Death by Cuddle Club

by Norah Wilson

  Albert ‘Squeezey-Hands’ Valentine.

  Chapter 4

  I HAD TO maneuver around a sea of bodies, but soon enough, I too was poking my head out of one of the holes at the top of a royal blue Cuddle-Uppie. Yes, right between Dickhead (“our Richie” was smiling still) and Albert. Okay, which way did I cringe?

  Suck it up, I told myself. You’re on an important fact-finding mission.

  The creepiest fact-finding mission on the planet, granted, but this was business.

  “I’m a salesman,” Albert said. He nodded to Dickhead. “Just like Richie here. ’Cept he sells paper products. How boring is that?”

  “Yeah. Boring.” Dickhead’s answer confirmed that he was indeed posing as a salesman.

  “And what do you sell, Albert?” I felt obliged to ask.

  “Flowers!” He answered triumphantly, as though I should swoon or something.

  “Flowers?”

  “Pretty flowers for pretty ladies. Do you like flowers, pretty lady?”

  Lady? I looked around automatically, then realized he was talking to me. I managed not to roll my eyes. “Do I like flowers? No.”

  “No? Not even roses?”

  “Can’t stand ’em.”

  Albert looked confused. “How could you not like roses?”

  “It’s the pricks,” I supplied. “I just wanna snap them right off. Take a pair of shears to them. Or pliers, and twist and twist and twist.”

  Albert’s eyes grew wider with every little fantasy... er, I mean detail.

  “You know—the thorns,” I said, smiling. “I can’t stand the thorns.”

  From the other side of the Cuddle-Uppie, Ruth-Ann struggled to suppress a smile.

  Albert turned away. Which required some awkward butt-walking action, seeing as we were all sitting on the carpeted floor, and our heads were so closely trapped by the Cuddle-Uppie.

  Jesus, I felt like I was in one of those whack-a-mole games at the amusement park.

  On that thought, I almost giggled, picturing a great big giant inflatable hammer coming down to whack us on the head at any moment. Said huge hammer could start with Detective Richard Head on my left.

  Boing. Pop. Got him! Then it would move on to Gaetan and his perfectly round afro. I could almost picture the hammer sinking down and bouncing back.

  Yes, I could really picture it. And so, despite everything, I got that warm and fuzzy feeling. Caught myself smiling. Okay, maybe even relaxing.

  Weird for me, under the circumstances.

  I glanced over at Dylan, who was looking over at me.

  I knew that smile—the smart-assed ha-ha-you-like-it smile. Or, maybe he was smiling because he was the only guy under blanket number two with Eva, Brandy, Zoey, Starla and a few others female cuddlers. Geez, there was even a geriatric woman in there, and she looked delighted to have Dylan Foreman so caressingly close. Oh, she was laying on the charm, batting her eyelashes faster than I could... well, bat my own eyelashes. (I still suck at metaphors. Also, I suck at batting my eyelashes.)

  Elizabeth Bee and her old fart were under the Cuddle-Uppie to my right. And oh, oh, oh, there was something going on under that blanket, if I knew Elizabeth. There was this little flippy ripple to that royal blue cover. Hands were working on something. That could only be—

  “You can quit staring, Dix,” Elizabeth said. “I’m scratching an itch on my foot.”

  Yeah, that.

  Okay, so there I was, sitting under a Cuddle-Uppie blanket with my head poked through a hole in the top.

  It wasn’t like we were body to body, bumping parts better left unbumped. We were sitting there under these huge blankets. Just... sitting. A bit knee to knee—but that wouldn’t kill me. Elbow here and there (mine were the pointiest). Of course, Dickhead was practically straining at the neck hole, as was I, so we wouldn’t touch each other. (God, you’d think we were in grade school and worried about catching cooties.) I started to relax even more. Yeah, I kind of did.

  “It’s time, my little buttercups,” Gaetan cooed to the crowd of us. “Time to cuddle. Snuggle in close, now.”

  “I have cooties! I have cooties!”

  “Oh that’s funny, Dix!” Elizabeth Bee laughed. “Cooties. You’re such a hoot!”

  Everyone giggled. (Well, almost everyone. Eva was scratching her head, as if the cooties were catching.)

