she was about to fall, I managed to grab hold of her hand.

  “No!” she yelled.

  Because she might have been fine if I hadn’t helped her, and when I “helped” her, I might have knocked her off balance. Luckily, the costume was so wide around that she didn’t hit her head when she hit the street. And luckily, there was no traffic. But it wasn’t good luck that there really was a gradual downhill slant.

  “Ooph!” she grunted as she toppled over onto the asphalt.

  It was downhill from there.

  She was just like Violet when she turned into a giant blueberry in Willy Wonka, except that she wasn’t purple. “I don’t like this!” she screamed and then she just screamed without saying anything.

  “I’ll help you!” I yelled, running after her. But she had a head start on me, and she was rolling faster than I could run.

  “She’s picking up speed!” Ruth yelled. “I’m having an LSD flashback! It’s 1967 all over again! Someone save Bobby Kennedy!”

  I ran full out after the poor sumo woman, who was screaming her lungs out.

  “Let a law enforcement professional handle this,” Terri said.

  Terri Williams might have been a law enforcement professional. She might have worked out five times a week and hadn’t eaten a carbohydrate since she had reached puberty. But Terri Williams was no match for a chubby woman in a sumo wrestler costume, rolling down the street at fifteen miles an hour.

  Karma. It’s a bitch.

  CHAPTER 10

  I once had a match who proposed in a shark tank. That didn’t end well. When proposing, tell your match: Nothing with teeth.

  Lesson 37, Matchmaking advice from your

  Grandma Zelda

  Miraculously, the sumo woman was unhurt, and she didn’t hate me. I got her contact information, and she was over the moon excited at the prospect of a large man who was searching for a committed relationship. She decided being in shape was overrated, and I helped her out of her costume, which she threw in the trash can on the corner.

  Terri wasn’t so lucky. She had valiantly tried to stop the sumo woman, but she only managed to get knocked off her feet. She rolled the rest of the way down Main Street, wrapped around the sumo woman. She finally came to a stop, flat on her back, with her arm in the gutter.

  “Get away from me,” she croaked, as I bent over her, looking for signs of life.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I have asphalt in my mouth.”

  “At least you didn’t shoot her. I think that shows admirable qualities of restraint.”

  “If I could move my arm, I would shoot you right here and now.”

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” I said.

  “No. In the past couple of days, I’ve flown into a pole and gotten bitten by a woman. I’ll never live down rolling through town with a sumo wrestler.”

  It was charmingly naïve of her to believe that word of the sumo wrestler wouldn’t blow through town within an hour. It almost made me like her.

  “You want me to help you?”

  “Only if you kill yourself first.”

  She was a gorgeous woman, more beautiful than any model, but boy, she was a bitch. “You saved the day, Terri,” I said. “A real law enforcement professional at work. I was in awe, watching you and your bravery.”

  Could a person die from bullshit? I hoped not.

  “I really think we could be good friends,” I continued. Now I wasn’t believing me, either.

  “I just want to get home to my cats,” she mumbled.

  “What was that? What’d you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  But I had heard her. The supermodel had cats. I guessed the matchmaking gods were giving me birthday presents. I could match Terri with Bruce Coyle, and then she would get off Fred’s back and off mine, too. But I would have to be smooth and clever to get the match done.

  I rifled through my purse and took out Lucy’s beautifully wrapped present. The scent of the expensive perfume permeated the box and the wrapping. “I got you a friendship gift,” I lied to Terri. I was sure Lucy wouldn’t mind me re-gifting her present if it got me a match and saved me a couple thousand dollars in tickets.

  Terri’s eye grew big. “You did? Perfume? I love perfume, but I don’t wear it much. It smells expensive.”

  It was the nicest she had ever been to me, and in my mind, I patted myself on my back for my genius. I handed her the box. “For you,” I s
aid, sweetly.

  She took the box with her good arm and clutched it to her chest. “Go away.”

  “You don’t want me to help you up?”

  “Go away before I give you a ticket for trying to kill me.”

  “All righty,” I sang and walked up the street to Ruth.

  “For the first time, I wish I had a smartphone so I could have videoed that whole thing. I could have made a fortune on You Tube,” Ruth said.

  “I don’t know why she doesn’t like me.”

  “You don’t?”

  “That wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t rolling down the street,” I pointed out.

  “You knocked the poor woman down. You initiated the roll, Gladie. Admit it. You initiated the roll.”

  She was right, but there was no way I was going to admit it.

  “I’m going to match the sumo woman,” I said.

  Ruth shook her head, like she pitied me. “What a way to make a living.”

  Since Buckstars was closed, we moved on to question the egg people. “What do those idiots have to do with a stranger’s murder?” Ruth asked, as she drove us to Josephine’s house.

  “I don’t know.”

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were involved. What had Josephine told me? She had once seen a dead person but didn’t tell anyone. Could that be the person buried under Buckstars? Could she have been confessing something to me?

  Josephine lived in a small cottage, just outside of the Historic District. When we arrived, I could smell the eggs before I got out of the car. “Josephine used to work on Wall Street,” Ruth told me, as we walked up the front steps. “Her ex-husband was a hedge fund guy.”

  “Bradford Blythe was a venture capitalist,” I said, noting the link.

  “So, she stabbed him to death and then went home to boil eggs?” Ruth asked, suspicious. “Sounds reasonable.”

  I knocked on the door, and Josephine answered, letting out a cloud of steam. Her hair was even more of a frizzball than it was earlier in the day.

  She smiled wide when she saw me. “Oh, Gladie. Thank you for coming and volunteering!”

  “Uh,” I said, as she pulled me into her house. Ruth followed. Every surface of Josephine’s home was covered in hard-boiled eggs. Ruth pushed aside a couple dozen and sat on the couch.

  “It’s like D-Day in here, Josephine,” Ruth said. “But D-Day was to stop the spread of fascism and beat the Nazis. Why are you doing this?”

  “We’re going to be in the Paramount World Record book, Ruth,” Josephine said, proudly. She had turned the corner from Debbie Downer to full-throated participant. “We’re putting Cannes on the map.”

  “It’s on every map I’ve ever seen,” Ruth said.

  “Ruth Fletcher, when you die, your tombstone is going to read, Party Pooper.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s going to read, I Wasn’t Dumb Enough to Boil a Hundred Thousand Eggs.”

  I stepped between them and gave Josephine my biggest smile. “How can I help, Josephine?” I heard myself ask. She showed me to her small kitchen where every pot was boiling at least a dozen eggs.

  “You can drain,” she said, like I knew what that meant.

  “Crazy about today,” I commented, picking up a pair of pot holders.

  “Well, hormones combined with tax season made Bridget lose her mind. That’s what everyone’s saying.”

  That sounded pretty convincing to me. I would have to find out who the real killer was quick or Bridget was a goner. I picked up a pot and poured the boiling water into a strainer in the sink.

  “Gently!” Josephine shrieked. “No cracking the eggs.”

  Wow, Easter was stressful. “Poor man, the man who was killed,” I said, as I got a face full of steam.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  My antennae stood up. She didn’t sound torn up about the murder. “Did you know him?”

  “Me? Of course not.”

  “He worked on Wall Street, too.”

  Josephine put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “A lot of people work on Wall Street, Gladie. I don’t know all of them.”

  Defensive. Definitely defensive.

  “Of course not.” I picked up another pot.

  “But I did know someone who knew him,” she continued. I froze with the pot in my hands. “You won’t tell a soul, will you?”

  “Would I tell a soul?” I said like a question so it wouldn’t be a lie.

  “The owner of Buckstars. When the murdered guy walked in, the owner said, ‘What are you doing here? I don’t want any trouble.’ What do you think of that?”

  I thought I wished I could have gotten into Buckstars and grilled the Essexes. “Sounds interesting,” I said.

  “And then there’s Bridget, of course,” Josephine said. “I heard they were in business together. Funny business. Like maybe Bridget wasn’t so honest with her numbers.”

  So, the baby daddy information hadn’t gotten out. That was good. But I didn’t like Bridget’s professional reputation tarnished. “Bridget has only ever been honest with her numbers,” I insisted. “She’s the most trustworthy person I’ve ever met. The most trustworthy person you’ve ever met.”

  Josephine shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”

  I had come over to ask Josephine about something she had told me, and now she was defensive. That wouldn’t make it easier to get information out of her. I needed her to be in a better mood.