  What would it take to scare these people away? If the threat of cooties wouldn’t do it, what would? I really didn’t want to play the diarrhea card. Oh boy.

  Well, kind of oh boy.

  In truth the panic wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought it would be as people started wrapping up closer.

  Still, I watched before I advanced to go.

  Dylan was practically folded up in that custom cuddle blanket as the women gathered around him closer.

  “Ladies,” Dylan said. “Make room for Mabel.”

  White-haired, eyelash batting (damn show off) Mabel couldn’t have been more thrilled as she scooted closer and then cuddled into Dylan. Okay, maybe “latched onto” is the phrase I’m looking for. She sighed contentedly.

  “Cuddle, Hugh?” Elizabeth cooed.

  “Love to, dearest.” Yeah, that blanket was moving suspiciously again. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t an itch that Elizabeth Bee was, er, scratching this time.

  Gaetan’s clap-clap-clapping was muffled under that blanket. (Oh God, I hope he was clapping his hands!) “Come on, cuddlers!” he said, his words clearly directed at me. “Don’t be shy. Cuddle right up!”

  Dickhead was still smiling as he looked at me. Well, sort of. It may have strained toward a cringing grimace. And was that a sheen of sweat upon his brow?

  Do we really have to do this? That was what he was thinking. I could read his very thoughts. (Of course, it helped that he muttered those exact same words as he thought them).

  Albert, on the other hand, wasn’t minding. And if he’d been miffed by my rose/prick/happy snip-snip remark, that was in the past. As he butt walked in a little closer (honestly it was a rolly thing), the Cuddle-Uppie folded in. Suddenly, arms were around me. Dickhead’s. Albert’s.

  (And yeah, those arms were still attached to the bodies!)

  Albert said, “Oh, you’re so...”

  What? Sweet? Luscious?

  “My God, you’re all—jabby. I mean... ouch!”

  I laughed as if it were funny.

  “No, seriously. Loosen up, will you?”

  “I am loose.”

  “There’s not a soft spot on you,” Albert complained.

  “Wait—are you calling me a hard belly?”

  He snorted a laugh. “God, no. Lots of padding there.” And he wasn’t meaning the pink peppermint jammies.

  Undercover (literally!) or not, the guy had just snapped my last nerve, “I’d be watching my prick if I were you, flower man.”

  That shut him up. It also caused him to loosen his grip on me. Which only served to make me more aware of Dickhead’s arms around me. Gah! Well, that, and the fact that he gave me a jab to the ribs, presumably to remind me we were undercover here. (Ha! Undercover. That never gets old.)

  “This is how we do it, Dix. That’s your name, right?”

  “Yes, Dickh—”

  “Richie,” he hastened to say. “But that’s okay. Sometimes the older ladies do have a hard time remembering all the names. It’s just that—oomph.”

  Ah, once again, a strategically placed elbow does the trick.

  “Lay down, cuddlers!” Gaetan sang out. Clap, clap, clap.

  Lay down? Was he freakin’ kidding me?

  It took some maneuvering. Twisting, and an awkward bit of rolling. The process was made even more awkward by the way Albert Valentine went down, like an old tom cat flopping himself down on a rug, dragging me down faster than I’d planned.

  “Hey, watch it, Valentine,” I hissed, giving him a jab. “We’re kind of attached here.”

  He made a grunting noise. I wanted to give him something to grunt
about, but restrained myself. It wouldn’t pay to get myself kicked out of cuddle club before the investigation even got started.

  So we twisted and scooted some more until we’d arranged ourselves into a sort-of prone position with our heads poking out of the Cuddle-Uppies. Beside each other, around each other. Tucked and tethered and leaning in. And yeah, I was lying down with Dickhead’s arms around me and my arms around Albert Valentine. And the only consolation was neither man seemed to be enjoying this any more than I was.

  But that was the thing... I kind of, a little bit, was.

  Oh God, I should be freaking, straining away from the contact. But somehow, I wasn’t. Maybe it was the coziness of the cuddle, the warmth of it (and it was warm in there, believe me).

  Nah. I rejected that thought. It had to be the paycheck waiting for me at the end of this. That was the warmest incentive of all.

  Suddenly, the office door flew open and light spilled into the dimly lit room.