  “Have I mentioned how impressed I am with what you’ve done with the Easter egg hunt?” I asked her, kissing her butt. It worked. She blushed and flipped her frizzed out hair. “There are a lot of volunteers in this town, but none of them have tried to pull off something this big. I think the town should give you a volunteer award.”

  Her face brightened, and she stood up straighter. “You think so?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  We talked for about twenty minutes about the minutiae of how to break a world record with eggs and how to mobilize an entire town toward a singular purpose. All the while, I boiled about a hundred eggs. My skin was dewy soft from the steam, and my makeup had melted off after five minutes.

  “You know, Josephine,” I said nonchalantly, leaning against her counter, when she was good and relaxed. “Call me silly, but I can’t stop thinking about what you told me yesterday. You know, about finding a dead body. That’s so exciting!”

  “Really? You find a dead body ever week.”

  “Not every week. Maybe every month.” I giggled like we were talking about nail colors. “Anyhoo… So, spill about the dead body. I promise I won’t tell.”

  I crossed my fingers behind my back so I wouldn’t go to hell.

  “I don’t know if I should,” she said, her face a picture of fear.

  “Oh, come on. What could it hurt?”

  She smiled, as if she was pleased to dish the dirt. “Well, all right. You know, it’s sort of strange because today reminded me of that day. You know, because it was in a weird place, not a place where you’d expect to find someone murdered.”

  Her phone rang, and she stuck a finger up. “This is my mother, Gladie. Can we finish this another time?”

  No! Of course we can’t finish this another time! My best friend is up for murder! Now, spill the beans, or I’m going to boil you like an Easter egg.

  “No problem,” I said, my mouth upturned in a frozen smile.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said into the phone and walked out of the kitchen, just as Ruth walked in.

  “Well?” she asked me. “Can we leave now? I feel like I’m an old Jewish man taking a shvitz in Brooklyn.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s racist, Ruth.”

  “What’s racist about Brooklyn?”

  “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  “What did you find out?” she asked me as we left Josephine’s house.

  “Nothing. A big goose egg. Just that Ford Essex knew Brad, but I already knew that.”

  Ruth perked up. “You already knew that? W
hy didn’t you tell me before? We need to get in that place, Gladie.”

  “I know.”

  We drove back to Buckstars. It was still locked, and the inside was dark. It was getting dark outside, too.

  “What’re we going to do?” Ruth asked me. “I know. We could kidnap them.”

  “Kidnapping is a federal charge.”

  “So is stealing mail. What’s your point?”

  I willed myself to be smart. Bridget was counting on me, and I was getting nowhere fast. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I began, but I was interrupted.

  “Pinky, I knew I would find you here.”

  It was the deep, velvety voice of Spencer Bolton. My boyfriend. The man who arrested my best friend for murder. He had changed his suit, and he was stunningly handsome. He smelled nice, too, and I instantly regretted giving away my fancy, expensive perfume.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of me. “Did you run out of my friends to arrest?”

  “We weren’t doing anything we weren’t supposed to,” Ruth told him, crossing her arms, defiantly.

  He arched an eyebrow. “I’m happy to hear that, Ruth. So, you couldn’t find another sumo wrestler to throw at my cops?”

  “I didn’t throw her,” I said.

  “She didn’t even push her on purpose,” Ruth explained. “She was trying to help, and that stupid cop of yours got in the way.”

  “Interesting graffiti on the Buckstars sign,” Spencer said. He gave Ruth the stink-eye.

  “I better get going,” Ruth said, avoiding any discussion of the Fuckstars sign. “Julie probably Superglued the teacups to the saucers again. Bye, Gladie. We’ll talk about you know what tomorrow.”

  “Talk about what?” Spencer asked me when Ruth walked away.

  “Why? You want to arrest Ruth, too?”

  Spencer stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me against him. “Pinky, I’m so sorry about Bridget. And I’m so sorry about your birthday. I know this will work out. In the meantime, let’s celebrate another year. Let me take you to dinner.”

  I tried to harden myself against his barrage of hormones, but no way could I be that hard. Until they invented a hormone-proof vest to fend off his Superman pheromones, I was helpless. “Are you really taking me out for my birthday dinner, or is this a ruse to arrest me and take me to jail?”