  “Babe, what are you doing?” Gaetan snapped.

  “I’m going to join in.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” Ruth-Ann called. “We can make room in here.”

  Gaetan didn’t seem to concur that that was such a wonderful idea. “Not tonight. We’ve already started. And the rules of cuddle club are simple. Golden. Once the cuddle is cast, no one else can come in.”

  Once the cuddle is cast?

  Oh brother!

  No, make that nasty S.O.B. of a brother.

  “But... but I had to lower the lights, start the music... turn on the fans! You said—”

  “No, Babe. Get back to the office.” Gaetan was adamant. Babe turned and left.

  Richard Head changed his position. Adjusted himself so that a certain part (guess which one) wasn’t so close to me. Oh, but Albert Valentine didn’t move a muscle. He lay there stiff as a board. (Okay, I do have a few stock metaphors in the drawer.)

  “Sorry for the rude interruption, cuddlers,” Gaetan said. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes, for those of you who are new...”

  Again, it was just Dylan and me. Was he trying to make us not stand out? My God, we were the only ones who showed up in our pajamas!

  “Is everyone settled into their cuddle spots? Everyone cozy?”

  There were a few male groans mixed in with an, “Oh, yeah.” More than a few female giggles from the general direction of Dylan’s Cuddle-Uppie.

  “Good,” Gaetan said. “Now, sometimes we have a little sing-along.”

  “Awesome!” Dylan said.

  “Oh, do you sing, Dylan?” Mabel asked.

  “I do,” he told the older lady. “Frank Sinatra, eat your heart out!”

  “Oh, I can’t wait to hear you.”

  I tensed. Well, tensed even more. (Something might actually have cracked inside). Dylan Foreman cannot sing. No, I mean, he is the worst vocalist on the planet. All those really bad American Idol auditions? Dylan makes every last sorry one of those contestants look good. Except Dylan didn’t know it. Hadn’t a clue.

  Elizabeth Bee—who’d heard him before—spoke up. “Gaetan, maybe we can do something else tonight. Tell jokes or ghost stories... anything!”

  “Nonsense! You have a very nice voice, Elizabeth. Now’s not the time to be shy,” Gaetan said.

  There were snickers all around. Shy was the last thing Elizabeth was, a fact that clearly was not lost on her fellow cuddlers. But I wasn’t snickering. As I lay there between tweedle dee and tweedle’s... dick, I had to figure out a way to stop this fiasco before it began. Before it hurt my ears. I was too far from the fire extinguisher. Couldn’t reach my cell to call in a bomb threat. There had to be something I could do. Something that wouldn’t blow our cover. Something that made perfect sense! Something that would stop this sing-along before it started.

  All of a sudden, I knew I didn’t have to make something up.

  “Omigod! The guy beside me...”

  “Dammit, Dixieland!” Dickhead grumbled, letting his cover slip a little in his exasperation. “What is it? What am I doing wrong now?”

  “Not you! It’s Goatma—I mean, Albert. The guy on the other side of me... he’s dead!”

  Yeah. That worked.

  Everyone forgot about the sing-along.

  Chapter 5

  YEAH, DEATH is always messy, especially when I’m smack-dab in the middle of it. Or in this case, smack dab beside it.

  After the “Ha-ha, very funny”, “He’s just sleeping,” and “Oh, that’s just our Albert,” were done, people actually started looking over. Questioning. Pulling their heads out of their holes (the Cuddle-Uppie holes), getting their socks back on in some cases, and scrambling to their feet.

  As Albert lay there unmoving, panic started to set in among the cuddlers.

  Eva gasped and started chewing her hair to an omigod omigod omigod beat.

  In no time flat, Brandy had her arms around Eva, soothing her.

  Zoey, hand over her mouth, started backing away from the scene.

  Babe, who’d emerged at the commotion, started gathering the abandoned blankets and ran back to the office with them as if keeping things tidy was important at a time like this! (Yep, panic sure did strange things to people sometimes.)

  And Gaetan? Well, he started accusing me.

  “What happened?” he yelled.

  “How should I know?”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing!” I protested. “I mean, I hardly said a word to him. Well, just that business about twisting off pricks and—”

  “Oh, God, no!” someone muttered. (Someone of the male persuasion—maybe they knew me from Florida.)

  “On roses,” I clarified. “We were talking about the prickly thorns on rose stems.”

  Judging by some of the expressions around me, not everyone was convinced. Well, that was their problem. I was in no way responsible for Goatman’s death. But as usual, I was in the thick of things.

  Or rather, I would be in the thick of things if the crowd hadn’t started thinning so rapidly. People were leaving. Grabbing coats, sliding on shoes and hustling out the door. What the hell? Okay, I know we don’t talk about cuddle club, but really, people!

  At least Detective Head was here to take charge. Off duty, or not, undercover or out from under the covers, he was still law enforcement. Any minute now, he was going to step up to the plate.

  Or not.

  Ruth-Ann (who, it turns out, was once an RN/PhD ethicist with the faculty of nursing at Marport University) was checking Albert Valentine for vitals.

  “Nothing,” she announced, her voice clipped. “No pulse, no respiration.”

  Then she leaned over Albert and started administering CPR.

  I glanced up to see a knot of people rushing the door, jamming it in their haste to get away. The bulge of bodies in the door frame would have been amusing if the circumstances weren’t so dire. I was surprised to see Elizabeth Bee quickening her pace to get to the door. I really didn’t think she’d give a rat’s ass about being seen at the cuddle club. But then I realized what her hurry was. Hugh Drammen was standing precariously close to Eva and Brandy near the door. Well, precariously close for Elizabeth’s liking, I imagined.

  Then, with a move that would have fit perfectly into any old Marx Brothers’ comedy, the log jam broke and everyone fell out through the door frame at once. Righting themselves, they darted off for the exits.

  A movement from Ruth-Ann drew my eyes back to the resuscitation attempt. I watched her tilt Albert’s head back, lift his chin, seal his nose and deliver a couple of breaths. It was eerie watching Albert’s chest rise and fall. Then she went back to the chest compressions. There was a rhythm to it, I saw. Thirty compressions, two breaths, back to compressions again. After a few cycles of this, she paused and checked again for breathing.

  Dylan, who’d stepped back momentarily to call 9-1-1, came to stand at my side, cell phone still pressed to his ear. “Ambulance is on the way,” he announced. Then he knelt to address Ruth. “I’ve got
dispatch on the line, Ruth. If I take over CPR, can you give them a status report?”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.” Ruth blew a strand of hair out of her face, sat back on her heels and took the phone Dylan proffered. I listened to her calmly describe Albert’s status and the rescue efforts she’d been employing, but my eyes were on Dylan. Huh. I didn’t even know he knew CPR. Though I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d taken over where Ruth-Ann had left off, and as I watched, it seemed to me his compressions were more aggressive, deeper than the older woman’s. Then again, he was younger, bigger and stronger. And he hadn’t been doing it for five minutes. Poor Ruth-Ann looked done in.

  Those of us remaining (the very few of us) looked on, knowing the efforts were to no avail. I could tell by the grim look on all their faces.

  Especially Albert’s.

  Come on, EMTs.

  As I watched Dylan pause and deliver a couple of breaths, it occurred to me that the cops would be arriving soon, too. Maybe they’d even be first on the scene ahead of the ambulance. The thought had me looking for Dickhead. I didn’t have to look far. He’d moved right up beside me. In fact, he took my elbow and drew me back.

  “The smoothie—it’s gone,” he murmured in my ear.

  “What?”

  His grip tightened on my elbow. “Could you keep it down?”

  “Fine,” I hissed. “What happened to the evidence?”

  “Babe must have dumped it out when she was doing her manic Merry Maids routine.”

  I groaned. I could hear it now. The churning sound of the dishwasher blended in with the sound of the agitating washer from the other room.

  “Shit. Nothing to analyze.”

  “Not exactly. Unless Albert perks up a whole helluva lot, the medical examiner will have the contents of his stomach to work with,” Dickhead pointed out.

  “Yeah, but they won’t necessarily know if it got into his stomach here.”

  “I know.” He sighed, looking over at Albert.

  I followed his gaze. Dylan was still doing CPR. Ruth-Ann still held the phone. Head’s next words ripped my attention back to him.